Name: Allegro amabile by Prof. Byron Adams
Duration: 6 min 49 s
Description: This Serenade for nine instruments was written in homage to my teacher at Cornell University, the great Czech-American composer Karel Husa. This recording is of the premiere performance by the Sinfonietta of Riverdale conducted by the superb American conductor, Mark Mandarano. At Serenade is available from the composer, pending publication.

The last piece of the first book of Aquarelles.

Aquarelles: VI.  Entr'acte (à l'Ombre rêveuse de C.-A.D.) - Completed

First movement of 'Invocation and Dance' (2002) performed by the Lontano Music Group, conducted by Matthew Cody in Pasadena, CA.

Invocation

The "Vision of Dame Julian of Norwich" is scored for soprano, string quartet, and piano, and is published by FatrockInk Music Publishers: http://www.fatrockink.com/076-1804.html

The Vision of Dame Julian of Norwich for soprano, string quartet and harp

I composed my "Trois Vieilles Chansons Françaises" for soprano Camille King. Each is a tribute to my love of France and her music. In "Sur le point d'Avignon" the "belles dames" (lovely ladies), "soldats" (soldiers) and, finally "musiciens" (musicians) come out for a bow. This score is unpublished at present but available from the composer.

Sur la pont d'Avignon

Marguerite, ma mie

Plaisir d'amour

Anton Arensky: "An der Quelle" from "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray" (1899)
Nadia Shpachenko, piano
Live Performance, May 4, 2016
Cal Poly Pomona University

Anton Arensky: The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (1899)

Charles Tomlinson Griffes_ Scherzo op.6 No 3, played bu Rudolph Reuter on Aeolian piano roll # 70308, Scanned and transcribed into digital form by Larry Doe, wstco.com. Re-recorded in 2016 by VViljanen (by permission)from the digitized copy of the original reproducing piano roll with virtual Grand Bluethner Model One, tone/sound modified/designed by VV.

Griffes: Scherzo op.6 No 3, played 1915 by Rudolph Reuter

This utterly beautiful and otherworldly performance of Byron Adams's "Ashes of Soldiers" for a cappella chorus is by the Eastman Chorale, William Weinert, conductor. This performance was recorded in Finney Chapel at Oberlin. The moving photograph is by Ally Goebert

	Text: Ashes of Soldiers


I chant this chant of my soul in the name of all dead soldiers.
Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, draw close,
Gather closer yet, but speak not,
Phantoms of countless lost,
Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,
Follow me ever – desert me not while I live.
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living – 
Sweet are the musical voices sounding, 
But, sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,
But love is not over – and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the battle arising,
Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride,
Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
O love.

Adapted by Byron Adams from “Ashes of Soldiers”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Byron Adams's "Ashes of Soldiers," performed by the Eastman Chorale at Oberlin

This Serenade for nine instruments was written in homage to my teacher at Cornell University, the great Czech-American composer Karel Husa. This recording is of the premiere performance by the Sinfonietta of Riverdale conducted by the superb American conductor, Mark Mandarano. At Serenade is available from the composer, pending publication.

Allegro amabile

Byron Adams (b. 1955) is a composer, conductor, and musicologist. His essays have appeared in journals such as 19th-Century Music, The Musical Quarterly, Music and Letters, twentieth-century music, and the John Donne Journal, and have been included in volumes such as The Cambridge Companion to Elgar (2004), Walt Whitman and Modern Music (Garland, 2000) The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (Cambridge, 2013) and The Music of Herbert Howells (Boydell, 2014) In 2000, the American Musicological Society presented him with the Philip Brett Award. In 2007, he was appointed scholar-in-residence for the Bard Music Festival, and edited the volume Edward Elgar and His World (Princeton, 2007). In addition, Adams has been a Visiting Fellow for the Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Studies, of the University of London, and is an Associate Editor of The Musical Quarterly. In 2010, he was named scholar-in-residence for the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles.


Adams’s music has been performed at the 26th “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music, the Leith Hill Festival in England, the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France (where he taught in the summer of 1992), and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra.  A recipient of numerous awards and grants, Adams’s music has been programmed in America by such ensembles as the West Virginia Symphony, Cantori New York, and the Riverdale Sinfonietta. His Serenade for nine instruments was performed during the 2013 Hot Air Festival of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Recent commissions include the Variationes alchemisticae for Chamber Music Palisades, Le Jardin Provençal, for Pacific Serenades, and Illuminations for piano, which was commissioned by the distinguished pianist Armen Guzelimian. In the summer of 2011, The Philharmonia Orchestra performed his Midsummer Music under the baton on Peter Oundjian; that same year the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra performed his Capriccio concertante, conducted by Grant Cooper. In 2013, the celebrated violist Nokathula Ngwenyama première d Adams’ Sonata for Viola and Piano; in March of 2014, the celebrated male voice ensemble Cantus sang the première of a score that they had commissioned, “Eventide,” which they featured on their annual Thanksgiving Day broadcast over NPR. In October of 2014, the distinguished ‘cellist Julie Albers gave four performances of Adams’s Concerto for violoncello and orchestra with Grant Cooper conducting the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra; in November celebrated pianists Alexander Peskanov and Rafal Lewandowski played the première performance of his Trittico for piano duet on a concert on the Bargemusic series in New York.


Allegro amabile

Prof. Byron Adams

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