Ravinia 2026 Issue 2

Telemann evidently negotiated an agreement that relieved him of direct teaching obligations. As his popularity and influence in Hamburg ex- panded, Telemann held other posts simultane- ously with that of Kantor, including director of the Hamburg Opera. His numerous chamber compositions from the Hamburg period include a set of 12 fan- tasies for “ violino senza basso ” (“violin with- out accompaniment”), probably dating from 1735. In fact, Telemann composed six sets of fantasies for solo instruments—three for key- board and one each for flute, violin, and vio- la da gamba—during the 1730s, forming what might have constituted a large-scale cycle. The Fantasy No. 8 for Solo Violin in E major is a three-movement work. Multi-stops provide harmonic references at key structural points. Rapid violin figuration in the Spirituoso serves an identical function. Mid-phrase multi-stops lend a folk-like quality to the Allegro . COLERIDGE-TAYLORPERKINSON (1932–2004) Louisiana Blues Strut Blue/s Forms Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was born in Win- ston-Salem, NC, but spent the greater part of his life and career in New York City. His moth- er—a respected pianist, church organist, and director of a theater company in the Bronx— named him after pioneering African British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. By the time Perkinson graduated from the High School for Music and Art in 1949, he had studied music theory and harmony with Aldama Jackson and counterpoint with J. Alan Taffs. Through Hugh Ross, director of the Schola Cantorum, he met Igor Stravinsky and conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Perkinson entered New York Uni- versity for musical and general studies before transferring to the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. His principal teachers included Vit- torio Giannini (composition) and Jonel Perlea (conducting). On the advice of Roger Sessions, Perkinson studied serial technique with Earl Kim at Princeton University. Numerous conducting opportunities present- ed themselves during the 1950s. He served as musical director of the Professional Children’s School (1952–64) before participating in the choral conducting program at the Tanglewood Music Center (1954). Later, Perkinson studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Nether- lands Radio Union in Hilversum. Other con- ducting activities included positions with the Dessoff Choir, Brooklyn Community Symphony Orchestra, New York Mandolin Symphony Or- chestra, Symphony of the New World (which he co-founded), the American Theatre Lab (estab- lished by Jerome Robbins), and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Perkinson served as Coordinator of Performance Programs (1988– 2004) and Music Director of the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble (1999–2004) at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. “Eclectic” most accurately describes Perkinson’s compositional profile. Classical music instilled in him an ambition to “try to be excellent in my craft,” equipped him with a wide stylistic palette embracing tonal, atonal, and serial procedures, and grounded his work in traditional structural principles. His experiences as an African Amer- ican musician exerted an even more profound influence. As Perkinson explained in an inter- view published in The Black Composer Speaks , “The thing that I consider unique about my own music is the inspirational understanding of Blackness.” This deep-seated awareness found an unexpected musical outlet during a short pe- riod of Perkinson’s career when he worked as an arranger for Motown Records, providing string and horn arrangements for landmark albums such as Marvin Gaye’s I Want You and Leon Ware’s Musical Massage , among other projects. Perkinson drew inspiration from another Afri- can American musical tradition in Blue/s Forms (1972), a solo-violin composition dedicated to Sanford Allen, the first African American vio- linist in the New York Philharmonic, who gave the premiere on February 19, 1972, in Carnegie Hall. The influence of the blues is heard most distinctly in the melodic material—the char- acteristic “blues notes,” or flattened pitches imported into a major scale from the minor scale—and certain rhythmic patterns. The stan- dard 12-bar blues form does not factor into these three pieces. Twenty-eight years later, Perkinson composed Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk for Solo Violin (2000) as the fourth movement of Blue/s Forms but decided to keep it as an in- dependent composition, stating, “I just couldn’t get my head in the same place.” Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson EUGÈNEYSAŸE (1858–1931) Sonata No. 5 for Solo Violin in G major, op. 27, no. 5 Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe ranked as one of the great artists of his age, but it was anoth- er musician’s interpretation of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1001–6, that inspired the creation of his own half-dozen sonatas (op. 27). Ysaÿe encountered this awe-inspiring music in July 1923, when Jo- seph Szigeti performed the solo Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, in Brussels. “The genius of Bach frightens one who would like to com- pose in the medium of his sonatas and partitas,” wrote Ysaÿe. “These works represent a summit, and there is never a question of rising above it.” Moved by the dual artistry of the Baroque composer and his modern interpreter, Ysaÿe re- turned to his summer quarters in the seaside re- sort of Knokke and sketched six unaccompanied works within a single day, according to legend. The overall tonal structure of Ysaÿe’s collection parallels Bach’s, which begins in G minor and ends in E major. Though Bach’s half-dozen com- positions alternated between four-movement sonatas and dance-suite partitas, there is no comparable formal scheme in Ysaÿe’s collection. Revisions took place over a two-week period. Schott Frères published the six sonatas with a dedication to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, her- self a violin student of Ysaÿe, in 1924. The com- poser dedicated each sonata to a contemporary violinist: Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enesco, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crick- boom, and Manuel Quiroga. The rediscovery of Ysaÿe’s bound sketches in 2018 not only shed light on his compositional process but also revealed a previously unknown, mostly complete three-movement “seventh” so- nata. In actuality, this was an alternate version of the sixth sonata ( Sonate posthume , op. 27 no. 6bis), thematically independent of the final Eugène Ysaÿe RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 69