Johannes Ciconia was a Franco-Flemish composer, mainly active in Italy around 1400. Born in or around Liège, a Flemish bishopric, he moved to Italy at a young age and remained there for his entire life. In 1955 Heinrich Besseler suggested that the period between the death of Guillaume de Machaut in 1377 and the beginning … Continue reading Johannes Ciconia and Ars Subtilior : Bridging Machaut and Dufay
Author: f. d. leone
Songwriter.
The Polyphonic Lais of Guillaume de Machaut : Overview + Recordings
Fourteenth-century France exhibits the effects of an era grappling for an identity through its language, poetry and music. Amidst intellectual rigidity and diurnal despair, this transitional period enfeebled by medieval traditions yet aspired to humanist artistry. Guillaume de Machaut, illustrious poet-composer in the medieval myth, offered a means of embellishing life through a variety of … Continue reading The Polyphonic Lais of Guillaume de Machaut : Overview + Recordings
Taking Liberties : Björn Schmelzer & Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame”
The La Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut has been called the most important polyphonic composition of the 14th century. There are at least 35 recordings dating back to 1951, although most of those pre-1980 are hard to find and if found only available on vinyl. There appears to be general agreement now … Continue reading Taking Liberties : Björn Schmelzer & Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame”
Les Escholiers de Paris : Motets, Songs & Estampies of the Thirteenth Century
Ensemble Gilles Binchois, Dominique Vellard Anne-Marie Lablaude, Brigitte Lesne, Susanne Norin, Emmanuel Bonnardot, Willem de Waal, Pierre Hamon, Randall Cook In fact, with the royal family's increasingly frequent visits to Paris and the development of the university, Paris became the focus of a vital flowering that attracted the greatest artists, musicians, scholars, and theologians to Europe's leading cultural center. From all … Continue reading Les Escholiers de Paris : Motets, Songs & Estampies of the Thirteenth Century
John Luther Adams : The Place We Began
“Last summer in my studio I discovered several boxes of reel-to-reel tapes that I’d recorded in the early 1970s. Using those "found objects," I sculpted these new soundscapes from fragments of my past.” Listening to John Luther Adams’s re-workings of his earliest music on his Cold Blue CD, The Place We Began, calls to mind … Continue reading John Luther Adams : The Place We Began
Pauline Oliveros : May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016
Pauline Oliveros was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of experimental and post-war electronic art music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin … Continue reading Pauline Oliveros : May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016
Francis Dhomont Turns 90 : Le cri du Choucas
I missed it last month, when on November 1st Francis Dhomont celebrated his 90th birthday. Francis Dhomont studied under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 40’s, in Paris (France), he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer would later call “musique concrète” and consequently conducted solitary experiments with the musical … Continue reading Francis Dhomont Turns 90 : Le cri du Choucas
Gavin Bryars : Two Experimental Masterpieces
Richard Gavin Bryars (1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism. Bryars's first works as a composer owe much to the New York School of John Cage (with … Continue reading Gavin Bryars : Two Experimental Masterpieces
Let Us Now Praise Great Bluesmen : Blind Willie Johnson, who died today, 1947, in Beaumont, Texas
Allmusic.com Biography by Joslyn Layne Seminal gospel-blues artist Blind Willie Johnson is regarded as one of the greatest bottleneck slide guitarists. Yet the Texas street-corner evangelist is known as much for his powerful and fervent gruff voice as he is for his ability as a guitarist. He most often sang in a rough, bass voice … Continue reading Let Us Now Praise Great Bluesmen : Blind Willie Johnson, who died today, 1947, in Beaumont, Texas
The String Quartets of Krzysztof Meyer : a major achievement of the second half of the 20th century
Krzysztof Meyer (born 11 August 1943) is a Polish composer, pianist and music scholar, formerly Dean of the Department of Music Theory (1972–1975) at the State College of Music (now Academy of Music in Kraków), and president of the Union of Polish Composers (1985–1989). Meyer served as professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik … Continue reading The String Quartets of Krzysztof Meyer : a major achievement of the second half of the 20th century
Musica Kaleidoskopea 