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Études Transcendantales
''Études transcendantales'' is a song cycle in 9 movements for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble composed by Brian Ferneyhough between 1982 and 1985. Background The creative basis for the ''Études transcendantales'' is Ferneyhough's mild mid-life crisis. He thought about death and what makes music more than just music of the moment, and thus the songs deal with such themes. As part of this, he wanted the ensemble to sound rather harsh. Starting from the standard modernist Pierrot ensemble, he replaced the clarinet exchanged for an oboe, the piano for a harpsichord, and removed the violin altogether. Including the voice, now all the parts are very different from each other and have strongly contrasting timbres, e.g., the pointillistic harpsichord with the smoother mezzo-soprano. Originally, Ferneyhough intended all the songs to be set to poems by the German poet Ernst Meister. However, he could not find enough suitable poems on death and permanence, and instead commissione ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song Cycle
A song cycle () is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in sequence, as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rarely a combination of solo songs mingled with choral pieces. The number of songs in a song cycle may be as brief as two songs or as long as 30 or more songs. The term "song cycle" did not enter lexicography until 1865, in Arrey von Dommer's edition of ''Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon'', but works definable in retrospect as song cycles existed long before then. One of the earliest examples may be the set of seven Cantiga de amigo, Cantigas de amigo by the 13th-century Galicians, Galician jongleur Martin Codax. Jeffrey Mark identified the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from Thomas Ravenscroft's ''The Briefe Discourse'' (1614) as the first of a number of early 17th-century examples in England. A song cycle is similar to a song collection, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |