SKU: PR.140401330

ISBN 9781491134412. UPC: 680160684939.

Nathaniel Dett was among America’s leading composers in the early 20th century, and MAGNOLIA SUITE is a beautiful example of his rich, hybrid style. Deeply inspired by the music and mission of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Dett’s piano music springs from the late Romantic traditions of florid texture and embellishment, along with programmatic titles and raw emotion. It is notable for melody writing inspired by and paraphrasing African-American song. The 18-minute MAGNOLIA SUITE contains five movements, any of which may also be performed separately. This edition by Lara Downes provides a clean, new engraving that corrects the many errors and unclear indications appearing in the historical printing.
Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in a place that was built on freedom. The little village of Drummondville, Ontario was founded by enslaved Africans – Dett’s ancestors among them – who traveled the Underground Railroad out of the American South into Canada. Their journey brought them to a safe haven, a place where fortunes and futures could be transformed in the span of one generation, to lives full of new possibilities. You could call it “the place where the rainbow ends,” which is the title of the last movement of Dett’s Magnolia Suite.When Dett wrote these pieces, he was a young teacher at Lane College in Tennessee, a historically Black college that had been founded in 1882, the year of his birth. A place built on freedom, with the purpose of educating newly-emancipated slaves – a place designed to nurture the blossoming of ideas, the vibrant flowering of minds set free. This music is inspired by the gorgeous splendor of the magnolia blooms on that college campus, and also by the shared histories, experiences, and aspirations of the community that Dett found there.These five pieces pay affectionate tribute to lineage and legacy. They express gratitude for the bittersweet beauties of the present; nostalgia for the past (a bit romanticized, as the past always is); and an effervescent optimism for the future that awaits us in the place where the rainbow ends.

SKU: HL.14035219

ISBN 9788759877739. Danish.

Lullabies / Vuggeviser for Piano solo was composed by Bent Sorensen in 2000. Preface / Programme Note: Some melodies keep haunting me: they will stick in my mind, and I will walk about humming them, and they will find their way into my music. Two such melodies are the basis for the present piano piece, which I call LULLABIES. The first little tune began its life as a ballad in an operatic draft ofmine. Later on - with text by English poet Selima Hill - it became part of my songcycle ROSES ARE FALLING for mezzo soprano and piano. In the latter context it is a love song, but I have always had a lullaby-feeling about this tune, and, indeed, as a lullaby it appears in my opera UNDERTHE SKY, to text by Peter Asmussen: inthe opera, the loved one sings and hums to her beloved and make him come to rest. During LULLABIES the tune will appear a half tone lower with each entry, and make its way downwards through the musical texture, from upper voice to bassline. The other little melody is a true lullaby, which I hummed for my youngest daughter to try and make her go to sleep. Later on it became the backdrop for the last movement of my trombone concerto, BIRDS AND BELLS. The two melodies in their original form are reproduced at the beginning of LULLABIES. Bent Sorensen, 2000.