Fifty-five Songs

SKU: PE.EP73742

ISBN 9790577024127.

Turn ing Fifty is a set of five songs for baritone, cello and harp that set the poetry of Australian poet Judith Wright. The poetic world is private, domestic even, all five texts reflecting on moments of everyday lived experience: breath in the night air, a parent musing on their sleeping child, a significant birthday, all five poems informed with a heightened sensitivity for the transience of life and the cruelty of Time. The musical world is predominantly gentle and intimate, the vocal style often sotto voce, with the cello acting as an instrumental double to the voice, and the harp widening the resonance of both music and text.

Turning Fifty is dedicated with affection to my friend, Chris Spice.

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SKU: CF.H84

ISBN 9781491165539. UPC: 680160924530.

Marce l Tournier (1879–1951) was one of the most important harpist/composers in the history of the harp. Over his long career, he added a significant catalogue of very beautiful works to the harp repertoire. Many of his solo works, almost one hundred, have been consistently in print since they were first published. But in recent years harpist Carl Swanson has discovered a treasure trove of pieces by Tournier heretofore unknown and unpublished. These include the Déchiffrages in this edition, as well as songs set for voice, harp, and string quartet, and ensemble arrangements of some of his most beloved works.All of the works that Carl Swanson found were in manuscript only. With the help of the great harpist Catherine Michel, he has put these pieces into playable form, and they are being published for the very first time. He and Catherine often had to re-notate passages to show clearly how they could be played, adding fingerings and musical nuances, tempos, pedals, and pedal diagrams.Tournier wrote these pieces when he was in his 20s, and before he became the impressionistic composer those familiar with his work know so well. They are written in the late nineteenth-century romantic style that was being taught at that time at the Paris Conservatory. They are beautiful short, intermediate level pieces by a first rate composer, and add much needed repertoire to that level of playing.
Marcel Tournier (1879–1951) was one of the most important harpist/composers in the history of the harp. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory with a first prize in harp in 1899. He also studied composition there and won a second prize in the prestigious Prix de Rome competition, as well as a first prize in the Rossini competition, another major composition competition of the day. From 1912 to 1948 he taught the harp class at the Paris Conservatory. But composition, and almost entirely, composition for the harp, was the main focus of his life. His published works, including many works for solo harp, a few for harp and other instruments, and several songs, number around one hundred pieces.In 2019, while researching Tournier for my edition MARCEL TOURNIER: 10 Pieces for Solo Harp, I discovered that there was a significant list of pieces by this composer that had never been published and were not included on any inventory of his music. Principal on this list were his déchiffrages (pronounced day-she-frahge, like the second syllable in the word garage).The word déchiffrage means sight-reading exercise, and that was their original purpose. Tournier numbered and dated these pieces, with dates ranging from 1900 to 1910, indicating that they were in all likelihood written for Alphonse Hasselmans’ class at the Paris Conservatory. Tournier was probably told how long to make each one, and how difficult. They range in length from two to four pages, with only one in the whole series extending to five, and from thirty to fifty-five measures, with only one extending to eight-five. The level of difficulty for the whole series is intermediate, with some at the easier end, and others at the middle or upper end.We don’t know if they were intended to test students trying to enter the harp class, or if they were used to test students in the class as they played their exams. The fact that they were never published means that students had to not only sight read them, but sight read them in manuscript form!I worked from digital images of the original manuscripts, which are in the private music library of a harpist in France. She had twenty-seven of these pieces, and this edition is the second in a series of three that will publish, for the first time, all of the ones that I have found thus far. The manuscripts themselves consist of little more than notes on the page: no pedals written in, no fingerings, few if any musical nuances and tempo markings, and no clear indication as to which hand plays which notes. These would have been difficult to sight read indeed! My collaborator Catherine Michel and I added musical nuances, fingerings, pedals and pedal diagrams, and tempo indications to put them into their current condition.At the time these were written, Tournier would have been in his twenties, having just graduated from the harp class himself (1899), and might still have been in the composition class. These are the earliest known pieces that he wrote, and they were written at the very beginning of a cultural revolution and upheaval in Paris that was to completely and profoundly alter musical composition. Tournier himself would eventually be caught up in this new way of composing. But not yet.All of the déchiffrages are written in the late romantic style that was being taught at that time at the Paris Conservatory. Each one is built on a clear musical idea, and the variety over the whole series makes them wonderful to listen to as well as to learn. They are also great technical lessons for intermediate level players.The obvious question is: Why didn’t Tournier publish these pieces, and why didn’t he list them on his own inventory of his music? Actually, four of them were published, with small changes, as his collection Four Preludes, Op. 16. These came from the ones that will be in volume three of this series from Carl Fischer. His first large piece, Theme and Variations, was published in 1908, and his two best known and frequently played pieces, Féerie and Au Matin, followed in 1912 and 1913 respectively. We can only speculate because there is so much still unknown about Tournier and about these unpublished pieces. He may have looked at them, fresh out of school as he was, as simply a way to make some quick money. The first several pieces that he did publish are much longer than any of the déchiffrages. So it could be that, because of their shorter length, as well as the earlier musical style that he was moving away from, he chose not to publish any more of them. We may never know the full story. But all these years later, more than a century after they were composed, we can listen to them for their own merits, and not measured against whatever else was going on at the time. The numbers on these pieces are the ones that Tournier assigned to them, and the gaps between some of the numbers suggest that there are perhaps thirty or more of these pieces still to be found, if they still exist. They will, in all likelihood, be found, as these were, in private collections of harp music, not in institutional libraries. We can only hope that more of them will be located in years to come.—Carl SwansonGlossary of French Musical TermsTournier was very precise about how he wanted his pieces played, and carefully communicated this with many musical indications. He used standard Italian words, but also used French words and phrases, and occasionally mixed both together. It is extremely important to observe and understand everything that he put on the page.Here is a list of the French words and phrases found in the pieces in this edition, with their translation.bien chanté well sung, melodiousdécidé firm, resolutediminu peu à peu becoming softer little by littleen diminuant becoming softeren riten. slowing downen se perdant dying awayGaiement gayly, lightlygracieusement gracefully, elegantlyLéger light, quickLent slowmarquez le chant emphasize the melodyModéré at a moderate tempopeu à peu animé more lively, little by littleplus lent slowerRetenu held backsans lenteur without slownesssans retinir without slowing downsec drily, abruptlysoutenu sustained, heldtrès arpegé very arpeggiatedTrès Modéré Very moderate tempoTrès peu retenu slightly held backTrès soutenu very sustainedun peu retenu slightly held back.

SKU: PR.312416820

UPC: 680160050376. 8.5 x 11 inches.

Chen Yi’s most performed and most beloved choral music is a series of 10 Chinese folk songs adapted for S.A.T.B. Chorus (published in 3 volumes: 312-41731, 312-41732, 312-41733). This special version is a setting of the familiar collection, adapted for children’s chorus and strings.
Remembering when I studied composition in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, I learned to sing hundreds of Chinese folk songs collected from more than twenty provinces and fifty ethnic groups, and went to countryside to collect original folk music every year.  I got to know that the folk songs are a mirror of people’s daily lives, their thoughts and sentiments, local customs and manners.  They are sung in regional dialects and use the idioms of everyday speech with their particular intonations, accents and cadences.  This correlation between speech and music distinguishes folk songs of one region from another.  I learned all songs by heart and sang them back in the exams every week.  They melted in my blood and became my natural music language.  The more I walk into the music life,the more I treasure the rich culture I have learned from my homeland. When I became the Composer-in-Residence of Chanticleer and was invited to write the first work for its concert program, as well as another version for its Singing-In-The-Schools program, I decided to introduce A Set of Chinese Folk Songs to my American audiences, and add a new flavor to Chanticleer’srich repertoire.  The work includes ten folk songs, taken from eight provinces (Anhui, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shanxi, Taiwan, Sinkiang, Jiangsu and Guizhou) and five ethnic groups (Han, Hasake, Uighur, Miao and Yi).  I arranged them for choirs (men’s or children’s chorus) with various combinations in voices, to be sung mostly in Chinese, some in English.   From the mysterious mountain songs originally sung in the open air with high and long notes that can carry over great distances, the sweet and delicate melodies of young love compared with nature, the humorous antiphony by little children, and the lively dancing tune by villagers, you may get an idea of various music styles in Chinese folk songs according to geographic, ethnic and linguistic differences, and appreciate the beauty of the Chinese folk music.  The pure choir sound and the sophisticated singing by Chanticleer, in terms of pitches, language and musical expressions, really attract and inspire me to create some more new works in the years to come.  In thisedition of A Set of Chinese Folk Songs for standard SATB mixed choir (with piano rehearsal score), I divided these ten songs into three volumes.  They are Fengyang Song, The Flowing Stream, Guessing, Thinking of My Darling, Mayila, Jasmine Flower, Riding on a Mule, Awariguli, Diu Diu Deng, andMountain Song and Dancing Tune.—Chen Yi.