Meeting in Music: Brown AW

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Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

3/23/2009

Anne Wiggins Brown: soprano who created the role of Bess

From The Times (March 21, 2009). In the 1945 Hollywood film biography of George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, the music is performed by several celebrated artists who play themselves. They include Anne Wiggins Brown, shown on screen singing Summertime. A decade earlier Brown had earned her place in the history of American opera as Bess in the world premiere of Porgy and Bess.

In watching and listening to Brown in those few minutes of film, one can easily conclude that had she been born two generations later, she would have become a leading star in opera internationally. Her glorious lyric soprano, with its strength, tonal gleam and sheer effortlessness — a sound easily imaginable as Mozart’s Pamina or Gounod’s Marguerite — was complemented by a slim figure, a ravishing face and exceptional sincerity and naturalness.

Unfortunately, during Brown’s vocal prime African-American artists were not welcome in their nation’s few professional opera companies — when Porgy and Bess was given its premiere, Marian Anderson’s appearance at the Metropolitan Opera was still 20 years in the future). Brown finally relocated to Europe, but even there she never enjoyed the prominence in opera that her talent deserved.

While noting that “Anne Brown is truly one of the most forgotten pioneers among black singers in the 20th century,” Dr Naomi André, a musicologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, noted that, thanks to Brown’s creation of Bess, “her voice is central for us in thinking about an African-American presence in opera”.

Brown was born in Baltimore in 1912, one of four daughters of a noted physician and his musically gifted wife. Having shown talent at an early age, she received encouragement in her high school’s excellent music programme. She attended Morgan State College, Baltimore, before Juilliard Institute (now the Juilliard School) in New York offered the 16-year-old soprano a scholarship.

While undertaking graduate studies at Juilliard, Brown heard that George Gershwin was writing an opera for Broadway. The Theatre Guild held hundreds of auditions in its search for classically trained performers to make up the almost completely African-American cast. Brown, however, was bold enough to write directly to Gershwin, asking to sing for him.

In a captivating, richly detailed 1995 interview published in The George Gershwin Reader, Brown recalled her association with the composer. It began at his apartment with a lengthy private audition. Brown returned on many occasions at Gershwin’s invitation so that she could sing through newly written passages from the opera for him (he sometimes sang the duets and ensembles with her). When remembering the lunches that they would enjoy together during those sessions, Brown added that “he would sometimes, once or twice, invite me into his bed. Of course, I never went there.”

Brown declining those romantic overtures clearly did not diminish her affection and admiration for Gershwin — after his death in 1937, she joined several other leading artists performing for a memorial concert at the Hollywood Bowl. She regarded him as “a lovable big brother” and herself, in those early months of acquaintance, as his “guinea-pig”. Expecting to be given a small part in the opera, she was surprised when Gershwin cast her as Bess. His dramatic source was the 1927 play Porgy by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, but Gershwin entitled his new work Porgy and Bess, a decision surely inspired by Brown’s singing. It was after repeated urging from her that Gershwin — who had intended Summertime for the character of Clara, early in the opera — inserted a reprise for Bess in Act Three.

Many years after creating Bess, Brown admitted to feeling “very schoolgirlish” during the initial rehearsals. This fallen woman was foreign to her conservative upbringing, as were the opera’s rowdier and more violent elements. But Brown mastered every aspect of the role; Eva Jessye, the original production’s much admired chorus master, later described Brown’s portrayal as “heartwrenching”.

On October 10, 1935, after trying out in Boston, Porgy and Bess opened at the Alvin Theatre, New York. Olin Downes’s New York Times review singled out just a few performers, including the 23-year-old female lead: “The fresh tone, admirably competent technic (sic), and dramatic delivery of Anne Brown as Bess was a high point of interpretation.” After a run of only 128 performances, the opera toured to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Chicago before winding up in Washington.

Brown — along with Todd Duncan, the first Porgy — refused to sing in that city’s segregated National Theatre. Solely for this engagement the policy was changed, and at the National Porgy and Bess played to integrated audiences.

There was no chance of Brown’s success as Bess leading to opportunities in the “standard” operatic repertoire. She did return to Broadway in the Heywards’ 1939 play Mamba’s Daughters and in the triumphant Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess in 1942. That year she and Todd Duncan also made a bestselling recording of highlights from Gershwin’s opera.

Anxious to avoid being known exclusively for one role, she left the production after six months. Her Bess, however, was later heard in Sweden (1943, 1948) and in Copenhagen (1945).

Brown gave recitals for a few years in America, frequently encountering a level of racial prejudice that disturbed her profoundly.

During a successful 1946 European tour she had sung in Norway, which, shortly thereafter, she decided to make her home. Subsequently she became a citizen of her adopted country and a well-known figure in its musical life.

Continuing to give concerts throughout Europe, as well as in South America, Brown also added Dido and Aeneas, The Consul and The Medium to her stage repertoire.

After a lung ailment ended her performing career in the 1950s, she took up voice teaching at a drama school in Oslo, where her pupils included Liv Ullmann.

In later years Brown was an honoured guest for the first Porgy and Bess productions seen at the Metropolitan Opera (1985) and Glyndebourne (1986). On numerous occasions she was asked for reminiscences of the world premiere. Her appearance in a 1987 television documentary, George Gershwin Remembered, showed her to be a deeply thoughtful and appealing woman, still beautiful in her mid-seventies.

In 1998 the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore made amends for rejecting the teenage Anne Brown by awarding her the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to American Music.

Brown was married to the physician Floarda Howard, the chiropodist Jack Petit and the writer-philosopher Thorleif Schjelderup (the latter was also a bronze medallist in ski jumping at the 1948 Olympics). All three marriages ended in divorce, and she is survived by two daughters.

Anne Wiggins Brown, soprano, was born on August 9, 1912. She died on March 13, 2009, aged 96.
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National Public Radio’s website offers clips of Anne Brown singing Summertime, My Man’s Gone Now and What You Want Wid Bess, as well as a 10-minute excerpt from Nicole Franklin’s upcoming documentary Meet Bess.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102059526 READ MORE...