|
Dance Panels
''Dance Panels'' is a ballet composed by Aaron Copland in 1959 for a planned collaboration with choreographer Jerome Robbins. After Copland had written the score, Robbins reneged on his commitment and the performance did not take place. Three years later, Copland revised the score for a ballet by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany, where it premiered on 3 December 1963. The ballet was performed by the New York City Ballet in 1965 and the concert version received its first performance at the Ojai Music Festival the following year. According to Copland biographer Howard Pollack, ''Dance Panels'' has proven from a musical standpoint one of the composer's more accessible late scores. While some of its more dissonant moments sound similar to Copland's twelve-tone compositions, other parts recall his earlier stage and screen music. It is also the only one of Copland's six ballets not written to a specific program. Background Aaron Copland wrote ''Dance Panels'' in 1959 on a comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with Glossary of ballet, its own vocabulary. Ballet has been influential globally and has defined the foundational ballet technique, techniques which are used in many other dance genres and cultures. Various schools around the world have incorporated their own cultures. As a result, ballet has evolved in distinct ways. A ''ballet'' as a unified work of art, work comprises the choreography (dance), choreography and music for a ballet production. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained ballet dancers. Traditional classical ballets are usually performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, whereas modern ballets are often performed in simple costumes and without elaborate sets or scenery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dybbuk
''The Dybbuk'', or ''Between Two Worlds'' (, trans. ''Mezh dvukh mirov ibuk'; , ''Tsvishn Tsvey Veltn – der Dibuk'') is a play by S. An-sky, authored between 1913 and 1916. It was originally written in Russian and later translated into Yiddish by An-sky himself. ''The Dybbuk'' had its world premiere in that language, performed by the Vilna Troupe at Warsaw in 1920. A Hebrew version was prepared by Hayim Nahman Bialik and staged in Moscow at Habima Theater in 1922. The play, which depicts the possession of a young woman by the malicious spirit – known as '' dybbuk'' in Jewish folklore – of her dead beloved, became a canonical work of both Hebrew and Yiddish theatre, being further translated and performed around the world. Characters * Leah, daughter of Sender, a maiden who had come of age and yet her father constantly rejects her suitors * Khanan, a poor Yeshiva student enamored with Leah, who is rumored to practice forbidden Kabbalah * Sender, son of Henya, a rich m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Taras
John Taras (April 18, 1919 – April 2, 2004) was an American ballet master, repetiteur, and choreographer. Early life and education Born on the Lower East Side of New York City to Ukrainian parents, he was sent at age 16 to study ballet with Michel Fokine, Anatole Vilzak, Pierre Vladimiroff and Ludmila Shollar, and later to the School of American Ballet. Career He first appeared professionally with Opera on Tour for which Fokine arranged dance. He performed at the 1939 New York World's Fair with Ballet Caravan at the Ford Pavilion and joined Catherine Littlefield's Philadelphia Ballet for a 1941 tour of the southern states, and in 1942 was in the Broadway revival of J. M. Barrie's '' A Kiss for Cinderella''. He then toured South America with American Ballet Caravan. Taras joined Ballet Theatre in 1942 and rose to soloist. He rehearsed the ballets of Lichine, DeMille, Nijinska, Balanchine and Tudor, and in 1946 choreographed his first ballet, ''Graziana''. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Balanchine
George Balanchine (; Various sources: * * * * born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze;, Romanization of Georgian, : April 30, 1983) was a Georgian-American ballet choreographer, recognized as one of the most influential choreographers of the 20th-century. Styled as the father of American ballet, he co-founded the New York City Ballet and remained its artistic director for more than 35 years.Joseph Horowitz (2008)''Artists in Exile: How Refugees from 20th-century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts.'' HarperCollins. His choreography is characterized by plotless ballets with minimal costume and décor, performed to classical and neoclassical music. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Balanchine took the standards and technique from his time at the Imperial Ballet School and fused it with other schools of movement that he had adopted during his tenure on Broadway theatre, Broadway and in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood, creating his signature " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonance And Dissonance
In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness, unpleasantness, or unacceptability, although there is broad acknowledgement that this depends also on familiarity and musical expertise. The terms form a structural dichotomy in which they define each other by mutual exclusion: a consonance is what is not dissonant, and a dissonance is what is not consonant. However, a finer consideration shows that the distinction forms a gradation, from the most consonant to the most dissonant. In casual discourse, as German composer and music theorist Paul Hindemith stressed, : "The two concepts have never been completely explained, and for a thousand years the definitions have varied". The term ''sonance'' has been proposed to encompass or refer indistinctly to the terms ''consonance'' and ''dissonance''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmony (music)
In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harmonic objects such as chords, textures and tonalities are identified, defined, and categorized in the development of these theories. Harmony is broadly understood to involve both a "vertical" dimension (frequency-space) and a "horizontal" dimension (time-space), and often overlaps with related musical concepts such as melody, timbre, and form. A particular emphasis on harmony is one of the core concepts underlying the theory and practice of Western music. The study of harmony involves the juxtaposition of individual pitches to create chords, and in turn the juxtaposition of chords to create larger chord progressions. The principles of connection that govern these structures have been the subject of centuries worth of theoretical wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inscape (Copland)
''Inscape'' is a 1967 musical composition for orchestra by Aaron Copland, approximately twelve to thirteen minutes in length, and commissioned by and dedicated to the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary (see also ''Capriccio burlesco''). Composed using the twelve-tone technique, the piece has been considered less accessible than much of Copland's earlier music. It is named for Gerard Manley Hopkins's term "inscape", invented: Hopkins's opposite of "inscape" was "instress" ("perception as opposed to intrinsic, essential quality"), and a commentator writes that Copland, "uses sounds as an 'instress' that communicates a deeper inner essence, an 'inscape.'"Steinberg, Michael (2000).About the Piece: Inscape", ''LAPhil.com''. "The outward appearance is the boundary chord (music), chords that frame the composition. The inner reality is the first complete statement of Copland's original melody, melodic idea (music), idea at P-0, which occurs very close to the middle of ''Ins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connotations (Copland)
''Connotations'' is a classical music composition for symphony orchestra written by American composer Aaron Copland. Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) in New York City, United States, this piece marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with '' El Salón México'' in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous for such as ''Appalachian Spring'', '' Lincoln Portrait'' and ''Rodeo''. It represents a return to a more dissonant style of composition in which Copland wrote from the end of his studies with French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and return from Europe in 1924 until the Great Depression. It was also Copland's first dodecaphonic work for orchestra, a style he had disparaged until he heard the music of French composer Pierre Boulez and adapted the method for himself in his ''Piano Quartet'' of 1950. While the composer had produced other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ( homophony). Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term ''polyphony'' is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Also, as opposed to the ''species'' terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent (1999) calls "dyadic counterpoint", with each part being written generally against one other part, with all parts modified if needed in the end. This point-against-point conception is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky ( – December 25, 1995), born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy (), was a Russian-born American musicologist, conductor, pianist, and composer. Best known for his writing and musical reference work, he wrote the ''Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns'' and the '' Lexicon of Musical Invective'', and edited '' Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians''. Biography Early life in Russia and Europe Slonimsky was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy in Saint Petersburg. He was of Jewish origin; his grandfather was Rabbi Chaim Zelig Slonimsky. His parents adopted the Orthodox faith after the birth of his older brother, and Nicolas was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. His maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, later a founder of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, was his first piano teacher. He grew up in the intelligentsia. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved south, first to Kyiv, then to Constantinople, and ultimately to Paris, wher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diatonic Scale
In music theory a diatonic scale is a heptatonic scale, heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps. In other words, the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The seven pitch (music), pitches of any diatonic scale can also be obtained by using a Interval cycle, chain of six perfect fifths. For instance, the seven natural (music), natural pitch classes that form the C-major scale can be obtained from a stack of perfect fifths starting from F: :F–C–G–D–A–E–B. Any sequence of seven successive natural notes, such as C–D–E–F–G–A–B, and any Transposition (music), transposition thereof, is a diatonic scale. Modern musical keyboards are designed so that the white-key notes form a diatonic scale, though transpositions of this diatonic scale require one or more black keys. A diaton ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gypsy (musical)
''Gypsy: A Musical Fable'' is a musical theatre, musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is loosely based on the Gypsy: A Memoir, 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, and focuses on her mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate stage mother, show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc. The musical contains many songs that became popular standards, including "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Rose's Turn", "Small World", "Together (Wherever We Go)", "You Gotta Get a Gimmick (song), You Gotta Get a Gimmick", and "Let Me Entertain You (Gypsy), Let Me Entertain You". It is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
