Five favorite pieces for unaccompanied violin - including "Milhaudesque No. 1", "Eurydice", "Act I Prelude", "City Theme No. 10", and "March in an Old French Style". NOTES and FACTS on the violin music of W A Young: Webster Young is a neoclassical composer for opera, ballet, orchestra, piano, solo strings, and solo guitar. He has 218 works to his credit, including 10 ballets, 5 symphonies, and 6 operas. Young's music can be described as neo-tonal, melodic, and neoclassical. W.A. Young began musical life as a guitarist and bandleader until at age 17 he took up the violin and piano during his musical studies at U. C. Berkeley. His first violin teacher was a member of the San Francisco Symphony. Young learned quickly and after leaving U. C. Berkeley taught himself until he began to receive advice on his violin playing from a close friend in the New York Philharmonic orchestra. The piano, taken up at the same time, became Young's main instrument. The composer wrote his first suite for the unaccompanied violin at age 29. Young refined its four movements for more than two decades, until it reached its current state. "Milhaudesque No. 1" and "Eurydice" are from this suite. Young has written several "Milhaudesques" and it constitutes a special form for the composer, in which the music is in the spirit of Darius Milhaud. Young studied composition with Milhaud's close friend Charles Jones. "Eurydice"comes from a time when the Young had been working on an Orpheus opera - although the violin piece did not become part of the opera. The "City Theme No. 10" (Young has written many pieces he calls a "City Theme") along with the French March, from Suite No. 2, followed Suite No 1 two years later. A 3rd Suite, which is from a later period of the composer's output, begins with the "Act I Prelude". Young's family is related to Otto Harbach, the Broadway lyricist of the 1920'3 and 30's who wrote "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and many Broadway operettas, including "The Desert Song" and "Rosemarie". He studied at five music schools , and with a number of prominent composers, receiving advice on opera from Samuel Barber and studying with Charles Jones, who was a friend of Milhaud and Stravinsky.