Frank Martin's musical reflections on death
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Frank Martin's musical reflections on death
(Dimension & diversity / Mark DeVoto, general editor, No.11)
Pendragon Press, c2011
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
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  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. 283-286
"Catalogue of Frank Martin's compositions": p. 291-296
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Frank Martin (1890-1974) , the greatest Swiss composer besides Arthur Honegger, spent two periods of his life intensely reflecting on death: the decade centered in World War II and the half-decade before his own passing at the ageof 84. The resulting nine compositions are internationally recognized as featuring among Martin's masterpieces. In terms of their spiritual approach, they each address the subject of death from a different angle. Far from morbidor dejected in his attitude, Martin uses his very expressive musical language to ponder the many ways in which humans seek to understand the finitude of their earthly lives. In mid-life, Martin ponders death as a longed-for reposeafter a long life of fatal passion and anxieties in the chamber oratorio Le Vin herbe (1938), as a fulfillment of a brief moment of glory in the orchestral song cycle Der Cornet (1942-43), as the judge of personal conscience in Sechs Monologe aus Jedermann (1943-44), as a power exhausted after a terrible war in the armistice oratorio In terra pax (1944), and as a human boundary spiritually overcome in the oratorio Golgotha (1945-48). By contrast, Compositions from the last years of the composer's life show death met with sinister wittiness in the Poemes de la mort after Francois Villon (1970-71), accepted with serenity in his Requiem (1971-72), awaited in faith in Polyptyque, hisviolin concerto for Yehudi Menuhin (1973), and finally welcomed with a victorious spirit in the chamber cantata "Et la vie lemporta" (1974).
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