Par JARRELL MICHAEL. De la nature... du musical Michael Jarrell, né en 1958, est l'un des compositeurs les plus en vue de sa génération. Dans une démarche toute personnelle, qui ne s'est inféodée à aucun mouvement, et dans une quête intérieure inlassablement poursuivie, il a opéré une synthèse de l'héritage des musiques d'après-guerre dont il a extrait certaines caractéristiques techniques pour les mettre au service d'une véritable poétique musicale. En effet, contrairement à ses aînés, il explore moins le langage pour lui-même, faisant des nouvelles techniques le lieu d'une mutation dans la pensée musicale, qu'il ne cherche à le mettre au service de l'expression. Aussi se méfie-t-il d'une conceptualisation excessive, et de l'utopie dont l'oeuvre serait porteuse, préférant mettre en valeur les vertus d'un artisanat qu'il enseigne par ailleurs à Vienne et à Genève, ainsi que lors de nombreux séminaires à travers l'Europe. Ses oeuvres, facilement identifiables dans l'abondante production contemporaine, sont toutes liées les unes aux autres, non seulement par une certaine forme de sensibilité, leur tonalité propre, mais aussi par la récurrence de certains traits que Jarrell retravaille dans des contextes différents. Il s'est ainsi très tôt constitué un univers qu'il ne cesse de remodeler, visant moins l'originalité apparente de chacune des pièces qu'un déplacement constant des perspectives dans lesquelles les mêmes idées, en elles, peuvent être appréhendées. 'Cent fois sur le métier...' voilà quelle pourrait être sa devise. On trouve ainsi dans chacune de ses oeuvres quelque chose de familier qui acquiert en même temps une certaine étrangeté, sentiment qui constitue peut-être un élément essentiel de son expressivité. La musique de Jarrell arpente les régions du rêve et de l'irréalité, à la recherche de son moment de vérité, souvent situé dans les sonorités les plus graves et tes plus lentes, là où le temps, ailleurs agité, s'immobilise. C'est peut-être ce qui confère à sa musique une forme de tendresse inséparable de la beauté sonore, allant jusqu'à un esthétisme raffiné, loin des recherches extrêmes et des formulations autoritaires. Chez lui, même les techniques instrumentales les plus inhabituelles, ou les sonorités électroniques, auxquelles il a souvent recours, sont rapatriées dans un monde sensible emprunt de pureté où ce sont les qualités expressives qui dominent. Celles-ci ne renvoient pas forcément au moi du compositeur, qui tend au contraire à s'effacer, mais davantage à l'essence même du musical, au phénomène en soi, porteur d'une présence singulière au monde. On retrouve de telles qualités dans sa dernière oeuvre, ...Le ciel, tout à l'heure si limpide, soudain se trouble horriblement..., commandée par l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Elle fait appel à un grand orchestre symphonique standard: 3 flûtes (dont alto et piccolo, 2 hautbois et cor anglais, 2 clarinettes et clarinette basse, 2 bassons et contrebasson, 4 cors, 3 trompettes, 3 trombones, tuba, harpe, timbales, 4 percussions (vibraphone, glockenspiel, cloches tubes, cymbales, bongos, tam-tam, grosse caisse, temple blocks, tom grave, spring coils, triangle, mark tree) et cordes. Malgré un titre qui pourrait sous-entendre un élément programmatique, l'oeuvre appartient à la catégorie de la musique pure. L'orchestre y est traité de façon conventionnelle, mais avec une virtuosité d'écriture, un raffinement dans la sonorité qui exige beaucoup de ses interprètes. D'un seul tenant, l'oeuvre se divise en quatre parties principales d'inégale longueur, les deux premières étant plus importantes que les deux suivantes: la première est constituée d'un continuum de notes rapides réparties entre les cordes et Les bois, tandis que les trompettes, doublées par différents instruments, lancent une figure d'appel incisive qui s'allonge progressivement. L'écriture est d'une grande virtuosité, les figurations en triples croches passant d'un instrument ou d'un groupe à un autre. Les notes rapides se figent une première fois dans des oscillations jouées notamment par les cordes divisées, puis à travers des notes répétées qui traversent toute la texture orchestrale. Après un passage intermédiaire privilégiant les sons graves, l'écriture vive reprend jusqu'à un sommet dramatique marqué par des trilles, aussitôt suivi d'une désintégration qui mène à la seconde partie. Celle-ci débute avec des quintes jouées par les cordes graves divisées et colorées par les percussions (les contrebasses, qui doivent modifier leur accord, jouent des sons harmoniques). La musique semble vouloir repartir d'un point originel, elle se réinvente à partir d'une structure élémentaire, dans une extrême douceur. L'impétuosité du début laisse place à une grande délicatesse des sonorités. C'est un trait que l'on retrouve dans de nombreuses pièces de Jarrell: après l'effervescence d'une écriture brillante, agitée, nerveuse, que l'auditeur suit dans sa course folle, vient un moment réflexif et profond, qui nécessite une réorientation de l'écoule, une plongée dans la nature même du phénomène sonore. La trame qui se déploie dans un tempo lent offre ainsi une autre image de la sonorité orchestrale, comme si une musique des origines, au caractère de litanie, était soudain dévoilée sous la couche éclatante du début. Elle donne le sentiment d'avoir commencé bien avant son moment d'apparition, comme si elle provenait des couches profondes de la conscience, d'une mémoire archaïque. D'ailleurs, Jarrell réélabore ici un passage d'une pièce antérieure, Music for a While, lui reprenant son matériau de base. Le sentiment de profondeur est dû au formidable ralentissement du temps, qui nous met soudainement en apesanteur, mais aussi à une forme en spirale, qui tranche avec la musique directionnelle qui précédait. L'effet que provoque la distance sensible entre de tels contrastes est onirique: on ne sait plus si la première partie, qui nous échappe en se projetant vers l'avant, n'était qu'une forme illusoire, ou si nous entrons, avec la partie lente, dans une sorte de rêve éveillé. Un passage central, dans cette seconde partie, s'organise autour de guirlandes sonores à la harpe et aux cloches que tout l'orchestre remplit de sonorités suaves. Les arpèges descendants des vents doublés par des pizzicatos de cordes, que transpercent des notes répétées aux trompettes et aux cors, dans un climat encore doux, annoncent la reprise du mouvement frénétique. Mais cette fois, ce sont moins des figures virevoltantes qui passent à travers les pupitres que des blocs de notes joués par la masse des instruments: des figures qui s'élancent vers le haut aboutissent à des notes répétées, en une forme d'antiphonie, et mènent à un sommet d'intensité. Après quoi, en guise de coda, une quatrième partie nous conduit à une fin mourante: l'harmonie se fige, les polyrythmes annulent toute sensation de mesure, les longues tenues des instruments graves chutent chromatiquement, les percussions jouant des figures rituelles, en résonance, jusqu'à l'immobilité finale. Le titre de la pièce provient de Lucrèce (De la nature). Il n'a pas de signification structurelle immédiate, comme souvent chez Jarrell, mais exprime en quelques mots l'idée qui avait présidé au morceau. Le trouble s'apparente ici à une forme d'étrangeté, à quelque chose d'inquiétant qui n'apparaît pas de façon narrative, tel un vent d'orage dans un ciel serein, mais comme l'essence même de l'articulation formelle entre deux types d'écriture, deux types d'expression qui exigent des temporalités opposées l'une à l'autre. La soudaineté, c'est le renversement entre les deux. Pourtant, on retrouve un même noyau entre les parties vives et les parties lentes, la quinte jouant dans les deux cas un rôle structurel, et le mib apparaissant comme une note polaire (toute la musique de Jarrell est aimantée par des pôles qui orientent l'écoute). Si le passage du limpide au trouble se traduit par la sonorité orchestrale, par le maniement très sensible des timbres qui provient en grande part de la tradition orchestrale française, il se manifeste aussi par des figures qui évitent tout profil thématique, toute forme mélodique au sens traditionnel du terme, et qui composent la texture. L'auditeur a directement à faire avec la matière sonore. Et celle-ci est composée de part en part. L'adjectif poétique vient à l'esprit pour définir une invention qui s'écarte aussi bien des formes illustratives que des constructions schématiques, et qui repose essentiellement sur l'organisation des hauteurs au détriment des effets, des sonorités bruiteuses ou des gestes iconoclastes. Et malgré les passages brillants, malgré les explosions sonores toujours maîtrisées et un maniement virtuose de l'orchestre, cette poétique révèle un caractère fondamental plutôt intimiste. Philippe Albèra / contemporain / Répertoire / Orchestre

Trois po?mes d?Henri Michaux was written for the Zagreb Biennale and first performed there by the orchestra and choir of Radio Zagreb conducted by the composer and Slavko Zlatic on 9 May 1963. It is composed for 20-part choirand an orchestra similar to that of the Symphony of Psalms though without the lower strings of the latter.Lutoslaswski has said that the general outline of the work came to him first and only then did he choose the threepoems. These reflect his Francophile taste: Henri Michaux was born in Belgium in 1899 and later became a painter: the trenchant Le Grand Combat with its onomatopoeic invented words dates form the 1920s; the other two texts which are more philosophic than pictorial form the 1930s. Choir and orchestra need separate conductors even though throughout they alternate more often than they combine.A description of the course of the music itself will bemore useful than any discussion of its technical processes or of its notation. A quiet section of orchestral polyphony which brass sforzandi punctuate with increasing frequency frames the beginning and end of Pens?es. Afterthe choir?s first unaccompanied passage the woodwind have a staccato section over which the female voices singing downward glissandi are superimposed (?Ombre de mondes infimes??). Then the woodwind and both pianos join in alapping ostinato which illustrates the text of the next forte choir entry ?Pens?es la nage merveilleuse?? The climax of the movement comes as these characteristic woodwind figures alternate with the tintinnabulation of agamelan-like ensemble of vibraphone c?leste harp and pianos.

Composer's Program Note Repertoire operas occationally have orchestral suites: Bits and pieces of overture interlude etc. tied upin a bouquet of 'schönste Tränen'. Contemporary opera usually wither after the first season so the focusis on getting people to come and have a sniff before it's too late. Consequently it seemed obvious to meto start making orchestral excerpts from my operas that are meant to be played before the premiere (andafter please); I call them 'opera trailers' when they're substantial enough to be considered independent works and 'opera demos' when they're relatively short and moreappetizer-ish. SNOW WHITE'S MIRROR is a full scale two act dramatic opera written for the Danish National Opera. The opera is a modern re-telling for grown-ups of the brothers Grimm's fairy tale: Snow White is a self-centered teenage narcissist and the villain of the opera; she ends up loosing everyone but herself either because she kills them or because they decide they can't stand being around her anymore. But apparently she's o.k. with that...The music is intended for a large audience: it's basically pop music done with all the craftmanship of aclassical composer who's equally at home with large scale symphonic form avantgarde technique opera singing - and modern pop. The Trailer is in three movements. It contains three sections of the opera; the prelude an interlude close to the beginning of the second act and the final scene but one. It's a gloomy sort of trailer starting out in grand title sequence style moving on to a decidedly odd piece where Snow White find her way to the dwarfs (who're creepy junkies doing pornography to get money to buy dope) and ending in kind of an eerie rejection mood: Everyone still alive walks out on Snow White singing 'skin as white as snow hands red with blood soul as black as ivory'.(NM 2010)

A Wedding Bouquet was the idea of Lord Berners who wanted Frederick Ashton to make a ballet pantomime out of one of Gertrude Stein's plays and who both wrote the music and designed the 'decor' and costumes. The name ofthe play was 'They must be Wedded to Their Wife' but this was thought too long for advertising and was changed to A Wedding Bouquet. Lord Berners went to visit Gertrude Stein in Bilignin and she liked the idea and he foundin her house a carpet which gave him the pattern for the backcloth for the ballet.The ballet was first spoken of as a choral ballet and the opera chorus did sing or chant the words at the early performances but it was entirelyunlike any other choral ballet before or since. The words explained the action introduced the characters made utterly irrelevant comments worked themselves into a frenzied rhythmical accompaniment or injected on occasional aptphrase that devastated dancers and audience alike. Not all of the words have ever been really intelligible but gradually the audience got to know certain phrases by heart and the ballet has a devoted public although inevitably ithas always been a rather special one and to this day there are people who detest the whole affair don't 'understand' it and think it an absurd waste of time and talent.

Four Pieces For Orchestra was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2000-2003. Programme note: In 1983 Hans Abrahamsen wrote the first seven of his Ten Studies for Piano. In the early eighties most composers who wrote for the piano were still making strenuous efforts to distance themselves from the instrument?s romantic past for example treating it as a percussion instrument rather than exploiting its expressive ?singing? potential. The piano?s modern identity as a mechanical rational emotionally cool instrument is reflected in Abrahamsen?s studies 5 7; but in the first four studies Abrahamsen allows the piano to?recollect? its past: especially what the composer calls ?the golden German romantic time full of expression night timelessness dream and the irrational?. Accordingly these first four studies were given German one might specifically say Schumanesque - titles: Traumlied (?Dreamsong?) Sturm (?Storm?) Arabeske (?Arabesque?) and Ende (?End?). While Abrahamsen was in no way dissatisfied with the first four Studies as piano music he soon felt the urge to expand them in both time and space. In their new identity as Four Pieces for Orchestra created between 2000-2003 the original studies nearly doubled in length while the forces required expanded from one soloist to an orchestra of Mahlerian/Straussian dimensions including instruments beloved by the late-romantics: Wagner tubas bass trumpet guitar mandolin and the hammer used so memorably in Mahler?s Sixth Symphony and Alban Berg?s Three Pieces for Orchestra. The results are not so much ?arrangements? of the four piano studies more recompositions. A helpful comparison might be made with certain painters: Cézanne portraying the same mountain from different angles; or Monet obsessively returning to Rouen Cathedral in different lights and weather conditions. Abrahamsen himself remembers an important visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo where he saw how Munch painted the same subject

Full Score-Nyman's 2011 The Prologue to ‘Dido and Aeneas’ is a prologue to Henry Purcell's opera on a libretto by Nahum Tate. The libretto is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. It recountsthe love of Dido Queen of Carthage for the Trojan hero Aeneas and her despair when he abandons her. This edition of the work is scored for SATB String section and Harpsichord.

For his only opera Leonore/Fidelio Beethoven wrote four overtures in total. Chronologically the so-called Leonore Overture no. 3 is the second of the series and perhaps the most performed of all Beethoven?s overtures. During his own lifetime it was heard not only in the theatre but also in concert thereby establishing with the Coriolan and Egmont overtures the new genre of the concert overture. Recognised around the middle of the nineteenth century as a masterpiece it went on to become the ?declared favourite of all orchestras ? as Beethoven biographer Anton Schindler testifies. It now appears as astudy score based on the musical text of the Beethoven Complete Edition with its own specially prepared foreword.

Picnic At Hanging Rock (Utflykt til det okända) for Orchestra by Britta Byström (2010). Programme Note ”What we see and what we seem are but a dream a dream within a dream” – These words opens Peter Wier’s film on Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock from 1967. The story takes place on Valentines Day 1900. A group of school girls go on a picnic at Hanging Rock in Australia and get caught up in a volcanic eruption. Three of the girls disappear without a trace – as if they where swallowed up by the mountain.  Inspiredby Peter Weir’s poetic and many layered film I have composed a tone poem – with the emphasis on poem – or poetry – as opposed to programme music. Disappearance is an important motif. The piece is a series of disappearances and transformations – one after another. At the end you can hear how the sound of the orchestra disappears in a swarm of clanging triangles – a way of picturing the girls disappearing into the mountain.  I have tried to catch several other of the characteristics of the film: The school girls in their white dresses the dangerous yet alluring mountain where the watches mysteriously stop at 12 the spell that makes the girls climb higher and higher and – at the end – the unanswered hesitant question: what really did happen?  Britta Byström   

Corona - The Solar Trilogy No. 3 for Orchestra was composed by Poul Ruders in 1995.Programme note:CORONA makes the final part of the SOLAR-TRILOGY a huge symphonic triptych about the life and behavior of the Sun. The first'panel' GONG depicts the birth life and final collapse of our nearest star the second ZENITH describes in its ultra-slow tempo the patient rise of the Sun toward midday ferocity and its subsequent setting. CORONA then is a symphonic 'portrait' of the phenomenally hot whispy brim encircling and radiating from the Sun a sizzling halo of electrons and photons visible only during a total eclipse. Formally CORONAfollows the process of such totality in progress:the gradual eclipsing by the Moon - total darkness with thefierce sparkling outer corona - the gradual 'rebirth' of the light toward the full gl.ory and warmth of the Sun.Besides the obvious astronomical narrative of the SOLAR-TRILOGY there's a metaphysical angle too underlying each of the three compositions: GONG in spite of its apparent energy may be the most pessimistic of them all epitomizing the death and ultimate annihilation of the prime source of Life itself. ZENITH is a hommage to human aspiration and spiritual endurance and CORONA ends with Hope and Glory after a journey from depression throughtotal despair. Super-structurally the zenith of ZENITH makes the zenith of the entire trilogy i.e. when the E- flat of the unisone horns in ZENITH is heard we are exactly halfway through the collected work.Poul Ruders

Premiered by The New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center New York City 10th June 2004. Orchestration 3 Flutes 3rd dbl. Piccolo2 Oboes1 English Horn in F3 Clarinets in Bb 3rd dbl. Bas Clarinet in Bb2 Bassoons1 Contra Bassoon4 Horns in F3 Trumpets in Bb3 Trombones1 Tuba1 (set of) Timpani2 Percussion (two players)1: Bass Drum (large) Chinese Cymbal Mark Tree2: TamTam (large) Vibraphone Antique Cymbal1 Harp1 Piano dbl. CelestaStringsAll non-octave transposing instruments are notated in their relevanttranspositions.Horns notated in bass clef sound a fourth above the notated pitch.All accidentals apply to each single note only except tied notes. Naturals for 'safety'. Programme Note This piece marks the conclusion of what could now be called 'The Nightshade Trilogy' three pieces which explore the contrasting worlds of Light and Darkness. As opposed to the earlier chamber work Nightshade which dealt with extremes of high and low pitches and the chamber orchestra composition Second Nightshade a two-fold piece contrasting darkness/anxiety and light/calm Final Nightshade for full symphony orchestra takes us on a journey in which the forces of dark and light struggle - and co-exist - in a predominantly polyphonic web with brooding undertones. The melodic point-of-departure is not surprisingly to be found in either of the two preceding pieces of the Trilogy but in an older piece Corpus Cum Figuris from 1985. Over the ensuing years I've dreamt on and off of 'doing something' with the opening measures of this older work perhaps even building a new composition on that very simple inward-looking time was ripe and there's a nice nostalgia angle to the idea: Corpus Cum Figuris was the first piece of mine to be

Par . The Symphony: From Mannheim to Mahler is a fascinating and accessible guide that considers the development of the symphony from a number of different perspectives: analytical, historical, and critical. Exploring important milestones, touchpoints, events, key works, and the composers that surround the genre, it also includes a composer timeline, detailed case studies and comprehensive music examples. This handy and informative book is ideal for GCSE, A-Level, and undergraduate music students, as well as anyone wanting to study and learn more about the genre. Christopher Tarrant is Lecturer in Music Analysis at Newcastle University. He received his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London and now teaches and writes about concert music of the long nineteenth century with a special emphasis on theory of form and the Nordic symphony. Christopher is also a violinist and conductor. Natalie Wild is Director of Research and Deputy Director of Music at the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST). Her research focuses on the role a classical music education can play in breaking down social barriers. Natalie has taught both GCSE and A-Level Music for many years as Head of Music in various inner-city schools. / Date parution : 2022-05-17/ Livre / Orchestre

Voyage Into the Golden Screen for Chamber Orchestra is a complex experimental work by Danish composer Per Nørgård that has been of elemental important in the composer's work. In the 1960's Nørgård claims to have discovered rather than invented a series of notes he calls 'the infinity series' rather like a twelve-tone series but infinite generative fractal and without the rhythmic and other confines of the true serialists. In Voyage the instruments are microtonally and individually retuned to create an aural space between half-steps. Voyage was the first work in which Nørgård put the infinity series at the centre of the work. Voyage Into The Golden Screen is awork in two movements. The slow-moving layers create aural intensity in the first part while the second movement explores more minimalist textures. Together they create an elemental sound experiment just one element of this composer's monumental creativity and originality.

The task: to write a piece that could involve children as players singers and composers alongside a professional symphony or chamber orchestra. The solution: a peace-cry for the biosphere in which the collaborative nature of theenterprise is a metaphor for a wished-for human enlightenment to the ways of the natural world. Davies provides five musical elements and five ways of development and uses these to illustrate five branches of life on earth:water-plants trees fish birds and mammals (including man). There is a space for answers from children's instrumental groups and then a larger space in which the children can develop the given ideas perhaps with members of theorchestra. Davies returns as composer to depict through an excess of development creation turned sour. Finally everyone comes together with a unison hymn with orchestra and instrumental groups celebrating the turn of thetide.This work for young instrumentalists children's chorus and orchestra was commissioned by the Association of British Orchestras as the centrepiece of an education project which coincided with the implementation of theNational Curriculum for music in schools in England and Wales echoing similar developments in Scotland and Northern Ireland.Score. Duration c. 25mins.

Søren Nils Eichberg's Morpheus - Concerto for Orchestra (2013). Commissioned by The Danish National Symphony Orchestra / DR. Parts are available on hire: hire@ewh.dk Programme note Morpheus in the Greek mythology is the most powerful of the Oneroi the gods of dreams. He is the one who sends us our dreams and he may appear to us within the dreams in disguise. Analogous to the logic of dreams in Morpheus everything is interwoven as chains of associations appear to logically lead us from one line of thought to another. Everything seems strangelyfamiliar. But the logic is treacherous and we already feel it may only be valid within the dream. Nothing that appears similar is actually ever really the same. Half awakening we struggle to hold on to a vanishing world we felt we were on the verge of understanding but which we already know will eventually escape us when we fully awake. Everything remains a mystery until the end.   The seven movements/dreamscapes are:   Vortex Trees and Walls Escher (Toccata) Crystal Into the Cloud Non-Euclid Arctica

Mit einem Anhang der handschriftlichen Gesangbücher aus den Signaturengruppen Kk und Kp / Orchestre