Violin Lullabies

Description

Violin — The lullaby, cradle song, or slumber song was born before language. From prehistoric timesto the present, mothers have known instinctively that gently rocking their babies in theirarms while humming or singing a soft melody is a soothing and comforting inducement totranquility and sleep.The lullaby is a natural form of music that music historians have called the “genesis of all song.”The cradle song, as we know it today, is rooted in the folk traditions of all nations and is knownby as many names as there are languages in the modern world: Berceuse in French, Wiegenlied(cradle song) or Schlummerlied (slumber song) in German, Oror in Armenian, Vuggevise inNorwegian, and Nana in Spanish, among them.The earliest of these songs were passed down through the generations by oral tradition longbefore the advent of musical notation. In ancient Egypt and Greece, mothers might haveaccompanied their cradle songs on the lyre or harp, forerunners of contemporary instrumentssuch as the violin, the instrument many consider closest to the singing voice.The birth of the lullaby and the origin of its name are unknown. One of the earliest possibilitiesdates back to an ancient Roman nurses’ song of which only this fragment remains: “Lalla,Lalla, Lalla,/Aut dormi, aut lacta” (“either sleep, or nurse”). In more recent times, “Lullay,Lullay, litel child” appeared in a 1372 English manuscript, while references to cradle songs(“cradyl songes”) appeared in print as early as 1398.1. In its classical form, the Berceuse, or lullaby was pioneered by Frédéric Chopin in 1843,with his Berceuse for solo piano. The most famous example is, of course, Johannes Brahms’sWiegenlied or, as it is popularly known in English, “Brahms’s Lullaby.” Although he nevermarried, Brahms (1833–1897) fell in love many times. In 1858, he met the young Austriansinger Bertha Porubszky; she often sang folksongs to him, including a love song that stayedwith him for many years. Later, after Bertha had married Arthur Faber and had her secondchild, Hans, Brahms dedicated his Wiegenlied, based on a variation of that song, to Berthaand her husband “…for cheery general purpose use.” In a letter to the Fabers, Brahms wrote,“Frau Bertha will immediately see that I composed the cradle song yesterday [August 17,1868] specifically for your little one.” The American violinist Albert Spalding (1888–1953)is among many who have arranged Brahms’s Wiegenlied for violin and piano. When thetheme is repeated, Spalding has the violin play harmony as well as melody, so it sounds likethe single violinist is playing a duet.2. By the time the fourth of his five children, Antoine, was born in April 1894, Belgianviolinist, composer, and conductor, Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931) was known throughoutEurope as the “King of the Fiddlers.” Although Ysaÿe enjoyed fame, fortune, and goodfuture prospects, his home life was darkened by a cloud. His infidelity had driven a wedgebetween him and his wife Louise. Several months after Antoine’s birth, Ysaÿe was touringthe United States. During a stop at Niagara Falls, he wrote to Louise, “Tears come tomy eyes at the thought of Antoine … precious mite ... how I am dying to take him in myarms….” Ysaÿe put that longing into his poetic Rève d’Enfant (“Child’s Dream”), which hededicated “À mon p’tit Antoine.” Originally composed for violin with orchestra, Ysaÿe latertranscribed it for violin and piano, a version he published in 1901.3. Vladmir Rebikov (1866–1920) had his ear tuned to the future and developed musicalinnovations that were ahead of his time. He was one of the first composers to use the wholetone scale and tone clusters—a favorite technique of twentieth-century modernists, such asHenry Cowell and György Ligeti. Although Rebikov had been a leader in the Russian avantgarde, he is best remembered today for pleasant piano pieces that recall the lyrical expressionof Tchaikovsky and Grieg. Rebikov composed many short pieces for and about childrenwith titles such as “Children Skating” and “The Little Girl Rocking her Doll.” The Berceuseheard here comes from his Trois Morceaux (“Three Pieces”), Op. 7, composed in 1895.4. From the age of one, it was clear that music inhabited the soul of Amy (Cheney) Beach(1867–1944). Gifted with perfect pitch, she could hum forty tunes accurately, and in key,after she first heard them. At age two, she astounded visitors to the family home when shesuddenly sang Handel’s “See the Conquering Hero Comes” at the top of her child’s voice.Her mother, an amateur pianist and teacher, gave Amy her first lessons. When Amy waseight, her parents settled in Boston, enabling their only child to experience musical life andpursue piano studies. She made her concert debut as a pianist at sixteen. Composition wasas natural to her as the piano. She had begun to compose at the age of five; her earliest extantpiece is titled Mamma’s Waltz. Beach studied counterpoint for one year, but was otherwisea self-taught composer who spent many hours reading scores and learning orchestrationon her own. She was highly regarded in Boston circles and soon gained the attention ofDr. H.H.A. Beach, a Boston surgeon and amateur musician whom she married in 1885.He was forty-two, Amy was eighteen. They had no children. Beach composed her mostimportant works during the period of her marriage: a symphony, piano concerto, chambermusic, solo piano pieces, and many songs. After Dr. Beach’s death in 1910, Amy resumedher performing career. Composed in 1898, her Berceuse is the second of her Three Piecesfor Violin and Piano.5. Ludwig Schwab (1880–1943) met the Czech violinist Jan Kubelik when both were studentsat the Prague Conservatory. A violinist, violist, pianist, and occasional composer, Schwabspent fourteen years touring the world as Kubelik’s piano accompanist. In 1912, Schwabreceived the enormous sum of $8,000 from the wife of a wealthy New York broker toserve as the exclusive pianist for functions at her home. Schwab later became the violistwith the New York String Quartet, founded in 1919. After his years in the United States,Schwab settled in Australia, where he married pianist Merle Robertson. In 1903, his friendKubelik married a countess (and niece of a former Hungarian premier) who bore him eightchildren. Schwab dedicated his folk-influenced Berceuse écossaise (“Scottish Lullaby”) “ÀMadame Marianne Kubelik.” The opening melody has the sound of a traditional Scots tune,but its origin is not known.6. Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) was a composer, musicologist, conductor and violinist/violist who is best known today for his trilogy of orchestral tone poems: Fountains ofRome, Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals, composed between 1917 and 1928. He beganhis professional instrumental career as a violist in the Russian Imperial Theater in St.Petersburg. During his five months living there, he studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov. A scholar of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century music, Respighi drew uponthose periods for his own compositions. In The Birds, he freely adapted the music of fourseventeenth- and eighteenth-century composers. For his Ancient Airs and Dances, he drewupon Baroque guitar music and Renaissance lute pieces, including one by the father ofGalileo. In addition to orchestral music, Respighi composed opera, ballet, chamber music,and vocal/choral works. He originally conceived his Berceuse for string ensemble. It becamethe first of his Sei Pezzi (“Six Pieces”) for violin and piano, all of which he adapted, between1901 and 1905, from previous works. He completed the Six Pieces fifteen years beforehe married his former pupil, mezzo-soprano and composer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo (in1919). Their union produced no children. Elsa Respighi survived her husband by sixtyyears, dying a week before her 102nd birthday, in 1996.7. George Gershwin (1898–1937) was born in Brooklyn as the second child of Russianimmigrants. He developed an interest in music when he was ten years old. By the timehe was fifteen, he was working as a pianist plugging songs for a publisher on New York’sTin Pan Alley. He made piano rolls and worked as an arranger before his first commercialsuccess at nineteen with the piano piece Rialto Ripples. Two years later, Al Jolson madeGershwin’s Swanee famous, and the young composer was on his way to a career in bothpopular and classical music. He composed numerous Broadway musicals, often with hislyricist brother Ira, and later composed music for Hollywood films. In 1922, Gershwincomposed the one-act jazz opera Blue Monday. It fell flat with critics but was a forerunnerto Porgy and Bess. Two years later, Gershwin had his first classical success with Rhapsodyin Blue, followed by his Concerto in F, and An American in Paris. He composed Porgyand Bess in 1933 and 1934. It premiered in Boston and opened in New York in 1935.xa0The opera begins on Catfish Row, a poor tenement in Charleston, South Carolina. Thesultry night is alive with activity—a dice game, dancing, a pianist playing a honky-tonktune—but the mood shifts as Clara is heard singing the lullaby “Summertime” to herbaby. Despite their poverty, Clara’s words attempt to soothe her baby with words of hopeand the optimism that life is good: “the living is easy…you’ll spread your wings and taketo the sky…nothing can harm you with Daddy and Mammy standing by.” But life is notgood. Clara and her husband die, leaving the baby orphaned. After Clara’s death, Bessholds the baby and sings only the first verse of “Summertime,” up to the words “so hush,little baby, don’t you cry,” poignantly omitting “with Daddy and Mammy standing by.”Gershwin’s most popular song, “Summertime” has been recorded approximately 25,000times. Although Gershwin never married, he had a long-term relationship with composerKay Swift. Russian-born composer and violinist Igor Frolov arranged “Summertime” forviolin and piano as part of his 1937 Concert Fantasia on Themes from Gershwin’s Porgyand Bess. To make “Summertime” work as a stand-alone piece outside the larger Fantasia,pianist Matthew Hagle has added a few bars of introduction based on the theme that leadsinto the song in the opera.8. Although Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) is regarded as an important twentieth-centurycomposer, he produced relatively little music compared with other composers of hisgeneration. Greatly influenced by Spanish folk songs and dances, his music is alive withrhythms and sensuous in its evocation of night, gardens, and the spirit of Spain. Fallacomposed ballets, an opera, stage works, several orchestral works, songs, and instrumentalmusic. He lived in Paris for seven years, and then settled in Granada, Spain, living areclusive life, refusing to publicize his music or seek fame. He became disillusioned withFranco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War and, despite illness, immigrated to Argentina forthe last five years of his life. Falla never married. His Nana (“Lullaby”) is one of his Sietecanciones populaires españolas (“Seven Spanish Folksongs”) for voice and piano, completedin Paris in 1914. He dedicated the work to Madame Ida Godebsk (1872–1950), the Russianbornmuse to many artists, musicians, and writers in Paris. Polish violinist Paul Kochanski(1887–1934) published his arrangement of Nana for violin and piano in 1925.9. Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) was the youngest of six children born to a nonmusical family.When he was a boy, he loved to play the harmonium in a chapel attached to his village school.An elderly blind woman who heard him play recognized his talent and told Fauré’s father,who had the wisdom to allow his son to study music. After completing his studies, Fauréembarked on a career as an organist, eventually securing a post at the famous Church ofthe Madeleine in Paris. He began to achieve recognition as a composer in his early thirties.Fauré was a leader in promoting contemporary French music while setting new standardswith his songs, works for piano, and chamber music. Later, he taught composition at theParis Conservatory and became its director in 1905. In 1877, he fell in love with MarianneViardot, daughter of singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, but Marianne ended the relationship,plunging Fauré into depression. He married in 1883 and had two sons. One became anacclaimed biologist, the other a writer. Composed between 1878 and 1879, the Berceuse forviolin and piano is among Fauré’s earliest works.10. Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) studied violin as a child and dreamed of becoming a virtuoso.His instrumental talent was not equal to his dreams, however. Sibelius began studyinglaw in 1885, but gave it up within a year to pursue music. He furthered that education inBerlin and Vienna. His early music reflects his affinity for Finnish sagas and his profoundcommitment to Finnish nationalism. In 1899, he composed the work that made himfamous, his patriotic Finlandia. Sibelius was very attuned to nature, finding inspirationin the woods surrounding the rustic lakeshore home, “Ainola,” that he named for hiswife. A powerful and original voice in twentieth-century music, Sibelius composed sevensymphonies, numerous tone poems, chamber music, incidental music and a major violinconcerto. In 1892, Sibelius married Aino Järnefelt, whose siblings included two prominentpainters, a composer/conductor, and a writer. The Sibeliuses had six daughters between1893 and 1911. The Berceuse is the concluding work in Sibelius’s “Six Pieces” for violin andpiano, dating from 1917.11. Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821–1910) was a renaissance woman, born in Paris to a familyof Spanish musicians. Her father, Manuel Garcia, was a famous voice teacher; her motherJoaquina, a soprano, actress and teacher; and her elder sister, Maria Malibran (1808–1836),one of opera’s first superstars. Pauline showed remarkable intelligence and talent from anearly age, exhibiting a facility for languages and a gift for painting as well as music. Herfirst love was the piano. She had some instruction from Liszt and began playing concerts atfourteen. When she was fifteen, however, her mother closed the piano and started givingher singing lessons. Viardot-Garcia became one of the great singers of her day, promptingBrahms, Schumann, Fauré, and others to compose for her. After she retired from thestage at forty-one, her friend Clara Schumann encouraged her to embark on a career asa virtuoso pianist. Viardot-Garcia focused instead on composition and teaching. She hadmarried the French theater impresario Louis Viardot in 1840 and had four children withhim. Her daughter Louise was a composer, singer, and teacher; her son Paul, a violinist,composer, conductor, and writer. Viardot-Garcia composed instrumental music, morethan 100 songs, operettas, and, at the age of eighty-three, a grand opera. Her Berceuse isfrom her Six Morceaux pour Piano et Violon (“Six Pieces for Piano and Violin”), composedin 1868 and dedicated to her son Paul.12. The music of American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) reflects his interest inEastern and Near East cultures and his own mysticism and spirituality. Born in Somerville,Massachusetts, Hovhaness began composing seriously in his teens. He was only fourteenwhen his first opera was performed. He studied at the New England Conservatory, butunlike the majority of composers of his generation, he was drawn not to Western ideasbut to the East: to India, Arab nations, Japan, Armenia, and Greece. He traveled to theselands, studying their music, philosophies, and societies, and created a body of distinctiveand exotic compositions that “assimilates the music of many cultures.” Hovhaness wasa prolific composer of sixty-seven symphonies, numerous concertos, chamber music,orchestral works, and instrumental music that features instruments not commonly heardin the West. Hovhaness married six times but had only one daughter, Jean Christina(Nandi), a harpsichordist. His Oror (“Lullaby”) for violin and piano is a very early work,possibly begun when he was only eleven years old and revised when he was fifteen.13. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) cut a path through music that ignited controversy, rage, evena near-riot, but his once-radical ideas became quickly absorbed into the fiber of twentiethcenturymusic. In 1913, his Rite of Spring ballet caused pandemonium at its premierewhen the audience, unaccustomed to its pulsing rhythms, dissonances, and unexpectedoutbursts of sound, shouted and stamped their feet in anger. The scene was very differenttwo years earlier at the premiere of The Firebird, a complete success that made Stravinskyfamous overnight. The Firebird is based on a Russian folk tale about a magical bird with“plumage of fire.” In the ballet, the Firebird is half-woman and half-bird, and rescues aprince held captive by the evil Kashchei. The Firebird lulls Kashchei and his followersto sleep with her lullaby, allowing the prince to escape. Stravinsky created three differentorchestral suites from the ballet. The second and most popular includes the hypnoticBerceuse. In 1906, Stravinsky had married his cousin Katerina with whom he had fourchildren. He arranged the Berceuse for violin and piano in 1929 and dedicated it to PaulKochanski.14. Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) studied composition with Fauré at the Paris Conservatory.Despite their age difference, the two became good friends. Born in the Basque region ofFrance, Ravel’s parents encouraged him to pursue his musical talents as both pianist andcomposer. In the early 1900s, he joined the Society of Apaches, a group of composers,including Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla, who considered themselves outcasts becauseof their progressive tendencies. Ravel welcomed new ideas and was later influenced byAmerican jazz. He never married and was not known to have had relationships otherthan his deep commitment to music. In 1922, a request to compose a piece to honorFauré resulted in Ravel’s Berceuse, which he also dedicated to Claude Roland-Manuel, thenewborn son of Ravel’s friend, the music critic Alexis Roland-Manuel, who later becameRavel’s biographer. The piece is called Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré (“Lullaby onxa0the name Gabriel Fauré”) because the first twelve notes spell out Fauré’s name, using thesystem whereby after G, H=A, I=B . . . N=G, and again, O=A, P=B . . . U=G, to create thebeginning: G-A-B-D-B-E-E F-A-G-D-E.15. Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was born in England to an American father and Germanmother. She studied violin at the Royal Academy of Music, composition at the RoyalCollege of Music, and viola with Lionel Tertis. Clarke enjoyed a successful career as aviolist, performing in ensembles and orchestras and touring as a soloist, often with cellistMay Mukle, in England, Europe, and the United States. She was among the first six womento become full members of a professional London orchestra. Clarke’s earliest compositionsdate from 1907. She composed chamber music, songs, and choral works. Although sheadmitted being “influenced by many schools” of music, she developed her own distinctivevoice, variously described as “ravishing,” “exotic,” and “emotionally intense.” Clarke visitedthe United States many times but always considered herself “British.” She eventually settledin New York, where she became reacquainted with James Friskin, a composer, pianist, andfriend from the Royal College of Music. They married in 1944 when both were in theirlate fifties. Clarke composed many lullabies for violin or viola and piano. The one in thiscollection dates from 1918.16. Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, like Brahms, composed vocal versions of the lullabythat have been transcribed for violin and piano. Schubert (1797–1828) was a prolificcomposer, whose output includes some 1,000 works, including over 600 songs, despitehis early death at the age of thirty-one. Schubert breathed new life into the art song andimbued it with a sensitivity and melody that make it ripe for violin transcription. HisWiegenlied, composed in November 1816, is the second of three songs, Op. 98. The originof the text, “Sleep, sleep, gracious, sweet boy, /softly rocked by your mother’s hand…” isuncertain, although it is sometimes attributed to German poet Matthias Claudius. TheRussian-born violinist Mischa Elman (1891–1967) transcribed this piece for violin around1910, when he first began arranging music. Elman, who was also a fine pianist, dedicatedthe transcription to Percy Kahn, his friend and accompanist for many years.17. Robert Schumann (1810–1856) composed his Albumblätter (“Album Leaves”) for solo pianoover a period of thirteen years, from 1832 to 1845, and dedicated it to his young daughtersMarie, Elsie and Julie. Album Leaves contains twenty pieces of which Schlummerlied(“Slumber Song”) is the sixteenth. Schumann married pianist and composer Clara Wieckin 1840, after a contentious legal battle with her father, Schumann’s former piano teacherFrederick Wieck. He did not want his daughter to “throw herself away on a pennilesscomposer.” Within months of the marriage, Schumann composed more than 160 songs.The next year, 1841, he produced the first two of his four symphonies. Although Schumanncontinued to compose prodigiously, he was not earning enough money to support Claraand their seven children. So Clara’s fees as a touring concert pianist constituted the family’sprinciple source of income. Schumann’s career as a composer was cut short by the mentalillness that claimed his life in 1856, at the age of forty-six. The Hungarian violinist andcomposer Hans Sitt (1850–1922) arranged Schlummerlied for violin and piano.18. The music of Lucien Durosoir (1878–1955) might have vanished had his manuscriptsnot been found and brought to light by his son. Prior to World War I, Durosoir was asuccessful violinist whose playing “mesmerized” audiences with its nobility and beauty.Like many men of his generation, Durosoir fought in the war, witnessing “the ultimatein horror,” as he described it to his mother. It was during this time that he began his firstattempts at composition, convinced that his efforts would become “fruitful.” Although hesurvived fifty-five months as a soldier, he was never the same. An accident in 1921 markedthe end of his concert career. He turned his attention to composition, retreating fromParis to relative isolation in a French village where he composed mainly for orchestra andchamber ensembles. His Berceuse from Cinq Aquarelles (“Five Watercolors”) for violin andpiano is an early work dating from 1920.19. Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) received his first musical instruction at the age of six fromhis mother, an amateur pianist. He composed his first piece Variations on a GermanMelody at nine. By the time he was fifteen, music was pouring from him. The violinistand composer Ole Bull immediately recognized the teenager’s gifts. According to Grieg,Bull “commanded” his parents to send him to the Leipzig Conservatory. Most of Grieg’searly compositions were for piano or voice and piano. His first major orchestral work, thebeloved Piano Concerto in A minor, dates from 1868, the year after he married his firstcousin, Nina Hagerup, a lyric soprano. Neither set of parents approved. The Griegs oftenperformed together to great acclaim. They had only one child, a daughter, Alexandra, whodied from meningitis a year after her birth. Grieg’s Vuggevise is the first of eight worksfor piano in his “Lyric Pieces, Book II,” dating from 1883. It was arranged for violin andpiano by Hans Sitt.20. Mikhail Antsev (1865–1945) was a composer, choral conductor, teacher, author, and editorborn in Smolensk, Russia. He studied composition with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov at theSt. Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1894. Antsev settled in Vitebsk,Belarus in 1896. There he taught choral singing. He also served as editor of the localnewspaper from 1905 to 1912. He was a co-founder of the Vitebsk People’s Conservatoryin 1918, where he lectured on music history and conducted the choir. Antsev authoredtextbooks and a music dictionary. In addition to his own compositions, he collectedBelarusian folk songs. His Berceuse dates from 1899.21. Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed his Wiegenlied for voice and piano on August22, 1899, during a family holiday in Bavaria. In 1894, Strauss married soprano Paulinede Ahna, with whom he had one child, a son Franz. The song, however, was a gift of loveand gratitude to Frau Marie Rösch, the daughter of Strauss’s friend Alexander Ritter, aviolinist to whom Strauss owed much of his success. When Strauss was twenty-one, Ritterconvinced him to drop the conservative style that had marked his music up to that time.As a result, Strauss went on to light the musical world with his incandescent brilliance,bringing music into the twentieth century. Wiegenlied became one of Strauss’s mostpopular songs; he orchestrated it in 1916. The uncredited arranger of the violin versionlikely is Strauss himself: the violin arrangement and original song were both published in1899, and it was common practice at the time for song composers to write instrumentalversions themselves.22. A violin prodigy, Camillo Sivori (1815–1895) was the only pupil of the great Paganini.The master was so impressed by the child that he composed a concertino and six sonatasfor Sivori. Although Paganini wanted Sivori to accompany him on his travels, Sivori’sparents refused because they felt the boy was too young. He had a highly successful careeras a touring artist, with travels throughout Europe, the United States, and South America.Sivori eventually married and had one known son, Federico, who died in 1916. Sivori’scompositional output, largely forgotten today, includes two violin concertos and numerouspieces for violin. A late work, the Berceuse remains his best-known composition.23. Victor Béraud was the pseudonym of Englishman G. Frank Blackbourne, whose PetiteReine, Op. 24, for piano was arranged for violin and piano by Edward Elgar in 1886.Blackbourne is an obscure figure today; not even the exact year of his birth is known,although it appears he was born in 1840 in Worcestershire, where Elgar also lived. An1886 newspaper review of Petite Reine (“Little Queen”) called Elgar’s arrangement, “aremarkably meritorious one.” Another report, a year later, praised it as “unconventional.…The ordinary character of the berceuse, with its sentimental theme above a rushingscript, had been departed from almost entirely, and we have an elegant piece.” PerhapsBlackbourne/Béraud is so little known for his music because his main career appears to havebeen as an actor in various English touring companies, performing mainly in comedies.Elgar, an acquaintance of Blackbourne, wrote to him on March 23, 1886: “Please considerthe arrangement of your Berceuse entirely your own property; I, of course, always intendedthat.” Little of Blackbourne’s music is available today: the song Primroses and Violets andseveral piano pieces published under his Victor Béraud pseudonym, a name perhaps adoptedin an effort to keep his two careers separate. His last known composition was published in1911. Elgar was a little known composer of increasing promise when he arranged Petite Reine.The arrangement was not published until 1907, when Elgar was famous.24. Max Reger (1873–1916) was a younger contemporary of Strauss whose music movedbetween the abstract and academic. A pianist, organist, conductor, and teacher, he was aprolific composer whom scholars and musicians credit with “emancipating dissonance” toa level that enabled Arnold Schoenberg to develop serialism. His gentle, lyrical Wiegenliedgives no hint of the abstract qualities that later influenced Bartók, Berg, Hindemith,Prokofiev, and Schoenberg. Although Reger’s music is heard relatively rarely today, thetheologian and physician Albert Schweitzer declared, “The significance of Reger’s workwill only be appreciated in the future.” After Reger married in 1902, he and his wife Elsaadopted their daughters Christa in 1907 and Lotti in 1908. The Wiegenlied is the firstpiece in Reger’s three-movement Suite for Violin and Piano, composed between 1902 and1904, published posthumously in 1917 as his Op. 79d.25. To the extent that Alexander Iljinsky (1859–1920) is remembered at all today, it is for hisBerceuse, which is the seventh movement of his orchestral Suite Noure et Anitra, composedbetween 1893 and 1894. Iljinsky studied at the Berlin and St. Petersburg Conservatories.He taught at the Moscow Philharmonic Society School of Music and Drama until 1899,when he resigned to concentrate on private teaching. Iljinsky also wrote and edited severalbooks. While his music has found little appeal among audiences today, an excerpt fromhis opera, The Fountain of Bakhchisaray was used in the 1938 film, Flash Gordon’s Trip toMars. His Berceuse must have been very popular in its day because it is found in numerouscollections. The Scottish composer and music collector Alfred Edward Moffat (1863–1950)arranged Iljinky’s Berceuse for violin and piano.26. Xavier Montsalvatge (1912–2002) represents the rich, colorful, and evocative tradition oftwentieth-century Spanish music, enhanced by his own innovative ideas, including theuse of West Indian idioms, Cuban habaneras, and jazz. Born into a family of businessmen,artists, and writers in the Catalonia region of Spain, Monsalvatge studied music inBarcelona. Although he initially planned a career as a violinist, composition soon absorbedhim and continued to do so from his early twenties until his death at the age of ninety.Montsalvatge was also a music journalist and teacher. In 1945, he composed the songCanción de cuna para dormer a un negrito (“Cradle song for a little black boy”) as partof his Five Black Songs for voice and piano. He later orchestrated the song and producedother arrangements, including Nana for violin and piano in 1957. Montsalvatge also wrotemusic for and about children, such as his “magic opera” based on the Puss-in-Boots fairytale and his “Songs for Children” settings of children’s poems by Federico Garcia Lorca.Montsalvatge married Elena Pérez de Olaguer in 1947 and had two children with her,Xavier and Yvette.27. Betty Jackson King (1928–1994) was an American composer, pianist, arranger, educator, andadvocate for Black musicians. Her mother, Gertrude Jackson, taught music at the SouthernChristian Institute in Mississippi, where King first heard the spirituals that influenced hercompositions. After the family returned to Gertrude’s native Chicago, Betty studied at theChicago Musical College of Roosevelt University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree inpiano. She went on to earn her master’s degree in composition with her sacred opera Saul ofTarsus, set to a libretto by her father Frederick, a minister. The Jackson family was active inthe Chicago community, forming a center for the welfare and education of young peoplein music, dance, and spiritual endeavors. Betty combined with her string playing motherand sister Catherine to form the Jacksonian Trio, which toured the nation. Betty pursueda teaching career, first in the Chicago public schools and later as a professor at DillardUniversity in New Orleans. She married in the 1950s and had a daughter. She eventuallysettled in Wildwood, New Jersey, where she returned to teaching in the public schools whilecontinuing to compose, perform, and play an active role in the community. In an effort tofurther improve opportunities for Black musicians, she became President of the NationalAssociation of Negro Musicians in 1982. In addition to spirituals and arrangements,Betty Jackson King composed instrumental works, songs, three operas, a cantata, and arequiem. Her Lullaby is scored for flute and piano. Rachel Barton Pine adapted it for violin. Following the birth of her first child, violinist Rachel Barton Pine went looking for a collection of lullabies written for violin and piano. After finding nothing in existence, she set about gathering sheet music and recording her own version with pianist Matthew Hagle. This new collection celebrates the beauty of new life and parenthood with familiar tunes and new discoveries by composers such as Brahms, Ravel, Faure, and Gershwin. Meticulously edited, these are short and elegant while remaining compositionally sophiscated, perfect for intermediate or advanced violinists. As an additional resource, the collection contains downloadable piano accompaniments and tracks performed by Matthew Hagle.