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Parallel Harmony
In music, parallel harmony, also known as harmonic parallelism, harmonic planing or parallel voice leading, is the Parallel motion (music), parallel movement of two or more melodies (see voice leading). Effects When all voices between chords move in parallel motion, this generally reduces or negates the effect of harmonic progression (music), harmonic progression. However, "occasionally chords such as the tonic (music), tonic and dominant (music), dominant may create the sense of harmonic progression". Illustrative example Lines with parallel harmony can be viewed as a series of chord (music), chords with the same interval (music), intervallic structure. Parallel means that each note within the chord rises or falls by the same interval. Examples from works Prominent examples include: * Claude Debussy's ''Beau soir'' (1880), ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (1894), ''Nocturnes (Debussy), Nocturnes'' (1899), ''La mer (Debussy), La Mer'' (1905), ''La cathédrale eng ...
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Music
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of elements of music, specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human creativity. Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of musical composition, composition, musical improvisation, improvisation, and performance. Music may be performed using a wide variety of musical instruments, including the human voice. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a music box ...
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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 ...
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Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-century classical music, and a central element of his music was its use of motive (music), motives as a means of coherence. He propounded concepts like developing variation, the emancipation of the dissonance, and the "unified field, unity of musical space". Schoenberg's early works, like ''Verklärte Nacht'' (1899), represented a Brahmsian–Wagnerian synthesis on which he built. Mentoring Anton Webern and Alban Berg, he became the central figure of the Second Viennese School. They consorted with visual artists, published in ''Der Blaue Reiter'', and wrote atonal, expressionist music, attracting fame and stirring debate. In his String Quartets (Schoenberg)#String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10, String Quartet No. 2 (1907–1908), ''Erwartung'' (1909), ...
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Elektra (opera)
''Elektra'', Opus number, Op. 58, is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama ''Elektra''. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal. It was first performed at the Semperoper, Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 25 January 1909. It was dedicated to his friends Natalie and Willy Levin. History While based on ancient Greek mythology and Sophocles' tragedy ''Electra (Sophocles play), Electra'', the opera is highly Modernism, modernist and Expressionist music, expressionist in style. Hofmannsthal's and Strauss's adaptation of the story focuses tightly on Electra, Elektra, thoroughly developing her character by single-mindedly expressing her emotions and psychology as she meets with other characters, mostly one at a time. (The order of these conversations closely follows Sophocles' play.) The other characters are Clytemnestra, Klytaemnestra, her mother and o ...
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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 ...
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Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithology, ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century, he was also an outstanding teacher of composition and musical analysis. Messiaen entered the Conservatoire de Paris at age 11 and studied with Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post he held for 61 years, until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. After the Battle of France, fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was interned for nine months in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A, where he composed his (''Quartet for the End of Time'') for the four instruments available in the prison—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an ...
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The Rite Of Spring
''The Rite of Spring'' () is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response, caused a sensation. Many have called the first-night reaction a "riot" or "near-riot", though this wording did not come about until reviews of later performances in 1924, over a decade later. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century. Stravinsky was a young, virtually unknown ...
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century classical music, composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernism (music), modernist music. Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the Saint Petersburg State University, University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913), the last of which caused a List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience respons ...
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Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born 17 May 18661 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conservatoire but was an undistinguished student and did not obtain a diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabarets in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his ''Gymnopédies'' and ''Gnossiennes''. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached. After a period in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum de Paris, Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the ...
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Le Tombeau De Couperin
''Le Tombeau de Couperin'' (''The Tomb of Couperin'') is a suite (music), suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917. The piece is in six movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque music, Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of a friend of the composer (or in one case, two brothers) who had died fighting in World War I. Ravel also produced an orchestral version of the work in 1919, although this omitted two of the original movements. Overview The word ''tombeau'' in the title is a musical term popular from the 17th century, meaning "a piece written as a memorial". The specific Couperin, among a family noted as musicians for about two centuries, that Ravel intended to evoke is thought to be François Couperin "the Great" (1668–1733). Ravel stated that his intention was to pay Homage (arts), homage more generally to the sensibilities of the Baroque music, Baroque French keyboard suite (music), suite, not necessarily to imit ...
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Daphnis Et Chloé
''Daphnis et Chloé'' is a 1912 ballet and orchestral concert work, subtitled ''symphonie chorégraphique'' (choreographic symphony), for orchestra and wordless chorus by Maurice Ravel. It is in three main sections, or ''parties'', and a dozen scenes, most of them dances, and lasts just under an hour, making it the composer's longest work. It premiered as a ballet, but it is more frequently given as a concert work, either complete or excerpted. The dance scenario was adapted by choreographer Michel Fokine from a pastoral romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from the 2nd century AD, recounting the love between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé. Scott Goddard in 1926 published a commentary on the changes to the story Fokine had to apply in order to make the scenario workable. Composition and premiere Ravel began to write the score in 1909 after a commission from impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, completing it some months before the p ...
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