Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nicholson, Sir Sydney (Hugo)

(b London, 9 Feb 1875; d Ashford, Kent, 30 May 1947). English organist. After leaving Oxford he studied at the RCM and at Frankfurt. For the next 25 years he was successively organist of the Lower Chapel, Eton (1903), acting organist of Carlisle Cathedral (1904), organist of Manchester Cathedral (1908) and of Westminster Abbey (1919). He became acquainted with the need and opportunities to raise the standard of music in parish churches, and with this in mind he left Westminster Abbey in 1928 and founded the School of English Church Music (later the Royal School of Church Music). His purpose was twofold: to establish a teaching centre where courses of instruction to choirmasters, organists and clergy might be held; and to develop an advisory service throughout the country for affiliated choirs. That service was subsequently extended overseas. He received the Lambeth DMus in 1928 and in 1938 he was knighted for his services to church music.

Nicholson edited the 1916 supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern and also the shortened music edition of 1939; he did much of the preliminary work towards the revised edition of 1950. He composed a little church music and some secular stage works including The Mermaid, 1928, and The Children of the Chapel, 1935.

WRITINGS

Church Music: a Practical Handbook (London, 1920)

Quires and Places where they Sing (London, 1932, 2/1942)

with G. Gardner: A Manual of English Church Music (London, 1923, 2/1936)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DNB (W. McKie)

W. Shaw: Vocation and Endeavour (London, 1997)

WATKINS SHAW

Nickel von Hof.

See Decius, Nikolaus.

Nico, Dr.

See Kasanda, Nicolas and the democratic republic of Congo, §III, 4(ii).

Nicodé, Jean Louis

(b Jerczik, nr Poznań, 12 Aug 1853; d Langebrück, nr Dresden, 5 Oct 1919). German pianist, conductor and composer. He studied in Berlin from 1856 with his father and Hartkäss, entering the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst in 1869 to study the piano with Kullak, harmony with Wüerst and composition with Kiel. From 1875 he taught in Berlin, also establishing the Nicodé Concerts at which he proved himself to be a brilliant and attractive pianist. A concert tour in 1878 through Galicia and Romania with Desirée Artôt further increased his reputation, and he then moved to Dresden as professor at the Royal Conservatory, resigning in 1885 to become director of the Philharmonic Concerts. In 1888 he left to devote himself to composition, reappearing in 1893 as conductor of the Nicodé Concerts. He also directed the Dresden Neustädtischer Chorgesangverein, 1896–1900. In 1919 he became a member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste.

Nicodé was a pianist of warmth and artistic power, and as a conductor he showed an artistic insight that led him to give interpretations full of humanity. His most important compositions include Das Meer, a kind of symphonic opera in six movements occupying a whole evening and scored for large orchestra and voices; it makes some use of leitmotif. He also made an impression with his ambitious symphonic ode Gloria!, which uses vast forces, offstage bands and extra-musical effects (including 12 tuned police whistles).

WORKS

(selective list)

Choral: Das Meer (K. Woermann), sym. ode, solo vv, male vv, orch, org, op.31 (Leipzig and Brussels, 1889); Gloria! ein Sturm- und Sonnenlied, boy's v, SATB, orch, org, op.34 (Leipzig, 1905)

Orch: Maria Stuart, sym. poem, op.4 (Leipzig, 1880); Die Jagd nach dem Glück (Introduction und Scherzo), op.11 (Leipzig, 1878); Romanze, vn, orch, op.14 (Leipzig, 1878); Faschingsbilder, op.24 (Leipzig, 1881); Sym. Variations, op.27 (Leipzig, 1884)

Pf solo: Andenken an Robert Schumann, 6 Phantasiestücke, op.6 (Leipzig, 1876); [13] Aphorismen, op.8 (Berlin and Posen, 1877); Variations and Fugue, op.18 (Leipzig, 1879); Sonata, op.19 (Leipzig, 1880); Ein Liebesleben, 10 poems, op.22 (Leipzig, 1880)

Other works: Vc Sonata no.2, op.25 (Leipzig, 1882); Bilder aus dem Süden, pf 4 hands, op.29 (Leipzig and Brussels, 1886); Dem Andenken am Amarantha, song cycle, op.30 (Leipzig and Brussels, 1886); Erbarmen, hymn, Mez/A, orch, op.33 (Leipzig, n.d.); songs; pieces for pf 4 hands

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove5 (D. Hume) [with complete work-list]

MGG1 (R. Sietz)

T. Schäfer: Jean Louis Nicodé (Berlin, 1907)

O. Taubmann: Jean Louis Nicodé (Leipzig, 1909)

A. Seidl: Jean Louis Nicodé's Gloria Symphonie (Regensburg, 1926)

DUNCAN HUME/JOHN WARRACK

Nicola da Siena [Nicolaus de Senis]

(b ?Siena; fl late 14th century–early 15th). Italian theorist. He was a friar of the Servite order, and was the author of a brief treatise entitled Regule in discantu, copied at Verona in the early 15th century, and containing rules for composition in two voices (named tenor and discantus). Four fundamental consonances are recognized; the 5th, octave, 12th and 15th, of which the latter two are reducible to the former two. The treatise has two sections, both provided with musical examples; in the first, Nicola discusses note-against-note discant, and in the second, counterpoint with several notes (minims and semiminims) from the discantus to one in the tenor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Anglès: ‘Dos tractats medievals de música figurada’, Musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge: Festschrift für Johannes Wolf, ed. W. Lott, H. Osthoff and W. Wolffheim (Berlin, 1929/R), 6–12, esp. 10

F. ALBERTO GALLO