Johan Halvorsen (Norway-1864-1937)

Johan Halvorsen (15 March 1864 – 4 December 1935) was a Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist.

Born in Drammen, Norway he was an accomplished violinist from a very early age and became a prominent figure in Norwegian musical life. He received his musical education in Kristiania (now Oslo) and Stockholm, and was a concertmaster in Bergen before joining the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He was a concertmaster in Aberdeen, Scotland, then a professor of music in Helsinki, and finally became a student once again, in St Petersburg, Leipzig (with Adolph Brodsky), Berlin (with Adolf Becker), and Liège (with César Thomson).


Returning to Norway in 1893, he worked as conductor of the theatre orchestra at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen and of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. He became concertmaster of the Bergen Philharmonic in 1885, and principal conductor in 1893. In 1899 he was appointed conductor of the orchestra at the newly-opened National Theatre in Kristiania, a position he held for 30 years until his retirement in 1929.

As well as theatre music, Halvorsen conducted performances of over 30 operas and also wrote the incidental music for more than 30 plays. Following his retirement from the theatre he finally had time to concentrate on the composition of his three great symphonies and two well-known Norwegian rhapsodies.

Halvorsen's compositions were a development of the national romantic tradition exemplified by Edvard Grieg though written in a distinctive style marked by brilliant orchestration. Halvorsen married Grieg's niece, and orchestrated some of his piano works, such as a funeral march which was played at Grieg's funeral.

His two best known works today are the Bojarenes inntogsmarsj (Entry March of the Boyars) and Bergensiana, along with his passacaglia and sarabande on a theme by Handel for violin and viola.

Selected compositions

Operetta

* Mod Nordpolen; in 3 Acts

Orchestra

* Bojarenes inntogsmarsj (Entry March of the Boyars) for Orchestra (or Concert Band) (1895)
* Festovertyre (Norwegian Festival Overture), Op. 16 (1899)
* Nächtlicher Zug from Miniatures for String Orchestra, Op. 29 No. 2 (1910); arrangement by the composer
* Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in Memoriam, Op. 30 (1910)
* Norway's Greeting to Theodore Roosevelt, Op. 31 (1910)
* Suite ancienne to the Memory of Ludvig Holberg, Op. 31 (1911)
* Festmarsj (Festival March). Op. 32
* Scène funèbre
* Sérénade, Op. 33 (1913)
* Bergensiana, Rococo Varations on an Old Melody from Bergen "Jeg tog min nystemte Cithar i Hænde" (I Took Up My Newly Tuned Zither) (1913)
* Norske rapsodie No. 1 (Norwegian Rhapsody No. 1) in A Major (1919–1920)

1. Springar
2. I went so lately to my bed
3. Halling - Springar

* Norske rapsodie No. 2 (Norwegian Rhapsody No. 2) in G Major (1919–1920)

1. Dance tune from Åmot
2. Han Ole
3. Springar

* Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (1923)
* Symphony No. 2 "Fatum" in D Minor (1924, revised 1928)
* Symphony No. 3 in C Major (1929)
* Norske eventyrbylleder (Norwegian Fairy-tale Pictures), Op. 37 (1933); reworking of 1925 incidental music

1. Peik, prinsessen og stortrollet (Peik, the Princess and the Big Troll)
2. Prinsessen kommer ridende på bjørnen (The Princess Comes Riding on a Bear)
3. Trollenes inntog i berget det blå (Entry of the Trolls into the Town Hall)
4. Dans av småtroll (Dance of the Little Trolls)

* Festovertyre (Norwegian Festival Overture), Op. 38
* Elegi for String Orchestra
* Forspill til den hvite Ring
* Rabnabryllaup uti Kraakjalund, Norwegian Folk-Song Arrangement for String Orchestra

Incidental music

* Gurre, Op. 17; music for the play by Holger Drachmann
* Nordraakiana
* Askeladden
* Reisen til Julestjernen (Journey to the Christmas Star); music for the play by Sverre Brandt
* Tordenskjold, Op. 18; music for the historical play by Jacob Breda Bull
* Kongen (The King), Op. 19; music for the play by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
* Fossegrimen, Op. 21; music for the play by Sigurd Eldegard
* Vasantasena; music for the old Indian play
* The Merchant of Venice; music for the Shakespeare play
* Much Ado about Nothing (1915); music for the Shakespeare play
* Livet i skogen, Op. 33; music for Shakespeare's As You Like It
* Dronning Tamara (Queen Tamara); music for the play by Knut Hamsun
* Macbeth (1920); music for the Shakespeare play

Concert band

* Hallingdal Bataljon's Marsj (1882–1883)
* Gatemarsj (Street March)
* Norwegian Sea Picture
* Salutation to the Royal Couple of Norway

Concertante

* Air norvégien (Norwegian Air) for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 7 (1896).
* Veslemøy's Song for Violin and Orchestra (1898); dedicated to Kathleen Parlow
* Norwegian Song "The Old Fisherman's Song" for Violin and String Orchestra, Op. 31 (1901, 1913)
* Andante Religioso for Violin and Orchestra (1903)
* Concerto in G Major for Violin and Orchestra (1909)
* Bryllupsmarsch, Norwegian Wedding March for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 32 No. 1
* Danses norvégiennes No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra (1915)
* Danses norvégiennes No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra (1915)

Chamber music

* 6 Stimmungsbilder (6 Mood Pieces) for Violin and Piano (1890)
* Suite in G Minor for Violin and Piano (1890)
* Danses norvégiennes for Violin and Piano (1897)
* Elegie (Andante) for Violin and Piano (1897)
* Passacaglia in G Minor on the Theme by Georg Friedrich Händel (from Harpsichord Suite in G minor, HWV 432) for Violin and Viola (1897)
* Sarabande con Variazioni in G Minor on the Theme by Georg Friedrich Händel for Violin and Viola (1897)
* Crépuscule for Violin and Piano (c. 1898)
* Suite Mosaïque for Violin and Piano (1898)

1. Intermezzo orientale
2. Entr'acte
3. Scherzino – "Spurven" (The Sparrow)
4. Veslemøys sang (Veslemøy's Song)
5. Fête nuptial rustique (An Old-fashioned Wedding)

* String Quartet in E, Op. 10
* Little Dance Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 22
* Slåtter, Peasant Dances for Violin Solo (1903)
* Miniatures, 5 Easy Pieces for 2 Violins and Piano, Op. 29 (1910)
* To serenader (Two Serenades) for Violin and Piano
* Norske viser og danse (Norwegian Folk Songs and Dances), 30 Folk Arrangements for Violin and Piano
* Concert Caprice on Norwegian Melodies for 2 Violins

Choral

* Varde, Cantata for Male Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 11 (1904); words by Per Sivle
* Alrune for Soprano Solo, Female Chorus and Chamber Orchestra, Op. 20 No. 1
* Kantate ved kroningen i Trondhjems Domkirke den 22 juni 1906 for Soprano, Baritone, Mixed Chorus, Orchestra, Harp and Organ, Op. 27 (1906); words by Sigvald Skavlan
* Bergensiana for Mixed Chorus Read more...

Constant Lambert (British-1905-1951)

Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 1905 – 21 August 1951) was a British composer and conductor.

Early life

Lambert was the son of Russian-born Australian painter George Lambert. Educated at Christ's Hospital and the Royal College of Music, Lambert was a prodigy, writing orchestral works from the age of 13, and at 20 received a commission to write a ballet for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Romeo and Juliet).

For a few years he enjoyed a meteoric celebrity, including participating in a recording of William Walton's Façade with Edith Sitwell. Lambert's most famous composition is The Rio Grande for piano solo, chorus and orchestra. A recording survives with Hamilton Harty as the soloist and the Hallé Orchestra conducted by the composer. Lambert had a great interest in American Negro music, and once said that he would have ideally liked The Rio Grande to feature a black choir.

Career

During the 1930s, his career as a conductor took off with his appointment with the Vic-Wells ballet (later The Royal Ballet), but his career as a composer stagnated. His major choral work Summer's Last Will and Testament (after the play of the same name by Thomas Nashe), one of his most emotionally dark works, proved unfashionable in the mood following the death of the King (George V), but Alan Frank hailed it at the time as Lambert's "finest work".[3] Lambert himself considered he had failed as a composer, and completed only two major works in the remaining sixteen years of his life. Instead he concentrated on conducting, and appeared at Covent Garden and in BBC broadcasts, and accompanied the ballet in European and American tours.

The war took its toll of his vitality and creativity, and his health declined with the development of diabetes which remained untreated for years owing to his fear of doctors, stemming from childhood.

Lambert was famous in his day as a raconteur and, unusually for an Englishman, as an expert on many different arts, and on modern European culture.He was also one of the first "serious" composers to understand fully the importance of jazz and popular culture in the music of his time. This is illustrated by his book Music Ho! (1934), subtitled "a study of music in decline", which remains one of the wittiest, if highly opinionated, volumes of music criticism in the English language.


He was at the centre of a brilliant literary and intellectual circle including Michael Ayrton, Sacheverell Sitwell and Anthony Powell, and despite Powell's denial, he is often said to be the prototype of the character Hugh Moreland in Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time.

As a conductor he had an instinctive appreciation of Liszt, Chabrier, Waldteufel and romantic Russian composers, and made fine recordings of some of their works. However, it was only when his health was declining that his career had a chance to flourish with the development of the BBC Third Programme and the Philharmonia Orchestra, having struggled for many years to extract vital performances from second-rate ensembles.

Personal life

Lambert was married twice. His first marriage was to Florence Kaye[5], and they had a son, Kit Lambert (born in 1935). In 1947 he married the artist Isabel Nichols, with whom he had a daughter, actress Anne Lambert. After Constant Lambert's death, Isabel married Alan Rawsthorne. Lambert had an on-and-off affair with the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn which began when Fonteyn was only 17 years old. It was rumored at the time that Fonteyn became pregnant to Lambert but had an abortion. According to friends of Fonteyn, Constant was the great love of her life and she despaired when she finally realised he would never marry her. Some aspects of this relationship were symbolised in his ballet Horoscope (1938).

Later life

Lambert died on 21 August 1951, two days short of his forty-sixth birthday, of pneumonia and undiagnosed diabetes complicated by acute alcoholism, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. His son Kit was buried in the same grave in 1983.

Major works

List of compositions by Constant Lambert

Ballets:

* Romeo and Juliet (1925)
* Pomona (1927)
* Horoscope (1938)
* Tiresias (1950)

Choral and vocal:

* Eight poems of Li Po (1928)
* The Rio Grande (1929) (based on a poem by Sacheverell Sitwell)
* Summer's Last Will and Testament (1936; to words by Thomas Nashe)
* Dirge from Cymbeline (1947)

Orchestral:

* Piano Concerto (1924) (ed. Shipley/Easterbrook - premiered Mark Gasser 2001 Christ's Hospital)
* The Bird Actors Overture (1924)
* Music for Orchestra (1927)
* Aubade Heroique (1941)

Chamber

* Concerto for Piano and 9 Instruments (1931)

Instrumental

* Piano Sonata (1930)
* Elegy, for piano (1938)
* Trois pieces negres, pour les touches blanches, piano 2 hands (1949)

Film Music

* Merchant Seamen (1940)
* Anna Karenina (1948) Read more...

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William Wallace (Scottish-1860-1940)

(b Greenock, 3 July 1860; d Malmesbury, 16 Dec 1940). Scottish composer and writer on music. The son of an eminent Scottish surgeon, he was educated at Fettes College and took medicine at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities. He then studied ophthalmology in Vienna and Paris, practising briefly in London. In 1889 he turned from medicine to music, entering the RAM for a year, his only formal musical training. His compositions began to be performed at the Crystal Palace and Queen's Hall, notably the symphonic poem The Passing of Beatrice in 1892. Wallace wrote widely in journals, editing the New Quarterly Musical Review for a few years. He examined the physiological and psychological aspects of music in his books The Threshold of Music and The Musical Faculty, two of the best contributions to the subject area. He was honorary secretary of both the Philharmonic Society (1911–13) and the Society of British Composers. During the war years Wallace worked again as a doctor and in later life became librarian and professor of harmony and composition at the RAM.
Wallace's series of symphonic poems made him the first British exponent of the genre, modelling them on those of his idol Liszt both formally and stylistically; Villon (1909) was his most successful essay. He also drew on Scottish idiom in A Scots Fantasy and the Jacobite Songs, coupled with Wagnerian influences in The Massacre of the Macpherson (c1910). In Wallace ad 1305–1905 he used the traditional melody ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled'. He was stylistically more advanced and less conservative than his compatriots MacCunn and Mackenzie, but his music is primarily that of a thinker, although in his first book, The Threshold of Music (London, 1908), he gave the view ‘there is no mental process which in any respect resembles music’.

WORKS

instrumental

Sym. poems: no.1 ‘The Passing of Beatrice’, after Dante, perf. 1892 (1911); no.2 ‘Amboss oder Hammer’, after J.W. von Goethe, perf. 1896; no.3 ‘Sister Helen’, after D.G. Rossetti, perf. 1899; no.4 ‘Greeting to the New Century’, perf. 1901; no.5 ‘Wallace ad 1305–1905’, perf. 1905; no.6 ‘Villon’, perf. 1909 (1910)

Other: Suite, A, orch, n.d.; A Scots Fantasy, suite, orch; An American Rhapsody, orch, 1891; The Lady from the Sea, suite after Ibsen, orch, perf. 1892; Pf Trio, A, 1892; Sym. Prelude, after Aeschylus, perf. 1893; In Praise of Scots Poesie, ov., perf. 1894; Suite in the Olden Style, arr. pf (1896); Sym. ‘The Creation’, ?1899, perf. 1899; Pelléas et Mélisande, suite after M. Maeterlinck, orch, 19
vocal

Brassolis (lyric tragedy in one act); Choral Sym. ‘Koheleth’ (Bible: Ecclesiastes); Lord of Darkness (scena, L.E. Mitchell), Bar, orch, 1890; Missa brevis e votiva de Assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis, duabus vocibus, vv, female chorus, 1891; Spanish Improvisations, vocal qt, pf, 1893 (1911); My Soul is an Enchanted Boat (P.B. Shelley), Bar/C, vn, pf, 1896;

The Rhapsody of Mary Magdalene (scena, Wallace: The Divine Surrender), 1v, orch, 1896; Freebooter Songs (Wallace), song cycle, perf. 1899, vs (1899) [orig. with orch]; Jacobite Songs (Wallace), song cycle, 1900 (1901); Lords of the Sea (Wallace), song cycle, 1901 (1901); The Outlaw (ballad, Wallace), Bar, male chorus, orch, 1908 (1908); The Massacre of the Macpherson (Burlesque ballad), male chorus, orch, perf. c1910 (1910); 3 Songs (W. Blake) (1911); many single songs and short choral pieces



WRITINGS

MS documents and letters in GB-En and Lbl

The Divine Surrender: A Mystery Play (London, 1895)

The Threshold of Music: an Inquiry into the Development of the Musical Sense (London, 1908)

The Musical Faculty: its Origins and Processes (London, 1914)

Richard Wagner as he Lived (London, 1925)

Liszt, Wagner and the Princess (London, 1927)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove3 (H.C. Colles/J.A. Fuller Maitland)

Obituary, MT, lxxxii (1941), 40

H.G. Farmer: A History of Music in Scotland (London, 1947), esp. 435–6, 526–7

L. Foreman: From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters 1900–1945 (London, 1987)

J. Purser: Scotland's Music (Edinburgh and London, 1992), 223–5

R. Stradling and M. Hughes: The English Musical Renaissance 1860–1940: Construction and Deconstruction (London, 1993)

C. Ehrlich: First Philharmonic: a History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford, 1995)

M. Musgrave: The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (Cambridge, 1995)

DUNCAN J. BARKER
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Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988) (born Leon Dudley Sorabji) was a British composer of Parsi origin. He was a music journalist and pianist.
He occupies a curious place in the repertoire. Most of his works are of extraordinary length and difficulty, making them inaccessible to many pianists. One of his most famous works, "Opus Clavicembalisticum"—the fame enhanced by once being listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest piano work ever written—has a reputation as a mythic, nearly impossible staple of the super-virtuoso repertoire. However, its difficulties are not insurmountable, and it has been recorded several times. Many of his major piano works have not been recorded at all, and some others have had recordings of selected movements only. Much of his work is very melodic with combinations of lush, piquant and dissonant harmonies. The record label Altarus intends to eventually release a full discography of the composer's work.

Biographical details

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was born Leon Dudley Sorabji in Chingford, Essex (now Greater London). His father was a civil engineer of Parsi parentage from Mumbai, his mother a singer of Spanish and Sicilian ancestry. (He never visited India, Spain or Sicily; a visit to Paris seems to have been his only trip abroad.) He later changed his name to demonstrate his strong identification with his Parsi heritage. He explained why he did this. Sorabji: A Critical Celebration, edited by Paul Rapoport includes his response to the suggestions that his name was not his real one:
"It is also stated that my name, my real name, that is the one I am known by, is not my real name. Now one is given one's name - one's authentic ones - at some such ceremony as baptism, Christening, or the like, on the occasion of one's formal reception into a certain religious Faith. In the ancient Zarathustrian Parsi community to which, on my father's side, I have the honour to belong, this ceremony is normally performed, as in other Faiths, in childhood, or owing to special circumstances as in my case, later in life, when I assumed my name as it now is or, in the words of the legal document in which this is mentioned "... received into the Parsi community and in accordance with the custom and tradition thereof, is now and will be henceforth known as..." and here follows my name as now."
As a critic, he was loosely connected to the "New Age" Magazine group surrounding A. R. Orage. His critical publications were of concentrated bitterness, weight, and sharpness, yet they were wickedly funny and displayed an extreme mistrust of the English public taste. Among his best publications are essays about Busoni, Reger, Szymanowsi, and Bernard van Dieren. Studies about Tantric Hinduism led him to his essay Metapsychical motivation in music and to his Tantrik Symphony.
His works were influenced by Alkan, Busoni (to whom his second piano sonata is dedicated), Godowsky, Reger, Szymanowski, Scriabin, and Delius. He was friends with Philip Heseltine, who wrote music under the pseudonym Peter Warlock, and became a music journalist in part because of their friendship.
His work Opus Clavicembalisticum (1930) for solo piano takes between about 3¾ and 4¾ hours to play and consists of three sections, each divided into several movements, and each larger than the last. It was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest piano piece ever written. The accuracy of this claim has been disputed as Sorabji himself wrote works of even greater length. His fifth piano sonata Opus Archimagicum, Sequentia Cyclica Super Dies Irae ex Missa Pro Defunctis, and the complete set of 100 Transcendental Studies—all have substantially longer durations than Opus Clavicembalisticum. His longest work Symphonic Variations occupies 484 A3-pages of manuscript in three volumes and could take about eight hours to play.
Characteristic is his use, inspired by Busoni, of baroque forms—chorale prelude, passacaglia, and fugue—with harmonies, melodies, and approaches that are not neoclassical

as usually understood.
Many details of his life were for a long time hard to come by as Sorabji was extraordinarily reticent about his life. He was notorious for almost always refusing requests for interviews or information, often with rude messages and warnings not to approach him again. This has led to numerous misunderstandings, for instance, that he lived in a castle, probably because the village in which he lived was named Corfe Castle. He was equally notorious for refusing permission for his works to be publicly performed. Since he had independent financial means, he felt no need to be tactful in his dealings with the public, critics, and musicians interested in performing his works.

His home, which he named "The Eye", had a sign at the gate: "Visitors Unwelcome."


The group of musicians who have tackled Sorabji's often extremely difficult works includes: Michael Habermann, Soheil Nasseri, Donna Amato, John Ogdon, Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Jonathan Powell, Yonty Solomon, Ronald Stevenson, Reinier Van Hoult, Tellef Johnson, Fredrik Ullén, Kevin Bowyer, Carlo Grante, Daan Vandewalle, and Marc-André Hamelin.

Selected List of Works

This is adapted from Sorabji: A Critical Celebration below, with permission, together with information from the brochure of the Sorabji Archive. Many of the manuscripts have been edited, and copies of the original manuscripts, and of the new editions, are available from the Sorabji Archive.


Works for orchestra

Poem, Chaleur, a short piece for orchestra (1917)
Symphony No. 1 for piano, organ, chorus and large orchestra (1921–1922)
Opusculum, a fairly short piece for orchestra (1923)
Symphony No. 3 "Jāmī" for baritone solo, wordless chorus, and large orchestra (including piano and organ) (1942–1951)
(The second symphony, 1930–1931, was intended for piano, large orchestra, organ, a final chorus, and six solo voices; only the piano part was completed, though this is, in number of pages, itself longer than the Opus Clavicembalisticum and seems to be a self-sufficient work.)
Messa alta sinfonica (Symphonic High Mass) (8 soloists, 2 choirs and orchestra.) (1955–1961)

Works for piano with orchestra

Eight Piano Concertos (no. 1, 1915–1916 to no. 8, 1927–1928, some unpublished, full score of no. 2 missing. The numbering used by Rapoport et al. is based on rediscoveries and reconstructed chronology, not on the numbers given in contemporary publications or even on the manuscript (eg. "Concerto V" written 1927–1928 seems to have been the eighth in order of composition.)
Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (orchestrated in 1953–1956 from the first book of the three-book piano work written in 1935–1937)
Opus clavisymphonicum—Concerto for Piano and Large Orchestra (1957–1959)
Opusculum clavisymphonicum vel claviorchestrale (Little Work for Keyboard and Orchestra) (1973–1975)

Works for Voice and Orchestra

Music to "The Rider by the Night" (text, Robert Nichols), only exists in full score
Cinque Sonetti di Michelangelo Buonarroti (baritone and chamber orchestra)

Works for Bells

Suggested Bell-Chorale for St. Luke’s Carillon (St. Luke's Church, Germantown, Philadelphia)

Songs

The Poplars (Ducic, translated Selver) (2 versions)
Chrysilla (de Régnier)
Roses du Soir (Louÿs)
l’Heure Exquise (Verlaine)
Vocalise (2 versions)
Apparition (Mallarmé)
Hymne à Aphrodité (Tailhade) (2 versions)
l’Étang (Rollinat)
I was not Sorrowful (Dowson)
Le Mauvais Jardinier (Gilkin) (incomplete)
Trois Poèmes (Baudelaire and Verlaine)
Arabesque (Shamsu’d-Dīn)
Trois Fêtes Galantes (Verlaine)
Trois Poèmes du “Gulistān” de Sa‘dī (translated Toussaint) (2 versions)
l’Irrémédiable (Baudelaire)
Vocalise “Movement”
Three Songs (Baudelaire and Verlaine)
Frammento Cantato


Chamber works

Primary among these are the two piano quintets, written 1919–1920 and 1932–1933 (a lengthy work at 432 pages, challenging Morton Feldman's String Quartet II for longest chamber work status). New typeset editions of all of the chamber works are available from the Sorabji Archive.
Concertino non grosso (4 violins, viola, and cello)
Il Tessuto d’Arabeschi (flute and string quartet)
Fantasiettina Atematica (oboe, flute, and clarinet) Read more...

Michael Daugherty (American 1954)

Biography
Early years
The centerpieces of the modest Daugherty home, located at 1547 5th Avenue S.E. in Cedar Rapids, were a player piano, television, and record player. At the age of 8, Daugherty taught himself how to play piano by pumping the pedals of the player piano and watching how piano keys moved to Tin Pan Alley tunes such as Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Music was a significant activity in the Daugherty family, especially during the holidays when relatives would participate in jam sessions of popular songs like Misty and Sentimental Journey. Additionally, the Daugherty family would frequently gather around the television in the evening to watch popular variety hours such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The record collection at the Daugherty home consisted mainly of 'easy listening music' of the fifties and music from Broadway theatre.

During his developmental years, Daugherty's mother encouraged him to paint, draw cartoons, tap dance, and play basketball and his father and uncle Danny Nicol taught him how to play rock and jazz drums. From 1963-67 Daugherty played bass drum in the Emerald Knights and tom-toms in Grenadier Drum and Bugle Corps where he competed against other Drum and Bugle Corps throughout small Midwestern towns. During these years, Daugherty was employed as an early morning paper boy for The Des Moines Register and delivered papers across his neighborhood and to Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Traveling was an important pastime for the Daugherty family. They often took long summer road trips down two-lane highways to tourist locations, including Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls and Miami Beach, Florida. In 1964, the entire Daugherty family took a two-week vacation to London, England where The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix were at the height of their fame and Carnaby Street was the cutting edge of pop culture and fashion - this was in the heart of the Swinging Sixties.

The sixties in America were a time of great political unrest and social change. This made a great impact on the teenage Daugherty; Civil Rights demonstrations for racial equality and integration and demonstrations against the Vietnam War were becoming common day occurrences in Iowa, especially at the nearby University of Iowa, in Iowa City.

From 1968-72, Daugherty was the leader, arranger, and organist for his high school rock, soul, and funk band "The Soul Company". This band performed a variety of Motown charts and music by James Brown, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Sky and the Family Stone. Because accessing sheet music was almost impossible, Daugherty learned to hand-transcribe the music by listening to vinyl recordings. With the help of his father, who drove the band across the state, "The Soul Company" became a locally popular group that performed at high school proms, dances, and other events.

During the same years, Daugherty was a piano accompanist for the Washington High School Concert Choir, a solo jazz piano performer in nightclubs and lounges, and he appeared on local television as the pianist for the country and western Dale Thomas Show. Daugherty interviewed jazz artists who performed in Iowa, including Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, George Shearing, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and he wrote articles on their music for the high school newspaper. During the summers of 1972-77, Daugherty played Hammond organ at county fairs across the Midwest for various popular music stars such as Bobby Vinton, Boots Randolph, Pee Wee King, and members of The Lawrence Welk Show.

Education in America and Europe
Daugherty studied music composition and jazz at North Texas State University (later the University of North Texas) from 1972-76. His teachers of composition included Martin Mailman and James Sellars. Daugherty also played jazz piano in the Two O-Clock Lab Band. It was after hearing the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber that Daugherty decided to devote his full energies into composing music for the concert stage. In 1974, conductor Anshel Brusilow programmed a new work with the North Texas State University orchestra, Daugherty was 20 years of age. After his premiere of Movements for Orchestra, the composition faculty awarded Daugherty a fellowship, which allowed him to continue his musical studies at the university. Daugherty received a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from North Texas State University in 1976.

That same year, Daugherty moved to New York City to experience the exploding new music scene. While there, he studied serialism with Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music for two years, and received a Master of Music in Composition degree in 1977. To earn money for his studies, Daugherty was employed as an usher at Carnegie Hall and a rehearsal pianist for dance classes directed by the New York City Ballet dancer Jacques d'Amboise.


Daughterty at IRCAM, 1979
Daugherty frequently attended "uptown" and "downtown" new music concerts in New York City; this is where he became acquainted with composers such as Milton Babbitt, Morton Feldman, and Pierre Boulez. In 1978, Boulez, then the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, invited Daugherty to apply to his recently opened computer music institute in Paris: IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique). A Fulbright Fellowship enabled Daugherty to move to Paris to study computer music at IRCAM from 1979-80. During his time at IRCAM, he met many composers such as Luciano Berio, Gérard Grisey, Todd Machover, and Frank Zappa. In Paris, Daughery had the opportunity to hear contemporary music by the leading European composers of the time performed by the Ensemble l'Itinéraire and Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain. He also attended analysis classes given by Betsy Jolas at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.

In the fall of 1980, Daugherty returned to America to pursue doctoral studies in composition at the Yale School of Music. During that time, Jacob Druckman (who was one of America's most influential composers) was chair of the composition department at Yale and composer in residence with the New York Philharmonic. Daugherty studied with Druckman and other Pulitzer Prize winning composers at Yale, including Bernard Rands and Roger Reynolds. He also studied improvisational notation systems and open form with experimental music composer Earle Brown. Daugherty’s composition class at Yale included student composers who would later become unique and important voices in contemporary music: Bang on a Can composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe; along with Robert Beaser, Aaron Jay Kernis, Scott Lindroth, and Betty Olivero.

At Yale, Daugherty wrote his dissertation on the relationship between the music of Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler and the writings of Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He worked closely on this dissertation with John Kirkpatrick, who was the curator of the Ives Collection at Yale and gave the 1938 premiere of Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord Sonata. Daugherty also continued his interest in jazz where he worked with Willie Ruff and directed the Yale Jazz Ensemble. It was Ruff who introduced Daugherty to jazz arranger Gil Evans, who, at that time, was looking for an assistant. For the next several years, Daugherty traveled by train from New Haven to Evans private studio on the lower Westside of Manhattan. Daugherty helped Evans organize his music manuscripts and complete projects. The most notable project was the reconstruction of the lost arrangements of Porgy and Bess, which was originally used for the 1958 recording with Miles Davis.

During the summer of 1981, Daugherty studied composition with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Mario Davidovsky as a composition fellow at Tanglewood, which, at that time, was renowned as a bastion of abstract and atonal music. It was at Tanglewood that Daugherty met the composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. After hearing Daugherty's music at Tanglewood, Bernstein encouraged Daugherty to seriously consider integrating American popular music with concert music. In the early 1980s, Bernstein's eclectic attitude was rarely shared by composers of "serious" contemporary concert music.

One year later, in the summer of 1982, Daugherty traveled to Germany to attend the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik - Darmstadt International Summer Courses in New Music). Darmdstadt was one of the leading centers for new music in Europe, where the musical aesthetics of Theodor W. Adorno were still of great influence. Daugherty attended lectures given by composers, including Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and performances by the Arditti String Quartet. At Darmstadt, Daugherty became friends with the trumpet player Markus Stockhausen, the son of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Together they formed an experimental improvisation ensemble (Stockhausen on trumpet and electronics and Daugherty on synthesizers) that, over several years, performed in concert halls and clubs across Europe.

Daugherty was invited by composer György Ligeti to study composition with him at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. In addition to attending Ligeti’s composition seminar (which took place at his apartment in Hamburg), Daugherty traveled with Ligeti to attend concerts and festivals of his music throughout Europe. At the time, Ligeti was interested in the music of Conlon Nancarrow, who lived in isolation in Mexico City and composed complex polyrhythmic music for player pianos. The player piano (by now an antique) was a familiar and nostalgic musical instrument to Daugherty. Daugherty met Nancarrow in Graz, Austria, when Ligeti introduced Nancarrow and his music to the European intelligentsia at the 1982 ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) World Music Days. During following two years (1983-84), Daugherty continued to study with Ligeti while employed as a solo jazz pianist in night clubs in Cambridge, England and Amsterdam. To create "original" music, Ligeti encouraged and inspired Daugherty to find new ways to integrate computer music, jazz, rock, and American popular music with concert music. In the fall of 1984, Daugherty returned to America and devoted his career to do just that.

Teaching:
Oberlin, Michigan, Residencies, and Service
Daugherty is an active educator of young composers and advocate for contemporary music. As an Assistant Professor of Composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1986-91), Daugherty organized guest residencies of composers with performances of their music; these included Luciano Berio, John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Roger Reynolds, Kenneth Gaburo, Morton Subotnick, Herbert Brun, and Salvatore Martirano. Daugherty also organized the 1988 Electronic Festival Plus Festival, which took place at Oberlin and featured music from over 50 composers. At Oberlin, Daugherty (playing synthesizer) also performed and recorded with jazz trumpet legend Donald Byrd who taught there from 1987-89.

In 1991, Daugherty was invited to join the composition faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music (Ann Arbor). He replaced Pulitzer Prize winning composer Leslie Bassett, who retired after 40 years of service to the university. Daugherty was co-chair of the composition department with composer William Bolcom from 1998-2001, and chair of the department from 2002-06. As a Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, Daugherty has been and continues to be a mentor to many of today's most talented young composers, many who been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, have won composer awards from BMI and ASCAP, and have received commissions from important orchestras, wind ensembles, and chamber ensembles, such as eighth blackbird, Kronos Quartet, and Dogs of Desire. These composers include, among others: Richard Adams, Stacy Garrop, Derek Bermel, Gabriela Frank, DJ Sparr, Joel Puckett, David Little, Roshanne Etezady, Armando Bayolo, Kristen Kuster, Andrew Bishop, Daniel Roumain, Felicia Sandler, Stephen Newby, Carter Pann, Alexandra Vrebalov, Christopher Dietz, Ian Dicke, Elizabeth Kelly, Joshua Penman, David Schober, Kevin Beavers, James Lee III, Andrea Reinkemeyer, Alexis Bacon, William Zuckerman, Matthew Tommasini, Manly Romero, David Maki, and Arlene Sierra. Many of Daugherty's former students are also professors of composition at major universities and schools of music across America and abroad.

At the University of Michigan, Daugherty has organized residencies of guest composers with performances of their music; these include Henryk Górecki, Louis Andriessen, Michael Colgrass, David Lang, Tania Leone, Michael Torke, Joan Tower, and Betsy Jolas. He has also composed many new works, including Niagara Falls (1997) and Bells for Stokowski (2002), for the University of Michigan Symphony Band and its two most recent conductors, H. Robert Reynolds (directorship 1975-2001) and Michael Haithcock (directorship 2001-present).

Daugherty has served as a final judge for the Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) Student Composers Awards, the Guadeamus International Composers Competition, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Elaine Lebenborn Award for Female Composers. He has also been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and other arts organizations. Daugherty has served as a composer mentor for reading sessions of young composers music by organizations such as the American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Composers Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Omaha Symphony, and the Young Composers Institute in Apeldoorn (Netherlands).

Daugherty is active as an advocate of new music with numerous orchestras throughout America. He was the Composer-in-Residence with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999-2003), Louisville Orchestra (2000), Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-02), Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2001-04, 2006-08), Westshore Symphony Orchestra (2005-06), Eugene Symphony (2006), the Henry Mancini Institute (2006), and Music from Angel Fire Chamber Music Festival (2006).

Daugherty is a frequent guest composer at American universities and schools of music, where he gives master classes on his music and works with young composers and student ensembles. Institutions of higher learning who have invited Daugherty include, among others, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado at Boulder, Rice University, Northwestern University, Syracuse University, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of North Texas, Vanderbilt University, Louisiana State University, Appalachian State University, University of Southern California, Eastman School of Music, The Hartt School, Juilliard School of Music, and Shenandoah University, Conservatory of Music.

In 2001, Daugherty was invited to present his music with performances by the United States Air Force Band at The Midwest Clinic "The Midnight Special" in Chicago, Illinois. Additionally in the Chicago area, Daugherty has frequently participated in the Ravinia Festival Community Outreach program which is designed to promote and encourage new music by student ensembles in the Chicago Public Schools. Daugherty continues to work with many youth orchestras, wind ensembles, and bands across the country.

Awards and honors
Daugherty has received numerous awards, distinctions, and fellowships for his music, these include: the Kennedy Center Freidheim Award (1989) for his compositions Snap! and Blue Like an Orange, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992), the Guggenheim Foundation (1996), and the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2000). In 2005, Daugherty received the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra Composer's Award, and in 2007, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra selected Daugherty as the winner of the A. I. duPont Award. Also in 2007, Daugherty was named "Outstanding Classical Composer" at the Detroit Music Awards and received the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for his composition Raise the Roof for Timpani and Symphonic Band.

Works List
Orchestra
New Work for Chorus and Orchestra (2009)
Letters from Lincoln for Baritone and Orchestra (2009)
March of the Metro (2008)
TROYJAM for Narrator and Orchestra (2008)
Ghost Ranch (2005)
Tell My Fortune (2004)
Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003)
Pachelbel's Key for Youth Orchestra (2002)
Philadelphia Stories (2001)
Motor City Triptych (2000)
Sunset Strip (1999)
Route 66 (1998)
Leap Day for Youth Orchestra (1996)
Metropolis Symphony (1988-93)
Flamingo (1991)
Concerti with Orchestra
Gee's Bend for Electric Guitar and Orchestra (2009)
Deus Ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007)
Bay of Pigs for Classical Guitar and String Orchestra (2006)
Above Clouds for Four Horns and Orchestra (2005)
Crystal for Flute, Alto Flute, and Chamber Orchestra, from Tell My Fortune (2004)
Once Upon a Castle: Symphonie Concertante for Organ and Orchestra (2003)
Fire and Blood for Violin and Orchestra (2003)
Raise the Roof for Timpani and Orchestra (2003)
Tell-Tale Harp for Two Harps and Orchestra, from Philadelphia Stories (2001)
UFO (composition) for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999)
Hell's Angels for Bassoon Quartet and Orchestra (1998-99)
Spaghetti Western for English Horn and Orchestra (1998)
Le Tombeau de Liberace for Piano and Orchestra (1996)
Mxyzptlk for 2 Flutes and Chamber Orchestra, from Metropolis Symphony (1988)
Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble
Bells for Stokowski (2002)
Rosa Parks Boulevard for Three Trombones and Symphonic Band (2001)
Red Cape Tango for Symphonic Band (1999)
Niagara Falls (composition) (1997)
Bizarro (1993)
Desi (1991)

Concerti with Symphonic Band or Symphonic Winds
Raise the Roof for Timpani and Symphonic Band (2007)
Brooklyn Bridge for Clarinet and Symphonic Band (2005)
UFO (composition) for Solo Percussion and Symphony Band (2000)
Ladder to the Moon for Solo Violin and Chamber Ensemble (2006)
Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993)
Opera
Jackie O (the opera) (1997)

Voice and Orchestra or Chamber Ensemble
Letters from Lincoln for Baritone and Orchestra (2009)
TROYJAM for Narrator and Orchestra (2008)
Chorus
New Work for Chorus and Orchestra (2009)
Large Chamber Ensemble
Asclepius Fanfare for Brass and Percussion (2007)
Ladder to the Moon for Solo Violin, Wind Octet, Double Bass and Percussion (2006)
Timbuktuba for Euphonium/Tubas Ensemble and Percussion (1996)
What's That Spell? for Two Sopranos and Chamber Ensemble (1995)
Motown Metal for Brass and Percussion (1994)
Snap! (1987)
Blue Like an Orange (1987)
[edit] Small Chamber Ensemble
Bay of Pigs for Acoustic Guitar and String Quartet (2006)
Diamond in the Rough for Violin, Viola and Percussion (2006)
Regrets Only for violin, Cello and Piano (2006)
Walk the Walk for Baritone Sax (or bass clarinet or contrabassoon) and Percussion (2005)
Crystal, from Tell My Fortune for Flute, Alto Flute and Piano (2004)
The High and the Mighty for Piccolo and Piano (2000)
Used Car Salesman for Percussion Quartet (2000)
Bounce for two Bassoons (1998)
Sinatra Shag for Solo Violin, Bass Clarinet, Cello, Piano and Percussion (1997)
Jackie's Song for Solo Cello (1996)
Yo amaba a Lucy (I Loved Lucy) for Flute and Classical Guitar (1996)
Lounge Lizards for two Pianos and two Percussion (1994)
Shaken Not Stirred for three Percussion and Electric Bass (1994)
Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993)
Lex for Electric Violin, four Percussion, Timpani, Synthesizers and Electric Bass (1991)
Firecracker for Solo Oboe, Flute(Piccolo), Bass Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Percussion and Piano (1991)
Viola Zombie for two Violas (1991)
[edit] String Orchestra
Bay of Pigs for Classical Guitar and String Orchestra (2006)
Octet: Mendelssohn-Daugherty (2002)
Strut (1989)
[edit] Large Brass Ensemble
Asclepius Fanfare for Brass and Percussion (2007)
Timbuktuba for Euphonium/Tubas Ensemble and Percussion (1996)
Motown Metal for Brass and Percussion (1994)
[edit] Percussion Ensemble
Used Car Salesman Percussion Quartet (2000)
Shaken Not Stirred for three Percussion and Electric Bass (1994)
Lex for Electric Violin, four Percussion, Timpani, Synthesizers and Electric Bass (1991)
String Quartet and Pre-Recorded Sound
Paul Robeson Told Me (1994)
Elvis Everywhere (1993)
'Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover (1992)
Solo Instrument
Venetial Blinds (2002)
Monk in the Kitchen (2001)
Jackie's Song (1996)
Piano Plus (1985)

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Arnold Cooke (British 1906-2005)

He was born at Gomersal , West Yorkshire into a family of carpet manufacturers. He was educated at Repton School and at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History, but he was already attracted to a career in music. In 1929, having taken a second degree in Music, he studied composition and piano at the Berlin Academy for Music under Paul Hindemith. He later became musical director of the Festival Theatre at Cambridge, and in 1933 was appointed a professor at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now merged into the Royal Northern College of Music). He moved to London in 1938.
In the 1930s Cooke carved out a reputation for himself as a promising young composer, and his music was taken up by leading interpreters. The harpist Maria Korchinska introduced his Harp Quintet in 1932; Sir Henry Wood conducted his Concert Overture No.1 at the 1934 Promenade Concerts; the Griller Quartet premiered his First String Quartet in 1935. In 1936 Havergal Brian singled out for praise a cantata, Holderneth, on a text by the American poet Edward Sweeney, which Cooke later withdrew. Louis Kentner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra premiered his Piano Concerto, which he had completed just before his call-up in 1941.
In the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy, first in the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and subsequently as a liaison officer in a Norwegian escort vessel and a Dutch tug that took part in the D-Day Landings. After demobilization he returned to London in 1946, becoming a founder member of the Composers Guild of Great Britain, and from 1947 until his retirement in 1978 he was Professor of Harmony and Composition at Trinity College of Music in London. In 1948, through the recommendation of E. J. Dent he obtained a doctorate from Cambridge. After a stroke in 1993 he virtually ceased to compose, but survived to the age of 98.

Music
As a composer Cooke was highly productive but tended to work in traditional genres. He wrote two operas – Mary Barton (completed 1954) after the novel by Mrs. Gaskell and The Invisible Duke (1976). The ballet Jabez and the Devil (1961) was a commission from the Royal Ballet. He composed six symphonies, several concertos, copious chamber music including a clarinet quintet and five string quartets, many instrumental sonatas, and some important vocal music. His music seems to show the influence of Hindemith almost throughout his career, leavened with a more English sense of lyricism.


Works (Selected)

Opera
Mary Barton, op.27 (1949–1954)
The Invisible Duke (1976)

Ballet
Jabez and the Devil, op.50 (1961)

Vocal and Choral Works
Holderneth, Cantata (1937)
Nocturnes, 5 Songs for soprano, horn and piano (1956)
Songs of Innocence for soprano, clarinet and piano (1957)
Ode on St Cecilia’s Day for soli, chorus and orchestra, op.57 (1967)
The Seamew for voice, flute,oboe and string quartet (1980)
O Men from the Fields for unison voices, copyright 1967, in Carols for Choirs, Oxford University Press
Five Songs of William Blake for baritone, treble recorder and piano (1987)

Orchestral Music
Piano Concerto, op.11 (1940)
Symphony No.1 (1947)
Concerto in D major for string orchestra (1948)
Concerto for Oboe and string orchestra (1954)
Clarinet Concerto No.1 (1957)
Concerto for Treble Recorder and string orchestra (1957)
Violin Concerto (1959)
Concerto for small orchestra, op.48 (1960)
Symphony No.2 (1963)
Symphony No.3 (1967)
Variations on a Theme of Dufay (1969)
Symphony No.4 (1974)
Cello Concerto (1975)
Symphony No.5 (1979)
Clarinet Concerto No.2 (1984)
Symphony No.6 (1984)
Concerto for Orchestra (1986)

Chamber Music
Octet, op.1 (1931)
Harp Quintet, op.2 (1932)
Duo for Violin and Viola (1935)
String Quartet No.1 (1935)
Sonata for Viola and Piano (1936–1937)
Sonata No.2 for Violin and Piano (1951)
Sinfonietta for 11 Instruments, op.31 (1954)
Quartet for Oboe and Strings (1956)
Little Suite for Flute and Viola (1957)
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1959)
Theme and Variations for Solo Recorder, op.65
Sonata for Treble Recorder and Piano
Clarinet Quintet (1962)
Quartet-Sonata for Recorder, Violin, Cello and Harpsichord (1964–1965)
Sonata No.2 for Cello and Piano (1980)

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Johan Svendsen (Norway 1840-1911)

Johan Svendsen was the first great Norwegian symphonic composer, as well as one of the leading conductors of his day. Next to Edvard Grieg, he was the most prominent figure in Norwegian music life at the end of the 1800s. Although he came from humble beginnings in Christiania (now Oslo), he was to become a cosmopolitan who felt at home al over Europe. Svendsen spent most of his adult life abroad, living in Copenhagen for almost 30 years. Nonetheless he retained contact with Norway throughout these years and was a frequent and popular guest in his native country.
Svendsen’s music is characterized by vitality and a mood of festivity. This was also true of him as an individual. A man of sunny disposition and ready wit, he felt equally at home at a festive social gathering as in front of a symphony orchestra.
Both as a composer and a conductor, Svendsen contributed to setting a new standard as regards the potential of the orchestra. He lay the groundwork for a Norwegian symphonic tradition, and a number of his works will go down as classics in Norwegian music history.
CHILDHOOD IN VIKA

Johan Severin Svendsen was born on 30 September 1840 in Vika, a working class district in old Chriatiania. His father played in a regimental band, and gave Johan his first music lessons. Svendsen’s main instrument was originally the violin, but he also played the flute and the clarinet. He was only 11 years old when he wrote his first violin compositions.
MUSICIAN

At the age of fifteen, he was drafted into the army, where he started as a soldier, but soon transferred to the military band. During that period he was very active in music life in the city. He played in dance bands, and was with the Christiania Theatre orchestra for a time. From 1857 to 1859 he was violinist with ”Abonnementskoncertene”, a series of subscription concerts arranged by Halfdan Kjerulf and J.G. Conradi, where Beethoven’s symphonies were performed for the first time in Christiania.
TO LEIPZIG

In many ways, this first encounter with symphonic music was to have a decisive influence on Svendsen’s music career. He felt a need to learn more, and decided to go abroad. In December 1863 he began to study at the music conservatory in Leipzig. He made rapid progress, and by the time he left the conservatory in 1867, he had already written some of his best compositions. He had found a musical idiom which was to characterise all of his subsequent works.
Music circles in Leipzig were not very receptive to new musical ideas. Svendsen’s composition teacher, kapellmeister Reinecke, was also conservative, and Svendsen stopped consulting him after a time. Therefore Octet for Strings was composed without his knowledge. It was a great success and Reinecke responded by commenting wryly, ”you’ll probably turn up with a symphony next time, Mr. Svendsen”. Little did he know that the symphony was already completed. When Svendsen knocked on Reinecke’s door a few days later with the manuscript under his arm, it was clear that he had nothing more to learn at the conservatory. He left Leipzig in 1867 after having graduated from the conservatory with honours.
BACK TO CHRISTIANIA

Back in Christiania Svendsen quickly gained a prominent position in the cultural life. Together with Grieg, he threw himself heart and soul into revitalising Norwegian music life. Grieg had been one of the founders of the Christiania Music Society’s orchestra in 1871, which Svendsen conducted a number of years. Despite the lack of funds and artistic resources, this was an expansive period for music life in the city, and for Svendsen himself. A number of his most well-known compositions were composed during this period, such as Norwegian Artists’ Carnival and Symphony No 2, Norwegian Rhapsodies and Romance for violin and orchestra.
"EMIGRATED" TO COPENHAGEN

Although Svendsen was one of the greatest composers of his day, he was never given working conditions in Christiania the corresponded to his international reputation. In 1883 he was offered the position of kapellmeister at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. It was a tempting offer, both financially and artistically, and after a great deal of thought, he decided to accept it. When Johan Svendsen ”emigrated” to Denmark, it was a severe blow to Norwegian music life, and there was a great deal of bitter talk about how poorly Norway treated her artists. Everyone – and most of all Svendsen – deplored the fact that Christiania was unable to provide him with proper working conditions.
Svendsen embarked on a brilliant career as a conductor on 3 September 1883, when he conducted Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Royal Teatre. As kapellmeister of the Royal Danish Orchestra and the Danish Opera, he was also to have an important influence in music life in Copenhagen. One of the conditions Svendsen made before accepting the position of kapellmeister was that he be given the opportunity to arrange concerts outside the theatre. Although it was unusual to perform symphonic music at that time, Svendsen’s concerts were very well received by the general public and were soon regarded as important events.
Svendsen was one of the most colourful artists in the Danish capital for 25 years. He lived in Copenhagen until he died on 14 June 1911, at the age of 70.
THE CONDUCTOR

Johan Svendsen fluorished as a conductor in Copenhagen, whereas he did little composing during that period. His position as kapellmeister was very time-consuming, and the orchestra needed a firm hand. Some of the musicians were incapable of carrying out their duties; one of them was almost blind and some of the violinists had had supports built so that they could prop themselves up while they played. Svendsen set about replacing some and hiring others, which was not always a painless process. Although he was much criticised for being too severe. He did a great deal to improve working conditions for his musicians in other respects. The end result was that the orchestra attained a very high standard and developed an extensive repertoire under the direction of Svendsen.
The rapport between the conductor and his musicians was excellent. At Svendsen’s 25th anniversary concert their relationship was compared to one of his famous crescendos: It had started pianissimo, but had gradually swelled to an incredible fortissimo. Svendsen could hardly have been paid a higher tribute.
Svendsen was an exceptionally gifted orchestra conductor. He appeared as guest conductor in most of the capitals of Europe, and won great acclaim in Vienna, Moscow, London and Paris. One of his most ardent admirers was the Danish composer Carl Nielsen, who himself played under Sevndsen’s baton for a time. On the occasion of Svendsen’s sixtieth birthday, Nielsen wrote the following tribute to the great composer in the Danish daily Polotiken: “…Anyone who has played under Svendsen’s baton will never forget the experience, partly because he has been so inspired and partly because he has seen what tremendous vitality can be conveyed from one individual to many others. He is an outstanding conductor, unquestionably the most brilliant in Europe since Bülow. It’s no wonder that the Norwegians take personal offence at the fact that he is living in Denmark, and that other countries are constantly inviting him to appear as guest conductor.”
THE COMPOSER

Svendsens passed on the heritage from the Leipzig conservatory in his music. Although he was firmly rooted in Romanticism, he was not a radical composer. His use of classical forms and mastery of counterpoint revealed his affinity with the classical tradition, but his use of harmony showed his close ties to Romanticism and the influence of Liszt and Wagner. Svendsen’s instrument was the entire orchestra, which he cultivated both as a composer and as a conductor. This is demonstrated by his brilliant instrumentation technique and imaginative and colourful treatment of orchestral sound. The Romantic Era’s fascination with drama and mysticism held little appeal for Svendsen; it did not suit his temperament. He was an outgoing, high-spirited man, as reflected in most of his music. Read more...

Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996)

Berthold Goldschmidt (b. Hamburg, 18 January 1903; d. London, 17 October 1996) was a German composer who spent most of his life in England. The suppression of his work by Nazi Germany, as well as the disdain with which many Modernist critics elsewhere dismissed his "anachronistic" lyricism, stranded the composer in the wilderness for many years before he was given a revival in his final decade.
Life
Goldschmidt's musical career began in earnest during the heyday of the Weimar Republic in Germany. While studying philosophy at the University of Hamburg, he was encouraged by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni to write music. In 1922, Goldschmidt entered the Berlin Hochschule and joined Franz Schreker's composition class, where his fellow pupils included Ernst Krenek, Alois Hába, Felix Petryek, and Jascha Horenstein. He also studied conducting, played freelance for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1923, coached the choir for the Berlin premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. In 1925, Goldschmidt achieved his first major success with his Passacaglia, Op. 4, which earned him the prestigious Mendelssohn Prize. Hailed as one of the brightest hopes of a generation of young composers, Goldschmidt reached the premature climax of his career with the premiere of his opera Der gewaltige Hahnrei in Mannheim in 1932.
This triumph happened on the eve of the Nazi takeover of Germany, which quickly destroyed Goldschmidt's livelihood. Like many Jewish composers (and other composers considered subversive of the Germanic purity of the Third Reich), Goldschmidt had his work condemned as "degenerate music" by the regime. There was no place in German musical life for Goldschmidt since performances of his work were banned and he was barred from conducting orchestras. Goldschmidt resorted to earning a living by giving piano lessons, before finally emigrating to England in 1935.
During World War II, Goldschmidt worked for the BBC and served as the Music Director of its German Service in 1944-47. While taking jobs in conducting, Goldschmidt also composed works such as the Ciaccona Sinfonica, concertos for violin, cello, and clarinet, and the opera Beatrice Cenci. The English attitude towards Goldschmidt's music was generally indifferent. Even though Beatrice Cenci, an opera based on the 1819 play The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley, won first prize in the 1951 Festival of Britain opera competition, Covent Garden refused to mount a production. Neglected by the musical establishment, Goldschmidt decided to abandon original composition in 1958. For the next six years, he collaborated with Deryck Cooke on producing a performing edition of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony. On 13 August 1964, at the Proms, Goldschmidt conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of the Cooke realization.
The last years of Goldschmidt's life witnessed a renewed interest in the composers of so-called "degenerate music." This revival led to performances of his work in the United States and Germany, new recordings, and the recovery of a number of lost manuscripts. Goldschmidt resumed composing in 1982 with the Clarinet Quartet and penned his final work, the Deux nocturnes, just before his death at the age of 93. Champions of his work include the conductors Simon Rattle and Charles Dutoit, the violinist Chantal Juillet, the Mandelring string quartet, and the record companies Largo and Decca.

Works


Operas
Der gewaltige Hahnrei op. 14 (1929-30). A musical tragi-comedy in three acts. Beatrice Cenci (1949-50). Opera in three acts, based on the 1819 play The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Orchestral works
Passacaglia op. 4 (1925) Overture: The Comedy of Errors (1925/28) Suite op. 5 (1927) Partita op. 9 (1927) Der gewaltige Hahnrei: Suite op. 14a (1933) Marche Militaire op. 20 (1932) for orchestra or wind band (later incorporated into Chronica) Ciaccona Sinfonica (1936) Chronica (1938/58/86) Polish Dance Suite (1939-40) Greek Suite (1940-41) Awake, the voice commands (1947) - Bach's chorale Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, transcribed for orchestra Violin Concerto (1952/55) Cello Concerto (1953) Clarinet Concerto (1953-54) Intrada (1985) for orchestra or wind band (later incorporated into Chronica) Rondeau 'Rue du Rocher' for violin and orchestra (1994-95)

Chamber works
String Quartet No.1 op. 8 (1925-26) String Quartet No.2 (1936) Carols for string trio (1948) Clarinet Quartet (1982-83) Piano Trio (1985) String Quartet No.3 (1988-89) Berceuse for violin and viola (1990) Retrospectrum for string trio (1991) Fantasy for oboe, cello and harp (1991) Capriccio for solo violin (1991-92) String Quartet No.4 (1992) Dialogue with Cordelia for clarinet and cello (1993) Encore, une meditation agitée for violin and piano (1993) Rondeau 'Rue du Rocher' for violin and piano (1994-95)

Vocal works
Two Morgenstern Songs op. 27 for voice and piano or string trio (1933 arr.1992) Three Songs op. 24 for coloratura soprano and piano (1933-34) Two Psalms op. 34 for high voice and string orchestra (1935) Der Verflossene. Cabaret Song for voice and piano (1942) Beatrice's Song for soprano and piano (1949) Time for voice and piano (1943) Nicodemus, he was black for unaccompanied voice (1948) The Noble Little Soldier's Wife for baritone and xylophone (1948) Clouds for voice and piano or orchestra (1950) The Old Ships for voice and piano (1952) Mediterranean Songs for tenor and orchestra (1957-58) Les petits adieux for baritone and orchestra (1994) Deux nocturnes for soprano and orchestra (1995-96)

Choral works
Letzte Kapitel op. 15 (1930-31) for speaker, chorus, percussion and piano Belsatzar (1985) for unaccompanied chorus

Piano works
Piano Sonata op. 10 (1926) Capriccio op. 11 (1927) Marche Militaire op. 20 (1932) Variations on a Palestine Shepherd's Song op. 32 (1934) Little Legend (1923/57) From the Ballet (1938/57) Scherzo (1922/58) Read more...

Alexandre Tansman (Poland-France: 1897-1986)

Alexandre Tansman (June 12, 1897, Lódz–November 15, 1986, Paris) was a prolific composer and virtuoso pianist. He spent his early years in his native Poland, but lived in France for most of his life. His music is primarily neoclassical, drawing on his Polish and Jewish heritage as well as his French musical influences.


Early life and heritage
Tansman was born and raised in the Polish city of Lódz during the era when Poland did not exist as an independent state, being part of Tsarist Russia.

The composer wrote the following about his childhood and heritage in a 1980 letter to an American researcher:

"... my father's family came from Pinsk and I knew of a famous rabbi related to him. My father died very young, and there were certainly two, or more branches of the family, as ours was quite wealthy: we had in Lodz several domestics, two governesses (French and German) living with us etc. My father had a sister who settled in Israel and married there. I met her family on my [concert] tours in Israel. ... My family was, as far as religion is concerned, quite liberal, not practicing. My mother was the daughter of Prof. Leon Gourvitch, quite famous man."[citation needed]

Career
Though he began his musical studies at the Lódz Conservatory, his doctoral study was in law at the University of Warsaw. Shortly after completing his studies, Tansman moved to Paris, where his musical ideas were accepted and encouraged by mentors and musical influences Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel, as opposed to the more conservative musical climate in his native Poland. While in Paris, Tansman associated with a crowd of foreign-born musicians known as the École de Paris; though Honegger and Milhaud tried to persuade him to join Les Six, he declined, stating a need for creative independence. (Tansman later wrote a biography of Stravinsky that was extremely well-received.)

Tansman always described himself as a Polish composer, though he spoke French at home and married a French pianist, Colette Cras. In 1941, fleeing Europe as his Jewish background put him in danger with Hitler's rise to power, he moved to Los Angeles (thanks to the efforts of his friend Charlie Chaplin in getting him a visa), where he made the acquaintance of Arnold Schoenberg. Tansman composed the score for at least two Hollywood movies - Flesh and Fantasy, starring Barbara Stanwyck; and a biopic of the Australian medical researcher Sister Elizabeth Kenny, starring Rosalind Russell. He scored six films in all. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1946 for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, for Paris Underground (there was a huge field of 21 nominations, and the winner was Miklós Rózsa for Spellbound).

Though Alexandre Tansman returned to Paris after the war, his disappearance from the European musical scene left him behind the musical currents of the time, and no longer fresh in the minds of the public, which slowed his previously fast-rising career.

No longer in tune with the French fashions, which had moved on to the avant-garde style, Tansman returned to his musical roots, drawing on his Jewish and Polish background to create some of his greatest works. During this time he began to reestablish connections to Poland, though his career and family kept him in France, where he lived until his death in 1986.

According to the Paris-based Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs, Tansman used the name "Stan Alson" when he composed jazz music.

Today the Alexandre Tansman Competition for promising musicians is held in his honor every other year in his birthplace of Lódz, in order to promote his music and the local culture.

Music
Tansman was not only an internationally recognized composer, but was also a virtuoso pianist. From 1932-33 Tansman performed worldwide for audiences including Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Mahatma Gandhi; he was regarded as one of the greatest Polish musicians. Later he performed five concert tours in the United States, including as a soloist under Serge Koussevitsky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as having a thriving career in France as a concert performer.

Tansman's music is written in the French neoclassical style of his adopted home, and the Polish styles of his birthplace, drawing on his Jewish heritage. Already on the edge of musical thought when he left Poland (critics questioned his chromatic and sometimes polytonal writing), he adopted the extended harmonies of Ravel in his work and later was compared to Alexander Scriabin in his departure from conventional tonality.

One of Tansman's letters states that "it is obvious that I owe much to France, but anyone who has ever heard my compositions cannot have doubt that I have been, am and forever will be a Polish composer."[citation needed] After Chopin, Tansman may be the leading proponent of traditional Polish forms such as the polonaise and the mazurka; they were inspired by and often written in homage to Chopin.[citation needed] For these pieces, which ranged from lighthearted miniatures to virtuoso showpieces, Tansman drew on traditional Polish folk themes and adapted them to his distinctive neoclassical style. However, he did not write straight settings of the folk songs themselves, as he states in a radio interview: "I have never used an actual Polish folk song in its original form, nor have I tried to reharmonize one. I find that modernizing a popular song spoils it. It must be preserved in its original harmonization."[citation needed]

He is perhaps best known for his guitar pieces, mostly written for Andrés Segovia—in particular the Suite in modo polonico (1962), a collection of Polish dances. Segovia frequently performed the work in recordings and on tour; it is today part of the standard repertoire. Tansman's music has been performed by musicians such as Segovia, Walter Gieseking, José Iturbi, Jane Bathori, Joseph Szigeti, Pablo Casals, and Gregor Piatigorsky and most recently Chandos Records has increased his profile, with the start of a series of his orchestral works, recorded by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Oleg Caetani.


Selected works
Tansman's many hundreds of compositions include:

8 mélodies japonaises, voice and orchestra (1918)
Le jardin du paradis, ballet, (1922)
Légende, orchestra (1923)
La nuit kurde, opera (1927)
Piano Concerto no.2 (1927)
Rapsodie hébraïque, orchestra (1933)
Orchestration of Federico Mompou's piano suite Scènes d'enfants (1936)
Violin Concerto (1937)
Rapsodie polonaise, orchestra (1940)
The Genesis, narrator and orchestra, collaboration with Schoenberg, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Toch, Shilkret, after Genesis (1944)
Isaïe le prophète, choir and orchestra (1950)
Cavatine, guitar (1951)
Concerto for Orchestra (1954)
4 mouvements symphoniques, orchestra (1956)
Sabbataï Zévi, le faux messie, opera, (1957–8)
Psaumes, tenor solo, choir, and orchestra (1960–61)
Suite in modo polonico, guitar (1962)
Cello Concerto (1963)
Fantaisie pour Cello & Orchestre ou Piano
Hommage à Chopin, guitar (1966)
Stèle in memoriam Igor Stravinsky, orchestra (1972)
Les dix Commandements, orchestra (1978–9)
Hommage à Lech Walesa, guitar (1982)
film music: Poil de Carotte (1932), Flesh and Fantasy (1942), Paris Underground (1945), Destiny (1945), Sister Kenny (1946), The Bargee (1964)
9 symphonies (1917, 1926, "Symphonie concertante" 1931, 1939, 1942, "In memoriam" 1944, "Lyrique" 1944,"Musique pour orchestre" 1948, 1957–8)
8 string quartets (1917, 1922, 1925, 1935, 1940, 1944, 1947, 1956)
7 Novelettes, piano
and his 2 works for solo bassoon and piano:

Sonatine
Suite.

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Alberic Magnard (France-1865-1914)

Lucien Denis Gabriel Albéric Magnard (9 June 1865–3 September 1914) was a French composer, sometimes referred to as the "French Bruckner". However, comparing Magnard to Bruckner is hardly justified, since there are more differences than similarities between their personalities and musical output.

Biography

Albéric Magnard was born in Paris to François Magnard, a bestselling author and editor of Le Figaro, Albéric could have chosen to live the comfortable life his family's wealth afforded him. But he disliked being called "fils du Figaro," and decided to have a career in music based entirely on his talent and without any help from family connections. After military service and graduating from law school, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied counterpoint with Théodore Dubois and went to the classes of Jules Massenet. There he met Vincent d'Indy, with whom he studied fugue and orchestration for four years, writing his first two Symphonies under d'Indy's tutelage. Magnard dedicated his Symphony No. 1 in C minor to d'Indy.
François Magnard did what he could to support Albéric's career while trying to respect his son's wish to make it on his own. This included publicity in Le Figaro. With the death of his father in 1894, Albéric Magnard's grief was complicated by his simultaneous gratitude to and annoyance with his father.
In 1896, Magnard married Julie Creton, became a counterpoint tutor at the Schola Cantorum (recently founded by d'Indy) and wrote his Symphony No. 3 in B-flat minor.
Magnard published many of his own compositions at his own expense, from Opus 8 to Opus 20. Similar to Paul Dukas and Henri Dutilleux, Magnard's musical output numbered only 22 works with opus numbers.
In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Magnard sent his wife and two daughters to a safe hiding place while he stayed behind to guard the estate of Manoir de Fontaines at Baron, Oise. When German soldiers trespassed, he fired at them, killing one of them, and they fired back and set the house on fire. It is believed that Magnard died in the fire, but his body could not be identified in the remains. The fire destroyed Magnard's unpublished scores, such as the orchestral score of his early opera Yolande, the orchestral score of Guercoeur (the piano reduction had been published, and the orchestral score of the second act was extant) and a more recent song cycle.
Joseph Guy Ropartz, who had a led a concert performance in Nancy of the third act of Guercoeur in February, 1908, reconstructed from memory the orchestration of the acts that had been lost in the fire. The Paris Opéra gave the belated world premiere in 1931. (A complete recording of Guercœur was released by EMI Angel/Pathé Marconi in 1990. It features Hildegard Behrens, Nadine Denize, José van Dam, and Gary Lakes, with the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Michel Plasson.)
Magnard's musical style is typical of French composers contemporaneous to him, but occasionally, as in the symphonies, there are passages that foreshadow the music of Gustav Mahler. His occasional use of chorale earned him the nickname of "French Bruckner." Although Bruckner used cyclical forms long before d'Indy "trademarked" the concept to César Franck's name, Magnard's handling of cyclical form is more Franckian than Brucknerian. In his operas, Magnard used Richard Wagner's leitmotiv technique. Magnard did not write much chamber music, but his complete œuvre is not that large, the published pieces numbering slightly more than 20. The chamber works include a string quartet, a quintet for piano and winds, a piano trio, a violin sonata (in G, opus 13) and a cello sonata (in A, opus 20). A few more works of his were published posthumously, such as the Quatre Poèmes in Musique, four songs for baritone and piano.

List of Compositions

Trois pièces pour piano, Op. 1 Suite dans le style ancien, Op. 2, for orchestra Six poèmes, Op. 3, for voice and piano 1. À Elle 2. Invocation 3. Le Rhin allemand 4. Nocturne 5. Ad fontem 6. Au poète Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 4 Yolande, opera (1888-1891), Op. 5 Symphony No. 2 In E, Op. 6 Promenades, Op. 7, for piano Quintet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet & bassoon in D minor, Op. 8 Chant funèbre, Op. 9 Overture, Op. 10 Symphony No. 3 in B-flat minor, Op. 11 Guercoeur, opera (1897-1900), Op. 12 Sonata for Violin and Piano in G, Op. 13 Hymne à la Justice, Op. 14 Quatre poèmes, Op. 15, for baritone and piano String Quartet in E minor, op. 16 Hymne a Venus, Op. 17 Trio for Piano and Strings in F minor, Op. 18 Bérénice, opera (1905-1909), Op. 19 Sonata for Cello in A, Op. 20 Symphony No. 4 in C-sharp minor, Op. 21 Douze poèmes, Op. 22 En Dieu mon esperance À Henriette

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Eugen D'Albert (Scotish-German 1864-1932

Eugen Francis Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer.
Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria. Feeling a kinship with German culture and music, he soon emigrated to Germany, where he studied with Franz Liszt and began a career as a concert pianist. D'Albert repudiated his early training and upbringing in England and considered himself German.
While pursuing his career as a pianist, d'Albert focused increasingly on composing, producing 21 operas and a considerable output of piano, vocal, chamber and orchestral works. His most successful opera was Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903. His successful orchestral works included his cello concerto (1899), a symphony, two string quartets and two piano concertos. In 1907, d'Albert became the director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he exerted a wide influence on musical education in Germany. He also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar.
D'Albert was married six times, including to the pianist-singer Teresa Carreño, and was successively a British, German and Swiss citizen.
BiographyD'Albert was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to an English mother, Annie Rowell, and a German-born father of French and Italian descent, Charles Louis Napoleon d'Albert, whose ancestors included the composers Giuseppe Matteo Alberti and Domenico Alberti. D'Albert's father was a dancer, pianist and music arranger who had been ballet-master at the King's Theatre and at Covent Garden. D'Albert was born when his father was 55 years old. The Musical Times wrote in 1904 that "This, and other circumstances, accounted for a certain loneliness in the boy's home-life and the years of his childhood. He was misunderstood, and 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' to such an extent as to largely prejudice him against the country which gave him birth."
D'Albert was raised in Glasgow and taught music by his father until he won a scholarship to the new National Training School for Music (forerunner of the Royal College of Music) in London, which he entered in 1876 at the age of 12. D'Albert studied at the National Training School with Ernst Pauer, Ebenezer Prout, John Stainer and Arthur Sullivan. By the age of 14, he was winning public praise from The Times as "a bravura player of no mean order" in a concert in October 1878. He played Schumann's piano concerto at the Crystal Palace in 1880, receiving more encouragement from The Times: "A finer rendering of the work has seldom been heard." Also in 1880, d’Albert arranged the piano reduction for the vocal score of Sullivan's sacred music drama The Martyr of Antioch, to accompany the chorus in rehearsal He is also credited with writing the overture to Gilbert and Sullivan's 1881 opera, Patience
For many years, d’Albert dismissed his training and work during this period as worthless. The Times wrote that he "was born and educated in England, and won his earliest successes in England, although, in a freak of boyish impetuosity, he repudiated some years ago all connexion with this country, where, according to his own account, he was born by mere accident and where he learnt nothing." In later years, however, he modified his views: "The former prejudice which I had against England, which several incidents aroused, has completely vanished since many years."
Career?In 1881, Hans Richter invited d’Albert to play his first Piano Concerto, which was "received with enthusiasm. In the same year d’Albert won the Mendelssohn Scholarship, enabling him to study in Vienna, where he met Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and other important musicians who influenced his style. D'Albert, retaining his early enthusiasm for German culture and music ("hearing Tristan und Isolde had a greater influence on him than the education he received from his father or... at the National Training School for Music") changed his first name from Eugène to Eugen and emigrated to Germany, where he became a pupil of the elderly Liszt in Weimar
. Liszt called him "the young Tausig", and d’Albert can be heard in an early recording of Liszt works. He played his own Piano Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1882, the youngest pianist who had appeared with the orchestra.D'Albert toured extensively, including in the United States from 1904 to 1905. His virtuoso technique was compared to that of Busoni. He was praised for his playing of J. S. Bach's preludes and fugues and of Beethoven's sonatas. "As an exponent of Beethoven, Eugen d'Albert has few, if any, equals." Gradually, d’Albert's work as a composer occupied his time more and more, and he reduced his concert playing.He was the recipient of a number of dedications, most notably of Richard Strauss's Burleske in D minor, which he premiered in 1890.
D'Albert was a prolific composer. His output includes a large volume of successful piano and chamber music and lieder. He also composed twenty-one operas, in a wide variety of styles, which premiered mostly in Germany. His first, Der Rubin (1893) was an oriental fantasy; Die Abreise (1898), which established him as an opera composer in Germany, was a one-act domestic comedy; Kain (1900) was a setting of the biblical story; and one of his last operas, Der Golem, was on a traditional Jewish theme.His most successful opera was his seventh, Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903. When Thomas Beecham introduced the opera to London, The Times observed, "the scoring owes more than a little to the discipline of Sullivan; there is also a curiously English fragrance".Tiefland played in opera houses throughout the world and has retained a place in the standard German and Austrian repertoire, with a production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in November 2007. According to biographer Hugh Macdonald, it "provides a link between Italian verismo and German expressionist opera, although the orchestral textures recall a more Wagnerian language." Another stage success was a comic opera called Flauto solo in 1905. D'Albert's most successful orchestral works included his cello concerto (1899), a symphony, two string quartets and two piano concertos. "Though not a composer of profound originality... he had an unfailing sense of dramatic appropriateness and all the resources of a symphonic technique to give it expression and was thus able to achieve success in so many styles".
D'Albert edited critical editions of the scores of Beethoven and Bach, transcribed Bach's organ works for the piano and wrote cadenzas for Beethoven's piano concertos. In 1907, he succeeded Joseph Joachim as director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, in which capacity he had a wide influence on musical education in Germany. He also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar.
Personal life and death Grave of d'Albert at the cemetery of MorcoteD'Albert's friends included Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gerhart Hauptmann, the dramatist. He was married six times and had eight children. The first wife was Louise Salingré. The second, from 1892 to 1895, was the Venezuelan pianist, singer and composer Teresa Carreño, herself much married and considerably older than d’Albert. D'Albert and Carreño were the subject of a famous joke: "Come quick! Your children and my children are quarrelling again with our children!" The line, however, has also been attributed to others. His later wives were mezzo-soprano Hermine Finck, who originated the role of the witch in Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel; actress Ida Fulda; Friederike ("Fritzi") Jauner; and Hilde Fels. His last companion was a mistress, Virginia Zanetti.
In 1914, d’Albert moved to Zürich and became a Swiss citizen. He died in 1932 at the age of 69 in Riga, Latvia, where he had travelled for a divorce from his sixth wife. He was buried in the cemetery overlooking Lake Lugano in Morcote, Switzerland.

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Lili Boulanger (France-1893-1918)

Lili Boulanger (Marie-Juliette Olga Lili Boulanger, 21 August 1893–15 March 1918) was a French composer, the younger sister of the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.
A child prodigy, Boulanger's talent was apparent even at the age of two, spotted by her parents, both of whom were musicians themselves and encouraged their daughter's musical education. Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya (Mischetzky), was a Russian princess, who married her Paris Conservatoire teacher, Ernest Boulanger; grandfather Frédéric Boulanger had been a noted cellist, and grandmother Juliette a singer. Boulanger accompanied the ten-year-old Nadia to classes at the Paris Conservatoire before she was five, shortly thereafter sitting in on classes on music theory and studying organ with Louis Vierne; she also sang and played piano, violin, cello, and harp. In 1913, at the age of 19, she won the Prix de Rome for her Faust et Hélène, becoming the first woman composer to win the prize. Nadia had given up entering after four unsuccessful attempts and had focused her efforts upon the girl Lili, first a student of Nadia and then of Paul Vidal, Georges Caussade, and Gabriel Fauré—the last of whom was greatly impressed by the young woman's talents and frequently brought songs for her to read. Lili was greatly affected by the 1899 death of her father; many of her works touch on themes of grief and loss. Her work was noted for its colorful harmony and instrumentation and skillful text setting; aspects of Fauré and Claude Debussy can be seen in her compositions, and Arthur Honegger was one composer influenced by her innovative work. Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock has said she is one of his favorite composers.
Her life and work were troubled by chronic illness, beginning with a case of bronchial pneumonia at age two that weakened her immune system, leading to the intestinal tuberculosis (now called Crohn's Disease) that cut short her life at the early age of 24. Although she loved to travel, completing several works in Italy after winning the Prix de Rome, her failing health forced her to return home, where she and Nadia organized efforts to support French soldiers in World War I. Her last years were also a productive time musically as she labored to complete works previously left unfinished. Boulanger was buried in Paris, in a tomb located in the Cimetière de Montmartre(section 33 near the main entrance), leaving unfinished the opera La princesse Maleine on which she spent most of the last years of her life. In 1979 her sister, the world-famous music educator Nadia Boulanger, was laid to rest in the same tomb. The definitive biography is The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger(ISBN 0-8386-1796-4) by the American musicologist Léonie Rosenstiel.
Wellesley College created an international foundation and award in her name (LBMF) to annually honor an outstanding young composer or performer. Awarded the prize were composers such as Harold Shapero and instrumentalists such as Robert D. Levin, Noël Lee and Sebastien Koch.

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Peteris Vasks (Latvia-1946)

Pēteris Vasks (born April 16, 1946) is a Latvian composer.
Vasks was born in Aizpute, Latvia, into the family of a Baptist pastor. He trained as a double-bass player, and played in several Latvian orchestras before entering the State Conservatory in Vilnius in the neighboring Lithuania to study composition, as he was prevented from doing this in Latvia due to Soviet repressive policy toward Baptists. He started to become known outside Latvia in the 1990s, when Gidon Kremer started championing his works and now is one of the most influential and praisedEuropean contemporary composers.
Vasks' early style owed much to the aleatoric experiments of Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki and George Crumb. Later works included elements of Latvian folk music, such as his gentle and pastoral cor anglais concerto (1989). His works are generally extremely clear and communicative, with a solid and muscular sense of harmony. Lyrical passages may be followed by agitated dissonances, or interrupted by sombre sections with a march-like feel. He made extensive use of minimalist techniques as well, but never became a slave to any particular method.
Vasks feels strongly about environmental issues, and a sense of nature both pristine and destroyed can be found in many of his works, such as the String Quartet No. 2 (1984). Other important works include Cantabile (1979) and Musica dolorosa (1984) and "Bass Trip" (2003) for solo double bass . He has written five string quartets, the fourth (2003) and fifth (2006) of which were written for the Kronos Quartet. Vasks was the recipient of the Vienna Herder Award in 1996 and the Latvian Grand Music Award in 1997, the latter for his violin concerto Tālā Gaisma (1996-7). His important works also include "Viatore", Symphony #2, "Music for a deceased Friend" et al.

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Eduard Tubin (Estonian-1905-1982)

Childhood and youth (1905-1920)

Eduard Tubin was born on June 18th, 1905 in the village of Torila near Kallaste at Lake Peipus in Estonia (now incorporated in Kallaste). His father was a fisherman and tailor. Both of Tubin's parents loved music. His father played trompet, later trombone in the village band.When Tubin was 3 years old, the family moved to Naelavere near Alatskivi. After his brother Johannes' death at the age of 21 in 1912 Eduard inherited some scores, a violin and a piccolo flute. He practiced flute on his own and enjoyed playing when he herded swine.After Naelavere Tubin attended the Torila Country Elementary School, graduating in 1920. The Torila school had a balalaika band, where he played flute and learned balalaika. In his free time he wrote scores, When he was 9-10 years old, his father took him to the local village band. Tubin played flute, appearing with the small orchestra at various parties. When Tubin's father saw that the boy was seriously interested in music, he sold a calf at the market and bought an old cottage piano for the money. Tubin learned to play by himself.Soon he could accompany village fiddlers, who visited the Tubins and played simple tunes.In 1918 Estonia declared its independence and managed to defend itself against both Soviet Communists and a German corps. After the Estonian Liberty War Tubin entered in 1920 the Tartu Teachers College to prepare for a career as a schoolteacher. Tubin played also in the college sinfonietta. Later the music teacher of the college entrusted Tubin with conducting a choir, with which he appeared at school parties. At the College he also made his first attempts to compose music.
As an independant musician in Tartu (1924-1944)

In 1924 Tubin entered the Tartu Higher School of Music, attending at first Johannes Kärt's organ class. At the same time he studied music theory and harmony with Heino Eller, together with other future well-known Estonian musicians as Olav Roots, Karl Leichter and Eduard Oja. Thanks to his unusual musical talent and diligence Tubin progressed very rapidly. His first preserved compositions, solo songs and piano pieces, are from 1925.After graduating from the Teachers College in 1926, Tubin started working as a teacher at Nõo, near Tartu. In 1928 he was appointed conductor of the Male Choir of the Tartu Male Choir Association (TMS). Living in Nõo, Tubin composed several solo songs and piano pieces. In 1930 Tubin graduated from the Higher Music School and moved back to Tartu. At the end of the same year he married Linda Pirn (Tubin), a fellow song student who later became an actress at the "Vanemuine" theater. Their son Rein was born in 1932. Tubin worked at the "Vanemuine" first as accompanist, then as conductor. In 1930-1931 he already conducted open-air concerts.The work at "Vanemuine" became very intense. From 1931 to 1944 Tubin conducted numerous opera, ballet and operetta performances, symphony concerts and oratories. He also conducted several choirs: the TMS male choir (from 1928 to 1944), a mixed choir named for Miina Härma (from 1930 to 1931), the mixed choir of the "Vanemuine" music department (VMO) (from 1931 to 1935) and the mixed choir of the "Estonia" music department (EMO) in Tallinn (from 1935 to 1936). He took the TMS Male Choir abroad, 1935 to Riga and 1937 to Warsaw and Krakow. From 1933 Tubin also led various song festivals, where his own songs were frequently performed.During these years Tubin made several trips abroad to study music. In 1932 he went to Vienna for the ISCM festival, in 1938 to Budapest. In Budapest he showed the scores of his Symphonies to Zoltan Kodaly and also met Bela Bartók. On Kodaly's recommendation Tubin took a renewed interest in folk music. During the summer of 1938 he went to the island of Hiiumaa to collect folk songs. The interest for folk music led him in 1938-1940 to write the first Estonian ballet "Kratt", with libretto by Elfriede (Erika) Saarik, a dancer at the "Vanemuine".
The occupation years (1940-1944)

As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops in 1940. The music life was restructured after Soviet ideals. Tubin was appointed head of the composition class at the Tartu Music School and head conductor of the "Vanemuine". Together with other Estonian composers Tubin was sent in 1940 to Leningrad to study the Soviet music life. In 1941 the Communist authorities started to organize the Estonian participation in the coming cultural festival ("decade") in Moscow. Tubin had to rewrite his ballet "Kratt", he got an order for the opera "The Rebels of Pühajärv". Due to the World War II this decade didn' take place.A wave of deportations and arrests preceded the outbreak of the war between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. During the war years Tubin continued his musical work in Tartu, bringing many first performances to the stage and conducting many symphony concerts. The first performance of "Kratt" took place on March 31st 1943, at the "Vanemuine" with Tubin himself conducting. Next year it was staged in Tallinn at the "Estonia" theatre, which was bombed during the sixth performance. Tubin and his wife, who attended the performance, had to run for shelter together with the actors and audience. The score of the ballet was destroyed. The only score of his Symphony No. 4 survived with burned edges in a safe.
Refugee years in Sweden (1944-1966)

In September 1944, when Estonia was occupied again by Soviets, Tubin with his wife Erika and his two sons had to flee to Sweden. In spring next year they were transferred to Neglinge at the outskirts of Stockholm. Tubin became acquainted with the music publisher Einar Körling, who found him a flat in the suburb of Hammarbyhöjden. During the following years several works were published by Körlings Förlag.In 1945 the Labour Board offered Tubin a position as "archive worker" at the historic Drottningholm Royal Court Theater, and he remained until his retirement in 1972. He restored baroque operas and ballets. The work, which he did at home, also offered him plenty of time for his own compositions.During the war tens of thousands of Estonians had fled to Sweden. Already at the end of 1944 the Stockholm Estonian YMCA Male Choir was founded (later the Stockholm Estonian Male Choir, SEM) and in February 1945 Tubin was appointed its leader. In April the choir gave its first concert. Tubin conducted the choir until 1959. He joined the choir again in 1975 and continued as its conductor until 1982. Tubin was repeatedly leader of Estonian song festivals in exile. Most of Tubin's choir songs are written for the SEM choir.The greatest part of Tubin's oeuvre was composed in Sweden. During this time Tubin achieved his individual musical style, combining intonations from Estonian folk tunes with contemporary means of expression. His most conspicuous major work was the Symphony No. 5, which echoes tragic moods and experiences from the wartime. It was finished in 1946 and became Tubin's most performed work. During composer's lifetime it was performed more than 50 times. Notable early performances were in New York in 1952 with Endel Kalam and in Sydney in 1958 with Nicolai Malko conducting. It was also the first of Tubin's works performed after the war in occupied Estonia (1956, Sergei Prokhorov conducting), which opened the way for renewed contacts with his homeland.In 1950 Tubin was inspired by northern lights in Stockholm to write his Piano Sonata No. 2 ("Northern Lights"). It should be regarded as one of the most brilliant works in the whole piano music of the 20th century. The composer, who always regarded his music critically, considered it his best work, together with the Symphony No 6. Living in the free world Tubin could closely follow the music life in Europe. Already in 1947 he visited the ISCM festival in Copenhagen. In 1952 he went to Bayreuth, where he could listen to several Wagner operas. In 1956 Tubin attended a Nordic Music Festival in Helsinki. In 1958 Tauno Hannikainen conducted his Symphony No 5 in Helsinki.In 1954 Tubin finished one of his most central works, the Symphony No 6. A depressing thoughts led him to use jazz elements and rhythms from contemporary dance music as grotesque effects in the symphony. The performances by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt proved that this symphony belongs to the top achievements of symphonic music in the 20th century. In 1959 it was performed in Estonia by Sergei Prokhorov.The Communist authorities of occupied Estonia followed closely the activities of the exiles. Repeatedly they tried to persuade Tubin to return. Since he steadfastly refused, performances of his works were banned at the end of the 1940s. His Symphony No 5 could be performed only in 1956.In 1959 the "Vanemuine" theatre asked Tubin to restore the score of the ballet "Kratt". In 1961 Tubin visited Estonia for the first time since the war to attend the first performance of the restored ballet. The performances of the ballet and the Symphony No 6, conducted by Järvi in Tallinn, were important events for many Estonian musicians. The force and active rhythms of the music inspired many young Estonian composers such as Veljo Tormis, Eino Tamberg, Jaan Rääts and Arvo Pärt.Tubin's visit to occupied Estonia was condemned by some exile Estonians, who saw it as collaboration with the Soviet authoroties.In 1961 Tubin became a Swedish citizen. In 1962 he was elected member of the Swedish Composers' Union (FST). His new works were regularly performed in Sweden, but did not get the attention they merited. His works written in Estonia remained hidden to the Swedish audience and were discovered only through Järvi's performances after his death.During the following years Tubin regularly visited Estonia to attend performances of his major works. In 1967 a producer of the National Opera Theatre "Estonia" Arne Mikk asked Tubin to write an opera, "Barbara von Tisenhusen", based on a historical short story by the Estonian-Finnish writer Aino Kallas. "Barbara von Tisenhusen" was first performed at "Estonia" in 1969 in the presence of the composer and his wife, and became a immediate success. It was performed more than 50 times during the following years, more than any other Estonian opera. Its deep and moving musical realization and intense development makes it the best Estonian opera.The great success led Arne Mikk to propose Tubin to write a second opera, based on another historical short story by Aino Kallas, "Parson of Reigi". It was finished in 1971, but repeated attempts by Mikk to have it staged failed due to the Soviet cultural policy. It was first performed by "Vanemuine" only in 1979.
Final years in Handen (1966-1982)

In 1966 Tubin moved to the suburb of Handen outside Stockholm. Here he was able to completely devote himself to his work as composer.The international breakthrough of Tubin's music started in 1980, when Neeme Järvi emigrated from Estonia to the USA and started ardently to perform it. Already in 1979 he conducted Tubin's Symphony No. 5 with great success in Stockholm, which prompted the music critic Carl-Gunnar Åhlen to prophesy: "Tubin's time will come". When Järvi was appointed chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 1982, he set his mind to record all of Tubin's symphonies, which could unfortunately be achieved only after the composer's death.A last great event in Tubin's life were the performances of his Symphony No 10 by the Boston Philharmonic during its centennial concerts in 1981. They were conducted by Neeme Järvi in the presence of the composer. During his last years Tubin received several important prizes. In 1979 he got the Kurt Atterberg award and in 1981 the Culture award of the City of Stockholm. In 1982 he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Music. This was a belated recognition of a composer, who had lived and worked quietly in Stockholm, but whose real greatness and importance had so far gone unrecognized in Sweden.His fatal disease was first felt in 1973 and relapsed at the end of the 1970s. He started writing his Symphony No 11, which remained unfinished. In the autumn of 1982 Tubin was hospitalized. Tubin died in Stockholm on November 17, 1982. Read more...

Mauricio Kagel (Germany-Argentina-1931-2008)

Mauricio Kagel (December 24, 1931 – September 18, 2008) was a German-Argentine composer who was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance.
BiographyKagel was born into a Jewish family which fled from Russia in the 1920s.[citation needed] He studied music, history of literature, and philosophy in Buenos Aires. [1] In 1957 he came as a scholar to Cologne, Germany, where he lived until his death.
From 1960–66 and 1972–76 he taught at the International Summer School at Darmstadt.
He taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1964 to 1965 as Slee Professor of music theory and at the Berlin Film and Television Academy as a visiting lecturer. He served as director of courses for new music in Gothenburg and Cologne. He was professor for new music theatre at the Cologne Conservatory from 1974 to 1997.
Among his students were Maria de Alvear, Carola Bauckholt, Branimir Krstic, David Sawer, Juan Maria Solare and Chao-Ming Tung.
He died in Cologne on September 18, 2008 after a long illness, at the age of 76.
WorksMany of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on. His work comparable to the Theatre of the Absurd.
Staatstheater (1971) is probably the piece that most clearly shows his absurdist tendency.[citation needed] This work is described as a "ballet for non-dancers",[cite this quote] though in many ways is more like an opera, and the devices it used as musical instruments include chamber pots and even enema equipment. As the work progresses, the piece itself, and opera and ballet in general, becomes its own subject matter.[citation needed] Similar is the radio play Ein Aufnahmezustand (1969) which is about the incidents surrounding the recording of a radio play.
Kagel also made films, with one of the best known being Ludwig van (1970), a critical interrogation of the uses of Beethoven's music made during the bicentenary of that composer's birth. In it, a reproduction of Beethoven's composing studio is seen, as part of a fictive visit of the Beethoven House in Bonn. Everything in it is papered with sheet music of Beethoven's pieces. The soundtrack of the film is a piano playing the music as it appears in each shot. Because the music has been wrapped around curves and edges, it is somewhat distorted, but recognisably Beethovenian motifs can still be heard. In other parts, the film contains parodies of radio or TV broadcasts connected with the "Beethoven Year 1770". Kagel later turned the film into a piece of sheet music itself which could be performed in a concert without the film - the score consists of close-ups of various areas of the studio, which are to be interpreted by the performing pianist.
Other pieces include Con Voce (With Voice), where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments and Match (1964), a tennis game for cellists with a percussionist as umpire,[4] also the subject of one of Kagel's films and perhaps the best-known of his works of instrumental theatre.
Kagel also wrote a large number of more conventional, "pure" pieces, including orchestral music, chamber music, and film scores. Many of these also make references to music of the past by, amongst others, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, and Liszt.
He has been regarded by music historians as deploying a critical intelligence interrogating the position of music in society.

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Robbn Orr (Scottish 1909-2006)

Robin Orr (1909 - 2006) - Full biography

Robin Orr was born in Scotland in 1909 where he lived until he was 25. After studying at the Royal College of Music, at Cambridge University (Organ Scholar at Pembroke College) and with Casella (in Italy) and Nadia Boulanger (in France), he moved to Cambridge, where he has spent most of his professional life. He was Organist and Director of Musicf at St John's College from 1938 to 1951, interrupted by war service in the RAFVR. From 1947 to 1956 he held a University Lectureship and was also a professor at the RCM. The next nine years were spent in Glasgow wher ehe was the first full-time Professor of Music at the University and became the first Chairman of Scottish Opera, an appointment he held for 15 years. He was Professor of Music at Cambridge from 1965 to 1976 (now Emeritus). During that time he made himself responsible for the new Music Faculty buildings, including raising the necessary funds for a first-class concert hall. For many years he was a Trustee of the Carl Rosa Opera and was a director of Welsh National Opera from 1977 to 1982. He is a Mus. D. of Cambridge, an Honorary Fellow of St John's and Pembroke Colleges, Hon. Mus. D. of Glasgow and LLD of Dundee, and was made CBE in 1972. Since retirement from academic work, he has spent much time with his wife in her native Switzerland. He was given Swiss nationality in 1995 and became a member of the Association Suisse des Musiciens in 1997.
Robin Orr's compositions include three commissioned operas: Full Circle (by Scottish Television for Scottish Opera in 1967, followed by four other separate productions); Hermiston (by Scottish Opera for the Edinburgh Festival in 1975); and On the Razzle (by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 1988). He has also written three symphonies that attracted the devoted support of Sir Alexander Gibson and Norman del Mar. The first, In One Movement, has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival, the London Proms and more than 60 other events worldwide; it was also recorded by HMV. The third, commissioned for the Llandaff Festival in 1978, was taken up in Scotland and most recently had an English premiere in Cambridge conducted by Stephen Cleobury. The Sinfonietta Helvetica (BBC commission) was premiered in Glasgow (1991), recognising the 700th anniversary of the founding of the Swiss Confederation. Orr has written several works for voice and strings: From the Book of Philip Sparrow (Janet Baker with the SNO 1969 and ECO 1971) and Journeys and Places (Glasgow University 1971) performed in Cambridge in 1984 by Sally Burgess and the Endellion String Quartet with Chi-Chi-Nwanoku. The Endellion (with tenor and oboe) recently performed Four Romantic Songs (commissioned by Peter Pears in 1949).
Chamber and church music are an important part of his creative work. Songs of Zion (on texts from four of the Psalms) was commissioned for the St Asaph Festival in 1978 and first performed by Stephen Wilkinson with the BBC Northern Singers. It was performed at the Zurich June Festival in 1986 and subsequently recorded for Nimbus by George Guest and St John's College Choir. There have been a number of performances in Switzerland of the Rhapsody for Strings (1956), most notably by the Zurcher Kammerorchester and the Camerata Bern; the Rhapsody has also been performed many times in Britain, by the ECO, SNO and the City of London Sinfonia. In 1998 Robin Orr's autobiography Musical Chairs was published (by Thames Publishing). His latest work is a commission from the BBC for a piece to preceded the Monteverdi Vespers, with the BBC Singers under Stephen Cleobury, premiered in Kings College Chapel on 6 August, 1999 and recorded as part of the 'Sounding the Millennium'.

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Rued Langaard (Denmark-1893-1952)

Thanks to Paul Dirmeikis for this beautifull work of art http://www.dirmeikis.org/

The child prodigy

Rued Langgaard was born on 28th July 1893 in Copenhagen.
His parents were Siegfried Langgaard, the pianist, composer and philosopher of music, and the pianist Emma Langgaard.
Art with a capital A was the order of the day in his childhood home, which was also permeated by deep religious feeling. Langgaard's parents felt themselves to be aristocrats in the realm of Art, and they viewed developments in musical life with scepticism.
Rued - his name was originally Rud, but he changed the spelling in 1932 - proved to be unusually musically gifted.With the talent he had been granted, his parents considered their child nothing less than 'God's gift to mankind'. So Rued was brought up to serve 'true' art.
It was a solitary childhood, in which young Langgaard's artistic development was the be-all and end-all. He did not go to school, but was taught at home by private tutors, and his musical education was guided with a firm hand by his parents.
It was only in the summer, when the Langgaard family holidayed at the idyllic fishing hamlet of Arild on Kullen (Sweden), that Rued had the chance to be a child and to be with children his own age. This was a sanctuary where he had a good opportunity to draw and paint, and in this area - as in music - he had a decided natural talent.
In March 1905 the 11-year-old Rued Langgaard performed for the first time in public on the organ, and shortly afterwards he gave a concert of his own at the Marmorkirken in Copenhagen. It was his amazing talent for improvisation that made a particular impression. Among the audience was Edvard Grieg, who in his enthusiasm immediately wrote a letter to the boy's mother.
Symphonist in the grand style
Rued Langgaard made his official debut as a composer in March 1908 with a large-scale work, Musae Triumphantes. The shy young composer was acclaimed by the public, but the press called the work immature and uncommitted.
Langgaard wanted to show his mettle, and three years later the then 17-year-old composer was ready with his gigantic First Symphony. But neither Copenhagen nor Stockholm felt able to perform it. The work was in fact extraordinarily demanding, but behind the rejection one glimpses the unwillingness of the musical establishment to support the young Promethean.
In the years 1908-13 Rued Langgaard was in Berlin every winter with his parents. There he heard lots of music, and Rued studied all the scores he could get hold of. And in Berlin he encountered interest in his symphony.
The result was that Langgaard's parents and relatives privately funded an all- Langgaard_concert with the Berlin Philharmonic and the conductor Max Fiedler in 1913, when the composer was 19.
Yet the considerable success Langgaard achieved in Berlin was not the cue for a career on Danish soil. The world premiere of his Symphony No. 2 Vaarbrud (Spring) in Copenhagen the following year thus did not to lead to a breakthrough for the composer. The critics were particularly sceptical.
In 1914 Rued Langgaard made his debut as a conductor in Copenhagen. Over the next few years he did quite a bit of conducting, but only of his own works. If we are to believe contemporary judgements, Langgaard had no striking talent as a conductor.
The music of nature, machinery and space
In the years 1914-18 large and small works flowed from the pen of Langgaard in a constant stream. In the middle of this period we find one of the marked watersheds in Langgaard's oeuvre. The optimism of the early works now yields to a more personal, melancholy and dissonant idiom. At the same time Langgaard begins to experiment with the form of the works. The work that begins this new phase in Langgaard's music is his Symphony No. 4 Løvfald (Fall of the Leaf) (1916) - a one-movement symphonic "autumn diary".
The sounds of nature, machinery and 'space' are brought into the works. This is done in miniature format in Insektarium, a series of small, aphoristic piano pieces, each describing an insect, and in String Quartet No. 2, which includes a 'futuristic' impression of a locomotive in a delirious, Bartók-like idiom.
In some of the highly imaginative, experimental works from these years Langgaard was ahead of his time. This is particularly true of Sfærernes_Musik (Music of the Spheres), the most visionary work from Langgaard's pen. It was first performed in Germany in 1921 and 1922, but then forgotten and neglected until 1968, when it was performed again and became the focus of a renewed interest in Langgaard.
The loner and the musical scene
When Langgaard was trying to make his mark as a symphonist the performance options for orchestral music in Denmark were extremely poor. So Langgaard organized a concert of his own in 1917, presenting his new Fourth Symphony, among other works. The concert was a success with the audience, while the critics - as usual - had their reservations.
The very few, scattered performances gave the public no opportunity to follow the expansive artistic development of the composer. And several of the important works Langgaard wrote in his younger years were either not performed in Copenhagen, or were badly received.
Langgaard was a loner, and although his original talents were recognized, the critics soon had him marked down as a 'child prodigy' who had not received the rigorous training necessary to bridle his talent.
Rued Langgaard, for his part, was not good at "selling himself". He was shy and never became part of an artistic environment which could balance the introverted, self-conscious atmosphere that surrounded his parents and their circle. Langgaard never acquired any strong advocates in the musical world, and only a small group of musicians supported him.
Another thing was that in these crucial years for Langgaard a new standard for progressive music was set in Danmark. For Carl Nielsen began in earnest to draw up the aesthetic agenda, while the opposition to Nielsen, to which the Langgaard family belonged, lost ground.
And finally, there must have been something in the personality of the brilliant, introverted youth that made people feel uncertain about him. In the 1910's Langgaard began to look around for a position as a church organist in Copenhagen, but despite his legendary organ-playing, he only succeeded in getting a couple of relatively short-term assistant job
"The Music of All Things"
The years 1919-24 are the 'modernist' phase in Rued Langgaard's output. In these years he composed a handful of works full of contrasts, which seek ways of expressing existential, religious truths and dealing with apocalyptic subjects; works like Symphony No. 6, Violin Sonata No. 2 and the piano work Afgrundsmusik (Music of the Abyss). At the centre stands the opera Antikrist (Antichrist).
At the same time it was a period when Langgaard's music seems to have enjoyed some success. At the beginning of the 1920's several of his orchestral works - for example Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 and Sfærernes Musik - were performed in Germany and Austria. And in contemporary music circles in Copenhagen it also appeared for a while that Langgaard was among the young composers to be reckoned with.
One of his most important works, his Symphony No. 6 (later given the title Det Himmelrivende - the Heaven-Rending), was given its first performance in Karlsruhe in 1923 with the composer conducting. The work was received with enthusiasm, while the Danish premiere a few months later can only be described as a scandal.
Langgaard himself saw the symphony as a work that pointed to the future, when a new era for music had to dawn, if everything was not to become meaningless. It was Langgaard's dream that music and art could become part of the life of society and culture in a crucially meaningful way. Around 1923 he formulated his - Utopian - ideas about this in writing in Fremtidens Frelser og Jesu musikalske Selskab (The Saviour of the Future and the Musical Society of Jesus), where he attempts to conceive of the kind of music the future needs, and calls it "The Music of All Things". Neoromantic revival
Around New Year 1924/25, Rued Langgaard took an unsual mental and stylistic 'U-turn'. His music was never again to sound as it had done before this turning-point, which divides his oeuvre in two.
After an explosive development from Late Romanticism to the point where he had become one of the most relentless Danish Modernists, Langgaard suddenly began to compose idyllic Romantic music that could have been written in the decades before his birth.
Apparently, Langgaard could no longer stomach the idea that art should give expression to existential problems.
He now advocated an 'impersonal', classically pure music, uncomplicated, with a simple message. And for him this meant Romantic music with beauty, memory and nostalgia as its pivotal values.
The change was sudden, and although Langgaard did develop further from this 'zero point', twenty years were to pass before he broke out of its constraints.
But Rued Langgaard was not the only composer who, in the turbulence of the twenties, sought an objective artistic foundation, a truth beyond the personal. It was a tendency of the period, which affected both Stravinsky and Carl Nielsen. But Langgaard's reaction was out of step with most others, in that it moved towards Romanticism rather than Neoclassicism or the "new objectivity".
In Langgaard's case, though, it was not simply a 'period' reaction. Its background was a series of artistic defeats, most recently the rejection of his opera. For an ambitious artist like Langgaard, doubts about his own value, and artistic heart-searching, were inevitable. That he was affected by these things at a deeply personal level is, interestingly enough, reflected in the composer's handwriting.
Nor was it only in music that Langgaard looked back towards his roots. In 1927 he moved, shortly after marrying ConstanceTetens, to a house his grandfather had once built far out in the open fields at Høje Tåstrup. But the next year the couple moved back to Langgaard's childhood neighbourhood in Copenhagen. And their summers were spent in places he had visited with his parents as a child.
In these years Langgaard worked temporarily as an organist at the Christiansborg Palace Chapel in Copenhagen. He was still looking for a position, even in the provinces - but without success. And when the post at Christiansborg Palace Chapel was announced as vacant in 1931, it was more or less promised to him - but he did not get it.
The struggle with the Zeitgeist
Rued Langgaard now turned his anger outward - against Carl Nielsen and all that he stood for, and against the musical establishment. Langgaard's life took on an unfortunate dimension and character, after a long, exhausting struggle for acceptance as an artist and as a loner; a struggle that loomed larger and larger in his consciousness and helped to drive him off course, artistically and mentally.
For a few years around 1930 Langgaard contributed in various ways to the intense cultural and musical debate of the day. In 1927, for example, he established "De kedeliges Musikforening" (The Boring Music Society) as an ironic bastion against what he saw as the cultural poverty of the period. It was short-lived.
Langgaard also wrote articles and readers' letters in the newspapers where his idealistic, religious view of music was expressed. Few were actually printed - among other things a polemic against Thomas Laub's influential church music reform. Langgaard was unemployed as an organist and had no opportunity to put his views into practice in church music. Personal and artistic motives prompted him to continue the struggle for a position as a church organist. Financial considerations were not a crucial factor for him.
In the 1930's Langgaard almost came to a standstill as far as the composition of new works was concerned, and instead he worked on the revision and reworking of previous compositions. And he read and read, seeking confirmation for his cultural pessimism, filling loose sheets of paper, notebooks and blocks with quotations and - sometimes very personal - notes.
The musical establishment by and large ignored him, and the situation was not improved by the way he presented himself in newspaper interviews as a martyr persecuted and betrayed by the age and its musical institutions. Only Danmarks Radio (the national broadcasting corporation, then called Statsradiofonien) felt a certain obligation towards Langgaard.
In the middle of this 'tragic decade' in Langgaard's life, when both external and internal problems came to a head, Langgaard succeeded in creating the mighty organ work Messis (Høstens Tid), (Messis - The Harvest Time), which stands as a central monument in his oeuvre.
Cathedral organist in Ribe
Langgaard's persistent lobbying was one of the things that paved the way for his success in obtaining - at the age of 47, and among 48 applicants - the job as cathedral organist and precentor at Ribe Cathedral in 1940, shortly after the German occupation of the country.
Ribe is far from Copenhagen, so Langgaard's engagement there inevitably took on the character of a 'banishment' of someone who was an undesirable in the capital. But for Langgaard the most important thing was the feeling that he was needed. For more than 15-20 years his greatest wish had been a modest organist's job, so it is not surprising that his mental state, which in the 1930's had reached a critical point, immediately improved on his arrival in Ribe.
His stable activities as a musican in the historic city stimulated his creativitity, and in 1942, after fourteen years, Langgaard took up the symphonic genre again in his Symphony No. 9 Fra Dronning Dagmars By (From the City of Queen Dagmar).
But Langgaard never tuned in to the mentality of the provincial city, and most of the citizens of Ribe had an uncomprehending attitude to this 'odd' artist. The children teased him, and he became entangled in innumerable petty clashes with the clergy, the congregational council and organist colleagues. If he was riled, his attitude could be provocative, bad-tempered and devil-may-care. Very few people got to know about his more good-humoured side.
Langgaard felt isolated as an artist in Ribe, but drew support from Constance, who also helped him by making fair copies of his scores and generally took charge of all practical matters.
The bizarre and the absurd
Contrary to what one might think, Langgaard had not stagnated as an artist. A new phase in his oeuvre began with the inspired Symphony No. 10 Hin Torden-Bolig (Yon Dwelling of Thunder) from 1944-45, which was the last of his 16 symphonies that he was to hear performed.
With Symphonies Nos. 11 and 12 and the Fri Klaversonate (Free Piano Sonata), strange 'autobiographical', bizarre and absurd features were added to the pastiche-like Romantic style Langgaard had long cultivated. An opaque - often 'private' - symbolism permeates the musical idiom.
Some of Langgaard's later works can be seen as protests against the composer's situation and as comments on his time - and on the musical tradition. This is true for example of the ultra-short Symphony No. 11 Ixion, written for an orchestra with four extra tubas.
The new tendency was a consequence of Langgaard's isolated position as a composer. After all, it seemed meaningless to carry on creating music to illuminate and open up the spiritual dimension of life when no one seemed to need it. Langgaard's later, contrast-filled and fragmented works express a dilemma: on the one hand the conviction that the composer brings us vital artistic/religious messages - and on the other the realization that the world is profoundly indifferent to them.
But Langgaard persisted. The period from May 1947 to September 1949 was his most productive ever. His list of works grew in this interval by some 60 items, including Symphonies No. 13 Undertro (Oh Ye of Little Faith), No. 14 Morgenen (Morning) and No. 15 Søstormen (Tempest), a strange piano work like Le Béguinage- and the choral work Carl Nielsen, vor store Komponist (Carl Nielsen, Our Great Composer).
Professor Langgaard
Langgaard's last years were dominated by resignation and physical frailty. After October 1949 he composed only minor works, with the exception of Symphony No. 16 Syndflod af Sol (Sun Deluge). The symphony was dedicated to the National Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra in gratitude for what the orchestra had done for the composer, but was not given its first performance until 1966.
In 1951 Langgaard was appointed Honorary Professor at a music institute in Lausanne, Switzerland. Langgaard was proud of the title and brandished it right and left, but in reality it was of highly dubious value and nowhere near as fancy as the diploma he was sent.
But the lifelong struggle had left its scars, and in January 1951 Langgaard suffered a stroke which was the decisive blow to his health. He attempted with great will-power to carry on with his job as an organist, but in the end could not complete a whole church service. Shortly before his 59th birthday, in July 1952, Rued Langgaard died and was buried in Holmens Churchyard in Copenhagen.

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Robin Milford (British-1903-1959)

Robin Milford (22 January 1903–29 December 1959) was an English composer.
Biography
Milford was born in Oxford, son of Sir Humphrey Milford, publisher with Oxford University Press. He attended Rugby School from 1916 where his musical talent for the piano, flute and theory was recognised, and studied at the Royal College of Music from 1921 to 1926. His composition teachers were Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and he studied harmony and counterpoint under R. O. Morris. He also studied organ.
In 1927, he married. Realising that he would not be able to make a living solely as a composer he worked for a time with the Aeolian Company correcting Duo-Art pianola rolls until 1930. He also taught part-time at Ludgrove School (where his pupils included the music enthusiast George Lascelles, later 7th Earl of Harewood) and at Downe House School. In 1929 he had met fellow-composer Gerald Finzi, with whom he found he had much in common, personally and musically, and the two formed a lifelong friendship.
His early compositions met with some success, his Double Fugue Op. 10 winning a Carnegie Prize and being performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Vaughan Williams. In September 1931 his oratorio A Prophet in the Land Op. 21 was performed in Gloucester Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival - the work was somewhat overshadowed by the splash made by William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast performed the same year. In 1937 a performance of his Concerto Grosso Op. 46 was directed by Malcolm Sargent, and his Violin Concerto Op. 47 was broadcast by the BBC in early 1938.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Milford volunteered for the army, and was posted to the Pioneer Corps. After just one week, he suffered a breakdown, and after treatment he and his family moved to Guernsey. His depression was deepened by the death of his mother in 1940. He returned to England, to teach and compose, but soon afterwards his five-year-old son was killed in a road accident prompting Milford to attempt suicide; he attempted to take his own life again soon afterwards in hospital. In 1946, he had recovered sufficiently to resume teaching (at Badminton School) and to undertake musical activities. He continued composing throughout this period.
After the death of his father in 1952, he was prescribed occasional shock therapy. He did continue to enjoy successes: his Overture for a Celebration Op. 103 was performed under John Barbirolli at the 1955 Cheltenham Music Festival. He also continued to receive moral and material support from his friends Finzi (who led a performance of Fishing by Moonlight Op 96 in 1956) and Vaughan Williams (who arranged a performance of the Concertino Op 106 in 1958, and gave financial help).
The deaths of Finzi (1956) and Vaughan Williams (1958) affected Milford deeply. His final illness affected his vision and his balance, and he committed suicide by taking an overdose of aspirin in December 1959.

Music

It has been observed that Milford's writing shows strongly the influence of Vaughan Williams, as might be expected. His use of diatonic melodies, often harmonised with gentle discords, and with false relations occurring occasionally, has led Erik Blom (1942) to crystallise these musical traits (also shown by other English composers of the period) as "musical Englishry".
Despite the tragic events of Milford's life, and his resultant depression, he seems to have had a capacity for incidental enjoyment and his music is by no means gloomy. Indeed, a factor contributing to Milford's depression was that his brand of English music, as handed down from Vaughan Williams and Holst, was going out of fashion, and his music was not appreciated in a musical scene which was increasingly modernist even while Milford's own music was becoming more conservative.
As well as large scale works, Milford also wrote smaller pieces, for example organ pieces suitable for playing as church voluntaries (he was himself a village church organist) and piano works. Milford was able to show the character of a song setting with just a few notes, for example in the very brief piano introduction to If it's ever Spring Again.
Recordings of his music are few, although some of his music - some songs, his Concertino Op. 106 and a selection of pieces including Fishing by Moonlight Op. 96 - are available

Notable compositions

Milford's compositions include

The Shoemaker Op. 3, children's opera (1923) Double Fugue Op. 10, for orchestra (1926) The Darkling Thrush Op. 17, for violin and orchestra (1929) Go Little Book Op. 18, suite for flute, optional soprano and orchestra (1928) Two Orchestral Interludes Op. 19e, for orchestra (arrangements of two easy piano duets, written before 1930) Concertino for Harpsichord and String Orchestra Op. 20 (1929) A Prophet in the Land Op. 21, dramatic oratorio (1929) Symphony Op. 34 (1933, perhaps never performed in full, withdrawn in 1956 although admired by Vaughan Williams - see quote) Miniature Concerto in G Op. 35, for string quartet or orchestra, with optional double basses (1933) Four Songs Op. 36 (1933) includes So Sweet Love Seemed (no. 1) Concerto Grosso Op. 46 (1936) Violin Concerto Op. 47 (1937) Four Hardy Songs Op. 48 (1938) includes The Colour, no. 2 If it's ever Spring Again, no. 3 Elegy for James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleugh Op. 50, for string orchestra (1939) A Mass for Children's Voices Op. 62 (1941-42) Sonata in C for flute and piano, Op. 69a (1944), of which Milford arranged the slow movement for flute and string orchestra Elegiac Meditation Op. 83, for viola and string orchestra (1946-47) A Mass for Christmas Morning Op. 84, for five voices (1945-47) Fishing by Moonlight Op. 96 for piano and string orchestra (1952 arrangement of 1949 piece for two harpsichords or two pianos) Festival Suite Op. 97, for string orchestra (1950) Overture for a Celebration Op. 103 (1952-54) Concertino in E Op. 106, for piano and string orchestra (1955) The Scarlet Letter Op. 112, opera based on novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1958-59) Read more...

Roger Quilter (British 1877-1953)

He was born at his parents’ home in Hove, Sussex, UK, on November 1st 1877. At that time, his father, a shrewd and extremely wealthy stockbroker and businessman, was still plain William Cuthbert Quilter, but in 1897, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Year, he became Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart. Sir Cuthbert was an art collector (his collection was well-known in its day) and he owned a very substantial estate in Suffolk, England.

Roger was the third of five sons, in a large family. His mother encouraged his artistic inclinations, and he was devoted to her. He attended a preparatory school in Farnborough and in January 1892, he began at Eton College, where, though the emphasis was upon sporting achievement, he was allowed to pursue his musical studies. However, Eton’s atmosphere was not congenial for someone of his sensitivity, and in later years, he was reported to have said that he hated his time there.
Around 1896 a family friend suggested that he continue his musical studies in Frankfurt. To go abroad to study was still a common route at this time, since the English music academies were not especially well-established. So Quilter enrolled at the Hoch Conservatory at Frankfurt-am-Main; he took composition lessons with Ivan Knorr, as did Balfour Gardiner, Norman O’Neill, Cyril Scott, and the redoubtable Percy Grainger, though they were not all there at the same time. They had in common a dislike of Beethoven, and they became known as the ‘Frankfurt Group’.
On his return, he continued to write songs, having begun while at Frankfurt, and in March 1901, his Songs of the Sea were performed by Denham Price at the Crystal Palace. Gervase Elwes, one of the leading tenors of the day, began to sing Quilter’s songs, and the song-cycle To Julia - which was dedicated to Elwes - put Quilter firmly on the map as a song composer.
Over the succeeding years, Quilter continued to write songs for an appreciative audience. He also continued in poor health (his letters are peppered with references to how ill he was feeling), and consequently did not serve in the First World War. Instead, he organised concerts in various hospitals, and a series of chamber concerts that he was involved with continued after the war.
Gervase Elwes was killed in an accident at Boston railway station, Massachusetts, in 1921. The Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, in the UK, was set up in his memory, and Quilter was a founder member, serving faithfully and attending the committee meetings regularly until his death. In 1923, he met a young baritone, Mark Raphael, whom he encouraged and worked with closely. He also had a private secretary, Leslie Woodgate, during the 1920s, and both Raphael and Woodgate remained lifelong and loyal friends.
In 1911, the children’s play Where the Rainbow Ends was premièred at the Savoy Theatre, London; Quilter wrote the incidental music for it. Produced by Italia Conti, who subsequently founded the Italia Conti School (now the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts), it was immensely successful, and for many years Quilter conducted the opening matinée of the season. The parties for the cast of children, that he held at his home in Montagu Street, London, were also well-known.
Most of his best work was produced before 1923, though there are some superb songs produced after this time. He collaborated with Rodney Bennett on a number of projects, including the light opera, Julia, which was premièred at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in December 1936. For many years, his songs were broadcast frequently on radio.
He was a nervous, anxious man, cultured, well-read and well-travelled, but not happy with others of his social class unless they shared his love of the arts. His favourite nephew, Arnold Vivian, was killed in tragic circumstances during the second World War; the shock was immense, and was possibly (given Quilter’s nature, the pressures on him as a result of his homosexuality, and other events) the final straw responsible for the triggering of his severe mental illness. In his last years, he was undoubtedly extremely difficult to live with, and there are allegations of blackmail; the events of these years are however open to different interpretations.
In 1952, his 75th birthday was marked by the BBC with a celebration concert, conducted by Leslie Woodgate. He died within the year, at his home in St John’s Wood, London, on the 21st September 1953, and was buried in the family vault at Bawdsey church, Suffolk. A memorial concert in London was very well attended by family and fellow musicians, and by ordinary people who loved his music.

Music
Quilter wrote mostly songs, but there are a few piano pieces, some orchestral pieces and some incidental music to theatrical works. There are a few chamber works, too: these are almost always arrangements of his other pieces.
His music was superbly crafted, and has an iridescent quality. It is often extremely powerful (particularly the Five Jacobean Lyrics - not a quality usually associated with Quilter. The songs always lie well: this is one feature that made them so popular - there were never any awkward intervals - and the accompaniments are closely integrated with the vocal line. A wistfulness tends to pervade all Quilter’s music: it is a very English sound, that we tend to associate with the Edwardian period, but perhaps it stems too from Quilter’s own personality.
Because of his early fame as a song-writer, there appears to have been little call for him to write in any other genre. But his other music, though light in nature (he never attempted any long forms), is a delight to listen to, and a joy to play. His piano music in particular is freed of the restrictions of having to write comfortably for singers and their pianists; it is effective and atmospheric, and owes much to Debussy. ‘At a Country Fair’ (from Three Pieces for Piano) has a percussive timbre with hints of Stravinsky’s Petrushka. The Three Studies are still in print, in an excellent volume available through Boosey & Hawkes; the Three Pieces, Two Impressions and Country Pieces are also available from Boosey’s as authorised photocopies.

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Boris Lyatoshynsky (Ukranian, 1895-1968)

Borys Mykolayovych Lyatoshynsky (Ukrainian) (January 3, 1895 - April 15, 1968) was a composer, conductor, teacher, and leading member of the new generation of twentieth century Ukrainian composers.
Biography .
Borys Lyatoshynsky was born in Zhytomyr (also the birthplace of Sviatoslav Richter), in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). His father, Mykola Leontiyovych Lyatoshynsky, was a history teacher and was an activist in historical studies. He was also the director of various gymnasiums in Zhytomyr, Nemyriv, and Zlatopol. Lyatoshynsky's mother played the piano well and sang.
Lyatoshynsky started out playing piano and violin. At 14, he wrote a few musical pieces including a mazurka and waltz for piano, along with quartet for piano. He also attended the Zhytomyr Gymnasium, from where he graduated in 1913. After graduating, he joined Kyiv University and later the newly-established Kyiv Conservatory, where he studied composition with Reinhold Gliere in 1914. Lyatoshynsky graduated from Kyiv University in 1918, and from the Kyiv Conservatory in 1919. During this time, he wrote his String Quartet No.1, op.1, and his Symphony No.1, op.2.
In 1920, Lyatoshynsky started to teach musical-theoretical disciplines at the Kyiv Conservatory, and from 1922 he taught composition. From 1922 to 1925 he was in charge of the Association of Modern Music in the name of Mykola Leontovych (his father's name).

Works

Stage

The Golden Ring, opera in 4 acts opus 23 (1929) (revised in 1970) "Shchors", opera about Nikolay Shchors in 5 acts after I. Kocherha and M.Rylsky opus 29 (1937) The Commander, opera (1970)

Orchestral

5 symphonies Symphony No. 1 A major opus 2 (1918-1919) Symphony No. 2 B minor opus 26 (1935-1936) Revised in 1940. Symphony No. 3 B minor opus 50 "To the 25th Anniversary of the October revolution" (1951) Symphony No. 4 B? minor opus 63 (1963)[1] Symphony No. 5 C major "Slavonic" opus 67 (1965-1966) Fantastic March opus 3 (1920) Overture on four Ukrainian Folk themes opus 20 (1927) Suite from the Opera "The Golden Tire" opus 23 (1928) Lyric Poem (1947) Song of the reunification of Russia opus 49 (1949-1950) Waltz (1951) Suite from the Film music "Taras Shevchenko" opus 51 (1952) Slavonic Concerto for piano and orchestra opus 54 (1953) Suite from the Play "Romeo and Juliet" opus 56 (1955) "On the Banks of Vistula", symphonic poem opus 59 (1958) Orchestration of String Quartet No. 2 A major opus 4 (No. 2 Intermezzo) for orchestra (1960) Polish Suite opus 60 (1961) Slavonic Overture opus 61 (1961) Lyric Poem "To the Memory of Gliere" opus 66 (1964) Slavonic Suite opus 68 (1966) Festive Overture opus 70 (1967) "Grazyna", ballade after A. Mickiewicz opus 58 (1955)

Vocal/Choral

OrchestralFestive Cantata "To the 60th Anniversary of Stalin" after Rilskov for mixed chorus and orchestra (1938) "Inheritance", cantata after Shevtshenko (1939)

Chamber/Instrumental

5 string quartets String Quartet No. 1 D minor opus 1 (1915) String Quartet No. 2 A major opus 4 (1922) String Quartet No. 3 opus 21 (1928) String Quartet No. 4 opus 43 (1943) String Quartet No. 5 (1944-1951) Piano Trio No. 1 opus 7 (1922) (revised in 1925) Sonata for violin and piano opus 19 (1926) Three Pieces after Folksong-Themes for violin and piano opus 25 (1932) Piano Trio No. 2 opus 41 (1942) Piano Quintet "Ukrainian Quintet" opus 42 (1942) Suite on Ukrainian Folksong-Themes for string quartet opus 45 (1944) Suite for wind quartet opus 46 (1944) Two Mazurkas on Polonian Themes for cello and piano (1953) Nocturne and Scherzo for viola and piano (1963)

Piano

Elegy-Prelude (1920) Piano Sonata No. 1 opus 13 (1924) Seven Pieces "Reflections" opus 16 (1925) Piano Sonata No. 2 "Sonata Ballade" opus 18 (1925) Ballad opus 22 (1928-1929) Ballad opus 24 (1929) Suite (1941) Three Preludes opus 38 (1942) Two Preludes opus 38b (1942) Shevchenko-Suite (1942) Not finished. Five Preludes opus 44 (1943) Concerto Etude-Rondo (1962-1965) Concert-Etude (1962-1967)

Vocal

"Moonshadow", song after Verlaine, I.Severyanin, Balmont and Wilde opus 9 (1923) Two Poems after Shelley opus 10 (1923) Two Songs after Maeterlinck and Balmont opus 12 (1923) Four Poems after Shelley opus 14 (1924) Poems for baritone and piano opus 15 (1924)
ChoralThe Sun Rises at the Horizon, song after Shevtshenko for chorus Water, Flow into the Blue Lake!, song after Shevtshenko for chorus Seasons after Pushkin for chorus Po negy kradetsya luna after Pushkin for chorus Kto, volny, vas ostanovil after Pushkin for chorus

Incidental and Film music

Music to the Play "Optimistic Tragedy" (1932) Music to the Film "Taras Shevtshenko" (1950) Music to the Play "Romeo and Julia" (1954) Music to the Film "The Hooked Pig's Snout" (1956) Music to the Film "Ivan Franko" (1956)

Band

March No. 1 for wind orchestra (1931) March No. 2 for wind orchestra (1932) March No. 3 for wind orchestra (1936)

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Boris Tchaikovsky (Russia 1925-1996)

Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky (no relations to Pyotr Ilyich) was born in Moscow on September 10, 1925. His father was an expert in statistics and economic geography (and also a capable self-taught violinist), and his mother was a medic (and it was she who urged him towards a musical career). The parents were talented individuals who worked very efficiently, knew literature and art well, and passionately loved music. The ethical principles inherited from the parents became his lifelong inner core.

He entered the Gnessin's Primary Musical School at the age of nine Among his first musical teachers were Alexandra Golovina, Elena F. Gnessina. B.Tchaikovsky's first teacher in composition was Eugeny Messner. Then B.Tchaikovsky in due course proceeded to the Gnessin's Specialized Musical School, where he studied with Vissarion Shebalin, Igor Sposobin, A.Mutly.

In 1943 Boris entered into the Moscow Conservatory where he studied the piano under Lev Oborin and composition under other prominent teachers - Vissarion Shebalin, Dmitry Shostakovich and Nikolay Myaskovsky. During the anti-formalist campaign of 1948 Shostakovich was banned from teaching and his students were deemed to have been contaminated. But Tchaikovsky refused to renounce his teachers, proving the integrity and strength of his character.

B.Tchaikovsky graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1949. Already in 1949 Nikolay Myaskovsky wrote: "...Boris Tchaikovsky is very gifted young composer with good composers technique and undoubtedly significant creative individuality".

After quitting the job at the radio station in 1952, Boris Tchaikovsky made his living only from composing music, including commissioned works and scores for radio, theatre, film and television.

B.Tchaikovsky was awarded by the USSR State Prize (in 1969, for creation The Second Symphony) and became the People's Artist of USSR (in 1985).

During the last years of his life (from 1989 to 1996) he taught at the Russian Academy of Music, where he was a Professor in the department of composition. Composers Stanislav Prokudin, Yury Abdokov, Rade Radovich, Alexander Khristianov, Elena Astafieva and Jakov Kurochkin were the students in B.Tchaikovsky's composition class.

Boris Tchaikovsky died on February 7, 1996 in Moscow

Listen from You Tube his Suite For cello solo Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4oVDvTjSw

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ3VJ-ioZc4

Enjoy this Great music and explore more of this neglected composer

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Cesar Cui (Russia-1835-1918)

César Antonovich Cui (Russian:, Tsezar' Antonovic Kjui) (18 January [O.S. 6 January] 1835 - March 13, 1918) was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a member of The Five, the group of Russian composers under the leadership of Mily Balakirev dedicated to the production of a specifically Russian type of music.
Biography
Upbringing and careerCesarius-Benjaminus Cui was born in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania), to a Roman Catholic family, as the youngest of five children. His French father Antoine (name russianized as Anton Leonardovich), had entered Russia as a member of Napoleon's army in 1812, settled in Vilnius upon their defeat, and married a local woman named Julia Gucewicz. Amidst this multi-ethnic environment young César grew up learning French, Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian. Before finishing gymnasium, in 1850 Cui was sent to Saint Petersburg to prepare to enter the Chief Engineering School, which he did the next year at age 16. In 1855 he was graduated from the Academy, and after advanced studies at the Nikolaevsky Engineering Academy, he began his military career in 1857 as an instructor in fortifications. His students over the decades included several members of the Imperial family, most notably Nicolas II. Cui eventually ended up teaching at three of the military academies in Saint Petersburg. Cui's study of fortifications gained from frontline assignment during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 proved quite important for his career. As an expert on military fortifications, Cui eventually attained the academic status of professor in 1880 and the military rank of general in 1906. His writings on fortifications included textbooks that were widely used, in several successive editions (see bibliography below).
Avocational life in musicDespite his achievements as a professional military academic, Cui is best known in the West for his "other" life in music. As a boy in Vilnius he received piano lessons, studied Chopin's works, and began composing little pieces at fourteen years of age. In the few months before he was sent to Petersburg, he managed to have some lessons in music theory with the Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, who was residing in Vilnius at the time. Cui's musical direction changed in 1856, when he met Mily Balakirev and began to be more seriously involved with music.
Even though he was composing music and writing music criticism in his spare time, Cui turned out to be an extremely prolific composer and feuilletonist. His public "debut" as a composer occurred 1859 with the performance of his orchestral Scherzo, Op. 1, under the baton of Anton Rubinstein and the auspices of the Russian Musical Society. In 1869 the first public performance of an opera by Cui took place; this was his William Ratcliff (based on the tragedy by Heinrich Heine); but it did not ultimately have success, partially because of the harshness of his own writings in the music press.]All but one of his operas were composed to Russian texts; the one exception, Le Flibustier (based on a play by Jean Richepin), premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1894 (twenty-five years after Ratcliff), but it did not succeed either. Cui's more successful stage works during his lifetime were the one-act comic opera The Mandarin's Son (publicly premiered in 1878), the three-act Prisoner of the Caucasus (1883), based on Pushkin, and the one-act Mademoiselle Fifi (1903), based on Guy de Maupassant. [16]Besides Flibustier, the only other operas by Cui performed in his lifetime outside of the Russian Empire were Prisoner of the Caucasus (in Liège, 1886) and the children's opera Puss in Boots (in Rome, 1915).
Cui among artists of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre, 1902Cui's activities in musical life included also membership on the opera selection committee at the Mariinsky Theatre; this stint ended in 1883, when both he and Rimsky-Korsakov left the committee in protest of its rejection of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina . During 1896-1904 he was director of the Petersburg branch of the Russian Musical Society.
Among the many musicians Cui knew in his life, Franz Liszt looms large. Liszt valued the music of Russian composers quite highly; for Cui's opera William Ratcliff he expressed some of the highest praise. Cui's book La musique en Russie and Suite pour piano, Op. 21, are dedicated to the elder composer. In addition, Cui's Tarantelle for orchestra, Op. 12, formed the basis for Liszt's last piano transcription.
Two personalities of direct significance for Cui were women who were specially devoted to his music. In Belgium, the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau (1837-1890) was most influential in making possible the staging there of Prisoner of the Caucasus in 1885. In Moscow, Mariya Kerzina, with her husband Arkadiy Kerzin, formed in 1896 the Circle of Russian Music Lovers, a performance society, which began in 1898 to give special place to works by Cui, among those of other Russian composers, in its concerts.
In such a long and active musical life as Cui's there were many accolades. In the late 1880s and early 1890s several foreign musical societies honored Cui with memberships. Shortly after the staging of Le Flibustier in Paris, Cui was elected as a correspondent member of the Académie française and awarded the cross of the Légion d'honneur. In 1896 the Belgian Royal Academy of Literature and Art made him a member. In 1909 and 1910 events were held in honor of Cui's 50th anniversary as a composer.
Family Grave of Mal'vina and César Cui at Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint PetersburgCui married Mal'vina Rafailovna Bamberg in 1858. He had met her at the home of Alexander Dargomyzhsky, from whom she was taking singing lessons Among the musical works Cui dedicated to her is the early Scherzo, Op. 1 (1857), which uses themes based on her maiden name (BAmBErG) and his own initials (C.C.), and the comic opera The Mandarin's Son. César and Mal'vina had two children, Lidiya and Aleksandr. Lidiya, an amateur singer, married and had a son named Yuri Borisovich Amoretti; in the period before the October Revolution Aleksandr was a member of the Russian Senate.
Last years and deathIn 1916 the composer went blind, although he was able to compose small pieces by dictation. Cui died on March 26, 1918 from cerebral apoplexy and was buried next to his wife Mal'vina (who had died in 1899) at the Smolensk Lutheran Cemetery in Saint Petersburg. In 1939 his body was reinterred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, Saint Petersburg, to lie beside the other members of The Five.
Cui as a music critic Caricature of Cui by Rayevsky, based on a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme. The gladiators in the center bear shields inscribed with the titles of Cui's operas William Ratcliff, The Mandarin's Son, and AngeloAs a writer on music, Cui contributed almost 800 articles between 1864 and 1918 to various newspapers and other publications in Russia and Europe. (He "retired" from regular music criticism in 1900.) His wide coverage included concerts, recitals, musical life, new publications of music, and personalities. A significant number of his articles (ca. 300) dealt with opera. Several of his themed sets of articles were reissued as monographs; these covered topics as varied as the original 1876 production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth, the development of the Russian romance (art song), music in Russia, and Anton Rubinstein's seminal lectures on the history of piano music of 1888-1889. (See list of writings below.) In addition, as indicated above as part of his profession, Cui also published many books and articles about military fortifications.
Because of rules related to his status in the Russian military, in the early years his musico-critical articles had to be published under a pseudonym, which consisted of three asterisks (***); in Petersburg musical circles, however, it became clear who was writing the articles]His musical reviews began in the St.Petersburg Vedomosti, expressing disdain for music before Beethoven (such as Mozart) and his advocacy of originality in music. Sarcasm was a regular feature of his feuilletons.
Cui's primary goal as a critic was to promote the music of contemporary Russian composers, especially the works of his now better-known co-members of The Five. Even they, however, were not spared negative reactions from him here and there, especially in his blistering review of the first production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in 1873. (Later in life Cui championed the music of this late colleague of his, to the point of making the first completion of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera The Fair at Sorochyntsi.)
Russian composers outside of The Five, however, were often more likely to produce a negative reaction. This derived at least partly from distrust of the western-style conservatory system in favor of the autodidactic approach that The Five had practiced. Cui lambasted Tchaikovsky's second performed opera, The Oprichnik, for instance[34]; and his stinging remarks about Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.1 are often cited. (Fortunately for posterity, both works have survived their unfavorable premieres.)
Of Western composers, Cui favored Berlioz and Liszt as progressives. He admired Wagner's aspirations concerning music drama, but did not agree with that composer's methods to achieve them (such as the leitmotif system and the predominance of the orchestra).
Late in life Cui's presumed progressiveness as espoused in the 1860s and '70s faded, and he showed firm hostility towards the younger "modernists" such as Richard Strauss and Vincent d'Indy. Cui's very last published articles (from 1917) constituted merciless parodies, including the little song "Hymn to Futurism")and "Concise Directions on How to Become a Modern Composer of Genius without Being a Musician"
Cui as a composer
Cui composed in almost all genres of his time, with the distinct exceptions of the symphony and the symphonic poem (unlike his compatriots Balakirev, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov). By far art songs constitute the greatest number of works by Cui; these include a few vocal duets and many songs for children. Several of his songs are available also in versions with orchestral accompaniment, including his Bolero, Op. 17, which was dedicated to the singer Marcella Sembrich. Some of his most famous art songs include "The Statue at Tsarskoye Selo" and "The Burnt Letter," , both based on poems by Cui's most valued poet, Pushkin.
In addition, Cui wrote many works for piano and for chamber groups (including three string quartets), numerous choruses, and several orchestral works, but his most significant efforts are reflected in the operas, of which he composed fifteen of varying proportions. Besides children's music (which includes four fairytale operas as well as the aforementioned songs), three other special categories of compositions stand out among his works: pieces inspired by and dedicated to the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau (whom the composer knew from 1885 to her death in 1890; works associated with the Circle of Russian Music Lovers (the "Kerzin Circle"); and pieces inspired by the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.
As to the current status of Cui the composer, in the last few decades one of his children's operas (of which he composed four) entitled Puss-in-Boots (from Perrault) has had wide appeal in Germany. Nevertheless, despite the fact that more of Cui's music is being made available in recent years in recordings and in new printed editions, his status today in the repertoire is considerably small, based (in the West) primarily on some of his piano and chamber music (such as the violin and piano piece called Orientale (op. 50, No. 9)) and a number of solo songs. The received wisdom that he is not a particularly talented composer, at least for large genres, has been cited as a cause for this state of affairs; his strongest talent is said to lie in the crystallization of mood at an instant as captured in his art songs and instrumental miniatures. Although his abilities as an orchestrator, too, have been disparaged (notably by his compatriot Rimsky-Korsakov), some recent recordings (e.g., of his one-act opera Feast in Time of Plague, from Pushkin) suggest that Cui's dramatic music might be more interesting to pursue with regard to this feature.
Cui's works are not so nationalistic as those of the other members of The Five; with the exception of Pushkin, his operas do not display a strong attraction to Russian sources. In the area of art song, however, the vast majority of Cui's vocal music is based on Russian texts. Overt attempts at Russian "folk" musical style can be detected in passages from his first act of the collaborative Mlada (1872), The Captain's Daughter, a couple of the children's operas, and a few songs; many other passages in his music reflect the stylistic curiosities associated with Russian art music of the 19th century, such as whole tone scales and certain harmonic devices. Nevertheless, his style is more often compared to Robert Schumann and to French composers such as Gounod than to Mikhail Glinka or to Cui's Russian contemporaries.

Music of Cui from Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maGVutLuRNo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ7G9na-a6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p9UwSs46EQ

More music in YouTube

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Spanish Composer Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989)

Ernesto Halffter Escriche (Madrid, 16 January 1905 – Madrid, 5 July 1989) is one of the most important Spanish composers of the twentieth century. Yet he considered himself modestly, just as a pupil of Manuel de Falla, whom he admired, both as an artist and as a morally exemplary human being. Nevertheless, Halffter was aware of his all-round musical talent, and that he was not lacking in ideas.
His father, Ernest Halffter Hein, a Prussian jeweller, who had settled in Madrid and married a Spaniard, Rosario Escriche Erradón, was completely supportive of the idea of his eldest and third-born sons, Rodolfo and Ernesto, choosing music as a profession. Perhaps this interest in music was inherited from their grandparents, Andalusians hailing from Écija (Seville), who were both opera lovers, while, according to Yolanda Acker, the musicologist and specialist in the works of Ernesto Halffter, their grandfather, Emilio Escriche, was also an excellent painter.
Ernesto began his education at the Colegio Alemán in Madrid and soon stood out in the world of music, as did his brother Rodolfo, for whom he wrote opera libretti. His earliest composition dates from 1911, when he was just six years old. In 1922 Ernesto’s piano teacher, the Hungarian Fernando Ember, performed his pupil’s first piano works, including the three pieces from Crepúsculos at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. A short time later after their first meeting in 1923, the young Halffter sent Falla the score of his Trio for violin, violoncello and piano, on which the Andalusian composer, wrote “Bravo!”
Crepúsculos already showed signs of the great composer who, at the of age twenty, would receive the Premio Nacional de Música for his splendid Sinfonietta, a prize he would again be awarded in 1983 for his ‘continuous contribution to Spanish music’. This piano triptych was initially titled Tres piezas líricas (Three Lyric Pieces). The composer wrote a program for the first, El viejo reloj del castillo (The Old Castle Clock), which might have been based on one of the legends by the great romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, whose Rimas (Rhymes) Albéniz, Falla and Turina turned into very beautiful songs. According to the critic Adolfo Salazar, the third, Una ermita en el bosque (A Hermitage in the Forest), had a certain rural flavour in the style of Granados. The second, Lullaby, reflects the impressionism Ernesto experienced several years later, from 1926 to 1928, in the Paris of Les Six. Halffter felt a close affinity to some of its members such as Poulenc, Auric and Milhaud. In Madrid he also formed part of the group of composers representing the so-called ‘Generation of 27’ or ‘of the Republic’, the famous literary (and musical) group launched during the very creative Roaring 20s, which dominated Spanish music until 1936. The group was based around the Residencia de Estudiantes, the institution derived from the very liberal, lay, and innovative Institución Libre de Enseñanza.
The premiere of the Marche joyeuse took place at the Residencia de Estudiantes in 1922. This piece is admirable for its charm and modern spirit, much in keeping with that of the generation of writers and artists featuring García Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí, Gerardo Diego, Aleixandre, etc. It was published with a cover by Salvador Dalí and soon formed part of the repertory of the famous Artur Rubinstein. Halffter reveals his very clever and ingenious use of bitonality and a varied array of rhythms.
In 1926 Halffter began composing his Sonata per pianoforte, which would not be completed until six years later. It could be described as a modern version of Scarlatti or of the spirit behind the Spanish harpsichord school. But upon closer listening, there are traces of a composer who, without discarding his customary joviality, is capable of revealing a side to his music that was as serious and profound as that of his admired Falla. It could also be a disguised homage to Granados, clearly cited towards the end of the Sonata, in both his Goyesque and Scarlattian aspects. The Sonata per pianoforte, dedicated to Janine Cools, was given its premiere by the pianist, Leopoldo Querol, in Madrid in May 1934. This was the only sonata of the three Halffter was required to compose in a contract he signed with the publishing house Max Eschig of Paris, of which the composer Eugène Cools (1877-1936) was Director.
L’espagnolade formed part of the album Parc d’attractions, a collective homage to the French pianist and teacher Marguerite Long (1874-1966), which took place at the 1937 Paris Exposition. This involved numerous foreign composers who resided in Paris at the time, including Tibor Harsányi (1898-1954), Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), Bohuslav MartinÛ (1890-1959), Marcel Mihalovici (1898-1985), Frederic Mompou (1893-1987), Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994), Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) and Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977). L’espagnolade is an ironic pasodoble, a charming imitation of an Andalusian musical form that flourished during the mid-nineteenth century. The premiere, given at the Salle Gaveau in Paris in 1938, was entrusted to the French pianist, Nicole Henriot (1925-2001), one of Marguerite Long’s favourite pupils.
Grüss (salute, greeting) follows the tradition of the German romantic Lied. The composer himself did not consider the piece to be of the slightest importance and never published it himself as he believed composers of his generation would not take it seriously. However, it exudes an intimate charm like that of other pieces of the same genre by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Gade or Grieg. It is as if it had been composed in 1840 instead of 1940. The title reveals its obvious Germanic precedents (similar to a romance without words, album leaf, or lyric piece), but it was also a Christmas greeting for his father, Herr Ernest Halffter. Max Eschig published Grüss in 1994.
In 1943 the composer (married to Alicia Camara Santos, the Portuguese pianist, since 1928), composed incidental music to Carlos Salvagem’s heroic farce Dulcinea, premiered at the Teatro Nacional in Lisbon in January 1944. Halffter arranged the work into a symphonic suite, presented in Madrid on 9 December 1945 during a benefit concert for the Press Association at the Teatro Monumental, when the composer himself conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica Arbós. The work consists of various parts, Preludio y alborada, Los pastores, Nocturnos, Serenata, and Final. As well as a version for violoncello transcribed by Gaspar Cassadó, and a piano and violoncello transcription by Maurice Gendron, the penultimate Serenata was also arranged for the piano. In ternary form, the opening section evokes the plucking of the guitar, accompanying a short melody whose text could well be You are my love, Dulcinea. In the centre section, there is a sad and desolate nocturne, in which the guitar strums while Don Quixote serenades his beloved, a peasant whom the knight believes to be a princess.
“Cuba had been lost and now it was true. It wasn’t a lie…”, wrote Rafael Alberti in his evocative poem Cuba dentro de un piano (Cuba Inside a Piano), which Xavier Montsalvatge so beautifully set to music. But a shattered, post-war Spain began to miss the gem of the West Indies, though Cuban influence was still felt as is very clear in the Pregón, with its Afro-Cuban and Spanish rhythms. And even more so in the Habanera, one of those well-written works that cannot be forgotten, even on a single hearing. This straightforward beautiful piece exudes the indolence and drowsiness provoked by the warm Caribbean climate with melancholic naturalness. Both the Pregón and the Habanera are featured in the film Bambú. Directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, it is a love story set in Spanish Cuba during the period of its independence following the war between Spain and the United States in 1898. The film, starring Imperio Argentina, Sara Montiel, Fernando Fernán-Gómez and Luis Peña, was premiered in Madrid on 15 October 1945. Regino Sainz de la Maza, the guitarist who premiered Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, also appeared in the movie.
Preludio y danza, composed for the inauguration of the Alonso Ortiz family house at El Escorial, dates from June 1974 (being premiered in the new house by Manuel Carra on the 11th of that month). It consists of two sections of the same length, including a Prelude in the style of the eighteenth-century recercadas by Sebastián Albero (1722-1756), slightly austere despite being very arpeggiated and finishing with a cadenza. This is followed by a very Halffterian dance of a characteristically Spanish nature.
Ernesto Halffter began writing Suite lírica in 1940 during his Lisbon period, reflected in works such as Rapsodia portuguesa and Seis canciones portuguesas. But the extract titled Llanto por Ricardo Viñes was probably composed between 29 April (the date of Viñes’s death in Barcelona), and 20 December 1943, the day it was premiered by the Portuguese pianist, Elena da Costa.
Federico Sopeña was fully justified when he commented that ‘the history of modern music (i.e. the first half of the twentieth century) could not be written without Ricardo Viñes’. A number of very significant twentieth-century piano compositions were dedicated to Ricardo Viñes Roda (1875-1943) and he himself premiered a great number of works. Educated in Lérida, his native city, and later in Barcelona under Joan Baptista Pujol (piano) and Pedrell (harmony), in 1890 he launched a career that would lead him to form part of the principal artistic and intellectual circles of Paris, where Halffter benefited from his expertise and friendship. Viñes, a man of vast musical and literary culture, was described by Professor Tomás Andrade de Silva as ‘the most unique pianist Spain ever had, both for his intimate awareness of sonority and for the inspired architectural conception of his interpretations’. Llanto por Ricardo Viñes, which did so much for Spanish music abroad, is the Madrilenian composer’s sad and solemn lament for the great Catalonian pianist. In the style of pieces Falla dedicated to Debussy and Dukas, its arpeggiated chords give a somewhat medieval atmosphere to the opening of the work. The poetic chords and sombre motives that follow signify a serene farewell.
Although Spanish keyboard music was already very advanced by the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with composers such as Cabanilles and Rodríguez Monllor, the work of Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) provided a tremendous inspiration, as can be seen in the music of Antonio Soler and others. Nationalistic piano music, from Granados to Falla, Rodolfo Halffter, Rodrigo and Ernesto Halffter, paid special attention to the Neapolitan genius. The presence of Scarlattian elements could already be perceived in the composer’s early music as well as in the famous Sinfonietta and Sonatina. Sonata homenaje a Scalatti presents a musical form similar to those created by the the Italian musician at the Spanish court, transformed into the neo-baroque aesthetic of the twentieth century. Genoveva Gálvez gave the premiere at the Prado Museum, Madrid, on 14 September 1985, the year of Scarlatti’s bicentenary. Towards the end of the sonata, Halffter quotes the theme from the well-known Cat’s Fugue from D. Scarlatti’s Sonata in G minor K. 30. Genoveva Gálvez played the work on the harpsichord, which seems closer to the composer being celebrated, but Halffter conceived the work for piano, and this justifies its performance on either instrument.
I had the privilege of hearing the composer himself perform Nocturno otoñal: recordando a Chopin, at his last home in Madrid. To commemorate the centenary in 1987 of the birth of Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982), the founder of the Santander International Piano Competition, Paloma O’Shea, commissioned a series of works in homage to the great Polish pianist, one of the most eminent performers of Chopin’s music. In this work, written in the autumn of his life (he died two years later in Madrid on 5 July 1989), Ernesto expressed the melancholy of time irremediably running out.
But Halffter would still complete three piano pieces in homage to the memory of three Spanish colleagues and friends – llian Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) of Seville, Federico Mompou (1893-1987) of Barcelona, and his brother, Rodolfo Halffter (1900-1987) from Madrid. Guillermo González premiered all three works, the first two during the inauguration of the Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada (9 March 1981), and Homenaje a Rodolfo Halffter at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid (5 December 1992).

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French Composer Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944)

Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade (August 8, 1857 – April 13, 1944) was a French composer and pianist.
Biography

Born in Paris, she studied at first with her mother, then with Félix Le Couppey, Augustin Savard, Martin Pierre Marsick and Benjamin Godard, but not officially, since her father disapproved of her musical education.
Her first experiments in composition took place in very early days, and in her eighth year she played some of her sacred music to Georges Bizet, who was much impressed with her talents. She gave her first concert when she was eighteen, and from that time on her work as a composer gained steadily in favor. She wrote mostly character pieces for piano, and salon songs, almost all of which were published.
She toured France several times in those earlier days, and in 1892 made her début in England, where her work was extremely popular.
Chaminade married a music publisher from Marseilles, Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, in 1901, and on account of his advanced age the marriage was rumored to be one of convenience. He died in 1907, and Chaminade did not remarry.
In 1908 she visited the United States, and was accorded a very hearty welcome from her innumerable admirers there. Her compositions were tremendous favorites with the American public, and such pieces as the Scarf dance or the Ballet No. 1 were to be found in the music libraries of many lovers of piano music of the time. She composed a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle, were also great favorites. Ambroise Thomas, the celebrated French composer and writer, once said of Chaminade: "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman." In 1913, she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, a first for a female composer. In London, 1903, she made gramophone recordings of six of her compositions for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; these are among the most sought-after piano recordings by collectors. Before and after World War I, Chaminade recorded many piano rolls, but as she grew older, she composed less and less, dying in Monte Carlo on April 13, 1944.
Chaminade was relegated to obscurity for the second half of the 20th Century, her piano pieces and songs mostly forgotten, with the Flute Concertino, composed for the 1902 Paris Conservatoire Concours, her most popular piece today.
Her sister married Moritz Moszkowski.
Works
Works with Opus number

Op. 3, Scherzo-etude Op. 4, Caprice-etude Op. 5, Menuet Op. 6, Berceuse Op. 7, Barcarolle Op. 8, chaconne (1879) Op. 9, 2 pieces: 1 (G) pièce romantique (1880)2 Gavotte Op. 10, Scherzando Op. 11, piano trio #1 (g): 1 allegro; 2 andante; 3 presto leggiero; 4 allegro molto agitato (1881) Op. 12, pastorale enfantine {arr marcus} (1881) Op. 18, capriccio for violin and piano (1881) Op. 19, Le sevillane Ouverture Op. 21, sonata (c): 1 allegro appassionato; 2 andante; 3 allegro (1881) Op. 22, Orientale Op. 23, minuetto (b) (1881) Op. 24, libellules (Dragon Flies) (1881) Op. 25, Deux morceaux: 1 duetto; 2 zingara; Op. 28, étude symphonique (B–) (1883) Op. 29, sérénade (D) (1884) Op. 30, air de ballet (G) (1884) Op. 32, guitare (1885) Op. 33, Valse caprice (1885) Op. 35, 6 études de concert: 1 (C) scherzo; 2 (D–)automne; 3 fileuse; 4 Appasionato 5 (F) impromptu; 6 (D) tarantelle(1886) Op. 34, piano trio #2 (a): 1 allegro moderato; 2 lento; 3 allegro energico (1887) Op. 36, 2 pieces: 2 pas des cymbales (1887) Op. 37, 5 Airs de Ballet : 1 danse oriental; 2 Pas des amphores; 3 Pas des echarpes; 4 Callirhöe;5 Danse pastorale(1888) Op. 38, Marine (1887) Op. 39, toccata (1887) Op. 40, Concertpiece for piano and orchestra Op. 41, air de ballet. pierrette (E–) (1889) Op. 42, Les Willis,caprice (1889) Op. 43, gigue (D) (1889) Op. 50, la lisonjera (G–) (1890) Op. 51, La livry,air de ballet (1890?) Op. 52, Capriccio appassionato (1890) Op. 53, arlequine (F) (1890) Lolita (Caprice espagnole), Op. 54Op. 54, caprice espagnole. lolita (D–) (1890) Op. 55, 6 pièces romantiques: 6 rigaudon (1890) Op. 56, Scaramouche (1890) Op. 57, Havanaise (1891) Op. 58, Mazurk-Suedoise (1891) Op. 60, les sylvains (1892) Op. 61, arabesque (1892) Op. 66, Studio (1892) Op. 67, caprice espagnole. la morena (1892) Op. 73, valse carnavalesque (1894) Op. 74, Pièce dans le style ancien (1893) Op. 75, Danse ancienne (1893) Op. 76, 6 romances sans paroles: 1 souvenance; 2 (E) élévation; 3 idylle; 4 eglogue; 5 chanson brétonne; 6 méditation (1894) Op. 77, deuxieme vals(1895) Op. 78, Prelude (1895) Op. 80, Troisieme valse brillante (1898) Op. 81, Terpsichore, sexieme air de ballet (1896) Op. 82, Chanson napolitaine (1896) Op. 83, Ritournelle (1896) Op. 84, Trois prèludes melodiques (1896) Op. 85, Vert-Galant (1896) Op. 86, romances sans paroles: 1 souvenance; 2 élévation; Op. 87, 6 pièces humoristiques: 2 sous bois; 3 inquiétude; 4 autrefois; 5 consolation; 6 norwegienne (1897) Op. 88, Rimembranza (1898) Op. 89, thème varié (A) (1898) Op. 90, Legende (1898) Op. 91, waltz #4 (D–) (1898) Op. 92, Deuxieme arabesque (1898) Op. 93, Valse humoristique (1906) Op. 94, havanaise #2 danse créole (1898) Op. 95, Trois dances anciennes: 1 passepied; 2 pavane; 3 courante; (1899) Op. 97, rondeaus for violin and piano (1899) Op. 98, 6 feuillets d’album: 1 promenade; 2 scherzetto; 3 (D–) élégie; 4 valse arabesque 5 chanson russe; 6 rondo allegre (1900) Op. 101, l’ondine (1900) Op. 103, Moment musical (1900) Op. 104, tristesse (c+) (1901) Op. 105, divertissement (1901) Op. 106, Expansion (1901) Op. 107, Concertino for Flute & Orchestra in D major(1902) Op. 108, Agitato (1902) Op. 109, Cinquieme valse (1903) Op. 110, Novelette (1902) Op. 111, Souvenir lointains (1911) Op. 112, sixieme valse, valse-ballet (1904) Op. 113, Caprice humoristique (1904) Op. 114, pastorale (1904) Op. 115, waltz #7 valse romantique (1905) Op. 116, sous le masque (1905) Op. 118, étude mélodique (G–) (1906) Op. 119, valse tendre (F) (1906) Op. 120, Variations sur un theme original(1906) Op. 122, 3 contes blues: 2 (1906) Op. 123, album d’enfants: 2 (A–) intermezzo. pas de sylphes; 4 (F) rondeau; 5 (a) gavotte; 9 (e) orientale; 10 (a) tarantelle (1906) Op. 124, étude pathetique (b) (1906) Op. 126, album d’enfants: 1 (C) idylle; 2 (E) aubade; 3 (a) rigaudon; 4 (G) eglogue; 5 (g) ballade; 6 (D) scherzo-valse; 7 (d) élégie; 8 (F) novelette 9 (g) patrouille; 10 (A) villanelle; 11 (a) conte de fées; 12 (B-) valse mignonne (1907) Op. 127, 4 poèmes provençales: 2 solitude; 3 (D–) le passé; 4 pêcheurs de nuit (1908) Op. 130, passacaille (E) (1909) Op. 134, la retour (1909) Op. 137, romance (D) (1910) Op. 139, étude scholastique (1910) Op. 143, cortège (A) (1911) Op. 148, scherzo-valse (1913) Op. 155, au pays dévasté (1919) Op. 158, danse païenne (1919) Op. 164, air à danser (1923) Op. 150, sérénade espagnole (G) (1925) Op. 165, nocturne (1925)

Works without Opus number

Chaminade at the keyboard

Les Rêves (1876) Te souviens-tu? (1878) Auprès de ma mie (1888) voisinage (1888) Nice-la-belle (1889) Rosemonde (1890) L'Anneau d’argent (1891) Plaintes d’amour (1891) Viens, mon bien-aimé! (1892) L'Amour captif (1893) Ma première lettre (1893) Malgré nous! (1893) Si j’étais jardinier (1893) L'Été (1894) Mignonne (1894) Sombrero (1894) Villanelle (1894) Espoir (1895) Ronde d’amour (1895) Chanson triste (1898) Mots d’amour (1898) Alleluia (1901) Écrin! (1902) Bonne Humeur! (1903) Menuet (1904) La Lune paresseuse (1905) Je voudrais (1912) Attente. au pays de provence (1914)

See and Listen some works of cecile from YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2UnpdwF7k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dyxAyRrFkE

Enjoy the music of this less known musician!!!!

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