Introduction To Chopin

This volume contains 31 pieces from The First Term at the Piano, For Children, 10 Easy Pieces and 7 Sketches. The informative foreword includes Bartók's specific instructions on wrist and finer action, articulations and syncopation. Each piece is prefaced by a brief introduction.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

Known as a "pianist's composer," Chopin's love, passion and devotion to piano music resulted in over 200 compositions. This collection contains the more accessible pieces which still have vivd melodies and lush harmonies.

Includes theme from "Raindrop" Prelude, "Minute" Waltz, "Lullaby," "Fantaisie-impromptu," "Butterfly" Etude, "Military" and "Heroic" Polonaise, plus melodic highlights from the most familiar preludes, mazurkas, waltzes, and etudes. Features 23 piano arrangements. Bonus MP3 downloads are included for each song.

"The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile. In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837-1840, when he composed his iconic "Funeral March"-dum dum da dum-using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads-musical, political, social, personal-is woven through the "Funeral March" in Chopin's Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it's known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know. As part of her research into Chopin's world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists. The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways"--

An excellent collection in Hinson's At the Piano Series. Contains many of his most popular Mazurkas, Preludes, Waltzes, Nocturnes--plus others! Includes informative biographical information and performance suggestions for each work.

This book provides a general introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters. These methods have become a staple for the sequential analysis of data in such diverse fields as signal processing, epidemiology, machine learning, population ecology, quantitative finance, and robotics. The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from the underlying theory to computational implementation, methodology, and diverse applications in various areas of science. This is achieved by describing SMC algorithms as particular cases of a general framework, which involves concepts such as Feynman-Kac distributions, and tools such as importance sampling and resampling. This general framework is used consistently throughout the book. Extensive coverage is provided on sequential learning (filtering, smoothing) of state-space (hidden Markov) models, as this remains an important application of SMC methods. More recent applications, such as parameter estimation of these models (through e.g. particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques) and the simulation of challenging probability distributions (in e.g. Bayesian inference or rare-event problems), are also discussed. The book may be used either as a graduate text on Sequential Monte Carlo methods and state-space modeling, or as a general reference work on the area. Each chapter includes a set of exercises for self-study, a comprehensive bibliography, and a “Python corner,” which discusses the practical implementation of the methods covered. In addition, the book comes with an open source Python library, which implements all the algorithms described in the book, and contains all the programs that were used to perform the numerical experiments.

An intimate and thrilling portrait of the piano virtuoso, from Naxos, the world's leading classical music label-with two CDs and exclusive Web access.