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CHARLES TOMLINSON GRIFFES

17thSept 1884 --- 8thApril 1920

His name in full Charles Tomlinson Griffes (born Sept. 17, 1884, Elmira, N.Y., U.S.A--died April 8, 1920, New York City), first
native U.S. composer to write Impressionist music.

Intending  to become a  concert pianist,  Griffes went  to Berlin  in 1903  to study  piano  and composition,  but  his  teacher
Engelbert Humperdinck, turned his main interest toward composition.  In 1907 he returned to the United States and took a
job as a  music  teacher  at the  Hackley  School for Boys  at Tarrytown, N.Y.  He died at 35,  on the  threshold of  his artistic
maturity.

Griffes was  fascinated by the exotic  and mysterious  sounds of the French Impressionists,  and was  compositionally much
influenced by them while he was in  Europe Impressionist  music and  carefully  studied  the scores  of Claude Debussy  and
Maurice Ravel. Other influences were the works of Aleksandr Scriabin and Modest Mussorgsky. The singer Eva Gauthier, for
whom he composed several songs, introduced him to Oriental music which impressed him deeply. His masterpieces are The
White Peacock (1915, part of  the piano suite Four  Roman Sketches), which he  orchestrated in  1919 for a  ballet sequence
The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1919, after the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and the Poem for  flute and orchestra
(1918),  written for  Georges Barrère.  Griffes'  other works  include  the  dance  dramas  Sho-Jo (1917),  built  on  Japanese
melodies, The Kairn of Koridwen (1917), for piano, celesta, flute,  clarinets, horns, and harp, and the powerful Piano Sonata
in F Major.

In his music he gradually integrated Impressionist, Oriental, and Russian influences into a personal and original idiom and
wrote numerous programmatic pieces for the piano and chamber ensembles.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated on 2017
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

(1254)"Scherzo, Opus.6, No.3". Sequenced by Peter R Wolfe

(801)"The White Peacock, Roman Sketches, Opus.7, No.1". Sequenced by Peter R Wolfe

(802)"The Vale of Dreams, Three Tone Pictures Opus.5, No.2". Sequenced by Peter R Wolfe

(804)"The Fountain of the Aqua Paola". Sequenced by Peter R Wolfe

(18)"Piano Sonata". Sequenced by Peter R Wolfe

(803)"The Night Winds from Three Tone-Pictures for Piano". Sequenced by Marty Weimer

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