Prepared Piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. Its invention is usually traced to John Cage's dance music for ''Works for prepared piano by John Cage#Bacchanale, Bacchanale'' (1940), created for a performance in a Seattle venue that lacked sufficient space for a percussion ensemble. Cage has cited Henry Cowell as an inspiration for developing piano extended techniques, involving strings within a piano being manipulated instead of the keyboard. Typical of Cage's practice as summed up in the ''Sonatas and Interludes'' (1946–48) is that each key of the piano has its own characteristic timbre, and that the original pitch of the string will not necessarily be recognizable. Further variety is available with use of the una corda pedal. Ferrante & Teicher between 1950 and 1980 used partially prepared pianos for some of their tunes in their albums. Other musicians, su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prepared Piano Board Neumann
The Scout Motto of the Scouting, Scout movement is, in English, "Be Prepared", with most international branches of the group using a close translation of that phrase. These mottoes have been used by millions of Scouts around the world since 1907. Most of the member organizations of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) share the same mottoes. In the first part of ''Scouting for Boys'', Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, Robert Baden-Powell explains the meaning of the phrase: Baden-Powell on "Be Prepared" Baden-Powell provides several descriptions of how and for what situations a Scout must be prepared elsewhere in ''Scouting for Boys''. In his explanation of the third point of the Scout Law, Baden-Powell says: In the opening chapter of ''Scouting for Boys'', Baden-Powell says: Baden-Powell discusses more skills required of Scouts in Chapter IV of ''Scouting for Boys'', which addresses camp life, and he lists: * Tying knots * Making a bivo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tack Piano
A tack piano (also known as a harpsipiano, jangle piano, and junk piano) is an altered version of an ordinary piano, in which objects such as thumbtacks or nails are placed on the felt-padded hammers of the instrument at the point where the hammers hit the strings, giving the instrument a tinny, more percussive sound. It is used to evoke the feeling of a honky-tonk piano. Tack pianos are commonly associated with ragtime pieces, often appearing in Hollywood Western saloon scenes featuring old upright pianos. The instrument was originally used for classical music performances as a substitute for a harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one .... Honky-tonk piano A honky-tonk piano has a similar tone as a tack piano; however, the method of obtaining its sound is d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Syvilla Fort
Syvilla Fort (July 3, 1917 – November 8, 1975) was an American dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher. Born in Seattle, she drew on her African-American heritage in her original dance works. American composer John Cage wrote his first piece for prepared piano, '' Bacchanale'' (1940), for a dance by Fort. She died from breast cancer at the age of 58. Biography Born in Seattle, Washington, Syvilla Fort began studying dance when she was three years old. After she was denied admission to several ballet schools because 'whites' practiced a system of color-based discrimination, Fort's early dance education took place in her home and in private lessons. By the time she was nine years old, Fort was teaching ballet, tap, and modern dance to small groups of neighborhood children who could not afford private lessons. Fort attended the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle as their first black student after graduating from high school in 1932. After spending five years at the Cornis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dance
Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire of movements or by its History of dance, historical period or List of ethnic, regional, and folk dances by origin, place of origin. Dance is typically performed with Music, musical accompaniment, and sometimes with the dancer simultaneously using a musical instrument themselves. Two common types of group dance are Concert dance, theatrical and Participation dance, participatory dance. Both types of dance may have special functions, whether social, ceremonial, Competitive dance, competitive, Erotic dance, erotic, War dance, martial, Sacred dance, sacred or Liturgical dance, liturgical. Dance is not solely restricted to performance, as dance is used as a form of exercise and occasionally training for other sports and activities. Dance perf ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luthéal
The luthéal is a kind of hybrid piano which extended the "register" possibilities of a piano by producing cimbalom-like sounds in some registers, exploiting harmonics of the strings when pulling other register-stops, and also some registers making other objects, which were lowered just above the strings, resound. The instrument became obsolete partly because most of its mechanics were too sensitive, needing constant adjustment. The only pieces in the general repertoire to feature the luthéal are ''L'enfant et les sortilèges'' (1920–25) and ''Tzigane'' (1924), by Maurice Ravel. History The attachment was created by the Belgian organ builder Georges Cloetens, who first patented it on 28 January 1919 and named it the "Jeu de harpe tirée".Roger Cotte, Cotte, Roger J. V. 2001. "Luthéal [Piano-Luthéal]". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (professor of music), John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers. M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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L'enfant Et Les Sortilèges
''L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties'' (''The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts'') is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first being '' L'heure espagnole''. Written from 1917 to 1925, ''L'enfant et les sortilèges'' was first performed in Monte Carlo in 1925 conducted by Victor de Sabata. After being offered the opportunity to write a musical work, Colette wrote the text in eight days. Several composers had proposed to Colette that she write to music, but she was only excited by the prospect of Ravel. Composition history During World War I, the Opéra de Paris director Jacques Rouché asked Colette, whom he met at one of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux's salons, to provide the text for a fairy ballet. Colette originally wrote the story under the title ''Divertissements pour ma fille''. After Colette chose Ravel to set the text to music, a copy was sent to him i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism (music), modernism, baroque music, baroque, Neoclassicism (music), neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, ''Boléro'' (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anna Stella Schic
Anna Stella Schic (30 June 1922 in Campinas – 1 February 2009 in Nice''Morre na França a pianista brasileira Anna Stella Schic''.AFP 1 February 2009. Accessed 11 January 2012.) was a Brazilian pianist and author of a biography of composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Life Schic gave her first piano recital at the age of six. She was taught by José Kliass, a former student of Martin Krause, who was in turn trained by Franz Liszt. Later on, she studied with Marguerite Long in Paris. Schic was married to French composer Michel Philippot, and according to her daughter Sandra Lechartre, she lived in France from 1971 on. In addition to her career as pianist, she taught at the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Legacy In 1976, Schic released her recorded cycle of the complete solo piano music of Heitor Villa-Lobos, the first such cycle to be completed. In addition, she was among the first to promote the mu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has globally become one of the most recognizable South American composers in music history. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2,000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his '' Bachianas Brasileiras'' (Brazilian Bach-pieces) and his Chôros. His Etudes for classical guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his ''5 Preludes'' (1940) were dedicated to his spouse Arminda Neves d'Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha". Both are important works in the classical guitar repertory. Biography Youth and exploration Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Ra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chôros No
''Chôros'' is the title of a series of compositions by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, composed between 1920 and 1929. Origin and conception The word ''chôro'' (; nowadays spelled simply ''choro'') is Portuguese for "weeping", "cry", and came to be the name used for music played by an ensemble of Brazilian street musicians (called ''chorões'') using both African and European instruments, who improvise in a free and often dissonant kind of counterpoint called ''contracanto''. In this context, the term does not refer to any definite form of composition, but rather includes a variety of Brazilian types. Villa-Lobos described the basic concept of his ''Chôros'' as a "brasilofonia"—an extension of the popular street-musicians' chôro to a pan-Brazilian synthesis of native folklore, both Indian and popular. The tenth work in the series is for mixed choir and large orchestra, and quotes at length from a popular song, originally composed as an instrumental schottische ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Georgina Born
Georgina Emma Mary Born, is a British academic, anthropologist, musicologist and musician. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born and for her work in Henry Cow and with Lindsay Cooper. Background Born was born in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, the granddaughter of the physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born, daughter of the pharmacologist Gustav Born, and cousin of the pop singer Olivia Newton-John. Born attended Godolphin and Latymer School then Purcell School in London and Dartington Hall School in Devon. Music Born studied the cello and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, and performed classical and modern music including stints with the Michael Nyman Band, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art. In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Eur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maurice Delage
Maurice Charles Delage (13 November 1879 – 19 or 21 September 1961) was a French composer and pianist. Life and career Maurice Charles Delage was born and died in Paris. He first worked as a clerk for a maritime agency in Paris, and later as a fishmonger in Boulogne. He also served for a time in the French army, before embarking on a music career in his twenties. A student of Ravel, who proclaimed him one of the supreme French composers of his day, and member of Les Apaches, he was influenced by travels to India and Japan in 1912, when he accompanied his father on a business trip. Ravel's "La vallée des cloches" from ''Miroirs'' was dedicated to Delage. Delage's best known piece is '' Quatre poèmes hindous'' (1912–1913).Georges Jean-Aubry (1917''An Introduction to French Music'' p.67, Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London His ''Ragamalika'' (1912–1922), based on the classical music of India, is significant in that it calls for prepared piano; the score specifies that a piece ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |