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Le Marteau Sans Maître
''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It is among his most acclaimed compositions. History Before ''Le Marteau'', Boulez had established a reputation as the composer of modernist and serialist works such as '' Structures I'', '' Polyphonie X'', as well as his infamously "unplayable" Second Piano Sonata. ''Le Marteau'' was first written as a six-movement composition between 1953 and 1954, and was published in that form in the latter year, "imprimée pour le festival de musique, 1954, Donaueschingen" (though in the end it was not performed there) in a photographic reproduction of the composer's manuscript by Universal Edition, given the catalog number UE 12362. In 1955 Boulez revised the order of these movements and interpolated three newly composed ones. The original, six ...
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Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism (in the 1950s), controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as landmarks of twentieth-century musi ...
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Xylorimba
The xylorimba (sometimes referred to as xylo-marimba or marimba-xylophone) is a pitched percussion instrument similar to an extended-range xylophone with a range identical to some 5-octave celestas or 5-octave marimbas, though typically an octave higher than the latter. Despite its name, it is not a combination of a xylophone and a marimba; its name has been a source of confusion, as many composers have called for a 'xylorimba', including Alban Berg, Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen, but for parts requiring only a four-octave xylophone. However, Pierre Boulez wrote for two five-octave xylorimbas in . Like the xylophone and marimba, the xylorimba consists of a series of wooden bars laid out like a piano keyboard "with a compass sufficiently large to embrace the low-sounding bars of the marimba and the highest-sounding bars of the xylophone." The lower notes of the xylorimba are described as sounding closer to a xylophone than a marimba, on account of its bars being both thicker a ...
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Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. Their music was initially characterized by late- Romantic expanded tonality and later, a totally chromatic expressionism without firm tonal centre, often referred to as atonality; and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique. Adorno said that the twelve-tone method, when it had evolved into maturity, was a "veritable message in a bottle", addressed to an unknown and uncertain future. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which, as his various published textbooks demonstrate, was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned n ...
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Sprechstimme
(, "spoken singing") and (, "spoken voice") are expressionist vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, ''Sprechgesang'' is directly related to the operatic ''recitative'' manner of singing (in which pitches are sung, but the articulation is rapid and loose like speech), whereas ''Sprechstimme'' is closer to speech itself (because it does not emphasise any particular pitches). Sprechgesang ''Sprechgesang'' is more closely aligned with the long-used musical techniques of ''recitative'' or ''parlando'' than is ''Sprechstimme''. Where the term is employed in this way, it is usually in the context of the late Romantic German operas or "music dramas" that were composed by Richard Wagner and others in the 19th century. Thus, ''Sprechgesang'' is often merely a German alternative to ''recitative''. ''Sprechstimme'' The earliest compositional use of the technique was in the first version of Engelbert Humperdinck's 1897 melodrama ''Köni ...
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Glissando
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the continuous portamento. Some colloquial equivalents are slide, sweep (referring to the "discrete glissando" effects on guitar and harp, respectively), bend, smear, rip (for a loud, violent gliss to the beginning of a note), lip (in jazz terminology, when executed by changing one's embouchure on a wind instrument), plop, or falling hail (a glissando on a harp using the back of the fingernails). On wind instruments, a scoop is a glissando ascending to the onset of a note achieved entirely with the embouchure. Portamento Prescriptive attempts to distinguish the glissando from the portamento by limiting the former to the filling in of discrete intermediate pitches on instruments like the piano, harp, and fretted stringed instruments have ...
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Incises
''Incises'' (1994/2001) and ''Sur Incises'' (1996/1998) are two related works of the French composer Pierre Boulez. The pitches of the row used in ''Incises'' and ''Sur Incises'' are based on the Sacher hexachord, the same as those used in the rows for '' Répons'', ''Messagesquisse'', and ''Dérive 1''. ''Incises'' ''Incises'' ("Interpolations") for solo piano was composed in 1994 as a test piece for the Umberto Micheli Piano Competition, where it was first performed on 21 October 1994. Boulez revised it in 2001. ''Incises'' was Boulez's first work for solo piano since his Third Piano Sonata of 1955–57/63. The piece lasts less than ten minutes. The work plays with contrasts of gestures and textures, for instance, repeated pitches or chords in an even tempo interrupted by violent melodic arcs, or sparse chordal interjections without discernible rhythm over long held sonorities. Reviewing of a 2005 performance of ''Incises'', Tim Page described it: "''Incises'' is charged wi ...
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Koto (musical Instrument)
The is a Japanese plucked half-tube zither instrument, and the national instrument of Japan. It is derived from the Chinese and , and similar to the Mongolian , the Korean and , the Vietnamese , the Sundanese and the Kazakhstan . Koto are roughly in length, and made from Paulownia wood ('' Paulownia tomentosa'', known as ). The most common type uses 13 strings strung over movable bridges used for tuning, different pieces possibly requiring different tuning. 17-string koto are also common, and act as bass in ensembles. Koto strings are generally plucked using three fingerpicks (), worn on the first three fingers of the right hand. Names and types The character for ''koto'' is , although is often used. However, (''koto'') is the general term for all string instruments in the Japanese language,(jaKotobank koto/ref> including instruments such as the , , , , , and so on. When read as , it indicates the Chinese instrument . The term is used today in the same way. The term ...
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Music Of Japan
In Japan, music includes a wide array of distinct genres, both traditional and modern. The word for "music" in Japanese is 音楽 (''ongaku''), combining the kanji 音 ''on'' (sound) with the kanji 楽 ''gaku'' (music, comfort). Japan is the world's largest market for music on physical media and the second-largest overall music market, with a retail value of US$2.7 billion in 2017. Traditional and folk music Gagaku, hougaku The oldest forms of traditional Japanese music are: * , or Buddhist chanting * , or orchestral court music both of which date to the Nara (710–794) and Heian (794–1185) periods. Gagaku classical music has been performed at the Imperial court since the Heian period. Kagura-uta (神楽歌), Azuma-asobi (東遊) and Yamato-uta (大和歌) are indigenous repertories. Tōgaku (唐楽) and komagaku emerged during the Tang dynasty (618–907) via the Korean Peninsula. In addition, gagaku splits into kangen (管弦) (instrumental music) and bugaku (舞楽) ( ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the f ...
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Gamelan
Gamelan () ( jv, ꦒꦩꦼꦭꦤ꧀, su, ᮌᮙᮨᮜᮔ᮪, ban, ᬕᬫᭂᬮᬦ᭄) is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. The most common instruments used are metallophones played by mallets and a set of hand-played drums called '' kendhang/Kendang'', which register the beat. The kemanak (a banana-shaped idiophone) and gangsa (another metallophone) are commonly used gamelan instruments in Bali. Other instruments include xylophones, bamboo flutes, a bowed instrument called a ''rebab'', a zither-like instrument ''siter'' (in Javanese ensemble) and vocalists named '' sindhen'' (female) or ''gerong'' (male).Sumarsam (1998)''Introduction to Javanese Gamelan'' Middletown. Although the popularity of gamelan has declined since the introduction of pop music, gamelan is still commonly played in many traditional ceremonies and other modern activities in Indonesia, b ...
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Music Of Bali
The Music of Bali, Bali is an Indonesian island that shares in the gamelan and other Indonesian musical styles. Bali, however, has its own techniques and styles, including kecak, a form of singing that imitates the sound of monkeys. In addition, the island is home to several unique kinds of gamelan, including the gamelan jegog, gamelan gong gede, gamelan gambang, gamelan selunding and gamelan semar pegulingan, the cremation music angklung and the processional music bebonangan. Modern popular styles include gamelan gong kebyar, dance music which developed during the Dutch occupation and 1950s era joged bumbung, another popular dance style. In Balinese music you can also hear metallophones, gongs and xylophones. Characteristics More than 50 people must be dancing during the music. Balinese music can be compared to Javanese music, especially that of the pre-Islamic period. During that time, Javanese tonal systems were imported to Bali. Balinese gamelan, a form of In ...
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