(Ed-gar’ Va-rez’) 1883–1965 French-American composer As a young man, Varèse became convinced that the twentieth century needed its own music, untrammelled by the legacy of the nineteenth. He emigrated to the US and began to write music (Amériques, Offrandes, 1921) that took the dissonance and rhythmic energy of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring as a starting-point. He ...
While in Paris, Varèse became interested in the dynaphone. Invented by René Bertrand and Nadal in 1927, this monophonic instrument was placed on a table. The right hand turned a knob controlling the pitch of an oscillator, while the left hand controlled volume and timbre. Honegger wrote for four dynaphones and a piano in his ballet score Roses de ...
A range of metal percussion instruments are found in the western orchestra, many of which have ancient and global origins. Triangle The triangle comprises a slim steel bar, circular in cross-section, bent into an equilateral triangle (18 cm/7 in each side) with one corner open. It is played with a metal rod, and is suspended from a ...
The tape recorder, invented in 1935, had been used early on to record concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was not until 1948 that Pierre Schaeffer, a technician at the Radiodiffusion Française studio in Paris, conceived his Etude aux chemins de fer. This was the first piece of musique concrète, an experimental technique that ...
Musique concrète (‘concrete music’) was the term coined by Pierre Schaeffer (1910–95) in 1948 to describe his new approach to composition, based on tape recordings of natural and industrial sounds. The term was chosen to distinguish the new genre from pure, abstract music (musique abstrait). Schaeffer was a radio engineer and broadcaster. Having gained a qualification from L’École Polytechnique ...
The ondes martenot (‘martenot waves’) was invented in 1928 by French inventor and cellist, Maurice Martenot. Martenot had met his Russian counterpart, Leon Theremin, in 1923 and the two of them had discussed possible improvements to Theremin’s eponymous instrument. In fact, Martenot’s instrument was patented under the name Perfectionnements aux instruments de musique électriques (‘improvements to electronic ...
In the twentieth century, some musicians became interested in inventing new acoustic instruments that could take music beyond the tuning systems, scales and harmonic language inherent in the instruments commonly played in western classical music. Creating new instruments created a revolutionary new sound world. New instruments were often promoted outside the normal scope of the bourgeois concert audience, ...
Varèse was particularly interested in the sounds of the modern urban world. His music takes a sound world derived from factories and industrialization and turns them into music. But it took the off-beat genius of Ligeti to compose a work entirely for special effects: his Poème symphonique (1962) has passed into musical folklore as the piece of music written for 100 ...
b. 1934 English composer Birtwistle, member as a student of the Manchester New Music Group, says his juvenilia are pastiche Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). Study with Richard Hall opened his ears to Stravinsky, Webern and Varèse, altering his musical style radically. In many ways his music is utterly individual; Birtwistle has said that he was driven to ...
1876–1971 American composer Ruggles wrote only a handful of works, of which the most important are the orchestral Men and Mountains (1924) and Sun-Treader (1926), Portals (1926) for strings and Angels (1924) for brass ensemble. They exhibit a boldly powerful, big-boned atonal style that at times approaches his friends Ives and Varèse, but remains independent. He worked slowly ...
1940–93 American composer, rock musician Zappa, the anti-establishment rock musician and founder of The Mothers of Invention, was inspired as a teenager by the music of Varèse, Stravinsky and Webern, and wrote fully notated avant-garde-style pieces while still at school. In 1970 he performed material from his forthcoming film 200 Motels with the Los Angeles Philharmonic ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1940–93) In 1964, Zappa formed The Mothers Of Invention, whose albums resembled pop-Dada aural junk-sculptures made from an eclectic heap that, laced with outright craziness, included 1950s pop, jazz, schmaltz and the pioneering tonalities of Stravinsky, Varèse and Webern. However, Zappa’s intense concern over social issues was never so ...
1874–1929, Austrian Hofmannsthal was a precocious talent. His first published poem appeared when he was just 16 and he rapidly made the acquaintance of some of the leading literary figures of the day. Most important was a paternalistic relationship with the German poet Stefan George (1868–1933). Hofmannsthal’s youthful ability led to a creative crisis in his mid-twenties from which he ...
(Vikh’-tor Uhl’-man) 1898–c. 1944 Czech composer Ullmann studied in Vienna with Schoenberg and also in his native Prague with the pioneer of microtonal music, Alois Hába. In his own music their influence is joined by those of Mahler, Zemlinsky (with whom he studied conducting), Debussy and Weill, among others. His powerful opera Der Sturz des Antichrists (‘The Rise ...
By the turn of the twentieth century, Western classical music seemed to have reached a crisis in language. Tonality had become enfeebled by its own progressive tendency, via increasing chromaticism, toward subtler and more complex forms of expression. European society had become similarly enervated by the familiar comforts of a bourgeois existence. In many quarters across the Continent ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.