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The Four Sections
''The Four Sections'' is an orchestral work by the minimalist American composer Steve Reich. The piece was commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony in honour of its 75th Anniversary by the widow of Ralph Dorfman." It was completed in August 1987 and given its premier that year on 7 October conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas in Davies Hall.Steve Reich's notes Boosey & Hawkes. Retrieved 8 January 2012 The title of the work refers to the four sections of the orchestra and the four harmonic sections dividing each movement. The work consists of the following movements: # Strings (with winds and brass) ( = 80) # Percussion ( = 80) # Winds and brass (with strings) ( = 120) # Full orchestra ( = 180) The original idea for ''The Four Sections'' was suggested by Tilson Thomas in terms of a Concerto for Orchestra. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimal Music
Minimal music (also called minimalism)"Minimalism in music has been defined as an aesthetic, a style, and a technique, each of which has been a suitable description of the term at certain points in the development of minimal music. However, two of these definitions of minimalism—aesthetic and style—no longer accurately represent the music that is often given that label." Johnson 1994, 742. is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non- teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns, as on the early compositions '' It's Gonna Rain'' (1965) and '' Come Out'' (1966), and the use of simple, audible processes, as on '' Pendulum Music'' (1968) and '' Four Organs'' (1970). The 1978 recording '' Music for 18 Musicians'' would help entrench minimalism as a movement. Reich's work ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (founded in 1981) and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1972) are part of the organization. Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's music director in 1995, and concluded his tenure in 2020 when Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the position. Among the orchestra's awards and honors are an Emmy Award and 15 Grammy Awards in the past 26 years. History The early years The orchestra's first concerts were led by conductor-composer Henry Hadley. There were sixty musicians in the Orchestra at the beginning of their first season. The first concert included music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, and Liszt. There were thirteen concerts in the 1911–1912 season, five of which were popular music. In 1915, Alfred H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Dorfman
Ralph Isadore Dorfman, (1911 – November 19, 1985) was a Jewish American biochemist. His work on metabolism in pharmacology and the use of steroid hormones contributed to the development of the combined oral contraceptive pill."Dr. Ralph I. Dorfman" '''', December 12, 1985, accessed February 5, 2019 Dorfman was born in Chicago, Illinois.Simoni, Robert D., Robert L. Hill, Martha Vaughan and Herbert Tabor "The Metabolism of Steroid Hormones: Ralph I. Dorfm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. Biography Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta Thomas, a Broadway stage manager and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan. The family talent goes back to Tilson Thomas's great-grandfather, Pincus, an actor and playwright, and before that to a long line of cantors; his father, Theodor Herzl Tomashefsky (Ted Thomas), was also a poet and painter. He was an only child and musical prodigy. Tilson Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting under Ingolf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Davies Hall
Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2,743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco Symphony a permanent home. Previously, the symphony shared the neighboring War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. The construction of Davies Hall allowed the symphony to expand to a full-time, year-round schedule. Acoustics Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Pietro Belluschi along with acoustical consultants Bolt, Beranek and Newman, its modern design is visually elegant both inside and out. A "cloud" of movable convex acrylic reflecting panels over the stage enables the acoustic space to be adjusted to suit the size of the orchestra and audience, while adjustable fabric banners around the auditorium can alter the reverberation time from approximately one to two-and-one-half seconds. Arc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concerto For Orchestra (Bartók)
The Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, is a five-movement orchestral work composed by Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hun ... in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular, and most accessible works. The score is inscribed "15 August – 8 October 1943". It was premiered on December 1, 1944, in Boston Symphony Hall, Symphony Hall, Boston, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducting, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. It was a great success and has been regularly performed since. It is perhaps the best-known of a number of pieces that have the apparently contradictory title ''Concerto for Orchestra''. This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók said that he called t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Six Marimbas
''Six Pianos'' is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. He also composed a variation for six marimbas, called ''Six Marimbas'', in 1986. The world première performance of ''Six Pianos'' was in May 1973 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. The European première took place in January the next year in Stuttgart, Germany. Reich's idea was originally for a piece titled ''Piano Store'' that could be played on all the pianos in a piano store. A friend in New York gave him and his fellow musicians access to the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company's premises during evenings, where they could try out ideas. Reich eventually settled on an ensemble of six upright pianos in close proximity, which would allow very precise timing without being masked by the resonance of grand pianos. Structure The piece begins with four pianists playing different notes to the same 8-beat rhythmic pattern. Then two more pianists begin to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Violin Phase
''Violin Phase'' is a musical work written by minimalism (music), minimalist composer Steve Reich in October 1967. Structure ''Violin Phase'' is an example of Reich's Phasing (music), phasing technique, previously used in ''It's Gonna Rain'', ''Come Out (Reich), Come Out'', ''Reed Phase'', and ''Piano Phase'', in which the music itself is created not by the instruments but by interactions of temporal variations on an original melody. Music of this kind is generally referred to as process music. It is the third in a series of instrumental compositions (together with ''Reed Phase'' and ''Piano Phase'') in which Reich explored the possibility of phasing in music for a live player with tape accompaniment or, in the case of ''Piano Phase'', for just two players . In ''Violin Phase'', two violins are recorded and played back, together at first. They are then made to go slowly out of sync by adding silence to one of the tapes. A new melody is formed by the interaction of the two out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compositions By Steve Reich
Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature * Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include visuals and digital space *Composition (music), an original piece of music and its creation *Composition (visual arts), the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work * ''Composition'' (Peeters), a 1921 painting by Jozef Peeters *Composition studies, the professional field of writing instruction * ''Compositions'' (album), an album by Anita Baker *Digital compositing, the practice of digitally piecing together a video Computer science *Function composition (computer science), an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones *Object composition, combining simpler data types into more complex data types, or function calls into calling functions History * Composition of 1867, Austro-Hungaria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1987 Compositions
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing everyone except a little girl; The King's Cross fire kills 31 people after a fire under an escalator flashes-over; The MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with an oil tanker, drowning almost 4,400 passengers and crew; Typhoon Nina strikes the Philippines; LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 crashes outside of Warsaw, taking the lives of all aboard; The USS Stark is struck by Iraqi Exocet missiles in the Persian Gulf; U.S. President Ronald Reagan gives a famous speech, demanding that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tears down the Berlin Wall., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Zeebrugge disaster rect 200 0 400 200 Northwest Airlines Flight 255 rect 400 0 600 200 King's Cross fire rect 0 200 300 400 Tear down this wall! rect 300 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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