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Wanda Landowska
Wanda Aleksandra Landowska (5 July 1879 – 16 August 1959) was a Polish harpsichordist and pianist whose performances, teaching, writings and especially her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's ''Goldberg Variations'' on the harpsichord in 1933. She became a naturalized French citizen in 1938. Life and career Life in Europe Landowska was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother was a linguist who translated Mark Twain into Polish. She began playing piano at the age of four, and studied at the Warsaw Conservatory with the senior Jan Kleczyński and Aleksander Michałowski. She was considered a child prodigy.Kottick, Edward L. ''A History of the Harpsichord, Volume 1''. Indiana University Press, 2003. pg. 425 She studied composition and counterpoint under Heinrich Urban in Berlin, and had lessons in Paris with ...
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Lakeville, Connecticut
Lakeville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States, close to Dutchess County, New York. It is within the town of Salisbury, but has its own ZIP Code (06039). As of the 2010 census, the population of Lakeville was 928, out of 3,741 in the entire town of Salisbury. The Hotchkiss School is located in Lakeville, and the Indian Mountain School is nearby. Geography Lakeville is in the southwestern part of the town of Salisbury, on U.S. Route 44, southwest of the Salisbury town center. US 44 leads northeast to Canaan village and west to Millerton, New York. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Lakeville CDP has a total area of , of which are land and , or 14.8%, are water. Most of the water area is part of Lake Wononscopomuc, the deepest natural lake in the state. History Until 1846, Lakeville was called "Furnace Village", due to the location there of one of the early blast furnaces of the historic Salisbury iron industry (one o ...
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Heinrich Urban
Heinrich Urban (27 August 1837 – 24 November 1901) was a German violinist and composer. Life and career Heinrich Urban was born in Berlin, and studied with Ferdinand Laub, Hubert Ries and Friedrich Kiel. He sang alto in the Königliche Domchor and the Königliche Kapelle. He continued his studies later in Paris, and then worked as a violinist, composer and music teacher. He also served as conductor of the Berliner Dilettanten Orchester Verein (Amateur Orchestra Society). Noted students include harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, Polish pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Polish composer Mieczysław Karłowicz, American composer Fannie Charles Dillon, American composer Maurice Arnold Strothotte, American composer and music critic Leonard Liebling, Polish musicologist Henryk Opieński, and American pianist and composer Carl Adolph Preyer. He died in Berlin. Works Urban wrote overtures, a symphony and symphonic poems, an opera and a violin concerto. He also wrote solo and chamb ...
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Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló (Catalan: ; 29 December 187622 October 1973), known in English as Pablo Casals,
''The New York Times'', 1911-04-09, retrieved 1 August 2009
was a Spanish and Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor. He made many recordings throughout his career of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, including some as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings he made of the Cello Suites (Bach), Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy (though the ceremony was presided over by Lyndon B. Johnson).


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Childhood and early years

Casals was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia, Spain. His f ...
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Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (; ; – ) was a French composer and music theory, music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin. Little is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theorist of music with his ''Treatise on Harmony'' (1722) and also in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which circulated throughout Europe. He was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today. His debut, ''Hippolyte et Aricie'' (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera was s ...
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François Couperin
François Couperin (; 10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733) was a French Baroque music, Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as ''Couperin le Grand'' ("Couperin the Great") to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family. Life Couperin was born in Paris, into a prominent musical family. His father Charles was organist at the Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais, Church of Saint-Gervais in the city, a position previously held by Charles's brother Louis Couperin, the esteemed keyboard virtuoso and composer whose career was cut short by an early death. As a boy François must have received his first music lessons from his father, but Charles died in 1679 leaving the position at Saint-Gervais to his son, a common practice known as ''survivance'' that few churches ignored. With their hands tied, the churchwardens at Saint-Gervais hired Michel Richard Delalande to serve as new organist on the understanding that François would replace him ...
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Musicology
Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, formal sciences and computer science. Musicology is traditionally divided into three branches: music history, systematic musicology, and ethnomusicology. Historical musicologists study the history of musical traditions, the origins of works, and the biographies of composers. Ethnomusicologists draw from anthropology (particularly field research) to understand how and why people make music. Systematic musicology includes music theory, aesthetics, pedagogy, musical acoustics, the science and technology of musical instruments, and the musical implications of physiology, psychology, sociology, philosophy and computing. Cognitive musicology is the set of phenomena surrounding the cognitive modeling of music. When musicologists carry out ...
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Berlin University Of The Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universities in the city. The university is known for being one of the biggest and most diversified universities of the arts worldwide. It has four colleges specialising in fine arts, architecture, media and design, music and the performing arts with around 3,500 students. Thus the UdK is one of only three universities in Germany to unite the faculties of art and music in one institution. The teaching offered at the four colleges encompasses the full spectrum of the arts and related academic studies in more than 40 courses. Having the right to confer doctorates and post-doctoral qualifications, Berlin University of the Arts is also one of Germany's few art colleges with full university status. Outstanding professors and students at all its c ...
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Schola Cantorum
The Schola Cantorum de Paris ( being ) is a private conservatory in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera. History The Schola was founded in 1894 and opened on 15 October 1896 as a rival to the Paris Conservatoire. Alexandre Guilmant, an organist at the Conservatoire, was the director of the Schola before d'Indy took over. D'Indy set the curriculum, which fostered the study of late Baroque and early Classical works, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance polyphony. According to the ''Oxford Companion to Music'', "A solid grounding in technique was encouraged, rather than originality, and the only graduates who could stand comparison with the best Conservatoire students were Magnard, Roussel, Déodat de Séverac, and Pierre de Bréville." The school was originally located in Montparnasse; in 1900 it moved to its present site, a former convent in the '' Quartier ...
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Folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, including folk religion, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and Rite of passage, initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a Cultural artifact, folklore artifact or Cultural expressions, traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, thes ...
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Exposition Universelle (1889)
The of 1889 (), better known in English as the 1889 Paris Exposition, was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 6 May to 31 October 1889. It was the fifth of ten major expositions held in the city between 1855 and 1937. It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors. The most famous structure created for the exposition, and still remaining, is the Eiffel Tower. Organization The exposition was held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, which marked the beginning of French Revolution, and was also seen as a way to stimulate the economy and pull France out of an economic recession. The exposition attracted 61,722 official exhibitors, of whom twenty-five thousand were from outside of France. Admission price Admission to the exposition cost forty centimes, at a time when the price of an "economy" plate of meat and vegetables in a Paris cafe was ten centimes. Visitors paid an additional price for several of the exposition's most popular att ...
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Pleyel Et Cie
Pleyel et Cie. ("Pleyel and Company") is a French piano manufacturing firm founded by the composer Ignace Pleyel in 1807. In 1815, Pleyel's son Camille joined him as a business partner. The firm provided pianos to Frédéric Chopin, who considered Pleyel pianos to be "non plus ultra". Pleyel et Cie. also operated a concert hall, the Salle Pleyel, where Chopin performed his first – and last – Paris concerts. Pleyel's major contribution to piano development was the first use of a metal frame in a piano. Pleyel pianos were the choice of composers such as Chopin, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, de Falla and Stravinsky and of pianists and teachers Alfred Cortot, Philip Manuel and Gavin Williamson. Nineteenth-century musicians involved in the company's management included Joseph O'Kelly and Georges Pfeiffer. History Around 1815, Pleyel was the first to introduce the short, vertically strung cottage upright piano, or "pianino" to France, adapting the design made popular in B ...
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