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Keyboard Glockenspiel
The keyboard glockenspiel (French: ''jeu de timbre'') or organ glockenspiel is an instrument consisting of a glockenspiel operated by a piano keyboard. It was first used by George Frideric Handel in the oratorio ''Saul'' (1739). It was also used in the 1739 revivals of his '' Il Trionfo del Tempo'' and '' Acis and Galatea'', and the next year in '' L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato''. Half a century later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed a ''strumento d'acciaio'' in ''The Magic Flute'' (1791) to represent Papageno's magic bells. It is now considered proven that Mozart meant a keyboard glockenspiel. From the 19th century onwards, the keyboard glockenspiel fell into the background due to the introduction of the celesta in 1886, which, due to its larger range and more modern construction, could also play more difficult glockenspiel parts. In contrast to the very soft sound of the celesta (produced by the felt hammers of the playing mechanism), the historical keyboard glockens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organ (music)
Carol Williams performing at the West_Point_Cadet_Chapel.html" ;"title="United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel">United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel. In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more Pipe organ, pipe divisions or other means (generally woodwind or electronic musical instrument, electric) for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, sometimes up to five or more, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual. The organ has been used in various musical settings, particularly in classical music. Music written specifically for the organ is common from the Renaissance to the present day. Pipe organs, the most traditional type, operate by forcing air through pipes of varying sizes and materials, each producing a different pitch and tone. These instruments are commonly found in churches and co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart and Richard Wagner, Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le diable'' and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard that helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Meyerbeer began his musical career as a pianist but soon decided to devote himself to opera, spending several years in Italy studying and composing. His 1824 opera ''Il crociato in Egitto'' was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Mer (Debussy)
''La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre'' (French for ''The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra''), or simply ''La mer'' (''The Sea''), L. 109, CD. 111, is an orchestral composition by the French composer Claude Debussy. Composed between 1903 and 1905, the piece premiered in Paris in October 1905. It was initially not well-received; even some who had been strong supporters of Debussy's work were unenthusiastic, even though ''La mer'' presented three key aspects of Debussy's aesthetic: Impressionism, Symbolism and Japonism. The work was performed in the US in 1907 and Britain in 1908; after its second performance in Paris in 1908, it quickly became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works. The first audio recording of the work was made in 1928. Since then, orchestras and conductors from around the world have set it down in many studio or live concert recordings. Background and composition ''La mer'' was the second of Debuss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Debussy
Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, ''Pelléas et Mélisande (opera), Pelléas et Mélisande''. Debussy's orchestral works include ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (1894), ''Nocturnes (Debussy), Nocturnes'' (1897–1899 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Juan (Strauss)
''Don Juan'', Op. 20, is a tone poem in E major for large orchestra written by the German composer Richard Strauss in 1888. The work is based on ''Don Juans Ende'', a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau after the Don Juan legend which originated in Renaissance-era Spain. Strauss reprinted three excerpts from the play in his score. In Lenau's rendering, Don Juan's promiscuity springs from his determination to find the ideal woman. Despairing of ever finding her, he ultimately surrenders to melancholy and wills his own death. It is singled out by Carl Dahlhaus as a "musical symbol of fin-de-siècle modernism", particularly for the "breakaway mood" of its opening bars. The premiere of ''Don Juan'' took place on 11 November 1889 in Weimar, where Strauss, then twenty-five, served as Court Kapellmeister; he conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. The work, composed when Strauss was only twenty-four years old, became an international ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Poems (Strauss)
The Symphonic poem, tone poems of Richard Strauss are noted as the high point of program music in the latter part of the 19th century, extending its boundaries and taking the concept of Realism (arts), realism in music to an unprecedented level. In these works, he widened the expressive range of music while depicting subjects many times thought unsuitable for musical depiction. As Hugh MacDonald points out in the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', "In the years prior to World War I these works were held to be in the vanguard of modernism."MacDonald, ''New Grove (2001)'', 24:805. List (in order of opus number) * ''Aus Italien'' (''From Italy''), Op. 16 (1886) * ''Don Juan (Strauss), Don Juan'', Op. 20 (1888) * ''Macbeth (Strauss), Macbeth'', Op. 23 (1888) * ''Tod und Verklärung'' (''Death and Transfiguration''), Op. 24 (1889) * ''Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche'' (''Till Eulenspeigel's Merry Pranks''), Op. 28 (1895) * ''Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss), Also spr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; ; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor best known for his Tone poems (Strauss), tone poems and List of operas by Richard Strauss, operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmony, harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan (Strauss), Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote (Strauss), Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben'', ''Symph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madama Butterfly
''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story " Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel '' Madame Chrysanthème'' by Pierre Loti.Chadwick Jenna"The Original Story: John Luther Long and David Belasco" on columbia.edu Long's version was dramatized by David Belasco as the one-act play '' Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan'', which, after premiering in New York in 1900, moved to London, where Puccini saw it in the summer of that year. The original version of the opera, in two acts, had its premiere on 17 February 1904 at La Scala in Milan. It was poorly received, despite having such notable singers as soprano Rosina Storchio, tenor Giovanni Zenatello and baritone Giuseppe De Luca in le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turandot
''Turandot'' ( ; see #Origin and pronunciation of the name, below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Puccini left the opera unfinished at the time of his death in 1924; it premiered in 1926 after the music was posthumously completed by Franco Alfano. The opera is set in China and follows the Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold-hearted Princess Turandot. In order to win her hand in marriage, a suitor must solve three riddles, with a wrong answer resulting in his execution. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to guess his name before dawn the next day, he will accept death. Origin and pronunciation of the name The title of the opera is derived from the Persian term ''Turandokht'' (, 'daughter of Turan'), a name frequently given to Central Asian princesses in Persian poetry. Turan is a region of Central Asia that was once part of the Ach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for List of compositions by Giacomo Puccini#Operas, his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long line of composers, stemming from the late Baroque music, Baroque era. Though his early work was firmly rooted in traditional late-nineteenth-century Romantic Italian opera, it later developed in the realistic ''verismo'' style, of which he became one of the leading exponents. His most renowned works are ''La bohème'' (1896), ''Tosca'' (1900), ''Madama Butterfly'' (1904), and the unfinished ''Turandot'' (posthumously completed by Franco Alfano), all of which are among the most List of important operas, frequently performed and recorded in the entirety of the operatic repertoire. Family and education Born in Lucca in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in 1858; he was the sixth of nine children of Michele Puccini (1813� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Vierge
''La Vierge'' is an oratorio (''légende sacrée'') in four scenes by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Charles Grandmougin. It was first performed at the Opéra in Paris on May 22, 1880. The oratorio is a recounting of the story of the Virgin Mary from the Annunciation to her death. In the first scene, Mary is visited by the Angel Gabriel and told that she will bear a son, Jesus. The second scene takes place at the Marriage at Cana where Jesus turns water to wine, and the third on Good Friday when Jesus is crucified. The fourth scene relates the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Although never popular as a whole, the orchestral piece "Le dernier sommeil de la vierge" (''The Last Sleep of the Virgin'') remains a popular encore piece to this day. A recording conducted by Patrick Fournillier was issued by Koch Swann in 1991, and the soprano Montserrat Caballé María de Montserrat Bibiana Concepción Caballé i Folch or Folc (12 April 1933 – 6 October 2018), als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the , in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, Drame lyrique, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
