Author Description

Product Description After a slow choral introduction, the Elegy unfolds with a dark melody in the bass which suggests a sacred quality similar to Gregorian chant. In triple meter, the Totentanz is spun out of a perky repeated-note motive which pervades the piece. A motor rhythm sustains the energy until its majestic ending. The work is recorded on the Acoma CD ANGELICA GXD5735. Review "Totentanz a fascinating score with a motoric rhythm that drives the work forward." -- David Denton, Fanfare About the Author Like Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, PETER WARE (May 4, 1951) has fashioned a melodic and harmonic vocabulary both distinctive and attractive. Frequently drawing titles from North American landscapes, Ware seeks to climb inside his sources creating an organic synthesis into the musical texture. With driving rhythm and intense drama, his music evolves through long-breathed melodies, spun out in a free-flowing contrapuntal style. Ware's musical structures develop naturally from motivic cells that seem to grow and mutate in an evolutionary sense. The music emerges from a primitive sense and communicates directly with the listener on a purely spiritual level. For this reason, its meaning can be interpreted and understood emotionally, but the message is encoded outside the realm of language. Wares early musical training was in the church choir and under the piano tutelage of Florence Robertson in Beethoven's lineage. He studied composition at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Cincinnati and Yale University. His principal teachers include Krzysztof Penderecki, Scott Huston, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati and Toru Takemitsu. While many composers claim inspiration from the works and spirit of Beethoven, Ware's orchestra music is large in gesture with the heroic always surfacing and a sense of undeniable majesty. It communicates the universal awe, a speechlessness that can only