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- All Subjects: Piano music
- Creators: Meir, Baruch
- Creators: Arias, Mauricio
Description
Yannis Constantinidis was the last of the handful of composers referred to collectively as the Greek National School. The members of this group strove to create a distinctive national style for Greece, founded upon a synthesis of Western compositional idioms with melodic, rhyhmic, and modal features of their local folk traditions. Constantinidis particularly looked to the folk melodies of his native Asia Minor and the nearby Dodecanese Islands. His musical output includes operettas, musical comedies, orchestral works, chamber and vocal music, and much piano music, all of which draws upon folk repertories for thematic material. The present essay examines how he incorporates this thematic material in his piano compositions, written between 1943 and 1971, with a special focus on the 22 Songs and Dances from the Dodecanese. In general, Constantinidis's pianistic style is expressed through miniature pieces in which the folk tunes are presented mostly intact, but embedded in accompaniment based in early twentieth-century modal harmony. Following the dictates of the founding members of the Greek National School, Manolis Kalomiris and Georgios Lambelet, the modal basis of his harmonic vocabulary is firmly rooted in the characteristics of the most common modes of Greek folk music. A close study of his 22 Songs and Dances from the Dodecanese not only offers a valuable insight into his harmonic imagination, but also demonstrates how he subtly adapts his source melodies. This work also reveals his care in creating a musical expression of the words of the original folk songs, even in purely instrumental compositon.
ContributorsSavvidou, Dina (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Little, Bliss (Committee member) / Meir, Baruch (Committee member) / Thompson, Janice M (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Born in 1937, the Ukrainian-Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin has gradually gained recognition among Western music scholars and pianists by blending American jazz idioms into classical forms, such as concertos, sonatas, and preludes; recently he has become a very prominent composer. As one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, he has composed over 160 works to date. Most of them are piano solo works. The uniqueness of his compositional philosophy is that he consistently treats the music language of jazz as a core element in all his output, while others might only use jazz idioms experimentally in their works.
Being an excellent pianist himself, Kapustin has recorded many of his own works, giving a firsthand reference for interpreting his piano music. Some of his most famous works, including the Variations, Op. 41, the Eight Concert Etudes, Op. 40, and the 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53 have been recorded by other prominent artists, such as Steven Osborne and Marc-Andre Hamelin.
Scholarly research on Kapustin’s piano works remains limited. Most of it is found in journal articles and dissertations. Unfortunately, all of them are focused on his early popular works. His more recent works from 2007-2013: the Six Little Pieces, Op. 133, Dialogue, Op. 148, Etude Courte mais Transcendante pour piano, Op. 149, Nobody Is Perfect, Op. 151, A Pianist In Jeopardy, Op. 152, and Wandering, Op. 153, have not yet been discussed in any scholarly writing.
In brief, the purpose of this study is to present a first recording of these six major solo works, and to examine them in a research paper. The paper discusses Kapustin’s consistent use of jazz elements in his recent works, addresses musical and technical concerns in their performance practice, and facilitates more extended study of these valuable but yet to be recorded works.
The paper consists of eight parts. The first part covers brief background information on the composer, as well as reviewing important jazz features, in order to more effectively analyze his stylistic language in the six compositions which are explored in the subsequent chapters including a conclusion.
Being an excellent pianist himself, Kapustin has recorded many of his own works, giving a firsthand reference for interpreting his piano music. Some of his most famous works, including the Variations, Op. 41, the Eight Concert Etudes, Op. 40, and the 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53 have been recorded by other prominent artists, such as Steven Osborne and Marc-Andre Hamelin.
Scholarly research on Kapustin’s piano works remains limited. Most of it is found in journal articles and dissertations. Unfortunately, all of them are focused on his early popular works. His more recent works from 2007-2013: the Six Little Pieces, Op. 133, Dialogue, Op. 148, Etude Courte mais Transcendante pour piano, Op. 149, Nobody Is Perfect, Op. 151, A Pianist In Jeopardy, Op. 152, and Wandering, Op. 153, have not yet been discussed in any scholarly writing.
In brief, the purpose of this study is to present a first recording of these six major solo works, and to examine them in a research paper. The paper discusses Kapustin’s consistent use of jazz elements in his recent works, addresses musical and technical concerns in their performance practice, and facilitates more extended study of these valuable but yet to be recorded works.
The paper consists of eight parts. The first part covers brief background information on the composer, as well as reviewing important jazz features, in order to more effectively analyze his stylistic language in the six compositions which are explored in the subsequent chapters including a conclusion.
ContributorsYe, Qingqing (Author) / Cosand, Walter (Thesis advisor) / Hamilton, Robert (Committee member) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
ContributorsBryan, Karen (Speaker) / Meir, Baruch (Performer) / Campbell, Andrew (Pianist) (Performer) / Cosand, Walter, 1950- (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2006-03-29
ContributorsFriar, Tyson Levell (Performer) / Glemser, Tim (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2003-05-01
ContributorsDarveaux, John (Performer) / Beek, Helena van (Performer) / Jennifer, Ostrowski (Performer) / Tappendorf, Rebecca (Performer) / Kim, Bora (Performer) / Stefanski, Josh (Performer) / Jiang, Yuan (Performer) / Bates, Carly (Performer) / Weinland, Kandi (Performer) / Koehler, Sarah (Performer) / Ye, Qingqing (Performer) / Price, Mary (Performer) / Huish, Sarah (Performer) / Hontz, Joshua (Performer) / Li, Tian (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2014-04-15
ContributorsYe, Qingqing (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2017-01-29
ContributorsYe, Qingqing (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2013-04-21
ContributorsArias, Mauricio (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2007-11-17
ContributorsMeir, Baruch (Performer) / Barefield, Robert (Performer) / Buck, Nancy (Performer) / Jiang, Danwen (Performer) / Swartz, Jonathan (Performer) / Tescarollo, Hamilton (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2004-02-15
ContributorsPagano, Caio, 1940- (Performer) / Meir, Baruch (Performer) / Cosand, Walter, 1950- (Performer) / Hamilton, Robert, 1937- (Performer) / Branch, Sonja (Performer) / Nottingham, Douglas (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2010-10-01