Paul Griffiths (writer)
Encyclopedia
Paul Griffiths is a British music critic, novelist and librettist
. He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th century operas, Tan Dun
's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter
's What Next?
.
town of Bridgend
to Fred and Jeanne Griffiths. He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry from Lincoln College, Oxford
, and from 1971 worked as a freelance music critic. He joined the editorial staff of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1973 and in 1982 became the chief music critic for The Times
, a post which he held for ten years. From 1992 to 1996, he was a music critic for The New Yorker
, and from 1997–2005, for The New York Times
. A collection of his musical criticism for these and other periodicals was published in 2005 as The substance of things heard: writings about music, Volume 31 of Eastman Studies in Music. He was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, when he also won a Deems Taylor Award for his notes for Miller Theatre.
In 1978, he also began writing reference books and monograph
s on classical music and composers starting with Modern music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez and Boulez (Volume 16 of Oxford Studies of Composers). Although the majority of these publications have dealt with 20th century composers and their music, he has also written more general works on classical music, including The String Quartet: A History (1985), The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (2005), and A Concise History of Western Music (2006).
In 1989, Griffiths published his first novel, Myself and Marco Polo: A Novel of Changes, which went on to win the 1990 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
for the best first novel in the Europe and South Asia region. The novel is a fictional version of Marco Polo
's memoirs which he dictated to Rustichello da Pisa
, his fellow inmate in the Genoese
prison where he had been incarcerated upon his return from China. (Rustichello is the "myself" of the title.) Two years later, he published his second novel, The Lay of Sir Tristram, a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult
legend interjected with the narrator's own love story and his meditations on the legend's fluctuating influence and interpretation over time. Griffiths' most recent novel, let me tell you (2008), uses a constrained writing
technique similar to those employed by the avant-garde Oulipo
group. In let me tell you, Ophelia
tells her story in a first-person narrative devised by Griffiths using only the 481 word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare's Hamlet
.
Griffiths' first excursion as an opera librettist
was The Jewel Box
which used music from Mozart's unfinished operas Lo sposo deluso
and L'oca del Cairo
as well as several arias and ensembles that he had written for insertion into operas by other composers. The story-line is an imagined reconstruction of a pantomime in which Mozart and Aloysia Weber
are said to have taken part in 1783. The Jewel Box premiered in 1991 in Nottingham
performed by Opera North
and conducted by Elgar Howarth
. It was subsequently performed in the United States by Skylight Opera Theatre
(1993), Wolf Trap Opera (1994), Chicago Opera Theater
(1996), and New Jersey State Opera
(1996). It was revived by Bampton Classical Opera
in 2006 for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. His second work of this type, Aeneas in Hell, was set to songs and dance music from Purcell
's theatre scores and was devised as a "prequel" to the composer's 1689 opera, Dido and Aeneas
. It premiered in 1995 at the University of Maryland
's Ulrich Recital Hall conducted by Kenneth Slowik.
Griffiths' libretto for Tan Dun
's Marco Polo
was his first for an opera by a living composer. In the late 1980s Tan Dun has been commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival
to compose an original opera. As he recounted in a 1997 interview:
Marco Polo finally received its world premiere in 1996, not in Edinburgh as originally planned, but in Munich
at the Munich Biennale
. Although Griffiths' libretto was not directly related to or based on his novel, the first line of the opera, "I have not told one half of what I saw", was the novel's final statement. Griffiths' next commission as a librettist was for Elliott Carter
's only opera, What Next?
. The work premiered in 1999 at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
who also conducted its US premiere in a concert performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
the following year.
In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those for Stravinsky
's Histoire du soldat
, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
, and Puccini
's La bohème
. He has also written poetic texts to accompany other classical music genres. His there is still time, subtitled "scenes for speaking voice and cello", is a spoken narration to accompany music by the cellist and avant-garde composer, Frances-Marie Uitti
. As in his later novel, let me tell you, Griffiths' text uses Ophelia's vocabulary in Hamlet. The work was recorded in 2003 by ECM Records
with Griffiths himself as the narrator. A more recent collaboration of this type was The General, which premiered in Montreal
on 16 January 2007, with Kent Nagano
conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
. The General, a concert piece for symphony orchestra, narrator, soprano
and chorus was conceived by Nagano as a tribute the Canadian General Roméo Dallaire
. Griffiths' narrative texts, inspired by Dallaire's attempts to stop the Rwandan genocide
, are interwoven with the music from Beethoven's complete Egmont
score and his Opferlied (Song of Sacrifice).
Paul Griffiths' first marriage ended in divorce. In 1998, he married the short-story writer, Anne West.
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
. He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th century operas, Tan Dun
Tan Dun
Tan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.-Early life in China:...
's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
's What Next?
What Next? (opera)
What Next? is the only opera to date by Elliott Carter. The libretto is by Paul Griffiths. It was written in 1997-8 on a commission from Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and premiered there on September 16, 1999 in a fully staged production conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The U.S...
.
Biography and career
Paul Griffiths was born in the WelshWales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
town of Bridgend
Bridgend
Bridgend is a town in the Bridgend County Borough in Wales, west of the capital, Cardiff. The river crossed by the original bridge, which gave the town its name, is the River Ogmore but the River Ewenny also passes to the south of the town...
to Fred and Jeanne Griffiths. He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry from Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...
, and from 1971 worked as a freelance music critic. He joined the editorial staff of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1973 and in 1982 became the chief music critic for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, a post which he held for ten years. From 1992 to 1996, he was a music critic for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, and from 1997–2005, for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. A collection of his musical criticism for these and other periodicals was published in 2005 as The substance of things heard: writings about music, Volume 31 of Eastman Studies in Music. He was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, when he also won a Deems Taylor Award for his notes for Miller Theatre.
In 1978, he also began writing reference books and monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s on classical music and composers starting with Modern music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez and Boulez (Volume 16 of Oxford Studies of Composers). Although the majority of these publications have dealt with 20th century composers and their music, he has also written more general works on classical music, including The String Quartet: A History (1985), The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (2005), and A Concise History of Western Music (2006).
In 1989, Griffiths published his first novel, Myself and Marco Polo: A Novel of Changes, which went on to win the 1990 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
for the best first novel in the Europe and South Asia region. The novel is a fictional version of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
's memoirs which he dictated to Rustichello da Pisa
Rustichello da Pisa
Rustichello da Pisa, also known as Rusticiano and Rustigielo , was an Italian romance writer best known for cowriting Marco Polo's autobiography while they were in prison together in Genoa. A native Pisan, he may have been captured by the Genoese at the Battle of Meloria in 1284, amid a conflict...
, his fellow inmate in the Genoese
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
prison where he had been incarcerated upon his return from China. (Rustichello is the "myself" of the title.) Two years later, he published his second novel, The Lay of Sir Tristram, a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult
The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...
legend interjected with the narrator's own love story and his meditations on the legend's fluctuating influence and interpretation over time. Griffiths' most recent novel, let me tell you (2008), uses a constrained writing
Constrained writing
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form....
technique similar to those employed by the avant-garde Oulipo
Oulipo
Oulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...
group. In let me tell you, Ophelia
Ophelia
Ophelia is a fictional character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet.-Plot:...
tells her story in a first-person narrative devised by Griffiths using only the 481 word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
.
Griffiths' first excursion as an opera librettist
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
was The Jewel Box
The Jewel Box
The Jewel Box is a pasticcio opera constructed by Paul Griffiths out of various pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Its mostly English libretto by Paul Griffiths includes new translations of most of the Italian-language texts of the musical numbers. It was premiered by Opera North at the Theatre...
which used music from Mozart's unfinished operas Lo sposo deluso
Lo sposo deluso
Lo sposo deluso, ossia La rivalità di tre donne per un solo amante is a two act opera buffa, K. 430, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between 1783 and 1784...
and L'oca del Cairo
L'oca del Cairo
L'oca del Cairo is an opera buffa in three acts, K. 422, begun by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in July 1783 but abandoned in October.The complete three act libretto by Giovanni Battista Varesco remains....
as well as several arias and ensembles that he had written for insertion into operas by other composers. The story-line is an imagined reconstruction of a pantomime in which Mozart and Aloysia Weber
Aloysia Weber
Maria Aloysia Louise Antonia Weber was a German soprano, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.-Biography:...
are said to have taken part in 1783. The Jewel Box premiered in 1991 in Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
performed by Opera North
Opera North
Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...
and conducted by Elgar Howarth
Elgar Howarth
Elgar Howarth is an English conductor and composer.Howarth was educated in the 1950s at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music , where his fellow students included the composers Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, and the...
. It was subsequently performed in the United States by Skylight Opera Theatre
Skylight opera theatre
The Skylight Opera Theatre is a professional light opera company located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded in 1959, Skylight performs in the 358-seat Cabot Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee...
(1993), Wolf Trap Opera (1994), Chicago Opera Theater
Chicago Opera Theater
The Chicago Opera Theater is an opera company that was founded as the Chicago Opera Studio in 1974 by Alan Stone to give vocal students performance experience, although it has grown into a professional opera company...
(1996), and New Jersey State Opera
New Jersey State Opera
The New Jersey State Opera is an opera company based in Newark, New Jersey. It was established in 1964 as the Opera Theater of Westfield, and shortly after opening Alfredo Silipigni was hired as Artistic Director. The name was changed to the Opera Theatre of New Jersey in 1965, and in 1968 the...
(1996). It was revived by Bampton Classical Opera
Bampton Classical Opera
Bampton Classical Opera is an opera company based in Bampton, Oxfordshire specialising in the production of lesser known opera from the Classical period...
in 2006 for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. His second work of this type, Aeneas in Hell, was set to songs and dance music from Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
's theatre scores and was devised as a "prequel" to the composer's 1689 opera, Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest's girls' school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid...
. It premiered in 1995 at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
's Ulrich Recital Hall conducted by Kenneth Slowik.
Griffiths' libretto for Tan Dun
Tan Dun
Tan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.-Early life in China:...
's Marco Polo
Marco Polo (opera)
Marco Polo is an opera by the Chinese-born composer Tan Dun set to an English libretto by Paul Griffiths. It premiered in Munich on 7 May 1996. Described variously as an "opera within an opera" and a "fantasia on an epic journey", the multi-layered storyline is loosely based on the journey of Marco...
was his first for an opera by a living composer. In the late 1980s Tan Dun has been commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
to compose an original opera. As he recounted in a 1997 interview:
I first tried to write the libretto myself, about something from myself, and wasn't getting anywhere. Then someone, in 1990, said why not read Paul Griffiths's novel Myself and Marco Polo? I read it and phoned him at his home near Oxford. And he agreed to write a libretto.
Marco Polo finally received its world premiere in 1996, not in Edinburgh as originally planned, but in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
at the Munich Biennale
Munich Biennale
The Munich Biennale is an opera festival in the city of Munich. The full German name is Internationales Festival für neues Musiktheater, literally: International Festival for New Music Theater. The biennial festival was created in 1988 by Hans Werner Henze and is held in even-numbered years over...
. Although Griffiths' libretto was not directly related to or based on his novel, the first line of the opera, "I have not told one half of what I saw", was the novel's final statement. Griffiths' next commission as a librettist was for Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
's only opera, What Next?
What Next? (opera)
What Next? is the only opera to date by Elliott Carter. The libretto is by Paul Griffiths. It was written in 1997-8 on a commission from Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and premiered there on September 16, 1999 in a fully staged production conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The U.S...
. The work premiered in 1999 at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....
who also conducted its US premiere in a concert performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...
the following year.
In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those for Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's Histoire du soldat
Histoire du soldat
Histoire du soldat , composed by Igor Stravinsky, is a 1918 theatrical work "to be read, played, and danced" . The libretto, which is based on a Russian folk tale, was written in French by the Swiss universalist writer C.F. Ramuz...
, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, and Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
's La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
. He has also written poetic texts to accompany other classical music genres. His there is still time, subtitled "scenes for speaking voice and cello", is a spoken narration to accompany music by the cellist and avant-garde composer, Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti is composer and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music. She was born in Chicago to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie...
. As in his later novel, let me tell you, Griffiths' text uses Ophelia's vocabulary in Hamlet. The work was recorded in 2003 by ECM Records
ECM (record label)
ECM is a record label founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a wide variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres...
with Griffiths himself as the narrator. A more recent collaboration of this type was The General, which premiered in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
on 16 January 2007, with Kent Nagano
Kent Nagano
__FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...
conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
Montreal Symphony Orchestra
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is a symphony orchestra based in Montréal, Québec, Canada, with Montréal's Place des Arts as its home.-History:...
. The General, a concert piece for symphony orchestra, narrator, soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
and chorus was conceived by Nagano as a tribute the Canadian General Roméo Dallaire
Roméo Dallaire
Lieutenant-General Roméo Antonius Dallaire, is a Canadian senator, humanitarian, author and retired general...
. Griffiths' narrative texts, inspired by Dallaire's attempts to stop the Rwandan genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
, are interwoven with the music from Beethoven's complete Egmont
Egmont (Beethoven)
Egmont, Op. 84, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine additional pieces for soprano, male narrator and full symphony orchestra...
score and his Opferlied (Song of Sacrifice).
Paul Griffiths' first marriage ended in divorce. In 1998, he married the short-story writer, Anne West.
Sources
- CBC NewsCBC NewsCBC News is the department within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on CBC television, radio and online services...
, "Montreal Symphony premieres Dallaire tribute", 18 January 2007. Accessed 30 August 2009. - Cummings, Paul (ed.), "Griffths, Paul", International Who's Who in Classical Music, Europa Publications, 2003, p. 299. ISBN 978-1-85743-174-2.
- Grimbert, Joan T., Tristan and Isolde: A casebook, Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-93910-0
- Kennedy, Michael and Bourne, Joyce (eds), "Griffths, Paul", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, 5th edition, Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-920383-3. Accessed online 30 August 2009.
- Kerner, Leighton, "Mind voyager", The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, 11 November 1997. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009. - Kimberley, Nick, "North by East-West", The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, 15 November 1998. Accessed 30 August 2009. - McLellan, JosephJoseph McLellanJoseph Duncan McLellan was The Washington Posts music critic for more than three decades as well as a chess and book reviewer.Born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1929 and grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor's degree in French from Boston College in 1951 and his master's...
, "Aeneas in Hell: The Sequel", Washington Post, 20 November 1995. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009. - New York Times, "Anne West and Paul Griffiths", 13 December 1998, Section 9, p. 10. Accessed 30 August 2009.
- Rich, AlanAlan RichAlan Rich was an American music critic who served on the staff of many newspapers and magazines on both coasts. Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, he first studied medicine at Harvard University before turning to music...
, "Dark Elegies", LA Weekly, 30 June 2005. Accessed 30 August 2009. - Tommasini, AnthonyAnthony Tommasini-Early years:Tommasini was born in Brooklyn around 1948 and raised on Long Island. He was admitted to Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music, but chose to matriculate at Yale University in order to obtain a broader liberal arts education...
, "6 Characters in Search of a Dimension, in Different Operatic Tempos", New York Times, 10 December 2007. Accessed 30 August 2009. - Tonkin, Boyd, "Singing in the chains: a tongue-tied heroine", The Independent, 16 January 2009. Accessed 30 August 2009.
External links
- Selected writings by Paul Griffiths for The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
- "How Music Spins a Web Of Meaning" (1 February 1998)
- "Of the Mind And Artists Who Lose It" (26 July 1998)
- "Iannis Xenakis, Composer Who Built Music on Mathematics" (5 February 2001)
- "Facing Challenges of Greatness and Mortality" (18 February 2001)
- "A Hymn To England's Divinity" (4 March 2001)
- "To Listen, Perchance To Sleep" (14 April 2002)
- "Luciano Berio, Composer of Mind and Heart" (28 May 2003)
- "Gyorgy Ligeti, Central-European Composer of Bleakness and Humor", (6 June 2006)