BELGIUM
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Introduction
As a musical country, Belgium has been dominated
by its neighbours, Germany and France, and particularly the
latter: for two centuries Belgium composers have studied and
worked in Paris. One aspect of that connection has been the
tradition of organ music and composition, and Belgium's best
known composer, César Franck (1822-1890), exemplified both
traditions, spending almost his entire adult life in France
and becoming a famous organist and professor of the organ
at the Paris Conservatoire. Another Belgium tradition has
been of virtuoso performers, notably of the violin, and the
most famous of these in the 19th century was Henri Vieuxtemps
(1820-1881), composer of well-known display concertos as well
as a soloist. An indigenous and quite prolific late 19th-century
opera tradition arose, represented by such composers as François
Gevaert (1828-1908), now best remembered for his interest
in old music, and Fernand Le Borne (1862-1929).
The tradition of performer-composer was taken
into the 20th century by one of the outstanding violinists
of any age, Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), and his brother
the pianist, conductor and composer Théo Ysaÿe (1865-1918).
Eugène Ysaÿe's only opera was in the Walloon dialect, reflecting
the nationalistic interests of the period; the chief exponents
of Flemish nationalism, building on the lead of Peter Benoit
(1834-1901), were Jan Blockx (1851-1912) who concentrated
on operas and vocal music in the Flemish language, and Flor
Alpaerts (1876-1954).
The major Belgium composer of the first part
of the 20th century was Joseph Jongen (1873-1953),
who worked initially in the idiom of his teacher Franck, absorbed
developing trends throughout his life, including French Impressionism
and suggestions of atonality; his brother Léon Jongen (1884-1969)
was also a composer and pianist. Paul Gilson (1865-1942) was
influenced by the Russian nationalists, and invoked some of
their rich orchestral colour, notably in his best known orchestral
work, La Mer (1892); he became a prominent teacher
who numbered many of the next generation of Belgian composers
among his pupils. Jean Absil (1893-1974) developed an atonal
and polytonal style, initially in traditional forms, including
three symphonies, and then using folk music, especially Bulgarian
and Rumanian influences; among his large output is a huge
radio opera, Peter Breughel the Elder (1950). Also
prominent were a group of composers who formed the group `Synthétiste'
in the 1920s, modelled on the French `Les Six', and including
Marcel Poot (born 1901). The tradition of organ and church
music was continued by Flor Peeters (born 1903).
The major figure of the second half of the
century has been Henri Pousseur (born 1929), who was
an important figure in the avant-garde movement, as, in the
early 1950s, was Karl Goeyvaerts (born 1923), who was one
of the earliest composers to see the possibilities, following
Webern, of serialism (`total serialism'), notably
in his Sonata for Two Pianos (1951). Their lead has
been followed by Philippe Boesmans (born 1936),
who with Pousseur established the Musical Research Centre
of Wallonie in 1971, and Pierre Bartholomée (born 1937), director
of the ensemble `Musiques Nouvelles', who has been interested
in micro-tones and whose unusual Tombeau de Marin Marais,
for members of the ensemble using baroque instruments, divides
the octave in 21 equal parts.
Belgian Music Information Centre:
Centre Belge de Documentation Musicale
Rue d'Arlon 75-77
B-1040 Bruxelles
Belgium
tel: +32 02 2309437
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BOESMANS
JONGEN
POUSSEUR
YSAŸE
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BOESMANS
Philippe
born 17th May 1936 at Tongeren
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Boesmans is an interesting and largely self-taught
composer who deserves to be better known outside Belgium.
The foundation of his idiom is post-Webern serialism, evident
in his piano music (Étude I for piano, 1963, Sonance
I for two pianos, 1964, and Sonance II for three
pianos, 1967), but he developed a style of loose serialism
in which the often lyrical linear flow is contrasted with,
and sometimes interrupted by, vertical blocks of ideas.
The atmospheric, dreamy qualities of this style
are exemplified in Conversations (1980) for orchestra,
that uses repetitive rhythmic and melodic patterns, with small
intervals, set against tone-clusters in a variation form.
The effect is of two related series of events happening at
a different pace: small detailed points of pattern and event,
often from a single instrument, against the larger-hewn blocks
of a slowly developing backdrop, in a kind of serial Impressionism.
The Violin Concerto (1979) is an exceptionally fine
work, in part because of the technique of its construction.
The feel of different simultaneous layers is present, the
orchestra often providing a back-projection of sound-in-depth
against the isolated solo part, continuity being maintained
by the transformation of material in the orchestra that had
been initiated by the soloist, a technique used in other Boesmans
concertante works (such as Eléments-Extensions (1976)
for piano and chamber orchestra). The transformation from
the focus on almost chamber-like interaction to the sudden
opening out of the sound-scape can be rapid, as in an unusual
passage in the violin concerto where the soloist has agitated
repeated patterns intertwining with similar patterns of solo
strings in the orchestra in an almost obsessive effect: gradually
the sound-scape enlarges as a background layer comes into
focus and percussive interjections add to the tension. As
the entire work seems to grow in scale the solo part, almost
unnoticed, has converted the solo material into a lyrical
line. Boesmans also uses a technique of what he calls `harmonic
travels', in which a basic 12-tone row is played several times,
becoming enlarged until it takes on chromatic and then diatonic
hues. The solo virtuosity was inspired by the Liège violin
tradition of Vieuxtemps and Ysaÿe, from rapid passage
work to a lyricism requiring richness of tone, and there are
also humorous touches (which Boesmans has called `trompe l'oreille',
or misleading the hearing), as in the sense of play sometimes
observable in the solo part, or in an on-stage trumpet muddling
up with an off-stage trumpet. With its ability to move swiftly
into different focuses, this violin concerto is an impressive
expressive work, its main moods being nervous agitation and
lyricism, with the orchestra, when not infected with that
disquiet, acting as an arbitrator for the solo line to move
from one to the other, with tranquillity reached in the final
pages.
The opera La passion de Gilles (1983)
is a dark story of perversion, malice, and child abuse, set
in the 15th century, acting as a commentary on the present
day. Its colours are dark, intense, and sparse, in keeping
with the subject; the orchestra is often used in distinct
colour groups or highlighting single instruments, using a
wide range of expressive effects and harmonic milieu ranging
from the near tonal to tone-clusters. Boesmans's sense of
more than one focus is here largely divided between the orchestra
and the vocal lines (rather than within the orchestra itself).
The former (at points joined by a distant children's choir)
acts as a continual commentator, almost another protagonist,
and the vocal lines emerge as foreground against this backdrop,
with the French tradition of following the lyrical flow of
speech that looks back to Ravel and beyond. The orchestral
writing is often tortured, interjectory, a sense of the vertical
against the horizontal vocal lines, and the overall effect
is powerful and harrowing, the dreaming of earlier works turned
into nightmare, if without the immediate impact of such works
as the Violin Concerto.
His more recent works include the fine Trakl-Lieder
(1986-1987, revised 1989) for soprano and orchestra, setting
seven Trakl poems of darker, autumnal emotions suffused with
nature imagery. The song-cycle is in the tradition of Mahler
and Berg, using a large orchestra, with off-stage effects
that continue Boesman's mastery of layered instrumental sounds.
The passionate vocal lines are set against a wide range of
orchestral colours and tones; at times, Boesmans seems to
counter the surface mood of a poem until one realizes that
he has penetrated a deeper layer. The opening poem is repeated
at the end as an unusual cyclical device. Very different in
feel are the two-movement String Quartet (1989, revised
1990) and Surfing (1990) for viola and instrumental
ensemble, both of which use extra-musical sources (in the
case of the string-quartet, driving) as the inspiration for
the structure, and which have a nervous, edgy energy.
Boesmans has been a producer for Belgian Radio,
and collaborated with Henri Pousseur in founding the
Musical Research Centre of Wallonie in 1971.
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works include:
- piano concerto; violin concerto; Corrélations
for clarinet and 2 ensembles; Doublures for harp, piano,
percussion and 4 ensembles; Eléments-Extensions for
piano and small orch.; Explosives for harp and ensemble;
Multiples for 2 pianos and orch.; Ring for electric
organ and ensemble; Surfing for viola and orch.
- Conversations, Intervalles I
and II and Verticles for orch.; Impromptu
for 23 instruments
- Intrusions for guitar; string quartet;
Sur mi for 2 pianos, electric organ and percussion;
La résurrection alterée for wind quintet
- Cadenza, Étude I for piano;
Fanfare I for 2 pianos, one player; Sonance I
for 2 pianos; Sonance II for 3 pianos
- Fanfare II and Ricercar sconvolto
for organ
- Intervalles III for mezzo-soprano
and orch.; Trakl-Lieder for soprano and orch.; Upon
la mi for soprano, horn, ensemble and electronics;
- music theatre Attitudes for singer,
actors, two pianos, synthesizer and percussion; opera La
passion de Gilles
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recommended works:
Conversations (1980) for orchestra
opera La passion de Gilles (1983)
Violin Concerto (1979)
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JONGEN Joseph Marie
Alphonse Nicholas
born 14th December 1873 at Liège
died 12th July 1953 at Sart-lez-Spa
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The best known Belgian composer of his time,
Joseph Jongen is not to be confused with his brother Léon
(1884-1969), also a composer and also a winner of the Prix
de Rome; Joseph became known in England when he lived there
during the First World War, founding his own piano quartet.
A self-critical composer, he withdraw 104 of his 241 of his
works towards the end of his life. Initially influenced by
César Franck and then the German post-romantics, his music
reflects his awareness of contemporary trends, eventually
absorbing the French Impressionists and adding touches of
atonality, with the continuity of a happy lyricism.
Although perhaps most at home in chamber works,
notably the hazy beauty of the String Quartet No.2
op.50 (1916) and the polyphony of the Rhapsody for
piano and wind quintet op.70 (1922), influenced by Impressionism,
his music is now probably more likely to be encountered in
organ recitals. A child prodigy, he showed an early aptitude
for organ playing, and especially the French art of organ
improvisation, and his own organ music, while not extensive,
is gratifying both to play and hear, the best known probably
being the menuet-scherzo Chant de Mai op.53 (1917).
Two of his orchestral pieces may occasionally be heard, the
popular Fantaisie sur deux noëls populaires wallons
op.24 (1902) for orchestra, based on two Walloon Christmas
carols, and more especially the intense Symphonie concertante
op.81 (1926) for organ and orchestra, his best known work.
In four movements, it includes virtuoso writing for the soloist,
some dramatic moments, an atmospheric slow movement using
a solemn hymn-like theme, and an exciting final toccata; the
second movement is founded on quick changes of rhythm, and
in the work there are unobtrusive atonal elements.
Jongen conducted the Concert Spirituels, specializing
in religious music and including contemporary works, from
1920-1925. He was professor at the Conservatoire royal of
Liège (1903-1914), and professor at (appointed 1920) and then
Director of the Conservatoire royal of Brussels (1925-1939).
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works include:
- symphony
- cello concerto; harp concerto; piano concerto;
violin concerto; Fantasie rhapsodique for cello and
orch.; Alleluia and Symphonie concertante for
organ and orch.; Hymn for organ and strings; Symphonic
Piece for piano and orch.; Allegro appassionato
and Suite for viola and orch.; Poème héroïque,
Second poème and Symphonic Adagio for violin
and orch.; Epithalame et scherzo for 3 violins and
orch.
- Fantaisie sur deux noëls populaires wallons,
Impressions d'Ardennes, Lalla-Roukh, Overture
de fête, Passacaglia et gigue, Prélude élègiaque
et scherzo, Tableaux pittoresques, Troisième
suite dans le style ancien, Tryptique and other
works for orch.
- cello sonata; Humoresque for cello
and organ; Concertino and Moto perpetuo for
cello and piano; flute sonata; 2 violin sonatas; string trio;
piano trio; trio for piano, violin and viola; Deux pièces
en trio for flute, cello and harp; Elégie for 4
flutes; saxophone quartet; 3 string quartets; Prelude and
Chaconne for string quartet; piano quartet; Concertino
and Two Pieces for wind quintet; Concert à cinq
for violin, viola, cello, flute and harp; Rhapsody
for piano and wind quintet
- Crépuscule au lac Ogwen, Little
Prelude, Suite en forme de sonate, Ten Pieces,
Two Concert Studies, Third Concert Study and
other works for piano;
- Chant de Mai, Sonata heroïca,
Two Pieces and other works for organ
- Six Songs for voice and piano; cantata
Hymne à la Meuse; Chant pastoral for women's
chorus and piano or orch.; La Légende de St.Nicolas
for children's choir and piano or orch.; Mass for unaccompanied
chorus and other vocal works
- ballet S'Arka
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recommended works:
Symphonie Concertante op.81 for organ
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POUSSEUR Henri
Léon Marie
born 23rd June 1929 at Malmédy
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Henri Pousseur has been the leading exponent
of avant-garde ideas in Belgium, and has achieved a wide prominence
abroad, after studying with Boulez, Stockhausen
and Berio, and thus gaining experience of three facets
of that movement. Throughout his career, he has seen a correspondence
between complex musical structures and complex social structures,
and that solutions to the latter may be mirrored in solutions
to the former.
The early works of a large and eclectic output
show echoes of Webern (the canonic effects of
the pre-serial, slow-moving and ruminating Sept versets
des Psaumes de la Pénitance, 1950, for four-part mixed
chorus or the Quintet in Memory of Anton Webern, 1955),
and the influence of his meeting with Boulez in 1951 (the
serial and pointillist Trois Chants Sacrés, 1951).
He saw in the precision of total serialism an abstraction
of sounds akin to aleatory effects, and so developed chance
elements in his own work, such as Scambi (1957), in
which the sixteen pre-recorded tape sections can be put together
in any order, Mobile for Two Pianos (1957-1958) and
Répons for seven instrumentalists, who each
take various roles (such as conductor) according to set rules
in different sections, with an actor coordinating the events
in a second version (1965).
Increasingly Pousseur used extra-musical materials
as source, as in the children's poems using old Liège street-names
in the electronic Trois visages de Liège, which includes
an unexpected diatonic passage among sounds influenced by
the musique-concrète works of Schaeffer and
Henry (it was commissioned for a son-et-lumière; the
Liège authorities found the music too modern, and instead
tried passages of Debussy and Bach before settling
on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue). His major work
of the sixties, using the concept of mobile forms (alterations
in such parameters as order of self-contained structures within
the overall cast) and chance elements, was the opera Votre
Faust, for five actors, singers, and twelve on-stage instrumentalists,
written in collaboration with the writer Michel Butor between
1960 and 1967. The story is of a composer commissioned to
write a new opera with all the money and resources he needs
on the condition that it has a Faust theme. His cabaret waitress
girlfriend tries to get him away from this commission, against
the opposition of the theatre director. The audience have
an important and involved role to play: they must at one point
decide whether the composer must follow his girlfriend or
the theatre director, and the opera proceeds accordingly,
though through the manipulation of other audience choices
it is steered to similar ends. A major concept in the opera
is a duality: the unification and the continuity of the Western
musical tradition on the one hand, and the potential spin-offs
in various directions (including earlier musics) from the
application of serial principles on the other. Earlier musics
turn up as objets trouvées, paralleling similar developments
in the visual arts. Thus in one section, a puppet-play on
the Faust legend (`La chevauchée fantastique'), there are
four possible (taped) background versions: one with Gounod's
Faust, one with Mozart's Don Giovanni,
one with snatches showing the progression of 19th-century
harmony, and one with early church music. Another (instrumental)
section, `Prologue dans le ciel', uses series taken from Schoenberg,
Webern, Stravinsky, Boulez,
Stockhausen and Pousseur himself, the Webern
being manipulated into quasi-tonal and whole-tone transformations.
Anticipating Stockhausen, a number of sections of the
opera can be taken in their own right as concert works, modified
(and sometimes with different chance elements) to suit the
situation. Thus Miroir de Votre Faust (1964-1965) uses
in modified form three of the opera sections, `Le tarot d'Henri'
for piano, `La chevauchée fantastique' for soprano ad.lib.
and piano, and `Souvenirs d'une marionette' (which combines
some elements of both the previous two) for piano. There is
also an associated taped version that includes other voices,
instrumentalists, and electronics, Jeu de miroirs de Votre
Faust (1967). Other self contained concert works include
Echoes de Votre Faust in two variants (1967 and 1969),
the first for cello, the second for mezzo-soprano, piano and
cello, Ombres de Votre Faust for tape, and Fresques
de Votre Faust for organ, violin, and two amplified instruments.
An illustration of Pousseur's parallel between complex musical
structures and complex social structures is provided by Jeu
de miroirs de Votre Faust, where in `Le Tarot d'Henri'
(a series of separate sheets of score which, in the concert
version, can be played in any order) the variety of musical
objets trouvées range from the tonal to the Webernesque,
in order to show the central character's `quest for a homogeneous,
harmonic field of action'. In Jeu de miroirs de Votre Faust,
the form in which the work is now most likely to be encountered,
the effects of these techniques are often startling, with
a mosaic of found musical objects set in a general serial
cast. It is not an easy work to assimilate, and is best heard
after a general acquaintance with the techniques and sounds
of the avant-garde, when it does provide a springboard for
possible ways of working outwards from a central avant-garde
serial core.
The possibilities of a complex harmonic diversity
within an overall controlling structural unity were further
explored in a number of divergent works. Couleurs croisées
(1967) for orchestra takes the song `We shall overcome' and
manipulates it in six sections, from complex chromaticism
to a tonal cast. Les éphémérides d'Icare II (1970)
for piano and 18 instruments predetermines the intervals and
rhythms, but then allows collective improvisation within the
parameters. Invitation à l'utopie (1970) for speaker,
soloists, chorus, piano and 18 instruments, is actually the
addition of voices (texts again by Michel Butor) to Les
éphémérides d'Icare II, and echoes contemporary anthropological
and linguistic ideas in the sequence of spoken language/sung
language/sung phonemes/purely instrumental sound. The seven
tape studies of Système des paraboles (1972) can be
combined to form Parabole Mix I-III.
Like many avant-garde composers, Pousseur has
been less prominent in recent years, and the more startling
aspects of his music would seen to have mellowed, though with
a consistency of concerns. The 81 units, gaining in length
from ten seconds to five minutes and divided by the tinkle
of small cymbals, of Agonie (1981) for voices, percussionist
and synthesizers, have a consistency, a gentle flow not found
in the work of the 1960s. Described by the composer as a 27-minute
diminuendo, its subject is death, from two viewpoints: those
around the dying person and the actual dying person. The texts
are from a variety of sources, from modern writers to the
Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the structure is determined
by a `timetable' divided into sections into which the singers
cast dice. Behind the whole work, sometimes emerging overtly,
is an air by the 16th-century composer John Dowland. In keeping
with its title, it includes unkind music in the electronic
distortion of voices, but the constancy of life and ritual
is kept by the cymbals, arriving at a dark but tranquil ending
in an effective and unostentatiously dramatic work.
In 1958 Pousseur founded the Studio de Musique
Electronique (SME) Brussels. He taught at the Basle Conservatory
(1963-1964) and at the state University of New York at Buffalo
(1966-1968), and became professor of composition at the Liège
Conservatory in 1971. He has written widely on avant-garde
music.
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works include:
- Symphony for 15 soloists
- Couleurs croisées and L'effacement
du Prince Igor for orch.; Les éphémérides d'Icare II
for piano and 18 instruments (version with solo vocalist and
chorus titled Invitation à l'utope); Icare apprenti
for any instruments; Rimes pour différentes sources sonores
for three orchestras and tape; Trait for 15 strings
- Echoes de Votre Faust I for clarinet;
Caractères madrigalesques for oboe; Ode for
string quartet; Quintette à la mémoire d'Anton Webern;
Répons for 7 musicians; Madrigal I-V (No.1 for
clarinet; No.2 for flute, violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord;
No.3 for clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and cello; No.4
for oboe and part of Caractères madrigalesques; No.5
Phonèmes pour Cathy for voice)
- Apostrophe et six réflexions, Exercises
for piano; Mobile for two pianos; Prospections
for 3 pianos in sixth-tones
- L'ibericare for guitar; 2 Vue
sur les jardins interdits for organ
- Agonie for singers, percussion, synthesizers
and electronics; Crosses of Crossed Colours for amplified
female voice, 2-5 pianos, 2 radios, 2 tape recorders, 2 LP
turntables; Echoes de Votre Faust II for mezzo-soprano,
flute, piano and cello; Mnemosyne I for voice and chorus
or voice and instruments, II for 1 or more performers;
Sept versets des psaumes de la pénitence for chorus;
Tales and Songs from the Bible of Hell for voices,
tape, and live electronics; Trois chants sacrés for
soprano and string trio
- ballet Electre for voice and instruments
electronically modified
- opera Votre Faust; Schönbergs Gegenwart
for actors, singers, and instrumental ensemble
- Etude pour Rimes II, Jeu de miroirs
de Votre Faust, Lièges à Paris, Ombres de Votre
Faust, Paraboles Mix I-III (from Système),
Scambi, Seismogrammes I-II, Système des paraboles,
Trois visages de Liège and other works for tape
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recommended works:
Agonie (1981) for voices, percussionist
and synthesizers
Miroirs de Votre Faust (1964-1965)/Jeu
de miroirs de Votre Faust (1967) for various forces [see
text]
Sept versets des Psaumes de la Pénitance
(1950) for chorus
opera Votre Faust (1960-1967)
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bibliography:
H. Pousseur Musique, sémantique, société,
1972
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YSAŸE Eugène Auguste
born 16th July 1858 at Liège
died 12th May 1931 at Brussels
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Considered by many the greatest violinist of
his time, and a champion of the music of his contemporaries
(notably Elgar's Violin Concerto), Ysaÿe the
composer has largely been forgotten except for one set of
works, the six Sonatas for solo violin, op.27, written
in 1923. But like the Bach sonatas for solo violin that are
their ancestors (No.2 quotes from the Prelude to Bach's Partita
in E major, since its dedicatee, Jacques Thibaud, used
the Bach piece for his pre-concert warm-up) these works are
among the most effective violin works of their time, and among
the most important works of the chamber violin repertoire.
Each sonata is dedicated to a famous violinist of his age
(each from a different country), and highlights elements of
their individual styles; as a group the sonatas cover a very
wide range of expression and technique, while maintaining
a sense of consistency. The inspiration of Bach is evident
in the form and phrasing of the ruminative and introspective
Sonata No.1 in G minor, giving it a neo-classical feel.
It is dedicated to the Hungarian Joseph Szigeti, and there
are also moments of harmonic shading that give the sonata
hints of Hungarian folk-music, as well as the dark overall
hue. The late-Romantic Sonata No.2 in A minor is dedicated
to the Frenchman Jacques Thibaud, and opens with the alternation
of the Bach quote and an elaboration of the plainchant `Dies
Irae'. The four movements have descriptive as opposed to abstract
musical titles (obsession, melancholy, dance of the shades,
the furies), and the overall cast is more emotionally expressive,
nocturnal in the shades of the middle movement, with a slow
quasi-folk dance in the third, and an equally slow but nightmarish
treatment of the plainchant in the finale. The ballade-form
Sonata No.3 in D minor, dedicated to the Rumanian Georges
Enescu, is short and in one movement, more a flight
of fancy, with the soaring main line supported by double-
or triple-stopping. The Sonata No.4 in E minor, for
the Austrian Fritz Kreisler, is neo-Baroque in form, and the
grandest in the cycle. Its decorative but emphatic writing
hints at Kreisler's own bravura compositional style in the
consistent arpeggio motion. The two-movement Sonata No.5
in G major, dedicated to the Belgian Mathieu Crickboom,
reverts to descriptive titles (`The Dawn', `Rustic Dance'),
and is the most daring of the series, closest perhaps to Bartók
in its intensity of expression and variety of means. The dawn
opens with double stopping and pizzicato support before gradually
building in intensity and thickness of texture, and it would
be a perceptive listener who, coming blind to it, recognized
that this was being played by only one instrument. The rustic
dance has little in common with the neo-Baroque dance forms
used elsewhere in the suite; rather it has the improvisatory
feel, the inner descriptive logic, of a folk instrumentalist
(especially in the changes of rhythmic flow), while at the
same time utilizing phrases that maintain the consistency
of the series. The extrovert Sonata No.6 in E major
was the only one never to be played by its dedicatee, here
the Spaniard Manuel Quiroga, due to injury. In one movement,
it uses a Spanish habanera rhythm and sometimes the exceptionally
high range used by gipsy fiddlers. All these sonatas are technically
extremely difficult, and the combination of virtuoso demands
and absorbing content, each sonata with its own particular
character, makes them well worth the encounter.
Of Ysaÿe's other works, sometimes highly chromatic
and turbulent in style, a number are violin show-pieces, following
the tradition of Kreisler, of which the most celebrated is
the Caprice d'après l'étude en forme de valse de Saint-Saëns,
while the Poème élégiaque (before 1896) inspired the
famous Poème for violin and orchestra by Ernest Chausson
(1955-1899), written for Ysaÿe to play. He also wrote eight
violin concertos, some of which he himself performed early
in his career, but these have remained unpublished, as has
his opera (in the Walloon dialect), Piére li houïeu
(Peter the Miner, 1930). It was produced, and Ysaÿe,
who suffered from diabetes, managed to attend the second performance
just before his death.
Apart from his many concert tours, Ysaÿe was
a founder-member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and
directed the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the U.S.A. from
1918 to 1922. He taught at the Brussels Conservatoire (1886-1898)
and founded the Concerts Ysaÿe in the same city. His Stradivarius
violin (the `Hercules' Stradivarius) was stolen while he was
on a concert tour in Russia in 1908; it turned up in Berlin
in 1947. A Fondation E. Ysaÿe was formed in 1961.
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works include:
- 8 violin concertos; Méditation and
Sérénade for cello and orch.; Concerto d'après deux
poèmes for violin and orch.; Berceuse, Chant
d'hiver, Divertimento, Extase, fantasia,
Les neiges d'antan, Poème élégiaque, and Scène
au rouet for violin and orch.; Amitié for 2 violins
and orch.; Poème nocturne for violin, cello and orch.;
Harmonies du soir for string quartet and string orch.;
- Exil for string orch.
- sonata for solo cello; 6 sonatas for solo
violin; 10 Preludes, Variations on Paganini's Caprice
and other works for solo violin; sonata for 2 violins; Caprice
d'après l'étude en forme de valse de Saint-Saëns, Etude-poéme,
Saltarelle carnavalesque and many other works for violin
and piano; Trio de concert for 2 violins and viola;
string quintet
- opera Piére li houïeu
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recommended works
Six Sonatas op.27 (1923) for solo violin
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bibliography:
L.Ginsberg Ysaÿe, trans. X.M.Danko,
1980
A.Ysaÿe and B.Ratcliffe Ysaÿe: His Life,
Work and Influence, 1947
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