Overview

Frank Martin (1890-1974) , the greatest Swiss composer besides Arthur Honegger, spent two periods of his life intensely reflecting on death: the decade centered in World War II and the half-decade before his own passing at the ageof 84. The resulting nine compositions are internationally recognized as featuring among Martin's masterpieces. In terms of their spiritual approach, they each address the subject of death from a different angle. Far from morbidor dejected in his attitude, Martin uses his very expressive musical language to ponder the many ways in which humans seek to understand the finitude of their earthly lives. In mid-life, Martin ponders death as a longed-for reposeafter a long life of fatal passion and anxieties in the chamber oratorio Le Vin herbé (1938), as a fulfillment of a brief moment of glory in the orchestral song cycle Der Cornet (1942-43), as the judge of personal conscience in Sechs Monologe aus Jedermann (1943-44), as a power exhausted after a terrible war in the armistice oratorio In terra pax (1944), and as a human boundary spiritually overcome in the oratorio Golgotha (1945-48). By contrast, Compositions from the last years of the composer's life show death met with sinister wittiness in the Poèmes de la mort after François Villon (1970-71), accepted with serenity in his Requiem (1971-72), awaited in faith in Polyptyque, hisviolin concerto for Yehudi Menuhin (1973), and finally welcomed with a victorious spirit in the chamber cantata ""Et la vie lemporta"" (1974).

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9781576471944

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Siglind Bruhn is a musicologist, concert pianist, and interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on compositions of the 20th century. Prior to coming to the United States, she taught for ten years in Germany and at the University of Hong Kong. Since 1993 she has been a full-time researcher at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities (one of six “Life Research Associates”); in the fall of 2004, she was appointed chercheur permanent at the Institut d’Esthétique des Arts Contemporains at Université de Paris 1–La Sorbonne. She has been an elected member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2001.

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