CDs
Béla Bartók: Peasant Jewels. Sylvia Parker, piano
Centaur Records (2014), www.centaurrecords.com
The
great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) loved the folk music
of his
native land. He collected thousands of peasant melodies, and then
presented
many of them in musical arrangements in order to make them, in his
words, “more
palatable to the taste of the public.” Here in this album are Bartók’s
myriad
arrangements for solo piano. They encompass happy, sad, silly, serious,
simple,
ornate, charming, boisterous styles. Bartók mounts all of these
precious jewels
in settings that are “palatable” –nay, delicious.
Sample:
Bartók
SonantinaFinale Parker.mp3
Sylvia Parker & Béla Bartók : CD
Review
Montpelier
Times Argus and Rutland Herald, May
14, 2015
“Béla Bartók: Peasant Jewels,” a two-disc set just released
by Centaur, can be enjoyed in two ways: one, as a University of Vermont
senior
lecturer’s compilation of Bartók’s complete arrangements of folk
melodies for
piano, or as a concert pianist’s sympathetic and excellent performances
of
intriguing and beautiful music. Parker
has beautifully combined erudition and heartfelt performance in
creating a
window into the deeply authentic ethnic world of Béla Bartók. --Lowe
Read more: TimesArgusRutlandHeraldMay14
2015.pdf
UVM Prof Gathers Béla Bartók’s
Peasant Songs for Solo
Piano
sevendaysvt.com
May 20, 2015
In 1987, after she built her house in Berlin, Vt.,
pianist Sylvia Parker
began hearing
rumors about the neighborhood's musical history. "People started asking
me, did I know anything about a musician who once lived up the road?"
recalls the University of Vermont music professor. "Finally I just
heard
too much of the gossip to put it away."
Parker
soon discovered that the "musician" was Hungarian composer and
pianist Béla Bartók. During the summer of 1941, Bartók spent a month at
a
friend's house "a short walk" down the road from Parker's. The
discovery impelled the UVM prof to become a Bartók scholar herself —
work that
culminated in her just-released two-CD set of solo piano works, Bela
Bartók:
Peasant Jewels. --Lilly
Read more: sevendaysvtMay20
2015.pdf
'Peasant Jewels'
Album Shines New Light on Bartók
UVM Today,
Fall 2015
After
studying Béla Bartók's piano harmonizations of peasant folk songs the composer
and pioneering ethnomusicologist had recorded in the Eastern European
countryside, Sylvia Parker was so taken by the brilliant compositions, she
decided to be the first person on earth to record all 152 of them together in a
single album. –Wakefield
Continue reading...
Bartók, Griffes, Mozart, D.
Scarlatti: Sylvia Parker, piano
Centaur Records (2006),
www.centaurrecords.com
Sample: Griffes Fountain of
the Acqua Paola S Parker piano.mp3
Steinway's
Grand: Sylvia Parker's new CD features UVM's fine piano
The View, September 12, 2006
When Sylvia Parker, senior lecturer of music, spent a
long day in fall 2002 at the Steinway factory in Queens, New York, test
driving
nine pianos for the University of Vermont Music Department, she didn’t
know she
was also helping choose the piano that would make it possible to record
her
first album.
--Waite
Read more:
SteinwaysGrand2006.pdf
Review
of Parker CD
American Record
Guide,
2006
This recital of works by composers who were formidable
keyboard players is varied and easy on the ears. Parker's playing is
warm and
plush, as is her instrument, a Colodny Steinway recorded in the
resonant
University of Vermont Recital Hall. Her Scarlatti has careful voicing,
with
interesting overtones and nuances. Mozart's Sonata 12 is limpid and
lyrical.
The four tone paintings by Griffes are gently exotic, with gorgeous
bass sounds
and generous pedal. Some may want more bite in Bartok's Sonatina and
Suite
(Opus 14), but I find Parker's subtle musicality refreshing. --Sullivan
UVM
pianist in outstanding recital
The Times Argus, December 15, 2006
Parker's outstanding recital program, recorded this year
at the UVM Recital Hall in Burlington, Vermont, includes traditional
works by
Scarlatti, Mozart and Bartók, all well-played, but it is the "Roman
Sketches,"
Opus 7, by American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) that
makes
this a true gem of a recording. --Lowe
Read more: UVMpianist2006.pdf
CD:
New England Reveries, Mark Nelson, tuba and Sylvia
Parker, piano
Crystal Records (1991),
www.crystalrecords.com
Sample: Calabro Sonata-Fantasia for tuba
& piano-Mvt 3
Nelson&Parker.mp3
PUBLICATIONS
Jenny Lind and P.T. Barnum: A Success Story of Music, Business, and Philanthropy Béla
Bartók’s
Other Microcosmos
College Music Symposium 2019
https://doi.org/10.18177/sym.2019.59.sr.11442
Abstract: Abstract: Soprano Jenny Lind (1820-87), known as the "Swedish Nightingale," toured the United States in 1850 under the auspices of "America's Greatest Showman" and self-proclaimed "Prince of Humbug," P. T. Barnum (1810-91). The tour was a phenomenal success for both of them and made Lind perhaps the most famous person on earth that year. This article presents historical information, pictures, documents, and commentary about these two historical figures and their relationship. It also offers critiques and descriptions of her singing, alongside corresponding recordings of the music she sang. Because there was no recording technology invented during Lind's lifetime, these modern recordings by other singers are used to bring her singing to life.
MTNA eJournal, September 2014
http://www.mtnaejournal.org/publication/?i=225199
Abstract: Petite
Suite for piano is the last among Béla
Bartók’s
many settings of authentic
folk melodies. A
rarely played hidden
gem derived from 44 Violin Duos, it
is within reach of the intermediate/advanced pianist. In
addition to providing engaging performance
repertory, it provides also a microcosmos of Bartók’s
work with peasant music. This
article offers an
opportunity to compare directly Bartók’s
research, composition, and
performance inspired by the peasant music that shaped his musical
thinking. Here his
notations of
authentic folk melodies appear alongside the scores of his piano
arrangements
thereof. Here his
field recordings of
peasants singing and playing appear alongside the Violin
Duos and his own piano performance of Petite
Suite. The
author
provides background context along with brief discussion of each
movement. Juxtaposing
the sound recordings of these
folk melody “jewels,” as Bartók
called them, brings them to
life as no verbal description can.
Claude
Debussy’s Gamelan
College Music
Symposium 2013
http://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=22:claude-debussys-gamelan&Itemid=146
Abstract: The year 1889 marked the 100th anniversary of
the French Revolution and the nation celebrated with the Paris
Exposition
Universelle, an extraordinary World’s Fair. The event’s importance is
marked by
France’s most famous icon, the Eiffel Tower, built for the occasion.
Twenty-seven year old Claude Debussy frequented the many exhibits from
all over
the world and was enthralled by the Javanese gamelan and the dancing it
accompanied. The experience inspired him later to capture the sounds of
the
gamelan in his 1903 piano composition Pagodes. This article examines
how he
does so and places Pagodes’ composition within the contexts of
documentation by
his contemporaries, his other works, and recent scholarship about
exoticism.
Four principal elements of gamelan music—timbre, tuning, polyphonic
layering,
and rhythmic structure—are examined through the eyes of twentieth
century
ethnomusicologists. The same four elements are analysed in Pagodes.
Elements of
Western musical composition complement the analysis. What emerges is
not a
vague impression but, rather, a remarkably successful rendition of the
Eastern gamelan
on the Western piano.
A
Riverton Retreat: Royal Charter to State Forest
Vermont History Vol. 78, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2010
http://vermonthistory.org/research/research-resources-online/vermont-history-journal/volume-78-2010
Abstract: A piece of Riverton, Vermont, evolves over the
course of two centuries from empty land in the Royal Charter, to the
site of a
grand cottage peopled by diverse occupants including a tycoon’s family,
a
Hungarian hostess, and composer Béla Bartók, to empty land once again,
now
preserved as state forest. [Note: The author lives just up the road
from the
cottage in this article.]
Béla
Bartók's Arab Music Research and Composition
Studia Musicologica Vol. 49/3-4, 2008
http://www.akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/SMus.49.2008.3-4.10
Abstract: In 1913 Béla Bartók traveled to Algeria to
research Arab folk music. He took with him the most modern
technological device
then available, the Edison phonograph, and recorded Arab peasants
performing
their music. Analysis of his ensuing scholarly documentation and free
composition reveals the inspiration Bartók drew from Arab folk music,
not only
in his treatment of traditional musical elements-melody, rhythm, and
harmony-but also in novel incorporation of exotic timbre, scales, drum
modes,
ululation, and exorcism. This paper elucidates diverse musical elements
with
examples from authentic folk music and Bartók's compositions. What
emerges is a
remarkably comprehensive image of Arab music, seen through the lens of
Béla
Bartók's unique scholarship and creativity.
Understanding
Sonata Form through Model Composition
Journal of Music
Theory Pedagogy Vol. 20, 2006
http://jmtp.ou.edu/journal-article/jmtp-journal-volume-20-all-articles
Composition is an important aid to musical understanding.
This paper describes a plan for guiding intermediate music theory
students to
hone their understanding of classical sonata structure through
composition.
Sonata-allegro is arguably the quintessential form in tonal music,
certainly
the most elaborate and prescriptive in terms of its component parts.
The
average undergraduate student comes to an understanding of the
contrasting
functions of the sonata's thematic, transitional, and developmental
sections
only with difficulty. Students who compose such sections themselves
acquire a
better understanding of the form than they who limit their study to
analysis.
Composing a sonata may seem too large a project for an undergraduate
class in
form and analysis. Yet such a project was completed, with great
success, in an
intermediate theory class at the University of Vermont. More than a
success,
the experiment culminated in three students presenting their projects
at a
conference of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences. This article
recounts
how the project began as a multi-part homework assignment with drafts
and
revisions spreading over several weeks, continued in a take-home
segment of the
midterm exam, and concluded in presentation of compositions by the most
successful students in a scholarly venue.
Bartók
at the Crossroads: A Classical Sonatina from Five Rumanian Folk Dances
College Music
Symposium Vol. 43, 2003
http://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2201:vol43id844&Itemid=124
Abstract in RILM www.rilm.org
Theoretical analysis of the Bartok Sonatina (1915)
proceeds from several viewpoints. Surface view presents five Rumanian
folk
dances grouped into three movements in simple classical forms.
Schenkerian
analysis reveals one unified diatonic structure in the key of D.
Motivic unity
consistently pairs pitches E-D, whose dissonance and resolution as ^2 -
^1
define tonic. Symmetrical design stems from Eastern European folk
music,
featuring particularly the perfect fourth and its consequent division
of the
octave into equal halves, and the symmetrical construction of the
minor-seventh
chord.