Pierre Henry

Pierre Henry (born 9 December 1927) is a French composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music.

Biography

Pierre Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of 15 with sounds produced by various objects. He became fascinated with the integration of noise into music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Paris Conservatoire from 1938 to 1948 (Dhomont 2001).

Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, which had been founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1943 (Dhomont 2001). During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the 1952 short film Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. Henry has scored numerous additional films and ballets.

Two years after leaving the RTF, he founded with Jean Baronnet the first private electronic studio in France, the Apsone-Cabasse Studio (Dhomont 2001).

Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno

The Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, for 40 and 60 voices, by Florentine Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio. It probably dates from 1565–6, during the reign of his employer Cosimo I de' Medici. Lost for more than 400 years, it was recently rediscovered in Paris. Most of the mass is for five separate choirs of 8 voices each, with the closing Agnus Dei being for five separate choirs of 12 voices each; all of the voice parts are fully independent. With its huge polychoral forces, climaxing on sixty fully independent parts, it is the largest known polyphonic composition from the entire era.

Background

The court of the Medici was long known for its patronage of the arts, including music, and the Medici rulers, from Lorenzo the Magnificent to Cosimo I de' Medici, were particularly noted for their love of music. Keenly aware that their status depended on not only employing the most talented artists and musicians, but having them create spectacular works and having them disseminated, they encouraged composers to write music which exceeded that of their contemporaries in size and scope. During the 1530s and 1540s, Francesco Corteccia, who was the principal composer for the first part of Cosimo's reign, wrote series of elaborate intermedii—groups of madrigals designed to be performed between the acts of plays, sung by actors in costume and accompanied by instruments. This musical form was one of the predecessors of opera.

Spooky Tooth

Spooky Tooth was an English rock band principally active, with intermittent breakups, between 1967 and 1974. In recent years, the band has been reconstituted at various points, and continues to perform occasionally.

Career

Crucial to their sound was their instrumentation; they were one of the relatively few rock acts of the time to adopt the twin keyboard approach (both an organ and a piano player).

They formed in October 1967, when Gary Wright joined the band Art. The band name Art only existed from April to October 1967. Art was renamed from The V.I.P.'s, as the name fitted better to the new musical direction taken on the album Supernatural Fairy Tales. Gary Wright held a significant role from the start. He wrote the majority of the first Spooky Tooth album, some even with record producer Jimmy Miller instead of band members.

The line-up changed several times, but typically was -

Pierre de la Rue

Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452 – 20 November 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. His name also appears as Piersson or variants of Pierchon and his toponymic, when present, as various forms of de Platea, de Robore, or de Vico. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the most famous and influential composers in the Netherlands polyphonic style in the decades around 1500.

Biography

Early life

La Rue was probably born at Tournai, in modern Belgium, and likely educated at the Notre-Dame Cathedral there, which had a substantial musical establishment. He may have been the son of Jean de la Rue, a master enlumineur of the town of Tournai.

While no records remain of his childhood, a Peter vander Straten (the Flemish equivalent of his name) is mentioned in the archives of the cathedral of Ste. Gudule in Brussels in 1469-1470, as an adult (tenor) singer; this is considered very likely to have been him. In 1471 he was in Ghent at the Jacobskerk as a part-time singer, paid from the cathedral's miscellaneous fund, suggesting he was brought in for special performances of polyphony. Subsequently he was employed in Nieuwpoort in 1472, at the church of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, probably initially as a temporary arrangement, but by the end of the year the church authorities hired him on a more permanent basis. He was no longer employed there by 1477/8 for his name had vanished from the account-book.

Lamb of God

Lamb of God (Greek: ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, amnos tou theou; Latin: Agnus Dei) is a title for Jesus that appears in the Gospel of John. It appears at John 1:29, where John the Baptist sees Jesus and exclaims, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

Although "Lamb of God" refers in Christian teachings to Jesus Christ in his role of the perfect sacrificial offering, Christological arguments dissociate the term from the Old Testament concept of a "scapegoat", which is a person or animal subject to punishment for the sins of others without knowing it or willing it. Christian doctrine holds that Jesus chose to suffer at Calvary as a sign of his full obedience to the will of his Father, as an "agent and servant of God". The Lamb of God is thus related to the Paschal Lamb of Passover, which is viewed as foundational and integral to the message of Christianity.

A lion-like lamb that rises to deliver victory after being slain appears several times in the Book of Revelation. It is also referred to in Pauline writings, 1 Corinthians 5:7 suggests that Saint Paul intends to refer to the death of Jesus, who is the Paschal Lamb, using the theme found in Johannine writings.