Johann Pachelbel was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a musical composition for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is one of the most important examples of the variation form. It is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may also have been the first performer of the work.
The gigue or giga is a lively baroque dance originating from the Irish jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues.
24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovich is a set of 24 preludes and fugues for solo piano, one in each of the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. The cycle was composed in 1950 and 1951 while Shostakovich was in Moscow and premiered by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva in Leningrad in December 1952; it was published the same year. The complete work takes about two and a half hours to play. It is one of several examples of music written in all major and/or minor keys.
Ludus Tonalis, subtitled Kontrapunktische, tonale, und Klaviertechnische Übungen, is a piano work by Paul Hindemith that was composed in 1942 during his stay in the United States. It was first performed in 1943 in Chicago by Willard MacGregor. The piece explores, "matters of technique, theory, inspiration, and communication. It is in effect, a veritable catalogue of the composer's mature style."
The Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38, entitled "Sonate für Klavier und Violoncello", was written by Johannes Brahms in 1862-65.
In music, notes inégales refers to a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The practice was especially prevalent in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, with appearances in other European countries at the same time; and it reappeared as the standard performance practice in the 20th century in jazz.
The inverted spectrum is the hypothetical concept of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees—one's qualia—are systematically different from the colors the other person sees.
The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, is a work for solo piano written by Johannes Brahms in 1861. It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B♭ major, HWV 434.
The mirror canon is a type of canon which involves the leading voice being played alongside its own inversion. The realisation from the 'closed' (unrealised) form can be effected by placing the page in front of a mirror, thus upside down, and beginning with the already progressing first voice.
In music theory, the word inversion has distinct, but related, meanings when applied to intervals, chords, voices, and melodies. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in musical set theory.
The String Quartet No. 9 by Robert Simpson was written in response to a commission by the Delme Quartet in 1982 to mark their 20th anniversary, one which coincided with the 250th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Haydn. Simpson was among five British composers to write works to mark this dual occasion, producing a very large set of variations on a Haydn theme, a work of some fifty-seven minutes in duration. Its first performance was given in the Wigmore Hall in London on 6 October 1982.
Cambiata, or nota cambiata, has a number of different and related meanings in music. Generally it refers to a pattern in a homophonic or polyphonic setting of a melody where a note is skipped from in one direction and this is followed by the note, and then by motion in the opposite direction, and where either the note skipped from is distinguished as a dissonance or the note skipped to is distinguished as a non-harmonic or non-chordal tone. With regards to music pedagogical activities and species counterpoint, it refers to a more specific set of patterns.
The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893, is a collection of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, composed for solo keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In Bach's time Clavier (keyboard) was a generic name indicating a variety of keyboard instruments, most typically a harpsichord or clavichord – but not excluding an organ either.
Bach's Greatest Hits is the debut album released by the Paris-based Swingle Singers. The album was a 1963 Grammy award winner for "Best Performance by a Chorus" and the group also won the 1963 Grammy award for "Best New Artist".
The Clavier-Übung III, sometimes referred to as the German Organ Mass, is a collection of compositions for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, started in 1735–36 and published in 1739. It is considered Bach's most significant and extensive work for organ, containing some of his most musically complex and technically demanding compositions for that instrument.
Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria is a work for solo organ composed by Benjamin Britten in 1946. It was commissioned for St Matthew's Church, Northampton and first performed on 21 September 1946, St Matthew's Day, three days after its composition. It uses a theme from a motet by the Spanish composer Vittoria, both in the prelude and as the basis for the fugue. The piece, which lasts about five minutes in performance, has had a mixed reception. One writer has noted the difficulty on finding a suitable organ on which to perform the piece, given the difficulties in finding appropriate registration to meet Britten's requirements. A reviewer of a concert performance in the 1960s called it "a contrived attempt to make bricks without straw", although other commentators have been more favourable about the piece.
The Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor, BWV 849, is a pair of keyboard compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is the fourth prelude and fugue in the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier, a series of 48 preludes and fugues by the composer.
