bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Guide to Contemporary Hungarian Composers: (III) The Later Decades and Outlook: Concluded
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

ENDRE SZERVÁNSZKY (b. 1911) is the almost exact opposite of Járdányi. The latter's music is coolly balanced, largely undemonstrative, and preserves accepted manners of musical parlance: Szervánszky's reflects his impulsively constituted personality and is fired by an impetuous desire to convey a deeply felt experience. Since he regards the immediacy of that experience the paramount consideration, he is liable to disregard prevailing notions of sound workmanship and even cultivated taste. In fact the respective position of Bartok and Kodaly is strikingly paralleled in the relationship of Szervánszky to Járdányi.
Shostakovich: Some Later Works
Authors: Ottaway Hugh
Published: February 2010

By modern standards, Shostakovich is an unusually prolific composer. Still in his early fifties, he has behind him over a hundred published works, many of them large-scale. He composes quickly, even impulsively—he says so himself—and his creative enthusiasm can sometimes outstrip his critical awareness. His Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad (1941), is doubtless an extreme example of this hit-or-miss ‘immediacy’, but the creative approach which it represents is characteristic and permeates his music. At his best, Shostakovich has one of the finest imaginations at work to-day. His gifts are very impressive; his potential remains immense. Those who contended some years ago that he was a spent force, ruined by politics, have had to think again: the Tenth and Eleventh Symphonies and the Violin Concerto, to mention only the more obvious works, have necessitated many an ‘agonizing reappraisal’.
Strawinsky's Performance of ‘Agon’: A Report
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

There is criticism and there is reporting, or at any rate there ought to be. I do not mean the kind of thing we read in the newspapers, where writers criticize things they have heard and report things they haven't, in order to conceal the fact. Thus, as criticism and reportage are understood today, the former is the more responsible task, but it should really be the other way round whenever the facts are more important than the critic's opinions, which is not seldom. At the same time, opinions do enjoy greater popularity with both the reader and the critic himself: they are easier to get for either. The unpopular truth is that while any fool can opine and indeed perchance opine rightly, only a qualified observer can report, and only a qualified reader is interested in facts, plenty of them and nothing but them.
Stravinsky's Newest Works
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

During 1959 Stravinsky completed three new works. The largest of these, Movements, for piano and orchestra (duration about ten minutes), was begun in 1958. It was commissioned by and dedicated to Margrit Weber, and was first performed by her, with the composer conducting, at a Stravinsky festival in New York in January this year. The other two works, both miniatures (their playing-time is about one minute each), were written in memory of two of Stravinsky's friends. The Double Canon (Raoul Dufy in memoriam), for string quartet, had its first performance at the same New York festival. The Epitaphium für das Grabmal des Prinzen Max Egon zu Fürstenberg (the patron of the Donaueschingen Festival), for flute, clarinet and harp, was first performed at Donaueschingen on 17 October, 1959.
Britten's ‘Cantata Academica’
Authors: Bradshaw Susan
Published: February 2010

So reads the title page of ‘CANTATA ACADEMICA—CARMEN BASILIENSE’, completed in March 1959, and awaiting its first performance on 1 July, 1960, when Basel University celebrates its five-hundredth anniversary. The Latin text, compiled by Bernhard Wyss, is taken from the charter of the university and from older orations in praise of Basel. Britten has arranged the words to form ten set pieces and three recitatives, making thirteen sections in all. Discounting the final chorus, which is but a unifying return to the opening (musically speaking), it is no accident that the remaining formal divisions are governed by the number twelve. It is fascinating to discover that this is in fact a ‘serial’ work—entirely dependent on a note-row for its harmonic outline, though without serial order in harmonic detail. This is serialism of a very personal kind, so tightly connected with the form that it is the form itself—an integral part of the musical creation, valid only for this particular work; and although the idea is apparently simple it is filled with such a wealth of musical invention that one is left gasping at the ingenuity which makes it possible.
Stravinsky: Information and Illumination
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: February 2010

If civilised man continues long enough to achieve the retrospect, we may hope that he will be able to view with amusement—though perhaps with some mystification—our addiction to reading and writing around the arts in preference to living in them at first hand. In ages when nothing was to be gained by thousands' professing enthusiasms they did not feel, there was no demand either for the writer who could supply approved aesthetic reactions or for his colleague who dealt in impressive technical information as a defence against the suggestion that any reaction should be thought obligatory.
Serial Composition Today
Authors: Still Robert
Published: February 2010

I can assure Mr. Iain Hamilton that the problem of the composer in facing up to serial technique is not nearly such a difficult one as the psychological problem posed by the coercive idealism of our time whether in music or any other sphere.

Like all idealists Mr. Hamilton overstates his case, when he writes, ‘Whereas one realises that a composer may pass through a period of the composition of some such works at a certain stage of his development, it seems strange that a composer can be content to remain in what is surely a dead world.’ ‘I also find it strange that one composer should be content to use another composer's hard-won style, and feel no responsibility that he must contribute something of his own if he is to meet the challenge offered to him.’
Britten's Purcell Realizations and Folksong Arrangements
Authors: Roseberry Eric
Published: February 2010

Benjamin Britten's secondary, but none the less significant and complementary, role as performer of other men's music is well known today and justly admired: his association—one might almost say his self-identification—with composers such as Mozart, Schubert, Wolf and Mahler, either as solo pianist, accompanist or conductor, are distinguished by a most compelling intensity of personal feeling for the music, objectified, as it were, by a cool, scientific clarity of musical presentation. His performances are supremely creative: the composer nourishes the performer in him, and vice versa, which provokes the reaction, as one admires an interpretative idea in the performance of a Mozart violin sonata or Schubert song partnered by Britten at the piano, ‘how Mozartian’ or ‘how Schubertian’ — and yet ‘how Brittenish’.
A Note on Tcherepnin's Fourth Symphony
Authors: Truscott Harold
Published: February 2010

Like his father before him, Alexander Tcherepnin is a prolific composer. He is also a fundamentally conservative composer who contrives to sound ‘modern’. With this modernity he has often flirted, but it is not the real man. When he is, as in this latest symphony, uninhibited, he is a very attractive composer. When he is carrying out what he conceives to be the stem duty of keeping up with the times, he can be a disappointment. He imagines modernity, or the contemporary idiom (as if there were only one!), to involve the kind of dissonance that would have made our forefathers wince. Although he is not particularly happy with it, he supplies it on occasions. But, stern duty done, he relaxes and is himself, and then we get works such as this symphony, which still uses his ‘modern’ idiom, but not to the degree that it disguises his true manner of speaking. His ‘modern’ style rests in the effect of persistent, local Neapolitan sixths playing against a basically tonal harmony and thus emphasising the more the basic tonality—what was, until a little while ago, mistakenly called ‘polytonality’.
Sir Thomas Beecham—Some Personal Memories
Authors: Arnell Richard
Published: February 2010

I first met Sir Thomas Beecham in New York and in the Green Room at Carnegie Hall after a concert. Although I cannot remember which orchestra he was conducting, it was possibly the Rochester Symphony Orchestra. Due, I was told, to various feuds with important managements, Sir Thomas never conducted either the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony Orchestras, at least not during the period I knew him there, from 1941 until his return to London in 1944. I had been introduced by his assistant John Barnett and was also armed with the encouragement of critic-composer Virgil Thomson, a friend and admirer of Sir Thomas, who had heard John rehearsing my overture, The New Age. This work was later rejected by the committee of the New York City Symphony, a group of unemployed musicians working under the W.P.A., a kind of dole. Partly from anger at what he thought an unjust decision, Barnett arranged my introduction to Sir Thomas.
Beecham Remembered
Authors: Raynor Henry
Published: February 2010

There are those artists who disarm one's critical faculties and to whom a sense of personal gratitude governs all one's attitudes. So far as the present writer is concerned, Beecham was one of that number; to pretend, therefore, that these notes are other than subjective appreciation (an opportunity to bid farewell to a departed hero) would be not only dishonest but so transparently so as to add stupidity to deceit.
Britten's Cello Sonata
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: February 2010

Recent opportunities given by the Third Programme for hearing Britten's chamber music again may have helped to dispel the faintly patronising air which has often been adopted towards all his instrumental works by those who profess to find there something less than the overwhelming mastery of his word settings. The two quartets show a marked originality of structural proportion as well as that flair for textures we have taken for granted in no other English composer in his early thirties, and the Lachrymae meditations reveal unsuspected shades of sombre colouring. Britten's return to this field after more than a decade arouses keen expectancy, particularly if we reflect on his artistic development during those years. Without totally effacing the impression of almost prodigal spontaneity that has been his stamp since the earliest works, he has effected an inner economy of material, often by motivic practices of unusual subtlety and strength. Outwardly too, with Winter Words and Turn of the Screw, we have begun to recognize a laconic utterance that is very compelling: it is seen in individual movements like the fifth Chinese Song or the Shakespeare setting in the Nocturne, but it also makes possible the changing vignettes of the first act of Midsummer Night's Dream, and the fleet progress of the Cantata Academica through thirteen sections in some twenty minutes.
Endre Szervánszky
Authors: Halmy Ferenc
Published: February 2010

Endre Szervánszky (b. 1911) is one of the outstanding figures on the Hungarian musical scene since Bartók and Kodály. He had his first notable success with his first string quartet. When this was performed by the Végh Quartet in Budapest in 1943, the distinguished music critic Dénes Bartha wrote: “The quartet must be considered by far the best, most original, forceful and mature creation of contemporary Hungarian chamber music”. Completed five years earlier, in 1938, it was Szervanszky's first work of significance, and although he modestly described it in the printed programme as an “essay on Bartók”, it already gives clear evidence of his creative individuality. For various reasons however, including of course the war, he did not go on to any comparable achievement until after 1945, although he did write a number of minor works for piano (Sonatina, Little Suite), as well as a Sonata for violin and piano (1945), of somewhat atonal character.
Some trends among younger composers
Authors: Kárpáti János
Published: February 2010

The composers in Hungary who have come to maturity after the mid-1950s have been more fortunate than their seniors in several respects. Not only are they farther out of the shadow of Bartók and Kodály, but their formative development has not been interrupted or impeded either by war or by the ideological problems that faced composers in the early 1950s. At the upper end of this group is György Kurtág (b. 1926), who after completing his studies in Budapest, and writing a number of successful prentice works, spent a year in Paris (1957–58), and put ‘Op. 1’ only to the string quartet which was the outcome of his experience there. Of autodidactic inclination, he was influenced less by particular major figures than by the general creative atmosphere around him, but became a disciple of Webern, not so much in technique as in his asceticism and self-discipline, his concentration on intensity of content and creative effort rather than on its extent. He has never been prolific, and his output since 1958 is remarkably slender—five works in ten years. Besides the string quartet these consist of a wind quintet, a series of piano pieces, a set of duos for violin and cimbalom, a piece for unaccompanied viola, and most recently an extended cantata for solo voice and piano, on texts by the 16th-century Hungarian writer Péter Bornemisza, which was performed at Darmstadt last year. This is a taxing virtuoso work for both performers, of exceptional range and force of expressive utterance. At the opposite extreme stand the delightful duos for violin and cimbalom, terse and unassuming, yet absorbing in content and distinctive in character, brilliantly exploring the possibilities of the unusual medium without any reliance on curiosity value or striving after effect.
Two opera composers
Authors: Fábián Imre
Published: February 2010

There is no strong opera tradition in Hungary. The founder of our national opera literature, Liszt's contemporary Ferenc Erkel, clung chiefly to the ‘verbunkos’ style as a characteristic Hungarian element in his attempts to form a national operatic style. He succeeded in fusing this with the style of his Italian models, and this was his great merit as a composer. But he left unsolved the crucial problem: the creation of a melodic style arising out of the characteristic accentuation of Hungarian speech, out of the spirit of the language. From this point of view Bartók was the epoch-making master. Bluebeard's Castle was the historic event in the rise of new Hungarian opera. As Kodály wrote after the première: “Bartók has taken the road to liberating the language, transforming its natural inflexions into music, thereby greatly furthering the emergence of a Hungarian recitative style. This is the first Hungarian operatic work in which the singing is consistent from first to last, free from all jarring prosody”. But Bartók's opera had no successors. The two stage works of Kodály, whose feeling for drama and theatre was not strong, were more in the nature of experiments, and were so intended by their composer. The following generation could hardly have made any progress in the direction indicated by them—though there was much that later opera composers could learn from his other vocal music, the songs and the choral works.
Some senior composers
Authors: Breuer János
Published: February 2010

The personality of Kodály over a period of forty years was a decisive factor in the development of new Hungarian music. In 1925, when works by a group of his pupils were first performed, his composition teaching was harshly attacked in the press. Kodály replied with a famous article, ‘Thirteen Young Composers’, in which he wrote: “we have to bring up not only European but at the same time Hungarian musicians … Only by the fusion of European and Hungarian traditions can we arrive at anything that will mean something to Hungary too”. Several of those thirteen played and still play a prominent part in Hungarian musical life, if not primarily as composers.
An outsider's view
Authors: Walsh Stephen
Published: February 2010

Within the last ten or twelve years music in Hungary, as in most east European countries—has undergone radical changes in technique and thought, and is now, for the first time since the 1930s, making an important contribution within the fairly broad framework of the avant-garde. This change having taken place out of earshot, as it were, and now presenting itself as a fait accompli, the significance of its results is not easy for the English or American listener to assess—particularly as gramophone records are still not readily available and performances are rare.
Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

With Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet, Op. 133, completed in 1968 and published this year (why the delay?), the contemporary problem stands on its head, on and off, for close on thirty minutes—if, that is to say, we take the reactions of some of the most interesting members of our musical culture into account (composers, advanced and conservative, critics, musical music lovers); and without reactions, without music's social situation, there wouldn't be any problem anyway: the Grosse Fuge was absolutely unproblematic before it was repeatedly played, and some of it understood. But that was, has been, the contemporary problem standing on its feet—chronically advanced music: in advance, that is to say, not only of its own time, but of successive later eras, with the result that we still don't altogether understand the work (as I call it), or the movement (as others call it)—or I don't anyway; why does it end so abruptly? All I get in reply to my question is my own musical depression: people don't even notice that it does end abruptly.
Foreword to “Albert Herring”
Authors: Crozier Eric
Published: February 2010

During the last three years I have spent much time with Benjamin Britten when he was planning and writing his operas Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia. As producer for both works I shared in discussions between composer and poet, and could follow their progress from first ideas to final performance. Lately, I have tried to profit by this invaluable experience in writing the text for Albert Herring.
“My Many Lives”
Authors: Lehmann Lotte
Published: February 2010

I know it is hard to believe but I am often asked whether it is necessary for a singer to know what happens in all the scenes of an opera in which one has a role. That one must know just what the opera is about…! Good Heavens ! ! ! When this strange question revealing such an abysmal lack of understanding was first put to me I really couldn't understand what was meant by it. How can one portray a role in an opera if one does not have a complete conception of the whole story with every detail which relates to the role and all the action which has preceded it? Otherwise it would be nothing but empty and incredibly stupid theatre. If one doesn't know the story from which the opera was created: the libretto itself, every gesture will be superficial and all the action lifeless and false.
Note on the New “Petrouchka”
Authors: Boys Henry
Published: February 2010

In his book on Strawinsky published in 1929, Boris de Schloezer pointed out that, contrary to the general opinion, Petrouchka rather than Le Sacre du Printemps was to be considered the really revolutionary work. His reason was that Strawinsky's attitude towards style and technique in Petrouchka was utterly different from that of the composers who “played the organ.” Scriabin had summed up in the most extreme form what Strawinsky meant by playing the organ when he had remarked that good orchestration should be like a good sauce—one should not be able to distinguish the ingredients. Beautiful sonorities for their own sake, blending of colours, filling up of holes, in a word all the magic by which any listener's musical attention can be put to sleep—The Firebird, maybe, had its share of these things, but Le Sacre? Yet in Le Sacre there is as much autonomy of rhythm as there is autonomy of sonority in Firebird; indeed, in some parts there is autonomy of sonority as well, and it is just this that makes the magic. “Playing the organ” was not a happy phrase, for the baroque way of playing the organ has much in common with Strawinsky's ideals. Nevertheless, Le Sacre, however differently, still played the 19th century organ.
Some Reflections on Opera as a Medium
Authors: Auden W. H.
Published: February 2010

Every artistic medium reflects some area of human experience. These areas often overlap but never coincide, for if two media could do the same thing equally well one would be unnecessary.

When someone, like myself, after years of working in one medium, essays another for the first time, he should always, I believe, try to discover its proper principles before starting work. Otherwise he is in danger of carrying over assumptions and habits of mind which have become second nature to him into a field where, as a matter of fact, they do not and cannot apply.
“The Rake's Progress”
Authors: White Eric Walter
Published: February 2010

The Rake's Progress occupies an unique place in Strawinsky's output: it is his only full-length work for the theatre. This may seem a surprising statement to make in view of the fact that his main successes as a composer during the last forty years have occurred in the theatres of Europe and America: yet until the completion of this opera he had never written anything that would fill an evening's bill. The longest of his ballets plays for no more than three-quarters of an hour; and neither his lyric tale, The Nightingale, his opera-oratorio, Oedipus Rex, nor his melodrama, Persephone, exceeds an hour in length, excluding intervals. It is typical of the problems attendant on the production of Strawinsky's so-called ‘full-scale’ works that when the Berlin Krolloper wanted to mount Oedipus Rex at the beginning of 1928, Mavra and The Soldier's Tale had to be thrown in as make-weights.
Contemporary Music in South Africa
Authors: Fleischmann Ernest
Published: February 2010

Throughout its short, but chequered history, South Africa has been a land of extremes and contrasts. Racially, socially, geographically and climatically everything seems rather exaggerated—there is a lack of what is usually called “the golden midway.” The population is divided into Coloureds and Whites; there is more extreme wealth and extreme poverty than in most other countries; parts of South Africa are wonderfully fertile, others arid desert; and the climate varies between tropical heat and sometimes fierce cold. And so it has been with the creation of music, and the performance of the work of contemporary composers from other countries. Until about fifteen years ago, South Africans were all but unaware that they had any composers in their midst and whenever anything composed later than, say, the year 1900 was performed, audiences stayed away in large numbers. Then, suddenly, things changed. Promising South African composers began to be discovered with an almost indiscriminate rapidity and a spirit of adventure started to creep into concert programmes.
Music in Turkey
Authors: Weldon George
Published: February 2010

Turkey has now had four Anglo-Turkish Music Festivals in Ankara, organised by the British Council and the Turkish Ministry of Fine Arts. The first of these (1948) and the fourth (1951) I had the pleasure of conducting.

Perhaps because of her distance from England, it is frequently not realised to what extent Turkey has advanced musically during the relatively brief space of time that she has been developing on Western musical lines. There are only two Symphony Orchestras in Turkey, at Ankara and at Istanbul, and both these are composed almost entirely of Turkish musicians. The Presidential Philharmonic Orchestra at Ankara is over seventy strong, and also provides the nucleus for the Radio Orchestra and the Opera Orchestra. For the Festival, seven rehearsals were allowed for each concert, and these were of course necessary to assimilate what were almost all new works to the repertory of the Orchestra, including Vaughan Williams' Job, Richard Arnell's Piano Concerto and Alan Rawsthorne's Symphonic Studies, quite apart from new Turkish works, which I will refer to later. The quality of orchestral playing is reasonably high, by any standard; there is a very pleasant warm string tone, and the principal woodwind players are truly excellent, the brass section is quite reliable, and I was particularly struck by the playing of the first horn.
Period Music
Authors: Cardus Neville
Published: February 2010

In his presidential lecture to the English Association Mr. A. L. Rowse consoled his audience by the remark that if “writing is not at a high peak at the moment, English painting is enjoying a more creative period than it has since the eighteenth century, and English music than at any time since the Elizabethans.” I am not competent to discuss this optimistic view about English painting, but I certainly do not share Mr. Rowse's opinion of contemporary English music—and I take it that by “contemporary” he means music by composers not writing in a style or idiom of yesterday or the day before.
The Development of Musical Life in Vienna Since 1945
Authors: Tenschert Roland
Published: February 2010

Richard Strauss wrote these words in a letter to me in 1944. Their tone indicates his state of mind after Goebbels had declared total war and with a stroke of his pen had brought the artistic life of Germany to a standstill and condemned musicians to war-work.

But worse was to follow. Opera house after opera house fell victim to the intensified bombing raids. A direct hit destroyed the rear portion of the Vienna Staatsoper, right to the floor of the stage, on 12th March 1945. Four further hits completely destroyed the stage and turned the glory of the auditorium into rubble and ashes. Some of the disaster might have been prevented had the firefighting team who were familiar with the building not been called up for warwork and the service not been manned by untrained newcomers. Thus, in a few hours, one of the most famous temples of the arts became a smoking ruin. The final strafing came a few weeks later, with the entry of soviet troops.
The Third Programme and Hans Pfitzner
Authors: Mitchell Donald
Published: February 2010

One of the brightest of the Third Programme's recent efforts was the presentation of a little festival of Pfitzner's music. “Little,” perhaps, may be not quite the right word for however short a series of programmes which included the whole of Palestrina (1912–1915), but it must be remembered that Pfitzner wrote four other operas besides this celebrated chef-d'oeuvre—Der arme Heinrich (1891–93), Die Rose vom Liebesgarten (1897–1900), Das Christelflein (1906, revised 1917), and Das Herz (1930–31). The B.B.C. gave us no glimpse of these other operas, although round about Christmas of each year one of their regional orchestras undertakes the overture to Das Christelflein as an appropriately seasonal piece. For this festival occasion, the B.B.C, in addition to Palestrina, threw in a song recital and a performance of Pfitzner's last chamber work, the Sextet (Op. 55/1945) for piano, violin, viola, cello, double-bass and clarinet. These two latter items may have been well-intentioned choices, but, notwithstanding, they were extremely ill chosen. The Third Programme—as, alas, so often—was either wrongly advised, or simply did not have any (skilled) advice to call upon. For instance, the six songs, ably performed by Mary Jarred, belonged to Pfitzner's earliest period—the latest “Lied”" was Sonst (Op. 15, no. 4), composed in 1904, and most of the other songs were written in the 1880's or 90's. But Pfitzner's output of “Lieder” extends to the 1930's and up to Op. 41—and his maturest and best songs are to be found in the years which the B.B.C. did not remotely approach! Incidentally, no opus numbers were printed in the Radio Times or announced over the air, so that as far as the uninformed listener was concerned he was hearing a “representative” selection of Pfitzner's “Lieder”; in fact, of course, he was hearing nothing of the kind.
Problems and Solutions in the Production of ‘Gloriana’
Authors: Coleman Basil
Published: February 2010

Best plan would probably be for ramps from which chorus could stand as if watching tournament happening in arena off stage. Chorus movements and reactions very useful in this way—would carry the initial excitement.

Judge best alternative to suggest arena by circle of gaily coloured tents between which Cuffe can dodge as if following tournament. Also, use a series of graded rostrums and steps, curved to suggest that they surround the arena.
Ariadne Auf Naxos
Authors: Lismann Else Mayer
Published: February 2010

The Strauss-Hofmannstal Ariadne holds a special place in operatic history as well as in the world of art as such, and above all in the life and development of this singular partnership between poet and composer which was to last for over twenty years.

In the works of these two artists it is always of particular interest to follow the gradual act of creation—the constant development of “the first idea,” which like a plant is being carefully watched and cultivated until it finally reaches maturity.
The Holland Festival 1953: Berg's Lulu
Authors: Mitchell Donald
Published: February 2010

One's memories of so large an international festival are bound to be mixed; while there were few classical performances of festival perfection to be heard, and little superior contemporary music to alleviate otherwise routine orchestral programmes, an occasional guest artist gave exceptional pleasure (Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf, Martinon), and one left Holland with renewed admiration for the Concertgebouw orchestra and with a somewhat broader knowledge of the work of contemporary Dutch composers. It was in the operatic field that the festival proved to be most enterprising and enlightened. The schedule included Falla's rarely performed La Vida Breve and El Retablo de Maese Pedro, Otello (under Krips), Der Freischütz (Elmendorff), Figaro (Krips), and the Essen production of Alban Berg's second, last and incomplete opera, Lulu. The performances of Freischütz and Figaro gave one an opportunity to assess the achievements of Holland's very youthful national opera, “De Nederlandsche Opera,” a company more recently founded than our own Covent Garden. While neither production was up to true festival standards (though Figaro was a considerable improvement on Freischütz), one was left with an impression of substantial promise for the future.
The Trial at Salzburg
Authors: Tenschert Roland
Published: February 2010

The performance of a contemporary work at the Salzburg Festival has become usual and this year the work chosen was Gottfried von Einem's latest opera, The Trial. Franz Kafka's novel of the same name (which, in his will, he directed should be destroyed unpublished) had already been dramatised by Gide and Barrault, and this opera libretto was prepared by the composer's teacher, Boris Blacher, and Heinz Cramer. The authors count it an especial virtue to have used only Kafka's own words, and at the most to have substituted direct for indirect speech. The individual scenes of the opera, furthermore, bear the same titles as the chapters of the novel. The single figure created by the librettists, who appears in both parts of the opera, is the “passer by,” but he, too, accords fully with the spirit of Kafka.
Towards an Amalgamation of Opera and Ballet
Authors: Koegler Horst
Published: February 2010

Ballet-premièeres of to-day have often all the glamour which was formerly a prerogative of opera. One has only to see the meteor-like career of the Diaghilev Ballet, the steady evolution of the Sadler's Wells Ballet, or even more recent the splendid progress of Balanchine's New York City Ballet, not to mention Paris, where opera always took second place, to be aware of this vital new development.

Even in Germany, which has little ballet-tradition, these signs are no longer to be neglected. The chief example is the Faust-ballet Abraxas by Werner Egk, which had a record number of sold-out performances at the Berlin Städtische Oper. No wonder that composers especially interested in the progress of the musical theatre, seek to exploit the latest trends for a synthesis of ballet-opera. Opera and ballet completely integrated! Opera itself has always tried to employ ballet for its own purposes. London knows of the Sadler's Wells Dido and the more recent Ashton-production of Gluck's Orpheus at the Garden, Paris had its greatest success of the last seasons when it revived Rameau's ballet-opera Les Indes Galantes and New York remembers the choreographic production of Bartóok's Bluebeard's Castle at the City Center. German directors often cast the three boys and three ladies in Die Zauberflöte with dancers and Tietjen, in his Berlin production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos banished the singing entourage of Zerbinetta and the three nymphs to the orchestra-pit, while their roles were executed by dancers, too.
Roger Quilter: 1877–1953: The Man and His Songs
Authors: Raphael Mark
Published: February 2010

Quilter often said he loved Poetry more than music. The poems he set to music would form an anthology of some of the choicest lyrics in the English language, while a collection of those poems which he loved but considered unsuitable for music, would give us an insight into his kind and gentle nature. Evenings spent in his company were a sheer delight. He had a great sense of humour, exquisite taste, and he delighted in surrounding himself with beautiful things. Helpful to young artists and friends, his generosity was of a most uncommon kind.
Berlin Journal, Winter 1953
Authors: Stevens James
Published: February 2010

The last lights you see from the plane are those of Hamburg; there is a flaring horseshoe of electric light from a vast stadium, and then blackness until an hour later the plane noses down on an island of illumination. This is Berlin. Nothing could better give a sense of the artificial isolation of the place; it is in fact a city besieged and the only way back and forth for its seething overnight population of businessmen, conferenciers and international artists is through the clouds. As I left the Tempelhof I could not resist a last backward glance at the cosy “Pionair” preening itself on the airfield. It takes some days to rid oneself of this feeling of clammy insecurity, the ridiculous compulsion to look back over one's shoulder; and the sound of aeroplane engines one hears so consciously all day bears a twofold significance. Strolling around this devastated capital, now at such pains to ingratiate itself with its guests, one may well wonder how a cultural and creative activity can exist at all. Writers will always write and composers will always forge their nebulous material into potential existence. But how, amidst these unbelievable expanses of rubble with isolated skyward-pointing digits of habitable rooms, maintain the players to play, the orchestras that breathe life into a score, the theatres and opera houses?
An Opera Re-Born
Authors: Tenschert Roland
Published: February 2010

Intermezzo, Richard Strauss's autobiographical comedy of married life had not been seen in Vienna for nearly 25 years. Now it has returned to the Theater an der Wien, the Staatsoper's emergency quarters, whose intimacy, it may be said, was a positive advantage for the chamber-like character of the work. The musical demands made by the composer in his detailed preface were ideally satisfied by the subtle tonal colouring of the Philharmonic Orchestra under Rudolf Moralt. The solo ensemble did full justice to the bright, kaleidoscopic variations of light and shade created by the interplay of words and music, the constant change between speech, arioso and full throated singing.
Soviet Music Today
Authors: Keldysh Georgi
Published: February 2010

The musical public in London knows the work of a number of outstanding Soviet composers. The works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and others have been published and performed with success more than once in Great Britain. In talking with representatives of the British musical world I was able to convince myself of their lively interest in the work of these composers and in recent events in Soviet music generally. In the following pages I shall try to satisfy that interest to some extent, and to deal with some of the more important changes in Soviet music, which, as I think, have occurred during the last three or four years.
Notes to Kodaly's Recent Setting of Hungarian Dances
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

Even the most individual art has some roots in tradition; and the interest of Kodály's music arises from his faculty to elevate his national inheritance to an unmistakably personal language. Historic consciousness has always been a dominating trait both of the man and his art; he posscsses an extraordinary imagination for relating the spiritual experience of earlier periods to musical forms of contemporary validity. Thus a sixteenth century sermon became one of the choral masterpiece of modern times; a popular tale of Napoleonic times intiated the revival of Hungarian musical theatre; and his folksong choruses laid the foundations of the general musical culture in Hungary to-day.
Gerald Finzi and the Solo Song
Authors: Boyd C. M.
Published: February 2010

In recent years Gerald Finzi has produced lengthy works such as the setting of Wordsworth's “Intimations of Immortality” and the clarinet concerto which, together with the earlier violin concerto, show a definite grasp of composition in the more extended forms. Although neither these works nor the various pieces for chamber groups can be disregarded in a final estimate of the composer, it can be fairly confidently upheld that it is within the narrower confines of the solo song that Finzi has given us his best work up to the present time. This is not altogether surprising since his gifts are above all lyrical. To write a good song is no mean accomplishment; to find in song-writing, as Finzi has done, a definite personal expression and a consistent development of style is something which only a few composers either achieve or attempt.
Ernest Bloch at 75
Authors: Chapman Ernest
Published: February 2010

It is difficult to believe that Ernest Bloch will be celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday on July 24th. His steady flow of new works, his lively letters and firm handwriting, his active life at his home on Oregon's lonely Pacific shore—all these suggest a man much younger in years. But Bloch's life has been grandly full, varied and fruitful. He has known successes and failures, happiness and pain. His perpetual concern for human beings and humanity at large, maintained in sojourns in the cities and solitudes of many countries, has reaped its reward in the vitality and wisdom of his old age.
The Carl Rosa Opera
Authors: Smith Cecil
Published: February 2010

The Carl Rosa Opera, the only all-touring opera company left in the world in this age of high travelling costs, has fallen on difficult days. No doubt the provincial British cities should count themselves lucky that any opera company visits them at all. In the United States, Fortune Gallo's San Carlo Opera Company, which used to cross the continent with productions as good as the Carl Rosa's pre-war best, has not been on the move for more than a decade, and the only itinerant spectacles of the kind are packaged single operas sent out from time to time by various New York concert managers.
Notes Concerning Bartók's Solo Vocal Music (III): The Twenty Hungarian Folksongs (1929)
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

The contrapuntal inspiration of the Folksongs does not preclude harmonic inventiveness; in fact, contrapuntally controlled harmony gives wide scope to very advanced tonal excursions. Valid bi- and/or polytonality depends a great deal on a satisfactory combination of individual melodic lines with independent tonal allegiances. The most aggressive tonal clashes are, as a rule, convincingly explained by melodic, contrapuntal progressions: it is an interesting fact that the most daring dissonances usually conceal a stereotyped melodic formula of age-long usage. To mention but one example, which is said to be an English peculiarity too, here is a passage from Taverner's Lamentations:
Howard Ferguson's “Amore Langueo”
Authors: Russell John
Published: February 2010

Anyone who attempts to set Quia Amore Langueo to music must have more than his share of courage and integrity. For in this anonymous Middle-English religious lyric there are so many overtones of meaning and of sheer poetic sound that no minstrel's lute, be it never so sensitively touched, can give utterance to them all. The theme presents no difficulty; it is a familiar one. There is the rejection of Christ by Man's soul, Christ's complaint to Man, and the persistent pleading of Christ to be received by Man, “because I languish for love.” As we might expect from the period, the story is told in vivid imagery; the Song of Songs sheds its bright, tinted light upon it. Heavy with allegory, charged with eroticism, the poem is a highly-coloured transmutation of the God-to-Man relationship into lover' language and feeling.
Boston Visits Moscow
Authors: Phipps Jack
Published: February 2010

The Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Münch and Pierre Monteux, now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, included what can only be called a triumphant visit to the Soviet Union during their recent European tour. They went at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, and the orchestra and its management had therefore the standing of official guests. From the first rather overwhelming welcome on the tarmac at Leningrad it was clear that no effort would be spared to make the visit a success. The hotels were provided by the Government and we had our own restaurants, where four enormous meals were served each day. Never less than five interpreters were available both for official business and for the well-arranged sightseeing tours of which everyone took full advantage, and throughout we were conscious of a feeling of immense goodwill, official and unofficial, on all sides.
A Living Craft: The Violin Makers of Italy
Authors: Jones Alfred
Published: February 2010

One hears so much these days of automation, strikes, labour disputes, etc., that it was refreshing to realize during a journey I made with a colleague to Italy that there is still craftsmanship in the world. Having spent nearly all my working life with violins, I was visiting a country for the first time that had a magical name for me—Italy. I started without any prejudices regarding the country or the people, having neither worked with them nor met them. All I knew was that old Italian instruments were of high monetary value and of beautiful workmanship. I used to wonder if this art had died out like so many crafts in different countries over the years, or whether the people concerned had left Italy and gone elsewhere where they would be appreciated and encouraged.
Novelties at the Proms
Authors: Chapman Ernest
Published: February 2010

The “appalling popularity” of music—to quote the phrase of the moment in the Most Advanced Circles—is nowhere more obvious than at the Promenade Concerts this summer.

The days are gone when the knowing ones could walk into Queen's Hall with a ‘complimentary’ bestowed with almost desperate eagerness, or, at worst, with the certainty of being able to buy a ticket for any part of the house. Try now to buy a seat, a week after the box-office has opened—then join the army of those who will listen-in at home.
New Music in London
Authors: Mason Colin
Published: February 2010

The most interesting recent event in the concert world was the performance by the National Symphony Orchestra, very well conducted by Walter Goehr, of Michael Tippett's Symphony 1945. A lengthy programme note hopefully describes this work as difficult only in texture. In truth it is very difficult altogether though the movements fortunately get progressively less so, the opening sonata movement being the least assimilable at first hearing.
Australian Symphony Orchestra
Authors: Slocombe Cecil
Published: February 2010

A new symphony orchestra aiming at the highest standards has been founded this year in Sydney. There has been no ‘stunting’ in order to attract fame, no desperate appeals for funds, and in fact the necessity of asking for subscriptions from the public has simply not arisen.

The orchestra, which has a full complement of eighty players, is financed jointly by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (a non-commercial concern), the New South Wales State Government, and the Sydney City Council. It is assured of a subsidy of £60,000 annually for three years—£30,000 from the A.B.C., £20,000 from the State Government, and £10,000 from the City Council. The last mentioned will also grant free use of the city concert hall, usually rented at £40 a night.
The Songs of Gerald Finzi
Authors: Long N. G.
Published: February 2010

The period of sensationalism and experiment in music seems to be passing; of the giants of a period which was richer in technical research than in musical achievement it is the mature Bartók and the thoughtful Hindemith who alone seem to have sufficient vitality to interest a more balanced generation; and it is even possible in the most sophisticated circles to mention British composers without making a shamefaced apology. Indeed, the gap between popular and sophisticated opinion seems to be narrowing: Peter Grimes was a popular success; A Child of Our Time aroused widespread enthusiasm; and the concertos of even the redoubtable Bartók filled the Albert Hall. All this is a sign of a new and healthier orthodoxy. But one fundamental heresy is still widespread; it is the tendency to judge music not for what it is but for what it portends; to regard works exclusively in terms of their potential significance instead of in terms of their achievement; to make (as someone put it) “the best the enemy of the good.”
The Paris Scene
Authors: de Candé Roland
Published: February 2010

For some years (one no longer knows how many—they have seemed interminable) French music has been marking time. It has survived, however, and continues its course thanks to the ardour of its devotees. Many of them have suffered the most unjust ostracism owing to the blindness of a nation that judged their work dangerous and contrary to the principles of National Socialism. This question of German musical politics is discussed by Marc Pincherle in the first number of the new French musical review Contrepoints.
Rudolf Bing
Authors: Churchill Clarissa
Published: February 2010

After the Edinburgh Festival Jast summer someone remarked ‘Now it will be no longer possible to plan any musical event of importance in Britain without first asking, what is Bing doing?’ The Festival, which took two years to plan, was the largest event of its type to be staged in the world. Though Rudolf Bing, its organiser, modestly gives credit to Glyndebourne and to Edinburgh for making the Festival possible, the fantastic onus of conception, planning, and organisation fell initially to Bing. That the festival was an unqualified success and will be repeated in 1948, is a tribute to Bing's unrivalled experience as a liaison agent between art and the people.
Music in Australia
Authors: Cardus Neville
Published: February 2010

The average informed musical critic, asked to write an article on Music in Australia, would—if he were bright enough to think of it—take refuge in the old story about the history of snakes in Iceland—“There are no…” etc., etc. He would be more mistaken even than usual.