SKU: HL.354338

ISBN 9781705107669. UPC: 840126936964. 9.0x12.0x0.109 inches.

Richard Wilson was born in Cleveland on May 15, 1941. He studied piano with Roslyn Pettibone, Egbert Fischer, and Leonard Shure, andcello with Robert Ripley and Ernst Silberstein. After beginning composition studies with Roslyn Pettibone and Howard Whittaker, he went on in 1959 to Harvard, studying with Randall Thompson, G.W. Woodworth, and principally with Robert Moevs, and graduating in 1963 magna cum laude. Awarded the Frank Huntington Beebe Award for study abroad, he continued studying piano with Friedrich Wührer in Munich, and composition, again with Moevs, in Rome, where he also gave piano recitals. Wilson joined the faculty of Vassar College in 1966. He was appointed to the Mary Conover Mellon Professorship of Music there in 1988, and he has served three times as chairman of the Department of Music. Wilson has been commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the American Symphony, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, and the Library of Congress. His works have been heard in such American musical centers as New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Cleveland, and Los Angeles and at the Aspen Music Festival, but also in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, Milan, Amsterdam, Graz, Leningrad, Stockholm, Tokyo, Bogota, and a number of Australian cities. The recipient in 1992 of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he was awarded the Elise L. Stoeger Prize of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 1994, the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004, and has served as composer in residence with the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. Wilson has been praised by 21st Century Music as a “splendidly talented and highly accomplished composer whose music rewards seeking out” and by the New York Sun as “possessed of a hard-won idiom that has grown and developed over the years into a probing blend of wit, classic form, modern harmony, and impressionistic color.” Writing in the New Yorker, Andrew Porter called his String Quartet No. 3 a “richly wrought and unusual composition,” while the New York Times called it “a work of substance and expressivity ... [that] merits a place in the active repertory.”.

SKU: BT.MUSM570364459

English.

Robert Saxton 's Hortus Musicae , Book 1 was commissioned by Ian Richie for the 2013 City of London Festival with funds provided by the John S. Cohen Foundation. The first performance was given by Clare Hammond on June 24th 2013 at the church of St Mary Le Bow. The title, less 'literal' in Latin than in the vernacular, refers to the idea of an allegorical/metaphysical garden (reference to a 'real', or existing, garden might be implied by Hortus Musicus) with various facets. The titles of the individual pieces/movements, with their respective garden image, are as follows: 1) Hortus Somniorum: a fleeting vision of a 'magical' garden 2) Hortus Temporis: a reflection of/on the floralclock described by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) in his [metaphysical] poem The Garden: How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers! 3) Hortus Cantus: A garden in which nature 'sings' (praises), in the manner of a 'chorale prelude' and ending with the cantus firmus transformed into bells. 4) Hortus Infinitatis: A meditative/formal garden representing Time suspended, in the form of a palindromic prolation canon combined with a harmonic ground (chaconne). 5) Saltatio Hortensis: A (summer) garden of dancing, celebratory nature. Its essence (and that of the entire cycle, both metaphorically and structurally/formally) is summed up in words spoken by Miranda in WH Auden's 1944 Tempest [Shakespeare]-inspired poem The Sea And The Mirror; So, to remember our changing garden, we Are linked as children in a circle dancing. Duration: 15 minutes.