SKU: PR.11641867S

UPC: 680160683208.

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.50243771

UPC: 884088157876. 9.0x12.0x0.041 inches.

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.

SKU: HL.14025900

0.453 inches.

Herrmann wanted to write a musical portrait of his friend and colleague Alfred Hitchcok, so choose motifs from the movie The Trouble With Harry, one of Hitchcock's more personal and humorous films. This single-movement work for Orchestra employs some of the more familiar elements of Herrmann's compositional style: short musical phrases repeated and then repeated again in other positions, sharp use of dynamics among them. From the first note, the creepiness begins.Bernard Herrmann was among the very greatest of all composers of music for cinema and there are many who avow that he was the greatest of all. A very short list of the films for which this award-winning composercreated soundtracks includes Citizen Kane, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, Jason and Argonauts, Fahrenheit 451, Obsession and Taxi Driver. He had a long and fertile association with Alfred Hitchcock during the most productive period of Hitchcock's career and with Orson Welles from the time of the Mercury Theatre on the Air. In addition to his conducting and composing work for the entertainment world, Herrmann wrote concert pieces, including a symphony, opera and cantata.

SKU: HL.14042598

ISBN 9788759827482.

Programme Note Poul Ruders WIND-DRUMMING WIND-DRUMMING was written in 1979 on a commission from The Danish Percussion Ensemble. The piece is a clash of two kinds of sound-associations, the mystic, exotic impact of Latin-American drumming, and the more well dressed reputation of Western concert-instruments, in this case a wind-quintet (w. electric flute). The two instrumental camps either melt into one soft humming ritual or are split wide apart, the winds tearing their way through the undergrowth of rainforest-drumming. There is more than one way of getting on to WIND-DRUMMING: obviously it is about the confrontation of two incongruent ways of living, a lament on the damage done tothe tropical rainforests of the world by modern civilisation. One can hear it plainly as a direct rhythm-show, a downright number or a joyous homage to the most exiting kind of folkloristic music at all: the carnal spell of the Brazilian Samba. Poul Ruders.

SKU: HL.14033079

ISBN 9788759858332. Danish.

There were wild oatsAnd the soil was blackBut sparkledWhen the sun was outThe air sharp in the nostrilsHard to defineSomewhere between knife and coal andAcid and that special light and sweetWhiteness thornbushes exhaleIt was nothing specialBecause everything was special...Thus the opening line of the poem TERRAINS VAGUES by Klaus Rifbjerg, the Danish Poet. I chose to adopt this title for my orchestral work, because of its closeness in associations: an indeterminable, often polarized, state of rhythmic and tonal ambiguity.The expression seems created by the Franch author, Victor Hugo:And here lies the fascination: in the kinds of terrains vagues, which are simultaniously bizarre and ugly, as if created by two alien species of nature. To watch the suburb is like observing and amphibium: trees vanish, roofs appear, grass vanish, cobble stones appear, ploughing fields vanish, shops appear, beaten tracks vanish - passions appear; the murmur of Nature Divine ends, the noise of Mankind takes over. (Victor Hugo)Still, the atmosphere as well as the material of TERRAINS VAGUES have its origin, in my SYMPHONY NO. 6 (1999), the last minute of which, cut up rough, appears as the start of my new work. The music of TERRAINS VAGUES subdivides itself, without breaks, into three sections, or shades:I: TERRAINS - II: VAGUES (Waves) III: TERRAINS VAGUES.Per Norgard, March 2001.