Twentieth Century

György Ligeti’s “Lux Aeterna”: The Ethereal Land of Micropolyphony

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Lux Aeterna for sixteen-part mixed choir, written in 1966 by the Hungarian-Austrian avant-garde composer György Ligeti (1923-2006), is simultaneously haunting, mysterious, unsettling, and serenely beautiful. Unfolding gradually in shimmering layers of sound, it forces us to confront our perceptions of time and space. Its dimensions are cosmic. The term micropolyphony has been used to explain the clusters of sound which emerge and develop in Lux Aeterna and other music by Ligeti. It’s a word which might bring to …

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Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto: An Honest, Neo-Romantic Voice

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I myself wrote always as I wished, and without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible… – Samuel Barber in a radio interview near the end of his life An unwavering and unapologetic honesty characterizes the music of American twentieth century composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981). This is in contrast to the prevailing winds of the academic establishment of the time, who were interested in advancing the musical language in search …

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“Music for a Scene from Shelley”: Samuel Barber’s Haunting Tone Poem

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… nor is it I alone, Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one, But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy. Hearst thou not sounds i’ the air which speak the love Of all articulate things? Feelest thou not The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? — List! [Music. –Prometheus Unbound (Act II, Scene 5), Percy Bysshe Shelley These lines were the inspiration for Samuel Barber’s Music for a Scene from Shelley, written in …

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Mahler’s Fifth Symphony: A Dramatic Departure

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Heavens, what is the public to make of this chaos in which new worlds are forever being engendered, only to crumble into ruin the next moment? What are they to say to this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound, to these dancing stars, to these breathtaking, iridescent, and flashing breakers? Gustav Mahler wrote these poetic words in a letter to his wife, Alma, following the first rehearsal for the …

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“I Am Lost to the World”: Mahler’s Song of the Solitary Artist

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I am dead to the world’s tumult, And I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my heaven, In my love and in my song! These are the final lines of “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (“I Am Lost to the World”), a poem by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) which Gustav Mahler set as the fourth song of his Rückert Lieder in the summer of 1901. Mahler was personally drawn to the poem, …

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Benjamin Britten’s “A Hymn to the Virgin”: VOCES8

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Benjamin Britten composed A Hymn to the Virgin at the age of 16 while a student at Gresham’s School in Norfolk, England. Yet there is nothing remotely youthful or immature about this brief work for unaccompanied double chorus. It unfolds with a sense of haunting mystery and quiet lament that seems timeless. The anonymous text, dating from around 1300, comes from the Oxford Book of English Verse. In an expansive, antiphonal dialogue, the main chorus sings in …

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Howard Hanson’s “Nordic” First Symphony: A Majestic, Neo-Romantic Soundscape

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At one time, twentieth century American composer Howard Hanson (1896-1981) was dismissed as a hopelessly conservative musical renegade. In the 1950s and 60s, at a time when atonality was dominant among the academic establishment, Hanson’s music embraced a warmly melodic, Neo-Romantic sound world. Born in the small prairie town of Wahoo, Nebraska to Swedish immigrant parents, Hanson wrote music which grew out of the austere harmonic language and dark, brooding orchestration of Scandinavian …

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