Stele

A stele (plural steles or stelai, from Greek: στήλη, stēlē) or stela (plural stelas or stelæ, from Latin) is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected as a monument, very often for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae may be used for government notices or as territorial markers to mark borders or delineate land ownership. They very often have texts and may have decoration. This ornamentation may be inscribed, carved in relief (bas, high, etc.), or painted onto the slab. Traditional Western gravestones are technically stelae, but are very rarely described by the term. Equally stelae-like forms in non-Western cultures may be called by other terms, and "stela" is most consistently used for objects from Europe, the ancient Near East and Egypt, China, and Pre-Columbian America.

History

Steles have also been used to publish laws and decrees, to record a ruler's exploits and honors, to mark sacred territories or mortgaged properties, as territorial markers, as the boundary steles of Akhenaton at Amarna, or to commemorate military victories. They were widely used in the Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and, most likely independently, in China and elsewhere in the Far East, and, more surely independently, by Mesoamerican civilisations, notably the Olmec and Maya.

Stele (disambiguation)

A stele (plural steles or stelai) is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected as a monument, very often for funerary or commemorative purposes.

Stele may also refer to:

Stele monuments

Other

Stele (Kurtág)

Stele, Op. 33, sometimes also stylised in Greek capitals as ΣΤΉΛΗ (stēlē), is a composition for orchestra by Hungarian composer György Kurtág. It was completed in 1994.

Composition

The composition was first conceived as a work for piano in 1993, which was dedicated to András Mihály. However, Kurtág completed the score for orchestra under the commission of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1994, while he was the composer-in-residence for the orchestra. The piece was first premiered in Berlin, on 14 December 1994, by the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado, both of these being the dedicatees. It was published later in 2003 by Editio Musica Budapest.

Structure

Stele is in three movements and takes up to thirteen minutes to perform. The three movements are kept untitled and are usually named by their tempo. All of the movements are meant to be played attacca. The movement list is as follows: