Word: cantatas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...twelve-movement cantata is distinguished by a close welding of sound to thought. Thus the line "Born in this century, tempered by war" calls forth a burst of clanging dissonance, in contrast to the exalted harmonies of the words "Disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage." Occasionally, the attempt to link music and words-as in a sudden intrusion of primitive drumbeats for the phrase "To those peoples in the huts and villages"-upsets the continuity. But for the most part, it is tightly knit and moving. Says Composer Danburg: "It is strictly nonpartisan...
Technique & Feeling. Stravinsky's new cantata. A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer, was a far more impressive achieve ment. Only 15 minutes long, it was scored for alto, tenor, speaker, chorus and full orchestra. Yet it had so lean a texture that virtually every detail was visible - as if a chamber group were playing. The piece was remarkable not only for its intensity and melodic freedom but for the intricacy and beauty of the vocal writing, particularly in the moving duet of alto and tenor in the Prayer, and in the Narrative about the stoning of St. Stephen...
...honorary degree to a , gray-haired, 70-year-old woman. citation to Nadia Boulanger read: half a century of teaching her influence has pervaded the musical life of two continents." Just years earlier, a young French , Nadia Boulanger, received the second Prix de Rome in musical composition for a cantata called 'La .' In the intervening decades, Nadia Boulanger studied, worked, and . And in spite of her preference for anonymity, she achieved the fame based essentially on excellence as a teacher: with Ernst Bloch Paul Hindemith she shares the of most influential music teacher the century...
...first student: her sister, Lili Boulanger. As a teacher, she succeeded. In 1913 Lili Boulanger won the Grand Prix de Rome in composition, the first woman ever to do so. Characteristically, at the competition in the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, sister Nadia accompanied the winning cantata. Nadia thought her sister's talent to be greater than her own. But unhappily, Lili died in 1918 at the age of 24. The austere Grove's Dictionary, rarely moved to rhapsody, commented that her death marked the loss of a "musical genius...
...outstanding works in a program of nothing but major works came first and last. Bach's Cantata 161, 'Komm, du susse Todesstunde' (1715) matched the efficiency of Mlle. Boulanger's conducting with its extreme economy of harmonic movement and accompaniment. Under her restraint, the ensemble of some twenty singers and twenty instrumentalists managed to sound personal, even intimate. Tenor Karl Dan Sorenson filled the museum court-yard with his clear and accurate voice; in her second solo, Contralto Jenneke Barton did the same...