YOUR SAY
CHOPIN Vs VERDI
I agree with the opinions expressed here which underline the dilemma any music lover experiences in having to choose between two composers who wrote for different instruments and idioms. Although I admire Chopin's piano music (solos and concerti alike) I really feel that Verdi has the edge in terms of his much broader vision, coupled with the essence of humanity that comes over very strongly in his acclaimed gift for melody and grandeur. This is simply the music of a genius and not a Lloyd Webber type of box office appeal. The fact that most of his huge catalogue of work still fires theatres worldwide with great enthusiasm over 100 years later proves that the public finds so much in the way of uplifting emotion in his music and identification with the engaging characters he set to music. He is certainly up there among the 3 greatest operatic composers - just as Chopin is in the top 3 pianoforte "greats"
GLASS Vs BOULEZ
BOULEZ
Boulez was born in Montbrison, France. He initially studied mathematics at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and the wife of Arthur Honegger, Andrée Vaurabourg. He studied twelve-tone technique with René Leibowitz and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style. Boulez was initially part of a cadre of early supporters of Leibowitz, but due to an altercation with Leibowitz, their relations turned divisive, as Boulez spent much of his career promoting the music of Messiaen instead. The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le Visage nuptial and Le Soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra, both composed in the late 1940s and revised several times since, as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, mode of attack, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism. Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation. Many composers of Boulez's generation taught at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. The so-called Darmstadt School composers were instrumental in creating a style that, for a time, existed as an antidote to music of nationalist fervor; an international, even cosmopolitan style, a style that could not be 'co-opted' as propaganda in the way that the Nazis used, for example, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Boulez was in contact with many young composers who would become influential, including John Cage.
Advocate
Courtney Pine
Courtney Pine is a multi-instrumentalist Jazz musician whose influence is felt around the world. His innovative approach to Jazz has reinvigorated the musical genre, with his breakthrough album, “Journey to the Urge Within” being the first Jazz album to break into the UK music charts. Courtney’s own style complemented the approach Visionary Pierre Boulez has taken in his musical journey.
GLASS
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is a four-time Academy Award-nominated American classical music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (along with precursors such as Richard Strauss, Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein).
Glass's music is frequently described as minimalist, though he has distanced himself from that description, calling himself a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Although his earliest mature music could be called minimalist, his style has evolved enough that the label is inappropriate for many of his more recent works. He now describes himself as a "Classicist", being thoroughly trained in harmony and counterpoint and having studied the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written ensemble works, operas, 8 symphonies, 8 concertos, film scores, and solo works. Glass counts many visual artists, writers, musicians, and directors among his friends, including Richard Serra, Chuck Close, Doris Lessing, Allen Ginsberg, Errol Morris, Robert Wilson, JoAnne Akalaitis, John Moran, actors Bill Treacher and Peter Dean, Godfrey Reggio, Ravi Shankar, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, David Bowie, Patti Smith, the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, and electronic musician Aphex Twin, who have all collaborated with him. Among recent collaborators are Glass' fellow New Yorkers Leonard Cohen, and Woody Allen. He has also composed an opera for the opening of the Expo '98.
Glass describes himself as "a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist", and a strong supporter of the Tibetan cause. In 1987 he co-founded the Tibet House with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and the actor Richard Gere. He has four children: two (Zachary (b. 1971) and Juliet (b. 1968)) with his first wife, the theater director JoAnne Akalaitis (m. 1965, div. 1980); and two (Marlowe and Cameron) with his current, fourth wife, Holly Critchlow. Glass lives in New York and in Nova Scotia. He is the first cousin once removed of Ira Glass, host of the nationally syndicated radio show This American Life. Philip Glass's father is Ira Glass's great uncle.
Advocate
Dennis Russell Davies
World famous conductor and grammy-award winner Dennis Russell Davies has long been a champion of Philip Glass. A student of the Juilliard School of Music in New York, Davies subsequently became Musical Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and currently of the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz. As advocate, Davies was able to draw from his friendship with as well as his admiration of Glass’s work.
VIGNETTES
