Front Page
UNITED STATES of
AMERICA
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The
history of 20th-century classical music in the U.S.A. revolves
around a continuous series of attempts to formulate novel and
especially American forms of musical expression, in part a struggle
against the domination of European classical music and ideas,
new or old. Some of these attempts have been more successful
than others; ironically most of them have been absorbed and
transformed by European traditions, notably through the immigration
of European composers to the United States. It is noticeable,
though, that compositions by the major American composers have
been under-represented in both concert halls and in recordings
by the major labels, although the rise of international independent
labels such as Naxos has recently allowed a much wider encounter
with the range of American 20th-century music.
A
large measure of the lack of general exposure of American composers,
both internally and externally, may be due to environmental
factors rather than to any absence of an innate pool of talent:
the kind of dissemination of new music that was particularly
associated in the late 20th-Century in Europe with
radio broadcasting and widely-covered festivals did not exist
in the States to the same extent or depth. In addition, the
close ties between American composers' livelihoods and academia
has had a `Ivory Tower' effect on composition, shifting the
balance more towards purely intellectual concerns, away from
the expression of a wider human condition, and from the reflection
of American non-academic emotions and concerns.
Another
curb on the dissemination of American music has been the lack
of operas of the quality to establish themselves internationally,
until the innovative works of such composers as Philip Glass
and John Adams. This, though, is partly a reflection
of the development of one of the major contributions of American
music, though one that lies outside the scope of this Guide:
the American musical, and it has been noticeable how many 20th-Century
American operas, such as those of Floyd or Douglas Moore,
seem to edge towards the popular American form. Similarly, the
States gave to the world two major music genres in the 20th-Century,
both of which also lie outside the scope of this Guide,
and both of which have had their influence on classical music:
jazz and the blues.
However,
the States has produced, and continues to produce, a remarkably
large number of composers. A book such as this cannot possibly
do justice to that scale, and therefore concentrates on those
composers most likely to be encountered, in the States or outside.
In addition, the first generation of truly American composers,
now coming to the end of their lifetimes, are of such general
if not exceptional interest, their music so undeservedly neglected
even if their names are widely known, that there is an element
of bias towards that generation.
A
major feature of American music is the long tradition of maverick
experimental composers, from the hymn music of Henry Billings
(1746-1800, in whom interest has been revived this century),
who wrote an atonal hymn, to John Cage in the present
day. But as the 20th century started, American music was anything
but original or inventive, being dominated by European example,
European training (particularly Germanic), and by European visitors,
such as Dvořák (1841-1904) or Mahler, and in the
world of opera, by the major Italian contemporary composers.
The major figure of the end of the 19th century was Edward MacDowell
(1860-1908), whose idiom was in the German Romantic tradition.
Similarly, the group known as the 'New England Classicists'
- George Chadwick (1854-1931), Arthur Foote (1853-1937) and
Horatio Parker (1863-1919) - followed the example of Brahms.
These, the leading composers of the period, concentrated on
symphonic and instrumental works; opera meant Italian opera.
There were two major exceptions to this general cast of American
composition at the turn of the century. The first was Charles
Martin Loeffler (1861-1935), who reflected the fin-de-siècle
developments of the end of Romanticism in Europe. Drawn to unusual,
bizarre, or exotic subjects, his outlook was Symbolist, and
his main achievements are the orchestral colours and effects
of his tone-painting. The evocative La mort de Tintagiles
(1897, revised 1901), a tone-poem for viola d'amore and orchestra
based on a dark marionette play by Maeterlinck, is well worth
hunting out, similar in style to the music of his British contemporary
Bantock. Loeffler's output is now little heard; it may
be that, in an age more indulgent to his type of idiom, he will
emerge as a composer of greater stature than such obscurity
would suggest. The second is Charles Ives (1874-1954),
whose extraordinary output, anticipating many of the techniques
evolved by others later in the century, had no influence at
the time of their composition. His place in the history of American
music is discussed under the entry devoted to him, below. Two
other composers might be far better known had their output been
larger. After early works influenced by German models, Charles
Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) developed an Impressionist idiom
tinged with Oriental colours and effects, in such evocative
tone-poems as The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1912-1917)
for orchestra and The White Peacock (1915,orchestrated
1919, originally the first of four Roman Sketches for
piano). These, and the fine Poem (1918) for flute and
orchestra, are well worth the encounter; this talented composer
died prematurely just as his music had been discovered, but
he helped American music turn away from German influences and
look to French music. The output of Carl Ruggles (1876-1971,
a painter as well as composer), bold in scale but meticulously
crafted, was extremely small (some ten acknowledged works) but
of a visionary quality, exploring an atonal harmonic palette.
Sun-Treader (1926-1931, much revised), the third of a
triptych of orchestral works, is one of the finest American
compositions of the first half of the 20th century, a large,
rich 16-minute score, its roots in late Romanticism, but with
an extremely chromatic harmonic palette that (through Ruggles'
general unwillingness to repeat a note until some eight others
have been heard) sometimes has an atonal cast. The emotional
range is considerable, the orchestra regularly swelling up and
out in unresolved climaxes that must start again, the whole
effect one of Expressionist emotional tension compressed almost
to bursting point, each detail meticulously weighted. An apt
comparison is perhaps with the earlier orchestral writing of
Berg. The two other works of the triptych, Men and
Mountains (1924, revised 1936) for orchestra and Angels
(1921, revised 1939) for four muted trumpets and five muted
trombones, are equally compressed. The former, for a very large
orchestra and in three parts, is in a idiom similar to, but
less intensely effective than, that of Sun-Treader. Angles
is a 47-bar work, muted but of an anguished and evocative weave.
Ruggles spent many years working on an opera The Sunken Bell
based on a play by Gerhardt Hauptmann, but burned the score.
The
first, and the most lasting and influential of all specifically
American musical developments, was not in the field of `serious'
music, but in the development of jazz. Ironically, the first
classical composers to absorb some of the techniques and ideas
of jazz into their work were not American at all, but those
such as Martinů, Milhaud, and Stravinsky,
working in Paris in the early 1920s. Nonetheless, it was the
element of jazz that provided the impetus for the styles of
the first American composers who came to the fore in the late
1920s and early 1930s with music that was instantly recognizable
as American, rather than a European clone. The catalyst for
this sudden explosion of an American music was also found in
Paris, in the teacher Nadia Boulanger. So many Americans studied
with her, from Copland to Glass, that a list of
her pupils reads rather like a catalogue of major American composers.
Her legacy was twofold. She encouraged American composers to
seek their own American voices. She also insisted on a detailed
and thorough study of basic techniques; on the positive side,
she instilled the sense of craftsmanship that is so apparent
in the subsequent generation of American composers, and on the
negative contributed to the obsession with intellectual analysis
that has so castrated academic American music.
A
second major thread running through the history of American
music has been that of dance. Many of Copland's best-known
works originated as ballets; much of the initial experimental
work with percussion by Cage and Lou Harrison
(born 1917) was influenced by dance, and Minimalism had its
origins in small-scale works for dancers. But one of the most
lasting legacies of the heritage of American serious music is
also one of the most neglected. The generation of American composers
who came to prominence in the 1930s excelled at the traditional
form of the symphony, and, to a lesser extent, its interior
obverse, the string quartet. What is more, these symphonies,
far from being mere copies of European models, proved to be
a major vehicle for the expression of ideas, emotions, and concerns
that reflected the American outlook of their age, especially
a sense of broad landscape and a rugged, rough purpose. If the
States did not produce a symphonist of the calibre or consistency
of Shostakovich or Vaughan Williams, the best
of these symphonies (as indicated in the individual entries
below) are very fine indeed, and moreover are of especial interest
and appeal because they reflect that particularly American spirit.
It seems extraordinary that American orchestras have not trumpeted
these works at home and abroad, to establish the base of a pride
in a musical cultural heritage currently so nebulous in the
U.S.A., especially when the form of the symphony is one readily
accessible to general audiences. The major American symphonists
include (besides Ives and Copland), Howard Hanson
(1896-1981), a conservative but a major force in promoting indigenous
American music, Roy Harris (1898-1979), Walter Piston
(1894-1976), Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), William
Schuman (1910-1992) Roger Sessions (1896-1985),
and the now virtually forgotten Ernst Toch (born Vienna 1887,
died 1964), who moved from a Romantic idiom through neo-classicism
to 12-tone techniques, and whose music deserves a revival.
These
group of symphonists formed the core of American classical music
in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, establishing and promoting a
specifically American idiom ranging from the American subjects
and tone of Copland and Schuman to the 12-tone
techniques of the influential Sessions, and developing
an American symphonic and operatic style, though much of the
latter awaits re-exploration and appraisal. Meanwhile Henry
Cowell (1897-1965), a major American innovator, had started
exploring works dominated by percussion, music for pianos prepared
in various ways to change or extend the range of colours, and
Eastern musics and rhythms. John Cage (1912-1992) and
Lou Harrison (born 1917) developed this legacy, the former
then emerging into a major avant-garde force whose ideas were
taken up by a number of experimental American composers. The
eccentric Harry Partch (1901-1974) was on a parallel experimental
path, but using specially designed instruments with microtonal
intervals (dividing the scale into 43 or more tones). His extraordinary
sound-world, quite unlike anything until the 1980s (when Eastern
sounds became more assimilated into Western music), owes much
to traditional Eastern musics, is usually built around his specially
designed tuned percussive instruments, and has a strong ritual
and theatrical quality. His sound-world is compelling, but is
almost impossible to encounter except on recordings, due to
the uniqueness of the instruments. Of his earlier works, often
using voice, Barstow (1941-1943) is an extraordinary
setting of eight hobo inscriptions on a railing outside the
town of the same name, using two voices, half-singing, half-speaking,
and four players on original instruments; it captures the essence
of the period of displaced hitchhikers, a 1940s equivalent to
Reich's 1980s Different Trains. Of his later works,
mostly large-scale rituals, Delusions of Fury (1963-1969)
is a music-theatre piece for mime, dancers (also chanting or
singing) in two halves, the first based on a Japanese nōh
play, the second a folk-like tale centred around a hobo, and
covers the whole gamut of Partch's unusual instruments, infectious
rhythms, Oriental colours, and microtonal effects. The RCA Company
had been experimenting with electronic instruments since the
late 1940s, but Vladimir Ussachevsky (born in Manchuria, 1911,
died 1990) and Otto Luening (born 1900) pioneered American electronic
music in the late 1950s, establishing a studio in Columbia University
that became the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in
1959. Their example was followed by Mario Davidovsky (born Buenos
Aires, 1934); all three composers are now little encountered,
but made important contributions to the development of American
music.
In
the 1960s American composition split into a number of branches.
Some composers followed the experiments and examples of Cage;
others like Lukas Foss (born 1922) had similarities with
the European avant-garde. Many more followed the path of `total
serialism' into ever more arcane detail, led by Milton Babbitt
(born 1916); this also dominated academic composition teaching
in the 1960s and 1970s, and still dominates academic musical
analysis, to the great detriment of modern American music. Carter
remained the most interesting and consistent of the American
composers, but his idiom was unique. The reaction in the 1970s
and 1980s produced a fragmentation of styles that ranged from
a return to a late-Romantic influence (Mahler in the
works of David Del Tredici, born 1937, and especially
in those of George Rochberg, born 1918, whose change from a
serial to a tonal neo-Romantic idiom is best heard in his string
quartets), a general neo-Romanticism (such as the very attractive
if superficial Violin Concerto, 1979, of Earl Kim, born
1920), the stylistic mishmash of John Corigliano (born
1938), and the mainstream, influenced by popular music and the
Broadway musical, of such composers as Leonard Bernstein
(1918-1990), a major personality and force in American music
more through his conducting and broadcasting than through his
own compositions. But the movement that has had the most national
and international attention and influence, and the only `school'
that has arisen in this period, is that known as `Minimalism'.
With its origins in the music of Carl Orff, more immediately
in the 1960s drone works of the jazz composer LaMonte Young,
and particularly in the seminal In C (1964) by Terry
Riley (born 1935), it was immediately loathed by conservative
critics and serialist academics alike, partly because it was
a strong reaction to 'highbrow' and particularly academic American
values. Its earliest manifestation in the 1960s was closely
tied with experimental modern dance and small chamber groups
usually using electronic amplification. It then broadened its
range and appeal in the 1970s until the works of Philip Glass
(born 1937) and Steve Reich (born 1936) achieved an enormous
following beyond the range of lovers of classical music, and
has spread into all serious musical genres, including opera.
While it has had adherents outside America, its use of repetitive
evolving patterns has increasingly influenced elements of works
by composers who could not by any stretch of the imagination
be included in the Minimalist school. Adherents of Minimalism
have been at pains to point out the considerable stylistic differences
between the major composers of the school. Such differences
are undeniable; but the cast of similarities, particularly the
influence of gamelan ideas, the return to a diatonic base, and
the altered conception of the time and spatial elements of the
construction of music, so markedly set these composers aside
from other developments in modern music that the broad grouping
is apposite. Whether the movement will be a lasting one, or
whether it will prove to be more significant in the influence
of its ideas on non-minimalist music remains to be seen, but
its main flaw - that it is more suited to broader spiritual
undertows than focused, immediate, experiential emotions - suggests
the latter.
These,
then, are the main outlines and figures of the development of
American music, but a number of composers for whom there is
not enough space for full inclusion in this Guide deserve
mention. John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) experimented with
jazz influences in the very visual ballet Krazy Kat,
based on a comic strip. The finest work of Ruth Crawford Seeger
(1901-1953) is her String Quartet (1931). Paul Creston
(né Guttoveggio, 1906, died 1985) was a cosmopolitan traditionalist,
best heard in the Symphony No.2 (1944), a two-movement
work pitting a Sibelius-touched `Introduction and Song'
against an `Interlude and Dance', full of forceful infectious
bounce tinged with jazz, and the fine, if conventional Symphony
No.3 (1950), which with the American gaiety of the second
movement and the contemplative dark third movement works better
as an abstract work, rather than through its programme representing
the mysteries of the Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection.
The unashamedly neo-classical Partita (1937) for flute,
violin and strings is also most attractive. Gian-Carlo Menotti
(born in Italy in 1911) is generally thought of as an American
composer, though he retained his Italian citizenship and settled
in Scotland in 1974. He is best known for his earlier operas,
unchallenging in their morals and in a naïve idiom that came
straight from the Italy of 1900, including The Medium
(1946), The Telephone (1947) and The Consul (1950).
His most successful work was the short, sentimental but attractive
Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), woven around a crippled
boy who meets the three Magi; it was the first television opera,
and on the stage remains a perennial Christmas favourite in
North America. David Diamond (born 1915), best known for his
Rounds for Strings (1944), was primarily a symphonist,
producing nine; the characteristic Symphony No.4 (1944)
is traditional, attractive, but unmemorable. Vincent Persichetti
(1915-1987) produced a large body of works in a variety of communicative
styles, from the tonal to the atonal, including nine symphonies.
The symphonies of Peter Mennin (born Mennini, 1923-1983) are
large and bold, tinged with an American brashness and syncopation,
and if not as striking as similar works by Harris or
Schuman, are worth hearing, especially the Symphony
No.3 (1946). Ned Rorem (born 1923) is probably better known
for his provocative books of musical autobiography and criticism
than for his music. His primary achievement is his large body
of songs; his style has been gracefully traditional, drawn from
French models, and his output and has been large, including
three numbered symphonies, of which the Symphony No.3
(1957) is full of delightful ideas but, with its range from
the atmospherical serious to the light, fails to gel. Of his
operas, Miss Julie (1960-1965, revised into one act,
1975) belongs to the American traditional of lyrical opera,
but its vocal fluency fails to delve the psychological depth
of the Strindberg play. He is at his worst in such grand-scale
works as An American Oratorio (1983-1985), mixing a 19th-century
choral tradition with populist elements and jazz, and at his
best in smaller-scale works that give rein to his sense of style
and grace. Lejaren Hiller (born 1924) has concentrated on music
composed with computers; his Illiac Suite (1957) for
string quartet (developed with Leonard Issacson) was the first
computer-programmed acoustic composition. His String Quartet
No.5 (1962) is in quarter-tones with a 24-note row, using
variation technique in which variation twelve is itself a miniature
quartet inside a quartet, all four movements played simultaneously.
Earle Brown (born 1926) was a leading advocate of `indeterminacy',
with scores that allowed the players considerable freedom in
interpretation and order of events, and mobile forms. Ben Johnston
(born 1926) is best known for his strings quartets using microtonal
intervals, notably the String Quartet No.2 (1964). Morton
Feldman (1926-1987), initially influenced by Cage and the avant-garde
New York painters, developed an idiom of quiet, sometimes hypnotic
strands of sound undergoing slow-moving variation of detail,
using graphic scores in the 1950s before reverting to conventional
notation. Jacob Druckman (born 1928) turned from electronic
music with instruments (notable the Animus series, 1966-1969)
to a neo-Romantic style that has included references to earlier
musics. John Eaton (born 1935), after exploring electronic music
in the 1960s, has more recently turned to opera (including The
Tempest, 1985) where he has used quarter-tones, especially
in the orchestral writing, set against more traditional harmonies
to considerable effect. Morton Subotnick (born 1933) has produced
a series of atmosphere electronic `theme' works, aimed at a
more popular market; Silver Apples of the Moon (1967),
designed for an LP, brought him wide attention, but the most
effective is After the Butterfly (1979) for trumpet ensemble
and electronics.
Finally,
it should be pointed out again that the States has a particularly
honourable tradition in the form of the musical, which, with
the help of Hollywood versions of Broadway productions, usurped
the position of European operetta from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Such works lie outside the scope of this book, but they have
influenced American classical music. Many American composers,
both indigenous (such as Bernstein) and immigrants (Weill),
have made major contributions to the genre, while Broadway's
most talented exponent, George Gershwin (1898-1937),
included works of a more classical idiom in his output, and
the musicals of Stephen Sondheim (born 1930) have taken the
genre to new levels of sophistication.
American
Music Centre:
30
- West 26th Street
Suite
1001
New
York, NY 10010-2011
tel:
+01 212 366 5260
fax:
+01 212 366 5265
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ADAMS
ANTHEIL
BABBITT
BARBER
BERNSTEIN
BOLCOM
CAGE
CARTER
COPLAND
CORIGLIANO
COWELL
CRUMB
DEL
TREDICI
FOSS
GERSHWIN
GLASS
HANSON
HARRIS
HARRISON
HOVHANESS
IVES
PISTON
REICH
RIEGGER
SCHUMAN
SESSIONS
THOMSON
WUORINEN
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ADAMS John
born
15th February 1947 at Worcester (Massachusetts)
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John
Adams, who came to prominence with the grand-scale opera Nixon
in China (1987), is proving to be one of the most fascinating
and infuriating of the new wave of Minimalist composers who
have followed the examples of Reich, and in Adams' case,
Glass. He is also the American Minimalist composer most
aware of the inheritance of musical tradition, incorporating
many influences into the minimal structures of his works, from
material that he shares with Ives (hymns, marches - such
Adams titles as Common Tones in Simple Time are clearly
an echo of Ives), to a use of ostinati colours that looks back
beyond Orff and the metallic percussive colours of early
Cage. Most strikingly, he almost immediately applied
Minimalist techniques to large-scale orchestras with an almost
Impressionist, Ravelian command of orchestral colour (Adams
had the advantage of being composer-in-residence at the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra, in contrast to Reich and Glass,
who arrived at writing for larger force via their own small
groups). His earlier works show his fondness for lyrical ideas
while being influenced by Cage and, in the triptych American
Standard (1973), Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, with
marches, jazz, and performers adding 'found objects'. The section
`Christian Zeal and Activity', with an almost Wagnerian overtone
to the slow unfolding of melodic strand, continues the American
tradition of utilizing hymn tunes, and placed Adams firmly in
the neo-Romantic movement.
Adams'
first major Minimalist work is also one of his most effective.
Shaker Loops (1978) for string septet (version for string
orchestra, 1982-1983) is inspired by another American phenomenon,
the 'Shaker' religious sect. Adams' minimalism does not come
from the very slow changes, the movement in stasis that is a
characteristic of Eastern musics inherent in the music of Reich
and Glass, and whose trance-like effect has been so often noted.
Instead, Adams' driving, impulsive, and very effective repetitive
rhythms are strictly ostinati, emphasising changes of colour
and timbre, and closer to neo-classical ostinati usage (a rhythmic
parallel to the third movement is Honegger's Pacific
231). Similarly, there are no sudden key shifts, but a conventional
tonal (and neo-Romantic) sense of harmonic progression and eventual
resolution: Phrygian Gates (1978) for piano is a cycle
of fifths. A simple harmonic pattern is the basis of Common
Tones in Simple Time (1979-1980, revised 1986), the structure
built on common chords (triads) or similarly simple harmonic
constructions, and modulation achieved only through chords with
common tones. With an equally simple basic metre (always 4/4
or 2/2), the emphasis is thrown on the changing colours, achieved
by such details as the 16th notes played by violins and violas,
the two pianos being 1/16 out of phase with each other, or the
two oboes or two trumpets hovering between neighbouring B and
C.
The
element of banality that has subsequently plagued some of Adams'
music then became apparent in Grand Pianola Music (1982),
with its elements of pastiche, including revivalist hymns and,
in the finale, echoes of the modern Hollywood pop epic style
in major keys exemplified by the pop composer Vangelis, together
with gospel music and marches. In contrast, two works have shown
the enormous potential of this composer, both extremely powerful
in their own right. In Harmonium (1981) for chorus and
orchestra and Harmonielehre (1985) for orchestra, rich
and sometimes delicate orchestral textures vie with orchestral
detail, the long flowing melodies with complex repetitive rhythmic
touches. Events unfold especially through changing colours,
and through the gradations of dynamics over a very long time-span,
leading to great sweeping climaxes in major keys whose power,
emotional effect, and sheer excitement, thanks to the scale
of the orchestral imagination, is unmatched by any other Minimalist
composer. The influence of Glass, observable particularly
in the shifts of the interval of 2nds in Harmonielehre,
unfortunately becomes more overt in Adam's major success to
date, the opera Nixon in China (1987), especially the
devices and energy of Act II of Glass's Satyagraha. The
opera deals in a rather uncomfortably surrealistic way with
Nixon's trip to China and his meetings with Chairman Mao. Much
of the orchestra texture is pared down, the fascination of detail
lost, and in spite of some marvellous climactic moments (especially
when ecstatic choral texture joins rich orchestral colour),
the banality resurfaces, partly caused by the ungrateful and
whitewashing libretto, which makes some sections seem a Minimalist
parody of Gilbert and Sullivan. In contrast to Glass' individual
vocal writing, Adams' solo vocal lines here belong to another
American tradition: that of the American musical, exemplified
by Bernstein's West Side Story. This type of melody sits
very uneasily on the Minimalist orchestral writing, sometimes
the impetus seems to lose focus, and the long lines become merely
note-spinning. Nowhere is this better exemplified that on the
note-spinning sections of The Chairman Dances (1985,
on material from Nixon in China) for orchestra, which
feel like muzak, in spite of the thrilling impetus of much of
the writing, with influences from Chinese music to Weill.
However, in Fearful Symmetries (1988) for winds, saxophones,
synthesizer, strings and brass (the same orchestral complement
as Nixon in China), Adams combines his sense of forward
momentum, climactic moments, and delicate touches with a more
eclectic synthesis of moods, not the least of which is humour,
to create one of his most satisfying and entertaining works.
Adams'
second opera, The Death of Klinghoffer (1989-1991), also
to a libretto by Alice Goodman, again treats a contemporary
subject: the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro
by Palestinian terrorists, with the subsequent death of one
of the passengers, Leon Klinghoffer. The aim is a tragedy, rather
than the quasi-comedy and parody of Nixon in China, and
its form is influenced by the Bach Passions, being laid out
in clear sections with a conspicuous choral involvement. Although
individual moments echo the idiom of the earlier opera, the
musical style is more varied, and in many respects more conservative
than Adams' earlier work, and the libretto more poetic. Both
these operas leave a sense of discomfort, easy to overlook because
of the sheer power of some of the music. In spite of the claims
of the composer, librettist and director, the treatment of other
cultures and ways of looking at the world has exactly the kind
of shallow, single-culture viewpoint that bedevils American
news. It is instructive that in Nixon in China, and even
more in The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams should turn to
what amounts to an equivalent of the 19th-century Grand Opera,
a form that inclines to primary colours and shallow simplistic
treatment when dealing with political subjects. This has been
reinforced by the spectacular, almost melodramatic, stage elements
of the operas, such as the appearance of the fuselage of the
Boeing when Nixon arrives in China with Kissinger, visually
very dramatic, but contributing little apart from the melodramatic.
Whether
Adams will continue to develop his individual brand of Minimalism,
or whether he will continue a populist opera style remains to
be seen. However, those coming new to the genre will find him
perhaps the most accessible composer of this new American movement.
They should not confuse him with the composer John Luther Adams
(born 1953).
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
symphony Light Over Water for brass and synthesizers
-
Common Tones in Simple Time and Harmonielehre
for orch.; Fearful Symmetries for orchestral ensemble;
Shaker Loops for seven strings
-
Phrygian Gates for piano
-
The Wound Dresser for baritone, trumpet and violin
-
Grand Pianola Music for voices and orch.; Harmonium
for chorus and orch.
-
operas The Death of Klinghoffer and Nixon in China
───────────────────────────────────────recommended
works:
Fearful
Symmetries
(1988) for orchestral ensemble
Harmonium (1981) for chorus and orchestra
Harmonielehre (1985) for orchestra
Shaker
Loops
(1977-1978) for 7 strings
───────────────────────────────────────
ANTHEIL George Johann
Carl
born
8th July 1900 at Trenton (New Jersey)
died
12th February 1959 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────George
Antheil was the first modern American composer to attract attention
(and controversy) in Europe, where he had originally gone as
a pianist (to Berlin, 1922), before settling in Paris in 1923,
where he was championed by the writers James Joyce and Ezra
Pound. There, between 1923 and 1927, his anti-Romantic, excessively
mechanistic music (influenced by Stravinsky, whom he
knew) caused a sensation.
Initially,
this was expressed in piano music, especially in a series of
sonatas, Sonata sauvage (Sonata No.2, 1922 or
1923), Death of Machines (Sonata No.3, 1923),
Jazz Sonata (Sonata No.4), and, most notoriously,
the Airplane Sonata (Sonata No.1, 1921), with
repetitive machine-like rhythms, organised in blocks of different
ostinati, and including cluster-like chords. His Symphony
No.1 `Zingaresca', 1922, revised 1923) had included jazz
elements, developed in the lively, impulsive, witty and short
Jazz Symphony (1926) for 22 instruments (revised for
small orchestra, 1955). But the most notorious piece of this
period was the Ballet mécanique (1923-1925) for eight
pianos, player piano, four xylophones, percussion and two airplane
propellers (version for 16 pianos and other noise makers, 1927).
The version now usually performed is a considerably shortened
revision (1953), and uses four pianos. Again, modular repetitive
units are used, under the influence of similar procedures in
Cubist painting. The fragments of melodic material (rhythm and
percussive colour is much more important) are influenced by
Stravinsky. With the pianos used percussively, it is
a tour-de-force of mechanistic but sometimes delicate sounds,
whose repetitions are masked by other constant changes. Its
use of unpitched percussion sounds, and emphasis on organization
by contrasts of rhythmic rather than harmonic material, parallels
the work of Varèse and anticipates later percussion developments.
Antheil
then turned to a neo-classical style, again following the lead
of Stravinsky, but also produced Transatlantic
(1927-1928), an admired satirical opera on American life that
uses cinematographic stage techniques, parodies of popular tunes,
and his modular and ostinati techniques. It was the first opera
by an American composer to be produced by a foreign opera company.
His last major piece written in Europe before his return to
the USA in 1933 was the uneven but sometimes fascinating La
femme: 100 Têtes (1933), a set of 44 preludes and a final
dance for piano, which include a return to the steely, percussive
(and sometimes noisy) style, as well as parodies of other pianistic
styles, from the virtuoso, through Impressionism, to a suggestion
of Shostakovich (later a strong influence on Antheil's
music), but which have a visionary feel to the overall set,
and an internal programme recalling Antheil's childhood.
From
1935 Antheil became well-known as a film composer working in
Hollywood, turning to opera in the late 40s and early 1950s,
of which the most successful was the comic Volpone (1949).
At the same time his style changed considerably, becoming neo-Romantic
in orientation, though keeping something of the rhythmic impulse
and jazzy rhythms of his experimental period. The most prominent
works of this period are the Symphony No.4 (1944), showing
the influence of Shostakovich, and using intentionally
populist melodies, and the infectious Symphony No.5 (1947-1948,
not to be confused with the Tragic Symphony, 1945-1946,
sometimes called No.5), with a lively first movement whose language
recalls Shostakovich's scherzos, and a slow movement in the
American landscape mode. The ballet The Capital of the World
(1953) is based on a Hemingway short story about a young bullfighter
from a poor village going to Madrid, the city of the title,
who eventually dies in the ring. First presented on television
rather than on the stage, it is a colourful and vivacious score,
full of Spanish touches, conventional in substance, but with
enough American verve to suggest that it would work well on
stage.
Among
Antheil's many achievements were the writing of a syndicated
column of advice to the lovelorn, the co-invention of a new
kind of torpedo, and the publication of two books on glandular
criminology. His music deserves more prominence, particularly
the opera Transatlantic, not least for its historic interest.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
6 numbered symphonies (No.1 Zingareska, No.3 American,
No.4 1942, No.5 Joyous, No.6 after Delacroix);
Jazz Symphony; Symphonie en fa; Tragic Symphony
(sometimes confusingly referred to as No.5)
-
2 piano concertos; Ballet mécanique; other orchestral
works
-
flute sonata; trumpet sonata; 4 violin sonatas (No.1 only finale
extant, No.2 with drums) and violin sonatina; Concertino
for flute, bassoon and piano; 3 string quartets; Symphony
for 5 instruments and other chamber music
-
cantata Cabeza de vaca; song cycles including Eight
Fragments from Shelley and Songs of Experience; other
songs
-
surviving ballets Capital of the World, Dance in Four
Parts, and Dreams
-
operas The Brothers, Helen Retires, Transatlantic,
Venus in Africa, Volpone, and The Wish
-
incidental music; 28 film scores, some lost; TV scores
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Airplane
Sonata
(Piano Sonata No.2, 1921)
Ballet
mécanique
(1926 rev. 1955)
Jazz
Symphony
(1926 rev 1955)
La
femme: 100 Têtes
(1933) for piano
Symphony
No.5 (1947)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
G.Antheil
Bad Boy of Music, 1945, reissued 1981
E.Pound
Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, 1928, reissued 1968
L.
Whitesitt The Life and Music of George Antheil, 1983
───────────────────────────────────────
BABBITT Milton Byron
born
10th May 1916 at Philadelphia
───────────────────────────────────────
For
better or worse, Milton Babbitt has been through his writings,
his theories and his teaching as well as his music, one of the
most influential of American composers since the Second World
War, one whose music is treated outside the circles of his followers
more with respect than with affection. Indeed, his works are
totally unknown to the vast majority of those who listen to
music: the composer himself has stressed the validity of appealing
to a small elite. Broadly speaking, his achievement has been
to remain in the forefront of the establishment and development
of 12-tone music in the USA, and more especially to reappraise
the 12-tone legacy of Schoenberg, ally it with Webern's
derived sets (a term invented by Babbitt, referring to a 12-note
set that is derived from the manipulation of a smaller set of
notes), apply the techniques to all the parameters of music
(e.g. duration, dynamics) as well as pitch, utilize the concepts
of new mathematics in the resultant systems, and invent (or
borrow from mathematics) terms to describe the processes (and
which have become current usage in complex analysis of such
works).
The
result was the concept of 'total serialism', which European
composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen were
arriving at independently following the lead of Messiaen,
but a year or so later than Babbitt. A major difference has
been that the European composers by and large dropped the strict
application of total serialism by the middle 1950s as being
too restricting; Babbitt, on the other hand, has developed it.
His first work of total serialism was Three Compositions
for Piano (1947-1948) a busy, yet austere and sometimes
delicate set of abstract miniatures, much more easily appreciated
(like most of Babbitt's music) when heard while following a
score. It uses a rhythmic set (and its transformations) that
corresponds to the pitch set (and its transformations according
to 12-tone principles). In the uncompromising, often single-voiced
Composition for Four Instruments (1948) for flute, violin,
clarinet and cello, and Composition for Twelve Instruments
(1948) the complex serial interrelationships between the various
aspects of the music are extended. He then continued to refine
the internal mathematical honeycombs of his music, in such works
as the String Quartet No.2 (1954) in which the structure
is based on the introduction of the first half of a 12-note
series (with their own row permutations), with increasingly
larger intervals until all six notes are stated consecutively,
followed by a similar process with the second six notes, until
all twelve notes can be sounded, or in the intervallic relationships
of Partitions (1957) for piano, the polyphonic network
of Relata I (1965) for orchestra, the distantly jazz
touches of All Set (1957) for jazz ensemble, or the String
Quartet No.3 (1969-1970) which the composer has aptly described
as 'sonic asceticism'. In all these works the fascination is
largely intellectual, the appeal to the mathematical mind, the
conceptualisation abstract. To the curious general listener,
the most appealing work of this period is probably Philomel
(1964) for soprano and 4-track tape.
In
1959 Babbitt set up the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Studio, and himself became one of the earlier American exponents
of electronic music. He himself used the medium largely to have
total control over the detailed graduations of his strictly
total serial concepts, particularly organized changes in timbre
and colour, and to utilize the ability to create much faster
changes than instrumentalists, in contrast to the new aural
conceptualisations that the Europeans were pursuing. His earliest
essay for tape was Composition for Synthesizer (1961),
the best-known probably Ensembles for Synthesizer (1962-1964).
Babbitt's
own achievement has been considerable, even if appreciated by
a very few. But there are many who consider that his influence
on American music has been little short of disastrous, producing
a whole generation of composers without his talent, erudition
or wit who have slavishly followed, in the academic circles
where much of the funding for new music is available, intellectual
complexities of such convoluted intent that their music has
often been excruciating, and totally devoid of any audience
other than their fellow practitioners. One might also point
to another effect of his influence, which many would consider
equally unfortunate: that the main reaction to such intellectual
complexity has been a swing to the opposite end of the pendulum,
the often oversimplified harmonically naïve trend of Minimalism.
Babbitt
has taught at Princeton since 1938 (as director of the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center since 1959), and at the Juilliard. He
received a Pulitzer Special Citation for Music in 1982.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
Concerti for violin, small orch. and tape
-
Relata I and II for orch.; Ars combinatoria
for small orch.; Correspondences for string orch. and
tape
-
My Ends Are My Beginning for solo clarinet; melismata
for solo violin; Dual for cello and piano; Images
for saxophone and piano; Compositions for viola and piano;
Sextet for violin and piano; 5 string quartets (No.1
withdrawn); woodwind quartet; Compositions for Four Instruments
for flute, clarinet, violin and cello; Four Play for
clarinet, violin, cello and piano; Arie da capo for flute,
clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello and piano; Paraphrases
for 10 instruments; Composition for Twelve Instruments
-
Canonical Form, Duet, It Takes Twelve to Tango,
Lagniappe, Minute Waltz, My Compliments to
Roger, Partitions, Playing for Time, Post-Partitions,
Tableaux and Three Compositions for piano; Reflections
for piano and tape; Don for piano, 4 hands
-
Sheer Pluck for guitar
-
Composition for tenor and 6 instruments; The Head
of the Bed for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin and cello;
A Solo Requiem for soprano and 2 pianos; Two Sonnets
for baritone, clarinet, violin and cello; and other songs
-
More Phenomena for 12 voices; An Elizabethan Sextette
for 6 female voices; Four Canons for women's voices
-
music-theatre Fabulous Voyage
-
electronic Composition for Synthesizer, Ensembles
for Synthesizer and Occasional Variations
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Ensembles
for Synthesizer
(1964)
String
Quartet No.2 (1952)
───────────────────────────────────────
BARBER Samuel
born
9th March 1910 at Westchester
died
23rd January 1981 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Samuel
Barber was a more varied and more interesting composer than
his current reputation as a conservative in an age of modernism
would suggest. His output was small, but beautifully crafted,
usually in larger forms. He is often misleadingly called a Romantic
composer, but there is rarely any Romantic sensibility or conflict
in his music except in the two major operas; instead there is
a distillation of potential complexities into their base constituents.
He is, though, undoubtedly a lyrical composer, the lyricism
perhaps stemming from his training as a singer (unusual for
a composer) and providing a constant thread throughout his work.
This seeming effortless lyrical inspiration is married to a
base drawn from neo-classicism, usually using conventional Classical
forms, the harmony traditional, though extended in works after
1939. He was a composer of considerable undemonstrative craftsmanship:
his rhythmical sense is often quietly active, unobtrusively
adding angles onto the flowing lines, and his orchestration,
often for chamber-like forces, is a model of clarity. In this
general cast he has in his earlier works much in common with
Kabalevsky and Rodrigo, and indeed can at times
coincidentally sound like either (for example, in the first
and second movements respectively of the Violin Concerto).
His later works are more wide-ranging in their idiom, as he
undemonstratively absorbed elements of contemporary developments
but also was prepared to vary the means considerably to suit
the demands of a particular work.
Two
of Barber's best-known works come from early in his career,
and make a lyrical introduction to his music. Dover Beach
(1931) for baritone and string quartet sets Matthew Arnold's
descriptive-philosophical poem, and is illustrative of a predominant
mood in Barber's music, a kind of wistfulness tinged by lyrical
sadness. The quartet creates an almost continuous weave, rocking
like the waves, undulating, rhythmically fluid, crossing paths
with the melancholic but rhapsodic vocal line. The lovely sonorous
Adagio for Strings is actually the slow movement with
expanded forces of the String Quartet (1936). A third
introduction to Barber's music is the Piano Sonata (1949),
which goes beyond the purely lyrical image of the composer.
Tonal in the sense of using a basic key, it also freely uses
ideas drawn from 12-tone techniques. The virtuoso first movement
is essentially Romantic, but constantly confounds expectations
rhythmically and harmonically; the second is a brief scherzo,
twinkling and lissom, like a music-box waltz; the third builds
up to passion; and the finale, starting as a fugue, is the most
interesting, with boogie-woogie jazz rhythms whose feel have
confounded many an accomplished player - this sonata needs a
pianist who can get underneath its eclectic idioms to come off,
and is fascinating when it does.
Besides
the Adagio and Dover Beach, it is the concertos
that are most frequently encountered. The popularity of the
Violin Concerto (1939) has been hampered by its hybrid
nature. The first too movements are gloriously lyrical, with
a lovely insinuating opening idea worthy of Dvořák, lucid
chamber textures (including piano) and a singing slow movement.
But the businessman who commissioned the concerto for his protegé
complained these were too easy to play, whereupon Barber wrote
a furious, virtuoso and rather brash finale (which the violinist
then claimed he could not play). This sits rather uneasily against
the preceding lyricism, though it does illustrate Barber's gradual
change to a less obviously Romantic idiom. The Capricorn
Concerto (1944) for flute, oboe, trumpet and strings has
the verve of a Stravinsky neo-classical work in a quasi-concerto
grosso. The less well-known Cello Concerto (1945) is
a lovely undemanding work, pitting energy against lyricism in
the first movement, a Mediterranean glow in the slow movement
touched by a hint of wistfulness, and a finale of complex, shifting
emotions. The Piano Concerto (1962) is a virtuoso work
in three movements, each in a sharply contrasting minor key.
It is the most obviously Romantic of his concertos, though in
the sometimes helter-skelter final movement the writing is eclectically
wild, with a touch of humour.
The
Symphony No.1 (1935-1936, revised) is in a single movement
with contrasting sections. The second symphony has a somewhat
complex history. Titled Symphony Dedicated to the Army Air
Force (1943-1944), and using airplane effects and dissonant
harmonies, it was revised and then destroyed in 1964 (but survives
in a recording), except for the second movement, which was retitled
Night Flight for orchestra; it is an atmospheric evocation
of its title, an American equivalent to a Respighi mood-painting.
The fine Essay for Orchestra No.1 (1937), its title referring
to `a work of a moderate length on a particular subject', is
an abstract largely neo-classical work in one movement but with
distinct sections along symphonic lines, tinged with a hint
of Dvořák towards the end, most effectively constructed
on the simplest of themes that appears in its inversion to round
off the work. The music of Medea's Meditation and Dance of
Vengeance (1946, usually heard in its orchestral tone-poem
form, 1955) was originally written for a Martha Graham ballet
charting Medea's growing jealousy of Jason and her desire for
vengeance, with the characters of the Greek tragedy sometimes
assuming the form of a modern woman and man. It is rich and
exotic, its dissonances used for dramatic rather than harmonic
ends; the actual dance is American in feel, with its piano ostinato,
its jazzy rhythms and colours passed among the orchestra and
providing a kind of pre-echo to Bernstein's West Side
Story.
The
libretto for Barber's opera Vanessa (1958) was written
by Menotti, set around 1905 in northern Europe: Vanessa has
waited twenty years for her lover, but it is his son who returns,
takes up with her, and leaves with Vanessa for Paris. In the
process, the son rejects his own lover, who shrouds the house
to await his return. It employs all the tricks of Grand Opera
(four acts, a ball scene) for this overtly Mills and Boon/Harlequin
story designed to appeal to conservative American audiences
not willing to be challenged, and Barber wrote music to suit.
His next full-length opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1965-1966),
was also on a grand scale and had a notoriously disastrous premiere.
The libretto by Zeffirelli and Barber, based on Shakespeare,
was revised in 1974 by Menotti, removing much of the spectacle,
condensing some sections and adding a duet taken from a play
by Beaumont and Fletcher (and set with a lyricism worthy of
Puccini). It deserved reworking, for Barber's music is
communicative and attractive, and if lacking the depth of the
Shakespeare, combines passion, lyricism, and a touch of exoticism
that is worth exploring by those who might have been put off
by the opera's original reputation. Less flawed than either
of these is the tiny chamber-opera A Hand of Bridge (1948)
for four soloists and chamber orchestra, a comedy with a serious
undertone. The frame for the opera is the game; within this
the four players are alienated, estranged individuals, thinking
respectively of such things as clothes, a mistress, a dying
mother, and a boring job, and yet continuing the illusion of
their lives through the formalities of bridge. The lithe score
has touches of jazz and follows the moods of the players. The
smaller scale of this work might seem more suited to Barber's
idiom, but he proved that he could write on a large, powerful,
and dramatic scale in the scena Andromache's Farewell
(1962). It sets Euripides: Andromache, widow of Hector, has
been told that she cannot take her son with her into exile following
the defeat of Troy - he is to be killed, and this is her farewell
to her son and to Troy. This extended aria has the richness
of Strauss, immediately obvious in the opening orchestral
outburst, making one wish he had created a complete opera from
the story. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) for soprano
and orchestra is an effective setting of a James Agee prose
poem about evening in a small American town.
Barber
was a composer whose self-effacing and essentially uncomplicated
musical view of life becomes increasingly attractive the more
one explores it, the work of a minor master who now deserves
a more sympathetic general treatment.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
2 symphonies including Symphony Dedicated to the Army Air
Force
-
cello concerto; piano concerto; violin concerto; Capricorn
Concerto for flute, oboe, trumpet and strings; Toccata
Festiva for organ and orch.
-
3 Essays for Orchestra, Fadograph of a Yestern Scene,
Music for a Scene from Shelley, overture School for
Scandal; Adagio for Strings (from String Quartet
No.1); Serenade for Strings
-
3 string quartets; Summer Music for woodwind quintet
-
piano sonata; Ballade, Excursions for piano
-
song cycle Despite and Still; Andromache's Farewell
for soprano and orch.; Dover Beach for lower voice and
string quartet; Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for voice and
orch.; The Lovers for baritone, chorus and orch.; Prayers
of Kierkegaard for soprano, chorus and orch.; A Stop-watch
and an Ordinance Map for male voice choir and orch.; choral
preludes Dies Natalis; many songs
-
ballets Medea: The Cave of the Heart and Souvenirs
-
operas Antony and Cleopatra, A Hand of Bridge
and Vanessa
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Adagio
for Strings
(1936)
scena
Andromache's Farewell (1962) for soprano and orchestra
opera
Antony and Cleopatra (1966, revised 1974) (see text)
Essay
for Orchestra No.1
(1937)
chamber
opera A Hand of Bridge (1959)
Cello
Concerto (1945)
Dover
Beach
(1931) for lower voice and string quartet
Medea's
Meditation and Dance
(1947) for orchestra
Piano
Sonata (1949)
Violin
Concerto (1939) (see text)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
N.
Broder Samuel Barber, 1954
───────────────────────────────────────
BERNSTEIN Leonard
born
25th August 1918 at Lawrence (Massachusetts)
died
14th October 1990 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
At
present, it is difficult to separate Bernstein the composer
from Bernstein the media-master, the most brilliant example
of American mass high-culture, a marvellous speaker and communicator,
and sometimes brilliant, usually wayward conductor. His music
is often treated like his personality and his conducting: uncritically,
as if such a forceful personality has to be brilliant just because
he was such a personality. This very American confusion between
style and substance masks the underlying impression that he
composed a number of interesting works but only one masterpiece
(the musical West Side Story), and that, through its
genre, lies on the margins of this Guide.
Much
of Bernstein's more weighty music is touched by his Jewish faith,
and the earliest work likely to be encountered, the programmatic
Symphony No.1 `Jeremiah' (1942) uses the Biblical `Lamentations
of Jeremiah' (in Hebrew) in its third and final movement, for
mezzo-soprano and orchestra, with an aura of Hebrew melody in
the (original) vocal line. The symphony is grand in scale, Mahlerian
in the first and third (slow) movement, but with a very American
tone to the most attractive middle movement, full of Coplandesque
dance syncopations broadening out into a larger American vision
(and portraying its intended programme of the results of pagan
corruption rather unsuccessfully, since it is so vital). The
Symphony No.2 `Age of Anxiety' (1947-1949, revised 1965)
is essentially a piano concerto inspired by the poem by W.H.Auden
(whose essence is a cry for faith), in two parts each divided
into three sections, closely following the structure and the
content of the poem. It veers eclectically in style, from a
late-Romantic florid delicacy, through echoes of Stravinsky
and grand gestures, to pure jazz, but manages a tenuous internal
logic. These two symphonies deserve a place in the canon of
the American symphony, if not a prominent one. The Symphony
No.3 `Kaddish' (1961-1963, revised 1977) for soprano, speaker,
chorus, boys' chorus and orchestra is the least successful of
the three. It sets the Jewish prayer chanted for the dead, continuing
the theme of faith, along with English words by Bernstein that
do not match the Hebrew or the music in quality: indeed at times
the work has similarities to Soviet Socialist Realist declamatory
choral works. The Mass (1971) for singers, players and
dancers bears about the same relationship to a liturgical work
of depth as does an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical to a serious
modern opera. Using pop elements, including an electric guitar,
quasi-Broadway tunes, mixed uneasily with classical touches,
and combining embarrassingly corny words with the Mass, it seemed
designed to instantly gratify those who cannot go beyond instant
gratification.
Bernstein's
flair for a more populist idiom had surfaced much more successfully
in the ballet Fancy Free (1944). The ballet follows a
group of sailors on shore leave, trying to find young women;
it is Bernstein at his best, bringing together elements of Broadway,
jazz, a trace of Kurt Weill, in a score of gaiety, verve,
and rhythmic flow. It was then expanded into the Broadway musical
On the Town (1944). The witty and entertaining Prelude,
Fugue and Riffs (1949) for clarinet and ensemble is a cross
between Stravinskian neo-classicism and out-and-out jazz. After
an adaptation of Voltaire in the musical Candide (1956),
a work of varying quality that doesn't match its source, the
culmination of this trend was Bernstein's masterpiece, the musical
West Side Story (1957). With a book by Stephen Sondheim,
himself a renowned Broadway composer, it reworks Romeo and
Juliet in modern New York with a brilliant combination of
Bernstein's classical and more popular experience, its songs
too familiar to be enumerated here. Bernstein turned some of
the music into a successful concert suite (West Side Story
- Symphonic Dances, 1960). His one-act opera Trouble
in Tahiti (1952) was less successful; he reworked it into
the opera A Quiet Place (1983).
Of
his other works for the concert platform, two stand out. Chichester
Psalms (1965) for treble, chorus and orchestra (also version
with harp and organ) uses Hebrew texts of the psalms, the idiom
ranging from touches of jazz to a cappella writing. In the orchestral
song-cycle Songfest (1976-1977) for six soloists and
orchestra Bernstein finally succeeded in integrating the disparate
influences on his music into a convincing whole. Although written
for a festive occasion (the American Bicentenary) and drawing
on American poets from the 17th-century Anne Bradstreet to Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, many of the poems have an undercurrent of protest.
The musical idiom draws on a similar range, from Broadway-like
tunes through art-song to a big-band sound. But whereas so often
in Bernstein's work these eclectic sources had been inserted
wholesale into a particular passage, here they are melded into
a concert-classical base. The Ferlinghetti setting, for example,
initially appears to be a jazz piece, but it is also a 12-tone
setting, and eventually reaches regions beyond the jazz song,
while two poems about the Afro-American experience are brilliantly
combined into a single song. The orchestra is huge, but used
in different combinations for each song.
Bernstein
was music director of the New York City Center Orchestra (1945-1948),
taught at the Berkshire Music Centre (1951-1955) and at Brandeis
University (1951-1956) and was associated with the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra as assistant conductor, musical director,
and Laureate Conductor from 1943. It was perhaps a measure of
his confusion over different idioms that near the end of his
life he recorded West Side Story with purely operatic
voices, with disastrously stilted results.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
3 symphonies (No.1 Jeremiah with mezzo-soprano; No.2
Age of Anxiety with piano; No.3 Kaddish for soprano,
speaker, chorus, boys' choir and orch.)
-
Halil for flute and orch.; Serenade for violin,
strings, harp and percussion; Preludes, Fugues and Riffs
for clarinet and ensemble
-
overture Slava!; Divertimento and A Musical
Toast for orch.
-
clarinet sonata; violin sonata; piano trio; Four Studies
for 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons and piano
-
piano sonata; Four Anniversaries, Five Anniversaries
and Seven Anniversaries for piano; Scenes from the
City of Sin for piano, 4 hands
-
song cycles La bonne cuisine and I Hate Music;
Songfest for 6 soloists and orchestra; Silhouette
(Galilee) and other songs
-
Mass for singers, players and dancers; Chichester
Psalms for treble, chorus and orch.; Hashkivenu for
tenor cantor, chorus and organ; Simchu na and Yigdal
for chorus and piano; Harvard Choruses and The Lark
for chorus; Little Norton Lecture for male voice choir
and other vocal works
-
ballets Dybbuk, Facsimile and Fancy Free
-
operas Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place
-
musicals Candide, On the Town, West Side Story,
Wonderful Town and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
-
film score On The Waterfront
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Chichester
Psalms
(1965) for treble, chorus and orchestra (or harp and organ)
ballet
Fancy Free (1944)
Songfest (1976-1977) for 6 singers
and orchestra
Symphonic
Dances (from West Side Story)
(1960)
Symphony
No.1 Jeremiah (1942)
Symphony
No.2 Age of Anxiety (1949 rev.1965)
musical
West Side Story (1957)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
L.
Bernstein The Unanswered Question, 1976
J.
Peyser Bernstein: A Biography, 1987
───────────────────────────────────────
BOLCOM William
born
26th May 1938 at Seattle
───────────────────────────────────────
William
Bolcom is as well-known as a performer (especially with his
third wife, the mezzo-soprano Joan Morris) as a composer. He
is also an expert on rag-time music, and his own compositions
draw on a wide variety of sources, especially early American
music, rag-time, and the occasional touch of cabaret or Broadway,
combined into a post-modernist idiom drawing on the experience
of the avant-garde period. Sometimes this mix sits uneasily;
at others it can be most effective, and is always willing to
be exploratory. His harmonic idiom is eclectic, ranging from
the serial to works with heavy chromatic dissonance with a tonal
centre, to more traditional harmonies. His concert works are
often dramatic, and in the 1960s he worked with improvisational
theatre groups.
His
more important works include song-cycles. The huge setting of
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (1956-1981)
for nine solo voices, three choruses, children's chorus and
orchestra set forty-six songs and took him two-and-a-half decades
to write. The song cycle Open House (1975) for tenor
and chamber orchestra sets seven poems by Theodore Roethke in
a sensitive treatment that matches the gently passionate poetry,
ranging from the Expressionist through shades of Britten
and a sinuous humour reminiscent of Walton's Façade
to a Broadway influence. The second part of the two-movement
Symphony No.4 (1986) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra
is an extended setting of a Roethke poem, `The Rose'; the first
movement, `Soundscape', is of Mahlerian proportions and emotional
range, longer on effect than substance. The Symphony No.5
(1990) drew on Wagner (Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde)
and the hymn `Abide with Me'.
His
other works are wide-ranging in styles and genres, attempting
collage-like effects in the 1960s, with a Blakeian vision of
an American culture moving towards disintegration, and then
increasingly influenced by rag-time and Classical music. Black
Host (1967) for organ, percussion and tape, includes a jazz
passage and crowd noises on the tape. Frescoes (1971)
for two pianos doubling harmonium and harpsichord is a rather
strange two-part work, inspired by paintings, the first half
titled `War in Heaven', the second `The Cave of Orcus' (the
underworld). It is a declamatory collage of effects, from the
monumental to the deliberately naïve, its first part heavily
influenced by early American secular music (such as Benjamin
Carr's The Siege of Tripoli for narrator and piano).
The culmination of this collage tendency was the wild Piano
Concerto (1975-1976) which draws on almost every musical
style conceivable, ending with a montage of snatches of famous
American tunes (such as `The Battle Hymn of the Republic' -
it was written for the Bicentennial). The contemporary opening
of Commedia (1971) for `(almost) 18th-century orchestra',
evoking the commedia dell'arte, is almost immediately countered
by reminders of Papageno's flute, and the work then traverses
an entertaining amalgam of the old and the new that is aptly
titled and well worth encountering, using a kaleidoscope structure
in which different combinations come into view and are replaced
by others. The Fantasia Concertante (1986) is entirely
Mozartian. Much of his piano music emulates piano-rags, which
also emerged in Ragomania (1982) for orchestra. Works
such as the Duo Fantasy (1973) for violin and piano move
from an almost atonal idiom to a waltz and rag-time, traversing
both agitation and sentimentality; one of the more successful
combinations of blues and suggestions of old hymns is the laid-back
and attractive Violin Sonata No.2 (1978). Two of his
operas are in cabaret style (there are also two sets of cabaret
songs); the rather uninteresting television opera Matigue
(1993) has an American Western theme, rather hysterical vocal
lines, and echoes of Broadway.
Bolcom
was composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony (in 1987
and 1988), and he taught at the University of Washington (1965-1966),
the City University of New York (1966-1968), New York University
(1969-1971), and at the University of Michigan since 1973.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
5 symphonies (No.2 Oracles)
-
piano concerto; violin concerto; Concertante for flute,
oboe, violin and orch.; Five for violin, piano and 3
string groups; Humoresque for organ and orch.
-
Summer Divertimento and Ragomania for orch.; Commedia
for chamber orch.
-
Short Lecture for solo clarinet; Phrygia for harp;
sonata for solo violin; Decalage for cello and piano;
Dark Music for cello and timpani; Concert Piece
for clarinet and piano; Aubade for oboe and piano; Lilith
for saxophone and piano; 2 violin sonatas; Duo Fantasy,
Fancy Tales, Graceful Ghost and Pastorale
for violin and piano; rag suite Afternoon for clarinet,
violin and piano; piano quartet; 9 string quartets (Nos. 1-7
withdrawn; No.9 Novella); Trauermarsch for flute,
oboe, electric harpsichord and electric cello; brass quintet;
Duets for Quintet; Whisper Moon for 2 violins,
flute, clarinet and piano; octet; series Session (I for
septet, II for violin and viola, III for clarinet,
violin, cello, piano and percussion, IV for nonet)
-
Brass Knuckles, The Dead Moth Tango, Dream
Music No.1, Fantasy Sonata No.1, Garden of Eden,
The Graceful Ghost, Monsterpieces (and Others),
Raggin' Rudi, Romantic Piece, Seabiscuits Rag
and Twelve Etudes for piano; Interlude for 2 pianos
Dream Music No.2 for harpsichord and percussion; Frescoes
for 2 pianos doubling harmonium and harpsichord
-
Chorale and Prelude on `Abide With Me', Hydraulis,
Mysteries and Gospel Preludes (3 books) for organ;
Black Host for organ, percussion and tape; Praeludium
for organ and harmonium; Seasons for guitar
-
Open House for tenor and chamber orch.; Six Cabaret
Songs and Six New Cabaret Songs for voice and piano;
Three Donald Hall Songs for lower voice and ensemble
-
Morning and Evening Poems for soloists and instrumental
ensemble; Songs of Innocence and Experience for 9 soloists,
3 choruses, children's chorus and orch.; Satires for
chorus
-
operas Dynamite Tonight, Greatshot and Matigue;
music theatre Casino Paradise
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Commedia (1971) `for (almost) 18th-Century
Orchestra'
song
cycle Open House (1975) for tenor and chamber orchestra
Songs
of Innocence and Experience
(1956-1981) for nine solo voices, three choruses, children's
chorus and orchestra
Violin
Sonata No.2 (1978)
───────────────────────────────────────
CAGE John (Milton)
born
5th September 1912 at Los Angeles
died
12th August 1992 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
John
Cage was the outstanding American experimenter of the 20th century,
and the one who has most deeply influenced other composers the
world over. His name has also been vilified - partly through
ignorance - by the more orthodox music listener, a reputation
that is often unjustified, as many who have encountered his
music have discovered. His inventive and meticulous mind was
matched by a surety of ear that transcends the merely theoretical,
and if his more extreme ideas, especially in the 1950s and early
1960s, may have a largely intellectual appeal to a limited number
of music lovers prepared to address the extremes of the avant-garde,
his earlier music in particular paved the way for the most recent
of trends, Minimalism. Those music lovers who enjoy Minimalism
will appreciate and enjoy the music of this remarkable precursor
(and find it considerably more rewarding than many of the later
Minimalist composers).
Cage's
earliest scores followed 12-tone principles (he studied briefly
with Schoenberg in 1934), but it was following the example
of Henry Cowell, to whom Cage acknowledged a considerable
debt (creating a continuity of eccentric American innovators),
that he developed an individual voice. Cowell and Varèse
had opened up new possibilities with percussion; Cage formed
his own percussion group in 1938, and faced an inherent problem
in the indeterminate pitch of so many of the percussion instruments
he used (including found objects, such as brake drums, and many
exotic eastern instruments). The solution was the reliance not
on the musical organization of pitch in the Western tradition,
but on the development of the organization of rhythm (as Varèse
had done in Ionization). Cage's preferred method was
to repeat groups of rhythmic patterns, well-known to the Eastern
musics (e.g. Indian talas) that Cowell had introduced
Cage to some years before. Such additive groups give a sense
of stasis within movement. At the time this was a rhythmic concept
alien to the Western tradition, but it now receives widespread
acceptance thanks to later developments in both popular and
classical music. Cage's own version preferred squared proportions
in numerical relationships. Typical works of this period are
the marvellous, vividly and metallically coloured, urban-orientated
First Construction (in Metal) (1939) for a variety of
metal-based percussion instruments, or the rather spare textures
of the Third Construction (1941) for percussion, using
traditional instruments from all parts of the Americas. This
piece, being divided into 24 sections, themselves divided in
24 bars, illustrates his preoccupation with proportion.
Equally
trail-blazing was the addition of variable speed turntables
in Imaginary Landscape No.1 (1939) and frequency oscillators
(producing purely electronic sounds) in Imaginary Landscape
No.3 (1942), as Cage continued the search for sound sources
divorced from traditional concert instruments. Cowell
had achieved considerable notoriety with his unconventional
use of the piano, creating sounds by plucking or sweeping the
strings with the hands, and using tone-clusters. These were
essentially atmospheric accompaniments; Cage extended the range
of sounds by meticulously preparing the piano, modifying individual
strings by the application of objects (ranging from nuts and
bolts to forks and cardboard strips) to the strings themselves,
creating what he named (on the score of Bacchanale for
piano, 1940) the `prepared piano'. The expression has since
received general acceptance. The result was an instrument that
was essentially percussive, and a development of the percussive
approach already discussed; since Cage initially used prepared
piano pieces as music for dance (thus obviating the need for
a number of percussion instruments), the modifications became
the sounds of the music itself, rather than the essentially
accompanying role of Cowell's innovations. The percussive nature
was emphasized by the fact that some of the modifications meant
that specific strings could lose their absolute pitch (harmony,
in any chordal sense, has a minor place in all of Cage's work).
The innovations were allied with the experience of his percussion
music, and there appeared series of works which look forward
to the Minimalists of the 1980s, with slow-moving patterns of
sound whose rhythmic progression is drawn from Eastern models,
and, in the colours Cage elicited, a strong echo of the timbre
and style of the gamelan orchestra, often very delicate in timbre.
The characteristic piano sound is virtually completely eradicated
by Cage's preparations. Typical of these pieces is The perilous
night (1943-1945) for prepared piano, with ethereal, beguiling
sounds and a mesmerizing progression, the monodic A Valentine
out of Season (1944) or the very minimalist Music for
Marcel Duchamp (1947). Amores (1943) juxtaposes sections
for percussion (with the hissing sounds of a pod rattle against
tom-toms, a colour contrast found throughout Cage's music) against
the softer sounds of a prepared piano. Exceptionally complex
preparation and (within the unfolding of longer patterns) intricate
polyrhythms, sounding like the multiple rhythms of more recent
improvisatory jazz, dominate Three dances (1944-1945)
for two amplified prepared pianos, again with gamelan overtones,
and all strictly notated (and therefore composer-instigated).
The Sonatas and Interludes (1946-1948) were an extended
set of works (sixteen sonatas and four interludes) for prepared
piano (with mesmerizing ostinati in such works as Sonata
V). The last piece that Cage wrote for prepared piano is
generally the most highly regarded, the Concerto for prepared
piano and chamber orchestra (1950-1951), although most readers
may prefer the earlier works already mentioned. This piece,
of nebulous strands of a narrow range of timbres, also used
rhythmic structures drawn on charts, and silent sections, and
reflects Cage's growing conviction that the composer's role
was as a conduit for divine (or natural) influence rather than
as a means of self-expression.
The
summation of this period is probably the String Quartet in
Four Parts (1950), in which many of Cage's concerns over
the previous years are brought together. The structure is based
on square roots, mathematically precise, with a basic structural
unit of 22 bars and with small divisions keeping a similar pattern,
the overall distribution between the four movements also being
based on 22. The string players are expected to play in a very
flat style (e.g. with no vibrato) to produce sounds reminiscent
of some of the sound effects of the prepared piano. In addition,
the movements not only represent seasons, but the first two,
places, and all four, elements of Indian philosophy. If this
sounds impossibly academic, the results, like so much of Cage's
music up to this point, are exactly the opposite, with a haunting
unadorned unfolding of slow events like the distant distortion
of some familiar music, but with an underlying inevitability
(the tempo indication is constant) that does indeed reflect
the philosophy.
These
works had been meticulously notated, with a mathematical exactitude.
With Music of Changes (for piano, in four volumes, 1951),
Cage's ideas took a radical new turn, and one that was to become
exceedingly influential to other avant-garde composers of the
time. Following his reading of the Chinese I Ching (Book
of Changes), he abandoned his careful delineation of all
the parameters of his music, and allowed some of them to be
determined by chance (specifically by charts and by the throwing
of dice). The music that Cage then notated was therefore partly
determined by these procedures; with Music for Piano I
(1952) Cage took a further step, with the performer rather than
the composer choosing the duration of the notes, and the pitch
of the notes being determined by imperfections in the music
paper. In Imaginary Landscape No.4 (1951) for twelve
radios, the chance is what is on the air and received by the
radios. The intention in all these pieces is to turn the audience's
attention away from the self-expression of the composer towards
an understanding of the elements of incidental chance and of
the sounds around the performance. The latter was brought, in
its most famous manifestation, to an extreme expression in 4'33"
(1952) for any number of players (usually a pianist) who remain
silent. If anyone thinks this a joke, they should attend a performance;
they may not consider the event music, but the resultant heightened
awareness of the sounds around (in the hall, outside) is considerable,
and one's awareness of the nature of sound enhanced.
Cage
then developed chance into indeterminacy, where instead of chance
being a factor in notation, it would take place in performance,
so that no two performances of a piece would be the same; the
role of the composer was thus further transformed from self-expression
into an initiation of ceremonies. Music for Piano 1-84
(1953-1956) in four parts, may be played all together or in
sections, perhaps separately, perhaps simultaneously, by any
number of pianists, while the Concert for Piano and Orchestra
(1957-1958, not to be confused with the Concerto for prepared
piano and chamber orchestra, above) is totally random, any
number of players on any instruments choosing any parts of a
score founded on chance, the duration determined by a conductor
showing the time. The graphic notation of works of the late
1950s and early 1960s (such as Variations I for any number
of players, 1958) are almost totally divorced from the musical
results, and exist in their own right (Cage was eventually to
produce art works). Works such as Atlas Eclipticalis
(1961-1962, constellation maps translated into musical notes)
can be played simultaneously with others like Winter Music
(1957) for any number of pianists, the score distributed randomly.
The reductio ad absurdam was probably a necessary measure at
the time; its opposite was the exploration of sounds per se
by electronic means (often in collaboration with David Tudor),
from Williams Mix (1952), through Cartridge Music
(1960) to realisations of such works as Variations II
(1961). Whether anyone would now want to recreate such things
other than in the spirit of historical interest is a moot point:
the resulting music requires the listener to simply receive
the sounds resultant from so much indeterminacy, rather than
listen in the conventional sense. If in the right frame of mind
this can be interesting (though surely more rewarding to create
than receive), but mostly the music of this period of Cage's
output is of import only from the point of view of musical philosophy
or aesthetics. Overall, it is aurally a total bore if given
concentrated attention, though interesting as background noise,
where some fascinating sounds suddenly interrupt.
However,
Cage's development of 'happenings', combining this aural hodge-podge
with visual elements, from the stage events of Water Music
(1952) for piano, which includes pouring water, through 0'0"
(1962) in which Cage made juice from vegetables in an electric
blender, to the gigantic multi-media happening HPSCHD
(with Lejaren Hiller, 1967-1969), including 51 tapes, and snatches
of the music of past masters, with film, slides, and lights,
belongs to the exploration of new musico-dramatic possibilities
that was one of the main legacies of the avant-garde period.
The sounds here become incidental to the overall creation; and
in HPSCHD, when divorced from the other events, start,
wittingly or unwittingly, to create an urban soundscape. This
process was furthered in the much more interesting 49 Waltzes
for the Five Boroughs (1977) `for performer(s) or listener(s)
or record maker(s)' - a graphic map of five boroughs of New
York, then 149 street addresses divided into groups of three.
Like the harpsichord fragments of the earlier work, sounds and
fragments of waltzes are distributed by I Ching consultation
and by dice throwing, and are combined with tapes prerecorded
on location, as specified, and other live sound makers. The
montage of street sounds punctuated by distant fragments of
music is atmospheric and evocative, the chance sounds of the
street brought into the concert hall.
Cage's
later work continued to use chance operations, as well as many
of his earlier techniques, with varied results. Some works remain
more interesting in the conceptualization, as in Score
(1974) for any number of instruments and/or voices, using small
drawings from Thoreau's Journals to determine the music.
In others, such as the delicate and ethereal Hymns and Variations
(1979) for twelve solo singers with echoes of tunes by Henry
Billings (1746-1800), there is a return to more conventional
soundscape and delineation of forces (and, in this case, to
the inheritance of the American tradition).
Cage's
place in American and avant-garde music is unquestioned, for
his conceptualizations remain of interest to anyone considering
the problems of the development of modern music. Whether his
actual music will continue to command the respect of performance
is a different matter. The earlier works deserve to, and it
is greatly to be regretted that so often the place of Cage's
earlier music has been overwhelmed by his later innovations.
Certainly 20th-century music has been greatly enhanced by the
presence of this extraordinary personality, writer, artist,
and expert on mushrooms as well as composer.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include: (selected list from large output)
-
concerto for prepared piano and chamber orch.; Concert for
Piano and Orchestra; Ryoanji for voices, flute, oboe,
double bass, percussion and small orch.
-
30 Pieces for 5 Orchestras; Atlas Borealis for
voices and orchestra; A Collection of Rocks for orch.
without conductor; Dance Four Orchestras; Etcetera
for small orch. and tape; 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs
for any number of players, any means
-
Atlas, eclipticalis for any ensemble drawn from 86 instruments;
branches and Child of Tree for percussion using
amplified plant materials; HPSCHD for 1 to 7 amplified
harpsichords, 1 to 51 tapes (with L.Hiller); Score (Drawings
by Thoreau) and 23 Parts for any instruments
-
Amores for 2 prepared pianos, 2 percussion trios
-
Nocturne for violin and piano; Six Melodies for
violin and keyboard; percussion quartet; string quartet; 30
Pieces for String Quartet; Music for Four for string
quartet; Music for Wind Instruments for wind quintet;
Postcard from Heaven for 1 to 20 harps
-
Constructions for various percussive instruments and
objects
-
Five Imaginary Landscapes for various objects or tape
-
Music of Changes, 84 Music for Piano, and many
other works for piano
-
And the Earth shall Bear Again, Baccanale, In
the Name of the Holocaust, Music for Marcel Duchamp,
Music for Xenia, A Valentine out of Season, The
Perilous Night, Prelude for a Meditation, Primitive,
Roof of an Unfocus, Sonatas and Interludes, Spontaneous
Earth, Tossed as it is Untroubled, Totem Ancestor,
The Unavailable Memory of for prepared piano; Two
Dances for amplified prepared piano; Electronic Music
for piano and electronics
-
4'33" for any instrument, tacet; Radio Music
for 1 to 8 radios, and other similar works
-
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs for lower voice
and closed piano; Song Books (Solos for Voice 3-92);
Hymns and Variations for 12 amplified voices; and other
vocal works
-
Theatre Piece for 1 to 8 performers; 8 Variations
for virtually any type or number of performers (No.8 for poster)
-
Fontana Mix and other works for tape; Bird Cage
for 12 tapes
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Amores (1943) for prepared piano
and percussion
Concert
for Piano and Orchestra
(1957-1958)
Concerto
for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1951)
First
Construction (in Metal)
(1939) for percussion
Sonatas
and Interludes
(1946-1948) for prepared piano
Three
dances
(1944-1945) for two amplified prepared pianos
Third
Construction
(1941) for percussion quartet
Thirty
Pieces for Five Orchestras
(1986)
String
Quartet in Four Parts (1950)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
Cage's
own writings include Empty Words, 1979, For the Birds,
1981, Mud Book, 1982, Silence, 1961, Themes
and Variations, 1982 and A Year from Monday, 1967.
P.
Griffiths Cage, 1981
ed.
R. Kostelanetz John Cage, 1970
───────────────────────────────────────
CARTER Elliott Cook
born
11th December 1908 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Elliott
Carter was born the day after Messiaen, and the two composers
are perhaps the most highly regarded of their generation. For
Carter, widespread recognition came comparatively late in life,
partly because he did not develop a truly individual idiom until
his early 40s. Since then, however, his musical language has
been entirely personal, following none of the systems or trends
evident since the 1950s, but displaying an awareness of those
developments. His idiom is especially rewarding because it combines
conceptual brilliance and complexity of thought with an entirely
expressive intent: Carter is inclined to develop the means,
the structure of a piece, especially for the intent of that
piece, whatever the common treads of his ideas. Thus he has
not adhered to any particular system, apart from his use of
`metrical modulations'.
However,
both the concepts and the expressive content are usually of
considerable complexity, especially in rhythm and metre. In
place of development by conventional means (thematic or harmonic),
Carter in his mature work has utilized what he has called `metric
modulation'. Analogous to harmonic modulation (which transforms
the sense of key), metric modulation is a gradual transformation
of the underlying rhythmic pulse of a passage, sometimes emphasised
by the introduction of cross-rhythms to change the metre (as
opposed to a sudden shift, such as halving the speed). These
changes can mark formal blocks in the structure. His atonal
harmonic language is equally plastic, and typical of the way
Carter will find novel structural solutions in a particular
work is the extraction of a foreground three-note chord from
a 12-note background in the Piano Concerto (1964-1965),
then developed into more complex five- and seven-note chords
in the Concerto for Orchestra (1969).
Equally
prominent in Carter's work is a sense of duality, both in means
and in content. His sense of music-making as a drama or conversation
creates tensions with the purely abstract, intellectual intricacies
of construction. Part of the solution is to create intentional
dualities in the formal layout, whether between instrumental
groups that oppose, interact, and overlay each other, or in
strong differentiation between colours, rhythms, harmonic kernels
and character of the basic materials - a form of collage. This
can lead not only to the considerable aural complexity of much
of his work, but an impression of a split between the formal
and expressive qualities of his music; much of his evolution
has been an increasing mastery of the combination of the two.
That complexity requires considerable rehearsal time, and consequently
his orchestral music is less often encountered in the concert
hall than his chamber music.
Carter's
earlier, and now less heard music, had included (after the early
influence of Stravinsky and neo-classicism) echoes of
Ives and Copland. In such works as the Holiday
Overture (1944) he had demonstrated a rugged personality,
while the Symphony No.1 (1942), although its last two
movements are in the mainstream American tradition, has an unconventional
first movement that progresses by variations on two groups of
musical material in a foretaste of Carter's later concerns with
unusual structures. The rugged and the vital are paramount in
what is perhaps the most effective of the earlier works, the
Piano Sonata (1945-1946). The sense of the overtones
of the piano, emphasised by material based on chords of fifths,
anticipates later preoccupations with sonority, while the undercurrent
of stillness that keeps (magically) emerging as if always latent
is another example of Carter's basic duality between the still
point and the surrounding activity. The rather dour ballet Minotaur
(1947, suite 1950) is primarily of interest to those wishing
to explore the range of Carter's earlier music.
The
work with which Carter (at the age of 42) found a totally individual
voice, and which initiated a steady evolution of style ever
since, was the String Quartet No.1 (1951), in which he
allowed himself to explore a much more esoteric language, only
to be surprised by the enthusiastic reception of the work. Although
in three movements, these do not correspond to the sections
of the work: rather the breaks are pauses in the flow. The quartet
is framed by an opening cello cadenza, giving the basic harmonic
material including a four-note chord in which every interval
may be obtained through permutation; this is picked up by the
violin at the close, the common link representing real time.
Within this frame (suggesting dream time) is a complex layering
of independent melodies fastened to each other through polymetric
relationships. It is an intensely expressive work, `a continuous
unfolding and changing of characters', as Carter has described
it, emotionally charged, sometimes with a dry heat reminiscent
of the desert in which it was written. A passage in the adagio
exemplifies Carter's metrical manipulation for those new to
it, with shifting flows and tempi above a strict `walking' jazz
bass whose influence is felt even when it has finished.
A
similar rugged sense instils the Sonata for Flute, Oboe,
Cello, and Harpsichord (1952), in which Carter's sensitivity
to texture is paramount, the other instruments picking up the
resonances of the harpsichord. Perhaps the most effective work
with which to approach his music is the Variations for Orchestra
(1954-1955), one of Carter's more transparent pieces with a
synthesis of many different styles (from Schoenberg to
the American symphonic tradition). The structure, based on continuous
variation of material rather than the traditional clearly differentiated
sectioning, is particularly approachable, and the working of
Carter's complex imagination is clearly exemplified by the two
`ritornelli', in which the tempi characteristically undergo
controlled change, and by variations seven, eight and nine -
the ninth presents the three successive ideas of the seventh
simultaneously over a rhythmic pulse transformed from variation
eight. Throughout, the detailed clarity of the orchestration
reflects Carter's mastery of sonority; the impression that one
finds throughout Carter's music that he is not following any
system, but building his own edifices, is strong.
In
the String Quartet No.2 (1959) the sense of the individuality
of the instruments, inherent in its predecessor, becomes overt
in a kind of modern conversation piece (echoing Ives's
String Quartet No.2), with each instrument being associated
with different musical gestures, rhythms, and expressive content.
It is a more condensed work than its predecessor, in both nine
sections and four `movements' played continuously (with each
of the first three dominated by one of the instruments). The
`characters' go their own way, imitate each other, sometimes
co-operate. In the Double Concerto (1959-1961) for harpsichord,
piano and two chamber orchestras, Carter's characteristic sense
of duality is expressed by the different materials for the two
soloists, and by their function as intermediaries between percussion
and two chamber orchestras. The work is not easy to listen to,
with very busy textures, but with a convincing arch structure,
issuing from chaos to a kind of ordered expression and dissolving
back again, its vibrant layers of imagination and event become
compelling on renewed acquaintance. The Piano Concerto
(1964-1965) is emotionally more uncompromising, with the piano
associated with a concertino septet, in often violent (and unresolved)
conflict with the main orchestra, and for many it will appear
with its widely leaping intervals excruciatingly difficult music.
The
culmination of this period of constructional intensity, complexity
and dramatic interplay was the String Quartet No.3 (1971).
The quartet of instruments is divided into two duos (violin
and cello, violin and viola), each of which has different material
and a number of different tempi in a formal plan of ten cross-cutting
sections. Each of the tempi of one group is at one time or another
played against the tempi of the other, as well as on its own
(with the other duo silent), and such is the complexity of these
ever-shifting strata that it is usually performed with a metronome
`click-track' relayed by headsets to the players. It is impossible
to approach this quartet with conventional expectations; instead
one has to allow the ear to drop in and pick up the changing
patterns and textures in this gritty and forceful work.
The
Duo for Violin and Piano (1973-1974) formed a bridge
between these complex works and a more open style that continued
to explore new methods of expression while retaining the metrical
idiom. At first hearing the song-cycle A Mirror on which
to Dwell (1975) for soprano and chamber orchestra, setting
six poems by Elizabeth Bishop, can appear dour. But underneath
this surface is a welter of detail and effect, enhanced by the
changing combinations of instruments for each song; in `Sandpiper',
for example, the soprano lines (echoed by the oboe) exactly
mimic the stop-go-stop movement of the bird on the shore, in
`Insomnia' there is a haunting play of light in the overlapping
textures, while `A View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress'
(the work was commissioned for the Bicentennial) has Ives-like
juxtapositions. A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976)
was inspired by Hart Crane's poem The Bridge. The orchestra
is divided into three groups with distinct characters, each
of which has four movements, all differing in tempo and harmony
that are cross-cut in the manner of the String Quartet No.3;
the whole piece travels, in three parts but one overall motion,
from the heights of the opening strings, woodwind and trumpet
to the lowest depths. But these complex interactions travel
too fast for immediate appreciation; the dominating effect of
this powerful work, its textures less dense than earlier orchestral
works, its sudden eruptions and outbursts new to Carter's idiom,
is of a great, teeming, sometimes pugnacious, momentarily lyrical,
urban landscape in which individual sections or buildings initially
present a sense of confusion until they are seen within the
broader landscape, matching Crane's epic imagery.
The
symphony marked a climax in Carter's output, in which there
was an element of reconciliation between the demands of form
and of expressive intent. The twenty-minute Night Fantasies
(1980) for piano retained the considerable complexity, together
with virtuoso writing and sharp contrast of episode, but subsequent
works have shown a mellowing of the intricacy. Syringa
(1978) for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra sets an allusive
and ironic view of Orpheus by John Ashbery in a collage with
fragments of Greek texts, with a clarity derived from A Mirror
on which to Dwell. It was joined by another vocal work,
In Sleep, in Thunder (1981) for tenor and chamber orchestra,
setting Robert Lowell, to complete a trilogy. Triple Duo
(1983) returns to the interplay of character through its juxtapositions
and interactions of the duos, sharply contrasting in timbre
and colour, of flute (doubling piccolo) and clarinet, violin
and cello, and piano and percussion.
Carter's
singular achievement has been to create a viable expressive
musical language that eventually owes very little to traditional
formal procedures, and yet maintains a link, however tenuous,
with that tradition. His other achievement is more subtle: as
the century has progressed there has been an increasing understanding
that behind all apparent chaos, in whatever field, physical,
psychological or social, lie patterns and organizations that
have their own rigorous logic, momentum, order and beauty. Carter's
music has exactly reflected that understanding.
Carter
worked in the office of War Information during the Second World
War, and taught at the Peabody Conservatory (1946-1948), at
Columbia University (1948-1950), at Yale (1960-1962) and at
the Juilliard (from 1963) and briefly at other universities.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
symphony; Symphony for Three Orchestras
-
oboe concerto; concerto for orch.; Double Concerto for
harpsichord and piano
-
Holiday Overture and Variations for Orchestra
-
cello sonata; Pastoral for clarinet or cor anglais or
viola and piano; Duo for violin and piano; 3 string quartets;
Eight Etudes and a Fantasy for woodwind quartet; Pieces
for Four Tympani; Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord;
brass quintet; woodwind quintet; Triple Duo for flute,
clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion and other chamber
music
-
piano sonata; Night Fantasies for piano
-
In Sleep, In Thunder (1981) for tenor and orchestra;
A Mirror on which to Dwell for soprano and chamber orch.;
Syringa for mezzo-soprano, baritone and chamber orch.;
Three Poems by Robert Frost for voice and piano
-
The Defence of Corinth for speaker, men's chorus and
piano four hands; The Harmony of Morning for women's
four-part chorus and chamber orchestra; Emblems for men's
chorus and piano and other choral works
-
ballets The Minotaur and Pocahontas
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Double
Concerto
(1959-1961) for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras
song-cycle
A Mirror on which to Dwell (1975) for soprano and chamber
orchestra
song-cycle
In Sleep, in Thunder (1981) for tenor and chamber orchestra
Piano
Sonata (1945-1946)
String
Quartet No.1 (1951)
String
Quartet No.2 (1959)
String
Quartet No.3 (1971)
A
Symphony of Three Orchestras
(1976)
Variations
for Orchestra
(1954-1955)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
E.
Carter The Writings of Elliott Carter (ed. E.
and K. Stone), 1977
D.
Schiff The Music of Elliott Carter, 1983
───────────────────────────────────────
COPLAND Aaron
born
14th November 1900 at Brooklyn (New York)
died
2nd December 1990 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Aaron
Copland was the first composer of classical music whose style
and spirit were recognized by a wide public to be specifically
American. Although Ives and others had consciously forged
an `American' style, they did so in isolation, virtually unnoticed,
and historically Copland instigated a new outlook in which younger
American composers looked to their fellow composers rather than
European contemporaries for their models. Many followed his
example of studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
He
remains the quintessential American composer, whose basic duality
reflects the American landscape: the lyrical and the broad,
evoking the wide expanses of the prairies, and the monumental,
suggesting the high mountains when lyrical, urban skyscrapers
when dissonant. For Copland, these were not mutually exclusive,
but rather the opposite ends of the same pole, mediated by dance
rhythms and especially the influence of Latin American and Mexican
music. His primary vehicle was the orchestra, and he saw the
timbres of individual instruments as having specific emotional
connotations; consequently his orchestration concentrates on
eliciting the maximum expression from each instrument and maintaining
space between them, giving a purposeful airiness in the sound.
The apparent ease and mastery of his rhythmic drive is often
achieved by complex rhythmic patterns that have their origin
in the syncopations and polyrhythms of jazz, though it should
be noted that the jazz influence is rarely that of the intimate
club (as it is in Stravinsky or Milhaud), but
that of larger popular dance bands. Traditional and folk material
(or invented folk-like tunes) are invariably modified by odd
accents and phrasing. Two moods predominate in these dance patterns
(corresponding to the basic duality in Copland's work): the
undulating and trance-like, and the lively and nervous. Except
when using 12-tone techniques, his traditional harmonies are
enlivened by clashes and polyharmonies, and development is more
often by evolution of rhythm and theme rather than any conventional
harmonic progression (except when used as an intellectual device
in such works as In the Beginning for choir, 1947). In
general, his music seeks to express the multiplicity and variety
of the surface impressions and emotions of the American life
around him, as opposed to exploring the profound or the tragic.
Commentators
have tried to draw distinct periods in Copland's output, but
the elements of Copland's distinctive language were formed early
on, and his early music brings many of them together, sometimes
tumbling over each other. His development was to extract these
various strands and to bring them to fruition at various times
in different groups of works. The Symphony for Organ (1924),
revised as Symphony No.1 without organ in 1928, introduces
a number of Copland characteristics: the broad lyricism, the
clear textures, the use of ostinato figures, the syncopated
rhythms and the fanfare figures; the organ is generally undemonstrative,
and there are acerbic harmonies, especially in the second movement.
Music for the Theater (1925) for small orchestra is imbued
with the dance, the influence of popular band music in evidence.
The opening of the Piano Concerto (1926) establishes
a kind of American pastoral, especially with the blues inflections
of the piano entry; there are echoes of Prokofiev in
the piano writing, but the second of two parts (played continuously)
is jazzily dissonant and happily raucous. The Dance Symphony
(1929), reworked from an earlier ballet Grohg (1922-1925)
opens with a delightful Stravinskian neo-classicism, moves to
the monumental and the rugged, and ends with jazzy touches similar
in idiom to Gershwin's An American in Paris. Even
at this early stage the influence of Latin-American percussion
is evident. The more inflated Symphonic Ode (1928-1929,
revisions to 1932) traverses broad vistas, and uses a characteristic
Copland figure: a short note leaping upwards or downwards (sometimes
on the octave) to a longer held note. The Short Symphony
(1930-1933, numbered as Symphony No.2), with a fifteen-minute
slow-fast-slow structure all of whose material is derived from
the opening idea, is more spiky.
All
these earlier works are distinctive, individual, and well worth
hearing, but in the 1930s Copland's idiom split into two main
strands. The first was a consciously more popular sound, with
generally traditional harmonies, colourful rhythms and evocations,
and a particular concentration on the broad, lyrical vistas.
The second picked up on the more exploratory and dissonant elements
inherent in almost all the earlier works, and developed them,
eventually with 12-tone elements. These works, less often encountered,
reflect the turbulence and the urban energy that Copland saw
around him.
A
major impulse in the more populist works was Copland's systematic
absorption of the idiom of Mexican music, following visits there
and through his friendship with Chávez. It was a development
of great import for indigenous American music, for the Spanish-Mexican
influence had infiltrated over the border through the movement
of cattle ranching and its popular music, and Copland was thus
forging a link with the music of the American West. El salón
Mexico (1933-1936) for orchestra, brilliantly coloured,
rhythmically impulsive, and full of `bounce' (Copland's word),
adapted themes from two collections of Mexican folk-music. The
ballet Billy the Kid (1938), whose orchestral suite uses
a large portion of the ballet, brought the idiom to the American
Western heritage, opening with the wide open prairie, portraying
a frontier town, complete with Mexican women and their characteristic
music, using onomatopoeic ideas for the gunfight, and weaving
in an authentic cowboy song. The equally entertaining ballet
Rodeo (1942, symphonic suite in four sections, 1945)
is virtually a companion piece, following the adventures of
a lonely, tom-boy who tries to match the riding skills of the
men, and eventually dresses as a beautiful woman for the ranch
dance and wins her man. Billy the Kid is more characterized
by its vivid colour, Rodeo by its strong vein of humour.
The best-known example of this aspect of Copland's output is
undoubtedly Appalachian Spring (1943-1944), which exists
as the original ballet for thirteen instruments, as a full orchestration
of the ballet, and as a suite (omitting some eight minutes)
for full orchestra, but sometimes played with the original instrumentation.
This glowing, warm-hearted work transports us to Shaker country,
that now defunct sect famous for its perfect combination of
form and function in its furniture, and for its hymn tunes,
of which `Tis the gift to be simple' forms the heart of the
ballet music. Set in the early 1800s, it follows a young couple,
about to be married, celebrating their newly-built farmhouse
and warned by revivalists about human fate. The Symphony
No.3 (1944-1946) contains a similar idiom in symphonic form,
the basic duality being between the lyrical and the monumental
and declamatory. Although widely admired, it seems a little
stilted alongside the ballets, though it has some magical effects
in the fourth movement, which opens (without a break from the
third) with the well-known and imposing Fanfare for the Common
Man, originally written as a separate piece for brass and
timpani in 1942. The Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra
(1948) belongs to this group of works, in spite of its intimate
jazz touches (with a plucked bass), for the clarinet writing
largely reflects the spacious, lyrical tone of the work. Other,
shorter pieces in a similar vein are well-worth hearing: John
Henry (1940) celebrates a railroad man. In the same period
Copland produced a number of scores for films that celebrated
a shared view of the American heritage; The Red Pony
(1948) contains attractive music. The score for The Heiress
(1948) won him an Oscar. The attractive song-cycle Old American
Songs (two sets, 1950-1952) most effectively arranges well-known
American songs, including the Shaker hymn of Appalachian
Spring, but the finest of Copland's limited output of vocal
works is the song-cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson
(1949-1950), which, in general tone, rhythmic variety, and its
use of high independent piano writing, is an American first
cousin to Britten's song-cycle Winter Words.
The
culmination of this aspect of Copland's art should have been
the opera The Tender Land (1952-1954), designed for smaller
stages (or television) and telling the story of a prairie family
whose daughter is seeking escape. Its major failing is that
its libretto by Erik Johns is too pat and insubstantial, suggesting
an outside concept of prairie life, not inside observation or
knowledge. Copland's score was designed to appeal to wide audiences,
but it does not have enough psychological bite for sophisticated
opera audiences, and is unlikely to be seen by the kind of audience
who might respond to it. It is best encountered in recording.
The last work to explore this side of Copland's idiom was the
ballet Dance Panels (1959, revised 1962), a set of seven
contrasting sections without a storyline.
Copland
had written what was virtually an atonal work in his setting
of e.e.cummings' Poet's Song in 1927, but he initially
avoided the example of Schoenberg and his followers in
order to divorce himself from the Germanic tradition. The Piano
Variations (1930), a seminal work in American piano literature
and one of Copland's finest creations, comes close to the techniques
and aesthetic of the Schoenberg circle without completely breaking
with a tonal base in its twenty variations in two sets of ten,
all based on a seven-note theme. Copland orchestrated it in
1957 as the Orchestral Variations, but it is more effective,
aggressively turbulent and remorseless, in its original version.
The opening of the influential Piano Sonata (1939-1941)
takes up from the Piano Variations, with steel-edged
abrasive chords and an unsettled rhythmic percussive lilt, followed
by a darting wispish scherzo and leaving a slower pace to the
last movement; its opening has parallels with the opening of
Ives' Concord Sonata. The Piano Quartet
(1950) does use 12-tone techniques, but is totally devoid of
any Germanic cast; indeed, Copland deserves more credit for
showing, at an early date, that such techniques could serve
the mellifluous, here spiced with dissonant moments and a spiky,
jovial second movement. Connotations (1961-1962) for
orchestra opens with the 12-tone row piled vertically in chords,
which then spread out in a series of variations, the percussive
colours of the orchestra suddenly countered by the colours of
a piano. The tone is of the urban landscape, sometimes forceful,
almost brutish, often lonely, occasionally fantastical with
little flute runs or strings using harmonics, its title referring
to implications `in addition to the primary meaning', and is
one of Copland's finest and least-known works. Inscape
(1967), Copland's penultimate orchestral work, fittingly brought
together the two strands in his aesthetic. It opens with a 12-tone
chord, but tonal implications are quickly established, and the
gritty urban forcefulness is offset by a broad lyricism.
Besides
Copland's compositional contribution to American music, he was
a major advocate of new American music in his activities as
writer, conductor and broadcaster. Among his many achievements,
he co-founded the Copland-Sessions Concerts, which ran from
1928 to 1931, he helped organize the American Composers' Alliance
(1937), was on the faculty of the summer courses at Tanglewood,
and his pupils included Bernstein and Foss. Ives
may have been the herald of a truly American classical music;
Copland was its father-figure.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
3 numbered symphonies (No.1 originally Symphony for Organ
and Orchestra, No.2 Short Symphony); Dance Symphony
-
Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra; piano concerto
-
Connotations, Emblems, Fanfare for the Common
Man, Inscape, John Henry, Letter from Home,
Music for a Great City, Music for Radio, Music
for the Theatre, Orchestral Variations (from piano
work), An Outdoor Overture, El salón Mexico, Quiet
City, Symphonic Ode, Two Mexican Pieces and
Three Latin American Sketches for orch.; Lincoln Portrait
and Preamble for a Solemn Occasion for speaker and orch.
-
Duo for flute and piano; violin sonata; Two Pieces
for violin and piano; Vitebsk for piano trio; Two
Pieces for string quartet; piano quartet; Two Threnodies
for flute and string trio; nonet for strings
-
piano sonata; Four Piano Blues, Night Thoughts,
Piano Fantasy, Piano Variations and other works
for piano; Danza de Jalisco and Danzón cubano
(also orchestrated) for 2 pianos
-
song-cycles Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson and Old
American Songs; other songs; In the Beginning and
other works for chorus
-
ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Dance
Panels and Rodeo
-
school opera The Second Hurricane; opera The Tender
Land
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Copland's
output was not large, but its quality was consistent, and all
his music is recommended. Those new to his work may care to
start with the more popular pieces, as outlined above; those
familiar with the well-known scores might care to explore the
other side of his output - the more abrasive and experimental
scores - or the early works.
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
A.
Copland Copland on Music,
1960
A.
Copland and V. Perlis Copland, (2 vols.), 1982 &
1989
───────────────────────────────────────
CORIGLIANO John
born
16th February 1938 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
John
Corigliano is emerging as the `safe' populist American composer,
sufficiently in touch with tradition to aim at a more mass audience,
sufficiently touched with modernism to promote as a contemporary
composer, and sufficiently untouched by deeper philosophical
delving that might challenge audiences.
His
earlier works, such as Elegy (1965) for orchestra, follow
a tonal, popular tradition that stems from such earlier composers
as Nelson and Moore, through Copland; Tournaments
Overture (1965) has palpably American tunes, a `holiday'
atmosphere, just touched with dissonant effects to ensure it
is not confused with a composition of an earlier epoch. The
Piano Concerto (1968) has big bold gestures, contrasts
of mood (and an overtly neo-Romantic slow movement) in its four
movements that have fleeting effect, but is totally unmemorable
apart from the rhythmic flow and ostinati impulse of the second
movement. The Oboe Concerto (1975) emulated the effect
of orchestral tuning in its opening, and of Moroccan music in
its finale. The fine Clarinet Concerto (1977) still relies
on the big effect, in its outbursts and in its demanding solo
writing reaching into the highest registers, but is much less
traditional in its procedures, unfolding a series of contrasting
emotional states, exploring the possibilities of juxtaposed
colours, and with a broad, lyrical and homogeneously textured
slow movement. The Pied Piper Fantasy (1978-1979) is
a programmatic flute concerto, but is less effective, with its
corny opening of power and might, its neo-Romantic writing,
and such banalities as a tin whistle. Two independent children's
orchestras represent the children of the story: they leave,
lured by the flute in a work of gesture and effect rather than
substance. The Fantasia on an Ostinato (1986) for piano
(also orchestrated) is based on a passage from Beethoven's seventh
symphony, its almost Ravelian repetitive insistence (with an
imitation of the decay of repeated notes) evolving into an Impressionistic
minimalism. The Symphony No.1 (1980) was inspired by
the exhibition `The Quilt', commemorating AIDS victims; three
of the four movements commemorate particular friends who died
from AIDS, ending with an epilogue, intertwining ideas from
the earlier movements. It has moments of considerable power
- dark marches with climactic interjections, hushed sad passages
(and a fine slow movement), piano playing and dances distantly
heard as if through nostalgic memory - that creates a work of
emotional substance rather than of the mere effects that sometimes
threaten. The extravaganza of an opera The Ghosts of Versailles
(completed 1991) was commissioned for the 1983 centenary celebration
of the Metropolitan Opera, and is overall an opera buffa, based
on the third book of the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy to a libretto
by William M. Hoffman. Its considerable spectacle, rivalling
those of contemporary musicals and including an opera-within-an-opera,
was more interesting that its music, which draws on a divergent
set of styles, new and old. It was a pity that the Met. could
not have chosen a composer of greater musical depth for their
first new opera in a quarter of a century.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
symphony
-
clarinet concerto, oboe concerto, piano concerto; Pied Piper
Fantasy for flute and orch.
-
Campane di Ravello, Echoes of Forgotten Rites,
Elegy, Gazebo Dances (also piano, 4 hands or brass
band), Ritual Dance, Three Hallucinations, Tournaments
Overture for orch.; Voyage for Flute and String Orchestra;
Creations for narrator and orch.
-
violin sonata; Aria for oboe and string quartet; Voyage
for Flute and String Quintet
-
Etude Fantasy, Fantasia on an Ostinato (also orchestrated)
for piano; Kaleidoscope for 2 pianos
-
The Cloisters for voice and piano or orch.; Three
Irish Folk-Songs for voice and flute
-
A Dylan Trilogy (Fern Hill for mezzo-soprano,
chorus and orch. or strings, piano and harp; Poem in October
for tenor and orch, or chamber ensemble; Poem on his Birthday
for baritone, chorus and orch.); Christmas at the Cloisters
for chorus and piano; What I Expected Was... for chorus,
brass and percussion; A Black November Turkey and L'invitation
au voyage for unaccompanied choir
-
operas A Figaro for Antonia and The Ghosts of Versailles
-
film scores including Altered States
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Clarinet
Concerto (1977)
Symphony
No.1 (1990)
───────────────────────────────────────
COWELL Henry Dixon
born
11th March 1897 at Menlo Park (California)
died
10th December 1965 at Shady (New York)
───────────────────────────────────────
Henry
Cowell is one of the major figures in the American traditions
of eccentric music experimentation, and of enthusiastic support
and promotion of the modern music of others. Like a number of
those other experimenters, his ideas are now more often heard
in the music of the generation of composers who followed him,
and who adopted many of his innovations, than through his own
music. His output is vast (over 950 works) and eclectic, much
of it is now totally ignored (especially in Europe), and currently
it is difficult to gain an overall impression of its value,
especially as much is unpublished.
His
childhood included the abiding influence of oriental music he
heard in the Chinatown of San Francisco, and not only did he
further this interest, studying non-European musics at the end
of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, but he also assimilated
influences from his Celtic heritage (especially Irish music),
and American Mid-Western folk-tunes. But it was his new ideas
on the sounds available on the piano that first brought him
and his music into prominence. Chief among these was the concept
of the tone-cluster (a term he himself invented), which Ives
had also developed, independently and unnoticed. These clusters
Cowell played using the forearm, the palm and the fists, although
they are closely delineated and usually used as support for
more conventional melodic ideas (as in Adventures in Harmony,
1913, for piano). To this technique he added new ways of actually
playing the strings, such as the very atmospheric and haunting
swirls and characteristic glissandi played internally on the
piano strings in The Banshee (1925), which also incorporates
the whole-tone scale in a strikingly successful demonstration
of new piano colours. Similarly, in the Aeolian Harp
(c.1923) the strings are plucked and strummed (Cowell termed
the instrument thus used the `string piano'). All these ideas,
as well as his innovation of placing objects inside the piano
to change the timbre, have been developed by subsequent composers
(especially through the influence of Cage) to become
common parlance in avant-garde piano music; most of them, and
their use as background to more conventional writing, are heard
in Cowell's Piano Piece (Paris 1924). His widespread
tours as a pianist, sensationally received (and including the
first invitation to an American composer to tour the U.S.S.R.,
1929) furthered the influence of his new ideas.
Cowell
also used clusters in his orchestral music of the 1920s, notably
in the Piano Concerto (1928), but meanwhile he had experimented
in totally different areas, those of micro-tones, harmonics
and very unconventional and complex rhythmic patterns moving
completely independently of each other. These ideas were expressed
in two atonal quartets, Quartet Romantic (1915-1917)
for two flutes, violin and viola, and Quartet Euphometric
for string quartet, which were thought by the composer and others
to be unplayable, until new techniques in the 1960s proved otherwise.
They have the sense of two worlds colliding, the individual
melodic lines belonging loosely to their period, the uses to
which they are put and the multiplication of simultaneous ideas,
some 50 years ahead of their time. As such, there is an element
of the academic, and their influence derived from the expounding
of these and Cowell's other experimental ideas in the classic
theoretical book New Musical Resources (1916-1919, but
not published until 1930). He also developed new sound sources,
from the concerto Rhythmicana for the early electronic
rythmicon and orchestra, to the widespread use of percussion,
notably in the beguiling Ostinato pianissimo (1934) for
two string pianos, eight rice bowls (an early use of 'found
objects'), two wood blocks, guiro, tambourine, two bongos, three
drums, three gongs, xylophone, with an Eastern sense of progression
and colour, which again influenced such composers as Cage.
Yet
another innovation that Cowell bequeathed (again following the
lead of Ives), was that of indeterminacy, which he termed
"elastic form", and which he first applied theoretically
to dance. In his own work it concerns especially the free order
in which events are to be played (Mosaic Quartet for
string quartet, 1935). The middle of the 1930s marked the end
of his particularly experimental period (coinciding with his
false imprisonment for four years in 1936), as he increasingly
turned to tonality and to more homely idioms, particularly Irish
music and the rich tradition of American hymns (exemplified
in Eighteen Hymns and Fuguing Tunes for diverse instrumental
combinations including orchestra, 1944-1964).
In
the 1950s and 1960s he integrated many of his earlier concerns,
especially dissonance and clusters, with a less esoteric approach,
particularly the influences of the near- and far-East (Percussion
Concerto, 1958) and Japan (Koto Concertos No.1 and
No.2, 1961-2, 1965). Among the major works of this period,
most of which are in a more accessible idiom, are the Symphony
No.11 `The Seven Rituals of Music' (1953), in which each
of the seven movements is in a different style, matching the
seven ages of man. The first sections herald material in the
last sections, and the stylistic approach varies from insistent
motoric percussion to shades of the big band and jazz sound
in what is essentially a dance score as much as a symphony.
A similar mixture of tradition and exoticism is found in such
works as the Symphony No.15 'Thesis' (1961), which opens
in the American hymn style, has five tiny movements followed
by a sonata-form closing movement, and includes percussive effects
and wailing string harmonics, with some very quirky results
in its combination of the traditional and the modernistic. The
element of Americana is typified by the light and fluffy Saturday
night at the Firehouse (1948) for small orchestra, using
folk melodies and rhythms.
Cowell
both as a composer and as a major historical figure in serious
American music has still not received his due. For anyone interested
in modern American music, his earlier works are both enjoyable
and essential to an understanding of that history. Among his
many pupils at Columbia University and the New School for Social
Research were Cage and Gershwin, and he championed
the cause of new American composers through his magazine New
Music (1927-1948), which published gramophone records as
well as scores. Among his books, New Musical Resources
is a classic of the genre, while Charles Ives and His Music
(written with his wife Sidney Cowell, 1955) is the definitive
work on the composer.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
20 completed symphonies (No.2 Anthropos, No. 3 Gaelic
for band and strings, No.4 Short Symphony, No.8 with
optional alto and chorus, No.11 Seven Rituals of Music,
No.13 Madras, No.15 Thesis, No.16 Icelandic,
No.20 completed by Harrison); sinfonietta
-
Concerto brevis for accordion and orch.; harmonium concerto;
harp concerto; 2 koto concertos (No.2 In the Form of a Symphony);
percussion concerto; Concerto Grosso and other concertante
works
-
Variations for Orchestra and a very large amount of other
orchestral and band music
-
much chamber music including Ensemble for string quartet
with thundersticks, Ostinato pianissimo for percussion,
Polyphonica for 12 instruments or chamber orch.
-
piano trio; Quartet Euphometric for string quartet, Quartet
Romantic for two flutes, violin and viola, Twenty-Six
Simultaneous Mosaics for clarinet, violin, cello, piano
and percussion
-
extensive piano music including a series of encores (No.3 Advertisement),
The Banshee, 14 Ings, Piano Piece (Paris 1924)
and Tiger
-
a large amount of especially shorter choral music; vocal music
-
much incidental and dance music
-
operas The Building of Bamba and O'Higgins of Chile
(not orchestrated)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Ostinato
Pianissimo
(1934) for percussion orchestra
Pulse (1939) for percussion
Symphony
No.11 The Seven Rituals of Music (1953)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
H.
Cowell New Musical Resources, 1930, reprinted 1969
R.
Mead Henry Cowell's New Music, 1925-1936, 1981
───────────────────────────────────────
CRUMB George
born
24th October 1929 at Charleston (W.Virginia)
───────────────────────────────────────
George
Crumb became established in the 1960s as one of the more individual
of contemporary American composers, and one who commanded a
much wider audience than most of the avant-garde. After a number
of atonal and then serial scores, his individual voice emerged
in a cycle of works (1964-1970) for voice and chamber ensemble
inspired by, and incorporating sections of, the poetry of Lorca.
Crumb responded to the dark, earthy but haunting imagery of
the poetry with musical equivalents, especially in the basic
atmospheric tension between deep held sonorities and sharp bursts
of usually percussion colour.
In
the first of these, Night Music I (1964) for mezzo-soprano
and chamber ensemble, Crumb established a delicacy of wispish
texture, detailed with dots of delicate percussive colour and
deep sonorities, that relied on colour and atmosphere for its
effect and to point up sometimes almost spoken vocal line. In
Madrigals (1965-1969, in four books) for soprano, flute,
harp and double bass, Crumb explores a similar world but with
a refinement of subtle graduations of instrumental sound (including
very precise and controlled modifications such as striking the
harp with metal rods). Some of the melodic effects (set against
a wide range of vocal styles) suggest a strong Moorish hue (and,
in the final madrigal, a folk-line against a drone). This Moorish
influence is even more overt in the clarinet writing of the
Eleven Echoes of Autumn (1965) for violin, flute, clarinet
and piano (with the instrumentalists at three points intoning
a Lorca fragment), a more austere work in which Crumb starts
to use the high extremes of instruments that he developed in
later works as an evocative and effective colouristic device.
All these works have a sense of improvisatory freedom (belying
the actual precision of detail) that exactly reflects the poetry,
but the most successful work of this series is also the best
known, Ancient Voices of Children (1970) for mezzo-soprano,
boy soprano, oboe, mandolin, harp, electric piano and percussion.
Working from a similar base of delicate detail, the range is
extended, the intensity of the percussion writing in the `Dance
of the Sacred Life-Cycle' matching that of Ohana's Lorca
cycle, Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias.
The
sense of ritual that lies behind these works was more evident
in such scores as the Pulitzer Prize-winning Echoes of Time
and the River (1967) for orchestra, but became fully integrated
in his most evocative work, and one which continues to capture
the public's imagination when performed, the Vox Balaenae
(Voice of the Whale, 1971) for flute, cello and piano
with antique cymbals, all sometimes amplified. In it the high
harmonic effects become an instrumental echo of the whales'
cries; the highly atmospheric writing is enhanced in stage performance
by the use of masks, turning the piece into a 'mystery' in the
ritualistic sense. Meanwhile, the underlying humanity of the
Lorca settings was sharply contrasted by the harshness of Black
Angels (Images I) (1970) for electric string quartet. Ethereal,
distant wisps of sound, very high, sit behind a foreground of
tortured and sometimes brutal electric string expression. Using
the plainchant Dies Irae, snippets of Schubert's Death and
the Maiden and an Elizabethan madrigal, a spoken voice,
and numerical symbolism, its extreme Expressionism centres around
black and sinister superstitions - the performance instructions
suggest the volume should be "on the threshold of pain".
Nonetheless, some passages are very evocative. Crumb's preoccupation
with tone colours and with atmosphere has been developed in
A Haunted Landscape (1984) for orchestra with a very
large percussion section (45 different instruments). Designed
to conjure up the sensibilities of landscape, it is indeed a
haunting work, pitting foreground colour, sometimes spare (the
use of the rattle recalling early Cage), sometimes climactic,
against a background that regularly uses a series of tonal chords,
reminiscent of the colourless but moving world of the end of
Vaughan Williams's Symphony No.6.
Crumb's
achievement has been to take the pointillistic sound of much
serial music, and adapt it to his own (non-serial) exploration
of tone colour and atmosphere. Devoid of any system, his music
is designed to appeal to the emotions as much as the intellect,
and with his very sure sense of colour, restraint and overall
structure (usually a number of shorter sections within a larger
span), he has succeeded in still sounding modern while appealing
to a wider audience, who respond to the emotional aspects. His
works are genuinely evocative; and while they have currently
been somewhat eclipsed by the vogue of the Minimalists, they
seem likely to continue to appeal.
Crumb
taught at the University of Colorado (1959-1964), and at the
University of Pennsylvania from 1965.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
A Haunted Landscape, Echoes of Time and the River
and Variazione for orch.
-
Eleven Echoes of Autumn and Night of the Four Moons
for instrumental ensemble
-
Night Music I for soprano, celesta, piano and percussion,
Night Music II for violin and piano
-
sonatina for solo cello; Four Nocturnes for violin and
piano; Vox Balaenae for flute, cello and piano; string
quartet; Black Angels for electric string quartet; Eleven
Echoes of Autumn for violin, flute, clarinet and piano;
An Idyll for the Misbegotten for amplified flute and
3 percussionists
-
Five Pieces and Makrokosmos I for piano; Makrokosmos
II for amplified piano; Makrokosmos III 'Music for a
Summer Evening' for 2 amplified pianos and percussion; Makrokosmos
IV 'Celestial Mechanics' for amplified piano, four hands
-
Ancient Voices of Children for mezzo-soprano, boy soprano
and 7 instruments; Apparition for soprano and amplified
piano; Madrigals, Book I for soprano, vibraphone and
double-bass, Book II for soprano, alto flute and percussion,
Book III for soprano, harp and percussion, Book IV
for soprano and instrumental ensemble; Songs, Drones, and
Refrains of Death for baritone and instruments
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Ancient
Voices of Children
(1970) for mezzo-soprano, boy soprano and chamber ensemble
Black
Angels
(1970) for electric string quartet
A
Haunted Landscape
(1984) for orchestra
Madrigals (1965-1969) for soprano and
various forces
Makrokosmos
III 'Music for a Summer Evening'
(1974) for 2 amplified pianos and percussion
Vox
Balaenae
(1971) for flute, cello and piano
───────────────────────────────────────
DEL TREDICI David Walter
born
16th March 1937 at Cloverdale (California)
───────────────────────────────────────
David
Del Tredici is one of the most approachable eccentrics of modern
American music. His idiom is dominated by three fundamental
clashes: the tug between the modern avant-garde of his training
and a sumptuous Romanticism that eventually looks to Strauss
and Mahler; the pull between the demands of music for
the concert platform and a preference for the operatically dramatic;
and the desire to reach both sophisticated and populist audiences.
Such a raft of conflicts is perhaps irreconcilable without obsession
or humour, and Del Tredici has both in full measure; Oliver
Knussen has aptly pointed out than even when his music
is being serious, it is humorous, and when being humorous it
is serious; these conflicts also create a palpable tension in
his music. It is perhaps typical of his humour that he often
uses the number 13 (in intervals and time signatures, for example)
in his works, punning on the Italian meaning of his name.
After
earlier, mainly piano, works, Del Tredici's output has been
dominated by two obsessions: between 1958 and 1968 the writing
of James Joyce, and since 1968, forming the bulk of his work,
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Alice through
the Looking Glass. Both writers, of course, share the same
delight in odd language connected to tradition, quirky humour
(often half-hidden), surrealist imagery, and a lateral, disconcerting
logic - all of which is found in Del Tredici's music. The Joyce
works (a full list is given below) are essentially a prelude
to the Alice works, with the lithe vocal lines electronically
amplified, as in so many Del Tredici works, in Syzygy
(1966), for soprano, horn, tubular bells and chamber orchestra,
to counter the massed sounds from the orchestra. The first of
the Alice works was Pot-Pourri (1968, revised 1972) for
amplified soprano, a rock group of saxophones and electric guitars,
chorus and orchestra, which gives a good introduction to his
quirky humour, rhythmic inventiveness and to the characteristic
solo vocal writing, lyrical at its base but with huge leaps,
sudden runs, trills, speech and a wide range of colours and
inflections. The irreconcilable oppositions in this piece are
the `Turtle-soup' passage from Alice and the Catholic
liturgy, represented in part by the (Protestant) Bach chorale
`Es is genug' (used by Berg in his Violin Concerto),
separating each of the five sections and whose first four notes
provide the basic material. In the second section the chorus
have repetitive chants derived from Del Tredici's memories of
interminable hours in church. The turtle soup material is eventually
heard played backwards while a trumpet plays forward, and in
the final section the Bach chorale is heard in full against
interjections of turtle soup material. The result is a piece
that can suddenly turn from pathos or a wonderful, childlike
humour (especially in some of the tongue-in-cheek instrumental
effects) to moments of serious impact. An Alice Symphony
followed a similar formula, with a folk group replacing the
rock group, but it was with Final Alice (1975-1976) for
amplified soprano, folk group and orchestra that Del Tredici
found a less startlingly eclectic idiom to suit the material,
and its success catapulted him into international prominence.
Set in five scenes, it retains the vocal style (including distortions
available through the amplification), opening with the soprano
narrating; but as soon as the soprano starts singing (against
prominent banjo and mandolin) the large orchestra moves into
a sumptuous large-scale palette directly derived from Strauss
and Mahler, the harmonies, phrase-shapes and orchestral
colours and patterns instantly recognizable, yet glossed with
more modern harmonic effects and the vastly extended range of
vocal style. It is as if we were in a parallel world (as, of
course, the texts place us) in which the known developments
of 20th-century music had not happened, and instead classical
music had continued directly from the late-Romantic, and the
effect is remarkable, fiercely dramatic (with Alice eventually
denouncing the cards and returning to reality) and strangely
moving. Perhaps the dominating emotions in Final Alice
are a Mahlerian bitter-sweet ecstasy and a Straussian turmoil
and triumphant joy. Final Alice was not, however, final,
and even more stunning is In Memory of a Summer Day (1980)
for amplified soprano and orchestra, the first and best-known
part of Child Alice (1977-1981), in which the other parts
form the second half of a concert evening when given in its
entirety. In the earlier Alice works Del Tredici had told various
parts of the Alice story; in In Memory of a Summer Day
he dropped the linear story-telling in favour of an Alice atmosphere,
and at the same time omitted the rock or folk groups. While
the idiom remains similar, there is a greater emphasis on lyrical
calm, as if this were the grown-up Alice looking back and recalling.
A large number of Del Tredici's other Alice works are reworkings
of parts of the major Alice works in different formats, or forming
new works: Virtuoso Alice (1984), for example, is a fantasy
for piano on a theme from Final Alice.
Del
Tredici's extraordinary idiom is a one-off, inimitable except
by parody, a mixture of two eras fused through equally remarkable
non-musical inspirations; it certainly provides a unique experience,
to which many have responded.
───────────────────────────────────────
`Alice'
works include:
-
An Alice Symphony for amplified soprano, folk group and
orch.
-
Virtuoso Alice for piano
-
Adventures Underground for soprano, folk group and orch.;
Child Alice for amplified soprano and folk group; Haddocks'
Eyes for amplified soprano and chamber ensemble; In Memory
of a Summer Day for amplified soprano and orch.; Pop-pourri
for amplified soprano, rock group, chorus and orch.; Vintage
Alice for amplified soprano, folk group and chamber orch.
settings
of Joyce:
-
I Hear an Army for soprano and string quartet; Night
Conjure-Verse for soprano, mezzo-soprano or counter-tenor
and chamber ensemble; Syzygy for amplified, soprano,
horn, tubular bells and orch.; Two Songs on Poems of James
Joyce and Four Songs on Poems of James Joyce for
voice and piano;
other
works include:
-
Fantasy Pieces, March to Tonality, Steps
and Tattoo for orch.
-
string trio
-
Soliloquy for piano; Scherzo for piano, 4 hands
-
The Last Gospel for female voice and rock group
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Final
Alice
(1975-1976) for amplified soprano, folk group and orchestra
In
Memory of a Summer Day
(1979) for soprano and orchestra
Pop-pourri (1968) for soprano and orchestra
───────────────────────────────────────
FOSS Lukas (né Fuchs)
born
15th August 1922 at Berlin
───────────────────────────────────────
Lukas
Foss has been one of the most visible of the experimental American
composers, tempering his modernity with what often seems a residue
of traditional ideas or techniques, and usually incorporating
new directions in his own idiom rather than himself being an
innovator. He is also well known as an unusual conductor, and
an enthusiast for new music. Although born in Germany, he moved
with his family to Paris in 1933 and to the USA in 1937, becoming
an American citizen in 1942.
His
early music was influenced by Copland, and until the
1950s he wrote music of a neo-classical mould, with traditional
harmonic structures (including a Symphony in G, 1944)
and a sense of American colour and nationalism (as in The
Prairie, 1944, for soloists, chorus and orchestra, or the
comic opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, 1949).
The influence of the Passions of J.S. Bach lay behind the narrative
style of A Parable of Death (1952) for narrator, tenor,
chorus and orchestra. Using the poetry of Rilke, it has a spare,
serene beauty, the narrator taking the major role while the
musical forces comment or support. The diversity of styles that
he has continued to show was evident in the virtuoso Piano
Concerto No.2 (1951), or the romantic and sensuous Song
of Songs (1946) for soprano and orchestra. He continued
to write in this broadly mainstream style until the Symphony
of Chorales (1956-1958, based on Bach chorales) and the
ten-minute opera Introductions and Goodbyes (1959, to
a libretto by Menotti), although by then he had started
experimenting with improvisation groups at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he had taught since 1953.
This led to a complete change of style, and it is for the works
written since 1959 that he is now best known.
In
1957, following his experiments with his students, Foss founded
the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble to explore the possibilities
of chance, and the relationship between composer and performer
in the control of the performed music. In his own works, notably
the Webernesque song cycle Time Cycle (1959-1960, versions
for soprano and orchestra or chamber ensemble), with a spare
vocal line and some tonal, some atonal sections, he started
to use serial techniques, strictly composer controlled, in spite
of interpolated improvisations (later notated) in the first
performance of Time Cycle. With Echoi (1961-1963)
for clarinet, cello, piano and percussion, his first more experimental
piece, Foss retained the serial basis for the construction of
the music, but building on the experience of the Ensemble, he
included limited chance (the players switching to sections of
the score on the stroke of an anvil), a characteristically large-scale
sound (including internal piano sonorities) from limited resources.
In the extrovert feel of the work there is a sense that the
lyrical is never too far away.
Foss
then developed the concept of what he called `multi-diversity':
the score is dense with material, but only a small amount is
used at any one time and in any given performance. This allows
a random element while ensuring control of the actual material.
Élytres (1964) for solo flute, two solo violins and instrumental
ensemble varies the density of forces as well as material. The
Fragments of Archilochos (1965) for four small choirs,
large chorus, percussion, mandolin, guitar, male and female
speakers and solo counter-tenor, with considerable use of speech,
allows some choice in rhythm and pitches in its rather dense
and declamatory gestures. The elements of the linguistically
dramatic and the declamatory (and the rather brutal) were developed
in Paradigm `for my friends' (1969) for percussion (doubling
conductor), electric guitar and three instruments, with many
chance elements.
The
influence of the Baroque, evident in the Symphony of Chorales,
then resurfaced in Foss's new style. From the grand white-noise
sonorities and the echoes of the Baroque in the insistently
effective Non-Improvisation (1967) for four instruments
(the very title indicating a change of direction) Foss arrived
at the marvellous synthesis of the Baroque and modernist distortion
that are the Baroque Variations (1967) for orchestra,
his most notorious, most popular and most accessible experimental
music. Based on Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach, it is not in a
recognized variation form, but fragments of the originals are
seen distorted in a kind of dream (and in the last movement,
nightmare) world, haunting and effective, a reflection both
of the 20th century's interest in earlier music, and the way
it becomes a residue in our memories. In the same year, the
Concert for Cello and Orchestra mixed a live orchestra
and the cello recorded on tape, both eventually dividing and
distorting a Bach sarabande.
The
more recent works have explored a number of these facets of
his idiom. Timbre and sonorities are the subject of Ni Bruit
Ni Vitesse (1973), in which two pianists treat the inside
of two pianos percussively, with effects akin to electronic
music. The Salomon Rossi Suite (1975) for orchestra treats
music by the early 17th-century Mantuan composer with great
reverence, modifying the original only by orchestration. The
almost neo-Romantic idiom of Night Music for John Lennon
(1980) is cast in neo-classical forms (prelude, fugue and chorale).
The repetitions of Minimalism influenced Solo (1983)
for piano.
Foss
taught at UCLA (University of California in Los Angeles) from
1953. He was the artistic director of the Buffalo Philharmonic
Orchestra (1963-1970), conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonia
(now Philharmonic) Orchestra from 1971, and director of the
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (1981-1986). He founded, and became
director of, the Buffalo Centre for Creative and Performing
Arts (1963).
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
symphony
-
clarinet concerto, revised as Piano Concerto No.1; flute
concerto Renaissance; 2 piano concertos; oboe concerto;
Concert for Cello and Orchestra; Orpheus and Euridice
for 2 violins and orch. (orig. Orpheus for violin, viola
or cello and orch.);
-
Baroque Variations, Night Music for John Lennon
(with brass quintet), Solomon Rossi Suite and other works
for orch.; Geod for 4 orch. groups
-
Echoi for clarinet, cello, piano and percussion; Élytres
for solo flute, two solo violins and instrumental ensemble;
Non-Improvisation for four instruments; Paradigm `for
my friends' for percussion (doubling conductor), electric
guitar and 3 instruments
-
percussion quartet; 3 string quartets (No.2 Divertissement
`Pour Mica'); brass quintet; The Cave of Winds for
wind quintet; Music for Six for six instruments; Quartet
Plus for speaker and 2 string quartets
-
American Cantata for tenor, chorus and orch.; The
Fragments of Archilochos for 4 small choirs, large chorus,
percussion, mandolin, guitar, male and female speakers and solo
counter-tenor; A Parable of Death for narrator, soloists
and orch.; song cycle Time Cycle for soprano and orch.
or chamber ensemble; other choral and vocal works
-
ballets Gift of the Magi, The Heart Remembers
and Within these Walls
-
operas Introductions and Goodbyes, Griffelkin
and The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Baroque
Variations
(1967) for orchestra
Ni
Bruit Ni Vitesse
(1973) for two pianos
Non-Improvisation (1967) for 4 instruments
song
cycle Time-Cycle (1959-1960) for soprano and orchestra
───────────────────────────────────────
GERSHWIN George
(as classical composer)
born
26th September 1898 at Brooklyn (New York)
died
11th July 1937 at Hollywood
───────────────────────────────────────
George
Gershwin was one of the finest popular song-writers of the century,
often with his brother Ira as lyricist; songs such as That
Certain Feeling (1925), 'S Wonderful (1927), I've
Got a Crush on You (1928) and I Got Rhythm (1930)
have become standards, and he brought to the American musical
stage a new sophistication drawn in part from his classical
training. These and the shows from which they came, including
Lady, Be Good! (1924), Funny Face (1927), Show
Girl (1929) and Strike Up the Band (1927, revised
1930)), lie outside the parameters of this Guide. But
Gershwin also wrote a number of works for the concert stage,
colourful, vivacious, and imbued with the spirit of jazz, blues
and ragtime. Rhapsody in Blue has become one of the best-known
of all 20th-century compositions, and his idiom paved the way
for other American composers to incorporate jazz and popular
elements into their music.
Aside
from the Lullaby (c.1919) for string quartet, his first
major attempt at a combination of the popular and the classical
was the 20 minute one-act opera Blue Monday (1922, original
orchestration by Will Vodery), which used a theme from the Lullaby.
Set in a night club, it was originally (and disastrously) used
within a musical comedy, and then taken up by the band leader
Paul Whiteman and re-orchestrated (1929) by Ferde Grofé under
the title 135th Street. It was Whiteman who commissioned
the Rhapsody in Blue (1923-1924), whose opening upward
clarinet run is pure jazz, then turning into a scintillating
combination of short piano concerto and jazz suite. The orchestration
in the version usually heard was again by Ferde Grofé (best
remembered for his overtly Romantic Grand Canyon Suite,
1931, for orchestra); it is more effective in its original guise
for piano and jazz band. Its instant popularity led to a commission
for the Piano Concerto (1925). This much more ambitious
work attempted to extend the idiom of the Rhapsody; it
veers into sentimental lushness and into brashness, but has
a memorable lilt and bright optimism. More successful is An
American in Paris (1928) for orchestra, an evocation of
Gershwin's reactions to the sights and sounds of Paris (the
street noises including the sounds of taxis), whose verve and
bright colours far outweigh its rather rambling form. The Cuban
Overture (1932) for orchestra incorporated Cuban rhythms,
and helped draw the attention of American composers to the fertile
inspiration of Latin-American music. But his masterpiece is
the opera Porgy and Bess (1934-1935) to a libretto by
Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, based on the novel by Heyward.
The story is set among the American Black dockyard community
(drawn from Heyward's knowledge of Charleston), and follows
the love of a cripple (Porgy) for the loose woman Bess. Bess
is the `woman' of a stevedore, Crown, who commits murder in
a crap-game; Porgy gives Bess sanctuary, until Crown returns
and Porgy kills him. Porgy is taken away by the police (to identify
Crown, not as a suspect), and Bess is persuaded by another villain
to leave with him for the high life in New York. When Porgy
returns, she is gone, and the opera ends with him setting out
to follow her. Gershwin correctly described it as a `folk-opera',
for it is an equivalent of a ballad opera, drawing on Negro
spirituals as well as jazz, blues and ragtime; the lovely song
`Summertime' has become one of the most famous ever written.
The opera teems with vitality and energy, vivid in its evocations
and emotions, and it remains, whatever its affinities with the
form of the musical, the classic American opera.
Gershwin
died at the age of 38; one can only wonder how he might have
continued the synthesis of popular and classical American styles.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
piano concerto; Rhapsody in Blue and Second Rhapsody
for piano and orch.
-
An American in Paris and Cuban Overture for orch.
-
Lullaby for string quartet
-
Preludes for Piano and "I Got Rhythm" Variations
for piano
-
Funny Face, Girl Crazy, Lady, Be Good!, Let
'Em Eat Cake, Of Thee I Sing, Oh, Kay!, Shoe
Girl, Strike Up the Band, Tip-Toes, Treasure
Girl, and other musicals and show scores; many songs
-
operas Blue Monday (135th Street) and Porgy
and Bess
-
songs for film scores
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
An
American in Paris
(1928) for orchestra
Rhapsody
in Blue
(1924) for piano and orchestra or jazz band
opera
Porgy and Bess (1934-1935)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
E.
Jablonski Gershwin, 1988
C.
Schwartz Gershwin, 1973
───────────────────────────────────────
GLASS Philip
born
31st January, 1937 at Baltimore Ma.
───────────────────────────────────────
Philip
Glass is unquestionably the most successful serious American
composer of the present day, at least in terms of contemporary
public reaction, commanding an international audience that includes
music lovers of all hues, classical, pop and jazz. He is also
the popular leader of the reaction to post-serialism and the
1960s avant-garde, and which has become known as Minimalism,
developed in Glass's case in small-scale works, mainly for dance,
before he turned to opera. The essence of his Minimalist style
is a series of repeating patterns, usually based on the traditional
diatonic harmonic triad, that undergo changes by the addition
or subtraction of different instrumental colours, sometimes
with sharply contrasting dynamics, changes in speed, and sudden
gear shifts in the harmonic patterns. A favourite device is
the change from a minor triad to the major triad a major third
below (since two of the three notes are common to each triad,
this means a semitonal [minor second] shift in the third note),
prominent in the haunting Glassworks (1981), written
like many of his smaller-scale works for his own ensemble, a
kind of atmospheric Minimalist tone-poem, whose success launched
his world-wide fame and which is this best introduction to those
new to his music.
At
his best, these procedures can create mesmerizingly effective
atmospheres that are whipped up into ecstatic excitement, often
with a fabulous sense of timing, especially in the placing of
brass. At his worst (which is often) his music can be horrendously
banal and infuriatingly trite; unfortunately many of his works
include passages of both. He has tried to broaden his techniques
and range throughout his career, but eventually has seemed trapped
in his own success, each repetition of the formula becoming
less original and inventive.
His
large output is so divergent in quality that this entry concentrates
on the more interesting works, especially his major achievements
in opera. The early works are best avoided, except by Glass
aficionados. The mind-numbing simplicity of Dance 1-5
(1978-1979) for small ensemble serves as an example. A set of
mechanistic pieces designed for dance, it shows all Glass' hallmarks
of repetitive patterns with additive rhythms, bright colours,
rapid rising arpeggios, tonal harmonies rocking on major seconds,
and simplistic syncopations, intentionally hypnotic, with characteristic
gear-shifts. The music will repeat apparently endlessly, and
then (with a change of colour, key, or ostinati length) shift
into another extended repeat (sometimes emphasized by a change
in instrumentation), usually eventually shifting back again.
With Glassworks he started to integrate rhythmic and
harmonic changes in a more unified fashion, especially in the
operas.
Glass's
first three operas developed into a trilogy based on historical
figures. The first, Einstein on the Beach, explored the
philosophical and poetical concept of the scientist, the second,
Satyagraha, that of the humanist, and the third, Akhnaten,
that of the religious thinker. Theatrically, especially in terms
of stylistic ritual, they show a clear thread of development,
but musically, Einstein on the Beach represents a culmination
of Glass's idiom to that point and the next two operas the development
of a new musical maturity.
Einstein on the Beach (1975),
written in collaboration with Robert Wilson, revolves around
images connected with Einstein and delves into a post-Modernist
enquiry into the scientist: trains, a bed, a spaceship, Einstein
playing the violin. It is the most disjointed of Glass's operas,
and is best heard (as opposed to seen) section by section. The
second work in the trilogy, Satyagraha (1979-1980) is
stylistically considerably more unified and developed, while
acting as a prelude to the full maturity of Glass's idiom in
Akhnaten. The basis of the opera, to a libretto by Constance
de Jong, is the development of Gandhi's concept of `Satyagraha'
(resistance by non-violence) during his period in South Africa,
and including a number of incidents in his resistance to the
treatment of Indians there. The actual text to this plot is
in Sanskrit, drawn from the Bhagavad-Gita, and each of the three
acts has a non-singing symbolic mentor: Leo Tolstoy and Rabindranath
Tagore (both major influences on Gandhi), and, in the third
act, Martin Luther King Jr., representing `satyagraha' after
Gandhi's death. The use of the archaic language, its marriage
to the plot, and the symbolic figures create a kind of philosophic
mystery-play of an opera, with a strong ritualistic element.
Musically there are obvious echoes of Glassworks, and
a distinctive orchestral colour, using only strings, woodwind
and organ. Glass builds terrific energy, especially in Act II,
using longer vocal lines with echoes of chant, often in combination
or with chorus, over the characteristic repetitive pulses of
the orchestral writing. The seams between musical changes, and
the long-term movements of the music are not as assured as in
Akhnaten (Satyagraha was the first Minimalist
work on so large a scale and time-span), but the opera remains
a compelling experience.
The
final work of the trilogy is Glass's masterpiece, where he found
a ritualistic stage format that merged completely with both
the subject-matter and the mesmerizing qualities of his musical
style. Akhnaten (1982-1983) to a libretto by the composer,
Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel and Richard Riddell, based on
ancient Egyptian texts, opens with the funeral procession of
the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV in 1375 B.C. It then presents in three
acts the ascending to the throne of his son Akhnaten, the revolutionary
changes during his reign (including the first concept of a monotheistic,
abstract god), and his downfall, culminating in tourists visiting
the ruins of his city while he and his family join his father's
funeral procession. Its central theme is that of a revolution
in philosophical thought, eventually overcome by inherent forces
of conservatism. The main protagonist is essentially the orchestra;
merged into its ever-unravelling web are large choruses and
ritualistic solo vocal lines, with the title-role given to a
counter-tenor. The languages are ancient Egyptian, Akkadian
and Hebrew, with the linking narration and Akhnaten's central
hymn of praise in the language of the audience. The progress
of the piece evolves over long time-scales, changes to the overall
tone created by changes of long-term colours (such as adding
drums, the use of solo bells, diminution of forces into a chamber-ensemble).
The Ancient Egyptian setting, with its strong visual symbolism,
its direct, yet allusive, verbal imagery, its sense of huge
time-spans, and its ritualistic emphasis, finds its mirror-image
in Glass's music, and the work is less an opera than a ritualistic
event in which music, words, and visual effect merge. Consequently,
readers are advised to seek out the video of the opera if they
are unable to attend a performance, where the full impact of
the conjunction of these elements is better experienced. However,
a recording is still a compelling experience, with such moments
as the Act II love-duet between Akhnaten and Nefertiti having
a sense of the purity of a Renaissance madrigal combined with
the insistent repetition of Glass's orchestral writing, Akhnaten's
haunting hymn, or the poignancy of the Pharaoh's deserted official,
writing for military help, followed by the massed choral and
orchestral power of the mob attacking the Pharaoh's palace.
Glass'
other stage works have had less impact. The Making of the
Representative for Planet 8 (1987) was based on a sci-fi
novel by Doris Lessing where an ice-age on a temperate planet
destroys its people, ennobling them in the process, but it missed
the symbolism and the distancing of settings of archaic languages
of the earlier operas. The Photographer (1982) is a combination
of play, concert music and dance; the final pages of Act III
of the suite arranged from it for orchestra have a terrific
excitement. The Voyage (1991-1992) was commissioned by
the New York Metropolitan Opera to celebrate the 500th anniversary
of Columbus' transatlantic voyage. Conventionally laid out in
three acts with a prologue and an epilogue, it equates a space
voyage in 2092 to Columbus' voyage, with the central act concerning
16th-century Spain, and the two framing acts the space voyage,
the last dominated by a statue of the earlier adventurer. The
chief interest is in the scenario and the libretto: the music,
with its repetitive schemes, forms a large-scale underframe
for the scenarios rather than itself creating subtleties of
depth of character or personal interactions. The choral writing,
characteristically ecstatic, is effective, but in spite of the
ending (the heads of the earth states are assassinated) and
the trendy allusions (figures reminiscent of both Stephen Hawkins
and Mrs.Thatcher appear), one can't help feeling that this is
yet another example of American easy fare for the masses, whose
ultimate lack of musical content is conveniently overlooked
because of its immediacy and potential for visual appeal.
Of
his other works, perhaps the most successful is the String
Quartet No.2 `Company' (1983), where the lack of contrasting
instrumental colours forces a concentration on the subtleties
of other aspects of Glass' repetitions, with most appealing
results. The song-cycle Hydrogen Jukebox (1989-1990)
for narrator, vocal and instrumental ensemble, promised more
than it delivered, being a collaboration with the poet Allen
Ginsberg to create a `portrait' of America from the 1950s to
the 1980s through Ginsberg's inimitable poetry. The best parts
are the actual narration of poems (by Ginsberg in the Nonesuch
recording), at one point against quasi-improvisatory piano,
and the insidious pulse of a setting of part of The Green
Automobile. A trio of symphonically conceived "portraits
of nature" appeared in the late 1980s; of these, Itaipú
(1989) for chorus and orchestra is the most ambitious, Glass
at his swirling best in the opening, building power in a work
concerned with a hydro-electric dam on the Paraná river, and
with joyful, ecstatic, exciting triumph in the end, though let
down by a trite middle movement that treads a path already covered
by David Bedford's equally trite The Odyssey and by an
opening to the third that is a cross between Handel's Zadok
the Priest and Bernstein's Mass. The Canyon
(1988) is a huge orchestral ritual dance, effective as such,
but not quite achieving the grandeur of its aims. Some of Glass'
most effective music is to be found in film scores, notably
Koyaanisqatsi (1981) and Powaqqatsi (1987).
Philip
Glass occupies a special place in modern American music. He
has filled a void left by the virtual demise of the American
musical and of `popular' opera and operetta, as the former was
taken over by the huge-scale, usually British, spectacular,
and the latter simply disappeared. His formula has been wildly
popular, and deservedly so: it appeals to a much wider audience
than the general repertoire of operas. Unfortunately, this has
been promoted as something it is not, with the possible exception
of Akhnaten: great 20th-century opera. This is hardly
the fault of Philip Glass, who does what he does with panache
and effect; but it is a sad commentary on current critical and
intellectual thoughtfulness that something that should be celebrated
for its particular general appeal should instead be pumped up
into masquerading as a challenging and thought-provoking creation,
extending the audience through the music as well as the drama
into complex regions of emotional, intellectual, or personal
experience that they would not otherwise have thought of entering,
the prerequisite of any great opera. It does, however, make
for good box-office.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
violin concerto
-
The Canyon, The Light and Music from the Civil
Wars for orch.
-
Strung Out for amplified violin; 4 string quartets (No.2
Company, No.3 Mishima, No.4 Boczak) and
other chamber works; Music in Eight Parts, Music in
Fifths, Music in Similar Motion, Music with Changing
Parts and other works for ensemble
-
How Now for piano; Two Pages for electronic keyboards
-
Habeve Song for soprano, clarinet and bassoon; Hydrogen
Jukebox for six singers and instrumental ensemble; Fourth
Series Part I for chorus and organ; Itapú for chorus
and orch.; Three Songs for chorus
-
operas Akhnaten, Einstein on the Beach, The
Fall of the House of Usher, The Juniper Tree, The
Making of the Representative of Planet 8, Satyagraha,
The Voyage and 1000 Airplanes on the Roof; madrigal
opera The Panther; music-theatre The Civil Wars;
hybrid play/music/dance The Photographer
-
much incidental music and many film scores
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
opera
Akhnaten (1982-1983)
Glassworks (1981) for ensemble
Itaipú (1989) for chorus and orchestra
(see text)
opera
Satyagraha (1979-1980)
String
Quartet No.2 Company (1983)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
P.
Glass Opera on the Beach, 1988
───────────────────────────────────────
HANSON Howard
born
28th October 1896 at Wahoo (Nebraska)
died
19th February 1981 at Rochester (New York)
───────────────────────────────────────
Howard
Hanson was one of the major figures of American music, especially
through his activities as teacher, conductor, and enthusiast
for American music and younger American composers. His own compositions
stand on the cusp of the development of American classical music,
its late-Romantic idiom drawing on the Scandinavian symphonic
tradition (his parents were immigrant Swedes): he was the last
of the American Romantics whose models were primarily European,
and he is the only one of real stature.
His
earlier symphonies are the works most likely to be encountered.
The Symphony No.1 `Nordic' (1921-1922) sets the tone:
a large-scale three-movement work of vitality and colour, soaring
tunes, a luxuriant slow movement and a big, brassy finale that
turns into an American equivalent of an Elgarian march to emphasize
the sombre undercurrent of the work. The Symphony No.2 `Romantic'
(1930) is warmer and more mellow than the first, with a swaying
lyricism that suggests (as often in Hanson's music) the motion
of the sea, and with a motto theme linking the three movements.
The Symphony No.3 (1936-1938) recalls Sibelius
in its use of development from germinal cells and a build-up
and flow over pedal points. More linear than its predecessors,
it includes a touch of the light-hearted, a second movement
of smooth textures, an almost primitive effect in the repetitions
of the third, and an uplifting finale. The Symphony No.4
`The Requiem' (1943), using a cyclical structure in its
four movements, was written in response to the death of the
composer's father. The Symphony No.5 `Sinfonia sacra'
(1954) is short - a single 15-minute movement - and inspired
by St.John's account of the Resurrection, dark in hue, rugged
in effect. The Symphony No.7 `The Sea' (1977) for chorus
and orchestra draws on the same group of Whitman texts as the
sea symphonies of Vaughan Williams and Harris;
its main tone is of joyous affirmation. Of his other orchestral
works, Mosaics (1956) for orchestra is a set of variations
that covers most of Hanson's colours and idioms, including a
distinct touch of the English pastoral and a moment of the exotic,
besides the Nordic sense of space and ruggedness. The Piano
Concerto (1948), coming in and going out gently and with
often an improvisatory feel to the solo writing, is entertaining
but not especially distinctive.
Hanson's
major choral work is The Lament for Beowulf (1925) for
chorus and orchestra. A long orchestral introduction with a
repetitive throbbing rhythmic idea and fanfares creates the
Nordic mood, and the movement of the sea again infects the linear
vocal and orchestral writing, both often bare and exposed. Many
of Hanson's other choral works are well worth the encounter,
especially his only a cappella work, a setting with rich dense
textures of a 9th-century prayer A Prayer of the Middle Ages
(1976); works such as his settings of psalms would make an effective
and less well-known alternative in Anglican services. His opera
Merry Mount (1933), based on Hawthorne, was well-received
at its original Metropolitan premiere, but has disappeared from
the repertoire apart from an orchestral suite drawn from the
opera.
Hanson's
influence on younger American composers was considerable, for
his encouragement to experiment and develop and an absence of
any attempt to impose his own conservative idiom. He started
teaching at the College of the Pacific in San José in 1916,
becoming the Dean of its school of music in 1919, at the age
of 23. He was the director of the Eastman School of Music at
the University of Rochester from 1924 to 1964, and his American
Music Festivals included works by all the important younger
American composers.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
7 symphonies (No.1 Nordic, No.2 Romantic, No.4
The Requiem, No.5 Sinfonia sacra, No.7 Sea,
with chorus)
-
Concerto for Organ, Harp and Strings; piano concerto;
Fantasy-Variations on a Theme of Youth for piano and
orch.; Pastorale for oboe, harp and strings; Serenade
for flute, harp and strings
-
symphonic poems Exaltation (with piano viola obbligato),
Lux aeterna (with viola obbligato), Pan and the Priest
(with piano viola obligato); Bold Island Suite, Dies
natalis I, Elegy, For the First Time, Mosaics
and Summer Seascape I and II for orch.
-
string quartet; Concerto da camera for piano and string
quartet; Elegy for viola and string quartet; Young
Person's Guide to the Six-tone Scale for piano, wind and
percussion
-
Yuletide Pieces and other works for piano
-
songs; oratorio New Land, New Covenant; Psalm cxxi
and Songs from Drum Taps for baritone, chorus and orch.;
The Mystic Trumpeter for narrator, chorus and orch.;
The Cherubic Hymn, The Lament for Beowulf, Song
of Democracy, Song of Human Rights and Streams
in the Desert for chorus and orch.; How Excellent Thy
Name for female voices and piano
-
opera Merry Mount
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
The
Lament for Beowulf
(1925) for chorus and orchestra
Symphony
No.1 Nordic (1921-1922)
Symphony
No.2 Romantic (1930)
Symphony
No.3 (1936-1938)
Symphony
No.5 Sinfonia sacra (1954)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
H.
Hanson Music in Contemporary American Civilization,
1951
───────────────────────────────────────
HARRIS Roy
born
12th February 1898 at Chandler, Oklahoma
died
1st October 1979 at Santa Monica, California ───────────────────────────────────────
One
of the finest American composers, Harris is still too little
known both inside and outside his own country, partly due to
the reaction against the mainstream American evocative composers
during the avant-garde period of the 1960s and 1970s. He is
the composer of the wide open American landscapes, expansive,
with a quiet strength. He drew material from cowboy songs, the
music of the American Civil War, and American hymn tunes, to
forge it into an idiom that reflects American rural, rather
than urban, life. His contrapuntal idiom is predominately tonal,
with long flowing melodies, but always has an edge sharpened
by dissonances and polytonality, and by irregular rhythms, and
occasionally by modal harmonies.
Although
his output covers a wide range of genres, including much band
music, it is as a symphonist that he is chiefly to be valued.
Like a number of composers of his generation, he studied (none
too successfully) with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and among his
more important early works is the Concerto for Piano, Clarinet
and String Quartet (1927). But his first symphony, titled
Symphony 1933 (1933), is a landmark in the history of
American music, the first American symphony unmistakable in
its cultural origins. From the vigorous opening onwards, it
has a sense of the expansiveness of the American landscape,
and a rough pioneer spirit in spite of the sophisticated and
characteristic sense of counterpoint. It was also the first
American symphony to be recorded, and has a similar position
in the history of the American symphony to Walton's first
in the British. With its vitality and touches of the American
folk tradition, it still has impact, in spite of moments where
the counterpoint seems to be in danger of stalling the momentum.
The second symphony is not a conventional symphony at all, but
a fifteen-minute, three-movement work for a cappella choir based
on texts by Walt Whitman, and one of Harris' most successful
works. Titled Symphony for Voices (1935), it is vocally
challenging, with eight-part writing, ostinati lines regularly
rising in step-like motion with dissonant consequences, and
speech-like moments in the middle movement that provide a close
match with the essence of the texts. The first movement provides
a fascinating contrast with Vaughan Williams's setting
of the same lines in the Sea Symphony.
However,
it was the Symphony No.3 (1938, usually known as the
Third Symphony) that instantly became Harris' best-known
work, and which became established as one of the central symphonies
in the American repertoire. Its one movement is divided into
five contrasting sections, themselves characteristic of Harris'
general concerns ('Tragic-Lyric-Pastoral-Fugue-Dramatic-Tragic').
It opens with a typical long expansive and almost hymn-like
tune, its dark orchestral colours anticipating the more tragic
elements of the work. The ease of its flowing construction has
gained the admiration of critics. To a wider public, its various
moods, from dark expansive sonorities expressive both of the
American landscape and the hardships of the pioneer world, through
a gentle lyricism, a jaunty boisterousness reminiscent of traditional
cowboy music idiom, to the rugged and dramatic assertion, have
seemed quintessentially to reflect the American spirit, its
idiom identifiable with the American soil and pioneer values.
On both levels, it remains as powerful today.
The
Symphony No.4 (1939) extends that sense of connection
with the soil, for it is properly titled Folk-Song Symphony,
and is a fantasia for chorus and orchestra rather than a symphony,
its material based on popular American traditional tunes. The
Symphony No.5 (1942, later revised and shortened) is
intentionally heroic, to express the "will to struggle"
inherent in the American dream. In idiom, it is similar to the
third; however, the material is not developed along traditional
thematic lines, but by metamorphosis of initial motives. The
orchestral colours are dominated by horns, and a march-like
quality adds spice and piquancy to the otherwise characteristic
style. It is well worth hearing in its own right, and some may
prefer its more monumental directness, although the final movement
almost tips into bombast. The Symphony No.6 (1943-1944,
subtitled Gettysburg) was a war-time symphony, dedicated
to the armed forces, and was inspired by Lincoln's address.
The opening movement, a long crescendo, is atmospherically inspired,
the vibraphone adding a brightness to colours centred on string-tones,
its motion in search of a key belying its purposefulness. The
second picks up the same mood, opening with a long brass tune
over a sonorous pulse of a drone in the strings before dissolving
into gesture (with fanfare whoops). With a curious lack of contrast,
the rich sonorities are extended in the slow movement. The impression
is of a deeply flawed work, especially in the moments of almost
populist rhythms in the finale, that is nonetheless strangely
compelling.
Considerably
more successful is the Symphony No.7 (1951), where there
is a much stronger sense of an internal tension and turmoil.
Harris reverted to the one-movement form; the rhythmic drive
remains, as does moments of atmospheric sonority. But there
are 12-tone elements in the melodic cast, with considerable
more acerbity than his earlier symphonies, the orchestration
more wide-ranging in short phrases and motifs. In spite of a
lighter dance-lilt in the centre of the symphony, and the move
towards a brighter, more monumental horizon at the close, the
overall impression is of the threat of the fragmentation of
the American dream. This symphony may not be so immediate, or
so obviously American, as the third, but it is perhaps a finer
creation. None of his later symphonies have been as successful.
The Symphony No.10 is for chorus, brass, amplified pianos
and percussion, while in the numbered sequence, there is for
superstition's sake no No.13.
Of
his concertante works, the most appealing is the Violin Concerto
(1949, first performed in 1984 - the orchestration of an earlier
violin concerto was never completed), which shares some material
with the Symphony No.7, though to quite different ends.
With a typically exciting, driving opening followed by a rhapsodic
violin, there are strong modal influences, the bouncing feel
of the popular, rural dance, and an essentially lyrical view,
not unlike the concertos of Vaughan Williams. The Concerto
for Piano and Strings (1960) is a reworking of the 1936
Piano Quintet.
The
traditional American tune When Johnny Comes Marching Home
provided the basis for two attractive works of the same title,
the first (1934) a deservedly popular set of symphonic variations
subtitled an 'American overture', its boisterousness mixed with
more contemplative and expansive moments, and the second (1937)
a short and effective choral work for a cappella choir, a much
more dissonant treatment that is virtually a very sophisticated
round.
Harris
taught at the Juilliard School (1932-1940), at Colorado College
(1940-1946), at various other institutions, and then at UCLA
(University of California in Los Angeles) from 1961 to 1973.
He directed the music section of the Overseas Division of the
Office of War Information in 1945.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
14 symphonies (No.1 Symphony 1933, No.2 Symphony for
Voices, No.4 Folk-Song Symphony, No.6 Gettysburg;
No.10 for chorus, brass, amplified pianos and percussion; no
symphony numbered 13, therefore last two numbered 14 and 15)
-
Cumberland Concerto for orch.; accordion concerto; concerto
for piano, clarinet and string quartet (Piano Concerto No.1);
piano concerto (No.2); concerto for amplified piano, brass and
percussion; Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra; Elegy
and Paean for viola and orch.
-
Acceleration, American Creed, American Portraits,
Epilogue to Profiles in Courage: J.F.K., Evening Piece,
Kentucky Spring, Ode to Truth, Time Suite,
Quest, Toccata, overture When Johnny Comes
Marching Home for orch.
-
Andante for Strings; Chorale for strings; Rhythm
and Spaces for string orch.
-
Soliloquy and Dance for viola and piano; piano trio;
4 string quartets; piano quintet; string quintet; piano sextet;
string sextet
-
piano sonata; concerto for two pianos
-
cantata Give me the Splendid Silent Sun for baritone
and orch.; Western Challenge for baritone, chorus and
orch.; chamber cantata Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight;
cantata Canticle to the Sun for soprano and chamber orch.
-
ballets From this Earth, What so proudly we hail,
and Western Landscape
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
'American
overture' When Johnny Comes Marching Home (1934)
Symphony
No.3 (1939)
Symphony
No.5 (1942)
Symphony
No.7 (1952)
Symphony
for Voices
(1935) for a cappella choir
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
D.
Stehman Roy Harris: An American Musical Pioneer, 1984
───────────────────────────────────────
HARRISON Lou Silver
born
14th May 1917 at Portland (Oregon)
died
2nd February 2003, Columbus (Ohio)
───────────────────────────────────────
Lou
Harrison is one of the few composers who has made a virtue out
of extreme eclecticism, ranging widely for the sources of his
own distinctive sounds. His music might be better known if he
had been identified with a particular area of contemporary music,
for his works are almost always inventive and interesting, and
almost invariably breathe a sense of grace and fun. Impressed
by the cultural diversity of the San Francisco area (where he
grew up), from Cantonese opera to Mexican music, his own sources
range from the Baroque through 12-tone techniques (he was a
pupil of Schoenberg), to Eastern musics (especially gamelan
music), which is perhaps the most obvious feature of his own
style. Tuning is an important concern to the quality of his
sound: often he will require `just' intonation (as opposed to
the normally used `equal temperament' tuning), where the intervals
within the octave vary slightly. Some of his works (such as
the anti-nuclear war Novo Odo, 1961-1963, for chorus
and orchestra) have a strong political and pacifist content.
Harrison
was one of the earlier explorers of the potential of percussion,
influenced by Cowell and working with Cage. In
the First Concerto (1939) for flute and percussion (two
players) rhythm is the main motivator, the flute melodies woven
from the rhythmical patterns, each of three short movements
using different percussion, with the Eastern flavour emphasised
in the use of gongs. Suite for Percussion (1941) used
a number of found and home-made percussion instruments, and
metrical modulation (altering the pulse by the over-lapping
introduction of a new rhythmic idea); the winsome second movement
opens and closes with rustling sounds and is otherwise pared
to a minimum, with an `aria' for temple-blocks. Canticle
#3 (1941, revised 1989) for a terra-cotta flute (the ocarina),
guitar and five percussionists is a gently attractive, musing
work when the ocarina is playing, otherwise with a clockwork-like
percussion insistency that will appeal to those who enjoy similar
works by Cowell or Cage.
Although
Harrison's music on a chamber scale is the most likely to be
encountered, he has written a number of larger-scale works.
The ritualistic and gently paced ballet Solstice (1949),
usually heard in its concert suite, has a newly-invented myth
as its basis, pitting darkness against light. Its feel of simplicity,
delicacy and strong colours is most attractive, with prepared
(`tack') piano in its octet forces, and Chinese and gamelan
inflections in its idiom. The Suite for Symphonic Strings
(1930-1942), like many of his larger works written over a long
period, includes a wide range of styles in its nine movements,
from medieval dances to a Romantic nocturne. The Symphony
on G (1948-1954) uses 12-tone techniques while maintaining
a tonal base. The Symphony No.3 (1937-1982) is in six
movements, the second, third and fourth short and grouped into
a dance section (a reel, a waltz and an estampe). It opens in
the grand, almost Romantic manner, with just a hint of the Oriental,
but its moods and idioms are wide-ranging, more of a suite than
a symphony. The attractive Concerto in slendro (1961)
for violin and ensemble of specially tuned celesta, two prepared
pianos and two percussionists has a strong Eastern flavour,
especially in the simple contemplative violin melody against
gentle comments from individual members of the ensemble in the
second of three movements; the violin writing has the flavour
of Eastern folk-singing.
His
later music has included many works written for gamelan orchestras,
for which some of the first American gamelan instruments were
made. La Koro Sutro (1972) is a rather simplistic extended
work for 100 singers, harp, organ and gamelan orchestra, the
vocal lines based on chanting, and in its own fashion anticipating
the slightly later New Age movement; the text is the `Heart
Sutra' translated into Esperanto. A similarly home-made quality
innocently pervades Varied Trio (1986) for violin, piano
and percussion (including chopsticks and bakers' pans). A set
of three pieces for gamelan written in 1978 and 1979 highlight
soloists, including a French horn retuned to match gamelan tuning
in Main bersama-sama (1978) and creating unexpectedly
effective contrasts of timbres, and violin in Threnody for
Carlos Chávez (1979). He has also used the gamelan for concertos:
the Double Concerto (1981-1982) is for violin, cello
and Javanese gamelan. In the Piano Concerto (1985) the
black keys are tuned to mathematically precise intervals, the
white keys to `just' intonation, and sections of the orchestra
are tuned to one or the other; gamelan is again a strong influence.
A Summerfield Set (1987, revised 1988) for piano, on
the other hand, shows no Eastern influence at all, but is entirely
neo-Baroque. String Quartet Set (1978-1980) looks back
to earlier musics: a 12th-century tune, a stamping peasant's
dance, the French baroque and the music of the Turkish court;
where appropriate, the body of the string instruments are used
as percussion.
Harrison
was critic for the New York Herald Tribune (1945-1948), and
a notable champion for the revival of the music of Charles Ives.
He has taught widely, notably at San Jose State College, California
(1967-1980).
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
Elegiac Symphony, Symphony on G, Symphony No.3
and The Last Symphony
-
concerto for organ, percussion and orch.; piano concerto; 2
concertos for flute and percussion; concerto for violin and
percussion; Double Concerto for violin, cello and large
Javanese gamelan orch.; Suite for violin and American
gamelan; Suite for violin, piano and small orch.; Seven
Pastorales for 4 woodwind, harp and strings
-
Alleluia 1944 for orch.; Pacifika rondo for chamber
orch., Western and Oriental instruments; 2 Suites and
Suite for Symphonic Strings for strings; Simfony in
Free Style for 17 flutes, 5 harps, 8 viols, trombone, celesta,
prepared piano and percussion; At the Tomb of Charles Ives
for chamber ensemble; Labyrinth for 91 percussion, 11
players
-
many works for gamelan orch.
-
Grand Duo for violin and piano; string trio; String
Quartet Set; Canticle #3 for a ocarina, guitar and
5 percussion; much other chamber music, often for unusual instruments
or combinations
-
A Summerfield Set, Three Sonatas and other works
for piano; Six Sonatas for Cembalo
-
Piece Piece Two for tenor and ensemble; other songs with
instruments
-
Four Strict Songs for 8 baritones and orch.; La Koro
Suite (1972) for chorus, harp, organ and gamelan orch.;
Mass for chorus, trumpet, harp and strings; Piece
Piece One for voices and ensemble; Scenes from Cavafy
for baritone, male voices and large Javanese gamelan; other
choral works
-
many dance pieces
-
puppet opera Young Caesar; opera Rapunzel; incidental
and film music
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Harrison's
works with gamelan ensembles are recommended, in addition to
the following:
Canticle
#3
(1941, revised 1989) for ocarina, guitar and five percussionists
Concerto
in slendro
(1961) for violin and ensemble
First
Concerto
(1939) for flute and percussion
Symphony
No.3 (1937-1982)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
L.
Harrison Music Primer: Various Items About Music to 1970,
1971
───────────────────────────────────────
HOVHANESS Alan (Chakmakjian)
born
8th March 1911 at Somerville (Massachusetts)
died
21st June 2000 at Seattle ───────────────────────────────────────
Hovhaness
is quite easily the most disappointing composer listed in this
section of American composers. He would not appear in this book
at all, were it not that a large number of recordings have been
devoted to his works, and he has a following in the U.S.A. Therefore
readers may be curious about this composer and his works.
His
music can only be described as musak with a sophisticated veneer
It is a mishmash of strong Armenian influences (Hovhaness is
of Armenian origin) spiced by the occasional exoticism, served
with a sauce of pseudo-philosophizing, spread over a tonal base.
This conglomeration is ill-digested. The same Armenian tinge
appears again and again in the majority of his works, as do
the rather plodding square rhythms, and almost invariably there
is a long brass line floating somewhere over strings, and usually
bells. Occasionally (as in Khaldis op.91, 1951, for piano,
four trumpets and percussion) there is an attempt at a more
contemporary rhythmic moment or harmonic combination, but with
integration into the general idiom. Trite dances, often with
a folk or exotic flavour, regularly appear, usually with ostinato
effects in the strings. Hovhaness is an extremely prolific composer,
and it shows. His works sprawl, without any sense of purposeful
construction, and sections of works seem to have been plonked
alongside each other, like random patches.
This
is all the more regrettable, because, just occasionally, Hovhaness
will produce an effect or a sonority that can grippingly capture
the imagination, in the manner of a good film score. The opening
of Fra Angelico op.220 (1968) for orchestra, for example,
has a hushed sense of atmospheric magic. Similarly, the main
theme of the Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra 'Artik'
is gloriously expansive and affecting. This quality is most
notable in climactic moments, when Hovhaness has the ability
to create a noble statement of brilliant orchestral colours,
especially in the timing of harmonic resolutions. Examples of
this include the ending of Fra Angelico and the bright,
visionary feel of the ending of the Symphony No.11 `All Men
Are Brothers' op. 186 (1960, revised 1969). Unfortunately,
the rest of these works show such a complete lack of self-discipline
or structural judgement as to nullify these moments. Worse,
many of his works are intended to reflect philosophical or religious
concerns, from Eastern mysticism, to 15th-century European artists
and Christian themes. One could therefore expect some kind of
insight, elucidation, or exploration of those themes. However,
no such illumination emerges at all.
The
one work that rises out of this general mediocrity is the short
continuous Symphony No.2 `Mysterious Mountain' op. 132
(1955), which is as much an extended tone-painting as a symphony.
Here Hovhaness's hallmarks are contained within a convincing,
linear structure, with a modal edge to the harmonies. The contrapuntal
writing with scurrying strings, a Hovhaness hallmark, has a
sense of drive and purpose, and the nobility of the climaxes
is satisfying. The slow section, with string voices gradually
entering and rising over quiet sonorities from horn and harp,
has an atmospheric magic. Many will derive considerable pleasure
from this symphony. The other work that has attracted wider
attention is And God Created Great Whales (1970) for
orchestra with taped whale songs, but Crumb's Vox
Balaenae is an infinitely more thoughtful contemplation
of the same subject.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include: (from a huge output)
-
at least 52 symphonies (No.2. Mysterious Mountain, No.4
for wind ensemble, No.9 Saint Vartan, No.11 All Men
Are Brothers, No.19 Vishnu, No.21 Symphony Etchmiadzin
for 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion and strings, No.23 Ani
for band, No.24 Majnun Symphony for violin, string orch.
and chorus, No.25 Odysseus); chamber symphony for 10
players Mountains and Rivers
-
8 concertos for orch. (No.1 Arevakal); concerto for horn
and strings Artik; concerto for piano, 4 trumpets and
percussion Khaldis; Elibris (Dawn God of Urardu)
for flute and orch.; Lousadzak for piano and orch.; Prayer
of St.Gregory for trumpet and string orch.
-
And God Created Great Whales and Fra Angelico
for orch.
-
Alleluia and Fugue, 3 Armenian Rhapsodies for
string orch.; Moss Garden for chamber orch.
-
Requiem and Resurrection for wind band
-
solo flute sonata; solo harp sonata; Three Vision of St.Mesrob
for violin and piano; The Garden of Adonis for flute
and harp; Duet for violin and harpsichord; The Spirit
of Ink for three flutes; Tzaikerk for flute, violin
and drums; 2 piano trios (No.1 Tumburu, No.2 Varuna)
-
12 Armenian Folksongs, Fantasy, Jhala,
Komachi, Orbit (2), suite Shalimar, Suite
for Piano, Visionary Landscapes and other works for
piano
-
Spring Music with Wind for piano and voice; Flute
Player of the Armenian Mountains for bass and piano; O
Lady Moon for soprano, clarinet and piano; cantata Avak,
the Healer for soprano, trumpet and strings and other vocal
works
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Symphony
No.2 Mysterious Mountain op.132 (1955)
───────────────────────────────────────
IVES Charles Edward
born
20th October 1874 at Danbury (Connecticut)
died
19th May 1954 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Charles
Ives is the supreme individualist of American music, a pioneer
whose worth was not fully recognized until some 30 years after
his works had been written. He is also among the most American
of composers in that the inspiration of his music is deeply
rooted in the landscape and history of the United States, and
his musical sources in its vernacular musical traditions, especially
band and hymn music.
Ives'
experimentation came almost entirely from his childhood. His
father, a bandmaster, so encouraged his son's musical activities
that by the age of 13 Ives was a church organist. More important,
his father was ceaselessly curious about sounds of every type,
acoustics, clusters, quarter-tones and unusual tunings, and
included his children in his experiments. This curiosity was
inherited by Ives, and increasingly in his own music he experimented,
on a traditional base, with effects originally instilled in
these experiences: atonality, polytonality, unusual rhythms,
spatial effects, collage effects of widely differing materials,
often in different keys and rhythms - all techniques widely
incorporated into music later in the 20th century, but at its
beginning virtually unheard-of. In addition, he was little exposed
to orchestral music of the European tradition then dominant
in American music, and thus could develop these ideas relatively
unhindered. Much has therefore been made of Ives the innovator,
claiming for him a place in the development of 20th-century
music analogous to that of Schoenberg or Stravinsky.
This, however, is misleading. First, his isolation extended
to performance (he was much more famous in his lifetime as the
author of the manual on insurance salesmanship). Little
of his music was heard until the late 1930s (he stopped composing
after 1926), and the full value of his achievement was not recognized
until the 1950s and 1960s, by which time these innovatory procedures
had been independently developed elsewhere and were in general
usage. Second, and perhaps more important, Schoenberg was consciously
and intellectually attempting to create a system that would
extend the development of music, as was, in a very different
fashion, Stravinsky in his stylistic changes. There is little
sense of such an intellectual conceit in Ives, but rather an
instinctive attempt to translate the sounds he heard inside
his head in the most accurate form possible, with a largely
emotive rather than intellectual intent. Consequently the cast
of his music broadly follows the general practices of the late-19th
century - almost all his works have a programmatic content,
and are vividly descriptive - while its techniques belong firmly
to the 20th century. None of this diminishes Ives' place: rather
it makes him unique, and the effect of the combination of late-Romanticism
and modern effects is extraordinary, producing strong reactions
both for and against. His works are also depictions of the memories
of childhood, and their effects on the adult life, that is rare
in concert music; on the evidence of the music, there is a strong
suggestion that the need for such recollections may have been
a primary motivation for his composition.
The
symphonies and descriptive orchestral evocations form the core
of Ives' output. The Symphony No.2 (1900-1901, first
performed 1951) best shows Ives' musical origins, a too-diffuse
Romantic work in five movements, with a touch of Beethoven here,
and more of Dvořák there, though unexpected modernisms
slice in, such as a polyrhythmic side-drum, the injection of
fife and drum music, or the hideous final musical joke. But
much of it has an attractive clarity and a Transcendental gentleness.
The much more effective Symphony No.3 (1902-1904, revised
1909, first performed 1947) uses a small orchestra, and might
be sub-titled the `hymn' symphony, for it is based on hymn tunes
(from the 1830s and 1860s) and church organ pieces. Sometimes
subtitled `The Camp Meeting', its three movements represent
old folks gathering, children's day and communion, and, devoid
of Ives' experiments in harmonies and rhythms, this genial work
looks forward to Copland and Schuman, its dominant
string sonorities emulating its inspirations. The Symphony
No.4 (1909-1916, first performed in full 1965) for chorus
and orchestra is the most startling and the most original, scored
for a very large orchestra with two conductors and piano, a
Modernist work that parallels the aesthetic of such writers
as James Joyce. Predominant is collage: the second movement
is a huge conglomeration of juxtaposed ideas, images and colours,
resolved in the fourth. The opening movement uses the chorus,
setting a poem by Lowell Mason that poses the philosophical
basis of the symphony (questioning the meaning of life); the
third movement is a more restrained adagio for strings. More
conservative critics have hated it, and indeed there is a sense
that Ives' fertile imagination is out of control, but ironically
it should present no problems to those used to the superimposed
collage effects of the avant-garde period. Some of its effects
are striking, such as sudden movements from loud passages to
ghostly ideas as if heard at a distance or in memory, a technique
that came into widespread usage in the 1970s. It is throughout
a fascinating work, Ives' most ambitious and a summation of
his musical development.
Perhaps
his most frequently heard work is Three Places in New England
(1903-1914) for orchestra (formally titled Orchestral Set
No.1). The first movement is an evocation of a procession
of dead souls from the Civil War on Boston Common, ghostly,
rhythmically and harmonically in flux, the web of misty orchestral
swirl highlighted by the emergence of individual instruments,
including the piano. The second depicts Putnam's Camp, commemorating
a winter military camp in 1778-1779, full of marches, quotations
from `The British Grenadiers', and bouncing band music that
is combined with completely contrasting material in clashing
keys to give a bright, dream-like effect. This collage-juxtaposition
effect was extraordinary for its time, a technique that was
not fully employed until the avant-garde 1960s. The third depicts
the misty morning river at Stockbridge, with distant singing
in the church; the orchestral palette remains thick, swirling,
again pinpointed with isolated instrumental touches like a fusion
between Impressionism and pointillism, and the harmonies of
the climax go beyond chromaticism into clusters. The Orchestral
Set No.2 (1909-1915, partly based on earlier material) for
orchestra and chorus, has a similar pattern, but is more extreme
in its experimentation, the second movement remarkable for its
disjointed rhythmic effects within a general flow that suggests
popular music, the third an extraordinary concept inspired by
hearing people singing after receiving the news of the sinking
of the Lusitania, starting with a distant chorus and
continuing with a threnody of different simultaneous orchestral
layers and ending with an almost Mahlerian climax before the
long fade. The Holidays Symphony (1904-1913) is also
in the same vein of experimentation and description, and is
more of a suite than a symphony, each of the four movements
celebrating a national holiday: Washington's Birthday, Decoration
Day, The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. It includes a jews'
harp in its orchestration, and the wild and swirling `Decoration
Day' is often heard on its own. Of his other orchestral works,
The Unanswered Question (1906, performed as theatre interlude,
1907, concert premiere 1946), with its quiet strings, questioning
trumpets, and answering flutes, and Central Park in the Dark
(1906, same performance history) are the most gratifying.
Of
the two string quartets, the String Quartet No.1 (1896)
is a conventional early work with echoes of Dvořák in its
four movements, although the key structures are not traditional,
and there are moments of polytonality and echoes of American
hymns; the fugue was reused in the Symphony No.4. The
String Quartet No.2 (1907-1913) is quite different: Ives
described it as a discussion among four men who converse, discuss,
argue and fight, make up (movements one and two), and eventually
walk up the mountain to view the firmament (the third movement).
There are quotations from Beethoven, hymns, and Civil War songs,
and the harmonic idiom is largely atonal in a complex work,
difficult to assimilate, but leading to a transcendental close.
Of his piano music, the Three Page Sonata (1905), in
three clearly defined sections, is remarkable for its compression,
for its creation of emotional and musical expectations only
to follow other directions, and for its feeling of unreality,
created by layers of different harmonies and rhythms. The huge
Piano Sonata No.2 `Concord' (1911-1915, partly based
on earlier music, then revised many times; first performed 1939;
full subtitle Concord, Massachusetts, 1840-1860) with
flute and viola (sometimes omitted) is Ives' summation of his
philosophy and his admiration for the American Transcendentalists;
its many revisions have left various alternatives open to performers,
and it remains his finest work and a major contribution to 20th-century
piano music. Each of its four movements pays tribute to one
of the Transcendentalists from the town of Concord (Emerson,
Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau), a motto from the four-note
opening of Beethoven's fifth symphony pervades the work, and
well-known American tunes occasionally make their appearance.
`Emerson' surveys powerful contemplation and complex thought
occasionally leavened by more musing moments; the viola makes
a tiny but telling appearance. `Hawthorne' veers wildly in mood,
regularly returning to a mysterious melancholic atmosphere,
`The Alcotts' is delicate, fragrant, counterpoised by passion
stirred by the Beethoven motto. `Thoreau' is the most transcendental
of the movements, with the flute representing the mist over
Walden Pond; throughout the sonata the piano writing is usually
dense and of considerable virtuosity; those listening to the
work for the first time might consider taking one movement at
a time. Ives' songs also include fine works; he wrote some 200,
ranging from the sweetly sentimental to the acerbically complex.
Ives
is a composer best taken in small doses. He is uneven in his
inspiration; some of the effects sound just that; and his emotional
range is essentially limited to those half-dreamt integrations
of childhood memories. Occasionally one wishes for tauter formal
structures to bind works together. But at his best his musical
visions are compelling, and when rediscovered he made an indelible
mark on American music and on American composers of the second
half of the 20th century.
The
insurance agency he co-founded, Ives and Myrick, eventually
became the largest in the United States.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
4 symphonies (No.2 Holidays Symphony, No.3 The Camp
Meeting)
-
Central Park in the Dark, Chromâtimelôdtune (also
brass quintet and piano), The Gong on the Hook and the Ladder,
Orchestral Set No.2, Over the Pavements, Overture
`1776', The Pond, The Rainbow, Robert Browning
Overture, Set for Theatre Orchestra, Tone Roads
No.1 and No.3, Three Places in New England
(Orchestral Set No.1) and The Unanswered Question
for orch.
-
From the Steeples and the Mountains for trumpet, trombone
and bells; 2 string quartets; Holding Your Own for string
quartet; In re con moto et al for piano quintet; The
Innate for string quartet, double-bass and piano and other
chamber music
-
2 piano sonatas (No.2 Concord); Three-Page Sonata;
Andante maestoso-Allegro vivace, The Anti-Abolitionist
Riots, Set of Five Take-Offs, Some Southpaw Pitching
and Varied Air and Variations for piano; Three Quarter-Tone
Pieces for 2 pianos
-
Prelude on `Adeste fideles' and Variations on `America'
for organ
-
around 200 published songs; The Celestial Country for
soloists, chorus and 8 instruments; December for unison
voices and wind; Lincoln for unison voices and orch.;
The New River for unison voices and orch.; Processional
for four voices and organ or brass; Three Harvest Home Chorales
for chorus, brass and organ; choral psalm settings
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Piano
Sonata No.2 Concord (1911-1915, often revised)
String
Quartet No.2 (1907-1913)
Symphony
No.3 (1902-1904, revised 1909)
Symphony
No.4 (1909-1916)
Three
Page Sonata
(1905) for piano
Three
Places in New England
(1903-1914) for orchestra
The
Unanswered Question
(1906) for orchestra
Central
Park in the Dark
(1906) for orchestra
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
C.Ives
Essays before a Sonata, 1961
H.
and S. Cowell Charles Ives and his Music, 1952,
1969
V.
Perlis Charles Ives Remembered, 1974
───────────────────────────────────────
PISTON Walter
born
20th January 1894 at Rockland (Maine)
died
12th November 1976 at Belmont (Mass.)
───────────────────────────────────────
Piston,
who trained as a painter before becoming a composer, is best
known for his suite from the ballet The Incredible Flutist.
However, his reputation rests more securely on the eight symphonies
which are at the heart of his output. All his works are for
orchestral or instrumental forces; there is no vocal music.
He was one of the first American symphonists for whom the evocation
of the American spirit was less important than the more abstract
exploration of the form. He has been called a 'neo-classicist',
and although such a title contains an element of truth, there
is a rugged individuality in his music, combined with concentration
on formal devices, that is reminiscent of Hindemith.
An elegance is at the heart of his output, and a self-contained
unity in the architecture. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in
Paris, like so many of his generation of American composers,
and elements of American popular influences do appear, particularly
in echoes of jazz (especially syncopated rhythms), but they
are integrated into his abstract goals, and became less obvious
as he explored more complex harmonic ideas in the 1960s. Yet
their very presence removes from his work the label of 'Parisian
neo-classicism' that has so often been attached to him.
Although
interested in the pattern of thinking of 12-tone composers and
in some of their formal devices, his harmonic language remained
essentially traditional, based on tonality, and linear counterpoint
predominates. The use of particular intervals as a basis of
form is a common feature (for example, the rising sixth in the
first movement of the Symphony No.7, or the relationship
between the intervals of the 12-note row in the slow movement
of the Symphony No.3 with those of the principal theme
of the first movement). Piston is also the most widely known
of American theorists, and his textbooks on harmony, counterpoint
and orchestration are still standard university works. Some
of that academicism perhaps raises its head in his music. The
regular presence of passages which are impeccable in their academic
credentials, yet fail to have impact beyond that (notably meandering
strings), have probably prevented his music from reaching a
wider dissemination. To offset that, his textural clarity, sense
of rugged assertion, and moments of a very objective contemplation
are far removed from any academic overtones. His melodic lines
have an inevitability about them, sometimes forcefully so, without
the tuneful flow of such American contemporaries as Harris
or Copland.
The
rather dour Symphony No.1 (1937) is, with the seventh,
the most obviously neo-classical of the symphonies. Characteristic
are the rigid rhythms, offset by syncopations and giving a rugged
directness to the expression. Predominant are forceful strings,
and there is an affinity with the hardened steel and concrete
purposefulness of the architecture of the period; this symphony
is worth revival. The next three symphonies probably remain
the best known. The three-movement Symphony No.2 (1943)
extends this rather direct and limited vision, adding a sense
of lyrical warmth and much more varied material, including suggestions
of the 'cowboy' musical inheritance in the first movement. This
adds a touch of optimism that is generally apparent in Piston's
output, while maintaining a largely sombre mood until the end:
the gentle slow movement becomes more impassioned and persuasively
pastoral, but the last movement is short and somewhat facile,
an example of Piston at his less inspired. The Symphony No.3
(1947) uses a large orchestra, with a notable part for two harps,
and a favourite fugato texture in the finale. The key is the
optimistic one of C major (with a conventional progression of
C-F-G-C in the four movements, and an overall structure of slow-fast-slow-fast),
though it also opens in a solemn and subdued mood with dark
orchestral colours, with solo lines (especially woodwind) or
blocks emerging from a dense, atmospheric texture. The slow
movement has a hymnal quality to its expansiveness, a monumental
quality to its climax. In total contrast is the energetic, highly
contrapuntal scherzo, jerky and piquant in intent (apart from
a meditative central section with solo flute), with touches
of the Mexican bounce that Copland had developed. A similar
tone is adopted in the finale, complete with a march-tune, the
orchestration reminiscent of the harmonium, and this is the
most obviously 'American' of Piston's symphonies. The similarly
orchestrated Symphony No.4 (1950) has at its close a
different, though related, tonal centre from that of its opening.
It starts in quite a different mood, light and lyrical, and
the whole feel is more relaxed, almost to the point of what
the English would call 'light' music, dance dominating the scherzo
(titled `Ballando'), the meandering of the strings never more
obvious. The slow movement reverts to contemplation with a massed
crescendo, but to less effect than the earlier symphonies, and
in spite of its superficial attractions, this is the least successful
of Piston's symphonies.
With
the three-movement Symphony No.5 (1954), Piston extended
the range of his idiom, maintaining the strict classical structures,
but adding the use of a tone-row in the opening of the slow
movement, and binding the structure with melodic elements that
appear throughout (he had used all twelve notes in the slow
movement of Symphony No.3, but the usage is lost in the
purely tonal goals). The effect is both more obviously abstract,
and at the same time grittier, with a consistent argument between
diatonic and chromatic material, and more spare and pointed
textures. The Symphony No.6 (1955) is a return to the
rather vacuous idiom of the fourth. The three-movement Symphony
No.7 (1960), on the other hand, is much more lithe and angular
in its material, more obviously neo-classical, and with particularly
clean textures. The orchestra is used sparingly in clearly differentiated
lines, often reduced almost to chamber-size. The harmonic exploration,
still rooted in tonality, is tense and chromatic, and the finale,
for all its brashness, has an acerbic edge. The final Symphony
No.8 (1964-1965), again in three movements, maintains that
harmonic edge, but combines it with the sense of the monumental
observable in earlier works.
Surveying
the symphonies as a whole, it is difficult not to come to the
conclusion that their details and individual moments are more
impressive than their overall impact, either as single symphonies
or as an overall achievement. The development of the idiom from
first to last is consistent, but limited. They are almost all
rewarding in one way or another (with the exception, perhaps,
of the fourth and sixth), and are interesting in the honesty
of their construction and their clarity of idea. Those interested
in the techniques of music will find the fifth perhaps the most
appealing, those more receptive to emotional impact, the third.
The final two symphonies, in the tension of their harmonic material
and its application to so many of Piston's characteristics,
are perhaps the most fascinating.
However,
the work most likely to be encountered is the completely uncharacteristic
suite (1938) from the ballet The Incredible Flutist (1938).
The scenario is a sleepy village that wakes up to the arrival
of a circus band, including the Incredible Flutist. Both his
dalliance with the Merchant's daughter and his own playing unite
the Widow and her object of passion, the Merchant himself. The
suite uses about half the full ballet, and largely follows the
same action. It is Piston at his most unexpectedly populist,
boisterous and colourful. After a characteristically neo-classical
start, the idiom ranges the gamut from pseudo-Spanish, through
Broadway waltz, quasi-Mexican, a touch of the 19th-century virtuoso
piano, hoe-down ideas, to circus music, complete with all the
appropriate orchestral colours, unashamedly American in its
melting-pot. With its distant echoes of The Sorcerer's Apprentice,
it is a happy reminder that Piston was at one time a pupil of
Dukas, and a marvellous compendium of the popular influences
on American serious music in mid-century.
The
five string quartets share many stylistic features of the symphonies,
argued with great craftsmanship, but possesses a more luminous,
interior quality. The String Quartet No.1 (1933) is essentially
lyrical (in spite of the chromatic elements of the first movement)
and ruminative, the two outer movements using material that
oscillates on a C-D flat axis. The String Quartet No.2
(1935) is in much the same vein, but with a haunting and beautiful
slow opening to a long first movement that has a wide variety
of moods and material. Both works are effective on a purely
emotional, as well as intellectual level. The String Quartet
No.3 (1947) and String Quartet No.4 (1953) are more
discursive. Both have extremely slow, long-lined slow movements,
and the latter a scherzo with something of Shostakovich's
mawkish humour. The String Quartet No.5 (1962), shows
the more astringent, almost atonal harmonies that Piston had
by then developed, but otherwise follows similar lines. If none
of these works are particularly gripping in their entirety,
none should fail to please, particularly in their clarity of
intellectual construction. However, perhaps Piston's finest
chamber work is the Flute Quintet (1942). Written for
the unusual combination of flute and string quartet, it has
a delightfully wispy and flowing opening, the sunlight of Ravel's
Provence looking over Piston's shoulder, with the flute integrated
into the general string texture while providing a parallel colour
(the relationship had been foreshadowed in the flute solo passages
of The Incredible Flutist). The scherzo is spiky, typical
of Piston's rhythmical insistence but with colourful flute writing,
and a scurrying finale.
Piston
was a celebrated teacher (at Harvard, 1929-1960), and among
his pupils were two of the most distinguished (and most contrasted)
of American composers, Bernstein and Carter. His
writings on theory are Counterpoint (1947), Harmony
(1941), Orchestration (1955) and Principles of Harmonic
Analysis (1933).
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
8 symphonies; sinfonietta for chamber orch.
-
clarinet concerto; flute concerto; two-piano concerto; concerto
for string quartet, wind and percussion; viola concerto; 2 violin
concertos; concertino for piano and chamber orch.; Capriccio
for harp and string orch.; Fantasia for violin and orch.;
Fantasy for English horn, harp and strings; Variations
for cello and orch.
-
Lincoln Center Festival Overture, 3 New England Sketches,
Pine Tree Fantasy, Ricercare, Serenata,
2 Suites, Symphonic Prelude and Toccata
for orch.
-
flute sonata; Suite for oboe and piano; violin sonata;
sonatina for violin and harpsichord; 2 piano trios; Three
Counterpoints for string trio; 5 string quartets; flute
quintet; piano quintet; wind quintet; string sextet
-
Improvisation and Passacaglia for piano
-
ballet The Incredible Flutist
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Flute
Quintet (1942)
ballet
The Incredible Flutist (1938)
String
Quartet No.2 (1935)
Symphony
No.1 (1937)
Symphony
No.2 (1943)
Symphony
No.3 (1947)
Symphony
No.5 (1954)
Symphony
No.7 (1960)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
H.Pollack
Walter Piston, 1981
───────────────────────────────────────
REICH Steve
born
3rd October 1936 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Steve
Reich has emerged as the most serious composer of the Minimalist
movement, and perhaps the one most deserving of attention. His
idiom, more uncompromising than that of Glass, less populist
than that of Adams, not only uses slowly unfolding repetitive
patterns for effect, but also as solutions to abstract problems,
often at the service of descriptive intent. The result is often
both intellectually and emotionally mesmerizing.
His
version of minimalism was initially influenced by La Monte Young
(born 1935), who experimented with Minimalist repetitive ideas
and `happenings', and by Terry Riley's In C (Reich took
part in the first performance). Its essence is movement within
the repetition by shifts of rhythmic patterns of one or more
of the instruments or voices at different times, creating gradual
overlapping patterns of changes. This is in contrast to the
abrupt gear changes of Glass, and although abrupt changes
do regularly occur in Reich's music, they usually appear first
in one voice alone to create a new strand in the weave. These
changes are often subtle (the replacement of a rest by a beat,
for example), and the overlap of the same rhythmic patterns
out of phase with each other, with one of them then changing
position for a new overlap, has become known as `phase shifting',
analogous to the traditional technique of canons, or indeed
double canons when one voice of the pattern moves slowly, another
fast (first employed by Reich in the Octet). Gradually
through his output he has extended these techniques to more
complex harmonic as well as rhythmic patterns.
Of
his early works, It's Gonna Rain (1965), using only the
recorded voice of a black preacher, Brother Walter, is fascinating
less for its musical effects than as an example of Reich's first
experiments with phase shifting. Using only a single spoken
phrase endlessly repeated, a second recording gradually moves
out of synchronicity with the first, creating deepening echo
and rhythmic effects. Violin Phase (1967) for a violinist
playing against one and then two and three prerecorded tracks
of him- of herself, is typical of the early works evolving the
phase shifting, the prominence and changes of the resulting
patterns being emphasized by the simple device of lowering the
volumes of the tape tracks. With its rigid note patterns and
singularity of timbre it seems crude compared with later works.
With
Drumming (1970-1971) for various drums, instruments and
voices, Reich took a major step to remedy some of the monotony
evident in the earlier works, partly as a result of studies
in Africa of Ghanaian drumming. This long work takes in its
entirety 1½ hours, but is divided into parts, often heard on
their own. By substituting beats for rests as the piece progresses,
a series of shifting patterns are created, and with the resonant
and timbral effects of a battery of drums, the result is mesmerising.
It progresses from small forces (two bongos) to the full ensemble.
The technique was further developed, with a much wider range
of colour, in Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
(1973). It is based on two rhythmic cells, whose note values
are subject to lengthening and shortening, creating changing
patterns of colour, with three abrupt changes of direction.
The effect is unexpected: rather than the feeling of rhythmic
shifts and overfolding of ideas in Reich's later work, the various
individual colours of his forces emerge and recede against the
ostinato patterns, like parts of a tapestry coming into focus
and then fading. Stockhausen had achieved similar effects
in Stimmung four years earlier. However, with its small
but abrupt harmonic shifts, and the feeling of always being
on the edge of tonal resolution, Music for Mallet Instruments
(as it is usually known) is the work that brought Reich attention
world-wide, and comes closest to the idiom of Philip Glass.
With
Music for Eighteen Instruments (1976), with suggestions
of jazz, and Music for a Large Ensemble (1978, revised
1979), which again uses wordless voices as part of the instrumental
texture and changes signalled by the vibraphone, Reich reached
a public that included followers of popular music as well as
those following the latest classical music. Variations
(1979) for orchestra of winds, strings and keyboards, was Reich's
first piece for such large forces. While using subtle shifts
of phase, it has considerably more melodic movement, with the
emphasis on overlapping and slowly shifting layers of melodic
ideas, propelled by the bass lines of long held notes, essentially
static against the higher ostinato layer as a kind of cantus
firmus. This technique and pattern of sound proved to be a point
of departure for another Minimalist, John Adams.
The
Octet (1979) for string quartet, two pianos, two clarinets
(doubling bass clarinet, flute and piccolo; ten musicians may
be used if necessary, but only eight play at any one time),
one of Reich's most impressive and closely argued works, is
built around complex writing for two pianos (four hands). The
sense of stasis inherent in repeated phrases slowly undergoing
transformation is relieved by the wide leaps of the melodic
fragments, giving a feeling of expansion and contraction, and
by the dense and tight focus and yet wide range of instrumental
colour afforded by the instrumentation. The movement between
each of the five sections is also more securely handled, creating
an almost unnoticed change and overlap rather than a more abrupt
gear-change, and this better suits the complex interlocking
of rhythmic ideas that is basic to his idiom. The Octet
was orchestrated for an ensemble of ten strings by Ransom Wilson,
with Reich's supervision, and in this version it is known as
Eight Lines.
Reich
moved to the actual setting of words (as opposed to voiceless
chorus, or speech on tape) in Tehillim (1981) for voices
and instruments, a Psalm setting that draws on his Jewish heritage,
including a melodic influence. There is no fixed metre or metrical
pattern, but merely the metre of the text, which is constantly
changing. In it, Reich starts to move away from a `pure' minimalism,
the repetitions turning to variations and canons in a beautiful
flowing tapestry of voices, the instruments providing a slower
grounding. The next major work was The Desert Music (1982-1984),
for chorus and orchestra, a long work based on excepts from
poetry by William Carlos Williams. The structure is an arch
form, with the five movements played continuously, the first
matching the last, the second the fourth; the central movement
is in A-B-A form. The longer melodic lines, initiated in Tehillim,
are further developed. The effect is less busy than his earlier
works, with a spaciousness that matches the title, and new textures
are introduced: a wailing siren imitated on the violas, and
signalling a shift to a different movement (rather than the
overlaps of the Octet) that is smoother and more convincing
than those in the works of the 1970s. Much of the sense of being
on the edge of harmonic resolution has gone; instead the colours
are darker and more chromatic. Some of the rhythmic devices
(in particular a beat of 3 against 2) have jazz origins, and,
in spite of the respect with which this work was received, sound
pedestrian in comparison with some of Reich's other works, and
the realisation of the essence of the poetry is less effective
than in Tehillim.
In
the Sextet (1984-1985) for percussion instruments, two
pianos and two synthesizers, Reich returned to a purer, abstract
palette, but with greater harmonic complexity, the changes of
tempo made abruptly at the beginning of each of the five movements
by metric modulation. Different Trains (1988) for string
quartet and tape is Reich's masterpiece to date, and a change
in direction. It is a music docu-drama evoking trains in three
eras each filling a movement: the great intercontinental American
trains before the war, the trains transporting Holocaust victims
during the war, and trains after the war. Its basis are repeated
snippets of spoken words on tape (looking right back to It's
Gonna Rain), by Reich's childhood governess, a retired Pullman
porter, and Holocaust survivors, and recordings of trains from
the periods; the string quartet, over-recorded four times to
create dense patterns, matches the rhythms and speech-melody
patterns of these taped snippets and adds its own commentary.
From the opening bars one knows Reich has moved into a denser,
far more expressive world while retaining the main features
of his idiom; the effect is both exciting and moving, the three
atmospheres clearly delineated, the effects of the train whistles
(used as an integral part of the patterns) and the voices haunting
and hard-hitting, the multi-tracked string quartet layers propulsive,
descriptive, evocative and gripping. In 1993 his first full
length `documentary music theatre', the opera-length The
Cave, was premiered, in part building on his experience
in Different Trains. The three acts focus on the common
ancestor of Abraham in three religions, Jewish, Muslim and Christian,
using taped interviews as well as extensive quotations from
religious texts. The static, oratorio-like nature of the libretto
was countered by extensive and integral use of video techniques.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
Clapping Music; Drumming for wordless voices and
ensemble; Music for Large Ensemble; Music for Mallet
Instruments; Music for Pieces of Wood; Variations
for winds, strings and keyboards
-
Electric Counterpoint for guitar, multi-tracked; Violin
Phase for violin, multi-tracked; Vermont Counterpoint
for flutes and piccolos (or one player, multi-tracked); sextet;
Six Marimbas (originally Six Pianos); Octet;
Music for Eighteen Musicians
-
Piano Phase for piano; Eight Lines for pianos
-
Desert Music for voices and instruments; Different
Trains for taped speaking voices and instruments; Tehillim
for voices;
-
opera The Cave
-
tape Come Out and It's Gonna Rain
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Different
Trains
(1988) for string quartet and tape
Drumming (1970-1971) for various drums,
instruments and voices
Music
for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
(1973)
Octet
(1979)
Tehillim (1981) for voices and instruments
───────────────────────────────────────
RIEGGER Wallingford
born
29th April 1885 at Albany (Georgia)
died
2nd April 1961 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Wallingford
Riegger belongs to that generation of American composers who
forged an American music, utilizing new ideas while casting
them in more traditional forms. He developed a free and unschematized
use of 12-tone techniques, often using the initial row to generate
ideas to be used in conventional structures; sometimes this
is combined with a sense of tonality, and some works are almost
entirely tonal. The chief features of his music are a sense
of directness, clarity and logic (sometimes expressed in such
forms as the fugue or the passacaglia), and a drive based on
forceful rhythms. These were in part the result of his considerable
experience writing for dance; between 1933 and 1941 he wrote
nothing else, producing scores (mostly with piano and drums)
for most of the notable American modern dancers, including Martha
Graham. After this period he concentrated on abstract orchestral
and chamber works.
His
earliest music was entirely traditional, in the line of Brahms
(he admitted to hissing at the first Berlin performance of Scriabin's
Poème de l'Extase), but between 1923 and 1926 he withdrew
from composing to rethink his musical stance. He then joined
a group of forward-thinking American composers, and became involved
in the advanced Pan-American Association of Composers. The first
major compositional results of this self-examination were the
Study in Sonority (1926-1927) op.7 for ten violins or
any multiple thereof, and Dichotomy (1931-1932) op.12
for chamber orchestra. The former, a very advanced and austere
American work for its time, shows the influence of Schoenberg
in its dissonant textures and its wide leaps, and of Bartók
in its percussive use of string instruments and incorporation
of folk-like thematic fragments; the impulse is of an atonal
lyrical flow, the textures getting progressively thicker. The
vibrant Dichotomy was one of the first American works
to use tone-rows, using two of 11 and 10 notes each, and including
their standard manipulations (inversion, retrograde inversion
[backwards], inverted plus retrograde), although Riegger was
unaware at the time of Schoenberg's formal 12-tone theories
(whatever some American commentators may have later claimed).
However its percussive energy, leading to a furious ending,
is much more apparent than any dissonance, and Riegger does
not adhere strictly to his rows, anticipating his later use
of the formal 12-tone system.
The
Fantasy and Fugue op.10 (1930-1931) for orchestra and
organ is ostensibly atonal, though in its carefully matched
sonorities (the organ colours being integrated with the orchestra,
rather than concertante), its dance-like rhythms, and melodic
flow it rarely feels dissonant. In contrast, the Canon and
Fugue op.33 (1941) for either string or full orchestra is
representative both of his interest in counterpoint and his
occasional writing in an entirely tonal manner. Riegger withdrew
his first two numbered symphonies, and it was with the Symphony
No.3 (1946-1947) that he became known to a wider audience.
It has that rugged intensity characteristic of mid-century American
symphonies and is perhaps his finest work. The Symphony No.4
op.63 (1957) is a more diffident work, in a tonal idiom centred
on keys without a strong sense of resolution (it ends on a major
seventh); the rhythmic sense is here rather nervous, the scoring
spare and often assigned to solo woodwinds. The Variations
for Violin and Orchestra op.71 (1959) is the best known
of the works based on variations (others include the Variations
for Piano and Orchestra op.54, 1953, and the Variations
for Violin and Viola op.57, 1956). With twelve variations
and a cadenza, it is based on 12-tone principles (although with
some deviations), with a predominantly lyrical singing line
for the violin, and more aggressive interpolations from the
chamber-sized orchestra. Of his other works, he produced two
important scores for brass ensembles, Music for Brass Choir
op.45 (1948-1949) and the Nonet for Brass op.49 (1951),
both of which include cluster effects.
Where
Riegger differs from the Viennese practitioners of 12-tone technique
(apart from his free use of the system) is the lack of the heightened
extremes of Expressionism. Instead his idiom appears direct
and thoughtfully rugged, individual in its personal use of 12-tone
idioms and their combination with more traditional harmonic
and formal patterns. Among his few pupils was Morton Feldman,
among his output a large number of commercial arrangements (with
a variety of pseudonyms) done for financial necessity in the
years of the Depression. He died from injuries received falling
over a dog's leash in a snowstorm.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include: (75 opus numbers)
-
4 symphonies (Nos. 1 & 2 withdrawn); sinfonietta
-
Duo for piano and orch.; Fantasy and Fugue for
orch. and organ; Variations for piano and orchestra;
Variations for violin and orch.
-
Dance Rhythms, Festival Overture, Music for
Orchestra, and New Dance for orch.; Canon and
Fugue for string orch. (also full orchestral version); Dichotomy
for chamber orch.
-
Study in Sonority for 10 violins or multiples thereof;
Music for Brass Choir; Quintuple Jazz for ensemble;
Introduction and Fugue for violin and wind instruments
(also for cello and wind)
-
Music for Flute Alone; Sonatina for violin and
piano; Variations for violin and viola; Divertissement
for flute, harp and cello; Duo for three woodwinds; 2
string quartets; piano quintet; woodwind quintet; concerto for
piano and wind quintet; brass nonet
-
piano works
-
cantata In Certainty of Song for chorus and chamber orch.
and other vocal works
-
many works for dance with small ensembles
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Dichotomy op. 12 (1931-1932) for chamber
orchestra
Study
in Sonority
op.7 (1926-1927) for 10 violins or multiples thereof
Symphony
No.3 op.42 (1946-1947)
───────────────────────────────────────
SCHUMAN William Howard
born
4th August 1910 at New York
died
15th February 1993 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
William
Schuman was one of the major figures in the mainstream of American
music, continuing the tradition of American symphony as the
vehicle for the abstract expression of American life. He had
an unusual apprenticeship, writing popular songs (usually arranged
by others) before starting a serious study of music at the age
of 23. Although most highly regarded for his ten symphonies,
he is also noted in America for his choral works. His development
was one of consistent extension of his idiom, rather than any
radical changes of style.
There
is a strong and vital urgency about his music, and he was a
public composer in the sense that the bulk of his works seem
the expression of outward events and situations rather than
of inward emotions. He explored no new boundaries, but extended
traditional forms with a strong consensus between form and content
- rarely does anything sound out of place in Schuman's work.
Within an essentially tonal framework (though usually without
key signatures, and with sometimes dissonant counterpoint or
polytonal moments, and with characteristic use of leaping sevenths
and triads) the most immediate aspect of his music is its rhythmic
intensity, preferring a steady pulse overlaid with cross-rhythms,
sometimes with spectacular rhythmic shifts (as at the end of
the Symphony No.3). Dance rhythms also appear in some
of his later works, and behind all lies the rhythmic example
of jazz. On this rhythmic base he places long, often cantabile
melodies, allowing broad conceptions. His orchestration often
divides the orchestra into groups, and he delights in the sonorities
of solo strings. A favourite technique, particularly in the
middle and later works, is the overlay of two or more concepts
moving at different paces and sometimes in different keys. As
a framework for this melodic and rhythmic motivation, he preferred
neo-classical forms.
It
was with the powerful Symphony No.3 (1941) that Schuman
came to prominence (he withdrew the previous two symphonies,
the second of which was admired by Copland but was a
disaster at its premiere). Divided into two movements, each
of two parts, it shows Schuman's fondness for ordered neo-classical
forms, here the toccata, chorale, passacaglia, and especially
the fugue, which unusually among 20th-century composers Schuman
regularly used with a strong sense of freedom and lightness
as an integral structural catalyst. It is a pulsing, vital work,
using its formal framework for vivid shifts of colourful expression
and its nocturnal slow section. The Symphony No.4 (1941)
is more thinly textured, less substantial and less inventive
in its combination of three-movement form and outgoing content
than its predecessor, in spite of the impressive fugal work
of the finale and the driving pulse of the opening movement.
The most neo-classical of the symphonies is perhaps the rather
intense Symphony No.5 (Symphony for Strings, 1943),
for strings alone, with very broad melodic lines and throughout
an energetic pulse. The Symphony No.6 (1948) is considered
by some to be his finest. It is a powerful and densely argued
work, in which one plane is dominated by strings and timpani,
in long lines or powerful statements, another by the brighter
colours of woodwind and solo brass, rhythmically more fragmentary.
Its construction is unusual: cast in one movement, two outer
slow sections frame four central ones, which themselves have
echoes of classical construction (fast opening, scherzo, adagio
and finale). The violent, punctuating nature of the Presto is
particularly effective. This fine achievement is let down, perhaps,
only by the rather aimless wandering of the strings at its centre.
Schuman
did not then produce a symphony for another twelve years, but
the Symphony No.7 (1960) re-established his position
as a symphonic composer. Building on a mood suggested by the
sixth symphony, it is darker, more anguished and personally
intense than the earlier symphonies, the harmonies often uncomfortable
(pitting upward sevenths against thirds), the orchestral colours
brightly embittered by brass fanfares, and with a yearning slow
movement - cantabile intensamente - for strings alone. It is
one of the finer American symphonies, an uncomfortable and compelling
work. The three-movement Symphony No.8 (1960-1962) has
a massive, sometimes harsh feel, the string lines long and thick-textured,
offset by woodwind and brass layers, as in the sixth symphony.
It creates a sense of slabs grinding against each other, like
a geological fault. Its slow movement is equally firm and insistent
rather than lyrical, with characteristic short chattering notes
in the brass at its climax. The dark Symphony No.9 `Le fosse
ardeatine' (1968) was a reaction to a visit to the site
in Rome of Nazi atrocities, again using a slow-fast-slow construction.
Of
his concertante works, the discursive and extended fantasy for
cello and orchestra A Song of Orpheus (1961), written
just after the seventh symphony, is deeply lyrical. Schuman's
characteristically long melodic line is fully extended for the
solo instrument, pitted against solo woodwind over a neo-classical
orchestra before moving to more positive assertion and some
deeply expressive writing. His most unusual concertante work
is the Concerto on Old English Rounds (1973) for viola,
women's chorus and orchestra, where the basic lyricism is tempered
by harsher sections, unexpected sonorities are set up by the
combination of women's chorus and the solo instrument, and the
nature of the material demands constant transformation - in
idiom perhaps an old-fashioned work, but nonetheless effective
and individual. The Violin Concerto, originally (1950)
in two movements, was revised in 1956, and was then cast again
as a two-movement work in 1959; it opposes energetic moments
with more contemplative ideas, characteristically using fourths
and sevenths. It is a sometimes forceful, sometimes lyrical
work of considerable impact, with few concessions to any virtuoso
Romantic tradition in form or in content.
Two
of Schuman's most successful works were written for the choreographer
and dancer Martha Graham. The scenario of Night Journey
(1947, concert version subtitled 'Choreographic Poem' for fifteen
instruments, 1980-1981) is based on the Oedipus legend, but
seen from the point of view of Jocasta. It combines motoric
moments with drawn-out ideas of a neo-classical character, and
something of the spare, semi-static nature of Greek drama. Judith
(`choreographic poem' for orchestra, 1949), was based on the
biblical story of Judith, with overtones of earlier fertility
rituals. Two clearly different strands of musical line work
independently but set up polytonal effects. Within the atmosphere
of a rather ritualistic drama, Schuman uses the full orchestra
for a wide range of effect, from an intimate chamber quality
to large sonorous climaxes. Two other ballets for Martha Graham
(Voyage for a Theater, 1953, and The Witch of Endor,
1965), have been withdrawn. Of his other orchestral music, the
Credendum (Article of Faith, 1955) for orchestra
was the first piece of music to be commissioned directly by
a department of the U.S. Government, while his American Festival
Overture (1939) has retained its popularity. New England
Triptych (1956) for orchestra is also in Schuman's more
popular vein, using hymn tunes by Billings, with a lovely second
movement (`When Jesus Wept'), and a blockbuster of a finale
(`Chester').
A
Free Song (1943), the
second of two Secular Cantatas for chorus, won the first
Pulitzer Prize in music. His major choral work is perhaps the
Carols of Death (1958), to three poems by Walt Whitman.
Written for a cappella choir, the actual rhythms of the words
are used to govern the structure. With contrasts between broader
swathes of choral sound combined with rhythmic detail, and darker
harmonies always suggesting an eventual resolution, this short
intimate work is unassumingly effective. His two single-act
operas are both light-weight but entertaining. The Mighty
Casey (1951-1953), to a libretto by Jeremy Gury is based
on the most famous of all baseball stories (Casey at the
Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer), which will need no introduction
to baseball fans but will probably mystify others. Full of vocal
lines that verge on the idiom of the Broadway musical, it is
colourful, boisterous, gently humorous, and in a style designed
to appeal to a wide audience: in a word, fun, with a little
home-spun philosophizing and a touch of the bitter-sweet at
the end. It was revised as a cantata Casey at the Bat
for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra in 1976. A Question
of Taste (1987-1988) is based on a story by Roald Dahl,
with a libretto by J.D.McClatchy, and is a little comedy of
manners centred around a bet on recognizing a fine wine at a
dinner-party: the bet is the hand of the daughter of the host
against half-a-million dollars. The idiom is again easy-going,
but darker-hued. Schuman wrote relatively little chamber music,
and virtually no piano music. Four of his five string quartets
are earlier works, and the String Quartet No.1 (1936)
was withdrawn. The String Quartet No.3 (1939) has cyclical
elements, material from the first movement being developed and
restated in the next two.
Schuman
was a particularly prominent figure in American musical life.
At the age of 35 he became the director of the Julliard School
(1945-1962), where he was an innovative administrator. From
1962 to 1969 he was president of the Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts, and he was chairperson of the MacDowell Colony
from 1973. Columbia University named the William Schuman Award
for lifetime achievement as a composer in his honour.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
10 symphonies (No.1 for 18 instruments, withdrawn, No.2 withdrawn,
No.5 Symphony for Strings, No.9 Le fosse ardeatine,
No. 10 American Muse)
-
piano concerto; violin concerto; Concerto on Old English
Rounds for viola, women's chorus and orch.; fantasy Song
of Orpheus for cello and orch.
-
American Festival Overture, Circus Overture, Three
Colloquies, Credendum, New England Triptych,
Newsreel, canticle In Praise of Shahn, A Prayer
in Time of War, and overture William Billings for
orch.
-
Prelude to a Great Occasion for brass and percussion
-
Amaryllis for string trio (also arranged for string orch.);
5 string quartets (No.1 withdrawn); Dances for wind quintet
and percussion
-
Three Moods and Voyage for piano
-
cantata Casey at the Bat; Carols of Death; Prelude
for voices; Prologues for chorus and orch.; Requiescat;
2 Secular Cantatas (No.1 This is Our Time, No.2
A Free Song); Te Deum; choral fantasy To Love;
other vocal and choral music
-
song cycle The Young Dead Soldiers for soprano, horn,
woodwind and strings
-
ballets Judith, Night Journey and Undertow
(two later ballets withdrawn)
-
operas The Mighty Casey and A Question of Taste
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Carols
of Death
(1958) for unaccompanied chorus
opera
Casey at the Bat (1951-1953) (see text)
Concerto
on Old English Rounds
(1973) for viola, women's chorus and orchestra
choreographic
poem Judith (1949)
Symphony
No.3 (1941)
Symphony
No.5 (for strings) (1943)
Symphony
No.6 (1948)
Symphony
No.7 (1960)
Symphony
No.8 (1960-1962)
Violin
Concerto (1950-1959)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
C.
Rouse William Schuman: Documentary, 1980
F.R.
Schreiber and V. Persichetti William Schuman, 1954
───────────────────────────────────────
SESSIONS Roger Huntington
born
28th December 1896 at Brooklyn (New York)
died
16th March 1985 at Princeton
───────────────────────────────────────
Roger
Sessions was perhaps the most highly regarded American teacher
of composition of his generation, but his own music, so prized
by a few, has never received the wider attention and exposure
that might have been expected. His sympathies were on the one
hand with a classical sense of order and of music being primarily
an abstract and technical art (consequently he worked in traditional
forms, notably the symphony) and on the other with a Expressionist
appreciation of the power of music to reveal the subconscious
emotions, the "energies which animate our psychic life".
His best music keeps the two in balance, with an emphasis on
rhythmic energy and variety; during the late 1950s, his technique
threatened to suppress the expression, notably in the middle
symphonies, but he redressed the balance in the middle 1960s.
His
early works were influenced by Bloch and then by neo-classicism,
and one of these early works, the imposing suite The Black
Maskers (1923, suite 1928) remains one his most often heard
works. It was reworked from the incidental music to the symbolic
play by Andreyev dealing with the dark forces of the unknown,
and the music matches the demonic undercurrents, generally late-Romantic
in idiom, with dark, clear-cut orchestral colours that are characteristic
of his orchestration. From the 1930s he developed an harmonic
idiom that was increasingly atonal, and in the early 1950s embraced
12-tone technique, though his usage is not strict. Elastic rhythms,
often varying rapidly and used organically in carefully organised
structures, were a major feature of his music, with a continuous
flow in which events (as Copland pointed out) come to
the surface and then submerge. This can create a long-breathed
overall continuity; at times it only emphasises an academic
angularity. His orchestral colours are hard-edged, sometimes
suggesting a monumental cast; his music is rarely `easy', but
it is an idiom that increases in effectiveness as one becomes
more used to the details and their imagery.
Sessions'
development is best seen through his symphonies. The Symphony
No.1 (1926-1927, revised 1929) is the work of a composer
trying out his voice, drawing on Stravinsky, Copland
and neo-classical elements, rhythmically energetic, especially
in the outer of the three movements, with a key structure but
much harmonic wandering, a slow movement of rather ponderous
but attractive lyricism, and a wildly exotic and quixotic finale
with jazzy features. The Symphony No.2 (1944-1946) occupies
quite a different sound-world, anguished, dense, swirling, harmonically
unstable, regularly losing any sense of basic key, the textures
maintained in the slow movement and the finale, where the undercurrent
of Expressionist monumentality against a nebulous surface is
confirmed. By the Symphony No.3 (1957) he had fully adopted
his own brand of 12-tone technique. The Symphony No.4
(1958) uses much leaner textures and more pointed orchestration;
its three were movements originally conceived as character pieces.
It has a nervous, angular cast, with fragments of high colour
in the central elegy. The Symphony No.5 (1964) retains
the angularity and the leaner textures, but is more compressed,
the movements played without a break, changes of mood more swiftly
juxtaposed, the opening figure recurring throughout the work,
which has a hard-edged monumentality, more successful in integrating
procedure and expression than its predecessor. The next three
symphonies were written under the impetus of the Vietnam war,
and by the Symphony No.7 (1967) he had restored a feeling
of expressive dynamic purpose, unsettled and with thick textures
and urgent, varied rhythms and an elusive, long-breathed angular
slow movement. His last symphony is also one of his finest.
The Symphony No.8 (1968) is in one continuous movement,
scored for a large orchestra, and it appears to reconcile Session's
symphonic make-up, in the easier flow, the less extreme angular
leaps, the almost Romantic moment of violin solo, and in the
arch of quietly atmospheric opening and close (strings against
hushed percussion), while retaining the dark hues, the rhythmic
interest, and a tone of melancholy that may be tense, but is
no longer anguished.
Of
his other works, the Violin Concerto (1930-1935), the
work with which he gained a mature style, is perhaps the finest.
The long phrasing of the solo line is usually set very high
in an elliptical, energetic and expressive work with clean orchestral
colours (omitting violins) and edges, an angular lyricism and
a sometimes sharply chromatic harmonic language. The Piano
Sonata No.1 (1927-1930) includes dissonant and chromatic
passages handled with clarity as Sessions was developing his
harmonic language. The Piano Sonata No.2 (1946) is aggressive,
restless, elusive, sometimes quasi-humorous, harmonically unsettling
with near-cluster effects in the opening. The Sonata for
Violin (1953) for solo violin was his first work to use
a 12-tone structure, with an elusive melancholic lyricism. His
two operas have not maintained a place in the repertoire: The
Trial of Lucullus (1947) has been eclipsed by the treatment
of the Brecht play by Dessau; Montezuma (1941-1963,
later revisions), following the overthrow of the Inca Montezuma
by the Spanish conquistadors, was more theatrically imposing.
The large cantata When Lilacs In The Dooryard Bloom'd
(1964-1970, but conceived in 1927) for soloists, chorus and
orchestra, to words by Walt Whitman, is one of his finest later
works, the music often vividly reflecting the descriptive images
of the poetry.
Sessions
taught at Smith College (1917-1921), at the University of California,
Berkeley (1945-1952), at Princeton (1935-1945 and 1953-1965)
and then Berkeley (1966-1967), Harvard (1968-1969) and at the
Juilliard. He co-founded the Copland-Sessions concerts that
introduced new American composers,
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
9 symphonies
-
piano concerto; violin concerto; concerto for violin, cello
and orch.
-
Divertimento, Rhapsody, Scherzino and March
for orch.; Concertino and Five Pieces for chamber
orch.
-
Six Pieces for solo cello; sonata for solo violin; Duo
for violin and piano; 2 string quartets
-
3 piano sonatas; From My Diary and other piano works
-
Idyll of Theocritus and Psalm 140 for soprano
and orch.; cantata When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd;
mass for male voice choir and organ; Turn O Libertad
for chorus and piano, 4 hands;
-
ballet The Black Maskers
-
operas Montezuma and The Trial of Lucullus
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
suite
The Black Maskers (1923, suite 1928) for orchestra
Symphony
No.2 (1944-1946)
Symphony
No.7 (1967)
Symphony
No.8 (1968)
Violin
Concerto (1930-1935)
When
Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'd
(1964-1970) for soloists, chorus and orchestra
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
R.Sessions
The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener,
1950
Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays, 1979
A.
Olmstead Roger Sessions and his Music, 1985
───────────────────────────────────────
THOMSON Virgil
born
25th November 1896 at Kansas City
died
30th September 1989 at New York
───────────────────────────────────────
Virgil
Thomson contribution to American music lay as much in his work
as a critic (notably with the New York Herald-Tribune, 1940-1954)
and writer as through his own composition. His music, in a very
large output (much of it short works), embraced a wide range
of styles, but throughout is characterized by a wit (sometimes
ironic) and piquant view of life and a delight in a quasi-naive
simplicity and directness derived in part from the influence
of Satie, and in part from the writer Gertrude Stein,
whom he met in Paris in 1926. His earliest works used jazz (Two
sentimental Tangos, 1923, for piano or band), a dissonant
neo-classicism (the Sonata da chiesa, 1926, for clarinet,
horn, trumpet, trombone and piano), and modal and Gregorian
chant hues in choral works, but he also turned to the American
heritage of hymn music that was an abiding thread through his
output (Symphony on a Hymn Tune, 1928). In the 1930s
he concentrated on chamber and string works, including the Violin
Sonata (1930), the String Quartet No.1 (1931) and
String Quartet No.2 (1932). The last has all the ethos
of Schubert's Vienna, with a classical structure and tonality,
charm, grace and clarity, and a waltz for a second movement
(one wonders how he could have thought it modern, as he did,
but that may have been part of his impish humour). He orchestrated
it into his Symphony No.3 in 1972, in which guise it
takes one a completely different character due in part to the
use of percussion and brass, the charm turning into a kind of
forcefulness; the two make a fascinating comparison. In the
late 1930s he returned to American themes, especially in his
film scores. Much of the 1940s and 1950s were taken up with
his critical activities, but he returned to full-time composing
in 1955, consolidating his style and reworking a number of earlier
works into new compositions. In Five Songs of William Blake
(1951) for baritone and orchestra or piano he applied the simplicity
and directness of the American 19th-century parlour song to
Blake (including settings of `Tiger, Tiger' and `Jerusalem',
a delightful, ironic, contrary setting with a sparkling ripple
of an accompaniment), an unexpected but effective combination
that only briefly flirts with a more complex art-song idiom.
Recordings of this work have omitted the fourth song as being
racially insensitive, though the censors have missed the irony
of the words and the setting, which has the strong flavour of
a Stephen Foster song. The fine Feast of Love (1964)
for baritone and small orchestra, setting translations of Latin
texts, ranges from a Stravinskian cast, with a lively pulse
in the accompaniment set against the counter-rhythms of the
long vocal lines at the opening, to a Romantic hue. The lovely
concertino Autumn (1964) for harp, strings and percussion,
opens with the broad chordal movement of a Copland work,
and the last three of its four movements are reworkings of the
Piano Sonata No.2 (1929) - the last movement, with bumptious
tuned percussion, is a little gem.
However,
Thomson's music is now most likely to be encountered in three
areas: his operas, his series of `portraits', and his suites
from film scores. His most important work is undoubtedly the
opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1927-1928, orchestrated
1933). The libretto by Gertrude Stein, with Cubist juxtapositions
of word and image that follow little linear pattern, is less
obtuse than it at first appears: in a Prologue and four acts
(there is a discussion between the third and fourth as to whether
the fourth will take place), it is fanciful, with a huge conglomeration
of different images, periods, and symbols, but with an undercurrent
that is both serious (touching on spirituality and religious
ecstasy) and ironic. Two of the four saints are genuine (St.Teresa
of Avila and St.Ignatius Loyola) and two are invented, and there
are host of minor saints. There is no plot as such, but a series
of choreographed scenarios, ranging from a monastery and a garden
party to the opera house and heaven. Thomson's score is equally
eclectic in its inspiration, including suggestions of American
folk and hymn tunes, and an actual quote from `America'; throughout
it bubbles with brightness, gentle humour, rhythmic bounce and
choral writing of simplicity and vitality. The orchestral writing
is deliberately kept undecorated to support the vocal lines
and to provide aural simplicity and clarity. Not the least of
its achievements is a close association between vocal writing
and the inflections of American speech; this, together with
its original structure in part dictated by the libretto makes
it the first American opera to entirely depart from the European
operatic tradition, a feat not again matched until the operas
of Glass. The first production also unprecedentedly used
an all-American Black cast (a year before Gershwin's Porgy
and Bess). It was followed by The Mother of Us All
(1946-1947), which followed a similar vein, except that the
libretto by Stein is more concerned with actual events, centred
around the suffragette Susan B. Anthony, its fantastical elements
introducing figures from American history and legend, including
John Adams, Indiana Elliott and Ulysses S. Grant, and using
quotations from literature, speeches and letters. The score
has more dissonant elements than its predecessor. Thomson's
final opera, Lord Byron (1961-1968), to a libretto by
Jack Larson, was more direct, but failed to achieve the impact
of the earlier works.
Throughout
his life, and especially in the 1940s, Thomson wrote `portraits'
(the idea was inspired by Stein) for a wide variety of forces
and in a diversity of styles. These miniatures range from the
angular dissonance of Bugles and Birds (Portrait of Pablo
Picasso) (1940, orchestrated 1944) for piano, and the contrapuntal
severity of Persistently Pastorale (Portrait of Aaron Copland)
(1941, orchestrated 1945) for piano, through the Family Portraits
(1972-1975) for brass quintet to the Eight Portraits for
Violin Alone (including a portrait of Gertrude Stein as
a young girl). The best have a Satiesque quirkiness; among the
portraits are those of Harrison and Sauguet. Thomson's
film music is distinguished (he wrote with Marc Blitzstein the
score for the unforgettable documentary Spanish Earth,
1937, drawing on Spanish folk music), and three in particular
stand on their own as orchestral suites. The Plow that Broke
the Plains (1936, suite 1942) and The River (1937,
suite 1957) were both written to accompany Department of Agriculture
films, and allowed Thomson to express a feel for the American
landscape in a broad pictorial style that has affinities with
Copland. The former includes genuine cowboy songs and
a jazz movement, the latter the swagger of the `Old South',
the exuberance of `Industrial Expansion in the Mississippi Valley',
a slow movement (`Soil erosion and Floods') with funereal undertones,
and references to well-known American tunes. Louisiana Story
(1948, and the only film score yet to have won a Pulitzer Prize)
was written for another documentary about the oil industry in
the bayou, and includes touches of Impressionism, a folk-tune
set against a chorale, and a passacaglia and a fugue for the
last two of the four movements.
works
include:
-
3 symphonies (No.2 from Piano Sonata No.1, No.3 from
String Quartet No.2)
-
violin concerto; concertino Autumn for harp, strings
and percussion
-
Fantasy in Homage to an Earlier England, The Lively
Arts Fugue, Three Pictures (The Seine at Night, Wheat
Field at Noon and Sea Piece with Birds) and other
works for orch.
-
many `portraits', including Eight Portraits for Violin Alone,
Family Portraits for brass quintet, Five Portraits
for 4 clarinets, Four Portraits for Violin and 32
Portraits (4 vols.) for piano. many orchestrated.
-
sonata for solo flute; violin sonata; 2 string quartets; Sonata
da chiesa for 5 instruments and other chamber works
-
4 piano sonatas; Five Inventions, Nine Etudes,
Ten Easy Pieces and a Coda and Ten Etudes for
piano
-
Church Organ Wedding Music, Fanfare, Passacaglia,
Pastorale on a Christmas Plainsong, Prelude, and
Variations and Fugues on Sunday School Tunes for organ
-
Collected Poems for soprano, baritone and orch.; The
Feast of Love for baritone and orch.; Four Songs to Poems
of Thomas Campion for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, harp and
viola; Five Songs of William Blake for baritone and orch.;
Mass for lower voice or unison chorus and piano; [three]
Old English Songs for soprano and piano; [four] Old
English Songs for baritone and piano; many individual songs
-
Cantata on Poems of Edward Lear for 2 sopranos, 2 baritones,
chorus and orch.; Missa pro defunctis for chorus and
orch.; Missa brevis and Seven Choruses from the Medea
of Euripides for female voices and percussion; other choral
works including Hymns from the Old South for unaccompanied
chorus
-
ballet Filling Station
-
operas Four Saints in Three Acts, Lord Byron and
The Mother of Us All
-
incidental music
-
film scores including Louisiana Story, The Plow that
Broke the Plains and The Spanish Earth (with Blitzstein)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
concertino
Autumn (1964) for harp, strings and percussion
opera
Four Saints in Three Acts (1927-1928)
opera
The Mother of Us All (1947)
suite
from film The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936, suite
1942)
`portraits'
(see text)
suite
from film The River (1937, suite 1957)
String
Quartet No.2 (1932)/Symphony No.3 (1972) (see text)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
V.
Thomson Virgil Thomson, 1966
K.
Hoover and J. Cage Virgil Thomson, 1959
───────────────────────────────────────
WUORINEN Charles
born
9th June 1938 at New York
──────────────────────────────────────
The
prolific Charles Wuorinen was the major American composer after
Babbitt to develop the heritage of European models (in
spite of his nationalist views on American music), specifically
building on the aftermath of 12-tone techniques and serialism,
as opposed to following an American tradition or idiom, and
his music has been widely heard in the States. His influence
as a teacher and (on other academic composers) as a composer
has been considerable, but his music lacks a distinctive individuality
or idiomatic personality (apart from the technical facility
and fertility) that distinguishes such contemporaries as Ferneyhough,
or indeed Babbitt himself. There have been claims of a baleful
influence of Wuorinen on American music, and one can't help
but feel they have a point, for the ultimate impression of his
music is one of sterility.
In
his earlier music (represented by such works as the spiky Flute
Variations, 1963) he developed an idiom that not only systematized
the intervals of the row and the rhythm (as Babbitt had done),
but also the larger structures of a piece, and this has remained
a cornerstone of his technique. These works have abrupt changes
of pace and dynamics, block-like effects, darting figures, and
a rather severe cast. The Chamber Concerto (1963) for
cello and ten players exemplifies this idiom, in five movements,
each with a different tone for the soloist. The String Trio
(1967-1968) is the best of these earlier works, still exceptionally
severe, but with the changes less abrupt.
Wuorinen
came to wider notice with the electronic Time's Encomium
(1968-1969), commissioned by Nonesuch records, in which he applied
similar techniques (especially the control of duration from
the smallest event to overall form) in the electronic medium.
It now sounds terribly dated, and excruciatingly dull in comparison
to the European electronic works of the 1960s, as if he was
doodling with his idiom on the Moog - in part because of the
very synthesized sound of the RCA synthesizer on which it was
realised, and which was prejudiced towards the use of 12-tone
equal temperament. The Piano Sonata No.1 (1969) effectively
applied the spiky leaps and sudden shifts to the piano in fast,
darting writing with spare textures. Ringing Changes
(1969-1970) for percussion ensemble is too anonymous in character
to be of real interest. In the String Quartet No.1 (1970-1971)
the sudden changes are turned to a more theatrically dramatic
cast, with different characterization for each instrument. When
these characters become more homogeneous, the sense of a dramatic
conversation is maintained, leading to almost minimalist repetitions
of great energy, and this work is a rewarding place to start
for those wishing to sample Wuorinen's music. This shift to
the less severe in Wuorinen's idiom was continued in the timbral
musings of the Bassoon Variations (1971-1972) for bassoon,
harp and timpani. Grand Bamboula (1971) for strings further
eroded the severity by combining an energetic Stravinskian neo-classicism
with the gestural effects and a more avant-garde harmonic palette,
and is worth the encounter. The Concerto for Amplified Violin
and Orchestra (1971-1972) is big and aggressive, again concerned
with timbre, the potential lyricism of the solo instrument expunged
by the amplification. The Percussion Symphony (1976)
for 26 players, including (like Ringing Changes) pianos
used as tuned percussion, returns to severity in its first movement,
and in spite of some delicate sounds in the slow movement and
a momentary echo of jazz in the last, is too cerebral, too academic,
to lift off a plane of aggressive self-consciousness. Its three
movements are divided by transcriptions of a Dufay setting of
Petrarch, providing a restful contrast of mood, like eating
a sherbet between courses. However, in more recent works Wuorinen
has developed a more direct sound-world, building on his technical
experience, retaining the complex rhythmic shifts and drive,
but smoothing out the disjointed effects of his style so that
the vertical components have started to serve a more linear
flow. The Piano Concerto No.3 (1982-1983) has a furious
first movement initiated by the piano and joined by percussion
and, gradually, by other members of the orchestra, a slow movement
of angular ideas that builds in complexity after the establishment
of the distinctive colours of cow-bells, tom-toms, timpani and
drums, and an ebullient, crowded finale. The title of The
Golden Dance (1986) for orchestra (including piano) refers
not only to Californian history, but also the `Golden section'
(the ratio of 2:1) followed by the duration and, inversely,
by the tempi of the two movements. Its 12-note row is derived
from a hymn melody by St.Thomas Aquinas; the first movement
shifts from tone-painting of colours and textures to a more
detailed focus of dense, complex elements, its idiomatic anonymity
eventually becoming wearisome, the second more furious but equally
vacant.
Wuorinen
has taught at Columbia University (1964-1971) and at the Manhattan
School of Music, and was appointed composer-in-residence to
the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1975.
───────────────────────────────────────
works
include:
-
3 symphonies; Percussion Symphony; Two-Part Symphony
-
3 piano concertos (No.2 for amplified piano); Chamber Concerto
for cello and 10 instruments; Chamber Concerto for oboe
and 10 players; Concerto for Amplified Violin; Concertante
IV for violin, piano and chamber orch; Five for amplified
cello and orch.; Prelude to Kullervo for tuba and orch.;
Rhapsody for violin and orch.; Tashi for clarinet,
violin, cello, piano and orch.
-
Astra, Contrafactum, Crossfire, The
Golden Dance, Movers and Shakers, Music for Orchestra,
Overture, Short Suite for orch.; Bamboula Squared
for orchestra and electronic sound; Orchestral and Electronic
Exchanges for orchestra and synthesized sound; Alternating
Currents, Ancestors, An Educator's `Wachet Auf',
Evolution transcripta and Galliard for chamber orch.;
Grand Bamboula for strings; Concertino for large
chamber ensemble
-
flute sonata; violin sonata; piano trio; 2 string trios; 3 trios
for flute, cello and piano; 3 string quartets (2 numbered);
wind quintet; string sextet; octet and a very large number of
other chamber works
-
3 piano sonatas; Bagatelle, Capriccio, Twelve
Short Pieces, Variations and other works for piano
-
Six Songs for counter-tenor, tenor, and chamber ensemble;
oratorio The Celestial Sphere for chorus and orch.; oratorio
Genesis for chorus and orch.; Mass for soprano,
chorus, violin and organ; Symphonia sacra for three male
soloists, 2 oboes, 2 violins, double bass and organ and other
songs and vocal works
-
masque The Politics of Harmony; opera The W. of Babylon
-
electronic Consort from Instruments and Voices and Times
Encomium
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended
works:
Grand
Bamboula
(1971) for strings
String
Quartet No.1 (1970-1971)
String
Trio (1967-1968)
──────────────────────────────────────
