Word: sinfonia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Slavenski: Sinfonia Orienta...
Slavenski, a Yugoslav, has written a musical history of the world in this Sinfonia. The sections, are labeled "primitive, Hebrew, Moslem, Buddhist, Christian, Free Thought, and Hymn of Toil." Some of the music, such as the "Primitive" section, is really wild. Throughout, the piece shines with the style of Slavenski, incorporating Eastern ideas of melody with western harmonic practices. He has not quite achieved a satisfactory blend, but he makes effective use of pedal points, repetitions, and modality. While Slavenski is long on imagination and short on technique, the record is certainly without equal in its field...
...Chavez. As a young composer he tilted with everything from mechanized music, in his ballet H.P. (horsepower), to severe abstractions, with such names as Polygons and Hexagons, to music for native instruments. Last week Composer Chavez led the New York PhilharmonicSymphony Orchestra in the first U.S. performance of his Sinfonia No. j, which proved to be bluntly modern, enormously powerful and sometimes beautiful...
...Ramiro switched to the University of Southern California, the next semester won a tuition scholarship, the Harvey Gaul Prize, Philadelphia's Eurydice Chorus award and a $500 BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) prize for a woodwind trio. He also set to work on an orchestral piece called Sinfonia Sacra, submitted it to the annual George Gershwin Memorial Contest. The judges: Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, Musicologist Carleton Sprague Smith, Composers Aaron Copland, Morton Gould and Peter Mennin...
After three months with the 45 entries (all sent in anonymously), the judges picked Sinfonia Sacra, by Ramiro Cortés.* Last week, in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, Conductor Mitropoulos played Cortés' work with the Philharmonic-Symphony. Its first movement (Kyrie) was a slightly stolid development of an oId Mexican tune in slow tempo; its second (Sanctus) was as reedy and antique sounding as a drafty baroque organ; its finale (Dies Irae), driven by busy motoric rhythms, included some fine furious flights of imagination and a paraphrase of an ancient Gregorian Dies Irae...