Twentieth Century

Stravinsky’s Septet: A Turn to Serialism

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The Septet, completed in 1953, marks a stylistic turning point in the musical catalogue of Igor Stravinsky. The first movement is a sparkling and witty celebration of neoclassicism. Its dense, pristine counterpoint seems like a twentieth century retrofit of music from the Baroque and Classical periods. In the second and third movements, the tonal center fades and the music enters the twelve tone world of serialism. For the first time, Stravinsky abandons …

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All Aboard! Five Pieces Inspired by Trains

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Music reflects the sounds of the time. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, music was centered around the human voice and the motion of the body through dance. Music of the eighteenth century emerged from the pastoral sounds of nature, hunting horns, and the bugle calls of the battlefield. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, music got louder and more discordant amid the mechanized roar of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps electricity and computers inform …

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Lutoslawski’s Twenty Polish Christmas Carols: Festive Colors and Cradle Songs

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During the 1930s and 40s, war-ravaged Poland suffered first under the occupation of the Nazis and then the Soviets. In 1946, as the ominous clouds of totalitarianism and cultural censorship gathered, the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) compiled a collection of nineteenth century Christmas carols from his homeland. Originally written for voice and piano, the Twenty Polish Christmas Carols were premiered by the soprano Aniela Szleminska and pianist Jan Hoffman in Kraków in January, 1947. The piece …

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Sibelius’ “Pohjola’s Daughter”: Tone Poem and Mythic Vision

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Jean Sibelius’ 1906 tone poem, Pohjola’s Daughter, was inspired by a mythic story outlined in Cantos 8 of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Väinämöinen, the white-bearded demigod, is speeding through the Finnish landscape on his sleigh when he spots a beautiful maiden sitting on the edge of an enormous rainbow. Captivated, Väinämöinen asks her to join him on his sleigh and to become his wife. The seductive maiden agrees on the condition that …

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Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto: A Youthful Romp

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An infectious lightness of spirit pervades Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102. It’s music which takes us on a brief, jubilant romp filled with youthful vitality, cheerful and quirky voices, and unabashed humor. It sparkles with a witty Haydnesque classicism. The lushly beautiful second movement moves into a space of dreamy intimacy and warmth. Shostakovich composed this music in 1957 in celebration of the 19th birthday of …

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Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”: Ghosts of the English Renaissance

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Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is filled with ghosts. Composed in 1910, this haunting single-movement work for string orchestra develops from a melody written nearly 400 years earlier by the English Renaissance composer, Thomas Tallis. Tallis’ hymn melody, one of nine written in 1567 for the Archbishop of Canterbury, is tinged with a sense of quiet mystery and lament. With continuous harmonic and metric shifts, it feels mysterious …

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Hovhaness’ “Fra Angelico,” Fantasy for Orchestra: Angelic Intelligences

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The American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest musical mavericks. As a student at Tanglewood in the 1940s, Hovhaness’ music was ridiculed by the establishment so severely that he withdrew from the school and abandoning his scholarship. Famously, over the course of two weeks in the 1930s, he burned some 1,000 scores that he considered to be mediocre. Following this purge, an authentic new voice emerged. A …

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