Luciano Berio's work is characterized above all by his love of the theatrical, his fascination with the voice, and his constant willingness to engage with music of the past as well as of the present. Drawing on a range of influences that reaches from the poetry of Dante to the politics of Martin Luther King, and from the operas of Monteverdi to the sounds of modern jazz, his output has embraced all the major musical developments of its time, including electronic music, music theatre, and works using quotation and collage - hence one critic's description of him as an "omnivore". (The Rough Guide to Classical Music). See an example of Berio's omnivorous theatrical output in La vera storia (1981), prima parte . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
According to John Murphy at Bardolatry, "Harold Bloom called Macbeth Shakespeare’s most “expressionistic” play. It is only appropriate, then, that America’s most Expressionistic filmmaker, Orson Welles, settled on “The Scottish Play” as his first foray into Bard adaptation. Macbeth (1948) was an appropriate choice for the auteur, considering some kind of curse had apparently befallen the once wined-and-dined star of theatre, radio, and film. The film was produced on the relative cheap (about $500,000), filmed at a breakneck pace (about twenty days), and the result is a haggard, stylized tone poem. This is Shakespeare as lurid film noir. The messy quality somehow makes it more compelling, mostly because Welles’ unsurpassed visual imagination compensates for the low-end production values. See Welles' messy yet brilliant vision - with music by Jacques Ibert . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.
Jacques Hétu's work, said the conductor Jacques Lacombe, "always bears a very personal signature". Singling out "his lyricism, his harmonic language, his sense of structure, the clarity of his orchestration", Lacombe describes Hétu as "a real musician who knew how to write for musicians, without laying traps for them – not that his music doesn't present challenges or difficulties for its performers. But ... he always wrote well for the orchestra and that is doubtless one of the reasons that orchestral musicians take so much pleasure in playing his music and that he is one of the Québecois and Canadian musicians most performed both at home and internationally." Hear a performance of Hétu's final work, the Symphony No. 5, "Liberté" (2009) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.
"Gwyneth Walker work is characterized by a tremendous energy and a strong sense of humor. Even in her most calm and serene pieces, there is a constant undercurrent of energy -- a lifeblood that ties the music together. Many personal stylistic traits appear throughout her work including elements that have often been classified as characteristic of "American music" (including the strong rhythmic sense, open sonorities, and influences of rock, jazz, blues, and American folk music). She is strongly in the American tradition of composers such as Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein -- but is a slave to no compositional school or prescribed style. Her music is recognizably her own and thoroughly original" (Carson P. Cooman). Watch a performance of Walker's Don't Step On My Toes (1993) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Heralded as “A Composer to Watch” by the New York Times, Kenji Bunch has quickly emerged as one of the most prominent American composers of his generation, appealing to audiences and performers alike with a distinctive, vibrant voice in contemporary American music. As one of only three composers selected nationwide to inaugurate the Meet the Composer Magnum Opus Project, Bunch wrote his Symphony No. 1: Lichtenstein Triptych (2004), which was premiered to critical acclaim by the Bay area symphonies of Santa Rosa, Marin, and Oakland. Watch a performance of Kenji Bunch's Suite for Viola and Piano (1999) performed by violist Barbara Sudweeks and pianist Steve Harlos . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC.
Virgil Thomson was the original multi-faceted elder statesman of American composers, as well as an esteemed music critic. He was particularly famous for his two operas in collaboration with Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts (1928) and its sequel, The Mother of Us All (1947), about Susan B. Anthony, which together became a landmark of American musical theater. He was also among the first major American composers to write music for films. Among his most famous scores are the Louisiana Story (1948), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Plough That Broke the Plains (1936). He also presided over the American musical scene from 1940 to 1954 as the insightful, uninhibited music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. This week at Pytheas we feature Virgil Thomson in two areas. Listen to him discuss his life and music in a fascinating interview with Charles Amirkhanian - our Pytheas COMPOSER PORTRAIT. Then, read about and listen to excerpts from the Albany Records disc Heaven Is Music, featuring choral works by Virgil Thomson - this week's FEATURED RECORDING.
Tilo Medek was born into a family of musicians and grew up in Thuringia, a region of central Germany with a rich musical culture. He studied violin and piano from the age of ten and had an early exposure to contemporary music when he attended the Darmstadt summer school in 1957, participating in classes given by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono among others. Medek’s output encompasses works of almost every genre. His interest in the voice is reflected in a wide range of choral music and song cycles, while his instrumental works stretch from solo and chamber pieces to concertos for almost all of the standard concert instruments as well as more unusual offerings such as timpani and marimba, in addition to over thirty orchestral pieces and three ballets. Watch a performance of Medek's Abfahrt einer Dampflokomotive (Departure of a Steam Locomotive) by the Blow Up Flute Ensemble . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Virgil Thomson was the original multi-faceted elder statesman of American composers, as well as an esteemed music critic. He was particularly famous for his two operas in collaboration with Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts (1928) and its sequel, The Mother of Us All (1947), about Susan B. Anthony, which together became a landmark of American musical theater. He was also among the first major American composers to write music for films. Among his most famous scores are the Louisiana Story (1948), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Plough That Broke the Plains (1936). He also presided over the American musical scene from 1940 to 1954 as the insightful, uninhibited music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. This week at Pytheas we feature Virgil Thomson in two areas. Listen to him discuss his life and music in a fascinating interview with Charles Amirkhanian - our Pytheas COMPOSER PORTRAIT. Then, read about and listen to excerpts from the Albany Records disc Heaven Is Music, featuring choral works by Virgil Thomson - this week's FEATURED RECORDING.
Tilo Medek was born into a family of musicians and grew up in Thuringia, a region of central Germany with a rich musical culture. He studied violin and piano from the age of ten and had an early exposure to contemporary music when he attended the Darmstadt summer school in 1957, participating in classes given by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono among others. Medek’s output encompasses works of almost every genre. His interest in the voice is reflected in a wide range of choral music and song cycles, while his instrumental works stretch from solo and chamber pieces to concertos for almost all of the standard concert instruments as well as more unusual offerings such as timpani and marimba, in addition to over thirty orchestral pieces and three ballets. Watch a performance of Medek's Abfahrt einer Dampflokomotive (Departure of a Steam Locomotive) by the Blow Up Flute Ensemble . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Michael Nyman's score for the Peter Greenaway film Drowning By Numbers (1988), is, at the film director's specific request, based entirely on themes taken from the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat Major. Bars 58-61 of Mozart's work are heard in their original form immediately after each of the film's "drownings". Nyman was alerted to the potential of this piece by Greenaway in the late 1970s and had previously used it as material for part of the score for Greenaway's The Falls, The Masterwork Award Winning Fish-Knife and Tristram Shandy. The The Trysting Fields section of Drowning By Numbers contains the most complicated use of Mozart's music: every appoggiatura [a melodically important ornamental note, sounded on the beat, and preceding a main note] from the movement, and no other material from the piece, is used. Watch a performance of The Trysting Fields by The Michael Nyman Band . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
One of the most poignant themes of the "Coming of Age" film is First Love . . . usually bittersweet, wrapped in soft-focus nostalgia, and accompanied by string-drenched music. But Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961), made at a time when both films and society were undergoing profound changes, is darker. It deals realistically, even shockingly, with the agony of first love, and the forces that drive lovers apart. Bud and Deanie are high school sweethearts in 1920's Kansas, who are finding it increasingly difficult to resist their sexual urges. Deanie's puritanical mother warns her that "nice girls don't" . . . so Deanie doesn't. Bud's nouveau-riche father urges him to find a not-so-nice girl to take care of those urges. The consequences are disastrous. With composer David Amram's modern (and often dissonant) music, and Richard Sylbert's stark, striking production design adding atmosphere, Splendor in the Grass is the antithesis of sentimental. (Margarita Landazuri @ Turner Classic Movies). Watch the opening of Splendor in the Grass with David Amram's film score . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.
Canadian composer and pianist Heather Schmidt is recognized as one of the most talented, exciting and versatile musicians of her generation, bringing a contemporary freshness to the illustrious composer-performer tradition of the past. She has received international acclaim through performances, broadcasts, commissions and awards both in North America and abroad. Hear a performance of Schmidt Solus (1996), for piano solo, performed by the composer . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
Béla Bartók is recognized as one of the most important composers of the 20th century. His style grew out of romanticism and nationalism to embrace new currents heard in the music of Debussy. Inspired by Hungarian traditional songs and dances (he collected some 10,000 songs from Hungary, Romania, Central Europe, Turkey, and North Africa), he incorporated folk modes and irregular rhythmic patterns into his highly original scores. The year 1926 brought a sudden rush of works designed for Bartók, himself, to play in concert. These include the Piano Concerto No. 1, the suite Out of Doors and the Piano Sonata. These exploit the piano as a percussion instrument, using its resonances, as well as its xylophonic hardness, in ways never utilized before. Watch a thrilling performance of the first movement of Bartók's Piano Sonata (1926) by pianist Lang Lang . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
One of the most poignant themes of the "Coming of Age" film is First Love . . . usually bittersweet, wrapped in soft-focus nostalgia, and accompanied by string-drenched music. But Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961), made at a time when both films and society were undergoing profound changes, is darker. It deals realistically, even shockingly, with the agony of first love, and the forces that drive lovers apart. Bud and Deanie are high school sweethearts in 1920's Kansas, who are finding it increasingly difficult to resist their sexual urges. Deanie's puritanical mother warns her that "nice girls don't" . . . so Deanie doesn't. Bud's nouveau-riche father urges him to find a not-so-nice girl to take care of those urges. The consequences are disastrous. With composer David Amram's modern (and often dissonant) music, and Richard Sylbert's stark, striking production design adding atmosphere, Splendor in the Grass is the antithesis of sentimental. (Margarita Landazuri @ Turner Classic Movies). Watch the opening of Splendor in the Grass with David Amram's film score . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.
Canadian composer and pianist Heather Schmidt is recognized as one of the most talented, exciting and versatile musicians of her generation, bringing a contemporary freshness to the illustrious composer-performer tradition of the past. She has received international acclaim through performances, broadcasts, commissions and awards both in North America and abroad. Hear a performance of Schmidt Solus (1996), for piano solo, performed by the composer . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
Béla Bartók is recognized as one of the most important composers of the 20th century. His style grew out of romanticism and nationalism to embrace new currents heard in the music of Debussy. Inspired by Hungarian traditional songs and dances (he collected some 10,000 songs from Hungary, Romania, Central Europe, Turkey, and North Africa), he incorporated folk modes and irregular rhythmic patterns into his highly original scores. The year 1926 brought a sudden rush of works designed for Bartók, himself, to play in concert. These include the Piano Concerto No. 1, the suite Out of Doors and the Piano Sonata. These exploit the piano as a percussion instrument, using its resonances, as well as its xylophonic hardness, in ways never utilized before. Watch a thrilling performance of the first movement of Bartók's Piano Sonata (1926) by pianist Lang Lang . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
"In George Crumb's Solo Cello Sonata (1955) we have a good example of a work by an American composer living in freer political and stylistic circumstances than some of his European counterparts of the time, but still facing essentially the same problems of his age: the search for an individual response to the musical revolutions of the first half of the 20th century. Written during the time when Crumb was a graduate student in Berlin, the three-movement Sonata also owes a certain amount to Bartók. An opening Fantasia, making expressive use of pizzicato, is followed by a Tema pastorale con variazioni, in which a highly chromatic theme is put through its paces in three variations and a coda. The final movement is a Toccata which, after a short slow introduction, makes much use of dynamic and timbral contrasts" (Keith Potter). Watch a performance by cellist Umberto Clerici . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
According to Roger Knox (The WholeNote), "Percussionique (Albany Records), a disc of percussion music by American-born Canadian composer Michael S. Horwood, should attract both new music aficionados and others interested in revitalizing listening experiences. Superbly performed by the Toronto Percussion Ensemble and guests, it is beautifully recorded and presented by Albany Records. The “spine” of this chronologically presented oeuvre is a series of Pieces Percussioniques dating from 1964 to 2008. Spanning numerous and varied contemporary compositional practices, a consistent voice still emerges, refined yet playful. A percussionist himself, Horwood writes idiomatically throughout. Intricate divisions of the beat layered variously between instruments give an effect of luxuriant flourishing, without cluttering the texture. In a noisy world we forget to listen truly: try letting Percussionique’s sound world beguile you!" Check all this out, and more . . . at our current FEATURED RECORDING.
Michael Colgrass' The Schubert Birds was commissioned by the National Arts Orchestra in 1989, and is loosely based on an obscure Waltz by Franz Schubert. According to Marvin Dickau, "I am a staunch lover of contemporary music, particularly by Canadian composers. I found The Schubert Birds to be most interesting; full of mood changes, complex melodies and rhythms, along with lush chords. There is always an overtone of dissonance, sometimes more pronounced, sometimes less. From an almost ethereal start, the composition moves through many simulated bird calls interwoven with atonal melodies in fourths and fifths, all supported by the mellow lower strings. Each section has moments of prominence – wonderful mallet work from percussion, full bodied strings and tightly woven woodwinds and reeds". Hear a performance of The Schubert Birds thanks to Arts Alive and NACmusicbox . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942), written in San Francisco, is one of a series of Canticles for percussion "in the ecstatic manner". Of the work, the composer wrote, "It was written at a time I was most interested in Indian and Mexican music and is composed out of a very few rhythmic and melodic germs, developed in larger sections, by continuity, overlaps, and the usual augmentation and diminution." The revised version was first performed at the University of Illinois in 1952. An All Music Guide review explores the piece vividly . . . “The ocarina, a torpedo-shaped terra cotta flute, has a pure, primeval tone that, combined with percussion, gives this score a hauntingly primitive, ritualistic feel. The five percussionists haul out tam-tam, xylophone, snare drums, bass drums, wood blocks, temple blocks, tom-toms, and maracas, as well as such exotica as teponaztli, sistrums, brake drums (both muted and suspended), metal pipes, elephant bells, cowbells, and water-buffalo bells. Amid all this -- which Harrison exploits for timbral richness, not loudness -- the guitar struggles to make an impact of its own, remaining absent or in the background until taking a slightly more prominent role at the end. The work falls into three large sections. In the first, the ocarina plays a little pentatonic dance, then retreats for what amounts to an extended percussion cadenza arising from the rhythm of the ocarina tune. The ocarina returns for the second part, now playing a very slow melody of short, repeated phrases deeply indebted to Native American music. Percussion instruments give the melody a shimmering halo, but again the ocarina disappears during a fast-tempo, gradually expanding percussion crescendo distantly based on the rhythm and pitches of the opening tune. Just as this section climaxes in a series of widely spaced crashes, the ocarina and guitar take advantage of a moment of silence to bring back the pentatonic tune from the beginning, the quiet percussion accompaniment now more threatening than before. Yet instead of exploding in a final percussive outburst, the music very gradually slows and fades away, leaving nothing but a slowly throbbing bass drum." Watch a performance of Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942) by The YouTube Symphony Orchestra with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
According to Roger Knox (The WholeNote), "Percussionique (Albany Records), a disc of percussion music by American-born Canadian composer Michael S. Horwood, should attract both new music aficionados and others interested in revitalizing listening experiences. Superbly performed by the Toronto Percussion Ensemble and guests, it is beautifully recorded and presented by Albany Records. The “spine” of this chronologically presented oeuvre is a series of Pieces Percussioniques dating from 1964 to 2008. Spanning numerous and varied contemporary compositional practices, a consistent voice still emerges, refined yet playful. A percussionist himself, Horwood writes idiomatically throughout. Intricate divisions of the beat layered variously between instruments give an effect of luxuriant flourishing, without cluttering the texture. In a noisy world we forget to listen truly: try letting Percussionique’s sound world beguile you!" Check all this out, and more . . . at our current FEATURED RECORDING.
Michael Colgrass' The Schubert Birds was commissioned by the National Arts Orchestra in 1989, and is loosely based on an obscure Waltz by Franz Schubert. According to Marvin Dickau, "I am a staunch lover of contemporary music, particularly by Canadian composers. I found The Schubert Birds to be most interesting; full of mood changes, complex melodies and rhythms, along with lush chords. There is always an overtone of dissonance, sometimes more pronounced, sometimes less. From an almost ethereal start, the composition moves through many simulated bird calls interwoven with atonal melodies in fourths and fifths, all supported by the mellow lower strings. Each section has moments of prominence – wonderful mallet work from percussion, full bodied strings and tightly woven woodwinds and reeds". Hear a performance of The Schubert Birds thanks to Arts Alive and NACmusicbox . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942), written in San Francisco, is one of a series of Canticles for percussion "in the ecstatic manner". Of the work, the composer wrote, "It was written at a time I was most interested in Indian and Mexican music and is composed out of a very few rhythmic and melodic germs, developed in larger sections, by continuity, overlaps, and the usual augmentation and diminution." The revised version was first performed at the University of Illinois in 1952. An All Music Guide review explores the piece vividly . . . “The ocarina, a torpedo-shaped terra cotta flute, has a pure, primeval tone that, combined with percussion, gives this score a hauntingly primitive, ritualistic feel. The five percussionists haul out tam-tam, xylophone, snare drums, bass drums, wood blocks, temple blocks, tom-toms, and maracas, as well as such exotica as teponaztli, sistrums, brake drums (both muted and suspended), metal pipes, elephant bells, cowbells, and water-buffalo bells. Amid all this -- which Harrison exploits for timbral richness, not loudness -- the guitar struggles to make an impact of its own, remaining absent or in the background until taking a slightly more prominent role at the end. The work falls into three large sections. In the first, the ocarina plays a little pentatonic dance, then retreats for what amounts to an extended percussion cadenza arising from the rhythm of the ocarina tune. The ocarina returns for the second part, now playing a very slow melody of short, repeated phrases deeply indebted to Native American music. Percussion instruments give the melody a shimmering halo, but again the ocarina disappears during a fast-tempo, gradually expanding percussion crescendo distantly based on the rhythm and pitches of the opening tune. Just as this section climaxes in a series of widely spaced crashes, the ocarina and guitar take advantage of a moment of silence to bring back the pentatonic tune from the beginning, the quiet percussion accompaniment now more threatening than before. Yet instead of exploding in a final percussive outburst, the music very gradually slows and fades away, leaving nothing but a slowly throbbing bass drum." Watch a performance of Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942) by The YouTube Symphony Orchestra with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Isang Yun's Duo for Cello and Harp (1984) is yet another convincing example of Yun’s lyricism in his later works - it is accessible and mellow-toned; but it is still quite intricately worked-out. The main expressive weight lies in the outer movements - the third movement is particularly beautiful - and the mood relaxes in the dance-like middle movement. It is also one of Yun’s happiest works, probably because it was composed on the occasion of his son’s wedding. Watch a performance of Yun’s Duo by cellist Holgen Gjoni and harpist Ina Zdorovetchi . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
Dutch composer Michel van der Aa is one of Europe’s most sought-after contemporary composers. His style is strikingly subtle, playful, poetic, and transparent but not, however, expressive or melodious in the traditional sense. His music has an idiomatic sense for the stage, combining sounds and scenic images in a play of changing perspectives. Dramatic personages take on various identities or have an alter ego: musicians on the stage, not always audible, mime or lip-sync with their electronic counterparts on soundtrack. Van der Aa is in fact a playwright in music. His sounds - like real people - can be flexible or stubborn: they either take control or get the short end of the stick; they reinforce or counteract each other, affecting audiences with their expressive power. Hear Michel van der Aa talk about his opera After Life and watch excerpts from it . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.
According to Tamsin Nutter, "In the beautiful, plotless Sinfonietta (choreographed in 1980), Jiri Kylian plays deftly with patterns and movement dynamics, and yet the result is wonderfully humanist. As befits a great work of art, movement, music, backdrop, and costumes feel indivisible. Leos Janacek’s spine-tingling music (composed in 1926), a golden cacophony of trumpets and trombones, seems to echo off the rolling hills of Walter Nobbe’s gorgeous backdrop. A swirling community of men and women run, leap, and hit the floor, punctuating the large-scale patterns with bewitchingly unexpected little gestures: a bow of the head, a hand drawn in slow motion across the eyes. Sinfonietta is lushly romantic, yet skewed — familiar, yet strange — striking a perfect balance between ballet’s past and future." Watch a performance of Sinfonietta by the Netherlands Dance Theatre . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.
Icelandic composer Jón Leifs' Hekla (1961) for chorus and orchestra describes the eruption of the volcanic mountain Hekla in 1947, the largest of the 20th Century, which Leifs witnessed. The music is one massive, ever-intensifying depiction of volcanic eruption, beginning quietly but graphically increasing in intensity and power reaching a tumultuous climax during which one hears a brief chorus (almost overwhelmed by the massive orchestra/percussion sound), singing: "In the dark depths, violent cries of death/ There the red flames carried/ The steaming lava across the land." Leifs scored Hekla for orchestra and a huge complement of percussion. Nineteen percussion players are needed. Percussion instruments required include "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils, sirens, church bells, shotguns and canons. Listen to a performance of Leifs' Hekla . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Dutch composer Michel van der Aa is one of Europe’s most sought-after contemporary composers. His style is strikingly subtle, playful, poetic, and transparent but not, however, expressive or melodious in the traditional sense. His music has an idiomatic sense for the stage, combining sounds and scenic images in a play of changing perspectives. Dramatic personages take on various identities or have an alter ego: musicians on the stage, not always audible, mime or lip-sync with their electronic counterparts on soundtrack. Van der Aa is in fact a playwright in music. His sounds - like real people - can be flexible or stubborn: they either take control or get the short end of the stick; they reinforce or counteract each other, affecting audiences with their expressive power. Hear Michel van der Aa talk about his opera After Life and watch excerpts from it . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.
According to Tamsin Nutter, "In the beautiful, plotless Sinfonietta (choreographed in 1980), Jiri Kylian plays deftly with patterns and movement dynamics, and yet the result is wonderfully humanist. As befits a great work of art, movement, music, backdrop, and costumes feel indivisible. Leos Janacek’s spine-tingling music (composed in 1926), a golden cacophony of trumpets and trombones, seems to echo off the rolling hills of Walter Nobbe’s gorgeous backdrop. A swirling community of men and women run, leap, and hit the floor, punctuating the large-scale patterns with bewitchingly unexpected little gestures: a bow of the head, a hand drawn in slow motion across the eyes. Sinfonietta is lushly romantic, yet skewed — familiar, yet strange — striking a perfect balance between ballet’s past and future." Watch a performance of Sinfonietta by the Netherlands Dance Theatre . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.
Icelandic composer Jón Leifs' Hekla (1961) for chorus and orchestra describes the eruption of the volcanic mountain Hekla in 1947, the largest of the 20th Century, which Leifs witnessed. The music is one massive, ever-intensifying depiction of volcanic eruption, beginning quietly but graphically increasing in intensity and power reaching a tumultuous climax during which one hears a brief chorus (almost overwhelmed by the massive orchestra/percussion sound), singing: "In the dark depths, violent cries of death/ There the red flames carried/ The steaming lava across the land." Leifs scored Hekla for orchestra and a huge complement of percussion. Nineteen percussion players are needed. Percussion instruments required include "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils, sirens, church bells, shotguns and canons. Listen to a performance of Leifs' Hekla . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
On January 19, 1936 Paul Hindemith travelled to London, intending to play his viola concerto Der Schwanendreher, with Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This was to be the British premiere of the work. However, just before midnight on January 20th, King George V died. The following day, from 11 am to 5 pm, Hindemith sat in an office made available to him by the BBC and wrote Trauermusik (Funeral Music/Mourning Music) in homage to the late king. It, too, was written for viola and orchestra and was performed that evening in a live broadcast from a BBC radio studio, with Boult conducting and the composer as soloist. The work consists of four very short movements, last of which is the heart of the work. In it Hindemith quotes the chorale Vor deinem Thron Tret ich hiermit (Here I stand before Thy throne). Though Hindemith was unaware of it at the time, the tune was also very familiar in England as Old 100th, to the words All creatures that on Earth do dwell. Watch a performance by the magnificent violist Yuri Bashmet with the Soloists of Moscow . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
Our FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA for the week is a conversation between Korean-German composer Isang Yun and Bruce Duffie (at bruceduffie.com). Here's how things start . . . "Bruce Duffie: Let me start out with an easy question - Where is music going today? Isang Yun: I don't think anyone can really answer this question, myself included. I can say for myself that my music is becoming more understandable, and I find a quality of human sympathy is becoming more prevalent in it. BD: Is this something being added now that was missing earlier, or is it an outgrowth of the way your music has been going all these years? Yun: It's part of a natural process, and I've just noticed it through observation. This is a process that started about ten yeas ago and I think it will be at least another ten years before it is fully developed. BD: Did something specific happen at that point ten years ago to make this change? Yun: My experience of the personal side and political area in Korea happened twenty years ago, and it took ten years for me to be able to translate these experiences into my music. I think today our world very badly needs music that brings us closer together, particularly because there are so many grave problems that people everywhere are having to deal with. In order to be able to articulate these problems in art, we need a great deal of musical understanding . . ." Read more at Pytheas.
For Stefan Wolpe (1986) is among American composer Morton Feldman's last works; one of many dedicated to composers, painters, and writers he admired. Written for chorus and two vibraphones, the work alternates between choral sonorities and instrumental passages, creating a series of refrains which at first seem like simple repetitions, but which in fact change and expand gradually over the piece's thirty minutes. Described by Feldman as "crippled symmetry," this technique was inspired by the slight alterations in repeating patterns he observed in oriental carpets. Hear a performance of Feldman's For Stefan Wolpe . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.
In 1940, when Thornton Wilder's Our Town was about to become a film, the Hollywood producer Sol Lesser asked Aaron Copland to compose the music. Copland admired Wilder, and when he heard that Our Town had been written mostly at the MacDowell Colony and that Grovers Corners was patterned after the town of Peterborough, N. H., where Copland had composed several works, the combination was too much for the composer to resist. After Our Town was successfully released, Copland arranged about 10 minutes of the film score into an orchestral suite and adapted some excerpts for piano. Watch a performance of the piano excerpt Conversation by the Soda Fountain from Our Town (1940) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Our FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA for the week is a conversation between Korean-German composer Isang Yun and Bruce Duffie (at bruceduffie.com). Here's how things start . . . "Bruce Duffie: Let me start out with an easy question - Where is music going today? Isang Yun: I don't think anyone can really answer this question, myself included. I can say for myself that my music is becoming more understandable, and I find a quality of human sympathy is becoming more prevalent in it. BD: Is this something being added now that was missing earlier, or is it an outgrowth of the way your music has been going all these years? Yun: It's part of a natural process, and I've just noticed it through observation. This is a process that started about ten yeas ago and I think it will be at least another ten years before it is fully developed. BD: Did something specific happen at that point ten years ago to make this change? Yun: My experience of the personal side and political area in Korea happened twenty years ago, and it took ten years for me to be able to translate these experiences into my music. I think today our world very badly needs music that brings us closer together, particularly because there are so many grave problems that people everywhere are having to deal with. In order to be able to articulate these problems in art, we need a great deal of musical understanding . . ." Read more at Pytheas.
For Stefan Wolpe (1986) is among American composer Morton Feldman's last works; one of many dedicated to composers, painters, and writers he admired. Written for chorus and two vibraphones, the work alternates between choral sonorities and instrumental passages, creating a series of refrains which at first seem like simple repetitions, but which in fact change and expand gradually over the piece's thirty minutes. Described by Feldman as "crippled symmetry," this technique was inspired by the slight alterations in repeating patterns he observed in oriental carpets. Hear a performance of Feldman's For Stefan Wolpe . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.
In 1940, when Thornton Wilder's Our Town was about to become a film, the Hollywood producer Sol Lesser asked Aaron Copland to compose the music. Copland admired Wilder, and when he heard that Our Town had been written mostly at the MacDowell Colony and that Grovers Corners was patterned after the town of Peterborough, N. H., where Copland had composed several works, the combination was too much for the composer to resist. After Our Town was successfully released, Copland arranged about 10 minutes of the film score into an orchestral suite and adapted some excerpts for piano. Watch a performance of the piano excerpt Conversation by the Soda Fountain from Our Town (1940) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
John Rutter is one of England's best-known composers of the late twentieth century, as well as a widely respected choral conductor and music scholar and editor. While his choral works (including the Te Deum, Magnificat, and Requiem) are the most familiar, he has also written instrumental works and two children's operas. He has a strong sense of the English musical traditions, and some of the more significant English musical influences on his work include Vaughn Williams, Walton and Britten. Listen to his beautiful setting of the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd (1978) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, composer Osvaldo Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world's most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses. "I want my music to be intuitive," the composer explains. Each of Golijov's compositions is different. The influences include South America, the synagogue and the shtetl, wrapped in a life-filled tonal shimmer. It wasn't always easy for Golijov to express himself this way in university – he completed his graduate studies in Israel and the U.S. "I was feeling alienated from that aesthetic," Golijov says of the tyranny of serialism and other atonal experiments in the 1980s. "Then, in one week, my first daughter was born and my mother, who taught me how to play piano, died. It was that whole cycle of new life and death. It opened my eyes, and I realized I don't have to please academic orthodoxy. "You don't become a musician to get rich," he adds, laughing. "So I decided I should do what makes me happy." Golijov describes his method of writing as a combination of "intuitive impulses." "It's like Michelangelo, who said that the shape is inside the piece of marble. All you need are the right tools to find it". Listen to Osvaldo Golijov speak about his life and music . . . he's our current FEATURED COMPOSER.
Here's what Jacob Swanson of the Erie Saxophone Quartet has written about Sarah Horick's Deleted Scenes (2008), "Recently our quartet was SO FORTUNATE to have the opportunity to work with Sarah Horick, a composer currently working in Florida. She wrote a lovely piece for our ensemble, "Deleted Scenes," which consists of seven short movements - each portraying a different character. Our ensemble is looking forward to growing with this work and performing it for a long time to come. I'd love to hear what you think of the piece!" Have a listen for yourself to Deleted Scenes (2008) and let US know what you think . . . the work is one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
In 1920 Maurice Ravel was asked to contribute to a special commemorative supplement of La Revue musicale dedicated to Claude Debussy. Appearing in December 1920, the supplement included what would become the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. Of the Sonata Ravel wrote, "In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary. During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole." "The music is stripped to the bone," Ravel wrote. "Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody." This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Watch a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Paul and Yan-Pascal Tortelier . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, composer Osvaldo Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world's most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses. "I want my music to be intuitive," the composer explains. Each of Golijov's compositions is different. The influences include South America, the synagogue and the shtetl, wrapped in a life-filled tonal shimmer. It wasn't always easy for Golijov to express himself this way in university – he completed his graduate studies in Israel and the U.S. "I was feeling alienated from that aesthetic," Golijov says of the tyranny of serialism and other atonal experiments in the 1980s. "Then, in one week, my first daughter was born and my mother, who taught me how to play piano, died. It was that whole cycle of new life and death. It opened my eyes, and I realized I don't have to please academic orthodoxy. "You don't become a musician to get rich," he adds, laughing. "So I decided I should do what makes me happy." Golijov describes his method of writing as a combination of "intuitive impulses." "It's like Michelangelo, who said that the shape is inside the piece of marble. All you need are the right tools to find it". Listen to Osvaldo Golijov speak about his life and music . . . he's our current FEATURED COMPOSER.
Here's what Jacob Swanson of the Erie Saxophone Quartet has written about Sarah Horick's Deleted Scenes (2008), "Recently our quartet was SO FORTUNATE to have the opportunity to work with Sarah Horick, a composer currently working in Florida. She wrote a lovely piece for our ensemble, "Deleted Scenes," which consists of seven short movements - each portraying a different character. Our ensemble is looking forward to growing with this work and performing it for a long time to come. I'd love to hear what you think of the piece!" Have a listen for yourself to Deleted Scenes (2008) and let US know what you think . . . the work is one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.
In 1920 Maurice Ravel was asked to contribute to a special commemorative supplement of La Revue musicale dedicated to Claude Debussy. Appearing in December 1920, the supplement included what would become the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. Of the Sonata Ravel wrote, "In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary. During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole." "The music is stripped to the bone," Ravel wrote. "Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody." This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Watch a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Paul and Yan-Pascal Tortelier . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
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