Born April 2, 1873, on the estate of Oneg in the province of Novgorod, Russia, Sergei Vassilyvitch Rachmaninoff was the fifth of the six children of Vassili and Lyoubov Boutakova Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff's aristocratic descent was traced to the Hospodars Dragosh, rulers of the realm of Molday from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. One of the daughters from this family had married a son of the Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow. The son's nephew was named Rachmanin, and from this source the family name originated.1 Rachmaninoff's mother was the daughter of a general, head of Araktcheyev Military College in Novgorod and the owner of a number of estates in the district. It was with a dowry of five of these estates that Lyoubov Boutakova married Vassili Rachmaninoff, and on one of these estates, Oneg, the couple settled down to married life.

The chorale Wie schðn leuchtet der Morgenstern was popular from its very outset in 1589. That it has retained its popularity down to the present day is evident by its continually appearing in hymnbooks and being used as a cantus in organ compositions as well as forming the basis for other media of musical composition. The treatment of organ compositions based on this single chorale not only exemplifies the curiously novel attraction that this tune has held for composers, but also supplies a common denominator by which the history of the organ chorale can be generally stated.

The first chapter outlines the history of percussion instruments used by Béla Bartók, The second chapter deals with the use of percussion by various composers from Bach's time up to the period of Bartók. Chapter three outlines how Bartók uses percussion instruments.

The five Preludes, Op. 15 were composed in the year 1897 while Scriabin was occupied in concert tours with his friend and publisher, Beliaef. This year brought no less than forty-seven short preludes written at various times and collected in five sets: Opp. 11, 13, 15, 16, and 17. These preludes, though clever and original in melody, show the great influence of Chopin on Scriabin.

A collective description and analysis of the first three Prussian sonatas of Bach

Most of Domenico Scarlatti's harmonic progressions are quite orthodox when considered abstractly or free of their positioning in the score. The harmonic movement is given interest by subtle alterations in time; for example, (1) simultaneous upper and lower voices of different lengths, when repeated several times, change their relationship with each other; (2) one voice may be simply delayed so that it lags behind the other voice, thus combining to produce irregular harmonic sound on many succeeding beats; (3) the combination of two or more chords appearing on one beat is similar to number (2) but does not necessarily occur more than once.