passacaglia

• “Upon this as cantus firmus Brahms has developed what is known as a passacaglia; originally a rather slow and stately dance, but in musical use denoting a movement developed over a ground bass, or single harmonic foundation, the final result partaking somewhat of the nature of variations; but more of a sort of cumulative playing with musical elements, finally reaching a great degree of complexity, which, if well done, should also be a complexity of idea and a fullness and richness of expression.”

  The Masters and their Music A series of illustrative programs with biographical, esthetical, and critical annotations

• “Mr. Millepied's effort, set to Nico Mulhy's moody, fully orchestrated score based on the "passacaglia," a stately Baroque-era musical form rooted in court dance from Spain or Italy, is a mostly monotonous, unisex affair.”

  The Wall Street Journal: ABT's Rewards This Season Were in the Past

• “Shostakovich's score teems with deliberately overdrawn musical stereotypes and self-effacing ironies, which include a debauched Viennese waltz danced by a teetering drunk and irreverent glimmers of a faux-elegiac passacaglia.”

  The Wall Street Journal: A Rollicking and Riveting 'Lady Macbeth'

• “The familiar Welsh lullaby "All Through the Night" is the theme that underlies each movement: the first, a theme and variations, each one in a different key, the second a chaconne and then a passacaglia and, finally another set of variations.”

  The Washington Post: In performance: Emerson Quartet

• “The visions are set in the Opera House on Kobol...the same one Baltar and Head Six projected into in that beautiful scene with the passacaglia in the score.”

  Thoughts on Daybreak

• “One has only to think of the overwhelming pathos and power of a piece like Bach's C-minor passacaglia, or the poignancy of the return of the opening theme at the end of his Goldberg Variations, to recognize how artistically effective such a form, and such devices operating within the form, can be.”

  languagehat.com: THE POETRY OF THE INEFFABLE.

• “Their ghosts appeared, in the company of Nicholas Rubinstein, on the night when this stanch friend came to tell Ivan that, instead of the brief _passacaglia_ which he had modestly offered as his first piece on the concert programme, it had been decided -- on a hearing entirely arranged by”

  The Genius

• “This program is made up of six of the eight dances of your See Series, all inspired by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's passacaglia, Guardian Angel Sonata.”

  The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed

• “It serves as a haunting musical autobiography to the composer, quoting his 10th, first and fifth symphonies alongside his passacaglia from Lady Macbeth as well as his DSCH monogram his musical "signature", in which four repeated notes represent his first four initials.”

  The Guardian World News

• “Mr. Stein played these works, and a showier passacaglia by Muffat, with calm precision and fluidity.”

  NYT > Home Page

Show 10 more examples...