Word: orfeo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...guest artists, could be viewed as an audio resum. Claudio Monteverdi published the music we now call the 1610 Vespers in a volume of music printed probably at his own expense and dedicated to the Pope. The year before, Monteverdi had published a volume containing his opera L'Orfeo and dedicated to the future Duke of Mantua. In that first book, he showed that he was the master of the new theatrical style and that he could weld into new shapes the musical styles he had inherited from his predecessors; and that opera has been held up as a masterpiece...
...Vespers is really an occasional piece: that is, designed for a specific occasion. We don't know whether there really was a single occasion on which all this music was performed; but it uses almost exactly the same rich variety of instruments as the opera L'Orfeo: strings, cornetti, sackbuts, recorders, organs, lutes, harpsichords; it uses the same numbers and types of voices, and most of the same wonderful musical techniques: tricky echoes that turn the last syllables of a phrase into a new word; fantastic fast notes; learned counterpoint. It is a piece drawing specifically on the talents...
...popular course showcases five pieces of music--Beethoven's ninth symphony, Handel's "Messiah," Stravinsky's "Le sacre du printemps," Monteverdi's "Orfeo" and Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique"--and examines the cultural context of their first performances...
...fell to Domenech, a man obsessed with the history of Catalunya, to % design what may be the most extreme Art Nouveau building in Europe. This is the Palau de la Musica Catalana (1905-08). It was built for the Orfeo Catala, a choral-music society. Pablo Casals and Montserrat Caballe, both Catalans, began their careers here. From the mosaic-sheathed ticket office to the stupendous inverted bell of a stained-glass skylight in the auditorium, from the sculpted Valkyries riding across the proscenium arch to the encrustations of ceramic roses (each the size of a cabbage) on the ceiling...