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Search and listen to more than 2 million music recordings on 800 labels. Contains more than 40,000 biographies of composers and performers in all music genres and time periods.
In music, systematic avoidance of harmonic or melodic reference to tonal centers. The term is used to designate a method of composition in which the composer has deliberately rejected the principle of tonality.
The body of compositions whose fundamental syntactical reference is a particular ordering (called series or row) of the twelve pitch classes—C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B—that constitute the equal-tempered scale.
Italian composer. His work, usually involving electronic sound, combines serial techniques with commedia dell'arte and antiphonal practices, as in Alleluiah II (1958) for five instrumental groups.
Born in Accrington, Lancashire, he began his career as a clarinettist. While in Manchester he formed, with other young musicians including Peter Maxwell Davies and John Ogdon, the New Manchester Group for the performance of modern music.
US composer. His early works, such as his piano concerto (1926), were in the jazz style but he gradually developed a gentler style with a regional flavour drawn from American folk music.
A pioneer synthesizer player with Roxy Music, Eno later earned a reputation as a leading avant-garde figure in rock-music circles, and explored the potential of ambient music in such albums as Music for Airports (1979).
US composer, conductor, and pianist. His stylistically varied works, including the cantata The Prairie (1944) and Time Cycle for soprano and orchestra (1960), express an ironic view of tradition.
American composer, b. Baltimore. Considered one of the most innovative of contemporary composers, he was a significant figure in the development of minimalism in music.
German composer and teacher. His operas Cardillac (1926, revised 1952) and Mathis der Maler/Mathis the Painter (1933-35) are theatrically astute and politically aware.
French composer and pianist. A member of the group of composers known as Les Six, he was extremely prolific in a variety of styles and genres, influenced by jazz, the rhythms of Latin America, and electronic composition.
Brazilian composer and conductor. He absorbed Russian and French influences in the 1920s to create neo-baroque works in Brazilian style, using native colours and rhythms.
Romanian-born French composer of Greek parentage. He evolved a method of ‘stochastic’ composition using the mathematics of chance and probability and also employing computers.
, French composer, exponent of musical impressionism.