Concerto for Bassoon and Small Orchestra [Flute, 2 Clarinets in B-Flat, Strings]

Luigi Nono's Voci destroying muros for female voices and small orchestra was performed for the first and only time at the Holland Festival in 1970. A setting of texts by female prisoners and factory workers, it marks a sharp stylistic departure from Nono's political music of the 1960s by virtue of its audible quotations of revolutionary songs, its readily intelligible text setting, and especially its retention of the diatonic structure of the song on which the piece is based, the communist “Internationale.” Nono's decision, following the premiere, to withdraw the work from his catalogue suggests that he came to regard it as transgressing an important boundary in his engagement with “current reality.” I examine the work and its withdrawal in the context of discourses within the Italian left in the 1960s that accused the intellectuals of the Partito Comunista Italiano of unhelpfully mediating the class struggle. Nono's contentious reading of Antonio Gramsci, offered as justification for his avant-garde compositional style, certainly provided fuel for this critique. But Voci destroying muros suggests receptivity on the part of the composer—albeit only momentary—to achieving a more direct representation of the voices of the dispossessed.

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‘Le Paradis Perdu’: in its time

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200031284 ◽

1980 ◽

pp. 58-60

Author(s):

Serge Moreux

Keyword(s):

Chamber Music ◽

Music Criticism ◽

Or Groups ◽

Small Orchestra

In Paris, between 15 October 1935 and 1 July 1936 there were:246 symphony concerts with full orchestra,30 with small orchestra (which is incredibly few),57 with chorus,115 chamber music concerts, not counting either sonata evenings or recitals by various instrumental soloists or groups, which make something like 700 performances to add to the above. Altogether, then, if I am to believe the Guide du Concert (from which I have taken these figures, adding a few concerts that were missed there), 1,144 occasions to exercise the reprehensible and avowedly useless profession of music criticism.

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Britten's ‘Nocturne’

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200044879 ◽

1959 ◽

pp. 14-22

Author(s):

Imogen Holst

Keyword(s):

Small Orchestra

Britten's Nocturne for tenor and small orchestra was written during August and September 1958 and was first performed at the Leeds Festival on October 16th, with Peter Pears singing the solo and Rudolph Schwarz conducting. The first London performance, conducted by the composer, was given on January 30th, 1959, at Friends' House, Euston Road, as a tribute to the memory of the late Erwin Stein.

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Catalogue of Music for Small Orchestra

Notes ◽

10.2307/889758 ◽

1947 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 457

Author(s):

Thor Johnson ◽

Cecilia Drinker Saltonstall ◽

Hannah Coffin Smith

Keyword(s):

Small Orchestra

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The Small Orchestra

The Musical Times ◽

10.2307/909203 ◽

1918 ◽

Vol 59 (910) ◽

pp. 553

Author(s):

Kaikhuson Sorabji

Keyword(s):

Small Orchestra

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A New Catalog of Music for Small Orchestra

Notes ◽

10.2307/940209 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 374

Author(s):

James N. Berdahl ◽

Cecilia D. Saltonstall ◽

Henry Saltonstall

Keyword(s):

Small Orchestra

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Partita for Piano and small Orchestra

Tempo ◽

10.1017/s0040298200031259 ◽

1980 ◽

pp. 39-43

Author(s):

Alex de Graeff

Keyword(s):

Small Orchestra ◽

Made In

Markevitch's achievement does not lie in having produced, at 18, a work stamped with the skill of a thoroughly experienced musician. We might well apply on his behalf the observation Radiguet made in declining a success due only to his precocity: ‘Age is nothing. All the great poets were writing when they were seventeen. The greatest are those who succeed in making us forget it.’ But it is wonderful to see the young Markevitch achieving such sure mastery in a field where there is no safeguard to keep him from error and no restriction to prevent him from exceeding his powers.

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