scholarly journals FORGOTTEN OFFERINGS: MESSIAEN'S FIRST ORCHESTRAL WORKS

Tempo ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (241) ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Christopher Dingle
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Organ Music ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Organ Works ◽  
Paul Griffiths ◽  
The Church ◽  
Creative Life

The prevailing image of Messiaen in the 1930s is of an organist-composer. One of the first things learnt about him is that he was organist at the church of the Trinité in Paris, having been appointed at the spectacularly young age of 22. As the earliest (though not the first) of Messiaen's works to have been published, the short organ piece Le Banquet céleste (1928) is, quite rightly, the focus of close examination for its precocious assurance. The 1930s were punctuated by the substantial organ cycles La Nativité du Seigneur (1935) and Les Corps glorieux (1939), so it is no surprise to find Felix Aprahamian's article for the fifth edition of Grove describing Messiaen as being a ‘French organist and composer”, and later observing that ‘although it was as a composer of organ music that in pre-war years Messiaen's name first attracted attention, he had already composed a quantity of vocal music’. Fifty years later, Paul Griffiths similarly observed that ‘Organ works featured prominently in his output of the next decade [1930s], but so did music about his family’. According to Harry Halbreich, ‘one can say that before 1940, Messiaen was essentially an organist-composer’, while, Malcolm Hayes concludes his chapter on the early orchestral music in The Messiaen Companion by stating that ‘to judge from the idiom of his works written in the 1930s, he had once seemed destined to spend his creative life within the narrow confines of the organ loft’.

Orchestral Music in Salzburg, 1750–1780

10.31022/c040 ◽  
1994 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Orchestral Works

Although sacred vocal music by Mozart's predecessors and contemporaries in Salzburg has been widely studied, symphonies and other orchestral works by many of these composers remain unknown. Yet the repertory of Salzburg symphonies represents the earliest orchestral music to which Mozart was exposed, and its influence can be seen not only among his earliest symphonies, composed in London, Paris, and Holland in 1764–66, but also among the numerous symphonies and serenades of the 1770s. This edition includes previously unavailable orchestral works by three generations of Salzburg composers: the court violoncellist Caspar Christelli (ca. 1706–66) and the court concertmaster Ferdinand Seidel (ca. 1700–73); vice-Kapellmeister Leopold Mozart (1719–87); and the court violinists Wenzel Helbelt (ca. 1736–69) and Joseph Hafeneder (1746–84).

Kodály's Later Orchestral Music (I)

Tempo ◽  
1950 ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
John S. Weissmann
Keyword(s):  
Choral Music ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Case Investigation ◽  
Orchestral Works

It has often been said that the greatness of an artist depends on his relation to the legacy of previous epochs and on his attitude to the intellectual impulses of his time. His awareness of these factors, conditioned by his response towards the obligations of society, will determine the value of his own contribution.In Kodály's case investigation was hitherto centred mainly on his choral music: it is now proposed to examine his two large-scale, purely orchestral works of comparatively recent date.

Tuning Preferences in Recorded Orchestral Music

1976 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Geringer
Keyword(s):  
Speed Control ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Music Students ◽  
Mean Deviation ◽  
Variable Speed ◽  
Pitch Range ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Pitch Level ◽  
The Mean

The purpose of this study was to investigate tuning preferences regarding recorded orchestral music. Specifically, the study was designed to test subjects' tuning preferences while investigating both the direction and magnitude of mistuning. Sixty randomly selected undergraduate and graduate music students modulated a variable speed tape recorder to preferred pitch levels. Stimuli were recorded excerpts of ten orchestral works, each representative of a different key. Subjects listened to the thirty-second excerpts and turned a linear continuous-speed control knob with a pitch range of approximately an augmented fourth. Data consisted of cent deviation scores relative to A = 440 Hz. Results indicated a marked propensity to tune these excerpts sharper than their recorded pitch level. Subjects' responses indicated the mean cent deviation for sharp tunings to be 149.29 cents (approximately 11/2 semi-tones); when tuning flat, the mean deviation was 88.43 cents.

scholarly journals The Church Struggle and the Confessing Church: An Introduction to Bonhoeffer's Context

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Hockenos
Keyword(s):  
Young Age ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Confessing Church ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Jewish Descent ◽  
The Church

This article traces the German church struggle form 1933 to 1945 with particular emphasis on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role. Although Bonhoeffer’s status in the world today is that of a great theologian and courageous opponent of the Nazi regime, he did not have much of an impact on the direction of the Confessing Church during the church struggle. Bonhoeffer’s striking albeit marginal role in the German church struggle and his inability to affect significantly the direction of the Confessing Church was due to many factors, including his young age, his liberal-democratic politics, his absence from Germany from October 1933 to April 1935, his vacillating and at times contradictory positions on central issues, his radical theological critique of the Nazi state, his friendship with and family ties to Christians of Jewish descent, and ultimately his willingness to risk his life to destroy Hitler’s regime.

Marcus Simaika

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Simaika ◽  
Nevine Henein ◽  
Donald M. Reid
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servant ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Egyptian History ◽  
The Church

Marcus Pasha Simaika (1864–1944) was born to a prominent Coptic family on the eve of the inauguration of the Suez Canal and the British occupation of Egypt. From a young age he developed a passion for Coptic heritage and devoted his life to shedding light on centuries of Christian Egyptian history. His achievement lies in his role as a visionary administrator who used his status to pursue relentlessly his dream of founding a Coptic Museum and preserving endangered monuments. During his lengthy career—first as a civil servant, then as a legislator and member of the Coptic community council—Marcus Simaika maneuvered endlessly between the patriarch and the church hierarchy, the Coptic community council, the British authorities, and the government to bring them together in his fight to save Coptic heritage. This biography draws upon Simaika's unpublished memoirs as well as on other documents and photographs from the Simaika family archive to deepen our understanding of several important themes of modern Egyptian history: the development of Coptic archaeology and heritage studies, Egyptian–British interactions during the colonial and semi-colonial eras, shifting balances in the interaction of clergymen and the lay Coptic community, and the ever-sensitive evolution of relations between Copts and Muslims.

Berthold Goldschmidt: Orchestral Music

Tempo ◽  
1984 ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
Colin Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Real Power ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Cello Concerto ◽  
Orchestral Score ◽  
Clarinet Concerto ◽  
A Performance

With his major work, the opera Beatrice Cenci, unperformed apart from extracts, his other opera Der gewaltige Hahnrei not revived professionally since its highly successful première more than 50 years ago, the Second Quartet having to wait 17 years for its première, the remarkably original Kästner settings of 1931 still awaiting a performance, it is clear that it is not only Berthold Goldschmidt's orchestral works that have been ‘undeservedly neglected’.But of these orchestral works only one can in any sense be said to have entered the repertoire, and that, ironically, is one of Goldschmidt's very earliest works—the Comedy of Errors Overture of 1925. It is his only orchestral score in print. The three concertos—the Cello Concerto (1953), Clarinet Concerto (1954), and Violin Concerto (1951–5)—received a fair number of performances during the 1950'5 (not all of them under Goldschmidt's baton), but have virtually disappeared, along with the inventive Sinfonietta of 1945. Perhaps the least deserving of the obscurity into which they have temporarily fallen are the Ciaconna Sinfonica (1936) and the Mediterranean Songs (1958)—both of them works of real power and substance, and immediately approachable.

Scale and Context: Approaches to the Study of Canadian Migration Patterns in the Nineteenth Century

1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-303
Author(s):  
Randy William Widdis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Setting ◽  
Organ Music ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Saturday Afternoon ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Bell

Picture, if you will, a little Methodist church in a rural setting. The year is 1890. It is the first day in January. Saturday afternoon. The church bell peals a welcome to family and friends celebrating the marriage of John Albert Salsbury and Alberta Effa Edgar. Some arrive on foot and others in horse-drawn vehicles. The horses are tied to the hitching-post and left to munch oats from their feed bags.The people enter the church, and the minister greets each by name. A good turnout. Camden East is a close-knit community, and yet the preacher notes sadly that the congregation is getting smaller every year. Soft organ music plays as the people take their places. Then all becomes quiet: a short lull before the Wedding March begins. Everyone turns around to look at the smiling bride being led down the aisle by her proud father.

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