11/14/2004 |
Lonely Hearts |
Giles Swayne |
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Although often very funny and rather saucy (the fourth song, Verse for a Birthday Card, is a mini-fugue on the words “Some people like sex more than others”), they also have distinctly serious and quite poignant undertones.
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11/11/2020 |
The Spell of the Rose |
Craig Galbraith |
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Thomas Hardy’s poem The Spell of the Rose tells a story of alternating hope and turmoil in a troubled love relationship. Galbraith assigns passages of direct speech to solo voice and narrative passages to the full choir; he also adapts the poem slightly, dovetailing together Hardy’s first and second stanzas.
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09/27/2004 |
Graphic 10 |
Harry Freedman |
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Graphic 10 is part of a series of Freedman’s compositions that pay homage to the visual arts. Like its predecessor Graphic 8, this piece was inspired by Henri Matisse’s 1947 limited-edition art book Jazz, which contained prints of many of the artist’s brightly coloured cut-paper collages of figures in silhouette.
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06/04/2021 |
Death of Shalana |
R. Murray Schafer |
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Shafer composed The Death of Shalana with the intention that it should eventually be sung across a lake, with the four choirs on different shores.
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04/22/2004 |
A Musical Offering |
Omar Daniel |
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Prompted both by the polyphonic nature of Bach’s 'Musical Offering' and the spirit of adventure it evinces, Daniel chose to freely rewrite Frederick’s theme, using fragments and motifs from it.
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04/22/2004 |
A Gift for King Freddie |
Harry Freedman |
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Despite its irreverent title, Freedman’s contribution to Freddy’s Tune is not, this time, a jazz piece. Nor does it contain the original theme given to Bach by King Frederick.
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04/22/2004 |
Freddy's Blend |
Craig Galbraith |
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For the most part, Galbraith uses the notes of King Frederick’s original theme but rearranges them in various ways. Sometimes the notes are played simultaneously; sometimes the tune is transformed by means of such simple techniques as inverting it or playing it backwards.
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04/22/2004 |
Fred and John Were Having Tea (When I Dropped By) |
Melissa Hui |
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Hui uses traditional gestures idiomatic to the piano trio to translate and transform the original theme. Her piece contains virtuosic lines for all instruments, each of which exists alone, and within, a densely contrapuntal texture.
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04/22/2004 |
Freddy's Dead |
James Rolfe |
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Rolfe emploie certaines des méthodes que Bach a lui-même utilisées pour l’Offrande musicale, notamment le renversement, le rétrograde et le renversement du rétrograde. La majeure partie de Freddy’s Dead est dérivée du troisième mouvement de la sonate en trio de l’Offrande musicale, dont Rolfe a accéléré le matériau pour ensuite le contraindre en l’ajustant aux temps forts (clé de fa) et aux temps faibles (clé de sol).
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04/22/2004 |
Vorwissen |
Paul Steenhuisen |
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Steenhuisen grapples in his piece with what he calls the “retrograde/palindrome problem”—the fact that, while music moves forward through time, the concept of a retrograde melody or musical palindrome requires the listener to experience the music moving both forwards and in reverse.
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02/29/2004 |
The Fall into Light |
R. Murray Schafer |
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The Fall into Light is a syncretic work based on texts from a wide variety of sources, mostly gnostic, hermetic, and mystical, but also including writings by Rilke and Nietzsche, along with some reflections of Schafer’s own.
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