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Member of Alain family

(b Saint Germain-en-Laye, Aug 3, 1918; d Elancourt, Ile de France, Feb 28, 1994). French composer, pianist, and musicologist, brother of Jehan Alain and Marie-Claire Alain. He learnt to play the organ and piano as a child. Equally drawn to the study of literature, he did not enter the Paris Conservatoire until after graduating from the Sorbonne; at the Conservatoire (1948–51) he was a pupil of Aubin and Messiaen. In addition to his activities as a composer and concert pianist, he worked as music critic for Le Figaro (1957–70) and for Les nouvelles Littéraires (1965–8); he also taught sight-reading, analysis, and composition. He directed the Saint Germain-en-Laye Conservatory (1950–64) and the Ecole César Franck, Paris (from 1961), and acted as an inspector of music with special responsibility for conservatories (from 1970), particularly in the creation of the Baccalauréat with music option. In ...

(Ger.: ‘song circle’)

A circle or club of people dedicated to the cultivation of popular song. Examples are the ‘Mittwochskränzchen’ (‘Cour d’amour’) that met during the early 1800s in Goethe’s Weimar home, the Stägemann circle in Berlin, 1815–18, that included the young poet Wilhelm Müller, the Dresden Liederkreis (‘Dichtertee’), c 1804–24, in which Weber met the poet Kind, and the ‘Schubertianer’ or friends of Schubert in Vienna, who held regular meetings during the 1820s. Liederkreis activities were varied, recreational as well as creative. They included singing simple group songs, playing charades and other games with songs, and listening to song performances staged with costumes, ‘attitudes’ or elaborate ‘living pictures’. To supply the demand parody texts were often set to song melodies from, for example, Das Mildheimische Liederbuch (ed. R.Z. Becker, 1799, 4/1810); either the melodies were rearranged or the verse newly set. Collections that reflected the work of a Liederkreis were titled accordingly, like J.H.C. Bornhardt’s ...

Member of Rimsky-Korsakov family

(b St Petersburg, 13/Dec 26, 1901; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Sept 10, 1965). Russian composer and musicologist, nephew of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov. He studied under M.A. Steinberg, Sokolov, Lyapunov and Nikolayev at the Petrograd/Leningrad Conservatory until 1927. In the following year he took his kandidat degree at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre and Music, supervised by Finagin and Asaf′yev. He taught from 1927 at the Leningrad Conservatory, where he was Asaf′yev's assistant up to 1929; courses that he directed included acoustics, score reading and orchestration. During the period 1929–32 he also worked at the Lenfilm film studio as a sound engineer. In 1923 he founded a Petrograd society for quarter-tone music, and he made public appearances in concerts and lectures as the director of an ensemble for music of this type (1925–32). His compositions make use of a quarter-tone harmonium and the Emiriton, an electronic keyboard instrument constructed by A.A. Ivanov, A.V. Rimsky-Korsakov, V.L. Kreytser and V.P. Dzerzhkovich....

(Louis)

Member of Seeger family

(b Mexico City, Dec 14, 1886; d Bridgewater, CT, Feb 7, 1979). American musicologist, composer, conductor, critic and musical philosopher. His initial interest was in composition and conducting, and he joined numerous young American composers in Europe in the years immediately following his graduation from Harvard (1908). He spent a season (1910–11) as a conductor at the Cologne Opera before returning to the USA as a composer and chairman of the department of music at the University of California, Berkeley (1912–19), where he gave the first American courses in musicology in 1916. Several of his compositions were destroyed in the Berkeley fire (1923). Subsequently he was a lecturer and instructor at the Institute of Musical Art, New York (1921–33), the forerunner of the Juilliard School, and lecturer at the New School for Social Research (...

Member of Štědroň family

(b Brno, Feb 9, 1942). Czech composer and musicologist, nephew of Vladimír Štědroň and Bohumir Štědroň. He read musicology and Czech at Brno University (1959–64, taking the doctorate in 1967), where his teachers included Racek and his uncle Bohumir. From 1965 to 1970 he studied composition and music theory under Piňos, Ištvan, Kohoutek, and Kapr at the Brno Academy, after which he completed a postgraduate course in electronic music. He began his teaching career, in the 1970s, in the arts and pedagogical faculties at Brno University (he took the CSc in 1985 with a dissertation on 20th-century music and the works of Janáček), and at the Brno Academy; he was appointed lecturer in 1991 and university professor in 1994.

As a university professor, concentrating mainly on music theory, he educated a large number of young musicologists, both at masters and at doctoral level. His musicological work has focussed on early music history, in particular the Renaissance and Baroque, music of the 20th century, and a special study of the works of Janáček; he is co-editor of a critical edition of the complete works and the author of numerous monographs and studies on Janáček. Together with the composer and music theorist Leoš Faltus, he has reconstructed and prepared for performance several of Janáček’s works, among them the Violin Concerto and the symphonic poem ...