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Treemonisha
''Treemonisha'' (1911) is an opera by American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. It is sometimes referred to as a "ragtime opera", though Joplin did not refer to it as such and it encompasses a wide range of musical styles. The music of ''Treemonisha'' includes an overture and prelude, along with various recitatives, choruses, small ensemble pieces, a ballet, and a few arias. Southern (1997), p. 537. The opera was largely unknown before its first complete performance in 1972. Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1976 for ''Treemonisha''. The performance was called a "semimiracle" by music historian Gilbert Chase, who said ''Treemonisha'' "bestowed its creative vitality and moral message upon many thousands of delighted listeners and viewers" when it was recreated. Chase, p. 545. The musical style of the opera is the popular romantic one of the early 20th century. It has been described as "charming and piquant and ... deeply moving", with elements of bla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin (November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Dubbed the "King of Ragtime", he composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became the genre's first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the quintessential rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music meant to be played in concert halls and largely disdained the performance of ragtime as honky tonk music most common in saloons. Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Texas. During the late 1880s, he traveled the American South as a musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which helped make ragtime a national craze by 1897. Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and worked as a piano teacher. He began publishing music in 1895, and his "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899 brought him fame and a steady income. In 1901, Jopl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Vera Brodsky Lawrence
Vera Brodsky Lawrence (born Vera Rebecca Brodsky; July 1, 1909 – September 18, 1996) was an American pianist, music historian, and editor. A child prodigy, she left her native Virginia to enroll at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, where she studied with Josef Lhévinne, Josef and Rosina Lhévinne. After graduating, she traveled to Europe where she met Harold Triggs in 1932 and formed a piano duo that played classical music and arrangements of popular music of the era. In 1938, she became a staff pianist for CBS and embarked on a solo career. Aside from performing live solo recitals, song recital accompaniments, and chamber music, she was the host of a weekly radio show where she played modern and lesser-known compositions. During World War II, she played the Western broadcast and concert premieres of Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No. 2 (Shostakovich), Piano Sonata No. 2, and had exclusive performing rights to it for a period. She also gave the Western broad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its Syncopation, syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott (composer), James Scott, and Joseph Lamb (composer), Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles. Ragtime music originated within African Americans, African American communities in the late 19th century and became a distinctly American form of popular music. It is closely related to American march music, marches. Ragtime pieces usually contain several distinct themes, often arranged in patterns of repeats and reprises. Scott Joplin, known as the "King of Ragtime", gained fame through compositions like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer (rag), The Entertainer". Ragtime influ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an African American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers of the 20th century and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."Joyce Aschenbenner, ''Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). While a student at the University of Chicago, Dunham also performed as a dancer, ran a dance school and earned an early bachelor's degree in anthropology. Receiving a postgraduate academic fellowship, she went to the Caribbean to study the African diaspora, ethnography and local dance. She returned to graduate school and submitted a master's thesis to the anthropology faculty. She did not complete the other requirements for that degree, however, as she realized that her professional calling was performance and choreography. At the height of her career i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Recitative
Recitative (, also known by its Italian name recitativo () is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do. It resembles sung ordinary speech more than a formal musical composition. Recitative can be distinguished on a continuum from more speech-like to more musically sung, with more sustained melodic lines. The mostly syllabic ''recitativo secco'' ("dry", accompanied only by Basso continuo, continuo, typically cello and harpsichord) is at one end of the spectrum, through ''recitativo accompagnato'' (using orchestra), the more melismatic arioso, and finally the full-blown aria or ensemble, where the pulse is entirely governed by the music. Secco recitatives can be more improvisatory and free for the singer, since the accompaniment is so sparse; in contrast, when recitative is accompanied by orchestra, the singer m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the late 19th century, while African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The ASO's main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center. History Though earlier organizations bearing the same name date back as far as 1923, thanks largely to the efforts of Josephine Fields Sanders, the orchestra was officially founded in 1945 and played its first concert as the Atlanta Youth Symphony under the direction of Henry Sopkin, a Chicago music educator who remained its conductor until 1966. The organization changed to its current name in 1947 and soon began attracting well known soloists such as Isaac Stern and Glenn Gould. In 1967, with the departure of Sopkin, Robert Shaw (founder of the Robert Shaw Chorale) became the music director, and a year later the orchestra became full-time. In 1970, Shaw founded a choir, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. In 1988, Yoel Levi became music director and principal conductor. Under him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Morehouse College
Morehouse College is a Private college, private, Historically black colleges and universities, historically black, Men's colleges in the United States, men's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Anchored by its main campus of near downtown Atlanta, the college has a variety of residential dorms and academic buildings east of Ashview Heights. Along with Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and the Morehouse School of Medicine, the college is a member of the Atlanta University Center consortium. Founded by William J. White (journalist), William Jefferson White in 1867 in response to Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution#Adoption, the liberation of enslaved African Americans following the American Civil War, Morehouse stressed preparatory and religious instruction in the Baptist tradition for students who had been prevented from receiving education by former slave laws. Growth in the late 19th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Newspapers
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, Obituary, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of Subscription business model, subscription revenue, Newsagent's shop, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often Metonymy, metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published Printing, in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also Electronic publishing, published on webs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news. Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publishing until May 2021, when it was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media. David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, closed a deal to buy the paper on January 15, 2024. History 19th century ''The Sun'' was founded on May 17, 1837, by Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates, William Moseley Swain from Rhode Island, and Azariah H. Simmons from Philadelphia, where they had started and published the '' Public Ledger'' the year before. Abell became a journalist with the ''Providence Patriot'' and later worked with newspapers in New York City and Boston.Van Doren, Charles and Robert McKendry, ed., ''Webster's American Biographies''. (Springfield, Massa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Overture
Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") is a music instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overtures which were independent, self-existing, instrumental, programmatic works that foreshadowed genres such as the symphonic poem. These were "at first undoubtedly intended to be played at the head of a programme". The idea of an instrumental opening to opera existed during the 17th century. Peri's '' Euridice'' opens with a brief instrumental ritornello, and Monteverdi's '' L'Orfeo'' (1607) opens with a toccata, in this case a fanfare for muted trumpets. More important was the prologue, consisting of sung dialogue between allegorical characters which introduced the overarching themes of the stories depicted. French overture As a musical form, the French overture first appears in the court ballet and operatic overtures of Jean-Baptist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
