This week the Pytheas Center honors American composer Milton Babbitt, who died this week at the age of 94. Read about Babbitt's life and music in Allan Kozinn's obituary from The New York Times.

Then hear Milton Babbitt himself talk about his life and electronic music in this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

And listen to two featured works by Babbitt. His Composition for 12 Instruments (1948/54) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

And Philomel (1964), composed for soprano and electonically synthesized sound . . . our FEATURED SOUND ART.

Aulis Sallinen is one of the most prominent figures in Finnish music, and his music often focuses on figures from Finnish history. While his lyric writing shows a strong Sibelius influence, there is also a certain acerbic touch in both his subject matter and his music that is strongly reminiscent of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Weill. His opera The Red Line (1978), in particular, has a sardonic, slightly bitter tone that strongly resembles Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. And like Kurt Weill, he also used jazz elements, as in the ironic song in in the opera Kullervo (1988) in which Kullervo learns that he has slept with his own sister. Hear a performance of Sallinen's Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik's Funeral March (1981), a work for string orchestra derived from his String Quartet No. 3 . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

The instrumental and electroacoustic music of composer Alexandra Gardner combines explorations into the rich details of acoustic sound with a visceral percussive energy to create dynamic sonic landscapes. Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from mythology and contemporary poetry, to her training as a percussionist, Gardner is building new audiences for contemporary music with an expressive sound and a flair for the imaginative and unexpected. A native of Washington, DC, Gardner's compositions have been featured at festivals and venues throughout the U.S. and internationally. Watch a performance of her Bloom (2009) performed by cellist Joshua Roman . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Giacinto Scelsi's mature music is marked by a supreme concentration on single notes, combined with a masterly sense of form. Scelsi revolutionized the role of sound in western music, and his best known work is the Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra/Four Pieces for Orchestra (1959), each on a single note. These single notes are elaborated through microtonal shadings, harmonic allusions, and variations in timbre and dynamics. It is impossible to express the immense power of this apparently simple music in words - (Todd McComb/ClassicalNet). Hear what Todd McComb is writing about in a performance of Scelsi's Quattro Pezzi by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra with Peter Rundel conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Hubert Culot (MusicWeb International) writes that, "Isang Yun is undoubtedly the most important composer to have emerged from Korea during the second half of the 20th century. He studied with Boris Blacher who made him aware of modern techniques, such as twelve-tone and serial writing; these Yun adopted without ever strictly adhering to them. His music is rooted in classical Korean music, of which we know very little, whereas its formal framework is often found in 20th century music. Although some of his earlier pieces are more experimental or more overtly "modern", Yun steered clear of strict serial practice, and allowed his deeply rooted lyricism to flower freely". Read more of this CD review and hear excerpts from Capriccio Record's CD of "Chamber Music by Isang Yun" . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING here at Pytheas.

The film How Green Was My Valley (1941) is one of John Ford's masterpieces of sentimental human drama. It is the melodramatic and nostalgic story, adapted by screenwriter Philip Dunne from Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, of a close-knit, hard-working Welsh coal-mining family at the turn of the 20th century as a socio-economic way of life passes and the home-family unit disintegrates. Episodic incidents in everyday life convey the changes, trials, setbacks, and joys of the hard-bitten community as it faces growing unemployment, distressing work conditions, unrest, unionization and labor-capital disputes, and personal tragedy. Domestic life, romance, harsh treatment at school, the departure of two boys to find their fortune in America, unrequited love between the local preacher (Walter Pidgeon) and the only Morgan daughter (beautiful 19 year old Irish actress Maureen O'Hara), and other events are portrayed within this warm, human story. The original musical score by the great Alfred Newman was nominated for an Academy Award. Watch an excerpt from this classic film . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, written between 1938 and 1946 (and completed two years AFTER the Violin Sonata No. 2), is one of the darkest and most brooding of the composer's works. Prokofiev described the slithering violin scales at the end of the 1st and 4th movements as "wind passing through a graveyard". The work was premiered by violinist David Oistrakh and pianist Lev Oborin, under the personal coaching of the composer. During rehearsals, Oborin played a certain passage, marked forte (loud), too gently for Prokofiev's liking, who insisted it should be more aggressive. Oborin replied that he was afraid of drowning out the violin, but Prokofiev said "It should sound in such a way that people should jump in their seat, and say 'Is he out of his mind?'". Watch a performance of the 4th movement of Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 by violinist Xenia Akeynikov . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

In his operas The Horseman and Kullervo, and in his music for the television epic The Iron Age, Aulis Sallinen has penetrated deep into the mists of Finnish prehistoric myth. Similar mists veil the events his The Red Line, although they are set in our own century and can indeed be timed to the day. The most shattering moments in all these works are those in which Death suddenly and shockingly reaps its harvest. Sallinen movingly examines the pain of life under the shadow of death also in his song cycle Four Dream Songs (1973) based on his opera The Horseman. Hear a gorgeous performance of the third and fourth "Dream Song" by soprano Soile Isokoski . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

For this week's Composer Portrait we turn to pianist Gwendolyn Mok. She specializes in the music of Maurice Ravel, and has recorded Ravel's complete solo piano works on a restored Erard concert grand piano, dating from 1875, similar to Ravel' s own piano . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Trapèze is a circus-themed one-acter which was written in 1924 for Boris Romanov, a modernist Russian choreographer who had emigrated to Germany in 1921. His Berlin-based company was so hard up it couldn’t afford an orchestra, so Prokofiev duly scored his commission for a quintet of clarinet, oboe, violin, viola and double-bass. Watch an excerpt of Trapèze brought to us by Video Artists International (VAI), an independent record label of Classical, Jazz, Broadway, Ballet, and Opera DVD's and CD's whose catalogue includes performances by such luminaries as Leopold Stokowski, David Oistrakh, Fritz Reiner, Van Cliburn, Beverly Sills, Leontyne Price, Renata Scotto, Franco Corelli, and Maria Callas among others . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

The first five pieces of Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 (1911) were composed in a single day, February 19, 1911; the sixth followed on June 17. These very brief and compact pieces are a sort of musical equivalent of aphorisms: the longest of the set (No. 1) encompasses no more than 18 measures. Schoenberg here experiments with the construction of ideas that are complete from the outset and require no development. Watch a performance of these classics of 20th century music by pianist Michel Beroff . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

According to David Gutman, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 occupies a special place in his output. The product of 1917, the year of Revolutions, it had its belated premiere in Paris in October 1923. The score is remote from conventional expectations of Romantic and virtuoso display. The work is scored with a precise economy of means, so that lean, translucent textures predominate despite the prominent part for tuba. As if the opening melody (conceived as early as 1915) were not magical enough, its recapitulation on solo flute (pp dolcissimo) with harp, muted strings and lightly running tracery from the soloist is quite ravishing, matched by the more elaborate return at the end of the finale. The central movement, a mercurial scherzo, gives the soloist ample opportunities for high jinks. Everywhere the flow of ideas is so spontaneous that the music seems to create its own form, an alloy of innocence and sophistication."

Written 50 years after Prokofiev's Concerto, Alfred Schnittke's score for the film The Commissar (1967) comes from a completely different sound world. The film itself traveled a tragic and rocky road before receiving the special prize of the jury and the Silver Bear at the Berlinale 1988 and four professional Nika Awards (1988). It was shot in the political climate of the post-Khrushchev thaw. From the outset of the production, censors forced the film director Aleksandr Askoldov to make major changes: 1967 was the year of the 50th anniversary of 1917 October Revolution and the events were to be presented in the Communist Party-mandated style of heroic realism. After making the movie, director Askoldov lost his job, was expelled from the Communist Party, charged with social parasitism, exiled from Moscow and banned from working on feature films for life. He was told that the single copy of the film had been destroyed. Mordyukova and Bykov, major Soviet movie stars, had to plead with the authorities to spare him of even bigger charges. The film was shelved by the KGB for twenty years. In 1986, due to glasnost policies, the "Conflict Commission" of the Soviet Film-makers Union recommended the re-release of the movie but the censors refused to act. After a plea from Askoldov at the Moscow Film Festival, the film was reconstructed and finally released in 1988. Check out the first scene - this week's Pytheas Sighting ...

Sit back, close your eyes and take in a Pytheas Earful of Elaine Fine's Serenade for Oboe and Strings (2007) [sorry, no longer available], presented at the University of Illinois and made available thanks to U of I's Media Center.

And don't be put off by the setting - an empty room with music propped up a clarinet case - for this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES performance of the first of Stravinky's Three Pieces for Clarinet (1919). It's the music that counts!

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Vancouver is known as the "home" of acoustic ecology, due principally to the pioneering work of the World Soundscape Project. In the early 1970's, the World Soundscape Project, under the direction of R. Murray Schafer, launched a research project on the soundscape of Vancouver including the publication of a book and a recording. In the early 1990's, the School of Communication of Simon Fraser University, with the guidance of Barry Truax, undertook a "revisitation" of the Vancouver soundscape, including a research project to re-record the acoustic environment of Vancouver and compare changes in the soundscape over the years. This week we present a little snipet from Soundscape Vancouver (1996) which will change the way you listen to the world...

As part of the effort, here at Pytheas, to help make a connection to contemporary composers and their music, check out THE COMPOSER SPEAKS ON THE WEB. This new feature brings together web video and streaming audio of composers talking about themselves, their music and their ideas. This expands our current bi-weekly COMPOSER PORTRAIT feature, making these resources accessible in three ways:

(1) on individual COMPOSER PAGES
(for example at Glass on Glass)
(2) in the COMPOSER PORTRAIT ARCHIVE
and (3) at THE COMPOSER SPEAKS ON THE WEB

Many people are familiar with Sergei Prokofiev's orchestral Suite from Lieutenant Kijé (1933). What most people do not know is that this music originated as the film score to Aleksandr Fajntsimmer's film of the same name. The plot is a political satire on the bureaucracy of Emperor Paul I of Russia, and can be seen in full - in 12 parts! - as this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING - Contemporary Music on Film.

FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES brings us back to a performance by Nico Muhly (piano) and Nadia Sirota (viola) of selections from Muhly's film score to The Reader (2008).

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music