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Psappha (ensemble)
Psappha was an ensemble of contemporary classical musicians based in Manchester in the North West of England, specialised in the performance of works by living composers. Founded in 1991 by artistic director Tim Williams, the ensemble moved into a new home in 2015, St Michael's, Ancoats, Manchester. The ensemble had a core instrumentation of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola and cello. Psappha closed in November 2023 due to Arts Council England withdrawing 100% of its regular funding to the ensemble. Association with Peter Maxwell Davies Their patron until his death in March 2016 was Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Davies was earlier associated with the Fires of London, a group which disbanded in 1987. The Fires formed in the 1960s to play Arnold Schoenberg's '' Pierrot lunaire'' (1912) and new works with a similar scoring. Psappha has performed Davies' works for Pierrot ensemble, such as ''Missa super l'homme armé'' (1968, rev. 1971) and ''Eight Songs for a Mad King ...
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Ancoats
Ancoats is an area of Manchester, England, next to the Northern Quarter, the northern part of Manchester city centre. Historically in Lancashire, Ancoats became a cradle of the Industrial Revolution and has been called "the world's first industrial suburb". For many years, from the late 18th century onwards, Ancoats was a thriving industrial district. The area suffered accelerating economic decline from the 1930s and depopulation in the years after the Second World War, particularly during the slum clearances of the 1960s. Since the 1990s, Ancoats' industrial heritage has been recognised and its proximity to the city centre has led to investment and substantial regeneration. The southern part of the area was branded New Islington by property developers Urban Splash, with redevelopment centred on the Daily Express Building. In 2021, a plaque was put in place acknowledging Ancoats' status as a Little Italy. For the purpose of local government elections, the area is part of ...
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Arts Council England
Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. The arts funding system in England underwent considerable reorganisation in 2002 when all of the regional arts boards were subsumed into Arts Council England and became regional offices of the national organisation. Arts Council England is a government-funded body dedicated to promoting the performing, visual and literary arts in England. Since 1994, Arts Council England has been responsible for distributing lottery funding. This investment has helped to transform the building stock of arts organisations and to create many additional high-quality arts activities. On 1 October 2011 the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council was subsumed into the Arts C ...
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Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music, Davies formed a group dedicated to contemporary music called the New Music Manchester with fellow students Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. Davies's compositions include eight works for the stage—from the monodrama '' Eight Songs for a Mad King'', which shocked the audience in 1969, to ''Kommilitonen!'', first performed in 2011—and ten symphonies, written between 1973 and 2013. As a conductor, Davies was artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984 and associate conductor/composer with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1992 to 2002, holding the latter position with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as well. Early life and education Davies was born in Holl ...
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Fires Of London
The Fires of London, founded as the Pierrot Players, was a British chamber music ensemble which was active from 1965 to 1987. The Pierrot Players was founded by Harrison Birtwistle, Alan Hacker, and Stephen Pruslin.''Who’s Who 1975'', page 1302, (A&C Black: London) From 1967 it was under the joint direction of Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. The ensemble was formed to play Schoenberg's '' Pierrot Lunaire'' and new works, often with a theatrical element, for a similar scoring (usually with the addition of percussion). The instrumentation proved to be too limited for Birtwistle and he left in 1970. Maxwell Davies took over as sole director, renaming the group the Fires of London. It was disbanded after its 20th anniversary concert in 1987. Maxwell Davies subsequently endorsed a new group Psappha, based in Manchester, and remained their patron until his death in 2016. During its existence, the Fires of London was particularly associated with Maxwell Davies' music, and ga ...
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Desert Island Discs
''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a " castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight audio recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item that they would like to take if they were to be cast away on a desert island, whilst discussing their life and the reasons for their choices. It was devised and originally presented by Roy Plomley. Since 2018, the programme has been presented by Lauren Laverne. More than 3,400 episodes have been recorded, with some guests having appeared more than once and some episodes featuring more than one guest. An example of a guest who falls into both categories is Bob Monkhouse, who appeared with his co-writer Denis Goodwin on 12 December 1955 and in his own right on 20 December 1998. When ''Desert Island Discs'' marked its 75th year in 2017, ''The Guardian'' called the show a radio ...
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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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Pierrot Ensemble
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work '' Pierrot lunaire'', which includes the quintet of instruments above with a narrator (usually performed by a soprano). History The quintet of instruments used in ''Pierrot lunaire'' has been used in the twentieth century by different groups, such as The Fires of London, who formed in 1965 as "The Pierrot Players" to perform Pierrot lunaire, and continued to concertize with a varied classical and contemporary repertory. This group began to perform works arranged for these instruments and commission new works. While standard chamber ensembles (such as string quartets or piano trios) continued to be extremely popular among 20th-century composers, the Pierrot ensemble represents an example of the many kinds of non-standard chamber ensembles that have been used in classical music since the beginning of ...
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Eight Songs For A Mad King
''Eight Songs for a Mad King'' is a monodrama by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by Randolph Stow, based on words of George III of the United Kingdom, George III. The work was written for the South-African actor Roy Hart and the composer's ensemble, the Fires of London, Pierrot Players. It was premiered on 22 April 1969. Lasting half an hour, it is scored for a baritone with an extraordinary command of Extended vocal technique, extended vocal techniques covering more than five octaves, and six players (Pierrot ensemble + percussion): *flute (doubling piccolo) *clarinet *Percussion instrument, percussion (1 player): railway whistle, snare drum, 2 suspended cymbals, foot cymbal, 2 Woodblock (instrument), wood blocks, 2 bass drums, chains, Ratchet (instrument), ratchet, Tom-tom drum, tom-toms, tamtam, tambourine, rototoms, toy bird-calls, 2 Wooden fish, temple blocks, wind chimes, crotales, sleigh bells, hammered dulcimer, dulcimer, glockenspiel, steel bars, crow, didgerid ...
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Mr Emmet Takes A Walk
''Mr Emmet Takes a Walk'' is a chamber opera by the English composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by David Pountney. The work is self-described as a "dramatic sonata". It tells the story of the last seconds of the life of Mr Emmet before his suicide on a railway line. Thoughts, ideas, musical fragments and experiences flash through Mr Emmet's mind before his death which expand across the fifty-minute duration of the work. Davies has cited the works of four composers as motifs in the opera: *Bach's Prelude and Fugue No. 12 in F minor (BWV, 881) from Book 2 of the ''Well-Tempered Clavier'' *Andrea Gabrieli's ''Edipo Tiranno'' *"Come furia disperata" from Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' (sung by the character Donna Anna in act 1, scene 1), *the opening of Schumann's Second Symphony.Liner notes by the composer to the recording of the work, PsaCD1002. The work premiered in a co-production of Muziektheater Transparant and the Psappha ensemble at the St. Magnus Festival, ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. S ...
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Contemporary Classical Music Ensembles
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from about 1945 to the present. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity. Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war. An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in the internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars. The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and aftermath of the Cold War enabled the democratization of much of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Decolonization was another important trend in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as new states ...
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