Étude

An étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd/; French pronunciation: ​[eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, of considerable difficulty, and designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Études written in the 20th century include those related to traditional ones (György Ligeti), those that require wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage), and ones that are unusually easy to play.

19th century

Studies, lessons and other didactic instrumental pieces composed before the 19th century are very varied, without any established genres. The pieces in lute instruction books, such as the celebrated Varietie of Lute-Lessons (1610), may be arranged in order of increasing difficulty, but will usually include both simple teaching pieces and masterworks by renowned composers. Domenico Scarlatti's 30 Essercizi per gravicembalo ("30 Exercises for harpsichord", 1738) do not differ in scope from his other keyboard works, and Johann Sebastian Bach's four volumes of Clavier-Übung ("keyboard practice") contain everything from simple organ duets to the extensive and difficult Goldberg Variations.

The Etude

The Etude was a U.S. magazine dedicated to music, which was founded by Theodore Presser (1848–1925) at Lynchburg, Virginia, and first published in October 1883. Presser, who had also founded the Music Teachers National Association, moved his publishing headquarters to Philadelphia in 1884, and his Theodore Presser Company continued the magazine until 1957.

Targeted as much as possible to all musicians, from the novice to the serious student to the professional, The Etude printed articles about both basic/popular and more-involved musical subjects (including history, literature, gossip, and politics), write-in advice columns about musical pedagogy, and graded piano sheet music totaling over 10,000 works. Long-time editor James Francis Cooke (editor-in-chief from 1909 through 1949) added to its masthead the phrase "Music Exalts Life!", and the magazine became a platform for Cooke's somewhat polemical and militantly optimistic editorials. The Etude's sometimes conservative outlook and contents may have contributed to its circulation decline during the 1930s and 1940s, but in many respects it moved with the times, unequivocally supporting the phonograph, radio, and eventually television, and embracing jazz by the late 1930s. By the end, George Rochberg was an editor of The Etude (under Guy McCoy, who had succeeded Cooke as editor-in-chief after over two decades as an assistant), and the magazine's musical content became more in-step with the contemporary.

Étude (instrumental)

"Étude" is a single by musician Mike Oldfield, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). It is from the album The Killing Fields, the soundtrack album for the film of the same name . It was reissued in 1990, when it was used in a commercial for Nurofen. The 1990 release also featured a track called "Gakkaen" by The Ono Gagaku Kai Society.

"Étude" is taken from the Francisco Tárrega piece "Recuerdos de la Alhambra".

Music video

The music video for "Étude" which appears on the Elements – The Best of Mike Oldfield video shows a boy watching parts of The Killing Fields on a television from a reel-to-reel tape machine and looking through photographs. The boy also plays with a Fairlight CMI, which the soundtrack album was composed on.

Track listing

7-inch vinyl

12-inch vinyl

1990 release

References

Moya

Moya may refer to:

Names

Places

Other uses

See also

Moya (architecture)

In Japanese architecture moya (母屋) is the core of a building. Originally the central part of a residential building was called moya. After the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century, moya has been used to denote the sacred central area of a temple building. It is generally surrounded by aisle like areas called hisashi. In temples constructed in the hip-and-gable style (irimoya-zukuri), the gabled part usually covers the moya while the hipped part covers the aisles.

A butsuden's floor plan

The drawing shows the floor plan of a typical Zen main butsuden such as the one in the photo above at Enkaku-ji in Kamakura. The core of the building (moya) is 3 x 3 ken wide and is surrounded on four sides by a 1-ken wide hisashi, bringing the external dimensions of the edifice to a total of 5 x 5 ken. Because the hisashi is covered by a pent roof of its own, the butsuden seems to have two stories, but in fact has only one.

This decorative pent roof which does not correspond to an internal vertical division is called mokoshi (裳階・裳層, also pronounced shōkai), literally "skirt story" or "cuff story".

List of Farscape characters

This article contains information about fictional characters in the television series Farscape.

Main characters

John Crichton

John Robert Crichton, Jr. /ˈkraɪtən/, played by Ben Browder, is an International Aeronautics and Space Administration (most commonly referred to on the show as IASA) astronaut who, in the opening few minutes of the pilot episode, is accidentally catapulted through a wormhole across the universe, thus setting the scene for the show as a whole. As the only regularly appearing human on the show, he is the main focus and is the main character as he narrates the weekly credits and is the only character to appear in every episode. Along with Michael Shanks' character of Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, Browder's Crichton has been called one of the sexiest male characters in science fiction.

Although Crichton is a heroic and unwaveringly loyal character, he is also a mischievously comical one, so much so that he is the primary source of humor for the series. The show derives much of its humor from Crichton's habitual (and extensive) use of Earth-related pop culture references, often used as witty mockery in the face of danger or opponents who, being unfamiliar with the references, are unaware that they are being insulted. Although an occasional reference will provoke curiosity or confusion to his friends, Crichton's fellow shipmates are largely unaffected by these comments because they simply assume them to be native Earth terms that cannot be interpreted by translator microbes and merely extrapolate the meaning from its context.