Twentieth Century

Walter Piston’s Sinfonietta: American Mid-Century Neoclassicism

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It can be argued that, far from being restrictive and stifling, rules and parameters create conditions for the ultimate creativity. Such is the case with the music of American composer Walter Piston (1894-1976), with its sublime contrapuntal lines and adherence to neoclassical structure and form. Born in Rockland, Maine, Piston taught for many years at Harvard University, and contributed three significant text books on the technical building blocks of music: Harmony (1941), Counterpoint (1947), …

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Ives’ “Elegie”: A Yankee Take on the French Chanson

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Charles Ives’ 1901 song, Elegie is haunting and hypnotic. Its gloomy and forlorn text, a setting of a poem by Louis Gallet, expresses the heartache of a narrator whose beloved is forever gone. The blue skies and birdsongs of springtime are replaced with late autumnal chill. The vocal line rises over an unrelenting rhythmic ostinato which begins to render time infinite and unmeasurable. French composer Jules Massenet wrote a song using the …

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Ives’ “Calcium Light Night”: Sounds of a Nineteenth Century Fraternity Party

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For years, “Calcium Night” was a boisterous tradition at Yale University, where Charles Ives was a student between 1894 and 1898. Students wishing to join a fraternity paraded around the campus, singing their fraternity’s song under the glow of a calcium light, the “limelight” used on theater stages before electricity. (The calcium light was so blinding that it was used during the American Civil War to illuminate artillery targets, and on navel …

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David Diamond’s String Quartet No. 3: From Adventure to Elegy

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Rooted in diatonic and modal harmony, much of the music of American composer David Diamond (1915-2005) unfolds as a dynamic weave of contrapuntal voices. It flows in a seemingly continuous stream, in which one phrase opens into the next without resolution. Listening to this music, we are forced to celebrate the magic of each fleeting moment. Diamond composed his String Quartet No. 3 in 1946, shortly after the end of the Second …

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Ljubica Marić’s “Ostinato Super Thema Octoïcha”: Byzantine Mysticism

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Ljubica Marić (1909-2003) is widely considered to be the most important Serbian composer of the 20th century. Her music has been described as a synthesis of “medieval music with the avant-garde,” and a precursor to the mediative minimalism of Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. (Borislav Čičovački) “Ljubica Marić has used an entire arsenal of contemporary music in order to achieve a high goal,” wrote Shostakovich after examining Marić’s 1956 cantata, Songs of …

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Remembering Leif Segerstam

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Leif Segerstam, the colorful Finnish conductor and composer, passed away last Wednesday following a brief illness. He was 80. Eccentric and larger-than-life, with an exuberant podium demeanor resembling Santa Claus, Segerstam embraced music with a childlike enthusiasm. He served as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from 1995 to 2007, and later held the title of Chief Conductor Emeritus with the orchestra. He held similar positions with the Danish National Radio …

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Remembering Stoyka Milanova

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Stoika Milanova, the renowned Bulgarian violinist and teacher, passed away on September 29 in Madrid following a long illness. She was 79. Milanova began playing the violin at age three, under the guidance of her father. She went on to study with David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. After placing second in the 1967 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Milanova won first prize at the 1970 Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. Between 2005 and …

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