John Foulds
John Herbert Foulds (born November 2, 1880 in Manchester , † April 24 (or April 25, 1939 ) in Calcutta ) was an English composer . As one of the most innovative musicians of his generation, he experimented with quarter tones as early as 1898.
Life
Fould's father was Fred Foulds (around 1853-1924), bassoonist in the Hallé orchestra . Achille Fould , Minister of Finance under Napoléon III, was one of his ancestors . Foulds began playing the piano at the age of four and later learned the oboe and cello. At the age of 7 the first compositions were created. He left home at the age of 13 and soon became a professional orchestra musician. In 1900 he became a member of the Hallé Orchestra under Hans Richter . As a composer largely self-taught, the tone poem Epithalamium , which Henry Wood premiered at the Proms in 1906 , also made him known to a wider audience.
In 1915 he met his second wife, Maud MacCarthy, who - herself a musician who also mastered the Indian scales as a singer - introduced him to Indian music and thus reinforced his already existing interest in exotic sounds and scales. Foulds also taught at the University of London for a while.
From 1927 to 1930 he lived in France, where he gained recognition as one of the leading silent film companions. In Paris he came into contact with the artist group Les Six as well as Korngold , Ravel , Varèse and Stravinski . In 1930 he returned to London. In 1935 he traveled to India with his family, did folk music research and became director of European music at All-India Radio in Delhi . In 1939 he died of cholera in India .
plant
Foulds was one of the most innovative English composers of his generation. A variety of influences are mixed in his work: English ( Holst ) with those of the French Impressionists, Russian echoes (such as Rachmaninoff or Scriabin ) with Indian scales. He was one of the first European composers to experiment with quarter tones in a string quartet composed in 1898 . Quarter- or microtonal passages also appear as means of expression in his later works . Foulds developed 90 modes based on Indian scales, which he compared to the traditional major and minor scales as equivalent. However, he rejected atonality or twelve-tone music. Towards the end of his life, his efforts to synthesize music from West and East prompted him to write compositions for traditional Indian instruments, which, however, were written in Western notation.
Foulds composed piano and chamber music (10 string quartets) as well as orchestral works and solo concerts (e.g. Lyra Celtica for vocalise and orchestra, Dynamic Triptych (1929) for piano and orchestra). Between 1919 and 1921, A World Requiem was based on Christian and Hindu texts; In the mid-1920s it was performed several times - with 1,200 singers - in the Royal Albert Hall (German premiere: November 2, 2014 in Wetzlar Cathedral). After a first opera based on Dante 's Divine Comedy (1905-08), he later worked for a long time on the opera Avatara , which is set in India, but which, apart from three interludes ( Three Mantras from Avatara ), must be considered lost (like also several other late works). In order to support his family, he also wrote numerous, thoroughly successful works in the "easy" genre, which still stands in the way of the discovery of his "serious" music to this day.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ nmz - neue musikzeitung, online from November 22, 2014 , accessed on December 25, 2018
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Foulds, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Foulds, John Herbert (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 2, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Manchester |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 24, 1939 or April 25, 1939 |
| Place of death | Calcutta |