John Barry: Moviola Context Born in 1933 as John Barry Prendergast, the budding young musician worked closely with film from a young age. His father owned a cinema in York, and it was here that his love for film music was born. Barry undertook his national service with the British Read more…
Ethel Smyth: Serenade in D Context Dame Ethel Smyth is one of the most important British composers that bridged the gap between the 19th and 20th centuries. She composed a number of orchestral works, chamber music, songs and six operas. Also a talented writer, Smyth also penned 9 books (in Read more…
Franz Liszt: Totentanz Context Completed in 1849, Totentanz (‘Dance of the Dead’) is a fiery work for solo piano and orchestra by Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt. The work is primarily based on the Dies irae melody, which Liszt takes and develops into a powerful set of variations. Liszt was known Read more…
Arturo Márquez: Conga del Fuego Context Arturo Márquez was born in Sonora, Mexico in 1950. Surrounded by a musical family, Márquez studied composition with the likes of Federico Ibarra, Hector Quintanar, and Joaquín Gutierrez Heras. His use of Latin American styles in his music makes Márquez a highly popular composer Read more…
Maurice Ravel: Boléro Context Composed originally as a ballet that was commissioned by the Russian actress Ida Rubinstein, Maurice Ravel’s orchestral work Boléro is his most famous composition. Before composing Boléro in 1928, Ravel had composed music for ballets including suites for ballet and full large-scale ballet scores. For instance Read more…
Ralph Vaughan Williams: In the Fen Country Context Inspired by the fairly bleak and desolate East Anglian marshland, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ In the Fen Country is one of his earliest orchestral works. The Fens, known for being flat and dull, was an interesting, and perhaps unusual inspiration for Vaughan Williams. Read more…
Alexander Glazunov: Oriental Rhapsody Context Composed in 1889, Alexander Glazunov’s Oriental Rhapsody was one of many orchestral works by Russian composers that took great inspiration from East Asia. This vein of Russian exoticism is also seen in works by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Igor Stravinsky. The five-movement work is Read more…
Hildur Guðnadóttir: Bathroom Dance Context In 2018, Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir was announced as the composer for the 2019 thriller, The Joker. Alongside Director Todd Phillips, Guðnadóttir composed a lot of the music based on her reactions to filmed scenes and script ideas. Guðnadóttir was allowed to flex her creative Read more…
Ralph Vaughan Williams: 49th Parallel Prelude Context Unlike in America, the British film industry in the 1930-40s did not specifically employ specialist film composers to write scores for films. Instead, popular concert composers were asked, as was the case for the 1941 war drama 49th Parallel. In 1940, conductor Muir Read more…
Elisabetta Brusa: Firelights Context Italian-British composer Elisabetta Brusa is an award-winning musician with a wealth of experience in the music industry. Her music has been performed by some of the top orchestras in the world including the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, and The Women’s Philharmonic. Read more…