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VSTO (string Quartet)
''VSTO'' is a string quartet by Alvin Curran. It was released on the album ''Schtyx'' (CRI: 1994), performed by a quartet led by David Abel of the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. Written for choreographer Trisha Brown, Curran writes: "As students, Elliott Carter said we could do anything but write octaves; here the octave rules like Gurdjieff. It is an interval that goes absolutely nowhere even when it goes up and down..." Richard Friedman elaborates, "Octave consonance trades with calm dissonance, and even some twisted '' shtetl'' tunes ," and quotes Curran: "there is nothing to understand here...just let it happen."Arditti at Mills: Perfection!
, ''Rchrd.com''
Another review wonders about the specific location: "Russian (Ukrainian? Polish?)"Flegler, Joel (1995). ''Fanfare'', Volume 18, Issue 5 ...
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String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist. The string quartet was developed into its present form by composers such as Franz Xaver Richter, and Joseph Haydn, whose works in the 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since Haydn the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form; writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer. String quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert each wrote a number of them. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Ja ...
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Consonance And Dissonance
In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness, unpleasantness, or unacceptability, although there is broad acknowledgement that this depends also on familiarity and musical expertise. The terms form a structural dichotomy in which they define each other by mutual exclusion: a consonance is what is not dissonant, and a dissonance is what is not consonant. However, a finer consideration shows that the distinction forms a gradation, from the most consonant to the most dissonant. In casual discourse, as German composer and music theorist Paul Hindemith stressed, "The two concepts have never been completely explained, and for a thousand years the definitions have varied". The term ''sonance'' has been proposed to encompass or refer indistinctly to the terms ''consonance'' and ''dissonance''. D ...
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Arditti Quartet
The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974 and led by the British violinist Irvine Arditti. The quartet is a globally recognized promoter of contemporary classical music and has a reputation for having a very wide repertoire. They first became known taking into their repertoire technically challenging pieces. Over the years, there have been personnel changes but Irvine Arditti is still at the helm, leading the group. The repertoire of the group is mostly music from the last 50 years with a strong emphasis on living composers. Their aim from the beginning has been to collaborate with composers during the rehearsal process. However, unlike some other groups, it is loyal to music of a classical vein and avoids cross-genre music. The Quartet has performed in major concert halls and cultural festivals all over the world and has the longest discography of any group of its type. In 1999, it won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement, being the firs ...
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Soldier String Quartet
The Soldier String Quartet was a string quartet, founded by composer and violinist Dave Soldier, that specialized in performing a fusion of classical and popular music. The quartet proved a training ground for many subsequent experimental classical groups and performers, including violinists Regina Carter and Todd Reynolds, and performed at venues ranging from the classic punk rock club CBGBs to Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center. From 1984 to 2004, in addition to a large repertoire of original compositions and transcriptions of blues, jazz and hip-hop by Soldier, the group premiered over 100 compositions including major works by Teo Macero, Leroy Jenkins, Phill Niblock, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Jonas Hellborg, Elliott Sharp, Alvin Curran, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky. They also performed and recorded with many rock, pop, and jazz acts including Guided by Voices, Van Dyke Parks, Jesse Harris, Butch Morris, Tony Williams, Lambchop, Bob Neuwirth, Bill Laswell, Ric Ocasek, A ...
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Silesian String Quartet
The Silesian String Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1978 by the graduates of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland. Its current members are: * Szymon Krzeszowiec (violin I) * Arkadiusz Kubica (violin II) * Łukasz Syrnicki (viola) * Piotr Janosik (cello) History In 1978, graduates of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice founded the Silesian String Quartet. They participated in masterclasses with such artists as, among others, the musicians of the LaSalle Quartet, Amadeus, Juilliard, Smetana and Alban Berg string quartets. In 1993, the Silesian Quartet launched an annual chamber music festival held under the motto "Silesian Quartet and its guests". Since 2005, the Self-Government of Gliwice has been the patron of The Silesian String Quartet and the Music Theatre of Gliwice has been its partner. Performances Festivals The ensemble performed at numerous festivals, including: Berliner Musiktage, Time of Music in Viitasaari (Fin ...
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Giacinto Scelsi
Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi (; 8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988, sometimes cited as 8 August 1988) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and dynamics, as paradigmatically exemplified in his ''Quattro pezzi su una nota sola'' ("Four Pieces on a single note", 1959). This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life. Today, some of his music has gained popularity in certain postmodern composition circles, with pieces like his "Anahit" and his String Quartets rising to increased prominence. Scelsi collaborated with American comp ...
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Klezmer
Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman (especially Greek and Romanian) music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker. After the destruction of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the Holoca ...
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Shtetl
A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the contexts of peculiarities of former East European Jewish societies as islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and bears certain socio-economic and cultural connotations.Marie Schumacher-Brunhes"Shtetl" ''European History Online'', published July 3, 2015 Shtetls (or shtetels, shtetlach, shtetelach or shtetlekh) were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, Kingdom of Romania and in the Kingdom of Hungary. In Yiddish, a larger city, like Lviv or Chernivtsi, is called a ' ( yi, שטאָט), and a village is called a ' ( yi, דאָרף). "Shtetl" is a diminutive of ' with the m ...
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George Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (; rus, Гео́ргий Ива́нович Гурджи́ев, r=Geórgy Ivánovich Gurdzhíev, p=ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪd͡ʑ ɡʊrd͡ʐˈʐɨ(j)ɪf; hy, Գեորգի Իվանովիչ Գյուրջիև; c. 1866–1877 – 29 October 1949) was an Armenian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia). Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work" (connoting "work on oneself") or "the System". According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the ...
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Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938) is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives and works in Rome, Italy. He is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome and sporadically at various institutions. His works include solo performance pieces such as ''Endangered Species'', ''TransDadaExpress'', and ''Shofar''; radio works such as ''Crystal Psalms'', ''Un Altro Ferragosto'', ''I Dreamt John Cage Yodeling at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof'', and ''Living Room Music''; large-scale musical choreographic works such as ''Oh Brass on the Grass Alas'', for 300 amateur brass-band musicians, and the ''Maritime Rites'' series of performances on and ne ...
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Octave
In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music," the use of which is "common in most musical systems." The interval between the first and second harmonics of the harmonic series is an octave. In Western music notation, notes separated by an octave (or multiple octaves) have the same name and are of the same pitch class. To emphasize that it is one of the perfect intervals (including unison, perfect fourth, and perfect fifth), the octave is designated P8. Other interval qualities are also possible, though rare. The octave above or below an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated ''8a'' or ''8va'' ( it, all'ottava), ''8va bassa'' ( it, all'ottava bassa, sometimes also ''8vb''), or simply ''8'' for the octave in the direction indicated by plac ...
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Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernism (music), modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" into a distinctive style with a personal harmonic and rhythmic language, after an early Neoclassicism (music), neoclassical phase. His List of compositions by Elliott Carter, compositions are performed throughout the world, and include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. The List of awards and nominations received by Elliott Carter, recipient of many awards, Carter was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Pulitzer Prize. Born in New York City, Carter had developed an interest in modern music in the 1920s. He was later introduced to Charles Ives, and he soon came to appreciate the American ultra-modernists. After studying at Harvard University with Edward Burlingame Hill, Gusta ...
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