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Ibert: Ballad of Reading Gaol; Bacchanale; Louisville Concerto; Honegger: Prelude for Aglavaine & Selysette; Suite Archaique.
IBERT: Ballad of Reading Gaol; Bacchanale; Louisville Concerto; HONEGGER: Prelude for Aglavaine & Selysette; Suite Archaique Louisville Orchestra/ Robert Whitney, Jorge Mester--First Edition 1906--67 minutes
Jacques Ibert's Ballade of Reading Gaol (1922) is based on the eponymous poem by Oscar Wilde. The subject, in Eugene Enrico's words, is "the horrors of prison life ... as a metaphor of the universal predicament of all mankind". I depicts the tedium of the prisoner marching through the yard, haunted with guilt over killing what he loved. A good part of this murky, often quiet music sounds like Miklos Rozsa's later anxiety-ridden score to Double Indemnity, with bits of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe interspersed. II shows the mental anguish the prisoner must hold in. It opens nervously in the high strings over pizzicato basses, adds a doom-laden processional melody, and the two combine in a way that blends the earlier anxiety of Rozsa with Saint Saens's Danse Macabre. The movement scurries to a frenetic ending before the low strings create a bridge into III, a Debussian world, first of ghostly uncertainty and then quiet resignation.
Bacchanale opens with a combination of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance and Paul Creston. A broad, treading mid-section depicting the arrival of a major personage interrupts the proceedings, but as soon as the bigwig is settled the festivities resume to combine the two musical ideas.
Ibert wrote Louisville Concerto for the Louisville Orchestra. In the composer's words, "Pretty girls go by, horsemen gallop past. The orchestra pours out the warmth of the whisky, whilst a whiff of dream suddenly floats by." For all the references to horsemen, this jazzy pastiche of Offenbach, Grofe, and especially Gershwin comes off more as "A Frenchman in Louisville".
Arthur Honegger's Prelude for Aglavaine and Selysette (1917), a drama by Maeterlinck, was his first orchestral piece. It is a quiet, beautiful work that draws heavily on Debussy's Images and Jeux, though the young Honegger was more direct and ...
- Pit of shame; the real ballad of Reading Gaol.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
- Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News November 1, 2007 700+ words
...9781904380214 Pit of shame; the real ballad of Reading Gaol. Stokes, Anthony. Waterside Press...Stokes traces the history of England's Reading Gaol from the 16th century to the present...inmate, Oscar Wilde, whose "Ballad of Reading Gaol" is examined in detail. Distributed...
- Arrested development. (Notebook).(Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol)
- Magazine article from: New Criterion Dalrymple, Theodore June 1, 2002 700+ words
...mouthed Doctor" of The Ballad of Reading Gaol who ... gloats and notes Each new...always accompanied by The Ballad of Reading Gaol--not literally, for my own copy...architecturally, to the same era as Reading Gaol. It is of the panopticon type, so...
- Poem of the week: The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
- News wire article from: Europe Intelligence Wire March 23, 2009 700+ words
...of art and a new kind of life, borrowing Dante's title La Vita Nuova for his own projected resurrection. The Ballad of Reading Gaol, this week's choice, is the fulfilment of that plan. Wilde wrote the poem in 1898. He was now free, but a broken man...
- Letter: Reading gaol.
- News wire article from: Europe Intelligence Wire October 24, 2002 700+ words
(From The Independent) Byline: Dr Rob Kinnersley Sir: I was not surprised to hear of the "reading rots the mind" notice in Crick and Brenner's Cambridge office (Science and Nature, 21 October). Having lived there myself for a number of years I can see why the casual visitor might form that
- In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History.
- Magazine article from: Style Wright, Terence R. December 22, 1995 700+ words
One of the problems of the label "Reader-Response Criticism" is that it covers a multitude of different approaches. Jane Tompkins's anthology, Reader-Response Criticism, originally published in 1980 but reprinted many times since then and still used as a course textbook, includes essays that could
- Rare book to drive Oscar fans Wilde.
- News wire article from: Europe Intelligence Wire June 2, 2004 700+ words
...signed copy of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol has beenfound - and it's said to worth...was in disgrace after coming out of Reading Gaol. He died in 1900, two and a half years...year before he died. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is an epic work and, among other powerful...
- LOOKING BACK: Arup K Datta.
- News wire article from: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire December 5, 2004 700+ words
...parallel in modern times. Coming out of Reading gaol, Wilde reached Dieppe in France, a...from him. Other than The Ballad of Reading Gaol, to which he gave finishing touches...bears an inscription from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: And alien tears will fill for him...
- Wilde.
- Magazine article from: Commonweal Alleva, Richard July 17, 1998 700+ words
...and reputation, the loss of his family, imprisonment in Reading Gaol. The well-researched, well-upholstered look of this...In the postprison scenes, Fry neatly conveys the toll Reading Gaol took, not by faking haggardness with make-up, but by...
- The marriage penalty.
- News wire article from: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire June 21, 2004 700+ words
...Aged about 11, I memorised Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. I am still waiting for the day when knowing it comes in...children yet could still recite a good amount of the Ballad of Reading Gaol, though far from all of it. Anyway, the effect of this...
- THE COMPLETE LETTERS OF OSCAR WILDE.(Review)
- Magazine article from: American Scholar KIRSCH, ADAM January 1, 2001 700+ words
...dramatizing letter he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading Gaol, he prophesied: "such [is] the irony of things that...kindhearted publisher who agreed to take on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Given the tragic graph of his life--nearly two decades...
