Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria



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Frick, Gottlob


(b Ölbronn, nr Pforzheim, 28 July 1906; d Mühlacker, 18 Aug 1994). German bass. He studied at the Musikhochscule in Stuttgart and was a chorus member at the Stuttgart Opera (1927–31). He was engaged at Coburg in 1934, making his début as Daland. After periods at Freiburg and Königsberg he was engaged at the Dresden Staatsoper, where he created Caliban in Sutermeister’s Die Zauberinsel (1942) and the Carpenter in Haas’s Die Hochzeit des Jobs (1944), and sang Rocco, Nicolai’s Falstaff, Prince Gremin, the Peasant in Orff’s Die Kluge, and, especially, the Wagnerian bass roles. He joined the Berlin Städtische Oper in 1950 and the Bavarian and Vienna Staatsopern in 1953. He first sang at Covent Garden in 1951, as Hunding and Hagen, and appeared there regularly from 1957 to 1967 in the Wagner repertory and as Rocco. He also appeared at Bayreuth, Salzburg (where he took part in the première of Egk’s Irische Legende), the Metropolitan, La Scala and other leading theatres. Although he officially retired in 1970 he continued to make occasional appearances in Munich and Vienna, and in 1971 sang Gurnemanz at Covent Garden. In 1976 the Stuttgart Opera staged Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor to honour his 70th birthday. Frick had a strong, firmly centred yet flexible bass voice which was immediately recognizable; he sang with the utmost intelligence and with incisive diction. He recorded all his major roles, notably his Rocco (three times), Hagen and Gurnemanz.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


W. Schwinger: ‘Gottlob Frick’, Opera, xvii (1966), 188–93

HAROLD ROSENTHAL/ALAN BLYTH


Frick [Frike], Philipp Joseph


(b Willanzheim, nr Kitzingen am Main, 27 May 1740; d London, 15 June 1798). German organist and glass harmonica player. He was organist to the court of the Margrave of Baden-Baden, but became the first German virtuoso on Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica and attempted to improve the instrument by applying keyboard action to it. After several years in St Petersburg he made his first appearance in London in 1778 and settled there shortly afterwards. He gave up concert tours on health grounds and devoted himself to teaching the piano and harmonica. In London he published three trios for harpsichord or piano and obbligato violin and cello (1797), two piano duets (1796) and the following theoretical works: The Art of Musical Modulation (1780; after Ausweichungs-Tabellen, Vienna, 1772), A Treatise on Thorough Bass (c1786) and A Guide in Harmony (1793).

BIBLIOGRAPHY


GerberL

GerberNL

C.F. Pohl: Zur Geschichte der Glas-Harmonica (Vienna, 1862; Eng. trans., 1862)

BRUNO HOFFMANN


Fricker, Herbert (Austin)


(b Canterbury, 12 Feb 1868; d Toronto, 11 Nov 1943). English organist and choirmaster. He was city organist at Leeds and choirmaster to the Leeds Musical Festival; the high reputation of the Leeds choir at the triennial festivals up to 1913 was largely the result of his training. He initiated municipal concerts at Leeds in 1903 from which grew the Leeds SO (later Northern PO), and furthered Yorkshire’s musical development in many other ways. In 1917 he went to Canada to become conductor of the Mendelssohn Choir of Toronto with which he achieved a similarly high standard of performance. In this capacity he conducted the first Canadian performances of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis in 1927, Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast in 1936 and Berlioz’s Grande messe des Morts in 1938. At the New York World’s Fair in 1939 Fricker conducted the broadcast performance of Bach’s B minor Mass with the New York Philharmonic SO and Chorus; the same work was the subject of his farewell concert with the Mendelssohn Choir in Toronto on 23 February 1942. (EMC2, R. Pincoe)

H.C. COLLES/HELMUT KALLMANN


Fricker, Peter Racine


(b London, 5 Sept 1920; d Santa Barbara, CA, 1 Feb 1990). English composer. The most prominent British composer to emerge immediately after World War II, he developed a free atonal style which exerted a strong influence at a time when British composers were turning from the insularity of the war years.

1. Life.


His family came from Wiltshire; the middle name is after his great-grandmother, a descendant of the dramatist. Fricker was educated at St Paul’s School, London. It was planned that he should leave school at 14 to join the merchant navy, but he was not accepted because of his poor eyesight. In 1937 he entered the RCM, where he studied theory and composition with Morris, the organ with Bullock and the piano with Wilson. He also attended classes at Morley College, where in 1939 he met Tippett. In 1941 Fricker joined the Royal Air Force and was trained as a radio operator. He was married in 1943, and that year was posted to India as an intelligence officer, after an intensive course in Japanese at the University of London.

When Fricker was demobilized in 1945 he was refused readmission to the RCM since he had already spent four years there, and instead he returned to Morley College, where Tippett, now director, suggested he study with Seiber. Following his formal composition lessons (1946–8) Fricker continued to work closely with Seiber until the latter’s death in 1960, acting as his assistant conductor and helping with film scores. At Morley College he occasionally conducted and was rehearsal pianist for the choir, while earning his living as a copyist and arranger. In 1952 he succeeded Tippett as director of the college, and from 1955 he also taught composition at the RCM. His position in London musical life brought with it an increasing burden of administrative work, until in 1964 he accepted a one-year appointment as visiting professor of music at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He found the circumstances there so congenial that in the next year he accepted a full-time appointment as professor of music. While maintaining strong ties with English musical life (e.g. serving as president of the Cheltenham Festival, 1984–6), he remained in Santa Barbara, as chairman of the music department (1970–74), faculty research lecturer (1980) and Corwin Professor of Composition (1988).


2. Works.


During World War II English music had been dominated by the pastoral folksong tradition. The new spirit of the immediate postwar years was epitomized by Fricker’s music, which owed nothing to folksong (his mentors were Bartók, Berg, Hindemith and Schoenberg, rather than Holst and Vaughan Williams), which was predominantly instrumental and densely chromatic, and which displayed an assured grasp of large-scale formal processes and a rigorous intellectual drive. His quick rise to fame was a recognition not only of his individual and highly developed language, but also of a general desire to rejoin a European tradition. Both in Britain and abroad his music gained awards and performances: in 1947 the Wind Quintet won the A.J. Clements Prize; in 1949 the Prelude, Elegy and Finale was first heard at the Darmstadt summer courses and the Symphony no.1 received the Koussevitzky Prize; in 1950 this work had its première at the Cheltenham Festival and the First Quartet was performed at the ISCM Festival; in 1951 the Violin Concerto no.1 won the Arts Council Festival of Britain Competition for Young Composers and the Second Symphony was commissioned for the Liverpool Festival; and in 1952 the Edinburgh Festival commissioned the Viola Concerto. Subsequently the catalogue of commissions was enlarged – if not at quite the same rate – a token both of the more conservative position Fricker represented from the mid-1950s and of his willingness to see the composer as a functioning member of society.

From his earliest works it was evident that Fricker was a fluent contrapuntist. Such works as the Wind Quintet and the Symphony no.1 (whose first movement includes a passage in seven real parts) offer striking examples of his skill in an orthodox manner, the fourth movement from the fine Octet an instance of his more individual treatment of contrapuntal textures. Although he never entirely abandoned the structural resources of tonality, in his early music Fricker used a high level of dissonance, emphasizing such intervals as the augmented 4th, the major 7th and the minor 9th, and basing chord sequences as much on the results of motivic working as on functional progression. A typical example of a Fricker chord would be G–C–B–F, such as appears at figure 2 in the Quartet no.1. The harmonic palette is rich, however, including much sweeter sounds and even triads at final cadences. Fricker’s feeling for harmony was indeed one of the most sophisticated aspects of his style. Yet at the same time it was one of the most conventional, since his fondness for the principle of melody and accompaniment obviously derived from 19th-century models. Sometimes he could rely too heavily on the expressive quality of his harmonic accompaniment without sufficiently characterizing its presentation. This tendency to settle on repeated harmonic patterns may be regarded perhaps as a product of native English caution. On the other hand he drew strength from this by writing a large number of concertante works where the principle finds a natural outlet and where his melodic gifts could flower. The two violin concertos, the viola and piano concertos and Laudi concertati for organ and orchestra must be counted among his finest works. The melodic invention is notable as much for its suitability for development as for its intrinsic quality. Fricker could sustain melodic growth over extended structural units and regulate the dramatic tension of large-scale quasi-sonata forms with remarkable assurance. In some works, such as the Rapsodia concertante, the second and third symphonies and the Concerto for orchestra, this resulted in a controlled vehemence rare in British music.

Although Fricker’s language may frequently suggest the use of 12-note technique, wholly 12-note works are few and of modest dimensions, such as the Concertante no.1 and the Sonnets for piano. The technique is used more as a tool than a method. From a series he could derive a melodic and chordal vocabulary deployed within a more traditional conception of musical development. In the Rapsodia concertante, for example, there is more music in a ‘free’ than in a strictly 12-note style, although the work is based on a series derived from the opening bars. The Litany, one of his most beautiful works, makes free use of a 12-note melody complementing the dominant plainsong theme. In later works Fricker developed his thematic use of serialism, by using series of intervals (as in the piano Episodes) or a family of short series of a few notes each (as in Come Sleep).

In the first 20 years or so of his creative maturity Fricker worked largely in traditional forms. He showed a masterly command of three- and four-movement designs and an especially inventive use of rondo (notably in the Symphony no.2, each of whose three movements is in a complex rondo form). The oratorio The Vision of Judgement was perhaps the most spectacular example of his neo-classical temperament. But after the mid-1960s Fricker grew impatient with classical prototypes. His Symphony no.4 is in a single movement, whose ten sections bear little relation to the conventional four-movement design. Its multiplicity of tempos is mirrored in the mosaic-like character of the piano Episodes and the Rondeaux for horn and orchestra. Fricker’s interest in independent tempos can be seen in such works as The Roofs, Introitus and the Third String Quartet. In general the more economical, linear textures of his later work show Fricker developing a style as concentrated as his early music was expansive.


WORKS

orchestral


Rondo scherzoso, 1948; Sym. no.1, op.9, 1948–9; Prelude, Elegy and Finale, op.10, str, 1949; Conc. no.1, op.11, vn, small orch, 1949–50; Concertante no.1, op.13, eng hn, str, 1950; Sym. no.2, op.14, 1950–51; Concertante no.2, op.15, 3 pf, str, timp, 1951; Va Conc., op.18, 1951–3; Conc., op.19, pf, small orch, 1952–4; Rapsodia concertante (Vn Conc. no.2, Concertante no.3), op.21, 1953–4; Dance Scene, op.22, 1954; Litany, op.26, double str, 1955; Fantasie, small orch, 1956 [on a theme of Mozart]

Comedy Ov., op.32, 1958; Toccata, op.33, pf, orch, 1958–9; Sym. no.3, op.36, 1960; Sym. no.4, op.43, 1964–6; 3 Scenes, op.45, 1966; 7 Counterpoints, op.47 [op.2 orchd with 3 more movts], 1967; Concertante no.4, op.52, fl, ob, vn, str, 1968; Nocturne, op.63, chbr orch, 1971; Introitus, op.66, chbr orch, 1972; Sym. no.5, op.74, org, orch, 1975–6; Sinfonia, op.76, 17 wind, 1976–7; Laudi concertati, op.80, org, orch, 1978–9; Rondeaux, op.87, hn, orch, 1981–2; Conc. for St Paul's, op.91, chbr orch, 1985; Conc. for Orch, op.93, 1985–6; Walk by Quiet Water, orch, 1989; Conc. no.2, pf, orch, 1989

choral


2 Madrigals, op.4 (W. de la Mare), 1947; Rollant et Oliver (Song of Roland), 1949; Musick’s Empire, op.27 (A. Marvell), chorus, small orch, 1955; 2 Motets, 1955–6; 2 Carols, 1956; The Vision of Judgement, op.29 (orat, Cynewulf), S, T, chorus, orch, 1957–8; Colet (school cant., D. Colet), S, A, T, B, chorus, orch, 1959; 2 Carols, 1962; Commissary Report (S. King), male vv, 1965; Threefold Amen, chorus, insts, 1966; Ave maris stella, op.48, T, male vv, pf, 1967; Magnificat, op.50, S, A, T, chorus, orch, 1968; 7 Little Songs, op.69 (F. Hölderlin, trans. M. Hamburger), 1972; Mirabilem misterium, SATB, 1974; 2 Madrigals (Petrarch), SSATB, 1974; A Wish for a Party (? St Bridget), male vv, 1977; Rejoice in the Lord (Ps xxxiii), SATB, org, 1983; Whispers at these Curtains (J. Donne), op.88, Bar, boys' choir, chorus, orch, 1983–4; Advent Motet, op.99, women's choir, mixed chorus, 1989

solo vocal


Night Landscape, op.6, S, str trio, 1947; 3 Sonnets, op.7 (C. Angiolieri, trans. C. Rossetti), T, wind qnt, vc, db, 1947; King o’ Love (Scottish ballad), S, pf, 1949; Roses et muguets (C. Cros), S, pf, 1952; The Tomb of St Eulalia, op.25 (Prudentius), elegy, Ct, b viol, hpd, 1955; O Mistress Mine (W. Shakespeare), T, gui, 1961; Cant., op.37 (W. Saroyan), T, wind qnt, str qt, db, 1961–2; O longs désirs, op.39 (L. Labé), S, orch, 1963; Vocalise, S, pf, 1965

4 Songs, op.42 (A. Gryphius), S/T, pf/orch, 1965; The Day and the Spirits, op.46 (primitive verse, ed. M. Bowra), S, hp, 1966–7; Cantilena and Cabaletta, op.54, S, 1967–8; Some Superior Nonsense, op.56 (C. Morgenstern, trans. M. Knight), T, fl, ob, vc, hpd, 1968; The Roofs, op.62 (W.S. Merwin), coloratura S, perc, 1970, rev. 1987; Ich will meine Seele tauchen (H. Heine), Bar, pf, 1970; Come Sleep, op.67 (J. Keats), A, a fl, b cl, 1972; 2 Songs (T.E. Hulme), Bar, pf, 1977; In Commendation of Music, op.82 (W. Strode), S, rec, b viol, hpd, 1980; 6 mélodies de Francis Jammes, op.84, T, vn, vc, pf, 1980; A Dream of Winter (D. Thomas), op.98, Bar, pf, 1989

chamber and instrumental


Wind Qnt, op.5, 1947; Str Qt no.1, op.8, 1947; Sonata, op.12, vn, pf, 1950; Aubade, a sax, pf, 1951; Str Qt no.2, op.20, 1952–3; Pastorale, 3 fl, 1954; Sonata, op.24, hn, pf, 1955; Trio, 2 cl, bn, 1955–6; Suite, 2 tr rec, t rec, 1956; Sonata, op.28, vc, pf, 1956; Octet, op.30, fl, cl, bn, hn, vn, va, vc, db, 1957–8; Serenade no.1, op.34, fl, cl, b cl, va, vc, hp, 1959; Trio (Serenade no.2), op.35, fl, ob, pf, 1959; 4 Dialogues, op.41, ob, pf, 1965

Fantasy, op.44, va, pf, 1966; 5 Canons, 2 fl, 2 ob, 1966; Serenade no.3, op.57, sax qt, 1969; Refrains, op.49, ob, 1968; 3 Arguments, op.59, bn, vc, 1969; Carillon Music I, 1969; Carillon Music II (3 Variants), 1970; Paseo, op.61, gui, 1970; Concertante no.5, op.65, pf qnt, 1971; Sarabande, vc, 1971; A Bourrée, vc, 1971; Ballade, op.68, fl, pf, 1972; Gigue, vc, 1972; The Groves of Dodona, op.70, 6 fl, 1973; Spirit Puck, op.71, cl, perc, 1974; Str Qt no.3, op.73, 1974–6; Seachant, op.75, fl, db, 1976; Serenade no.4, op.79, 3 cl, b cl, 1977; Serenade no.5, op.81, vn, vc, 1980; Spells, fl, 1980–81; Bagatelles, op.85, cl, pf, 1981; For Three (Serenade no.6), op.86, ob, ob d'amore, eng hn, 1981; 2 Pieces, rec, 1984; Madrigals, op.89, brass qnt, 1984; Aspects of Evening, op.90, vc, pf, 1984–5; Second Sonata, op.94, vn, pf, 1987

keyboard


Pf: 3 Preludes, op.1, 1941–4; 4 Fughettas, op.2, 2 pf, 1946; 4 Impromptus, op.17, 1950–52; Nocturne and Scherzo, op.23, duet, 1954; 4 Sonnets, 1955; Variations, op.31, 1957–8; 14 Aubades, 1958; 12 Studies, op.38, 1961; Episodes I, op.51, 1967–8, II, op.58, 1969; Anniversary, op.77, 1977; Sonata, op.78, 2 pf, 1977; 2 Expressions, 1981; 6 Diversions, op.95, 1987

Org: Sonata, op.3, 1947; Choral, 1956; Pastorale, 1959; Wedding Processional, 1960; Ricercare, op.40, 1965; Trio (Canon Ostinato), 1968; 6 Pieces, op.53, 1968; Toccata ‘Gladius Domini’, op.55, 1968; Praeludium, op.60, 1969; Intrada, op.64, 1971; Trio Sonata, op.72, 1974; Invention and Little Toccata, 1976; 5 Short Pieces, op.83, 1980; Recitative, Impromptu and Procession, op.92, 1985

Hpd: Suite, 1956

dramatic


Ballet: Canterbury Prologue, op.16, 1951

Incid music: King John (Shakespeare), 1961

Film scores: The White Continent, 1951; Inside the Atom, 1951; The Undying Heart, 1952; The Inquisitive Giant, 1958; Atomic Energy, 1958; Das Island, 1958; Looking at Churches, 1959

Radio scores: Le morte d’Arthur, 1952; The Quest for the Holy Grail, 1953; My Brother Died (op), 1952–4; Clive of India, 1954; The Death of Vivien (op), 1955–6; Lemons and Hieroglyphs, 1959

Principal publisher: Schott

BIBLIOGRAPHY


D. Stevens: ‘P. Racine Fricker’, Music 1952, ed. A. Robertson (London, 1952), 29–37

C. Mason: ‘Fricker and his Generation’, The Listener, li (1954), 501

P. Evans: ‘Fricker and the English Symphony’, The Listener, lxiv (1960), 813

R.S. Hines, ed.: The Composer’s Point of View (Norman, OK, 1963/R), 81–8

M. Schafer: British Composers in Interview (London, 1963), 137–46

D. Peart: ‘Racine Fricker’s Fourth Symphony’, The Listener, lxxvii (1967), 208

R.S. Hines, ed.: The Orchestral Composer’s Point of View (Norman, OK, 1970), 76–88

A. Hoddinott: ‘Peter Racine Fricker’, Music and Musicians, xviii/12 (1969–70), 30–34

F. Routh: Contemporary British Music (London, 1972), 245–57

M.A. Kimbell: Peter Racine Fricker’s Second String Quartet: an Analysis (DMA diss., Cornell U., 1973)

P.R. Fricker: ‘Learning to Compose at an American University’, Composer, no.71 (1981–2), 9–10

M. Meckna: ‘Peter Racine Fricker: a Look at his Recent Music’, Music and Musicians, xxxvii/9 (1988–9), 49–51

J. Connolly: ‘Peter Racine Fricker (1920–1990)’, Royal College of Music Magazine, lxxxviii/3 (1990), 53–5

IAN KEMP/MICHAEL MECKNA




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