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61-572: They should not be confused with two other chamber groups of similar name, the Melos Quartet or the Melos Art Ensemble (an Italian group). The Melos Ensemble was founded by musicians who wanted to play chamber music scored for a larger ensemble in a combination of strings, winds and other instruments with the quality of musical rapport only regular groups can achieve. The Melos Ensemble played in variable instrumentation, flexible enough to perform

122-638: A central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle , in his early twenties. He joined Olivier Messiaen 's masterclass in Paris in 1955. Back in England and working for the BBC , he experienced an international breakthrough in 1957 with his cantata The Deluge in 1957, conducted by his father Walter Goehr . He composed Little Symphony in 1963 as

183-472: A composer were not encouraged by his father. Goehr worked for the music publisher Schott after leaving school. A girl he met on the train to work recruited him for a left-wing Zionist party, and he spent two years in a training kibbutz in Essex. He was then sent to Manchester for political work, where he wrote his first piece, described as "a sort of Zionist pageant with songs". Goehr studied composition at

244-491: A conscious decision to have a wide-ranging repertoire in order to avoid getting stuck to any particular period. For most of the Schubert recordings the instruments were a cello by Francesco Ruggieri (1682), a viola by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi (18th century), first violin by Domenico Montagnana (1731) and second violin by Carlo Annibale Tononi (18th century). They were planning a farewell tour in 2005, when Wilhelm Melcher,

305-553: A fragment of medieval plainchant , was a typical foray into the art of musical ornament , written in 2008. Since Brass nor Stone for string quartet and percussion, written in 2008 as a memorial to Pavel Haas for percussionist Colin Currie and the Pavel Haas Quartet , was inspired by a Shakespeare sonnet from which it borrows its title. It achieved the chamber category of the 2009 British Composer Awards . Goehr wrote …between

366-657: A further contract with D.G.G. for complete recordings of the Schubert and Cherubini string quartets. After this they undertook tours around the world, in North and South America, Africa, all European countries, the Near East and Far East, getting as far as Novosibirsk in Russia . They became the first West German musicians to play in Volgograd ( Stalingrad ), in 1973, in concerts commemorating

427-595: A fusion of modal harmonics and the tradition of figured bass . Over the following twenty years he applied this approach to traditional genres such as symphonies, composing Sinfonia in 1979 and Symphony with Chaconne in 1987. In 1985 he composed ... a musical offering (J. S. B. 1985) ... , written in memory of Johann Sebastian Bach . It was premiered by Oliver Knussen , who remained a close collaborator. Goehr focused especially on vocal music, with many works reflecting socio-political themes. The Death of Moses (1992) uses Moses ' angry refusal to die as an allegory for

488-631: A memorial to his father, arriving at a serialism that allowed expressive freedom. He combined avant-garde techniques with elements from music history in works of many genres including the Piano Trio (1966), the first opera Arden Must Die (1966), the music-theatre piece Triptych (1968–70), the orchestral Metamorphosis/Dance (1974), and the String Quartet No. 3 (1975). He founded the Music Theatre Ensemble in 1967. Goehr first lectured in

549-606: A selection from historical recordings, titled "Melos Ensemble – Music among Friends". The principal players were Richard Adeney (and William Bennett, flute), Gervase de Peyer (and Keith Puddy, clarinet), Peter Graeme (and Sarah Barrington, oboe), Neil Sanders (and James Buck, horn), William Waterhouse (and Edgar Williams, bassoon), Emanuel Hurwitz (and Kenneth Sillito , first violin), Ivor McMahon (and Iona Brown, second violin), Cecil Aronowitz (and Kenneth Essex, viola), Terence Weil (and Keith Harvey, cello), Adrian Beers (double bass), Osian Ellis (harp) and Lamar Crowson (piano). The ensemble

610-423: A wide repertory of pieces. All its members were excellent musicians who held positions in notable orchestras and appeared as soloists. The founding members, namely Gervase de Peyer (clarinet), Cecil Aronowitz (viola), Richard Adeney (flute), and Terence Weil (cello) planned a group of twelve players, a string quintet and a wind quintet with harp and piano, that might be expanded by other players, to perform

671-413: Is of great importance to composers and to anyone who likes to follow what composers are doing, what is being discussed is not the music itself but the location of the music, the place where it exists. Goehr continued to compose choral works. Encouraged by his friendship with the choral conductor John Alldis , who was strongly committed to new music, Goehr composed his Two Choruses in 1962, which used for

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732-990: The Boccherini Quintet in Rome . He won the International Chamber Music Competition in Venice in 1962 and became concertmaster of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra the next year. The Voss brothers are Rhinelanders . They studied with Sandor Végh , and Hermann continued as a pupil of Ulrich Koch , becoming solo violist of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra . Cellist Buck is a Swabian who studied in Düsseldorf and Freiburg and with Ludwig Hoelscher in Stuttgart. Gerhard Voss and Buck were members of

793-479: The Conservatoire de Paris , and he studied counterpoint privately with Yvonne Loriod . He remained in Paris until October 1956, becoming friends with Pierre Boulez and involved in the serialist avant-garde movement of those years. Goehr experimented with Boulez's technique of bloc sonore . Eventually Goehr's sensibility parted from Boulez's serialism. What disturbed Goehr was mainly his perception that by

854-600: The Melos Ensemble of London . Melos Quartett Stuttgart was founded in October 1965 by four young members of well-known German chamber orchestras. The name Melos, an ancient Greek word for singing, and the root of the word melody , was suggested by the combination of the names Melcher and Voss, to indicate their purpose as distinct individuals seeking musical harmony together. Leader Melcher of Hamburg studied with Erich Röhn and with both Pina Carmirelli and Arrigo Pelliccia of

915-684: The Reith Lectures . In a series of six lectures, titled The Survival of the Symphony he traces the importance of the symphony, and its apparent fall from grace in the 20th century. Goehr's Colossos or Panic was premiered in 1992 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa . Although the last fifteen years of Goehr's output received less generous coverage in terms of both academic writing and frequency of performances, they represent an interesting phase of composition. He wrote

976-540: The Royal Manchester College of Music from 1952 to 1955, with Richard Hall . He became friends there with Peter Maxwell Davies , Harrison Birtwistle , trumpeter Elgar Howarth and pianist John Ogdon . He influenced Davies, a clarinetist, and Birtwhistle who studied to teach, to focus on composition. The five founded the New Music Manchester Group , a "distinctive, progressive force in what

1037-610: The Wardour Castle Summer School in Wiltshire with Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle in 1964, and most importantly, the beginning of Goehr's preoccupation with opera and music theatre . In 1966 he wrote his first opera, Arden Must Die , a Brechtian setting of a Jacobean morality play, a text compiled by Erich Fried . The opera was premiered at the Hamburg State Opera in 1967. In 1967 he founded

1098-856: The Württemberg Chamber Orchestra. In 1966 the group gave its first recital, won a prize in the Villa-Lobos -Quartet competition in Rio de Janeiro , represented West Germany at the World Congress of Jeuness Musicale in Paris , and, most influentially for their future success, won the Prix américain as the best quartet at the Geneva International Congress of Musical Performance. Then, giving up their orchestral positions to concentrate solely on

1159-409: The " Catacombs " movement from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition , to which his father had devoted a harmonic analysis. This flexible approach to serialism, integrating harmonic background with bloc sonore and modality was representative of the type of writing that Goehr developed as an alternative to the strictures of total serialism. It was no coincidence that Boulez, who had earlier facilitated

1220-583: The 1995 opera Arianna to Ottavio Rinuccini 's historic libretto for Monteverdi's lost L'Arianna , exploring the sounds of Italian Renaissance music . The opera was first performed at the Royal Opera House in London. His engagement with Monteverdi's music dates back to the cantata The Death of Moses , which he described as "Monteverdi heard through Varèse ". Arianna is also the piece that most overtly displays Goehr's intent to turn his reinvention of

1281-472: The Melos Ensemble has directly and indirectly influenced music for new combinations of chamber musicians in contemporary music . Melos Quartet The Melos Quartet was a much-recorded, Stuttgart -based string quartet active from 1965 until 2005, when its first violinist died. It also went by the name Melos Quartett Stuttgart , partly to distinguish itself from the equally prominent chamber group

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1342-580: The Melos Ensemble played on 16 August Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg. On 18 August parts of In Chymick Art , a cantata on texts by Edward Benlowes that Robin Holloway wrote for the Summer School, were performed for the first time. On 20 August they premiered two works they had commissioned, Tragoedia by Birtwistle, conducted by Lawrence Foster , and two 'In Nomine" of Seven in Nomine by Davies, conducted by

1403-548: The Melos Ensemble presented its 25th anniversary concert in London. In 1982 the Melos Ensemble appeared in Graz in a retrospective of Egon Wellesz , playing his Oktett für Klarinette, Fagott, Horn und Streichquintett Op.67. Composers created music for unusual groupings with the Melos Ensemble specifically in mind, leading in turn to the formation of similar chamber groups. Hans Werner Henze composed Kammermusik 1958 for tenor, guitar and eight solo instruments, for example. In that way,

1464-559: The Music Theatre Ensemble, as a pioneer of musical theatre in England; in 1971 he completed a three-part cycle for music theatre Triptych of three works, Naboth's Vineyard (1968) and Shadowplay (1970) both explicitly written for the Music Theatre Ensemble while the later Sonata about Jerusalem (1971) was commissioned by Testimonium in Jerusalem and performed there by the Israel Chamber Orchestra and Gary Bertini . From

1525-575: The Piano Quintet in 2000 and the Fantasie for cello and piano in 2005, with sonorities reminiscent of Ravel . Marching to Carcassonne was written in 2003 for pianist Peter Serkin and the London Sinfonietta , alluding to neoclassicism . A set of piano pieces, Symmetry Disor.der Reach , recalling a Baroque suite , was premiered bv Huw Watkins in 2007. Manere for violin and clarinet, based on

1586-598: The Quartet, they began touring in 1967 and in 1968 performed in seven European countries. In 1969 they gave 105 concerts throughout the world, and had their first television appearance. In 1969 the group signed a five-year contract with the D.G.G. record company, and spent 25 days that year making recordings for radio and commercial release. They obtained the first prize of the String Quartet Foundation sponsored by German industry in 1970, and in 1972 they entered into

1647-795: The United States, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 1968 and at Yale University , then at the Southampton University from 1970. He was professor of music at the University of Leeds from 1971 and at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1999. Goehr returned to a more traditional way of composing with Psalm IV in 1976. He wrote the opera Arianna in 1995, setting the libretto of Monteverdi's lost opera . He focused on chamber music in later years. Peter Alexander Goehr

1708-423: The age of 92. Many of Goehr's works are studies in the synthesis of disparate elements. Examples include The Deluge (1957–58), which was inspired by Eisenstein's notes for a film, itself based on a writing by Leonardo da Vinci . Other works' inspirations range from the formal proportions of a late Beethoven piano sonata ( Metamorphosis/Dance , 1973–74) to a painting by Goya ( Colossus or Panic , 1990), to

1769-633: The bombing of Gaza during the Iraq war and was premiered in a concert of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Knussen marking Goehr's 80th birthday. Largo Siciliano (2012) was a trio praised for its mastery of aural balance between the unusual combination of violin, horn and piano. The chamber symphony ...between the lines... (2013), written on a commission from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group ,

1830-454: The classes of Messiaen, but also to study counterpoint and serialism with Schoenberg scholar and composer Max Deutsch . Goehr remained indebted to Messiaen, apparent his lifelong commitment to modality as an integration to both serialism and to tonality, as well as his often bird-song inspired melodic writing, particularly in the cantata Sing, Ariel . Schott Music provides a full discography by work: Goehr discography Sources: Goehr

1891-553: The complete cycles of Mendelssohn , Schumann , Brahms , Cherubini and Schubert . They recorded the complete Beethoven cycle twice (1970 for Intercord and 1983/85 for DGG), and later the two Janáček Quartets. For DGG, with violists Franz Beyer and Piero Farulli , they recorded the complete String Quintets by Mozart . They recorded also many unusual repertoire for SWR Radio, which has been since released digitally. Alexander Goehr Peter Alexander Goehr ( German: ['ɡøːɐ̯] ; 10 August 1932 – 25 August 2024)

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1952-546: The composer. The Melos Ensemble performed regularly at British and International Festivals, among others Warsaw, Venice, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Bordeaux and the Aldeburgh Festival , their first US tour was in 1966. The group gave many BBC broadcasts, and made over 50 recordings, first with the publisher L'Oiseau-Lyre. Gervase de Peyer directed the extensive recording programme of the Ensemble for EMI . EMI reissued in 2011

2013-690: The destiny of the victims of the Holocaust ; while the cantata Babylon the Great is Fallen (1979) and the opera Behold the Sun (1985) —for which Babylon the Great can be considered to be a sketch study—both explore the themes of violent revolution via the texts from the Anabaptist uprising in Münster of 1543. Non-political vocal works include Sing, Ariel , recalling Messiaen's bird vocalization setting English poetry , and

2074-458: The end of the 1960s Goehr held prestigious academic appointments. In 1968–69 he was the first composer-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston , and went on to teach at Yale University as an associate professor of music. Goehr returned to Britain as visiting lecturer at Southampton University (1970–71). In 1971 he was appointed West Riding Professor of Music at the University of Leeds . Goehr left Leeds in 1976 when he

2135-667: The events of 1943. By 1975, when the Schubert integral recordings were completed and issued, the Quartet also held a teaching post at the Stuttgart School of Music. By 1975 the group had built up a repertoire of 120 works, including the complete Beethoven , Schubert, Cherubini, Mendelssohn , Schumann , Brahms , Janáček quartets, and works by Haydn , Mozart , Hugo Wolf , Pfitzner , Verdi , Donizetti , Debussy , Smetana , Kodály , Hindemith , Bartók , Alban Berg , Gian Francesco Malipiero , Witold Lutosławski , Milko Kelemen , Robert Wittinger and Josef Maria Horváth . They made

2196-402: The first time the combination of modality and serialism which was to remain his main technical resource for the next 14 years. His search for a model of serialism that could allow for expressive freedom led him to his Little Symphony , Op. 15 (1963). He composed it as a memorial to his father who had unexpectedly died, and it is based upon a chord-sequence subtly modelled upon (but not quoting)

2257-455: The first violinist died unexpectedly just before his 65th birthday. Among others, the Quartet collaborated with Arthur Rubinstein , Mstislav Rostropovich , Georg Solti , Narciso Yepes , Piero Farulli and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau . The membership was unusually stable: For Deutsche Grammophon label, in 1977, they taped Schubert 's String Quintet with Mstislav Rostropovich as second cellist; Mozart 's 10 Great String Quartets , and

2318-1126: The great octets by Schubert and Mendelssohn , the septet by Beethoven , Ravel's Introduction and Allegro and the Serenade by Arnold Schoenberg . Neill Sanders (horn, a member for 29 years until 1979), and Adrian Beers (double bass) were members from the beginning. All these musicians stayed with the group for decades. Other early members included Gervase de Peyer (first clarinet) Emanuel Hurwitz (leader 1956–1972), Ivor McMahon (second violin), William Waterhouse (bassoon), Osian Ellis (harp), James Blades (percussion), Lamar Crowson and Ernst Ueckermann (piano), Peter Graeme and Sarah Barrington (oboe), James Buck (horn), Edgar Williams (bassoon) and Keith Puddy (clarinet), expanded by Colin Chambers (flute and piccolo), Alan Hacker (bass clarinet), Eric Roseberry (piano), Leonard Friedman (violin), Kay Hurwitz (viola), William Bennett (flute), Stephen Pruslin (piano), Leonard Friedman (violin), Hilary Wilson (harp) and Timothy Brown (horn). In

2379-761: The lines… in 2013 for the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin. After an almost ten-year hiatus from the operatic medium, Goehr returned to the form with Promised End (2008–09), first performed by English Touring Opera in 2010 and based on Shakespeare's King Lear . In the same year came When Adam Fell , a BBC commission for orchestra based on the chromatic bass from the Bach chorale setting " Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt " BWV 705, first introduced to Goehr by Messiaen. To These Dark Steps/The Fathers are Watching (2011–12), written for tenor, children's choir and ensemble, sets texts by Israeli poet Gabriel Levin concerning

2440-632: The meeting with Messiaen's music combined with the interest in medieval modes shared with Davies and Birtwistle largely influenced Goehr's first musical imaginings. His first acknowledged compositions date from these years: Songs for Babel (1951) and the Piano Sonata, Op. 2, which was dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev . The piano sonata in one movement was played at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1954 by Hedi Stock-Hug. In 1955, Goehr left Manchester to go to Paris and study with Messiaen at

2501-413: The mid-fifties, serialism had become a cult of stylistic purity, modelling itself on the twelve-tone works of Anton Webern . Reference to any other music was forbidden and despised, and spontaneous choice replaced with the combinatorial laws of serialism: Choice, taste and style were dirty words; personal style, one could argue, is necessarily a product of repetition, and the removal of repetition is, or

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2562-525: The new Wardour Castle Summer School , founded by Harrison Birtwistle , Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr . On 16 August 1964 they played among others Monody for Corpus Christi by Birtwistle, Five Little Pieces (first performance) by Davies, and Suite Op.11 by Goehr. A chamber concert on 17 August featured the Horn Trio by Brahms, on 18 August the Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Messiaen. In 1965,

2623-654: The opera Kantan and Damask Drum in 1999, premiered at the Oper Dortmund . It combined two plays from the Japanese Noh theatre tradition, separated by a short kyogen humorous interlude, with Japanese texts dated back to the 15th century adapted by the composer. The music is inspired by the relationship between music and drama in Noh theatre. In the following years, Goehr focused on chamber music . He composed works of "unprecedented rhythmic and harmonic immediacy", such as

2684-582: The opera Arianna (1995) is the setting of the libretto of a lost opera by Monteverdi, and posthumously published prose fragments by Franz Kafka inspired or appear in Das Gesetz der Quadrille (1979). On a strictly technical musical level, Goehr's tried unifying the contrapuntal rigour and motivic workings of the First Viennese School and Second Viennese School with a strong sense of harmonic pacing and sonority. He went to Paris not only to attend

2745-523: The opinion of William Waterhouse (writing in 1995), "it was the remarkable rapport between this pair of lower strings" (i.e. Terence Weil and Cecil Aronowitz) "which remained constant throughout a succession of distinguished leaders, that gave a special distinction to this outstanding ensemble.", Obituary Gervase de Peyer"the Guardian" A remarkable premiere for the group was Jacques-Louis Monod 's 1962 presentation of Roberto Gerhard 's Concerto for Eight . This

2806-476: The past into a musical process that the audience can hear and identify: The impression I aim to create is one of transparency: the listener should perceive, both in the successive and simultaneous dimensions of the score, the old beneath the new and the new arising from the old. We are to see a mythological and ancient action, interpreted by a 17th-century poet in a modern theatre. In 1987 the BBC invited Goehr to present

2867-504: The performance of Goehr's music, refused to program Little Symphony . Goehr composed works of many genres including the Piano Trio (1966). He wrote Romanza , a cello concerto, in 1968 for Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim . The orchestral Metamorphosis/Dance was premiered in 1974 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink . He composed the String Quartet No. 3 in 1975–76. Goehr founded

2928-502: The position of the avant-garde composer and his music: If one wishes, one can just say that music has to be autonomous and self sufficient; but how to sustain such a view when people who sing for pleasure are deprived of true satisfaction in the performance of new work? [...] We can talk about music in terms of the ideas that inform it; we can talk about structure and techniques; we can talk about aesthetics or ethics or politics. But we have to remember that while all this, realistic or not,

2989-488: The sinister humour of Bertolt Brecht ( Arden Must Die , 1966) or to the Japanese Noh theatre ( Kantan and Damask Drum , 1999). Just as The Deluge takes its cue from an unfinished project (Eisenstein never finished the planned film), many of Goehr's works include a synthesis of fragments or unfinished projects left by other artists. The cantata The Death of Moses resonates with Schoenberg's unfinished Moses und Aron ;

3050-480: The time", as his obituary in The Telegraph noted. Goehr worked for the BBC as musical assistant from 1960 to 1967. He received two more cantata commissions from the BBC; Sutter's Gold for choir, baritone and orchestra was no success. Singers found it impossibly difficult to perform, and critics dismissed it when it was first performed at the 1961 Leeds Festival . Goehr listened to criticism and described

3111-668: The works for large ensemble – six to thirteen players – for which the Melos Ensemble was founded, some composed for the ensemble: Following the death of Ivor McMahon in 1972, and the departure of three other members, the group briefly disbanded in 1973, but was reformed in 1974 with eight of the original players. In the later period the following musicians were also among those playing for the ensemble: Hugh Maguire (violin), Thea King (clarinet, 1974–1993), Nicholas Ward (violin, from 1977), Sylvie Gazeau (principal violin for many years), Gwenneth Pryor (piano), Iona Brown (violin), Patrick Ireland (viola) and Keith Harvey (cello). In 1975

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3172-580: The world premiere of Tippett's A Child of Our Time . The boy attended Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, where he was known as "an anti-establishment political activist, flirting with the Communist Party ". He grew up in a household populated by composers, including Mátyás Seiber and Michael Tippett . He received lessons from a composer colleague of his father, Allan Gray . Although these premises pointed to Goehr's future in music, his efforts as

3233-492: Was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge , Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès , Julian Anderson , George Benjamin and Robin Holloway . Born in Berlin, Goehr's childhood was spent in London surrounded by musicians, including his father, the conductor Walter Goehr . Goehr emerged as

3294-656: Was a monothematic work of four movements played without a break, in acknowledgement of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony op. 9. Two Sarabandes was composed for the Bamberg Symphony and premiered by them conducted by Lahav Shani . A string quartet Ondering was premiered by the Villiers Quartet at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2023. Goehr died at his home in Cambridgeshire on 25 August 2024, at

3355-454: Was appointed Professor of Music at Cambridge University where he taught until his retirement in 1999. His students included some of England's most notable composers to come, such as Thomas Adès , Julian Anderson , George Benjamin and Robin Holloway . In Cambridge he became fellow of Trinity Hall . In 1976, Goehr composed Psalm IV in a "bright modal sonority", in a departure from serialism, towards more transparent sounds. He found

3416-491: Was believed to be, a cornerstone of classical serialism as defined by Webern's late works [...] All this may well be seen as a kind of negative style precept: a conscious elimination of sensuous, dramatic or expressive elements, indeed of everything that in the popular view constitutes music. Upon his return to Britain, Goehr experienced an international breakthrough as a composer with the performance of his cantata The Deluge in 1957, conducted by his father. The ambitious work

3477-469: Was born in Berlin, on 10 August 1932. He came from a musical Jewish family; his mother Laelia (née Rivlin), from Kyiv, was a classically trained pianist who had appeared with Vladimir Horowitz at age 12, and his father Walter Goehr was a Schoenberg pupil and pioneering conductor of Schoenberg, Messiaen and Monteverdi . The family moved to Britain when the boy was only a few months old. His father became an influential conductor in London, leading

3538-580: Was expanded for single works by Christopher Hyde-Smith (flute), Anthony Jennings and Stephen Trier (bass clarinet), Barry Tuckwell (horn), David Mason and Philip Jones (trumpet), Arthur Wilson and Alfred Flaszinski (trombone), Robert Masters (violin), Manoug Parikian and Eli Goren (violin), Patrick Ireland (viola), Derek Simpson (cello), Hilary Wilson (harp), Marcal Gazelle (piano), James Blades , Tristan Fry , Jack Lees and Stephen Whittaker (percussion), and singers Mary Thomas (soprano) and Rosemary Phillips (contralto). The collection of 11 CDs contains

3599-547: Was followed by the 1962 premiere, and subsequent 1963 recording , of Benjamin Britten 's War Requiem , for which the instrumental sections accompanying the English texts had been written specifically for the Melos, and were directed by the composer in the performance. The recording received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. In 1964 and 1965 the Melos Ensemble played several concerts at

3660-427: Was inspired by the writings of Sergei Eisenstein — one of Goehr's many extra-musical sources of inspiration. The soundworld could be seen to have derived from the twelve-tone cantatas of Webern , but it implicitly strives for the imposing harmonic tautness and full sonority of Prokofiev's Eisenstein cantatas. It was regarded "to have more harmonic coherence and considerably more dramatic impact than most serial music of

3721-460: Was the generally parochial and conservative world of British music in the early 1950s", as Andrew Davies phrased it in 2024. The group performed not only works by its members but also introduced compositions of the European avant-garde . A seminal event in Goehr's development was hearing the UK premiere of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony in 1953, conducted by his father. The interest in non-Western music (for instance Indian raga ) sparked by

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