Mount A Libraries: Music Library: Bragg Artist-in-Residence: Graham Johnson

Graham Johnson

Graham Johnson is recognized as one of the world’s leading vocal accompanists. Born in Rhodesia, he came to London to study in 1967. After leaving the Royal Academy of Music his teachers included Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons. In 1972 he was the official pianist at Peter Pears’s first masterclasses at Snape Maltings, which brought him into contact with Benjamin Britten—a link that strengthened his determination to accompany. In 1976 he formed The Songmakers’ Almanac to explore neglected areas of piano-accompanied vocal music, and throughout his career he has maintained long and fruitful collaborations with many distinguished singers.

Graham Johnson’s relationship with Wigmore Hall in London is a special one. He devised and accompanied concerts in the hall’s re-opening series in 1992, and in its centenary celebrations in 2001. He is Senior Professor of Accompaniment at the Guildhall School of Music and has led a biennial scheme for Young Songmakers since 1985. He has had a long and fruitful link with Hyperion, for whom he has devised and accompanied sets of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, as well as a substantial proportion of the wider Hyperion French song edition. He is author of The Songmakers’ Almanac: Twenty years of recitals in London, The French Song Companion (OUP, 2000), Britten: Voice and Piano (Ashgate, 2003), Gabriel Fauré: the Songs and their Poets (Ashgate, 2009) and Franz Schubert: the Complete Songs (Yale, 2014). Awards include four Gramophone awards (three for albums in the Schubert and Schumann series) and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 1998; he is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. He was made an OBE in the 1994 Queen’s Birthday Honours list and in 2002 he was created Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He is a Doctor of Music honoris causa on three continents: at Durham in the UK, Boston’s New England Conservatory in the USA, and Perth in Western Australia.

[Image and bio from Hyperion Records]

Library Resources

Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs by Graham Johnson
Call Number: ML 410 .S3 J65 2014 v. 1-3 (Reference Collection)
Publication Date: 2014-12-16
This three-volume boxed set is the definitive work on Franz Schubert's vocal music with piano. A richly illustrated encyclopedia, these substantial volumes contain more than seven hundred song commentaries with parallel text and translations (by Richard Wigmore), detailed annotations on the songs' poetic sources, and biographies of one hundred and twenty poets, as well as general articles on accompaniment, tonality, transcriptions, singers, and more.
A French Song Companion by Graham Johnson; Richard Stokes
Call Number: ML 54.6 .J76 F74 2000 (Reference Collection)
Publication Date: 2000-09-07
The French Song Companion is the most comprehensive book of French melody in any language. Graham Johnson provides repertoire guides to the work of some 150 composers the majority of them from France, but including British, American, German, Spanish, and Italian musicians who have written French vocal music. There are major articles on such figures as Faure, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc; substantial articles on Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Chausson, Hahn, and Satie; and reassessments of such composers as Massenet, Koechlin, and Leguerney. A host of less celebrated figures who have contributed to the genre take their place in a book which is both informative and entertaining. T
Britten, Voice and Piano by Graham Johnson
Call Number: ML 410 .B853 J64 2003
Publication Date: 2017-01-30
This collection of eight 'lectures' by Graham Johnson is based on a series of concert talks given at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of the Benjamin Britten festival in 2001. The focus of the book is on Britten's songs, starting with his earliest compositions in the genre. Johnson suggests that the nature of Britten's creativity is especially apparent in his setting of poetry, that he becomes the poet's alter-ego. Drawing on letters and diaries, and featuring a number of previously unpublished photographs, this book illuminates aspects of Britten's songs from the personal perspective of the pianist who worked closely with Peter Pears after Benjamin Britten was unable to perform through illness. Johnson worked with Pears on learning the role of Aschenbach in 'Death in Venice' and was official pianist for the first master class given by Peter Pears at Snape in 1972.
Gabriel Fauré: the Songs and Their Poets by Graham Johnson
Call Number: ML 410 .F27 J64 2009
Publication Date: 2009-10-20
The career of Gabriel Fauré as a composer of songs for voice and piano traverses six decades (1862-1921); almost the whole history of French mélodie is contained within these parameters. In this detailed study Graham Johnson places the vocal music within twin contexts: Fauré's own life story, and the parallel lives of his many poets. Additional chapters for the student singer and serious music lover discuss interpretation and performance in both aesthetical and practical terms. Richard Stokes provides parallel English translations of the original French texts.

Lieder by Schubert, Franz
Call Number: M 1620 .S38 D83 2005 [high, v. 1-9 ; med, v. 1-9 ; low, v. 1-9]
Publication Date: 2005
Bärenreiter Urtext editions for low, medium, and high voice.

Franz Schubert : Music and Belief by Leo Black
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 B563 2003
ISBN: 9781843830238
Publication Date: 2003-12-04
The old stereotypes of Schubert as Bohemian artist and unselfconscious creator have been replaced over the past half-century with a picture of a difficult man in difficult times. In this acclaimed book, Leo Black aims to redress the balance, concentrating firstly on the works where Schubert's beliefs are clearly expressed (masses, other religious music, songs amounting to Geistliche Lieder). This also prompts an examination of instrumental masterpieces (Unfinished and Great C Major Symphonies, and the Wanderer Fantasy), which show that Schubert's religious side encompasses awe and terror as well as wonder. Schubert's 'complete voice' is thus clearly heard, rather than the sombre one currently emphasised in both literature and concert.
Schubert's Goethe Settings by Lorraine Byrne Bodley
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 B96 2003
Publication Date: 2016-11-29
The traditional approach to the study of Goethe and Schubert is to place them in opposition to one another, both in terms of their life experiences and in relation to the nineteenth-century Lied. In her introduction to this book, Lorraine Byrne examines the myths that have evolved around these artists and challenges the view that Goethe was unmusical and conservative in his musical tastes. She also considers Schubert's life in relation to his obvious affinity with the poet and links the composer's Goethe settings with the poet's perception of the Lied. The core of this volume is the series of individual analyses of all of Schubert's solo, dramatic and multi-voice settings of Goethe texts. This is the first study in English to treat both artists with equal attention and insight. This, together with its encyclopaedic coverage of this important corpus of works, makes this volume an essential reference tool for all those who study Schubert and Goethe.
The Cambridge Companion to Schubert by Christopher H. Gibbs (Editor); Jonathan Cross (Contribution by)
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 C18 1997
Publication Date: 1997-04-17
This Companion to Schubert examines the career, music, and reception of one of the most popular yet misunderstood and elusive composers. Sixteen chapters by leading Schubert scholars make up three parts. The first seeks to situate the social, cultural, and musical climate in which Schubert lived and worked, the second surveys the scope of his musical achievement, and the third charts the course of his reception from the perceptions of his contemporaries to the assessments of posterity. Myths and legends about Schubert the man are explored critically and the full range of his musical accomplishment is examined.
The Schubert Song Cycles: wtih thoughts on performance by Gerald Moore
Call Number: Ml 410 .S38 M6 1975
Publication Date: 1975
Franz Schubert : Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song by Lawrence Kramer
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 K774 1998
Publication Date: 1998-05-28
This is the first book to examine Schubert's songs as active shaping forces in the culture of their era rather than as mere reflections of it. Responding to rising new forms of social organisation, Schubert discovered that songs could serve as a medium for shuffling and reshuffling the basic building blocks of identity and desire, especially sexual desire. His songs project a kaleidoscopic array of unexpected human types, all of whom are eligible for a sympathetic response, even the strangest and most disconcerting. Schubert sought to validate these subjective types without subordinating them to a central social or sexual norm. The book describes and contextualises this process and tracks it concretely in a wide variety of songs. Combining close attention to both music and poetry, the book addresses both specialists and non-specialists in a lively, accessible style unburdened by excessive jargon.
Distant Cycles : Schubert and the Conceiving of Song by Richard Kramer
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 K775 1994
Publication Date: 1994-09-15
Franz Schubert's song cycles Schone Mullerin and Winterreise are cornerstones of the genre. But as Richard Kramer argues in this book, Schubert envisioned many other songs as components of cyclical arrangements that were never published as such. By carefully studying Schubert's original manuscripts, Kramer recovers some of these "distant cycles" and accounts for idiosyncrasies in the songs which other analyses have failed to explain. Returning the songs to their original keys, Kramer reveals linkages among songs which were often obscured as Schubert readied his compositions for publication. His analysis thus conveys even familiar songs in fresh contexts that will affect performance, interpretation, and criticism. Probing the farthest reaches of Schubert's engagement with the poetics of lieder, Distant Cycles exposes tensions between Schubert the composer and Schubert the merchant-entrepreneur.
The Schubert Song Companion by John Reed
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 R265 1986
Publication Date: 1997-06-05
This reference book provides an encyclopaedic guide to every song by Schubert for solo voice and piano, 600 in all, including different versions, unfinished songs and variants.
The Unknown Schubert by Barbara M. Reul (Editor); Lorraine Byrne Bodley
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 U55 2008
Publication Date: 2018-03-08
In The Unknown Schubert contributors explore Schubert's radical modernity from a number of perspectives by examining both popular and neglected works. Chapters by renowned scholars describe the historical context of his work, its relation to the dominant artistic discourses of the early nineteenth century, and Schubert's role in the paradigmatic shift to a new perception of song. This valuable book seeks to bring Franz Schubert to life, exploring his early years as a composer of opera, his later years of ill-health when he composed in the shadow of death, and his efforts to reflect in his music his own profound inner experience.
Schubert's Late Lieder : Beyond the Song-Cycles by Susan Youens
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 Y725 2002
ISBN: 9780521793148
Publication Date: 2002-04-25
Schubert's Late Lieder is a study of selected songs for voice and piano composed by Schubert between 1822 and his death on 19 November 1828. Circa late 1822, Schubert was diagnosed with syphilis, and many of the songs discussed in this book were written under the seal of impending death. It is possible to locate in these songs a 'late song style', full of elegiac references to Schubert's other death-haunted works and marked by distinctive variation techniques. In this book, Susan Youens introduces the poets Matthäus von Collin, Johann Ladislaus Pyrker, Carl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner, Johann Anton Friedrich Reil, Franz von Schlechta, and Johann Gabriel Seidl and discusses Schubert's songs to their poetry, revealing much about the poet and about Austrian history and culture.
Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder by Susan Youens
Call Number: ML 410 .S38 Y73 1996
Publication Date: 1996-07-11
Lieder began with words, with the composer's discovery of a poet and a poetic work, but the scholarly study of lieder has tended to bypass those origins. Schubert's choice of poets has traditionally come under fire for the preponderance of mediocre talent, and yet many of these writers were highly esteemed in their day. In her highly acclaimed study, Susan Youens has chosen four such poets - Gabriele von Baumberg, Theodor Körner, Johann Mayrhofer and Ernst Schulze - in order to re-examine their lives, works, and Schubert's music to their verse. All four poets were vivid inhabitants of a vivid era, and their tribulations afford us added insight into the upheavals, the manners and mores, of their day.
Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert by Joe Davies (Contribution by); James William Sobaskie (Contribution by); Brian Black (Contribution by); Anne Hyland (Contribution by); Christine Martin (Contribution by)
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781783273652
Publication Date: 2019-02-15
It is commonly assumed that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies, and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama. Challenging this view, Drama in the Music of Franz Schubert provides a timely re-evaluation of Schubert's operatic works, while demonstrating previously unsuspected locations of dramatic innovation in his vocal and instrumental music. The volume draws on a range of critical approaches and techniques, including semiotics, topic theory, literary criticism, narratology, and Schenkerian analysis, to situate Schubertian drama within its musical and cultural-historical context. In so doing, the study broadens the boundaries of what might be considered 'dramatic' within the composer's music and offers new perspectives for its analysis and interpretation.
Retracing a Winter's Journey by Susan Youens
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780801499661
Publication Date: 2015-05-06
I like these songs better than all the rest, and someday you will too, Franz Schubert told the friends who were the first to hear his song cycle, Winterreise. These lieder have always found admiring audiences, but the poetry he chose to set them to has been widely regarded as weak and trivial. In Retracing a Winter's Journey, Susan Youens looks not only at Schubert's music but at the poetry, drawn from the works of Wilhelm Müller, who once wrote in his diary, "perhaps there is a kindred spirit somewhere who will hear the tunes behind the words and give them back to me!" Youens maintains that Müller, in depicting the wanderings of the alienated lover, produced poetry that was simple but not simple-minded, poetry that embraced simplicity as part of its meaning. In her view, Müller used the ruder folk forms to give his verse greater immediacy, to convey more powerfully the wanderer's complex inner state. Youens addresses many different aspects of Winterreise: the cultural milieu to which it belonged, the genesis of both the poetry and the music, Schubert's transformation of poetic cycle into music, the philosophical dimension of the work, and its musical structure.

The Complete Collaborator: The pianist as partner by Martin Katz
Call Number: MT 236 .K27 2009
ISBN: 9780195367959
Publication Date: 2009-06-01
Take more than forty years of partnering celebrated soloists in concerts all over the world, add nearly thirty years of teaching the art of accompanying, and you have the qualifications for such an audacious title as The Complete Collaborator. All the tools for understanding and executingfirst-class collaborative piano are here, paired with audio recordings of many of the musical examples performed by the author himself, along with two vocalists, on a companion website.The obvious topics: breathing, languages, flexibility, and creating a collaborative atmosphere are discussed at length, articulated clearly for the curious novice and proving beneficial even for the experienced professional. In addition, two significant chapters deal with orchestral accompaniment,reflecting today's requirements for any professional accompanist. Oft-neglected details such as beginning a piece together, telling stories with piano solos, tuning, and balance between the players are also covered herein.Dubbed the "Dean of Accompanists" by the Los Angeles Times, this teacher of sold-out masters' classes presents his material clearly and incisively, but always with the humor and wit for which he is known. Whether it be read by the curious novice, the amateur who wants to accompany as best he can,or the experienced professional seeking confirmation or a new look at the role of any partner, Martin Katz's The Complete Collaborator is all one needs.
The Unashamed Accompanist by Gerald Moore
Call Number: ML 417 M82 U6 1984
Publication Date: 1984
The author provides detailed advice about the art of piano accompaniment, including preparation, practice, rehearsal, and work with orchestras, violins, and string sections.
The Art of Accompanying and Coaching by Kurt Adler
Call Number: MT 68 A23 1965
Publication Date: 1965
Kurt Adler, former conductor and chorus master of the Metropolitan Opera, provides a comprehensive guide to musical accompanying and coaching, based in his extensive experience, which will be helpful, if not indispensable, to music teachers, students, coaches, accompanists, orchestral and choral conductors, and performing vocal and instrumental artists.
Singer and Accompanist: The Performance of Fifty Songs by Gerald Moore
Call Number: MT 892 .M82 1953
Publication Date: 1953
The Art of the Song Recital by Shirlee Emmons; Stanley Sonntag
Call Number: MT 892 .E54
ISBN: 0028705300
Publication Date: 1979-04-01
The book presents imaginative advice and practical techniques for producing successful recitals and kindling audience excitement. Every aspect of the recital is covered, from building programs and the use of acting skills to the relationship between the singer and the accompanist. Singers of all levels and backgrounds will benefit from the authors vast experience in the performance of song recitals as a singer/accompanist team. The comprehensive repertoire lists, now organized by voice and instrumentation as well as by composer, appeal to both students and professional musicians. Readers will agree that the authors have met their goal of providing "extensive, throughgoing, and definitive insights into the attributes that can render the song recital at once a great art and a magnificent entertainment."
The Art of Accompanying: Master Lessons from the Repertoire by Robert Spillman
Call Number: MT 68 .S7 1985
ISBN: 0028723805
Publication Date: 1985

Graham Johnson, Artist Profile
Graham Johnson in Grove Music Online
Graham Johnson on the Naxos Music Library
[Video] Graham Johnson talks to George Miller about Schubert Lieder
Graham Johnson, celebrated accompanist, author and the first pianist ever to record all of Schubert's songs and part-songs, talks to George Miller about Schubert, the significance of his 'songs' and the Lieder in perfomance.
[Video] Graham Johnson: The Unacclaimed Accompanist
A 2019 Gresham College talk, Graham Johnson examines a problematic profession that continues to attract many gifted young pianists to its ranks and asks why.

Events

All events and activities will take place in Brunton Auditorium in the Marjorie Young Bell Conservatory of Music.

Master Class: Voice and Piano Duos
Tuesday, March 8, 2022 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Graham Johnson presents a master class for voice and piano duos from the Department of Music.

Coachings: Voice and Piano Duos
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 12:30 – 2:30 pm

Colloquium Musicum: My Life in Music
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:00 p.m.
Bragg Artist-in-Residence Graham Johnson discussed his long and varied career as collaborative pianist, recording artist, and scholar.

Master Class: Schubert Lieder
Thursday, March 10, 2022 12:30 – 2:30 pm
Graham Johnson presents a master class focusing on Schubert’s Lieder for voice and piano duos from the Department of Music.

Public Talk: Schubert in Love, in Sickness and in Health
Thursday, March 10, 2022 7:00 p.m.
Pianist and scholar Graham Johnson shares his thoughts on various elusive aspects of the composer's private life that have been much-debated among scholars and music-lovers for many years, and never more so than in the last decades. Dr. Johnson will offer his interpretation of the available evidence and describe how Schubert's friendships impacted the composition of his songs.

Public Talk: Collaboration at the Piano
Friday, March 11, 2022 1:30 – 2:30 pm
In this informal talk, Dr. Johnson will discuss the joys and challenges of collaborating at the piano, with a particular focus on the art song repertoire.

Lecture-Recital: Franz Schubert – Night and Day
Friday, March 11, 2022 7:30 p.m.
Pianist and scholar Graham Johnson presents a lecture-recital, contextualizing some of Schubert’s most beloved songs, joined by Dory Hayley (soprano) and Vicki St. Pierre (contralto).

Coachings: Voice and Piano Duos
Saturday, March 12, 2022 (Time to be confirmed)