Typed letter signed ("Lee") to American musicologist and conductor, Paul Echols (1944-1994)
1 page. Quarto. Dated "20 Feb.," no year. On personal stationery, with "Lee Hoiby Box 71 Rock Valley, Long Eddy, N.Y. 12760" stamped in black at head.
Hoiby is sending two songs to Echols, soliciting his input as to their appropriateness for "the younger market - how young: Grade school? Kindergarten? High school" Sunday School?" He "wrote them both in a day and would gladly do more if they are in the right direction," saying that "there must be other Blake poems if it's to be a group. Hope you don't mind my picking your brain. That's what you get when you come up to a composer and say 'I like your songs!' "
Very lightly creased at folds.
"As a composer Hoiby was a modern Romantic from the lineage of Barber and Menotti. The influence of the former is evident in his warm lyricism, while that of the latter is found in a propensity for light, genial humour. Though much of his music is characterized by a disarming diatonic simplicity, his ambitious works tend towards greater harmonic and textural complexity. Interest in his music has centred chiefly around his operatic, choral and vocal works, which seem to stimulate his most deeply felt efforts. Some of these works – for example Summer and Smoke, Galileo Galilei and The Tempest – achieve an eloquence comparable to the later works of Barber. With greater critical acceptance of more conservative musical styles from the early 1980s onwards, Hoiby’s music has been performed and recorded with increasing frequency." Richard Jackson and Walter G. Simmons in Grove Music Online.
Item #40040
Price: $100.00 other currencies