Accordion The accordion is the main instrument of the musette style of ballroom music in France (a style largely now out of fashion) and of the fifties chanson singing.
Although rarely seen in the cities, the accordion is still very popular in many country regions, and is often used by the local Orchestre du bal.
In the USA it was an instrument that was widely used during their ‘Vaudeville’ period, in Holland it is played as an accompaniment to ‘Clog dancing’, and also enjoyed a certain popularity in Russia at the turn of the century.
There are several different types of button accordions - the Diatonic, the Chromatic, plus the many complex hybrids, and curiosities.
In addition the bass systems are a real science in themselves, with many configurations.
Other instruments from the same family are the Concertina, the Bandeoneon and the Flutina, which are all squeezeboxes.

The Bombarde A folk musical instrument from Brittany and Cornwall in the UK, that is a cross between an oboe and a conical- bored pipe chanter (the part of the bagpipe upon which the player creates the melody).The bombarde is blown by the mouth with the reed is held between the lips. Typically pitched in B flat, it plays a diatonic scale over two octaves. It produces a strident, powerful tone and is used in most Bagads, the Breton version of British pipe bands.
It was traditionally used in a duet with the biniou (bagpipes) for Breton folk dancing, but requires so much breath that it cannot be used for very long periods by the (talabarder) bombard player.

Hurdy Gurdy The hurdy gurdy or vielle-a-roue (fiddle with a wheel) is a cross between a violin and a piano accordion. It is made up of a curved, oval body, a set of keys and a curved handle that is turned and 

connected to a wheel that bows the strings that are stopped by the keys.
There is a moveable bridge, a variable number of drone strings and hidden sympathetic strings, all of which can also effect the sound, which sounds something like bagpipes. Simpler forms of the hurdy gurdy are also found in Spain, Hungary, and Russia

The country that we will be doing on is Italy, Venice. We will be presenting to you the culture of the music as people row their gondoliers in Venice.

These men (and now women,too) who tend the black flat bottomed boats called gondolas that are the main transport through the waterways of Venice are called gondoliers . They sing barcaroles to keep tempo for their rowing. The profession has been around since the 11th century.

The music is made as a tradition as they row their boat so as to be able to keep their tempo when rowing. 

 

Those people are called gondoliers (in italian gondolieri) because they work on boats called gondolas (gondole in italian). They are typical oarsmen of the city of Venice.

 

 

This is a picture of Leopold Mozart.

This is a brief history of him:

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (November 14, 1719 – May 28, 1787) was a composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.

Childhood and student years

He was born in Augsburg, son of JOhann Georg Mozart (1679-1736), a bookbinder , and his second wife Anna Maria Sulzer (1696-1766). From an early age he sang as a choirboy. He attended a local Jesuit school, the St. Salvator Gymnasium, where he studied logic, science, theology, graduating magna cum laude in 1735. He then moved on to a more advanced school, the St. Salvator Lyceum.
While a student in Augsburg, he appeared in student theatrical productions as an actor and singer, and became a skilled violinist and organist. He also developed an interest, which he retained, in microscopes and telescopes. Although his parents had planned a career for Leopold as a Catholic priest, this apparently was not Leopold's own wish. An old school friend told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777, "Ah he [Leopold] was a great fellow. My father thought the world of him. And how he hoodwinked the clerics about becoming a priest!"
He withdrew from the St. Salvator Lyceum after less than a year. Following a year's delay, he moved to Salzburg to resume his education, enrolling in November 1737 at the Benedictine University to study philosophy and jurisprudence At the time Salzburg was the capital of an independent state with HOly Roman Empire (the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg now part of Austria. Except for periods of travel, Leopold spent the rest of his life there.
Leopold received the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in 1738 However, in September 1739 he was expelled from the university for poor attendance, having "hardly attended Natural Science more than once or twice".

Mozart's contributions:

The assessment of Leopold Mozart as a person and as a father brings forth serious disagreement among scholars. The Grove Dicitonary article, by Cliff Eisen, denounces "his misrepresentation at the hands of later biographers":
A man of broad cultural achievement ... Leopold Mozart may have been haughty, difficult to please and at times intractable, ... but there is no compelling evidence that Mozart was excessively manipulative, intolerant, autocratic or jealous of his son’s talent. On the contrary, a careful reading in context of the family letters reveals a father who cared deeply for his son but who was frequently frustrated in his greatest ambition: to secure for Wolfgang a worldly position appropriate to his genius.
A harsher view is taken by Maynard Solomon, who portrays Leopold as a man who loved his children but was unwilling to give them their independence when they reached adulthood, resulting in considerable hardship for them.

Mozart's family gravestone.^

Mozart's musical works:

Leopold Mozart's music is inevitably overshadowed by the work of his son Wolfgang, and in any case the father willingly sacrificed his own career to promote his son's. But Leopold's Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys ( Toy Symphony),once attributed to Joseph Haydn , remains popular, and a number of symphonies, a trumpet concerto , and other works also survive.

Leopold Mozart was much concerned with a naturalistic feel to his compositions, his Jagdsinfonie (or Sinfonia da Caccia for four horns and strings) calls for dogs and shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles (ad. lib.), and pistol shots.
His oeuvre was extensive, but it has only been until recently that scholars have begun to assess the scope or the quality of it; much is lost and it is not known how representative the surviving works are of his overall output. Cliff Eisen, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Leopold Mozart's symphonies, finds in a Symphony in G major examples of his "sensitivity to orchestral colour" and a work that "compares favourably with those of virtually any of Mozart’s immediate contemporaries."
Some of his work was erroneously attributed to Wolfgang and some pieces attributed to Leopold were subsequently shown to be the work of Wolfgang. Much of what survives is light music but some more significant work survives including his Sacrament Litany in D (1762) and three fortepiano sonatas, all published in his lifetime.

Another great composer, Claudio Monteverdi.

This is a picture of him:

Heres a brief history of him:

Name: Claudio Monteverdi.

Claudio Monteverdi is born in
Born in Cremona 1567, he studied music in his teens and went to Mantova to become court musician. He was appointed maestro di capella there aged 34 and stayed until the age of 45. From then (1613) until his death in 1643 he was maestro di capella at the famous basilica di San Marco in Venezia. His job there was, of course, to compose and play spiritual music for the masses, but he never stopped composing operas which he had started to do at the court of Mantova.

If Lasso was the greatest composer of the Renaissance, then Monteverdi was his worthy successor for the early Baroque age. Although his style is clearly influenced by Renaissance polyphony - after all, he did learn his craft in the era -, it is a style of its own. Some musicologists say that his L'Orfeo (1607) was the first opera ever, but this can be battled about.

Whatever the case, he led the genre to a first climax in that he composed the music not according to strict academic rules (which he called prima prattica), but but in order to emphasise the emotion required by the plot (seconda prattica). No wonder he was especially interested in plots that contained a wide variety of strong, down-to-earth emotions. The best example is his final masterwork, L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642), exceptional in that its protagonists are not ancient greek gods and heroes as it had been customary until then, but real people, and in that good does not triumph over evil. IMO no composer has ever after rendered emotions as directly, intuitively understandable as he did. No opera has ever really emotionally touched me except the three (out of some -ty Monteverdi composed) that have been handed down to this day. I wish it were more.

All the other operas have, unfortunately, been lost. Two fragments have survived in compilations: Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, and Lamento della Ninfa. Apart from that, there are some sacred works (most notably the Vespro della Beata Vergine) and the complete set of his eight books of madrigals.

For a Monteverdi beginner I recommend Il combattimento / Lamento della Ninfa on Teldec 4509-92181-2. The fight between Tancredi and Clorinda is rendered breathtakingly plastic by Werner Hollweg as "narrator", the music virtually screaming for a sword dance.

Hello=D

Here is another new post about another wonderful composer, Antonio Vivaldi.

This os a picture of him:

This is a brief history about Antonio Vivaldi.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on 4 March 1678 and passed away on on 28 July 1741. He is nicknamed il Prete Rosso(“The Red Priest”). He was a Baroque composer
and venetian priest, as well as a famous virtuo violinist,born and raised in the Republic Of Venice. The Four Seasons, a series of violin concerti, is his best-known work and highly popular Baroque piece. He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife. It is not known how the life of the infant was in danger, but the immediate baptism was most likely due to his poor health or to an earthquake that shock the city that day. Vivaldi's official church baptism, did not take place until two months later.

Musical innovations

This is an example of one of Vivaldi's musical innovations, Opera
Impresario.

Here is a picture of it:

First edition of Juditha triumphans and is described as his first great oratorio.In the Venice of the early 18th century, opera was the most popular musical entertainment and the most profitable for the composer. There were several theaters competing for the public attention. Vivaldi started his career as opera writer in undertone: his first opera, ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie theater in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, Vivaldi made the jump to Venice and became the impresario of the theater San't Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. However, the work did not meet the public's taste, and Vivaldi had to close it after a couple of weeks and replace it with a rerun of a different work already given the previous year. In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader, with eleven arias. This time it was a success, and in the late season, Vivaldi planned to give an opera completely of his own hand, Arsilda regina di Ponto (RV 700). However, the state censor blocked the performance, objecting to the plot: the main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. Vivaldi managed to get the opera through censorship the following year, and it was eventually performed to a resounding success.

Style and influence

Many of Vivaldi's compositions reflect a flamboyant, almost playful, exuberance. Most of Vivaldi's repertoire was rediscovered only in the first half of the 20th century in Turin and Genoa and was published in the second half. Vivaldi's music is innovative, breaking a consolidated tradition in schemes; he gave brightness to the formal and the rhythmic structure of the concerto, repeatedly looking for harmonic contrasts and innovative melodies and themes. Moreover, Vivaldi was able to compose nonacademic music, particularly meant to be appreciated by the wide public and not only by an intellectual minority. The joyful appearance of his music reveals in this regard a transmissible joy of composing; these are among the causes of the vast popularity of his music. This popularity soon made him famous in other countries such as France which was, at the time, very independent concerning its musical taste.

Recent discoveries

Recently, four sacred vocal works by Vivaldi have been discovered in the Saxon State LIbrary in Dresden . These compositions were improperly attributed to Baldassare Galuppi , a Venetian composer of the early classical period, mostly famous for his choral works.
In the 1750s or 1760s, the Saxon Court asked for some sacred works by Galuppi from the Venetian copyist Don Giuseppe Baldan. Baldan included, among authentic works by Galuppi, the four compositions by Vivaldi, passing them off as Galuppi's. He probably obtained the originals from two of Vivaldi's nephews, ( Carlo Vivaldi and Daniele Mauro), who worked under him as copyists.

The recognition of Vivaldi's authorship could be made by analyzing style and instrumentation and by recognizing arias from Vivaldi's operas.

Heres another composer: Pauline Oliveros.

Name of composer: Pauline Oliveros

Brief History of a composer, Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros was born on 30^th May 1932. She is an accordionist and composer who has a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music.

Pauline Olvieros has written books,formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “Deep Listening" and “sonic awareness”.

Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas She earned degrees from Moores School of Music at the University of Houston and San Francisco State College.

Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was the resource on the U.S. west coast for electronic music during the 1960s. The Center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. Oliveros often improvises with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

Her contributions

Deep Listening

Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening Bandep Listening" in 1991,[1] a term which she then applied to her group and to the Deep Listening program of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. (formerly The Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985). The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Deep Listening Band, which includes Oliveros, David Gamper, and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. They have collaborated with Ellen Fullman and her Long String Instrument, as well as countless other musicians, dancers, and performers.

Sonic Awareness

Von Gunden

describes and names a new musical theory, developed by Oliveros in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles, called "sonic awareness." Sonic awareness is the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound, requiring continual alertness and an inclination towards always listening, and comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing). "Sonic awareness is a synthesis of the psychology of consciousness, the physiology of the martial arts, and the sociology of the feminist movement" and describes two ways of processing information, focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by the dot and circle, respectively, of the mandala Oliveros commonly employs in composition. Later this representation was expanded, with the mandala quartered and the quarters representing actively making sound, imagining sound, listening to present sound, and remembering past sound. This model was used in the composition of her Sonic Meditations. Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center", as focal attention creates tonality and the global attention creates masses of sound, flexible timbre, attack, duration, intensity, and sometimes pitch, as well as untraditional times and spaces for performance such as requiring extended hours or environmental settings. The theory promotes easily created sounds such as vocal ones, and "says that music should be for everyone anywhere."

Pauline Oliveros work

Sound Patterns(1961) is a musical piece or composition for a capella mixed chorus by Pauline Oliveros. She won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1962 with this work.

Rather than a traditional text, the work is constructed of phonetic sounds chosen on the basis of their timbre. The piece is entirely notated, lasts about 4 minutes and features an exposition(measures of which 1-12),development)12-46) and recapitulation(47-59).

The sounds may be understood to reflect Oliveros interest in electronic music,which she recently begun to work with, Heidi Van Gunden,(1983) illustrates this point by highlighting 4 types of sounds that correspond to the basic electronic music techniques:

1. White noise.

2. Ring-modulated sounds.

3. Percussive envelopes.

4. Filtered techniques.

It is Oliveros' “most carefully composed piece” and features only only one measure of controlled improvisation linking the development to the recapitulation.

Heres a picture of a western classical composer, Johann Sebastian Bach

Heres a brief history about Bach:

 Johann Sebastian Bach was born on 31^st March 1685 and passed away on 28 july 1750. He was a western composer and an organist whose sacred and secular works for choir,orchestra,and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Barouge period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapunal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse instrumentation, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.

A short description of two of his works

 The inscription of 24 march 1721 on the dedication manuscript to the Margrave, attests for the date of composition for the Brandenburg concerti, but most likely they had been written over a number of years during Bach's tenure as Kapellmeister at Kothen and possibly extending back to the period of his employment at Weimar (1708-1717).

 

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, are a set of an aria and 30 variations for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach. First published in 1741 as the fourth series in Bach called Clavier-Ubung; “keyboard practice”. The work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form. It is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer.

 

Musical innovations

Bach unfortunately did not introduced any new forms.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach's contributions

While Bach's fame as an organist was great during his lifetime, he was not particularly well-known as a composer. His adherence to Baroque forms and contrapuntal style was considered “old-fashioned” by his contemporaries,especially late in his career when the musical fashion tended

towards Rococo and later Classical styles. A revival of interest and performances of his musical began early in the 19^th century, and he is widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western traditions.