Lincoln Center Commissions

Samuel Barber ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 451-469
Author(s):  
Barbara B. Heyman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
Lincoln Center ◽  
Individual Style

For the opening week of the new Philharmonic Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1962, Barber composed a piano concerto in honor of the 100th anniversary of his publisher. The concerto was tailored to the technical prowess and individual style of John Browning, reflecting the Russian influence of his piano teacher Rosina Lhévinne. The second movement was a reworking of an earlier piece, Elegy, written for Manfred Ibel, a young art student and amateur flute player, to whom Barber dedicated his piano concerto. This chapter details Barber’s compositional process and influences for each movement of the concerto and describes the enthusiastic reception of the debut performance. Nearing completion of the concerto, Barber was invited to Russia as the first American composer ever to attend the biennial Congress of Soviet Composers, where he freely discussed his compositional philosophy and methods. For the concerto, Barber won his second Pulitzer Prize and the Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. His second composition for the opening season of Lincoln Center was Andromache’s Farewell, for soprano and orchestra. Based on a scene from Euripides’s The Trojan Women, the piece displayed deep emotional expression and striking imagery. With a superior opera singer, Martina Arroyo, singing the solo part, the success of Andromache’s Farewell presaged Barber’s opera Antony and Cleopatra.

Samuel Barber

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara B. Heyman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
American Composers ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
Samuel Barber ◽  
Entire Career ◽  
Lincoln Center

Samuel Barber (1910–1981) was one of the most important and honored American composers of the twentieth century. Writing in a great variety of musical forms—symphonies, concertos, operas, vocal music, chamber music—he infused his works with poetic lyricism and gave tonal language and forms new vitality. His rich legacy includes such famous compositions as the Adagio for Strings, the orchestral song Knoxville: Summer of 1915, three concertos, and his two operas, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, a commissioned work that opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York. Generously documented by letters, sketchbooks, original musical manuscripts, and interviews with friends, colleagues, and performers with whom he worked, this book covers Barber’s entire career and all of his compositions. The biographical material on Barber is closely interspersed with a discussion of his music, displaying Barber’s creative processes at work from his early student compositions to his mature masterpieces. The book also provides the social context in which this major composer grew: his education; how he built his career; the evolving musical tastes of American audiences; his relationship with Gian Carlo Menotti and such musical giants as Serge Koussevitzky, Arturo Toscanini, Vladimir Horowitz; and the role of radio in the promotion of his music. A testament to the significance of neo-Romanticism, Samuel Barber stands as a model biography of an important American musical figure.

Dieter Hacker's Mask for Timon of Athens

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
GJW
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
Stage Design ◽  
York Public Library ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
Lincoln Center ◽  
The One ◽  
Timon Of Athens

For the well-received 1990 Bochum Schauspielhaus production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Dieter Hacker, one of Germany's leading artists and stage designers, created fifty-four masks, including the one on the opposite page for Timon himself (Figure I). This mask, Hacker's designs, and photographs of the production were seen in the recent exhibition “Contemporary Stage Design from German and Austria” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, presented in collaboration with the Goethe House and German Cultural Center in New York.

Impressions After an Exhibition

Tempo ◽  
1972 ◽  
pp. 2-9
Author(s):  
Claudio Spies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Research Library ◽  
York Public Library ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
Public Property ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
90Th Anniversary ◽  
Lincoln Center

During these summer months the New York Public Library has been holding an exhibition at the Research Library of the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, of manuscripts, drafts, annotations, letters, photographs, posters, objets, objets d'art, and other memorabilia selected from Stravinsky's legacy, and lent by his widow. The exhibition is unprecedented with respect to the collection of objects on display—since, for one thing, it is presumably only after so public a figure's demise that an assortment of this kind becomes open to the possibility of being thus exhibited—although a number of items had been familiar in published form. It is also, I conjecture, the first in a potential succession of exhibitions (depending, primarily, upon the eventual location of, and time at which, the entire legacy of these materials may become, as is to be hoped, in the most positive sense, public property), and it was mounted in conjunction with a Stravinsky Festival celebrating the 90th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Somaticist in the dance archives: Exploring Jerome Robbins’ diaries through somatics

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-238
Author(s):  
Hiie Saumaa
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
York Public Library ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
Lincoln Center

In this short piece, I highlight the question of how to bring somatics skills acquired in a somatics class to bear upon other life contexts. I use the example of scholarly work: I show how I use somatic methods as I conduct research in the archives of the choreographer Jerome Robbins (1918–98), housed at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I suggest that we need to pay more attention to the question of how students and practitioners could bring physical awareness into their various life scenarios and tasks. I propose that if we learn how to transfer our somatic knowledge into different life contexts, our lives can become more embodied and we can tap into the knowledge that emanates from the physical self.

The Plays of David Mamet: Games of Manipulation and Power

1988 ◽  
Vol 4 (13) ◽  
pp. 77-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry I. Schvey
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Business ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Harold Pinter ◽  
David Mamet ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Business Values ◽  
Lincoln Center ◽  
World Premiere ◽  
One Act

David Mamet, born in Chicago in 1947, is one of the most talented and eagerly watched young playwrights in America today, whose work has also found a ready response among British audiences. After such plays asSexual Perversity in Chicago(1974).American Buffalo(1975) andEdmond(1982), hisGlengarry Glen Ross(1982), dedicated to Harold Pinter, had its world premiere in London at the National's Cottesloe Theatre, and subsequently won the Pulitzer prize for the best American play in 1984. In the same year,American Buffalo(seen briefly on Broadway in 1977) won an award for best revival, while the London production ofEdmond, which opened at the Royal Court in December 1985, was favourably received by English critics in contrast to its mixed reception in New York. In addition to Mamet's work for the stage, he has written the screenplays for the filmsThe VerdictandThe Postman Always Rings Twice. Noteworthy for their sensitivity to the nuances and rhythms of American speech, including its unmistakable penchant for banalities and obscenities. Mamet's best plays, as the accompanying essay demonstrates, carry with them an implicit attack on American business values, usually through a confrontation between two individuals, one of whom tries to exploit or dominate the other. The interview which follows was conducted in New York City on 2 January 1986 following a performance of Mamet's latest work, a double bill of one–act plays entitledThe ShawlandPrairie du Chien, selected by Mamet's friend and close associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Gregory Mosher, to reopen the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York.

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