Interviews with Roy Harris and Nicholas Slonimsky

From the collection of Karl Miller


Interview with Nicholas Slonimsky
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9ql78rvokqrjx2u/Slominsky.zip

Interview with Roy Harris
http://www.mediafire.com/download/xcrq8nx686eo9g2/01__Roy_Harris_interview_Harris%2C_Roy_Roy_Harris_Intervier_with_William_Malloch_American_20th_Century.mp3

Music of Francis Poulenc III



Poulenc divides the liturgical text of the Gloria into six sections that are organized rather in pairs. The second and fourth movements reveal Poulenc in his lighthearted mood, while the third and fifth are pious in their bearing. These are framed by the first movement, in which a positive spirit is ennobled by a degree of monumentality, and the sixth, which makes use of both of these contrasting attitudes and recalls some music from the opening section, which provides a nice balance to what the composer described as “a large choral symphony.”

Not infrequently, the Gloria bespeaks Poulenc’s admiration of Stravinsky, who had been the lodestar for all the composers of Les Six when they came of age circa 1920. The opening movement has something of that earlier flavor, its forthright neo-classicism here extending to double-dotted, maestoso fanfare figures that summon up the idea of a French Baroque overture. The two measures (scored for winds alone) that conclude the orchestra’s introduction could almost have been plucked from Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments. These herald the entry of the chorus, which wends its way fluidly through a thicket of harmonic centers, always preserving a tone of jubilation.

Already in the first movement Poulenc has doled out his music in relatively short phrases. This tendency becomes even more pronounced in the playful “Laudamus te.” The brief phrases are constantly revisited and reassembled, though Poulenc often injects slight changes are they recur, which keeps performers on their toes and listeners on the alert.

Small cells of music continue to be the norm throughout the piece. In the “Domine Deus” movement, their material is perfectly in tune with the prayerful posture of the soprano soloist. If the music up to this point has reminded us of an earlier, somewhat obstreperous Poulenc, this movement could only be a work of his more sobering maturity. After this expanse of entreaty, the “Domine fili unigenite” breaks forth with vibrant buoyancy and passes by in a flash. Now the “pious Poulenc” returns, in “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei.” In its opening measures, the clarinet proposes an embellished octave leap that is one of Poulenc’s musical fingerprints, frequently encountered in his scores and soon to appear with heartbreaking purpose in his end-of-life sonatas for oboe and for clarinet. The soprano soloist also takes up a variant on the same, to haunting, mystical effect. The concluding section,” Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris”—again opening maestoso—includes not only references to music heard earlier, but also provides some new sounds. At the words “Quoniam tu solus sanctus” the choir sings a cappella in tight four-part harmony, much in the mode of Poulenc’s more severe choral compositions. In the work’s closing minutes, the soprano intones a fervent “Amen” and joins with the chorus to conclude in a spirit of harmonic luxury (reminiscent of Ravel), ardent sincerity, and transcendent calm.

Music of Francis Poulenc II



Gloria
by James Keller From the San Francisco Symphony Website

ancis Jean Marcel Poulenc was born January 7, 1899, in Paris, France, and died there January 30, 1963. He composed his Gloria from May 1959 through June 1960 on commission from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, and he dedicated it to the memory of Serge and Nathalie Koussevitzky. It received its first public performance January 20, 1961, at Boston’s Symphony Hall, with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chorus Pro Musica (Alfred Nash Patterson, director), and soprano Adele Addison. The first San Francisco Symphony performances of Gloria, in April 1971, were led by Seiji Ozawa and featured soprano Lois Marshall, the Stanford University Choir, and the Stanford University Chorus. The most recent SFS performances, in September 1996, were conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, with the SFS Chorus and soprano Heidi Grant Murphy. The score calls for piccolo and two flutes (second also doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, strings, a four-part mixed chorus (sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses), and soprano soloist. Performance time: about twenty-five minutes.

Music lovers are accustomed to think of Francis Poulenc as a good-humored composer. Even so famous a work as his Gloria provides no impetus to revise that point of view, as the piece is largely ebullient rather than merely pious. It was this high-spirited aspect that defined Poulenc when he first gained public notice, at the moment when the deprivation of World War I was ceding to the buoyancy of the Roaring Twenties. That’s when he and five of his iconoclastic colleagues declared themselves to be a Société des nouveaux jeunes, a label that would give way to the more informal Groupe des Six. Though each of Les Six—Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, and Louis Durey—ended up pursuing distinct paths, the jovial brashness they all shared in the early 1920s remained forever a part of Poulenc’s style.

But beginning in the 1930s, Poulenc also began to display a more introspective side. This development seemed to be sparked by the death, in 1930, of his close friend Raymonde Linossier, the only woman with whom he ever fell deeply in love. The sudden decease of another close friend, the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, sent Poulenc into a period of soul-searching and sparked his renewed interest in the Catholicism into which he had been born but which he had largely set aside. One result was his impulse to write religious music, an interest that would lead to a corpus of sacred choral music, both a cappella and accompanied, that includes his Litanies à la vierge noire (1936), Mass in G major (1937), Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (1938-39), Stabat Mater (1950-51), Gloria (1959-60), and finally his Sept répons des ténèbres (1962).

Certainly the sacred did not replace the secular in Poulenc’s output. Instead, we find him sometimes writing devoutly religious pieces, sometimes unabashedly worldly ones, and not infrequently allowing the aesthetics of those styles to intermingle. In a speech he delivered in 1962, he emphasized this cross-fertilization when describing how the character of his Gloria coalesced. Speaking of the work’s second movement (“Laudamus te”), he said: “The second movement caused a scandal. I wonder why? I was simply thinking, in writing it, of the Gozzoli frescoes in which the angels stick out their tongues; I was thinking also of the serious Benedictines whom I saw playing soccer one day.” He expanded on the fresco image, which relates to the decorations Benozzo Gozzoli painted circa 1460 in the Chapel of the Magi of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence: “If you go to Florence, if you go to the Riccardi Palace, if you go to admire the sublime Gozzoli frescoes of the angels, you will see a whole series of angels. And if you look at the angels very closely, there is one who is sticking out his tongue at his neighbor, right? I take the position that angels are not always well-behaved.” Whether this exact image actually exists may be open to question. Nonetheless, these angels are far from solemn. Instead, they resemble a children’s choir that has just returned to rehearsal and is still stoked up on recess. Inattention reins, and ones senses that the whole bunch of them could erupt into chaos at any moment. The important thing, though, is that Poulenc believed that one of them was sticking out its tongue at another, that it was real in his memory. In spirit, he was on the mark, and it is probably far from incidental that the golden halos of those very angels are inscribed with words plucked from the Gloria.

When the Koussevitzky Foundation first approached Poulenc about a commission, a wish was expressed that he might undertake a symphonic work. The idea didn’t appeal to him. After some back and forth, the foundation proposed that he write something entirely of his own choosing. Poulenc accepted, and in April 1959 his Gloria began to take form, even before the terms of the commission were formalized. That month, his devoted friend and musical partner Pierre Bernac sent him the Latin text of the Gloria along with a French translation. By the end of year the work was complete in piano score, and it reached it final, orchestrated state in June 1960.

It was decided that the Boston Symphony, the late Koussevitzky’s one-time orchestra, would perform the premiere, and that orchestra moved into action to put the piece on its schedule. In the ensuing flurry of correspondence, Poulenc expressed enthusiasm that the choral work would be entrusted to Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica, since its director, Alfred Nash Patterson, had previously conducted a number of the composer’s compositions. Apparently Leontyne Price was desired as the soloist, but when she proved unavailable the job went instead to Adele Addison; in the event, she magnificently fulfilled Poulenc’s admonition that “the soloist should have the exact voice of Desdemona, which is to say a warm but pianissimo high register.” Poulenc signed on to appear in the same concert as one of the two soloists in his Concerto for Two Pianos, and he agreed to attend and advise at the rehearsals for the Gloria, at which he was looking forward to crossing paths again with his old friend Charles Munch, who had succeeded Koussevitzky as the Boston Symphony’s conductor.

The reviews of the premiere were ecstatic, and they may have meant more to the composer than almost any others in his career. “Thank the Lord the Gloria was considered important,” he wrote to the French critic Henri Hell, who had recently published a Poulenc biography. “I know full well that I am not considered in vogue but at least I need to be recognized. And this has happened.”

Music of Francis Poulenc





From the collection of Karl Miller

Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra
Composer and Evelyne Crochet, pianos

Gloria (Premiere)
Adele Addison, Soprano
Chorus Pro Musica (Alfred Nash Patterson, conductor)

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Munch, conductor
[21 January 1961]


Program Notes



Concerto For Two Pianos

by Ileen Zovluck

Francis Poulenc was a member of the French group of composers referred to as "Les Six." When the group was first formed, they stood in an open rebellion against the overt romanticism of César Franck and the impressionism of Claude Debussy. This group which also included Milhaud and Honnegger, established simplicity of thought and expressions as their program; their music was distinguished by succinctness and a flair for popular idioms. There is in Poulenc's music an ingenuity and freshness that seem always to have an undercurrent of folklore at its base.

Poulenc's catalog includes such diverse genres as ballets, opera, chamber music, sacred music, songs, choral works and piano pieces. The medium in which Poulenc distinguished himself the most was perhaps the concerto - a form which he renewed, broadened and diversified; his concertos indeed hold a very special place among his works. They include: the Concert champêtre (1927-8), for harpsichord and orchestra; Aubade (1929), a choreographic concerto for piano and eighteen instruments; this Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1932); the Concerto in G for Organ, Strings and Timpani (1938); and the Piano Concerto (1949). Each work differs from the others in its spirit, intentions and orchestral complement.

The Two-Piano Concerto was commissioned by the American patroness of the arts, Princess Edmond de Polignac, née Winnareta Singer. The princess - who was a friend to both Poulenc and his childhood friend, the pianist Jacques Février - asked for a piece that the two Frenchmen could play together; in 1932, during a period of two and a half months, Poulenc produced the D minor Concerto, a "gay and straightforward" work, full of fresh, spontaneous and well organized ideas.
With this piece, Poulenc took a new step in his evolution as a composer. Like the Concert champêtre, which harks back to the Baroque era, the Two-Piano Concerto looks back in time, in this case to the Classical era; however, although he used as a model the Double Concertos of Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn before him, he breaks free of the Baroque and Classical conventions to which the early masters were tied, as he opts to follow the freer spirit of a divertissement. This Concerto is one of Poulenc's most typically inventive compositions.

The first movement, Allegro, ma non troppo, is marked by its sprightly dynamics and irrepresible, buoyant energy. Being thoroughly acquainted with pianistic resources, here the composer provides ingenious dialogue between the two soloists. Woven into the thematic and contrapuntal web are chansonettes and popular Parisian tunes from the café- concert circuit. Of note, as well, are the coloristic effects in the coda, where the composer admittedly evoked the Balinese gamelan music he had heard at the 1931 Colonial Exposition.

In an era of retrospective tributes, where Stravinsky was going back to Bach and Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev would write like a "twentieth century" Haydn, or Poulenc himself would pay tribute to Couperin in hisConcert champêtre, it is not surprising that the composer would chose to pay homage to the composer he preferred over all the rest - Mozart. The outlines of the Larghetto are quite classical, as the outer sections employ a theme that brings to mind Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21

Arthur Gelbrun: Concerto-Fantasia for Flute, Harp, and String Orchestra(1963)


From the collection of Karl Miller

Brigitte Buxdorf, flute; Catherine Eisenhoffer, harp
Orchestra de la Suisse Romande
Jean-Marie Auberson, conductor

From Jim Moskowitz's Unknown Composers pages.

Another composer of this time was Arthur Gelbrun, born in Warsaw 11 July 1913. He studied at the Warsaw State Conservatory and with Alfred Casella at the Academia Chigiana in Siena. He then returned to Warsaw and played violin and viola with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. He went to Switzerland with Radio Lausanne and then became conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchester until 1948. He emigrated to Israel in 1948. Performed as guest conductor of the Israel RSO, the Kibbutz youth choir and the Inter-Kibbutz orchestra. He is now professor of composition and conducting at the Academy of Music, Univ. Of Tel Aviv. His music is primarily romantic with modest use of serialism and new techniques. I personally know very little about his music and have only one composition in my collection; Lamento (from Five Pieces) for Cello Solo, performed by Michael Haran, cello with Alexander Volkov, piano and Ayal Rafiah, percussion on Music from Israel Disc No. MII-CD-7.

Arthur Gelbrun: Concerto-Fantasia for Flute, Harp, and String Orchestra(1963)


From the collection of Karl Miller
http://www.mediafire.com/download/u6qofquun2cgdbc/Gebrun.zip

Brigitte Buxdorf, flute; Catherine Eisenhoffer, harp
Orchestra de la Suisse Romande
Jean-Marie Auberson, conductor

From Jim Moskowitz's Unknown Composers pages.

Another composer of this time was Arthur Gelbrun, born in Warsaw 11 July 1913. He studied at the Warsaw State Conservatory and with Alfred Casella at the Academia Chigiana in Siena. He then returned to Warsaw and played violin and viola with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. He went to Switzerland with Radio Lausanne and then became conductor of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchester until 1948. He emigrated to Israel in 1948. Performed as guest conductor of the Israel RSO, the Kibbutz youth choir and the Inter-Kibbutz orchestra. He is now professor of composition and conducting at the Academy of Music, Univ. Of Tel Aviv. His music is primarily romantic with modest use of serialism and new techniques. I personally know very little about his music and have only one composition in my collection; Lamento (from Five Pieces) for Cello Solo, performed by Michael Haran, cello with Alexander Volkov, piano and Ayal Rafiah, percussion on Music from Israel Disc No. MII-CD-7.

SPA Records-- American Life (1954)

from the collection of Karl Miller

Alex North: Holiday Set

• Sunday Morning
• Journey to Country Scene
• Baseball game
• Pause
• Journey from

[/i]

Sunday in Brooklyn: Eli Siegmeister

• Prospect Park
• Sunday Driver
• Family at Home
• Children's Story
• Coney Island[/i]
  

Music Hall Overture:  Frederick Jacobi

McConkey's Ferry Overture:  George Antheil

Saturday Night at the Firehouse: Henry Cowell

Vienna Philharmonia Orchestra
I. Charles Adler, conductor
Source LP:  SPA Records:  SPA 47

SPA Records-- American Life (1954)

from the collection of Karl Miller

http://www.mediafire.com/download/3i4zx6r8a64ampj/american_life.zip

Alex North: Holiday Set

• Sunday Morning
• Journey to Country Scene
• Baseball game
• Pause
• Journey from

[/i]

Sunday in Brooklyn: Eli Siegmeister

• Prospect Park
• Sunday Driver
• Family at Home
• Children's Story
• Coney Island[/i]
  

Music Hall Overture:  Frederick Jacobi

McConkey's Ferry Overture:  George Antheil

Saturday Night at the Firehouse: Henry Cowell

Vienna Philharmonia Orchestra
I. Charles Adler, conductor
Source LP:  SPA Records:  SPA 47

Compositions by Lionel Barrymore



From the collection of Karl Miller

Waltz Fantasy
Fugue Fantasia
AFRS Concert Hall Program #270
Leo Damiani
(Likely the Burbank Symphony Orchestra)

In Memoriam: John Barrymore
Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy, conductor
AFRS Philadelphia Symphony Program #14
[15 April 1944]

Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf
(Lionel Barrymore- narration)
Waltz Fantasy
AFRS Los Angeles Philharmonic Replacing Philadelphia Symphony 15
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Standard Hour Concert at the Hollywood Bowl
[23 July 1944]



Barrymore may not have been one of the all time greats, but WHAT a renaissance man!  Also, I decided to use a still from Key Largo for the picture instead of his role as "Mr. Potter" from "It's a Wonderful Life."  Key Largo is, IMO, one of the greatest movies from the 40s.

Compositions by Lionel Barrymore



From the collection of Karl Miller


http://www.mediafire.com/download/8jata9t5n95678d/Barrymore.zip

Waltz Fantasy
Fugue Fantasia
AFRS Concert Hall Program #270
Leo Damiani
(Likely the Burbank Symphony Orchestra)

In Memoriam: John Barrymore
Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy, conductor
AFRS Philadelphia Symphony Program #14
[15 April 1944]

Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf
(Lionel Barrymore- narration)
Waltz Fantasy
AFRS Los Angeles Philharmonic Replacing Philadelphia Symphony 15
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Standard Hour Concert at the Hollywood Bowl
[23 July 1944]

Music of Menahem Avidom


from the collection of Karl Miller

I've posted two of his symphonies earlier-- now, thanks to Karl, we have the full symphonic cycle.


Symphony No. 1 "Folk Symphony" (1946)
Kol Israel SO
Heinz Freudenthal, conductor

Symphony No. 2 "David" (1948)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Joseph Singer, conductor

Symphony No. 3 "Mediterranean Sonfonietta"
Israel Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra
Eitan Globerzon, conductor

Symphony No. 4. (1955)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Gary Bertini, conductor

Symphony No. 5. "The Song of Eliat" w/soprano (1957)
soprano unknown
Israel Radio SO
Joseph Singer, conductor

Symphony No. 6 (1960)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Jean Martinon, conducter


Symphony No. 7 (1961)
Israel Radio Orchestra
Sergiu Comissiona, conductor

Symphony No. 8 "Festival Sonfonietta" (1966)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Georges Pretre, conductor

Symphony No. 9. "Symphonie Variee for Chamber Orchestra" (1968)
Performers unknown.

Symphony No. 10. "Sinfonia Brevis" (1980)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Israel Edelson, conductor


Flute Concerto (1944)
Guber(?), flute
Kol Israel Orchestra
Shalom Ronly-Riklis, conductor


Short Biography from BachCantatas.com

Menahem Avidom (Composer)

Born: January 6, 1908 - Stanislav, Galicia, then Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died: August 5, 1995 - Tel-Aviv, Israel

Menahem [Menachem] Avidom [Mahler-Kalkstein] was an Israeli composer of Russian birth. His mother was a cousin of Gustav Mahler; his adopted surname combines the word ‘Avi’ (‘father of’) with the initials of his children's names. He studied at the American University in Beirut and at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Rabaud. In 1925 he emigrated to Palestine, where, in addition to his work as a composer, he served as a music critic, secretary general of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1945-1952), chair of the Israel Composers' League (1958-1971) and general director of ACUM, the Israeli performing rights society (1955-1980).

In the late 1930s, after writing early works in an Impressionist style, Menahem Avidom turned towards atonal composition. While studying in Beirut and during a four-year stay in Egypt, however, he became deeply influenced by Mediterranean and Asian folk music and French culture. These influences found their expression in arrangements for the Yemenite singer Bracha Zefira (1939), the Flute Concerto (1944), Symphony No. 1 ‘Amamit’ (‘Folk Symphony’, 1945), Symphony No. 3 ‘Yam tichonit’ (‘Mediterranean Sinfonietta’, 1951) and other works. A use of modal scales, folk-like dance rhythms, oriental melodic motifs and orchestration influenced by Ravel and Les Six are characteristic of these works. Symphony No. 2 ‘David’ (1948-1949) depicts the life of the biblical king, while Symphony No. 5 ‘Shirat Eilat’ (‘The Song of Eilat’, 1956-1957) is a combination of a conventional symphonic form and a song cycle.

In the early 1960’s Israeli music began to move away from regionalism towards international styles and techniques. Influenced by these trends, Avidom turned to 12-note procedures. Enigma (1962), a work that imitates electronic effects, displays his interest in sound patterns: the second movement is an inversion of the first, the fourth an inversion of the third and the fifth a recapitulation of the first. The Symphony No. 7 (1960-1961) features a four-note series (A-B-D-mi) that refers to his name. In 1974, for the first Rubinstein Piano Master Competition, Avidom wrote ArtHur ruBinStEin, six inventions based on the series of notes represented in Rubinstein's name (A-H-B-S-E). The last symphony, No. 10 (1981), combines 12-note procedures and oriental melodies. Bachiana (1984-1985), based on B-A-C-H, was written for J.S. Bach's 300th anniversary.

Avidom's first major opera B'khol dor va'dor (‘In Every Generation’, 1953-1954) describes events in Jewish history. Ha'preida (‘The Farewell’, 1971) creates a strangely unreal atmosphere and a convincing expression of complex psychological situations. His historical opera Alexandra ha'khashmonait (‘Alexandra the Hasmonean’, 1955-1956) won the Israel State Prize in 1961.

More Music of Menahem Avidom


from the collection of Karl Miller

http://www.mediafire.com/download/jc1spj4ge1t6cnr/Menahem1.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fup440iqr1rfs40/Menahem2.zip


Symphony No. 1 "Folk Symphony" (1946)
Kol Israel SO
Heinz Freudenthal, conductor

Symphony No. 2 "David" (1948)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Joseph Singer, conductor

Symphony No. 3 "Mediterranean Sonfonietta"
Israel Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra
Eitan Globerzon, conductor

Symphony No. 4. (1955)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Gary Bertini, conductor

Symphony No. 5. "The Song of Eliat" w/soprano (1957)
soprano unknown
Israel Radio SO
Joseph Singer, conductor

Symphony No. 6 (1960)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Jean Martinon, conducter


Symphony No. 7 (1961)
Israel Radio Orchestra
Sergiu Comissiona, conductor

Symphony No. 8 "Festival Sonfonietta" (1966)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Georges Pretre, conductor

Symphony No. 9. "Symphonie Variee for Chamber Orchestra" (1968)
Performers unknown.

Symphony No. 10. "Sinfonia Brevis" (1980)
Israel Broadcasting Orchestra
Israel Edelson, conductor


Flute Concerto (1944)
Guber(?), flute
Kol Israel Orchestra
Shalom Ronly-Riklis, conductor


Short Biography from BachCantatas.com

Menahem Avidom (Composer)

Born: January 6, 1908 - Stanislav, Galicia, then Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died: August 5, 1995 - Tel-Aviv, Israel

Menahem [Menachem] Avidom [Mahler-Kalkstein] was an Israeli composer of Russian birth. His mother was a cousin of Gustav Mahler; his adopted surname combines the word ‘Avi’ (‘father of’) with the initials of his children's names. He studied at the American University in Beirut and at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Rabaud. In 1925 he emigrated to Palestine, where, in addition to his work as a composer, he served as a music critic, secretary general of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1945-1952), chair of the Israel Composers' League (1958-1971) and general director of ACUM, the Israeli performing rights society (1955-1980).

In the late 1930s, after writing early works in an Impressionist style, Menahem Avidom turned towards atonal composition. While studying in Beirut and during a four-year stay in Egypt, however, he became deeply influenced by Mediterranean and Asian folk music and French culture. These influences found their expression in arrangements for the Yemenite singer Bracha Zefira (1939), the Flute Concerto (1944), Symphony No. 1 ‘Amamit’ (‘Folk Symphony’, 1945), Symphony No. 3 ‘Yam tichonit’ (‘Mediterranean Sinfonietta’, 1951) and other works. A use of modal scales, folk-like dance rhythms, oriental melodic motifs and orchestration influenced by Ravel and Les Six are characteristic of these works. Symphony No. 2 ‘David’ (1948-1949) depicts the life of the biblical king, while Symphony No. 5 ‘Shirat Eilat’ (‘The Song of Eilat’, 1956-1957) is a combination of a conventional symphonic form and a song cycle.

In the early 1960’s Israeli music began to move away from regionalism towards international styles and techniques. Influenced by these trends, Avidom turned to 12-note procedures. Enigma (1962), a work that imitates electronic effects, displays his interest in sound patterns: the second movement is an inversion of the first, the fourth an inversion of the third and the fifth a recapitulation of the first. The Symphony No. 7 (1960-1961) features a four-note series (A-B-D-mi) that refers to his name. In 1974, for the first Rubinstein Piano Master Competition, Avidom wrote ArtHur ruBinStEin, six inventions based on the series of notes represented in Rubinstein's name (A-H-B-S-E). The last symphony, No. 10 (1981), combines 12-note procedures and oriental melodies. Bachiana (1984-1985), based on B-A-C-H, was written for J.S. Bach's 300th anniversary.

Avidom's first major opera B'khol dor va'dor (‘In Every Generation’, 1953-1954) describes events in Jewish history. Ha'preida (‘The Farewell’, 1971) creates a strangely unreal atmosphere and a convincing expression of complex psychological situations. His historical opera Alexandra ha'khashmonait (‘Alexandra the Hasmonean’, 1955-1956) won the Israel State Prize in 1961.