Hector Berlioz

As the conductor entered the silent hall, the lights over the audience started to dim until only the orchestra was illuminated. With his penguin-like coattails wobbling behind him, the conductor stepped onto the gray and worn-out podium, and checked each face of his performers. The small wrinkles on his cheeks slightly lifted as each member grinned back at the conductor. The dimly-glowing white baton began to rise in the air, and with a small twist in the wrist, slowly swirled in front of the…

Randy Newman is one of the many contemporary composers who has shaped our favorite movies and songs into what they are today. Randy was born in a humble home in Los Angeles, California on November 28, 1943. He moved a lot as a child. He first was in Los Angeles, then he moved to New Orleans his mother’s hometown, and finally at age eleven moved back to Los Angeles! He attended and graduated from University High School in Los Angeles, California, and went to college at the University of…

For my composer’s report, I decided to research the infamous works of Wilhelm Richard Wagner. I was extremely interested in Wagner’s work due to the fact that he was one of Adolph Hitler’s favorite composers. I was intrigued to hear what caught Hitler’s attention and to learn what affect his interest had on Wagner’s legacy. While doing research, I learned that Wagner was behind the very famous opera titled Tristan and Isolde. I had previously heard of that opera throughout my life, but I never…

Harry Partch has undoubtedly always followed his own muse when it came to music. Whether it be thinking outside of the box in creating a new music scale or inventing new instruments. Partch is best known for his philosophy of music. He views music as having two “givens”, but his most famous theory is that music is separated into two independant and distinct poles: there is abstract and there is corporeal. According to Partch, music whether it is “good” or “bad” has two God-given aspects. The…

Berlioz’s work was more theatrical than for service, proving to include secular settings in a sacred frame, as he contrasted the loud and peaceful movements, and employed the use of militaristic imagery through the brass and percussion. For example, Berlioz included fanfare-like passages using thick brass voices and the extensive use of timpani to accentuate the rhythms in the Dies Irae (which would be described…

The reason I chose Wagner was because of his interesting background. Being from Germany myself, I can relate better to a German composer than any other composer just because I grew up under a German culture. What is specifically interesting about Wagner that separates him from all the other composers is that he his music pieces appealed to Adolf Hitler. His music was apparently played at concentration camps, which was used to re-educate the prisoners. This created a lot of controversy, which…

Commencing in the early eighteenth century, the Romantic era sought not only to transform the essence of human experience through challenging the unyielding and judicious constraints in the social and political realms of neoclassicism but also to introduce revolutionarily eccentric ways of thinking, whilst provoking the ideals and notions of the period through movements in arts and literature. Mary Wollstonecraft’s earliest work of feminist philosophy “A Vindication in the Rights of Women”…

When one examines the field of fine arts, he is unlikely to find a category as mysterious, captivating, and expressive as music. Given the greatly varied psychological and physiological effects music has on individuals, it is apparent that composers must utilize a variety of complex techniques to stimulate our myriad of senses. Most simply, perhaps, is the usage of musical patterns that match the lyrics of a piece. For an early example, in Weelkes’ madrigal As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill…

Concert Report On Friday, November 4th, 2016, a concert was held at Whitman Theatre, Brooklyn College by the Conservatory Orchestra from 7:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. The conductor was George Rothman and the Orchestra manager was Timothy Barrus. There were 29 performers who played violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, percussion, and timpani. They performed three representative pieces of compositions from the twentieth-century, which were “Washington 's Birthday”…

William Wordsworth is an English poet who lived from 1770 to 1850, he was born on the 7th of April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwest of England, he is considered as one of the greatest poet in the romantic era, which is also called the Romanticism, He was an early leader of it, Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, it emphasis upon the power and terrors of the inner imaginative life. The…