November, 2018

51 Posts
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Ukiyo-e and the Western Musical Imagination
The Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is best known as the author of a woodblock print series entitled “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.” That series contains probably the most iconic print image associated with Japan, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
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Satie: Relâche
Scheduled for Performance Today in 1924
Multimedia was alive and well in 1924, and with the title Relâche—loosely translated into “No Performance today,” or “Theatre Closed”—everybody automatically knew that the ballet collaboration between Francis Picabia and Erik Satie was in the firm grip of Dadaism.
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Sooner or Later? The Art of Rubato
Tempo rubato (literally “stolen time” in Italian) is perhaps most closely associated with the music of Fryderyk Chopin, his friend and fellow composer Franz Liszt, and other composers of the Romantic period. But it is possible to achieve rubato effectively
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Norwegian Influences
English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) first went to Scandinavia as a young man working for his father. He went first to Sweden and then, in his off hours, went to Norway and began a lifelong fascination with the country, its
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Henryk Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No. 2
Background and History
Anton Rubinstein called Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880) “the greatest violinist of his time.” A combination of French schooling and Slavonic temperament, Wieniawski had impeccable technique and produced a wonderfully warm and rich tone. As such, he made light work of technical
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The Iron Hand Gripping His Heart
In 1827, Hector Berlioz went to a play and came away transformed. At the Odéon Theatre in Paris, a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet took his heart. Everything about the play and the performance affected him – the raging
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Conceptual Concerts with MusicArt
Hong Kong-born and now based in London, pianist Annie Yim is the creator of MusicArt London, a conceptual concert series which combines music with poetry and visual arts, creating interesting and unexpected dialogues and connections between the works in the
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Camille Saint-Saëns: The Atheist in the Choir Loft
Camille Saint-Saëns was not a deeply religious man, and he certainly had “a repugnance for religious ceremonies.” On one occasion he even made arrangements for someone else to represent him at a baptism service where he was to become a
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