Poetry, stories and strange odds and ends from the desk of a writer
Pastorale in E Minor1738Baroque https://youtu.be/7mUb_rnsCDg Domenico ScarlattiBaroqueBorn: 26 October 1685, Naples, ItalyNationality: ItalianDied: 23 July 1757, Madrid, Spain Scarlatti was a composer, primarily of the Baroque era he was also influential in the development of the Classical style. He composed a wide variety of musical forms but he is best known for his sonatas. Scarlatti … Continue reading Pastorale in E Minor by Domenico Scarlatti
Boadicea1987Film and TV https://youtu.be/JKQwgpaLR6o EnyaNew Age, Film and TVBorn: 17 May 1961, Gweedore, IrelandNationality: Irish Enya is a singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She was born into a musical family and raised in the Irish-speaking area of Gweedore in County Donegal. She began her music career when she joined the family’s Celtic folk band … Continue reading Boadicea by Enya
Carpenter is a filmmaker, composer, and screenwriter. He has worked with various genres, but is best known for horror, science fiction and action films of the 1970s and 1980s...
Poledouris was a composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film and television scores, best known for his collaborative work John Milius and Paul Verhoeven...
Vangelis is a musician and composer of progressive, electronic, ambient, jazz and orchestral music. He is best-known for his Academy award winning score to Chariots of Fire...
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was a composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and cleric. He is recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers...
Young is a composer and orchestrator of film and television scores. Many of his scores are for horror and thriller films...
Chopin was a composer. His first published composition at aged 7 which was followed a year later as he began his performing career...
Handel was a Baroque composer who spent most of his career in London, becoming naturalised British in 1727. He was well known for his operas, oratorios, concerti grossi, organ concertos and anthems...
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was a composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and cleric. He is recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and within his lifetime his influence was widespread...
Dvořák was a composer and one of the first Czech composers to achieve worldwide recognition. He frequently used rhythms and other aspects of folk music...
Rossini was a composer famed for his thirty-nine operas. He also composed songs, chamber music, sacred music, and piano pieces. He set new standards for serious and humorous and retired from large-scale productions while at the height of his popularity in his thirties...
Holst was a composer, arranger, and teacher best known for his orchestral suite The Planets. He composed many other works...
Vangelis is a musician and composer of progressive, electronic, ambient, jazz and orchestral music. He is best-known for his Academy award winning score to Chariots of Fire ...
Jarre is a composer, performer, and record producer. He is a pioneer of electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and well-known for his outdoor spectacular performances of music, lasers, fireworks, and visual projections...
Arnold is a film composer best known for scoring five James Bond films, Stargate, Independence Day, and the television series Sherlock. Independence Day earned him a Grammy Award for best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture. Arnold and co-composer Michael Price won a Creative Arts Emmy for the score of ‘His Last Vow,’ the final episode of the third series of Sherlock...
Copland was a composer, writer, composition teacher and conductor. The open, slowly changing harmonies of his music evoke vast landscapes and the pioneer spirit of America. Best known for his vernacular style of the 1930s and 1940s including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo, and Fanfare for the Common Man and his Third Symphony he also composed many other genres including chamber music, opera and vocal works, and film scores...
Schubert was a composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He left behind a cast oeuvre despite his short life, including over 600 secular vocal works, seven symphonies, sacred music, and a large collection of piano and chamber music...
Williams is a composer, pianist, and conductor regarded as the greatest film score composer of all time. He has composed some of the most popular, critically acclaimed, and most recognizable film scores in cinematic history and won 25 Grammy Awards, 7 British Academy Awards, 5 Academy Awards, and 4 Golden Globe Awards. Williams’ film scores include Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones...
Lloyd-Webber is a composer and impresario of musical theatre. Best known for his musicals, including ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘Evita,’ ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ and ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.’ Some of his musicals have run on the West End for more than a decade and on Broadway. A patron of the arts, in 1992 he set up Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation supporting arts, culture, and heritage in the UK...
Brahms was a composer, pianist, and conductor. He spent much of his professional life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, organ, piano and voice. A virtuoso pianist he premiered many of his own works himself. He is grouped with Bach and Beethoven as one of the ‘Three B’s’ of music...
Myrow was a composer best known for composing film soundtracks including Phantasm, Soylent Green, and Scarecrow. He was also a pianist, and performed concerts of his compositions. Pianist Brad Mehldau dedicated the song ‘Goodbye Storyteller,’ from the piano suite Elegiac Cycle, to Myrow, recorded two weeks after his death...
Rachmaninoff was a virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor of the late Romantic era. His early work, influenced by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and other Russian composers developed into his personal style which was notable for song -like melodic expressiveness and colourful, rich orchestration. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia and settled in New York City in 1918. His main income came from piano and conducting performances and demanding tour schedules reduced his time for composition. Failing health led to his relocating to California in 1942. Rachmaninoff was granted US citizenship in 1943, one month before his death from melanoma...
Brahms was a composer, pianist, and conductor. He spent much of his professional life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, organ, piano and voice. A virtuoso pianist he premiered many of his own works himself. He is grouped with Bach and Beethoven as one of the ‘Three B’s’ of music...
Telemann was a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He became a composer against his family’s wishes and was almost self-educated musically. Before settling in Hamburg in 1721 as a musical director of the city’s five main churches, he held important positions in Leipzig, Eisenach, and Frankfurt. He is one of the most prolific composers in history and considered to be one of the leading composers of the time...
Djawadi is a score composer, best known for his scores for the Marvel film Iron Man in 2008 and the TV series Game of Thrones. He has also written the scores for Clash of Titans, Warcraft, and West World...
Tchaikovsky was a Romantic composer and the first Russian composer to make a lasting international impression. In 1884 Tsar Alexander III honoured him with a lifetime pension...
Vangelis is a musician and composer of progressive, electronic, ambient, jazz and orchestral music. He is best-known for his Academy award winning score to Chariots of Fire and also composing scores for Blade Runner, Antarctica, Conquest of Paradise and Alexander. From a career spanning over 50 years Vangelis is considered one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music...
Purcell was a composer of a uniquely English form of Baroque music which incorporated Italian and French elements. He is one of the greatest English composers and the most famous before the 20th century’s Elgar, Williams, and Britten...
Copland was a composer, writer, composition teacher and conductor. The open, slowly changing harmonies of his music evoke vast landscapes and the pioneer spirit of America. Best known for his vernacular style of the 1930s and 1940s including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, and Fanfare for the Common Man...
Handel was a Baroque composer who spent most of his career in London, becoming naturalised British in 1727. He was well known for his operas, oratorios, concerti grossi, organ concertos and anthems. Handel trained in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg before settling in London in 1712. He started three opera companies to supply Italian opera to the English nobility. Handel is considered one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era with works such as Messiah, Water Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks and four coronation anthems; Zadok the Priest, composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at the coronation of every subsequent coronation during the anointing of the monarch...
Telemann was a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He became a composer against his family’s wishes and was almost self-educated musically...
Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. A child prodigy he was competent on both keyboard and violin from the age of five, performing before European royalty. Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court at 17 but grew restless and travelled to find a better position. He was dismissed from his post in 1781 while visiting Vienna where he stayed. During his final years, he composed many of his best-known works, including symphonies, operas, concertos, and parts of the Requiem which was unfinished at the time of his death at just 35
Johann Sebastian Bach was a composer and musician of the Baroque era. Best known for his instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and for vocal music such as St Matthew Passion. Since a Bach revival in the 19th century he has been regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time...
First broadcast in 1958, Blue Peter is a children’s television programme which has had continuous seasons since it was first aired and is the longest-running children’s TV show in the world...
Barry was a composer and conductor of film music. He composed scores for eleven of the James Bond movies between 1963 and 1987, and arranged and performed the ‘James Bond Theme’ to the first film, ‘Dr. No’ in 1962. Other scores include the Grammy and Academy Award-winning ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘Out of Africa,’ ‘Mary, Queen of Scots,’ and for the TV series ‘The Persuaders.’
Williams is a composer, pianist, and conductor regarded as the greatest film score composer of all time. He has composed some of the most popular, critically acclaimed, and most recognizable film scores in cinematic history and won 25 Grammy Awards, 7 British Academy Awards, 5 Academy Awards, and 4 Golden Globe Awards. Williams’ film scores include Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra Terrestial, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones...
Schumann was a composer, pianist, and music critic. Regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, Schumann left the study of law to pursue a career as a pianist but a hand injury ended his dream. Instead he turned his talents to composing and until 1840 he wrote exclusively for the piano. Later he composed for piano and orchestral works, and many Lieder...
Schubert is among the last of the Classical composers and among the first of the Romantic ones. His music is noted for its melody and harmony. He received a thorough education in music and won a scholarship...
Beethoven was a composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transition between the classical and romantic eras in classical music, and arguably one of the greatest composers of all time....
Haydn was a composer of the Classical era and instrumental in the development of chamber music. He spent much of his career as a court musician for the remote estate of the Esterházy family. This isolated him from other composers and music trends. However, Haydn’s music was circulated widely and he was the most celebrated composer in Europe...
King is an award -winning composer, singer, and actor. He is best-known as a member of the family ensemble, The King Brothers...
Chopin was a composer. His first published composition at aged 7 which was followed a year later as he began his performing career. He moved to Paris in 1832 and mixed with high society and was well known as a piano tutor...
Telemann was a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He became a composer against his family’s wishes and was almost self-educated musically. Before settling in Hamburg in 1721 as a musical director of the city’s five main churches, he held important positions in Leipzig, Eisenach, and Frankfurt. He is one of the most prolific composers in history and considered to be one of the leading composers of the time...
Best known for the instrumental ‘Eye Level’, the theme tune for the original Van der Valk television series...
Schubert was a composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He left behind a cast oeuvre despite his short life...
Corelli was a violinist and composer of the Baroque era. His music was significant in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto as well as the rise in the pre-eminence of the violin and the coalescing of the instruments tonality and functional harmony....
Johann Sebastian Bach was a composer and musician of the Baroque era. Best known for his instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and for vocal music such as St Matthew Passion. Since a Bach revival in the 19th century he has been regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time....
Morricone is a composer, orchestrator, trumpet player and conductor. He has composed over 400 scores for film and television and over 100 classical works...
Jarre is a composer, performer, and record producer. He is a pioneer of electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and well-known for his outdoor spectacular performances of music, lasers, fireworks, and visual projections...
