Dohnányi family

Dohnányi is a Hungarian family name belonging to a notable family of politicians and musicians descended from composer Ernő Dohnányi. The addition of "von" is the German equivalent to the letter Y / YI at the end of a family name of the Hungarian gentry. Its meaning is "of" = German "von".

Piano quintet

In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments. The genre particularly flourished in the nineteenth century.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the instrumentation most frequently consisted of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Following the phenomenal success of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 in 1842, which paired the piano with a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello), composers began to adopt Schumann's instrumentation. Among the most frequently performed piano quintets, aside from Schumann's, are those by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The piano quintet before 1842

While the piano trio and piano quartet were firmly established in the eighteenth century by Mozart and others, the piano quintet did not come into its own as a genre until the nineteenth century. Its roots extend into the late Classical period, when piano concertos were sometimes transcribed for piano with string quartet accompaniment. Not before the mid-nineteenth century was music ordinarily composed expressly for this combination of instruments. Although such classical composers as Luigi Boccherini wrote quintets for piano and string quartet, it was more common through the early nineteenth century for the piano to be joined by violin, viola, cello and double bass.

1 (number)

1 (one; /ˈwʌn/ or UK /ˈwɒn/, also called unit, unity, and (multiplicative) identity), is a number, a numeral, and the name of the glyph representing that number. It represents a single entity, the unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of unit length is a line segment of length 1.

As a number

One, sometimes referred to as unity, is the integer before two and after zero. One is the first non-zero number in the natural numbers as well as the first odd number in the natural numbers.

Any number multiplied by one is that number, as one is the identity for multiplication. As a result, one is its own factorial, its own square, its own cube, and so on. One is also the result of the empty product, as any number multiplied by one is itself. It is also the only natural number that is neither composite nor prime with respect to division, but instead considered a unit.

As a digit

The glyph used today in the Western world to represent the number 1, a vertical line, often with a serif at the top and sometimes a short horizontal line at the bottom, traces its roots back to the Indians, who wrote 1 as a horizontal line, much like the Chinese character 一. The Gupta wrote it as a curved line, and the Nagari sometimes added a small circle on the left (rotated a quarter turn to the right, this 9-look-alike became the present day numeral 1 in the Gujarati and Punjabi scripts). The Nepali also rotated it to the right but kept the circle small. This eventually became the top serif in the modern numeral, but the occasional short horizontal line at the bottom probably originates from similarity with the Roman numeral I. In some countries, the little serif at the top is sometimes extended into a long upstroke, sometimes as long as the vertical line, which can lead to confusion with the glyph for seven in other countries. Where the 1 is written with a long upstroke, the number 7 has a horizontal stroke through the vertical line.

Ernő Dohnányi

Ernő Dohnányi (Hungarian: [ˈɛrnøː ˈdohnaːɲi]; July 27, 1877 – February 9, 1960) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor. He used a German form of his name, Ernst von Dohnányi, on most of his published compositions. The "von" implies nobility, and, according to the biography by his third wife, his family was ennobled in 1697 and given a "seal," which she describes in some detail.

Biography

Dohnányi was born in Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia). He first studied music with his father, a professor of mathematics and an amateur cellist, and then, when he was eight years old, with Carl Forstner, organist at the local cathedral. In 1894, in his seventeenth year, he moved to Budapest and enrolled in the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music, studying piano with István Thomán and composition with Hans von Koessler, a cousin of Max Reger. István Thomán was a favorite student of Franz Liszt and Hans von Koessler was a devotee of Johannes Brahms music. These two influences played an important role during Dohnányi's entire life: Liszt in his way of playing piano and Brahms in his compositions. Dohnányi's first published composition, his Piano Quintet in C minor, earned the approval of Johannes Brahms, who promoted the work in Vienna.

C minor

C minor (abbreviated c or Cm) is a minor scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, and B♭. The harmonic minor raises the B♭ to B♮. Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with naturals and accidentals as necessary.

Its key signature consists of three flats. Its relative major is E-flat major, and its parallel major is C major.

Usage

In the Baroque period, music in C minor was usually written with a two-flat key signature, and some modern editions of that repertoire retain that convention.

Of the two piano concertos that Mozart wrote in a minor key, one of them (No. 24, K. 491) is in C minor.

C minor has been associated with heroic struggle since Beethoven's time. Beethoven wrote some of his most characteristic works in the key of C minor, including the Symphony No. 5 and no fewer than three piano sonatas. (See Beethoven and C minor.)

Brahms's first symphony and first string quartet were composed in C minor; these were both genres with which Beethoven was closely associated during Brahms's lifetime.