Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human creativity. Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of composition, improvisation, and performance. Music may be performed using a wide variety of musical instruments, including the human voice. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a music box, barrel organ, or digital audio workstation software on a computer.
Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The process of interpreting musical notation is often referred to as reading music.
In musical terminology, tempo, also known as beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given composition. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece and is usually measured in beats per minute (BPM). In modern classical compositions, a "metronome mark" in beats per minute may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will typically simply be stated in BPM.
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper. However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.
A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments.
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was an English composer, music critic, pianist and writer whose music, written over a period of seventy years, ranges from sets of miniatures to works lasting several hours. One of the most prolific 20th-century composers, he is best known for his piano pieces, notably nocturnes such as Gulistān and Villa Tasca, and large-scale, technically intricate compositions, which include seven symphonies for piano solo, four toccatas, Sequentia cyclica and 100 Transcendental Studies. He felt alienated from English society by reason of his homosexuality and mixed ancestry, and had a lifelong tendency to seclusion.
Lowell Liebermann is an American composer, pianist and conductor.
Opus clavicembalisticum is a work for solo piano, notable for its length and difficulty, composed by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji and completed on 25 June 1930.
Post-romanticism or Postromanticism refers to a range of cultural endeavors and attitudes emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the period of Romanticism.
Comme le vent is the first of the Études in the minor keys, Op. 39 for solo piano by the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan. It is in A minor. The tempo marking is prestissimamente, and the unusual 2
16 time signature further encourages a fast performance. Its continuous triplet melody evokes a tarantella, and has a fleeting Mendelssohnian scherzo character, but is marked by Alkan's obsessive melodic development and unusual harmonic progressions.
Paul Rapoport is a Canadian musicologist, music critic, composer and professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique Op. 15 is a three-movement suite for piano composed by the French composer, Charles-Valentin Alkan, published in 1837. The suite also bears the title Souvenirs (Memories). The 3 movements are Aime-moi, Le vent, and Morte.
While a concerto is generally a piece for an instrument or instruments with orchestral accompaniment, some works for piano alone have been written with the seemingly contradictory designation concerto for solo piano.
A piano symphony is a piece for solo piano in one or more movements. It is a symphonic genre by virtue of imitating orchestral tone colour, texture, and symphonic development.
En rythme molossique is the second of the Études in the minor keys, Op. 39 for solo piano by the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, published in 1846. It is in D minor. The piece is in rondo form, with two episodes, and is mostly driven by the rhythm . Ronald Smith compares the theme to the octaves in canon of the minuet from Joseph Haydn's string quartet, Op. 76 No. 2.
Alistair Richard Hinton is a Scottish composer and musicologist with a focus on the works of his friend Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. He is the curator of the Sorabji Archive.
Sequentia cyclica super "Dies irae" ex Missa pro defunctis, commonly known as Sequentia cyclica, is a piano composition by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Written between 1948 and 1949, it is a set of 27 variations on the medieval sequence Dies irae and is widely considered one of Sorabji's greatest works. With a duration of about eight hours, it is one of the longest piano pieces of all time.
"Gulistān"—Nocturne for Piano, commonly known as Gulistan, is a piano piece by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji written in 1940. Its title refers to Golestan, a collection of poems and stories by 13th-century Persian poet and writer Sa'di. The piece lasts about 30 minutes in performance and is often considered one of Sorabji's greatest works.
