Word: cantata
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thanks to the devoted efforts of Claudio Spies, Instructor in Music, a Harvard audience heard the most recent manifestations of Igor Stravinsky's art-last Sunday evening in a Sanders Theatre concert. An instrumental Septet (1953), the Cantata (1952), and Three Songs from Shakespeare (1953) comprised the program. The quality of performance throughout was superb with the exception of William Hess' tenor; and its strained quality was probably attributable to a cold. Both Mr. Hess and mezzo-soprano Eunice Alberts mastered vocal parts of exceptional difficulty. The modulations of mood and expressiveness which Miss Alberts achieved were striking. The precision...
...approach to the Cantata might be made by way of Gide's aphorism (which Stravinsky quotes in his Poetics of Music) that the beauty of classical works is made evident only by virtue of their subjugated romanticism. One must constantly look for those moments which bring to brief light that underlying level of passion and intensity in the music which is continually evinced on the surface by the texts themselves. The diversity of these texts (all late-Medieval English lyrics) pose another challenge for the listener. "Contrast is everywhere," Stravinsky has written, "Similarity is hidden . . . and is found only after...
...Little Boy Lost cantata is such an experiment. Based on Blake's Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence, it was written in 1952 and received its first complete performance at Kirkland House Sunday afternoon. While many of the work's fifteen sections--nine orchestral and six vocal--are quite fine, I could find little unity among them, either musical or dramatic...
This is a serous flaw. An extended composition needs some principle of organization, some inner logic that not only gives the separate sections a raison d'etre, but also builds to a culmination. The cantata's failure to do these things is attributable to several factors. There seemed to be virtually no relation between orchestra and chorus. The vocal sections were usually accompanied by only the piano, and it is significant that the one exception--Robert Gartside's tenor solo with light orchestral accompaniment--was among the high points of the performance. The conducting of Michael Greenebaum kept the difficult...
...Matthen also offered Rameau's cantata Aquilon et Orithie, a trivial but melodious endorsement of rape as a lover's strategem...