The History Of Classical Music

The turn of the 17th century represents not only the golden age of the Venetian Republic, but one of the most variegated moments in the history of Western art music. The innovations of the Venetian School, influential far beyond the confines of its native lagoon, represent the culmination of a stylistic evolution in a period of aesthetic transition from the high Renaissance to the early Baroque. The instrumental music of “La Serenissima” is celebrated not only for the enormous historical, cultural, and artistic inheritance that it represents, but, quite simply, for its sheer beauty. La Pifarescha incorporates a fascinating and diverse selection of instruments. Shawms, sackbuts, cornetts, trumpets, bagpipes, dulcians, flutes, fiddles, lutes, viols, percussion, and many others, join together to alternate the sounds of "alta” with the “bassa cappella", offering a highly variable sonority unique to this group.Thus, La Pifarescha traces the evolution from the alta cappella to the noble consort of cornetts and sackbuts, which appeared on the scene during the renaissance and flourished in the early baroque, often expanding its ranks to include keyboards, strings, and voices.

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Each disc of this Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented in chronological order but they do appear here in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through the repertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be presented in its entirety (in the case of this disc, Op 48). The folksongs of 1894 will be shared between all the singers in the series.

This two-LPs-on-one-CD package is essential listening for anyone who is seriously interested in either British blues, the Rolling Stones' early sound, or the history of popular music, in England or America, during the late '50s and early '60s. In England during the years 1957-1962, jazz and blues used to intermix freely, especially among younger blues enthusiasts and more open-minded jazzmen – by 1963, most of the former had gone off to form bands like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, etc., with guitars a the forefront of their sound, while the latter (most notably British blues godfather Alexis Korner) kept some jazz elements in their work.

A unique collector's edition is a "climbing on the history of music" for 20 centuries from ancient times (Greece) to the present day. "History of Music", the 20-disc collection. Starting with the ancient music, music of the Middle Ages continued, Renaissance and Baroque music and ending the era of romanticism and modernity.