In devising ways of communicating with the right hemisphere ,RW Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize for medicine , by showing the right hemisphere is " indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering & reasoning, " —Roger Wolcott Sperry CALTEC
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MUSICIANS
MozartMozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791), an Austrian composer, is considered one of the greatest and most creative musical geniuses of all time. With Joseph Haydn, he was the leading composer of the classical style of the late 1700's. Mozart died before his 36th birthday, but he still left more than 600 works. Mozart was born in Salzburg. His father, Leopold, was the leader of the local orchestra, and also wrote an important book about violin playing. At the age of 3, Wolfgang showed signs of remarkable musical talent. He learned to play the harpsichord, a keyboard instrument that preceded the piano, at the age of 4. He was composing music at 5, and when he was 6, he played for the Austrian empress at her court in Vienna. Before he was 14, Mozart had composed many works for the harpsichord, piano, or the violin, as well as orchestral and other works. His father recognized Wolfgang's amazing talent and devoted most of his time to his son's general and musical education. While serving as his teacher, Leopold took Wolfgang on concert tours through much of Europe. Wolfgang composed, gave public performances, met many musicians, and played the organ in many churches. In 1769, like his father before him, he began working for the archbishop of Salzburg, who also ruled the province. The Mozarts often quarrelled with the archbishop, partly because Wolfgang was often absent from Salzburg. The archbishop dismissed young Mozart in 1781. Mozart was actually glad to leave Salzburg, a small town, and preferred to seek his fortune in Vienna, one of the music capitals of Europe. By this time people took less notice of him, because he was no longer a child prodigy. But he was a brilliant performer and active as a composer. Mozart married in 1782. He did not have a permanent job in Vienna and tried to earn a living by selling his compositions, giving public performances, and giving music lessons. None of these activities produced enough income to support his family. He even travelled to Germany for the coronation of a new emperor, but his concerts there did not attract as much attention as he hoped. He died in poverty on Dec. 5, 1791. His works Opera : The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787) are operas he composed with words in Italian. The Magic Flute (1791) has German words. Symphonies : His last and most famous symphony, Number 41 (1788), is nicknamed the Jupiter. Church : orchestra. Mozart's best-known sacred work is the Requiem (Mass for the Dead). He began it in the last year of his life and while writing it seems to have become concerned about his own death. Parts of the Requiem were composed during his final illness. He died before the work was finished.
TchaikovskyP TchaikovskyTchaikovsky, Peter Ilich (1840-1893), was the first Russian composer to gain international fame. He was a master of orchestration with a superb talent for blending instrumental sounds and for achieving rousing orchestral effects. He also had a remarkable gift for writing melody. Tchaikovsky is often described as a composer of music that is basically melancholy. Some of his music is melancholy, especially the last movement of his Symphony No. 6. But he also wrote spirited music, as in Marche Slave and the "1812" overture; lyrical music, as in the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet; lively ballet music, as in the Nutcracker Suite; and powerful symphonies. His works. Tchaikovsky's six symphonies stand out as landmarks in his artistic development. His first three are seldom performed today. His fourth, written in 1877, is his first masterpiece in the symphonic form. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 (1888) is his finest from the standpoint of formal construction. Symphony No. 6 (1893) is called the "Pathetique" ("Pathetic"). It departed from the traditional symphonic form by expressing a deeply emotional feeling of tragedy in the final movement. Tchaikovsky's other orchestral works include Italian Capriccio (1880), Nutcracker Suite, and four other suites. Tchaikovsky's three ballets have become classics. They are Swan Lake (1875-1876), Sleeping Beauty (1888-1889), and The Nutcracker (1892).
HandelHandel, George Frideric (1685-1759), was a German-born composer who is known today mainly through his musical compositions called oratorios. His famous oratorio Messiah is one of the most popular works in music. In the mid-1900's, Handel's operas, neglected for 200 years, gained recognition as at least equal in quality to his oratorios. Handel also composed much orchestral music, chamber music (music for small groups of instruments), and solo music for harpsichord. His work. The oratorio developed in Italy as a music drama to be played without staging in the oratory (meeting room) of a religious association. Singers represented characters in a Biblical story or in the life of a saint. In addition to the dialogue and songs of the singers, a narrator often filled in necessary details in the story. A chorus usually represented groups of people or crowds and reacted to the events. His works Water music , Fireworks and Messiah MahlerG Mahler - emotional and imaginationMahler, Gustav (1860-1911), was a Bohemian-born composer of the romantic period. He completed nine symphonies and died before completing a tenth. He also composed numerous songs, many with orchestral accompaniment. Much of Mahler's music has a religious or philosophical basis. The early works often describe nature, and the later ones describe the struggles and triumphs of the soul. There is a note of sadness and resignation in many of his works. Mahler's symphonies are large-scale works that try to include every human emotion. They employ a large orchestra, and four of them (Numbers 2, 3, 4, and 8) use voices. Although Mahler wrote for a large orchestra, he often used it very delicately. Mahler's songs are more intimate in style. Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children, 1905) is a cycle of five songs set to poems by Friedrich Ruckert. Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth, 1911) is a symphony for tenor, baritone (or contralto), and orchestra. It explores the evanescence or temporary nature of human achievement and the enduring beauty of the earth. Mahler was born in Kaliste, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). He studied at the Vienna Conservatory, Austria, from 1875 to 1878. Mahler spent virtually his entire career as an opera and orchestra conductor.
RossiniRossini, Gioacchino Antonio (1792-1868), was an Italian opera composer. His The Barber of Seville (1816) is perhaps the greatest farce opera ever written. Rossini was born in Pesaro and received advanced musical training in Bologna. His second opera, La Cambiale di matrimonio (1810), made him an important force in Italian music. This was the first of his operas to be performed. For the next 13 years, Rossini wrote comic and tragic operas, sometimes as many as three or four a year. The most popular ones include The Italian in Algiers (1813), The Turk in Italy (1814), Otello (1816), Cinderella (1817), Moses in Egypt (1818), The Lady of the Lake (1819), and Semiramide (1823). They are noted for their rich and catchy melodies, surging vitality, and expert vocal writing. Rossini composed many of the great female roles in his tragic operas for his first wife, Isabella Colbran. In 1824, Rossini moved to Paris, then the opera capital of the world. In 1826 and 1827, he revised two of his Italian operas for French words. He then composed--to French texts--the masterly comic Le Comte Ory (1828) and his serious masterpiece William Tell (1829), with its well known overture. Rossini composed no operas after 1829, partly because he was often in poor health, and partly because he did not like the new operatic styles. His compositions after that year include the religious work Stabat Mater (1842) and many small instrumental and vocal pieces that he called Peches de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). Rossini had intelligence, wit, and humour, and became a famous host while living in Paris.
HolstHolst, Gustav (1874-1934), was an English composer and teacher. Holst composed many of his works for vocal soloists and chorus. These compositions show his sensitivity to the human voice and to language as well as his love for the English folk song tradition. However, Holst's best-known work is the orchestral suite The Planets (1914-1916). This suite consists of seven parts, each interpreting the astrological nature of a planet. Holst composed two suites for military band (1909, 1911) based on English folk songs. The Hymn of Jesus (1917) is a work for orchestra and chorus based on the Apocrypha of the New Testament. The poetry of John Keats inspired Holst's First Choral Symphony (1925) for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. Holst also wrote a number of works that reflect his interest in Hindu literature. In 1908, for example, Holst composed nine hymns for vocal soloist and piano based on the ancient Hindu sacred book the Rig-Veda. Holst was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In 1905 he became director of music at St. Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, London. His St. Paul's Suite (1913) for strings is dedicated to the school orchestra. From 1907 until his death, he served as musical director at Morley College, London. Holst also taught at the Royal College of Music from 1919 until his death.
ChopinChopin, Frederic Francois (1810?-1849), a Polish-born composer, was one of the masters of piano composition. Chopin wrote chamber music (music for small groups of instruments), a few songs, and several pieces for piano and orchestra. But his fame rests almost entirely on his more than 200 compositions for solo piano. His life. Chopin was born in Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, Poland. A child prodigy, Chopin played the piano in public when he was only 8 years old. He began to compose soon afterward. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826 to 1829 before leaving Poland in 1830. He settled in Paris in 1831, and, except for some travel, lived there the rest of his life. In 1837, Chopin began a love affair with George Sand, a French woman novelist. He travelled with her to the Mediterranean island of Majorca during the winter of 1838-1839. Bad weather there weakened his failing health. His affair with George Sand ended with a quarrel in 1847. He was then seriously ill with tuberculosis. He died on Oct. 17, 1849. Work Minute waltz - d flat
GriegGrieg, Edvard (1843-1907), was a Norwegian composer. He wrote his music in the style of Norwegian folk songs and folk dances. Grieg's works include songs, music for chorus and orchestra, and numbers for small instrumental groups. His compositions feature expressive melodies and original rhythms and harmonies. Grieg's most famous music includes such compositions for piano as the 10-volume Lyric Pieces. This work includes a number of well-known pieces--"Album-Leaf" (1867), "To Spring" (1886), and "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" (1896). Grieg was also noted for his Concerto in A Minor (1869) for piano and orchestra. The Peer Gynt suite (1876), Grieg's most famous orchestral work, includes such popular selections as "Morning," "Anitra's Dance," and "In the Hall of the Mountain King." In 1876, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen used this suite for his play Peer Gynt.
VerdiVerdi, Giuseppe (1813-1901), was an Italian composer of operas. His works are performed more often today than those of any other opera composer. Between 1851 and 1871, Verdi produced a remarkable series of masterpieces, including Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), The Sicilian Vespers (1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857, revised 1881), A Masked Ball (1859), La Forza del Destino (1862), Don Carlos (1867), and Aida (1871). Verdi wrote 26 operas. He composed all to Italian librettos (texts) except the Sicilian Vespers and Don Carlos, which he wrote to French librettos. Verdi gained fame for his mastery of theatrical effect and for the stirring melodic quality of his operas. He took several of his plots from the plays of such great dramatists as Victor Hugo, Friedrich Schiller, and William Shakespeare. Verdi wrote many melodies for soloists and small groups of singers. His operatic choruses remain familiar throughout the world. Verdi, a fiery Italian patriot, became a symbol of Italy's struggle for independence from Austria during the mid-1800's. He had frequent conflicts with Austrian authorities, who felt that his operas encouraged Italian nationalism. Much of the music of his early operas, particularly of Nabucco (1842) and I Lombardi (1843), became identified with the Italian nationalist movement. Verdi was born in Le Roncole, near Parma. He studied music as a boy in Busseto, a nearby town. He tried to enter the Milan Conservatory in 1832 but was rejected because he was too old and lacked sufficient formal training. He began taking private music lessons in Milan. In 1839, Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was a success at its premiere at La Scala, the leading opera house in Milan. Between 1838 and 1840, his first wife and two small children died. The grief-stricken composer finished a comic opera, Un Giorno di Regno, which was a failure when presented in 1840. But his third opera, Nabucco, made him the foremost Italian composer of his time. After completing Aida in 1871, Verdi apparently decided to end his career because of illness and age. During the next 16 years, his only important composition was a Requiem Mass (1874), written in memory of the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni. Verdi returned to opera composing in the mid-1880's through the urging of his friend Arrigo Boito, a noted Italian poet and composer. Boito contributed librettos for Verdi's Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). Many critics have called Otello Verdi's greatest tragic opera, and some consider it the greatest of all Italian operas. Falstaff was only Verdi's second comic opera, but it ranks as one of the greatest comic operas ever written. Verdi's only works after Falstaff were four beautiful religious compositions for voices called Quattro Pezzi Sacri (1898). A period of national mourning was declared in Italy following Verdi's death. The Complete Operas of Verdi (1970) by Charles Osborne analyses the historical, literary, and musical elements of the operas composed by Verdi.
BerliozBerlioz became famous for his way of relating his musical compositions to stories ideas and landscapes , known as programme music.Berlioz, Hector (1803-1869), was a French composer. He is known for his orchestrating genius and his long, uninterrupted melodies Berlioz composed symphonies, operas, and other large works. Many of these compositions had a text or programme. His symphonies include the Symphonie fantastique (1830); Harold in Italy (1834), with viola solo; and Romeo and Juliet (1839), with solo voices and chorus. He composed five operas, among them Benvenuto Cellini (1838), Beatrice and Benedict (1862), and The Trojans (1863, 1890). His other works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra include the Requiem (1837), L'Enfance du Christ (1854), and The Damnation of Faust (1846). Berlioz was admired as a conductor, critic, and writer. His books on music include Grand Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration (1844), Evenings with the Orchestra (1852), and The Conductor: The Theory of His Art (1855). His Memoirs were published in 1870, after his death. Louis Hector Berlioz was born in La Cote Saint-Andre, near Grenoble, France. |
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