Leslie Van Houten

Antonin Dvorak vs. Howard Shore What makes a great composer, one who will stand the test of time and create sounds that evoke feelings such as love, anger, happiness, or sadness inside the listener? While listening to various classical music pieces, one might discover that, although composers develop their own distinct characteristics while creating various, new styles unique to their own individuality, they have many well-defined similarities. The time period in which the composition was…

Totentanz or Dance of the Dead Paraphrase on Dies Irae for pianoforte and orchestra, S. 126 is a symphonic piece written for piano and orchestra by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886). Liszt initially planned the piece in 1838 and finished the first version in 1849. In 1853 and 1859 he revised it before finally publishing it in 1865. Hans von Bülow, to whom Liszt dedicated the work, was the soloist in the April 15, 1865, premiere with the Diligentia Musical Society of The Hague,…

Photographers who photograph landscapes must also often “wait for the right light to capture that perfect moment” (shawacademy.com). If the lighting is too bright and harsh, the image can appear washed out, overexposed, and dull and lifeless in color. If the lighting is softer, as often found during the “golden hour,” most colors have more contrast and appear vibrant and alive. The “golden hour” occurs just after sunset or sunrise, when the colors in the sky appear redder and the sun’s lighting…

Night Cafe Who was Vincent Van Gogh? And why the night cafe is one of his masterpiece and most famous painting? In the Modernist world there were so many fabulous and famous paintings but in this essay I want to focus in Vincent Gogh.Vincent Gogh was born on March 30 of 1853 in Netherland. He studied paintings while living in Paris in 1886. He was a Dutch artist whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th-century art. He never married he declared his love to Eugénie Loyer, but she reject…

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Vienna on January 27, 1756. He was born to a mother, father, and sister. There were more children, but no one lived past childhood. Wolfgang was a determined and musically smart little boy. He knew what he was doing behind a set of piano keys. He was a prodigy to say the least. He accomplished more in a lifetime then most could in two lifetimes. Over the course of his thirty-five years on earth he composed around 600 compositions. Mozart’s family…

Research Summary The Painting I chose for this research is “Byzantine nun and priest by Paul Emile Borduas. My research process started off with trying to figure out what the painting meant without actually looking it up. I attempted to find who, what, where, when and how from visual information only. When officially started to research about "Byzantine nun and priest," I couldn't find much information about the painting itself but more about the artist's life. Finding sources that were…

My Friend, Fear The sky filled with wonders and colors, decorates my canvas with shades of blue and orange. My city of Los Angeles is a place full of people with inspiration and talented artists. Many of us consider this city as a sanctuary, to express our feelings of sadness and happiness, through art work. I had an amazing opportunity to get into one of the most prestigious art schools in California. Choosing this pathway, has lead me to find my special someone. Destiny has driven our…

Mason Taylor 4th Hour 7 November 2017 Dual Literature Gustav Holst vs. John Williams Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite heavily influenced the soundtracks for John Williams’s Star Wars movies. This is shown through each production’s use of rhythm, tone, and orchestration. Gustav Holst - creator of famed suite, The Planets - is widely considered one of the best-loved 20th-century English composers, and is actually more serious of a composer than one might assume from listening to The Planets.…

Edward Hopper’s dark oil painting, Nighthawks inspired me. Nighthawks is something I never want the world to look like. His art inspired me to be the change. The dark colors used made New York City feel like a sad and lonely place. I wanted to change this. The city is bright, loud, and filled with energy and this art goes against what the city is known for. This is related to me because I am not a sad and lonely person. I deviated from the original to show my bright attitude. I used color to…

Listening to a song is like watching the stars. Anytime a song is authentic and shines of its own light, it reverberates a sound that originated thousands of years ago into the present. When I first met Niccolò Castiglioni on March 13, 1993, in the concert hall “Puccini” of the Conservatory "G. Verdi" in Milan, the subject of our conversation was exactly this aspect of the language and its principles of permanence and resistance to change. On that afternoon, Gianpaolo Bisanti was conducting…