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41-467: The Four Last Songs (German: Vier letzte Lieder ), Op. posth., for soprano and orchestra are – with the exception of the song "Malven" (Mallows), composed later the same year – the final completed works of Richard Strauss . They were composed in 1948 when the composer was 84. The songs are "Frühling" (Spring), "September", " Beim Schlafengehen  [ de ] " (When Falling Asleep) and "Im Abendrot" (At Sunset). The title Four Last Songs

82-672: A companion piece to "Opus 27, No. 1" ( Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major , 1800–01), paired in same opus number, with both being subtitled Sonata quasi una Fantasia , the only two of the kind in all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. Furthermore, the Piano Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2, in C-sharp minor is also catalogued as "Sonata No. 14", because it is the fourteenth sonata composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. Given composers' inconsistent or non-existent assignment of opus numbers, especially during

123-420: A composer's juvenilia are often numbered after other works, even though they may be some of the composer's first completed works. To indicate the specific place of a given work within a music catalogue , the opus number is paired with a cardinal number ; for example, Beethoven 's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor (1801, nicknamed Moonlight Sonata ) is "Opus 27, No. 2", whose work-number identifies it as

164-581: A composer's works, as in the sets of string quartets by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827); Haydn's Op. 76, the Erdödy quartets (1796–97), comprises six discrete quartets consecutively numbered Op. 76 No. 1 – Op. 76 No. 6; whilst Beethoven's Op. 59, the Rasumovsky quartets (1805–06), comprises String Quartet No. 7, String Quartet No. 8, and String Quartet No. 9. From about 1800, composers usually assigned an opus number to

205-453: A composition, Prokofiev occasionally assigned a new opus number to the revision; thus Symphony No. 4 is two thematically related but discrete works: Symphony No. 4, Op. 47, written in 1929; and Symphony No. 4, Op. 112, a large-scale revision written in 1947. Likewise, depending upon the edition, the original version of Piano Sonata No. 5 in C major, is cataloged both as Op. 38 and as Op. 135. Despite being used in more or less normal fashion by

246-563: A number of important early-twentieth-century composers, including Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Anton Webern (1883–1945), opus numbers became less common in the later part of the twentieth century. To manage inconsistent opus-number usages — especially by composers of the Baroque (1600–1750) and of the Classical (1720—1830) music eras — musicologists have developed comprehensive and unambiguous catalogue number-systems for

287-997: A number of pieces for piccolo alone by such composers as Samuel Adler , Miguel del Aguila , Robert Dick , Michael Isaacson , David Loeb , Stephen Hough , Polly Moller , Vincent Persichetti , Karlheinz Stockhausen , and Brian Ferneyhough . Repertoire for piccolo and piano, many of which are sonatas , has been composed by Miguel del Águila , Robert Baksa , Robert Beaser , Rob du Bois , Howard J. Buss , Eugène Damaré  [ fr ] , Pierre Max Dubois , Raymond Guiot , Lowell Liebermann , Peter Schickele , Michael Daugherty , and Gary Schocker . Concertos have been composed for piccolo, including those by Lowell Liebermann , Sir Peter Maxwell Davies , Todd Goodman, Martin Amlin, Will Gay Bottje , Bruce Broughton , Valentino Bucchi , Avner Dorman , Jean Doué, Michael Easton, Egil Hovland , Guus Janssen , Daniel Pinkham , Jeff Manookian and Levente Gyöngyösi . Additionally, there

328-918: A prelude to "Im Abendrot", to which it bears motivic similarity. Note: the texts for the three songs by Hermann Hesse are copyrighted until 2032, and therefore cannot be reproduced on Misplaced Pages. They can however, be found online at Lieder.net. ("At sunset") (Text: Joseph von Eichendorff ) Wir sind durch Not und Freude gegangen Hand in Hand; vom Wandern ruhen wir beide nun überm stillen Land. Rings sich die Täler neigen, es dunkelt schon die Luft. Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen nachträumend in den Duft. Tritt her und lass sie schwirren, bald ist es Schlafenszeit. Dass wir uns nicht verirren in dieser Einsamkeit. O weiter, stiller Friede! So tief im Abendrot. Wie sind wir wandermüde – Ist dies etwa der Tod? Through sorrow and joy we have gone hand in hand; we are both at rest from our wanderings now above

369-781: A result, the plural opera of opus tends to be avoided in English. In other languages such as German, however, it remains common. In the arts, an opus number usually denotes a work of musical composition , a practice and usage established in the seventeenth century when composers identified their works with an opus number. In the eighteenth century, publishers usually assigned opus numbers when publishing groups of like compositions, usually in sets of three, six or twelve compositions. Consequently, opus numbers are not usually in chronological order, unpublished compositions usually had no opus number, and numeration gaps and sequential duplications occurred when publishers issued contemporaneous editions of

410-412: A sense of calm, acceptance, and completeness. The settings are for a solo soprano voice given soaring melodies against a full orchestra, and all four songs have prominent horn parts. The combination of a beautiful vocal line with supportive horn accompaniment references Strauss's own life; his wife Pauline de Ahna was a famous soprano and his father Franz Strauss a professional horn player. Towards

451-631: A single unit in 1950, and in the order that most performances now follow: "Frühling", "September", "Beim Schlafengehen", "Im Abendrot". Roth's 1950 published sequence follows neither the order of composition of the songs ( Im Abendrot : May 6, 1948; Frühling : July 20, 1948; Beim Schlafengehen : August 4, 1948; September : September 20, 1948) nor that of the 1950 premiere (by Kirsten Flagstad conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler ). Although most recordings adhere to Roth, some stay with Flagstad/Furtwängler – Beim Schlafengehen, September, Frühling, Im Abendrot . The latter include Sena Jurinac 's 1951 recording with

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492-454: A variety of hardwoods, most commonly grenadilla . Finely made piccolos are often available with a variety of options similar to the flute , such as the split-E mechanism. Most piccolos have a conical body with a cylindrical head, like the Baroque flute and later flutes before the popularization of the Boehm bore used in modern flutes. Unlike other woodwind instruments, in most wooden piccolos,

533-641: A work or set of works upon publication. After approximately 1900, they tended to assign an opus number to a composition whether published or not. However, practices were not always perfectly consistent or logical. For example, early in his career, Beethoven selectively numbered his compositions (some published without opus numbers), yet in later years, he published early works with high opus numbers. Likewise, some posthumously published works were given high opus numbers by publishers, even though some of them were written early in Beethoven's career. Since his death in 1827,

574-442: Is now a selection of chamber music that uses the piccolo. One example is Stockhausen's Zungenspitzentanz , for piccolo and two euphoniums (or one synthesizer), with an optional percussionist and dancer. Another is George Crumb 's Madrigals, Book II for soprano, flute (doubling piccolo/alto flute), and percussion. Other examples include a trio for piccolo, contrabassoon, and piano, 'Was mit den Tränen geschieht' by Stephen Hough ,

615-474: Is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition , or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer 's publication of that work. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositions with similar titles; the word is abbreviated as "Op." for a single work, or "Opp." when referring to more than one work. Opus numbers do not necessarily indicate chronological order of composition. For example, posthumous publications of

656-418: Is the case of the concertos that Antonio Vivaldi wrote for flautino . Until the end of the 19th century, the piccolo maintained the same construction. Historically, the piccolo had the same keys of the baroque flute (one key) and then of the classical and romantic simple system flute. At the end of the century, the piccolo began to be built with the Boehm mechanism, which would become the standard during

697-608: The Baroque (1600–1750) and the Classical (1750–1827) eras, musicologists have developed other catalogue-number systems; among them the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV-number) and the Köchel-Verzeichnis (K- and KV-numbers), which enumerate the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , respectively. In the classical period , the Latin word opus ("work", "labour"), plural opera ,

738-617: The Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler . The performance was made possible by a magnanimous offer by the Maharaja of Mysore , Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar Bahudar . Though he could not be present, the music-loving maharaja put up a $ 4,800 guarantee for the performance, so that the Four Last Songs could be recorded for his large personal collection – then estimated at around 20,000 records – and

779-452: The 1900s. However, it cannot wholly transition to the Boehm system since the bore has remained conical, as in the old system flute, and the first bottom note is D, like in the baroque flute. The piccolo should not be confused with the fife , which is traditionally one-piece, has a smaller, cylindrical bore, and produces a more strident sound. It is a myth that one of the earliest pieces to use

820-989: The Mendelssohn heirs published (and cataloged) them as the Italian Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 , and as the Reformation Symphony No. 5 in D major and D minor, Op. 107 . While many of the works of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) were given opus numbers, these did not always bear a logical relationship to the order in which the works were written or published. To achieve better sales, some publishers, such as N. Simrock , preferred to present less experienced composers as being well established, by giving some relatively early works much higher opus numbers than their chronological order would merit. In other cases, Dvořák gave lower opus numbers to new works to be able to sell them to other publishers outside his contract obligations. This way it could happen that

861-713: The Stockholm Philharmonic conducted by Fritz Busch ; Lisa Della Casa 's 1953 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm ; and Felicity Lott 's 1986 recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi . There is no authority because Strauss did not conceive a cycle, but he did entrust the premiere to Flagstad. All of the songs but "Frühling" deal with death and all were written shortly before Strauss himself died. They are suffused with

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902-553: The best work of an artist with the term magnum opus . In Latin, the words opus (singular) and opera (plural) are related to the words opera (singular) and operae (plural), which gave rise to the Italian words opera (singular) and opere (plural), likewise meaning "work". In contemporary English, the word opera has specifically come to denote the dramatic musical genres of opera or ballet, which were developed in Italy. As

943-536: The case of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47); after his death, the heirs published many compositions with opus numbers that Mendelssohn did not assign. In life, he published two symphonies ( Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11 ; and Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ), furthermore he published his symphony-cantata Lobgesang , Op. 52, which was posthumously counted as his Symphony No. 2; yet, he chronologically wrote symphonies between symphonies Nos. 1 and 2, which he withdrew for personal and compositional reasons; nevertheless,

984-466: The cases of César Franck (1822–1890), Béla Bartók (1881–1945), and Alban Berg (1885–1935), who initially numbered, but then stopped numbering their compositions. Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) were also inconsistent in their approaches. Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was consistent and assigned an opus number to a composition before composing it; at his death, he left fragmentary and planned, but numbered, works. In revising

1025-764: The end of "Im Abendrot", after the soprano's intonation of "Ist dies etwa der Tod?" ("Is this perhaps death?"), Strauss musically quotes his own tone poem Death and Transfiguration , written 60 years earlier. As in that piece, the quoted seven-note phrase (known as the "transfiguration theme") has been seen as the fulfillment of the soul through death. The songs are scored for piccolo , 3 flutes (3rd doubling on 2nd piccolo ), 2 oboes , English horn , 2 clarinets in B-flat and A, bass clarinet , 3 bassoons (3rd doubling on contrabassoon ), 4 horns in F (also E-flat and D), 3 trumpets in C, E-flat and F, 3 trombones , tuba , timpani , harp , celesta , and strings . One of

1066-415: The first four symphonies to be composed were published after the last five; and (c) the last five symphonies were not published in order of composition. The New World Symphony originally was published as No. 5, later was known as No. 8, and definitively was renumbered as No. 9 in the critical editions published in the 1950s. Other examples of composers' historically inconsistent opus-number usages include

1107-592: The index of Franz  [ de ] and Florian Trenner. Strauss had come across the poem "Im Abendrot" by Joseph von Eichendorff , which he felt had a special meaning for him. He set its text to music in May 1948. Strauss had also recently been given a copy of the complete poems of Hermann Hesse and was strongly inspired by them. He set three of them – "Frühling", "September", and "Beim Schlafengehen" – for soprano and orchestra, and contemplated setting two more, "Nacht" (Night) and "Höhe des Sommers" (Height of Summer), in

1148-541: The last wishes of Richard Strauss was that Kirsten Flagstad be the soprano to introduce the four songs. "I would like to make it possible," he wrote to her, "that [the songs] should be at your disposal for a world premiere in the course of a concert with a first-class conductor and orchestra." The premiere was given posthumously at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 22 May 1950, sung by Flagstad, accompanied by

1189-556: The octave as early as 1735 as existing scores by Jean-Philippe Rameau show. Piccolos are now mainly manufactured in the key of C. In the early 20th century, piccolos were manufactured in D ♭ as they were an earlier model of the modern piccolo. For this D ♭ piccolo, John Philip Sousa wrote the famous solo in the final repeat of the closing section (trio) of his march " The Stars and Stripes Forever ". Although once made of wood, glass, or ivory, piccolos today are made from plastic, resin, brass, nickel silver, silver, and

1230-549: The piccolo was Ludwig van Beethoven 's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor , which premiered in December 1808 . Although neither Joseph Haydn nor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used it in their symphonies, some of their contemporaries did, including Franz Anton Hoffmeister , Franz Xaver Süssmayr , and Michael Haydn . Also, Mozart used the piccolo in his opera Idomeneo . Opera orchestras in Paris sometimes included small transverse flutes at

1271-408: The quiet land. Around us, the valleys bow, the air already darkens. Only two larks soar musingly into the haze. Come close, and let them flutter, soon it will be time to sleep so that we don't get lost in this solitude. O vast, tranquil peace, so deep in the afterglow! How weary we are of wandering – Is this perhaps death? Opus number In music , the opus number

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1312-471: The recording then shipped to him in Mysore. The performance was recorded on acetate discs. They became badly worn before the first LP transfer, which was generally considered very poor. Subsequent restorations using modern digital technology were effected in 2007 by Roger Beardsley for Testament Records , and in 2014 by Andrew Rose for Pristine Audio . Timothy L. Jackson has noted that Strauss had composed

1353-457: The same manner. He also embarked on a choral setting of Hesse's "Besinnung" (Reflection), but laid it aside after the projected fugue became "too complicated". With the exception of the song "Malven" ( "Mallows" ) composed later the same year, the songs are Strauss's final completed works. The overall title Four Last Songs was provided by Strauss's friend Ernst Roth , the chief editor of Boosey & Hawkes , when he published all four songs as

1394-475: The same opus number was given to more than one of his works. Opus number 12, for example, was assigned, successively, to five different works (an opera, a concert overture, a string quartet, and two unrelated piano works). In other cases, the same work was given as many as three different opus numbers by different publishers. The sequential numbering of his symphonies has also been confused: (a) they were initially numbered by order of publication, not composition; (b)

1435-409: The song " Ruhe, meine Seele! " for piano and voice in 1894 from a poem by Karl Friedrich Henckell , but did not orchestrate it until 1948, just after he had completed "Im Abendrot" and before he composed the other three of his Four Last Songs . Jackson suggests that the addition of "Ruhe, meine Seele!" to the Four Last Songs forms a five-song unified song cycle, if "Ruhe, meine Seele!" is performed as

1476-679: The tenon joint that connects the head to the body has two interference fit points surrounding the cork and metal side of the piccolo body joint. The piccolo is used alongside marching drums in traditional formations at the Carnival of Basel , Switzerland. In 2014, a festival was born entirely dedicated to the piccolo, the International Piccolo Festival , which takes place annually in July in Grado , Italy . There are

1517-452: The un-numbered compositions have been cataloged and labeled with the German acronym WoO ( Werk ohne Opuszahl ), meaning "work without opus number"; the same has been done with other composers who used opus numbers. (There are also other catalogs of Beethoven's works – see Catalogues of Beethoven compositions .) The practice of enumerating a posthumous opus ("Op. posth.") is noteworthy in

1558-518: The works of composers such as: Piccolo Piccolos are often orchestrated to double the violins or the flutes, adding sparkle and brilliance to the overall sound because of the aforementioned one-octave transposition upwards. The piccolo is a standard member in orchestras , marching bands , and wind ensembles . Since the Middle Ages, evidence indicates the use of octave transverse flutes as military instruments, as their penetrating sound

1599-513: Was audible above battles. In cultured music, however, the first piccolos were used in some of Jean Philippe Rameau 's works in the first half of the 18th century. Still, the instrument began to spread, and therefore to have a stable place in the orchestra, only at the beginning of 1800 A.D. During the Baroque period, the indication "flautino" or also "flauto piccolo" usually denoted a recorder of small size (soprano or sopranino). In particular, this

1640-571: Was provided posthumously by Strauss's friend Ernst Roth , who published the four songs as a single unit in 1950 after Strauss's death. Strauss died in September 1949. The premiere was given at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 22 May 1950 by soprano Kirsten Flagstad and the Philharmonia Orchestra , conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler . The work has no opus number. It is listed as AV 150 in Mueller von Asow's thematical index , and as TrV 296 in

1681-409: Was used to identify, list, and catalogue a work of art. By the 15th and 16th centuries, the word opus was used by Italian composers to denote a specific musical composition, and by German composers for collections of music. In compositional practice, numbering musical works in chronological order dates from 17th-century Italy, especially Venice . In common usage, the word opus is used to describe

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