Joseph Elliott Needham Cooper (7 October 1912 – 4 August 2001), pianist and… Read Full Bio ↴Joseph Elliott Needham Cooper (7 October 1912 – 4 August 2001), pianist and broadcaster, best known as the chairman of the BBC's long-running television panel game Face the Music.
Cooper was born at Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol, England. He was educated at Clifton College, and then at Keble College, Oxford, where he was an organ scholar, During the 1930s he worked initially as a church organist and piano teacher before joining the GPO Film Unit, where he wrote incidental music for documentaries, including Mony a Pickle (1938) and A Midsummer Day's Work (1939). Here his colleagues included the poet W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten. He had already embarked on a promising career as a concert pianist when the outbreak of World War II forced him to give up the concert platform for the duration of hostilities. He resumed his career in 1946, studying briefly with Egon Petri and making his London debut in 1947.
Cooper made a number of successful recordings and also began broadcasting on radio. In 1954 he accepted an invitation to work on the BBC radio quiz show Call the Tune. In 1967 the show transferred to television under the title Face the Music. Transmitted on BBC2 and repeated on BBC1, it ran until 1979 and was briefly revived in 1983-4. The show kept Cooper in the public eye, and the "Hidden Melody" round, a regular feature of the show in which he improvised in the style of a composer and cloaked a well-known tune in his elaboate extemporization, served as a vehicle for his great pianistic talent. Face the Music also featured the Dummy Keyboard, in which Cooper played a well-known piano piece on a silent keyboard and the panel had to identify it. The music was gradually faded in for viewers at home.
During the 1960s, Cooper occasionally appeared as one of the presenters of Here Today, a daily 15-minute light current affairs programme broadcast by the independent company TWW, which served South Wales and the West of England. He became known for his acerbic, rather irascible interviewing style and for the fact that he regularly played out the programme with a gentle piano piece.
Cooper was awarded the OBE in 1982. He was married twice, first to Jean Greig from 1947 until her death in 1973, and then Carol Borg, from 1975 until her death in 1996.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cooper"
Cooper was born at Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol, England. He was educated at Clifton College, and then at Keble College, Oxford, where he was an organ scholar, During the 1930s he worked initially as a church organist and piano teacher before joining the GPO Film Unit, where he wrote incidental music for documentaries, including Mony a Pickle (1938) and A Midsummer Day's Work (1939). Here his colleagues included the poet W.H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten. He had already embarked on a promising career as a concert pianist when the outbreak of World War II forced him to give up the concert platform for the duration of hostilities. He resumed his career in 1946, studying briefly with Egon Petri and making his London debut in 1947.
Cooper made a number of successful recordings and also began broadcasting on radio. In 1954 he accepted an invitation to work on the BBC radio quiz show Call the Tune. In 1967 the show transferred to television under the title Face the Music. Transmitted on BBC2 and repeated on BBC1, it ran until 1979 and was briefly revived in 1983-4. The show kept Cooper in the public eye, and the "Hidden Melody" round, a regular feature of the show in which he improvised in the style of a composer and cloaked a well-known tune in his elaboate extemporization, served as a vehicle for his great pianistic talent. Face the Music also featured the Dummy Keyboard, in which Cooper played a well-known piano piece on a silent keyboard and the panel had to identify it. The music was gradually faded in for viewers at home.
During the 1960s, Cooper occasionally appeared as one of the presenters of Here Today, a daily 15-minute light current affairs programme broadcast by the independent company TWW, which served South Wales and the West of England. He became known for his acerbic, rather irascible interviewing style and for the fact that he regularly played out the programme with a gentle piano piece.
Cooper was awarded the OBE in 1982. He was married twice, first to Jean Greig from 1947 until her death in 1973, and then Carol Borg, from 1975 until her death in 1996.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cooper"
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Prelude in G Minor
Joseph Cooper Lyrics
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The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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@tombonespilbo
@@1ndonlysolena. plenty of composers were homosexual..
Tchaikovsky, Britten, Saint-Saens, Copland, Barber. Ethel Smyth to name a small handful.
Also hasten to add these famous black composers:
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, Nathaniel Dett.
Female composers: Ruth Gipps, Morfydd Owen, Ethel Smyth, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Florence Price.
And these are the dead ones.
The living composers are quite something.
Not all straight, white and male and there are plenty out there being discovered, unearthed and enjoyed. One ill informed attention seeking tiktok doesn't represent the industry at large.
@accountno5571
Corelli was gay
Lully was gay
Handel was gay
Schubert was gay
Tchaikovsky was gay
Britten was gay
Poulenc was gay
Copland was gay
Bernstein was gay
John Cage was gay
Chopin was bisexual
Hildegard of Bingen was a woman
Clara Schumann was a woman
Fanny Hensel was a woman
Amy Beach was a woman
Rebecca Clarke was a woman
Lilli and Nadia Boulanger were women
Cécile Chaminade was a woman
Ethyl Smyth was a woman who was a lesbian
Florence Price was black
Samuel Colridge Taylor was black
Scott Joplin was black
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges was black
William Grant Still was black
George Walker was black
These are all dead composers just to show that even Classical music's history is diverse. Yes there are definitely problems with representation of these composers, and how their music has been received and appreciated, but to categorise Classical Music as inherently racist is vastly oversimplified and ignores the contributions and identities of these talented composers. Today Classical Music is more diverse than ever with people from all different backgrounds, ages, nationalities, gender identies expressing themselves through music. This list didn't even begin to cover performers, which have been historically even more diverse than composers.
@accountno5571
@ADumbMidget At least your username is honest. If you're only pretty sure of something, perhaps you should read a book to become more certain of it.
Chopin wrote love letters to his classmate Tytus Woyciechowski.
Schubert may have been bi or gay, but it is at least evident that he was queer.
Handel is believed to have frequented circles in which homosexuality was commonplace and accepted, such as Burlington House and Cannons, the homes of the Earl of Burlington and the Duke of Chandos. He had no wife. Corelli moved in similar circles and lived closely with male companions.
Lully developed close ties with the homosexual circle established by the King of France's brother at the time.
Britten had Peter Pears as his long term romantic partner. John Cage had Merce Cunningham as his.
Tchaikovsky diary entries and letters to his brother explicitly state his romantic feelings for men.
Bernstein's wife has confirmed he was gay. Copland was part of a group of gay composers with him, he travelled openly with the men who he was in relationships with.
Poulenc was openly gay.
Need I go on...? Perhaps if you're not going to do some reading of scholarly articles, a quick Google search would help remedy your ignorance.
@tommack9395
Yes, Only someone who knows nothing about western music can even rationalize the statement. We build upon what we already have.
There are no 12 semitones scales without Pythagoras working out 5ths ... there would be no diatonic scales, would be no tempered scale without J.S. Bach.
Classical is influenced by folk and folk influences by classical.
All folk music, blues, jazz, rock, soul, hip-hop and all use the elements of melody and more important harmony from all the above. Heck, most modern day ethnic music in Africa even use western elements.
@theajoestar
as a black girl, i can confirm i dont give a shit. if it sounds good im gonna listen to it. its not racist its music💀💀
@hencytjoe
It's not racist because they wrote it to impress the audience, not to oppress black people. Most of them probably never met a black person in their entire life, so why would they actively make stuff against black people?
@theajoestar
@@hencytjoe for real. but somehow its always the people that arent of colour that are so annoyed about this.🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️
@The_Killah29
It's racist cus it's White culture, and for some reason White culture needs to be absolutely demolished. :/
@Dimensionalalteration
Cheers
@UnaMandagora
@Garraway Prox they mostly wrote it to survive paycheck to paycheck, we glorify them but there was dozens of musicians at that time, some better and some worse, just happened that the best got remembered, doesn't mean they were wealthy tho. Bethoven died in poverty, for example and he never married
@KadoTheLion
As a classical violinist, this woman is insane
@ericfrate2124
Thank you from another musician. I'm pretty sure to speak for all Musicians. Music theories is definitely something important.
@BboyKeny
"Everything is sexist, homophobic and racist. And you have to point it all out." - Anita Sargeezian
@m4tta
who knew i, as a middle eastern child, was actually a victim of racism when playing violin