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SOUTH AFRICA
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Introduction
South African classical music has not been heard widely outside its
borders. The major South African composer, Priaulx R ainier (1903-1986) spent most of her compositional life in
the U.K., but her music was influenced by indigenous South African music.
Among her contemporaries, John Joubert (born 1927) taught at Birmingham
University in England from 1927, with two symphonies and seven operas among
his works, while the piano music of Herbert Du Plessis shows the influence
of Bartók. The most important South
African composer of the next generation, Kevin Volans (born 1949) moved to
Germany in 1973. African influences are prominent in She Who Sleeps with a Blanket (1985) for percussion, and his
string quartets, impelled by native African music and minimalist in feel,
have been widely heard. The String Quartet No.1 `White Man Sleeps'
(1987) has delicate repeated patterns grouped in phrases that are
interrupted by rhythmic pauses, suggesting sometimes African drumming,
sometimes African string music, alluring, rhythmically invigorating, and
often with the beauty of sounds heard from afar over a wide landscape. The String Quartet No.2 `Hunting:Gathering' (1987) `paraphrases' from
Ethiopian, Zimbabwean and Malian music, with 23 different sections covered
in twenty-six minutes, linked in a pseudo-narrative form. It is influenced
by Reich in the melodic and harmonic
figures, but creates its own atmosphere, with ethereal snatches, sometimes
weaving little nets of counterpoint. The String Quartet No.3 is
titled `The Songlines' (1988), the String Quartet No.4
(1990) `Ramanujan Notebooks'. The opera The Man with the Soles of Wind (1992) was based on the life of the
poet Artur Rimbaud. Of other South African composers, Allan Stephenson
(born 1949 near Liverpool, England) has written two symphonies and a number
of concertos in a very conservative style, of which the infectious little Oboe Concerto (1978) for oboe and chamber orchestra would make a
pleasant accompaniment to a genteel afternoon tea, its slow movement under
the spell of Rodrigo's guitar concerto. His Concertino for Piccolo, Strings and Harpsichord (1980), a rare
work for such an instrument, is in a similar vein.
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RAINIER
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RAINIER
Priaulx
born 3rd February 1903 at Howick, Natal
died 10th October 1986 at Besse-čn-Chandesse (France)
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Brought up among a largely Zulu population in her home area in South
Africa, which exposed her to the influence of indigenous rhythms and
colours, Priaulx Rainier settled in London on completing her musical
studies. She became noticed as a composer with the Three Greek Epigrams (1937) and the String Quartet
(1936-1939), where the absorbed and abstracted (rather than pictorial)
echoes of her childhood appear in the exotic, if sparse, colours (including
the use of harmonics), in the insistent ostinato rhythms, and in the wide
variety of mood and effect in what is otherwise a largely post-Romantic
work.
Her earlier music follows this idiom, concentrating on chamber works and
ignoring counterpoint in favour of straightforward melodic patterns, with
the exception of the Viola Sonata (1945), which introduced a
characteristic mood of the sombre and rugged. The African influence
appeared more directly in the attractive Two Songs for Tenor and Guitar (1948), with elements of African
rhythms in the first and the second setting a Zulu poem, and in the Barbaric Dance Suite (1949) for piano. Two important vocal works
written for the tenor Peter Pears followed: the Cycle for Declamation (1952) and the Requiem
(1956) for tenor and unaccompanied choir. The former is for tenor voice
alone, setting passages from John Donne's Devotions, and indeed
uses a declamatory style, the silences between the sentences an integral
part of the effect. The latter, to texts by David Gascoyne, is forceful and
sparse, the soloist and chorus often echoing or merging with each other,
the vocal lines characterized by wide leaps and unsettled rhythms and a
declamatory feel, with few points of relief from the overall sense of
homophonic tension. Rainier then evolved her style to emphasize the
abstract and unsettled qualities, with small motifs replacing thematic
material, more chromatic harmonies, more complex rhythms, and greater
variety of colours and textures. The dark String Trio (1966) is
composed of fragments of ideas and moods, from the intense to the more
ruminative, with the wide leaps seen in the Requiem again
evident. It has the sense of eavesdropping on a series of circular musical
events, rather than a journey between two points, an extension of ideas
formulated in the oboe quartet Quanta (1962) whose title
is based on quantum theory. The fragmentary effect of the rhythmic snatches
and ideas in the quartet is in keeping with the avant-garde patterns of the
day, although the underlying basis remains tonal, and a sense of flow is
maintained through the atmospheric and gritty work by the regular merging
of one instrument into another. The Cello Concerto (1964) is in
two movements, with a rhetorical solo line, while each of the seven
continuous sections of the orchestral suite Aequora Lunae (1967)
describe the affective associations of seven of the seas of the Moon,
together forming a `cycle of fertility'. The orchestra is divided into two
parts which exchange textures, strings with brass and hard percussion
against woodwind and softer percussion. The colour effects include chord
clusters and numerous wind solos. Rainier returned to vocal writing with a
setting of an extended metaphysical and mystical poem by Edith Sitwell, The Bee Oracles (1969), for tenor, flute, oboe, violin,
cello and harpsichord. Again there is a fragmentary quality, but it is
combined with a exotic feel partly created by the colours of the
instrumentation. Sections of intense forcefulness contrast with the more
drifting and ruminative. An unusual sense of progression is achieved
through an underlying rhythmic repetitive structure for the vocal line,
against which the instruments set up more varied rhythmic conjunctions.
Throughout her output, Rainier's voice is often hard and uncompromising,
and completely without any sense of sentimentality. Yet underneath this
surface lie fragments of sound patterns, a held chord here, a colour
texture there, that clearly derive from her childhood inheritance, like a
landscape emerging underneath a hard dawn light. These became more striking
and recognizable as her idiom became freer, more abstract and more
individual. That idiom will not find a wide appeal, but has an inner
sincerity and interest for those prepared to tackle its tough exterior. She
deserves to be wider known as one of the more distinctive woman's
compositional voices of the century. Rainier taught at the Royal Academy of
Music from 1942 to 1961.
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works include:
- Sinfonia da Camera
- cello concerto
- Aequora Lunae and Phalaphala for orch.
- Pastoral Triptych for solo oboe;Suite for Clarinet and Piano; viola sonata; string trio; Quanta for oboe quartet; string quartet
- Organ Gloriana and Primordial Canticles for organ
- song cycle for Declamation; Requiem for tenor and
unaccompanied choir; Two African Songs for tenor and guitar and
other songs
- Barbaric Dance Suite and Five keyboard Pieces for piano
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recommended works:
The Bee Oracles
(1969) for tenor, flute, oboe, violin, cello and harpsichord
Requiem
(1956) for tenor and unaccompanied chorus
Quanta
(1962) for oboe quartet
String Trio
(1966)
Two Songs for Tenor and Guitar
(1948)
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