Sophie-Carmen [called Sonia] Eckhardt-Gramatté (née Friedman) Austrian-Canadian pianist and composer

Moscow, 06.01.1902 - Stuttgart, 02.12.1974 

Her mother, Catherine de Kochevskaya was a pupil of both Anton and Nicolas Rubinstein and she was music teacher to the Tolstoy family. She divorced her husband Artur Friedman and even though Sophia-Carmen bore the name 'Sonia' Friedman until 1920 the paternity has never been properly  established.
Sonia was first sent to England as a very small child but her mother joined her in 1904 in Paris where the girl's musical education began under her mother's instruction. At 11 she gave solo concerts in Paris, Geneva, and Berlin, appearing on the programs alternately as pianist and as violinist. 
When Sophie-Carmen had studied at the Paris Conservatoire she moved to Berlin with her mother and sister early in 1914 and for a time supported them there by playing in cafés. 

In 1920 she married the painter Walter Gramatté (1897-1929) and they moved to spain to live in Barcelona from 1924 to 1926 where Pablo Casals became her mentor. During the years in Spain she performed frequently there and also traveled to Germany for a 1925 concert series with the pianist Edwin Fischer.

News of her versatility and virtuosity had reached the conductor Leopold Stokowski, who engaged her for appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, but these were postponed owing to the serious illness of her husband. Gramatté died in 1929 of tuberculosis, and it was only later in that year that the young widow was able to fulfill her US engagement. In the 1929-30 season she performed her own works (Konzertstück) for piano or violin and orchestra with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock.

As a composer she was more or less self-taught and in 1930 she decided to give up her performing career to concentrate on composition and on Stokowski's recommendation became a pupil for a period of Max Trapp in Berlin. But while she acknowledged Trapp's important contribution to her skills in counterpoint and orchestration, there can be little doubt that her distinctive and somewhat willful creative personality had been formed through her own investigations of the creative experience, often guided by her virtuosity as a performer. It was affected, too, by the challenge of being a woman composer, first in the highly structured, precedent-laden, intensely competitive milieu of the Europe of her day, and then in the radically contrasting frontier situation of Canada. The result was a music of marked, not to say headstrong, character, full of ideas, impulses, and technical difficulties, but seldom serene in mood or classically ordered.

	Ferdinand Anton Ludwig  Eckhardt (1902-1995)

In 1934 she married Ferdinand Eckhardt, an Austrian art historian living in Berlin, who had been interested in the graphics of her late husband. In 1939 the couple moved to Vienna, and she adopted the professional name with which her later works were signed: S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté. In 1945 Eckhardt-Gramatté was one of a small group who re-established the Austrian branch of the ISCM. She won several major composition prizes, 1948, 1949, and 1950, and first prize in the International Competition for Women Composers (GEDOK, Mannheim) in 1961. In 1970 Eckhardt-Gramatté was awarded the title professor by the Austrian government.
Eckhardt-Gramatté composed music virtually throughout her life, beginning with the Alphabet Pieces at six and concluding with the Trumpet Concerto left incomplete at her death. 
Among her compositions are a Duo Concertante for cello and piano, a Symphony-Concerto for piano and orchestra, a Symphony in C, Triple Concerto (clarinet, trumpet and bassoon with chamber orchestra).

Drei Klavierstücke: no. 1 (in fact 1st movement of her sonata No. 6) (1952) 
The three movements are: 1. Prestissimo, e molto preciso for the left hand alone, 2. Lustig und mit Witz for the right hand alone and 3. Vivo assai e marcato for both hands. No. 1 can  be seen on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzIPr8hbros 

The six sonatas are recorded by Marc-André Hamelin: Altarus, AIR-CD-9052[2]

Go to top    Back to index

Hubert Eckartz  

(1903 - 1962)

Capriccio from 8 Klavierstücke

Go to top    Back to index

Erich Eder de Lastra  Austrian composer

Born: Linz, 19.12.1933 

Eder de Lastra was educated at the High School of Music in Vienna (piano, singing, composition and conducting). 
For many years Eder de Lastra was teacher at the Vienna University.
A small selection of his works include Sinfonia brevis for large wind orchestra and speaker,  Jeu satirique - Chamber ballet, Six postcards from Austria, Sinfonietta for winds, Concerto for violin and orchestra, Symphonies, Diamorphose - for piano and orchestra (piano concerto nr. 2), Cellofonia - Three movements for five cello groups.

* 19.12.1933 Linz. Komponist und Pädagoge. Ausbildung an der MHsch. in Wien (Musikerziehung, Klavier, Komposition bei O. Steinbauer, Gesang bei F. Großmann, Dirigieren) und an der Univ. Wien (Lehramt Germanistik). E. d. L. war bis zur Pensionierung Lehrer an Höheren Schulen in Linz und Wien, wo er seit 1976 lebt. Als Komponist, der oft auch auf Auftrag zahlreicher Solisten und Ensembles schrieb, versuchte er, „Neues in friedlichem Einklang mit der großen Tradition zu finden“. Viele seiner Werke sind seinem Freund dem Klarinettenvirtuosen Roger Salander gewidmet. Er selbst sieht sich resignierend von anderen Komponistengruppen gemieden und klagt, nicht mehr aufgeführt zu werden.

Variationen für die linke Hand  (for harpsichord) (1989) (Doblinger)

Go to top    Back to index

George Eggeling  German composer and teacher

Brunswick, 24.09.1866 - ? 

Georg Eggeling's father, Theodor Eggeling was Concert Master of the duke of Brunswick and he taught his son the first steps of music. Later on he attended the Piano Seminarium of Professor Wilhelm Breslaur from 1885 to 1890 where his teachers were Alfred Christlob Salomo Kalischer (1842-1909), William Wolf (1838-1913), Anton Franz Grunicke (1841-1913) and Eduard Frank, who also taught at the Stern Conservatory of whom he also became a private pupil from 1889 to 1891. At that time he was already made teacher at the Breslaur Seminarium where he taught piano, theory and method until 1900. He then established his own musical institute in Berlin.
His compositions are mostly for the piano: Two studies op. 21, 100 modulations op. 58, Eighteen Studies in Octaves op. 90, 50 Studies in all the Major and Minor Keys op. 122, 25 Melodious Studies op. 170, Seven Exercises for Practicing Extended Chords op. 172, Ten Melodious Studies op. 175,Twelve Tuneful Studies for Grace and Rapidity and many other instructive pieces. 
Apart from this he wrote the books: Musicians Lexicon and Young Peoples' Musical Reference Book. 

Mélodie in F sharp minor op. 178  1912 (Schmidt)

On the Lagoon; Barcarolle op. 165  1913 (Presser)

Go to top    Back to index

Zwei Universal-Étuden op 82 (for the left hand) & op 83 (for the right) (Vienna: Wetzler)
Mentioned in Hofmeisters Handbuch der Klavierliteratur vol., 1880-1985 p. 145

Born: Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 1959

And - yes he is the brother of Brian Eno with whom he - as an ambient composer, has collaborated. But his depth as a musician he defies categorization. A multi - instrumentalist, Eno has composed many memorable scores for film and TV including Dune, Nine And A Half Weeks and Warm Summer Rain. His love of classical piano is evident in his many critically acclaimed solo works which feature his unique ambient chamber music style. His piano also figured prominently in the group Channel Light Vessel, an ambient super-group featuring Kate St. John, Bill Nelson and Laraaji. In addition to those projects, Roger Eno has worked with an illustrious assortment of musicians including Michael Brook and John Cale.
At the age of twelve he began cornet lessons and at sixteen entered Music College in Colchester, Essex. Upon graduating, he moved to London and busked on street corners and in subways for eight months before returning to Colchester to run a music therapy department in a hospital for the mentally handicapped. He continued this work for two and a half years during which time he was composing more and more of his own music.
In 1983, he was invited by his brother Brian to assist in the writing of the album Apollo, music and amospheres and so, with some months in between in London playing jazz piano and guitar, he left for the USA and Canada. His first solo disc dates from 1984. Voices is an album of treated piano pieces and explores simple melodic lines and almost impressionist harmonies. At this time, Roger Eno began to give the first of many live performances.
1987 saw the release of his second solo work, Between Tides. This disc took a different approach to his first and relied on fewer treatments and a small chamber group of violins, lower strings, flutes, clarinet and vibraphone along with solo and accompianing piano. His third album, The Familiar, with Kate St. John combined elements of his previous work, treated textures and acoustic instruments and added songs. These songs are abstracted pieces deliberatley going against the obvious popular song form and as such treat the voice as a special instrument rather than a focal point. In 1993 he wrote the music for In A Room, a disc played by and dedicated to the Harmonia trio. The following year saw the release of mini cd Classical Music For Those With No Memory also played by Harmonia.
In 1994 saw another collaboration with Kate St. John, Bill Nelson, Laraaji and Mayumi Tachibana. Under the group title of Channel Light Vessel these five musicians spent twelve days improvising in Wiltshire, England and the results were mixed, added to and generally knocked into shape by Bill Nelson. The title of the record is Automatic. 1994 also sees the release of another solo disc Lost In Translation which uses more improvisation than his previous discs and also features, for the first time, his voice as a crucial element. Swimming was released in 1996 and mixes folk tunes with a panoply of beautifully ethereal songs of Romantic and pastoral hue.
Apart from these solo works, Roger Eno has collaborated with others on their personal projects, Michael Brook's Cobalt Blue being a particularly notable record. In this capacity of guest he has also appeared on Daniel Lanois' Aracadia, Nerve Net by Brian Eno, Flow Goes The Universe by Laraaji and Marco Polo by Alesini & Andreoni. On Damage, in collaboration with Lol Hammond, Eno brings a level of harmonic sophistication to the proceedings that is generally missing from the world of techno, not to mention a contemplative, almost pastoral sensibility. Hammond, for his part, takes what could have been almost soporific keyboard parts and muscles them up with electronic rhythm that never sounds artifically imposed. Collaborates while miles apart with Peter Hammill on The Appointed Hour. Roger has toured much of Europe and has perfomed in USA and the far East.

Links (Fand Music)
About this piece Roger Eno writes in his note: I am right handed. I write left handed music as it leaves my (other) better hand free to pursue other tasks whilst I play (the) music I have knocked out. I often play music and write letters simultaneously (as I am of these lines) and have invented a stationary needle that protrudes from my piano to enable me to crotchet scarves and mittens for the forthcoming winter.
My left handed music has allowed me to mix cakes, complete jigsaws, do crosswords and continue in the manufactory of pottery.
I hope you find this piece equally enabling. RE 2004

Go to top    Back to index

(Olga) Pozzi Escot 

Born: Lima, Peru 01.10.1933 

Escot received her first musical training in Lima and later graduated from the Juilliard School and the Musikhochschule, Hamburg. Escot is a professor at Wheaton College and the Graduate School at New England Conservatory.
Escot is coauthor of the acclaimed book Sonic Design, editor-in-chief since 1980 of the journal Sonus, president of the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, and director of Tufts University Talloires International Composers Conference.
She was chosen as one of the five remarkable women composers of the 20th century in 1975; that year the New York Philharmonic premiered her Fifth Symphony. Critics around the world have praised her compositions and the composer Virgil Thomson has called her the most interesting and original woman composer now functioning. 
Escot is author of numerous published articles and has just completed two new books, The Poetics of Simple Mathematics in Music and Oh How Wondrous: Hildegard von Bingen, Ten Essays.
Among Pozzi Escot's works are Three Poems of Rilke (String quartet nr. 4 with - reciter), Three Movements for piano and violin, Lamentus (Trilogy for the 6 million nr. 1 (obviously the Jewish Nazi victims) for 1 soprano, 2 violins, 2 cellos, piano and 3 percussionists with text by the composer), Christos (Trilogy nr. 2 for 3 violins, alto flute, contra bassoon or bassoon and percussion),  Sands (Symphony nr. 5 for 5 saxophones, electrical guitar, 4 bass drums, 17 violins and 19 double basses),  Fergus Are (for organ) and Missa Triste (for women choir and any three instruments).  

Interra II for piano left hand and prerecorded piano (on tape); 8 movements  1980 (Publications Contact International)
Commissioned by John Felice and dedicated to "Basia". The score says for the left hand or both.

Go to top    Back to index

Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup  Danish flute player, ophiclaide virtuoso and composer

Århus, 19.07.1803 - Esrum Lake, 08.09.1891

Read more about this remarkable composer in the appendix.

Concerto for a piano left alone  (1853) (lost)

Variations on Si non e vero - e ben trovato for piano and cymbals, both left hand alone.  (1848) (MS)

Four-part fugue for the left hand on the One Note Samba  (1856) (lost)

Go to top    Back to index

Heinrich (von) Eyken  German composer

Elberfeld, 19.06.1861 - Berlin, 28.08.1908

He studied the Leipzig Conservatory with organ teacher Benjamin Robert Papperitz (1826-1903)  who perhaps is only remembered today for saying: Compare Sullivan with Brahms - of the two, I think Sullivan had the greater natural musical talent - and later Eyken studied at the Berlin Academy with  Baron Heinrich von Herzogenberg in connection with whom Brahms' name comes up once again. (Many considered Herzogenberg as an amateur composer, but Brahms said of Herzogenberg that he knew everything and could do everything. Posterity has stamped him as a mediocre composer - posterity has much to learn.)
 

	Composer and teacher Baron Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg  (Graz, 10.06.1843-Wiuesbaden, 09.10.1900)

Eyken taught theory at the Royal High School in 1902. He is primarily remembered for his fine songs; among these are Judith's Song of Victory for contralto and orchestra, Icaros for baritone and orchestra, Schmied Scmerz, Song of the Walküre, Stille Tröstung (silent consolation) - but also male choruses, a Psalm and a Serenade. .His best achievement was Chorordnung (in four volumes with 324 choral numbers in strict style). Ha also wrote A Harmony Tutor.

Romanze op. 8   c.1894 (Raabe & Plowthow)

Go to top    Back to index

Edmund Eysler [Eisler]  Austrian composer

Vienna, 12.03.1874 - Vienna 04.10.1949

Eysler studied at the Vienna Conservatory where he was a pupil of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs (1842-1899) and his brother Robert Fuchs (1847-1927). 
During his early years he struggled to make a career as a serious composer while supporting himself as a piano teacher. The turning point - though not quite as expected - came when a well-meaning relative arranged for a meeting between Eysler and the librettist Ignaz Schnitzler (who wrote Zigeunerbaron for Johann Strauss). Schnitzler had intended a new book for Strauss but gave it to Eysler instead which resulted in the operetta Hexenspiegel, which was accepted with the publisher Weinberger but never produced.
The musical material was then used in another operetta Brüder Straubinger, which was Eysler's first success. After this followed Der lachende Ehemann (1913), Hanni geht tanzen (1916) and Die gold'ne Meisterin (1927) and many others. These operettas all became very popular in Germany and Austria but failed - with their very local colours - to reach a more international public.
Eysler's music was suppressed during the Nazi regime because of his Jewish origin - but surprisingly, he did not emigrate during the war. He  was hidden and protected by family and friends until 1945 when he returned to the public scene with renewed recognition in Vienna, as a loved and respected figure.

12 Etüden  1946 (Wiener Dreiklangverlag)

Go to top    Back to index