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 1-10 of 57,544 Results

Article

Pärt, Arvo  

Andrew Shenton

Publication History:

Published online:
29 March 2021

(b Paide, Sept 11, 1935). Estonian composer.

Pärt was the only child of Linda Anette and August Pärt. In 1938 he and his mother moved to Rakvere where he studied at Rakvere Music School (1945–53) and Rakvere Secondary School No.1 (1950–54). In 1954 he began studies at the Tallinn Music School, but this was interrupted by military service in the Soviet army (1954–6). In the fall of 1956 he was released from the army because of ill health and returned to the Tallinn Music School where he studied briefly with Veljo Tormis. From 1957 to 1963 he studied composition at the Tallinn Conservatory with Heino Eller, whom he cites as a profound personal and musical influence, and to whom he dedicated his Symphony no.1 ‘Polyphonic’ (1963). In 1958 he began work as a sound engineer at Estonian Radio, resigning in ...

Article

Schumann [née Wieck], Clara  

Nancy B. Reich

revised by Natasha Loges

Publication History:

Published online:
29 March 2021

(Josephine)

(b Leipzig, Sept 13, 1819; d Frankfurt, May 20, 1896). German pianist, composer, and teacher. One of the foremost pianists and pedagogues of the 19th century, she was also a respected composer and the wife of Robert Schumann.

Clara Schumann, née Wieck, was the daughter of Mariane [Marianne] and Friedrich Wieck. Her father (1785–1873) studied theology at the University of Wittenberg and settled in Leipzig in about 1814. He established a business selling and hiring out sheet music and pianos, as well as repairing pianos. He also taught the instrument, rapidly acquiring a reputation as an expert in this field. Her mother, Mariane Wieck (née Tromlitz, 1797–1872), was the daughter and granddaughter of musicians: her father, Georg Christian Tromlitz (1765–1825), was the town cantor in Plauen and her grandfather, Johann George Tromlitz, was a well-known flautist, flute maker, and composer. Mariane was the first student in the singing and piano school Friedrich Wieck established in ...

Article

Enneatonic  

Alexander Sanchez-Behar

Publication History:

Published online:
23 December 2020

(Nonatonic)

A nine-note scale or collection comprised of the recurring pattern of two semitones and a whole tone: C–C♯–D–E–F–F♯–G♯–A–B♭–C (enharmonic spellings are common). The scale is widely known as enneatonic or nonatonic, yet other labels exist: ‘mode 3’ of limited transposition from Messiaen (1944), the ‘nine-step scale’ from Tcherepnin (1962), and set class 9–12 [01245689T] from Forte (1973).

The enneatonic scale has symmetrical properties, reducing its number of distinct transpositions to four. Analogous to other symmetrical scales such as the octatonic, the intervallic arrangement of this scale can be rotated to begin with a semitone or whole tone. It is possible to generate the enneatonic scale by superimposing other symmetrical collections, using either three augmented triads, two hexatonic scales a semitone apart, or a whole-tone scale combined with a hexatonic scale (ex.1). Conversely, it can be thought of as the complement of an augmented triad. One of the inherent properties of collections based on symmetrical octave partitioning such as enneatonic is the saturation of major or minor thirds. The enneatonic scale contains nine major thirds, the maximum number for all conceivable nine-note scales....

Article

Pipudi [Pipardi], Johannes  

Karen Cook

Publication History:

Published online:
23 December 2020

(fl late 14th century). Theorist and musician, best known in association with several theoretical treatises in the composite manuscript E-Sc 5.2.25. The only known reference to a Johannes Pipudi by name is found in one of the treatises in E-Sc 5.2.25 (fols.104v–107). Here, Pipudi is given the titles dominus and magister and is named as a canon at the church of Saint Didier in Avignon (canonicus sancti desiderii avinionensis). He is cited as having created and ordered at least some of the rules of counterpoint laid out in the treatise, the incipit of which lent itself to the title Regulae contrapunctus as given by Maricarmen Gómez.

This incipit indicates that these rules were the work of the master responsible for the preceding treatise (‘per supradictum magistrum’), which Anglés and Gómez called De arte cantus; furthermore, a set of rules in a mix of Latin and Catalan that follow ...

Article

Carlos, Wendy  

Judith Rosen and Alan Shockley

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
24 November 2020

[Walter]

(b Pawtucket, RI, 14 Nov 1939). Composer.

Beginning music study with piano lessons at age six, Carlos became one of the early experimenters in electronic music. Carlos, named Walter until after her gender transition in the 1970s, studied composition with Ron Nelson as an undergraduate at Brown University (AB 1962), then continued studies with Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson at Columbia University (MA 1965). From 1964 Carlos served as an adviser to Robert Moog in modifying and perfecting the Moog synthesizer. The synthesizer gained recognition as a musical instrument and became the standard for electronic realizations owing to the enormous popularity of Carlos’s recording Switched-on Bach (1968), which was made on a Moog synthesizer. More than a million copies of the album were sold, and this success spawned follow-up albums composed of other Baroque transcriptions for synthesizer, as well as many albums from other recording artists....

Article

Evans, David  

Terence Charlston

Publication History:

Published online:
24 November 2020

(b Wooler, Northumberland, July 28, 1936; d Reading, Dec 8, 2018). English harpsichord maker. Educated at Lord Wandsworth College, Hampshire, he studied zoology at the University of Hull, served in the RAF as a pilot, and then worked in education for which he was awarded the MBE in 1986. Evans was captivated by the sound of an original French harpsichord as a child and inspired by the recorder and harpsichord partnership of Carl Dolmetsch and Joseph Saxby while at school.

He began harpsichord making in the late 1950s when non-historical, piano workshop-based approaches dominated commercial harpsichord building in the UK. His adoption of historical methods of harpsichord construction was unusual for the time and influenced the practice of other makers.

He undertook exhaustive studies of surviving instruments and collaborated over nearly half a century with a small but distinguished number of like-minded players and makers who shared his aspirations and interests. Important early influences were the cabinet maker and furniture restorer Denis Rawlings, and the harpsichord maker Frank Sykes (foreman to ...

Article

Pastor, Tony i  

Gillian Rodger

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
24 November 2020

[Antonio]

(b New York, NY, 26 April 1833; d Elmhurst, NY, 26 Aug 1908). Circus performer and variety manager.

He was the third of six children of a Spanish immigrant barber, Antonio Pastor, and his American wife Cornelia Pastor (née Buckley). He was apprenticed to John Jay Nathans, a circus equestrian, in 1847, but gravitated towards a career as a clown. In the latter role he was expected to sing and dance as well as take part in comic minstrel and pantomime skits, which were a standard part of 19th-century circus entertainments.

By the end of the 1850s Pastor had moved into variety entertainment. It was not uncommon for variety theaters to hire circus acts, and Pastor found his first steady employment with Frank Rivers, a Philadelphia manager, and then with Robert Butler, the manager of the American Music Hall in Manhattan. Pastor worked with Butler for several seasons and established himself as a hugely popular performer with a diverse range of skills. A new theater licensing law in ...

Article

Rebay, Ferdinand  

Luiz Mantovani

Publication History:

Published online:
24 November 2020

(Wilhelm Friedrich)

(b Vienna, June 11, 1880; d Vienna, Nov 6, 1953). Austrian composer, arranger, choirmaster, pianist, and piano teacher. As a child, he sang in the boys’ choir of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey, later studying composition privately with two members of Brahms’s circle, Eusebius Mandyczewski and Josef von Wöss. Rebay graduated in 1904 from the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, where he was a prize-winning student of Robert Fuchs. He subsequently worked for 16 years as a choirmaster in Vienna, leading two important choirs in that city: the Vienna Choir Association and the Schubertbund. During these years, Rebay acquired a local reputation as a composer of vocal music and regularly accompanied important Viennese singers, including Hans Duhan of the Vienna State Opera. In 1920, Rebay was hired as a piano teacher at his former school (by now renamed the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Arts), a post he kept until his retirement in ...

Article

Robbins  

Frances Barulich

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
24 November 2020

Firm of music publishers. It was founded in New York in 1927 by John Jacob (Jack) Robbins (b Worcester, MA, 15 Sept 1894; d New York, NY, 15 Dec 1959), who had formerly worked for Harms and for Enterprise. Robbins Music Corporation was one of the earliest firms to publish popular songs associated with films, their successes included “Spring is here” and “You were meant for me” (1929), “Goodnight sweetheart” (1931), “Try a little tenderness” (1932), “All I do is dream of you” and “Blue Moon” (1934), and “A-tisket, A-tasket” (1938). Robbins also published theme songs for the bands of Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Count Basie, Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite, and popular Latin American music. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought an interest in the firm in 1929, and in 1939 it became part of the Big 3 Music Corporation; Robbins was vice president of the new company until ...

Article

Shirley, Donald Walbridge  

Krin Gabbard

Publication History:

Published online:
24 November 2020

(b Pensacola, FL, Jan 29, 1927; d New York City, April 6, 2013). American pianist and composer. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Donald Shirley showed substantial promise as a pianist at an early age. At the age of 18, he made his début with the Boston Pops Orchestra performing a piano concerto by Tchaikovsky. He later studied music at the Catholic University in Washington. As a composer, he wrote symphonies, concerti, string quartets, works for organ, piano, and violin, a ‘Recorso’ inspired by James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and an extended piece for piano that he called ‘an improvisation based on the story of Orpheus in the Underworld’. As a pianist, Shirley hoped to have a career in classical music, but after being told that audiences would not take an African American seriously as a classical artist, he chose to play jazz and popular music. For many years he played in clubs in New York City where he lived in an apartment directly above Carnegie Hall. Performing at Carnegie Hall in ...