American composers Essays

  • John Adams, An American Composer

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    liveliness and simplicity. American classical music has been innovated with every single passing year, majority of the composers have added their taste and invention to further enhance the crispiness and enchanter the form of classical music. One of the most legendary and prominent composer of classical music is John Adams. The composer John Adams is solitary classical composer of United States of America who is considered as the most well-liked and appreciated composers of all times. People of America

  • American Sniper Hero

    2129 Words  | 5 Pages

    one of the highest grossing films, American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, told the story of Chris Kyle, who was pronounced the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. Kyle was depicted as a war hero and showed magnificent up-bring to what he sees through the scope. His journey holds astonishing memories and real stories on how the sniper came to be. Unfortunately, being a historic figure is not all it’s made out to be. The positive outtake on American Sniper brought Kyle’s remarkable service

  • How Music Works

    1555 Words  | 4 Pages

    both of composer and of performer. BIBLIOGRAPHY Footnotes and other reference material 1. John Cage 4' 33'' (Probably his most provocative piece is 4' 33'' in which the performer, seated in front of the piano, plays nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds) Groliers. 2. Tess Knighton, Decca Notes 1989 to Ashkenazy & Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. OUP 1987. The Oxford Companion to music OUP 1980 reprint. Groliers Academic American Encyclopedia

  • Folk in Nationalist Music

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Using a folk idiom in art music is a problematic practice for composers because folk and Art music traditions stem from fundamentally different origins. Art music is part of a literate tradition with recognized authorship, as opposed to the folk tradition, which is part of a communal tradition disseminated anonymously by means of oral communication. Thus, art music composers aspiring to leave a legacy often refrain from utilizing folk idioms in their music for several reasons; to compose cultured

  • Who is the real Shakespeare?

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shaksper of Stratford (the spelling of his name originally) could not have been the true composer of the plays he is traditionally attributed with. Although the thought of someone besides Shakespeare composing the plays is not popular with the American and European world, there are excessive theories concerning the truth behind the possibility of the works being authentically his. Doubts about the true composer of Shakespeare’s works generally arise from the fact that there is no logical match between

  • Experimentation in Music

    1450 Words  | 3 Pages

    art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre (American Heritage). One important component of analyzing music is whether it has musical value. In other words, music does not have to be organized sound or produced by instruments. This is what composers and artists of experimental music discover. Experimental music is an art form, makes use of instruments or other items that can produce sound, and

  • The 20th century's 3 greatest composers

    2350 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 20th century's 3 Greatest Composers The 20th century has watched many musicians break through their generation's bounds of normalcy to creat a completely new music. Musicians who initiated revolutions so grandiose that the impact—like an earthquake’s aftershocks—would reverberate for decades and influence scores of musicians to come. Such influences can be traced back to three specific composers. Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Nadia Boulanger: the triumvirate of 20th century music

  • Ever Heard of Chance Music?

    591 Words  | 2 Pages

    aleatory music (ā'lēətôr'ē) [Lat. alea=dice game], music in which elements traditionally determined by the composer are determined either by a process of random selection chosen by the composer or by the exercise of choice by the performer(s). At the compositional stage, pitches, durations, dynamics, and so forth are made functions of playing card drawings, dice throwings, or mathematical laws of chance, the latter with the possible aid of a computer. Those elements usually left

  • Dmitri Shostakovich: A Musical Creative Genius

    3777 Words  | 8 Pages

    contradictory reasons. He strongly believed in a profound bond between the composer and his society which enabled him to work, survive, and develop, but also which fostered an air of confusion when he felt he was wrongly criticized. In 1968, he was quoted as saying, "Soviet music is a weapon in the ideological battle. Artists cannot stand as indifferent observers in this struggle." (Blokker 133) He believed that composers could not retreat into private, creative worlds; rather, they must deal with

  • Song Analysis: Toys In The Attic

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amanda May MU3308 Writing assignment 2 Toys in the Attic is the third album that Aerosmith, an American rock band, had created in 1975. Aerosmith worked side by side with Jack Douglas and Colombia records to get this studio album completed. Aerosmith had styles that were rooted within a blues based heavy rock. They have produced music that included R&B, pop and even heavy metal elements as well. Within the album, competing with the sounds of Led Zeppelin, both being rock bands with roots in

  • Dvorak

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dvorak Antonin Dvorak was born in Nelahozeves on September 8, 1841. Dvorak was one of the greatest of the Czech composers. He grew up with an appreciation of local folk songs and demonstrated a talent for music at an early age. His first experience with music was of a violinist and violist. He got the attention of Johannes Brahms with his Moravian Duets and soon won a competition in Vienna that he would have never won if it had not been for the insistence of Brahms. Since his patriotic composition

  • Arnold Schoenberg's Musical Influence

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    cabaret orchestra, and teaching. Schoenberg influenced the music and art of the western culture in numerous ways. Some of the most successful composers were his students. These students were molded by Schoenberg and directly absorbed his knowledge and style. Schoenberg created different rhythms and tunes that were passed along to his students and other composers. He was able to catch the attention of a multitude through his writings, music, paintings, and post cards. This variety of talent gathered

  • A History of Jazz and Classical Music

    1739 Words  | 4 Pages

    European because most of the major composers up till the 20th century were European. Vivaldi was Italian, Bach was German, Mozart and Beethoven were Austrian; they are some of the more prominent composers. Not until the twentieth century with Gershwin and a few others do we find American composers writing this kind of art music. For the sake of convention, we can refer to Western Art Music as Classical music. Jazz is a distinctively American form of music, and it's history

  • 20th Century

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    electronic music. Like all people, musicians have been affected by the political, economic, and social problems of twentieth century. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 had an especially dramatic impact on the lives and careers of musicians. Many composers left Europe for the United States. These refugees made huge contributions to musical culture. One of the most significant changes in components of music that formed twentieth century music is rhythm. The modern music is full of complex rhythms and

  • George Balanchine

    6676 Words  | 14 Pages

    George Balanchine If composers are the masters of time, then the choreographer George Balanchine is the master of visual realization of that time in human terms. A master in both the kinesthetic and musical frames of creativity, he did not devote his energies to music visualization by assigning a certain number of dancers to represent strings, others the brass, and still others woodwinds or percussion but by creating a visual analogy in space that restates the musical structure with the trained

  • Gustav Mahler

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Then add to that the fact that the public considered Mahler to be a gifted conductor with a habit of writing over-long symphonies, while Mahler considered himself to a composer forced to spend most of his year conducting. Mahler is known for the length, depth, and painful emotions of his works. He loved nature and life and, based on early childhood experiences, feared death (family deaths, a suicide, and a brutal rape he

  • Paul Hindemith

    1331 Words  | 3 Pages

    was born in the German town of Hanau in 1895, on December Sixteen. We might assume that Hindemith felt a pull in the musical direction from a very early age; Paul’s father was a painter and did not want his son becoming a musician, so our little composer-to-be ran away at the age of 11, and started his own life. Paul taught himself the violin and viola, and began earning his living by playing at Cafes and other such establishments. Eventually, Hindemith learned the rudiments of all the instruments

  • Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and Jurek Becker’s Jacob the Liar

    2648 Words  | 6 Pages

    the mid 1940s to the late 1960s in parallel to the societal changes in the interpretations and memories of the war that took place over the same years. Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus: the life of the German composer Adrian Leverkühn as told by a friend is the story of Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who strives for musical perfection and wants to reach it badly enough that he literally sells his soul to the devil. The story is told by a friend of Adrian’s, a man who is often as much telling Germany’s

  • Scott Joplin

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    of music. Rag time as it is most commonly know was the type of fast paced music played around 1885 in St. Louis. Scott Joplin was born in 1868 and lived until 1917, but has done a lot in his life span. He was one of the first African Americans to be know as a composer. Born in Texarkana, Texas to a large family with musical background, he began learning to play the guitar and beagle, and gained free piano lessons by showing such fast progression to his teachers. After death of his mother, he left

  • Painting and Writing with Magical Realism

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    Painting and Writing with Magical Realism The term Magical Realism describes an artistic style of painting and writing. In these paintings and novels the composer "interweaves, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched Realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements" (Abrams). Some of the Magical Realism writers are said to be Gabriel Garcia Marques in Columbia, Gunter Grass in Germany, and John Fowls in England. Understanding