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Three Tone Pictures, op. 5 (1910-1915)
Michael Lewin:
"The Three Tone Pictures, op. 5 [were] the composer's first published piano works. Begun in 1910 and later revised, they were published by G. Schirmer in 1915 on the recommendation of Ferruccio Busoni. With them, Griffes left the German Romanticism of his early music and created a unique impressionistic style. Fragmentary in nature, they are filled with chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, creative pedal effects, and a subtle sense of color and imagination. They show Griffes as a master miniaturist and tone-poet."
Griffes references three poems which served as inspiration for his Three Tone Pictures. With The Lake at Evening, he quotes William Butler Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1890):
... for always ...
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore
He prefaces The Vale of Dreams with a passage from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Sleeper" (1831):
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
Another poem by Poe, "The Lake -- To ----" (1827), inspired the final piece The Night Winds:
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody --
Then -- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) was an early 20th-century American composer actively engaged with the international music of his time. Aaron Copland:
"What [Griffes] gave those of us who came after him was a sense of the adventurous in composition, of being thoroughly alive to the newest trends in world music and to the stimulus that might be derived from such contact."
Griffes drew from a range of influences in his brief career, from the German Romanticism of his early works, to impressionistic tendencies of pieces from the 1910's, to later compositions bearing a certain Japanese or 'oriental' influence. Although Griffes often took inspiration from extramusical sources such as poetry, painting, and nature, his well-known late Sonata for Piano (1917-1919) showed a move towards a more abstract style.
Born in Elmira, New York, Griffes received early piano lessons from his sister Katharine. At the age of eleven he began studying with Mary Selena Broughton of Elmira College, who encouraged him to write his first compositions. Broughton was a significant influence on Griffes' musical direction, and supported his later studies in Berlin, Germany between 1903-1907. There he studied at the Stern Conservatory with Gottfried Galston, Ernst Jedliczka, and Philippe Rüfer, and privately with composer Engelbert Humperdinck. During this period Griffes began to focus more on composition, and was also active as a pianist and teacher.
In 1907 Griffes returned to the US and took a position as director of music at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, where he would remain for the rest of his life. The position provided a modest salary for the composer as he worked on his own music and obtained performances in nearby New York City and elsewhere. Many important premieres took place in the last years of Griffes' life, including those by orchestras in Boston, New York, and Philadephia. He died at the age of 35 of a lung infection.
Griffes' music is recorded on many major labels as well as Albany, Bridge, Capstone, Cedille, Centaur, Dorian, Equilibrium, Gasparo, GM, Klavier, Koch International Classics, New World, Premier, and Vox.
Pianist David Allen Wehr has performed in over 30 countries since winning the Gold Medal in the 1987 Santander International Piano Competition in Spain. He has been a soloist with orchestras in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and New Zealand, and performs as regularly as a chamer musician and pianist with the Sartory Trio. He has made over a dozen recordings for the Connoisseur Society label, most recently the complete Beethoven sonata cycle, and has also recorded for Chandos. Wehr studied piano with Peggy Neighbors Erwin in Miami, Florida, Edward Zolas at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio, and Sequeira Costa at the University of Kansas. He also studied at the Taos School of Music in New Mexico and Dartington International Summer School in England. Since 2001, Wehr has taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
related websites
http://www.music.duq.edu/fasBioWehr.html
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