Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83


Frank [Franke], Johann. See Franck, Johann. Frank, Michael



Yüklə 17,54 Mb.
səhifə386/500
tarix30.12.2017
ölçüsü17,54 Mb.
#18285
1   ...   382   383   384   385   386   387   388   389   ...   500

Frank [Franke], Johann.


See Franck, Johann.

Frank, Michael.


See Franck, Michael.

Frank, Salomon.


See Franck, Salomo.

Franke, Bernd


(b Weissenfels, Saxony-Anhalt, 14 Jan 1959). German composer. He studied at the Musikhochschule in Leipzig (1975–81) with Thiele, among others, at the DDR Akademie der Künste (1981–5), where he attended Matthus’s masterclasses, and at Tanglewood (1989), where he was a student of Lukas Foss. In 1981 he was appointed to a post at the University of Leipzig. He has made concert tours of the USA (1993, 1996) and served as a jury member at the Munich Biennale (1994). His honours include the Hanns-Eisler Prize of Radio DDR (1981), the Kucyna International Composition Prize, Boston (1987), a prize from the Künstlerhaus, Boswil (1987) and the Leonard Bernstein Tanglewood Fellowship (1989).

Franke’s music is rooted in the tonal and formal practices of the central European tradition. His approach to composition, however, is one of analysis and subversion. His music does not negate the past, but becomes a game played with remnants of the Classic-Romantic style. The work of Lutosławski, Varèse, Stockhausen and Morton Feldman have had a formative influence on his compositional development, as have the paintings of Marc Chagall, Wolfgang Schulze (WOLS) and Richard Pousette-Darten. Joseph Beuys’s idea of ‘social sculpture’ has been particularly influential to his compositional aesthetic (from 1988). Solo x-fach, an ensemble score divisible into individual parts that can be performed simultaneously, thematicizes the isolation of the soloist; movement, colour, light and video art make the social implications of this clear. Music for Trumpet … problematizes the hierarchical nature of the orchestra, while For WOLS for solo piano becomes an endgame incapable of development. The opera Mottke gives expression to the shattering of the individual in his social milieu. Franke’s critical realism provides a glimmer of hope nonetheless, showing communication to be present in illusion and vision.


WORKS


(selective list)

Op: Mottke (2, J. Moore, after S. Asch: Mottke der Dieb), 1995–7

Orch: 3 Orchesterstücke, 1980–83; Chagall-Musik, 1985–6; Music, tpt, vn, hp, orch, 1990–93; Seasons of Light, bn, orch, 1994

Vocal: Redners Missgeschick, 3 lieder, Bar, pf, 1982; Jodok lässt grüssen (Etüde über O) (P. Bichsel), mixed speaking chorus, 1990

Chbr and solo inst: Qt, cl, vn, db, perc, 1977–8; 3 x Virtuoses, perc, 1982; Die Zeit ist ein Fluss ohne Ufer, 10 insts, 1987; Gesang I, fl, b fl, 1988; Konform-Kontraform, scene, 8 insts, 1988; Projekt Solo x-fach, multiple versions, 1988–; For WOLS (It’s All Over), 4 pieces, 1991; Musik, pf trio, 1992; For Sholem Asch, 5 pieces, 1995–7

MSS in Zentralbibliothek, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Principal publishers: Deutscher Verlag, Breitkopf & Härtel

GISELA NAUCK

Frankel, Benjamin


(b London, 31 Jan 1906; d London, 12 Feb 1973). English composer. The son of a synagogue beadle, he learnt the piano and the violin in his youth and taught himself the musical literature by avid reading of everything held by the Hammersmith Public Library. He was for a short time apprenticed to the watchmaking trade, and managed during 1922 to spend six months in Germany as a piano student of Victor Benham, contemporary and friend of Moriz Rosenthal. Returning to London he was a jazz violinist in night clubs while studying piano and composition under Orlando Morgan at the Guildhall School of Music where he was awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians' Scholarship. From 1931 he was much in demand as an orchestrator and conductor of West End musical comedies and revues. These included Noël Coward's Operette, Beverley Nichols's Floodlight and many C.B. Cochran shows. In 1934 he wrote his first film score; during his career as an outstanding composer of film music, he produced more than 100 scores for the cinema. He was able to find distinctive ideas and appropriate musical styles for a remarkable range of films. Many of his best scores were written for films directed by Anthony Asquith, who was receptive and sympathetic to the virtuosity and precision of Frankel's technique.

Alongside his theatre and film work he continued composing concert music, and his reputation increased suddenly after World War II, when his works began to be more widely performed, broadcast and published. His Second String Quartet was performed at the Copenhagen ISCM festival in 1947; the orchestral prelude Mayday was given at a 1950 Prom; the Violin Concerto, commissioned by Max Rostal, was given at one of the joint London Contemporary Music Centre-BBC Festival of Britain Concerts in 1951; and the First Sonata for solo violin was issued on disc. The first four string quartets, the Piano Quartet, the Clarinet Quintet and the Violin Concerto are the principal works of this period.

A general impression was formed that the production of so much immediately effective music for films caused Frankel to react in his concert music by concentrating exclusively on an inward-looking, even melancholy expression, making this music in some way ‘difficult’ and unrewarding to the listener. An informed familiarity with his output lends little support to such a view, though there is a possible explanation for it: whatever had gone before, the endings of his works tended to be either slow or contemplative in character, or, if quick-moving, to be pianissimo. The Violin Concerto, a serious and deeply felt work written ‘in memory of “the six million”’ (a reference to the Jews killed in World War II), provides an example in the last of its four widely varied movements, a final Grazioso, quasi allegretto. This movement at first puzzles, for all its gentle beauty, and the final delicately scored pages are scarcely designed to bring an audience to its feet. Yet understanding of the work as a whole and on the composer's own terms seems demanded by its total psychological integrity. The deceptive urbanity, even the gentle humour of such a conclusion is seen to be an expression of the deepest acceptance in human terms of the work's tragic content.

Frankel's musical style was by this time fully formed, though to label it was not easy. The shadows of Shostakovich and Bartók in the quartets, and of Sibelius (and perhaps Walton) in the Violin Concerto, give passing stylistic orientation, but the technical absorption of such influences was soon complete and the musical personality became quite unmistakably his own. It was gradually, during the 1950s, that his thought turned in the direction of 12-note serialism and to a burst of creativity which continued to his death.

In this last period Frankel's major creative production was in a remarkable output of symphonies, a form which he unfashionably held to remain ‘a wholly viable vehicle for the expression of the most compelling musical thought’. Eight symphonies appeared between 1958 and 1971, all concerned in a variety of ways with serial techniques. A single 12-note series is employed in all movements of both the Second and the Sixth; in the other symphonies individual movements tend to have their own series, to be freely diatonic or to apply serial techniques to other than 12-note material. The second movement of the Fifth uses two distinct series and, most originally, in the one-movement Third, diatonically presented material becomes gradually transformed into consistently 12-note serial music. Nor is it only in technique that the symphonies show variety, for each has its own atmosphere and design, varying from the broad, often ominous, canvas of the Second, through the relaxed geniality of the Fifth to the hard brilliance of much of the Seventh.

The special feature of Frankel's approach to serialism was his strong belief in tonality as a continuingly vital principle in musical thought, and his striking demonstration that strictly serial deployment of the total chromatic is compatible with both expressive and structural uses of tonality. He viewed the series as a pervasively thematic melodic line of almost infinite versatility, out of which it was possible to derive harmonies often of a startlingly bold diatonicism.



For a time most of his works were first performed by the BBC or abroad (he was principally resident in Switzerland from 1957) but public performances of his works in England became more frequent after the LSO commissioned his Seventh Symphony in 1970, continuing principally under the sympathetic advocacy of Sir Charles Groves. Just before his death, Frankel spoke of having completed in his mind a ninth, choral, symphony, but nothing had been written down, except for the customary prolific sketches. The opera Marching Song was left in vocal score, but with sufficient indications for the preparation of a full score; a projected performance by ENO, scored by Buxton Orr, was cancelled but eventually broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 3 October 1983.

WORKS


(selective list)

orchestral


8 syms.: no.1, op.33, 1958; no.2, op.38, 1962; no.3, op.40, 1964; no.4, op.44, 1966; no.5, op.46, 1967; no.6, op.49, 1969; no.7, op.50, 1970; no.8, op.53, 1971

Pezzo sinfonico, op.9, c1940; Solemn Speech and Discussion, op.11, str, 1941; Youth Music, op.12, str, 1942; Mayday, a Panorama, op.22, 1948; Vn Conc., op.24, 1951; Mephistopheles Serenade, op.25, 1952; Concertante lirico, op.27, str, 1952; A Shakespeare Ov., op.29, 1954; Messa strumentale, op.36, 1960; Serenata concertante, op.37, pf trio, orch, 1960; Va Conc., op.45, 1967; Konzertstück, op.47, 1968; Ov. to a Ceremony, op.51, 1970; Pezzi melodici, op.54, small orch, 1972

More than 100 film scores

other works


Stage: Marching Song (op, 3, H. Keller after J. Whiting), op.52, 1971–2, inc.

Chbr and solo inst: Str Trio no.1, op.3; Sonata, op.7, va; Trio [no.1], op.10, cl, vc, pf, 1940; Sonata, op.13, vn; Str Qt no.1, op.14, 1945; Str Qt no.2, op.15, 1944; Novelette, op.16, vn, pf; Str Qt no.3, op.18, 1947; Sonatina leggiera, op.19, pf; Str Qt no.4, op.21, 1949; 3 Poems, op.23, vc, pf; Pf Qt, op.26, 1953; Cl Qnt, op.28, 1956; Preambles and Progressions, op.30, pf, inc.; Str Trio no.2, op.34; Bagatelles (Pezzi notturni), op.35, 11 insts, 1959; Sonata no.2, op.39, vn, 1962; Trio [no.2] (Pezzi pianissimi), op.41, cl, vc, pf, 1964; Catalogue of Incidents in Romeo and Juliet, op.42, 11 insts, 1964; Str Qt no.5, op.43, 1965

Vocal: The Aftermath (R. Nichols), op.17, T, tpt, timp, str, 1947; 8 Songs, op.32, Mez/Bar, pf

MSS in GB-Lbl

Principal publishers: Novello, Chester

Principal recording companies: CPO, Chandos

BIBLIOGRAPHY


R.W. Wood: ‘Benjamin Frankel’, Music Survey, iii (1951), 257–63

R. Manvell and J. Huntley: The Technique of Film Music (London, 1957)

P.M. Young: A History of British Music (London, 1967)

R. Myers, ed.: Twentieth Century Music (London, 1968)

H. Keller: ‘Frankel and the Symphony’, MT, cxi (1970), 144–7

B. Orr: ‘The Symphonies of Benjamin Frankel and the Death of Tonality’, The Listener (12 Oct 1972), 483 only

F. Routh: Contemporary British Music (London, 1972)

J. Williams, ed.: The Music of Benjamin Frankel (London, 1996)

BUXTON ORR



Yüklə 17,54 Mb.

Dostları ilə paylaş:
1   ...   382   383   384   385   386   387   388   389   ...   500




Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©genderi.org 2024
rəhbərliyinə müraciət

    Ana səhifə