Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown. But his music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. It took time for the quality of his music to be recognized, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music. He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century.
Harold Samuel Shapero was an American composer.
Pandiatonicism is a musical technique of using the diatonic scale without the limitations of functional tonality. Music using this technique is pandiatonic. The term "pandiatonicism" was coined by Nicolas Slonimsky in the second edition of Music since 1900 to describe chord formations of any number up to all seven degrees of the diatonic scale, "used freely in democratic equality". Triads with added notes such as the sixth, seventh, or second are the most common, while the, "most elementary form," is a nonharmonic bass. According to Slonimsky's definition,
Pan-diatonicism sanctions the simultaneous use of any or all seven tones of the diatonic scale, with the bass determining the harmony. The chord-building remains tertian, with the seventh, ninth, or thirteenth chords being treated as consonances functionally equivalent to the fundamental triad. Pan-diatonicism, as consolidation of tonality, is the favorite technique of NEO-CLASSICISM [sic].
The Firebird is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with a scenario by Alexandre Benois and Fokine based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. When first performed at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910, the work was an instant success with both audience and critics.
Slonimsky is a Russian, Belarusian, Polish and Jewish surname. It means "a person from the city of Slonim".
Shaker Loops is a 1978 composition by American composer John Adams, originally written for string septet. A version for string orchestra followed in 1983 and first performed in April of that year at Alice Tully Hall, New York, by the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Harmonielehre is a 1985 orchestral composition by the American composer John Adams. The composition's title, German for "study of harmony," is also the title of several music theory texts, including those written by Arnold Schoenberg (1911), Heinrich Schenker (1906), and Hugo Riemann (1893), with Adams explicitly referring to Schoenberg's.
The Chairman Dances is a 1985 composition by John Adams, subtitled Foxtrot for Orchestra and lasting about 13 minutes. A commission from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, it has several dance-like tunes and has been described by Adams as an “outtake” from Act III of the opera he was working on at the time, Nixon in China. The word “Dances” in the title is a verb, not a noun. In the opera, the music depicts Madame Mao gate-crashing a presidential banquet, hanging paper lanterns, and performing a seductive dance; Chairman Mao descends from his portrait, and the two dance a foxtrot, back in time together. The piece ends with the sound of a gramophone winding down.
Lollapalooza is a short piece composed by American minimalist composer John Adams in 1995. The piece is based on the rhythm of the word 'Lollapalooza'. It was composed as a fortieth birthday present to the British conductor Simon Rattle, with whom Adams has worked in the past.
Hallelujah Junction is a composition for two pianos written in 1996 by the American composer John Adams. Adams titled his autobiography after this composition. A two-CD retrospective album of works by Adams on the Nonesuch label is also entitled Hallelujah Junction, but does not include the composition.
The Wound-Dresser is a nineteen-minute-long piece by U.S. composer John Adams for chamber orchestra and baritone singer. The piece is an elegiac setting of excerpts from American poet Walt Whitman's poem "The Wound-Dresser" (1865) about his experience as a hospital volunteer during the American Civil War.
American Standard is an early ensemble work by noted American composer John Adams. It consists of three movements: a march, a hymn, and a jazz standard. The piece in its entirety has only been recorded once for commercial release, by Adams himself. The middle movement, "Christian Zeal and Activity", has achieved individual notability.
Juan Carlos Paz was an Argentine composer and music theorist.
The Dharma at Big Sur is a composition for solo electric violin and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The piece calls for some instruments to use just intonation, a tuning system in which intervals sound pure, rather than equal temperament, the common Western tuning system in which all intervals except the octave are slightly impure. The piece was composed in 2003 for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and was conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The electric violin solo was performed by Tracy Silverman.
Harold Shapero completed the Symphony for Classical Orchestra in B-flat major on March 10, 1947, in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. It is written for an orchestra consisting of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B-flat, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 tenor trombones and one bass, timpani and strings. Although labelled "Classical," many of the work's features point to Beethoven rather than Haydn or Mozart, such as "the way in which Shapero paces himself, alternating long passages in the tonic and the dominant, with fast, dramatic modulations often reserved for transitions and developments." Nicolas Slonimsky remarked on how the piece is "premeditatedly cast in the proclamatory key of B-flat major, the natural tonality of the bugle, and ending in a display of tonic major triads." But there are modern features as well, with "the work's orchestration, in general, ... distinctively bright and brassy, and undoubtedly derived a fair amount from Piston and Copland, as well as from the composer's experience as a dance band arranger."
Chamber Symphony is a 1992 composition for a 15-member chamber orchestra by American composer John Adams, inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9. It is a three-movement work that takes about 23 minutes to perform.
Absolute Jest is a concerto for string quartet and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony for the orchestra's centennial. Its world premiere was given at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall on March 15, 2012, and was performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. However, after the premiere Adams heavily re-wrote the beginning of the piece; this revised version of Absolute Jest was first performed in Miami Beach on December 1, 2012, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the New World Symphony under the composer's direction.
