Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Music
  4. Music: General Interest
  5. Content Listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

16785 results in Music: General Interest

Page 308 of 840

  • 3 - Interview with Keith Grant

  • from Appendices
  • Cameron Pyke
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten and Russia
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016, pp 286-292

  • Summary

    London, 25 September 2009

    Keith Grant was General Manager of the Covent Garden Opera Company, later the Royal Opera, and the English Opera Group, from 1962 to 1973. He accompanied Britten on the latter's tour to the Soviet Union in September– October 1964, and, as a fluent Russian speaker, was sometimes asked by the composer to translate Shostakovich's letters.

    How did you first come to work with Britten?

    In 1962 I was appointed to do the double job of looking after the Covent Garden Company and the English Opera Group. I was told by the then General Administrator of the Opera House, Sir David Webster, that my career in opera would very much depend on my ability to deal with Benjamin Britten, who was notoriously demanding. Thus my working association with Ben began, and I had nearly twelve very rewarding years at his side.

    What was the background to the 1964 English Opera Group's tour to the Soviet Union?

    I was aware in my first week that in 1961, at the previous Aldeburgh Festival, Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya had not only won the hearts of the Festival audience but had already cemented a strong friendship with Ben and Peter Pears. I have little doubt that the English Opera Group visit to the Soviet Union in 1964 was very much stimulated and encouraged, virtually insisted upon, by Rostropovich, who was a man of huge determination and negotiating skill. Because I was a Russian speaker I was often called into consultation and discussion.

    Ben adored Vishnevskaya's artistry; she had what he called a ‘peasant voice’, which she used to intense dramatic effect. The premiere of the War Requiem in 1962 to mark the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral was somewhat marred by her absence. At the last minute the Soviet authorities refused to allow her to participate, in spite of the fact that the soprano part had been specially written for her.

  • 15 - Letters from Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova

  • from Appendices
  • Cameron Pyke
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten and Russia
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016, pp 323-325

  • Summary

    13 January 2015

    The Russian composers Dmitri Smirnov (b. 1948) and Elena Firsova (b. 1950) are husband and wife.

    When and how did you first encounter Britten's music?

    DS I heard the name and read about Britten some time before I had opportunity to listen to his music. This was two or three years before entering the Moscow Conservatory in 1967. But soon, when I was able to obtain recordings of his compositions, I liked them very much, especially his Four Sea Interludes, Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, which I still regard as real masterpieces. Later I listened to more and more of his music with great interest and pleasure.

    EF In 1966–7, as a first-year music student in the music college of the Moscow Conservatory. I used to buy records of contemporary music which it was possible to find in the music shops in Moscow (it was not a wide choice). Once by chance I bought a record on which Rostropovich played Britten's Sonata for Cello and Piano. I liked it very much and since that time (even now) it is my favourite composition of Britten's. A few years later, at the end of my first year at the Moscow Conservatory, I wrote a sonata for cello and piano [op. 5] which was certainly influenced by Britten's Cello Sonata, especially in the second theme of the first movement. There is the same motif. Of course, there is not only Britten, but also Hindemith and a little Shostakovich. Something mine too …

    I may also have seen Peter Grimes a little earlier, at the Kirov Opera House in Leningrad. I liked it very much too, but the Sonata made a much stronger impression.

    How did younger composers such as yourselves view Britten and his music?

    DS During my time as a student in Russia we had rather limited access to contemporary music. We could listen to the works and get the scores of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and sometimes Stravinsky, but with Western composers it was much more difficult.

  • 6 - Interview with Lilian Hochhauser

  • from Appendices
  • Cameron Pyke
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten and Russia
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016, pp 299-301

  • Summary

    London, 24 November 2011

    Like her husband, Victor, Lilian Hochhauser (b. 1926) was a friend of Britten.

    You were present when Britten and Shostakovich first met in 1960 as well as on a number of subsequent occasions. What would you say about their relationship?

    Shostakovich knew a few words of English, but more importantly Britten and Shostakovich already knew each other because they knew each other's music. No words were necessary for them to feel what the other was thinking or trying to say. That first meeting nearly didn't happen as Britten decided to come almost at the last minute, and really because they were playing his music. There hadn't been any connection between Britten and the Russians before then. On reflection, you realise how momentous it was. At the time, it was exciting to have them both there but now when I think back I should have seen the profundity of it all. Their coming together now seems inevitable. They really thought on the same lines and both realised each other's greatness and genius. But at that first moment, I think each was somewhat overawed to be meeting the other.

    Did Shostakovich ever refer to his admiration for Britten?

    Shostakovich was not an easy person to talk to. He might have made one or two remarks but a conversation with him was quite difficult. But the enthusiasm he had when we told him that Britten was coming to meet him was obvious. He was clearly excited and pleased. There was no question that he was a great admirer of Britten. But it's difficult to discuss views and ideas with a very great person like that. You could with Rostropovich, but Shostakovich and Britten were on a different level. Ben didn't like Brahms, but you couldn't say to him ‘Why don't you like Brahms?’, so I didn't have any detailed discussions. But from the way they reacted to each other it was very obvious that they revered each other.

  • Preface

  • Cameron Pyke
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten and Russia
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016, pp x-xi

  • Summary

    I was born on the day Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears arrived in Moscow from St Petersburg, then Leningrad, during their final visit to the Soviet Union in 1971; and Britten's Te Deum in C was the first piece I sang as a treble nine years later. Britten's music runs as something of a thread over my school years, well ahead of my first thoughts relating it to my love of Russian music nearly ten years ago.

    Benjamin Britten and Russia examines the origins and development of the composer's interest in Russia over the course of his creative life, from his first documented acquisition of a Tchaikovsky score in 1925 to his unfinished work on Praise We Great Men, just over fifty years later, for Rostropovich to conduct in exile in the United States.

    Various aspects of Britten's relationship with Russia have been discussed over the last thirty years and, in particular, his friendship with Shostakovich is now increasingly recognised as an important aspect of his creative persona during the last fifteen years of his life, as are his friendships with Soviet musicians, most notably Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya and Sviatoslav Richter. Donald Mitchell (1984), Eric Roseberry (1995) and Liudmila Kovnatskaia (2000) were pioneering in suggesting significant areas of shared affinity and preoccupations between Britten and Shostakovich to English readers, and this book builds upon the considerable foundations of their scholarship. In particular, Liudmila Kovnatskaia's longstanding interest in Britten, which began as a student at the Leningrad Conservatory in the 1960s and found expression in her detailed monograph of the composer in Russian in 1974, has resulted in an important series of publications on the Britten–Russia theme, enriched by her wider credentials as an authority on English music and a highly respected Shostakovich scholar. Yet other aspects of Britten's cultural ‘Russophilia’ – his abiding admiration for Tchaikovsky, for example, or his more ambivalent attitude towards Russian performance style – have received considerably less scholarly attention; and there is now much greater appreciation of the appeal to Britten of various forms of ‘otherness’.

  • 7 - Britten and Shostakovich Again: Dialogues of War and Death, 1963–76

  • Cameron Pyke
  • Book:
    Benjamin Britten and Russia
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    18 August 2016, pp 230-274

  • Summary

    Composers whose thoughts run on parallel lines, especially if they are master and pupil, or even great friends, will often find that the lines converge and become identical.

    Although by 1963 Britten and Shostakovich already shared a long-standing creative affinity, it is perhaps in their preoccupation with the topic of death that their musical relationship can most coherently be traced over the last twelve years of their lives. Of course, one must acknowledge that this is only one way of looking at their relationship as it developed in the 1960s, and a way that ultimately relies upon a subjective reading of musical and circumstantial evidence as opposed to explicit documentary proof: this theme is not mentioned in the letters between the two composers and also seems to have remained unspoken on the relatively few occasions on which they met privately in the Soviet Union or the United Kingdom. One might equally suggest, for example, that just as Britten saw in Shostakovich his unfulfilled destiny as a symphonic composer, Shostakovich particularly admired Britten for his extensive operatic output. Moreover, the preoccupation with death was not widely recognised critically at the time: Stephen Walsh, writing just after Britten's death, felt that ‘notwithstanding his chronic illness, few of us thought of his mid-seventies music as “valedictory” or “other-worldly”’. On the other hand, with the benefit of hindsight, a consideration of their shared treatment of death does enable an overall assessment which convincingly transcends both the purely personal aspect of the association and its specific geographical and political contexts, both amplifying and qualifying its peculiarly Russian dimension and polarised Cold War backdrop. In this respect, some comparison can be made with the relationship between Vaughan Williams and Holst, who shared a friendship and several close aspects of creative sensibility: though their creative closeness was by no means consistent, and their outputs not identical, each at times regarded the other's latest compositions as offering an answer to ongoing compositional questions and a stimulus to further compositional activity. Vaughan Williams most explicitly acknowledged this in his near-quotation from The Planets in the epilogue of the Sixth Symphony, fourteen years after Holst's death and his own unexpected return to composition after the Fifth.

  • Chapter 1 - You Are About To Participate in a Great Adventure

  • Wissner Reba
  • Book:
    We Will Control All That You Hear
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016, pp 1-32

  • Summary

    “There is Nothing Wrong With Your Television Speakers”

    From 1963-1965, American viewers were not in control of their television sets. The new show that controlled their televisions was called The Outer Limits, created by Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens, and was broadcast on the ABC network. The series, lasting only a season and a half with a total of 48 episodes, changed the face of science fiction and fantasy television. While a successor to anthology shows such as Thriller (NBC, 1960-1962) and Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond (ABC, 1959-1961), and contemporaries with The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-1964), The Outer Limits painted a much different, yet bleak, picture of the future. With a sine wave on screen accompanied by an acousmatic Control Voice, the show promised that it would control the horizontal, the vertical, and all that the viewer would see and hear. A distinct characteristic of the show in the first season is that any damage done to the universe had to be corrected by the episode's conclusion, even if only by the Control Voice narration by Vic Perrin. The Control Voice forces our attention onto the screen, highlighting its unusual function and using its distinctly unusual purpose to demand intense attention while simultaneously increasing the audience's level of paranoia. This opening sequence, Jeffrey Sconce demonstrates, is invasive and unmatched by any other show before or since.

    We become passive, yet adventuring spectators, that by virtue of watching and taking part in the show's sojourns into uncharted territories. The Control Voice's closing narration often emphasizes that the episode's message is not as obvious as it seems throughout the episode. Each of the episodes culminates with someone or something gaining a new insight, along with thoughtful commentary. J.P. Telotte believes that “The Outer Limits demonstrated that science fiction was hardly a monolithic story type, certainly not just the space opera, and that, far from being a niche form, it could effectively address and broad spectrum of the television audience.” Among its entertainment value, this Cold War era show essentially frightened viewers not of would happen, but what could happen given the trajectory of science and the tendencies of the human race.

  • Chapter 3 - From a Soft Blur to Crystal Clarity: Orchestration and Sound Design

  • Wissner Reba
  • Book:
    We Will Control All That You Hear
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016, pp 59-80

  • Summary

    Under the “Story Requirement” section of “The Canons of Please Stand By,” requirement E reads, “The mad magic of SOUND must be employed as often and as artfully as is feasible. The ear must never be treated as step-brother to the eye.” For this reason, the series presented viewers with sights and sounds never before experienced. One of the things that made the sound of The Outer Limits so iconic is the traversal of the boundary beyond the stereotypical coffee-percolator sound of science fiction film that by this point was such a clichéd sound for the future. Sounds for science fiction and fantasy deal with and engage the imagination. Sounds in science fiction must be both believable and satisfy audience expectations. There are three ways to create convincing sound effects in film and television, and The Outer Limits used all of them: manually, vocally, and electronically. Manual concerns the use of instruments or everyday objects, vocal uses the human voice, and electronic uses either electronic instruments or machines. Often, more than one of these will be used at any given time. As such, the episodes’ ambient sounds take precedence over the music in order to make the viewer aware of the new soundscape and its possibilities.

    Frontiere established the sound design of The Outer Limits that would persist through the end of the series’ run, even when he and Elizalde no longer worked on it. Occasionally music or orchestrations by Frontiere's composition teacher Robert Van Eps and Edward B. Powell were also included in season one, and this will be discussed further in the next chapter. But music supervisor and sound editor of the first season John Elizalde, and John Caper Jr. in the second season created many of the series sound effects, including the added alien voices and electronic sounds. Those also responsible included coordinator and copyist Roger Farris, mixer Jay Ashworth, editor Arthur J. Cornall, and recording engineers Jack Wood and Harold Smith. The series’ sound design helped to emphasize the point that what you cannot see often can scare you most and make what you can see more frightening. Watching The Outer Limits was truly an experience and the music and sound design of the series enhanced that experience. The sound effects often enrich the diegetic space in which the viewer enters and heightens its credibility.

  • Appendix 1 - Episode Information

  • Wissner Reba
  • Book:
    We Will Control All That You Hear
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016, pp 181-202

  • Summary

    (Episodes are listed in order of airdate, despite their production number. Cues are listed in the order of appearance. Cues that appear more than once in an episode only appear once below)

    First Season—14 Original Scores. All cues by Dominic Frontiere unless otherwise noted.

    The Original Proposed Outer Limits Pilot Episode: “Please Stand By.” Written by Leslie Stevens. Original Score. Cue titles: Main Title, Alan Carries Carol, Wait For Me, Everybody Go Home, Wild Cue, End Title.

  • • “The Galaxy Being.” Production Number SF#1: Original Airdate: 9/16/63. Written by Leslie Stevens. Music runtime: 19:58. 26 Cues. Original Score. Cue titles: Main Title #5. Alan Carries Carol (from Please Stand By), Main Title (from Please Stand By), Main Title #4, Loop #6, Teaser – Curtain, Villa Bossa Nova (from Stoney Burke episode “Kelly's Place”), Wild Cue – Loop (from Please Stand By), Venus Girl (from Stoney Burke episode “Fight Night”), Happy Birthday (from Stoney Burke episode “Kelly's Place”), Wait for Me (from Please Stand By), Beatnik (from Stoney Burke episode “The Contender”), Maureen's Theme (from Stoney Burke episode “To Catch the Kaiser”), Sophisticated (from the unaired pilot Kincaid), Innocent (from Stoney Burke episode “Point of Honor”), Guitar Bumper (from Stoney Burke), Tex Williams #2 (from Stoney Burke episode “The Contender”), Let's Go, Everybody Go Home (from Please Stand By), Yvette #8 (from The Outer Limits episode “The Architects of Fear”), End Title #2.

  • • “The Hundred Days of the Dragon.” Production Number SF#7. Original Airdate: 9/23/63. Written by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz. Original Score. Music runtime: 29:13. 40 Cues. Cue Titles: Main Title #5, Alan Carries Carol (from Please Stand By), Main Title (from Please Stand By), Main Title #4, Dragon #1, Loop #2, Your Own Opinion (from Stoney Burke episode “Point of Entry”), Dragon #10, Dragon #12, Chute Charger (from Stoney Burke episode “The Contender”), Dragon #9, Dragon #6, Dragon #11, Dragon #5, The Wild Brahmas (from Stoney Burke episode “Point of Honor”), Dragon #8, The Whip (from Stoney Burke episode “Child of Luxury”), Dragon #7, Washington D.C., The Sniper Prepares (from Stoney Burke episode “Point of Entry”), Dragon #3, The Needle, The Sniper Misses Anna (from Stoney Burke episode “Point of Entry”), Let's Go #1, Dragon #4, Sophisticated (from the unaired pilot Kincaid), His Last Dragon #13, Loop #6 (from The Outer Limits episode “The Galaxy Being”), Main Title #1, Yvette #8

  • Appendix 2 - Recording Session Informatio

  • Wissner Reba
  • Book:
    We Will Control All That You Hear
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016, pp 203-210

  • Summary

    From American Federation of Musicians Contracts, Provided by Professional Musicians Union Local 47 and David J. Schow, The Outer Limits Companion. Some information, such as exact instruments played, and the scores recorded may be missing. Except for the leader, contractor, librarian, copyist, and orchestrator, all musician names are listed in alphabetical order. All musician numbers include the leader but not the librarian, contractor, copyist(s), orchestrator, or arranger. If Roger Farris's recording logs for a specific session were available to me, I have indicated the cues recorded at that session.

    1963:

    August 23, 9:00AM-12:30PM and 1:30PM-7:30PM. Recording call, 46 musicians. United Recorders. Cues from “The Architects of Fear,” “The Human Factor,” “Tourist Attraction,” “The Hundred Days of The Dragon,” “Controlled Experiment,” “The Borderland.” Dominic Frontiere, Composer, Arranger, and Leader; Urban Thielman, Contractor; Victor Arno, Violin; Frank Beach, Trumpet; Myer Bello, Viola; Joachim Chassman, Violin; Russell Cheever, Clarinet; Donald Christlieb, Bassoon; John Clyman, Trumpet; Ralph Collier, Drums; Joe Coppin, Cello; Richard Cornell, Drums; Karl De Karske, Trombone; Vincent De Rosa, Trumpet; Kurt Dieterle, Violin; Adolph Di Tullio, Violin; Joseph Ditullio, Cello; J. Bob Gibbons, Guitar; Ossip Giskin, Cello; Luella Howard, Flute; Clarence Karella, Tuba; Louis Kaufman, Violin; Raymond W. Klein, Trombone; Marvin Limonick, Violin; Paul Lowenkron, Violin; Oliver Mitchell, Trumpet; Abe Most, Clarinet; Richard Nash, Trombone; Irma Neuman, Violin; Jack Priesner, Accordion; Harold Rees, Drums; Sven Reher, Viola; Howard Roberts, Guitar; Paul Robyn, Viola; Meyer Rubin, Bass; Harry Schmidt, Horn; Paul Shure, Violin; Henry Sigismonte, Horn; Marshall Sosson, Violin; Joseph Stepansky, Violin; Ann Stockton, Harp; Leon Trebacz, Violin; William Ulyate, Bass Clarinet; Robert Van Eps, Piano; Kenneth Winstead, Bass; Roger E. Farris, Copyist; Robert Van Eps, Arranger.

    Cues recorded at this session: “Main Title” (Please Stand By), “Main Title”—last bar Wild cue (Please Stand By), “End Title” (Please Stand By), “Wild Cue – Loop” (Please Stand By), “Wild Cue – Loop—Strings” (Please Stand By), “Wait For Me,” “Everybody Go Home,” “Allan Carries Carol,” “Main Title No. 1,” “Main Title No. 2,” “Main Title No. 3,” “Main Title No. 4,” “Main Title No. 5,” “Teaser Curtain,” “Let's Go No. 1,”

  • Chapter 5 - The Scores of Harry Lubin

  • Wissner Reba
  • Book:
    We Will Control All That You Hear
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016, pp 153-180

  • Summary

    When ABC renewed The Outer Limits for a second season, Daystar Productions completely reworked the staff of the show including the composer. These changes resulted from a rift between ABC and Daystar: with an inability to agree on the show's direction and a plan for a newly-reduced budget, much of the production team changed hands and were ultimately fired. The company hired Harry Lubin to compose the scores for the second season of the series. However, the show would only last a half season with a total of 13 episodes, ten of them using original scores by Lubin, who had previously composed the music for two television shows, The Loretta Young Show and Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond. Since he had previously composed music for ABC shows, including one that featured supernatural tales and was otherwise unengaged in any other work at the moment, he was an ideal person to ask.

    Throughout the second season of The Outer Limits, the budget kept dropping, necessitating the cutting of corners wherever possible, including the music. Without the producer as composer as was the case in the first season with Frontiere, it was virtually impossible to have all the forces that the composer desired for recording. As a result, Lubin reused much of his music from One Step Beyond in The Outer Limits. Lubin's scores, as compared to Frontiere's, sound more tonal, “centering around definite harmonic ‘poles,’ often using consonant chords with a dissonant note or pattern played around them, or a single accompaniment to the orchestra is set up, then a slow-moving, spooky-sounding theme is added or played solo.” As such, this creates an isolated, haunting soundscape. This soundscape creates the newly sought after aesthetic of the second season. Unlike the scores for the first season in which the stock cues were highly varied, the cues for the second season were reused multiple times, giving many of the episode scores the same sound as each other, that which Schow describes as a brittle set of stock cues. These cues were both composed and handpicked from Lubin's own previously composed music, as shown by his listing on each of the cue sheets as musical director.

We Will Control All That You Hear
  • The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination
  • Volume 3
  • Wissner Reba
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2016
  • From 1963–1965, The Outer Limits, an anthology television show co-created by Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens, was broadcast on ABC. Through the use of unconventional and newly invented instruments and household objects to produce unique sounds, the show not only looked different from most television of the time, but it sounded different as well. We Will Control All That You Will Hear: The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination, discusses the use of music within the series, offering multiple readings of the ways that music is used. This book focuses not only on the ways that newly composed scores and stock music were utilized in the series, but also how the music enhances and interacts with what we see and hear onscreen.

Page 308 of 840