Social Etudes

Item details

• Description +

  • Duration: 17 min.
    
    The title of the piece refers to the way the players interact, beginning all together on one instrument and eventually moving to six individual set-ups. It also refers to the differing ways the notation binds them together or separates them. The conductor's role also varies throughout the piece, at times a strict regulator of activity and at others of a very general guide.

• Instrumentation +

  • Percussion Ensemble (6 playeres)
    
    Player 1:
    Marimba (a)
    
    Player 2:
    Glockenspiel
    Triangle
    Brake Drum
    
    Player 3:
    Vibraphone
    
    Player 4:
    Vibraphone
    
    Player 5:
    3 Timpani
    Bass Drum
    2 Tenor Drums
    Bake Drum
    Chimes
    
    Player 6:
    Marimba

• About the composer +

  • Nils Vigeland was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950 and made his professional debut as a pianist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, Lukas Foss conducting. He later studied composition with Mr. Foss at Harvard College, graduating with a BA in 1972. Graduate studies were at the State University of New York at Buffalo in piano with Yvar Mikhashoff (MFA 1975) and composition with Morton Feldman (PhD 1976).
    
    For eight years Mr. Vigeland was the director of the Bowery Ensemble, which gave an annual series of concerts at the Cooper Union in New York City. The ensemble gave the first performance of over thirty works by composers including John Cage, Jo Kondo, Pauline Oliveros, and Dane Rudhyar. With Jan Williams, percussion, and Eberhard Blum, flute, Mr. Vigeland has recorded all the extended length works of Feldman for this ensemble on HAT ART. His own work appears on CD releases from Mode and Lovely Music and is published by Boosey and Hawkes.
    
    In 1992 The English National Opera commissioned and gave the first performance at the Almeida Theatre in London of Mr. Vigeland's chamber opera, False Love True Love , based on two scenes from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. In 1989 his orchestral work My Father's Song was a winner of the Rose Prize and given its first performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He has been the recipient of grants from Harvard College, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust.
    
    Mr. Vigeland has taught at Manhattan School of Music since 1984 and is presently the chair of the composition department.

• Reviews +

  • To come.

• Credits +

  • Front cover graphics and layout: Ronni Kot Wenzell
    Copyright © Edition Svitzer
    Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark

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