Between the Inside and the Outside:
Seven American Composers in the Twentieth Century and Their Piano Pieces
D.M.A. Document
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Musical
Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Liguang Zhou
Graduate Program in Music
The Ohio State University
2019
D.M.A. Document Committee
Dr. Caroline Hong, Advisor
Dr. Kenneth Williams
Dr. Arved Ashby
Dr. Scott Jones
1
Copyrighted by
Liguang Zhou
2019
2
Abstract
Despite achieving success in other genres, several twentieth-century American composers have piano works that have not yet entered the standard repertory. The main purpose of this DMA Document is to advocate for seven modern American piano works and to encourage musicians—especially pianists—to pay more attention to lesser-known music of American composers in the twentieth century in programming their recitals and concerts.
This document examines seven piano compositions for solo piano and two pianos.
The piano solo pieces are: Five 2-Part Invention by Virgil Thomson; Four Pieces for
Piano by John Verrall; Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 by Ben Weber; Capriccio on Five
Notes by Lee Hoiby; and Three Epigrams by Robert Palmer. The pieces for two pianos with four hands are: Hard Times and Carnival by Isadore Freed and The Fringes of a Ball by Robert Starter. These works were all composed during the mid-twentieth century. I write this document also through my own analyses, a recorded performance, and a
(teaching) performance guideline of Lee Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five Notes.
These seven American composers both embraced tradition and sought innovation.
Their music existed in a space between the “inside” and the “outside.” In Chapter 1, I trace the development of music in the United States in the twentieth century. In Chapter
2, I discuss the topics of “American Music,” “American Mavericks,” and “American
ii
Pragmatism,” and briefly outline the biographies of some iconic American composers.
Chapter 3 presents the biographies of the seven American composers and analyses of the chosen piano works. I analyze the tonality, harmony, dynamics, structure, and style of these seven American piano pieces, in order to examine their status between the “inside” and the “outside.” Chapter 4 is a performance guide for Lee Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five
Notes from a pianist’s perspective. Chapter 5 elaborates on the conclusion that these piano works exist between the “inside” and the “outside,” and extols the benefits of programing American modern music.
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Dedication
This document is dedicated to my dear friend Dr. Behzad Karim Namazi.
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Acknowledgments
First, I want to sincerely express my deepest gratitude to my piano professor, Dr.
Caroline Hong. Her recitals are impressive and have far-reaching influences on me. Dr.
Hong’s teaching has equipped me with new methods to decode the music I perform. In addition, she coached me to be independent and confident, skills I will carry forward into my own musical career. Dr. Hong is an advocate for American modern music. Because of
Dr. Hong’s recommendation, I had the opportunity to participate the program “America’s
Music Collection,” which was launched by Dr. Danielle Fosler-Lussier, a musicology professor at Ohio State. Dr. Fosler-Lussier also strongly advocates for American music and has collected unrecorded American art music from the mid-twentieth century. She invited me to record these seven American piano pieces. Because I enjoyed playing them very much, I gave a solo recital for these piano solo works, and the pieces became the topic of this DMA Document. Here, I sincerely want to thank Dr. Fosler-Lussier for giving me this great opportunity to be part of her program.
In addition, I am eager to thank my committee of my doctoral studies at Ohio
State. Dr. Kenneth Williams, the piano pedagogy professor, always shared teaching experiences with the students in his Piano Pedagogy and Keyboard Harmony courses. Dr.
Arved Ashby is an outstanding professor in musicology. Despite his busy agenda, he offered weekly meetings guiding me through the process of completing my DMA
Document. Dr. Scott Jones is an OSU Wind Symphony conductor. He directed
Symphony No. 7 by American composer David Maslanka. It was my honor to play the piano part under his baton. I cannot forget this wonderful experience playing in an ensemble, and it has remarkably influenced my solo playing.
I appreciate the support from my good friend Dr. Behzad Namazi and his father
Dr. Hamid Namazi, a very professional and kind dentist. Behzad and I were classmates at
Ohio University for our master’s degrees. He passionately recommended me to my current piano professor, Dr. Caroline Hong. So, it is my honor to dedicate my DMA document to Dr. Behzad Namazi for his great support.
Moreover, the foundation of my piano skills is without a doubt attributable to Dr.
Christopher Fisher, Professor of Piano in the School of Music of Ohio University. His offer brought me to the United States to study with him at OU. His professionalism and hospitality are embedded in my performing and teaching.
At last, but not least, I feel very thankful to have the support from Dr. Ronald
Green and his wife, Louisa. Dr. Green is a Professor Emeritus at Ohio State in film studies, and Louisa is executive Deputy Direct Emerita of the Columbus Museum of Art.
The couple often discuss music and piano playing with me, and they have provided me and my wife tremendous support and great care. This is an indispensable part of my doctoral studies.
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Vita
2006—2010…………………………………………… Bachelor of Music
Piano Performance
Shenyang Conservatory of Music
Shenyang, China
2013—2015……………………………………………Graduate Teaching Assistant
Master of Music
Piano Performance
School of Music
Ohio University
2015—2018…………………………………………...Graduate Teaching Associate
Piano Performance
School of Music
The Ohio State University
Fields of Study
Major Field: Music
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgments...... v Vita ...... vii List of Tables ...... xi List of Musical Examples ...... xii Chapter 1. Introduction: The Development of Twentieth-Century Music in the United States ...... 1 Chapter 2. The Twentieth-Century American Art Music: Ideologies and Composers ...... 6 2.1. What is American Music? ...... 8 2.2. American Mavericks ...... 10 2.3. American Pragmatism ...... 12 2.4. Some Famous American Composers in the Twentieth Century ...... 13 2.4.1. Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) ...... 14 2.4.2. Charles Ives (1874-1954) ...... 15 2.4.3. Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)...... 16 2.4.4. Charles Griffes (1884-1920) ...... 17 2.4.5. Aaron Copland (1900-1990) ...... 18 2.5.6. Henry Cowell (1897-1965) ...... 19 2.4.7. Roy Harris (1898-1979) ...... 20 2.4.8. William Schuman (1910-1992)...... 21 2.4.9. Harry Partch (1901-1974) ...... 22 2.4.10. Samuel Barber (1910-1981) ...... 23 2.4.11. Elliott Carter (1908-2012)...... 24 2.4.12. John Cage (1912-1992) ...... 24 2.5. American Composers in the Middle Ground in the Twentieth Century ...... 26 Chapter 3. Seven Piano Works by Seven American Composers ...... 28 viii
3.1. Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) and Five 2-Part Inventions ...... 28 3.1.1. Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) ...... 28 3.1.2. Five 2-part Inventions by Virgil Thomson ...... 30 3.2. John Verrall and Four Pieces for Piano ...... 46 3.2.1. John Verrall (1908-2001) ...... 46 3.2.2. Four Pieces for Piano by John Verrall ...... 47 3.3. Ben Weber and Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 ...... 57 3.3.1. Ben Weber (1916-1979) ...... 57 3.3.2. Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 by Ben Weber ...... 58 3.4. Lee Hoiby and Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 ...... 67 3.4.1. Lee Hoiby (1926-2011)...... 68 3.4.2. Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 by Lee Hoiby ...... 70 3.5. Robert Moffat Palmer and Three Epigrams ...... 76 3.5.1. Robert Moffat Palmer (1915-2010) ...... 77 3.5.2. Three Epigrams by Robert Palmer ...... 78 3.6. Isadore Freed and Hard Times and Carnival ...... 89 3.6.1. Isadore Freed (1900-1960) ...... 89 3.6.2. Hard Times (Paraphrase on a Folk Theme) (for two pianos) ...... 90 3.6.3 Carnival (for two pianos)...... 94 3.7. Robert Starer and The Fringes of a Ball: Waltz Variations on a Theme by William Schuman ...... 98 3.7.1. Robert Starer (1924-2001) ...... 98 3.7.2. The Fringes of a Ball: Waltz Variations on a Theme by William Schuman by Robert Starer ...... 99 Chapter 4. Performance Guidelines for Lee Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 105 4.1. Motive ...... 106 4.2. Rhythm ...... 107 4.3. Phrasing...... 109 4.4. Articulation ...... 109 4.5. Pedaling...... 111 4.6. Fingering ...... 113 4.8. Emotions ...... 115 4.9. Practicing ...... 116 ix
Chapter 5. Conclusion: Twentieth-Century American Composers—Inside and Outside ...... 119 5.1. Review of the Seven Pieces ...... 120 Bibliography ...... 126 Appendix: Thoughts on Programming Modern American Music for Recitals...... 132
List of Tables
Table 1. Structure of “Freely” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions ...... 35
Table 2. Meter changes of “Freely” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions ...... 36
Table 3. Structure of “Flowing” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions ...... 39
Table 4. Change of time signatures of Lament from Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano ..... 50
Table 5. Structure of “Dance” from Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano ...... 53
Table 6. Dynamics of the 1st movement of Weber’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 ...... 62
Table 7. Dynamics of the 2nd movement “Misterioso” of Weber’s Three Piano Pieces,
Op. 23 ...... 65
Table 8. The motive and its variants in Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 ...... 73
Table 9. Structure of the 2nd movement of Palmer’s Three Epigrams...... 83
Table 10. Structure of Freed’s Carnival as ternary form ...... 94
Table 11. Structure of Freed’s Carnival as compound ternary form ...... 95
Table 12. Structure of Starer’s The Fringes of a Ball ...... 101
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List of Musical Examples
Example 1. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 1-2 ...... 31
Example 2. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 6-7 ...... 31
Example 3. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 12-15 ...... 32
Example 4. J.S. Bach Two-Part Invention BWV 779, mm. 1-2 ...... 33
Example 5. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 17-18 ...... 33
Example 6. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 20-22 ...... 34
Example 7. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm," m. 23 ...... 34
Example 8. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 27-28 ...... 35
Example 9. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 2nd Invention “Freely,” mm. 6-7 .. 37
Example 10. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 2nd Invention “Freely,” mm. 1-2 37
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Example 11. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section A, mm. 1-3 ...... 39
Example 12. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section B, mm. 30-33 ...... 39
Example 13. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section
A’, mm. 53-55 ...... 40
Example 14. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” mm. 12-
14...... 41
Example 15. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” m. 54 .. 41
Example 16. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm.
1-2 ...... 42
Example 17. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm.
13-14 ...... 42
Example 18. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm.
6 and m. 13 ...... 43
Example 19. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 41-43
...... 44
Example 20. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention ”Firmly,” mm. 1-8. 44
Example 21. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 22-24
...... 45
Example 22. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 53-55
...... 45
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Example 23. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 1-2...... 48
Example 24. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 24-25...... 48
Example 25. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 4-6 and 46-48 ... 49
Example 26. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 2nd movement, mm. 11-14 ...... 51
Example 27. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 2nd movement, mm. 15-18 ...... 51
Example 28. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 1-4 ..... 53
Example 29. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 53-55 . 54
Example 30. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 9-10 ... 54
Example 31. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 1-5 ... 55
Example 32. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 14-16 55
Example 33. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 59-63 56
Example 34. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 2 and 31 ...... 60
Example 35. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 5, 8, and 36 ...... 60
Example 36. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 22 and 35 ...... 60
Example 37. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 13-14, 19-21 and 43-44 ...... 61
Example 38. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 1, mm. 1-3...... 62
Example 39. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 2nd movement “Misterioso,” mm.
1-2 ...... 63
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Example 40. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 2, mm. 1-2...... 63
Example 41. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 2nd movement “Misterioso,” mm.
17-18, 21-22, and 30-33 ...... 64
Example 42. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 2, mm. 4-5...... 64
Example 43. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 3, mm. 1-2...... 66
Example 44. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 3rd movement “Allegretto,” mm. 1-
2...... 66
Example 45. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 1-4 ...... 70
Example 46. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 10-14 ...... 71
Example 47. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 15-17 ...... 72
Example 48. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 87-90 and 94-96 ...... 74
Example 49. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 42-48 ...... 75
Example 50. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 12-14 ...... 79
Example 51. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 7-10 ...... 80
Example 52. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 47-50 ...... 81
Example 53. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 16-22 ...... 81
Example 54. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 1-5 ...... 82
Example 55. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 48 and 63 ...... 83
Example 56. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 1-3 ...... 84
Example 57. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 5-6 ...... 85
Example 58. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 9-10 ...... 85
Example 59. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 62-63 ...... 86
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Example 60. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 3rd movement, mm. 1-3 ...... 87
Example 61. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 3rd movement, mm. 28-31 ...... 88
Example 62. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 1-3 ...... 91
Example 63. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 4-6 ...... 92
Example 64. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 18-19 ...... 93
Example 65. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, m. 14 ...... 93
Example 66. Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, between Rehearsal 32 and 33 ...... 95
Example 67. Isadore Freed, Carnival, m. 20 ...... 96
Example 68. Isadore Freed, Carnival, mm. 33-36 ...... 97
Example 69. Isadore Freed, Carnival, mm. 37-39 ...... 97
Example 70. Robert Starer, Theme by William Schumman ...... 100
Example 71. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 1-4 ...... 101
Example 72. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 40-43 ...... 102
Example 73. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 76-81 ...... 103
Example 74. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 28-30 ...... 107
Example 75. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 55-56 ...... 107
Example 76. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 96-97 ...... 107
Example 77. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 59-61 ...... 108
Example 78. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 98-100 ...... 108
Example 79. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 31-33 ...... 110
Example 80. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 78-81 ...... 111
Example 81. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 62-65 ...... 112
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Example 82. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 114-115 ...... 112
Example 83. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 126-128 ...... 113
Example 84. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 74-76 ...... 114
Example 85. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 104-106 ...... 115
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Chapter 1. Introduction: The Development of Twentieth-Century Music in the United States
Despite an emphasis on modernity, much of the twentieth century was dominated by music in the past; these masterpieces of the past were treated as a source of inspiration, a touchstone of musical value. On the other hand, for some composers, the music of the past was a source of anxiety and an inescapable burden.1 In the twentieth century, some composers were more traditional: their minds were deeply rooted in the past, despite their musical or technical creativity. But other composers held a revolutionary attitude about what sounds were acceptable as “musical.” Some composers in the twentieth century even tried to find inspiration in human, animal, or artificial sounds. Italian writers, especially Filippo Marinetti, Francesco Pratella, and Luigi
Russolo, asserted that a true musician could or should use anything as a resource.2
Throughout the century, more technology came to the stage and opened new worlds of sound to explore; electronic music started to define its status. Composers in the twentieth century not only pushed the boundaries of compositional forms, but also searched for new possibilities with traditional instruments. Some composers experimented with
1 Joseph Straus, Remaking the Past (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 5. 2 Elliott Schwarts and Daniel Godfrey, Music since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature (New York: Schirmer Books, 1993), 109. 1 innovative approaches to piano music in terms of playing techniques, tuning, and combinations with tape or live electronics.3
There were no signs that the established methods of composing music had been exhausted.4 Music in the twentieth century is a fusion of the old and the new: it is about negotiating one’s place on the “inside” or the “outside” of tradition. Musicians were a part of the new world, catching up with contemporary trends by employing the music of the past. Even the famous American avant-garde composer John Cage wrote: “If
American art music—music that really spoke with this country’s voice and was heard by the world—was largely the product of eccentric loners, historians can still look back at those loners and cite their similarities of method and style.”5 Additionally, by the mid-
1800s, American audiences were becoming more sophisticated consumers of music; there were many indications that the people with little or no music background started appreciating music. As the Century in 1872 put it, America had “an ever-larger class of cultivated people who love music simply, purely, and for its own sake.”6
These musical developments did not end with mere fusion of old and new. The social conditions of this country nurtured and cultivated the creativity of American composers, freeing them to write anything they liked. But they still naturally referenced the past when they created new music. Of course, even though artists could create
3 David Burge, Twentieth-Century Piano Music (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2004), 196. 4 Rupert Hughes, Contemporary American Composers (Boston: Page, 1900), 145-46. 5 John Cage, “The American Experimental Tradition and Its Godfather,” in All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by John Rockwell (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1983), 48. 6 Joseph A. Mussulman, Music in the Cultured Generation: A Social History of Music in American, 1870- 1900 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), 72. 2 anything they wanted, the American public was free to ignore it. Despite this, American composers continued to pursue innovation.7
Let us look at a few brief examples regarding this relationship between tradition and innovation that American composers explored in the twentieth century. Aaron
Copland took the traditional Shaker melody “Simple Gifts” and wrote variations on it in his ballet Appalachian Spring (1944). That melody was performed independently of the choreography on the concert stage and became famous in popular culture as the theme of the TV documentary series CBS Reports. Many modern listeners who know nothing about the tune can still hum it perfectly. Leonard Bernstein’s career serves as another example. This outstanding American pianist, conductor, composer, and writer helped young generations to understand and enjoy classical music. He composed the film music for On the Waterfront and West Side Story.8 As American music was further developed, the sense of individual experimentation gradually became a paradoxical tradition of its own. This experimental tradition traces back to the music of John Cage and his associates in the early 1950s. The highly experimental music by avant-garde composers like Cage was initially considered part of the counterculture.9 Many American composers, like
Cowell, Partch, and Ives, defied the traditional European notions of what a composition should be or what it should contain.10
7 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), xiv. 8 Michael G. Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century, 1st ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1999), 72-73. 9 James E. Perone, Music of the Counterculture Era (Westport, Connecticut & London: Green Wood, 2004), 11. 10 Paul Griffiths, Modern Music: The Avant Garde since 1945 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1981), 171. 3
Continuing the theme of experimentation, American composer Virgil Thomson discussed his concept of masterpieces in his book The Musical Scene, which discussed this change of the mindset of American composers. Thomson provided this new thought on art music, serving as a representative of the American composers in the twentieth century:
In the centuries when artistic skills were watched over by guilds of workmen, a masterpiece was nothing more than a graduation piece, a work that marked the student’s advance from apprenticeship to master status. Later the word was used to mean any artist’s most accomplished work, the high point of his production. It came thus to represent no corporate judgement, but any consumer’s private one. Nowadays, most people understand by it a piece differing from the run of repertory by a degree of concentration in its expressivity that establishes a difference of kind.11
Life in ancient times was silent. Today, noise prevails. During the nineteenth century, it became triumphant, because of the new sounds that followed the invention of machines. Art music, at first, sought purity and sweetness of sound. Later, it blended a diversity of sounds, but it still retained smooth harmonies and was pleasant to the ears. In the twentieth century, art music combined old and new sounds to create more dissonance, strangeness, and harshness. Therefore, over the course of history, music gradually began to incorporate noise.12 Although the developments and creativities of musical thought since 1900 have been rich and complex, they are full of great successes and remarkable and unremarkable failures, which brings “enormous and continuing promise, and seemingly endless contradiction.”13
11 Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1945), 278. 12 Nicolas Slonimsky, Music since 1900, 3rd edition, revised and enlarged (New York: Coleman-Ross Company. Inc., 1949), 642-43. 13 Eric Salzman, Twentieth-century Music: An Introduction, 3rd edition (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice hall, 1988), 5. 4
As a conclusion, the twentieth century was an era of experimentation and unrest.
On one hand, some American composers, with equanimity and care, have poured their energy into experimentation and innovation, because they were impressed by new music.
On the other hand, other American composers wrote music based on traditional forms and styles, even though new musical vocabularies had already developed.14 The aesthetic co-existence of the past and the present can appeal to a public audience comprising diverse cultures who are open to this combination and fusion. However, if listeners are too preoccupied with the past, their mindsets may become stagnant or old-fashioned.
Despite the glories of this past, this closed-minded attitude to music cannot sustain itself, and suggests a bleak future of diminishing hope for the performance of art music in the twenty-first century and beyond.15
14 Douglas Moore, From Madrigal to Modern Music: A Guide to Musical Styles (New York: W. W. Norton & Company In., 1942), 257. 15 Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 423. 5
Chapter 2. The Twentieth-Century American Art Music: Ideologies and Composers
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans had a strong motivation to emigrate to America. However, musicians still had a strong tendency to stay in Europe, with its long tradition of conservatories and orchestral institutions where their music could be performed and appreciated. Famous European musicians had tours in the United
States, but often found American musical organizations primitive and the audiences naïve.16 In this era, American musicians worked under a discouraging philosophy: any innovation or departure from European precedent would be considered a technical deficiency. As a result, “Prior to [the twentieth century], America contributed very little to the world’s musical culture.”17 Meanwhile, European composers like Liszt, Wagner, and Schoenberg were finding ways to absorb the past and create their own rules.
American composers like George Bristow, George Chadwick, and Amy Beach continued to write music in the models of conservative European composers such as Mendelssohn,
Brahms, and Dvorak. These European composers brought tremendous benefits to the culture of American music and had an enormous impact on the native American style that
16 Gann, American Music, 19. 17 Ernst Krenek, “The Rise of American Art Music and the Impact of the Immigrant Wave of the Late 1930’s,” in All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by John Rockwell (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1983), 15. 6 was so weak at that time. Thus, American composers and artists struggled for a long time with the advantages and disadvantages of clinging to their European heritage.18
In the early twentieth century, many American composers went to Europe to study. In fact, American composers who studied in Europe were more likely to build their own aesthetic than the composers who did not. The influence from Paris left an almost irresistible impression on many American composers in the 1920s. Among French musicians, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) had a particularly remarkable influence on
American composers.19 Boulanger left her immortal imprint on the world as a teacher, performer, conductor, and composer. As a teacher, she cultivated the talents of many great American composers, like Aaron Copland, Elliot Carter, Roy Harris, and Virgil
Thomson. Under her tutelage, almost all of them turned into remarkable composers in the twentieth century. As a soloist, she performed with the New York Symphony Orchestra.
In addition, Boulanger was the first woman to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Society for a complete concert, and she regularly conducted concerts of the Boston Symphony,
New York Philharmonic, and Halle Orchestra (Manchester).20 Generally speaking,
Boulanger’s contribution to music in the United States is magnificent, especially between
World War I and World War II.
18 Krenek, “Rise of American Art Music,” 15. 19 Kay Norton, “Musical Emissary in America: Nadia Boulanger, Normand Lockwood, and American Musical Pedagogy,” in Vistas of American Music, edited by Susan L. Porter and John Graziano (Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1999), 323. 20 Anne Gray, The World of Women in Classical Music (La Jolla, California: Wordworld, 2007), 306. 7
2.1. What is American Music?
American composers in the early twentieth century conducted their music careers in the context of a weak historical and geopolitical situation. They faced two huge challenges: they were expected to show a high level of artistry and technique equal to an ideal of German romantic music, and they were simultaneously supposed to catch up with
Europe’s latest trends. American composers struggled to make their music distinctively
“American,” though it was difficult to come to a consensus on the definition of such a quality.21 Before World War I, most cultural commentators and arbiters thought of
American culture as an outgrowth of European models.22 As American composer Henry
Gilbert put it, “American music has this problem to face: It can only become ultimately distinctive by leaving the paths of imitation, and that by leaving the paths of imitation it must temporarily sacrifice both immediate success and the respect.”23
American Music can be considered a result of a clash between European, African,
Asian, and Latin American influences. In addition, it also arises from a distinctly
American brand of freedom—without the restrictions or benefits of an assumed, shared culture. American music is a mixture of inheritance and freedom. European classical music and other ethno-music dealt with continuity of shared conventions, whereas
American music was looking for originality and innovation. In other words, the shared tradition of American music is individualism. This is a paradox. As American composer
21 Gann, American Music, 21. 22 Barbara Tischler, An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 11. 23 Henry Gilbert, “The American Composer.” Music Quarterly 1 (April 1915): 94-104, reprinted in Gilbert Chase, ed. The American Composer Speaks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1996), 102. 8
Virgil Thomson said, “The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is to be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.”24 American music is whatever is written by American composers; this slogan has been widely accepted. Also, this saying rejects the notion of a separation between “real” American composers from less authentic ones.25 Every culture has its own musical identity, with aspects that gradually generate tradition. For example, we can identify African music and Japanese music with no difficulty. However, in terms of American music, it is not easy to identify its distinctive features. As a result, American composers were overshadowed for many years by their counterparts from Europe, Asia, and Africa.
However, America is not lacking its own musical characteristics. American composers themselves have often asked if typical American music exists. Aaron Copland noted, “I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanism. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature it will also be
American in quality.”26 Along with music from other parts of the world, American music was rooted in a culture and tradition: its innovations have been influencing other cultures just as they have had an impact in America.27 With this, there has never been a lack of creativity in American music. There are many styles and techniques that have provided remarkable influence on other cultures in different parts of the world, including minimalism, maximalism, electronic music, and the third stream.
24 Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician (New York: Berg Publishers, 1987), 5. 25 Gann, American Music, xiii. 26 Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein, 5. 27 Krenek, “Rise of American Art Music,” 15. 9
The cultural and social developments of twentieth-century America influenced
American composers. This overall background nurtured the musicians and their minds, providing the framework for a mixture of tradition and innovation. Libertarianism grew at the beginning of the twentieth century; the peak of anarchism had passed. H. L.
Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarians.28 They advocated for the thought that people should maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment, and self-ownership.29 These aspects represented the pursuit of one’s own conception of happiness, or the good life without any restrictions.
American composers were influenced to have their own compositional or artistic choices regardless of the European musical conventions. In other words, American composers created their own musical sonority through their own freedom, not totally bound by the rules of “common writing.”
2.2. American Mavericks
The word “maverick” derives from Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-1870), who was an American cattle rancher. He was a New Englander who resettled near San
Antonio, now called “Maverick County.” He did not tie the cattle up as the people used to. Instead, he set them loose and free on the range. Any free and unbranded cattle was called a “maverick.” A century later, the word developed its modern meaning: loner, dissenter, non-conformist, independent. Some twentieth-century American composers
28 Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 309. 29 George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2004), 16. 10 were described in these terms, as musical mavericks. Musicologist and composer Peter
Garland, who ran the journal Soundings, have called some American composers
"experimental" and referred them as a part of the "American Experimental Tradition." In
1994, the New York Philharmonic devoted a festival to American experimentalists, describing these composers as "American Eccentrics." This was kinder phrasing than referring to these artists as "amateurs" or "kooks," as more conservative composers did.
Later, in an annual music festival given by the San Francisco Symphony, it started becoming common to refer to some American composers as "the American Mavericks."30
These composers did not try to be approachable to audiences. The “mavericks” did not to carry followers, nor did they lead to new trends.
Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Leo Ornstein were considered first three
American “maverick” composers. They advocated for freedom from European classical music and all the rules taught in music schools. However, these composers did respond to musical traditions from within their anti-traditionalism. Once Henry Cowell had started his studies at Berkeley, Charles Seeger told him two things. The first was that Cowell needed to define his own use and system of new and experimental compositional techniques. The second was that he should compose some repertoire which would further explore these innovations.”31 After Henry Cowell, there were many American
“maverick” composers; for example, Carl Ruggles, Harry Partch, George Antheil, Conlon
Nancarrow, John Cage, Henry Brant, Lou Harrison, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros,
30 Kyle Gann, “What is a Maverick?” American Public Media, http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_gann01.html. 31 David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1890-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 134-35. 11
Meredith Monk, La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Frank Zappa, Diamanda Galás, and
Mikel Rouse.32 Those mavericks learned from each other, gravitated toward each other, and formed their own dissenting, independently American tradition.
2.3. American Pragmatism
American pragmatism began around 1870. Pragmatism advocated for thoughts as an instrument or tool for problem-solving and action, and it emphasized the practical application of ideas by acting on them to test them in human experiences. The core of this philosophy centers on a changing world rather than an unchanging one.33 The pragmatist school’s attention focused on ideas and actions for the sake of dealing with and improving everyday life. American composers in the twentieth century were influenced by this philosophical trend, and they practiced their own “free” styles, without fully abiding by the conventions of European music.
American composers in the twentieth century wrote their musical works within this social and cultural background. European traditions emphasized rules people needed to study and apply in their practice. However, the more practical approach for composing is to do whatever the composer wants to do as a free choice, instead of being restrained by “rules.” The pragmatism of American composers can be seen in the usage of materials that interest them, such as jazz and folk tunes, and in the creative, experimental, and innovative approach to composition. It is impossible to deny American classical music’s
32 Gann, “What is a Maverick?” 33 Gerald Gutek, Philosophical, Ideological, and Theoretical Perspectives on Education (New Jersey: Pearson, 2014), 100. 12
European roots. However, later in the twentieth century, it became impossible to ignore
African and Asian roots, as well.
2.4. Some Famous American Composers in the Twentieth Century
Over the course of music history, great composers followed the same path—they inherited what was in the past and they also experimented (with harmony, dynamics, musical forms, etc.) as a way of producing something new for the present. For example,
Mozart was prolific but experimental in composing his symphonies, piano sonatas, and piano concertos. For example, the second movement of his Piano Concerto No. 20, K.
466 in D minor has a non-traditional structure: there is a fast section in the center of a typical slow movement. It was absolutely an innovation at that time. Beethoven also experimented with musical form. The “Emperor” Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 5, Op.
73 in E-flat major) has its cadenza at the beginning of the first movement, which is opposed to the convention of writing cadenzas at the end of the movement. For Brahms, one of his innovations was adding a scherzo movement to his piano sonatas and piano concertos to make these works four movements instead of three.
However, many other composers in the music history tried to hold true to their traditional roots, and they even went back to the styles in the past. Some modern composers—such as Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Hindemith—were considered neo- classical. They went back to tradition, even though they also employed experimental approaches. The situation was the same for American composers in the twentieth century.
As discussed previously, some twentieth-century American composers absorbed and replicated European musical tradition—they dwelled inside of the rules. On the other
13 hand, other twentieth-century American composers were avant-gardists—situated outside of the rules.
It is not hard to recognize various composers’ proclivities to gravitate towards either tradition or innovation. The avant-garde composers were represented by Charles
Ives, Elliot Carter, and John Cage, among others. American composers like Edward
MacDowell and Samuel Barber kept to the traditions of the European music. Therefore, it is necessary to provide brief biographies of seven American composers who became iconic—even canonic—in the twentieth century. These composers listed below are diverse in musical styles and techniques. This group of composers will also help define
American music.
2.4.1. Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)
Edward MacDowell was born in New York City. He was an American composer and pianist with strong musical influences from Europe, specifically Germany. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, and Debussy was his classmate. After graduation, he taught at Hoch’s Conservatory and then Darmstadt Conservatory. In 1882, he went to
Weimar to visit Liszt. Liszt really enjoyed MacDowell’s work and helped him to find a publisher for his first piano concerto.34 In 1884, MacDowell went back to the United
States to marry Marian Griswold Nevins, who significantly supported his career.
MacDowell composed his first tone poem and his first orchestral work in 1885,
Hamlet and Ophelia, which proved remarkably successful. The American premieres of
34 David Ewen, American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982), 432-35. 14
Hamlet and Ophelia were in 1886 and 1887. After this success, MacDowell became increasingly productive: he finished his second tone poem for orchestra, Lancelot and
Elaine, in 1886 and his second Piano Concerto in D minor in 1887. MacDowell gave the world premiere of his own Piano Concerto No. 2 under Theodore Thomas conducting the
New York Philharmonic. In 1888, the couple permanently settled down in the United
States. In 1896, he was appointed as the first professor of music at Columbia University.
MacDowell was considered one of the greatest American composers during his lifetime and was often compared to Edward Grieg.35 MacDowell was inheriting European musical aesthetics, especially from Franz Liszt. MacDowell’s music contains serious and emotional melodies, formed by an introspective contemplation of memories. He tried to compose music that could capture an aspect of nature, the essence of myth and fairyland, or the spirit of romance, chivalry, and heroism.36
2.4.2. Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He was one of the first internationally- renowned American composers. He was an avant-gardist for his experiments in musical techniques, such as tone clusters, polytonality, polyrhythms, and aleatoric music. Ives mixed American popular and church music with European art music. His had a huge influence on other American composers and on twentieth-century music. His father,
George Ives, encouraged Charles and Moss (Charles’s brother) to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonies. Ives become an organist when he was 14, and at the same time
35 Gann, American Music, 3. 36 Nicholas E Tawa, The Coming of Age of American Art Music: New England’s Classical Romanticists (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991), 133. 15 he also started composing hymns and songs. Ives attended Yale University in 1894 and graduated in 1898, then worked for the Mutual Life Insurance company in New York.
His employment with insurance companies continued until he retired.
Ives’s musical life was tremendously fruitful. In 1906, he composed the first radical work of the twentieth century, Central Park in the Dark. Around the first decade of the century, Ives composed other musical works that became famous worldwide:
Holiday Symphony, Three Places in New England, Concord Sonata (The Piano Sonata
No. 2), the Fourth Symphony, and others. Despite discussions about American music being based on the European model, Charles Ives composed experimental works specifically to escape the European tradition.37 Among American composers, Charles
Ives was one of the boldest. As Paul Collaer wrote: “He is to America what Schoenberg and Stravinsky are to Europe.”38
2.4.3. Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)
Carl Ruggles was born in Marion, Massachusetts. Ruggles was Charles Ives’s contemporary, but the two composers held totally opposite ideas about their compositions. Ives combined different musical styles into a chaotic universe. But,
Ruggles was single-minded, and he composed few works that were highly dissonant and unremittingly contrapuntal. Musically, Ruggles’s method was in some ways similar to
Schoenberg’s twelve-tone practice: Ruggles developed a rigorously atonal method of never repeating a pitch until nine others had been used. However, his compositions were
37 John Corbett, “Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others,” in Western Music and Its Others, edited by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley: University of California Press), 163. 38 Paul Collaer, A History of Modern Music, trans. Sally Abeles (Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Company, 1961), 366. 16 always intuitive, developed by trial and error, and never sounded as random as twelve- tone music.39 In his opera, The Sunken Bell, Ruggles’s ideas developed from post-
Wagnerian romanticism to an atonal style of angular melodies and harsh dissonance.
In 1922, Ruggles became a member of the International Composers Guild and the
Pan American Association. From 1937 to 1943, he taught at University of Florida in
Miami. Throughout Ruggles’s music career, he relied on the advice of his friends Charles
Seeger, John Kirkpatrick, and James Tenney. Ruggles was unlike Ives: He traveled to
London, Paris, and Germany, and he had contacts with the most famous musicians in
Europe of his day. Joseph Machlis writes: “Ruggles’s music was atonal, and it bears a certain relationship to the Second Viennese School. But he was cultivated from an environment totally different from that of Schoenberg and his disciples.”40
2.4.4. Charles Griffes (1884-1920)
Charles Tomlinson Griffes was born in Elmira, New York in 1884. He went to
Berlin to study at the Stern Conservatory. Griffes was one of the first American composers to write impressionist music. Influenced by European musical traditions,
Griffes absorbed the exoticism and mystery of French music, and was also impressed by
Russian composers such as Scriabin who used synthetic scales. Among his famous works were White Peacock, for piano (1915, orchestrated in 1919), his Piano Sonata (1917–18, revised 1919), a tone poem, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1912, revised in 1916), and Poem for Flute and Orchestra (1918). In addition, he composed a considerable
39 Gann, American Music, 18-19. 40 Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1961), 579. 17 number of programmatic pieces for piano, chamber ensembles, and for voice. Despite his short life and the demands of his fulltime teaching position, he was a prolific composer, and the quality of his works is outstanding.
2.4.5. Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, and composed a wide range of instrumental music, orchestral music, ballet, opera, and film music. He created an
American style and aesthetic in his works. He was also an active critic, mentor, advocate, and concert organizer.
In 1921, Copland went to Paris to study under Nadia Boulanger. Copland played a particularly significant role in the growth of serious music in America in the twentieth century. Copland was nurtured by the Parisian view of life and art, and he attached himself to the neo-classicism of Stravinsky.41 Like many other composers of this era,
Copland was interested in jazz rhythms at the beginning of his career. However, when he came back from Paris, he wanted to depart from Parisian influences and compose something with a genuine American flavor.42 Attempting to create a recognizably
American music, Copland incorporated jazz into two of his works, Music for the Theatre
(1925) and Piano Concerto (1926). Those works initially defined him as a shocking modernist. He was later critical of the isolation of the American composers from the broader public, observing, “It seemed to me that composers were in danger of working in a vacuum. Moreover, an entirely new public had grown up around the radio and
41 Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music, 481. 42 Madeleine Goss, Modern Music-makers: Contemporary American Composers (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1952), 321. 18 phonograph. It made no sense to ignore them and continue writing as though they did not exist. I felt it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.”43 That statement indicated how quickly he could absorb the idioms of
America—Copland’s music undoubtedly belongs to the United States.
2.5.6. Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
Henry Cowell was born in Menlo Park, California in 1897. He studied with
Charles Seeger Jr. (1886-1979), who was a significant theorist and ethnomusicologist.
Cowell experimented with the overtone series and with the use of tone clusters in music
(playing with the fist, flat of the hand, or forearm, depending on the width of the cluster).
His musical independence can be traced back to an early age: in The Tides of
Manaunaum, a piano piece composed in 1912 when he was fifteen, Cowell was already making use of tone clusters.44 Cowell was even more revolutionary in his handling of rhythm, however. Cowell invented a rhythmic notation capable of specifying divisions of a whole note into as many as fifteen equal parts. In 1923, 1926, and 1929, Cowell undertook three European tours, performing his own music in Germany and Austria.
Cowell also took up the study of primitive and folk music to enrich his musical experiments. Always eager to jump from one problem to the next, Cowell absorbed a wider range of music than any other American composer. He was interested in vernacular sources, and he devoted himself to the entire world of music.
43 Henry Partch, Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos, ed. Thomas MacGreary (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), xix. 44 Robert Morgan, Twentieth-century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and American (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), 297. 19
2.4.7. Roy Harris (1898-1979)
Roy Harris was born in Oklahoma Territory. In the early twentieth century, Aaron
Copland’s reputation was ascendant, but Harris was also famous as one of the greatest
American symphonists. Harris declared that his life was influenced by Abraham Lincoln, because he was born in a log cabin on Lincoln’s birthday. Some of Harris’s works are linked to this great liberator. In 1926, on the recommendation of Copland, Harris went to
Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. Harris’s first Symphony (1933) was a great success, quickly becoming well-known, as did his Sixth and Tenth Symphonies, and his chamber work Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight. Later, Harris moved to California, where he studied with Arthur Farwell. Harris’s reputation grew because when his orchestral pieces were conducted in New York. This success brought him a chance to meet Aaron
Copland.
Harris created rolling, giant melodies with harmonic traits developed via the superimposition of triads. Harris’s Third Symphony is undoubtedly the great American symphony. After this success, Harris had a restless career, moving to many places to teach, until he finally settled down at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Harris’s later works have many deficiencies because he borrowed a great deal from earlier works, even entire sections. He also quoted folk songs, used major-minor ambiguity, and polytonal chorales. Dan Stehman called this style “Harris gamelan,” using piano, harp, vibraphone, and chimes to achieve a particular sonority.45 Henry Cowell also
45 Dan Stehman, Roy Harris: An American Musical Pioneer (Boston: Twayne Plublisher, 1984), 184. 20 wrote, “One finds [his music] sounding quite conventional.”46 But Harris was very innovative and ambitious throughout his life. As Nicolas Slonimsky recorded in an anecdote, “Harris wanted to make him Beethoven.”47
2.4.8. William Schuman (1910-1992)
Born in 1910 in New York, Willian Schuman was one of the most famous
American symphonists. He described himself as “the composer of eight symphonies, numbered three through ten.”48 His name would stand together with Copland and Harris.
Schuman started his career as a jazz musician. From 1935, he taught at Sarah Lawrence
College. In 1945, Schuman become the first president of the Juilliard School, and then, in
1961, he began serving as president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Harris hugely influenced Schuman’s third symphony, with its long, non-repeating melodies, polytonal harmonies, and muscular orchestration. However, Schuman’s works are more disciplined in structure than those of Harris. Schuman’s eighth symphony is considered one of his most successful works, showing Harris’s strong influence in use of the major-minor triad with added dissonances in the beginning. One iconic trait of
William Schuman is the use of repeated brass chords in asymmetrically rhythmic patterns with nervous crescendos.49 Like Harris, Schuman did not write a development section in
46 Henry Cowell, “Roy Harris,” in American Composers on American Music: a Symposium, edited by Henry Cowell (New York: F. Ungar, 1962), 65. 47 Nicolas Slonimsky, “Roy Harris: The Story of and Oklahoma Composer Who was Born in a Log Cabin on Lincoln’s Birthday,” in A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 317. 48 Gann, American Music, 59. 49 Gann, American Music, 59. 21 his symphonies. He employed textures to form a gradual accretion, and he passed themes from one section of the orchestra to another.
2.4.9. Harry Partch (1901-1974)
Harry Partch was born in Oakland, California. His family moved to Tucson,
Arizona, then Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was exposed to a mixture of different musics, from Chinese to Mexican and Indian. When he was 14, Partch played the piano, composed music, and played musical accompaniment for silent movie theaters. Partch felt that European music was based on an “acoustic lie,” so he tried to reject Western music to create an entirely new kind of music.50 He declared, “I was not going to be straitjacketed by anyone. I was going to be completely free.”51 In 1933, Partch met
Copland, Harris, Cowell, Seeger, Hanson, and several other famous American composers.
Partch employed multiple diverse musical sources and integrated them into the language of art music. He formed his own style of performance through ancient Greek drama, Chinese theater, and American Indian ritual. He enjoyed exploring the ancient musical cultures of Greece and Asia and employing the pure intervals of just intonation.52
Partch also invented new, whimsical instruments. He experimented with stringed instruments, tuning them differently. He thought that music should not only be an aural but also a visual and theatrical experience. Partch is one of most radical of the American experimentalists. His major book, Genesis of a Music (1949), is a most insightful one-
50 Gann, American Music, 79. 51 Stephen Pouliot (Director), Harry Partch in The Dreamer that Remains (Eugene, Ore.: New Dimension Media, 1974). 52 Morgan, Twentieth-century Music, 302. 22 volume history of tuning. Further, many of his instruments have been duplicated, and they become quite common.53
2.4.10. Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He started his piano lessons at age six, and he was composing at seven. Barber was famous for his high romanticism.54
In 1924, he attended the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied piano, voice, and composition. In 1935, he traveled to Europe, giving voice recitals, and he conducted a concert in Vienna. Barber composed his first symphony in 1936. The work incorporated the classical structures of lyricism and romanticism. Later, his works Essay No. 1 and
Adagio for Strings were conducted by Toscanini with the NBC Symphony in New York, the latter becoming one of Barber’s most popular compositions.
As a singer, Barber also recorded his own songs, in a neo-romantic style based on his own singing quality. His opera, Antony and Cleopatra (based on Shakespeare’s play) was a huge failure. Despite this, Barber was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice, the first one for his opera Vanessa in 1958, and the second for his Concerto for Piano and
Orchestra in 1963. In his opera, there is “a soaring lyricism often touched with tenderness, and melancholy, combined with dramatic power and effective atmospheric writing.”55 Barber leaned more toward the European tradition than to maverick experimentation. Nevertheless, Barber’s traditionalism did not keep him from using the
53 Gann, American Music, 83. 54 Gann, America Music, 69. 55 Ewen, American Composers, 36. 23 electronic synthesizer. In 1982, Barber received the Wolf Trap Award at the White
House.
2.4.11. Elliott Carter (1908-2012)
Elliott Carter was born in New York in 1908. He studied at the Horace Mann
School under Clifton Furness, who had contact with Charles Ives. Furness introduced
Carter to Ives in 1924, and the two were frequently in touch until 1932. Ives even wrote
Carter a recommendation to Harvard University. Ives’s encouragement was significant in
Carter’s decision to become a musician, and Carter was hugely influenced by Ives.56 In
1932, Carter went to Paris and studied with Boulanger.
Carter’s compositional career began with Neo-classicism, but he later moved to atonality. After World War II, Carter gave up neo-classicism suddenly, and his self- reinvention was a striking expression in the postwar climate.57 He did not employ neo- classicism, nor he used twelve-tone technique. Carter only influenced a small number of
American atonal and twelve-tone composers: Ralph Shapey, George Perle, Arthur
Berger, and Donald Martino, among others. Carter emphasized rhythm, tempo contrasts, and dramatic characterization, which were different from the concerns of pitch-centered
European music.
2.4.12. John Cage (1912-1992)
John Cage was born in Los Angeles. Later, he traveled to Paris to study architecture. In music, Cage drew inspiration from Satie, Thomson, Stravinsky,
56 Ewen, American Composers, 111. 57 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 60. 24
Hindemith, and Scriabin. In 1935, he studied with Schoenberg. After that, Cage began to write purely rhythmic works for non-pitched percussion. In his work First Construction,
Cage introduced a rhythmic structure that he referred to as “micro-macrocosmic,” a form in which the whole is reflected in an individual part.58 His Second Construction was composed in 1940 and scored for four percussionists. This work is notable for the use of prepared piano.
In late 1950, Cage used the I Ching as a compositional tool. Traditionally, the I
Ching is one of the foundations of Chinese philosophy and is consulted to help direct one’s actions. Cage used the I Ching mostly as a random-number generator in his music to make decisions for pitches, durations, dynamics, and other choices. He used this approach for the third movement of the Prepared Piano Concerto. Also, Music of
Changes (1951), the first book by Cage, is totally influenced by the I Ching.
Cage’s later reputation was as an unruly iconoclast. In 1960, Cage published
Silence, which became one of the most influential books written by a musician in the late twentieth century. “Silence assumes sound at either end of the silence, or it really is not musical silence, but a stratagem intended to make you aware of unpredictable and transient noises within the time-limits of the silence arbitrarily defined as music, as John
Cage’s 4’33’’.”59 Later in 1987, Cage opened a new phase, which he called “number” pieces or “time bracket” pieces. These include dozens of quiet, muted works. The instruments play single notes or chords at any point within notated time brackets.60
58 James Pritchett, "From Choice to Chance: John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano," Perspectives of New Music 26, no. 1 (1988): 50–81. 59 Tawa, Art Music in the American Society, 51. 60 Gann, American Music, 140. 25
2.5. American Composers in the Middle Ground in the Twentieth Century
Twentieth-century American composers often leaned toward either traditional or innovative styles. In other words, different composers have formed their own relationships to their musical heritage, deciding how to utilize or respond to the traditional rules of composition while creating their own new techniques. American composers like Charles Ives or Henry Cowell were innovators, so they were considered
“outsiders.” But other composers were more conservative and were in an academic “old boy network.” These academic musicians were those who used conventional and traditional approaches, so they were “insiders.”
In the twentieth century, the composers who occupied either extreme often became very well-known, and their compositions were more popular because they drew people’s attention. For example, Leo Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane and Charles Ives’s
Concord Sonata for piano have been widely performed, recorded, and studied. Musical works by the composers who asserted traditions were also famous, such as Samuel
Barber’s Piano Sonata Op. 26, and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
However, some twentieth-century American composers received little attention.
These composers existed somewhere in the middle ground and their compositions were less performed and studied. These composers honored traditions, but also embraced innovations. In doing so, they embraced a unique status as composers—between the
“inside” and the “outside.” The seven middle ground composers who serve as the focus of this document are Virgil Thomson, Ben Weber, John Verrall, Robert Starer, Lee
Hoiby, Isadore Freed, and Robert Palmer. Aesthetically, the mixture of European musical
26 conventions and their own American “liberty” is the focal point of their artistry. But there remains only a small audience for their works. Their music in the middle ground is like a niche market, which focuses on specific products aimed at satisfying small specific tastes.
27
Chapter 3. Seven Piano Works by Seven American Composers
What follows is biographical information of the seven identified American composers, and analysis of a composition by each composer.
3.1. Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) and Five 2-Part Inventions
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and music critic with many musical compositions to his credit. He wrote two books: The Musical Scene (1945) and Music
Right and Left (1951), which are collections of his reviews as a music critic. Within his compositional catalog are works of diverse styles and characters. Thomson embraced many different musical mediums as inspiration and source material, including hymns, popular songs, and dance music. Thomson’s music often contained diatonic dissonance and polytonal passages. His contributions to music made him one of the most influential and lasting critics of the twentieth century.61
3.1.1. Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1896. Thomson’s older cousin gave him his first piano lesson when he was five years old. As time passed, Thomson would go on to study piano with some of the best teachers in Kansas City. During his
61 Grove Music Online, s.v. “Thomson, Virgil,” by Anthony Tommasini and Richard Jackson, accessed October 7, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2225674. 28 early years of piano study, he became deeply rooted in American musical styles and forms, including his own experience with Southern Baptist hymn-singing, ragtime, and popular songs. Thomson attended Kansas City Polytechnic Institute in 1915 until joining the army in 1917. Then, he attended Harvard University to study music composition in
1920. At Harvard, three teachers had a significant influence on Thomson: Edward
Burlingame and Archibald Davison, both French-trained composers, and Forster Damon, a young English instructor and poet.
Thomson studied in Paris from 1921 to 1922. He was so taken with life as a composer in Paris that he returned in 1925 and stayed there until 1940. In Paris, he soon became a leading member of several artistic and musical circles. He was taken with the music of Erik Satie, “Les Six” (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius
Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre) and the neo-classical compositions of Stravinsky. As these French influences took root in his own compositional style, he was considered the American counterpart of Satie.62 But, Virgil Thomson felt lonely and nostalgic for his Missouri roots. He came back to America in 1940, where he worked in
New York as a music critic. While both experiences in his native Missouri and travels in
France influenced Thompson’s musical personality, his American heritage served as the wellspring of his compositional voice.
62 Susan Bradshaw, “The Twentieth Century,” in Keyboard Music, edited Denis Matthews (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 357. 29
3.1.2. Five 2-part Inventions by Virgil Thomson
The set of Five 2-Part Inventions was composed in 1926 during his years in Paris.
The inspiration for these five inventions undoubtedly derived from J.S. Bach, who composed fifteen famous two-voice and three-voice inventions. Thomson's piano music often featured this two-part texture. John Cage praised Thomson’s third invention within this set, “a piece that simply flows, as a stream flows through a landscape. Unhampered by the presence of canon, this centrally placed Invention shows Thomson unconcerned with facades of broken rules that he had been so busy erecting.”63
The first invention, “With marked rhythms” is in the key of E minor. The second invention, “Freely,” is centered on F. The third invention, “Flowing,” is in A, with the middle section in F, and ending in A. The fourth invention, “Rhythmically,” is in C minor. The last invention, “Firmly,” is in G major. The set moves from E minor to its relative key of G major. I think that the five inventions should be played continuously.
There are two reasons. Firstly, each individual invention is very short. The other reason is that the pitches are connected: The last note of one movement and the first note of the following movement are neighbor tones.
3.1.2.1. With marked rhythms
The first invention’s motive starts with a syncopated rhythm and then follows with a scalar passage.64 The lower voice starts the piece on the pitch E, and the first entrance of the second voice begins on the pitch F#. These two voices create a sequence
63 Virgil Thomson, Music Right and Left (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951), 128. 64 Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, Fingered E. Robert Schmitz (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946). 30 with dissonance and syncopated rhythms, which sounds like a competition. From my perspective, this invention is energetic and joyful, and a little sarcastic (see Example 1).
Example 1. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 1-2 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
The key is ambiguous throughout this invention. Measure 6 functions as the dominant of D major, because measure 7 is in D major (see Example 2). From measures
7 to 12, the music stays in D major, and then measure 13 cadences to A major through the leading tone of G# (see Example 3).
Example 2. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 6-7 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
31
Example 3. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 12-15 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
So far, the modulations have led toward sharped keys (E minor/G major to D major, and then to A major). Soon the modulations will move toward flat keys. From measure 14 to 16, the music starts with one flat—F major and D minor. In measure 15, the music sounds like J.S. Bach’s Invention BWV 779 in F major (see Example 4).65 In measure 17, the music has a cadence in F major. In measure 18, the syncopated rhythm comes back. It is cohesive with the beginning material. Also, the lower part is in F major and the upper part is in G major, which brings the competition just as the beginning.
Thomson obviously did not want to go far from the European harmonic traditions. He used the tune from Bach and employed the motive throughout the invention (see Example
5).
65 Johann Sebastian Bach, Two-Part Invention BWV 779 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1853). 32
Example 4. J.S. Bach Two-Part Invention BWV 779, mm. 1-2 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1853)
Example 5. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 17-18 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
From measures 19 to 26, the music contains an increasing number of flats, and the climax (m. 23) is in D minor. Then, the second-to-last measure (m. 27) does not have a dominant-tonic relationship. The several repeated B-flats in these measures are confusing, because they suddenly lead to E minor in the very last measure. Although this invention does have a clear structure, the ending is associated with overlapping subjects, which is traditional. As we can see from measures 20 to 22, Thomson used a stretto technique as a sequence, to gradually build up the music to the climax of this movement
(see Example 6). He continuously used sixteenth notes throughout this movement, along with syncopated quarter and eighth notes.
33
Example 6. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 20-22 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Dynamically, only mf is marked in the beginning of this invention. Throughout this invention, the passages are constantly ascending or descending. Typically, ascending notes are associated with crescendos, and descending patterns with decrescendos. Pianists can follow this general rule regarding the dynamics in this invention. The highest note reaches D6 in measure 23, which can be the climax of the invention dynamically and otherwise (see Example 7). The time signature of this invention shifts between 2/4, 3/4,
4/4, and 5/4; however, the second-to-last measure is in an unusual meter of 15/16, which is experimental (see Example 8).
Example 7. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm," m. 23 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
34
Example 8. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 1st Invention “With marked rhythm,” mm. 27-28 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
3.1.2.2. Freely
The second invention is like an American folk song. The music has stepwise melodic motions and lyricism, and the music is modal. It is short; only 12 measures.
When I play this invention, music makes me feel nostalgic and melancholy. This invention contains moments of bimodality, and a sense of ambiguity. It starts in F Ionian, but also it is similar to D Dorian because of the B-natural (a raised sixth). In measure 7, the music is modulated to A melodic (with F-sharp and G-sharp). Then, it switches back to F Ionian. This invention ends with a perfect-fifth interval, F (lower part) and C (upper part), which is in F Ionian (see table 1).
Section A Section B Measure 1—6 7—12 Key F Ionian/D Dorian A melodic minor—F Ionian Table 1. Structure of “Freely” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions
35
The time signature is not marked in this movement, which is unusual. I just count the beats based on a quarter note in each measure, and there are meters including 4/4, 8/4,
9/4, 10/4, 11/4, and 13/4 (see table 2). The very last measure has whole notes in both voices, but from my perspective, the performer could choose to hold the last measure longer than four quarter-note beats. My interpretation is that the last measure should contain a fermata to let the music gradually fade away.
Time Signature Measure number 4/4 12
8/4 4 9/4 1, 2, 7, 11 10/4 3, 5
11/4 8, 9, 10
13/4 6 Table 2. Meter changes of “Freely” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions
The length of each measure and the pitch levels match the overall linearity. In other words, the measures with more beats are associated with more musical tension.
Measure 6 is the longest in this invention (in 13/4), where the climax happens. Also, the highest pitch in this invention is A5, found in measures 6 and 7 (see Example 9). This practice is common in J.S. Bach’s works; the highest pitches often occur at the musical climax.
36
Example 9. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 2nd Invention “Freely,” mm. 6-7 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
This invention uses traditional compound counterpoint. The theme consists of two parts—the precedent and consequent. The upper voice starts with the precedent part, with the consequent part in the lower voice. Then, the two voices cross over (see Example 10).
Example 10. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 2nd Invention “Freely,” mm. 1-2 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Compound counterpoint is used throughout this invention, but not in a strict fashion. The harmony has more liberty, and the treatment of dissonance is special: Thomson uses a dissonant interval (major-seconds) for almost all of the entrances. For example, in the first measure, the left-hand part has the consequent part from the next-to-last beat on D, which is against the C in the right hand. Also, at the end of the second measure, the C in the lower part is against the D in the upper part. Most phrases begin with whole steps.
37
Dynamic changes within this invention are traditional. In general, pianists typically bring out the entrance of the subjects in contrapuntal pieces, especially in fugues by Bach. This approach can be applied to this movement. The material of the precedent part is required to be louder than the consequent part, marked mf vs. p. Thomson’s may have drawn inspiration here from the French style—this music contains little driving force. The climax and the phrases building up to it are still at the same dynamic levels of mf and p. Overall, the second invention centers dynamically around mf, and the climax does not build in volume. This is reminiscent of Satie’s Gymnopedie and Francis
Poulenc’s Le Bestiaire, which are intentionally deprived of driving force. As American composer and music critic Marion Bauer wrote, “The American composer Virgil
Thomson is an ardent Satie disciple.”66
3.1.2.3. Flowing
The third invention starts on C-sharp, continuing the C-natural that ends the preceding invention (see Example 11). There are three sections in this movement according to the change of bimodal key signatures (see table 3 and Examples 12 and 13).
66 Marion Bauer, Twentieth Century Music: How it Developed and How to Listen to it. G. P, New Edition (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1947), 235. 38
Example 11. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section A, mm. 1-3 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Section A Section B Section A' Measure 1—29 30—53 54—93 Key A Ionian/A Mixolydian F Ionian/F Lydian A Ionian/A Mixolydian Transition 20—29 40—53 78—93 Right hand A Ionian/A Mixolydian A-Ionian/A Mixolydian A Ionian/A Mixolydian Left hand F Ionian/F Lydian F Ionian/F Lydian F Ionian/F Lydian Table 3. Structure of “Flowing” from Thomson’s Five 2-Part Inventions
Example 12. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section B, mm. 30-33 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
39
Example 13. Virgil Thomson Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” Section A’, mm. 53-55 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
The treatment of meter is irregular, with the meters changing frequently; although this movement has a mixture of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and 6/4, there are no time signatures indicated. From my perspective, the irregular treatment of meters creates intentional confusion for the listener. In other words, it is not possible for listeners to predict what will come next. But the irregular beat patterns do not prevent the music from flowing, because of the use of stepwise motions and legato. The phrase structure is also irregular; the first phrase lasts 12 measures, and the second phrase is only seven.
In addition, the dynamic changes have a small range, just from p to mf, like the two previous inventions. That is a sense of cohesion in the treatment of dynamics; these inventions are not overly dramatic, and they contain little driving force. Regarding the counterpoint, the theme has two parts—antecedent and consequent. The upper voice and lower voice form a compound counterpoint. In addition, the contrapuntal nature of this invention features both voices in stepwise motion.
The musical tension is associated with the level of the pitches, as in the previous movements. In the Section A (from measure 1 to 29), the upper part moves toward a peak at measure 13 with the highest pitch A5, which is mf (see Example 14). Then, the dynamic drops off in measure 29. In the second section (from measure 30 to 53) and the 40 third section (from measure 54), two parts are sometimes marked with contrasting dynamics (see Example 15). When the left-hand part has mf, the right hand is marked mp.
The opposite situation also happens. In the third section, the upper part reaches to a peak at measure 72 with the highest note A5, just as the first time in measure 13.
Example 14. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” mm. 12- 14 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Example 15. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 3rd Invention “Flowing,” m. 54 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
3.1.2.4. Rhythmically
This invention has a time signature of 12/8. The tempo is fast, marked at 72 bpm for the dotted quarter note. This invention is fugue-like. Typically, the conventions and standards of fugues include expositions, episodes, and returns. This invention contains a subject, but the formal structure of traditional fugues is absent. From my perspective, this invention is more of a ricercar, which is in an improvisatory toccata style. The subjects 41 enter at times, but the movement does not contain other traditional fugal elements like countersubjects or episodes.
This invention is unique. As its title implies, the fourth invention is very rhythmic in nature. There are syncopated rhythms throughout this invention, which naturally create a jazzy style. Every time I play this invention, I tended to dance to the music. Regarding the key of this movement, it is in C minor in general. The upper voice begins with the subject, and the second measure contains the entry of an exact answer in the left hand
(see Example 16). Other entries mostly begin on C and its dominant G, and towards the end, the entries appear on E-flat and D (see Example 17).
Example 16. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm. 1-2 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Example 17. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm. 13-14 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
42
Dynamically, this invention has a wider range than previous inventions—from p to f. There are two measures marked f: measure 6 and 13 (see Example 18). The climax of this invention is from measure 13 to 16 (the end). After measure 13, the music has
Marcato and Crescendo al fine marked. This movement is very lively and energetic.
Example 18. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 4th Invention “Rhythmically,” mm. 6 and m. 13 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
3.1.2.5. Firmly
The fifth and final invention imitates a gigue. Traditionally, gigues are in compound meters. But this invention is in a simple meter of 3/8. It is in G major, which is a contrast to the previous movement, but the relative major of the first movement’s key of
E minor. This invention contains several traditional musical elements. Firstly, the phrase structure includes conventional four-measure phrases. The tempo is dotted quarter equals
68. This invention is in Baroque style, very delicate and lively.
The dynamic range in this invention is the widest of the entire set, from p to ff.
This invention starts with f; in measure 16, the dynamic suddenly changes to p. Then, the music launches into a long crescendo: the dynamic is builds to mf in measure 25, and
43 increases to ff in measure 41, the climax of this invention (see Example 19). The music stays ff to the end.
Example 19. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 41-43 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
The fifth invention is also in compound counterpoint, as with the second and third inventions. The right-hand part in the first four measures are the same as the left-hand part in the following four measures (from measure 5 to 8; see Example 20).
Example 20. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention "Firmly,” mm. 1-8 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
A special feature in this invention is the use of sequences. Sequences are prevalent in measures 9-10, 13-14, 22-24, 25-32, 33-35, 38-40, 49-51, and 53-55 (see
44
Examples 21 and 22). When I practiced these measures, I feel the music has a strong and irresistible driving force.
Example 21. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 22-24 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
Example 22. Virgil Thomson, Five 2-Part Inventions, 5th Invention “Firmly,” mm. 53-55 (Philadelphia, PA: Elkan-Vogel Co., Inc., 1946)
In Five 2-part Inventions, Thomson paid homage to J. S. Bach. His use of counterpoint and climax (higher pitches associated with more musical tension) are conventional, as are each movement’s characteristic and key (or pitch center). The virtue lies in the use of an effective opening figure exploited by the finely-balanced, compact part writing.67 However, Thomson used direct and clear-cut exactness for the melodic
67 Anne Welch, “Five Two-Part Inventions by Virgil Thomson; Piano Sonata No. 4 by Virgil Thomson; Ten Etudes for Piano by Virgil Thomson,” Notes 3, no. 4 (September 1946): 384. 45 figures to give the work freshness. He used “new harmonies and combinations of tones designed chiefly to startle by their originality.”68 Overall, the work is a hybrid of tradition and innovation. In other words, these inventions occupy the middle ground, in which extremes are avoided.
3.2. John Verrall and Four Pieces for Piano
3.2.1. John Verrall (1908-2001)
John Verrall was born in Britt, Iowa in 1908. His father sung in a church choir, and his older brother played the piano. Verrall became interested in the piano when he was eleven years old. Soon after, Verrall studied piano with Mrs. John Anderson. Verrall began composing when he was at the age of twelve, and was initially self-taught. In 1922,
Verrall met Sergei Rachmaninoff, who came to give a concert. Rachmaninoff liked his compositions and recommended him to study with Daniel Prothero, who became
Verrall’s first composition teacher.
Before he attended college, Verrall studied composition with Donald Ferguson.
Afterwards, Verrall studied with R.O. Morris in London and Kodaly in Budapest. He went to the Minneapolis School of Music and Hamline University, and there he received his bachelor’s degree in 1932. He continued his studies with Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, and Frederick Jacobi. From 1934 to 1942, he had a faculty position at Hamline University
Mount, and from 1942 to 1946, he taught at Holyoke College. From 1942 to 1973,
Verrall taught at the University of Washington. Among the many awards he received,
68 Madeleine Goss, Modern Music-makers: Contemporary American Composers (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1952), 238. 46 two are very outstanding: a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947, and the D. H. Lawrence
Fellowship in 1964.
John Verrall used traditional tonality in his compositions from late 1940s but created his own scalar system; a nine-pitch scale consisting of two tetrachords on either side of a central pitch (e.g., C, D-flat, E-flat, E, and F-sharp, G, A-flat, B-flat). That is an adaptation of the Phrygian mode. The pattern of his nine-pitch scale is symmetrical, and the melodic contour provides relationships between pitches and rhythms in his music.69
3.2.2. Four Pieces for Piano by John Verrall
This piano work has four movements, and it imitates the traditional organization of the suites by J. S. Bach (French Suites, English Suites, and Partitas). Typically, there are several dance movements in those suites following an opening prelude: Allemande,
Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. On occasion, composers add other movements between the Sarabande and the Gigue. But Verrall followed the format of Bach’s dance movements. The four movements in Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano are Prelude,
Lament, Dance, and Toccata.
3.2.2.1. Prelude
The first movement is short, consisting of two sections.70 Both sections have similar patterns that are symmetrical in their ascending and descending patterns. In the first section, the right-hand part has flowing sixteenth notes; the first measure has the ascending line E-F-G-A♭-B♭, and the descending has the same notes backwards (B♭-A♭-
69 Grove Music Online, s.v. “Verrall, John,” by Richard Swift, accessed October 4, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/29231 70 John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954). 47
G-F-E; see Example 23). Then in the next phrase, the same pattern continues; the melody climbs higher, then traces the same path back down. In the first section, the left-hand part has chordal progressions. In the second section, the left hand joins the right in playing the sixteenth-note patterns (see Example 24).
Example 23. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 1-2 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
Example 24. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 24-25 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
Both sections contain moments where both hands switch roles. In the first section of the movement, the left-hand part has chordal progressions. Then, in the second section, right hand plays chords (see Example 25).
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Example 25. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 1st movement, mm. 4-6 and 46-48 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
The first movement is not tonal, but overall it centers on E. The second section modulates to an emphasis on B. The final chord, E-B-G#-B, concludes this movement in
E major. There is no doubt that Verrall kept traditional tonic-dominant relationships in place in this work; he also employed a traditional binary form. However, he was innovative in his use of musical motives. In the twentieth century, some composers created their own unique methods for composing—Schoenberg and twelve-tone technique, Bartok and key centricity and symmetrically-intervallic relationships, Cage and aleatoric music, Stravinsky and primitivism, Reich and minimalism, etc. Verrall’s signature was his compositional device comprising a symmetrical pattern of nine pitches.
From my perspective, this movement sounds like night music, dreamy and dramatic.
Overall, the sixteen-note passages sound dizzy, and the dynamic changes bring the drama.
Regarding the dynamics, this movement starts with p, and then there are crescendos and decrescendos. Towards the end of the first section, there are crescendos, 49 which bring the music from p to ff. After a one-measure decrescendo, the music transitions into a soft start of the second section, which has a similar dynamic layout to the first section. Through some short crescendos and decrescendos, the music oscillates between loud and soft.
3.2.2.2. Lament
The second movement is slow, marked Lento e mesto. This movement is also short—only 26 measures. However, this short movement is full of change—time signatures shift between 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 5/16, 2/4, and 3/4, and the tempo changes to Più Mosso at measure 11, and then the music is back to a tempo at measure 19, where the opening material returns (see Table 4 and Example 26). This movement sounds sad and nostalgic.
Time Signature Measure 3/8 13, 14 4/8 12 5/8 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 19, 20 6/8 11 7/8 3, 4, 8, 9, 23
2/4 18, 22
3/4 21, 24, 25, 26 5/16 15, 16 7/16 17
Table 4. Change of time signatures of Lament from Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano
50
Example 26. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 2nd movement, mm. 11-14 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
This movement is motivic. It starts with a theme, and then the theme is transposed. The intervals have step-wise and skip-wise motions. The theme is developed in the middle section develops by extracting and emphasizing the step-wise motions.
Besides, the accompaniment has chords in the beginning and the last section, and the middle section contains intensive chordal progressions (see Example 27).
Example 27. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 2nd movement, mm. 15-18 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
Overall, the character of this movement is sad and melancholic. The melody at the beginning has a scarce accompaniment, delivered like a monologue. The melody has a
51 sigh effect when it is descending, and it is like a struggle when it is ascending. The second movement as whole is in E minor, but it ends with a Picardy chord—E major.
There is a sense of counterpoint in the middle section. The moving voices in both hands create a contrary motion with the eighth and sixteenth notes towards both the extreme registers of the piano. It provides more harmonic tension, more driving force for the phrasing and timing, and more profound sonority for the lament characteristic. In addition, this movement sounds improvisatory, especially in the beginning and ending.
Although this movement relies on traditional forms and techniques, this movement does contain innovation. The chords in the accompaniment part create harmonic detachment from the melody. In other words, the two parts—melody and accompaniment—create dissonance through bitonality. This dissonance sounds like a tone cluster, which typically has at least three adjacent tones a scale of diatonic, chromatic, or pentatonic keys. With this definition, the second movement contains this new compositional device.
3.2.2.3. Dance
The third movement is like a waltz (in 3/4), with a fast tempo of 160 bpm for the quarter note. Also, the composer marked this movement with the word “freedom.” This piece is like a scherzo movement of a symphony. Overall, it serves as an interlude in the whole set. I feel as though the composer brought some sense of humor and laughter to this movement. This movement is in binary form, with a short coda (see table 5).
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Section A Transition A' Coda Measure 1—19 20—31 32—50 51—55 Key Center G-flat/G G-flat G-flat/G G-flat/G Table 5. Structure of “Dance” from Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano
The melody has a shape of flexion; the phrases are fragmented with short slurs
(see Example 28). The harmony creates frequent modulation. For example, the first measure is in G-flat major, and then the second measure is suddenly shifted to D minor. It is obvious that this movement is in neoclassical style, sounding like the early piano pieces by Prokofiev. Both hands create a sense of counterpoint.
Example 28. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 1-4 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
In this movement, there are some small-scale changes in tempo. In measure 5, there is a sostenuto. Also, there are accelerando and più mosso markings in measure 11 and 12, respectively. There is accelerando in measure 42, followed by più mosso in measure 43. In addition, there is meno mosso in measure 53. In addition, in this
53 movement is in the middle-high register, with some exceptions—low G-flats from measure 24 to 29.
This movement sounds tonal, but the pitch centers are ambiguous. It has two centers, G-flat and G, which is between traditions and innovations. In this movement,
Verrall made the left hand follow the right hand. So, this movement is like a canon. The phrases usually start on G-flat but end on G, or vice-versa (see Examples 29 and 30).
Example 29. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 53-55 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
Example 30. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 3rd movement “Dance,” mm. 9-10 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
3.2.2.4. Toccata
The last movement is also short and fast (132 bpm for the quarter note). Verrall marked at the beginning, “Don’t rush, always bold and energetic” (see example 31). This 54 movement is highly motivic and contrapuntal. It is very much like a two-part invention.
Regarding the key, the theme starts in E minor and then modulates to its dominant key of
B minor, which follows the traditional tonic-dominant relationship (see Example 32).
Example 31. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 1-5 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
Example 32. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 14-16 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
This movement is in binary form. The first section is from the beginning to measure 37, and the second half is from measure 38 to the end. The two halves are almost equal in length. The last movement has its own unique relationship to the notion of the
“inside” vs. the “outside.” This movement is tonal and motivic, in a neoclassical style.
55
But it is bold and a little aggressive, not being as traditionally delicate and elegant. In my opinion, the music is vigorous with inexorable power (see Example 33).
Example 33. John Verrall, Four Pieces for Piano, 4th movement “Toccata,” mm. 59-63 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1954)
To view the movements as a whole set, the overall pitch center is E. The first two movements have pitch centricity in E. The third movement has its pitch center in G- flat/G. The fourth movement goes back to E. In addition, it is cohesive that all the movements are in binary form. J.S. Bach’s Suites (English Suites, French Suites, Partitas, and Toccatas) are also works with multiple movements, and each movement has its own characteristics. Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano is undoubtedly influenced by Bach, as we can see the similar format like Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue in Bach’s works. However, the piece by Verrall does not totally obey traditional rules about the relationships between tempos and between keys. The harmony is also more colorful. It thus exists in a space between the “inside” and the “outside.” Verrall wrote in his book,
Fugue and Invention: In Theory and Practice, “There is a prototype of the fugue, an image which may be somewhat disembodied, it is true, but which is recognizable as the norm from which every great fugue derives. The unique features of a fugue, which give it
56 life and meaning, are super-imposed upon this prototype, but it is still recognizably present.”71
3.3. Ben Weber and Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23
3.3.1. Ben Weber (1916-1979)
Weber was born in 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, and he moved to New York from the Midwest in the mid-1940s. He had a hermetic life, and two professions financially supported his composing: he was a restauranteur and a copyist. Weber never considered teaching in a university, because he did not like that. Weber was mostly self-taught, and the only training in music he received was from piano and singing lessons as a child. As he put it, “I always feel I can do anything I mean to do if I can find a means of organizing myself, because I am in sense self-creative.”72 From 1938, he started using twelve-tone technique and was one of the first American composers engaging in that approach.
In 1945, Weber moved to New York City, where his musical compositions were played frequently. In 1946, Weber began his career as a copyist. In 1954, he became one of two American representatives in Rome for the Convegno Musicale. Weber served as a president in ISCM and ACA in 1959. Composers like Copland, Thomson, Carter, Cage,
Babbitt, and Diamond thought highly of Weber’s music. His honors included two
Guggenheim Fellowships, an award and a citation from the National Institute of Arts and
Letters, two awards from the Ford Foundation, and the first Phoebe Ketchum Thorne
71 John Verrall, Fugue and Invention: In Theory and Practice (Palo Alto, California: Pacific Books, 1996), ix. 72 Evelyne Luest, “About Ben Weber,” Chamber Music 9, no. 3 (1992): Weber quoted on 26. 57
Music Fund Award. His first piano concerto was premiered in 1961 under Leonard
Bernstein, and the pianist was William Masselos.
Arnold Schoenberg inspired Weber. In 1940, Weber met Schoenberg, who complimented his music and assumed that Weber wanted to study with him. However,
Weber’s intention was to continue to rely on his own ears and tastes—he wanted to learn the twelve-tone technique independently by studying the available scores by Schoenberg,
Berg, and Webern.73 But, he still used elements of a virtuosic romanticism. Due to his training in singing, all his music demonstrates a vocal quality. Weber enjoyed German and French music, but he used the twelve-tone technique in most of his compositions.
Weber explained his use of twelve-tone technique in his unpublished Memoir: “Because I find in it greater freedom for my imagination.”74
3.3.2. Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 by Ben Weber
Ben Weber was one of the first American composers who used twelve-tone technique; he brought a poetic sensibility to this style, addressing the balance between atonal chromaticism and the twelve-tone system. However, he did not commit himself to strict usage of the twelve-tone technique, like the composers of the Second Viennese
School, because Weber wanted to have the freedom to use other techniques to serve his expressive goals.75
Op. 23 is not long, consisting of three short movements. Each movement has its own characteristics. The whole piece is very much like Op. 11 by Arnold Schoenberg in
73 Jeeyoung Son, “Twelve-Tone Writing in the Piano Music of Ben Weber (1916-1979)” (D.M.A. diss., The City University of New York, 2008), 2. 74 Son, “Twelve-Tone Writing,” 1. 75 Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music, 619. 58 terms of pitch, articulation, tempo, dynamic, phrasing, and registration. However, in
Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, Weber did not employ strict serialism; he even did not use a tone row.
3.3.2.1. Giocoso, ma teneramente
The first movement mostly has short and fragmented musical ideas: for example, in measures 2, 17, 31, and 48 (see Example 34).76 Also, the right-hand part has some abrupt releases in the end of the phrases: e.g., in measure 5, 8, 23, 32, 36, and 47 (see
Example 35); the left-hand part has similarly abrupt endings in measures 2, 5, 12, 22, 29,
35, and 37 (see Example 36). Occasionally, this movement contains some short phrases with legato articulations, such as from measures 13 to 14, 19 to 21, 23 to 25, 40 to 41, 43 to 44, and 50 to 51 (see Example 37). The change of registers is either through transitioning passages or with sudden shifts. For example, in measure 9, the right-hand part has an ascending passage to higher register, whereas the left hand has a large leap to the downbeat D from the previous interval G#-E. This gesture—a sixteenth note followed by a dotted eighth note and then another sixteenth note—is found throughout this movement. In addition, this movement is in a soft dynamic with some loud moments.
Overall, it sounds dreamy with some surprises.
76 Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23 (Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953). 59
Example 34. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 2 and 31 (Hillsdale, NY: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Example 35. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 5, 8 and 36 (Hillsdale, NY: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Example 36. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 22 and 35 (Hillsdale, NY: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
60
Example 37. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 1st movement “Giocoso, ma teneramente,” mm. 13-14, 19-21 and 43-44 (Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Weber had studied Schoenberg’s music, and probably imitated Schoenberg’s piano suite, Op. 11 (1909), which has three movements.77 It is not hard to find the similarities between the two works (see Example 38). On the other hand, Weber has his own innovations. Weber just imitated the overall effect of the twelve-tone music, by using sudden changes of articulations and extreme shifts of dynamics (see table 6).
77 Arnold Schoenberg, Three Pieces, Op. 11, Revised version, 1924 (Mainz-Wien: Schott-Universal Edition, 1968). 61
Example 38. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 1, mm. 1-3 (Mainz-Wien: Schott-Universal Edition, 1968)
Dynamics Times ppp 1 pp 3 p 12 mp 1 mf 2 f 5 ff 1 fff 0 Cresc. 17 Dim. 14 Accel. 2 Rit. 8 sfz 2 sfp 1 Table 6. Dynamics of the 1st movement of Weber’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23
3.3.2.2. Misterioso
The second movement sounds longing; the left-hand ostinato is similar to
Schoenberg’s Op. 11 No. 2 (see Examples 39 and 40). Meanwhile, Ben Weber had his own innovations. The ostinatos in the bass line are very prominent, but the movement by
Weber has some changes—he not only presented triplets, but also other rhythmic patterns such as eighth notes, dotted eighth notes, and sixteenth notes. Secondly, the registration shifts are very similar to Schoenberg Op. 11 No. 2. Weber’s Op. 23 No. 2 begins with 62 ostinatos in the bass; then, the bass parts disappear, and the sound shifts to the middle register. This approach of switching registers is iconic in the second movement of the
Schoenberg, providing different colors and evoking orchestral richness.
Example 39. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 2nd movement “Misterioso,” mm. 1-2 (Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Example 40. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 2, mm. 1-2 (Mainz-Wien: Schott-Universal Edition, 1968)
In addition, Weber’s use of silence is creative. Classical composers like Mozart,
Haydn, and Beethoven paid attention to the use of silence. In those composers’ works, silence is about humor, breath, or surprise. In Weber’s Op. 23 No. 2, there are several moments when the music pauses: in measure 8, from measure 17 to 18, 21 to 22, 25 to
26, and 30 to 33 (see Example 41). Aesthetically, the alternation of ostinatos and pauses 63 in Schoenberg’s piece keeps the listeners’ attention (see Example 42). From my perspective, in Weber’s piece, the pauses are not preparations for resetting the ostinatos, because Weber did not employ them as surprises. Nor does he employ silence to evoke humor (like Mozart and Haydn). Instead, Weber introduces the pauses randomly, and they signal the beginning of the next section. Weber thus draws on tradition, but not in a stereotypical way.
Example 41. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 2nd movement “Misterioso,” mm. 17-18, 21-22, and 30-33 (Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Example 42. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 2, mm. 4-5 (Mainz-Wien: Schott-Universal Edition, 1968)
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The dynamics are listed below (see table 7). We can see how many times different dynamics occur. This movement is mostly in p dynamic, and there are several diminuendos. There is only one fff, but this movement surprisingly does not have any mp, mf, f, or ff.
Dynamics Times ppp 3 pp 2 p 6 mp 0 mf 0 f 0 ff 0 fff 1 Cresc. 7 Dim. 11 Accel. 1 Rit. 4 sfz 0 sfp 0 Table 7. Dynamics of the 2nd movement “Misterioso” of Weber’s Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23
3.3.2.3. Allegretto
The third movement is in 6/8, and switches between a calm and energetic mood.
This movement is fast with frequent tempo changes, but the beginning is tranquil and lyrical. It has many musical parameters that are similar Schoenberg’s Op. 11, No. 3, which is very rhythmically tricky (with quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and
65 thirty-second notes, and different rests; see Example 43). This movement by Weber is rhythmically difficult, as well (see Example 44).
Example 43. Arnold Schonberg, Op. 11, No. 3, mm. 1-2 (Mainz-Wien: Schott-Universal Edition, 1968)
Example 44. Ben Weber, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 23, 3rd movement “Allegretto,” mm. 1-2 (Hillsdale, New York: Bomart Music Publications, Inc., 1953)
Weber also chose a faster tempo for Op. 23 No. 3, with frequent tempo changes; for example, measure 16 is marked Poco Largamente, and measure 24 is In Tempo. The last seven measures are in a slower tempo—Poco Lento, to conclude this whole set.
There are some other tempo changes: ritardando in measure 19, 29, 37, and 38. Although
66 the articulations are like those of the works by the composers of the Second Viennese
School, this piece has a touch of romanticism. For example, there are some long phrases in the beginning of this movement and in the measures before Poco Largamente.
Ben Weber was self-taught and was considered "one of the first Americans to embrace the twelve-tone techniques of Schoenberg, starting in 1938.”78 Interestingly, he did not give up tonality. He did not follow directly in the footsteps of the European composers who focused on the twelve-note rules. Instead, he employed the overall effect of twelve-tone music without strict application of the technique. Weber also combined these serial elements with romanticism in his works. Op. 23 is just such an example, which convincingly showed Ben Weber’s “franchise” (twelve-tone) and how he negotiated his position between the “inside” and the “outside” (the mixture of traditions and freedom). As discussed previously, he imitated Schoenberg Op. 11 regarding the style, tempo, articulation, registration, and the relationship between the movements.
However, we can also see in Weber’s Op. 23 many features that are outside the style of the Second Viennese School.
3.4. Lee Hoiby and Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23
Because I want to provide a performance guideline of Lee Hoiby’s Capriccio on
Five Notes, Op. 23 in Chapter 4, I will provide more detail to Hoiby’s biography.
78 Anthony Tommasini, "Music Review; A Serialist with a Penchant for Lyricism," New York Times, December 4, 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/04/arts/music-review-a-serialist-with-a-penchant-for- lyricism.html. 67
3.4.1. Lee Hoiby (1926-2011)
Lee Henry Hoiby was well-known for his operas and songs. His most famous work is his opera setting of Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams. Hoiby is known for the lyricism of his works. His mentor was Italian-American composer Gian Carlo
Menotti, who received the Pulitzer Prize in music twice. Hoiby’s musical style has been described as reminiscent of Menotti regarding concise, dramatic, and aurally pleasing compositional techniques.79
Hoiby was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1926. He started playing piano at the age of five. Hoiby was a child prodigy, studying piano with Gunnar Johansen from high school through his bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin. Hoiby continued on to study with Egon Petri at Mills College, and he finished studying there in 1952. He planned to be a concert pianist, not considering composition until he was admitted by
Gian Carlo Menotti as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music. After a long compositional career, Hoiby went back to his piano career; he made his debut recital at
Alice Tully Hall in New York in 1978. Many pianist-composers of the nineteenth century, such as Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, publicly performed their own music.
Lee Hoiby followed in this tradition. Hoiby thought that composer’s job was not to invent new ways of composing. Instead, composers should discover new beauties in the old ways, and sought sentimentality and emotionality in his music. He said, “The aim is to reach into the human heart.”80
79 Lori Ellefson Bade, “Lee Hoiby: The Composer and His Compositional Style, His Role in the History of American Music, and His Song Output” (D.M.A. Diss., The University of Texas, 1994), 25. 80 Melvin Berger, Masters of Modern Music (New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1970), 208. 68
Hoiby’s two favorite composers were Mozart and Schubert. Schubert's art songs triggered Hoiby's interest in writing for the voice. But, Hoiby also drew inspiration from
Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Samuel Barber. In fact, Hoiby said that the composer who most helped him to find himself was Samuel Barber, even though he never studied with Barber.81 The influence from Barber is evident in Hoiby’s warm lyricism.
Lee Hoiby believed that a person's ability to learn increases as he gets older. Lee
Hoiby can fit into the historical context of what is now referred to as the "New
Romanticism," which moved away from the twelve-tone and other avant-garde techniques and returned to a more tonal idiom. But, Hoiby reacted negatively to this label. He considers himself to be a "late romantic," having never been anything but romantic; for him, the atonal movement in music has had no importance. Hoiby rejected the music of the avant-garde. Even though Hoiby acknowledged the diversity of influences on his style, he was strongly opposed to atonality and serialism.82 Hoiby was anxious to explain that he disliked the “atonalists,” and gave many reasons for his distaste.83
81 Richard Allen Crosby. “The Piano Music of Lee Hoiby” (D.M.A. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1990), 20-21. 82 Eric Conway, “Selected Piano Music of Lee Hoiby” (D.M.A. diss., Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1996), 13. 83 Richard Allen Crosby. “The Piano Music of Lee Hoiby” (D.M.A. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1990), 16-17. 69
3.4.2. Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 by Lee Hoiby
Lee Hoiby composed this piece in 1962 for piano solo; the work was commissioned for The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.84 This piece is fantasia-like, exploiting various musical and technical challenges. The five tones that serve as the basis of the work are C-sharp, D, C, B, and B-flat, which are presented at the very beginning of the piece (see Example 45). Throughout this work, Hoiby used the motive and its variants: inversion, augmentation, diminution, displacement, retrograde, and transposition. Besides, the composer used various approaches: rhythmic and textural developments, double notes, skips, octaves, and registration changes.
Example 45. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 1-4 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
The prime form of that motive is (0, 1, 2, 3, 4), and the vector is <4, 3, 2, 1, 0>.
The motive is chromatic, but the order is not just ascending or descending; it has two ascending notes and then three descending notes. However, the music starts with a phrase of seven notes instead of five. After the five notes, two more notes follow as a tail, and
84 Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962). 70 the two notes, D♭ (C#) and B♭, are derived from the five-note motive. The very beginning makes me feel the twilight is merging into darkness. The piece starts the theme in the middle register of the piano, and then the theme is transposed to A-sharp in the middle-low register. The dynamic range is from p to pp. The tempo of the beginning is
Moderato for the first four measures. After the four-measure phrase, the tempo is changed to Allegro Molto, then, the dynamic suddenly changes to ff. Measure 6 has the motive in left hand: E♭, E, D, D♭, and C. The motive occurs in measure 8 in the left-hand part. But this time it has an inversion: E♭, D, E, F, and F#. The right hand has part of the motive: B♭ and C#. As the music goes on, we can find that the motives in the left hand are (from measure 10 to 14): E♭, E, D, D♭, C; A, B♭, A♭, G, G♭; A♭, A, G, G♭, F; C#, D,
C, B, B♭; G, G#, F#, F, E. The right-hand part has the motives (from measure 12 to 14):
E♭, E, D, D♭, C; F#, G, F, E, E♭; A♭, A, G, G♭, F; E♭, E, D, D♭, C (see Example 46).
Example 46. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 10-14 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
71
The five-note motive, its variants, and fragments of it are used throughout the piece. Measures 15 to 17 are highly chromatic (see Example 47). The following measures has the motive in the left-hand part A-B♭-A♭-G-F#. Then, the left-hand part has the motive in high register, C-C#-B-B♭-A-C-A, and then it moves to the middle-low register,
A-A#-G#-G-F# and G#-A-G-F#-F-A-F.
Example 47. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 15-17 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
The motive and its variants in the rest of the piece are mostly listed below: inversion, augmentation, diminution, displacement, retrograde, and transposition. (see table 8) But there are many places in the work that have fragments of the motive, as well.
72
Measure Motive 26 G#-A-G-F#-F 28 Bass: C#-D-C-B-♭B 29 Soprano: F-F#-E-E♭-D 36—39 Right-hand: F-F#-E-D#-D 45—46 Both Hands Octave: C#-D-C-B-B♭ 49 E#-F#-E-D#-D 55—56 Tenor: A#-B-A-A♭-G. Alto: D#-E-D-D♭-C 56—57 Top voice: D#-E-D-D♭-C 59 Top notes: G#-A-G-G♭-F 60—61 Bass line retrograde: F-G♭-G-A-A♭ 62—66 Top voice: A-A#-G#-G-(F#) Tenor inversion: E♭-D-E-F-F# 67—71 Top whole notes E♭-E-D-C#-C, and the bass line C-C#-B-A#-A 75 Soprano and alto (thirds) C#-D-C-B-B♭ and A-B♭-A♭-G-G♭ 75—76 Inversion C#-C-D-D#-E, A-A♭-B♭-B-C Right-hand (thirds): G-F#-G#-A-A#, E♭-D-E-F-F#, A-A#-G#-G-F# 76-77 Bass inversion: A♭-G-A-B♭-B, D-C#-D#-E-E#, C#-C-D-D#-E 83 Right-hand Inversion: C-C♭-D♭-D-E♭ Left-hand: G-A♭-G♭-F-F♭ 87-89 Right-hand: B-C-B♭-A-A♭, G-A♭-G♭-F-E Left-hand: B♭-A-B-C-C#, E♭-D-E-F-G♭, C♭-B♭-C-C#-D, E♭-D-E-F-G♭ 96-97 Right-hand inversion: A-G#-A#-B-C, D#-D-E-F-F#, D-C#-D#-E-F Left-hand: F-F#-E-D#-D, D-C#-D#-E-F, F-F#-E-E♭-D 98-102 Right-hand melody (Inversion): D-D♭-E♭-E-F, D-D#-C#-C-B Bass whole notes: G-G♭-A♭-A-B♭ 105-106 Right-hand Intervals: G#-A-G-F#-F, (Inversion) B-B♭-C-C#-D 108-110 Right-hand Melody (Inversion): F-E-F#-G-G#, C#-C-D-D#-E Left-hand Melody: C-C#-B-B♭-A, G#-A-G-F#-F 116-118 Half-notes: E-F-E♭-D-C# 121-123 Intervals: E-F-E♭-D-C#, D-E♭-D♭-C-B, (Inversion) E-E♭-F-F#-G Inversion: G-F♯-G♯-A-B♭, F-E-F♯-G-A♭, D-D♭-E♭-E-F, B-C-B♭-A-A♭, A-B♭- 124—127 A♭-G-G♭ 129 Inversion: C-B-C♯-D-E♭ 130 Inversion: G♭-F-G-G♯-A, C♯-C-D-D♯-E Table 8. The motive and its variants in Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23
Typically, pianists need to emphasize these thematic moments in their playing, so they need to circle these moments when practicing. This Capriccio is one of the most
73 difficult pieces among these seven works. Therefore, I will specifically discuss this piece in Chapter 4 from a performer’s standpoint.
Dynamically, this piece is extremely dramatic. The whole piece has many dynamic details; intense crescendos and decrescendos as well as subito dynamic changes.
For example, it is p in measure 12 and then there is a huge crescendo to ff in measure 14.
The same thing happens from measure 15 to 18 (sub p to ff). The opposite (from loud to soft) happens, such as from measure 87 to 90, 94 to 96, and 139 to 142 (see Example 48).
Overall, in the first half of this piece, the dynamic range is from pp to ff, and then the piece reaches its climax in measure 144 and 145 (towards the end of the piece).
Interestingly, the very end is not in fff, but just in ff. The music sounds very dreamy with delicacy and subtlety from measures 62 to 71 and from measures 98 to 119.
Example 48. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 87-90 and 94-96 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
In this Capriccio, Lee Hoiby absorbed the aesthetics of the tonal tradition with regards to dynamics, linearity, and motive. The five-note motive and its variants are 74 present throughout the piece, as it might be in a Baroque or Classical work. However, the innovations are also obvious. Even the first four measures are ambiguous regarding key or pitch center. The first two measures have a pitch center of B-flat, and the following two measures have G as the center.
The right-hand part in measure 43 is repeated in the left-hand part in measure 44
(see Example 49). The passages are displaced: the left-hand part starts the material from the downbeat, whereas the right hand plays the same material from the second beat. The highly-chromatic progressions in both hands create a dissonant sonority. Also, the passage creates a sense of bitonality even though it is difficult to tell the keys or pitch centers in this phrase. The two-note slurs are very prominent, and it brings a dancing character. It is lively and exciting.
Example 49. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 42-48 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
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The music is very colorful; the contrast of registers creates some of this variety in tone color, as in measures 5, 7, and 22. The color also arises from the style, because some parts draw on impressionist textures. For example, measure 56 to 72 sound like the music of Debussy, with soft dynamics between p and pp and short, fragmented phrases. And yet, the whole piece is very motivic. It thus is highly eclectic—a mixture of classicism, romanticism, and impressionism. Overall, the treatment of the motive and its variants is random—it does not follow traditional progressions in which the theme is usually presented on tonic first and then on dominant. This piece does not obey these rules. The motive in this piece can be considered a cell, and its different variants and fragments build up the texture of the whole. The music by Lee Hoiby utilizes several techniques from late romanticism; extended tonality, freer form, highly colorful harmonic vocabulary, and impressionism. It covers several different realms, and further, it is not idiomatic in each territory. In this fusion of old and new techniques, the work takes its place between the “outside” and the “inside” of late romantic traditions.
3.5. Robert Moffat Palmer and Three Epigrams
When people became seriously interested in American contemporary music,
Robert Moffat Palmer’s reputation began to grow. His audience was quite large, but also scattered. His music was not eclectic—he did not mix elements from various sources.
Instead, he explored many varied traditions that he developed for himself at an early age, such as various rhythmic patterns and asymmetrical phrasal structures. But he would not use traditions and fashionable innovations that would not match. Palmer was not a
76 disciple of any music master, and there was no doctrinaire theory that limited his open- minded speculation and his intense emotional expression.85
3.5.1. Robert Moffat Palmer (1915-2010)
Palmer was born in 1915 in Syracuse, New York. His mother taught him piano beginning at age 12. He attended Syracuse Central High School, where he studied piano and other subjects like violin and music theory. Then, he was awarded a scholarship to go to the Eastman School of Music to study composition. His teachers were Roy Harris
(1939), Aaron Copland (1940), and, most importantly, Quincy Porter (in the summers of
1935 and 1936).86 From 1940 to 1943, Palmer taught music theory, composition, and piano at the University of Kansas. From 1943 to 1980, Palmer taught at Cornell
University. He was named the Given Foundation Professor in 1976, because he had established the doctoral program in music composition at Cornell University, the first doctoral degree in composition in the United States.87 Palmer retired in 1980. Bukoff
Ronald, Director of the Hurley School of Music Library and an Associate Professor of
Music, wrote that “Palmer’s music has endured, creating a niche for itself in the panorama of American music.”88
American music critic, Paul Rosenfeld, drew people’s attention to Palmer by writing that he “gives an impression of robustness and maturity.”89 Then, more public
85 William Austin, “The Music of Robert Palmer,” The Musical Quarterly 42, no. 1 (January 1956): 35. 86 Grove Music Online, s.v. “Palmer, Robert,” by William Austin, accessed October 3, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/20776 87 Steven Stucky, “Remembering Robert Moffat Palmer (1915-2010),” New Music Box, July 6, 2010. 88 Bukoff Ronald, “Charles Ives, a History and Bibliography of Criticism (1920-1939), and Ives' Influence (to 1947) on Bernard Herrmann, Elie Siegmeister, and Robert Palmer” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1988), 157. 89 Paul Rosenfeld, “Robert Palmer and Charles Mills,” Modern Music 20 (1943): 264. 77 attention came from Aaron Copland, whose article in the New York Times titled “The
New School of American Composers” spoke highly of Palmer as “representative of some of the best we have to offer the new generation.”90
3.5.2. Three Epigrams by Robert Palmer
3.5.2.1. Allegretto grazioso
There are three movements in this set, edited by John Kirpatrick.91 The first movement sounds like a dance, very bold and energetic. The A section starts from the beginning to measure 41, and then the second section is from measure 42 to 61. Then, the
A section returns. Overall, the first movement is in A-B-A form, and the B section is like a development of the A section. Further, both A sections consist of three parts that are also in A-B-A form. The first part (measure 1 to 15) presents the theme; the second part
(measure 16 to 23) is like a transition that is changed to a faster tempo, Affrettato. The third part has the theme return (measure 24 to 41). Then, the A’ section has the same organization with the sub-sections, but the details are varied: The first part presents the theme (measure 62 to 72); then the second part is also like a bridge with a tempo change to Affrettato (from measure 73 to 77). The third part returns to the theme (from measure
78 to the end of the movement). Palmer was passionate about rhythmic changes. So, the rhythms in the first movement are very intriguing. Throughout this movement, the left- hand part has many three-note and four-note patterns, which mostly cross over the bar- lines (see Example 50).
90 Aaron Copland, “The New School of American Composers,” New York Times, March 4, 1948. 91 Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, edited by John Kirkpatrich (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960). 78
Example 50. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 12-14 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
The change of time signatures is very prevalent in this movement. The meters change between 3/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 8/8, 9/8, and 2/4, and the tempo changes are well- structured. As mentioned, there are two moments marked Affrettato that serve as the transitions. However, before the themes return from the transitions, the music slows down in order to gradually land on the original theme. The other fascinating element along with the rhythmic tricks is the use of accents in the left-hand part. These accents are on the first notes of the three-note and four-note patterns and ignore the presence of the bar-lines and time signatures. Rather, the accents significantly reinforce the patterns of note groups. Besides, the right-hand part has asymmetrical rhythms. Further, the different articulations in the right hand make the tricky rhythms even more stimulating through tenuto, staccato (with accent).
79
Example 51. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 7-10 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
This movement centers on C, but it is hard to know this from listening because the left hand brings so much dissonance. Overall, both hands create a sense of bitonality. In addition, the piece is highly motivic. The middle section (from measure 42 to 61) develops the theme. The tune here is a variation of the original theme. The theme is transposed to two other different key centers in two phases in the development section.
The first one is from measure 42 to 50, which is centered on F; the second one is from measure 51 to 61, which centers on E. The key centers are still ambiguous, and the bitonality still exists.
This movement is very dramatic, and it also has many nuances. For example, from measure 6 to 10, and from measure 47 to 50, the music has precise and nuanced dynamic markings (see Example 52). Some other places have big dynamic shifts, as we can see from measures 16 to 22 and from measures 34 to 38 (see Example 53). The colors are change frequently, primarily because of the dynamic changes and registration. These elements fall within the realm of traditional aesthetics. All these elements make the music sound off-balance, which naturally becomes the driving force of this movement. Thus,
80 the listener can hardly predict what will happen rhythmically, harmonically, and structurally.
Example 52. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 47-50 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Example 53. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 16-22 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Palmer employed a traditional structure for this work. The first movement is in compound ternary form (an A-B-A form that contains the sub-sections in each section).
Even though the first movement is dramatic with its dynamic nuances, the dynamic range is conventional. On the other hand, the innovations are obvious. First, the time signatures
81 are frequently changed, and the rhythmic patterns in left-hand part break the traditional grouping of the beats. The patterns also cross the bar-lines, and the accent markings on the groups of notes even challenge the sense of pulse. At the same time, the right hand keeps the integrity of the bar-lines and the pulse of downbeats. Therefore, both parts generate polyrhythms and polymeters. This movement centers on C, but it is sometimes ambiguous. In the meantime, both hands present different key centers, creating bitonality.
Therefore, the distinction between the “inside” (traditions) and the “outside”
(innovations) is apparent in this movement.
Example 54. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 1st movement, mm. 1-5 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
3.5.2.2. Allegretto grazioso
The second movement is fast and light. It has innovations that are like those of the first movement, such as the rhythmic patterns, change of meters, and bitonality. But the second movement has its own distinctions. The structure of the second movement is a traditional, simple ternary form—ABA’ (see table 9).
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Section A Section B Section A' a a' b b' a a' Measure 1—10 11—18 19—25 26—35 36—51 52—64 Table 9. Structure of the 2nd movement of Palmer’s Three Epigrams
The innovations are obvious in the second movement. The time signatures are frequently changed among 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/8, 5/8, 6/8, 8/8, 9/8, 5/16, and 7/16, although the time signatures mostly alternate between 2/4 and 3/4. A few time signatures are only used for one measure: 5/16 in measure 25; 8/8 in measure 33, 9/8 in measure 35, 7/16 in measure
48, and 4/4 in measure 63 (see Example 55).
Example 55. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 48 and 63 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Regarding the key/pitch center, different sections have different centers, and both hands have their own pitch centers. In the A section, the right hand has the centers on G- sharp, whereas the left hand is centers on G. They seem to compete for their own status, which creates a strong harmonic tension. The B section also has this same ambiguity of pitch center between the hands. G seems to be the center in the right hand (some phrases 83 occasionally land on G with accents), whereas the left hand has C as the pitch center in the middle section (the beginning of this section has several cadences that land on C, and throughout the B section, the left hand has C pitches many times). Afterwards, in the A’ section, both hands center on B-flat in the first part (from measure 36 to 51). Then, the second part of A’ section centers on G and G-flat in both hands. Overall, the second movement emphasizes bitonality. Each hand has different key centers, and both parts create dissonance. Further, the A section centers on G and G-sharp simultaneously, which consolidates the dissonance to a semitone. The A’ section combines two key centers of G and G-flat in each hand. It is such an innovative design; even Bartok did not employ this kind of organization regarding pitch center.
Example 56. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 1-3 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Also, the phrase structure is irregular in this movement, which is not traditional.
Sometimes, there are four-measure phrases, like from measure 11 to 14 and from measure
36 to 39. But they mostly do not follow the conventional format of the four-measure phrase. For example, this movement has phrases of 3, 6, and 7 measures. From the beginning to measure 6 is an example of a six-measure phrase. This movement also has a
84 sense of perpetual motion, and the change of phrasing is related to the length of the motive. The extension of phrases consists either of simple repetitions of the motive or variations of it. For instance, measure 5 and 6 simply repeat the motive (see Example 57).
The measure 9 and 10 create a variation of the pattern (see Example 58).
Example 57. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 5-6 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Example 58. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 9-10 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
The dynamics in the second movement are traditional. The dynamic range moves between p and f. The second movement starts in mp, and then it is going through some subtle changes to reach f at measure 9. Also, there are two dramatic moments in measure
26 and 29, where the dynamics have sudden changes between p and f. Throughout this movement, there is only one tempo. But there are four moments that slow down: in 85 measures 9 to 10; in measure 35; from measures 50 to 51; and from measures 62 to 63. It is interesting that every time, the musical slow-down matches the dynamics and phrasing.
As mentioned before, there are some extended phrases with varied repetitions. All four moments of ritardando fall on a diminuendo and include repetitions of the notes from the previous phrases. These moments give performers and audiences breaks from the perpetual motion. The second and third times emphasize the rallentando with rhythmic augmentation (see Example 59).
Example 59. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 2nd movement, mm. 62-63 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
This movement is full of interest in rhythm and motive. It is fascinating to have the combination of motivic repetition, unexpected phrasing, and ritardandos. Also, the combination of two key centers—for each hand and both hands, is very innovative.
Bartok initiated this technique, and Palmer also used that similarly. However, the structure and dynamics are still traditional. The ternary form is clear in this movement, even though the theme modulates to other keys. The dynamic ranges are small; Palmer is
86 not as extreme in dynamics as Charles Ives or Leo Ornstein. It is probably a special design by Palmer, in order to imply a more static French style.
3.5.2.3. Andante con moto
The third movement is like the previous two movements in several way, which naturally brings cohesiveness to the work. The third movement, like the other two movements, has a similar emphasis on changing time signatures, even though it is less frequent than in the first two movements. This movement is mostly in 6/8 and 9/8, but sometimes it is in 5/8. The two-note slur figure is iconic throughout the movement, which is like a “sigh” effect (see Example 60). Also, the phrase structure is not in the format of a regular four-measure phrase. For example, the very first phrase takes six measures, and the second phrase has three measures.
Example 60. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 3rd movement, mm. 1-3 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
The overall structure of this movement is ternary form. The A section is from the beginning to measure 28. The B section is from measure 29 to 44. The A’ section is from measure 45 to 70 (the end of the piece). In the A section, the theme is from the beginning to measure 8, and then after a transition the theme returns from measures 21 to 27. This
87 movement is highly motivic, as well. The theme is transposed up a major-third at the beginning of the B section (from the pick-up to measure 29; see Example 61). The two- note slurs are still the accompaniment in the left hand. The third movement also demonstrates bitonality: the A section has G-center in the right hand vs. C in the left- hand. The middle section has B as the center in the right hand, and G in the left hand. The
A’ section returns to the G and C centers. But the G-C relationship is ambiguous until the third-to-last measure. In addition, there are two ritartandos, in measures 18 and 44, which serve a similar purpose as in the previous movements.
Example 61. Robert Palmer, Three Epigrams, 3rd movement, mm. 28-31 (New York: Peer International Corporation, 1960)
Of course, there are some other aspects that are not like the previous two movements. The dynamic range is wider in the third movement, and there are two accelerarando moments at measure 19 and from measure 37 to 39. The central elements of Robert Palmer’s music are: asymmetrical rhythms and meters, the octatonic scale, imitative counterpoint, and the expansion of phrases by varied repetition. But he also used traditional structures and dynamic ranges. So, like the other examples, this work exists between the “inside” and the “outside.”
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3.6. Isadore Freed and Hard Times and Carnival
3.6.1. Isadore Freed (1900-1960)
Isadore Freed was born in Belarus in East Europe in 1900, but he was taken to
Philadelphia at the age of three. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in
1918. His piano teachers included Ernest Bloch and Josef Hoffman. Freed taught at the
Curtis Institute from 1924 to 1925. Afterwards, he studied composition with Nadia
Boulanger, Louis Vierne and Vincent d'Indy in Europe. After he went back to the U.S. in
1933, he became active in advocating for secular and Jewish liturgical music, and he also founded the first American Composers’ Laboratory in Philadelphia in 1934. He joined the faculty at Temple University from 1937 to 1946 and chaired the composition department at the Hartt School of Music from 1944 to 1960. Freed received the Society for the Publication of American Music award in 1943.
Freed’s music is pandiatonic and neo-classical. He wrote the book Harmonizing the Jewish Modes (1958). He made remarkable contributions to Jewish sacred music. In addition, Freed became gradually interested in composing new music for the synagogue.
Freed’s mentors were Lazare Saminsky and others from the “Russian group.” He kept the
Jewish “flavor” in his music by borrowing from traditional modes.92 For Freed, every letter in the Torah was indeed a musical note, because the inner history of a people is contained in its songs. The pathos of Judaism runs the gamut from Ko nidre to Hatikvah,
92 Jessica Roskin-Coleman, “Isadore Freed: The Man and His Music” (Master’s thesis, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music, 1994), 7. 89 from Chassidic melodies to the marching songs of the Israeli pioneers. Freed thought that music was better than anything else, because it sums up the spirit of a people.93
3.6.2. Hard Times (Paraphrase on a Folk Theme) (for two pianos)
Now let us shift our focus from piano solo music to piano duets. I will still discuss these works for two pianos in terms of their relationship to the musical “inside” and
“outside.” Although these pieces are lesser-known and less-frequently performed in piano recital programs, they reach high artistic level. These pieces continue to absorb traditions, but they are not restrained by the rules. Working on these pieces can bring pianists a new outlook on the piano and are excellent options to consider for pianists programming their recitals (see the Appendix).
Isadore Freed was influenced by Jewish religious music. This piece Hard Times
(for two pianos, four hands) is subtitled “Paraphrase on a Folk Theme.”94 The tempo is not fast; 84 bpm to the quarter note. It is marked Sostenuto. The meter changes frequently between 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4. Freed used modes to construct this piece, and overall it is in D
Aeolian. The beginning of the piece is like a chant. For me, this piece has rich, warm, and consoling harmony. Piano II introduces the tune in parallel octaves, while Piano I rests
(see Example 62). The melody then appears in Piano I in measure 4. The roles of two pianos are very consistent throughout this piece: Piano I generally contains melodies composed of long notes, and Piano II serves as the accompaniment with moving notes.
93 Joel Zion, Isadore Freed, Master and Teacher (New York: National Jewish Music Council, 1962), 1. 94 Isadore Freed, Hard Times and Carnival (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957). 90
The melody part (Piano I) contains many perfect-fourth and perfect-fifth intervals. The accompaniment (Piano II) mostly has parallel octaves.
Example 62. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 1-3 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
Both parts are in counterpoint, and the melody is marked “singing.” The main motive and harmony are reminiscent of Jewish sacred music. The rhythm of an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes recurs in both piano parts throughout the piece.
Along with the rhythmic pattern, the pitches move in stepwise motions in throughout the entire piece. The harmony contains many perfect-fourth and perfect-fifth intervals, which give this piece an open, somber, sacred quality. In addition, the bass lines have single notes or octaves throughout the work, and sometimes the octaves in the bass lines are doubling with the right-hand part, like from measure 4 to 6 in Piano II (see Example 63).
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Example 63. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 4-6 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
However, there are some innovations in this work. Freed used D Aeolian, but he did not just use the notes from this mode. For example, the second measure has a D-flat.
Also, in measures 18 and 19, both Piano I and II have C-sharp, D-sharp, and F-sharp, which are obviously not from the D Aeolian mode (see Example 64). We can explain this in two ways. The first is that the composer deliberately provided dissonance by introducing notes from outside D Aeolian. The other explanation is that the music briefly modulates to other modes. For instance, measure 14 of Piano II is like B Lydian mode
(see Example 65). Freed concluded this piece on a D major (D Ionian) chord, similar to a
Picardy major chord. But the keys/modes are ambiguous leading to the final cadence, adding a dissonant quality that is innovative for sacred music.
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Example 64. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, mm. 18-19 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
Example 65. Isadore Freed, Hard Times, m. 14 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
In this piece, Freed incorporated traditional elements of Jewish religious music into his compositions. As the American music theorist Leon Dallin wrote,
“Contemporary musicians have not been concerned exclusively with blazing unexplored trails. They have also done extensive research on early music, much of which is based on
93 a system of modal scales.”95 In the twentieth century, composers were interested in using modes to contrast with restrictive major-minor keys. The modal scales were somehow ignored by composers for three centuries, but they provided simple and logical extensions of melodic resources. Therefore, the use of modes alone suggests how this work occupies a space between the “inside” and the “outside,” using these extensions achieve stylistic and aesthetic balance.
3.6.3 Carnival (for two pianos)
The composer marked this piece Allegro, with verve and gaiety; indeed, the tempo is a brisk 106 bpm for the quarter note. This piece also exhibits meter changes between
2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and 9/8. Besides, this work is in D major/centricity. This piece sounds like a dance, very lively and joyful. Despite these conventional elements, the structure of this piece is ambiguous. There are two approaches to interpret its musical form. The first is to consider this piece as an example of ternary form (see table 10).
Section A Section B Section A' Coda Measure 1—19 20—65 66—107 108—148 Table 10. Structure of Freed’s Carnival as ternary form
But the other explanation is this work is in a compound ternary form (see table
11). Interestingly, in this scheme, the first theme in both A sections happens twice.
95 Leon Dallin, Techniques of Twentieth Century Composition: A Guide to the Materials of Modern Music, Third Edition (Dubuque, Iowa: WM. C. Brown Company Publishers, 1974), 19. 94
Section A Transition Section A' Coda a b a' b' Measure 1—19 20—55 56—65 66—107 108—132 133—148 Table 11. Structure of Freed Carnival as compound ternary form
Overall, the parallel octave passages are prevalent. Freed also used perfect-fourth and perfect-fifth intervals to convey the characteristics of Jewish sacred music. The music brings a sense of primitivism from those intervallic and harmonic effects. Also, the themes in Carnival are reminiscent of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (see Example
66).96 But, it is also interesting to have some dissonance, like measure 20 in Piano II, for example (see Example 67).
Example 66. Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, between Rehearsal 32 and 33 (Kiev: Musytschna Ukraina, 1975)
96 Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (Kiev: Musytschna Ukraina, 1975). 95
Example 67. Isadore Freed, Carnival, m. 20 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
It is not initially clear that the piece is in D major or D Ionian; there are many notes that are not from D major/Ionian, such as in measures 7, 11, and 30, among others.
There are two ways to understand this kind of ambiguity. The one is that the music modulates frequently, which is fitting in a neoclassical style (such as in Prokofiev’s early pieces like Visions Fugitives). In Carnival, the keys change from D-flat major to B major, and at last to F Lydian mode: from measure 30 to 32, 33 to 36, and 37 to 39, respectively
(see Examples 68 and 69). However, the alternative explanation is that the music employs accidentals outside of D major. We can consider those notes to be temporary accidentals instead of shifts to different keys, because those moments are quite short. Or, we can draw a third conclusion, which is a combination of these two answers: some phrases are about key modulations, and some other phrases are involved in temporary accidentals.
There is no clear answer, for Freed may have designed the piece in this way intentionally.
Undoubtedly, that ambiguity contributes to the sense of this piece existing between the
“inside” and the “outside.”
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Example 68. Isadore Freed, Carnival, mm. 33-36 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
Example 69. Isadore Freed, Carnival, mm. 37-39 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1957)
Regarding the ensemble, the moving sixteenth notes in one piano are coordinated with quarter and eighth notes from the other piano. This organization occurs throughout this work. Besides, two tempo changes happen in the middle part, Più Calmo (from measure 56 to 65) and Agitato (from measure 108), sounding lyrical and warm. One more element positions this piece between the “inside” and the “outside.” Traditionally, the theme and its return share the same tempo. That is the symmetry in the musical form. But in Carnival, Freed used different tempos in A’ section. The first A section does not have 97 any tempo changes. But after A returns, the composer marks an agitato in measure 108.
So, the music is faster, creating an unbalanced relationship between the two sections.
3.7. Robert Starer and The Fringes of a Ball: Waltz Variations on a Theme by
William Schuman
Robert Starer is an Austrian-born American composer. Famous symphony orchestras have nationally and internationally performed his orchestral works. Itzhak
Perlman made a recording of his Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, which was nominated for a Grammy award. Throughout his life,
Starer devoted himself to teaching, and he published two books, Continuo: A Life in
Music in 1987 and The Music Teacher, a novel, in 1997. One of his piano works,
Sketches in Color (two sets) is a great contribution to intermediate level piano repertoire in twentieth century.
3.7.1. Robert Starer (1924-2001)
Starer was born in Vienna in 1924. He started playing piano at age four and attended the State Academy of Music when he was 13. After Germen troops invaded
Austria, he went to Jerusalem where he continued his studies at the Palestine
Conservatoire. He served in the Royal British Air Force during World War II, was discharged from military service in 1946, and immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Starer continued his musical education at the Juilliard School of Music in New York on a scholarship. He also studied under Aaron Copland at Tanglewood in 1948. He also premiered his own Piano Concerto No. 1 (1947) in February 1949 as the soloist. Starer became a U.S. citizen in 1957.
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Starer taught at Juilliard School from 1949 to 1974. Then, he taught at Brooklyn
College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1963 to 1991.
He received the title of Distinguished Professor in 1986. Starer was selected as a member of the American Academy Letters in 1994, awarded the Medal of Honor for Science and
Art by the President of Austria in 1995, earned an Honorary Doctorate from the State
University of New York in 1996 and a Presidential Citation by the National Federation of
Music Clubs in 1997.97 There were two outstanding awards among other honors:
Guggenheim Fellowships and grants from the National Endowment and the Ford
Foundation. In his book, Continuo: A Life in Music, he wrote about his music, “there are elements of Viennese sentiment, Jewish melisma, Near Easter playfulness and American jazz. These elements must have been compatible with my nature to have become part of my style and musical personality.”98
3.7.2. The Fringes of a Ball: Waltz Variations on a Theme by William Schuman by
Robert Starer
This work for two pianos was published in 1962. Starer used a twelve-tone theme by William Schuman as the basis for this work (see Example 70). In the piano score, there is a composer’s preface: “This theme is taken from a dance piece entitled
Performance, with choreography by Jose Limon. It was commissioned by Juilliard
School of Music.”99
97 Robert Starer, Robert Starer, http://www.robertstarer.com/, accessed on September 26, 2017. 98 Robert Starer, Continuo: A Life in Music, (New York: Random House, 1987), 205. 99 Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball: Waltz Variations on a Theme by William Schuman (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1962). 99
Example 70. Robert Starer, Theme by William Schumman (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1962)
This work has changing meters between 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 (see Example 71). Also, it obviously has many tempo changes, as evident from the tempo markings. The time signatures alternate randomly. In addition to this metrical activity, there are also two waltz sections inserted. Traditionally, waltzes are in 3/4 with spinning and swirling motions. Waltz composers in Romantic period, like Chopin, Liszt, and Johann Strauss kept the 3/4 meter and the grandiose yet delicate style. However, in this piece, Starer changed the meter of this waltz: He used a mixture of 2/4 and 3/4 in the Waltz time sections. Nevertheless, Starer still employed the hilarious and joyful characteristics of waltzes. In other words, he only partly followed the traditions. Moreover, the alternations by both hands in the high register create a buzzy, pointillistic, playful, and interesting sound.
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Example 71. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 1-4 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1962)
The structure of this piece is clear. It is in a compound binary form (see table 12).
The A section has two parts: The first part is like an introduction from the beginning to measure 39, and then the second part is titled Waltz time, from measure 40 to 106. In the
A’ section, the first part is like an introduction from measure 127 to 175, and then the
Waltz time is from measure 176 to the end of this piece.
Section A Transition Section A' a b a' b' Measure 1—39 40—106 107—126 127—175 176—207 Table 12. Structure of Starer’s The Fringes of a Ball
This piece is atonal, and the composer used the twelve-tone row by William
Schuman. For the two moments of Waltz Time, Starer used the theme from Performance directly (see Example 72). Starer wrote variations by changing the rhythms of original tune and repeating some notes in the melody.
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Example 72. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 40-43 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1962)
Starer wrote introductions (from the beginning to measure 39, and from measure
127 to 175) for both waltz sections. The music is marked leggiero for both. I feel they are exciting and grandiose, and there is some sense of humor in it. Both introductions have non-stopping alternation for both hands. When one piano is doing the alternation, the other piano at the same time has some single notes or fragmented phrases. Overall, the sonority is really like “a rolling ball,” which corresponds to the title, The Fringes of a
Ball. Because of the figuration—continuous alternations and fragmented motives, the music exhibits a pointillist character. The continuously jumpy notes bring out a hidden
“buzzy” line. The use of twelve-tone technique in a binary form (associated with the
Classical era) is fascinating. Further, there are some tempi changes and rubatos to add a sense of freedom or a touch of the romantic style. As we can see, the retards are marked in measures 36, 45, 57, 67, 73, 83, 89, 97, 173, 187, and 193. Accelerandos are also written in measures 52, 105, 163, and 201. There are even several tempo changes: in measure 54, poco più mosso; in measure 68, più mosso; in measure 100, molto allegro; in
102 measure 104, più allegro; in measure 107, larghetto; in measure 127, Allegro; in measure
168, presto; in measure 196, molto allegro; in measure 200, più allegro; in measure 203, presto.
There are also some interesting rhythmic patterns. There are two places that utilize hemiola: from measure 76 to 91 and from measure 138 to 144 (see Example 73).
In terms of dynamic, this piece has a wide range, and it sounds very dramatic. For instance, in measure 176, that is the loudest moment marked fff, and the softest spot is in the end of the piece with ppp. All the factors above can define the piece in romanticism.
However, the approach on harmony is not in romantic style. Instead, it is very modern.
Thus, this piece is highly eclectic, which contains chromaticism, serialism, and tone cluster.
Example 73. Robert Starer, The Fringes of a Ball, mm. 76-81 (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser Company, 1962)
The piece does not have regular four-measure phrases, which is very innovative.
But these phrases (three-measure and five-measure phrases) are still based on the
103 convention—four-bar phrase. Therefore, this work exists is between the “inside” and the
“outside.”
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Chapter 4. Performance Guidelines for Lee Hoiby’s Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23
The seven piano pieces I have discussed are technically demanding, and one of the most difficult pieces among them is the Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23 by Lee
Hoiby. In this chapter, I will present a performance guide for this work. This Capriccio was commissioned for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1962. That competition was named after American pianist Van Cliburn and is one of the most prestigious international piano competitions in the world. This piece is thus very technically difficult but with a high level of artistry. The purpose was to test the contestants on their technique and musicality.
However, since the Competition in 1962, this piece has rarely been performed, and there are few recordings of the work. I performed this piece in my last DMA solo recital at Ohio State and in several other informal circumstances. I enjoyed practicing and performing this work. In this chapter, I will discuss this piece from a performer’s perspective regarding rhythm, motive, phrase, articulation, tempo, pedaling, fingering, and practicing. I will also, based on my own practicing and performing experiences, provide suggestions of some technical and musical solutions that would be helpful for learners and performers in the future.
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4.1. Motive
This piece is highly motivic. The piece starts with the five-note motive C-sharp,
D, C, B, and B-flat. Throughout the entire piece, we also see the motive and its variants in inversion, retrograde, transposition, augmentation, diminution, and fragmentation. I began by personally circling all the places that have the motive and its variants. I treat them as I would the themes in the Fugues of J.S. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier. When playing pieces in counterpoint, pianists usually emphasize subjects. If one hand is playing two voices at the same time, the performer should strive to voice the theme more than the other voice by giving the theme more weight from the hand or the arm. This Capriccio does not follow a strictly-contrapuntal approach like Bach’s fugues. However, I use a marker to circle the moments with the motives and to circle, with different colors, the moments when the motives are overlapped in one hand or for both hands. To hear and understand the themes clearly, I highly recommend for students to begin by practicing in a very slow tempo.
For example, from measure 28 to 30, the motive and its variants happen crowdedly in one hand and both hands (see Example 74). From measures 29 to 30, the right hand plays the theme and its inversion together. Similar situations exist in measures
55 to 56 and measures 96 to 97—the motive and its variants overlap (see Example 75 and
76). Pianists should practice slowly and voice clearly the beginning of the themes in each case.
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Example 74. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 28-30 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
Example 75. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 55-56 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
Example 76. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 96-97 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
4.2. Rhythm
The rhythms are not very tricky in this piece: Eighth notes, syncopated rhythms, and triplets are predominant. But many phrases that have triplets (eighth-note, quarter- note, or half-note) are difficult to coordinate well with the other hand. Also, the triplets at
107 different note-values create a challenge for pianists who wish to keep the music at a consistent tempo. I suggest to pianists to practice these measures slowly with a metronome. In terms of the coordination between both hands, there are some tricky places like these three: from measure 55 to 56, from measure 59 to 61, and from measure
98 to 100 (see Examples 77 and 78). To solve this technical issue, pianists can play both hands slowly to feel how the music is organized for both hands. Then, they can use a metronome (in a slow tempo) to manage the overall pace. From measure 55 to 56, the half-note triplets in the left-hand part can easily drag down the tempo of the right hand; practicing with a metronome can help resolve this problem.
Example 77. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 59-61 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
Example 78. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 98-100 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
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4.3. Phrasing
The phrase structures of this Capriccio are based on traditional four-measure phrases as well as on irregular three- and five-measure patterns. The piece is only ten pages long. I recommend students to cut the piece into phrases and then know the length of each phrase. Then, this piece is worth practicing phrase by phrase. The structure of this work does not have the recapitulation or returning section that usually occurs in a ternary form or sonata-allegro form. Rather, this piece is through-composed, and it is difficult to keep track of the musical journey. If students do not create a clear idea of the length of each phrase, they could easily get lost in this loose structure. From my own practicing, I have personally experienced this kind of problem in this piece. I found it beneficial to break the piece into phrases and then practice the individual phrases.
4.4. Articulation
The articulations in this piece can be easily categorized into one of two kinds: there are many long slurs in the lyrical sections that create legato effects; then some other sections have short slurs over two continuous eighth-note intervals. Therefore, there are two different techniques for playing these two kinds of articulation. To achieve the legato and lyrical passages, pianists should use arm weight along with horizontal arm motions.
Then, for the latter category, pianists can use vertical forearm motions to properly articulate the short slurs. The two-note (two-interval) slurs naturally bring accents on the first notes, and the follow-up note is lighter. The drop-lift gesture can be employed for the technique of two-note slur: The forearms can thus drop down for playing the first note
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(interval), and then the forearms can just lift at the same time when playing the second note.
From measure 31 to 33, pianists can move forearms horizontally to fulfill the legato (see Example 79). When I practiced the passages with legato, I used arm weight and transferred the weight through the fingers. There are also many other places with long slurs for the legato effect. Pianists can apply the same technique for those passages, as well. An example of the drop-lift gestures is from measure 78 to 81 (see Example 80).
The drop-lift gesture by the forearms can help students effectively relax their arms and fingers, especially in a faster tempo, as opposed to just using fingers to deal with the two eighth-note slurs. The drop-lift gestures alternate hands, which creates problems for coordination; for example, when the left hand is moving up, the right hand is coming down. Students can practice the gestures slowly on a desk or keyboard lid.
Example 79. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 31-33 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
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Example 80. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 78-81 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
4.5. Pedaling
Some parts of this work are in an impressionistic style. Those sections or phrases are generally soft. In addition, these places usually have long sustaining notes as one of the musical layers. We are not able to hold down the long notes, even with a good fingering. Having experimented with pedaling, I think it is appropriate to use half pedal
(damper pedal) for phrases that contain long sustaining notes. If some phrases sound too noisy and dissonant, I would use 1/4 or 1/3 pedaling. Also, if I really need to change the pedal, I would change 1/2 or 1/3 of the pedal during the long notes to maintain the sonority of the sustaining notes. I recommend students to utilize their own sensitivity to adjust the damper pedal and soft pedal, because different halls and pianos have various acoustic effects that we cannot finally prepare for without trying them out in the space.
From measure 62 to 65, the left-hand part has whole notes, and the dynamic level is pp (see Example 81). We can consider using the soft pedal to achieve the subtle impressionistic characteristics. As mentioned previously, pianists can do some experiments with the damper pedal to keep ringing the whole notes, and, in the meantime, to make the overall sonority not too noisy. We can use 1/2, 1/3, or even 1/4
111 pedaling, which depends on different pianos and rooms. But we would not change the pedal in the middle of the whole notes in the left hand, because we will break the sound of the sustaining notes. If necessary, we can change 1/2 or 1/3 of the pedal. From measure 114 to 115, pianists can change the damper pedal every two beats to keep the half-note octaves in the right hand (see Example 82). We also need to consider how much we use the pedal to keep the sound from being too chaotic. From measure 126 to 128, the left hand has two layers (see Example 83). We can change the damper pedal, but we need to avoid cutting the bass line too short by completely changing the pedal.
Example 81. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 62-65 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
Example 82. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 114-115 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
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Example 83. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 126-128 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
4.6. Fingering
In this piece, there are many intervallic progressions, especially thirds. To play thirds, we typically use the fingering 1-2, 1-3, 2-4, and 3-5. But in this work, we need to consider using 2-3, 1-4, and even 1-5. In addition, this Capriccio is in a modern style, and calls for challenging but splendid techniques. Some passages with single notes or leaps involve different hand positions and thumb crossings. It is difficult to systematically categorize these challenges, because such passages are scattered throughout the piece.
Therefore, pianists can practice hands separately and slowly to experiment with the best fingering for any given moment. Then, students need to mark the fingering on the score.
The task of finding and marking good fingering should be meticulously done. If the fingering is not fixed firmly, pianists may use different fingerings in every performance, and it is more likely that pianists would not feel comfortable and confident about their performances and would create bad habits in approaching fingering.
From measure 74 to 76, the right hand has a passage with thirds (see Example
84). I highly encourage students to try different fingerings, because each person will have his/her own preferences. Students should also consider picking up the hand and using 2-
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3, 1-4, and 2-5 for tackling some hard moments. For example, in measure 75, I suggest that students use the fingering 1-4, 2-5, 2-4, 1-3, 2-3, 2-4, and 1-3 for the right hand.
Example 84. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 74-76 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
There are many places with thirds like this measure. Pianists need to approach those passages slowly and meticulously. It will be beneficial to mark favorite fingerings as the player discovers them. The same method can be applied to other difficult passages with fast single notes. We can see this in the measures from 104 to 106 (see Example 85).
The left hand has a zigzag motion, so we need to carefully figure out the fingering. We can mark 1 on the score for every time we use the thumb, because other fingers can just follow the position after the thumb is placed. I also suggest for students to practice the right-hand part of Chopin etude, Op. 25, No. 6 as an accompaniment to preparing this work. This etude is famous for its continuous thirds. Students can practice slowly with the fingering suggested by the composer. This can help students practice to the fingering and acquire the continuity of their thirds.
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Example 85. Lee Hoiby, Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, mm. 104-106 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1962)
4.8. Emotions
Hoiby thought that music should convey human emotions. When I practice this work, the music naturally brings me some feelings and imaginations. The beginning is very dreamy; everything seems to be overlaid with darkness and mystery. Then, the music switches to a lively and energetic dance through a short transition. The rhythms and dynamics make the music sometimes like roaring (see Example 85). On the other hand, there are some moments the musical tension is shrinking and fading. (see Example
80). I feel the softer and slower parts are like longing for the struggle and excitement of the louder and faster sections. Then, the energy is gradually released.
In addition, when the music is impressionistic, I turn to feel a state of being dizzy and dreamy, again, just as the very beginning (see Examples 82 and 83). Afterwards, the music feels energetic, but the it is built up to the climax, which has more excitement.
Every time I perform this section (from measure 120 to 147), I feel the climax is extraordinarily triumphant and exciting through long but inexorable power. Throughout this work, dualism is obvious—dreamy and energetic. The very end of the piece is like an
115 explosion, for which the dizziness is totally gone, because of the striking and shocking character that carries the dualism but then overwhelms that.
4.9. Practicing
Because pianists want to have successful performances on stage, they need to practice in the right way. Of course, different pieces of music have their own artistic and technical characteristics, and pianists also have different ways to practice. Based on the loose structure and atypical techniques of this piece, I want to share some thoughts about how to practice this work effectively. My experiences of practicing and performing this
Capriccio suggest the strategies below.
First, I highly recommend that pianists cut the entire piece into phrases and then practice this work phrase by phrase. This approach will give players a clearer sense of the structure of the piece. Technically, to set one phrase as a unit reduces the burden of handling the entire work at one time. In addition, slow practice is very necessary, especially for the places with tricky fingering. When I was performing this piece, I felt nervous about some tricky passages of fast single notes, because my fingering was not very consistent, and my hands tended to get stuck in the “juggle” of the combination of white and black keys. After I practiced those passages slowly, and methodically chose fingerings for those passages, I felt much better. I also want to add that if pianists need to use a metronome to keep the same tempo, there should be no hesitation in doing so. After learning every single phrase, students can run through the entire piece in a slow tempo.
This step will give players a “big picture” of the piece and give them a sense of the overall linearity of the development after the motive is presented in the very first four
116 measures. Then, pianists can practice the piece gradually in faster and faster tempos until they reach the desired performance tempo.
Regarding memorization, pianists are required to memorize standard piano repertory. That is the convention. But for avant-garde music, as well, more and more pianists try to perform from memory, in works such as Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus by Oliver Messiaen and the piano etudes of György Ligeti. For performing this
Capriccio, I tried both—I used the music score, and I also memorized the piece.
Eventually, I found that no matter whether or not I memorized the entire piece, I had to use my memory when I was playing the difficult passages and large leaps. The reason was that I did not have time to switch my eye sight from the keyboard to music. I tried to lift my head to look at the music at times, but I lost track on the keyboard when playing the most difficult places. So, I would suggest that pianists who want to perform this piece very well should memorize some of the most technical passages, and then they will feel more secure in their technique.
After going through this process of practicing, pianists can polish some details and then contextualize them. Pianists can isolate the problematic spots and find ways to handle them; pianists can be highly creative when seeking good techniques to solve problems. We can make some supplementary practicing materials, such as changing the rhythms, transposing, or using different articulations. However, after polishing the hard spots, pianists need to put the isolated places in context to determine whether the technique are smooth.
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Last, but not least, along with practicing the musical notes, performers should open their imaginations to possible storylines for this piece. Lee Hoiby’s philosophy is that music should convey human emotions. Should the performers play this Capriccio with their own genuine feelings? I think the answer is yes, even though some music is for the sake of the music itself, such as some works by Igor Stravinsky. When practicing to remove or resolve technical issues, pianists will use their emotions and imaginations. In other words, pianists must also take their feelings into this work. The music by Lee
Hoiby is highly romantic. Pianists not only need to practice for managing the difficult techniques, but also need to find what the music wants to express through the musical notes and rests.
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Chapter 5. Conclusion: Twentieth-Century American Composers—Inside and Outside
Classical art music moved gradually from musical notes to the incorporation of noise. For example, George Ligeti’s piano etudes are extremely filled with complex musical notes; his musical approach is maximalism, which moves toward noise in the deployment of musical tones. The music of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen contains even more noise than Ligeti, even as the minimalists embraced the opposite effect in their musical textures. These two trends demonstrate the allure of these different musical mindsets: simplicity and complexity are both extremes in relation to the quantity of musical materials.
Twentieth-century American composers were very much in a similar situation.
They were extreme in their treatment of European musical traditions, often negotiating a space between the “outside” and the “inside” of these conventions. The compositional approaches of John Cage, Leo Ornstein, and Charles Ives were totally fresh to the public.
They broke the mold; they were avant-gardists with respect to exploration and experimentation, and their music remains shocking to audiences even today. Other
American composers like MacDowell and Barber, kept a sense of lineage—of western musical traditions—in their works. They did not try to escape from convention. The approach of the seven composers discussed in this document is a purposeful mixture of 119 both extremes. These composers kept some degree of European traditions, while adding their own innovations.
This dwelling—between the “inside” and “outside” of musical traditions—is probably the reason these American composers and their musical works have not found mainstream popularity so far. The seven composers discussed in this document were not as famous as those explorers and traditionalists. Their pieces are not frequently performed in recitals and concerts. But the artistry of their music is highly conceived.
From my perspective, the seven composers are some of the best representatives of the development of twentieth-century American music. In other words, there are many
“niche” American composers like these seven, who are ignored and whose music did not become very famous.
5.1. Review of the Seven Pieces
Thomson’s own reviews could be considered the best written for his American cultural life.100 The work Five 2-Part Inventions shows the influence of J.S. Bach. This is an homage to Bach’s suites (French Suites, English Suites, and Partitas), which consist of several dance movements in different tempi and styles. Thomson composed five inventions with five different characteristics. I think all the inventions should be performed continuously as an entire work. Stylistically, Thomson’s signature is a neo- baroque style. Within the traditional structure of Bach’s suites, Thomson frequently changed time signatures and used irregular phrases. The key centers are clear, but the
100 Robert Craft, Present Perspectives (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 72. 120 music modulates frequently. The dissonance provides freshness for performers and listeners alike.
Ben Weber’s “cachet” relates to his use of serialism and the influence of
Schoenberg. Of course, Weber is considered the first American composer who used twelve-tone technique in the twentieth century. He was mostly self-taught, and his music is not strict in its twelve-tone compositional approach. Serialism is neither a style nor a system in Weber’s music. It could equip composers with methods that are less restrictive than the traditions of diatonic harmony or fugal composition.101 Weber imitated the expressionism of the Second Viennese School throughout this work. In Three Pieces for
Piano, he did not actually use a row. Palmer also employed silence and sudden and extreme dynamic changes. In addition, note values and tempi are diverse throughout the work, creating an effect like that of expressionism. Moreover, Weber artistically imitated the registration used by Schoenberg. In the second movement of Op. 23 by Weber, the composer emulated Schoenberg Op. 11, No. 2, in terms of the usage of different registers.
The two pieces are also similar in texture and in the use of motives. The ostinato in the left-hand parts of both pieces is dominant. Ben Weber welcomed notions of liberty and romanticism, whereas the composers of the Second Viennese School strongly objected to romantic music. Weber mixed the expressionistic style with other elements, and neither rules nor freedom dominate the texture in Weber’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 23.
Lee Hoiby employs atonality along with romanticism. He followed Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti’s footsteps, and he inherited the old-fashioned vocal
101 Griffiths, Modern Music, 84. 121 lyricism of Menotti. Hoiby created Capriccio on Five Notes, Op. 23, in a neo-romantic style, bringing back a sense of sentimentality and emotionality and stressing the overall technique of virtuosity. This piece is highly motivic. The motive and its different variants are interesting, employing rhythmic augmentations and diminutions, intervallic inversions, and contrapuntal organizations. All of these elements reveal the composer’s close relationship to European music traditions. We can see J. S. Bach’s influence on
Hoiby’s counterpoint, for example. We can also witness the motivic development by way of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. However, this same work also contains romanticism, which is shown in the sentimental long phrases and in its great virtuosity. The piece is undoubtedly a fusion of traditions and innovations.
John Verrall’s Four Pieces for Piano is also a mixture of traditions and innovations. Like several others, he imitated the structure of J.S. Bach’s music. There are four movements in this suite, each with different characters. The first movement Prelude is mostly impressionistic. Verrall used ambiguous harmony and fragmented phrases which sound like Debussy. The second movement Lament is romanticized, like a monologue with instrumental accompaniment. The third movement is neo-classical, a waltz-like movement titled Dance. The last movement, Toccata, is neo-Baroque in style, like a gigue as the last piece of a suite. As an American maverick, Verrall also created his own musical patterns. He created a symmetrical scale with nine notes for the ascending and descending patterns. His idea is obvious, although the rule is not followed strictly. In this piano work, the symmetries are prevalent and potent.
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Robert Palmer’s “cachet” was that he was interested in asymmetrical rhythms. In
Three Epigrams, rhythmic games run throughout the work. However, with his creativity in music, Palmer also employed European traditions. Three Epigrams has three movements, which are like three short character pieces, reminiscent of those by Robert
Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Palmer’s Three Epigrams used the traditional structure for each movement, which is all in simple binary form. Palmer used different rhythms for both hands, and sometimes (especially in the first movement) the repetitions and patterns cross bar-lines. The composer still used time signatures, even though they are frequently changed. Although this work is atonal, Palmer did not totally give up on the notion of key centers. There is always a “tonic” in each movement, although there are moments with two centers—one in each hand. The first and third movement are in C, and the second movement has G/G-flat as the centers; additionally, Palmer still relies on the conventional relationship of the tonic to the dominant. In other words, Palmer did not totally give up the tradition. It is not hard to conclude that Palmer’s Three Epigrams for piano is in the middle ground—he used traditions and his own creativity.
Hard Times and Carnival, by Isodore Freed, are for two pianos with four hands.
Those pieces have their own uniqueness, but they do contain a common thread. Freed was a church musician, and he used modes in this piece. That is the traditional side.
However, he did not use only the notes from the chosen scales; instead, he often added other notes that are not from the models. In this way, Freed created some dissonant sonorities. Those notes can be treated as “non-chord tones.” But those accidentals happen frequently enough to provide support to the other hypothesis—that they are from another
123 mode, to create a sense of “bitonality.” In this piece, the mixture of tradition and innovation is obvious. The composer borrowed the church tune Hard Times. Moreover,
Freed had in mind to use constant iterations and fragmentations of the initial motive.
Further, Freed frequently changed time signatures, and employed some notes outside the keys to create dissonance.
The same approach is also apparent in Freed’s second piece, Carnival. The time signature is often changed, and it is also motivic. However, this piece also has a sense of primitivism from Stravinsky. The melody is not lyrical. The key of this piece lies in the ambiguity between D major and D Dorian. The overall structure is not as well-organized.
When the A section returns, the tempo is not the same as the first time it occurs. It naturally creates a loose structure.
Robert Starer’s piece, The Fringes of a Ball, has as its subtitle Waltz Variations on a Theme by William Schuman. Traditionally, waltzes by Beethoven, Schubert,
Chopin, Brahms, and Johann Strauss, are undoubtedly associated with 3/4. These composers wrote many famous waltzes, such as Chopin waltzes for piano, and the
Viennese waltzes of Johann Strauss. However, Starter did not only use 3/4 in the waltz sections, but also 2/4. It is such a revolutionary change. The composer still used the grandioso style of conventional German waltzes—festive, joyful, and delicate. The Waltz time for two-pianos still gravitates to those same moods. The innovation is also in phrasal structures. Typically, waltzes have four-measure phrases. However, the Carnival is not in traditional four-bar phrases. It is obvious that the piece lies somewhere in the middle
124 ground—some innovations within a conventional framework. Thus, this piano work is between the “inside” and the “outside.”
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Appendix: Thoughts on Programming Modern American Music for Recitals
For college piano majors (both undergraduate and graduate students) programming degree recitals or auditions, it is easy to feel like the standard piano repertoire is getting smaller over time rather than larger. Although the total number of compositions has increased over the course of music history, the standard piano repertoire has not changed very much. For auditions (at music schools or conservatories) and piano recitals, the repertoire requirements are very much the same: one or two virtuosic etudes, a major work from Baroque period (usually by J.S. Bach), an entire
Classical sonata, and a large-scale Romantic or Contemporary piece. In theory, this kind of policy allows performers some freedom to choose piano works within each era, rather than prescribing a set list of repertoire. In practice, however, students are often encouraged by teachers to program pieces that match their artistic and technical skills, and so the same works are often recommended and performed over and over again. Thus, a lack of exposure to new repertoire can constrain a pianist’s choices. In other words, the standard piano literature has become smaller even as the number of available works has expanded.
Despite this challenge, performers can choose to study new piano music for recitals, adding some freshness while still following the requirements for the standard repertoire elsewhere on the program. For example, since I started practicing the seven
132 piano pieces I discuss in this document, I performed the four solo piano pieces (by
Thomson, Verrall, Weber, and Hoiby) in one of my recitals. I programmed these pieces alongside Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky to craft a program that created an American “picture” to complement the classic Russian “picture.” I enjoyed performing these American works; however, my audiences also told me that this program helped them to discover new works that move beyond the overly-performed mainstream repertoire.
As a pianist, I am deeply invested in advocating the performance of new music. I am eager to continue introducing contemporary music to my audiences. I hope pianists can add these kinds of pieces to their recitals in the future. When they program their recitals or concerts, they should seek out unknown or lesser-known piano pieces and introduce them to the audiences in their performances. In this way, both pianists and listeners can taste some new “colors.” People usually feel enjoyment and curiosity when embracing fresh ideas. I believe this is also one of the ways to keep the development of art music flourishing. Otherwise, the piano repertoire will continue to shrink.
Having been influenced by Dr. Hong, I developed an interest in listening to and playing contemporary piano music, particularly modern American piano music. The overall social and political conditions of the United States allow composers to have freedom to write any kind of music they want, and to write as much as they can by following their passion. American composers have encountered music from different countries and cultures, which has led to exciting mixtures of various parameters. In other words, American music is highly eclectic. As a pianist, I can easily find many interesting
133 modern American piano pieces to add to my repertoire, even though they are lesser- known so far. I believe pianists can benefit from learning these pieces to improve artistry and technique, because the eclecticism naturally brings a variety of exciting challenges.
Pianists seem uniquely positioned to welcome new music to their repertoire and introduce that to the audience; there is evidence of a pianistic tradition of embracing modern music. For example, Sviatoslav Richter often performed entire recitals to introduce the pieces by Tchaikovsky, Medtner, Grieg, Dvorak, and Prokofiev, whose works were not yet famous. Other masters also dedicated themselves to performing new or unknown works. Vladimir Horowitz premiered the piano sonata by Samuel Barber and performed the second piano sonata Op. 36 and the third piano concerto Op. 30 by Sergei
Rachmaninoff. His performances of the pieces influenced their inclusion into the standard piano repertory.
Today, college piano majors are encouraged to be creative and independent. With their curiosities and interests, they have opportunities to program non-standard piano repertoire for their juries, recitals, and auditions. Of course, students should know the requirements of the repertoire (standard repertoire) for their degree recitals. However, they should also seek out new music based on this existing framework, or take their professors’ suggestions. World-class musicians often blend their own creativity with the knowledge and experience of traditional formal training, and this fusion is often what pushes music history forward. Without a doubt, there are many wonderful piano works that await pianists’ explorations. Students can and should pair new works with those of standard repertory to lead the audience on an inspiring musical journey.
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