In classical music, a fugue is a contrapuntal, polyphonic compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation, which recurs frequently throughout the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a fuguing tune, which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Fugues can also have episodes—parts of the fugue where new material is heard, based on the subject—a stretto, when the fugue's subject "overlaps" itself in different voices, or a recapitulation. A popular compositional technique in the Baroque era, the fugue was fundamental in showing mastery of harmony and tonality as it presented counterpoint.
A libretto is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet.
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broadway composers of the early 20th century, including Jerome Kern, Louis Hirsch, Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, and Sigmund Romberg. Harbach believed that music, lyrics, and story should be closely connected, and, as Oscar Hammerstein II's mentor, he encouraged Hammerstein to write musicals in this manner. Harbach is considered one of the first great Broadway lyricists, and he helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age more concerned with music, spectacle, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Indian Love Call" and "Cuddle up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine".
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887.
Samson and Delilah, Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire. It was first performed in Weimar at the Grossherzogliches Theater on 2 December 1877 in a German translation.
Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150, is an early church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach composed for an unknown occasion. It is unique among Bach's cantatas in its sparse orchestration and in the independence and prominence of the chorus, which is featured in four out of seven movements. The text alternates verses from Psalm 25 and poetry by an unknown librettist. Bach scored the work for four vocal parts and a small Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins, bassoon and basso continuo.
The Seasons is a secular oratorio by Joseph Haydn, first performed in 1801.
Joseph Deems Taylor was an American music critic, composer, and promoter of classical music. Nat Benchley, co-editor of The Lost Algonquin Roundtable, referred to him as "the dean of American music." He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1934.
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It is part of what would have been a "diptych", in Delany's description, of which the second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished.
Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet CH CBE was an English writer. His elder sister was Edith Sitwell and his younger brother was Sacheverell Sitwell. Like them, he devoted his life to art and literature.
John Liptrot Hatton was an English musical composer, conductor, pianist, accompanist and singer.
Jaromír Weinberger was a Bohemian born Jewish subject of the Austrian Empire, who became a naturalized American composer.
Fugue State Press is a small New York City fiction publisher, specializing in the experimental novel. Novelist James Chapman is the founder and publisher.
Il pirata is an opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, which was based on a three-act mélodrame from 1826: Bertram, ou le Pirate by Charles Nodier and Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor. This play was itself based upon a French translation of the five-act verse tragedy Bertram, or The Castle of St. Aldobrand by Charles Maturin which appeared in London in 1816.
Stet is a novel by the American author James Chapman; it was published by Fugue State Press in 2006.
Travis Jeppesen is an American novelist, playwright, poet, artist, and art critic. He is known, among other works, for his novel The Suiciders; a non-fiction novel about North Korea, See You Again in Pyongyang; and for his object-oriented writing work, 16 Sculptures.
The Rats (1974) is a horror novel by British writer James Herbert. This was Herbert's first novel and included graphic depictions of death and mutilation.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
"Todesfuge" (Deathfugue) is a German language poem written by the Romanian-born poet Paul Celan probably around 1945 and first published in 1948. It is one of his best-known and often-anthologized poems. Despite critics claiming that the lyrical finesse and aesthetic of the poem did not do justice to the cruelty of the Holocaust, others regard the poem as one that "combines mysteriously compelling imagery with rhythmic variations and structural patterns that are both elusive and pronounced". At the same time it has been regarded as a "masterful description of horror and death in a concentration camp". Celan was born to a Jewish family in Cernauti, Romania ; his parents were murdered in the Holocaust, and Celan himself was a prisoner for a time in a work camp. The poem has reached international relevance by being considered to be one of the most important poems of the post-war period and the most relevant example of Trümmerliteratur.
Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (2006) is the second novel by author Sam Savage, about a rat runt in 1960s Boston who learns to read. In 2006 Coffee House Press published Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife. In 2007 the Spanish publishing house Seix Barral purchased the world rights to Firmin, including English-language rights. The novel subsequently became a bestseller in Europe.
