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The Bulletin O F T H E So C I E T Y F O R Am E R I C a N Mu S I C F O U N D E D in H O N O R O F Os C a R G The Bulletin OF THE SOCIETY FOR AMERIC A N MU S IC FOUNDED IN HONOR OF OS C A R G. T. SONNECK Vol. XXXIV, No. 3 Fall 2008 Because Time was in the Air (Part III) Editor’s Note: This is the last in a three-part series of essays that Judith Tick wrote on a commission from the Tanglewood Music Center to use in the program book for the Festival of Contemporary Music, 28 July–2 Aug. 2007, where she served as a scholar-in-residence. The festival was organized by John Harbi- son on the theme “The Generation of 1938,” with programs including music by William Bolcom, Alvin Curran, David Chaitkin, Paul Chihara, John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, Charles Fussell, Philip Glass, John Harbison, John Heiss, Julius Hemphill, William Thomas McKinley, Elsworth Milburn, Stanley Silverman, Harvey Sollberger, Joan Tower, Olly Wilson, Charles Wuorinen, and Ellen Zwillich. Essays I and II appeared in the Bulletin, vol. XXXIV, no. 1: 18–22. Appalachian Spring was once again a director Robert Wilson, was produced at beautiful piece. the uptown venue of the Metropolitan Time was in the air, carrying with it Opera House; its experiments with per- new language, including “neo” terms and formative time have made this work a his- referential practices, as in the new tonal- torical benchmark. As part of the FCM ism, neo-Baroque compositions, “New generation, Philip Glass symbolizes the Romanticism,” quotation, “polystylism,” authority of the minimalist movement, and intertextuality. This discourse sug- – Judith Tick on its way to mainstream recognition by Matthews Distinguished gests a developing stage in the assimila- the mid- to late 1970s. University Professor of Music tion between the past and the future. The Glass’s achievements point to stylistic Northeastern University, Boston German philosopher Reinhart Koselleck divisions within FCM composers which wrote, “All testimony answers to the they themselves so readily acknowl- problem of how, in a concrete situation, edge. Most of them have not adopted The following article has also appeared experiences come to terms with the past; his aesthetic of purposeful stasis. (It has online in NewMusicBox, the web maga- how expectations, hopes, prognoses that remained for a younger generation to zine from the American Music Center are projected into the future become ar- embrace and then develop more fully its 1 (www.newmusicbox.org). ticulated into language.” Music embod- potential.) Even so, minimalism made yet ies this process within itself. more room for everyone by swinging the Without using the term “postmodern” Finding ways to forge new syntheses and pendulum of stylistic priorities so far in – barely known in musical discourse in the opposite direction away from postwar techniques for themselves through ex- the late 1960s – Leonard Meyer described plorations and surprising reconciliations serialism that the middle ground looked it in Music, the Arts and Ideas (1967). His like a radical center. of tonal and post-tonal languages, the formal definition is technically precise, continued on page 54 generation of Festival of Contemporary and ends with a literary soundbite that Music (FCM) composers moved into the is still relevant: “[This is] a period not forefront of American classical music in characterized by the linear cumulative de- in this issue: the 1970s and ’80s. For many of them, velopment of a single fundamental style, Judith Tick | 53 one stylistic turning point enabling this but by the coexistence of a multiplicity of development occurred in the mid-1970s. quite different styles in a fluctuating and Heiss says: Yale OHAM Grant | 59 It was time. By the mid ’70s a lot dynamic steady-state.” of people decided to act differently. New ways of telling time moved from Conference Updates | 59 It felt artistically right. It got to be background into foreground more direct- the mid ’70s and the feeling came.... ly in the next decade. In 1976 the opera All this was “in the air”.... Suddenly Einstein on the Beach, composed by Philip Book Reviews | 62 Glass in collaboration with the visionary continued from page 53 Other composers within the FCM gen- greatly among some FCM composers, in eration began reinventing tonal practices the background hover similar principles Several factors in the 1960s helped di- in the late ’60s, provoked more by the in- and dreams. Rzewski honed radical poli- rect the flow of aesthetic traffic along the vestment of cultural authority in vernacu- tics, which has informed his destiny as an way to Meyer’s “dynamic steady-state.” lar expressive culture as a whole than rock artist, particularly struck by Pete Seeger’s An old and frail Stravinsky, who was liv- in particular. In 1967 David Del Tredici advice to include in whatever he wrote ing and working in the United States, used pop art as his bridge to Lewis Car- tunes that everybody can sing. Richard provided models and inspiration for the roll’s world of Alice in Wonderland. He Teitelbaum set himself the goal of tran- continued quest for growth within tradi- deliberately included electric guitars, an scultural improvisation, combining East- tion. Even his “living presence” for Harbi- instrument he described as “a monster in ern idioms with improvisational practices. son symbolized the unknown future. “He the world of classical music.” Around then For Chihara the late 1960s offered respite was like a nova coming over the horizon” Bill Bolcom found ragtime through the from academia: “I resorted to a Cageian to Heiss. “Stravinsky was my hero. I just burgeoning interest in historical Ameri- silence. I read Zen in the Art of Archery.... waited for his next piece,” Borden says. can music that would come to fruition in One of the things he said was ‘I am the Stravinsky’s late works communicated the next Bicentennial decade. He regards arrow. I cannot miss.’ You would identify new possibilities for integrating tonal his music from the late ’60s as early ex- yourself with many things. [This was] our concerns into twelve-tone music within amples of “the trend [of] integrating all posture as composers.... We embraced a Spartan Webern-like texture of restraint kinds of music in the same piece to find this, and other philosophies. We didn’t and clarity. Curran said, “I began to find interfaces.” Similarly, David Borden wrote resist.” Few did. [In Memoriam] Dylan Thomas and Agon a piece that “began with nasty atonal stuff The cultural aftershocks of the Civil even more critically beautiful because then it broke into a friendly tonal part. Rights Movement and the Vietnam war they were of their time. They still had a George Rochberg heard it, he had already led directly to the intellectual revolutions critical edge.” By 1972 Wuorinen con- converted to tonality in the Beethoven of the 1970s of second-wave feminism templated his creative future through the sense. He said, ‘Nice try, Dave.’” and African American cultural national- prism of Stravinsky’s late works, writing How much the ’60s in general precipi- ism. Both have had special relevance for in 1986 how tated these challenges to authority and hi- some FCM composers, who by virtue of “some of us, as composers, have been erarchy remains an open question. Who gender (Tower, Zwilich) and race (Hemp- so profoundly affected by the late living through those years was not aware hill, Wilson) faced different professional works, in which are first exhibited of the Sturm und Drang around us? In the and creative obstacles and challenges techniques and devices we have watershed year of 1968, the FCM genera- to their own artistic development. For extracted to employ and extend, as to want to predict that the final chapter tion turned thirty, the age at which one al- both women and minorities, the recla- of his output will be the most signifi- legedly lost the “trust” of the younger gen- mation of history by previously margin- cant in the long run. [They point] eration. They behaved as individuals with alized subjects had a salutary impact on even to a possible synthesis of the respect to politics, some more, others less their growth. (How many other occupa- tonal and twelve-tone approaches.”2 directly involved. Harbison, for example, tions still use the noun “woman” as an Another contributing factor was the is unique among the group in taking an adjective, as in “woman composer”?) For historical gain in the cultural weight of activist role in spending a Freedom Sum- Tower the emergence of historical schol- popular music in the 1960s. While rock mer doing civil rights voting registration arship proved to be a primary tool for and roll from the ’50s mattered little to work in Mississippi. Chihara remembers “self-determination” and “autonomy,” to the FCM generation, most of these com- how the Vietnam War mattered above ev- quote Gerda Lerner, a pioneering feminist posers responded to the changing valence erything else to him. historian of the 1970s. After she partici- of vernacular music filled with ever more A third factor concerns philosophical pated in the International Conference of gravitas during this period. As “Beatlema- idealism and the extent to which compos- Women in Music in New York in 1981, nia” took hold, the musical intelligentsia ers and intellectuals invested music with Tower began organizing concert series for fell like bowling pins knocked down by utopian agency at the turn of the ’60s and performances of neglected music by his- such albums as Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s mid ’70s. We can only briefly hint at con- torical and contemporary women, an ac- Lonely Hearts Club Band, with composers nections here. Many FCM composers be- tivity that she continues to this day. (e.g., Berio, Rorem) and historians (e.g., lieved that art could provide redemptive Zwilich, ever the “contrarian” (her Wilfred Mellers, William Mann) writing experiences to pervasive social alienation.
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