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Micropolyphony
Micropolyphony is a kind of polyphonic musical texture developed by György Ligeti, which consists of many lines of dense canons moving at different tempos or rhythms, thus resulting in tone clusters. According to David Cope, "micropolyphony resembles cluster chords, but differs in its use of moving rather than static lines"; it is "a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms, and timbres". Differences between micropolyphonic texture and conventional polyphonic texture can be explained by Ligeti's own description: The earliest example of micropolyphony in Ligeti's work occurs in the second movement (mm 25–37) of his orchestral composition ''Apparitions''. He used the technique in a number of his other works, including ''Atmosphères'' for orchestra; the first movement of his ''Requiem'' for soprano, mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, and orchestra; the unaccompanied choral work ''Lux aeterna''; and ''Lontano'' for orchestra. Micropolyphony is easier with larger ensembles or polyph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde music, avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". Born in Romania, he lived in the Hungarian People's Republic before emigrating to Austria in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973 he became professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he worked until retiring in 1989. His students included Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin and Michael Daugherty. He died in Vienna in 2006. Restricted in his musical style by the authorities of Communist Hungary, only when he reached the West in 1956 could Ligeti fully realise his passion for avant-garde music and develop new compositional techniques. After experimenting with electronic music in Cologne, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atmosphères
''Atmosphères'' is a piece for orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre (music), metre in favor of dense sound texture (music), textures. After ''Apparitions'', it was the second piece Ligeti wrote to exploit what he called a "micropolyphony, micropolyphonic" texture. It gained further exposure after being used in Stanley Kubrick's film ''2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 2001: A Space Odyssey''. History ''Atmosphères'' was commissioned in 1961 by the Südwestrundfunk, Southwest German Radio (SWF) and had its world premiere on 22 October 1961 by Hans Rosbaud conducting the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra, SWF Symphony Orchestra at the Donaueschingen Festival. Ligeti dedicated the piece to the memory of Mátyás Seiber, a fellow Hungarian-born composer who had been killed in a car crash the previous year. The SWF recorded this performance for broadcast, and this recording has been released commercially on CD seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Texture
In music, texture is how the tempo and the melodic and harmonic materials are combined in a musical composition, determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. The texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices (see Common types below). For example, a thick texture contains many 'layers' of instruments. One of these layers could be a string section or another brass. The thickness also is changed by the amount and the richness of the instruments playing the piece. The thickness varies from light to thick. A piece's texture may be changed by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used. The types categorized by number and relationship of parts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Requiem (Ligeti)
The Requiem by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti is a large-scale choral and orchestral composition, composed between 1963 and 1965. The work lasts for just under half an hour, and is in four movements: "Introitus", a gradual unbroken plane of sound; "Kyrie", a complex polyphonic movement reaching a fortissimo climax; " Dies Irae", which uses vocal and orchestral extremes in theatrical gestures; and the closing "Lacrimosa", for soloists and orchestra only, which returns to the subdued atmosphere of the opening. Composition Ligeti was commissioned to write a work in 1961 for a series of new-music concerts on Swedish Radio. It was he who suggested a Requiem, and had initially intended to set the full text of the Requiem mass. However, he ultimately decided on setting the composition around half of the original text. Ligeti spent nine months working on the six-minute "Kyrie" section alone, which featured the most complex polyphony he had ever attempted, featuring twenty vocal li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Cope
David Howell Cope (May 17, 1941 – May 4, 2025) was an American author, composer, scientist, and Dickerson Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz. His primary area of research involved artificial intelligence and music; he wrote programs and algorithms that can analyze existing music and create new compositions in the style of the original input music. He taught the groundbreaking summer workshop in Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music (WACM) that was open to the public as well as a general education course entitled Artificial Intelligence and Music for enrolled UCSC students. Cope was also co-founder and CTO Emeritus of Recombinant Inc., a music technology company. He died of congestive heart failure on May 4, 2025, at the age of 83. Inventions Cope was the inventor of US Patent #7696426 "Recombinant music composition algorithm and method of using the same," which he filed in 2006. Composition In 1975, he composed a short piece on an IBM machine, using punched cards. His EMI ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pygmy Music
Pygmy music refers to the sub-Saharan African music traditions of the Central African foragers (or "Pygmies"), predominantly in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Congo, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. Pygmy groups include the Bayaka, the Mbuti, and the Twa peoples, Batwa. Music is an important part of Pygmy life, and casual performances take place during many of the day's events. Music comes in many forms, including the spiritual likanos stories, vocable singing and music played from a variety of instruments including the bow harp (''ieta''), ''ngombi'' (harp zither) and ''limbindi'' (a string bow). Researchers who have studied Pygmy music include Simha Arom, Louis Sarno, Colin Turnbull and Jean-Pierre Hallet. Polyphonic song The Mbenga (Aka people, Aka/Benzele) and Baka peoples in the west and the Mbuti (Efé) in the east are particularly known for their dense counterpoint, contrapuntal communal improvisation. Simha Arom says that the level of polyphonic c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Samuel
Claude Samuel (23 June 1931 – 14 June 2020) was a French music critic and radio personality. Biography Born in Paris, after medical studies and graduating as a dental surgeon, Samuel chose to devote himself to classical music journalism. He was a regular contributor to various newspapers of the daily press (''Paris-Presse'', from 1961 to 1970; ''Le Matin de Paris'', from 1977 to 1987), of the weekly press ('' L’Express'' in 1959 and 1960; '' Le Nouveau Candide'' from 1961 to 1967; ''Le Point'', from 1974 to 1989), the monthly press (Revue ''Réalités'', and discs collection ''Philips-Réalités'' from 1957 to 1960) and the music press (''Harmonie'', ''Le Panorama de la Musique'', ''Musiques'', '' La Lettre du musicien'', '' Diapason'', where he has been responsible for the "Ce jour-là" column since 2001). He also commented on cultural news since 2007 until November 2018 in a weekly blog. A producer of programs at the R.T.F. then at the O.R.T.F. (more than a thousand br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perspectives Of New Music
''Perspectives of New Music'' (PNM) is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ... and analysis. It was established in 1962 by Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz (who were its initial editors-in-chief). ''Perspectives'' was first published by the Princeton University Press, initially supported by the Fromm Music Foundation.David Carson Berry, "''Journal of Music Theory'' under Allen Forte's Editorship," '' Journal of Music Theory'' 50/1 (2006), 21, n49. The first issue was favorably reviewed in the '' Journal of Music Theory'', which observed that Berger and Boretz had produced "a first issue which sustains such a high quality of interest and cogency among its articles that one suspects the long delay precedin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Tyrrell (musicologist)
John Tyrrell (17 August 1942 – 4 October 2018) was a British musicologist. He published several books on Leoš Janáček, including an authoritative and largely definitive two-volume biography. Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Zimbabwe and worked as a professor of music and executive editor of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. He died in 2018, aged 76. Early life and education Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), he studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. He graduated Bachelor of Music at the University of Cape Town following which he moved to the University of Oxford to pursue a doctoral degree under the supervision of Edmund Rubbra. Career Tyrrell started his career working in an editorial capacity at '' The Musical Times''. He was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Sadie
Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was a British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was published as the first edition of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. Along with Thurston Dart, Nigel Fortune and Oliver Neighbour he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post-World War II generation. Career Born in Wembley, Sadie was educated at St Paul's School, London, and studied music privately for three years with Bernard Stevens. At Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge he read music under Thurston Dart. Sadie earned Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees in 1953, a Master of Arts degree in 1957, and a PhD in 1958. His doctoral dissertation was on mid-eighteenth-century British chamber music. After Cambridge, he taught at Trinity College of Music, London (1957–1965). Sadie then turned to music journalism, beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theory of music. Earlier editions were published under the titles ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', and ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians''; the work has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource called ''Grove Music Online'', which is now an important part of ''Oxford Music Online''. ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' was first published in London by Macmillan and Co. in four volumes (1879, 1880, 1883, 1889) edited by George Grove with an Appendix edited by J. A. Fuller Maitland in the fourth volume. An Index edited by Mrs. E. Wodehouse was issued as a separate volume in 189 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
