Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria
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Foulds, John (Herbert)(b Hulme, Manchester, 2 Nov 1880; d Calcutta, 24 April 1939). English composer and conductor. Largely self-taught and the son of a Hallé Orchestra bassoonist, he composed copiously from childhood. During the 1890s he acquired performing experience as a cellist in theatre and promenade orchestras in England and Wales; he also travelled on the Continent. In 1900 he joined the ranks of the Hallé’s cello section under Richter, who encouraged Foulds as a conductor, taking him to the 1906 festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein in Essen, where he met Delius, Humperdinck and Mahler. He also studied conducting with Lamoureux, Mahler and Nikisch. However, encouraged by Henry Wood’s performance of his tone poem Epithalamium at the 1906 Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts, Foulds left the Hallé to concentrate on composition. He found success in light orchestral and salon music. The Keltic Suite (1911) was much performed; its slow movement, the Keltic Lament, became a popular light classic through innumerable arrangements. In 1912 there began a fruitful collaboration with the actor-director Lewis Casson; over a 20-year period, Foulds became one of Britain’s leading stage-music composers. During World War I, he was active in music-making for the troops; he was appointed music director of the central YMCA in 1918, and conductor of the London University Musical Society in 1921. His A World Requiem (1919–21), composed in memory of the war dead of all nations, was recommended for national performance by the committee of the newly formed British Music Society and adopted by the British Legion as the musical component of the Armistice Night commemorations; its annual performances at the Royal Albert Hall during 1923–6, by a chorus and orchestra numbering over 1200 conducted by Foulds, constituted the first Festivals of Remembrance. After 1926 the Legion’s patronage lapsed. Foulds spent part of 1927 in Sicily before settling for three years in Paris, where he worked as a cinema pianist and composed some of his most radical works. Returning to England in 1930, he wrote his highly personal study of contemporary music and its sources of inspiration, Music To-day, published in 1934. In 1935 he travelled to India. His interest in its music, non-European modes and rāgas, and music for meditation, had earlier been awakened by his second wife, the violinist Maud McCarthy (in the 1920s he had essayed a vast Sanskrit opera, Avatara, which he subsequently destroyed, though the 3 Mantras, the preludes to the acts, survive). After a year investigating Indian music first-hand, he was appointed Director of European Music at All-India Radio, Delhi, where he broadcast frequently as a commentator, solo performer and conductor. He also coached Indian musicians to read Western musical notation and perform as an ensemble on Indian instruments; a project never fulfilled was an ‘Indo-European orchestra’ combining the resources of both continents. He died suddenly from cholera shortly after being transferred to reorganize music at AIR’s Calcutta station. Foulds’s idiomatic eclecticism, and his frequently adventurous and unorthodox musical ideas, resist easy classification. His extreme versatility, talent for memorable tunes, instrumental colour and national or exotic characters, made him a natural purveyor of light music and theatre scores. Though such works supported him financially he regarded them as sidelines to his more serious compositional output, which, however, was for the most part ignored or rejected. Indeed for decades after his death, Foulds was only remembered, if at all, as the composer of the Keltic Lament.
Many of his modal studies (eg. in Essays in the Modes) relate to Southern Indian rāgas, and he made use of Indian additive rhythms before Messiaen. These Indian interests intersected with his leanings towards esoteric spirituality to produce explorations of harmonic stasis and ‘timeless’ repetition (eg. Gandharva-Music) that foreshadow the minimalism of 50 years later. His largest works tend to synthesize the multifarious tendencies pursued separately in smaller ones: The Vision of Dante is an example from an early stage in his development, as the Mantras and A World Requiem are respectively more radical and conservative examples from his maturity. In the Dynamic Triptych and Quartetto intimo he produced his most impressive contributions to the genres of concerto and quartet. The vitality, exuberance and technical command of Foulds’s best works are remarkable, and they constitute an important and individual contribution to the British music of the early 20th century. WORKS[selective list] vocal-orchestral
orchestral
chamber
piano
other vocal
incidental music
BIBLIOGRAPHYJ.H. Foulds: Music To-day (London, 1934) M. MacDonald: John Foulds: his Life in Music (Rickmansworth, 1975, enlarged 2/1989 as John Foulds and his Music [incl. miscellany of Foulds writings]) MALCOLM MACDONALD Directory: download -> 3062a7ba-8b89-4266-8568-82026f790e50 -> Bibliografia%20Básica download -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations download -> Bbc archives: Beyond the programme download download -> Occupational health and safety download -> Dynatest 3031 lwd light Weight Deflectometer download -> Forth coming competitive exams download -> English Olympiad Tasks: 10 th form Аудіювання, 10 клас. Текст download -> Brush High School Morning Announcements Friday, September 05, 2014 all school download -> Year 9 The Arts — Music download -> Years 7 and 8 standard elaborations — Australian Curriculum: Music draft Bibliografia%20Básica -> Oakeley, Sir Herbert (Stanley) Download 19.1 Mb. Share with your friends:
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