Search - Gerard Schurmann, BBC Symphony Orchestra :: Gerard Schurmann: Six Studies of Francis Bacon / Variants for Small Orchestra

Gerard Schurmann is a Dutch-American composer whose music is influenced by Alan Rawsthorne, his composition teacher under whom he studied. His music has taken the very best ideas of serialism and atonality and merged them with very bright orchestral colors. Thus, it's natural that he'd compose a work based on the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon. The Six Studies of Francis Bacon (1969) are musical transcriptions of six Bacon paintings. They reflect the tempestuousness and grotesqueness of the man's oeuvre. Variants for small orchestra (1970) deals in multi-tonality and theme clusters that are constantly shifting. This is exceptional music. --Paul Cook