Around the 1960s some composers thought that a lot of music was getting too complicated. Music of the avant garde school such as Edgard Varèse, Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt was becoming too difficult for people to understand. People found it too mathematical and intellectual. They wanted music with feeling and emotion. A group of composers developed a style called Minimalism which uses music based around a simple idea which repeats itself again and again but gradually changes. Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, John Cage and to some extent John Adams all used minimalist techniques. It was a reaction against music that had become too complicated.
While all these different schools of thought were coming and going there were still some composers who managed to keep to a more traditional path and find new ways to use tonality in their music. The greatest figure in British music was Benjamin Britten who was an eclectic composer (i.e. he took ideas from many different people). Two other great composers were Michael Tippett and William Walton, who each developed their own style. In America there were composers such as Samuel Barber, Roy Harris and Alan Hovhaness. In Germany Paul Hindemith was one of the most important composers. Like Kurt Weill, he often wrote music which had a political purpose, but Weill's music is more jazz-inspired.
Some contemporary composers (alive today) write music which is deeply religious. These include John Tavener and Arvo Pärt. John Rutter and Bob Chilcott, who write music for choirs which sounds fresh and attractive to new audiences. Other composers have found various ways of creating their own style, e.g. the Scottish composers James MacMillan and Judith Weir and the Master of the Queen's Music: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. In Russia Sofia Gubaidulina and Galina Ustvolskaya are important voices in the search for new music.
Cuxhaven
Cuxhaven is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. About 55,000 people live there. It is on the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe River. Cuxhaven is the capital of the Cuxhaven district. It is a popular vacation spot on the North Sea.
In 1896, when the town was an exclave of Hamburg, the railway line from Bremerhaven Hauptbahnhof was built.
Haifa Wehbe
Haifa Wehbe (, born March 10, 1972) is a female Lebanese singer, actress, model, and jewelry designer who is known in the Arab world. Wehbe was born in a rural town in South Lebanon and currently lives in Beirut. She started her music career with her debut album "Huwa az-Zaman" (, "It is Time").
Before she became a singer, she was a model. She won title "Miss South Lebanon" when she was sixteen. In 1995, she was the runner-up for Miss Lebanon before the public found out she had a daughter named Zeinab.
Her second 2005 album was "Baddi 'Ayš" (, "I Want to Live"). Her second songs was "Ana Haifa" ("I am Haifa").
She also appeared in Pepsi ad with French footballer Thierry Henry.
Dynamics (music)
In music, the dynamics in the piece is the variation in loudness between notes or phrases.
In written music the dynamics are shown by letters which stand for Italian words for the dynamic levels. They are listed in the table below. Notice that “piano” is pronounced the Italian way (“pi-AH-no”), to tell it apart from the
Use more than two ps or fs to show that the music is very, very soft, or very, very loud. Tchaikovsky sometimes used five ps or fs, though only up to three are normally found in sheet music.
Dynamic levels are not something that can be measured exactly. Exactly how loud mp should be depends on several things: what is happening in the music, the instrument, the size of the room in which the music is being played etc. The important thing is that dynamic levels should be correct in relation to one another.
Some composers are very precise about writing the dynamics they want. Others leave a lot to the performer to decide. Historically, composers several centuries ago, such as Bach, only wrote occasional dynamic marks. Even Mozart only wrote a few, mostly p and f. By the 19th century composers were writing dynamics in much more detail in their music.
Sometimes accents are shown by marks similar to dynamic marks. "Sforzando" means a strong, sudden accent and is abbreviated as sf, sfz or fz. The notation sfzp (or sfp) means a "sforzando" followed immediately by "piano"
The terms "crescendo", and "diminuendo" (or sometimes "decrescendo"), mean a gradual getting louder or softer. They can also be shown by signs known as "hairpins". A hairpin opening out is a "crescendo", one which closes is a "diminuendo".
For a quick change in dynamics, molto cresc. and molto dim. are often used ("molto" means "a lot"). For slow changes poco a poco cresc. and poco a poco dim. are used ("poco a poco" means "little by little", i.e. very gradually.)
Francesco Botticini
Francesco di Giovanni Botticini (ca. 1446 – July 22, 1498) was an Italian painter. He lived in the early part of the Renaissance period. He was born in Florence about 1446 and is best known for his painting called "Assumption of the Virgin".
He died in 1497 or 1498. After he had been an assistant to the painter Neri di Bicci he started his own workshop. The shop was famous for its decorative works, a few of which can be seen in the cloistered church of Empoli. Botticini was influenced by Filippino Lippi and Botticelli who were two very famous Florentine painters.
Grana Padano cheese
Grana Padano is a type of hard cheese. It is similar to parmesan cheese. The name comes from the noun "grana" (‘grain’), which refers to the distinctively grainy texture of the cheese, and the adjective "Padano", which refers to the river Po.
Grana Padano was created by the Cistercian monks of Chiaravalle. They used ripened cheese as a way of preserving extra milk. By the year 1477, it was regarded as one of the most famous cheeses of Italy. Today, this product is made in the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto, and in the province of Trento.
Like Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano is a semi-fat hard cheese which is cooked and ripened slowly (for up to 18 months). It is produced by curdling the milk of grass-fed cows. The cows are milked twice a day, the milk is left to stand, and then partially creamed. It is produced all year round and the quality can vary seasonally as well as by year.
A wheel of Grana Padano is cylindrical, with slightly convex or almost straight sides and flat faces. The rind, which is thin, is white or straw yellow.
Grana Padano cheese has been produced since the 12th century, and production and quality are now overseen by the Consorzio per la Tutela del Formaggio Grana Padano.
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a trade agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The agreement was signed by U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and Mexican President Carlos Salinas on December 17, 1992 in San Antonio, Texas, and took effect on January 1, 1994. It removed taxes on products traded between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It also protects copyrights, patents, and trademarks between those three countries. It was updated with the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, which helped set more environment regulations and helped reduce pollution. It was also updated with the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation, which helped people fight for better work conditions.
On September 30, 2018, it was announced that the United States, Mexico, and Canada had come to an agreement to replace NAFTA with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Since it took away taxes between products traded between the US, Canada, and Mexico. Mexico has been buying more products from the US. It saved U.S. companies on the cost of selling products to Mexico, and it saved Mexican companies on the cost of buying things from U.S. companies.