FOUR TEMPERAMENTS

Melancholie, op. 13 is the set of four lieder for mezzo-soprano and string quartet based on poems by Christian Morgenstern. They are early works of the German composer from the year 1919, representing a period of emerging mastery that bloomed into an extraordinary career as composer, music theorist, teacher, conductor and violist. In 1921 he toured Europe as the violist of the Amar quartet with his brother Rudolph who was the cellist; their emphasis was on new music. His relationship with the Nazi regime was complicated and at times contentious; although he became an American citizen in 1946, he returned to Zurich and taught there until his retirement in 1957.

Goddard is the Composer in Association and Associate Principal Trumpet with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. His catalog of over fifty works includes ten pieces for large orchestra, many frequently performed chamber works, and a large body of innovative work for solo instruments and electronics. His quartet Allaqi was commissioned for the St. Lawrence String Quartet and has been performed nearly one hundred times by quartets across North and South America.

Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist. Although he is presently known better as a composer, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practising music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill; in fact, he made important early contributions to organic chemistry. He also was a promoter of education in Russia and founded the School of Medicine for Women in Saint Petersburg, where he taught until 1885.

As a composer, Borodin was known as one of “The Five”, a group of composers who were dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music. He was a cellist and enthusiastic chamber musician, which probably explains the gorgeous solos for cello in the 3rd movement, the “Nocturne” of his string quartet No. 2 in D major.

Holst was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed many other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success.

Vaughan Williams introduced Holst to folk songs and also plainsong hymns, which Holst loved throughout his life. One Sunday, in an interval between church services, he heard a woman singing a wordless song as she played the open strings of her violin. This astonishing sound gave him the idea of writing "Four Songs for Voice and Violin," settings of medieval religious poems. Holst said of these songs that at last he had learned to write "a tune at one with the words."

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Trinity-St. Paul's United Church and Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts, 427 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada