History of Classical Music, The
Author : Richard Fawkes
Performed By : Robert Powell
Publisher : Select Music & Distribution
Runtime : 5 hours 15 minutes
Categories : Social & Economic
Music Related
Music Related
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From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text illustrated by performances from some of the most highly praised recordings of recent years.
Music of the western classical tradition spans some fourteen centuries, from the emergence of Gregorian chant to the sounds of the present day. The range covered is extraordinary - the sacred and the secular, the massive spectaculars of the opera stage and the darkly intensive world of the string quartet.
But there was a gradual development, one that reflected the times in which the composers lived and worked. It is the purpose of this History to give an overview, to draw the multifaceted threads together and provide a background to our present musical experience.
Medieval and Renaissance Periods
Western classical music, like drama, began in church with the chanting of monks. Out of this plainchant grew choral polyphony -many sounds - as the vocal line was embellished and developed. As composers became interested in rhythm, contrast, harmony and music with words not taken directly from the mass, new vocal forms were introduced. This was the age of the motet, the madrigal, the chanson and carols. Slowly too, instruments began to be incorporated into musical performance and composers began to write for ensembles. From dance came the idea of musical contrast, and the seeds of all later music were sown.
Baroque and Classical Periods
The musical form above all others that came from the Baroque period was opera, a form reflecting the time's love of theatrical excess. Even religious music was written to be staged, hence the development of the oratorio and the chorale, while the increasing virtuosity of instrumentalists led to the formation of orchestras and the development of the concerto grosso.
Taken up by composers of the classical period, the concerto grosso became the symphony the contrast of a soloist against an ensemble became the concerto, and, at the other end of the scale, the sonata and the string quartet came into being.
The Romantic Period
Romantic composers believed that music was an expression of their inner feelings and so they produced music that was wild, tempestuous and often tried to tell a story. Tone-poems, programme symphonies and large scale concertos became their hallmark. Increasing nationalism was reflected not just in the use of folk tunes in orchestral music but also in the subject matter of operas.
And if there was one instrument above all others that the Romantics claimed as their own it was the piano. Many composers, like Liszt and Chopin, were virtuoso performers who wrote their pieces to show off their own talents.
The 20th Century
The 20th century is the most confusing of all musical periods. It is a century in which the old empires crumbled, the world map was redrawn by two world wars, and in which there are still nationalist conflicts. It is also a century in which man has walked on the moon. The immense political and scientific changes have been reflected in art and in music as composers have sought to find a new musical voice.
From the atonalism of Schoenberg to the rhythmic experiments of Stravinsky, from the aural impressionism of Debussy to the electronic world of Varese, composers have tried to examine what music is and how it relates to life. Some of these experiments have taken music away from popular taste, others have proved to be a dead end; but all have contributed in some measure to the mainstream so that classical music now is as rich, vibrant and diverse as it has ever been.
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Frankenstein
Author : Mary Shelley
Performed By : Full Cast Performance
Publisher : Select Music & Distribution
Runtime : 2 hours 40 minutes
Categories : Classics
Dramatizations
Horror & Suspense
Our Price : $11.99
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The gothin tale of Frankenstein and his construction of a human being who runs amok has, with the help of numerous films, become one of the most vivid of horror stories.
But Mary Shelley's original novel, written in 1816, dealt more sympathetically with "the daemon", showing how an initially beneficent creature is hammered into a daemon by the way he is treated.
Her ideas, and her dramatic but poignant story, is brought to life in this sound dramatisation.
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus
Mary Shelley was the daughter of the radical feminist Mary Wollstencraft and the mistress - later the wife - of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1816, she and her half-sister, Claire Claremont, mistress of both Shelley and Byron, followed Shelley into exile from his native land, where his frank espousal of a philosophy of 'free love' and his outspoken atheism had been little relished. They spent the summer with Lord Byron (also on the run from scandal in England) who had taken the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva. The company may even have been joined by the shade of Milton who had once occupied the house. But the current of creative genius that had produced the divine spark in Milton had become, in the popular imagination, something demonic in these two arch-romantic poets.
On June 15, as the lightning flickered across the lake, Mary listened to the conversation of Byron, Shelley and Dr Polidori, Byron's young amanuensis. They were discussing galvanism (the medical use of electric current) and the possibility of provoking the very spark of life by its means. The subject was of particular interest to Shelley who had experimented with electrical instruments at Oxford. At the same time the company were deeply engrossed in German horror stories, and the following day they each agreed to try their hand at writing a ghost story. The published outcome was Polidori's The Vampyre, adapted from Byron's effort, which had in turn been inspired by an hysterical fantasy from Shelley - and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Inspiration had been slow in coming, but when it did her nightmarish creation broke upon her drowsing consciousness fully-formed. She "saw the pale student of unhallowed arts" turning in horror from "his odious handiwork", the vile assemblage of human remains which he had animated with the breath of life. And in working out this ghastly fantasy into a full narrative her inspiration did not desert her. She was hardly nineteen. Though she lived another thirty-five years, she never again approached the visionary grandeur of conception achieved in this, her first literary effort. All her youthful life's experience went into it. Above all, it was about Shelley himself, who is both the idealistic creative spirit and the hounded outcast, both Dr Frankenstein and his monster. In a sense, the popular misconception that gives the name Frankenstein to the monster himself is an appropriate one. Frankenstein's creation haunts him like his own evil genius, his own shadow made flesh. For it is his refusal to take responsibility for the unprepossessing fruit of his actions that turns it into an avenging angel, destroying all the human connections that make life meaningful, as it pursues him to the grave.
Frankenstein is a meditation upon the grounds of evil inspired by the anarchist philosophy of Mary's Father, William Godwin. It is also a daring development of Milton's vision of the fallen angel in Paradise Lost and a critique of the idea of Divine creation itself. But finally, it must be recognised as quite a new-thing for its time: it is the first work of science fiction in English. And as science fiction it is about the limitations of goodwill without wisdom. It is a dire warning against technological hubris, against the temptation to assume that benevolent intentions are sufficient to procure beneficent results. Its timely message is that there are matters with which we tamper at our peril. As such, the novel remains the most powerful Promethean fable of modern times.
This is the definitive version!
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