From My Scrapbook
Since I have devoted space to the daily music reviewer's trade I think Ishould give some examples of the product, namely, how I operated in the years I was involved with that trade. Looking back at what I wrote I am impressed with the touch of a certain bravado which I doubt very much Icould summon up now. The reviews are of contemporary composition sincethe orientation of this book has been in that direction.
Daily concert reviewing is a kind of improvisatory activity. Under pressure of time there is a minimum one can do to think things through and ofcourse it is not possible to rewrite and rewrite. So as I look back at my reviews, at the clippings of them that I saved in my scrapbook and that havenot disintegrated because of being improperly stored, I surprise myself atthe things that came up, things that I let pass. It is not only through deterioration that I lack copies of much that I have written, but also becausethere were many times when events reviewed were so pedestrian that itscarcely seemed worth the effort to save any record of them. The habit ofnot cutting and pasting those reviews carried over so that for long stretchesat a time I did not save any. I cannot help feeling that the many words I havewritten for newspapers are like ashes tossed into the sea.
Stokowski Leads Shostakovich 6th
The City Center audience last night departed from concert routine to applaud the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony after the opening Largo. At the end of the work Leopold Stokowski was repeatedly recalled. It is to behoped that it was the suave ensemble and sensitive tone of the City Symphony that were being acknowledged. For if not for the live string qualitydevoted to melodies of appallingly little inventiveness, or Renée LeRoy'smellow rendition of the flute figures which do nothing to fill the gapinghole in the Largo, or the orchestra's buoyancy in the cheap finale, there would have been painfully little indeed to hold this listener's interest.
The ostensibly satirical objective of the Presto calls to mind Stravinsky's “Card Party,” in which the commentary and the subtle cutting of analogous material make the Shostakovich seem like the most puerile venture incontrast. Even the much underestimated American composer could haveeasily been found who would show up this symphony. But the nearest Mr. Stokowski came to native music was the uneventful “Pacific Prayer” by Dai-Keeong Lee, the Hawaiian composer educated here and now in ourarmed forces.
The program also listed excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakoff's “Ivan the Terrible” and Wagner's “Tristan,” and Debussy's “Afternoon of a Faun.” There were, of course, fewer difficulties than last week, but the sonorous distinction of what was only the orchestra's third concert promises muchfor the future.
League of Composers
There was no dearth of creative talent and good performance at Sundaynight's League of Composers concert at the Museum of Modern Art, though most of the talent seemed not quite energized in the music bywhich it was represented on this particular occasion, and not much of the music really came off. The work that was nearest, as a whole, to doing sowas the sonata by Edmund Haines, since its proportions were attractively modest. The motoriness of the fast movements was fresh, but too much ofone kind, and sustained melodies were too few.
Leon Kirchner's Duo for violin and piano strove for grand pose and “modernistic” effect, in an opaque chromatic style that kept curious company with Hungarian gypsy improvisations. But Kirchner is a newcomerof consequence, with vital music drive. John Lessard's violin work was cleanin workmanship, but thin in material. Trifolium, by Betsy Jolas, started promisingly, but soon bogged down.
Shapero is a personality with musical strength enough to trouble onewhen he is problematic. His half-hour-long piano sonata was hissed Sunday by some because of the boldness of its frank reversion to Beethoven(the loftiest, late Beethoven). Even regarded as a stage, and a very valuableone, in his own development, it is a major effort, and it took courage towrite it after contributing, in his earlier works, a personal quality that hasalready exerted an influence on some of his fellow musicians of his ownyouth. The sonata has striking inspirations, notably in the first movementbefore he bows so completely to Beethoven's harmonic processes. But composers use new materials not simply to avoid a new Beethoven sonata, which would be just as great now as it would have been a century ago. They do so because they need some prop to rivet them to paths allowing for adventure and surprise in the internal relations, and to avoid being carriedalong by their own momentum, as Shapero seems to have been carriedalong much of the time.
Program at Columbia
The Ditson concert offered by Columbia University at the McMillin Theater last night left one with some hope that there are still a few relativelynew fields open to composers who work in an atonal direction. Milton Babbitt's Composition for Four Instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, cello) was atlast music with enough profile and ingenuity of its own to take on the aspect of something more than a further exercise in the moods and disciplines so thoroughly exploited by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Almostany disciple of these three composers has the capacity of perplexing manylisteners, because the original idiom is still unknown to a large audience. But after the indoctrination point, a listener encounters less and less surprise in each new work of the orbit.
Theodore Strongin's Septet, in its premiere last night, for example, hadlittle that was strikingly distinct, despite the obvious musical sensitivity inits execution. And Alban Berg's early clarinet pieces, on the other hand, seemed more subtle and fresh than many a work in this idiom tossed off byour young men today. Babbitt, however, whose nearest musical relative isprobably Webern, seems to realize that the problem of atonal music of alldegrees is the achievement of types of abstraction. Once any given type isdeployed, there it is. There is not much more to do with it than spread it ona canvas as a texture with slight ramifications of hue.
The abstraction takes the form of separating tones from their intrinsic harmonic drives and their familiar melodic profiles, giving tones, that is tosay, independence. Babbitt furthers the abstraction and thus achieves a remarkable new quality, austere, piquant, and quite unlike anything one hasheard before. Using twelve-tone method, he constructs a melodic line, forexample, in which tones are further liberated, further differentiated, by ascribing a different loudness to each, and also a different timbre and a vastlycontrasting pitch range. The degree of abstraction, short of relinquishing tones altogether, is now complete.
The program also included Claus Adam's Piano Sonata, a work of profound seriousness and motor drive that was reviewed not long ago in these columns.
Composers Forum
Final concert of the season last night at McMillin Academic Theater Columbia University; music by Leon Kirchner and Ned Rorem with John Tasker Howard as moderator. The program:
Duo for Violin and Piano (1947)—Kirchner……Broadus Erie and the composer
* Piano Sonata (1948)—Kirchner………Composer at the piano
* Penny Arcade (cyclical melodrama, 1948)—Rorem………Nell Tangeman, mezzo
soprano, composer at the piano
Mountain Song for cello and piano (1948)—Rorem……Seymour Barab and
Byron Hardin
Sonata for Piano, four hands (1943)—Rorem…Eugene Istomin and Byron Hardin
* First performance.
Leon Kirchner and Ned Rorem, who shared the season's final Composers Forum last night at MacMillin Theater, both offered ample evidence oftheir musicianship in the compositions through which they were represented, but they also provided tangible confirmation of this by appearing as composer-pianists. Mr. Rorem's participation was confined to the accompaniments of his song cycle, “Penny Arcade,” to which he brought the neededfleetness, nimbleness and sensitivity. Mr. Kirchner, playing his massiveand uncommonly impressive Piano Sonata, naturally had more occasion toreveal his performing talents, and left us with a sense of how powerful hiscreative drive must be to set aside for it so much keyboard accomplishment and gift.
Power is, in fact, the word that comes first to mind in characterizing Mr. Kirchner's gifts. When he came here from California early this seasonon a Guggenheim fellowship, he was not long being recognized by the “arrived” composers, who keep tabs on such newcomers, as one of the most “vital young talents to invade these parts in many years.” If your reporterwas slower than they were in recognizing the degree of this talent from the Duo at the League of Composers, it was because the pardonably youthfulforcing for effect, with all manner of violin tricks, diverted him from the many really sincere qualities in the work.
Rehearing the Duo last night I was impressed by some lyric strands thathad escaped me, and was less disturbed by the gypsy style shifts, from fastto slow episodes in a chromatic idiom that seemed a bit too serious for this. But the sonata seems to me a better shaped work, with ideas of greater profile, and firmer realization of the tonal drives that seem in quite a uniqueway to invest material with frequently atonal leaning. Bartok is suggestedas distant relative in the combination of composer and pianist, the keen ear
Rorem, recent winner of the Gershwin Prize, is far less a stranger. Hismany works have been appearing on programs with greater and greaterfrequency. His enormous facility is no news, and he has become, quite inevitably, a young composer to rely upon where a job must be completedneatly and elegantly for almost any musical occasion near at hand. The four-hand sonata, composed at nineteen, indicates that the facility has beenthere for some time. Facility is good thing to have, but it is also a good thingto struggle with it, and last night's music seemed to have done little of this.
The first and last songs of “Penny Arcade” had intriguing figures, withtheir own validity, despite ancestry in Poulenc. But too much of Rorem'smusic was square in rhythm and phrase length, and without tension. The echoes of Satie's “Parade” may be overlooked in the four-hand sonata. Butif Poulenc and Satie are admirable sources for any young composer, itseems important for Rorem now to elaborate on them more than he has, tofind some dialectic for his undeniable charming and engaging languorousvein. He is a very well endowed composer, indeed, and it would be good tosee him be more severe with himself, to do more to transform his richsources of popular song.
Yesterday's forum was not only one of the best that has been given in itsmusical content, but it had such excellent participants as Nell Tangeman, mezzo-soprano; Broadus Erie, violinist; and Eugene Istomin, pianist, whoall turned in fine performances.
Contemporary Music
The International Society of Contemporary Music opened its season at the Ninety-second Street Y. M. H. A. last night with a concert of major significance to those who are concerned with the evolution of music in its creativeaspect. A program confined to the music of Anton Webern is not only without precedent here, but would be a rarity anywhere, and is something to bepromptly noted in historical records. Even more important than this wasthe remarkable impression the occasion made, the wonderful sensitivityand taste that the music of the late Austrian composer maintained throughout, and the degree of satisfaction that a whole evening of his reticent, predominantly “sotto voce” miniatures was capable of offering.
More than a small part of the credit for this goes to the performers fortheir intimate knowledge and understanding of the music and the greatpains that had obviously gone into mastering its enormous difficulties. Jacques Monod who appeared both as conductor and as piano accompanistis clearly one of the best musicians around, and he brought staggering discipline and shading to his executions. Accompanying Bethany Beards lee intwo groups of songs without the aid of printed music was a sheer tour deforce. The young soprano for her part maneuvered the relentless vocalskips as if they were no more challenging than scale-wise passages, and herlight voice is extraordinarily suitable to the skips and gives a curve to their ostensible angularity.
The incomparable virtues of the New Music Quartet are thoroughly familiar by now, but the degrees of pianissimo it achieved last night, the precise values it gave to Webern's imaginative string coloration heightenedthis fine ensemble's stature. So also did the appearance as soloists of twoof its members, Broadus Erie, violin, and Claus Adam, cello, each of whomplayed with a polish far exceeding what we expect from ensemble musicians. It was an uncommon delight, too, to hear the bass clarinet, in the hands of Sidney Keil, played quietly and soothingly, and the clarinetist, Luigi Cancellieri, is also to be complimented.
It is only through performances of last night's caliber that we may cometo appreciate Webern's music, for its sparse constellations of notes are almost all about color, subtle variations of loudness and delicate balancing oftones widely removed in pitch. In traditional music such tones denoted climax, and the impulse is to play heavily. This impulse has been responsiblefor misrepresenting not only Webern, but also the other two members of
Webern is capable of making his point in as short a period as twenty seconds, as in the third of the Bagatelles for Quartet, Op. 9. It is as if a little, intensely personal confidence, rich in meaning, were whispered into ourear. The Five Canons, Op. 16, and Six Songs, Op. 14, reflected a bolder and more complex approach in Webern's middle period. The String Quartet, Op. 28, the latest work on the program, dating from 1938, had the longestmovements, and lasted in all about ten minutes. Webern had obviously bythis time exhausted the most minute rhythmic intricacies and had developed a style of evener note-values in which a single melody is shared insuccession by several instruments to establish what is, perhaps, his mostoriginal contribution.
The Philharmonic
Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor
soloist, Nathan Milstein, violinist
Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor………Bach-Respighi
Violin Concerto No. i. in D major………Prokofieff (played in memory of the composer)
“Night Music”………George Rochberg (first performance) (winner of the
eighth annual Gershwin Memorial Contest) Symphony No. 5 in C minor……Beethoven
The Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra and its musical director, Dimitri Mitropoulos, entered upon the last week end of their season at the top oftheir form last night in Carnegie Hall. There was also, to grace the occasion, a soloist of first rank in the violinist, Nathan Milstein, and to investthe program with more than routine musical interest there was the premiere of a work by a young American composer, “Night Music” by George Rochberg.
Mr. Rochberg, who is in his early thirties, was the 1952 winner of the Gershwin Memorial Contest which is open to young American composers. One of the substantial rewards for winners of this eight-year-old contestnowadays is performance of the prize work by the Philharmonic-Symphony, and it was thus that we came to hear “Night Music.” It turned outto be a meagre ten minutes of music by a young composer who knows howto reproduce the tenuous orchestral colors of Impressionism with a fair degree of expertness.
According to the program notes provided by the composer “Night Music” was from a symphony that had one movement too many, and the namewas given to the piece after it was extracted from the symphony. We aretold that “night” is to be interpreted in a broad way as “a symbol of whatever is dark, unknown, awesome, mysterious or demonic.” Both this program and the grotesque opening solo by contra-bassoon immediately putme in mind of the modern dance events on Fifty-second St. Valiantly as the player tried to redeem this solo in the deep dark pitch regions that seem almost below the margin of hearing, the result was a highly unprepossessing opening. It sorely cried out for some stark, expressionistic, tortured stagecounterpart.
There followed a promising section that verged, in a mild way, on a validepisodic, spasmodic contemporary chromaticism. But in less than two minutes this gave way to a far too easy solution for the piece as a whole, namely, a prolonged sonority consisting largely of muted harmonies on
“Night Music” dates from four years ago. The composer tells us it preceded his “first efforts in the technique of twelve-tone composition,” and we may assume from this intelligence that he means to say he has gone onto higher things since. The Gershwin committee must have had very slimpickings, indeed, to have been obliged to come up with this work as the prize-winner.
Mr. Mitropoulos made the best of whatever opportunity the piece gaveto make an orchestra sound lovely, lucid and sonorous. He also provided anexcellent accompaniment for Mr. Milstein in Prokofieff's first concerto. The violinist for his part played with his usual suavity and superb control, and if the reading was wanting in some of its customary excitement, it had acertain ease that was nice for a change.