Category

Compositions by Barbara Harbach

Retourner Symphonie, Symphony No. 11

Retourner Symphonie is Harbach’s eleventh symphony. I. Return-Debate, the first movement, is loosely based on a scene from Willa Cather’s 1913 novel, O Pioneers! takes place in Nebraska in the early twentieth century. Emil Bergson has just returned home to Nebraska...

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Arabesque noir for Orchestra

Arabesque Noir was inspired by the ornamental designs found in Arabic and Moorish decoration. The music reflects the florid ornamentation with flowing melodies and motifs that are sinuous, spiraling and undulating. It seeks to capture the complicated relationships...

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Recitative and Aria for Orchestra

Recitative and Aria for Orchestra (2017) are two movements inspired by the life of Edwin Booth (1833-1893), perhaps the greatest American actor, and the greatest Prince Hamlet of the 19th century.  As an actor, Booth toured throughout the United States as well as...

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Early American Scandals for Orchestra

Early American Scandals (2017) are four snapshots that look back to the turbulence, Revolution, slavery, Civil War and social unrest of the 18th and 19th centuries. Harbach has always been intrigued by this time period, and has written several compositions exploring...

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Suite Luther for Orchestra

In 1517, Martin Luther purportedly nailed 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in the German town of Wittenberg. His criticisms challenged the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and led to a split with the Church, giving birth to the beginnings of...

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Civil-Civility for Chamber Orchestra

Civil-Civility (2016) depicts the acts and writings of courageous women who defied all odds to help women and humanity.  Women have historically struggled to achieve their rights in patriarchal societies even from the time of 9th-century Kassia, born in Constantinople...

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Hypocrisy – Orchestral Suite

13 Movements of Original Music Based on the 1915 Silent Film Directed by Lois Weber Barbara Harbach wrote Hypocrisy, an original film score to the 1915 silent film, Hypocrites, directed by the legendary American director, Lois Weber (1888-1939). The film points out...

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Dorothy Parker Love Songs for Soprano, Violin and Piano

An American poet, short story writer, screenwriter, satirist and critic, Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) had an unerring acuity for commenting on twentieth-century urban peculiarities.  She became renowned for her writing as in The New Yorker and as a member of the...

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Terezin Children’s Songs for Soprano, Violin and Piano

The ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), located in the hills outside Prague, was an unusual concentration camp in that it was created to cover up the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Billed as the “Führer’s gift to the Jews, this “model ghetto” was the site of a Red Cross...

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The Birth, Life and Death of Christ for Chamber Orchestra

La Naissance, La Vie et La Mort du Christ (The Birth, Life and Death of Christ) is a 33-minute silent film from 1906 comprised of twenty-five scenes or tableaux, directed by the trail-blazing French filmmaker Alice Guy (1873-1968). The very first woman filmmaker, Guy...

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