scholarly journals Neglected Canadian Orchestral Music

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Robin Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Orchestral Work ◽  
Harry Somers ◽  
Canadian Composers ◽  
Orchestral Repertoire

This article examines neglected orchestral works by six Canadian composers: Rodolphe Mathieu, Colin McPhee, John Weinzweig, Harry Somers, Istvan Anhalt, and R. Murray Schafer. Despite the considerable professional accomplishments and career achievements of these composers, each has at least one orchestral work in his catalogue that failed to make a good impression with the musical public or has never been heard in live performance. The article attempts to find why these compositions did not win a place in the repertoire and also considers how these works illustrate broader issues relating to the Canadian orchestral repertoire.

Orchestral Music in Salzburg, 1750–1780

10.31022/c040 ◽  
1994 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Orchestral Works

Although sacred vocal music by Mozart's predecessors and contemporaries in Salzburg has been widely studied, symphonies and other orchestral works by many of these composers remain unknown. Yet the repertory of Salzburg symphonies represents the earliest orchestral music to which Mozart was exposed, and its influence can be seen not only among his earliest symphonies, composed in London, Paris, and Holland in 1764–66, but also among the numerous symphonies and serenades of the 1770s. This edition includes previously unavailable orchestral works by three generations of Salzburg composers: the court violoncellist Caspar Christelli (ca. 1706–66) and the court concertmaster Ferdinand Seidel (ca. 1700–73); vice-Kapellmeister Leopold Mozart (1719–87); and the court violinists Wenzel Helbelt (ca. 1736–69) and Joseph Hafeneder (1746–84).

Kodály's Later Orchestral Music (I)

Tempo ◽  
1950 ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
John S. Weissmann
Keyword(s):  
Choral Music ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Case Investigation ◽  
Orchestral Works

It has often been said that the greatness of an artist depends on his relation to the legacy of previous epochs and on his attitude to the intellectual impulses of his time. His awareness of these factors, conditioned by his response towards the obligations of society, will determine the value of his own contribution.In Kodály's case investigation was hitherto centred mainly on his choral music: it is now proposed to examine his two large-scale, purely orchestral works of comparatively recent date.

Tuning Preferences in Recorded Orchestral Music

1976 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Geringer
Keyword(s):  
Speed Control ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Music Students ◽  
Mean Deviation ◽  
Variable Speed ◽  
Pitch Range ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Pitch Level ◽  
The Mean

The purpose of this study was to investigate tuning preferences regarding recorded orchestral music. Specifically, the study was designed to test subjects' tuning preferences while investigating both the direction and magnitude of mistuning. Sixty randomly selected undergraduate and graduate music students modulated a variable speed tape recorder to preferred pitch levels. Stimuli were recorded excerpts of ten orchestral works, each representative of a different key. Subjects listened to the thirty-second excerpts and turned a linear continuous-speed control knob with a pitch range of approximately an augmented fourth. Data consisted of cent deviation scores relative to A = 440 Hz. Results indicated a marked propensity to tune these excerpts sharper than their recorded pitch level. Subjects' responses indicated the mean cent deviation for sharp tunings to be 149.29 cents (approximately 11/2 semi-tones); when tuning flat, the mean deviation was 88.43 cents.

Berthold Goldschmidt: Orchestral Music

Tempo ◽  
1984 ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
Colin Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Real Power ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Cello Concerto ◽  
Orchestral Score ◽  
Clarinet Concerto ◽  
A Performance

With his major work, the opera Beatrice Cenci, unperformed apart from extracts, his other opera Der gewaltige Hahnrei not revived professionally since its highly successful première more than 50 years ago, the Second Quartet having to wait 17 years for its première, the remarkably original Kästner settings of 1931 still awaiting a performance, it is clear that it is not only Berthold Goldschmidt's orchestral works that have been ‘undeservedly neglected’.But of these orchestral works only one can in any sense be said to have entered the repertoire, and that, ironically, is one of Goldschmidt's very earliest works—the Comedy of Errors Overture of 1925. It is his only orchestral score in print. The three concertos—the Cello Concerto (1953), Clarinet Concerto (1954), and Violin Concerto (1951–5)—received a fair number of performances during the 1950'5 (not all of them under Goldschmidt's baton), but have virtually disappeared, along with the inventive Sinfonietta of 1945. Perhaps the least deserving of the obscurity into which they have temporarily fallen are the Ciaconna Sinfonica (1936) and the Mediterranean Songs (1958)—both of them works of real power and substance, and immediately approachable.

scholarly journals FORGOTTEN OFFERINGS: MESSIAEN'S FIRST ORCHESTRAL WORKS

Tempo ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (241) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Christopher Dingle
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Organ Music ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Organ Works ◽  
Paul Griffiths ◽  
The Church ◽  
Creative Life

The prevailing image of Messiaen in the 1930s is of an organist-composer. One of the first things learnt about him is that he was organist at the church of the Trinité in Paris, having been appointed at the spectacularly young age of 22. As the earliest (though not the first) of Messiaen's works to have been published, the short organ piece Le Banquet céleste (1928) is, quite rightly, the focus of close examination for its precocious assurance. The 1930s were punctuated by the substantial organ cycles La Nativité du Seigneur (1935) and Les Corps glorieux (1939), so it is no surprise to find Felix Aprahamian's article for the fifth edition of Grove describing Messiaen as being a ‘French organist and composer”, and later observing that ‘although it was as a composer of organ music that in pre-war years Messiaen's name first attracted attention, he had already composed a quantity of vocal music’. Fifty years later, Paul Griffiths similarly observed that ‘Organ works featured prominently in his output of the next decade [1930s], but so did music about his family’. According to Harry Halbreich, ‘one can say that before 1940, Messiaen was essentially an organist-composer’, while, Malcolm Hayes concludes his chapter on the early orchestral music in The Messiaen Companion by stating that ‘to judge from the idiom of his works written in the 1930s, he had once seemed destined to spend his creative life within the narrow confines of the organ loft’.

PLAINCHANTS AS COLOURED TIME IN MESSIAEN'S ‘COULEURS DE LA CITÉ CÉLESTE’

Tempo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (254) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Cheong Wai-Ling
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Orchestral Work ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Religious Elements

When Messiaen finished Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine (1943–4), almost all the orchestral works he had composed up to that point had been religious in ethos.1 There was no real sign that this would change: that he would stop devoting his orchestral works to the service of the Catholic faith. That some 20 years elapsed before he attempted another orchestral sacred work is intriguing. It was Couleurs de la cité céleste (1963) that broke the ice, and after it the orchestral and the sacred became once again closely united, as they had been in the pre-Turangalîla era. Couleurs also brought us his first obvious use of plainchant in an orchestral work, thus heightening the religiosity of this score to approximate that enshrined in Trois petites liturgies. And as Messiaen's fame continued to grow, the religious elements in his music grew with it, both in ubiquity and intensity. Retrospectively, sacred orchestral works composed after Couleurs exceed those before Trois petites liturgies not only in number, but also in magnitude, profundity and grandeur.

scholarly journals An Exploratory Study of Western Orchestration: Patterns through History

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Song Hui Chon ◽  
David Huron ◽  
Dana DeVlieger
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Ensemble Size ◽  
Pitch Class ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Stratified Sample ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Empirical Analyses

Changes in instrument combination patterns in Western classical orchestral music are traced over a three hundred year period from 1701 to 2000. Using a stratified sample of sonorities from 180 orchestral works by 147 composers, various empirical analyses are reported. These include analyses of instrumentation presence, instrument usage, ensemble size, common instrument combinations, instrument clusterings, and their changes over time. In addition, the study reports associations of different instruments with various dynamic levels, different tempos, pitch class doublings, affinities between instruments and chord factors, as well as interactions between pitch, dynamics, and tempo. Results affirm many common intuitions and historical observations regarding orchestration, but also reveal a number of previously unrecognized patterns of instrument use.

scholarly journals Orchestration of D. L. Klebanov and V. M. Zolotukhin: a comparative analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (23) ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Hanna Savchenko
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Vertical Projection ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Horizontal Projection ◽  
Special Trait ◽  
Great Transparency ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Extended Group

Background. In the last two decades there was a constantly increasing scholar interest to Kharkiv school of composition as a phenomenon of Ukrainian musical culture. Despite this, a lot of unstudied questions remain, which need to be researched. This includes problems of orchestral thinking, orchestral style and orchestral writing of Kharkiv composers, particularly, D. Klebanov and V. Zolotukhin. The novelty lies in the systematization of the principles of orchestration in the symphonies of D. Klebanov (based on the symphonies 1, 3, 6, 7) and the First Symphony of V. Zolotukhin. Analysis of literature. Orchestral music of both composers is researched quite sporadically. Its several facets are studied in works by M. Cherkashyna (1968), I. Frumina (1969), O. Gusarova (1988), T. Krasnopolska (1964), Yu. Malysheva (1967), N. Ocheretovska (2007), Е. Ponomarenko (2005), O. Roschenko (2005; 2016), А. Zamotaylo (2001), O. Zinkevych (2005), I. Zolotovytska (1980), A. Dmitriyeva (2016). There is an article by H. Savchenko (2018), specially devoted to orchestration of D. Klebanov The goal of this article is to reveal the principles of orchestration in symphonies by D. Klebanov (No. 1, 3, 6, 7) and V. Zolotukhin (No. 1) in aspect of comparative analysis. In the article the author operates such methods of research as analytical, functional, and comparative. Conclusions. In results of studying of orchestral works by D. Klebanov and V. Zolotukhin (First Symphony) in aspects of orchestral thinking and principles of orchestration, we have reached the following conclusions: 1) both composers prefer a triple orchestra, which is quite flexible, in order to achieve full-bodied orchestral texture and be able to operate different timbral colours; 2) in the works of both composer, there is an inclination to equal understanding of orchestral groups, including percussion in the first Symphony by V. Zolotukhin; 3) in the vertical projection there is a differentiation of the groups through orchestral functions, which causes a great transparency of the score; 4) much more slow changes of type of a texture and timbral combinations in horizontal projection sets apart orchestration of V. Zolotukhin from orchestration of D. Klebanov; 5) overall, orchestration of V. Zolotukhin is more dense, filled with doubles, it is dominated by “large touch”, which causes continuity and smaller degree of detailing; 6) a special trait of orchestration of D. Klebanov is thinking by timbral and textural layers with obvious distinction of orchestral function between them. Inside of these layers there is an additional split of orchestral functions which causes rather rare usage of doubles between instruments of different orchestral groups. For V. Zolotukhin, thinking with clearly defined timbral and textural layers is characteristic, which tells about realisation of orchestral polyphonic thinking on the macro level or the whole texture; 7) in orchestration of both composers there is a tendency to colouring: in the First Symphony by V. Zolotukhin it is brighter and more robust due to usage of more diverse timbral palette (from piano harp, celesta to extended group of percussion).

The Visual Listening Guide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Chan-Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Listening Guide ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Systematic Examination ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
New Type ◽  
Symphonic Work ◽  
Western Classical Music

This chapter is a systematic examination of the Visual Listening Guide, a new type of printed graphic guide to facilitate active listening and understanding of orchestral works. Created by musicologist Hannah Chan-Hartley, the Visual Listening Guide is the first of its kind to appear in a concert program book, for use during a live performance. This chapter describes the development and creation of the Guide’s distinctive design. An analysis of its elements reveals how the Guide aims to show the structure of a symphonic work, acting like a map to it, indicating important sonic landmarks and other features. It also reviews the reception of the Visual Listening Guide following its first phase of use by concert-goers from 2015 to 2020, and considers the efficacy and potential of graphic guides to communicate about Western classical music to the broad public, helping organizations foster audience engagement and appreciation.

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