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Douglas Leedy
Douglas Leedy (March 3, 1938; Portland, Oregon – March 28, 2015; Corvallis, Oregon) was an American composer, performer and music scholar. Biography Born in Portland, Oregon, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young and Terry Riley. An orchestral hornist, harpsichordist, and singer, he studied South Indian music in Madras with K. V. Narayanaswamy, North Indian vocal music with Pandit Pran Nath, and was first music director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and the musical director of the 1985 Portland Handel Festival, during which he conducted complete, period-instrument performances of Handel's oratorios Jephtha and Theodora. He taught music at UCLA, the Centro Simon Bolivar (Caracas), and at Reed College. He founded the electronic music studio at UCLA, and his synthesized music was among the earliest commissioned album-length recordings of the M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bhishma At The Harpsichord
Bhishma (Sanskrit: भीष्म, , ), also known as Pitamaha, Gangaputra, and Devavrata, played an integral role in Mahabharata. He was the supreme commander of the Kaurava forces during the Kurukshetra War mentioned in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. He was the only character who witnessed the entirety of the Mahabharata, beginning from the reign of his father, King Shantanu of the Kuru kingdom. Bhishma was the step-brother of Vyasa, the grandfather of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas. He was a prominent statesman of the Kuru Kingdom. He was born as the elder son of the illustrious King Shantanu and Ganga. Originally named Devavrata, he was made the heir-apparent of his kingdom. However, he ceded his throne for his father's happiness and took the vow of lifelong celibacy. Owing to this selfless decision, he came to be known as Bhishma and was blessed to live as long as he wanted, by his father, Shantanu. He played a major role in the political affairs of the Kuru king ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buchla
Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments (BEMI) was a manufacturer of synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The origins of the company could be found in Buchla & Associates, created in 1963 by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla of Berkeley, California. In 2012 the original company led by Don Buchla was acquired by a group of Australian investors trading as Audio Supermarket Pty. Ltd. The company was renamed Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments as part of the acquisition. In 2018 the assets of BEMI were acquired by a new entity, Buchla U.S.A., and the company continues under new ownership. Company origin Buchla's first modular electronic music system was the result of a San Francisco Tape Music Center commission by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick in 1963, who later allotted $500 from a Rockefeller Foundation grant to Buchla in 1964. Subotnick envisioned a voltage-controlled instrument that would allow musicians and composers to create sounds suited to their own specificati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Persians
''The Persians'' ( grc, Πέρσαι, ''Persai'', Latinised as ''Persae'') is an Greek tragedy, ancient Greek tragedy written during the Classical Greece, Classical period of Ancient Greece by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It is the second and only surviving part of a now otherwise lost trilogy that won the first prize at the dramatic competitions in Athens' City Dionysia festival in 472 BC, with Pericles serving as ''choregos''. Place in Aeschylus' work The first play in the trilogy, called ''Phineus'', presumably dealt with Jason and the Argonauts' rescue of King Phineus from the torture that the monstrous harpies inflicted at the behest of Zeus. The subject of the third play, ''Glaucus'', was either a mythical Corinthian king who was devoured by his horses because he angered the goddess Aphrodite (see Glaucus (son of Sisyphus)) or else a Boeotian farmer who ate a magical herb that transformed him into a sea deity with the gift of prophecy (see Glaucus). In ''The Persians'', Xe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pindar
Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sappho
Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Poetry of Sappho, Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; only the "Ode to Aphrodite" is certainly complete. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style. Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; Charaxos (Χάραξος), Larichos ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's ''Iliad'' centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The ''Odyssey'' chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Homer's Ithaca, Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic Greek, Ionic and Aeolic Greek, Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally Oral tradition, transmitted orally. Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Just Intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios (such as 3:2 or 4:3) of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals (and chords created by combining them) consist of tones from a single harmonic series of an implied fundamental. For example, in the diagram, if the notes G3 and C4 (labelled 3 and 4) are tuned as members of the harmonic series of the lowest C, their frequencies will be 3 and 4 times the fundamental frequency. The interval ratio between C4 and G3 is therefore 4:3, a just fourth. In Western musical practice, instruments are rarely tuned using only pure intervals—the desire for different keys to have identical intervals in Western music makes this impractical. Some instruments of fixed pitch, such as electric pianos, are commonly tuned using equal temperament, in which all intervals other than octaves consist of irrational-number freq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meantone
Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, that is a tuning system, obtained by narrowing the fifths so that their ratio is slightly less than 3:2 (making them ''narrower'' than a perfect fifth), in order to push the thirds closer to pure. Meantone temperaments are constructed the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a stack of equal fifths, but it is a ''temperament'' in that the fifths are not pure. Notable meantone temperaments Equal temperament, obtained by making all semitones the same size, each equal to one-twelfth of an octave (with ratio the 12th root of 2 to one (:1), narrows the fifths by about 2 cents or 1/12 of a Pythagorean comma, and produces thirds that are only slightly better than in Pythagorean tuning. Equal temperament is roughly the same as 1/11 comma meantone tuning. Quarter-comma meantone, which tempers the fifths by 1/4 of a syntonic comma, is the best known type of meantone temperament, and the term ''meantone temperament'' is often used to refer to i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equal Temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, which gives an equal perceived step size as pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency. In classical music and Western music in general, the most common tuning system since the 18th century has been twelve-tone equal temperament (also known as 12 equal temperament, 12-TET or 12-ET; informally abbreviated to twelve equal), which divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equal on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the 12th root of 2 ( ≈ 1.05946). That resulting smallest interval, the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step. In Western countries the term ''equal temperament'', without qualification, generally means 12-TET. In modern times, 12-TET is usually tuned relative to a standard pit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his former teacher and contemporary, Henry Cowell, but later moved toward incorporating elements of non-Western cultures into his work. Notable examples include a number of pieces written for Javanese style gamelan instruments, inspired after studying with noted gamelan musician Kanjeng Notoprojo in Indonesia. Harrison would create his own musical ensembles and instruments with his partner, William Colvig, who are now both considered founders of the American gamelan movement and world music; along with composers Harry Partch and Claude Vivier, and ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee. The majority of Harrison's works and custom instruments are written for just intonation rather than the more widespread equal temperament, making him one of the mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Partch
Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built custom-made instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book '' Genesis of a Music'' (1947). Partch composed with scales dividing the octave into 43 unequal tones derived from the natural harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals to the octave. To play his music, Partch built many unique instruments, with such names as the Chromelodeon, the Quadrangularis Reversum, and the Zymo-Xyl. Partch described his music as corporeal, and distinguished it from abs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives. Minimalism in music often features repetition and gradual variation, such as the works of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Julius Eastman and John Adams. The term ''minimalist'' often colloquially refers to anything or anyone that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has accordingly been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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