Dick Wernick, George Rochberg, and George Crumb (/e/110 right) get together near tl1 eir home turfs in Dela••"lre County ju.\1 to oblige photographer Bruce Stromberg, who was obliging our reader.1. Three Penn composers

By Patricia McLaughlin

HEY laughed when I sat down to were talking. After a while, he asked, write about contemporary music. Professors Crumb, "Doe anybody know what this is?" ToT write, specifically, about George I listened for a minute. "Sounds like Crumb, George Rochberg, and Richard Rochberg, and Jan de Gaetani," I said. "Is it?'' Wernick, three composers who teach in Wernick are all "I don't know," he said. He went to look Penn's mu ic department. I'd known they at the record jacket. It was Jan de Gaetani, were there all along. I'd heard of them. major figures in singing Crumb's Ancient Voices of Once I even heard one of Crumb's works Children. -I'm not sure anymore which one-in contemporary So, there. concert at the University Museum and That's not really the point, though. As liked it. I'd heard- vaguely-about their mUSIC Rochberg said, "Is it important that when Pulitzers, their Naumburgs, their Ford and you hear a Beethoven symphony that you Rockefeller and Fromm and Guggenheim know that it's Beethoven? Suppose that and N.E.A. fellowships and commi sions. you've never heard Beethoven before, and Beyond that, I knew just about nothing I have been to four operas in my life, you're somewhere where there' a radio, about them. I didn't know anything about and slept through major portions of three and you hear this glorious thing-and you their mu ic . And I had, really, no idea of them. (More to do with exhau tion than never find out that it's Beethoven. Doe how "important" they were on the con­ with boredom-I always seem to go to it change the fact that this is a glorious temporary mu ic cene until I talked to opera the day after a lcepless night. Fate, expression in music? Doesn't change it Donal Henahan, the mu ic critic of The maybe.) The one I tayed awake for I sat one iota. We make too much of this bu i­ New York Times, about them. through the first act of in a tate of buzz­ ness of name." My friend Warren lent me some Bartok, ing, blooming confusion: I'd been prepped No, the point is that, over the past orne Honegger, some Cage, some Stock­ on the drive into ew York with a lengthy couple of months of researching thi piece, hausen, some Ives, some Hindemith, to de cription of the plot of L'/taliana en I, who had never listened to any music listen to for background. H e was going to Algeri. I didn't learn until intermission much past Beethoven, I, who had taken it lend me orne Varese, but he couldn't that what was actually going on on the for granted that contemporary mu ic was find any. tage of the Met was Traviata. something accessible only to contempo­ "Don't stack my records,'' he aid. I have known for some time that serial rary musicians, have found several pieces "Play them one at a time. Handle them music has nothing to do with Cheerios, of music written in the last decade that I only by the edges. Put them back in their bllt I'd never figured out what it did actually like li tening to. jackets when you're through. Promi e?" have to do with. Mo t of my ad hoc record collection of I promised. My mu ical sophistication i uch that, contemporary music has to go back to the Then he said, kindly, ''Pats, don't try to when I interviewed George Crumb, what library-or to Warren-next week. But be a music critic. Don't try to sound as if impressed me most wa how well he there are a couple of records that I bought you know what you're talking about. phlyed the piano. He was ju t fiddling -paid my own money for-and that I You'll make a fool of your elf. You don't around while I took picture . But it expect to keep listening to. There are a know anything about music. Don't ounded o infinitely much better than couple more that I plan to buy as soon as pretend." anything that had resulted from my high I get paid for writing this article. And I Somewhat tactlessly put, you may think, school piano les ons. The same with Roch­ mean to hold off on returning Wernick's but nonetheless the advice of a true friend. berg. He played about 12 notes during the tape of the single performance to date of I don't know anything about music. interview-ju. t enough to give me an idea Visions of Terror and Wonder until I can I can usually tell the difference between, of what "imagist" mu ic ound like. But find someone with a reel-to-reel tape re­ say, Handel and Wagner. There are a few you could tell he knew what he was doing. corder who will let me play it one thing. I recognize: the Brandenburg. Still. The other night, after dinner with more time. Beethoven's Third, Fifth, Seventh, and orne friends, one of them put on a record­ On the ba is of this experience, I fe el Ninth Symphonies. But sometime I get ing of what was-obviously-contempo­ qualified to give you orne advice. If you're them mixed up. rary music . I wasn't paying attention. We at all interested in expanding your mu ical continued 18 PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE

horizons past the 19th century, if you're Rochberg, a card-carrying serialist for a interested in knowing what the music of Crumb says that while, apparently-this is the impression I Crumb, Rochberg, and Wernick is like, got from Henahan-assured his place in you shouldn't read this article, you should talking about music 20th-century mu ical history when he write it. Or, at lea t, you should re earch it. is like trying repudiated serial ism in the early Sixties Spend a Sunday at the Free Library and began exploring the possibilities of listening to Rochberg's early work and to say something traditional tonality.) Wernick al o speaks being perplexed. (It helps if the person at both passionately and humorously about the turntable across from your keeps tap­ that's already the general mu ic public's avoidance of ping his foot to the apparently foot­ new music. Borrow his tape of Visions of tapping rhythm that i coming, unheard been said Terror and Wonder. (He describes the by you, out of his earphones.) compo ilion as "a great, big orchestra Spend a couple of days at the Univer- piece, with voice-a big orchestra. It's ity' Music Library, reading the highly not an anti-intellectual piece, but it's not technical works on contemporary mu ic Stern with the Pittsburgh, the Chicago meant to be tudied in a clas room and the mu ic librarian will helpfully recom­ Symphony, and the San Francisco then taken apart. It's very hard to mend as uitable for the general reader Symphony. characterize your own work-it's a big, and becoming more perplexed. Read You will find that he discus e contem­ Romantic work.'') everything in every clipping file you can porary music and it place in Western Take the same train to Media and spend lay your hands on pertaining to Crumb, musical tradition elegantly, articulately, an afternoon with Crumb in his cluttered Rochberg, and Wernick-per onality pro­ pa ionately. (He also has a nice smile, the study. ("My wife .ays it's the me iest file , review , long critical articles-and kind that come on suddenly and illumi­ room in the hou e.") run a lot of it through a Xerox copier. nates a face.) Get him to talk about the Crumb has been a musician since he was (The Xeroxing is largely occupational similaritie between modern music and six or seven, when his father, a clarinetist therapy; you may not understand most of modern art and architecture. Get him to with the Charleston Symphony, started this stuff, but at least you have physical talk about tradition and the Japanc e teaching him to play a small E-ftat clarinet. possession of it , it' all right there in your theater. Get him to play the piano. Ask (Hi hands were till too small to reach briefcase.) Check the Music Index, the him to explain all the things that have the fingering on a regular clarinet.) He Dictionary of Contemporary Music, and been confu ing you for the pa t few week . started composing when he was 10-"little o forth. Read Rochberg's "Reflections on Take the Media Local to Moylan and Mozart pieces, later on Romantic pieces, Schoenberg," his "The Avant-Garde and pend a couple of hours with Wernick, all imitative of earlier styles.'' He studied the Aesthetics of Survival," and his 'The talking about contemporary music and mu ic at Mason College of Music and Renewal of Mu ic." Then re-read them. the way he writes hi . Fine Arts, at the Cincinnati Conservatory Read the liner notes on all of Crumb' , Wernick grew up in Dorchester, Mas ., of Music, at the University of Illinois, at Rochberg's, and Wernick' recording . and still retain his Boston accent. He the Berkshire Music Center at Tangle­ You will have to buy a copy of Th e ~tudied at Brandeis Univer ity and, after wood, at the Hochschule fUr Musik in Han•aul Brief Dictionary of Music to finishing hi M.A., embarked on a varied Berlin, and at the University of Michigan, look up all the word you've come compo ing career. He was musical director and he has taught at Illinois, Michigan, across that mean nothing to you: retro­ and compo er-in-re idencc for the Royal Hollins College, the University of Colo­ grade, chromaticism. tone row, 12-tone Winnipeg Ballet and wrote a series of rado, and at Buffalo. Crumb's Pulitzer method, tonality. etc. short ballet for the Canadian Broadcast­ was awarded in 1968 for Echoes of Time By now you should be solidly confused, ing Company, pent even years in New and the River. impres ed with (or depre sed by) your York doing free-lance compo ing for People who write articles about Crumb quixotici min having undertaken this theater, TV, and film, and was, for two are always describing him as "painfully project, and ready for the next step. years, resident composer for the Bay Shore shy." If you talk to him about anything Stop by Rochberg's office in the Music Public School in Bay Shore, Long I land. but music-e.g., old photograph , which Annex-it is o bare, furni hed with a Wernick has taught composition at the fa cinate him-you will see immediately piano, a desk. two chair , and an ashtray, State Univer ity of New York at Buffalo that this i a lot of baloney. Talking to that it looks unoccupied-and talk to him and at the Univer ity of Chicago. He ha him about music i another story. "You for a couple of hours about his music and been musical director of the Penn Con­ pend a couple of hours with him and go that of hi colleagues. temporary Players since he came to the away thinking you've got some marvelous You will already know that Rochberg University. He won hi Pulitzer last year, things, and then you look at your notes wa born in Pater on, .J ., graduated for Visions of Terror and Wonder, but later, and you've got nothing," Henahan from Montclair State Teacher · College, the accompanying fame ha not yet quite ays. Talking about music, Crumb hesi­ and studied composition at the Mannes caught up with him : a econd performance tate a lot, and frequently lapses into School of Music in New York with Hans of Visions has been scheduled for next !.ilence. I think partly he just doesn't Weisse, George Szell, and Leopold season at Carnegie Hall, but so far it has like talking about music-e pecially Mannes, before serving overseas during been heard only once, at its premiere. his own-and partly he doesn't see the World War II. After the army, he tudied "The strange thing about the timing of point in it, anymore than he see the at Curti In titute and earned a master· the Pulitzer Prize," Wernick points out, point of writing liner notes for his re­ degree at Penn. Rochberg is widely "is that it's announced about one month cording . " It' like, you know, trying to credited with rebuilding the music depart­ after all the major orchestra have made say something that's been said," he says. ment in the 1960s. It was he who, a chair­ up their schedules." "A far as you're concerned, it's been man of the department, invited George Wernick will give you a brisk, no­ said definitively in the music it elf. Crumb to join the faculty in 1965 and, in nonsense explanation of what was going "People want explanations, some­ 1968, brought Richard Wernick to Penn. on in academic music in the Fifties and time ,"he says. "But there's so much His most recent work, a violin concerto Sixties-i.e., serialism and aleatory music that's intuitive in composing that can't commi sioned by the Pitt burgh Sym­ -and why he was never much interested be accounted for. There's no way of phony Orchestra during the Bicentennial, in either. (He i n't alone. Crumb has never proving much of anything. There's no for Isaac Stern. has been performed by used what i known as the serial technique. way of really saying in words why continued 20 PE NSYLVANIA GAZETTE Listening tn: three discographies

George Crumb ANCI ENT VOICES OF CHILDREN ...... Nonesuch 7 125 5 MAKROKOSMOS , VOLUME I...... Nonesuch 71293

BLACK ANGELS ...... CRI 283, Vox/Turnabout 34610 MAKROKOSMOS, VOLUME II ...... Columbia 34135

DREAM SEQUENCE ...... Columbia • MUSIC FOR A SUMMER EVENING (MAKROKOSMOS, VoLUME III) ...... Nonesuch 71311 EcHOES OF TIME AND THE RivER ...... Louisville 711 NIGHT OF THE FOUR MOONS ...... Columbia 32739 ELEVEN ECHOES OF AUTUMN, 1965 ...... CRI 233 NIGHT MUSIC I...... CRI 218 FrvE PIECES FOR PIANO ...... Advance FGR-3 SONATA FOR VroLINCELLO ...... Desto 7169 FOUR NOCTURNES: NIGHT MUSIC II ...... Des to 7157/59 Mainstream 5016 SONGS, DRONES, AND REFRAINS OF DEATH ...... Desto 7155

LUXAETERNA FOR FIVE MASKED MUSICIANS ...... Columbia• Vox BAL AENA E FOR THR EE MASK ED PLAY ERS ...... ' . . . Columbia 32739 MADRIGALS, BooKs I-IV ...... Vox 34523

George Rochberg

BAGATELLES ...... Advance RICORDAN ZA FOR PIA 0 AND CELLO ...... CRI 337

BLACK SoUNDS ...... Grenadilla Records SERENAT E D'ESTATE ...... Nonesuch 71220

BLAKE SONGS ...... Nonesuch 71302 SONGS IN PRAISE OF KRISHNA ...... CRI

CAPRICE VARIATIONS ...... Musical Heritage STRING QuARTET No. 1, 1952 ...... CRI 337

CARNIVAL Musrc (Alan Mandel, pianist) . . Grenadilla Records STRING QuARTET No. 2, 1959-61 (w ith voice) ...... CRI, Vox/ Turnabout34524 CHAMBER SYMPHONY FOR 9 INSTRUMENTS ...... Des to 6444 STRING QuARTET No. 3, 1971...... Nonesuch 71283 CoNTRA MoRTEM ET TEMPus ...... CRI 231 SYMPHONY No. 1, 1949-55 ...... Louisville 634 DIALOGUES FOR CLARINET AND PIANO ...... Capra NIGHT MUSIC ...... Louisville Duo CoNCERTANTE FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO ...... Advance 6 SYMPHONY No. 2, 1958 ...... CSP 6379 Duo CONCERTANTE FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO ...... CRI 337 TABLEAUX FOR SOPRANO AND 11 PLAYERS . . . Turnabout 34492 LA BocCA DELLA VERITA ...... Ars Nova/ Ars Antigua THR EE PSALMS ...... Oberlin College MUSIC FOR THE MAGIC THEATER ... . . ,, ...... Desto 6444 TRIO FOR VIOLIN, CELLO, AND PIANO ...... Turnabout 34520 NACH BACH (harpsichord or piano) ...... Grenadilla Records VIOLIN CoNCERTO ...... Columbia PsALM 23 ...... Trinity Church, New York

Richard Wernick HAIKU OF 8ASHO ...... CRI. A PRAYER FOR JERUSALEM ...... CRI 344

KADDISH-REQUIEM ...... Nonesuch 71303 SONGS OF REMEMBRANCE ...... , , ...... Nonesuch 71342

MOONSONGS FROM THE JAPANESE ...... CRl*

*To be released.

December, 1977 21 Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is a great "One of my kids, for example, likes piece of music. Everybody know it is­ Wernick says that Stravinsky very much-he love to play everybody with ears. It's just there, Stravinsky, or listen to Stravin ky, so there's no question. But why-that's in most people haven't that's a preference. But he accepts the category of impossible questions." even discovered Stravin ky like anybody el e would accept Still, you can learn something from Haydn. Absolutely nothing strange in experiencing Crumb' visible unea e when that music has that music to him. There was a per­ you ask him to talk about his music. formance on TV-he was playing in a You can learn something about the been written in youth orchestra at the time-of Schoen­ essential untranslatability of mu ical berg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, and he ideas into language, and you can learn this century got very excited: he said, 'Why don't omething about what he means when he we play that?' He didn't realize it wa a says, "I've been a purely intuitive little too hard for a youth orchestra-but composer." he wanted to play it, it wa an exciting You hould also look at his score - I know what contemporary music piece. So I think it's a matter of condi­ partly because they are, some of them, ound like." He did admit he liked it. tioning, I really do. If people will listen­ beautiful and amazing graphically, the Then I played Rochberg' Third String and it's not even a matter of listening taves spiraling or circling or forming Quartet, which begin with what are, to 'intelligently'-1 think it' a matter of crosses, and partly becau e, if you can a 19th-century ear, dissonant violins. just listening." read them well enough to grasp their "Ah," Michael aid with orne ati fac­ To support his argument that most technical sophi tication-which I can't, tion. "Now that's contemporary music." people have trouble listening to contem­ I'm going on faith here-you will learn "What do you mean, Michael?" I porary music only because they're not something about what Crumb doesn't a ked. used to it, Wernick cites the example of mean when he says he' always been "a "Screechy," he said. a friend of his who came to this country purely intuitive composer." ("Crumb i Why doe contemporary music sound from lndia-"He's Ali Akbar Khan' after simplicity," Henahan says, "but you o different from the mu ic most people drummer, he's a wonderful musician, one look at the core and it's terrifically are used to li tening to, I asked Wernick. of the leading people in India, and he complex.") "Becau e they haven't listened to much could not understand Western mu ic at And, if you're invited, you should new music, that's all," he said. all. And that included all of it-a// of it­ certainly tay for dinner. You see a dif­ But even if they had, wouldn't it till whether it was contemporary, Classical, ferent side of Crumb when he starts ound different? or Romantic. He would just sit there pulling out his books of old photographs, "Well," Wernick aid, "every com­ bewildered-to him it was just one big and Liz Crumb's spaghetti, for all her poser ounds different. Mozart sounds cacophony, just like many of us react to apologie , i delicious. different from Beethoven-but people Indian music. We just don't understand it All thi will help. A few things will can identify with them. I'd hope my -you know, after a while it becomes a begin to fall into place. But, mo tly, you mu ic would ound different from every­ din. Chinese music's even more difficult­ should li ten to the mu ic. "Hearing the body else's, becau e I'd want it to be Chinese opera. Japanese music, you know actual mu ic i the be t way to get into mine-but somehow your use of the -very hard. Well, it's a cultural thing. mu ic ," Crumb ays. Listen to it. and word different i that it's very different We're just not accustomed to it." listen to it again. from the music that most people are used It would be nice to be able to leave it You will need to listen to it again to. But that' becau e most people are at that. The trouble with leaving it at because mo t contemporary mu ic u ed to listening to music that wa com­ that is that even many musicians, who are (Rochberg's recent work i an exception, po ed up until about 1880, and that's it. accustomed to listening to much of the ort oO doesn't ound like "regular" But thi i 1977! The 20th century i music written in the Fifties and Sixties music, like the music most people are almost over, and most people haven't and understand the principles according u ed to li tening to. (Even Crumb admit even di covered that music ha been to which it was composed, till find it that when he fir t heard Bartok, when he written in this century. difficult to li ten to, and do not like it was a enior in high chool in Charleston, "It's usually not their fault," he added very much. W.Va., he was "perplexed. I didn't under­ quickly, forgiving. " It' the fault of the Crumb characterizes the Fifties and stand the style, it took orne li tening.'') big orchestras and the mass media. It's Sixties as "a period which was involved I think it' becau e o much new music much ea ier to promote something that with a lot of experimentation for its own ounds "different" and perplexing that people are already comfortable with. It's . ake, rather than being experimentation most people-even people who like other one of the great tragedie of our culture- which supported some expres ive interest. kinds of mu ic-are not o much just 77 year into the 20th century and my There are exceptions, but there was a sort not interested in contemporary music as kids still come home from chool and are of aridity, at least to my taste, and the they are actively prejudiced again tit. told things about 20th-century mu ic that whole emotive force of music was One night my friend Michael stopped are absolute poppycock because the neglected, underplayed, or even ignored by for a drink. "Michael," I said, "want teachers that are teaching music in the in some cases." to hear orne contemporary music?" public school don't know anything about "A lot of post-Webernian music, the "Not particularly," he said. it. They get told that there are no melo­ music written in the Fifties and Sixties," "You'll like it," I said, sounding like an die ! So my kid walk out of class Wernick explains, "was based on Schoen­ Alka-Seltzer commercial. I played Roch­ whi tling Aaron Copland' Billy the Kid berg's 12-tone method. A lot of it wa. berg' Ricordanza for Cello, compo ed for the teacher-nearly got lugged for based on methods of composition in in 1972, which Rochberg call "an doing it. They get told it's discordant, it's which the notes were not governed by obviou regression to an earlier kind of unpleasant. My kids and the Crumb kids the composer at all , they were governed mu ical thinking-it's a, for me, very -they li ten to plenty of contemporary by some sort of formula set up ahead of beautiful, imple, direct piece of mu ic, mu ic, they ju t hear it, it's just natural time, consciously de igned to take the it just sings." for them, they don't mind it." personality out of music. On the other After the first few measures, Michael But do they actually like it? Do they hand, there was aleatory mu ic, in which said, "That's not contemporary mu ic . have preference ? it was pure chance that governed; the

22 PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE composer wrote nothing really." (Warren and fantasy sometimes missing from the provides a good example of aleatory Since he wrote usually severe serial music." He himself mu ic: John Cage's Do Something Useful has written that at the beginning of his for Twenty Minutes concert, which he his last serial career he thought he had found in attended when he was in college. Cage work, in 1963, Schoenberg's method "the means to ay sat on stage at a desk, writing letters or what I wanted or had to. I was convinced balancing his checkbook or something, Rochberg has been of the historical inevitability of the while microphones picked up the scratch­ 12-tone language-! felt I was living at ing of his pen, the turning of pages, the a staunch critic Jhe very edge of the musical frontier, of occasional creaking of the chair. Cage at hi tory itself." But since he wrote hi last least seems to have intended a degree of of serialism serial work, in 1963, he ha been one of humor. Stockhausen, on the other side, the method's strongest critic and has seems to have been distressed by the become increasingly interested in the pos- comic effects produced by some of his ibilities offered by (more or less) old­ works. But let's not get into that.) ''What's happened, you ee," Wernick tyle tonality. After Webern, what you got, it seems, says, "is that as this technique got more Henahan calls him "one of the most was a hardening of Schoenberg's 12-tone in the hands of theorists, the method important of contemporary composer techniques. "It purports not to be tonal," became more important than there ults, in having the courage to repudiate Wernick explains. (There is, it seems, no many time . And, in essence, any kind of 12-tone-to be a university composer longer any adequate way of defining what a ystem which is too doctrinaire becomes and go against that style! Whether his the word tonal means; it used to refer to anti-musical. That's what happened. It's mu ic will hold up is another question, music written in a recognizable key-e.g., pretty much finished now, that's the but I think it will. To see two people like the music most people are used to-but interesting thing. It's on its way out." Crumb and Roehberg break out of that­ now that almo t nobody writes anything Dispiriting. You spend all thi time Carter, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ses ions-it in a particular key, it can be used, it trying to figure out the intricacies of tone was a very strong cartel to go against. It seem~. to describe any music that does rows and seriali m only to find out that couldn't have happened in one of the not make a deliberate and uccessful it's pretty much all over anyway. major music centers, it couldn't have effort to avoid returning to a tonal Henahan concurs. "It's not over yet,'' happened in New York." "center." More on this later.) he says. "Twelve-tone is still taught To say that Crumb, Rochberg, and "Some of the things that come out of everywhere-as a certain kind of aca­ Wernick stand outside of serialism-and it can't help being tonal," Wernick con­ demic fugue once was. But the people have done so since well before it wa tinues. (You see what I mean?) "But one coming out now tend not to use it. It's sort fa hionable-is not to say that they con­ of the things they try to do is to avoid of thought to be yesterday's gardenia." stitute a school. I have been warned about tonality, as a matter of fact. Serial ism is Continuing the analogy with fugue, he this on all sides. By now, probably even part of that. You can write atonal music ay , "It's a kind of discipline you can get the hapless New York critic who once without being erial, but serial music is into and like-you can go anywhere, and referred to them as "the Philadelphia usually atonal. Serialism is an extension whatever else you can or can't do, you can chool" agrees that that was a mistake. of 12-tone. Twelve-tone has to do with the always say, 'Well, at least I can write a For one thing, their music sounds notes in a piece-how they're organized fugue.' It's the same with 12-tone." He entirely different. -and serial goes beyond that, it' a parallels the strictness of the serial method I would hesitate to ay so if Crumb method of organizing everything, not with the rise of the New Criticism in hadn't said, "Sometimes I think the best just the notes, but the rhythms and the literature at roughly the same time. The way of writing about music is not on a meters and the dynamics and the speeds. New Critics narrowed the scope of technical plane, but maybe using meta­ A tone row is like a scale-from C to B respectable literary inquiry to the text of phors, speaking in poetical terms in a inclusive, for example, counting all the the poem. You were only allowed to talk very general sense, trying to find verbal white notes and all the black notes. You about the words themselves. Curiosity analogues." But I keep thinking that can rearrange them in any order you about the poet's intention, the reader's Crumb's music-I'm thinking e pecially want, and whatever order you rearrange response, the social context of the poem­ of Makrokosmos, Volume I, but, a them in i a row, and the idea i that you or anything el e beyond the text it elf­ Crumb ays, "my music ince 1962 ha never repeat one until you do all 12. was frowned on. "People get a little been all of a piece"-sounds like what That's supposed to prevent any one of frightened of freedom," Henahan sug­ you might hear if you left an amplified them from asserting itself as having any gests. "They need a Gauleiter to help piano in a clearing in some Keatsian particular importance. And that's just the them out a little bit sometimes. It goes wood for a night, to be played at will by beginning of it. It can be a very rigid in cycles." a per onification of Night it elf, a per­ ystem in that, if you start fiddling Though serjali m may be "yesterday's former compounded out of nightwind around with those notes, you'll find that gardenia," it's worth knowing a little and stars and unidentifiable rustlings and there are relationships that spring up about it-and about how strong it was­ insect and animal voices and the occa­ among them so you can make rows that to see Crumb, Rochberg, and Wernick in sional passing hamadryad. It is other­ are four sets of relation hips of threes­ context. Crumb, apparently, never paid it worldly. It sound like no other music or three sets of relationships of fours- any attention. Wernick dabbled in it but (except, apparently, that of its imitators, or divide it in half. Compo ers have found "never took it very eriously." Rochberg who, according to Henahan, are that they can make the second half of the is the only one of the three to have been increasing). row the same as the first half of the row, a serious seriali t-Henahan cites his This has partly to do with Crumb's use but transposed to a different level-and Serenata d'estate as "one of the best of unconventional instruments-tuned so the thing can turn back on it elf. You 12-tone pieces," but it sounds to the water glasses played with a violin bow, can make tremendous games with it-it's untrained ear like a ort of subversive for example-and with his unconven­ wonderful fun." Wernick's tone unmis­ kind of 12-tone; it has, according to Eric tional u e of conventional instrument - takably reflects hi conviction that fun Salzman, who wrote the liner notes, "a running a chi el over the winding of a and games is not precisely the point of relaxed charm, a graceful swing, and an piano string to produce a glissando, or composing music. imaginative sense of instrumental sonority directing the performer to sing over the COIItitltlt!d December, 1977 23 trings to create are onance. He tarted music is tonal, but it sounds very different this sort of thing in 1963, with Night 'The three of from my music, which is tonal. My mu ic, Music I, which at one point directs one of which is tonal, sounds very different from the performer to lower a tam-tam into a us tend to be Rochberg's mu ic, which i tonal. We're tub of water to "bend" the sound. all kind of focu ing in on the hub of a I a ked Crumb whether he started Romantics of a wheel-but we're all out there on the experimenting with ound possibilities kind, our music edge, and we're all kind of looking in from becau e he felt limited by conventional different spots, o it comes out quite in trument . "Well, I guess so," he said, is emotional,' different. ounding not entirely convinced. "What "To hear us talk about music," Wernick you want to express in the mu ic depend Crumb says ays, "you would find an enormou on extending the re ources in certain amount of agreement. We're interested in directions, and this eemed like a fruitful the same thing musically pretty much. direction." We have a vast common ground of like The distinctive character of his sound mu ic. I thinlc we can u e the so-called and dislike -and we tend tore pect the world al o ha to do partly with the com­ di onance of 20th-century music-the same things. We all like music that' posers who influenced him. ''I was always musical structures, the harmonic true­ somehow grounded in tonality. We enjoy intere ted in composer -early compo ers lure of 20th-century music-I think it's mu ic that has ome kind of emotional like Debus y-who emu ic is involved po ible to u e those in such a way that strength. The three of us enjoy the pas­ with the coloristic a pects of ound," they produce a tonality of their own. sionate aspect of music rather than the he says. That's what I tried to do in Visions. It's cool a pect of music. But when these But I keep thinking-and I'm not even not in a key, it's not tonal in that sen e. things are projected on an individual sure exactly what I mean by this-that But I don't think there' any que tion but work, it come out quite differently, and the way Crumb's music ound ha more that it's a tonal work. Mo t of Crumb's that's a function of personality." to do with Crumb him elf than with hi Crumb says nearly the same thing: unconventional instrumentation or with ··compared with many styles being writ­ the influence of other composer . That How do you compose ten, the three of u tend to be Romantic may even be a trui m. But from li tening a piece of music? of a kind, our music is emotional. There to the rnu ic, and from talking to him, are cooler type in the field-more one gets the impres ion thqt hi mu ic is GEORGE CRUMB : "J don't know that classical, more constructional, more translated to the page-no matter how there's any short answer to that. It's a ab tract." arduou ly-directly from a p(\rt of his very slow proce with me, and I have Some of Rochberg's recent work­ mind that i inacce ible to language. Hi to do a lot of sketching. and many of especially the Ricordanza and the second mu ic seem , omehow, quinte entially my pieces stretch over years and arc part of his Third String Quartet-should per onal. Which i not to ay that it' not very low in maturing-Songs, Drones give no trouble even to somebody who's accessible to audiences: Henakan says and Refrains of Death. for example, never heard anything after Beethoven. Crumb "has succeeded in getting to a lot wa about a I 0-year proce . That wa After he left serial ism behind, in the early of people who think they don't like con­ the Ionge t torment. It involves te ling Sixtie , he began to experiment with quo­ temporary mu ic ; they hear a Crumb ideas and much revision-it' like tation or collages of traditional music. piece, and they're uddenly me merized." writing anything, I uppose." ''It wa my way of finding my way back," Crumb's mu ic ounds almost like a he ays. "When I broke with the sort of natural--or supernatural-phenomenon, GEORGE Ro HBERG: "Well, I tell strait-laced orthodoxy-12-tone, serial, li)(e, maybe, the ''music of the spheres." you, thi i maybe eva ive, but a very whatever you want to call it-1 couldn't, I Wernick's i harder to characterize, partly nice lady once asked Brahm how he simply couldn't just jump back into tonal because I've heard le s of it, but partly got the ideas for his works, and he music. It was a way of edging into it, back­ because it ound more like what you aid, 'Well, when I'm hining my ing into it. It was a kind of an arduous expect mu ic to sound like-it moves hoe in the morning.' There are two process, but after-I gue s the last major from point to point the way a classical or impossible que tions: why do you work of quotation or collage was my Third Romantic piece docs-at the same time compo e mu ic and how do you com­ Symphony-and I don't think I've done it that it harmonic are recognizably con­ po emu ic. The real proce sis indc- to any degree since, and I'm certainly not temporary. Wernick explains hi method cribable. I don't think it lends it elf intere ted in doing it now. In other words, of compo ition as u ing what are, to a to any kind of verbal pinning down." J reached the point where I aid, 'Now 19th-century ear, dis onances in such a you're going to try to write your own tonal way that they function as con onances. RICHARD WER ICK : "Oh, that' music, come what may.' ' ''I'm interested in tonality," he ays. almost impossible to get into. Jt really Talking about hi po t- erial work, "But the problem with that i that you is. It's incredibly arcane. The proces Rochberg ays, "In order to correct the can't define tonality. My concern is that -what you're asking fori a chapter situation, it's as though you have to find one houldn't put the definition of in a book. It varie with every piece. your way back out of a cul-de-sac, right? tonality in a box and a sociate it neces­ E entially what it is is the working So you sort of think very hard about sarily with 19th-century common prac­ out of mu ical ideas. It' not like where it all started from-because you tice, or with 18th-century common describing how you make a clay pot have to work your way back to the start­ practice. I think it's possible within the on a wheel ; it's not a mechanical ing point and then begin to understand, context of 20th-century language to proce . There's no et formula. J.-ikc well, what happened. employ tonality as a compositional a piece of music, the process ha a "I always find it interesting to see these means. We have certain interval and beginning, a middle, and an end: the corroborations of what I've been thinking chord now which used to be con idered beginning is trying out and rejecting for a long time popping up more and quite di sonant-which are now con- ideas, the middle is working out ideas, more now, like dai ie on a lawn. Ten idered qui~e con onant-and without and the end i producing the piece­ year ago I was saying this, and no one reverting to the con onance that wa and even that doe n't always hold." would have believed that, by now, archi­ prevalent in 18th- and 19th-century tects would be rejecting the Bauhaus, that

24 PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE painters and sculptors would be going Tazaki Eleven' and Tazaki Fifteen' and back to the figure. They're re-thinking Of the search so on, and their personal names have been their situation-and for a compo er it to all intents and purposes-not erased­ means writing melodies again-tunes!­ for originality, but simply set a ide, In other words, they becoming expre ive again-Romantic acknowledge that they belong to this if it's in fact nece ary. Rochberg says, tradition and that their per on is of no "How doe anything get into the 'What difference importance in carrying out the tradition. repertoire?'' he a ks. "Not by election, They only happen to be the historical not by committee choice. If it doesn't does it make who accident that is continuing the tradition­ speak, particularly to performers, they're and that is something that would be not going to be intere ted. And it doesn't wrote what?' marvclou , if the West would ever adopt matter how brilliantly it's organized, or that. We'd get away from all this idiocy­ on the basi of what fantastic set of intel­ you know, John Cage, and Boulez, and lectual principles or esthetic-if ph­ Stockhausen-all these people tormenting former don't re pond to it, they'r not what I feel is consistent with my view of themselves and each other-and us­ going to spend time learning it. If what l consider music to be a an art, as with their scream for innovation and player says, 'Gee, that feels good, J liked an expression of being human and being originality and o on. And it's all come to playing that,' then you've convinc d him. a mu ician. I can't hape that to every naught, because human life isn't lived Because players are not intellectu<¥s­ pas ing point of view. Because then you that way. Whether in society or art. I why should they be, really why shduld lose yourself, you just give yourself away, don't believe so. anyone be when you come right down to and everyone's opinion counts as much "We have to get back to producing art it? People who go to hear an orchestral or as yours." in a erious way, where, as a craftsman, a chamber concert-why impo e upon Speaking of Ricordanza, he ay , ''It's you know that you're building something them the nece sity to be philo opher or strange-I couldn't just write mu ic like which is, at least metaphorically, for all estheticians or theorists or anything? that any time I feel like it. It' not easy to time-10,000 years from now will ·ound They're people who need music as a part write really convincing tonal fTlUSic with as fresh and as good a , let's say, Beeth­ of their lives. I'm not particularly con­ no conces ion to what happened after oven sounds to us ISO years after he cerned with how deep their knowledge­ 1860or 1870." composed it. That's got to be the goal. quote, unquote--of music is, I'm con­ In his recent work, Rochberg cems to "I mean, fine, if l write a piece of music cerned with how intensely they feel what be working toward a rapprochement of -or if John Doe writes a piece of mu ic they've experienced-that's the key. l 20th-century idiom with the language of -in which by orne happy accident some don't think it's worth while to concern 19th-century tonality. "In the 20th new use of some old means emerges. yourself with the intellectual a pects of century," he says, "there've been some Great. Wonderful. But that's not the rca- composition and sort of ignore or di - amazingly beautiful things produced­ on for having written the piece in the connect that from the ex pres ive level. which are not cast in the mold of the first place, that's only incidental. I mean, "The situation's become so insane," he 19th or 18th century but are true, repre­ it seems to me that the real reason to write continues. "There are so many people entative 20th-century work . But thi that piece is that John Doe has something who feel that unless something is a de­ happened before 1945, before the end of so urgent-burning-that he' got to put parture-an obvious departure from what the Second World War, when, I think, down, that he simply must do that. Can't happened ye terday or the day before the adventure of 20th-century art was help himself. It's a compulsion, it's a yesterday-it's not worth paying attention entirely believable for those who prac­ ncce ity, without it, you know, he can't to. It doesn't matter in what way it ticed it. The doubts, the crumbling, live. That's the way he breathes. That's departs or, again, what it has to say, but crushing question , came in after the end what produces art. And, then, that, com­ only that this guy has done something that of the Second World War, and that' bined with thi madly obsessive love of no one ever thought of doing. In other where we arc now. Bartok's generation­ the craft, of the tradition-to know that words, we arrive at the condition of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg-they you're only the latest millimeter added innovation for its own ake. I don't think could believe in thi , becau e mo t of to this long line, and the hope that if you art and innovation are necessarily related them, in a sense, didn't think they were can be half as good a the best of tho e at all-that makes me out a real r~dical breaking with tradition. They were people who represent that line-now conservative. extending tradition. After the econd we're talking about, /think. art, and "When everything' acceptable noth­ World War, you get men like Boulez who being an artist. That's what it means to ing is acceptable, isn't that so?" he asks. ay, 'Let' practice amnesia-we're me. Who cares whether you're unique?'' "Nothing's valuable. And what d I done with this, we're finished, now we l a ked Rochberg to suppose that the mean by valuable? I mean omething I have to make the marriage of the machine tradition of the Japanese theater were to can live with as part of my life as a and the mind'-and it's ju tab olute be adopted in We tern mu ic-whose musician and as a· human being in a world non ense. name would he take? which has gone mfld, something which "And this whole idea that you've got "Great!" he aid, laughing. Then, gives stability and continuity and a feeling to be unique, original-that idea has becoming immediately serious, ''Oh. l that, in fact, I am practicing being human destroyed more people, ju t the search. don't dare utter it. No, at this point it'~ in the best way I know how. And so I'm It's the narrowc t egoi m. In the end, what till too remote. I have my private dream , not just flying off in all direction at once difference docs it make who wrote what? naturally. But l don't think I'll live long and just being innovative for the sake of ''I'll tell you what I love," Rochberg enough to achieve it. ln order to achieve attracting attention to myself. I am prac­ ay . "In the Kabuki theater and the Noh it-it' like a handicap race, right?--oh, ticing the art of composing in the hardest play tradition, actor , once they've I'd have to live another 150 year . Oh, way I know how, the old-fashioned way. attained a real gra p of a certain tradition, I've been accused of sounding like him. "There are people, I'm well aware of it, a certain way of acting, can adopt an That's one thing. But for me to feel that who view what I'm doing as a real cop­ earlier narnc-the name may go back to we could meet in heaven and have a con­ out, to use the vernacular. There are the 1600s. An actor can now call himself versation as equal -that's something others who see great sense in it. I'm not Tazaki Ten.' So lhere are people who completely different. particularly concerned-I have to do are Tazaki Two' and Tazaki Three' and "But, for me, this is the longing.''

December, 1977 25