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Gordon Crosse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gordon Crosse

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gordon Crosse (born December 1, 1937) is an English composer and music technologist.

Crosse was born in Bury, Lancashire and in 1961 graduated from Oxford University with a first class honours degree in Music. He then undertook two years of postgraduate research on early fifteenth-century music before beginning an academic career at the University of Birmingham. Subsequent employment included posts at the Universities of Essex, Cambridge and California. He won the Worshipful Company of Musicians' Cobbett Medal for services to music in 1976, the same year he retired to his Suffolk home to compose full-time.

Crosse first came to prominence at the 1964 Aldeburgh Festival with Meet My Folks! (Theme and Relations, op.10), a music theatre work for children and adults based on poems by Ted Hughes. Hughes would also provide the lyrics for five of Crosse's subsequent works: the "cantata" The Demon of Adachigahara (op.21, 1968); The New World for voice and piano (op.25); the opera The Story of Vasco (op.29, 1974); Wintersong for six singers and optional percussion (op.51); and Harvest Songs for two choirs and orchestra (op.56). The Demon of Adachigahara, another music theatre work for children and adults, is a retelling of a traditional Japanese folk-tale akin to a Brothers Grimm story; it warns of the dangers of curiosity. The Story of Vasco, premièred in 1974 by Sadler's Wells Opera at the Coliseum Theatre in London, is a setting of Hughes' translation and adaptation of Georges Schehadé's play Historie de Vasco.

Crosse's first opera, Purgatory (op.18), is a one-act setting of the play by William Butler Yeats. It was written in 1966 and premièred at the Cheltenham Music Festival later that year. In 1969, Crosse returned to the Aldeburgh Festival to hear the English Opera Group première his second opera The Grace of Todd (op.20) and revive Purgatory. The following year, the piece Some Marches on a Ground [1] for full orchestra elaborated material that would later appear in The Story of Vasco.

Crosse's interest in the relationship between music, literature and drama is evident in his concert as well as his theatrical work. Two examples are Memories of Morning: Night [1] for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, based on Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea; and World Within for actress, soprano and small ensemble, based on a text by Emily Brontë. Crosse also developed an interest in ballet after he adapted his orchestral piece Play Ground (1977) for choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. The ballet version of Play Ground was premièred at the 1979 Edinburgh Festival by the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, after which MacMillan then choreographed Crosse's chamber piece Wildboy (clarinet and ensemble, 1978) to produce a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre. In 1984, following a request by choreographer David Bintley, Crosse extended Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo for use as ballet music; the resulting ballet was premièred later that year by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.

Works for soloist and orchestra form the other major strand in Crosse's composition. These include two violin concertos, a cello concerto[1] (written in 1979 "in memoriam Luigi Dallapiccola", based on a motif from Dallapiccola's piece Piccola Musica Notturna) and three works featuring blown instruments (Ariadne for oboe, Thel for flute and Array for trumpet).

In recent years, Crosse has moved away from composition, developing instead an interest in the uses of music technology.

[edit] Selected works

[edit] Orchestral

1986 Array 30' trumpet and string orchestra
Harvest Songs op.46 28' double choir and orchestra
1979 Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra [1] op.44 25' "In Memoriam Luigi Dallapiccola"
1978 Play Ground op.41 27'
1975 Symphony No.2 op.37 24'
1974 Young Apollo 30'
Memories of Morning: Night [1] op.30 34' mezzo-soprano and orchestra
1970 Some Marches on a Ground [1] op.28 12'
Concerto No.2 for Violin and Orchestra op.26 34'
Changes: A Nocturnal Cycle op.17 50' soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, orchestra

[edit] Chamber

1986 Array 30' trumpet and strings
Wintersong op.51 six singers, optional percussion
1983 Wavesongs [1] 30' cello and piano
1982 Watermusic [2] 11' recorders (one player) and piano
1980 A Year and a Day [1] op.48a 8' solo clarinet
1979 Verses in Memoriam David Munrow [3]   9' countertenor, recorder, cello and harpsichord
1978 Wildboy op.42 27' clarinet and ensemble
Thel op.38 14' flute, two horns and string ensemble
1973 Dreamsongs [4] op.35 14' clarinet, oboe, bassoon, piano
1972 Ariadne op.31 23' oboe and ensemble
The New World op.25 20' voice and piano

[edit] Opera and music theatre

1977 World Within op.40 43' actress, mezzo-soprano, ensemble
1974 The Story of Vasco op.29 135' three-act opera
1968 The Demon of Adachigahara op.21 30' children and adults
The Grace of Todd op.20 75' "comedy in three scenes"
1966 Purgatory op.18 40' one-act opera
1964 Meet My Folks! (Theme and Relations) op.10 25' children and adults

[edit] Recordings

Meet My Folks! op.10 EMI LP CLP-1893
Changes: A Nocturnal Cycle op.17 Argo LP ZRG-656 Vyvyan, Shirley-Quirk, LSO & Chorus cond. del Mar
Purgatory op.18 Argo LP ZRG-810
The New World op.25 U-K DKP (CD) 9093 Muriel Dickinson, voice; Peter Dickinson, piano
A Year and a Day op.48a Metier MSV CD92013 FP Kate Romano, clarinet; Alan Hicks, piano
Ariadne op.31 Argo LP ZRG-842 featuring Sarah Francis, oboe
Watermusic Olympia OCD714 John Turner, recorders; Peter Lawson, piano
Wavesongs NMC 019 Alexander Baillie, cello; Andrew Ball, piano
Memories of Morning: Night
Cello Concerto
Some Marches on a Ground
op.30
op.44
op.28
NMC D058 Bickley, mezzo-soprano; Baillie, cello;
BBCSO cond. Brabbins

[edit] Bibliography

  • ed. Lewis Foreman, British Music Now: A Guide to the Work of Younger Composers (Paul Elek Ltd.: London, September 1975)
  • ed. Walsh, Holden and Kenyon, Viking Opera Guide: Gordon Crosse (Viking: London, 1993; ISBN 0-670-81292-7)
  • Crosse has written for and been written about in the journal Tempo.

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Online excerpt available as of September 2006.
  2. ^ Another version replaces the piano with a string orchestra.
  3. ^ Revised in 1996 for Spitalfields Festival.
  4. ^ Revised and enlarged for chamber orchestra as op.43.


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