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Understanding the Role of Composers in Music

This quiz explores the role of composers in music, examining concepts related to composition, performance, and the evolution of musical roles.

#music #composition #composers #musical roles #jazz #electronic music

1 jazz, ________) it has in some ways become increasingly complex or vague.

2 For instance, in certain contexts - the line between composer and ________, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles - can be quite blurred.

3 Since the mid-20th century, the term has expanded to accommodate creators of ________, in which composers directly create sonic material in any of the various electronic media.

4 Composer societies at the ________

5 In fact, in the ________ form, the soloist would often compose and perform a cadenza as a way to express their individual interpretation of the piece.

6 This is distinct from instrumental composition, where the work is represented by a ________ to be interpreted by performers.

7 The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as ________ and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music.

8 In as much as the role of the composer in ________ has seen continued solidification, in alternative idioms (i.e.

đź’ˇ Interesting Facts

  • distinguished recipients of the Grawemeyer Award for music composition have included Witold LutosĹ‚awski, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez and John Adams.
  • an electronic opera Raab by the Czech composer Jaroslav KrÄŤek was banned by the communist regime in 1972.
  • during the midst of the Cold War, Alan Shulman and Dmitri Shostakovich were invited to join a Soviet–American composers' symposium organised by Nicolas Slonimsky for NBC.
  • in addition to his distinguished military career against the Ottoman Turks, Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha (pictured), was also an accomplished poet, harpsichordist, and composer.
  • the "van" in the name of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is a remnant of his Flemish ancestry.
  • only three works of Egardus, a fourteenth century composer whose music was known in Flanders, Italy, and Poland, are known to have survived.
  • although he has composed music for over 20 video games and conducts the Video Games Live concert series, Jack Wall has a degree in civil engineering.
  • almost 30 years after quitting his career as a composer, Gervase Hughes returned to music in 1960 as a writer of books on musical subjects.
  • Partenope was the first opera written by an American-born composer.
  • Stereo Type, by the Welsh composer Guto Puw, was written for the combination of amplified typewriters and tape and was premiered in a shopping centre in Bangor, Gwynedd.
  • American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was the first woman to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts in composition and to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
  • German composer Christian Geist died of the bubonic plague in 1711, along with his wife and children.
  • according to the old hexachordal principle, the sixth aria of Hexachordum Apollinis should have been in B-flat major, but the composer Pachelbel wrote it in 1699 as an F minor.
  • the American composer Paul Moravec won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2004 for his Shakespeare-inspired chamber piece Tempest Fantasy.
  • the composer Anton Rubinstein conducted his own opera The Merchant Kalashnikov so badly that the performance had to be stopped.
  • the music of video game music composer Masaharu Iwata has been described as among the most well-recognized in the tactical role-playing game genre.
  • the dates of birth and death of the Ukrainian music theorist and composer Nikolay Diletsky remain unknown.
  • the musical piece composed by Will Schaefer for the United States Bicentennial earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
  • the term choral symphony was coined by French composer Hector Berlioz (pictured) when describing his symphony, RomĂ©o et Juliette.
  • when English composer Sir Edward Elgar died in 1934, he left more than 130 pages of sketches for a third symphony.
  • upon graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, Hayato Matsuo went straight to work under Koichi Sugiyama, the composer for the Dragon Quest video game series.
  • the last three piano sonatas by Franz Schubert (pictured), published eleven years after the Austrian composer's death, are often regarded as a trilogy.
  • the British General John Reid, second in command in Henry Bouquet's expedition against the western and Ohio Indians, was also a proficient flute-player and a musical composer.
  • the composer Zbigniew Preisner wrote the title music for the monumental BBC documentary People's Century, which spans 26 parts.
  • the composer Johannes Brahms premiered his Academic Festival Overture, a musical fantasy based on several student drinking songs, at the University of Breslau's convocation to thank the institution for granting him an honorary doctorate.
  • the English composer Anthony Payne, who completed a version of Elgar's third symphony, has also composed a version of Elgar's incomplete Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6.
  • the German late Romantic composer Richard Wetz (pictured), in 1928, was appointed foreign member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts, alongside Igor Stravinsky.
  • the Scottish composer and pianist Ronald Stevenson composed an 80-minute passacaglia for solo piano based on the four-note motif D-Eâ™­-C-B.
  • Roy Agnew has been described as the most outstanding Australian composer of the early 20th century.
  • Russian opera in the 18th century was dominated by Italian composers and singers.
  • Czech composer Jan RychlĂ­k played the drums in the jazz orchestra of Karel Vlach.
  • composer William Turner was kicked out of the Chapel Royal choir when his voice broke.
  • Greek composer Phivos has written songs for artists including Keti Garbi, Angela Dimitriou, Manto, Thanos Kalliris, and, most successfully, Despina Vandi.
  • Hungarian-born composer Mátyás Seiber was killed in a car crash while on a lecture tour of South Africa.
  • Korean composer and violinist Hong Nan-pa is best known for his song Bongseonhwa written in 1919 which was widely sung during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
  • Italian composer and American citizen Nino Marcelli led the San Diego High School orchestra to achieve a national reputation in the 1930s.
  • composer Tom Scott also had a career as a folk singer known as "The American Troubador".
  • composer Takanori Arisawa won three JASRAC International Awards for most international royalties, due to the worldwide popularity of the Sailor Moon anime soundtrack.
  • AntonĂ­n Dvořák's Cello Concerto in b minor was considered so great that Johannes Brahms, the composer's mentor who had never written one himself, commented: "Why on earth didn't I know that one could write a cello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago!".
  • church music composer Geoffrey Shaw was the father of Sebastian Shaw, who played Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.
  • Australian composer Raymond Hanson, a teacher of music composition at the Sydney Conservatorium, was himself largely self-taught.
  • Australian composer and ABC broadcaster William G. James dedicated his Six Australian Bush Songs to Dame Nellie Melba.
  • composer Allyn Ferguson, co-creator of themes for Barney Miller and Charlie's Angels, was cited by Variety as being "among the most prolific composers of TV-movie scores in the past 40 years".
  • Polish composer RafaĹ‚ Augustyn′s Symphony of Hymns took twenty years to complete, typically lasts for 100 minutes and requires an orchestra of over 170 players.
  • Russian composer Boris Sobinov was abducted from the Berlin American Zone by the NKVD and condemned to ten years in prison in the Soviet Union.
  • Isidore de Lara's Messaline was the first opera by an English composer to be produced at La Scala.
  • Hamilton Clarke, a prolific composer of the Victorian era, is remembered today chiefly for his compilation of the overture to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
  • John Milton (1562–1647) was so successful as a composer and scrivener that his son John Milton—author of Paradise Lost—never had to work for a living.
  • Juliusz Wertheim, a Polish pianist, conductor and composer, was a mentor of Arthur Rubinstein, considered one of the greatest piano virtuosi of the 20th Century.
  • Marbrianus de Orto was one of the first composers to write a completely canonic setting of the Ordinary of the Mass.
  • Eric Coates was an English composer who wrote some songs for lyrics by Arthur Conan Doyle.
  • Domenico Brescia wrote in 1919 that he was probably the first composer to use a chromatic set of cowbells as a symphony instrument.
  • American composer Danny Elfman was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1990 for creating "The Simpsons Theme" and in 2005 for the Desperate Housewives theme.
  • songwriter and composer Paul Dresser (pictured) amassed a large fortune writing songs in the 1890s but spent and gave away most of it before dying penniless in 1906.
  • video game music composer Garry Schyman prefers the video game industry to television and film in part because the people in it are "nice people whose egos were in check".
  • Charles Wilfred Orr wrote more settings of A. E. Housman's poetry than any other composer.
  • Dennis Berry was a musician, composer, arranger and producer who not only produced the music to the first Monty Python film, but has also had his music featured on the BBC's Little Britain, MTV's The Osbournes and the Nickelodeon cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.
  • 17th-century Italian composer Filippo Acciaiuoli was also an inventor of machines used for theatrical effects in operas and plays.
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