Harpsichord

SKU: OT.21125

Composed by Daniel Akiva. 5 short pieces for harpsichord/cembalo. Classical. Score. OR-TAV Music Publications #21125. Published by OR-TAV Music Publications (OT.21125).

ISBN 9789655051117. 8.27 x 11.69 inches.

The five short movements for solo cembalo are brief, personal prayers that depict how the subject manages a range of feelings and emotions. The miniatures each represent a different emotional state: reflection, searching, meditation, agitation, and resolution. Each is a small-scale representation of a grand, wide-ranging prayer of supplication.
As a composer, performer, and researcher of early music, writing for cembalo allows me not only to express my special connection to the instrument and the period in which it flourished, but also to present its contemporary dimensions as a rich and versatile instrument.
The piece was composed at the request of Hagai Yodan, who performs it with great skill.
Daniel Akiva is a composer, performer, and educator whose performances on guitar and lute have won great acclaim. Mr. Akiva graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem in 1981, where he studied classical guitar with Haim Asulin and composition with Haim Alexander. In 1987 he completed his studies at the Geneva Conservatorium in Switzerland where he studied lute with Jonathon Rubin and composition with Jean Ballisa. For many years, he headed the Music Department at the WIZO High School for the Arts in Haifa, which he founded in 1986, and served as the Artistic Director of the Guitar Gems Festival from 2006-2019. As part of his work at WIZO High School, he has developed a method for teaching free improvisation that has been incorporated into the music program at the school.
Mr. Akiva has appeared in concert as a guitarist and lutist and given master classes in Israel, Europe, Russia, the United States, and Latin America. Daniel Akiva’s compositional output includes works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choir, voice and guitar, piano, and chamber orchestra. His works have been recorded on twelve CDs, the latest of which, Malchut, was issued by OR-TAV in 2014.
A native of Haifa whose family has lived in Israel for over five hundred years, he was steeped in the Sephardic (Jewish-Spanish) tradition from his youth. Much of his compositional output has been devoted to a dialogue with the music of the Sephardic Jews. Daniel Akiva has also maintained a creative dialogue over many years with the poets and writers Amnon Shamash, Rivka Miriam, and Avner Peretz.

Chamber Music Harpsichord

SKU: PR.110418390

Composed by Eric Ewazen. Full score. 11 pages. Duration 10 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #110-41839. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.110418390).

ISBN 9781491134603. UPC: 680160685158.

Eric Ewazen’s THREE INVENTIONS were inspired by Bach’s Two-part Inventions, yet they sound thoroughly like Ewazen. Composed for harpsichord (with a piano adaptation following later), Ewazen’s inventions maintain a pure “one note per hand” texture until their final chord, with strong-but-free imitative counterpoint between the two voices. While Ewazen may be best known for his wind music, he is a pianist himself, and composers’ works for their own instrument are a direct insight into how they write for their own performances. The piano adaptation of THREE INVENTIONS is also available as a separate publication.
THREE INVENTIONS was written for my dear friend Maria Rojas, who premiered the work on a faculty recital at Juilliard. Maria is both a pianist and a harpsichordist, and I first met her when she gave a demonstration of the harpsichord for the students in my theory classes.I’ve always been captivated by Bach’s series of Two-Part and Three-Part Inventions. With the Two-Part Inventions, I’m amazed how Bach could create such wonderful intricacy and counterpoint with only two voices. I consequently modeled my inventions after the counterpoint of Bach, involving the traditional contrapuntal devices he used: imitation, development, harmonic and modal shifts, fragmentation, and sequence, essentially creating a dialog between two completely equal voices conversing with each other!Bach wrote 15 Two-Part Inventions (as well as 15 Three-Part Inventions, not to mention the 48 preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier!), and that’s just the start of his voluminous repertoire for the keyboard! I was happy just to write three!!!Each of my inventions has a distinctive mood. The first is in a relaxed, yet cheerful C Major tonality (as a nod to Bach’s Invention No. 1 in C Major); the second is heartfelt and lyrical; and the third invention (involving a Gigue rhythm in the compound meter of 12/8) is energetic, and full of life and spontaneity. The third is primarily in a minor tonality, resulting in a feeling of drama, bringing the THREE INVENTIONS to an exciting finale.

Composed by Gottlieb Muffat. Editio princeps based on sources of the Berlin Sing- Akademie and the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek. Breitkopf and Haertel #EB 9325. Published by Breitkopf and Haertel