A Garland for Dr. K. explained

A Garland for Dr. K. is a set of eleven short compositions created in 1969 for the celebration of the eightieth birthday of Dr Alfred Kalmus, the director of the London branch of Universal Edition. It is also the title of an album containing these eleven pieces of music, recorded in 1976.

History

The Garland was initiated in January 1969 by the London office of Universal Edition, who invited eleven composers with close ties to their director, Dr. Alfred Kalmus, to write short pieces of music to celebrate his 80th birthday. All of the pieces were to be scored for performance by members of the Pierrot Players. The works were premiered as a group by the Pierrot Players on 22 April 1969, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, London, in a programme that also included the world premieres of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, and Linoi II by Harrison Birtwistle. Seven years later, a recording of the entire Garland was made by a Spanish ensemble directed by Cristóbal Halffter for an LP produced by Universal Edition.

Constituent parts

The eleven composers and their contributions are:

The pieces by Wood and Birtwistle both quoted the well-known American "Happy Birthday to You" tune (the former was "fast, spirited, interestingly mysterious" and the latter a "soft antiphonal piece involving nice high trills"), while Berio's contribution was a scoring of Henry Purcell's "There's Not a Swain" with added hesitations and paraphrases. Boulez offered a clarinet solo reminiscent of the same composer's Domaines, a piece "full of lively squeals", which was apparently part of the quintet for flute, clarinet, viola, cello, and piano, played a few weeks later at a private function on Alfred Kalmus actual birthday. This was later revised and retitled Improvisé—pour le Dr. K, and published in a final revision for the composer's own 80th birthday in 2005.

Bennett's Impromptu was a slow, quietly undulating solo flute piece, while David Bedford delighted the audience with quick-change instrumentation which, amongst other things, required Alan Hacker to play two clarinets simultaneously, and Duncan Druce two violins. Bedford later (1999) rescored this work for saxophone quartet. Stockhausen offered a sextet that slowly unfolded from its opening chord, with rhythms expanding from initial unison to increasing independence and back again, while the pitches continually expand to the end. Pousseur's Echos II de votre Faust was mainly a whimsical duet for violin and cello in parallel fourths, with some added material in the piano toward the end. This proved to be part of the larger work Echos de Votre Faust, for mezzo-soprano, flute, piano, and cello, begun two years earlier. Halffter's post-Webern Oda was judged as only partially successful, Haubenstock-Ramati's contribution as "pleasantly nondescript", and Rands's piece was described merely as "very terse".

Discography

Complete
Individual pieces

References

Sources

Further reading

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