Word: biss
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...final work of the evening was Gregory Biss's String Quartet. The string quarter provides the advantage of lucidity, rapid harmonic and dynamic change, absolute audibility and visibility, manageable balance, tremendous possibilities for sheer sounds, and maximum polyphonic delineation. The Biss Quarter demonstrated both the advantages and potential tediousness of the mercurial technician. Biss's combination of strategies included collegno, microtonesia, and heroic written out glissandi. The work 's primary fault was monotony of radical techniques. The cumulative effect--if that is a proper term since it is not clear since it is not cleat whether the work is sequential...
...Gregory Biss will conduct the Bach Society Orchestra in its second concert of the year at 8:30 p.m. tonight in Paine Hall. The program will include works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Ruggles...
...Biss will have the Bach Society again next year. The experience he has gained, combined with an early campaign for more and better strings earlier in the season, will assure another fine year...
...sharp contrast to Scarlatti's simplicity were the shifting moods of Gabriel Faure's Pellas and Melisande, composed as incidental music to the Maeterlinck dramatic poem. Biss achieved a good variety of sonorities in the four richly orchestrated movements. In the Prelude the orchestra sounded rich and as one unit; at other times, as in the second movement, subdued violins contrasted sharply with pizzicati in the celli and wood-wind solos. The dance-like quality attained in the third movement was excellent. The music lost direction, however, in the Marche Funebre, when Biss had to struggle to keep the dotted...
...movement. In the second, the sole twelve-tone piece, pizzicato strings, harp and per cussion executed difficult rhythms gracefully if not perfectly. At the end of the third piece, a dirge with an ostinato bass, the orchestra turned into a chorus and sang the final chord. Happily, Biss repeated the performance for an amused audience...