Maurice Ohana
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:
Top
Maurice Ohana
(b Casablanca, 12 June 1914; d Paris, 13 Nov 1992). French composer of Andalusian origin. He studied with Daniel-Lesur at the Schola Cantorum, Paris (from 1937), and after the war with Casella at the Accademia di S Cecilia, Rome. In 1946 he returned to Paris, where he has taught and composed. His first major work, the oratorio Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1950), brought his name to a wide audience. His music is cosmopolitan and independent, related to French composers from Debussy to Boulez but also to the music of Spain and north Africa. He has written for diverse vocal and instrumental groupings, often including zither, guitar and percussion in his ensembles, and has exploited micro-intervals.
AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music :
Top
Maurice Ohana
- Genres: Chamber Music
Biography
A composer of striking originality, given to rejecting schools, cliques, and fashions, Ohana pursued a distinguished career that is as hard to characterize as his nationality. His father had Andalusian heritage, but as the family had settled in Gibraltar, had British citizenship. Maurice was born in Morocco and brought up in Bayonne, France. He studied in Paris and Barcelona, joined the British Army in World War II and fought in Italy, staying behind to study composition with Casella. In 1947 he returned to Paris and founded a group called "Zodiaque," devoted to the ideal of artistic freedom, mainly freedom to reject the twelve-tone system that was then rapidly taking over European musical thought. His manifesto attacked serialism, "Parisian cliques," and avant-garde techniques. This made him a lifelong foe of the Pierre Boulez, the avant-garde serialist who led the dominant Parisian clique from that time and for the next half-century.Ohana's music escapes the older Romantic tonal tradition by embracing the wildness and strange scales of Andalusian and Northern African music. His music calls for fluid, florid, almost bel canto singing and remarkably subtle new tone colorations (instrumental and vocal). He often seeks the stillness of Eastern-inspired meditation, but often uses hard-edged, Stravinskian rhythms. His music often has a sense of half-forgotten, archaic rituals. He used electronic music on occasion, and divided the octave into intervals smaller than the usual half-step. Among his most notable compositions were Syllabare pour Phèdre, Signes, Sibylle, Silenciare, Stream, Neumes, Promethée, and Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias. (He was fond of the letter "S" in his titles because it is spelled with a reverse "sigma," the Greek letter representing summation or infinity.) ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi
Discography
Maurice Ohana: Office des oracles; Messe; Avoaha; Lys de madrigaux Buy this CD |
Maurice Ohana: Office des oracles; Messe; Avoaha; Lys de madrigaux Buy this CD |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
Maurice Ohana
Maurice Ohana (June 12, 1913 – November 13, 1992 in Paris) was an Anglo-French composer of Sephardic Jewish origin.
Ohana was born in Casablanca, Morocco. He was a British citizen until 1976, as his father had been born in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. He originally studied architecture, but abandoned this in favour of a musical career, initially as a pianist. He studied under Alfredo Casella in Rome, returning to France in 1946. Around this time he founded the "Groupe Zodiaque", which fought against prevailing musical dogma. His mature musical style shows the influence of Mediterranean folk music, particularly the Andalusian cante jondo.
Ohana's output includes the choral works Office des Oracles and Avoaha (1992), three string quartets (1963, 1980, 1989), and two suites for ten-string guitar: Si le jour paraît... (1963)[1] and Cadran lunaire (1981-2)[2], as well as a Tiento for six-string guitar (1957).[3] He also wrote an opera entitled Syllabaire pour Phèdre.
He is also known for his extensive use of microtonality; for example, third- and quarter-tones in pieces like Le Tombeau de Debussy and Si le jour paraît.... He was influenced by the use of microintervals in the cante jondo. [4]
Ohana rarely composed for large symphony orchestra: Synaxis (1966), Livre des Prodiges (1979) and T'Harân-Ngô (1973-1974). He composed two cello concertos, one piano concerto and a guitar concerto (1950-58; dedicated to Narciso Yepes).[5][6]
|
Contents
|
References
- ^ Si le jour paraît...
- ^ Cadran lunaire
- ^ Tiento
- ^ Jedrzejewski, Franck. 2003. Dictionnaire des musiques microtonales ("Dictionnary of microtonal music"), Paris, L'Harmattan, ISBN 2-7475-5576-3; Bayer Francis. 1981. De Schönberg à Cage : Essai sur la notion d'espace dans la musique contemporaine, Paris, Klincksieck, ISBN 2-252-02329-5
- ^ Halbreich, Harry. 1997. An Andalusian from Paris to New Orleans, liner notes of CD-release 1C1039 on Timpani Records.
- ^ Liner notes to the Narciso Yepes recording
External links
Articles
- Défense et illustration de la musique contemporaine - Le Cadran Lunaire by Arnaud Dumond (French)
- A propos de Pierre Boulez et de Maurice Ohana by Arnaud Dumond, Les Cahiers de la Guitare, July 1982 (French)
- Maurice Ohana: l’originalità di un linguaggio (parte prima) – Cenni biografici e riferimenti culturali by Isabella Abbonizio, «Il Fronimo» n .131, luglio 2005, pp. 31–42 (Italian)
- Estelas, by Mauricio Ohana (The history of a guitar-work composed in collaboration with Abel Carlevaro) - by Alfredo Escande
- Maurice Ohana: l’originalità di un linguaggio (parte seconda) – Un profilo estetico e l’opera per chitarra by Isabella Abbonizio, «Il Fronimo» n. 132, ottobre 2005, pp. 24–36 (Italian)
- Maurice Ohana: l’originalità di un linguaggio (parte terza) – Il Tiento by Isabella Abbonizio, «Il Fronimo» n. 133, gennaio 2006, pp. 36–46 (Italian)
Listen
- Excerpts from sound archives of Ohana's works.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia
The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Read more
AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music
Copyright © 2012 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.
Read more
Mentioned in
Anonymous 20th century, for 2 guitars
(Classical Work)
Maurice Ohana
(Classical Artist)
Suites for 2 guitars
(Classical Work)
Marc Soustrot
(Classical Musician)
French Choral Music 3
(Classical Album)
» More