fhimpsl wrote:Hello All, I recently uncovered a score by Australian-born composer George F. Boyle (1886-1948); his Serenade from "Four Compositions For PIano."
From Grove:
Boyle, George Frederick
(b Sydney, 29 June 1886; d Philadelphia, 20 June 1948). Australian-American pianist, composer and teacher. He was first taught the piano by his mother and then, from 1901, by Sydney Moss. In the same year he made a concert tour of more than 280 towns and cities in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand; further tours followed. From 1905 to 1910 he studied in Berlin with Busoni. During these years of intensive study he performed extensively throughout Europe and conducted orchestras in the UK. After he settled in the USA in 1910, such notable pianists as Mark Hambourg, Ernest Hutcheson and Backhaus continued to play his compositions in Europe. From 1910 until his death Boyle performed, taught and composed in America. He held positions at three major American conservatories: the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, as head of the piano department (1910–22), the Curtis Institute (1922–4) and the Institute of Musical Art, soon renamed the Juilliard School of Music (1922–40). In addition, he was on the faculty of Chestnut Hill College (1944–8) and was coordinator of the Boyle Piano Studios in Philadelphia from 1926 until his death in 1948.
Boyle composed in a late Romantic style. The works of his early period (1902–10) are short, small-scale pieces, characterized by simple harmonies, rhythms and melodies. Many of them are dances in binary, ternary or rondo forms. The 1909 Ballade for piano anticipated his middle period (1910–22), in which forms become larger, and rhythms and harmonies more daring in the manner of Debussy and Ravel or the later Rachmaninoff. Rich, often non-functional harmony and striking pianistic effects such as tremolos, long trills, alternating octaves and fast repeated chords characterize such works as the Piano Concerto (1912), the Piano Sonata (1921) and the Habanera for piano. In Boyle's final period (1922–48), he returned to smaller forms, but now free-composed and with the advanced harmonies, chromatic melodies and more complex rhythms of the middle period compositions. He wrote many pedagogical pieces during these later years.
WORKS
Pf: Ballade, 1909; Nocturne (London, 1910); Morning: a Sketch for Pf (New York, 1911); 3 pièces (1911): 1 La prima ballerina, 2 In tempo di mazurka, 3 La gondola; Pf Sonata, B, 1915; Habanera (1919); Caprice, 1928; Obsession, 1928; Suite, 2 pf, 1931–2; numerous other pf pieces
Regards
Fred
