Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson was an English composer, as well as a long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.
The String Quartet No. 5, Sz. 102, BB 110 by Béla Bartók was written between 6 August and 6 September 1934. It is one of six string quartets by Bartok.
The String Quartet No. 4 in C major by Béla Bartók was written from July to September 1928 in Budapest. It is one of six string quartets by Bartok.
The Trout Quintet (Forellenquintett) is the popular name for the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, by Franz Schubert. The piano quintet was composed in 1819, when he was 22 years old; it was not published, however, until 1829, a year after his death.
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique had proved inadequate to express his grief and had found it empty of expressive intent. By the 1970s, Rochberg's use of tonal passages in his music had provoked controversy among critics and fellow composers. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania until 1983, Rochberg also served as chairman of its music department until 1968. He became the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities in 1978.
Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, from 1810, was his last before his late string quartets. It is commonly referred to as the "Serioso," stemming from his title "Quartett[o] Serioso" at the beginning and the tempo designation for the third movement.
Franz Schubert's final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major is sometimes called the "Cello Quintet" because it is scored for a standard string quartet plus an extra cello instead of the extra viola which is more usual in conventional string quintets. It was composed in 1828 and completed just two months before the composer's death. The first public performance of the piece did not occur until 1850, and publication occurred three years later in 1853. Schubert's only full-fledged string quintet, it has been praised as "sublime" or "extraordinary" and as possessing "bottomless pathos," and is generally regarded as Schubert's finest chamber work as well as one of the greatest compositions in all chamber music.
Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat major, Op. 118, was composed from 9 to 20 July 1964. It was premiered by the Beethoven Quartet in Moscow and is dedicated to composer Mieczysław (Moisei) Weinberg, a close friend of Shostakovich. It has been described as cultivating the uncertain mood of his earlier Stalin-era quartets, as well as foreshadowing the austerity and emotional distance of his later works. The quartet typified the preference for chamber music over large scale works, such as symphonies, that characterised his late period. According to musicologist Richard Taruskin, this made him the first Russian composer to devote so much time to the string quartet medium.
The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg published four string quartets, distributed over his lifetime: String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7 (1905), String Quartet No. 2 in F♯ minor, Op. 10 (1908), String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 (1927), and the String Quartet No. 4, Op. 37 (1936).
Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11, is a set of pieces for solo piano written by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg in 1909. They represent an early example of atonality in the composer's work.
Pedro Vilarroig is a professor of physics and cosmology at the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid and a former Spanish composer. He is a proponent of neotonalism, having founded and led the Asociación Española de Compositores Neotonales.
The String Quartet No.3 is a composition for string quartet written in 1947 by Polish Composer Grażyna Bacewicz. The violinist-composer wrote this piece during her stay in Paris following the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and it was later awarded the Polish Ministry of Culture Award in 1955 alongside her Symphony No.4 and Violin Concerto No.3. This quartet was the first to be initially published alongside quartets 4-7 before more recent reprintings of her prior quartets.
Franz Schubert's last three piano sonatas, D 958, 959 and 960, are his last major compositions for solo piano. They were written during the last months of his life, between the spring and autumn of 1828, but were not published until about ten years after his death, in 1838–39. Like the rest of Schubert's piano sonatas, they were mostly neglected in the 19th century. By the late 20th century, however, public and critical opinion had changed, and these sonatas are now considered among the most important of the composer's mature masterpieces. They are part of the core piano repertoire, appearing regularly on concert programs and recordings.
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.
Divertimento for String Orchestra Sz.113 BB.118 is a three-movement work composed by Béla Bartók in 1939, scored for full orchestral strings. Paul Sacher, a Swiss conductor, patron, impresario, and the founder of the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester, commissioned Bartók to compose the Divertimento, which is now known to be the pair's last collaborative work.
The Concord String Quartet was an American string quartet established in 1971. The members of the quartet were Mark Sokol and Andrew Jennings, violins; John Kochánowski, viola; Norman Fischer, cello. They gave their last regular concert on May 15, 1987. An anniversary concert was given in December 1996 at the Naumburg Foundation.
Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No. 4 in F major or Quartet for Two Violins, Viola and Cello in F major, Opus 44, was composed between February and July 1906. The last of Nielsen's four string quartets in the official series, its first public performance took place on 30 November 1907 in Copenhagen.
String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Stiles 1.2.3.3 SQ4, was completed by Alfred Hill on 25 July 1916 in Neutral Bay, Sydney. It is dedicated to Henri Verbrugghen and his Verbrugghen String Quartet. It is Hill's first non-program string quartet. The first two movements were transcribed for orchestra in 1955 forming the basis of the Symphony No. 4 "The Pursuit of Happiness" in which this music turns to have a program.
