{"id":6684,"date":"2015-01-22T12:21:18","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T11:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=6684"},"modified":"2016-06-16T21:19:21","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T20:19:21","slug":"explore-the-score-hans-gal-idyllikon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2015\/01\/22\/explore-the-score-hans-gal-idyllikon\/","title":{"rendered":"Explore the Score- Hans G\u00e1l: Idyllikon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hear it live for the first time in 25 years <a href=\"http:\/\/surreymozartplayers.com\/seasonprogramme.html\" target=\"_blank\">on the 31st of January here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Idyllikon<\/strong><br \/>\nFour movements for small orchestra, Opus 79, (1958)<br \/>\nSerenade, Badinerie, Sarabande, Villanelle<br \/>\nDuration: 29&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>First performance: Vienna Radio, Aug. 1960 (Orchester des \u00f6sterreichischen Rundfunks\/Etti)<\/div>\n<div class=\"woocommerce \"><ul class=\"products columns-4\">\n<li class=\"product type-product post-6648 status-publish first instock product_cat-cds product_tag-avie-records product_tag-hans-gal-2 product_tag-orchestra-of-the-swan-2 has-post-thumbnail shipping-taxable purchasable product-type-simple\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/product\/hans-gal-the-four-symphonies\/\" class=\"woocommerce-LoopProduct-link woocommerce-loop-product__link\"><span class=\"et_shop_image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies.jpg\" class=\"attachment-woocommerce_thumbnail size-woocommerce_thumbnail\" alt=\"Hans G\u00e1l- The Four Symphonies\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-90x90.jpg 90w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-1140x1140.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-570x570.jpg 570w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-380x380.jpg 380w, https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Gal-Four-Symphonies-285x285.jpg 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><span class=\"et_overlay\"><\/span><\/span><h2 class=\"woocommerce-loop-product__title\">Hans G\u00e1l- The Four Symphonies<\/h2>\n\t<span class=\"price\"><span class=\"woocommerce-Price-amount amount\"><bdi><span class=\"woocommerce-Price-currencySymbol\">&pound;<\/span>18.00<\/bdi><\/span><\/span>\n<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Hans G\u00e1l<\/strong> was born in the small village of\u00a0Brunn am Gebirge, just\u00a0outside\u00a0Vienna. He studied with some of the foremost teachers in\u00a0Vienna, including Richard Robert for piano (teacher of Rudolf Serkin , Clara Haskil and George Szell) and Eusebius Mandyczewski for composition, who had been a close friend of Brahms. In 1915 he won the K. und K. (Royal and Imperial) State Prize for composition for a symphony (which he subsequently discarded). In 1928 His Sinfonietta (which was to become his \u2018First Symphony) won the Columbia\u00a0Schubert Centenary Prize. The next year, with the support of such important musicians as\u00a0Wilhelm Furtw\u00e4ngler,\u00a0Richard Strauss\u00a0and others, he obtained the directorship of the\u00a0Mainz\u00a0Conservatory. G\u00e1l composed in nearly every genre and his operas, which include\u00a0Der Artz der Sobeide,\u00a0Die Heilige Ente\u00a0and\u00a0Das Lied der Nacht, were particularly popular during the 1920s. When Hitler rose to power, G\u00e1l was forced to leave\u00a0Germany\u00a0and eventually emigrated to\u00a0Britain, teaching at the\u00a0Edinburgh\u00a0University for many years.<\/p>\n<p>G\u00e1l\u2019s music enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity in the years immediately after World War II, and was featured regularly in broadcasts on BBC radio. However, by the 1960s, BBC director William Glock\u2019s programming philosophy, sharply slanted in favour of strictly modernist music, meant that G\u00e1l and other tonal composers of the time found themselves unable to get their music on the airwaves of the \u201cThird Programme.\u201d Gradually, performances also became more and more scarce, and G\u00e1l was deeply affected by the death in 1964 of his friend and foremost champion, conductor Otto Schmitgen. There were personal tragedies as well- G\u00e1l\u2019s younger son Franz died by his own hand during this period. Circumstances for new work in a tonal idiom were similarly bleak on the continent, and commissions for new works in standard genres or for traditional instruments were almost non-existent. Indeed, the main champions and patrons of G\u00e1l\u2019s music at this time were recorder player Carl Dolmetsch and Vinzenz Hladky, Professor of Mandolin at the Vienna academy of Music and publisher of mandolin music, who had instigated G\u00e1ls\u2019s writing for mandolin in the period back in Vienna between 1933 and the Anschluss in 1938. Now in the 60s, Hladky published and regularly performed G\u00e1l\u2019s music with his mandolin ensembles, to which G\u00e1l responded with two Sinfoniettas for Mandolin Orchestra, amongst other works.<\/p>\n<p>G\u00e1l\u2019s \u201cIdyllikon\u201d was written in 1958- the sole major work to come out of what was for G\u00e1l a highly uncharacteristic period of a relative lack of compositional productivity. Even during the dark years of the 1930\u2019s and 40\u2019s, G\u00e1l had continued to compose prolifically. The exact reasons for G\u00e1l\u2019s temporary drop off in output in the late 1950\u2019s is, of course, unknown, but it was a period of great despair for G\u00e1l at the direction contemporary music was taking. Never given to experimental techniques or modern musical languages himself, G\u00e1l had always been a staunch supporter of revolutionaries like Alban Berg throughout his early career. Anton Webern and G\u00e1l struck up a friendship in the 1920\u2019s when G\u00e1l proved to be the only chorus master capable of teaching Viennese singers to cope with Webern\u2019s thorny dissonances. G\u00e1l\u2019s sympathy for the modern, however, reached its breaking point with the emergence of aleatoric, or chance, music and total serialism, both of which he saw as a fundamental abdication of the composer\u2019s responsibility to imagine, develop and realize music in the inner ear. The climate for G\u00e1l\u2019s music, which had remained favourable even in the post-War years, now turned utterly bleak, too, and it was in these years that his music began to fall completely out of the repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>For a work written in such troubled times, Idyllikon is a strikingly un-troubled work. It marks something of a stylistic breakthrough- the first major essay in G\u00e1l\u2019s late, more pastoral style. The four character pieces which comprise the piece deftly balance orchestral virtuosity, sophistication of approach and a largely wistful atmosphere, although the piece ends in wildly extrovert high spirits.<\/p>\n<p>Happily, Idyllikon was one of the few works of G\u00e1l\u2019s late period to receive multiple professional performances. Sir Colin Davis, the President of the <a href=\"http:\/\/hansgal.org\/hansgalsociety\/32\" target=\"_blank\">Hans G\u00e1l Society<\/a> until his death in 2013, gave the last of several early performances with the BBC Symphony in 1976. Since then the work has been heard only once in a studio concert in Switzerland in 1990.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2015\/01\/22\/explore-the-score-hans-gal-idyllikon\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"box_count\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"true\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hear it live for the first time in 25 years on the 31st of January here.\u00a0 Idyllikon Four movements for small orchestra, Opus 79, (1958) Serenade, Badinerie, Sarabande, Villanelle Duration: 29&#8221; First performance: Vienna Radio, Aug. 1960 (Orchester des \u00f6sterreichischen Rundfunks\/Etti) Hans G\u00e1l was born in the small village of\u00a0Brunn am Gebirge, just\u00a0outside\u00a0Vienna. He studied [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-opion-life-as-a-performing-musician","category-explore-the-score"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6686,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6684\/revisions\/6686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}