John Foulds

Some may have noticed his name in the microtonal discography but it
was never mentioned on this list. Therefore I'll draw attention so
that members will recognize the name when they encounter it again:
John Herbert Foulds. This rather remarkable composer was born in
Manchester in 1880 and died of cholera in Calcutta in 1939.
His works have been much forgotten. I read his name somewhere in the
New Grove and have one record (Quartetto Intimo, Quartetto Geniale,
Aquarelles). This information is from the booklet.
He wrote a wide range of music: 10 string quartets, a cello concerto
and sonata, symphonic poems, a concert opera, music for piano and
orchestra, 9 suites, theatre music, a gigantic World Requiem with 1200
singers and instrumentalists, and so on. He also published a book,
"Music To-day".
John Foulds was the first British composer to use quarter-tones, as
early as the 1890s. He had a deep fascination with oriental music,
especially from India. This led him to compose with ancient Greek
modes, nondiatonic scales and Hindu ragas, as in "Ghandarva-Music"
(1915-1926) for piano. Later he also wrote for ensembles of Indian
instruments and combination of Indian instruments with a western
symphony orchestra.
Perhaps for us the most interesting is the "Lyra Celtica" concerto for
wordless voice and orchestra (1920?), which features a microtonal
tuning of 22 tones to the octave (which anyone? srutis maybe).
There's no recording. Several of his works still await their first
performance. He wrote works in more traditional genres as well, which
show diverse influences as of Busoni, Scriabin and Bartok.
In 1935 he travelled to India, where he collected Indian folk-music,
became director of European Music for all-India Radio at Delhi,
created an orchestra from scratch, and began to work towards a musical
synthesis of the cultures of East and West.
The record above mentioned was made with assistance of the British
Music Society. Their website does not provide any information about
Foulds, except that there's an article in vol. 10 of the annual
journal British Music.
There is a short home page: http://shift.merriweb.com.au/foulds/

I have by the way added a few records to the microtonal discography
ftp://ella.mills.edu/ccm/tuning/papers/discs.html

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl


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