In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety". In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a head arrangement.
In music, a glissando is a glide from one pitch to another. It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French glisser, "to glide". In some contexts, it is equivalent to portamento, which is a continuous, seamless glide between notes. In other contexts, it refers to discrete, stepped glides across notes, such as on a piano. Some terms that are similar or equivalent in some contexts are slide, sweepbend, smear, rip, lip, plop, or falling hail. On wind instruments, a scoop is a glissando ascending to the onset of a note achieved entirely with the embouchure, except on instruments that have a slide.
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born American conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed.
Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death in the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost.
Night on Bald Mountain, also known as Night on the Bare Mountain, is a series of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). Inspired by Russian literary works and legend, Mussorgsky composed a "musical picture", St. John's Eve on Bald Mountain on the theme of a Witches' Sabbath occurring at Bald Mountain on St. John's Eve, which he completed on that very night, 23 June 1867. Together with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko (1867), it is one of the first tone poems by a Russian composer.
Miroirs is a five-movement suite for solo piano written by French composer Maurice Ravel between 1904 and 1905. First performed by Ricardo Viñes in 1906, Miroirs contains five movements, each dedicated to a fellow member of the French avant-garde artist group Les Apaches.
Walter Sinclair Hartley was an American composer of contemporary classical music.
An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, is a tone poem for large orchestra written by German composer Richard Strauss in 1915. It is one of Strauss's largest non-operatic works; the score calls for about 125 players and a typical performance usually lasts around 50 minutes. The program of An Alpine Symphony depicts the experiences of eleven hours spent climbing an Alpine mountain.
Alexander Nevsky is the score composed by Sergei Prokofiev for Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. The subject of the film is the 13th century incursion of the knights of the Livonian Order into the territory of the Novgorod Republic, their capture of the city of Pskov, the summoning of Prince Alexander Nevsky to the defense of Rus', and his subsequent victory over the crusaders in 1242. The majority of the score's song texts were written by the poet Vladimir Lugovskoy.
Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 8 in D minor was composed between 1953 and 1955. Sir John Barbirolli, its dedicatee, conducted the Hallé Orchestra in the premiere at the Kings Hall in Manchester, on 2 May 1956. It is the shortest of the composer's nine symphonies, and is mostly buoyant and optimistic in tone.
The Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 52, is a three-movement work for orchestra written from 1904 to 1907 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
The Miraculous Mandarin Op. 19, Sz. 73, is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918 and 1924, and based on the 1916 story by Melchior Lengyel. Premiered on 27 November 1926 conducted by Eugen Szenkar at the Cologne Opera, Germany, it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds. Although more successful at its Prague premiere, it was generally performed during the rest of Bartók's life in the form of a concert suite, which preserves about two-thirds of the original pantomime's music.
La valse, poème chorégraphique pour orchestre, is a work written by Maurice Ravel between February 1919 and 1920; it was first performed on 12 December 1920 in Paris. It was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard as a concert work.
Alexander Scriabin's Symphony No. 3 in C minor, entitled Le Divin Poème, was written between 1902 and 1904 and published in 1905. It was premiered in Paris on 29 May of that year.
The Symphony No. 2 in E minor and C major by Arnold Bax was completed in 1926, after he had worked on it for two years. It was dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky, who conducted the first two performances of the work on 13 and 14 December 1929.
Robert Simpson composed his Seventh Symphony in 1977, the same year he completed his Sixth Symphony. Composition was begun 26 September and concluded 23 October in Chearsley. The work is dedicated to Hans Keller and his wife, Milein Keller, and was first performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Brian Wright at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool on 30 October 1984. It is a one-movement work of approximately 28 minutes duration, and since its first performance it has become one of Simpson's most frequently heard symphonies.
Russian composer Alfred Schnittke's Symphony No. 7 was composed in 1993. It is dedicated to conductor Kurt Masur who gave its world premiere performance in New York with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on 10 February 1994.
The Symphony No. 2 in E minor is a symphony composed by Havergal Brian between 1930 and 1931. The work was inspired by Goethe's drama Götz von Berlichingen. Originally it did not bear any dedication, but in 1972 he retrospectively dedicated it to his then recently deceased daughter Elfreda Brian. While it appears to be a traditional, four-movement symphony in the German postromantic tradition, Brian greatly deviates from convention and his personal approach to the symphonic discourse only shares superficial elements with other composers.
