Stilton, Geronimo.

Summary: Geronimo Stilton participates in the New Mouse City Song Festival, after his friend Champ Strongpaws enters him.

Format: text

Publisher / Publication Date: Scholastic Paperbacks 2009

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Summary: Singer-songwriter Andrew Bird is a virtual one-man band - along with his vocal talents, he plays the violin, guitar, xylophone, and glockenspiel. The celebrated musician winds his instrumental techniques together with sophisticated electronic looping. Add in his uncanny ability to whistle anything, and he becomes not just a band but an orchestra. This TED presentation by Bird offers an ideal...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010

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Summary: How do musicians find the inspiration to create? Do most songwriters come up with lyrics first, or music? What does it mean to be a composer in today's high-tech world? This program addresses questions young people may have about embarking on a career in music or musical composition. Focusing on current styles like rock, techno, and hip-hop, the video includes interviews with a classically...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008

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Summary: Using Mozart's lively operatic piece, this program illustrates how composers weave together musical ideas to bring contrast and texture to their music. Abrupt pizzicatos, resounding fanfares, and languid melodies presented as a series of quick edits illustrate the point, along with an uninterrupted playback of a portion of the Overture.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: Inspired by Paganini's dedication to a soloist instrument, the violin, Chopin decided early in his career to write only for piano. This beautifully produced program presents a biography of the Polish-born child prodigy and composer who blended Slavic influences into his works. Sketches, paintings, and cinematic treatments of Chopin and his times complement the music. Archival footage includes...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Summary: One of Debussy's impressionistic Estampes, La soiree dans Grenade vividly recalls the landscapes and architecture of Spain and the Far East. Virtuoso pianist Martino Tirimo directs a thrilling master class in this program-enabling the diverse group of students gathered at London's Royal Academy of Music to achieve the atmospheric tonality that Debussy intended. Artists from the United States,...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Summary: Between the two of them, Wynton Marsalis and B.B. King have jazz, classical music, and the blues covered. What are these towering composer/musicians like as writers and performers-and as people? This NewsHour program shares a few moments of their lives to look deeper. Episodes include. * Wynton Marsalis-Jazzing the Pulitzer: Charlayne Hunter-Gault and a 35-year-old Wynton Marsalis talk...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008

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Summary: The Rhapsody in B Minor requires a range of sensibilities, from lightheartedness to a propensity for shock value. In this program, virtuoso pianist Martino Tirimo leads an engaging master class at London's Royal Academy of Music-pushing his students to find the essence of the Brahms piece, while encouraging each performer to craft his or her individual approach. Artists from the United States,...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Summary: This is a performance of the Messiah in the original scoring, performed as Handel intended it, with much smaller resources than we have become accustomed to and, therefore, a perfect balance between a small chorus and orchestra. Roger Norrington conducts the London Baroque Players (comprising leading specialists in 17th- and 18th-century instrumental practice), the Cardiff (Wales) Polyphonic...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: This program discusses the development of this ethereal instrument in 8th-century Ireland. We see how Irish monks introduced the harp to Europe, and follow its growth from a small, hand-held instrument into the standard 75-pound, 46-string instrument played today. Works by Handel, Mozart, Liszt, and Debussy, as well as music from Ireland and Switzerland, illustrate the harp's use through time.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: A close look at such rarities as the dulcimer and the hurdy-gurdy, as well as better-known instruments like the organ, harpsichord, and kettledrums.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008

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Summary: In 1701, Bartolomeo Christofori, a musician employed by the Medicis, invented the first piano by modifying a harpsichord. This program discusses how this popular instrument has changed over the years (except for its hammers), and how its flexibility and expressiveness have inspired composers such as Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Bartok.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: Two groups of instruments use strings as the primary source of sound: those in which plucking sets the strings in vibration, and the bowed strings. This program shows how the demand for more powerful sounds was met, and examines the instruments of Stradivari to determine what science can and cannot reveal about their magic. It also examines the ways in which scientific methods complement the...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: This program discusses the history and evolution of electronic music. The synthesizer's roots are traced from the 1920s to the invention of the "Trautonium"-a prototype of the modern synthesizer. Its acceptance in European music circles is discussed. Performances that include the synthesizer show how the development of the modern Moog synthesizer in the 1970s revolutionized contemporary music...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: Liszt frequently expanded upon the work of previous composers to create new musical forms. His transcription of Verdi's Rigoletto was part of a completely new style of piano composition. In this program, Martino Tirimo guides students toward a mastery of the Rigoletto paraphrase and an understanding of its compositional layers. Assembled at London's Royal Academy of Music, pianists from the...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005

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Summary: In the 11th century, European musicians tried to make their instruments sound like the human voice. Instead of plucking the strings, they began drawing a piece of wood or bone across them to sustain the tone. By Elizabethan times, the viol was the aristocrat of bowed instruments, while the violin was considered fit only for pubs and parties. This program shows how fashions as well as musical...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008

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Summary: The guitar is the national instrument of Spain, so it is appropriate that this program begins with the playing of the traditional vihuela. The story of the instrument's development over the next 400 years includes its replacement of that universal Renaissance instrument, the lute, in both Spain and Italy. Both guitar solo performances and guitar performances with voice appear throughout the...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: In this program, the orchestra uses lighthearted cafe music from the Milhaud ballet set in a Paris nightclub to illustrate how the use of various keys adds color to the musical landscape. Different instruments, performing the pieces in major and minor keys, give listeners a firsthand glimpse into how key changes add interest to music.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: Pipe organs are the most majestic of musical instruments, and each one is a unique work of art named after its designer. This program studies the painstaking craftsmanship in wood and metal that goes into pipe organ construction and illustrates the function of the instrument's many parts. The voicing process, in which the volume and tonal quality of a pipe organ is adjusted to suit the...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007

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Summary: No other instrument has been as important to the history of Western music as the piano. Since its invention in Florence three hundred years ago, the piano has become many things to many people-a bridge between the worlds of classical and popular music and the ultimate composer's companion. This program traces the ancestry of the instrument and the history of those composers who championed its...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: The development of reeds from those played loudly by the Saracens to frighten the Crusaders' horses, to the seventeenth-century forerunners of today's orchestral reed instruments.

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008

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Summary: Beginning with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, this program provides a detailed look inside that most distinctly American of film traditions, the musical comedy. Interviews with dancer Cyd Charisse, famous for her starring roles in MGM musicals, and Hermes Pan, renowned choreographer and collaborator with Fred Astaire, help to illuminate the advent and evolution of the genre. Excerpts...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009

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