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43-548: The Wedding was completed in 1917 but was then subjected to a series of changes of heart by Stravinsky regarding its scoring; he settled on the above forces only in 1923, in time for the premiere in Paris on 13 June that year under conductor Ernest Ansermet and danced by the Ballets Russes to choreography by Bronislava Nijinska . Several versions of the score have been performed over the years, substituting an orchestra for

86-616: A break: The work was premiered on 13 June 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in Paris, by the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska . The instrumental ensemble of four pianos and percussion was conducted by Ernest Ansermet . The work is usually performed in Russian or French; English translations are sometimes used, and Stravinsky used the English one on the recordings he conducted for Columbia Records in 1934 and 1959. At

129-723: A great historical awareness, as well as a special regard for instrumental color and subtle harmonies. Verbey was a member of a reading club devoted to the study of contemporary thought. Later commissions included Traurig wie der Tod , a work for orchestra and chorus premiered by the Netherlands Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and the Netherlands Radio Choir, conducted by James Gaffigan, as well as Lumen ad Finem Cuniculi , written for philharmonie zuidnederland and conducted by Dmitri Liss. The Brodsky Quartet commissioned Verbey to provide

172-574: A mixed reception to its early performances. While its premiere in Paris in 1923 was welcomed with enthusiasm, the London performance three years later received such a negative response from critics that, according to Eric Walter White, "The virulence of this attack so exasperated [the novelist] H. G. Wells that on June 18, 1926, he wrote an open letter." Wells' letter, quoted by White, said: "I do not know of any other ballet so interesting, so amusing, so fresh or nearly so exciting as Les Noces ... That ballet

215-435: A rehearsal recording unobtainable elsewhere, was used by Decca on the company's 1957 stereo demonstration LP, A Journey into Stereo Sound . The conductor's clear and methodical counting of beats is a distinct feature of this rehearsal sequence. In his last years he and his ensemble recorded works by Haydn , Beethoven and Brahms . In 1962, Ansermet made the first complete recording of Joseph Haydn 's Paris symphonies with

258-403: A segment for their celebrated song cycle, Trees, Walls, Cities. Verbey composed 4 Preludes to Infinity for The Stolz Quartet, a work which is included on their CD, Dutch Masters and Their Inspiration. More recently, the duo Andrea Vasi & Sebastiaan Kemner performed Ballade , a work for trombone and piano written especially for them. In 2007, Theo Verbey completed his second commission for

301-499: A space in which people who knew Theo and loved his music can feel at home. The foundation collects, organizes, preserves, makes accessible and helps publish Theo’s teaching materials, scores, and performance recordings, and has also consulted with specialized institutions in the Netherlands and abroad to professionalize its activities in areas such as archiving, preservation, management and providing access. The Theo Verbey Foundation

344-422: A student. His earliest musical memories were of singing nursery rhymes with one of his numerous aunts. He later began playing the recorder and singing in the boys’ choir of his grammar school. He started composing music at the age of seven, writing small pieces for his school orchestra. While in high school, he also wrote some pop songs as well as music for a jazz/rock band of which he was a member. He studied at

387-506: A symphonic poem entitled Feuilles de Printemps (Leaves of Spring). He also orchestrated Debussy's Six épigraphes antiques in 1939. He died on 20 February 1969 in Geneva at the age of 85. Theo Verbey Theo Verbey (5 July 1959 – 13 October 2019) was a Dutch composer. His style could be considered to be associated with Postmodern music . Verbey was also orchestrated Alban Berg 's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 in 1984 while still

430-569: Is a me who speaks as though he were an I ," that the Jew "suffers from thoughts doubly misformed", thus making him "suitable for the handling of money", and sums up with the statement that "historic creation of Western music" would have developed just as well "without the Jew". Ansermet's reputation suffered after the war because of his collaboration with the Nazis and he was boycotted in the new state of Israel. In May 1954 Decca recorded Ansermet and

473-477: Is a rendering in sound and vision of the peasant soul, in its gravity, in its deliberate and simple-minded intricacy, in its subtly varied rhythms and deep undercurrents of excitement, that will astonish and delight every intelligent man or woman who goes to see it." The pious reaction of Soviet critics such as Tikhon Khrennikov was no surprise: "In Petrushka and Les Noces Stravinsky, with Diaghilev's blessing, uses Russian folk customs in order to mock at them in

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516-1131: The London Sinfonietta , the Residentie Orchestra , the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and the Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra, Klangforum Wien , the Deutsche Oper Berlin and many others. Theo Verbey taught at both the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam , as well as having been on the composition jury for the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1992 and 1997. His work shows high regard for structure, beauty, and

559-646: The Royal Conservatory of The Hague where he graduated in 1986. His principal composition teachers were Peter Schat and Jan van Vlijmen. Upon completing his studies Verbey rapidly became one of the most performed living Dutch composers. In 1987 he was awarded the Amsterdam Arts Fund's incentive award for young composers, and since received commissions from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra , Amsterdam Sinfonietta,

602-535: The London premiere on 14 June 1926 at His Majesty's Theatre , the piano parts were played by composers Francis Poulenc , Georges Auric , Vittorio Rieti and Vernon Duke . When Stravinsky conducted a recording using the English libretto in 1959, the four pianists were composers Samuel Barber , Aaron Copland , Lukas Foss , and Roger Sessions . At a revival of the ballet in London's Covent Garden on 23 March 1962, four composers – John Gardner , Malcolm Williamson , Richard Rodney Bennett and Edmund Rubbra – played

645-426: The Netherlands, he represented one of the few remaining links between the two disciplines, which have been bound together throughout the history of music. In September 2020, the non-profit Theo Verbey Foundation was established to honour Theo’s artistic legacy by serving as a platform to preserve and distribute his work. By building a network of people who were connected with Theo, the foundation hopes to create

688-410: The Netherlands. In celebration of that orchestra’s 60th jubilee, Verbey was commissioned to compose Orchestral Variations which showcases each section of the orchestra both individually and within the ensemble. Verbey also collaborated with Klangforum Wien on their Free Radicals program, providing a score for Man Ray 's 1923 film, Retour à la Raison. This was not Theo Verbey's first contact with

731-495: The Nursery, and Songs and Dances of Death), which are regularly performed. He also arranged Scriabin 's Preludes op. 33, as well as Three Choral Preludes by J.S. Bach for oboe, violin, viola and cello. Theo worked at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague since 1984 as a teacher of Music Theory, where he was known as an intelligent and dedicated teacher with a strong commitment to the education of young musicians. In 1995, he joined

774-699: The OSR on Decca. His last recording, of Stravinsky's The Firebird , was made in London with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in 1968, which included a recording of the rehearsal sessions issued as a memorial to him. Another late recording for Decca, also issued as a memorial album, was with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and was devoted to Albéric Magnard 's Symphony No. 3 and Édouard Lalo 's Scherzo for Orchestra . Ansermet composed some piano pieces and compositions for orchestra, among them

817-710: The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, among others. Other orchestrations included an arrangement of Leoš Janáček 's piano sonata 1. X. 1905 . In 2006 Theo Verbey was asked by Amsterdam Sinfonietta to arrange the three remaining movements of Alban Berg 's Lyric Suite for string orchestra. At the invitation of ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) this version of the Lyric Suite was included in Amsterdam Sinfonietta's successful 2011 tour of six major European cities. Mr. Verbey

860-647: The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra: LIED, for Trombone and Orchestra, with Jörgen van Rijen as soloist. His Fractal Symphony was chosen by choreographer Regina van Berkel as music to accompany her ballet Memory of a Shape performed by Ballet Mainz in 2009. Van Berkel also based a second ballet based on Verbey's music, which was performed by the ballet company of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in February/March 2011 under

903-461: The decade after The Rite (although he was never again to produce such an extreme sonic effect solely with percussion). He reminisced in 1962: "When I first played The Wedding to Diaghilev … he wept and said it was the most beautiful and most purely Russian creation of our [ballet company]. I think he did love The Wedding more than any other work of mine. That is why it is dedicated to him." The ballet-cantata has four scenes performed without

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946-469: The faculty of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam , as well. As a teacher, Verbey was known for his extensive knowledge of the history and development of the art of instrumentation, as well as his precise arrangements and orchestrations. He was devoted to teaching, and took his obligation extremely seriously. He would work out his own solution to every orchestration assignment, so his students could look over his shoulder, as it were. Theo Verbey

989-413: The fields of jazz and popular music." Goodall lists composers that have fallen under its influence such as Orff , Bartók , Messiaen and many others, including film composers. In her memoir of working as Stravinsky's agent during the final decade of his life, Lilian Libman recalls the composer's particular fondness for the work: "Still, did he have a favorite as a father has a favorite son?... I think it

1032-591: The four pianos with a large orchestra. The version including pianola that Stravinsky left unfinished was completed with permission from Stravinsky's heirs by the Dutch composer Theo Verbey and performed in the Netherlands in 2009. A new version of Les noces was performed by the English National Ballet at Sadler's Wells in September 2023, choreographed by Andrea Miller. Les Noces received

1075-404: The interests of European audiences, which he does by emphasizing Asiatic primitivism, coarseness, and animal instincts, and deliberately introducing sexual motives. Ancient folk melodies are intentionally distorted as if seen in a crooked mirror." However, in 1929, Boris Asafyev , a musicologist less inclined to stick to the " party line " made a shrewd prediction: "The young generation will find in

1118-477: The medium of film: in 1994, film maker Alejandro Agresti used Verbey's piece TEGENBEWEGING as the basis of his short film which formed a segment of Hexagon , a film project made for the Holland Festival . In addition to composing his own works, Theo Verbey earned high regard for his orchestrations. One of his earliest successes, Alban Berg 's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 , has been performed many times by

1161-423: The most radical, the most original and conceivably the greatest of them all." Howard Goodall has pointed out the influence of the distinctive sonorities of Les Noces : "To other composers, though, as they gradually came across Les Noces , its peculiar faux-primitive, fierce sound proved irresistible... The sound world of Les Noces is, quite simply, the most imitated of all twentieth-century combinations outside

1204-443: The music of Arnold Schoenberg and his associates, even criticizing Stravinsky when he began to use twelve-tone techniques in his compositions. In Ansermet's book, Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (1961), he sought to prove, using Husserlian phenomenology and partly his own mathematical studies, that Schoenberg's idiom was false and irrational. He labeled it a "Jewish idea" and went on to say that "the Jew

1247-601: The orchestra in Europe's first commercial stereophonic recordings. They went on to record the first stereo performance of the complete The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky on LP ( Artur Rodziński had already recorded a stereo performance on magnetic tape , but this had been released on LP only in mono). Ansermet also conducted early stereo recordings of Debussy 's Nocturnes and the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune . Part of his recording of The Rite of Spring , augmented by

1290-454: The orchestral playing did not always reach the highest international standards, and they differed notably from those of other famous 20th-century specialists, notably Pierre Monteux and Stravinsky himself. Ansermet disapproved of Stravinsky's practice of revising his works, and always played the original versions. Although famous for performing much modern music by other composers such as Arthur Honegger and Frank Martin , he avoided altogether

1333-512: The percussion and pianos or using pianolas in accordance with a version Stravinsky abandoned. Stravinsky conceived of The Wedding in 1913. By October 1917 he had completed it in short score to a libretto he himself had written using Russian wedding lyrics taken mainly from songs collected by Pyotr Kireevsky and published in 1911. During this long gestation its orchestration changed dramatically. Stravinsky at first planned to use forces similar to those of The Rite of Spring . A later idea

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1376-447: The piano parts. The premiere of the 1919 version of Les Noces , with cimbaloms , harmonium , and pianola, took place in 1981 in Paris, conducted by Pierre Boulez . The Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned an arrangement by Steven Stucky for symphony orchestra and premiered it under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen on May 29, 2008, at Walt Disney Concert Hall . The arrangement retains Stravinsky's percussion parts while replacing

1419-455: The restrictive nature of a woman's duty to marry. The dark and somber set provides the backdrop to the simple costuming and rigid movements. The individuality of the dancer is stripped away in Nijinska's choreography, therefore displaying actors on a predetermined path, as marriage was regarded as the way to maintain and grow the community. The choreography exudes symbolism as, huddled together,

1462-412: The score of Noces an inexhaustible fountain of music and of new methods of musical formulation – a veritable primer of technical mastery." The passage of time has indeed shown Les Noces to be one of Stravinsky's finest and most original achievements. Writing in 1988, Stephen Walsh said, "Although others among Stravinsky's theatre works have enjoyed greater prestige … The Wedding is in many respects

1505-719: The title Frozen Echo . Memory of a Shape received its Dutch premiere in 2017, when it was performed by Introdans . In November 2010, Theo Verbey's piece Bandersnatch for cello and pianola was premiered by Larissa Groeneveld as part of the Amsterdam Cello Biënnale. It was Mr. Verbey's second commission for the Biënnale. In 2009/2010, Theo Verbey was Composer-in-Residence of the Brabant Philharmonic Orchestra, based in Eindhoven,

1548-403: The women repeatedly strike the floor with their pointe shoes with rigid intensity, as if to tell the tale of their struggle and ultimate reverence. The Russian peasant culture and the dutifulness it evokes in its people is represented in Nijinska's piece. Ernest Ansermet Ernest Alexandre Ansermet ( French: [ɛʁnɛst alɛksɑ̃dʁ ɑ̃sɛʁmɛ] ; 11 November 1883 – 20 February 1969)

1591-427: Was Les Noces ... It drew him, it would seem, as no other work of his had done. During the time I knew him, the mention of Les Noces never failed to produce the same smile with which he greeted those for whom he felt great affection." Bronislava Nijinska 's choreographic interpretation of Les Noces has been called protofeminist . Les Noces deserts the upbeat nature of a typical wedding, and instead brings to life

1634-409: Was held in high esteem by his colleagues, and there was no dispute about his authority as a theorist and orchestrator. He was also known for his kind and considerate approach to students outside the classroom. He demonstrated a similar regard for his colleagues, always being well informed and utterly professional. As a composer, he belonged to a dying species, the "composer-theorist." In

1677-744: Was a Swiss conductor . Ansermet was born in Vevey , Switzerland. Originally he was a mathematics professor, teaching at the University of Lausanne . He began conducting at the Casino in Montreux in 1912, and from 1915 to 1923 was the conductor for Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes . Travelling in France for this, he met both Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel , and consulted them on the performance of their works. During World War I, he met Igor Stravinsky , who

1720-532: Was exiled in Switzerland, and from this meeting began the conductor's lifelong association with Russian music. In 1918 Ansermet founded his own orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR). He toured widely in Europe and America and became famous for accurate performances of difficult modern music, making first recordings of works such as Stravinsky's Capriccio with the composer as soloist. Ansermet

1763-468: Was granted permission by the heirs of Igor Stravinsky to complete the orchestration of the unfinished 1919 version of Les noces for voices, pianola , 2 cimbaloms, harmonium and percussion. This version has been so successful that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands chose it for her annual Queen's Day Concert in her palace in The Hague . Verbey also orchestrated three Mussorgsky song cycles (Sunless,

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1806-452: Was one of the first in the field of classical music to take jazz seriously, and in 1919 he wrote an article praising Sidney Bechet . After World War II, Ansermet and his orchestra rose to international prominence through a long-term contract with Decca Records . From that time until his death, he recorded most of his repertoire, often two or three times. His interpretations were widely regarded as admirably clear and authoritative, though

1849-591: Was to use synchronised roll-operated instruments, including the pianola ; this he abandoned when partially completed because the Paris firm of Pleyel et Cie was late in constructing the two-keyboard cimbaloms , later known as luthéals , he required. Stravinsky settled only in 1923, six years after his short score, on the following forces: soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass vocal soloists; mixed chorus; unpitched percussion ; and pitched percussion , notably four pianos. The decision exemplified his growing penchant for stripped down, clear and mechanistic sound-groups in

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