Willem Mengelberg
Joseph Wilhelm Mengelberg (28 March 1871 – 21 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic conductors of the 20th century. Biography Mengelberg was the fourth of fifteen children of German-born parents in Utrecht, Netherlands. His father was the Dutch-German sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg. He was a distant cousin of the musicologist and composer and the uncle of the conductor, composer and critic Karel Mengelberg, who was himself the father of the pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg. After studies in Utrecht with the composer and conductor Richard Hol, the composer Anton Averkamp (1861–1934) and the violinist Henri Wilhelm Petri (1856–1914), Mengelberg went on to study piano and composition at the Cologne conservatory (now the Hochschule für Musik Köln), where his principal teachers were Franz ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Isidor Seiss
Isidor Wilhelm Seiss (23 December 184025 September 1905) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, piano pedagogue and philanthropist. His surname also appears as Seiß, and his first name also appears as Isidore. Biography Isidor Wilhelm Seiss was born in Dresden in 1840. His first musical studies were under Friedrich Wieck (piano) and Julius Otto (theory), before going to Moritz Hauptmann in Leipzig from 1858 to 1860. He did some performing in Germany and Belgium, then became a piano teacher at the Cologne Conservatory in 1871, where he had a long career. He conducted the Cologne Musical Society.Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed, 1954, Vol. VII, p. 691 His notable students included Engelbert Humperdinck,Guy Wagner ''A Master from Liechtenstein: Josef Gabriel Rheinberger''/ref> Elly Ney (for nine years before she moved on to Leschetizky and Sauer), Willem Mengelberg, Carl Lachmund, Frederick Corder, Volkmar Andreae, Maurits Leefson, Henri Weil, Kar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Utrecht
Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The municipality of Utrecht is located in the eastern part of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Netherlands, and includes Haarzuilens, Vleuten and De Meern. It has a population of 376,435 as of . Utrecht's ancient city centre features many buildings and structures, several dating as far back as the High Middle Ages. It has been the religious centre of the Netherlands since the 8th century. In 1579, the Union of Utrecht was signed in the city to lay the foundations for the Dutch Republic. Utrecht was the most important city in the Netherlands until the Dutch Golden Age, when it was surpassed by Amsterdam as the country's cultural centre and most populous city. Utrecht is home to Utrecht University, the largest university ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ein Heldenleben
''Ein Heldenleben'' (''A Hero's Life''), Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including '' Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Till Eulenspiegel'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Don Juan'', and '' Death and Transfiguration''. Background Strauss began work on the piece while staying in a Bavarian mountain resort in July 1898. He proposed to write a heroic work in the mould of Beethoven's ''Eroica'' Symphony: "It is entitled 'A Hero's Life', and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism. Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well and I hope to finish by New Year's Day."Glass, Herbert''E ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Willem Pijper
Willem Frederik Johannes Pijper (; 8 September 189418 March 1947) was a Dutch composer, music critic and music teacher. Pijper is considered to be among the most important Dutch composers of the first half of the 20th century. Life Pijper was born at Zeist, near Utrecht, on 8 September 1894 of strict Calvinist working-class parents. His father, who sometimes played psalm accompaniments on the harmonium, taught him the names of the notes of the treble clef when he was five. Willem subsequently discovered the use of sharps and flats and began composing simple melodies. His fascination with symmetrical musical structures was evident even at this early age. At ten he began formal piano lessons and made rapid progress. Poor health as a child meant that he was educated at home until age 13, but in 1912, after three years study at the gymnasium (high school), Pijper entered the Utrecht Academy of Music, where he was taught composition by Johan Wagenaar, passing examinations in theoreti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is the Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Its name originates from the palm branches waved by the crowd to greet and honor Jesus Christ as he entered the city. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Holy Week; in Western Christianity, this is the beginning of the last week of the solemn season of Lent, preceding Eastertide, while in Eastern Christianity, Holy Week commences after the conclusion of Great Lent. In most Christian rites, Palm Sunday is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches (or the branches of other native trees), representing the palm branches that the crowd scattered before Christ as he rode into Jerusalem. These palms are sometimes woven into Christian cross, crosses. The difficulty of procuring palms in unfavorable climates led to the substitution of branches of native trees, includi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, [ˈjoːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ]) ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral ''Brandenburg Concertos''; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites (Bach), cello suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (Bach), sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the ''Goldberg Variations'' and ''The Well-Tempered Clavier''; organ works such as the ' and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the ''St Matthew Passion'' and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Reception of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. The Bach family had already produced several composers when Joh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theory of music. Earlier editions were published under the titles ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', and ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians''; the work has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource called ''Grove Music Online'', which is now an important part of ''Oxford Music Online''. ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' ''A Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' was first published in London by Macmillan and Co. in four volumes (1879, 1880, 1883, 1889) edited by George Grove with an Appendix edited by J. A. Fuller Maitland in the fourth volume. An Index edited by Mrs. E. Wodehouse was issued as a separate volume in 189 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Acoustics
Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an Acoustical engineering, acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries. Hearing (sense), Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. Accordingly, the science of acoustics spreads across many facets of human society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more. Likewise, animal species such as songbirds and frogs use sound and hearing as a key element of mating rituals or for marking territories. Art, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kindertotenlieder
(''Songs on the Death of Children'') is a song cycle (1904) for voice and orchestra by Gustav Mahler. The words of the songs are poems by Friedrich Rückert. Poems and setting The original were a group of 428 poems written by Rückert in 1833–34 in an outpouring of grief following the illness (scarlet fever) and death of two of his children. Karen Painter describes the poems thus: "Rückert's 428 poems on the death of children became singular, almost manic documents of the psychological endeavor to cope with such loss. In ever new variations Rückert's poems attempt a poetic resuscitation of the children that is punctuated by anguished outbursts. But above all the poems show a quiet acquiescence to fate and to a peaceful world of solace." These poems were not intended for publication, and they appeared in print only in 1871, five years after the poet's death. Mahler selected five of Rückert's poems to set as Lieder, which he composed between 1901 and 1904. The songs are wri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Das Klagende Lied
''Das klagende Lied'' (''Song of Lamentation'') is a cantata by Gustav Mahler, composed between 1878 and 1880 and greatly revised over the next two decades. In its original form, ''Das klagende Lied'' is the earliest of his works to have survived. Compositional history Mahler began to write the text of ''Das klagende Lied'' during the early part of his final year in the Vienna Conservatory, where he was a student between 1875 and 1878. It is based on "Der singende Knochen" (" The Singing Bone") from the collection by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The draft text for the work is dated 18 March 1878, and composition of the music began in autumn of 1879. It was completed in November 1880. As originally composed, ''Das klagende Lied'' was in three parts: # Waldmärchen (''Forest Legend'') # Der Spielmann (''The Minstrel'') # Hochzeitsstück (''Wedding Piece'') The first performance did not take place until 1901, by which time Mahler had subjected his original score to several major revi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alma Mahler
Alma Mahler-Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was an Austrian composer, author, editor, and socialite. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of nearly fifty songs for voice and piano, and works in other genres as well. 17 songs are known to have survived. At 15, she was mentored by Max Burckhard. She married composer Gustav Mahler but he died in 1911. Between 1911 and 1914 she had a passionate affair with Oskar Kokoschka. In 1915, Alma married Walter Gropius, and they had a daughter, Manon Gropius. Throughout her marriage to Gropius, Alma engaged in an affair with Franz Werfel. Following her separation from Gropius, Alma and Werfel eventually married. In 1938, after Anschluss, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Werfel and Alma fled, as it was unsafe for the Jewish Werfel. Eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. In later years, her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Symphony No
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Mahler's Second Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |