Premiere Composer Starter Pack

[Rene Seiler]

Opening with the deep resonance of water through the water gong, the first movement explores the ebb and flow of water, deep and expansive, shallow and fragile. The second movement features a folk song, selected by Vadim Karpinos, this song celebrates another city shaped by water, Kiev, Ukraine. The closing movement showcases the star performers, making space for unique solos from the maracas and the xylophone.

Tim Corpus is a composer with a genuine lyric impulse. He writes music that is at the same time challenging and appealing - which should be the ideal of any composer. He has a wonderful ear for sound and for shape. This is a composer with a real and important voice.

Tim Corpus' music is complex, original and steeped in tradition. His Three Pieces for Five Timpani is clearly an extension of the composers, such as Elliott Carter, that came before him. The pieces are challenging but fulfilling to learn and perform. Possibly the most important thing about Tim's timpani writing is that audiences will enjoy listening to his compositions. He is taking solo timpani writing to the next level.

I've had the pleasure of knowing Tim for years now, and I learned very quickly that his passion and talent as a performer and composer are unquestioned. Everything he does is handled with a rare combination of intensity and care, and his works display such attributes. His lyricism in particular, along with his rich, beautiful harmonies and intricate polyphony set him apart from many of his colleagues. In a world littered with simple, non-intellectual music, Tim is breaking through and creating a new, exciting, accessible, and, most importantly, intelligent style of music that is imperative to the future of our art form.

Breath is very professionally produced, and the overall impression is of a lyrical and rhapsodic voice. I think Breath is a great starter, very ample and serene, even ecstatic. The second quartet is lively and engaging throughout.

I think it is a fusion of more tonal, lyrical music with sections of more contrapuntal chromatic language. There is a strong tendency towards melody. People have observed that all of it is in some way vocally conceived.

To feel that I have written music that is the best I can write and to know without a doubt that it is really good music. I also think providing the listener a meaningful experience is very near the top of my priorities.

I think the way in which classical music is presented might be off-putting to some people who might otherwise be surprised at how much they could enjoy music that they have previously pushed away. By that I mean the too-often formal, claustrophobic, uncomfortable setting of the concert hall is a non-starter for many people. Things that have now become more common, such as performers speaking to the audience, a less formal presentation in general, and inclusion of music representing a wider mixture of styles can help. Audiences enjoy visual stimulation. One performance of a recent work of mine included the inclusion of a commissioned visual artwork inspired by my piece that was displayed in conjunction with the premiere during a wine and cheese reception. The artist was available to discuss the collaboration before the piece was played in the round. Instead of being crammed into a tight commuter jet styled seating space, chairs were spaced around the orchestra in small groups and the chairs could be moved into clusters. These kinds of freedoms might help generate more interest.

I think perfect happiness is something indestructible that is not dependent on external events. Maintaining this kind of happiness takes continual effort but it is worth it, particularly when life is challenging.

Brahms apparently upset his host when he saw Liszt perform his own Sonata in B Minor at the Court of Weimar. Claiming that he was exhausted from travelling, Brahms fell asleep while the work was being played.

The so-called War of the Romantics was basically a musical argument between composers like Wagner and Liszt, who represented a more radical approach to music, and more conservative artists like Brahms and Clara Schumann. As a result, Brahms has always been seen as something of an old-fashioned composer, despite still being extremely popular today.

Brahms was very much an outdoors-y sort. When he wasn't travelling around Europe for concert tours, he was fond of travelling to the hills of Italy for walking holidays and to retreat for solitary composing.

When his mother died in 1865, Brahms was overcome with grief. It is speculated that this led him to compose his German Requiem, one of the most celebrated works from his career. However, the premiere of the piece was a disaster - the timpanist misread the dynamics as 'ff' (very loud) instead of 'pf' (quiet) and drowned the other musicians out.

Perhaps due to their musical opposition to one another, Wagner (pictured) and Brahms weren't exactly best friends when they met in Vienna in 1864, after Brahms moved there to direct the Vienna Singakademie. Wagner later attacked Brahms in the press.

When he was 57, Brahms announced that he was finished with composing. However, he was clearly unable to stop his creativity - he produced some incredible late-period works, especially for the clarinet, like his Clarinet Sonatas, Trio and Quintet.

Brahms died of either pancreatic or liver cancer (evidence is unclear) on April 3rd 1897. The British composer Hubert Parry (pictured) composed a musical tribute to him, his Elegy for Brahms, in the same year.

Wagner's composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly The World as Will and Representation), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Religious influences are also noted, ranging from Christianity, to Hinduism and Buddhism. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension.

The opera was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Benjamin Britten. Other composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy.[citation needed] Many see Tristan as a milestone on the move away from common practice harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century.[1] Both Wagner's libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century.[2]

Wagner was forced to abandon his position as conductor of the Dresden Opera in 1849, as there was a warrant posted for his arrest for his participation in the unsuccessful May Revolution. He left his wife, Minna, in Dresden, and fled to Zrich. There, in 1852, he met the wealthy silk trader Otto Wesendonck. Wesendonck became a supporter of Wagner and bankrolled the composer for several years. Wesendonck's wife, Mathilde, became enamoured of the composer.[3] Though Wagner was working on his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, he found himself intrigued by the legend of Tristan and Isolde.

The re-discovery of medieval Germanic poetry, including Gottfried von Strassburg's version of Tristan [de], the Nibelungenlied and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, left a large impact on the German Romantic movements during the mid-19th century. The story of Tristan and Isolde is a quintessential romance of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Several versions of the story exist, the earliest dating to the middle of the 12th century. Gottfried's version, part of the "courtly" branch of the legend, had a huge influence on later German literature.[4]

He had, in fact, made a point of giving prominence to the lighter phases of the romance, whereas it was its all-pervading tragedy that impressed me so deeply that I felt convinced it should stand out in bold relief, regardless of minor details.[5]

This influence, together with his discovery of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer in October 1854, led Wagner to find himself in a "serious mood created by Schopenhauer, which was trying to find ecstatic expression. It was some such mood that inspired the conception of a Tristan und Isolde."[6]

By the end of 1854, Wagner had sketched out all three acts of an opera on the Tristan theme, based on Gottfried von Strassburg's telling of the story. While the earliest extant sketches date from December 1856, it was not until August 1857 that Wagner began devoting his attention entirely to the opera, putting aside the composition of Siegfried to do so. On 20 August he began the prose sketch for the opera, and the libretto (or poem, as Wagner preferred to call it) was completed by 18 September.[8] Wagner, at this time, had moved into a cottage built in the grounds of Wesendonck's villa, where, during his work on Tristan und Isolde, he became passionately involved with Mathilde Wesendonck. Whether or not this relationship was platonic remains uncertain. One evening in September of that year, Wagner read the finished poem of "Tristan" to an audience including his wife, Minna, his current muse, Mathilde, and his future mistress (and later wife), Cosima von Blow.

In April 1858 Wagner's wife Minna intercepted a note from Wagner to Mathilde and, despite Wagner's protests that she was putting a "vulgar interpretation" on the note, she accused first Wagner and then Mathilde of unfaithfulness.[11] After enduring much misery, Wagner persuaded Minna, who had a heart condition, to rest at a spa while Otto Wesendonck took Mathilde to Italy. It was during the absence of the two women that Wagner began the composition sketch of the second act of Tristan. However, Minna's return in July 1858 did not clear the air, and on 17 August, Wagner was forced to leave both Minna and Mathilde and move to Venice.

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