Douglas Moore's 'Farm Journal' here recorded is a piece of music that could only have been wrtten by an America, its color and idiom are intensely of this continent, though the composer resorts to none of the typical phraseologies of standard 'Americana.'
Marion Bauer was an influential teacher, critic, and composer who worked primarily in the first part of the 20th century. Her music has a modernist aesthetic and leans toward a romantic version of atonality that mixes equal parts Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss. The "Suite for String Orchestra" is lush and chromatic, while "Prelude and Fugue" is, maybe predictably, more pastoral.
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Alfredo Antonini, Conductor; Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, William Strickland, Conductor; The Vienna Orchestra, F. Charles Adler, Conductor
Douglas Moore and Marion Bauer had very different backgrounds and though their music is not, on the surface, very much alike, in fact, they had a lot in common. Born in the last decades of the century of romantic music, they both had distinguished careers as composers, writers and educators. They were trained in France and helped to shift the focus of American musical culture away from the heavy German influence that had been dominant for so long. And both represented moderate, eclectic views about music and musical expression in a scene often dominated by the sometimes shrill, opposing voices of experimentalism, neo-classicism, and expressionism.
Douglas Stuart Moore, the more popular and the more populist of the two, came by his penchant for Americana very naturally. He was born, on August 10, 1893, in the colonial hamlet of Cutchogue in Southold Town, on the North Fork of Long Island, New York. Cutchogue's seventeenth-century heritage can still be seen in some of the oldest remaining domestic architecture in the United States and the settlement is still surrounded, as it was in 1893, by farms (the major difference is that wine grapes have replaced potatoes as the major crop). On his father's side, the composer was in the direct line of Thomas Moore who sailed from Connecticut in 1640 to found Southold Township; on his mother's side, he was descended from both Miles Standish and John Alden. All his life, he maintained, as his permanent residence, the house in which he was born. He died in neighboring Greenport on July 25, 1969.
Marion Eugenie Bauer was born in Walla Walla, Washington, on August 15, 1887. She studied in Portland, Oregon, in New York and in France where she is thought to have been Nadia Boulanger1s first American pupil. Beginning in 1919, she became part of a group of composers who regularly summered at the MacDowell Colony and which included a number of notable women, among them being Amy Beach, Mabel Daniels, Miriam Gideon and Ruth Crawford. Bauer began her long and distinguished teaching career in 1926 at New York University where she remained until her retirement in 1951; she also taught at Juilliard and lectured at the Chatauqua Institute in western New York and elsewhere. She helped to organize the American Music Guild and the League of Composers, served as music critic for the Evening Mail and Musical Leader, and was the author or co-author of a number of important articles and books, most notably, her Twentieth-Century Music, long a standard reference. In the 1920s, she was described as "a radical member of the musical left wing," but by the 1940s her music was being described as a "middle-of-the-road impressionist." Neither view does justice to the range and accessibility of her works. She died in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on August 9, 1955.
This title, originally issued on the CRI label, is now available as a burn-on-demand CD (CD-R) or download in MP3/320, FLAC or WAV formats. CD-Rs come in a protective sleeve; no print booklet or jewel case included. Liner notes are accessible via the link above.
Douglas Moore & Marion Bauer: Orchestral Works
| MP3/320 | $9.99 | |
| FLAC | $9.99 | |
| WAV | $9.99 | |
| CD-R | $9.99 |
A *.pdf of the notes may be accessed here free of charge.
Track Listing
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Farm Journal: I. Up Early
Douglas Moore
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Farm Journal: II. Sunday Clothes
Douglas Moore
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Farm Journal: III. Lamp Light
Douglas Moore
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Farm Journal: IV. Harvest Song
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: I. Grand March
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: II. Polka
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: III. Waltz
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: IV. Gallop
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: V. Cake Walk
Douglas Moore
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Cotillion Suite: VI. Quickstep
Douglas Moore
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Symphony in A: I. Andante con moto; Allegro giusto
Douglas Moore
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Symphony in A: II. Andante quieto simplice
Douglas Moore
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Symphony in A: III. Allegretto
Douglas Moore
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Symphony in A: IV. Allegro con spirito
Douglas Moore
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Prelude & Fugue for Flute & Strings: I. Prelude
Marion Bauer
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Prelude & Fugue for Flute & Strings: II. Fugue
Marion Bauer
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Suite for String Orchestra: I. Prelude
Marion Bauer
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Suite for String Orchestra: II. Interlude
Marion Bauer
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Suite for String Orchestra: III. Finale: Fugue
Marion Bauer
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