bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Alberto Ginastera's ‘Don Rodrigo’
Authors: Urtubey Pola Suares
Published: February 2010

In 1962 the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires commissioned Alberto Ginastera to compose an opera for the Colon Theatre, to have its first performance during the season of 1964. For some time before that Ginastera had been discussing with the Spanish poet and playwright, Alejandro Casona (who at that time was living in Argentina) the idea of writing an opera whose central figure would be Don Rodrigo, the last Visigoth King of Spain. This very beautiful legend has been related in hundreds of sagas throughout the centuries (in English literature Scott, among others, recreated it in ‘The Vision of Don Roderick’), and it has also been used operatically before, in Handel's Rodrigo. Ginastera's Don Rodrigo, his first opera, calls for a monumental mise-en-scène. It has four main characters: a dramatic soprano (Florinda, daughter of Count Don Julián); a dramatic tenor, (Don Rodrigo, King of Spain); a baritone (Don Julián, the governor of Ceuta); and a bass (Teudiselo, Rodrigo's tutor).
Some Czech Composers Today
Authors: Large Brian
Published: February 2010

The liberation and establishment of a peoples' democracy in Czechoslovakia gave a tremendous impetus to musical life throughout the republic. Not only were the ravages of war being made good but new conditions and opportunities were being created for the growth of music. Composers in an outburst of activity were producing works which not only reflected the bitter experiences of the war, but the optimism of a new life. Traditionalists like Vítězslav Novák who was born in 1870, and Josef Foerster, then in his eighty-sixth year, were composing alongside their own pupils and those of Janácek. Alois Hába, who had founded schools of microtonal music, was still experimenting with quartertones and at the same time producing cantatas based upon the diatonic system. Pavel Bořkovec, a pupil of Suk and a romantic at heart, together with Jaroslav Rídký were producing works in established styles and idioms and passing on their working methods to their many pupils. Others like Emil Hlobil and Emil Burian continued to compose in the traditions of Czech romantic music almost untouched by modern trends. New names were springing up everywhere. Composers who had matured during the occupation years had by 1946 grown into artists to be reckoned with and alongside them were musicians who were about to mature.
A Spectator at Lucerne
Authors: Russell John
Published: February 2010

From the garden of Wagner's house at Tribschen, one can peer down through the screen of foliage to the many-spired bassin of Lucerne; and inside the house are the framed programmes of the gigantic and adventurous concerts at which were performed the new inventions of the householder. Wagner is much esteemed by the authorities of Lucerne, and they have carefully trimmed his maple avenue, carefully swept and polished the corridors of his box-like villa. But when it comes to organizing a festival, his works are not performed, and the programmes have nothing of his obstinate audacity. An amiable incoherence was the mark of this year's Lucerne Festival. There was little planning, and there had been little publicity. The representative of the Cape Times bore almost alone the privilege of interpreting the scene to the English-speaking world. The programmes themselves would have been inconspicuous even at a Promenade Concert. Nobody, at this stage in the history of music, is going to post half across the world to hear Don Juan or the First Symphony of Brahms.
Music in the Berkshires
Authors: Burkat Leonard
Published: February 2010

Near the western border of the state of Massachusetts, more than 100 miles from the sea, stand the Berkshire Hills, remnants of an ancient and imposing range of mountains. The countryside is dotted with small one-industry cities, with prosperous farms, with relics of iron mining and the heavy industry of 125 years ago, and with the country estates of the wealthy from Boston and New York. In the heart of the Berkshires, about 140 miles from those two great cities of the North-east, lies the town of Lenox, a near-perfect example of what Americans across all our 3,000 miles like to think of as a typical New England community—wide streets, unbroken expanses of green lawn, an old white and gracefully steepled Congregational Church on the highest hill near the centre of the town. For forty-six weeks in the year the population of Lenox is under 3,000 persons, but on a sunny Sunday afternoon early in August it may hold five times as many within its borders. Lenox is the home of the Berkshire Music Centre and the Berkshire Festival.
Third Programme: First Birthday
Authors: Fisher Trevor
Published: February 2010

If we are a few days late in proffering birthday congratulations it is not entirely inappropriate, for the Third Programme itself does not insist on rigid punctuality. And if we forego a review of the year that ended on September 29th it is mainly in order to avoid printing a huge catalogue of major works and interesting performances. The temptation to reminisce is of course enormous, but to examine in detail one month of the Third's activity is probably more representative than to gloat over a year's masterpieces, curiosities, rareties, experiments.
Reflections and Recollections
Authors: Strauss Richard
Published: February 2010

TEN GOLDEN RULES

Written in the scrapbook of a young conductor (Ca. 1925)

1. Remember that you do not make music for your own amusement, but for the pleasure of your audience.

2. Do not perspire when conducting; only the public ought to get warm.

3. Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn; fairy-music.

4. Never look at the brass encouragingly; except with a quick glance for an important lead-in.

5. On the contrary, never let the horns and woodwind out of your sight; if you hear them at all they are already too loud.

6. If you think the brass is not strong enough, tone them down two points further.

7. It is not enough yourself to hear every word of the singer—which you know by heart anyway; the public also must be able to follow it without effort. If they don't understand what is happening they fall asleep.

8. Always accompany the singer so as to enable him to sing without exertion.

9. If you think you have reached the utmost Prestissimo, take the tempo as fast again.

10. If you remember all this sympathetically, your rich talents and great knowledge will always be the unimpaired delight of your audience.
Richard Strauss and France
Authors: Samazeuilh Gustave
Published: February 2010

By the range, the diversity, the burning vitality of his work, which embraces every type, Richard Strauss is not only beyond doubt the most famous musician in his own country, but is one of the greatest of his epoch. He has always been an admirer of France and France has always accorded him a warm welcome.
The Life of Béla Bartók
Authors: Bartók Béla , Dille Denijs
Published: February 2010

I was born on March 25th, 1881, in a small place, called Nagyszentmiklós, which now, together with the whole county of Torontál, belongs to Roumania. My mother gave me my first piano lessons when I was 6 years old. My father, who was the head of an agricultural school, was gifted musically and active in many directions. He played the piano, organized an amateur orchestra, learned the 'cello in order to play that instrument in his orchestra, and composed some dance music. I was 8 years old when I lost him. After his death my mother had to work as a school mistress and struggle hard for our daily bread. We first went to live at Nagyszöllös (at present Czechoslovak territory), then to Beszterce in Transylvania (at present Roumanian territory) and in 1893 to Pozsony (Bratislava, at present Czechoslovak territory). I began writing piano music when I was nine years old and made my first public appearance as a “composer” and pianist at Nagyszöllös in 1891; it was therefore a matter of some importance for us to settle at last in a biggish town. Among Hungarian country towns at that time it was Pozsony that had the most vigorous musical life, and by moving there I was given the possibility of having lessons in piano and composition with László Erkel (Ferenc Erkel's son) and also of hearing a few operas, more or less well performed, and orchestral concerts. I had the opportunity, too, of playing chamber-music, and before I was eighteen I had acquired a fairly thorough knowledge of music from Bach to Brahms (though in Wagner's work I did not get further than Tannhäuser). All this time I was also busy composing and was under the strong influence of Brahms and Dohnányi (who was 4 years my senior). Especially Dohnányi's youthful Opus No. 1 influenced me deeply.
Bartók and the Theatre
Authors: Oláh Gustav
Published: February 2010

Encouraged by the fact that I took part in the first Hungarian performances of Béla Bartók's three stage works, as well as in more recent productions of them, either in my capacity of designer, producer, or scenic and dramatic adaptor, I am setting down here a few of my experiences with these works, viewed from the particular point of view of my profession.
Bartók's Piano Music
Authors: Weissmann John
Published: February 2010

Bartók was constantly aware of the intellectual tendencies of his age and viewed with keen interest every aspect of contemporary life and thought. Naturally, his ideas affected his music; and since he confided most sketches of technical detail and many definitive statements of his musical problems to the keyboard, an examination of his body of works for the piano will afford us insight into the development of his idiom—as well as helping us to understand the evolution of contemporary music.
The State of the Nation
Authors: A. G.
Published: February 2010

This quotation, taken from a newspaper report of a London Borough Council meeting, represents a significant part of the background against which our current musical renascence must be judged. Last year the Arts Enquiry produced a Report on Musical Life in England, and in recent months there has appeared another of the annual British Council Reports, The Year's Work in Music, as well as the Fourth Annual Report of the Arts Council of Great Britain. The first-named is notable for its facts and figures—the cost of orchestras, the size of audiences, etc.—and should prove a useful source of information, a serviceable corrective to loose thinking, for some time to come. The second is deliberately more selective, pinpointing in a series of essays various aspects of the current scene—“Musical Life outside London,” “Musical Research,” etc.—and concluding with a “Selected Bibliography of Published Music and Musical Literature” and a “Selected List of Recordings of British Music” for the year under review.
Arthur Benjamin's Operas
Authors: Arundell Dennis
Published: February 2010

Ever since the seventeenth century composers of English operas have been handicapped by the snob-preference for foreign works irrespective of their merits. In Purcell's day a second-rate French composer, whose past is still shrouded in Continental mystery, was so boosted in London even by Dryden that it was only through an open-air performance by Mr. Priest's school-girls at Chelsea that Dido and Aeneas convinced both London theatre managers and eventually Dryden himself that Purcell was “equal with the best abroad.” In this century, when the usual opera favourites were established, it has been even more difficult for English opera-composers to get a showing (at one time it had not been unheard of for English operas to be translated into Italian or German for production in this country): but twenty-five years ago the Royal College of Music followed the example of Mr. Priest by producing for the first time Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover, which was afterwards given publicly by the British National Opera Company, and in 1931 under the auspices of the Ernest Palmer Opera Fund, introduced The Devil Take Her, the first opera by the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. The enthusiasm of the singers, headed by Sarah Fischer and Trefor Jones, the cunning skill of the conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham and the practical knowledge of the producer, John B. Gordon, who had had so much experience at Cologne and who was at the time doing such good work for opera at the Old Vic, all combined to make the performance outstanding.
Richard Strauss's “Four Last Songs”
Authors: Schuh Willi
Published: February 2010

The musical creation of Richard Strauss has been revealed over a space of about seventy years. His two periods of greatest activity, the first of which is dominated by the Symphonic Poems, the second by Opera, have as “Prologue” his youthful work (up to, say, op. 15) and as “Epilogue” everything which comes after the opera Capriccio (1940–41), to which he gave no opus numbers and which he designated as his “inheritance.” In each of the four periods one special type of work dominates, but through all of them runs the Song. Even in the boy's and young man's earliest essays in composition it plays its part, and then in the 'nineties and around the turn of the century—that is to say, during the first decade of Strauss's married life—it comes to full flower. Naturally it receded somewhat when Strauss was dedicating his creative powers to opera above all else, yet even in the years between Salome and Capriccio he published several collections of songs. From his final working years (that is, after 1941) there are only, apart from two as yet unpublished songs to words by the Austrian poet Josef Weinheber, these Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra. Not merely do they represent Strauss's last contribution to the Song, but they are, above all, the last compositions that he—in the year before his death—completed.
The Prince of the Pagodas
Authors: A.G.  , E.S.
Published: February 2010

It is the Court of the Middle Kingdom, of an old, foolish emperor who dotes on his daughter Belle Epine and has been turned against her gentle sister, Belle Rose. Belle Epine has no love for her father, but she humours him to his face while mocking him behind his back. And the courtiers follow her example. Alone the Fool has any real affection for his master, and he alone has given his heart's affection to the lovely, but despised Belle Rose. Belle Epine's favourite, on the other hand, is a black-clad, hunchbacked dwarf, and when the curtain rises he is maliciously plaguing the Fool. In a moment they are fighting, but the entry of the Emperor and his Counsellors and Courtiers makes them break hurriedly apart. The Emperor pets the dwarf and scolds the Fool. He is indeed a foolish Emperor and it is a gossiping, frivolous Court.
Higher Musical Education in American Universities - II
Authors: Stevens Denis
Published: February 2010

This brief supplement to my previous article (Tempo, No. 42) is intended to amplify the references to graduate courses available at Columbia University, in case anybody should take my last paragraph seriously. I mentioned there the possibility of combining teaching and study in an American university as being a practical way to gaining a research degree, under the guidance of some of the world's leading musical scholars. My reason for choosing Columbia University is simply that I know it best through having taught there. To assist my memory I have made use of the 1956–1957 Announcement of the Faculty of Philosophy, a book of 168 pages.
Music and the British Council
Authors: Whinyates Seymour
Published: February 2010

The promotion of British music overseas was one of the earliest activities of the British Council. In 1935, the year the Council was founded, an advisory committee of musicians was set up to provide expert advice on the handling of requests for information, which even then were numerous.
A Note on Gesualdo's “Sacrae Cantiones” And on Gesualdo and Strawinsky
Authors: Craft Robert
Published: February 2010

Illumina nos is the final “sacred song” in a book of twenty printed in Naples by Constantino Vitali and published there in 1603 by Don Giovanni Pietro Cappuccio. It is the only piece in the book requiring seven voices: the others are six-part polyphony. In the same year the same printer and publisher brought out a volume of nineteen five-voice “sacrae cantiones” by Gesualdo. Both of these volumes were marked “Liber Primus,” but if other books were published no copies are known to survive. Then in 1611, Giovanni Jacomo Carlino printed in Naples a book of twenty-six six-voice “Responses” by Gesualdo. These three volumes contain all that is known of Gesualdo's sacred music, and the only known copies of these volumes are in the library of the “Oratorio dei Filippini” at Naples. In 1934 Guido Pannain included fourteen of the five-voice sacred songs in a collection of “La polifonia cinquecentesca ed i primordi del secolo XVII di Napoli.” At this time Pannain discovered that the sextus and bassus parts of the six-voice volume were missing (a catalogue of the “archivio dell” oratorio Filippini” listing all three volumes had been published in Parma in 1918, but apparently no one before Pannain had examined the music). Not until 1955 were photo copies obtainable of the other “sacred songs” and of the “Responses.” Since then Mrs. Ruth Adams of the University of California in Los Angeles has transcribed the five five-voice pieces not published by Pannain, and the whole book of “Responses“ which includes a psalm setting and part of a Tenebrae Service.
Guide to Contemporary Hungarian Composers
Authors: Weissmann John S.
Published: February 2010

PÁL KADOSA (1905) represents the German tradition among his contemporaries, and in this regard he might be said to continue the course indicated by Weiner and Jemnitz. But whereas Weiner's music is anchored in the romantics and Jemnitz's in the expressionist school of Reger and Schoenberg, Kadosa's model was the music of the young German post-First-World-War school, of which Hindemith was the leading figure. Another factor contributing a great deal to the formation of his idiom was his being a practical musician, a pianist of considerable gifts. These two considerations, viz. Hindemith and the piano, inevitably dominate the instrumental character of his music as a whole. What distinguishes his work from that of the German father-figure is the strong influence of Hungarian folk-music in the rhythmic element of his music. It came via Bartók, since Kadosa did not take active part in folk-music-collecting. His mature personal style is predominantly contrapuntal, terse and detached to the point of austerity; and since he thinks in patterns of motivic figurations, it possesses marked rhythmic and dynamic power. The baroque revival of the nineteen-twenties and 'thirties—whose German version was associated with an impersonal “New Objectivity”—is reflected in his series of concertos—including four for the piano, two for the violin, one for the viola, and one for string-quartet and orchestra—precise, often epigrammatic in utterance, showing a kind of restrained and diffident lyricism that is so typical of Kadosa, and conceived in terms of brilliantly effective instrumental writing.
The Sonnet in Richard Strauss's Opera “Capriccio”: A Study in the Relation between the Metre and the Musical Phrase
Authors: Tenschert Roland
Published: February 2010

“Wort und Ton” (word and music), according to the composer's own words in his Capriccio, constitute a basic problem in the irresolute love of the Countess Madeleine and in the artistic problem of uniting poetry with music; the symbiosis of which depends, according to circumstances, upon whether the problem is resolved “prima le parole—dopo la musica” or “prima la musica—dopo le parole.” Since Richard Strauss in this work set himself the task of illuminating this artistic and aesthetic problem from all possible sides—both in the discussion of the persons participating in the piece as well as in its musical conception—it would appear to be of particular interest to test the theory on this very model. In the process of making this detailed examination, it soon became advisable to keep within certain limits, and for various reasons the Sonnet appeared to be specially suitable. In fact it does contain the “pivotal point of the plot,” as Willi Schuh rightly points out, since the poet and the musician are therein confronted with the prospect of working on a piece together, while the Countess is rendered even more helpless in that she is now forced into making a decision. Moreover, the strict sonnet form, because of its peculiarly elaborate construction, is more difficult to set to music than any other. The composer is either forced to let the inexorable poetic law of verse and strophe enslave him; or he has to violate the form of his literary source. At least so it would appear. That the problem does not have to be solved in this fashion is shown brilliantly by the solution which Richard Strauss's setting of the poem reveals.
Creative Trends in Latin American Music-I
Authors: Chase Gilbert
Published: February 2010

Any survey of music in the area that we are accustomed to call Latin America should begin with certain basic distinctions intended to dissipate the superficial notion of cultural homogeneity. Let us agree at the outset to regard the term “Latin America” as a loose geographical designation for those portions of the Western Hemisphere that lie outside of Canada and the United States. It is better to resort to such circumlocution than to risk the misleading assumption of a fundamental similarity in the twenty countries with which we are concerned.
The Music of ‘Noye's Fludde’
Authors: Roseberry Eric
Published: February 2010

Britten's new children's opera, a setting of the Chester Miracle Play, was completed in December 1957 and received its first performance at this year's Aldeburgh Festival on the 18th June at Orford Church with a local ‘chorus of animals’ and an East Suffolk Childrens' Orchestra. The opera will shortly be available for performance—and it will surely receive many performances—to musicians capable of raising these modest forces in sufficient size and obtaining the services of the small number of professionals required. County Music Organizers in particular are in the fortunate position of being able to draw upon these forces, and it is very much to be hoped that they will not be slow in realizing the unique opportunity which Britten's opera affords them. From the practical performance point of view, Noyes Fludde differs from The Little Sweep in that it calls for a large number of children—a chorus of animals from the Primary Schools (the number limited only by the size of the Ark); and a young persons' ripieno orchestra of strings, recorders and percussion (at Aldeburgh this numbered twenty violins, three violas, six 'cellos, two double basses, eight descant recorders, five treble recorders, a percussion section of eight and a team of six handbells) together with bugles. The concertino instrumental group comprises a string quintet (each player representing one of the five normal departments of the customary string orchestra), recorder, percussion and piano duet.
About Carlos Chavez: Some Notes and Thoughts on an Unfinished Career
Authors: Weinstock Herbert
Published: February 2010

Carlos Chávez is a composer before he is anything else. Although he has become known, in his native Mexico and elsewhere, as a conductor, administrator, and writer as well, he himself has regarded those other activities as adjuncts to, necessary extensions of (rather than substitutes for), his composing. For the academic year 1958–59 he is Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University. He will deliver the six required lectures. He is arranging concerts as part of his tenure of the honored professorship. But he undoubtedly regards the concerts, the lectures, and the book that will come out of them as integrally relevant to his continuing education and development as a composer.
Ireland's Shorter Piano Pieces
Authors: Ottaway Hugh
Published: February 2010

This is not an article for Ireland's eightieth birthday. That is to say, it is not a eulogy; rather is it a critical plea for wider performance and re-appraisal. The neglect of Ireland's piano music, particularly the best of the shorter pieces, can only be justified by reference to the immensity of the piano repertoire; which is, of course, no justification at all, especially when one remembers that, birthday performances apart, the three or four pieces that do turn up are by no means the choicest possible selection. The most frequently performed of all is probably The Island Spell (1912), yet this is an early piece whose virtues are largely negative ones—an avoidance of ‘impressionist’ harmonic cliché and of an overcrowded texture; it does not reveal Ireland's lyrical gifts. Again, Ragamuffin—the most popular of the London Pieces (1917–20)—and Merry Andrew (1918) are representative of only the lighter, more superficial side of the composer's personality.
‘Conversations with Igor Stravinsky’
Authors: Keller Hans
Published: February 2010

A critic and friend, rare combination, has suggested that there are, in principle, two ways of dealing with Stravinsky's latest book. One is to fall flat on one's face and exclaim, ‘A great man's book, a great book!’ The other was to review it simply as a book on music.

To my mind, either course of action is fallacious. The awed approach is a nineteenth-century fallacy, the rationalistic approach a twentieth-century fallacy. At the same time, the romantic, irrationalistic approach is the more objective, the more rational. The truth, quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi, became a truism long before the birth of the romantic genius-hero, and to treat the book of a genius like that of any old ass (as virtually all my colleagues did in the case of Schoenberg's Style and Idea) is to start with a wrong fact and remove oneself from the level of artistic reality for the duration of one's review.
Britten's ‘Songs from the Chinese’
Authors: Noble Jeremy
Published: February 2010

A curious verse, one might think, with which to begin a song-cycle—dry to the point of cynicism, and quite lacking in those superficially poetic characteristics so beloved of song-writers. But Britten's literary taste is both shrewd and subtle. Arthur Waley's Chinese Poems (Allen and Unwin, 1946) are a selection made by the author from his earlier volumes of translations, often with substantial revisions. In selecting six very short pieces from this collection Britten was skimming the cream of a great translator's life-work; yet the poems he chose are not merely magnificent in themselves, they are also arranged with extraordinary subtlety in relation to one another. Whether consciously or not Britten has hit on the one piece in the whole anthology which could best serve as the motto for his own Songs from the Chinese. What could stand more appropriately at the head of these brief settings for the exiguous combination of voice and guitar than a warning against the perils of public life and, by analogy, the grand gesture?
A Note on Britten's ‘Missa Brevis’
Authors: Roseberry Eric
Published: February 2010

Britten's Missa Brevis in D for three-part boys' voices and organ, op. 63, was ‘written for and performed by George Malcolm and the choristers of Westminster Cathedral on the occasion of Mr. Malcolm's retirement as organist and choirmaster there’. The manuscript bears the date Trinity Sunday, 1959, and the Mass received its first performance at Westminster on 22 July of the same year.
Martinu the Symphonist
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: February 2010

Tovey once suggested that Brahms was so jaundiced a self-critic as to have destroyed a sheaf of works scarcely distinguishable in quality from those we know. Whether or not Brahms was justified in remaining for so long uncommitted to a declared solution of the symphonic problem, his caution helped to magnify that peculiar sanctity with which the nineteenth century sought to invest the symphony. The relaxation in which he was then able to work out another vein of thought is an obvious characteristic of the symphony he completed only one year later; a decent interval of six years preceded his third essay. Though the large output of Bohuslav Martinu marks him out as one of the most prolific, and at times least self-critical, composers of our century, he too seems to have been reluctant to approach symphonic structure. Apart from a rather mystifying piece originally entitled La Symphonie (a descriptive rather than structural title, later changed to Rhapsody), he did not venture near the medium before he was fifty-one, but then wrote four in as many years, a fifth after two years, and a final symphony after another six years. We may feel that his initial spurt of composition in the one medium has tended to make those works too similar, and has served to confuse and discourage a public anxious to recognise symphonies as sporadic but particularly significant milestones in a composer's career.
The Middle Generation
Authors: Várnai Péter
Published: February 2010

Gábor Darvas (b. 1911) emigrated to Chile soon after completing his composition studies under Kodály, where he worked with Erich Kleiber. He returned to Hungary in 1958, and has since held numerous administrative positions. His development as a composer came unusually late. After his early pieces in the manner of Kodály and Bartók he was unproductive for many years, occupying himself with writing musical textbooks, and orchestration of piano works by Liszt and others. The continuation of his own creative work, after much preparatory thought, experiment, and study of many major contemporary works, came only in the 1960s. His ‘Improvisations symphoniques’ for piano and orchestra (1963), performed in 1966 at the Stockholm ISCM Festival, is virtually his Op. 1, an attribute that shows in the extremely varied and sometimes conflicting means it employs. But it has one distinctive feature which seems to be characteristic of the modern musical movement in Hungary generally: musical continuity. This does not necessarily mean thematicism, indeed it is perfectly reconcilable with post-Webernian abandonment of theme and development in the classical sense. It is more a matter of contrast. One of the weaknesses of much music today is the absence of contrasts of tempo, and the abandonment of the principle of construction by movements or sections of opposed character. What Darvas has sought in this work is to use contrast again as one of the means of sustaining continuity.
Letter from America
Authors: Burkat Leonard
Published: February 2010

The sociologist's view of the American university consisted until recently of an institutionalized football team hampered by an environment of classrooms, libraries and bewhiskered and bespectacled professors attempting to pursue the life of scholarship. This notion has been going out of fashion for many years now—very slowly but very surely. The war reached its hand into our seats of sport and carried the young gladiators away to battlefields of greater length than 100 yards—and the young philosophers too. Now our college population consists in large part of young heads of families trying to live on a monthly income of about £22 10s. (with a purchasing power much reduced by wartime inflation) and to get through their studies and into the world as soon as possible. Nuclear physics has recently become a thickly populated field of study but it is not only in the laboratories that we are busy. There has been some extraordinary musical activity at one of our eastern seats of learning.
New Music at Copenhagen
Authors: Balzer Jurgen
Published: February 2010

Contemporary music is a complex structure. It reaches from the traditionalists of the right wing to the experimentalists of the left. In the centre are those composers who take a stand from which, without forcing their material, they can achieve a free, personally stamped, stable form of expression. While thus “contemporary” is a mere dating, indicating the period of composition, “modern” implies a valuation of the style of the work. It would be an advantage if the I.S.C.M. would stress the modern and exclude works by composers who are only interested in the continuation of nineteenth century traditions, however skilled as craftsmen they may be. Every country has its clever traditionalists, and they are all very much alike, so that the real purpose of the I.S.C.M. Festivals should be to gather together in one place those works which, in the opinion of each individual country, are the most complete expression of what is new in the musical life of that country. The Copenhagen Festival fell short in this respect, yet even so, of the thirty works from sixteen different countries which were performed, I, for my part, took pleasure in listening to about one third, which after all is a high percentage.
A Recollection of Strawinsky
Authors: Karsavina Tamara
Published: February 2010

To the world of today, Strawinsky looms a figure shrouded in his own greatness, spiritualized. The incredible virtuosity, the utter precision of his methods of work are in themselves perturbing to the average mind. Scores without a single erasion, where each instrumental part is written in a different-coloured ink; the very array of the ink bottles so as to allow the composer to dip his pen in as unhesitatingly as if to touch the keys of his piano—all this suggests an alchemist in his laboratory rather than a composer in the throes of creative fever. But that it is pure gold produced in this laboratory the world contests not.
Israeli Composers
Authors: Gradenwitz Peter
Published: February 2010

The most clear-headed musical observers change their basic critical attitude when they start discussing the cultural and artistic contributions of what political terminology conveniently styles the “small nations,” or trying to record the growth of young civilizations. They then cease to judge the material at hand sub specie aeternitatis; not wishing to offend anybody, they sacrifice objectivity and choose a benevolent attitude instead. If a work of art produced by a young community or commonwealth pleases the critical contemporary, he takes a condescending stand of the see-what-they-can-already-do order and calls the work “promising” without taking the trouble to appraise the artist's or his work's intrinsic merits; if a creative effort seems hardly worth its paper or canvas the same critic will still say the artist and his people should be encouraged by way of a few benevolent words.
Orpheus with his Lute
Authors: Citkowitz Israel
Published: February 2010

Alone almost of all instruments, the piano represents a kind of abstraction; it is an impersonal and veritable machine for producing sound, complaisant to all touches, seeming to require only a lever set in motion to create an effect. In other instruments, their function itself defines their nature. They have an intrinsic life of their own which even the merest beginner must somehow evoke. This fundamental nature of an instrument determines ultimately its aesthetic. The demands which the more comprehensive aesthetic of the composer impose on the instrument may force an extension of its capacities but can never nullify them. And so a composer learning to instrumentate can do no better than to acquire at the hands of a practising musician an exposition of the instrument's capacities. A masterful score will liven his imaginative use of them, just as a poet's mastery of diction will freshen one's sense of words. The vocabulary, however, is given.
The Songs: An Appreciation
Authors: Kurenko Maria
Published: February 2010

Critical evaluation of Rachmaninoff's music has been considerable and varied, with both laymen and professional musicians often at swords'-points with regard to the work of the late Russian master. One unfortunate feature of this controversy is that by far the greater attention is paid to the composer's larger pieces, with little consideration given to his most representative and perhaps his finest output—his songs, a situation which extends also to the listening experience of the general public.
Igor Markevitch Et «ICARE»
Authors: Cocteau Jean
Published: February 2010

Jadis il m'eut été difficile d'écrire un article sur la musique, la poésie, la peinture sans “prendre position”, c'est-à-dire sans me mêler de cette politique profonde qui bouge comme l'autre, mais selon des règies beaucoup plus délicates et plus sauvages. Bref, j'eusse situé Markevitch par rapport aux autres musiciens et cherché le pourquoi de sa force et de sa fraîcheur. Aujourd'hui (on se lasse des détails à la longue), je regarde les choses de plus loin, pour ne pas dire de plus haut et, l'avouerai-je, les grands formats, les figures violentes, les artistes de haute taille m'émeuvent plus que certaines originalités moins éclatantes et d'un ordre complexe. Au reste, l'étrange boucle que boucle 1950 m'amène à mettre au premier plan, à situer comme un artiste de grand format et dont la personnalité s'impose avant même que notre esprit de jugement se mette en branle—un musicien difficile, dont chaque note semble écrite toute seule, entourée de vide, neuve au monde et fraîche en soi–même par la seule vertu de sa naissance. Icare n'est–il pas l'exemple type de l'oeuvre d'Igor Markevitch où cette mystérieuse méthode semble être à la base de l'oeuvre et comme le mécanisme qui la met en marche, l'actionne at la restitue au silence. Oeuvre étonnante, muette, tapageuse, vierge, capable de tendre les nėrfs de l'auditeur jusqu'au crime, jusqu'à cette gêne terrible qui nous isole dans une salle et nous annonce l'entree en scène de l'ange du nouveau. Icare se raconte mal. Je sais que le jeune Icare observe le vol des colombes, essaye sa machine et que ses ailes le précipitent dans la mer. Je sais qu'un ballet (de danses) devait évoluer sur cette musique et la traduire en gestes. Mais, moi, je m'en tiens jusqu'à nouvel ordre, à ce que mes oreilles enregistrent: la première oeuvre, depuis le Sacre, qui se pose comme un bloc de délices, qui tombe de la lune, qui apporte d'un monde inconnu des grâces troublantes.
The Brussels Philharmonic Society: An Historical Account
Authors: Cuvelier Marcel
Published: February 2010

In presenting this picture of the numerous activities of the Brussels Philharmonic Society, it is fitting to begin by placing the Society in its proper frame: the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

It was during the 1914–18 war that the Belgian Government at Havre, bent on putting an end to the long-standing dearth of concert halls and art galleries in the capital, approved as part of its rehabilitation scheme the construction in Brussels (a town of nearly a million inhabitants, in a small country of eight million) of a building designed for all kinds of artistic activity. The Palais des Beaux-Arts is to be found in the very centre of the town, that is, in the administrative and artistic quarter. Begun in 1922, this masterwork of Baron Horta was not completed until 1929. The scheme of the Palais comprises a very large collection of halls of different aspect, fitted out for concerts, exhibitions, plays, films, lectures, dancing, and fashion parades.
Aesthetic Trends in Argentine Music
Authors: Morillo Roberto Garcia
Published: February 2010

To study the various artistic movements within the corpus of Argentine music, with all its various branches, makes the critic think immediately of an immense, varied and many-coloured carpet. The pattern, revealing surprises at every turn, is apparently made up of the most disparate strands: not only natural and artificial silk of different colours, but also threads of different materials—wool, cotton and even string (modest enough but tough), worked in irregularly, making bizarre designs. To explain it, if I may follow up the metaphor, let us seize on an Ariadne's thread so as not to get lost in this present-day labyrinth of diverse schools and personal tastes which make up the country's national music.
The Changing Climate of Opera—An Edwardian Recollection
Authors: Nixon Frederick
Published: February 2010

Adelina Patti had made her last appearance at the Royal Opera in 1895, and her place as prima donna was taken by Nellie Melba. But Melba, although her voice was of incomparable beauty, lacked that touch of fire which a singer must have, if she is to capture the imagination of her audience; and for twelve years the throne of the Diva was vacant. Then, during the autumn of 1907, a new star of the most amazing brilliance appeared, quite unheralded.
Delius and Warlock
Authors: Squire W. H. Haddon
Published: February 2010

In England musical biography, in spite of its tempting possibilities has not yet attracted the attention of the zealous disciples of Freud and Jung. Composers, and even famous prima donna conductors, have so far escaped psychoanalytical scrutiny of their Libido, Oedipus, and ego-complexes. Free of such analysis, the new edition of Peter Warlock's (Philip Heseltine) book on the life and works of Frederick Delius with additions, annotations and comments by Hubert Foss (The Bodley Head, 15/- net) offers the reader fascinating and self-revealing portraits of two of the strangest figures in English music.
Notes on the Libretto of “Gloriana”
Authors: Plomer William
Published: February 2010

Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex is not a book which has pleased everybody, but it was the starting-point of this opera. This is not the place to analyse the book's deficiencies, real or alleged, but to assert that it tells skilfully a tense and dramatic story based upon historical persons and happenings. The late Sir Desmond MacCarthy, in his recently published Memories, recalls an interesting opinion that Elizabeth and Essex is almost a sketch for a play and that Strachey's method was inspired by or borrowed from the Elizabethan stage. Both the composer and the librettist of Gloriana were able to see in the book a sketch for an opera, and both are ready to acknowledge their debt to Strachey's dramatic sense. This does not mean that Gloriana is wholly based upon Elizabeth and Essex, or that it has emerged merely as an operatic version of that book. In the first place the makers of an opera are not under the obligation of even a picturesque biographer like Strachey to stick closely to history or chronology. Secondly, the makers of this particular opera came to be less concerned than Strachey with the amatory motives of the two principal characters and more concerned with the Queen's pre-eminence as a Queen, a woman, and a personality.
Was He a Genius?
Authors: Montagu-Nathan M.
Published: February 2010

In introducing the work of the unfortunate Russian composer Stanchinsky, knowledge of whom has hitherto been confined, in this country, to a brief mention of him in my Contemporary Russian Composers (1917), I am assuming that as he died close on forty years ago we who now examine his output for the first time may consider ourselves, in relation to the composer and his work, as posterity and as, during his brief period of creative activity, he was regarded by some distinguished contemporaries as undoubtedly deserving the description of genius it seems important that we should assume that particular function in the exercise of which posterity is reckoned to be more-or-less expert.
Prokofieff: Unkown Works with a New Aspect
Authors: Swarsenski Hans
Published: February 2010

Some unusual biographical and æsthetic interest may attach to a few manuscripts existing in the archives of the Paris office of Prokofieff's publishers. More than most composers, Prokofieff had the habit of revising and re-arranging his early compositions, and as in the new versions much of the original texture generally survived, he obviously attributed their original failure to corrigible technical shortcomings while continuing to believe in the maturity of his conception. Of the works here in question, the two short symphonic poems Rêves (Op. 6) and Esquisse Automnale (Op. 8), Le Cygne Blanc and Les Vagues (Op. 7) for female chorus and orchestra and the operas Magdalena (Op. 13) and The Flaming Angel (Op. 37), all but the last were written between 1909 and 1912, that is to say, before he left Russia for the first time. It is unlikely that in the circumstances of his hurried and unplanned departure he would have taken these scores with him and we may rather assume that he found them again, like the manuscript of The Gambler, when he first returned therein 1927. He then brought them back to Paris to re-write them there. This is all the more probable as the Sinfonietta, originally Op. 5 composed in 1909, the manuscript of which may have belonged to the same batch, actually appeared in Paris in a revised version in 1929 as Op. 48. Esquisse Automnale was re-arranged shortly before Prokofieff's definite return to Russia in 1934 and as there is much evidence of his intention to continue to visit the western world, the fact that these manuscripts remained in Paris does not mean that he wished to abandon them.
Singers on Safari
Authors: Cross Joan
Published: February 2010

Who wanted to go to Bulawayo? Not I, for one. And if that sounds at once churlish and unenterprising I protest that the sound of the place—Bulawayo—did not conjure up a picture of a musical Mecca at the end of what would be a very long pilgrimage.

Where was it exactly? Taking out the atlas and turning to a page marked “Africa”, it was to be found above the Transvaal, alongside Mozambique, in Southern Rhodesia and rather small print. Thousands of miles away from London, England. And who was invited to go to Bulawayo? The Opera Company from the Royal Opera House. The Rhodesian Government, celebrating the centenary of Cecil Rhodes's birth with a large exhibition, had built a theatre there, and they requested the pleasure of a visit not only from the Opera, but they also invited the Hallé Orchestra, the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, and a Company of actors which included Sir John Gielgud. The Ballet and the Halle orchestra were the earliest visitors at the Exhibition, and stories of extreme cold, of discomfort caused by altitude, of the tiresome length of the journey, all began to filter back to England. Who wanted to go to Bulawayo?
The New in Music (Part 2)
Authors: Balzer Jürgen
Published: February 2010

In his Clarinet Concerto, composed in 1928, Carl Nielsen introduces his first movement with the following theme (quoted here in the C tonality of the repetition:
John Ireland at 75—An Appreciation
Authors: Holland A. K.
Published: February 2010

Forty years ago a phenomenon known as the Young British Composer was beginning to impress its image on the world, largely owing to the advocacy of the late Edwin Evans. Those of us who were young English critics at the time were naturally excited at the prospect of entering upon what promised to be a creative period in the country's music, unparalleled since, the 17th century.

The term was a somewhat vague one, for there was already in existence a generation of composers born round about the 70's and 80's of the last century who were just beginning to make their influence felt, and nobody had decided at what stage a musician ceased to be a Young British Composer.
Arthur Benjamin: Symphony - An Analysis
Authors: Seiber Matyas
Published: February 2010

Arthur Benjamin's Symphony, one of the composer's major works, was written during the summer holidays of 1943, 1944 and 1945 in Canada. Its intensely dramatic, at times violent character reflects, in the composer's own opinion, the atmosphere of the war years. The Symphony consists of the traditional four movements: a large-scale Allegro preceded by an Introductory Largo; a Scherzo; a slow movement and a final Allegro.
‘The Turn of the Screw’ and Its Musical Idiom
Authors: Stein Erwin
Published: February 2010

The ‘curious story’ that the Prologue promises has even as an opera preserved the character of a narrative. Neither the immediacy of the stage nor the emotional directness of music has excluded a certain detachedness of approach from the part of the storytellers—the librettist and composer. A succession of pictures passes before us: it is, in fact, the multitude of short scenes that, more than anything else, suggests a narration. The stage, on the other hand, presents the many episodes with great conciseness, as each scene is concerned with a single event—one instant, as it were, of the screw's turn.