Synopsis
Composer Gary Lloyd Noland's COLLECTED PIANO WORKS: Volume 2 includes his epic-length 39 VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME IN F MAJOR Op. 98, his super-virtuosic GRANDE RAG BRILLANTE Op. 15, his GOLDEN GATE RAG Op. 123, and several other heretofore unpublished works for piano.
39 VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME IN F MAJOR Op. 98 is, at approximately two hours duration, one of the lenghiest and most challenging sets in the history of the genre. It has been described by composer Ernesto Ferreri as "an historical variation set for piano, a true descendant of the Goldbergs and Diabellis, beautifully targeted to an apotheosis of supreme grandeur." Composer/pianist Ludwig Tuman described it as "an astounding tour de force. In its far-reaching, systematic exploration of the theme's creative possibilities, as well as in the inexhaustible imagination brought to bear, it reminds one of the Goldberg and the Diabelli. But in its monumental dimensions it goes far beyond them both, and in the large number of historical styles referenced and integrated into the work ... I am unaware of any parallel. I especially enjoyed the consistent use of certain features of the theme, regardless of the style or the type of tonality, pantonality or atonality employed-among them the melodic turn, the phrases ascending by whole steps, and others. I offer my humble congratulations on a titanic achievement!"
Ragtime pianist Mark Lutton once described GRANDE RAG BRILLANTE Op. 15 as "the most difficult ragtime piece of all time ... The audience needs to have Attention Hyperabundance Disorder. (It's fine if, like me, your idea of a nice short little piece is a tone poem by Richard Strauss.)" The Canadian pianist and composer Max Keelyside described it as "the work of a musician's musician." GRANDE RAG BRILLANTE received its official world premiere on KPFA Radio on 4 October, 1991 in celebration of the inauguration of Pacifica Radio's (then) sparkling new facility in Berkeley, California. It was "performed" on a computer-driven Yamaha Disklavier. This historic premiere, paired with the premiere of a (then) new work by Lou Harrison, was later written up in Nicolas Slonimsky's MUSIC SINCE 1900 (an encyclopedic compendium that chronologically lists premieres of compositions that its author deems to be among the most significant and noteworthy of the 20th century). Ernesto Ferreri wrote, "Only a musical maniac could push something this far ... at times the rags fugue and the fugues rag into waves of improbable climaxes ... noticed a double fugue with the rag theme ... and you gotta love how it detours around atonality ... brillante indeed!" The late Slovak composer and conductor Ladislav Kupkovic (1936-2016) once wrote to Noland: "...Ihre Musik ist wunderschön, 'Grande Rag Brillante' ist ein Meisterwerk; als auch Komponist bin ich voll Neid, dass ich so etwas nicht schreiben kann. Ich wünsche Ihnen viel Erfolg! Ich komponiere schon viele Jahre europäisch tonal und es ist nicht leicht, so zu komponieren in einer Welt, die noch in der atonalen Ideologie denkt. Ich hoffe, Ihr Weg wird leichter." Here is a link to a rendition of GRANDE RAG BRILLANTE: https://soundcloud.com/gary- noland/grande-rag-brillante-for-piano-op-15.
GOLDEN GATE RAG Op. 123 was originally sketched out in 1974 and underwent significant revisions in 2021. This is the first time it has appeared in publication.
THREE MEDLEYS from VENGE ART comprise a series of strung-together musical excerpts from various works by Richard Strauss, Mahler, Korngold, Schönberg, Berg, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Karol Szymanowski, Mozart, and Hugo Wolf.
The recently revised THREE INCONGRUISMS Op. 122 (2021) are derived from various unfinished compositions by Noland dating back to the late 1970s and mid 1980s.
About the Author
Short Bio (First Person): I grew up in a headbox as an airhole freak, soliciting gestural acknowledgments of edibility crapropos of my monthly grub. The greenish gruel I ingested for nourishment drizzled in daggers from the broad vicinity of the ropemaster's, the driller's, and the eggman's quarters high aloft in the west-facing sumpwing of my cloaca maxima. I'd wile away my weeks watching ratsnakes swabbling down the dried up, crusty accounts off the edge of the slop pail in which I inveterately soaked my false tooth.Medium Bio (Third Person): GARY LLOYD NOLAND (a.k.a. author DOLLY GRAY LANDON, visual artist LON GAYLORD DYLAN, and musicians ARNOLD DAY LONGLY, ORLAN DOY GLANDLY & DARNOLD OLLY YANG) was born in Seattle in 1957 and grew up in a broken home in a crowded house shared by ten or more people on a plot of land three blocks south of UC Berkeley known as People's Park, which has distinguished itself as a site of civil unrest since the late 1960s. As an adolescent, Noland lived for a time in Salzburg (Mozart's birthplace) and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (home of Richard Strauss), where he absorbed a host of musical influences. Having studied with a long roster of acclaimed composers and musicians, he earned a Bachelor's degree in music from UC Berkeley in 1979, continued his studies at the Boston Conservatory, and transferred to Harvard University, where he added to his credits a Masters and a PhD in Music Composition in 1989. His teachers in composition and theory have included John Clement Adams (not to be confounded with composers John Coolidge Adams or John Luther Adams), Alan Curtis (harpsichordist, musicologist, conductor, and one of the musical "stars" in Werner Herzog's film on Gesualdo, "Death for Five Voices"), Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (Master of the Queen's Music from 2004-16), William Denny (student of Paul Dukas), Robert Dickow, Janice Giteck (student of Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen), Andrew Imbrie (student of Nadia Boulanger and Roger Sessions, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 1995), Earl Kim (student of Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch, and Roger Sessions), Leon Kirchner (student of Arnold Schoenberg and assistant to Ernest Bloch and Roger Sessions, Pulitzer Prize, 1967) David Lewin (dubbed "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation"), Donald Martino (student of Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, and Luigi Dallapiccola, Pulitzer Prize, 1974), Hugo Norden, Marta Ptaszynska (student of Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen), Chris Rozé (student of Charles Wuorinen, Ursula Mamlok, and Vincent Persichetti), Goodwin Sammel (student of pianist Claudio Arrau), John Swackhamer (student of Ernst Krenek and Roger Sessions), Ivan Tcherepnin (student of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, son of Alexander Tcherepnin), and Walter Winslow (brother of Portland composer Jeff Winslow). Noland has attended seminars by composers David Del Tredici (Pulitzer Prize, 1980), Beverly Grigsby (student of Ernst Krenek), Michael Finnissy (leading British composer and pianist), and Bernard Rands (Pulitzer Prize, 1984), and has had private consultations with George Rochberg ("Father of Neo-Romanticism," Pulitzer Prize finalist, 1986) and Joaquin Nin-Culmell (student of Paul Dukas and Manuel de Falla, brother of essayist and diarist Anaïs Nin).
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