AOL File Library: 3,701 to 3,800/aol-file-protocol-4400-3701-to-3800.zip/AOLDLs/Arts Mini-Lessons/Famous Composers/MUSIC.txt

Text File | 2014-10-30 | 7KB | 120 lines

Question: Can you give me some history about Australian composer Alfred Hill?


Answer From:   PrfMaestro


Alfred Hill (1870-1960, Australia/New Zealand):

Few composers can be credited with helping to lay the foundations for the
musical life of 2 countries while living half a world away from the major
music centres of the globe.  Born 16 November 1870 in Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia, Alfred Hill grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, where his family
moved when he was 18 months old.  He began his musical career as a violinist
in the orchestra of travelling theatre groups.  In 1887 Hill began 4 years of
study at the Leipzig Konservatorium in Germany, and he also became a violinist
in the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.  Immersed in German musical life as he was
during these years, the influence of German Romanticism remained strong
throughout his life.

Hill returned to New Zealand in 1892 and became conductor of the Wellington
Orchestral Society, as well as teacher, violinist and composer.  A number of
his works were based on Maori materials, and he would later also draw from
Australian Aboriginal and New Guinea sources.  In 1896, Hill went to Australia
and settled in Sydney, New South Wales.  In 1902 he returned to New Zealand as
an opera conductor, and in 1906 he served as music director of the
International Exhibition Orchestra in Christchurch, the first fully
professional orchestra in that country.  In 1908 Hill returned permanently to
Australia.  In Sydney he helped to establish the New South Wales
Conservatorium in 1913, and he served as professor of harmony and composition
from 1916 to 1934.  No less active in retirement, he remained a great
influence on the music of Australia and New Zealand.

Hill was a prolific composer and produced more than 500 works.  Most of his
early works were dramatic and included operas based on conventional European
topics, Maori legends and Australian literature.  Chamber music dominated most
of his output in the 1930s, including most of his 17 string quartets.  After
1940 he composed 12 of his 13 symphonies, all but the first of which were
essentially arrangements of chamber works.  He also composed short tone poems
and several concerti, for trumpet, violin, viola, piano and horn.  He remained
loyal to the conservative traditions he had accepted in Leipzig, and the Maori
and Aboriginal materials of New Zealand and Australia served only as exotic
embellishments of the essentially Romantic idiom of his music.  Listeners who
enjoy melodic and colourful music of the Late Romantic period would find Hill
very rewarding.  Alfred Hill died in Sydney on 30 October, 1960, less than 3
weeks before his 90th birthday.



Question:  Would you provide me with some information about Bedrich Smetana,
the Czech composer?


Answer From:  PrfMaestro


Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884, Bohemia):

First a bit of trivia.

1.  Name a famous composer other than Beethoven who became deaf, but
continued to compose some of his finest works.  Answer: Bedrich Smetana.

2.  Translate the Czech name Bedrich Smetana into English.  Answer: Fred
Sourcream.

Bedrich Smetana is regarded by most Czechs as the father of their national
music.  His music is filled with the essence of the Bohemian countryside.
Born March 2, 1824 in Litomysl, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Smetana
was musically gifted as a child but his musical studies were delayed due to family
circumstances.  Finally he took musical studies in Prague and also worked as a
musical tutor to the family of Count Thun.  At this time he composed several
polkas for a pianist who later became his wife.  After the Revolution of 1848,
Smetana opened a music school with the help of Franz Liszt, who also
introduced him to a publisher.  The death of his young daughter inspired him
to compose the lyrical _Piano Trio in G Minor_ in her memory.

As Austria tightened its grip on Bohemia, Smetana moved to Sweden for 4 years.
There he enjoyed success as a teacher and later as conductor of the
Philharmonic Society in Go"teborg.  During this time he composed 3 symphonic
poems in the manner of Lizst: _Richard III_, _Wallenstein's Camp_ and _Hakon
Jarl_.  After Austria suffered several military defeats in Bohemia, a great
upsurge in Czech national sentiment arose.  Smetana returned to Prague in 1863
and remained there the rest of his life.  He opened another music school and
became conductor of a choral society.

In 1864 a new theatre opened in Prague for native works, and Smetana composed
a total of 8 operas for it.  He also became its conductor.  His first opera
was the historical _Brandenburgers in Bohemia_, which was followed by his
beloved comic opera _The Bartered Bride_.  Next came the heroic tragedy
_Dalibor_ and the nationalistic festival opera _Libuse_.  His later operas
were light comedies of Bohemian national life.  The dance rhythms and melodic
shapes of his music are very Bohemian in nature, but his only works which
actually quoted folk tunes were his _Czech dances_ for piano.

Smetana was a hard worker, and this brought on severe headaches and
ill-health.  In 1874 he became completely deaf, which forced him to resign
from his post at the theatre.  His autobiographical _String Quartet No. 1 in E
Minor_ "From My Life" was completed 2 years later.  Programmatic chamber
music was unprecedented at this time, and Smetana illustrated the 4 movements of
this work with scenes from his youth and adulthood.  A high E in the final
movement represents the whistling in his ear which immediately preceded his
deafness.  In 1940 the Czech conductor George Szell transcribed this string
quartet for full orchestra.

It was after he became deaf that Smetana composed his finest work, a cycle of
6 symphonic poems entitled _Ma Vlast_ (My Country).  The 6 sections are
"Vysehrad", a rock above the Vltava River which was the legendary seat of
Bohemian princes associated with the princess-prophetess Libuse; "Vltava", or
"The Moldau", the river which flows through Prague; "Sarka", a valley near
Prague which was the home of the legendary Czech Amazons of the 14th Century
who fought for the supremacy of women; "From Bohemia's Woods and Fields", a
general impression of the Czech landscape; "Tabor", a fortified medieval town
in southern Bohemia; and "Blanik", a hill in south central Bohemia, the home
of the legendary knights known as the Hussites.

Smetana eventually became quite depressed due to his deafness.  His melancholy
_String Quartet No. 2 in D Minor_ appeared in 1882.  The next year he became
insane, and he died in a asylum in Prague on May 12, 1884, at age 60.  His
work in the service of Czech national music was continued by Antonin Dvorak.