mmm049 Sunday, December 21, 2014: Vivian Fine Marathon!
[ to witness the feature-length movie go here: http://youtu.be/vjqJ9xekECs ]
m(usic(ian's)m(eeting) 49: Vivian Fine Marathon! - 2014.12.21 (Winter Solstice - longest night of the year)
[tENT made the list of people informed about this broader than usual in the hope that more people would become curious about Fine's work]
Attendees:
tENT
Rob
Isaac
Frank & Concetta
Hyla
Spat
Gina & Gerty
Kenny
tENT sets up 4 listening stns in the house:
Kitchen: featured instruments
Living Room: tENT's personal favorites
Library: vocal music
Attic: chamber music
tENT sets up static camera at high position for videoing in Living Room & a 2nd camcorder on a tripod in the Living Room the position of wch can be more directly controlled
NOON: tENT futzs w/ cameras, plays CDs, reads, & waits for guests
03:45: Rob arrives w/ beer & tENT gets Rob to video him (using an iPhone) giving a tour of the Listening Stations
tENT & Rob go to Kitchen where tENT plays "Works for Piano and Harpsichord" CD
04:25: Isaac arrives & joins Rob & tENT in Kitchen
04:55: Frank & Concetta arrive w/ pasta Concetta made & give tENT bk!
05:05: Hyla arrives w/ tangerines & nuts
05:30 tENT talks about Vivian Fine
tENT gives another tour of the Listening Stations
back in the Living Room tENT plays "Memoirs of Uliana Rooney" CD
05:45 Spat arrives
Spat gives Hyla CD & DVD of Wire performance
Spat gives tENT "Githead Art Pop" CD from member of Wire
tENT gives Costa-Gavras "Music Box" VHS to Concetta
05:55 Hyla leaves
06:20 Isaac leaves
08:55 Rob leaves
10:00 Gina & Gerty arrive w/ beer
11:30 Kenny arrives
12:30 Gina & Gerty leave
12:40 Spat & Kenny leave
Music played in attic:
Chamber Music Volume I
Songs and Arias (1990)
Canciones y Danzas (1991)
Dancing Winds (1987)
Madrigali Spirituali (1989)
Canticles from the Other Side of the River (1993)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chamber Music Volume II
Portal (1990)
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1952)
Duo for Flute and Viola (1961)
Lieder for Viola and Piano (1979)
Song of Persephone for Solo Viola (1964)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Music played in library:
Vocal Music, Volume I
Four Songs (1933)
Four Elizabethan Songs (1940)
Two Neruda Poems (1971
The Nightingale (1976)
Inscriptions (1986)
Songs of Love and War (1991)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Vocal Music, Volume II
Canticles for Jerusalem (1983)
Ode to Henry Purcell (1984)
Five Victorian Songs (1988)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Vocal Music, Volume III
A Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose (1956)
The Great Wall of China (1947)
The Confession (1963)
Asphodel (1988)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Women in the Garden (1977)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A song for St. Cecilia's Day (1985)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Music played in living room:
(CRI) CD 692: "Vivian Fine"
Concertante for Piano and Orchestra (1944)
Missa Brevis (1972)
Momenti for piano solo (1978)
Quartet for Brass (1978)
Sinfonia and Fugato for solo piano (1963)
Alcestis (1960)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Orchestral Works, Volume I
Drama for Orchestra (1982)
After the Tradition (1987)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chamber Music Volume IV
Sonatina for Oboe and Piano (1942)
Capriccio for Oboe and String Trio (1946)
Second Solo for Oboe (1947)
Quintet for Violin, Oboe, Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1984)
Prelude for String Quartet (1937)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Teisho (1975)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1993)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Canciones y Danzas, on "Five Premieres"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Emily's Images, on "Legacy of the American Woman Composer"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Flicker, on "The Sky's the Limit"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Music played in kitchen:
Music for Solo Piano
Toccatas and Arias for Piano (1987)
Double Variations (1982)
Suite in E Flat (1940)
Five Preludes (1941)
Momenti (1978)
Sinfonia and Fugato (1952)
Concerto for Piano Strings and Percussion (One Performer) (1972)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
website for scores & recordings: http://www.vivianfine.org/main/scores.htm
wikipedia bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Fine
Vivian Fine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born (1913-09-28)September 28, 1913
Chicago, Illinois
Died March 20, 2000(2000-03-20) (aged 86)
Bennington, Vermont, U.S.
Genres 20th century classical
Occupation(s) Composer
Vivian Fine (28 September 1913 - 20 March 2000) was an American composer.
Over her 70-year career, Vivian Fine became one of America's most important composers. She wrote virtually without a break for 68 years, producing over 140 works. Although perhaps best known for her chamber music, she wrote in every genre, including large-scale symphonic and choral works. In addition to numerous articles and several dissertations, two books have been published on Fine's life and music: The Music of Vivian Fine, by the noted musicologist Heidi Von Gunden (Scarecrow Press, 1999), which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award in 2000, and Vivian Fine, A Bio-Bibliography, by the poet and composer Judith Cody (Greenwood Press, 2002). Her complete musical archives may be found on her website at vivianfine.org.
Vivian Fine was born in Chicago. A piano prodigy, she became at age five the youngest student ever to be awarded a scholarship at the Chicago Musical College. At age eleven she became a student of Scriabin disciple Djane Lavoie-Herz. Fine composed her first piece at thirteen while studying harmony with Ruth Crawford, who considered Fine her protegée. Through Madame Herz and Crawford, Fine met Henry Cowell, Imre Weisshaus, and Dane Rudhyar, who became strong supporters of her talent.
Fine made her professional debut as a composer at age sixteen with performances in Chicago, New York (Solo for Oboe, at a Pan-American Association of Composers' concert) and Dessau (Four Pieces for Two Flutes, at an International Society of Contemporary composers' concert). In 1931, the 18-year-old Fine moved to New York to further her studies. She was a member of Aaron Copland's Young Composers Group, and a participant at the first Yaddo Festival in 1932. In 1937 she helped found the American Composers Alliance and served as its vice-president from 1961 to 1965. In addition to her career as a composer, Fine continued to perform. In the 1930s she was perhaps the best-known performer of contemporary piano music in New York. She premiered works of Charles Ives, Copland, Brant, Cowell, Rudhyar, and others, and studied piano with Abby Whiteside from 1937 to 1946.
Fine's early compositional style was highly dissonant and contrapuntal. In 1934 she began a nine-year course of composition studies with Roger Sessions, and her work became for a time more tonal, as exemplified by Suite in E Flat (1940) and Concertante for Piano and Orchestra (1944). In 1946, with Capriccio for Oboe and String Trio and The Great Wall of China, she returned to a freer mode of expression, to which she adhered for the remainder of her career, steadily expanding her expressive and generic range. She employed diverse techniques corresponding to a wide range of musical subjects. Henry Brant noted that "No two Fine pieces are alike either in subject matter or instrumentation; each new work appears to generate its own style appropriate to the subject, and there are no mannerisms which persist from work to work."
Notable in Fine's work is a sense of fun, either as a major element in the piece (The Race of Life, Memoirs of Uliana Rooney) or as a humorous section or reference inserted into a more serious piece (The Women in the Garden, Songs and Arias).
Fine wrote extensively for voice, employing the poetry of Shakespeare, Racine, Dryden, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Kafka, Neruda, and others in a wide variety of settings. She composed two chamber operas, The Women in the Garden (1978) and Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994). In The Women in the Garden, Fine used the writings of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein to fashion conversations among the four women and a tenor representing the various men in their lives. Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994), Fine's last major composition, is a contemporary opera buffa, with libretto and videography by Sonya Friedman. The work, autobiographical in spirit if not in factual detail, follows American composer Uliana Rooney as she journeys through the 20th century, surviving changing political climates and several husbands to ultimately triumph.
Among Fine's many awards were a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, Ditson, Woolley, Koussevitsky, Reader's Digest and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundations, several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dollard and Yaddo Awards. In 1980, she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. For many years, Fine was a beloved member of the faculty of Bennington College in Vermont. She died in Bennington, at the age of 86, following an automobile accident.
Fine's manuscripts are housed at the Library of Congress.
to the mm index
forward to mm 50
backward to mm 48
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)