Forbidden Music Regained


Leo Smit Stichting
Search this site

The great Catherine

By Ignace Lilien

genre
Opera / musical theatre
instrumentation
Opera
year
1929
location of manuscript
www.nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl archive registration number 009/055
status
autograph
www.nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl catalogue application number NMI 24017

Details

Words by George Bernard Shaw

In the NMI archive only available the piano reduction. This work was originally published by Universal Edition.

First performance

1932 German version ‘Die grosse Katharina’

About Ignace Lilien

Ignace Lilien

His hometown Lemberg, in the Ukraine known as Lviv, and in Poland as Lwów, has a history of occupation by shifting powers. This is why the Germans had trouble figuring out Ignace Lilien's real identity; he survived the war with forged documents. He worked as a chemical engineer, but that didn’t stop him from composing a large oeuvre. His life was as varied as his music, with influences ranging from Polish modernism to South American rhythms and timbres.

by Frans van Ruth