Lyric for Strings is a musical composition written by the American composer George Walker. Originally titled Lament, it was first composed as the second movement of Walker's String Quartet No. 1 in 1946 while he was a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music. The piece was given its world premiere later that year at by the student orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music conducted by Seymour Lipkin.
In 1990, Walker expanded the work for string orchestra, retitling it Lyric for Strings; this new arrangement subsequently became Walker's most performed composition. [1] [2] [3] It is cast in a single movement and has a duration of approximately six minutes. The work is dedicated to Walker's grandmother, a formerly enslaved person, who died shortly before its completion. [4]
In music, an arrangement is a musical reconceptualization of a previously composed work. It may differ from the original work by means of reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or development of the formal structure. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety".
Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan stated, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." Principally influenced by nine years of composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than twenty-five years of study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of utilizing traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure that embraced lyricism and emotional expression. However, elements of modernism were adopted by Barber after 1940 in a limited number of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955), and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of serialism in his Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).
David Nathaniel Baker Jr. was an American jazz composer, conductor, and musician from Indianapolis, as well as a professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Baker is best known as an educator and founder of the jazz studies program. From 1991 to 2012, he was conductor and musical and artistic director for the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. He has more than 65 recordings, 70 books, and 400 articles to his credit.
The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia offering courses of study leading to a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, or Professional Studies Certificate in opera. Its mission is to educate and train exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. All pupils attend on full scholarship.
George Rochberg was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique had proved inadequate to express his grief and had found it empty of expressive intent. By the 1970s, Rochberg's use of tonal passages in his music had provoked controversy among critics and fellow composers. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania until 1983, Rochberg also served as chairman of its music department until 1968. He became the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities in 1978.
George Theophilus Walker was an American composer, pianist, and organist, who was the first African American to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received the Pulitzer for his work Lilacs in 1996.
Miriam Gideon was an American composer.
Jennifer Elaine Higdon is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and three Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, Viola Concerto in 2018, and Harp Concerto in 2020. Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019, she was a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1994 to 2021.
Jean Coulthard, was a Canadian composer and music educator. She was one of a trio of women composers who dominated Western Canadian music in the twentieth century: Coulthard, Barbara Pentland, and Violet Archer. All three died within weeks of each other in 2000. Her own work might be loosely termed "prematurely neo-Romantic", as the orthodox serialists who dominated academic musical life in North America during the 1950s and 1960s had little use for her. Some of her well-known compositions include Cradle Song, Threnody, Canadian Fantasy, Ballade "A Winter's Tale" and her opera Return of the Native.
Orlando Cole was an American cello teacher who taught two generations of soloists, chamber musicians, and first cellists in a dozen leading orchestras, including Lynn Harrell, Jonah Kim, Ronald Leonard, Lorne Munroe, Peter Stumpf and Marcy Rosen.
Stanley Walker Hollingsworth was an American composer and teacher. He was a student of composer Darius Milhaud from 1944–46, and of Gian Carlo Menotti from 1948–50. As a composer he is probably best known for his operatic trilogy of children's stories: "The Mother", "The Selfish Giant", and "Harrison Loved his Umbrella".
Jason Vieaux is an American classical guitarist. He began his musical training in Buffalo, New York at the age of eight, after which he continued his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1992, Vieaux was awarded the Guitar Foundation of America International Guitar Competition First Prize, the event's youngest winner.
Irving Milton Adolphus was an American pianist and composer.
Harold Boatrite was an American composer.
Natale Rosario Scalero was an Italian violinist, music teacher and composer.
David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer of classical music. His uncle is pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. After twenty years on the faculty of the Curtis Institute culminating as Artistic Advisor to the President and Chair of Composition, Ludwig was appointed Dean and Director of The Juilliard School Music Division in May of 2021
Byron Adams is an American composer, conductor, and musicologist.
Andrea Clearfield is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Regularly commissioned and performed by ensembles in the United States and abroad, her works include music for orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, film and multimedia collaborations.
Emmanuel Feldman is an American classical cellist and teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the co-founder of the cello-double bass duo Cello e Basso, and a member of the Aurea Ensemble.
Gabriella Smith is an American composer from Berkeley, California.