SKU: PR.110406720
UPC: 680160001316.
I have always been fond of writing works for specific people or organizations. It has been my good fortune during most of my creative career to be asked to compose for many extraordinary performers. The Sonata for Harpsichord Solo is such a case in point: it was written in 1982 for Barbara Harbach, a superb performer, close friend, and collaborator on many musical projects. The Sonata was premiered on March 2, 1984, in a recital given by Dr. Harbach at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. During my formative years as a composer, one seldom heard of the harpsichord as a modern instrument, though while I attended undergraduate school at Boston University, some of us banded together to construct a small harpsichord from one of the first do-it-yourself kits which began to appear in the late '40s. It was also during this time that I heard the Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord by my teacher Walter Piston and consequently specified that the accompanying instrument for my second violin sonata could either be a piano or a harpsichord. It was not until recently, however, that my interest in the harpsichord as a solo instrument for new music was aroused. This was because of the emergence of so many young virtuosi, such as Barbara Harbach, who are interested in the performance of new music besides the great harpsichord music of the Classical, Baroque, and pre-Baroque eras. The keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti has always intrigued and fascinated me. The brevity, excitement, and clarity of this sparkling music is charming as well as exhilarating. It is this type of Baroque sonata that inspired the conception and form of my harpsichord sonata. The entire work is loosely based on the musical translation of Barabara Harbach's name, especially the conflict of the B (B-flat) and H (B-natural in German notation). This secondo rub or dissonance especially pervades the first movement, which is in a modified sonata form, pitting jagged and tense melodic elements against most lyrical and smooth lines. This second movement is a song-like melody accompanied by rolled chords which may be played on the lute stop of the instrument if this sonata is performed on a two-manual harpsichord. The final movement is an ever-driving joyous toccata which brings the work to an exciting close with a coda made up of accelerating repeated chords. --Samuel Adler.
SKU: UT.HS-231
ISBN 9790215324558. 9 x 12 inches.
Tarascone; Tarantella Capuanese; Valzer; Polka di Vittorio; Tarantella StiglianeseThe history of the Viggianesi, strolling musicians, winds over a period of about four centuries and esprimeun ‘unicum’ musically and anthropologically. Heirs of a travelling musical tradition that from the late Middle Ages inhabited more than just the streets of the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples, the harpists of this extraordinary story made their first appearances as early as the end of the 1600s engaged in musical practices at shrines.Armed with an urgent need to make a living together with a strong musical inclination, adaptability and versatility, the groups of musicians, almost always belonging to the same family circle, became the promoters of the great Italian musical tradition (Southern in particular), and with their harps on their shoulders they became the identification symbol of a well-defined and limited area of Italy: the Agri Valley, in Basilicata.From the many documents examined, a very wide and varied musical repertoire emerges mixing the pastoral tradition with classical tradition (mainly opera, devotional music with songs from the cities (from the Neapolitan tradition to international production). The pastoral repertoire, the subject of this publication, consists of a strongly characterized native repertoire which the Viggianesi had consolidated in both public and private ritual occasions in their native land, even if performing in distant lands.This collection is included among the compulsory pieces of The 7th International Harp Contest in Italy Suoni D’Arpa, 2017, Category A – Associazione Italiana dell’Arpa – www.associazioneitalianarpa.it
SKU: UT.MAG-221
ISBN 9790215318625. 9 x 12 inches.
Martin-Pierre Dalvimare, born in 1770, in Dreux (Eure-et-Loir), from a distinguished family, learnt music as an entertainment art, and was obliged to make it a resource for his existence, after the troubles of the Revolution in 1789. He had acquired a remarkable talent for the harp; when he arrived in Paris he made a very good impression. Then, man of the world, knowledgeable in many fields, which is rare for a musician, he was welcome everywhere, and very soon came in friendly terms with some of the most renowned artists and men of letters of his times. The marriage certificate of the poet Legouve (15 pluviose of the year XI, or February 1803, 12th municipality of Paris), shows that Dalvimare was one of his best men and that at the time he was thirty-two years old. He became harpist of the Opera in the year VIII (1800), and was definitively confirmed in the month of fructidor of the year IX. At the time of the institution of the emperor Napoleon's private music, M. Dalvimare was appointed as his harpist. In September 1807 he obtained the title of harp master of the empress Josephine. A lucky change of his fortune allowed this artist to renounce to practise his talent for living, he resigned from all of his positions on March, 12th, 1812, and he retired in Dreux, where he still was living in 1837. For a peculiar weakness, he does not like to speak about his artist career, which had been entirely honourable, and he would like to forget his success too. His first composition was a symphonie concertant for harp and horn, which he composed with Frederic Duvernoy, and published in the year VII (1798); notwithstanding, he counted as his first opus a collection of romances with accompaniment of piano or harp, which he later published with Pleyel.In 1809 Dalvimare composed, for the theatre Feydeau, a one-act opera-comique called The Marriage for Imprudence. The music was weak; the work did not succeed, and people used to say that the greatest imprudence had been the one of the authors who had it performed. Nevertheless, the score of this opera was published in Paris by erard. (Francois-Joseph Fetis).
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