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RITCHIE, John
John Ritchie was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1921. He graduated in music at the Otago University and trained as a teacher at Dunedin Teachers’ College. Ritchie served in the navy in World War II and subsequently undertook post-graduate study with Walter Piston at Harvard University from 1956-57.
In 1946 he was appointed to Canterbury University becoming Professor and Head of Music in 1962. Ritchie served as acting and Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1973-83. During 1967-68 he held a Visiting Professorship at Exeter University and served on the board of Trinity College of Music, London.
He conducted many choirs and, in 1959, formed the John Ritchie String Orchestra and later the Christchurch Civic Orchestra. He guest-conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and for the New Zealand Ballet. In 1974 he was Music Director of the Xth Commonwealth Games and in 1986 the Papal Visit of Pope John Paul. Ritchie was Secretary General of the International Society for Music Education from 1976-84 and its President 1990-92. He was elected an Individual Member of the International Music Council in 1979.
As a composer he is known for choral music, music for brass, concerto-type works, carols and church music. These include Concertino for Clarinet and Strings, Concerto for Saxophone and Small Orchestra, Threnody (brass band), The Snow Goose (flute and orchestra), and Papanui Road Overture (full orchestra).
John Ritchie was Professor Emeritus at Canterbury University until his death. He was awarded the CANZ Citation for service to New Zealand music in 1992. He had a family of three daughters and two sons. His wife, Anita, a nationally recognised soprano, died in 2001.
John Ritchie passed away on the morning of his 93rd birthday, the 29th of September 2014.
https://sounz.org.nz/contributors/1083https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/why-uc/our-alumni/honorary-doctorates/emeritus-professor-john-ritchieCONCERTINO FOR CLARINET AND STRING ORCHESTRA (1957)Free Studio RecitalBasil Kirke StudioA.B.C. Building, Adelaide Terrace3pm Sunday June 10th 1967PERTH SINFONIETTAWithJack Harrison (clarinet)Programme: Overture “Artaxerxes” (Arne), Concerto Grosso in c Minor (Germiniani), Serenata Notturna (Mozart),Concerto for Clarinet and Strings (Ritchie)Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Kuhnau (Andriesson/Donemus).
10.6.1967
John RitchieConcertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra(1957)AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (clarinet) Perth Sinfonietta
Free Studio Recital Basil Kirke Studio A.B.C. Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia
Sir Arthur Bliss is generally remembered as an English composer, a pillar of the British musical establishment, but he was in fact half-American (on his father’s side), and America was to play an important part in his life and career.
Bliss was born in London on 2 August 1891 and was educated at Rugby School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. In the spring of 1914 he attended the Royal College of Music – only for a term, but long enough to receive valuable instruction and advice from Vaughan Willliams and Holst. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Bliss obtained a commission, to servein France, first with the Royal Fusiliers, and then with the Grenadier Guards. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916 and, two years later, gassed at Cambrai, and his bravery was commended in despatches, but he survived – unlike his brother Kennard, whose loss he felt keenly.
Bliss began to make an impact as a composer shortly after the War, with works like Madam Noy (1918) and Rout (1920), and he also began to be noticed as a conductor. The modernity of these early works had gained him a reputation as an enfant terrible but a more mature tone entered his voice with the Mêlée Fantasque of 1921 and, in particular, the Colour Symphony, first performed at the Three Choirs Festival in 1922; it was commissioned at the behest of Elgar, whom Bliss had first met in 1912.
In 1923 Bliss went with his father to the United States, composing little during this period but becoming highly active as a conductor, pianist, lecturer and writer; he also heard his music played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. During this period he met Trudy Hoffmann, whom he married in 1925; early the following year they returned to England and the stream of compositions began to flow again: Introduction and Allegro for orchestra (1926), a quintet for oboe and strings (1927), Pastoral (“Lie strewn the white rocks”) for soprano, chorus, flute, timpani and strings (1928) and a Serenade for baritone and orchestra (1929). In the late 1920s Bliss began work on the score that may well be his masterpiece, Morning Heroes, a symphony for orator, chorus and orchestra dedicated to the memory of his brother Kennard and “all other comrades killed in battle”. With it, Bliss said, he exorcised his own horrific memories of action in the First World War.
One of Bliss’ most influential scores was his film music for Alexander Korda’s version of H. G. Wells’ Things to Come (1934–35), which set a benchmark for future composers. This was followed by three equally influential ballets: Checkmate (1937), Miracle in the Gorbals (1944) and Adam Zero (1946). Bliss always responded to the stimulus of writing for individual musicians, and his Piano Concerto (1939) was composed for Solomon, the Violin Concerto (1955) for Alfredo Campoli and the Cello Concerto (1970) for Mstislav Rostropovich. He also continued to produce a number of impressive orchestral scores, not least the Meditations on a Theme of John Blow (1955) and the late Metamorphic Variations (1972).
Bliss’s only attempt at a stage opera, The Olympians (1949), to a libretto by J. B. Priestley, was only moderately successful, and he attempted the genre only once again, in the TV opera Tobias and the Angel (1960), to a text by Christopher Hassall. He continued to enjoy writing for voice: The Enchantress (1952), a scena for contralto and orchestra, was composed for Kathleen Ferrier, and The Beatitudes (1962) is an extensive cantata for soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra. His last major work was another cantata, Shield of Faith (1975).
Bliss was always at the centre of British musical life: he worked in the Overseas Music Service of the BBC in 1941, and was the BBC’s Director of Music from 1942 to 1944. He was knighted in 1950, and was appointed Master of the Queen’s Musick in 1953, in succession to Sir Arnold Bax. He died on 27 March 1975.
Arthur Bliss is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programmes with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.
Bliss wrote his Clarinet Quintet (1932) for the prominent British clarinettist Frederick Thurston, who gave the first performance at the composer’s home alongside the Kutcher Quartet. While Thurston was the intended performer, Bliss dedicated the published score to his friend, the composer Bernard van Dieren.
The quintet is also widely regarded as a private, musical tribute to Bliss’s younger brother, Kennard (a talented amateur clarinettist who was killed in World War I)
English composer and conductor Sir Arthur Bliss visited Perth in September 1964.
As the serving Master of the Queen’s Musick, his tour of Australia generated significant national media coverage. Newspaper archives from 28 September 1964 capture his time in Western Australia, including interviews where he publicly praised Australia’s growing classical music potential.
Clarinettist Jack Harrison performed the Australian premiere of the Arthur Bliss Clarinet Quintet with the Oriel Quartet in September 1964 in the presence of the composer. Jack got Arthur Bliss to sign a photograph that is inscribed
“For Jack Harrison with gratitude for a splendid performance of my clarinet Quintet in Perth 1964 from Arthur Bliss”.
U.W.A. Thursday Lunchtime Recital
September 1964
Clarinettist Jack Harrison with the Oriel String Quartet will interpret the Bliss Quintet at next Thursday’s free lunch-hour recital at 1.15pm in the Winthrop Hall undercroft, and oboist Peter Randall, with members of the quartet, will play the Mozart Oboe Quartet.
MUSIC
By Sally Trethowan
September 1964
Also a fine performance was the reading of the Bliss Clarinet Quintet by Jack Harrison and the Oriel Quartet who emphasized the romantic, lyrical nature of this music which is expressed through a dissonant idiom. The clarinet beginning as only one bright strand in a contrapuntal musical skein, emerges as soloist in the adagio where it wanders, looping itself in long braids and arabesques of melody in clarinet writing that recalls the Brahms Quintet. The studio was about two thirds full for the performance.
17.4.1964 18.9.1964
Arthur Bliss Clarinet Quintet (1932)AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE (performed in front of Bliss)
Jack Harrison (clarinet) Oriel String Quartet, Sir Arthur Bliss
Studio performance ABC Free lunchtime concert Winthrop Hall Undercroft University of Western Australia
The Master of Queens Musick, Sir Arthur Bliss, has told the Festival Of Perth committee that the planning of the musical programs in the coming festival is a magnificent gesture to British music and should be more widely known. That it has become well known already in Britain is showing by letters from many leading authorities there they include congratulations from the executive of the Composers Guild of Great Britain. Though some prominent English music festivals like Cheltenham Aldeburgh and the longest established Three Choirs Festival feature their country music, no British festival has in recent times included such an extensive and exciting range of British music in one series. Works of nearly 70 composers are included. The Perth programs have been wisely spaced over the six week festival period and though many of the concerts will start at the customary 8 pm some will be at 6 pm to enable patrons to attend another festival attraction the same evening.
Works by Vaughan Williams Gordon Jacob, Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley and Michael Tippett will be new to W.A. The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis will introduce Bliss’s “Discourse for Orchestra” to Australia in one of its Perth concerts. In the other, Tippitt’s Symphony No. 2 and Stravinsksy’s Symphony in Three movements will be played here for the first time. Leading W.A. musicians appearing as soloists in the festival will include soprano Molly McGurk who will sing Benjamin Britain’s song cycle Les Illuminations with the W.A. Symphony Orchestra. She will also sing the solo soprano part in the University Choral Society’s performance of Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony. Stephen Dorman will be the accompanist for tenor David Galliver’s three British song recitals. He will also partner violinist Vaughan Hanley in a Sonata recital and will play the solo part in constant Lambert’s Concerto for Orchestra and Nine Instruments. Jack Harrison will be the soloist in David Tunley’s Clarinet Concerto and will be joined by the Oriole Quartet in Bliss Clarinet Quintet. Graham Wood will introduce James Penberthy’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra and Alice Carrard will be the pianist with the A.B.C. Wind Players in Rawsthorne’s recent quintet. Madame Carrard will be joined by Mr Dornan, Stephanie James and Michael Cole to perform Malcolm Williamson’s new Concerto for Wind Quintet and two pianos. The new university organist, Mr John Hind, will be soloist in a program which will feature the W.A. Bach Society. The Oriel Quartet will also be the soloists with the W.A. Symphony Orchestra in Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for strings and will give a separate recital of works by Howells, Frank Bridge, John Exton (the newly appointed senior lecturer in music at the university) Gerald Finzi, Elizabeth Lutyens and Edmund Rubbra.
The West Australian September 1965Heat Affects Performance – By Sally Trethowan
The auditorium may have been stifling but the choice of program was coolly classical at the Chamber Music Society’s first meeting for 1970 held last night in the Secondary Teachers College Hall Nedlands. The Oriel String Quartet with Jack Harrison (clarinet) presented works by Beethoven, Mozart and Sir Arthur Bliss. The Oriel Members have a new stage image. Two are now bearded and all four are stylishly sporting sideburns. Last night’s heat though must have been too enervating, for they seem to have neither the heart nor the energy to give us anything more than technically acceptable professional playing. However, Jack Harrison’s two performances in the great Mozart Clarinet Quintet and in Bliss’s astringent Quintet were jewels. While the Oriel provided the harmonic and contrapuntal décor, Harrison’s cool, pure intonation and intrinsic musicality made glorious sound and sense of his every phrase. His playing of the finely wrought clarinet line in the Mozart was especially lovely and here, too, there was some beautiful responsive phrases from Graham Wood’s violin. In the performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18. No. 6. the heat seemed ponderable enough to weigh the Oriel’s bows judging from the absence of enthusiasm in the player’s movements. The resulting reading of what is in fact one of Beethoven’s gayest inspirations paced wearily where it should’ve nimbly stepped the light fantastic. Indeed, the phrases of the slow movement drooped so desperately that my sympathies went out to players and composer alike. Had the room being 20° cooler, the performance would predictively have been very different.
Perth Chamber Soloists – Sunday July 21 1985 – UWA Music Auditorium
Robert Cooper, Neil Barclay, John Dean and Jill Cole
Artie Shaw (born May 23, 1910, New York, New York, U.S.—died December 30, 2004, Newbury Park, California) was an American clarinettist and popular bandleader of the 1930s and ’40s. He was one of the few outstanding jazz musicians whose commitment to jazz was uncertain.
Shaw began playing in high school and turned professional in 1925. The first signs of indecision became apparent in the early 1930s, when he retired from music for a year. In 1935, at a New York swing concert, he played one of his own compositions accompanied by a string quartet. A jazz and dance band with a string section followed, but in 1937 he re-formed his band along more conventional lines and a year later became internationally known through his recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.” A string of hits followed, and Shaw’s popularity came to rival that of clarinettist Benny Goodman, the “King of Swing.” By this time Shaw had become known for his mercurial behaviour and perfectionism. He was harshly critical of himself and of the music business.
From 1939 Shaw lived alternately in Mexico and the United States, experimenting occasionally with small jazz combos that he called the Gramercy Five regardless of membership. While several public comebacks followed, including leadership of a U.S. Navy orchestra (1943–44), he dissociated himself from jazz almost totally after 1954 and did not play the clarinet again, although in 1983 he led a re-formed Artie Shaw Orchestra. He later worked as a farmer, theatre producer, and author. Among his writings are the three short novels collected in I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! (1965) and the revealing autobiography The Trouble with Cinderella (1952). Shaw was married eight times, with actresses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner among his wives.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Artie-Shaw
Artie ShawCONCERTO FOR CLARINET
Concerto for Clarinet is a composition for clarinet and jazz orchestra by Artie Shaw. The piece ends with a “legendary” altissimo C.
The piece is a “pastiche thrown together out of some boogie-woogie blues, clarinet-over-tom tom interludes, a commonplace riff build-up towards the end, all encased in opening and closing virtuoso cadenzas for the leader’s clarinet”.
Shaw and his orchestra performed the piece in the Fred Astaire film Second Chorus (1940), in which Shaw played himself.
Hear Artie Shaw performing his Concerto for Clarinet here:
Concerto For Clarinet (Shaw) by Artie Shaw & his Orchestra Spread over two sides of a 12-inch 78 disc, this extended number was also performed by Shaw and his band in the Paramount film “Second Chorus,” which starred Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard.
Jack Harrison and Sam Sharp studying the score of Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto
On October 6 1949, Jack Harrison played the first performance in W.A. of the Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto with the Jazz Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Nugent Haywood at the Capitol Theatre.
JAZZ SYMPHONY OF 1949 – CAPITOL THEATRE – THURSDAY, OCT. 6 1949(One Night Only).1949’s BIGGEST MUSICAL SHOWSurprise Exclusive Engagement of Australia’s Topline Film, Radio Actor and Producer Star of “Overlanders” Film, Founder and First Conductor of Perth Symphony OrchestraJOHN NUGENT HAYWARDConductingTHE JAZZ SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA IN GERSHWIN’S “RHAPSODY IN BLUE”Featuring LOUISE D’ARCY – A.B.C. Concerto SOLOIST.HUGE LINE-UP OF THE STATE’S BEST PROFESSIONALS ! ! !SAMMY SHARP‘S JAZZ SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA of 28 Leading Musicians.ALBERT CHAPPELLE Dramatic Baritone in W.A.’s first presentation of the famous “SOLILOQUY” with Orchestra.JACKIE HARRISON First Performance in W.A. of the thrilling ARTIE SHAW “CONCERTO FOR CLARINET”with Orchestra.PHYLLIS FROST Sensational Blind B.B.C. Singer.CLIFF ADAM and “NIDDY” ROBERTS hilarious Comedy Duo.“SOPHISTICATED LADIES” STRING ENSEMBLE All-femme String ensemble heard with success over A.B.C.PETER HARRISON Well-known Radio Personality and Announcer, also prominent “Old'” Jazz Authority.HARRY BLUCK Producer who successfully directed the “Jazz Symphony of 1948”, “Jazz Jamboree,” “Battle of Bands” and other successes.ADMISSION – 3/-, 4/-, 5/- (plus tax) – BOX PLAN AT NICHOLSONS. – BOOK EARLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT. The West Australian Friday 30 September 1949 page 37Artie Shaw rehearsal article1950 – REHEARSAL FOR SAMMY SHARP’S JAZZ FANTASIASaturday September 16 1950(photo) from left to right: Jack Harrison, Jim Beeson, Betty Wittaker, Sammy Sharp and Keith Whittle. The West Australian Tuesday 19 September 1950 page 121950 Jack rehearsing Artie Shaw“JAZZ FANTASIA”October 1 1950The Young Australia League – will present Sammy Sharp and his orchestra of 25 in the third annual Jazz Fantasia at the Capitol Theatre on October 1. Supporting artists will include Louise D’Arcy, Jack Harrison, Betty Whittaker, Bryn Gifford, Phyllis Frost and Keith Hounslow. The compere will be Peter Harrison. [3]A BLITZ IN MUSIC WILL FOLLOW THE BANDThe Young Australia League band will march through the city as a prelude to Perth’s third Jazz Fantasia at the Capitol Theatre on Sunday, October 1. Sammy Sharp and his Jazz Symphony Orchestra, with many supporting artists will provide the programme at the theatre. One of the featured works will be a performance of London Fantasia, with pianist Louise Darcy as soloist. It is a musical story of the spirit of London during the blitz. Other artists will include: clarinettist Jackie Harrison; a State finalist in the concerto and vocal competition this year, Phyllis Frost; a blind singer who has been featured with Claude Brampton’s All Blind Orchestra in London; and Betty Whittaker, star of the Repertory Club’s Maritza. The show will be produced by Sammy Sharp and compered by Peter Harrison and Terry Scanlon.The Daily News Thursday 21 September 1950 page 12CAPITOL THEATRESunday, October 1stY.A.L. Presents“JAZZ FANTASIA”With SAMMY SHARP and his 25-piece Jazz Symphony Orchestra.Comperes; TERRY SCANLAN, compere Ice Follies (by courtesy David N. Martin, Mgr. Dr. Tiv. Circuit Aust. Pty. Ltd.); PETER HARRISON (by courtesy A.B.C.).Guest Artists IncludeLOUISE D’ARCY. Soloist of “London Fantasia” Jackie Harrison in “Clarinet Concerto”and Betty Whittaker, Bryn Gifford, Phyllis Prost, Jimmy Beeson.SAMMY SHARP will be featured in Harry James’s arrangement of “Concerto for Trumpet.” Prices 5/ 4/ 3/ plus tax. Box plan at Nicholsons. The West Australian Wednesday 27 September 1950 page 37
Hear Jack Harrison performing Artie Shaw’s Concerto for Clarinet here:
SPECIAL DELIVERY STOMPRecording Date: September 3, 1940, at RCA Victor Studios in Hollywood, California.
Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five.
Released in October 1940 on Victor 26762.
The track famously features Shaw on clarinet alongside Johnny Guarnieri on harpsichord, Billy Butterfield on trumpet, Al Hendrickson on guitar, Jud DeNaut on bass, and Nick Fatool on drums.
January 1948Harrison family AgainSixteen-year-old Musician to give further broadcastWestern Australia was represented last week in “National Fair” from 6IX-WB-MD by twins, Jack and Jill Harrison and elder brother Ray. The Harrison family was put up as the best musical family in Australia. Jack Harrison, the 16 year old lad who played both the saxophone and clarinet, was such a success that the producers asked him to put up another challenge, so he is again appearing in the programme next Wednesday as the best clarinettist in Australia.Jack will again be accompanied by his twin Jill on the piano, and his brother Ray on the drums. This time Jack will be playing the clarinet only. His item will be “Special Delivery Stomp” one of Artie Shaw’s favourites.So far this is the first time two challenges have been put up by the same person. The West Australian selectors hope that this challenge is unbeatable, but listeners can decide that for themselves when they hear what the other States can produce to take up this challenge.The other five states also will be presenting their “exhibits” on Wednesday night at 8 o’clock, some again challenging and others answering challenges previously set. If anyone who knows of anything or anybody who could possibly be used as an “exhibit” in “National Fair”, he or she is asked to communicate with W.A. Broadcasters Ltd., Lyric House, Perth. The Broadcaster Saturday January 17 1948 Vol. 14, No. 720
Richard Strauss (born June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany—died September 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen) was an outstanding German Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable feature of the standard repertoire.
Life
Strauss’s father, Franz, was the principal horn player of the Munich Court Orchestra and was recognized as Germany’s leading virtuoso of the instrument. His mother came from the prominent brewing family of Pschorr. During a conventional education, Strauss still devoted most of his time and energy to music. When he left school in 1882, he had already composed more than 140 works, including 59 lieder (art songs) and various chamber and orchestral works. These juvenilia reflect Strauss’s musical upbringing by his father, who revered the classics and detested Richard Wagner both as a man and as a composer, even though he was a notable performer of the horn passages in performances of Wagner’s operas.
Through his father’s connections, Strauss on leaving school met the leading musicians of the day, including the conductor Hans von Bülow, who commissioned Strauss’s Suite for 13 Winds for the Meiningen Orchestra and invited Strauss to conduct that work’s first performance in Munich in November 1884. Following this successful conducting debut, Bülow offered Strauss the post of assistant conductor at Meiningen. Thenceforward Strauss’s eminence as a conductor paralleled his rise as a composer. Among the conducting posts he went on to hold were those of third conductor of the Munich Opera (1886–89), director of the Weimar Court Orchestra (1889–94), second and then chief conductor at Munich (1894–98), conductor (and later director) of the Royal Court Opera in Berlin (1898–1919), and musical codirector of the Vienna State Opera (1919–24).
At Meiningen Strauss met the composer Alexander Ritter, who reinforced that admiration for Wagner’s music which Strauss had previously nurtured in secret so as not to upset his father. Ritter urged Strauss to abandon classical forms and to express his musical ideas in the medium of the symphonic, or tone, poem, as Franz Liszt had done. Strauss had to work his way to mastery of this form, a half-way stage being his Aus Italien (1886; From Italy), a “symphonic fantasy” based on his impressions during his first visit to Italy. In Weimar in November 1889, he conducted the first performance of his symphonic poem Don Juan. The triumphant reception of this piece led to Strauss’s acclamation as Wagner’s heir and marked the start of his successful composing career. At Weimar, too, in 1894 he conducted the premiere of his first opera, Guntram, with his fiancée Pauline de Ahna in the leading soprano role. She had become his singing pupil in 1887, and they were married in September 1894. Pauline’s tempestuous, tactless, and outspoken personality was the reverse of her husband’s aloof and detached nature, and her eccentric behaviour is the subject of countless anecdotes, most of them true. Nevertheless the marriage between them was strong and successful; they adored each other and ended their days together 55 years later.
The years 1898 and 1899 saw the respective premieres of Strauss’s two most ambitious tone poems, Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). In 1904 he and Pauline, who was the foremost exponent of his songs, toured the United States, where in New York City he conducted the first performance of his Symphonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony). The following year, in Dresden, he enjoyed his first operatic success with Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s play. Although Salome was regarded by some as blasphemous and obscene, it triumphed in all the major opera houses except Vienna, where the censor forbade Gustav Mahler to stage it.
In 1909 the opera Elektra marked Strauss’s first collaboration with the Austrian poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Strauss wrote the music and Hofmannsthal the libretti for five more operas over the next 20 years. With the 1911 premiere of their second opera together, Der Rosenkavalier, they achieved a popular success of the first magnitude. Their subsequent operas together were Ariadne auf Naxos (1912; Ariadne on Naxos), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919; The Woman Without a Shadow), and Die ägyptische Helena (1928; The Egyptian Helen). But in 1929 Hofmannsthal died while working on the opera Arabella, leaving Strauss bereft.
After 1908 Strauss lived in Garmisch, in Bavaria, in a villa that he built with the royalties from Salome. He conducted in Berlin until 1919, when he agreed to become joint director, with Franz Schalk, of the Vienna State Opera. His appointment proved unfortunate, since it coincided with a postwar mood that relegated Strauss and similar late Romantic composers to the category of “old-fashioned.” Strauss was neither interested nor skilled in politics, national or musical, and he resigned from his post in Vienna in 1924. This political naïveté tainted Strauss’s reputation when the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933. Though able to manipulate grand dukes and kaisers, he proved to be no match for the ruthless totalitarians of the Third Reich and unwittingly allowed himself to be used by them for a time. Thus from 1933 to 1935 he served as president of Germany’s Reichsmusikkammer (Chamber of State Music), which was the state music bureau. But in the latter year he fell foul of the Nazi regime. After Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929 he had collaborated with the Jewish dramatist Stefan Zweig on a comic opera, Die schweigsame Frau (1935; The Silent Woman). This collaboration was unacceptable to the Nazis. The opera was banned after four performances, and Strauss was compelled to work with a non-Jewish librettist, Joseph Gregor. The fact that his son’s wife was Jewish was also held against him. Above all else a family man, Strauss used every shred of his influence as Germany’s greatest living composer to protect his daughter-in-law and her two sons. He spent part of World War II in Vienna, where he was out of the limelight, and in 1945 he went to Switzerland. Allied denazification tribunals eventually cleared his name, and he returned to Garmisch in 1949, where he died three months after his 85th birthday celebrations.
Works of Richard Strauss
Strauss’s first major achievement was to harness the expressive power of the huge Wagnerian opera orchestra for the concert hall. Although some of his early Mendelssohnian works, such as the violin concerto (composed 1882) and the first horn concerto (1882–83), are still played, the real Strauss emerged with the symphonic poemDon Juan (composed 1889), in which his ardent melodic gifts, descriptive powers, and mastery of instrumentation first became fully evident. Harmonically even richer is the climax of the symphonic poem Tod und Verklärung (1888–89; Death and Transfiguration), in which a dying man surveys his life and ideals. The rondo form is used in the tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1894–95; Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks), wherein Strauss found the exact instrumental sounds and colours to depict the 14th-century rogue Till’s adventures, from his scattering pots and pans in a market and mocking the clergy to his death-squawk on a D clarinet on the gallows. Also sprach Zarathustra (1896; Thus Spoke Zarathustra) is ostensibly a homage to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche but is actually a concerto for orchestra in which the entities of man and nature are illustrated and contrasted by opposing tonalities.
To illustrate the exploits of Don Quixote (1897), Strauss employed the variation form in this tone poem. Sheep, windmills, and flying horses are magically described in music that is suffused with poetry. Don Quixote was followed by the quasi-autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben (1898), in which Strauss’s adversaries are the music critics (characterized by petulantwoodwinds) whom he defeats in a battle scene of astonishing power and virtuosity before retiring to the countryside to contemplate his “works of peace” (a string of musical self-quotations) with his wife.
Two other tone poems followed that were dignified by the title symphony. In Symphonia Domestica (1903), a huge orchestra describes 24 hours in the life of the Strauss family household, including bathing the baby, quarrels, and love making. In Eine Alpensinfonie (1911–15; An Alpine Symphony) an even larger orchestra (more than 150 players) describes a day in the Bavarian Alps, with a thunderstorm, a waterfall, and the view from a mountain summit as highlights.
Like his great contemporary Gustav Mahler, Strauss wrote magniloquently for a large orchestra but was also able to achieve textures of chamber-music delicacy. But whereas Mahler’s music explores his own spiritual and psychological obsessions, Strauss’s music is more objective and is concerned with sensuous emotions and everyday life, rather than with spiritual torment and death. The opulence of Strauss’s orchestrations is tempered by harmonic acerbity.
Strauss had an unrivaled descriptive power and a remarkable ability to convey psychological detail. This last quality was particularly evident in his operas. His first opera was the Wagnerian-influenced Guntram (1892–94, rev. 1940). His next stage work, the satirical comic operaFeuersnot (1900–01; Fire-Famine), employs impish humour to mock small-town prudery and hypocrisy. With Salome (1903–05), Strauss transferred his mastery of the orchestral tone-poem to an opera that is outstanding for the intensity with which it conveys Salome’s naive lust for John the Baptist and the depravity of her stepfather Herod’s court. His next opera, Elektra (1906–08), is a second blockbusting one-act study of female obsession, in this case revenge. In this score Strauss went as far toward atonality as he ever desired. Elektra was followed by Der Rosenkavalier (1909–10), a “comedy in music” that is set in 18th-century Vienna and features an anachronistic string of waltzes and characters like the Marschallin, Baron Ochs, Octavian, and Sophie, whom audiences at once took to their hearts. This opera remains Strauss’s most popular stage work, despite its occasional dull passages.
Strauss had two musical gods, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner, and in his work they struggle for possession of his artistic soul. The battle is fought most persuasively and equally in the opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, rev. 1916), in which Strauss’s light, parodistic vein and his heroic style are blended and reconciled. At the opposite extreme is Die Frau ohne Schatten, a Wagnerian version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute that requires singing on a scale to match its grandiose conception and staging. Its portraiture of the lowly dyer Barak and his shrewish wife is a foretaste of Intermezzo (1918–23), where the protagonists are Strauss and Pauline, thinly disguised. Arnold Schoenberg was among the first to recognize the mastery and seriousness of this opera, which was at first lightly regarded but in which Strauss perfected his conversational melodic recitative.
With their last opera together, Arabella (1929–32), Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal returned to Vienna and amorous intrigue in their most romantic and lyrical work. Strauss’s opera with Zweig, Die schweigsame Frau (1933–34; The Silent Woman), has finally come into its own as a delightful comedy. Of Strauss’s three operatic collaborations with Gregor, the best is Daphne (1936–37). For his final opera, Capriccio (1940–41), Strauss and the conductor Clemens Krauss wrote an inspired “conversation piece” on the relative importance of words and music in opera. These two media are personified by a poet and a composer who are rivals for the love of a widowed countess, who is herself given the last of Strauss’s marvelously rewarding roles for the female voice.
This last opera initiated the composer’s “Indian summer,” when he recaptured the freshness of his youth in a second horn concerto (1942), an oboe concerto (1945), two wind sonatinas (1943–45), and a concertino for clarinet and bassoon (1947). He also composed, in Metamorphosen (1945–46), a study for 23 solo strings that is an elegy for the German musical life that the Nazis had destroyed. Strauss’s richly scored, poignantly retrospective Vier letzte Lieder (1948; Four Last Songs) for soprano and orchestra crowned a career of which his 200 songs comprise an important part.
As a young composer, Strauss came under the influence of Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and Liszt just when his technique and imagination were sharpened to make the most of their impact. From the tone poem Aus Italien onward, his style became recognizable as the big, bravura, flexible, post-Romantic panoply that dominated audiences in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But, having achieved fame as an avant-garde composer, Strauss after Der Rosenkavalier became a conservative whose musical evolution was pursued in isolation, unaffected by the advances and experiments going on around him. He spent the last 38 years of his life refining and polishing his style, writing often for smaller orchestras, partly out of practical considerations (to ensure the audibility of sung words in the theatre) and partly because large-scale Romantic musical textures were becoming less and less significant. In later years Strauss’s style became more classical in the Mozartean sense. Indeed, the opera Capriccio and other late works may be said to have achieved a perfect fusion of the late German Romantic and the Neoclassical manner.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Strauss/Works1959
The Australian premiere of Richard Strauss’s Duet-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon was broadcast in June 1959 by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. It was performed by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, featuring Jack Harrison on clarinet and Jill Mowson (née Harrison) on bassoon.
The Harrisons were always musical. The family used to get together in a one family band. Now the 27 year old twins – Jack and Jill – are the featured stars in a 40 minute broadcast from 6WF on Wednesday 24th June 1959 with the W.A. Symphony Orchestra. The programme: Richard Strauss’s Concerto for Bassoon and clarinet. Jill will be playing the bassoon and Jack the clarinet. The West Australian Friday June 19 1959
1968
The Australian premiere performance of Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 by Richard Strauss arranged for five instruments by Austrian composer Franz Hasenöhrl in 1954 was performed by Graham Wood (Violin) Jack Harrison (Clarinet) Jill Harrison (Bassoon) Patrick Brislan (Horn) John Mowson (Double Bass) on Sunday February 29 1968 in the A.B.C. Basil Kirke Studio as part of the Festival of Perth.
19.6.1959
Richard Strauss Duett-Concertino for clarinet, bassoon, strings and harp
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (clarinet) Jill Harrison (bassoon)
West Australian Symphony Orchestra ABC Studio Broadcast
29.2.1968
Richard Strauss Arr. Hasenöhrl for five instruments Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Graham Wood (Violin) Jack Harrison (Clarinet) Jill Harrison (Bassoon) Patrick Brislan (Horn) John Mowson (Double Bass)
Festival of Perth Free Studio Recital Basil Kirke Studio A.B.C. Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia
A Russian-American composer born in 1882, Igor Stravinsky was widely known as the greatest composer of the 20th century.
His contributions to music were wide and varied. He studied music with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from 1903 to 1906. He gained fame from his performances while commissioned with the impresario, Sergey Diaghilev.
Stravinsky’s ballet score, The Firebird (1910), was a huge success at the Paris Opera, followed by Petrushka, performed during the Ballets Russes (1911) in Paris.
Another outstanding work is The Rite of Spring (1913), which was a dynamic masterpiece. He worked on various pieces of ballet music, including a piano piece by Frédéric Chopin for Les Sylphides.
The Nightingale (1914) and The Soldier’s Tale (1918) were some of his compositions created while in exile in Switzerland during the War. In France, he diverted to neoclassical style and composed Oedipus Rex (1927) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930).
His renewed ties with Diaghilev resulted in his arrangement of Pulcinella (1920) and Apollo Musagetes (1928). From 1923 to 1935, he composed piano and wind instruments pieces.
He moved to the United States in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1945. The Rake’s Progress (1948-51), Canticum Sacrum (1955), and the ballet Agon (1953-57) were larger scale works wherein the music moves from a modal and tonal beginning into a full serial score.
After his work on Requiem Canticles (1966), a work as famous as his masterpieces and neo-classicals, his health failed. He died in 1971 and was buried in Venice.
https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/artists/stravinky-igorSOLDIER’S TALE CONCERT SUITE (1920)
Stravinsky had first met the Swiss writer, C.F.Ramuz in 1915 and worked with him on the French version of Renard and Les Noces so it was not surprising when he again collaborated with him on the L’Histoire du Soldat a few years later. The war had understandably affected the financial situation and both composer and librettist wanted to write something which could be produced simply and economically. L’Histoire du Soldat is scored for dancer, three speaking parts and seven instruments and has proved to be successful on an almost unbelievable international scale since its first performance in Lausanne in September 1918 (described in the programme as “to be read, played and danced”). The story tells of the Soldier who has a magic violin which he trades with the Devil who promises to fulfil his every wish. One of his many encounters involves his curing the lovely daughter of a King but throughout the piece the Devil proves a tricky protagonist.
The Concert Suite consists of the following Movements:
1. The Soldier’s March
2. Airs by a Stream
3. Pastorale
4. Royal March
5. The Little Concert
6. Three Dances: Tango – Waltz – Ragtime
7. Dance of the Devil
8. Grand Choral
9. Triumphal March of the Devil
and was first performed in London’s Wigmore Hall in July 1920.
Sheila MacCrindle
Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale Concert Suite (July 1920) is scored for septet: Clarinet (in A and B♭), Bassoon, Cornet, Trombone, Violin, Double Bass and percussion.
Igor Stravinsky composed the instrumental concert suite for The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du soldat) in 1919. He subsequently arranged a trio version for clarinet, violin, and piano which was premiered in November 1919, with the standard 7-instrument version premiering in July 1920.
The full theatrical production and the various concert suites of The Soldier’s Tale (L’Histoire du Soldat) were introduced to Australian audiences much earlier than 1968. For instance, the famous dancer and director Sir Robert Helpmann was famously associated with introducing the work to broader Australian audiences, and classical music societies in Sydney and Melbourne had performed the suite in the 1940s and 1950s.
The West Australian premiere was performed on Sunday September 29th 1968 in a free concert put on by the A.B.C. in the Basic Kirke Studio. Directed by Verdon Williams, the performers were Graham Wood (violin), John Mowson (bass), Jack Harrison (clarinet), Jill Harrison (bassoon), Donald Johnson (trumpet), Alan Mewitt (trombone) and Brian Sadique (percussion).
Free A.B.C. ConcertSunday September 29th 1968The free concert in the A.B.C.s Basil Kirke Studio tomorrow beginning at 3 o’clock is one of a series of six in which distinguished artists are performing a wide variety of works. The program will be Bartok’s outstanding and complicated “Sonata for two pianos and percussion” played by Wendy Nash and Stephen Dornan and percussionists John Reece and Brian Sadique directed by Verdon Williams and Stravinsky’s “Soldiers Tale” concert suite conducted by Verdon Williams. The performers will be Graham Wood (violin), John Mowson (bass), Jack Harrison (clarinet), Jill Harrison (bassoon), Donald Johnson (trumpet), Alan Mewitt (trombone) and Brian Sadique (percussion). The West Australian Saturday September 28 1968
28.9.1968
Igor StravinskySoldier’s Tale Concert Suite (1920)PERTH PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (clarinet) Jill Mowson (bassoon) John Mowson (bass) Graham Wood (violin) Don Johnson (trumpet) Alan Mewett (trombone) Bryan Sadique (percussion)
Free Concert Basil Kirke Studio A.B.C. Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia
The stature of Margaret Sutherland is unique in Australian music. She is honoured both as a distinguished composer and as one who continuously generated fresh interest and activity in the field of music. She asserted the importance of new music, particularly the work of Australian composers, and demonstrated her commitment to this belief by an extraordinary range of activities.
Her work spans more than fifty-five years, with more than ninety compositions, years of inspired teaching, recitals, and close personal involvement with Australian poets, young composers, with music education, and with the wider struggle for the recognition of the arts in Australia.
Margaret Sutherland was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on November 20th, 1897. When she was four years old, her family, noted for its artistic and musical interests, moved to Melbourne, Victoria, where she lived until her death in 1984.
In 1914 she was awarded a scholarship to study piano with Edward Goll, and composition with Fritz Hart at the Marshall Hall Conservatorium, where she completed her term of scholarship, after which she taught piano and theory and worked as assistant to Edward Goll.
In 1923 she went to London and Vienna where she became involved in the musical life of these cities and absorbed the influences of European culture. In England, Sir Arnold Bax became a valued friend and musical mentor. She returned to Australia in 1925. During World War II she arranged midday chamber music concerts for the Red Cross and became a member of the Council for Education, Music and the Arts (CEMA). For many years she was associated with the Australian Advisory Committee for UNESCO, and was a member of the Advisory Board for the Australian Music Fund as well as a Council Member of the National Gallery Society of Victoria. She was also instrumental in promoting the plan for the present Victorian Arts Centre.
Margaret Sutherland’s only opera The Young Kabbarli,based on an incident in the life of Daisy Bates, was composed in 1964, and received its first performance at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, in 1965. It was again performed by the State Opera of South Australia, in Adelaide and in Melbourne in 1972, and was honoured as the first Australian opera recorded in Australia.
More than half of Margaret Sutherland’s compositions are chamber works, reflecting her life-long participation in this form and her final reputation will almost certainly rest on the body of this work. Her music generally displays cogent and sinewy strength of argument happily merged with a rich and humane emotionalism.
In 1976, Graeme Murphy choreographed her orchestral work Haunted Hills in the award-winning Glimpses which has been performed with great success by the Australian Ballet and the Dance Company of New south Wales (now the Sydney Dance Company).
In 1969 Margaret Sutherland was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Melbourne in recognition of her contribution to Australian music. In 1970 Commonwealth recognition followed with the awarding of an OBE.
It was Margaret Sutherland who pioneered new music in the first half of this century in Australia, at a time when Australian composers experienced public indifference and a profound sense of isolation. Also she laboured under the extreme disadvantage in Australia, of being a woman. But for her example, it is unlikely that Australia would have produced such a proliferation of woman composers.
Jack Harrison performed the Perth premiere of Margaret Sutherland’s “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano” (1949) with Stephen Dornan (piano) in a Festival of Perth’s Australian Composers’ Workshop held at the Basil Kirke Memorial Studio at the A.B.C. in Western Australia. Jack performed on the first commercial recording in 1972: LP compilation titled Australian Festival of Music, Volume 8.
Peter Jenkins said: “I suspect Jack’s was probably the first recording. (Festival SFC 80025) Ian Morgan’s excellent PHD thesis suggests that it was. Ian was Assoc. Principal clarinet of the MSO for many years. The premiere was almost certainly given by Thomas White. He was Principal Clarinet of the Melbourne Symphony for many years and worked with Margaret on many occasions.I don’t know if Gabor Reeves played it. I actually never asked but I did get the music from him. My connection with the piece was hearing Jack Harrison’s recording of it on ABC radio on a number of occasions. I was at high school then and the wireless was always on when I returned home from school. I remember both Jacks beautiful playing and the piece. Many years later Richard Vella who was responsible for music with currency press asked my about works that were unpublished for clarinet. The Sutherland Sonata sprang to mind. It also suited the AMEB syllabus which ensured ongoing sales.”
CHAMBER MUSIC AT CHRISTMAS GATHERING
For its Christmas gathering last night British Music Society invited its members to hear a quintet in A major (Mozart), and quartet in A major (Brahms). In the quintet, clarinet and strings, and in the quartet, piano, violin, viola, and ‘cello, were heard to great advantage. Players were Paul McDermott and Ronald Wilkinson (violins), Eric Challinor (viola), Eldon Fox (‘cello), Thomas White (clarinet), Margaret Sutherland (piano).
The very first sound archival recording of Margaret Sutherland’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano was captured in 1949 (the exact year it was composed) by Thomas (Tom) White on clarinet and Margaret Sutherland herself on the piano.
Later, the first commercially pressed release to widely distribute the work was featured on a 1972 gatefold LP compilation titled Australian Festival of Music, Volume 8. For that historic commercial release, the piece was performed by Jack Harrison (clarinet) and Stephen Dorman (piano).
Workshop at its most attractive – By MARY TANNOCK
Thursday February 18 1971
Last night’s Australian composers workshop program at the Basil Kirke Studio was distinguished by the presence of Dr Andre Jurres, president of the International Society of Contemporary Music and the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. They were members of the panel chaired by Professor Frank Callaway. It was also the most attractive of the workshop series in the festival so far. Works by Margaret Sutherland, Colin Brumby, John Exton, Peter Sculthorpe and Trevor Jones were performed by Molly McGurk (soprano), Jack Harrison (clarinet), Stephen Dornan (piano) and the Oriel Quartet. Peter Sculthorpe’s “The stars turn” opened with wistful echoes from Gregorian Chant and a sea shanty and dissipated quickly into the character of the song. With limpid tones Miss McGurk sensitively delineated the shifting patterns of a lyrical line. Again, with Colin Brumby’s “Three Italian Songs for High Voice and String Quartet”, she infused chiselled and graceful declamation into the string line, throwing into relief its undulating fluidity. Trevor Jones’s “Essay for String Quartet” was alive with dense pulsating rhythms and sometimes fugal growth. Its textural complexity was skilfully highlighted by the Oriel Quartet.
In Margaret Sutherland’s “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano” traditional texture and techniques were cleverly reconciled to the clarinet line and the accompanist Stephen Dornan’s deft chordal Textures in the piano provided neat and subtle undertones. The West Australian February 19 1971
Composers’ Workshop an Evening of Contrasts – By ALAN BONDS
Thursday February 18 1971
The workshop program presented in the Basil Kirke Studio last night was an evening of contrasts. The programme began with a polished rendition by Jack Harrison and Stephen Dornan of a “polished” Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Dr. Margaret Sutherland. The work’s appeal was immediate, its form was basically straightforward and concealed few intricacies for cerebral digestion. The cycle of three songs by Colin Brumby further enhanced this composer’s reputation for skilful handling of texts. The work was witty and sensitive, but I feel that the texture of the accompanying string quartet was frequently too thick and overpowered the refined singing of Molly McGurk. For those interested, last Thursday’s performance of John Exton’s String Quartet (1969) was their fourth opportunity to hear the work in as many months and the work could easily stand a fourth hearing. It is completely absorbing, combining the all-embracing logic of serialism with a wonderful sense of contrast and colour. The performance by the Oriel Quartet was both accurate and persuasive, skilfully handling textures, which demand fine precision and control. “The Stars Turn” (1970) by Peter Sculthorpe was I feel more notable for the performance than the music which was performed. The piece itself was expressive and moving in the skull for tradition of Irkanda and the Quartets but I couldn’t help it feel that I had heard it all before. Molly McGurk did a splendid job moulding and phrasing as she might to Schubert or Brahms. The Oriel Quartet concluded the performance with a performance of Trevor Jones’s “Essay for string Quartet”. It would be fair to say that much of the work is reminiscent of Bartok’s quartet writing. The Essay was easily sectionalised thematically with frequent excursions through poly modality to atonalism. The Sunday Times February 21 1971
18.2.1971
Dr Margaret SutherlandClarinet Sonata (1949) PERTH PREMIERE FIRST COMMERCIAL RECORDING
Antoni Szalowski was a composer born in Warsaw and died in Paris. He began his music education studying the violin with his father, who was a distinguished violinist and teacher.
In 1930, he completed, with the highest honours, the Konserwatorium Warszawskie (Warsaw Conservatory), where he studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski, conducting with Grzegorz Fitelberg and piano with Paweł Lewiecki. He continued his studies between 1931 and 1936 with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, where he settled permanently.
He served as president of the Stowarzyszenie Młodych Polskich Muzyków (Association of Young Polish Musicians) in Paris between 1936 and 1948.
Szałowski won numerous prizes at composition competitions, e.g. in 1960 he was awarded the First Prize of the Radiodiffusion-Television Française in Paris for his ballet La femme têtue (1958).
Source: www.polmic.pl.
SONATINA FOR CLARINET
Szalowski’s Sonatina for clarinet and piano, was composed in 1936, the year he became president of the Association of Young Polish Musicians in Paris.
Music – By Peter HellstromSeptember 1976A visit by clarinettist Jack Harrison to the Eastern States this week raises the point again of how some fine Western Australian musicians need more recognition. Mr Harrison, who was granted a Churchill Fellowship in 1971, was invited recently to take part in the official opening concert of the Canberra School of Music next Tuesday. As principal clarinet of the W.A. Symphony Orchestra and a brilliant soloist, he will play a Sonata written by Antoni Szalowski with piano accompaniment. News of this invitation resulted in two more invitations… to perform with the Australian Contemporary Music Ensemble in a Schoenberg suite for seven instruments including three clarinets – and to give a performance in Brisbane for the Chalumeau Society, the Queensland equivalent of the W.A. Flute Society. Monday night’s performance will be at the Canberra School of Music and the other two clarinettists will be Don Westlake the Principal Clarinettist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Murray Khouri, Professor of the clarinet at the new school in Canberra. Mr. Harrison will not be able to give the Brisbane performance because of lack of time. He pointed out this week before leaving Perth that with this brief Leave of Absence from the W.A. Symphony Orchestra he was getting a rare opportunity to hear and perform with leading instrumentalists from other states. And this is my point: such travels by distinguished W.A. executants are essential for them to assess and reassess their own standards, to refresh themselves and interstate performers and to absorb atmosphere which will benefit themselves and thus general performance standards when they return. Sabbatical leave is granted after seven years to academics and generally we profit by it. The Churchill Trust which enabled Mr Harrison to travel before and is doing so this time, has helped many performers as well as people in other spheres. However, it cannot finance everything and everybody. If universities can grant sabbaticals, why cannot some similar system be created for the best full-time performing musicians? If the Federal Government, Liberal and Labor, can spend millions of dollars on buying artworks and such items as travelling Chinese art as well as helping to finance or partially finance some of the so-called creators and creations that pass for art in the broad sense, it could help in such a scheme. It could do so by reappraising the merits and priorities. No wonder we lose some of our best performers when their geographical isolation is aggravated by lack of opportunity for the equivalent of financed sabbaticals. A lot end up by trying their luck interstate or overseas finding success and staying there. Others are left lamenting or stay on, depending either on their employment in orchestras, any work that the University of W.A. can give them, a few ABC broadcasts and teaching. There may not be any geniuses in W.A… I don’t know… but there are some performers worthy of more opportunities than they can hope to get here. Who knows if some reallocation of obviously limited funds was made, we might find many more potentially noteworthy executants. Perhaps the State Government as well as the Commonwealth could look at the matter. (Sir Charles Court please note). The only proviso is that high standards should apply. I think that quite a number would measure up.The West Australian Saturday September 25 1976A light interlude of mixed Australian talent8.15pm Tuesday 28th September 1976As part of the opening festival of the new School of Music building, and to celebrate at the same time the 10th anniversary of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, a special concert on Tuesday night brought 11 former Churchill fellows from all parts of Australia to appear in a concert of great variety and interest. With so many individual artists each presenting one or two short items, it was not the sort of concert which could or should be reviewed in depth. But it did make a very pleasant evening which demonstrated the talents of some of the Australian performers who have received fellowships over the past 10 years. The program ranged from early harpsichord music played by Rhonda Vickers to Donald Hollier playing his own “Sonatina for Piano”, as wider contrast as any program could offer. Two violinists were featured, Kerry Smith in pieces by Bloch and Wieniaski, and Pamela Bryce who played Ravel’s “Tzigane”. Two clarinets were also included, Phillip Miechel playing two movements from the “Grand Duo Concertante” for clarinet and piano by Weber, and Jack Harrison with a very attractive “Sonatina for clarinet and piano” by the contemporary Polish composer Antoni Szalowski. The other instrumentalists were French hornist Victor Grieve and cellist Christian Wojtowicz, the latter making a welcome return to Canberra having taught from 1971 to 1973 at the School of Music. Finally, there were a brace of singers, mezzo Sylvia Wade and baritone Ronal Jackson. The accompanists were Ailsa McCristal and Rhonda Vickers. The Canberra Times Thursday September 30 1976 page 23
Peter Tahourdin was born in southern England in 1928. He studied composition with Richard Arnell at Trinity College of Music in London, graduating in 1952. In the years that followed, various concert and broadcast performances of his music were given in England, Holland and Canada.
Tahourdin came to Australia in 1964 and was appointed visiting composer to the University of Adelaide. The following year he was commissioned by the Australian Ballet to compose the score for Illyria, which was first produced, with choreography by Garth Welch, at the 1966 Adelaide Festival of Arts – it was later to appear on television.A long-standing interest in electronic music led him to undertake a year’s course of study at Toronto University in Canada. On returning to Adelaide he became active as a composer, lecturer and broadcaster, and he established the first practical course in electronic music in Australia at the University of Adelaide in 1969.
He was appointed to the staff of the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne in 1973, first as lecturer, then senior lecturer, in composition. During the two years 1978-79 he was chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Australia. His compositional output stems from a variety of commissions and interests, ranging from orchestral and chamber music to choral, electronic and educational music, as well as music for the theatre.
The five symphonies stand at critical points in Tahourdin’s career and are markedly different from one another, both in structure and in content. Equally, his chamber music reflects his changing approach to musical composition – from the tonal Clarinet Sonata (1962) through the four Dialogues (1971-84) and the Quartet for Strings (1982), all of which are concerned with the notion of direct yet varied interplay between the performers, to the Raga Music series (1985-88), which takes its structural base from procedures that underlie the unfolding of the raga in north Indian classical music.
In his electronic music Tahourdin is concerned with modern technology as an added resource that carries with it its own aesthetic and may be used in its own right (Three Mobiles – 1974), as a means of shaping and controlling other musical resources (San Diego Canons – 1983), or as one element within a more complex whole (Ern Malley – A Dramatic Testament – 1976).
https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/peter-tahourdin-1928-2009CLARINET SONATA
The Clarinet Sonata (1962) by British-Australian composer Peter Tahourdin is an early chamber work. Written in England and premiered in London by New Zealand clarinettist John McCaw, it marks a traditional, tonal approach to composition that predates his later, more avant-garde works.
MUSICBy Peter HellstromThe opening musical performance of the Festival Of Perth at 3 pm tomorrow week will be a free recital of contemporary Australian chamber music in the A.B.C. Basil Kirke studio. The festival committee is to be congratulated on the emphasis it has given this year to Australian music. As a result of its cooperation with the Fellowship of Australian composers, 14 of the 55 composers represented in the Festival are Australian. The opening recital is by the Oriel Quartet with which will appear pianist Alice Carrard, violinist John Exton and clarinettist Jack Harrison. Many of the works will be given their first W.A. performances. They include Sydney composer Peter Sculthorpe’s sixth string Quartet, Colin Brumby’s Trio for clarinet violin and piano and Peter Tahourdin ’s Clarinet and Piano Sonata. West Australian compositions will include Jennifer Fowler’s String Trio and Ashley Arbuckle’s Movements for String Trio. The West Australian January 21 1967 page 357 AUSTRALIANS IN PROGRAMME – By Sally Trethowan29th January 1967A free concert and the first of the music in this year’s Festival of Perth, which is offering principally music by Viennese and Italian composers, was a recital of contemporary Australian chamber music yesterday afternoon in the Basil Kirke Studio. Though the symbolical free-and-first might be seen as a sort of declaration of faith on behalf of the festival organisers, the Australian-music-at-any-price faction should feel satisfied after a two hour program of seven works by seven composers. However, there are some people, and I am one of them, who believe that a self-conscious offering of Australian music in one parcel as it were is probably not the best method of asserting its quality. Music should be listened to on its own merits regardless of the nationality or domicile of its composer. One of the most moving and satisfying things for an audience must be to watch a composer playing his own work. At yesterday’s concert, Dr John Exton played the violin part of his “Fantasy for Violin and Piano” with Alice Carrard playing the piano part. Dr Exton’s Fantasy is the product of a highly intelligent disciplined mind. From a single musical cell, the work evolves in continual parthenogenesis, gathering emotional tension till it logically works itself out full-cycle. Peter Sculthorpe’s Sixth String Quartet performed by the Oriel String Quartet is tense, nerve fraught music strongly indebted in technique to Bartok, though lacking both that composer’s emotional fire and his intellect. Felix Verder’s “Five Fantasias for String Trio” were deep browed music that even in quick passages exercised levity, the instrumental lines convoluted in prescribed patterns of discordant chromaticism. Two of the younger W.A. composers were represented Ashley Arbuckle by an aortic set of Nine Miniatures for String Trio, and Jennifer Fowler by an expressive well-wrought String Trio. “Strophe for clarinet violin and piano” a set of epigrammatic Variations a la Webern, by turns reflective and capricious, composed by Victorian Colin Brumby, was an agreeable foil for the other clarinet work, a Sonata by Peter Tahourdin. This engaging music played with gusto by Jack Harrison, clarinet and Alice Carrard, piano, employees a comparatively old-fashioned idiom, is strongly lyrical, repetitious and has a freshness and sparkle that glances back to Weber rather than Webern with whom most of the other composers have affiliations. One cannot praise too highly the scholarly analysis and program annotations of David Tunley and John Exton.
29.1.1967
Peter TahourdinClarinet Sonata (1962)PERTH PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (clarinet) Alice Carrard (piano)
Festival of Perth Free Studio Recital Basil Kirke Studio A.B.C. Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (12 October 1872, Down Ampney, Gloucestershire – 26 August 1958, London) was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many folk song arrangements set as hymn tunes, and also influenced several of his own original compositions.
Vaughan Williams spent most of his life in London. He studied the viola, piano and organ, and he wanted to compose, but his family discouraged him from an orchestral career. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied composition at the Royal College of Music, as well as organ and piano with several teachers, Although he also studied abroad with Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel, his style remained individual and English. He was appointed organist at Lambeth, and his interest in English folk music dates from his stay there. He became good friends with Gustav Holst, and they often shared their works in progress with each other. His work on the English Hymnal greatly influenced his musical career.
He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in France during World War I. From the 1920s onward, he was in increasing demand as a composer and conductor. He composed simple pieces and grand orchestral works and is considered the outstanding composer of his generation in England. According to Hubert J. Foss in The Heritage of Music, “In Vaughan Williams we hear the historic speech of the English people. What he gives us in music is the language of the breakfast table. It is also the language that Shakespeare wrote.”
https://www.windrep.org/Ralph_Vaughan_Williamshttps://www.fabermusic.com/we-represent/ralph-vaughan-williamsROMANCE FOR HARMONICA, STRINGS, AND PIANO
This whimsical piece for harmonica accompanied by string orchestra and piano was written for the great harmonica player Larry Adler (for whom Malcolm Arnold wrote his Harmonica Concerto). It was premiered by Adler in New York in 1952, a performance that was swiftly followed by another at the Proms under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent. Vaughan Williams writes idiomatically for the instrument without sacrificing his own distinctive compositional style, exploiting its expressive possibilities and showcasing the virtuosity of the soloist.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/romance-for-harmonica-9780193693265?cc=au&lang=en&#In March 1963 Jack Harrison performed the Australian premieres ofGordon Jacob’s Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Strings
andRalph Vaughan Williams’s Romance for Harmonica and Orchestra.
Mar 1963
Gordon Jacob Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Strings (1948) AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Vaughan Williams Romance for Harmonica and Orchestra (1951) AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (saxophone)
Jack Harrison (harmonica) John Farnsworth Hall (conductor)
West Australian Symphony Orchestra
ABC Free Concert, Supreme Court Gardens Perth, Western Australia
ABC FREE CONCERT 1963 – With the W.A. Symphony Orchestra – Conducted by John Farnsworth HallSoloist: Jack Harrison (saxophonist and harmonica player)Programme includes:Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Strings (Gordon Jacob)Romance for Harmonica and Orchestra (Vaughan Williams)Tomorrow Night at 8pmSupreme Court GardensCONCERT – MARCH 14th 1963An outstanding programme by the Perth Sinfonietta will be given in Winthrop Hall at 1.10pm next Thursday under the baton of Verdon Williams. This free recital is being presented by the A.B.C. as the first in a weekly series being sponsored by the University during the year. The Sinfonietta will play works by Berger, Copland, Delius and Vaughan Williams. The soloists will be Allyne Tilsed (flute) and Jack Harrison (clarinet). Those attending the concert include Russian violinist Nelli Schkolniskova and W.A. resident conductor John Farnsworth Hall, who will be soloists and conductor in the first A.B.C. Youth Concert on March 19.LUNCH MUSIC IS PROMISING – By Sally TrethowanMARCH 14th 1963The programme for this year’s free lunch-hour concert series held on Thursdays in Winthrop Hall is even more interesting and varied in type of music and number of performers than last year’s.If the first concert given yesterday to a large audience by the Perth Sinfonietta, is any indication of the quality, the weekly programmes will be exciting musical experiences and a major contribution to musical life in W.A.The Perth Sinfonietta always gives us an entertaining, thought-provoking programme. Conductor Verdon William’s introductory comments are instructive, to the point, and do not offend by being too technical or too long. The choice of composers in yesterday’s concert – Berger, Vivaldi, Copland, Delius and Vaughan Williams – leaned heavily towards the moderate, making the Vivaldi Flute Concerto (“The Goldfinch”) a pertinent, pleasant comment on, and exposition of, a more elegant and graceful age. The young flautist, Allyne Tilsed, who has just joined the W.A. Symphony Orchestra has a sureness of tone control which allows the most delicate innuendos without over or under emphasis. In Vivaldi’s “Goldfinch”, flute and strings chattered and trilled in animated conversation, whereas in the Copland Clarinet Concerto, a different symphonic relationship exists between orchestra and clarinet.Clarinettist Jack Harrison interwove the sure mellowness of tone and bell-like clarity of his instrument into the orchestral texture of the work.The brief overture of Jean Berger that began the programme and a Delius “Serenade” and Vaughan Williams “Fantasia on Greensleeves” which closed it, are works typical of the individuality of their composers, but have in common the fact that they make light and easy listening.The West Australian March 15 1963TELEVISION TONIGHT –SEPTEMBER 16 1963 – SMOOTH, MAN, SMOOTH – LIKE HOTIt caters for the highbrow and the “way-out man”. From the off beat “Take Five” to Tchaikovsky’s soulful Andante Cantabile. No, you don’t have to go to a record shop or have the radios tuned to two stations. What do you do? Tune in to TWO tomorrow night Tuesday September 17th 1963 at 9.30.Entitled Quartets in Contrast, this live show will present a string quartet and a jazz quartet in the same programme and will demonstrate the versatility of each. The jazz quartet is led by Jack Harrison and the string by violinist Graham Wood. The show was devised by ABC Music Supervisor Fred Ackland and will be produce by Jock Millett. The two quartets will combine for the opening number – the Andante Cantabile. In combination, they will also play “Stranger in Paradise”. Arrangements of both tunes have been specially written by Vaughan Williams who is also responsible for the string quartet adaption of Arthur Benjamin’s lively Jamaican Rhumba. The jazz group goes classical with Corelli’s Gigue but also presents some straight jazz with a bracket of four numbers: Take Five, It’s A Raggy Waltz, Little Girl Blue and All the Things You Are. Daily News Monday September 16 1963 page 6MUSIC – By Peter HellstromFestival Of Perth 1966The Master of Queens Musick, Sir Arthur Bliss, has told the Festival Of Perth committee that the planning of the musical programs in the coming festival is a magnificent gesture to British music and should be more widely known. That it has become well known already in Britain is showing by letters from many leading authorities there they include congratulations from the executive of the Composers Guild of Great Britain. Though some prominent English music festivals like Cheltenham Aldeburgh and the longest established Three Choirs Festival feature their country music, no British festival has in recent times included such an extensive and exciting range of British music in one series. Works of nearly 70 composers are included. The Perth programs have been wisely spaced over the six week festival period and though many of the concerts will start at the customary 8 pm some will be at 6 pm to enable patrons to attend another festival attraction the same evening.Works by Vaughan Williams Gordon Jacob, Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley and Michael Tippett will be new to W.A. The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis will introduce Bliss’s “Discourse for Orchestra” to Australia in one of its Perth concerts. In the other, Tippitt’s Symphony No. 2 and Stravinsksy’s Symphony in Three movements will be played here for the first time. Leading W.A. musicians appearing as soloists in the festival will include soprano Molly McGurk who will sing Benjamin Britain’s song cycle Les Illuminations with the W.A. Symphony Orchestra. She will also sing the solo soprano part in the University Choral Society’s performance of Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony. Stephen Dorman will be the accompanist for tenor David Galliver’s three British song recitals. He will also partner violinist Vaughan Hanley in a Sonata recital and will play the solo part in constant Lambert’s Concerto for Orchestra and Nine Instruments. Jack Harrison will be the soloist in David Tunley’s Clarinet Concerto and will be joined by the Oriole Quartet in Bliss Clarinet Quintet. Graham Wood will introduce James Penberthy’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra and Alice Carrard will be the pianist with the A.B.C. Wind Players in Rawsthorne’s recent quintet. Madame Carrard will be joined by Mr Dornan, Stephanie James and Michael Cole to perform Malcolm Williamson’s new Concerto for Wind Quintet and two pianos. The new university organist, Mr John Hind, will be soloist in a program which will feature the W.A. Bach Society. The Oriel Quartet will also be the soloists with the W.A. Symphony Orchestra in Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for strings and will give a separate recital of works by Howells, Frank Bridge, John Exton (the newly appointed senior lecturer in music at the university) Gerald Finzi, Elizabeth Lutyens and Edmund Rubbra. The West Australian September 1965THE THREE VOCALISES
(often referred to by the German title Drei Vocalisen)
is a wordless chamber work written for soprano voice and B-flat clarinet.
Composed in 1958, it is one of the final pieces Vaughan Williams completed during the last year of his life, written shortly after his celebrated Ten Blake Songs. The work was dedicated to the soprano Margaret Ritchie and published posthumously by the Oxford University Press.
The Australian premiere of Vaughan Williams “Vocalisen” was performed at Winthrop Hall on 2nd March 1968 at part of the sixteenth Festival of Perth. Jack was paid $50 and one free ticket. The engagement included an appearance “with Miss Streich on two occasions on 2nd March 1968” and to make himself available for “such rehearsals as she may determine after her arrival in Perth on 26th February.”
Rita Streich signed photo
Jack had Rita Streich sign a photograph which is inscribed “To Jack Harrison with many thanks for the beautiful clarinet playing in our recital 2 March 1968. I enjoyed it – Rita Streich”. Rita Streich, Super Star – By Sally TrethowanHer rendering of Mahler’s “I Breathed a Gentle Fragrance” was close to perfection, as was her singing of Schubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock”. In this last work, and that of Vaughan Williams, her voice was matched by the sweet, sure expressive clarinet obligato of Jack Harrison.The West Australian Monday March 4 1968Perfection at Winthrop Hall – By Robert D. NussbaumJack Harrison’s role was a still more limited one but again perfect in its way. The clarinet obligato to Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the rock” is probably the most beautiful part ever conceived for that instrument and the work itself ranks high among Schubert’s many fine compositions. Ss one who has grappled with this obligato half a dozen times in the last four year, I’m in a pretty good position to judge the effectiveness of this presentation. Probably taking his cue from the restraint of the soloist and possibly out of unwillingness to overshadow her in any way, Mr. Harrison held back most of the brilliance of which he is capable. From the sustained note at the beginning to the rapid runs of the coda, he held the volume down to about mezzo forte but he still provided the technically flawless, musicianly interpretation that Perth audiences have come to expect from him (and the kind that makes less skilful executants despair). In the Vaughan Williams “Vocalises” he seemed to be accompanying Miss Streich rather than in duet with her; even so, the blend between voice and clarinet was beautifully managed. The” Shepherd on the Rock” gave Miss Streich more opportunity to demonstrate the range of which she is capable than any other single number on the program and she took advantage of it. The Critic Vol. 8 No. 7 22 March 1968
2.3.1968
Vaughan Williams “Vocalisen” (1958) AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Jack Harrison (clarinet)
Maurice Till (piano)
Rita Streich (soprano)
Festival of Perth
Winthrop Hall University of Western Australia
1971AN EVENING OF BRILLIANCE WITH FIEDLER – BY PAULINE STEELFoot stamping, applauding concert goers last night persuaded conductor Arthur Fiedler to return to the stage three times after an evening of brilliant entertainment. The music burst into a bubble of merriment as encore of “Fantasia on Greensleeves” by Vaughan Williams and “Aquarius” (demanded twice) were played. The audience had been alternately thrilled, enchanted and amused by the music of Mr. Fiedler and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. They had packed into Winthrop Hall to hear the second of the ABC concerts for the Festival Of Perth. From the moment the program began with the thrilling chords of the “Triumphal March” from Aida, Mr Fiedler demonstrated the conducting technique that has made him famous under his baton. The W.A. Symphony Orchestra played with precision and great variety of mood. The mysterious atmosphere of Weber’s “Oberon” overture was captured by the Orchestra conjuring up a fairy world. Soloist Jack Harrison demonstrated the beauty and tone of the clarinet during the solo passages of a less well-known work Debussy’s Rhapsody number one for clarinet and Orchestra. He executed the technically difficult piece with great feeling. A highlight of the program was Ibert’s “Divertissement”, a very funny piece with the lead comic role being taken one after the other by wind instruments. The audience enjoyed the fantasy, romance and gaiety of the suite from “The Nutcracker”. The second half of the program ended with a selection from Oklahoma and the fun filled 76 trombones from ”The Music Man”. The West Australian Wednesday February 17 1971
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852- 1924) was one of the leading musicians of his generation and had a profound effect on the development and history of English music as a performer, conductor, composer, teacher and writer.
Born in Dublin to a musical family, his musical gifts were recognized early. He studied piano and the violin privately and subsequently the organ with Robert Prescott Stewart at Christchurch and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals in Dublin. Stanford entered Queens’ College Cambridge in 1870 as both an organ and classics scholar. While still an undergraduate he became Assistant Conductor of the Cambridge University Music Society and held the position of Conductor from 1875 to 1893. He became organist at Trinity College Cambridge in 1873 and subsequently studied composition in Germany with Carl Reinecke and Friedrick Kiel.
He was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London in 1883 (a position that he held for more than forty years) and Professor of Music at Cambridge in 1888. He subsequently held appointments as Conductor of the Bach Choir in London, the Leeds Philharmonic Society and the Leeds Festival.
Stanford was a prolific composer, completing seven symphonies, eight string quartets, nine operas, more than 300 songs, 30 large scale choral works and a large body of chamber music. He also composed a substantial number of works for the organ, as well as anthems and settings of the canticles for the Anglican Church. He wrote extensively on music including three volumes of memoirs and a popular text on composition.
Today he is largely remembered for his songs and religious music as well as his influence on several generations of composition students at the Royal College of Music. These included Sir Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Rebecca Clarke, Ivor Gurney, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Wood.
Stanford was knighted in 1902 and in 1904 he became the first British composer to be elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. His ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey near the remains of Henry Purcell.
There has been a revival of interest in Stanford’s music over the past two decades with performances of some of his neglected works and an increasing number of recordings.
