James Kenneth Wright | |
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Occupation(s) | Musicologist, pianist, academic and author |
Academic background | |
Education | Bachelor of Music Bachelor of Education M.A., Music Theory Ph.D., Music Theory |
Alma mater | Wilfrid Laurier University McGill University University of Western Ontario |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Carleton University |
James Kenneth Wright (1959 -) is a Canadian composer,pianist,and musicologist. His notable compositions include works such as Letters to the Immortal Beloved,and his award-winning books include Schoenberg,Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, [1] They Shot,He Scored:the Life and Music of Eldon Rathburn, [2] and Monstrosity,Identity and Music:Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames. [3]
Wright completed a Bachelor of Music degree at Wilfrid Laurier University in 1981,followed by a Master of Arts in Music Theory at McGill University in 1987. In 2002,he earned a Ph.D. in Music Theory from McGill University,where he received a Governor General's gold medal for his research and scholarly record. [4]
Wright is a professor in the School for Studies in Art &Culture and the College of the Humanities at Carleton University. [4] He served as Supervisor of Performance Studies from 2007 to 2018 and subsequently as Supervisor of Graduate Studies from 2020 to 2023. Additionally,he held a visiting appointment as Louis Applebaum Distinguished Visiting professor of composition at the University of Toronto in 2020. [4]
Wright's music has been published by Warner-Chappell Music in Miami,Leslie Music in Oakville,Cypress Music in Vancouver,Rhythmic Trident Music in Vancouver,Fairbank Music in Victoria,Frederick Harris Music in Toronto,Counterpoint Music in Toronto,and Da Capo Music in Manchester,UK.
Wright's nine-movement choral cycle,A Gallery of Song:Spirit of the Land,features settings of youth poetry inspired by the works of artists from Canada's Group of Seven. The piece premiered in 2003 at the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery in Kleinburg,Ontario. [5]
Wright's 2012 composition,Letters to the Immortal Beloved,is a chamber art song cycle inspired by love letters penned by Ludwig van Beethoven to his mysterious Immortal Beloved,whose identity remains a topic of debate among musicologists. [6] Written during a composer residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts,the work was premiered by Canadian mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah and the Gryphon Trio at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival on July 27,2012. Reviewing a March 30,2024 performance by Luxembourg baritone,David John Pike,Edinburgh critic Bryan Bannatyne-Scott wrote,"We are indebted to James Wright for giving musical life to the sentiments expressed in Beethoven's letters,and his three-song cycle was a revelation. In a modern idiom but grounded in harmony,and very well set for the baritone voice,the songs,with important parts for all three instruments in the trio,took us into the heart of Beethoven’s essentially hopeless longing". [7]
In 2013,Wright's choral work To Young Canadians, [8] featured words excerpted from a letter titled Letter to Canadians,written by Canadian politician Jack Layton on his deathbed. It was premiered at the presentation of the Ottawa Peace Award to Layton's widow,Olivia Chow. [9]
In 2022,Wright's String Quartet No. 1,a four-movement work inspired by the beauty of Lake Scattergood in the Outaouais region of southwestern Québec,was recorded by the Andara String Quartet of Montreal. [10] About the quartet,CBC Music wrote "James K. Wright's lush,tuneful String Quartet No. 1,titled 'Ellen at Scattergood,' is one of the year's best discoveries". [11]
Wright is also the author or editor of numerous scholarly books. His 2006 Schoenberg,Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle examines parallels between Arnold Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic theories and Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophical ideas,particularly from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,suggesting shared epistemological foundations. [1] His 2009 book Schoenberg's Chamber Music,Schoenberg's World,co-edited by Alan Gillmor,presents a scholarly collection of essays commemorating Schoenberg's landmark Second String Quartet,exploring its historical,theoretical,and biographical contexts,alongside its influence on subsequent composers internationally. [12] In 2019,he authored They Shot,He Scored:The Life and Music of Eldon Rathburn,a biography and critical analysis of the work of Canadian composer Eldon Rathburn. The book highlights Rathburn's career as a composer for the National Film Board,his IMAX film scores,and his orchestral and chamber compositions. [2] Reviewing the book,Michael Brendan Baker wrote that "the central argument of the monograph,that Rathburn is perhaps the most important composer in the history of the NFB and Canadian film at large,is presented with nuance and insight and thus represents a critical addition to our understanding of film music in Canada." [13] In 2022,his book Monstrosity,Identity and Music:Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames,co-edited by Alexis Luko,presented essays examining depictions of the monstrous in music,film,television,and videogames,through a variety of contemporary analytical lenses. [3]
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively small oeuvre,he is remembered as one of the most important composers of the 20th century for his expressive style encompassing "entire worlds of emotion and structure".
Franz Schmidt,also Ferenc Schmidt was an Austro-Hungarian composer,cellist and pianist.
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer,conductor,and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques in an increasingly rigorous manner,somewhat after the Franco-Flemish School of his studies under Guido Adler. With his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg,Webern was at the core of those within the broader circle of the Second Viennese School. Their atonal music brought them fame and stirred debate. Webern was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in an aphoristic,expressionist style,reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian and American composer,music theorist,teacher and writer. He was among the first modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-century classical music,and a central element of his music was its use of motives as a means of coherence. He propounded concepts like developing variation,the emancipation of the dissonance,and the "unity of musical space".
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly,it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers,with one performer to a part. However,by convention,it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
The Juilliard String Quartet is a classical music string quartet founded in 1946 at the Juilliard School in New York by William Schuman. Since its inception,it has been the quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School. It has received numerous awards,including four Grammys and membership in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. In February 2011,the group received the NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award for its outstanding contributions to recorded classical music.
Immortal Beloved is a 1994 biographical film written and directed by Bernard Rose and starring Gary Oldman,Jeroen Krabbé,Isabella Rossellini and Johanna ter Steege. The film narrates the life of composer Ludwig van Beethoven in flashbacks while it follows Beethoven's secretary and first biographer Anton Schindler's (Krabbé) quest to ascertain the true identity of the Unsterbliche Geliebte addressed in three letters found in the late composer's private papers. Schindler journeys throughout the Austrian Empire interviewing women who might be potential candidates,as well as through Beethoven's own tumultuous life.
Egon Joseph Wellesz,CBE,FBA was an Austrian,later British composer,teacher and musicologist,notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.
Oskar Adler was an Austrian violinist,physician and esoteric savant. He was the brother of the political theorist Max Adler and a key early influence on his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. His friend and student Hans Keller called him "one of our century's supreme instrumentalists".
Verklärte Nacht,Op. 4,is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks,it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name and by Schoenberg's strong feelings upon meeting his future wife Mathilde Zemlinsky,who was the sister of his teacher,Alexander von Zemlinsky (1877–1942). Schoenberg and Zemlinsky married in 1901. The movement can be divided into five distinct sections which refer to the five stanzas of Dehmel's poem;however,there are no unified criteria regarding movement separation.
The Hollywood String Quartet (HSQ) was an American string quartet founded by violinist/conductor Felix Slatkin and his wife cellist Eleanor Aller. The Hollywood String Quartet is considered to be the first American-born and trained classical music chamber group to make an international impact,mainly through its landmark recordings. These recordings have long been regarded as among the most outstanding recorded performances of the string quartet repertoire.
Rudolf Kolisch was a Viennese violinist and leader of string quartets,including the Kolisch Quartet and the Pro Arte Quartet.
The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg published four string quartets,distributed over his lifetime:String Quartet No. 1 in D minor,Opus 7 (1905),String Quartet No. 2 in F♯ minor,Op. 10 (1908),String Quartet No. 3,Op. 30 (1927),and the String Quartet No. 4,Op. 37 (1936).
The "Haydn" Quartets by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are a set of six string quartets published in 1785 in Vienna as his Op. 10,dedicated to the composer Joseph Haydn.
Eldon Davis Rathburn was a Canadian film composer who scored over 250 films during his thirty-year tenure as a staff composer at the National Film Board of Canada. Known as "the dean of Canadian film composers",Rathburn composed music for documentaries,short films,as well as such feature films as Drylanders (1963),Nobody Waved Good-bye (1964),Waiting for Caroline (1969),Cold Journey (1975),and Who Has Seen the Wind (1977). Rathburn was the subject of a 1995 NFB documentary by Louis Hone titled Eldon Rathburn:They Shoot... He Scores.
Karl Ignaz Weigl was a Jewish Austrian composer and pianist,who later became a naturalized American citizen in 1943.
The Kneisel Quartet was a string quartet founded in 1885 by violinist Franz Kneisel,then concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It continued to perform until 1917,and was generally considered the leading string quartet of its time in the United States.
Kenneth Slowik is an American cellist,viol player,and conductor. Curator of Musical Instrument Collection at the National Museum of American History and Artistic Director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. He took an interest in music and organology from an early age. He studied at the University of Chicago,the Chicago Musical College,the Peabody Conservatory,the Salzburg Mozarteum and,as a Fulbright Scholar,the Vienna Hochschule für Musik,guided by Howard Mayer Brown,Nikolaus Harnoncourt,Antonio Janigro,Edward Lowinsky,and Frederik Prausnitz.
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer,conductor,and teacher.
Richard Hoffmann was an American composer,musicologist and educator. He served many years as a professor at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.