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Xylorimba
The xylorimba (sometimes referred to as xylo-marimba or marimba-xylophone) is a pitched percussion instrument similar to an extended-range xylophone with a range identical to some 5-octave celestas or 5-octave marimbas, though typically an octave higher than the latter. Despite its name, it is not a combination of a xylophone and a marimba; its name has been a source of confusion, as many composers have called for a 'xylorimba', including Alban Berg, Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen, but for parts requiring only a four-octave xylophone. However, Pierre Boulez wrote for two five-octave xylorimbas in . Like the xylophone and marimba, the xylorimba consists of a series of wooden bars laid out like a piano keyboard "with a compass sufficiently large to embrace the low-sounding bars of the marimba and the highest-sounding bars of the xylophone." The lower notes of the xylorimba are described as sounding closer to a xylophone than a marimba, on account of its bars being both thic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xylorimba (from Emil Richards Collection)
The xylorimba (sometimes referred to as xylo-marimba or marimba-xylophone) is a pitched percussion instrument similar to an extended-range xylophone with a range identical to some 5-octave celestas or 5-octave marimbas, though typically an octave higher than the latter. Despite its name, it is not a combination of a xylophone and a marimba; its name has been a source of confusion, as many composers have called for a 'xylorimba', including Alban Berg, Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen, but for parts requiring only a four-octave xylophone. However, Pierre Boulez wrote for two five-octave xylorimbas in . Like the xylophone and marimba, the xylorimba consists of a series of wooden bars laid out like a piano keyboard "with a compass sufficiently large to embrace the low-sounding bars of the marimba and the highest-sounding bars of the xylophone." The lower notes of the xylorimba are described as sounding closer to a xylophone than a marimba, on account of its bars being both thicker a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Marteau Sans Maître
''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It is among his most acclaimed compositions. History Before ''Le Marteau'', Boulez had established a reputation as the composer of modernist and serialist works such as '' Structures I'', '' Polyphonie X'', as well as his infamously "unplayable" Second Piano Sonata. ''Le Marteau'' was first written as a six-movement composition between 1953 and 1954, and was published in that form in the latter year, "imprimée pour le festival de musique, 1954, Donaueschingen" (though in the end it was not performed there) in a photographic reproduction of the composer's manuscript by Universal Edition, given the catalog number UE 12362. In 1955 Boulez revised the order of these movements and interpolated three newly composed ones. The original, six-m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called '' modes of limited transposition'', which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime. Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and studied with Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post held for 61 years until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruppen
''Gruppen'' (german: Groups) for three orchestras (1955–57) is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. ''Gruppen'' is "a landmark in 20th-century music ... probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece". History Early in 1955 Stockhausen received a commission from WDR for a new orchestral composition, but his ongoing work on ''Gesang der Jünglinge'' prevented him from starting right away. In August and September, he took the opportunity to retreat to an inexpensive rented room in the attic of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland, recommended to him by a colleague, Paul Gredinger. Surrounded by the splendour of the Graubünden alps, he created the entire plan of ''Gruppen'', "with a completely new conception of musical time". The surroundings provided more than jus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint François D'Assise
''Saint François d'Assise : Scènes Franciscaines'' (English: Franciscan Scenes of Saint Francis of Assisi), or simply ''Saint François d'Assise'', is an opera in three acts and eight scenes by French composer Olivier Messiaen, who was also its librettist; written from 1975 to 1979, with orchestration and copying from 1979 to 1983. It concerns Saint Francis of Assisi, the titular character, and displays Messiaen's devout Catholicism. The composer's only opera, its première was given by the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier on 28 November 1983, but it was published eight years later in 1991. The work is considered the composer's ''magnum opus''. Composition history Despite his studies of Mozart and Wagner operas and his famous fascination with Debussy's '' Pelléas et Mélisande'', Messiaen thought he would never compose an opera. When Rolf Liebermann, general manager of the Paris Opera, commissioned an opera from Messiaen in 1971 the composer refused. Messiaen changed his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Transfiguration De Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ
''La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ'' ("The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ") is a work written between 1965 and 1969 by Olivier Messiaen. It is based on the account found in the synoptic gospels of Jesus' transfiguration. The writing is on a very large scale; the work requires around 200 performers. The forces required include a mixed choir, seven instrumental soloists and a large orchestra; only being surpassed by his opera Saint François d'Assise. Background On hearing "an old priest deliver a sermon on the light and the filiation", Messiaen started to think about the transfiguration story in the 1940s. By the time he began to write the music, he had not composed music for voices for 17 years, since his solo choral work ''Cinq rechants''. Warmer tonal harmonies reappeared in this work, in contrast to the harmonies he had been using for other works of the period. Messiaen makes extensive use of birdsong throughout the piece, including the songs of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pléïades
''Pléïades'' is a composition for six percussionists composed in 1978 by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, originally commissioned by the percussion ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg. It is notable for its use of the sixxen, an instrument Xenakis had constructed specifically for the piece. Title The title of this work is intentionally ambiguous: on one hand, the term comes from a word meaning "many", and which alludes to all of the instruments used by the six percussionists along the four movements; on the other hand, it refers to a myth in Greek mythology: the Pleiades are the seven daughters of Pleione and Atlas even though the greatest part of his inspiration may come from the astronomy, as the Pleiades were thought to be the stars from Taurus. Structure and composition The composition has four movements. Although Xenakis proposed two orders, there are many other recordings with different orders: Three of the movements (''Métaux'', ''Claviers'' and ''Peaux'') deri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism (in the 1950s), controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as landmarks of twentieth-century music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marimba
The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre of the marimba is warmer, deeper, more resonant, and more pure. It also tends to have a lower range than that of a xylophone. Typically, the bars of a marimba are arranged chromatically, like the keys of a piano. The marimba is a type of idiophone. Today, the marimba is used as a solo instrument, or in ensembles like orchestras, marching bands (typically as a part of the front ensemble), percussion ensembles, brass and concert bands, and other traditional ensembles. Etymology and terminology The term ''marimba'' refers to both the traditional version of this instrument and its modern form. Its first documented use in the English language dates back to 1704. The term is of Bantu origin, deriving from the prefix meaning 'many' an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term ''xylophone'' may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term ''xylophone'' refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a ''xylophonist'' or simply a ''xylophone player''. The term is also popularly used to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iannis Xenakis
Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalised citizen of France eighteen years later. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances. Among his most important works are '' Metastaseis'' (1953–54) for orchestra, which introduced independent parts for every musician of the orchestra; percussion works such as '' Psappha'' (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marimbaphone
The marimbaphone (not to be confused with the similarly named marimba) is an obsolete tuned percussion instrument, developed by the J.C. Deagan Company of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. in the early 20th century. The marimbaphone had either shallow steel or wooden bars arranged chromatically with a tube resonator under each bar. Its timbre was similar to the celesta The celesta or celeste , also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box ( ..., and it was used mainly by marimba bands and as a solo instrument by stage artists. In addition to being played with mallets in the conventional way (as in the playing of a marimba or vibraphone), the marimbaphone was designed so that its bars could be rotated from a horizontal position to a vertical position, allowing them to more easily be played with a bow. To further fac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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