Paul Griffiths (writer)
Paul Anthony Griffiths
Career
Paul Griffiths was born on 24 November 1947 in the Welsh town of Bridgend to Fred and Jeanne Griffiths. He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry from University of 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 to 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.
In 1978, he also began writing reference books and monographs 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). The last of these has been translated into seven languages.
Griffiths has been a guest lecturer at institutions including the University of Southern California, IRCAM, Oxford University, Harvard University, Cornell University (Messenger Lectures, 2008) and the City University of New York Graduate Center (Old Lecture, 2013), and has served on juries for international competitions, among them the Premio Paolo Borciani and the ARD Musikwettbewerb. 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 1989, Griffiths published his first novel,
Griffiths's first excursion as an opera
Griffiths's libretto for Tan Dun's Marco Polo was his first for an opera by a living composer. In the late 1980s, Tan Dun was commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival 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.[6]
Marco Polo finally received its world premiere in 1996, not in Edinburgh as originally planned, but in Munich at the Munich Biennale. Although Griffiths's 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.[6]
Griffiths's next commission as a librettist was for
In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those for
.Griffiths has also written original texts for non-operatic settings, including The General, which premiered in
Other musical collaborations have come out of his novel let me tell you, including there is still time, subtitled "scenes for speaking voice and cello", with spoken narration accompanying music by the cellist-composer
More directly connected to the novel is a concert work by Hans Abrahamsen, also titled let me tell you and composed for Barbara Hannigan with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave the first performance on 20 December 2013, Andris Nelsons conducting.
Griffiths was appointed
Bibliography
Music history and criticism
- Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez, Thames and Hudson, 1978 ISBN 978-0-50-020278-4)
- Modern Music: The avant garde since 1945, Braziller, 1981 (revised and expanded as Modern Music and After: Directions since 1945, Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-19-974050-5
- A Guide to Electronic Music, Thames and Hudson, 1981. ISBN 0-500-27203-4
- The String Quartet: A History, Thames and Hudson, 1985. ISBN 0-500-27383-9
- New Sounds, New Personalities: British composers of the 1980s in conversation with Paul Griffiths, Faber and Faber, 1985
- The Penguin Companion to Classical Music, Penguin Group, 2005. ISBN 0-14-051559-3
- The Substance of Things Heard: writings about music, Volume 31 of Eastman Studies in Music, University of Rochester Press, 2005. ISBN 1-58046-206-5
- A Concise History of Western Music, Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-84294-8
- La musica del novecento, Einaudi, 2014. ISBN 978-8-806-21330-5
Monographs on 20th-century composers
- Boulez (Volume 16 of Oxford Studies of Composers), Oxford University Press, 1978
- Cage (Volume 18 of Oxford Studies of Composers), Oxford University Press, 1981
- ISBN 0-86051-138-3
- Second Viennese School: ISBN 0-393-31587-8
- ISBN 0-87663-442-0
- Bartók (Master Musicians series), J.M. Dent & Sons, 1988
- ISBN 0-571-24732-6
- ISBN 0-460-04614-4
- The Sea on Fire: ISBN 1-58046-141-7,
Librettos
- ISBN 0-7011-3853-X)
- Aeneas in Hell – premiered 1994 (unpublished)
- ISBN 0-634-00238-4)
- What Next? – premiered 1999 (published by Boosey & Hawkes)
- Gulliver (unpublished)
Novels and short stories
- ISBN 0-7011-3571-9
- The Lay of Sir Tristram, Chatto & Windus, 1991. ISBN 0-7011-3570-0
- "Leda" in Ovid Metamorphosed (Philip Terry ed.), Chatto & Windus, 2000. ISBN 0-09-928177-5
- let me tell you, Reality Street Editions, 2008. ISBN 1-874400-43-1
- The Tilted Cup: Noh Stories, Sylph Editions, 2013. ISBN 978-1-909631-02-1
- Translated into French by Emilie Syssau: Pavillon lunaire: contes nô, Éditions de la Différence, 2014. ISBN 978-2-7291-2132-7
- Translated into French by Emilie Syssau: Pavillon lunaire: contes nô, Éditions de la Différence, 2014.
- Mr. Beethoven, Henningham Family Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-681375-80-9
- The Tomb Guardians, Henningham Family Press, 2021. ISBN 978-1-916218-61-1
- let me go on, Henningham Family Press, 2023 ISBN 978-1916218673
References
- ^ "Commonwealth Writers' Prize Regional Winners 1987 – 2007" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 October 2007. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
- ^ Grimbert (2002) pp. xcvi – xcvii
- ^ Tonkin (16 January 2009). See also the lengthy extract from the novel and Griffiths's commentary in "From let me tell you" Archived 7 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Golden Handcuffs Review, Winter – Spring 2007, Vol. 1, No. 8
- ^ Pawson, Lara (15 December 2023). "Let Me Go On by Paul Griffiths review – an exquisite experiment". The Guardian. London.
- ^ McLellan (20 November 1995)
- ^ a b Tan Dun quoted in Kerner (11 November 1997)
- ^ Tommasini (10 December 2007)
- ^ CBC News (18 January 2007)
- ^ Alan Rich (30 June 2005)
- ^ "No. 60728". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2013. p. 11.
Sources
- CBC News, "Montreal Symphony premieres Dallaire tribute", 18 January 2007. Retrieved 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. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
- Kerner, Leighton, "Mind voyager"[dead link], The Village Voice, 11 November 1997. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009.
- Kimberley, Nick, "North by East-West", The Independent, 15 November 1998. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
- McLellan, Joseph, "Aeneas in Hell: The Sequel", The Washington Post, 20 November 1995. Accessed via subscription 30 August 2009.
- Rich, Alan, "Dark Elegies", LA Weekly, 30 June 2005. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
- Tommasini, Anthony, "6 Characters in Search of a Dimension, in Different Operatic Tempos", The New York Times, 10 December 2007. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
- Tonkin, Boyd, "Singing in the chains: a tongue-tied heroine", The Independent, 16 January 2009. Retrieved 30 August 2009.
External links
- Official web site
- Selected writings by Paul Griffiths for The New York Times
- "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)