The Early Music Legend

For instrumental ensemble audio sample: Suite from The Devils opus number: 19b completion date: 1971 duration: 25 minutes movement titles: 1. Titles 2. Sister Jeanne's Vision 3. The Exorcism 4. Execution and End Music scoring: Flute (+ alto flute and piccolo), clarinet (+ bass clarinet), trumpet, trombone, *percussion (3 players), Hammond organ (+ out-of-tune upright piano and celesta), violin (+ viola and regal organ), cello, double bass *percussion (3 players): percussion 1: timpani, 4 suspended cymbals, temple gong, 4 wood blocks, chains, bamboo whistle, foxtrot kit, thunder-sheet, tam-tam, large tabor, tambourine, Indian temple jingles; percussion 2: marimba, small suspended Chinese cymbal, flexatone, lion's roar, tam-tam, grater, small bass drum, untuned zither, nightingale, rubber plunger in water, large bass drum, cycle wheel percussion 3: thunder-sheet, 4 suspended cymbals, 4 pieces of scaffolding, small bass drum, grater, blackboard (scraped with ...

Some negative comment on Munrows Consort to Peter Maxwell Davies Taverner. Reference is also made to Ken Russell, and The Devils film. Peter Maxwell Davies The British composer has been celebrating his 75th birthday with a production of his ambitious opera, Taverner. It's a work that had a far from auspicious start, as he explains How did you come to write this large-scale opera? I was a postgraduate and started really serious work on it in 1962 when I was studying with the composer Roger Sessions at Princeton University. But I never thought it would be put on, and it was an unpractical work in that it had stage bands and a lot of people in the cast. Quite apart from being inexperienced, I made no compromise whatever about the difficulty with the instrumental music, or difficulty with the singing – it was just exactly as I wanted it to be done and heard in my head. So how did it come to be staged by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in 1972? Edward Downes, bless his heart, had th...