SKU: HL.50603585
ISBN 9781705112649. UPC: 840126941432. 8.25x11.75x0.25 inches.
This work for soprano and string quartet was premiered at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on the 18th November 2019 by Carola Darwin and the Gildas Quartet. Commissioned by Carola Darwin with funds from Arts Council England, the Ambache Charitable Trust and the RVW Trust, this seven-song cycle sets texts by Walter Deverell (1827-1854) and the museum's three 2016 Poets-in-Residence: John Barnie, Steven Matthews and Kelley Swain. The title is taken from Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
SKU: HL.14040983
French.
The Modal Column is a cycle of paired pieces for piano, starting from the classical structure- prelude-fugue - used by Bach in Das wohltemperierte Klavier. The modes that are being used have a relatively simple octavizing structure, hence an almost infinite variety of combinations that can generate a large number of pieces, impossible to exhaust by a composer. Therein lies the idea of a column, in the sense given by Brancusi, i.e. an endless succession of modules.
In the vision of the author, the mechanism of the mode is a secondary (ancillary) aspect, the primary goal is deciphering the ethos incorporated in it.
The prelude-fugue structure hypostatizesthe musical discourse at the two possible extremes. free-constructed. While Romanian music rules in free areas, like any old music with an (especially oral) tradition, the constructed pieces start from Dutch (Flemish) or Venetian polyphony, which precedes the idea of fugue, understood as a technology of the movement (dynamics) of sound, after the models of Giovanni Gabrieli or Ockeghem.
The Modal Column is first of all the presentation of a melodic world but, as the subtitle indicates, also an investigation into the ethos of Romanian music. The forms in which the pieces are thought are simple, non-ostentatious, the whole cycle being in fact a musical workshop, whose better parts may be worth including in ampler works. Before the succinct description of the six couples in Books I and II, a few observations, necessary from a musicological point of view:
SKU: BR.EB-9240
ISBN 9790004185407. 9 x 12 inches.
Belcanto is a term for the Italian art of singing which took its development from the richly ornamented solo vocalism of the early 17th century (nobile maniera di cantare) and dominated European operatic singing until the first half of the 19th century. Complete control over the voice meant not only legato and messa di voce, but also appoggiatura and portamento, as well as virtuoso ornamentation by means of coloratura (canto fiorito). This development towards utmost virtuosity, emulating instrumental playing techniques, led to a mannered, artificial style on the one hand, but on the other also emphasized the physical aspects of interpretation (castrati were considered the ideal belcanto singers). And today? In his essay The Grain of the Voice, Roland Barthes writes: The grain is the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes and the limb as it performs. Initially, he refers to the friction between language and voice in singing, but then transfers his thoughts to the physicality of instrumental music. In this spirit, I went in search of beautiful singing, a beauty which perhaps results in the very place where the grain, the roughness, meaning also physical resistance, are not smoothed over. The oboe seemed very suitable to me for singing with such a physical expressivity, as a very unruly instrument! The backbone of my piece is one single, quasi endless melodic line, consisting of intervals that are constantly pulled apart and contracted again (breathing). Many different actions attach themselves to these notes: coloratura, trills, chords (multiphonics), double flageolets. However, there are not only sound types, but also impulses, repetitions, rhythmic figures and other elements: composed elements of belcanto. In the opera tradition described above, these were improvised ornaments or additions; here they become composed figures which originate with the notes of the melody, but also pull on them, bend them, and charge them with physicality. (Jorg Birkenkotter).
