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Welcome to the
COMPOSITION NOTES Page of
aMUSIClassical Directory
Our Classical Music website
for good music lovers.
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Notes on Major Compositions
listed by composer
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- Kabalevsky, Demitri 'Colas Breugnon'
- Kern, Jerome 'Roberta'
His last successful musical for the Broadway theater. It opened at the New
Amsterdam Theater in November of 1933 and ran for 295 performances. He
collaborated with Otto Harbach, book, and Robert Russell Bennett,
orchestrations. Based on Alice Duer Miller's romance 'Gowns by Roberta'
about an all American halfback who inherits his aunt's Paris shop and
falls in love with a clerk who turns out to be a Russian princess. The
princess was the exotic soprano Tamara. The other cast members included
hoofer George Murphy (later a US Senator from CA) and a comic named Bob
Hope. Raymond Middelton was the male lead. What led to the shows great
success was the song 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' which swept dance floors,
radio shows and glee clubs of the country...sung by Tamara with Leo
Reisman's Orchestra.
- Ketelbey 'Bells
Across
The Meadows'
To listen to the music of English composer Albert W. Ketelbey is to
take a nostalgic journey back to a more genteel period of popular music.
Ketelbey was a composer of proramme music for silent films. He was born
in
'Birming'um' in 1875. He studied at Trinity college, was a church
organist, concert pianist and vaudeville musical director in London. He
died in 1959 leaving many popular compositions after a very sucessful
career.
-
Khachaturian 'Gayane' Ballet
(GUY anne...GUY ann ah...GY nah)
The ballet was first staged in December of 1942 by the Kirov Ballet with
choreography by Ah NEE see MOH vah.
Later the music was taken from the 1958 Bolshoi theater production for
three orchestral suites. The popular Sabre Dance appears in the second
suite.
The scenario is about the young people of Soviet Armenia and clashing stories
of love, jealousy and friendship. As well as ego, jealousy and
betrayal. It is a tribute to the war effort of workers and
relationship of "Gayanne' a patriotic Armenian girl and her adulterous
relationship with an army commander...who exiled her husband. The work
is dedicated to the composer's wife, Guyna.
- Khachaturian 'Spartacus' Ballet Suite
From the 1956 Ballet FP by the Kirov ensemble. The third suite appeared in
1957. The work about the reble slave 'Spartacus'
- Kirchner, Leon 'Music for Orchestra'
- Kodaly 'Galanta Dances'
(gah LAHN tah) Composed for the 80th anniversary of the Budapest
Philharmonic Society. FP
October 1933. Not folk music here, but selected Hungarian National dances
of various gypsies from Galanta. (GAH' lahn tah).
- Kodaly 'Marosszek
Dances'
Originally a piano piece based on a series of 17th century Hungarian
dances. FP in the orchestral arrangement in 1930.
- Kodaly 'The Peacock'
Variations on a Hungarian Folksong. Heard the tune in the village of Surd in
1937. From poem of Endre Ady about the Peacock a symbol of freedom.
- Kodaly Sonata for solo
Cello
Kodaly completed his sonata for solo cello in 1915. It directly takes
melodies from Hungarian folksongs and incorporates them into an original
score of his own. In 1928 Bela Bartok said Kodaly was the composer whose
music is the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit.
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