Stefans Grové (born 23 July 1922, Bethlehem, Orange Free State, South Africa) is a South African composer. "He is regarded by many as Africa's greatest living composer, possesses one of the most distinctive compostional voices of our time".[1]
Contents |
In Bethlehem, where Grové was born, his mother worked as a music teacher and his father as a school principal.[2] Grové's musical education began at school and his first compositional efforts date from that time. He eventually trained as a pianist and organist, with the guidance from his mother's brother, D.J. Roode.[2] As a student he remained an avid reader of musical scores (often without the assistance of accompanying soundtracks) which not only informed his own development as a composer but may also have developed his talent for sight-reading at the piano.
In 1942 Grové moved to Klerksdorp where he worked as a teacher church organist for two years.[2] Thereafter he relocated to study composition at the University of Cape Town (then still called the South African College of Music) first with William Henry Bell and then with Erik Chisholm. Compositions from this time include a ballet suite for orchestra (1944), the String quartet in D major (1945), and a czardas for violin and piano (1946?).
As the first South African recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Grové had the opportunity of going to Harvard University where he completed his Master's degree. His teachers there included Thurston Dart and Walter Piston. Works that Grové composed under their guidance won him the G. Arthur Knight Prize and the New York Bohemian Prize.[3] These were awarded for the Pianoforte trio and the Sonata for pianoforte and cello respectively. Grové attended Aaron Copland's composition class at the Tanglewood Summer School and studied the flute at the Longy School of Music.[4] After these studies, beginning in 1956, Grové taught at the Bard College for two years, and then at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore for a further eight.[5] While working at the Bard College, Grové also took up a post as choirmaster for the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, where he pursued an interest in the performance of early music—most notably the cantatas of J.S. Bach. A similar venture was undertaken with a group that Grové founded in 1962, the Pro Musica Rara.[3]
While abroad, Grové evidently had a viable platform for the performance of his music. Thus, his Elegy for strings was performed in the Washington Gallery in 1952; the Three inventions for the piano was featured at the Salzburg ISCM Festival of 1953; the Sonata for flute and piano was played at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1954; the Harp quintet at Guildhall, London, in 1954; the Partita for orchestra in Brussels, in 1964; the First Symphony was led by Max Rudolph with the Cincinnati Orchestra in 1966; the Violin Concerto was performed that same year in Baltimore, Gabriel Banat being the soloist; and the Sinfonia concertante was recorded in 1973 by the Radio Orchestra of South-West Australia.[3]
Grové returned to South Africa for a sabbatical in 1960 when he lectured at both the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education as well as the South African College of Music. He returned to South Africa permanently in 1972 and, the following year, was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Pretoria.
Grové was one of the first white South African composers to incorporate elements of black African music into his own style, "venturing far beyond mere couleur locale to forge a unique creative synthesis of the indigenous and the "Western"." [1]
Grové's 'African' stylistic phase was result of a Damascus moment when he overheard a song sung by an African streetworker. The melody haunted him and inspired the Sonata on African Motives for violin and pianoforte (1984). Some other works composed in Grové's afrocentirc style are, the Dance Rhapsody (1986), Liedere en danse van Afrika (1990), 7 Boesman-liedere for soprano and string quartet (1990), Gesang van die Afrika-geeste (1993), Nonyana, the Ceremonial Dancer for piano (1994), Afrika Hymnus I for organ (1995), and Afrika Hymnus II for organ (1996).[5]
Remembering the African element in Grové's mature style, one can trace his development "from Debussy and Ravel through to Bartok and the neo-classicism of Hindemith, with passing passions for Messiaen and a more lasting fascination for Bach and early counterpoint".[6] He undoubtedly had a better exposure to European and American avant-garde than his contemporaries and that difference can be noticed in the quality of his music. His work, Glimpses. Five Miniatures for Piano (2004) was performed at the ISCM World Music Days in Hong Kong in November 2007.[7]
Apart from his work as a composer, Grové is also a fine writer whose essays and short fiction has received praise from no less a figure than André P. Brink. He has also been active as a music critic, most notably for the newspapers Rapport and Beeld.[3]
Although he is still alive it is already possible to trace a legacy in Grové's work. First, he forms part of a troika of white Afrikaans composers who are considered as "founding fathers of South African art music".[6] The other two composers in this category are Arnold van Wyk and Hubert du Plessis. But beyond that, and arguably more significantly, Grové has managed to shape a "hybrid style" [8] for himelf, beginning a new creative phase in a time when it must have amounted to a radical move on his part: he was a white composer—working in a country that was still functioning at the height of P.W. Botha's apartheid administration—whose new style was rejecting any notions of apartheid (separateness) by fusing white South African (Western) and black South African (African) musical languages. Unlike van Wyk and du Plessis, he was "prepared to consider and eventually to develop consistently a rapprochement between his Western art and his physical, African space".[6]