For the community in the United States, see Vanada, Indiana.
Vanada is an early musical composition by Michael Torke. A chamber piece, Vanada was composed in 1984 while Torke was still a student. Published in 1986, the piece is scored for a musical ensemble of twelve musicians using a mix of acoustic and electric instruments.
This chord serves as the basis of Vanada's harmony. Play
"In nearly all of Torke's music there's an implicit tension between a kind of free-form spontaneity and the tight structural control that he likes to impose on his material. An early work, the jazz-inspired Vanada (1984) bustles with a restless urban energy but, like fast-moving people in a modern city, each element knows precisely where it is heading. It's one of Torke's harshest scores, close in spirit to the aggressive European minimalism of Louis Andriessen"
– Staines, p. 588.
While written in the key of B Major/G♯ Minor,[1] the piece is based around an eight-note chord with a non-keybass note of D natural. While the keyboards produce the chord all at once, the other instruments have it as a center for their phrasings.[2]
Vanada begins with two bars in fortissimo, only to restart with a pianissimo and piano section punctuated with contrasting forte notes (bars 3 to 22). Later sections continue with dynamically contrasting material. The piece ends with the synthesizers rising in crescendo to a final blast at fffff or fortississississimo (bars 353 & 354). The piece has been described as "a romp for student chamber orchestra".[3]
While the piece has received critical acclaim,[4] Torke's ideas for the piece were opposed by the musical establishment at the time he composed it. The guest composer at the Eastman School of Music, where Torke was studying at the time, dismissed the material as "dangerously close to the corruption that's happening to all American music."[5] The piece represents the freer approach of post-minimalism as compared to the austerity of serialism and minimalism.[6]Vanada is Torke's first example of this approach, and the composer has consistently used it since.[5]
Torke was influenced by Milton Babbitt's time-point system in his composition of Vanada, but added four extra notes to create a piece with a 4 4time signature, rather than using 12 8 or 12 16 time which is normal for Babbitt's system. Torke was also influenced by pop musician Madonna's 1983 self-titled album, including the song "Physical Attraction".[6]Vanada has been described as instantiating a "metallic sound world", similar in character to the work of the Dutch, minimalist composer Louis Andriessen.[7]
A performance of the piece by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Kent Nagano, was recorded in November, 1989 at CBS Studio 1 in London, and originally released by Argo Records (UK). This recording was re-released by Ecstatic Records in 2004.[8]
↑ See liner notes for Argo Records ARGO 430 209–2, and liner notes for Ecstatic Records ER092299.
↑ Torke, "Composer's Note" and "Instrumentation", p. i.
Bibliography
Fiatow, Sheryl "A New Collaboration" in Playbill, Volume 7, Issues 1–12 (American Theatre Press, 1988).
Oteri, Frank J., "Keys to the Music of Michael Torke" in the liner notes to Five of the Ecstatic Collection: Music by Michael Torke ER092299 (Ecstatic Records, 2004).
Staines, Joe (ed.), The Rough Guide to Classical Music, 5th Edition (Rough Guides, 2010).
Torke, Michael (composer), Vanada (Boosey and Hawkes/Hendon Music, 1986).
Wierzbicki, James, "Torke: Adjustable Wrench; Rust; Slate; Vanada; the Yellow Pages" in Musical America 111(4) (Jul 1991).
Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".
Michael Torke is an American composer who writes music influenced by jazz and minimalism.
Six Pianos is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. He also composed a variation for six marimbas, called Six Marimbas, in 1986. The world première performance of Six Pianos was in May 1973 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. The European première took place in January the next year in Stuttgart, Germany.
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in E major, Sz. 119, BB 127 of Béla Bartók is a musical composition for piano and orchestra. The work was composed in 1945 during the final months of his life, as a surprise birthday present for his second wife Ditta Pásztory-Bartók.
Icebreaker is a UK-based new music ensemble founded by James Poke and John Godfrey. They interpret new music, specialising in a post-minimal and "totalist" repertoire. Icebreaker always play amplified and have a reputation for playing, by classical standards, "seriously loud". They have expanded their repertoire to include non-classical material, particularly in their version of the Brian Eno album Apollo, a project based on the music of Kraftwerk, and music by Scott Walker.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Albany, New York.
Herbert Howells's sonata for the clarinet in A in two movements was written in 1946. It was written for British clarinet player Frederick Thurston and was the composer's last major chamber work.
Proverb is a musical composition by Steve Reich for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones, and two electric organs. It sets a text by Ludwig Wittgenstein from the year 1946 and published in Culture and Value. It was written in 1995 and was originally intended for The Proms and the Utrecht Early Music Festival. It was premiered at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on February 10, 1996 by Theatre of Voices with Paul Hillier, to whom the piece is dedicated.
Rosa, A Horse Drama also called Rosa – The Death of a Composer is an opera in 12 scenes by Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen with a libretto by English film maker Peter Greenaway. The libretto was the sixth in Greenaway's Death of a Composer series which explores the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, two real, and the remaining eight fictional. It premiered at the Dutch National Opera on 2 November 1994 in a production co-directed by Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke. A recording of the opera was released on the Nonesuch label in 1998; Asko/Schönberg, conductor Reinbert de Leeuw..
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Herma is a piece for solo piano composed by Iannis Xenakis in 1961. About ten minutes long, it is based on a formulation of the algebraic equations of Boolean algebra, and is also an example of what Xenakis called symbolic music.
This is the discography of the UK ensemble Icebreaker.
Benjamin Britten's Piano Concerto, Op. 13, is the composer's sole piano concerto.
Color Music is a suite of five different compositions for orchestra by American composer Michael Torke. The suite is well known for its association with the composer's synesthesia.
Adjustable Wrench, sometimes also The Adjustable Wrench, is a composition for mixed chamber ensemble by American composer Michael Torke. It was composed in 1987.
Javelin is a composition for orchestra by American composer Michael Torke. It was finished in 1994.
Points and Dances from the Opera "Taverner" or Points and Dances from "Taverner", Op. 46, is a suite for ensemble written by British composer Peter Maxwell Davies from his own opera Taverner. Subtitled "instrumental dances and keyboard pieces from the opera for instrumental ensemble", it was finished in 1970.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
