As I mentioned yesterday, Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times top classical music critic, has created his list of the top 10 composers. As a classical music nerd, this was a fun column to follow as Mr. Tommasini outlined a musical period each day, and justified the candidacy for several composers until releasing the final list last week. I thought I might take the next 10 days to outline what I consider to be the most notable work of each of these masters included on the list. We'll begin with the VERY surprising selection of Bela Bartok at #10. It should be noted that I am not certain Bela Bartok would crack my top 50 much less my top 10!
Factoids:
- Bartok is widely regarded as the first ethnomusicologist.
- Ethnomusicology is musical study of a people.
- He traveled often, collecting and annotating folk music.
- Bartok was a fine pianist.
- He composed his famous 6-volume set Mikrokosmos to complement his son's piano studies.
- As discussed in earlier entries, a concerto is a piece written for solo instrument and orchestra.
- This makes a Concerto for Orchestra an interesting contradiciton.
- Bartok used this term as each instrumental section should be played soloistically, rather than several sections accompanying a solo instrument.
- Typically a concerto has three movements, and this has five.
Enjoy!
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