Uploaded March 2011 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
In Valen's Goethe songs, Op. 6, the musical development displays a disintegration of regular phrase structure and metre, moving towards a freely declamatory use of melody. This is drawn together through a new polyphonic organization which serves as the basis of his later works. The progression is from moderate expansion of the traditional use of compositional techniques in Sakontala (including the expansion of motifs) to a fusion of larger motif units and the development of a more independent musical structure in Weiss wie Lilien. In Seleika, Valen liberates himself completely from the metre of the poem. The music is characterized by a free, unrestrained declamatory style that remains, nonetheless, clearly rooted in the motifs. The entire composition is marked by a free flowing style with distinctive declamatory statements, separated by pregnant pauses.
The more sound-oriented accompaniment in Sakontala may have been inspired by Goethe's "musical" use of poetic alliteration and onomatopœia. This leads to an imitative motif technique that becomes Valen's trademark, in which the piano voice is integrated with the singing voice. The singing voice is "mirrored" and integrated into the piano voice through the free interchange of characteristic motifs, a fundamental element of Valen's musical aesthetic. ("Der Speigel sagt mir: ich bin schön.") Here we can identify a direct connection to the Second Viennese School. Elmar Budde refers thus to what the calls the aesthetic plan in Webern's relationship with texts: The composer reflects himself in the text by absorbing the motivating force in the compositional process, which in turn comprises a musical reflection on the text. The text is incorporated into the music, and is maintained there as compositionally reflected content.
Olav Fartein Valen (25 August 1887 -- 14 December 1952) was a Norwegian composer and musical theorist, notable for his work within atonal polyphonic music.Valen was born in Stavanger, Norway in 1887 into a deeply Christian religious family and maintained his religious beliefs all his life. His parents were missionaries, and he spent five years of his childhood in Madagascar. In addition to his aptitude for music, he was also a polyglot, mastering at least nine languages. He earned his examen artium with the highest grades in all subjects except mathematics. He loved cats, nature and literature, cultivated roses (even developed an award winning hybrid), and after losing them in a devastating freeze took up growing cacti.In 1906, Valen moved to Oslo to study Norwegian literature and language but also took classes with Catharinus Elling (1858 - 1942) at the Oslo conservatory of music, graduating with a degree in organ playing. In 1909 he moved to Berlin to study composition at the Music Academy with Max Bruch who subsequently retired. While in Berlin, he worked on exercises in both tonal and atonal counterpoint and began to develop a polyphony similar to Bach's, but based on motivic working and dissonance rather than harmonic progression.
In 1916, he returned to Norway and took up residence at his family estate with his mother and sister in Sunnhordland where he started the most productive phase of his career, churning out more than 25,000 piano etudes (though they are not among his official works), while continuing to refine his own dissonant counterpoint. The counterpoint has similarities to that of J.S. Bach and Arnold Schoenberg, though evidence reveals that they were developed independently
In Valen's Goethe songs, Op. 6, the musical development displays a disintegration of regular phrase structure and metre, moving towards a freely declamatory use of melody. This is drawn together through a new polyphonic organization which serves as the basis of his later works. The progression is from moderate expansion of the traditional use of compositional techniques in Sakontala (including the expansion of motifs) to a fusion of larger motif units and the development of a more independent musical structure in Weiss wie Lilien. In Seleika, Valen liberates himself completely from the metre of the poem. The music is characterized by a free, unrestrained declamatory style that remains, nonetheless, clearly rooted in the motifs. The entire composition is marked by a free flowing style with distinctive declamatory statements, separated by pregnant pauses.
The more sound-oriented accompaniment in Sakontala may have been inspired by Goethe's "musical" use of poetic alliteration and onomatopœia. This leads to an imitative motif technique that becomes Valen's trademark, in which the piano voice is integrated with the singing voice. The singing voice is "mirrored" and integrated into the piano voice through the free interchange of characteristic motifs, a fundamental element of Valen's musical aesthetic. ("Der Speigel sagt mir: ich bin schön.") Here we can identify a direct connection to the Second Viennese School. Elmar Budde refers thus to what the calls the aesthetic plan in Webern's relationship with texts: The composer reflects himself in the text by absorbing the motivating force in the compositional process, which in turn comprises a musical reflection on the text. The text is incorporated into the music, and is maintained there as compositionally reflected content.
Olav Fartein Valen (25 August 1887 -- 14 December 1952) was a Norwegian composer and musical theorist, notable for his work within atonal polyphonic music.Valen was born in Stavanger, Norway in 1887 into a deeply Christian religious family and maintained his religious beliefs all his life. His parents were missionaries, and he spent five years of his childhood in Madagascar. In addition to his aptitude for music, he was also a polyglot, mastering at least nine languages. He earned his examen artium with the highest grades in all subjects except mathematics. He loved cats, nature and literature, cultivated roses (even developed an award winning hybrid), and after losing them in a devastating freeze took up growing cacti.In 1906, Valen moved to Oslo to study Norwegian literature and language but also took classes with Catharinus Elling (1858 - 1942) at the Oslo conservatory of music, graduating with a degree in organ playing. In 1909 he moved to Berlin to study composition at the Music Academy with Max Bruch who subsequently retired. While in Berlin, he worked on exercises in both tonal and atonal counterpoint and began to develop a polyphony similar to Bach's, but based on motivic working and dissonance rather than harmonic progression.
In 1916, he returned to Norway and took up residence at his family estate with his mother and sister in Sunnhordland where he started the most productive phase of his career, churning out more than 25,000 piano etudes (though they are not among his official works), while continuing to refine his own dissonant counterpoint. The counterpoint has similarities to that of J.S. Bach and Arnold Schoenberg, though evidence reveals that they were developed independently
![Hans Werner Henze, Being Beauteous for coloratura soprano, harp and four cellos [1963]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6qG9ItqMVdk/mqdefault.jpg "Hans Werner Henze, Being Beauteous for coloratura soprano, harp and four cellos [1963]
Devant une neige un Etre de Beauté de haute taille. Des sifflements de mort et des cercles de musique sourde fontmonter, sélargir et trembler comme un spectre ce corps adoré, des blessures écarlates et noires éclatent dans les chairs superbes. Les couleurs propres de la vie se foncent, dansent, et se dégagent autour de la Vision, sur le chantier. Et les frissons sélèvent et grondent et la saveur forcenée de ces effets se chargeant avec les sifflements mortels et les rauques musiques que le monde, loin derrière nous, lance sur notre mère de beauté, - elle recule, elle se dresse. Oh! nos os sont revêtus dun nouveau corps amoureux.
O la face cendrée, lécusson de crin, les bras de cristal ! Le canon sur lequel je dois mabattre à travers la mêlée des arbres et de lair léger !
Arthur Rimbaud
Hans Werner Henze (born 1 July 1926, Gütersloh, Westphalia) is a German composer of prodigious output best known for his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life.[1] His music is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition.
Henze is also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. He lives in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and still travels extensively, in particular to Britain and Germany, as part of his work. An avowed Marxist and member of the Communist Party of Italy. In 1945, he became an accompanist in the Bielefeld City Theatre, and was able to continue his studies under Wolfgang Fortner in Heidelberg in 1946.
Henze had some successful performances at Darmstadt, including an immediate success in 1946 with a neo-baroque work for piano, flute and strings, that brought him to the attention of Schotts, the music publishers. He also took part in the famous Darmstadt New Music Summer School, a key vehicle for the propagation of avant-garde techniques. At the 1947 summer school, Henze turned his thoughts more thoroughly to serial technique, and it seemed for a while as if he might become a leader of young German composers in this idiom.")
