Composers
The following composers have works currently in print by Wolfhead Music
Composers
The following composers have works currently in print by Wolfhead Music
J.S. Bach. Perhaps the best known and certainly one of the most prolific German composers of the baroque era, Bach (1685-1750) is a name that needs no introduction. His sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been hailed as among the greatest musical works ever written.
Betty Beath. Contemporary Australian composer, pianist, and educator at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and St. Margaret’s Girls’ School, Brisbane. Her works include orchestral, chamber, art song, and musical drama and have been performed widely throughout Australia, America, Europe, Mexico, Japan, and Indonesia. Her compositions have been recorded on the Vienna Modern Masters, Australian Broadcasting Commission, Grevillea, and Jade labels. Beath’s music has been described as possessing both “innocence” and “profundity ... with an almost Brittenesque feel....” [Home Page]
Heinrich Ignaz Biber. German-Bohemian violinist and composer (1644-1704). Best known for his Mystery Sonatas for violin and basso continuo, Biber was a prolific composer who broke new ground in many of his works. He made extensive use of scordatura (retuning of instruments) in a number of his compositions, allowing for a wide range of chordal effects and tonal qualities not typical for instruments with standard tunings. Much of his music is highly programmatic and surprisingly advanced for his time.
Michel Bosc. French composer Michel Bosc was born in 1963 and as a composer is largely self-taught. A prolific composer, his works cover such diverse registers as chamber music, symphonies, choral music, and music for the theater. A member of the Société Marc-Antoine Charpentier, he also is a distinguished music critic, analyst, and author. His works have been performed worldwide by such performers and ensembles as Gilles Lefèvre, Aline Fox, Christian Foulonneau, the brass quintet of the Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, the National Orchestra of Kazakhstan, the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Ulyanovsk Philarmonia, the European Orchestra, the Orchestre Instrumental d’Ile-de-France, the Orchestre Symphonique Lyonnais, and the Ensemble Gabriele Leone. Conductor Maximilian Fröschl has described Bosc’s music as possessing “melodic sweetness, polyphonic rigour, and the power of rhythm.” [Home Page]
Walter Bricht. Born in Austria in 1904, Bricht studied piano under his mother, Agnes Pyllema Bricht, and later at the Akademische Gymnasium and Akademie für Musik in Vienna. At the latter he studied composition under Franz Schmidt. He came to America in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime and later became an American citizen. After serving as chairman of the music department of Mason College, he was invited in 1963 to join the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music where he remained until his death in 1970. [Home Page]
Frédéric Burgmüller. Best remembered today for his melodic pedagogical works for piano, Burgmüller (1806-1874) was considered also an important composer of ballets during his lifetime. The Three Nocturnes represent his quentissential command of
pre-Romantic harmonic writing.
Domenico Caudioso. Italian composer of the eighteenth century about whom little is known. The G major concerto represents one of his few surviving works and evokes the charming style of mandolin-writing of his period.
John Craton. Contemporary American composer and native of Anniston, Alabama, Craton studied music theory and composition under John Maltese, Gerald Moore, and Henry Fusner. His compositions typically reflect the English pastoral school “with an American twist,” and his works have been compared to those of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Craton’s music frequently evokes a curious blend of medieval harmonies with pastoral lyricism and has been performed by such artists and ensembles as Sebastiaan de Grebber, Lester Turner, Gertrud Weyhofen, John Tabler, Ferdinand Binnendijk, Eva van den Dool, Het CONSORT, Het Orkest van het Oosten, and the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. [Home Page]
Carlos Curti. Little information is available on this Italian mandolinist and composer who flourished in the United States at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. He is known to have formed an early mandolin orchestra in America shortly after the appearance of the Estudiantina Figueroa in New York. His method (published in 1896) was a very comprehensive volume that has been out of print for many decades. We are pleased to offer it in facsimile edition.
Jim Dalton. Contemporary American performer and composer, Dalton was the 1997 winner of the Toronto Camerata Competition. His works have been performed by soloists and ensembles throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, including such venues as Musique Nouvelles in France and the Kansas Symposium of New Music in the U.S. In addition to composing, Dalton is an active performer on guitar, mandolin, and other plucked instruments and currently serves on the music theory faculty of the Boston Conservatory. [Home Page]
Walter Damrosch. Born in Breslau in 1862, Damrosch came to America at age nine when his father was appointed conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. Best remembered as a conductor, Walter Damrosch also composed five notable operas as well as a number of works for smaller ensembles and several song cycles. A prominent figure among the Cornish Colony composers, Damrosch inspired many other artists during his lifetime and left a lone sonata for piano and violin written in a style very reminiscent of Brahms.
Leonard Dumitriu. A graduate of the Iasi Music Conservatory of Romania, Dumitriu is among Romania’s most respected composers of the day. Since 1986 he has been principal conductor of the Romanian Opera House of Iasi after previously conducting the Craiova Lyric Theater Orchestra. In addition to his reputation as a conductor, Dumitriu has composed a large body of works including song cycles, string quartets, concertos, sonatas, four operas, and a number of chamber works. His music has been recorded and broadcast by the National Romanian Radio Corporation, and he was awarded the Cultural Merit Medal First Class by the President of Romania in 2004. [Home Page]
Clint Fox. A native of Wisconsin, Fox is a graduate of the Lawrence Conservatory where he studied piano under Robert Below and Kathleen Murray. After completing graduate studies in performance and pedagogy at Bowling Green of Ohio, he taught briefly at the Lawrence Arts Academy and now teaches piano at the Perrysburg School of Music in Perrysburg, Ohio. Fox recently released his first solo album of original compositions, Shadows & Reflections.
Geoffrey Gordon. Among the brightest of the rising stars in contemporary American composition, Gordon’s list of works includes orchestral and chamber music, as well as scores for theater, film, and dance. During the 2003-2004 concert season, his works received more than 50 performances on three continents. Nominated for numerous awards including the prestigious Elise Stoeger Prize, he is the 2003 recipient of the Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship in Music Composition. His music has been described as “brilliant” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “stunning” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), “wonderfully idiomatic” (Salt Lake Tribune), and “haunting” (Strings Magazine), all of which are evident in his Interiors of a Courtyard. [Home Page]
Louis-Gabriel Guillemain. French violinist and composer (1705-1780), his works represent the height of violin writing of his period. Full of pre-revolutionary French galant, his music also reveals an improvisational style well ahead of its time.
Johann Adolph Hasse. An eighteenth-century German tenor and composer of operas, most of his works were destroyed in the seige of Dresden. The mandolin concerto survives as a small representation of his work which encompassed more than 100 operas, oratorios, and sinfonias.
Sean Hickey. A native of Detroit, Michigan (b. 1970), Hickey studied guitar at Oakland University and completed his musical training in theory and composition at Wayne State University under James Hathway and James Lentini. He subsequently pursued further studies with Justin Dello Joio, Leslie Bassett, and Gloria Coates. His works include a wide array of chamber music, a film score, and incidental music for a children’s play. He has been performed widely throughout the United States and Spain, and recently an album of Hickey’s music (Left at the Fork in the Road) was released by Naxos. [Home Page]
Tyler Kaiser. A native of Duluth, Minnesota, Kaiser has earned national recognition with several awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and numerous grants, fellowships and commissions. Notable among these are a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Continental Harmony project, two McKnight/ARAC fellowships and commissions from the American Recorder Society, Arts Midwest/Meet the Composer, Matinee Musicale, the College of St. Scholastica, and the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra. He is a composer in residence with the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra. Kaiser studied guitar with Daniel K. Sturm, Peter Segal, Toyohiko Satoh, and Hopkinson Smith; and composition with Daniel K. Sturm and Arthur C. Campbell. He holds a B.A. in guitar performance & composition from the College of St. Scholastica. [Home Page]
Victor Kioulaphides. Born in Athens, Greece, Kioulaphides moved to New York in 1979, where he studied double bass and composition at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, studying composition under Giampaolo Bracali and Ludmila Ulehla. His works include eight operas and numerous vocal, orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Described as “accessible and lush” and often seasoned with baroque and Renaissance elements, his music connects with the listener and performer on an almost personal level. Though at times intellectually complex, the music never ceases to be emotionally charged to bridge the gap between heart and mind, spirit and matter. [Home Page]
Theodore von La Hache. La Hache immigrated to New Orleans, Louisiana, at age 20 from Dresden, where he was born in 1822, and quickly established himself as a prominent figure in the city’s musical circles. A gifted pianist, he also was organist and principal choirmaster of the Church of St. Theresa and founder of the New Orleans Philharmonic Society and the Harmonic Association of New Orleans. A contemporary of New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk, unlike Gottschalk he remained loyal to his adopted hometown and during the War Between the States organized numerous benefit concerts for victims of the War while composing many works celebrating Southern culture and the Confederacy. Though best remembered for his setting of the poem “The Conquered Banner” by Fr. Abram Ryan, his more than 600 numbered works include nearly every genre from parlor music to large sacred works for choir and orchestra. Forced to abandon performance after suffering lead poisoning in 1867, he was active in conducting and composing until his death two years later. [Home Page]
Charles Martin Loeffler.
Born in Europe in 1861, Loeffler emigrated to the United States in 1881 and considered himself an American composer. During his youth, Loeffler’s family lived in Germany, Alsace, Russia, Switzerland, and Hungary. Charles studied violin in Berlin with Joachim and composition in Paris with Ernest Guiraud. His works are imbued with French Impressionism and elements of contemporary Russian music. Though a prolific composer, many of his works remain unpublished. In addition to Music for Four Stringed Instruments, he wrote several other string quartets, three operas, a number of choral works, and compositions for jazz ensembles. Loeffler died in 1935.
Robert Lombardo. Professor Emeritus of music theory and composition from Roosevelt University, Lombardo received his musical training at the Hartt School of Music and the University of Iowa. Now a Chicago resident, he is a prolific composer of more than 200 works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra, operas, and song cycles. His works have been performed by numerous ensembles including the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Memphis Orchestras and have garnered many awards such as the Serge Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, and others. An album of his mandolin works has been recorded by Albany Records.
April Mok. Contemporary American composer who holds a B.M. in piano performance and an M.M. in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Having studied under Andrew Imbrie, Conrad Susa, Harvey Sollberger, Marta Ptaszynska, Bernard Rands, and Shulamit Ran, she has received commissions from the Camellia Symphony Orchestra of Sacramento and has been featured in the Santa Clara New Music Festival and the Composition Winter Festival in Chicago. Her works have been performed by such ensembles as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, and the Pacifica Quartet. Currently Ms. Mok is pursuing a doctorate in composition at the University of Chicago.
Jean-Joseph Mondonville. French violinist and composer (1711-1772). Best remembered for his choral works, Mondonville left an impressive corpus of compositions for the violin, an instrument he commanded with excellence and precision. His violin works abound with double-stops and harmonics, unique for French music of his day. Mondonville was known as an energetic, happy man, content with his station in life, and one who refused to consider any man his rival. His obituary proclaimed him a man of the highest virtues and character, and these qualities are equally reflected in his music. Such was his stature that in 1755 he rose to director of the Concert Spirituel in Paris, which at the time was the most important concert system in the world.
Antonio Salieri. A thoroughly accomplished Italian opera composer
(1750-1825), Salieri’s works were nevertheless quickly overshadowed by the brilliance of his contemporary, Mozart. Devoting himself almost entirely to the operatic genre, he found little time to compose works for solo instruments. The Variazioni, his last work, nevertheless betray a rare talent that was in full command of orchestral compostion. The version presented here has been arranged for solo violin and piano.
Pablo de Sarasate. Spanish violinist and composer (1844-1908). Remembered both for his remarkably stylistic works for violin and also as one of the first great artists to have left audio recordings of some of his performances, Sarasate’s music evokes an unquestionable Spanish flavor. The Playera, orginially for violin and piano, is taken from a collection of Spanish dances by the composer.
Carlo Tessarini. Born in Rimini, Italy, in 1690, Tessarini was a highly accomplished but restless soul who made frequent tours throughout Europe. Although there is no conclusive evidence that he studied with Arcangelo Corelli, he has long been rumored to have been one of Corelli’s students. Tessarini’s first set of violin sonatas was published in 1729, and within a few years his music had achieved international acclaim. His reputation often was compared to that of his contemporaries Vivaldi, Locatelli, Albinoni, Handel, and Alberti, even though he was considerably younger in age than they. His restless lifestyle saw him living in Italy, France, England, and Germany before apparently settling his last years in the Netherlands. He gave his last public performance there in December 1766 and was admired for his youthful energy even well into his 70s. The exact date and place of his death is not known, though he is thought to have died somewhere in the Netherlands in 1767.
Trygve Torjussen. Norwegian pianist, composer, and pedagogue (1885-1977), Torjussen’s career flourished in the early part of the 20th century. Best known for his tone poem “To the Rising Sun,” his works were consistently idyllic and clearly influenced by Edvard Grieg. Little biographical information is available, though he is known to have fled Norway for Scotland in 1941 to escape the Nazis.
Antonio Vivaldi. Italian violinist and composer (1678-1741). Though ordained a priest in 1703, Vivaldi spent most of his life teaching violin at the Ospedale della Pietà where he also composed an astounding number of works. The concerto F.I. no. 60 is unique among his compositions in that it is written for violin scordatura (the G string must be tuned up a minor third to B-flat). Among the most beautiful of all his concertos, it is published here for violin with piano accompaniment for the first time.
