University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Composers of the Twentieth Century Oral History Series David Sheinfeld AN ORIGINAL VOICE IN TWENTIETH -CENTURY MUSIC With an Introduction by Kent Nagano Interviews Conducted by Caroline C. Crawford in 1998 Copyright 1999 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape- recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and David Sheinfeld dated April 1, 1998. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with David Sheinfeld requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: David Sheinfeld, "An Original Voice in Twentieth-Century Music," an oral history conducted in 1998 by Caroline C. Crawford, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1999. Copy no. David Sheinfeld with members of the Alexander String Quartet, circa 1997. Patricia Ris, photographer. Cataloguing information SHEINFELD, David (b.1906) Composer, Violinist An Original Voice in Twentieth-Century Music. 1999, vi, 207 pp. Early years in St. Louis and Chicago; education with Alexander Sebald and Ottorino Respighi; creating a string quartet; music in the 1930s; composing for NBC and a WPA theater project; studying conducting with Pierre Monteux; performing as violinist with San Francisco Symphony, 1945-1971; life and work as a composer, 1946-1999. Interviewed 1998 by Caroline Crawford for the Composers of the Twentieth Century Oral History Series, the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Introduction by Kent Nagano, Music Director, Berkeley and Halle Symphony Orchestras. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Regional Oral History Office, on behalf of future researchers, wishes to thank Mrs. Phyllis Wattis, whose generous contribution has made possible the Composers of the Twentieth Century Oral History Series. TABLE OF CONTENTS- -David Sheinfeld PREFACE i INTRODUCTION by Kent Nagano iii INTERVIEW HISTORY v BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION vi I EARLY YEARS: 1906-1929 1 Parents: From the Ukraine to the United States: 1898 1 Learning English and Adjusting to Life in St. Louis 2 Keeping a Kosher House and a Belief in Socialism 3 High Jewish Holidays 5 Father s Tailoring Business and Reading Aloud 6 Reading the Harvard Classics and Writing 8 School in St. Louis 9 Moving to Chicago (1915) and First Music Lessons 10 Hard Times for the Family 11 Music Lessons or Schooling: Leaving School at Thirteen 13 Interest in Physics: Einstein, Sir James Jeans, Arthur Eddington 15 Studying with Alexander Sebald: 1922-1929 17 Going to Concerts and Forming a String Quartet 21 A B.A. from at the American Conservatory; A High School Diploma from the University of Illinois Academy for Adults: 1929 25 Quartet Repertoire and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Introduction to Schoenberg and Stravinsky 27 Studying Orchestral Scores: A Remarkable Talent for "Hearing" 30 A Job Offer from the Chicago Opera Company 34 II A MASTER CLASS IN COMPOSING IN ROME: 1929-1931 36 Learning Italian and Forming a Close Friendship with Violinist Mario Corti 36 Impressions of Rome 38 Remembering Respighi 39 Rome, Anti-Semitism, and the Popes 43 Respighi and Toscanini and Fascism 45 Toscanini "Saves" Fountains of Rome and Bolero 47 Respighi s Methodology and Music 49 Decision to Return from Rome 51 III BEGINNINGS OF A CAREER IN MUSIC 53 Music in Concert and on the Radio in the U.S.: 1930s 53 Thoughts about Respighi, Debussy, Ravel 56 Stravinsky s Rhythmic Revolution 58 Remembering Enrique Jorda, Pierre Monteux, Fritz Reiner 60 Opera in Italy and Chicago 64 Resettling in Chicago during the Depression; Arranging for NBC; Composing for a WPA Theater Project 66 Writing Music for Dance Companies and Some Shakespeare Plays 69 Working for the U.S. Government during Wartime 71 Moving to New York City and Studying with Monteux in Hancock, Maine: 1944 73 IV COMING TO CALIFORNIA: 1945 77 Pierre Monteux Extends an Invitation to San Francisco 77 Settling in San Francisco and a 1946 Commission for the San Francisco Symphony 78 Conducting Adagio and Allegro on Tour and Thoughts about Composing 79 The Birth of Sons and the Decision to Focus on Composing; Last Year at the Monteux Conducting Class 81 Adagio and Allegro (1946); Concerto for Orchestra (1949); Fantasia (1951) 82 Pierre Monteux and Enrique Jorda in San Francisco: 1935-1952; 1952-1963 and Meeting Dimitri Mitropoulos 83 William Steinberg Commissions Etudes (1959) 86 V LIFE AS A COMPOSER AND ORCHESTRA PLAYER 90 Thoughts on Independence and Influences; the Kolisch Quartet, Bartok and Stravinsky 90 The California String Quartet, Roger Sessions 93 Concerto for Woodwinds and Chamber Orchestra (1957) 96 Twenty-Six Years with the San Francisco Symphony and Compulsory Retirement 98 Josef Krips in San Francisco: 1963-1970 103 George Szell and Twentieth-Century Music 107 VI A NEW MUSICAL LANGUAGE: 1960S AND 1970S 110 Patterns for Harp (1962) 110 Confrontations for Gerhard Samuel and the Oakland Symphony Orchestra (1969), and Thoughts about New Instrumentations 113 Composing and Process 115 Traveling 117 The Use of Three Conductors in Confrontations: Thoughts about Charles Ives 119 Seiji Ozawa in San Francisco: 1970-1977; Time Warp (1972); Memories of Yesterday and Tomorrow f1971); Dualities (1976) 122 The Composing Environment 126 Thoughts about Structure in Music 127 Bach, Fugue, and Form 129 Solving Problems with Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart; Levels of Structure in Music and Atonality 133 VII COMPOSING: THE 1980s AND 1990s 139 The First Symphony: Polarities (1990) and Polyphony; Treating Time and Space: E=M(? (1997) 139 Dorothy Sheinf eld s Illness and Death 144 The First and Second String Quartets (1978, 1994) and the Kronos Quartet 147 Performing History of the Quartets; The Earth is a Sounding Board (1978) 153 Composers Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters); Dreams and Fantasies (1981) 155 Thoughts about Publishing 159 Thoughts about Society, Religion, and Tolerance 160 Dear Theo (1996) and Music of the Past and the Future 167 More About E=M(? (Symphony No. 2) 177 "Maximalism" 180 Pierre Boulez and an Expanded Language 181 Composing Symphony No. 2 and Aleatory Music 183 A New Work: Worlds of Sound 185 Musical Sources 189 Thoughts about Teaching 191 TAPE GUIDE 193 APPENDIX A List of Compositions and Biography from Sheinfeld Web Page, March, 1999 194 B Text of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, May, 1993 199 2 C Pages from the original score of E=MC 200 INDEX 205 PREFACE The Composers of the Twentieth Century series of oral histories, a project of the Regional Oral History Office, was initiated in 1998 to document the lives and careers of a number of twentieth-century composers with significant California connections, the composers chosen to represent a cross-section of musical philosophies, cultural backgrounds and education. The twentieth century in this country has produced an extraordinary disparity of musical styles and languages, and with those controversy and even alienation between composers and audiences, as composers sought to find a path between contemporary and traditional musical languages: serialism, minimalism, neoclassicism, and back to some extent to neoromanticism in the last decades. The battle of styles was perhaps inevitable, as well as the reverse pendulum swing that has followed, but as the New York Times stated in a recent article, "the polemics on both sides were dismaying." The composers were selected with the help of university of California faculty and musicians from the greater community and asked to discuss their musical philosophies, the development of their musical language, their processes of composing, ideas about the nineteenth- century European heritage, and experiences studying with such signal teachers as Nadia Boulanger, Roger Sessions, Arnold Schoenberg, Darius Milhaud, Luigi Dallapiccola and others, university associations (Andrew Imbrie) or orchestral ones (David Sheinfeld), and forays into fields as different as jazz (Dave Brubeck), electronic music (Pauline Oliveros), and film (Leonard Rosenman). Various library collections served as research resources for the project, among them those of the DC Berkeley and UCLA Music Libraries, The Bancroft Library, and the Yale School of Music Library.