SKU: HL.49018099

ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.

On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.

SKU: BR.SON-625

ISBN 9790004803271. 10 x 12.5 inches.

In 1998, at the end of the 20th century, Breitkopf & Hartel started the publication of the Complete Edition, which is made possible thanks to the cooperation of the various Sibelius publishers. The Editors (Helsinki University Library and The Sibelius Society of Finland) and the Editorial Committee (Chairman: Timo Virtanen, Helsinki) believe that the volumes of JSW will provide the basis for a now conception of the creative work of Jean Sibelius.Reviews: One immediately recognizes the towering production quality of these volumes - a point that can be extended to all volumes thus far published in the set. The music is a joy to read; and the lucidity and thoroughness of the texts ... are models of scholarly editions, and should be required reading for all bibliography and music-editing courses. ... In sum, the JSW is a remarkable project: the scholarship is impeccable, the music scores and texts are simply a joy to study. Edward Jurkowski, Notes December 2011: 442-443At the back of this magnificent book are pages of critical commentary on a bar-by-bar analysis of an endless supply of musical notation requiring interpretation by the editor. ... For the general, non-musically trained, purchaser of the edition there is the magisterial introduction to read, and fascinating reading it is. Edward W. Clark, Sibelius Society Newsletter 2009 The Sibelius pieces, however, are a revelation. I opened this magnificently produced volume - complete with multilingual critical report and generous facsimiles of original manuscripts - expecting Grieg-style quasi-nationalistic character pieces, and was instead presented with an incredible array of styles, textures, harmonic languages and levels of difficulty. Chris White, Piano Professional Summer 2009: 2This is not only a scholarly edition of one of the composer's major works, it is also a model for the philological editing of music in general. ... JSW has chosen to have the emendations reflected in two places, in certain cases even in three: as graphic indications in the music text, in prose form in the critical commentary, and sometimes also in the form of a warning footnote on the music page. There can be no doubt that such a procedure is very user-friendly, but it disturbs the appearance of the music and may mislead the user into thinking that there are two or more equally valid readings. Niels Krabbe, Fontes Artis Musicae 54/2, 2007: 248 Editorial standards are high throughout, and maintain a careful balance between the competing demands of practical exigency and the need to provide as much scholarly evidence of variants as possible. The critical commentaries provide concise and effective descriptions of the sources and, where appropriate, information on compositional genesis and historical context. The introduction to each volume provide useful background information on historical reception, including much new material not previously brought to light in Tawaststjerna's biography. Daniel M. Grimley, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 2/2, 2005: 244.

SKU: AP.12-057154309X

ISBN 9780571543090. English.

Picture a Day Like This is the fourth operatic collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence, and Into the Little Hill. This limited edition of the full score is one of only 150, presented in a cloth-bound hard cover. It is signed by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp and includes facsimile reproductions of pages from the manuscript, sketches by Benjamin and Crimp, and a photograph of Benjamin, Crimp, and directors Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma in rehearsal at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

In this bittersweet fable of grief and renewal. Benjamin and Crimp tell the story of a woman who has lost her child: if, before nightfall, she meets one truly happy person and cuts a button from their sleeve, her child will live again. In her search she meets a pair of lovers, a composer and their assistant, an artisan, collector, and, in a beautiful garden, the mysterious Zabelle.

Benjamin proves with this taut, sharp miniature that he is the finest opera composer of today…a work of depth of feeling, humanistic artistry, and expressive rigor…a drama that is miraculously condensed.
-- Süddeutsche Zeitung (Reinhard J. Brembeck) 9 July 2023.

SKU: SU.94010400

2,1 2,1 2,1 2,1; 4331; timp, perc(3), cel, hp; stgs Duration: 11' Composed: 2013 Published by: Subito Music Publishing Performance materials available on rental: Alas! Babylon’s Final Sunset is another installment in my series of works that musically comment on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation. The principal source of inspiration for this works comes from the 18th chapter of the book of Revelation. This chapter states that the career of Babylon the Great is finally coming to an end. The music begins with a mysterious pianissimo tremolo accompanied by tam-tam and bass drum. The initial flourishes in the oboes and English horn serve as the principal motive of warning. As the music continues, there are varying degrees of agitation among the strings and woodwinds. Throughout the work there are rhythmic motives in the brass, percussion, and various woodwind instruments that sing and speak Babylon is Fallen in triple meter. As the tutti ensemble arrives at a climax, the orchestral texture becomes thinner and slightly transparent. As the music continues, the opening motive returns in the oboes, however the counterpoint produces a series of solo laments. These passages are intended to provide picturesque images of these words: And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee. and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth. Rev. 18:22-24 The following passages musically comment on the historical career of Babylon with a sense of her impending destruction. The series of laments transforms into the more emphatic rhythmic motive Babylon is Fallen. The orchestral texture begins to become more condense, once again, with the initial flourishes of, but with notable variations. Finally, the celesta, harp, oboes, English horn, and strings sing profundities that are finally transformed into a minor mode tonality that fades away with the ringing of the tam-tam. Babylon has finally seen her last sunset.

SKU: HL.4491221

UPC: 884088872649. 10.5x14 inches.

Performance time - ca. 4:30

Originally written for concert band (and commissioned by the U.S. Marine Band), Esprit de Corps is a fantasy-march that serves as a tribute to both the Marine Corps and the Marine Band. Composed immediately after the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the composer chose to forego an elegiac tribute in favor of a work that reflects the positive spirit of the Corps, full of energy and dynamism. Even the tempo marking, ?Tempo di Bourgeois,? reflects the dramatic and spirited conducting of Col. John R. Bourgeois, conductor of the Marine Band at the time of composition.

SKU: HL.14028038

ISBN 9788759854730. 12.0x16.5x0.3 inches. English.

The word GONG is saturated with associations: the splendour of the Orient, mysticism, drama, loud metallic clangour, violent impact, etc. The present piece draws upon all those connotations, but it is primarily a symphonic drama about the life and behaviour of the sun, our closest star and prime source of life on Earth. Describing the sun in music is not a new idea, of course; during a visit to Greece, Carl Nielsen was inspired by the orbit of the sun and its very un-Danish ferocity and thus wrote the Helios Overture. GONG is a Helios Overture too, of sorts, albeit more abstract. Recent astronomical research shows, that the surface of the sun reverberates like a gong, in four different, simultaneous tempi (not directly depicted in the score, though); the sun looks like a GONG, - the O in the written work looks like the sun; there is even a solar research group called GONG (Global Oscillation Network Group). Formally the composition follows the life and fate of the sun, from the initial explotional birth through the hyper-activity as energy source as we know it today to the final, predicted flaring up and collapse into a so-called white dwarf. But - being a musical composition, not an astrophysical thesis - GONG is brought to its compositional conclusion by a real concert-ending, a chord taken from the middle of the piece and sustained over several bars, from virtual nothingness to full force.

SKU: HL.283507

Exit Music for Orchestra was composed by Bent Sorensen in 2006-07. Exit Music was commissioned by the Bergen International Festival for the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, and is dedicated to Per Norgard on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Programme note It began with a dream, as it always does when I compose. I dreamt that I was standing in an open doorway on a hill in an otherwise open landscape. I do not know what was behind the door, but in front of it - towards the landscape - I saw my music disappearing. I stood looking for the music, and started to hear it, to remember it in time with its disappearance. The dream continued to recur as strange pictures in my daydreams, and I continued to try to write down the music that had vanished. It was also the dream that gave the piece its title- Exit Music. Exit Music is based on three simple songs (the songs that vanish through the doorway): a little lullaby, which continues to reappearin fragments; a strange polyphonic pop song that refers to a section of my opera Under the Sky; and a passionate little love song, which concludes the piece on the strings, very quietly and in unison. These simple songs are then constantly overpainted by enervating repeated motes in fairly simple rhythms, which push the songs out of the room. (Bent Sorensen).

SKU: SU.90110170

Traditional carol given an R&B ballad treatment Gospel soloists (mezzo or baritone); SAT (opt B) choir; 2,1 2,eh 2,bcl 2; 4331; timp, 3perc, hp, pno, elec bs, drs; str Duration: 4' Text: Traditonal French carol Choral Octavo: available for sale (#90110141) Bass & Drum parts: available for sale (#90110142) Full Score & Parts: available on rental Composed: 1994 Published by: Subito Music Publishing.

SKU: PR.11641867L

UPC: 680160683215.

Contextures: Riots -Decade '60 was commissioned by Zubin Mehta and the Southern California Symphony Association after the successful premiere of the Concerto for Four Percussion Soloists and Orchestra. It was written during the spring and summer months of 1967. Riots stemming from resentment against the racial situation in the United States and the war in Vietnam were occurring throughout the country and inevitably invaded the composer's creative subconscious. Contextures, as the title implies, was intended to exploit various and varying textures. As the work progressed the correspondence between the fabric of music and the fabric of society became apparent and the allegory grew in significance. So I found myself translating social aspects into musical techniques. Social stratification became a polymetric situation where disparate groups function together. The conflict between the forces of expansion and the forces of containment is expressed through and opposition of tonal fluidity vs. rigidity. This is epitomized in the fourth movement, where the brass is divided into two groups - a muted group, encircled by the unmuted one, which does its utmost to keep the first group within a restricted pitch area. The playful jazzy bits (one between the first and second movements and one at the end of the piece) are simply saying that somehow in this age of turmoil and anxiety ways of having fun are found even though that fun may seem inappropriate. The piece is in five movements, with an interlude between the first and second movements. It is scored for a large orchestra, supplemented by six groups of percussion, including newly created roto-toms (small tunable drums) and some original devices, such as muted gongs and muted vibraphone. There is also an offstage jazz quartet: bass, drums, soprano saxophone and trumpet. The first movement begins with a solo by the first clarinetist which is interrupted by intermittent heckling from his colleagues leading to a configuration of large disparate elements. The interlude of solo violin and snare-drum follows without pause. The second movement, Prestissimo, is a display piece of virtuosity for the entire orchestra. The third movement marks a period of repose and reflection and calls for some expressive solos, particularly by the horn and alto saxophone. The fourth movement opens with a rather lengthy oboe solo, which is threatened by large blocks of sound from the orchestra, against an underlying current of agitated energy in the piano and percussion. This leads to a section in which large orchestral forces oppose one another, ultimately bringing the work to a climax, if not to a denouement. Various thematic elements are strewn all over the orchestra, resulting in the formation of a general haze of sound. A transition leads to the fifth movement without pause. The musical haze is pierced gently by the offstage jazz group as if they were attempting to ignore and even dispel the gloom, but a legato bell sound enters and hovers over both the jazz group and the orchestra, the latter making statements of disquieting finality. Two films were conceived to accompany portions of Contextures. The first done by Herbert Kosowar, was a chemography film (painting directly into the film using dyes and various implements) with fast clips of riot photographs. The second was a film collage made by photographically abstracting details from paintings of Reginald Pollack. The purpose was to invoke a non-specific response - as in music - but at the same time to define the subject matter of the piece. The films were constructed to correspond with certain developments in the piece and in no way affect the independence and musical flow of the piece, having been made after the piece was completed. Contextures: Riots - Decade '60 is dedicated to Mehta, the Southern California Symphony Association and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The news of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King came the afternoon of the premiere, April 4, 1968. That evening's performances, and also the succeeding ones, were dedicated to him and a special dedication to Dr. King has been inserted into he score. All the music that follows the jazz group - beginning with the legato bell sound playing the first 2 notes to We shall overcome constitutes a new ending to commemorate Dr. King's death.

SKU: HL.14025075

ISBN 9780853609421. 8.5x11.75x0.5 inches.

'I responded to this exciting but rather daunting commission by writing a very lively and I hope very accessible piece, which, I decided before I started composing, should be full of tunes. I wrote it in memory of my dear friend Sheila MacCrindle, who died in 1993... although this partita is in her memory, it never occurred to me to make it gloomy or dirge-like; that is not how I remember her.' Richard Rodney Bennett. Commissioned by British Telecommunications plc in co-operation with the Association of British Orchestras 95/96 season. Facsimile Study Score. Duration: c.17 mins. The full score and material is available for hire from Novello.