Academic literature on the topic 'Arranged Chamber orchestra music'

In the Kazakh educational process today, in addition to the generally recognized arrangements and treatments of world music classics and original works for viola, national music adapted for viola is actively involved. There are several collections of works for viola edited, arranged and processed by such authors as A.Nurbayeva, E.Liberchuk, Ya.Fudimana, N.Sagimbayeva, D.Makhmud. The musical literature presented in these collections is widely used at different levels of education – by students of music schools, colleges and even universities of the republic, which is mainly due to the limited repertoire. The article deals with the transcription of N.Karimov's «Kuy» for violin and chamber orchestra by M. Sagatov as one of the first experiments in interpreting the sound of dombra kuy in viola music.

Zoltán Kodály became seriously interested in Transylvanian folk music when he had learnt about the results of Béla Bartók's collecting fieldworks in Székelyföld. The wealth of old-style tunes and classical ballads, and – above all – the recognition of the importance of pentatony inspired Kodály to take part personally in the exploration of Székely folk music. Székely musical folklore obviously intrigued him both as an ethnographer and as a composer. He collected nearly 600 tunes in 15 Székely localities in the Gyergyó Basin, the valley of the Kászon stream, and Bukovina. He arranged 66 of these melodies within such compositions as e.g. the Dances of Marosszék, the musical play The Spinning Room, Hungarian Folk Music (57 ballads and folk songs for voice and piano), Székely Lament for mixed voices, Bicinia Hungarica, Kádár Kata and Molnár Anna (both with chamber orchestra accompaniment), and Pentatonic Music. Apart from his own collection, he also used those of some of his contemporaries. The paper discusses the specificities of Kodály's techniques of arrangement. His inspiring advice for younger folklorists had an essential role in triggering the in-depth investigation of Central Transylvanian folk music.

The article analyzes the repertoire for a duet of bayan players, which had been created by Russian arrangers and composers since the second half of the 70s of the XXth century to the beginning of the XXIst century. The article considers the reasons for the later creation of the first original compositions for the modern bayan duet in comparison with the repertoire for solo bayan, and defines the concept of "modern repertoire". Comparisons are drawn between the possibilities of presenting musical fabric in the works created for a mono-timbre bayan with ready-made chords in the left half shell, and a multi-timbre free bass instrument. In modern music for a bayan duet, in contrast to the works of the 1940s – early 1970s, there are other ways of presenting melodic, figurative line, as well as harmonic background in the left half shell of the bayan. The author considers the role of the timbre palette in modern compositions for a bayan duet and reveals the performance capabilities of this ensemble, which caused numerous arrangements of works written for piano, organ, chamber ensemble and orchestra. The figurative sphere laid down by the authors in the works written for a duet of traditional bayan and a duet of modern instruments is compared. The modern repertoire for this instrumental duet is created by both bayan composers and composers writing music for other forms of performance.

Background. Musical culture of Kharkiv has a rich history associated with the names of prominent musicians such as R. Genika, I. Slatin and others. But the creative work of our senior contemporaries, artists, who created in the second half of the XX and early XXI century, made a great influence on the formation of the modern musical face of Kharkiv, the state of professional music education, too. O. I. Litvinov, a composer, pianist (as well as accordion player, performer on wind instruments), conductor and arranger, is no doubt among those artists. However, the creativity of this outstanding musician, who was actually the founder of professional jazz education in Kharkiv, is not currently the subject of widespread discussion in contemporary Ukrainian musicology. There are few sources that would cover O. I. Litvinov’s life and career. For the first time, he is mentioned as the founder of pops’n jazz performance department in a print publication dedicated to the 85th anniversary of KhNUA named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky. In the same context, O. Litvinov’s name is found in O. Kononova’s essay on the evolution of music education in Kharkiv in the jubilee edition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the University. There is a biographical article in this very anniversary publication. In the earlier anniversary edition “Pro Domo mea” (on the 90th anniversary of the institution) there is some information about O. Litvinov regarding the history of the jazz department creation. Basic biographical data are briefly presented in the article of I. O. Litvinova in the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine. A small booklet dedicated to the major milestones of O. Litvinov’s life and creative work was published in the KhNUA (then KhSUA) named after I. P. Kotliarevskyi to mark the 75th anniversary of the musician. There are also several publications devoted mainly to specific dates in the creative life of the maestro (concerts, anniversaries, etc.): by H. Derev’ianko, L. Lohvynenko, M. Dvirnyi, A. Moshna, I. Polska, and O. Sadovnikova. Among purely research works devoted to this striking personality are the Master’s work by Yu. N. Shikova, which was written under the guidance of І. І. Polska at Kharkiv State Academy of Culture. The purpose of the article is to systematize existing information on the life and creative path of the prominent Kharkiv musician, give a brief description of the main features of his performing and composing style. Methods. The work employs historicobiographical, analytical and comparative methods, as well as a genre-stylistic approach. Results. O. Litvinov was born on November 17, 1927 in Zaporozhye. He received his elementary education at a piano music school. From 1943 to 1951 he was in military service, participated in the World War II. After the war, he continued to study music at Kharkiv Music College named after B. Lyatoshynsky, later at the Composition Faculty of Kharkiv Conservatory. He was expelled from there because of his passion for jazz. From 1951 he continued his musical activity as an artist of the MIA Variety Orchestra (in Dnepropetrovsk), in 1955–1956 he was a soloist of the Sakhalin Oblast Philharmonic and Khabarovsk Regional Philharmonic. In 1956–1958 he was the leader of the variety band of the Palace of Culture for Food–Industry Workers, in 1958–1961 he was the leader of the concert band of the Palace of Culture for Builders. From 1961 to 1973, he was the director of his own collective – Honoured Variety Ensemble “Kharkivyanka” at Kharkiv Electromechanical Plant. In 1965 he received the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine, in 1978 – People’s Artist. From 1973 to 1978 – Artistic Director and Conductor of the “Donbass”, Honored Mining Ensemble in Donetsk; from 1978 to 1980 – assistant at the Department of Cultural Studies, director of the Jazz Orchestra at Kharkiv Institute of Law. Since 1980 he worked permanently at Kharkiv I. P. Kotliarevskyi State Institute of Arts: first as a senior lecturer, later as an associate professor of the Chamber Ensemble Department, then as a professor of the Orchestra Wind Instruments Department. Since 1994 he created and headed the Department of Variety Orchestra Instruments, and at the same time he directed the variety-symphony orchestra of Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, the violin ensemble of the National Academy of Law named after Yaroslav the Wise. Since 1999 O. Litvinov was a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences of National Progress. In 2001 he became a diploma winner of the regional competition “Higher school of Kharkiv region – the best names” in the nomination “Head of Department”. In 2002 he was awarded the Honorary Medal of the Ministry of Culture and Arts of Ukraine. He died on March 15, 2007. O. Litvinov’s creative personality combines the image of composer, arranger, conductor, performer-multiinstrumentalist (apart from piano O. Litvinov played the accordion, organ, wind instruments, violin). O. Litvinov’s works employ the best achievements of world classics and Ukrainian academic music, in particular, the Kharkiv composition school, and embody the best features of jazz and, more broadly, variety music of the twentieth century. These stylistic origins often coexist organically in one piece by O. Litvinov. The performance style of O. Litvinov as a conductor is characterized by very clear, bright, emotional gestures, especially outstanding sounding of the orchestra, the ability to clearly show every change in the thematic development of the piece. The style of O. Litvinov’s arrangements was significantly influenced by the music of Hollywood films, the art of contemporary Soviet composers – Saulsky, Broslavsky, Pokrass, Dunaevskyi, jazz masters – Tsfasman, Utesov, Bernstein and others. Conclusions. O. Litvinov’s creative life was very bright and rich, and his musical activity was diverse and multifaceted. In the present works, the main focus is made more on the “polyphony” (according to A. Mizitova and A. Sadovnikova (2002, p. 17) of this life, its external events. Characteristics of the composer’s, performing, conducting styles of the artist are “inscribed” in this polyphony only as its “voices”. However, each of these voices needs, in our opinion, more detailed consideration. For example, O. Litvinov’s compositional heritage is very large, but only a few of his compositions are performed today and well known to the public. In fact, only one piece for violin ensemble (or for violin and piano), “Eternal Movement”, received true popularity among the performers and the public. Most other works are not published, and the fate of most scores is unclear. So, the direction of further research can be related to a more detailed study of some particular works of O. Litvinov that have survived as well as to deepening knowledge about his performing and pedagogical activity.

Background. The performance practice of recent decades demonstrates an obvious tendency to expand and update the repertoire due to the use of the works of those composers whose pieces had “lost” over time against to the pieces of their more famous contemporaries. At the same time, in sociology, psychology, culturology, gender issues are largely relevant. Musicology does not stand aside, applying the achievements of gender psychology in the study of composer creativity and musical performing (Tsurkanenko, I., 2011; Gigolaeva-Yurchenko, V., 2012, 2015; Fan, Liu, 2017). In general, the issue of gender equality is quite acute in contemporary public discourse. The indicated tendencies determine the interest of many musicians and listeners in the work of women-composers (for example, recently, the creativity by Clara Schumann attracts the attention of performers all over the world, in particular, in Ukraine the International Music Festival “Kharkiv Assemblies” – 2018 was dedicated to her works). The theme of the proposed work is also a response to the noted trends in performing practice and musicology discourse. For the first time in domestic musicology an attempt is made to give a brief overview of the life and career of another talented woman, whose name is little known in the post-Soviet space. This is a Swedish violinist, composer and pianist Amanda Röntgen-Maier (1853–1894), a graduate of the Stockholm Royal College of Music and the Leipzig Conservatory, a contemporary of Clara Schumann, J. Brahms, E. Grieg, with whom she and her husband – composer, pianist, conductor Julius Röntgen – were associated for enough long time by creative and friendly relationships. In the post-Soviet space, not a single work has been published that would be dedicated to the works of A. Maier. In European and American musicology, the composer’s personality and creative heritage is also not widely studied. Her name is only occasionally mentioned in works examining the musical culture and, in particular, the performing arts of Sweden at that time (Jönsson, Å., 1995, 151–156; Karlsson, Å., 1994, 38–43; Lundholm, L., 1992, 14–15; Löndahl, T., 1994; Öhrström, E., 1987, 1995). The aim of the proposed study is to characterize Amanda Meier’s creative heritage in the context of European romanticism. Research results. Based on the available sources, we summarized the basic information about the life and career of A. Maier. Carolina Amanda Erica Maier (married Röntgen-Maier ) was born on February 20, 1853 in Landskrona. She received the first music lessons from his father, Karl Edward Mayer, a native of Germany (from Württemberg), who worked as a confectioner in Landskrona, but also studied music, in particular, in 1852 he received a diploma of “music director” in Stockholm and had regular contracts. In 1869, Amanda entered to the Kungliga Musikaliska akademien (Royal College of Music) in Stockholm. There she learns to play several instruments at once: the violin, cello, piano, organ, and also studies history, music theory and musical aesthetics. A. Maier graduated from Royal College successfully and became the first woman who received the title of “Musik Direktor”. The final concert, which took place in April 1873, included the performance of the program on the violin and on the organ and also A. Maier’s own work – the Romance for Violin. In the spring of 1874, Amanda received the grant from the Royal College for further studies at the Leipzig Conservatory. Here, Engelbert Röntgen, the accompanist of the glorious orchestra Gewandhaus, becomes her teacher on the violin, and she studies harmony and composition under the guidance of Karl Heinrich Karsten Reinecke and Ernst Friedrich Richter. Education in Leipzig lasts from 1874 to 1876. In the summer and autumn of 1875, A. Maier returns to Landskron, where she writes the first major work – the Concerto for violin and orchestra in one-movement, D minor, which was performed twice: in December 1875 in Halle and in February 1876 with the Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of K. Reinecke. The further career of A. Maier, both performing and composing, developed very successfully. She made several major concert trips between 1876 and 1880: to Sweden and Norway, to Finland and St. Petersburg; she also played to the Swedish king Oscar II (1876); concerts were held with constant success. While studying in Leipzig, A. Maier met her future husband (the son of her violin teacher) Julius Röntgen, composer and conductor. They married 1880 in Landskrona. Their personal relationships included active creative communication, both playing music together, and exchanging musical ideas, getting to know each other’s works. Part of his chamber opuses, for example, the cycle of Swedish folk dances, A. Maier created in collaboration with her husband. An analogy with life of Robert and Clara Schumann may take place here, although the Röntgen spouses did not have to endure such dramatic collisions that fell to the lot of the first. After the wedding, Röntgen family moved to Amsterdam, where Julius Röntgen soon occupies senior positions in several music organizations. On the contrary, the concert and composing activities of A. Maier go to the decline. This was due both, to the birth of two sons, and to a significant deterioration in her health. Nevertheless, she maintains her violin skills at the proper level and actively participates in performances in music salons, which the family arranges at home. The guests of these meetings were, in particular, J. Brahms, K. Schumann, E. Grieg with his wife and A. Rubinstein. The last years of A. Maier’s life were connected with Nice, Davos and Norway. In the fall of 1888 she was in Nice with the goal of treating the lungs, communicating there with her friends Heinrich and Elizabeth Herzogenberg. With the latter, they played Brahms violin sonatas, and the next (1889) year A. Maier played the same pieces with Clara Schumann. Amanda Maier spent the autumn of 1889 under the supervision of doctors in Davos, and the winter – in Nice. In 1890, she returned to Amsterdam. His last major work dates back to 1891 – the Piano Quartet in D minor. During the last three years of her life, she visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where she performed, among other, her husband’s works, for example, the suite “From Jotunheim”. In the summer of 1889, A. Maier took part in concerts at the Nirgaard Castle in Denmark. In 1894, she returned to Amsterdam again. Her health seems stable, a few hours before her death she was conducting classes with her sons. A. Maier died July 15, 1894. The works of A. Maier, published during the life of the composer, include the following: Sonata in H minor (1878); 6 Pieces for violin and piano (1879); “Dialogues” – 10 small pieces for piano, some of which were created by Julius Röntgen (1883); Swedish songs and dances for violin and piano; Quartet for piano, violin, viola and cello E minor (1891). Still unprinted are the following works: Romance for violin and piano; Trio for violin, cello and piano (1874); Concert for violin and orchestra (1875); Quartet for piano, violin, viola and clarinet E minor; “Nordiska Tonbilder” for violin and piano (1876); Intermezzo for piano; Two string quartets; March for piano, violin, viola and cello; Romances on the texts of David Wiersen; Trio for piano and two violins; 25 Preludes for piano. The composer style of A. Mayer incorporates the characteristic features of the Romantic era, in particular, the Leipzig school. Lyric elements prevail in her works, although the composer is not alien to dramatic, heroic, epic images (the Piano Quartet E minor, some pieces from the Six Songs for Violin and Piano series). In the embodiment of such a circle of images, parallels with the musical style of the works of J. Brahms are quite clearly traced. In constructing thematic structures, A. Maier relies on the melody of the Schubert-Mendelssohn type. The compositional solutions are defined mainly by the classical principles of forming, which resembles the works of F. Mendelssohn, the late chamber compositions of R. Schumann, where the lyrical expression gets a clear, complete form. The harmonic language of the works of A. Maier gravitates toward classical functionality rather than the uncertainty, instability and colorfulness inherent in the harmony of F. Liszt, R. Wagner and their followers. The main instrument, for which most of the opuses by A. Maier was created, the violin, is interpreted in various ways: it appears both, in the lyrical and the virtuoso roles. The piano texture of chamber compositions by A. Maier is quite developed and rich; the composer clearly gravitates towards the equality of all parties in an ensemble. At the same time, piano techniques are reminiscent of texture formulas by F. Mendelssohn and J. Brahms. Finally, in A. Mayer’s works manifest themself such characteristic of European romanticism, as attraction to folklore, a reliance on folk song sources. Conclusions. Periods in the history of music seemed already well studied, hide many more composer names and works, which are worthy of the attention of performers, musicologists and listeners. A. Mayer’s creativity, despite the lack of pronounced innovation, has an independent artistic value and, at the same time, is one of such musical phenomena that help to compile a more complete picture of the development of musical art in the XIX century and gain a deeper understanding of the musical culture of this period. The prospect of further development of the topic of this essay should be a more detailed study of the creative heritage of A. Maier in the context of European musical Romanticism.

URS JOSEPH FLURY: Vineta; Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Sinfonietta for Strings. Biel Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Fournier (vlc), Vienna Volksoper Orchestra; Vienna Chamber Orchestra c. Urs Joseph Flury. Musikszene Schweiz MGB CD 6184.SCHOECK: Concerto for Cello and String Orchestra, op. 61; Suite in A flat for Strings, op. 59. Julius Berger (vlc), South West German Chamber Orchestra of Pforzheim c. Vladislav Czarnecki. ebs 6145 (www.EBSMusikproduktion.de).

YORK BOWEN: Viola Concerto in C minor, op.25. CECIL FORSYTH: Viola Concerto in G minor. Lawrence Power (vla), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra c. Martyn Brabbins. Hyperion CDA67546.BOWEN: Viola Concerto; Viola Sonata No.2 in F major; Melody for the C string, op.51 no.2. Doris Lederer (vla), with Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra c. Paul Polivnick, Bruce Murray (pno). Centaur CRC 2786.BOWEN: Viola Concerto. WALTON: Viola Concerto in A minor. HOWELLS: Elegy for viola, string quartet and string orchestra. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Suite for viola and orchestra (Group I). Helen Callus (vla), New Zealand Symphony Orchestra c. Marc Taddei. ASV CD DCA 1181.

Ondo was written for my grandmother’s 88th birthday. The composition comprises six sections based on a popular folksong, called “Tanko-Bushi,” which can be heard in every Japanese town during the Bon festival. Obon is a holiday in August, when we return home once a year to pay respect to our elders and ancestors. “Tanko-Bushi” became popular in Japan around the end of the Second World War and was based on a popular song from the early part of the twentieth century, around the time my grandmother was born, and has taken many forms since; it continues to do so under varied contexts and the versions I encountered there as a child, while attending the summer festivals with her, would have been but a small sample of these. As I worked on Ondo, I tried to imagine what it might have been like to live through all of the changes that took place in Japan over the past century. I think of the composition as a commentary on the westernization that has been taking place there and on the orientalization of Japanese identity—as an act of harmonizing disparate values. Between and within the sections, I explore varying degrees of fragmentation as they relate to, or disrupt, unifying threads that run through the four main sections (1, 3, 5 and 6). Above all, I wanted the piece to be enjoyable for my grandmother to listen to. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra gave a reading of the four main sections of Ondo on 28 January 2011 at the SPCO Center in Saint Paul, MN. Subsequent to the reading, two interludes (sections 2 and 4) were added as contrasting materials and as expansions upon the relationships explored between the diverse approaches to formal considerations in the piece.

v.1. Musical composition -- v.2. Analysis.
In this paper the compositional issues and techniques employed in my M. Mus. Thesis Composition Nocturnales (for chamber orchestra comprised of fifteen players) is discussed. The piece, constituted of three connected parts, exhibits an eclecticism of musical styles and compositional approaches that comes in part, from the use of different temporal structures. To build such structures, two independent techniques have been developed that organize pitch and rhythm according to some serial procedures, yet are flexible enough to permit local level decisions based on intuitive considerations. The basis of the pitch system is a 1-2-1 tetrachordal set, to which are applied both principles of permutation and a modal treatment. In the rhythm domain, besides the conventional metric divisions of 2 and 3, predetermined numerical rows derived from the Fibonacci series to provide the durational values between event attacks are employed.

The way I approached this analysis was to start with two general statements, one on the form and the other on the harmony. This was so the reader could get a sense of the direction of the piece. Then I did a fairly detailed analysis of the introduction since most of the ideas originate from there. The rest of the piece is discussed in less detail, but occasionally there were places that needed a little more detailed explanation. In the postscript I describe some of my influences.

X is a composition for a chamber orchestra with a duration of approximately 13'30″. The title X (read as "cross") refers to a cross-weave pattern created by superimposing the trills and written-out tremolos in the piece. While the trills and tremolos are used throughout the piece to create a sense of textural variety, they have an important function in controlling the formal structure of the piece. The texture, which is one of the important features of the composition, makes the overall form apparent.

Mountain Views for Chamber Orchestra is a three-movement piece that evokes various geographic and aesthetic attributes of the Catalina Mountains in Tucson Arizona. It makes use of musical elements such as time, theme, color/timbre, and texture from the chamber ensemble that are conducive to the evocation of contours, colors, and polyphonies necessary for the images found in the work. "Early Morning Clouds Descending on the Catalinas," the first movement of Mountain Views depicts the picturesque Catalinas as they are often seen in the mild winter mornings of Tucson. The slow introduction conveys the early dawn and the episodic middle section uses ostinato-like repetitions and sudden juxtapositions of block-like figures that depict a hidden and secretive landscape. "Cancion del saguaro," the second movement is much slower than the previous movement and features a more aria-like treatment yet, still with some repetitious accompanimental figures. This movement depicts a lonely cactus within the mountain landscape with chromatic glissandos that imply scale and incline. "Danzas de sombra," the last movement depicts the mountain face at dusk using white-note collections and contrasting black-note collections that depict bright and shadowy sections of the mountain. This movement is more segmented or episodic with the different sections distinguishable not only by their key areas and modes but also registrally and metrically with a greater use of mixed meter and dance-like rhythms in the black-note shadowy sections.

This composition proposes and implements a way in which to incorporate the pipe organ into a contemporary instrumental setting. Considering the instrument's wide use in concert halls and its popularity with contemporary music, much of the timbre-based music has evaded incorporating it into its settings; for one reason or another, there are currently no timbre-based works composed for organ and chamber orchestra. By using the process of spectral analysis, this timbre-based composition demonstrates one possible way of doing so by investigating timbre similarities and differences between selected ranks of the organ and selected orchestral instruments and mapping them into pitch structures.

This chapter provides a comprehensive account of Jewish musical organizations in interwar Galicia. It investigates the various types of Jewish musical organizations and how they implemented their cultural policies. It also shows the wealth and variety of the musical life of the Jewish communities from the four south-eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic: Lwów, Kraków, Stanisławów, and Tarnopol. The chapter looks into the goal of the Jewish Music Society in Lwów in order to unite the local Jewish musical community and represent the Jewish community in the city's musical life. It analyzes different musical interests and visions of society's cultural role that explain the different activities of symphony orchestra, choir, mandolin orchestra, and chamber orchestra.

László Hadady graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. From 1976 to 1980, he was soloist of the Hungarian State Concert Orchestra. From 1980 to 2010, he was solo oboist in Pierre Boulez’s Paris chamber orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and since 1995, he is professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. In this interview, Hadady discusses his early career and his ideas about teaching, the fundamentals of music, vibrato, and reeds. He talks about the importance of versatility and his mindset in performing

Maurice Bourgue is a French oboist, chamber musician, composer, and orchestra conductor who won international competitions in Geneva, Birmingham, Munich, Prague, and Budapest. In this chapter he discusses his career and its evolution, gives advice for those entering competitions, discusses national styles, and relates his most memorable performances.

Neil Black was an internationally known oboist and a professor at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Black attended Oxford University and earned a degree in history. Three years after finishing at Oxford, he became principal oboist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Later in his career, he became the principal oboist for the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the English Chamber Orchestra. In this chapter he discussed his beginnings in music, ideas on tone production, reeds, and technique. He further shared his thoughts on flexibility in musical settings, solo playing, and pedagogy. He also reminisced about his role models and his memorable concerts.

Gordon Hunt is currently principal oboe of the London Chamber Orchestra, and formerly of the Philharmonia and London Philharmonic Orchestras. In this interview, he discusses his early career, tone, reeds, vibrato, and the application of the string concept of louré to oboe. He shares his ideas on breathing, air support, and making a musical plan. He closes with reminiscences of great concerts.

Professor of oboe at the Eastman School of Music, Richard Killmer was principal oboist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for eleven years. In this interview, he talks about his early career and observations on the evolution of the oboe world. He discusses his teaching philosophy and shares specifics on breathing, intervallic placement, long tones, and articulation. He shares tips for technical practice and his ideas on vibrato and reeds. Killmer shares stories of his experience in helping to design the Ross gouge, and he talks about his inspirations.

This article attempts to present sketches of the compositional creativity of Alexandr Boris Mulear (1922–1994), who is one of the most important figures of the music culture in the Republic of Moldova and belongs to the older generation of composers, as his glory years were between 1950 and 1980. The composer’s record contains a valuable artistic heritage that is appreciated by performers but the study of his works is not in the center of interest of musicologists yet. However, the article will present some examples of the Mulearian creativity. Analyzing the composition portfolio of A. Mulear, the author shows that chamber works predominate for the most part in his creativity, including suites, quartets, sonatas, miniatures and musical pieces, with a wide range of instrumental groups: from the duo (violin and piano, piano and voice) to the symphony orchestra. In conclusion, it is noted that the composer manifested himself in an original way in chamber music, which is more innovative and bright and reveals diverse forms of classical music in terms of style and genre.

80 percent of Clara Schumann‘s playbills in her complete collection of concert programmes (Robert-Schumann-Haus Zwickau) include vocal participation of solo singers, choirs or actors. The question is to which extent Clara Schumann used to accompany these vocal contributions herself on the piano. Only rarely are other accompanists named on the concert playbills, but evidence from concert reviews suggests that these vocal contributions normally served as rests for the solo pianist. Sometimes separate accompanists are named in the concert reviews. In orchestral concerts it was usually the conductor who accompanied solo songs on the piano, not the solo pianist. The Popular Concerts in St. James’s Hall in London were chamber concerts, which had a regular accompanist who was labelled as „conductor“ though there was no orchestra participating. These accompanists sometimes also performed with instrumentalists, e. g. basso continuo music from the 18th century or piano reductions of orchestral concerts.

Blue Mountain is a 35-minute work for two actors and orchestra. It was commissioned by the Ultima Festival, and premiered in 2014 by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. The Ultima festival challenged me – being both a composer and writer – to make something where I wrote both text and music. Interestingly, I hadn’t really thought of that before, writing text to my own music – or music to my own text. This is a very common thing in popular music, the songwriter. But in the lied, the orchestral piece or indeed in opera, there is a strict division of labour between composer and writer. There are exceptions, most famously Wagner, who did libretto, music and staging for his operas. And 20th century composers like Olivier Messiaen, who wrote his own poems for his music – or Luciano Berio, who made a collage of such detail that it the text arguably became his own in Sinfonia. But this relationship is often a convoluted one, not often discussed in the tradition of musical analysis where text tend to be taken as a given, not subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny that is often the case with music. This exposition is an attempt to unfold this process of composing with both words and music. A key challenge has been to make the text an intrinsic part of the performance situation, and the music something more than mere accompaniment to narration. To render the words meaningless without the music and vice versa. So the question that emerged was how music and words can be not only equal partners, but also yield a new species of music/text? A second questions follows en suite, and that is what challenges the conflation of different roles – the writer and the composer – presents? I will try to address these questions through a discussion of the methods applied in Blue Mountain, the results they have yielded, and the challenges this work has posed.