American Classics

[Lat-Literal]

Meandering Interlude Based on Vague Impressions - I Like This One But I Don't Like That One - Part 1

I thought that this was going to be some sort of conclusion but it is merely an update. What I had hoped to do was avoid a simple "I like this" and "I don't like that" by commenting on the music with some sort of narrative. I will still try to do that in a further post but some of what I am now hearing is supporting preconceptions and other parts are not so. I suppose that was always going to be the way. I may have underestimated Diamond and overestimated Schuman and Piston. I do feel now that the opening of Diamond 1 is memorable and the second movement is moving. I'm still not sure the latter part is as successful. In some ways that is a metaphor for him for while the 9th is considered to be the height of his achievement, I can only speak positively for 1, 3, 4 and 2 in that order. I think Diamond 5 set a certain introspective tone which was carried through until Diamond 11. Similarly, I will take Schuman 3 and 4 but my view is that from 5 it all became rather self-indulgent. Piston is slightly different in that I have 2, 6, 4 and 7 in that order and 5 isn't too bad but he too became samey. Certainly his best moments were mainly in the 1950s while the first two were at their best in the 1940s. They all then lost some innovation.

There are various notes - "Remember Piston was of Italian origin too", "Piston 2 - Adagio, a good bit", "Diamond 3 - surely elements of orientalism" and "Schuman 3 - "Why is this the latest of several compositions during which I keep thinking of "To the Batmobile Let's Go" by Todd Terry?" Persichetti, I decided, was not as wonderful as I had first thought and only Persichetti 3 really stands out. But at his best he has a fresh, jazzy appeal. There is much colour in his compositions although I am not sure that the best description is, actually, "graceful" and "gritty". For the record, I have Persichetti 6 and 7 ahead of 9, 8 and 5. I sometimes wonder if it is helpful to have a picture for compositions on You Tube. It can influence the way in which music is heard. His pictures were bright but the same bit of black and white abstract art appeared with everything by Mennin and it made his symphonies indistinguishable. Not that it mattered for while the matted colouring and textures in Schuman were approachable and Diamond was evidently of intricate technical loom, I felt Mennin was ostensibly slabs or a scuttling at best. At worst - was it Mennin 7? - there was in part a lathe and waves that could feel almost like a Soviet assault.

Rather lazily, "Russian" went into the crazy notebook on more than one occasion as indeed did "Hitchcock" and "like a cartoon". The terms applied to a wider range of composers than I expected and were not necessarily derogatory. Lees, I think, managed all three and mainly he was just too ominous to be one of the more appealing symphonists of the 1950s. But if I had to choose just one of his for my island, it would be Lees 3. Rorem, on the other hand, was very well received. In fact, I have bought Rorem 1-3. He seemed to be able to draw together a lot of influences from composers in the 1930s and 1940s and make it all into something unique. Against Rorem 3 I wrote "Dudamel/Bolivar should do this one". Going back to the 1940s, I listened to the Carter symphony again and I still quite like it. I listened to Barber 1 again and I still quite like it. I don't think either are masterpieces. I probably think Barber 1 has more presence and that it has the edge although there is a deftness in the Carter symphony that is appealing. There was also time to listen to Barber 2. While he didn't like it, I thought it was ok. Gould doesn't float my boat. His work is a bit too light in places and where it is serious it isn't in a style I enjoy. Of his symphonies, Gould 1 wins because of its variety and unusual rhythms but it is very Big Country on occasions. Bernstein, though, works for me. Not only do I think Bernstein 3 is one of the best symphonies of the 1960s but Bernstein 1 and 2 are among the best from two decades earlier. So that has been another 80p or something - Naxos via Amazon.

[Lat-Literal]

Meandering Interlude Based on Vague Impressions - I Like This One But I Don't Like That One - Part 2

Some composers are much as I had anticipated. I set out my stall on McDonald - not keen - when talking about the 1930s. As I previously mentioned, I like Virgil Thomson 1 but I am not overly fussed about Thomson 2 and 3 and anyhow he was largely finished symphonically by the commencement of WW2. Randall Thompson's symphonic output did extend into the 1940s. While sometimes sounding a little dated, he did have inventiveness and Thompson 2 and 3 are not without interest. What I don't think I have mentioned to date is that I am a big fan of Still whose symphonies were written in the 1930s and the 1940s. So that's done. Carpenter 2 is a quite pleasant impressionistic piece and Hadley 4 is enjoyable. Creston, I think, is underrated although variable. He finds a rare beauty in the midpoints of Creston 1 and 2 which I prefer to Creston 3. As for Hanson who I view in a similar but not necessarily better light, I feel that I "did" him in a previous post although given Suffolkcoastal's positive remarks on Hanson 4 and 6 I do intend to review.

Other composers have been a revelation. While I doubt that I will ever listen to Sessions 4-9 on repeat, I do think that his first three symphonies are staggering and I enjoyed them. It still makes sense to me to regard him as pivotal. However, what I hadn't accounted for was Antheil who I feel is very underrated, not least in view of the date of Antheil 1 "Zingareska" which is ahead of Sessions 1 by years and is unequivocally striking. I haven't enjoyed all that I have heard of Antheil. I prefer Antheil 6 to Antheil 3 - "American" which is generally more popular. Antheil 5 is supposed to be joyous and it is so although it veers towards the cartoony. As for Antheil 4 it is an extraordinarily clever piece which appears to place America in an unnerving global context but some of the Shostakovian marching in it is overwhelming to the point of not listenable. I've now found Cowell who is very, very interesting. I also found Gillis who is sometimes highly entertaining and other times annoyingly trite. In contrast, as I look at my notes from the 1920s through to the 1950s, I can see that I have listened to Mason, Riegger, Gardner Reed, Porter, Siegmeister and Ward. While I have an understanding of their differences, none of them have left a huge impression on me. There is more to go through. I need to go back to Harris and I want to listen to more of Cowell. There's Glass, there's more of Hovhaness and even Rosner and some further works by many composers that are not symphonic. Finally I will want to listen to the Copland symphonies again in the light of everything I've now heard.

In the meantime, briefly onto the 1970s and afterwards. I loved the very offbeat Rochberg 3 - a highlight of the 1960s - and I have now decided that Rochberg 4 is one of the best symphonies of the 1970s. Rochberg 5 and 6 have not appealed as much but I prefer them to his first and second. It is a "yes" to Corigliano but, on balance, no to Bolcom, Flagello, Hailstork, Harbison - all of whom I have listened to in depth - and especially Gallagher about who I will say more soon. I am ok ish on Zwilich, Daugherty, Del Tredici and Coates, slightly favourable to Rouse and I have a weakness for that Sam Jones symphony for which I posted a link. One person who hasn't yet been mentioned is Lou Harrison whose work I think is exceptionally good and indeed highly significant in the overall scheme of things about which more later too. All good comments on the works mentioned would be welcome.

[Lat-Literal]

This is very good:

David Diamond - The Enormous Room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgJQRU_kxDQ

[Lat-Literal]

At times it has been very heavy going but I have now listened to the following American symphonies.

So if anyone has any questions:



The Copland symphonies and.......Antheil - 1, 3-6, Barber - 1-2, Beach - 1, Bernstein - 1-3, Bolcom - 1,3, Brant - 1, (John Alden) Carpenter - 2, Carter - 1, Chadwick - 2-3,
Coates - 1-2, 4, 8, 15, Corigliano - 1-3, Cowell - 2, 4-5, 7-11, 13-16, Creston - 1-3, Daugherty - 1, Dawson - 1, Del Tredici - 1, Diamond - 1-5, 8, Ellington - 1, Fine - 1, Flagello - 1, Fry 1-2, Gallagher - 2, Gillis - 1-2, 5.5, 10, Glass - 1-10, Gould - 1-4, (H Kimball) Hadley - 2, 4, Hailstork - 2, Hanson - 1-7, Harbison - 2, Harris - 1-4, 6-9, 11, Harrison - 2-4, Hovhaness - 1-4, 6-7, 9, 17, 19-24, 31, 34, 39, 46-50, 53, 60, 63, 66, Ives - 1-4, (James P) Johnson - 1, (Sam) Jones - 3, Lees - 2-4, Mason - 1-3, Mennin - 3, 5-9, Paine - 1-2, Persichetti - 3, 5-9, Piston - 1-8, Porter - 1, Price - 3, (Gardner) Read - 1-3, Riegger - 3-4, Rochberg - 1-6, Rorem - 1-3, Rouse - 2-4, Schuman - 3-10, Sessions - 1-9, Siegmeister - 5, Still - 1-5, Theofandis - 1, Thompson - 1-3, Thomson - 1-3, Ward - 1, 4, Zwilich - 1, 3. (This list has been updated since last night to include the ones I inadvertently omitted)

[Pulcinella]

That's a mighty (mightily?) impressive list, Lat-Literal; several on there I'd like to investigate.

[Lat-Literal]

That's a mighty (mightily?) impressive list, Lat-Literal; several on there I'd like to investigate.

Thank you Pulcy.

The Failed Attempt at Putting Together Any Sort of Overview of "The American Symphony" :

How The West Was Won Before Academic Retreat and Acceptance of Ultimate Incoherence

Somewhere in the middle of this malarkey, a joke so weak that it is embarrassing crossed my mind. It was "Where do those on the West Coast of America locate the Far East - (a) The West (b) Europe (c) New England or (d) The Far East? Oddly, less than a week later I was listening to Charles Shere interviewing Morton Feldman in 1967 and Feldman asked the same question, albeit simplified. I think he said in reply to himself - and I can confirm it was specifically in the context of music - something along the lines of the East being New York to people in California. Well, this taps in obliquely to the half-baked story I wanted to tell about the American symphony. That story was merely an outline drawing when I started and to the learned it will now be both like saying the obvious and incoherent/baseless. It begins with the strong influence of Europe, understandably, as the 19th Century became the 20th Century so that any notion of Chadwick and his allies beginning to find an American sound is not wholly convincing. It then suggests that what happened next was the distinctive voice of Ives and that voice was identifiable as American. The music was original and ambitious, seeking to merge elements of the past and the current, the religious and the secular and old folk traditions with the urban. Nevertheless it was very much in its own corner in its personality and geographically. At most, it could only be a signpost.

So where does it go next? Increasingly there was jazz and one thinks of the cities when it came to Gershwin. The highly experimental were mainly influenced by Europe but in a new way so very evidently it wasn't a re-run of Chadwick. No. It was Schoenberg v Stravinsky and you can add in where appropriate Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Boulanger, Debussy, Hindemith, Webern or Berg. However, for all of the intended ground breaking, the main impulse was still something pretty folksy but on an expansive filmic scale. By the 1940s, a surprisingly wide range of symphonies had been described as sounding like a description of how the west was won. And in a sense, the west was won then. It was won by Copland who in no way was a Harl McDonald but nor was he wholly removed from that sensibility. He was suitably positioned as someone had to be for representing the whole of America. Once that had been established, so my story goes, it freed up original thinkers to pursue music by math in east coast academia and it gave serious music to those in the west who could wholly reinvent it Brant style. Yes - this is a work of fiction but not so far fetched that I am pretending away who is still the first American composer in 2016.

Fly Me To The Moon, California Dreaming, The Far East West and Global Profit.......Everyone Is Happy

My next chapter. Two or three decades later, that is after the 1940s and 1950s, when the first group had become so highbrow and introspective they were caught in their own devices and the second so wild with new instruments that they weren't sure where they were anymore, they all conjoined in a mutual staring into space. I intimated this in a previous post and am in no doubt that the lack of direction was linked closely to America undergoing regular crises. For a brief while, what the vacuum let in was the spiritual. It happened in rock music too. And when that could be fixed to a point on the ground, it was inevitably to one outward looking from the west to India or what we know in Europe as the Far East. It was there in Cowell, in Harrison and in Hovhaness to name but three, to varying degrees of effectiveness. Since then - and it's a sterotypically jaundiced observation here - it has mutated into a domestic anything goes as long as it brings in enough money to earn a living. I could mention anyone but this is the spiel on Hovhaness - "Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer, his output assimilates the music of many cultures. What may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic". In other words, the legacy of it all - the legacy of one hundred and more years - has been an integration of truly global elements rather than merely European ones and what has to be seen as classical music's commercial mimicry of other musical forms via fusion.

So there it is - there's my story - and as I indicated above it is very half baked. I feel that I have failed. It was a mistake to try to find a meaningful narrative because individuals do what individuals do and there are many exceptions. Cowell was thinking globally as early as the Canadian McPhee. When the symphonic west was being won for America in the 1930s and the 1940s it was being populated by Italians like Piston and Creston. Harris's 11th in the 1960s was grounded in the politics of that period. Samuel Jones could at times be a 21st Century I-Tune Copland. Adams decided to put his mind to opera and the destination of that was Dr Atomic. It isn't even as if in recent decades there has been more eclecticism than in the 1940s and 1950s. The musical differences between the aforementioned Jones and Daugherty and Hailstork and Corigliano are not insignificant but there was more of a sense of diversity when Hadley, Still and Thompson were composing alongside Hanson and Creston, Rochberg and Riegger, Sessions and Lees and Schuman and Piston.

Meandering Conclusions Based on Vague Impressions - I Like This One But I Don't Like That One

Consequently all one can do is feel happy for having listened to a lot more music and to talk vaguely about personal preferences in each era. Let's draw up a playlist. I will take Diamond 1 and, I suppose, Piston 2 and Schuman 3 from the earlier period. I will certainly take Bernstein 1 and 2 and - probably a weakness - everything by Still along with Dawson, Price and Johnson, while acknowledging that some of these were earlier. Sessions 2, yes, because of its historical importance and also Carter 1, Barber 1, Creston 2, Carpenter 2, Persichetti 3, Rorem 3, Harris 3 and 4, Hadley 4 and possibly Antheil 5. And so now the mighty book has been abandoned and it is simply a case of numbers. I have commented on the 1960s before and won't do so again. Of the years that have followed it seems to me that Harrison 2, 3 and 4 really stand out as excellent works which take on board a wide range of influences. There is a genuine quality to them and they move. Rochberg 4 also has merit although I like his 3rd best. None of this addresses Cowell, Glass or indeed Hovhaness. I reckon the best from Cowell are 13, 8, 16, 4, 2 and 5 in that order but most of his are intriguing. The best non Bowie symphonies by Glass are 2, 9 and 8 but I like Symphony 1 too ("Low"). Hovhaness - 2, 6, 7, 9, 22, 24, 31, 46, 50 and 63 in no particular order but that long list doesn't imply that the quality is high in most of his work. So that's now done. But I can offer the odd thought here and there on the musical styles of individual symphonies if that would be helpful to anyone. I have got many pages of notes!

[Beef Oven!]

[Bryn]

Hmm. but Anna Livia flows into the Irish Sea, not the ocean.

Thanks, I will watch the rest later.

[Lat-Literal]

Encore - In The Ocean....Not So Much at Sea

(An "interesting, nay, fascinating post!" - The Daily Oven)

Oh lordy. Yes - thank you very much and it was interesting. Maybe I didn't wholly fail. There were umpteen references to geographical location. They were not, however, quite the same as mine and I jotted some of them down because they were striking. The United States of America was defined in musical terms as having become either an uptown or a downtown New York. Regrettably no one mentioned the shrinkage. My mind went immediately to Nashville where there is a similar perception of country music separated into conservative and liberal localities. We are advised that after the 1960s innovators looked to connect the two parts of the big apple - that is my representation rather than what they said specifically - but where are they now? Having among other things approached music in intricate detail to see if there are small parts that have been missed which are then to be magnified, they are in gaps between the rooms - that is their statement - or in the case of Brian Eno in three separate rooms of a record store which are not connected.

Large numbers of words can be weaved around these areas. I know because I am already guilty of it. It is probably to my cost. Those in the film appeared to be doing it to dig up and/or convey the intentions behind their motivations. The word "curator" was used which is closer to my starting point. They helped to clarify that "curating" now often goes beyond its connotations of history and looking through a microscope at samples in jars. It concerns a natural human desire for classification - that idea of how can we group what has been or is going on. This, though, can never be an applied science and it is more about perspectives than collecting folk songs in the 20th Century or any ethnomusicology. That was why I was right to describe my feeble attempt as merely a story. It will have elements that we can all agree are broad brush truths but that is all. Furthermore, as soon as anyone seeks to intellectualize the leaving of intellectual approaches to composition, there isn't just irony but arguably a suggestion that new music isn't speaking for and as itself.

I was pleased that the film people were on a similar train to me in describing atonal composition in America as having been as influenced by the Europeans as the music that preceded it. But that the British Eno and the Dutch Andriesson were mentioned at length in terms of what has happened since must surely be a warning sign to anyone who fears that history will keep repeating. There were modern thoughts in the film about population numbers and the claustrophobia both of information overload and living side by side flipping burgers. On the surface, that does have an American hue but its genuine home is in 21st Century Europe where there is considerably less space. The first piece by David Lang - composer of "The Carbon Copy Building", "Crowd Out" and most pertinent of all "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" - had similarities with many works but I was thinking of "Wind Rose" and a couple of other things by Carter from the past 10-15 years. The older man still knowingly had a concept of movement. Younger composers pursuing freedom seem to place themselves in boxes - those gaps between rooms or the rooms in a record store - when actually they are all moving away from or towards something, be that a genre or the idea of any music being a well-defined structure designed according to imposed rules. Not that I want to overstate this point. It is more the tortoise than horse.

Cue a lot of withering comment about the loss of tonality and a cautious welcoming of some return to melody. Well, no. Contrary to what I have written in recent weeks, I have always been open to the avant-garde. However, as a listener I am someone who needs to know where what I am listening to is located. That is as much to do with category as it is the environment but contexts and their colours matter to me. There is a desire for comprehending historical inter-linkages combined with strong leanings towards impressionism. Reich and Adams and Riley and Glass.....they are all in my CD collection. El-Dabh is on my Spotify lists alongside Oram, Derbyshire and Pade. I also have Xenakis there. I have Cage and Rzewski and Nancarrow beside Birtwistle. I now have Cowell and Harrison and Hovhaness on my shelves. Although you didn't know it you have just read five easy groupings. Minimalism. Electronica. Percussion. The individualistically experimental. The absorbing of global, exotic and/or mystical elements. It is on that sort of level as well as in terms of the music that I am able to engage and I do the same in other areas too - piano music, pastoralism, ethnicity, brass bands. I wouldn't get very far at all without a satnav.

I admit that the atonal is more difficult for me. I tend to require more than abstracts to begin to get a handle. This one has a jazz aura or that one I know involves twelve tone technique. Perhaps the one over there has a tonal part that is helpful or it cleverly harks back to madrigals or it is as precise in its crafting as Bach. And clearly from the date it was written that fourth one was truly ahead of its time! Additionally, I am not opposed to the deconstruction of music, whatever that is, but there can be points where I ask in a conservative way if the true motivation of a composer is a dislike of music as it has mainly been defined. And similarly, I am not against creating the sounds of the natural or industrial environment - I also have Rautavaara - but if the movement is significant in that direction one could genuinely ask what is the point. I have too begun to question part of my own argument which was a rerunning of what is generally said. That is, there is a common belief in composers especially in America going through schools in the 1950s and 1960s having to adhere to a specific way of writing with an emphasis on the atonal. That was at the heart of the programme but perhaps more evidence is required? Who was so afflicted seeing the rules were beginning to be broken before 1970 while those who were adhering to them were middle aged and any game of acquiring Europe was their design?

Now, I was focussing on symphonies which may give me a slant on this matter. I am, of course, aware of composers like Babbitt and Feldman too. But the more I listened to those symphonies what I found was that atonality is in itself something that shifts in one's perception. One morning I could wake up and think that almost everything I was listening to was not as tonal as I would prefer and that would include American composers who were associated mostly with the classical tradition. On the next day, I would listen to a similar set of pieces and find that they made so much sense to me I wondered if the influence of, say, the Second Viennese School had been hugely over-emphasised, ie could much of a list of composers in that category really be made at all? Those sorts of shifts also apply to the Coriglianos, Daughertys and Zwilichs. But what I often hear more in their modern works are devices. In earlier composers I might have considered those to be a part of an idiosyncratic style. In recent ones, I am more inclined to view them perhaps unfairly as gimmickry. Certainly I am on a journey here which will continue, albeit more organically, for as long as this area can attract my interest. What I don't fully take on board is the notion that American classical music as with much else isn't more often than not in virtual stasis, a point which as I said earlier was inadvertently intimated by those in the film.

[Beef Oven!]

Oh lordy. Yes - thank you very much and it was interesting. Maybe I didn't wholly fail. There were umpteen references to geographical location. They were not, however, quite the same as mine and I jotted some of them down because they were striking. The United States of America was defined in musical terms as having become either an uptown or a downtown New York. Regrettably no one mentioned the shrinkage. My mind went immediately to Nashville where there is a similar perception of country music separated into conservative and liberal localities. We are advised that after the 1960s innovators looked to connect the two parts of the big apple - that is my representation rather than what they said specifically - but where are they now? Having among other things approached music in intricate detail to see if there are small parts that have been missed which are then to be magnified, they are in gaps between the rooms - that is their statement - or in the case of Brian Eno in three separate rooms of a record store which are not connected.

Large numbers of words can be weaved around these areas. I know because I am already guilty of it. It is probably to my cost. Those in the film appeared to be doing it to dig up and/or convey the intentions behind their motivations. The word "curator" was used which is closer to my starting point. They helped to clarify that "curating" now often goes beyond its connotations of history and looking through a microscope at samples in jars. It concerns a natural human desire for classification - that idea of how can we group what has been or is going on. This, though, can never be an applied science and it is more about perspectives than collecting folk songs in the 20th Century or any ethnomusicology. That was why I was right to describe my feeble attempt as merely a story. It will have elements that we can all agree are broad brush truths but that is all. Furthermore, as soon as anyone seeks to intellectualize the leaving of intellectual approaches to composition, there isn't just irony but arguably a suggestion that new music isn't speaking for and as itself.

I was pleased that the film people were on a similar train to me in describing atonal composition in America as having been as influenced by the Europeans as the music that preceded it. But that the British Eno and the Dutch Andriesson were mentioned at length in terms of what has happened since must surely be a warning sign to anyone who fears that history will keep repeating. There were modern thoughts in the film about population numbers and the claustrophobia both of information overload and living side by side flipping burgers. On the surface, that does have an American hue but its genuine home is in 21st Century Europe where there is considerably less space. The first piece by David Lang - composer of "The Carbon Copy Building", "Crowd Out" and most pertinent of all "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" - had similarities with many works but I was thinking of "Wind Rose" and a couple of other things by Carter from the past 10-15 years. The older man still knowingly had a concept of movement. Younger composers pursuing freedom seem to place themselves in boxes - those gaps between rooms or the rooms in a record store - when actually they are all moving away from or towards something, be that a genre or the idea of any music being a well-defined structure designed according to imposed rules. Not that I want to overstate this point. It is more the tortoise than horse.

Cue a lot of withering comment about the loss of tonality and a cautious welcoming of some return to melody. Well, no. Contrary to what I have written in recent weeks, I have always been open to the avant-garde. However, as a listener I am someone who needs to know where what I am listening to is located. That is as much to do with category as it is the environment but contexts and their colours matter to me. There is a desire for comprehending historical inter-linkages combined with strong leanings towards impressionism. Reich and Adams and Riley and Glass.....they are all in my CD collection. El-Dabh is on my Spotify lists alongside Oram, Derbyshire and Pade. I also have Xenakis there. I have Cage and Rzewski and Nancarrow beside Birtwistle. I now have Cowell and Harrison and Hovhaness on my shelves. Although you didn't know it you have just read five easy groupings. Minimalism. Electronica. Percussion. The individualistically experimental. The absorbing of global, exotic and/or mystical elements. It is on that sort of level as well as in terms of the music that I am able to engage and I do the same in other areas too - piano music, pastoralism, ethnicity, brass bands. I wouldn't get very far at all without a satnav.

I admit that the atonal is more difficult for me. I tend to require more than abstracts to begin to get a handle. This one has a jazz aura or that one I know involves twelve tone technique. Perhaps the one over there has a tonal part that is helpful or it cleverly harks back to madrigals or it is as precise in its crafting as Bach. And clearly from the date it was written that fourth one was truly ahead of its time! Additionally, I am not opposed to the deconstruction of music, whatever that is, but there can be points where I ask in a conservative way if the true motivation of a composer is a dislike of music as it has mainly been defined. And similarly, I am not against creating the sounds of the natural or industrial environment - I also have Rautavaara - but if the movement is significant in that direction one could genuinely ask what is the point. I have too begun to question part of my own argument which was a rerunning of what is generally said. That is, there is a common belief in composers especially in America going through schools in the 1950s and 1960s having to adhere to a specific way of writing with an emphasis on the atonal. That was at the heart of the programme but perhaps more evidence is required? Who was so afflicted seeing the rules were beginning to be broken before 1970 while those who were adhering to them were middle aged and any game of acquiring Europe was their design?

Now, I was focussing on symphonies which may give me a slant on this matter. I am, of course, aware of composers like Babbitt and Feldman too. But the more I listened to those symphonies what I found was that atonality is in itself something that shifts in one's perception. One morning I could wake up and think that almost everything I was listening to was not as tonal as I would prefer and that would include American composers who were associated mostly with the classical tradition. On the next day, I would listen to a similar set of pieces and find that they made so much sense to me I wondered if the influence of, say, the Second Viennese School had been hugely over-emphasised, ie could much of a list of composers in that category really be made at all? Those sorts of shifts also apply to the Coriglianos, Daughertys and Zwilichs. But what I often hear more in their modern works are devices. In earlier composers I might have considered those to be a part of an idiosyncratic style. In recent ones, I am more inclined to view them perhaps unfairly as gimmickry. Certainly I am on a journey here which will continue, albeit more organically, for as long as this area can attract my interest. What I don't fully take on board is the notion that American classical music as with much else isn't more often than not in virtual stasis, a point which as I said earlier was inadvertently intimated by those in the film.

Many thanks for this interesting, nay, fascinating post!

[Lat-Literal]

Many thanks for this interesting, nay, fascinating post!

Thank you Beefy.

That's good of you.

It was very helpful to have the link to the film to put my thoughts in more order!

[BBMmk2]

LatlLit, many thanks for your recent posts on this thread. Been a very interesting read. A most succinct insight in the realms of American classical music scene. This would make a very interesting book, I think!

[Lat-Literal]

LatlLit, many thanks for your recent posts on this thread. Been a very interesting read. A most succinct insight in the realms of American classical music scene. This would make a very interesting book, I think!

Thanks ever so much Bbm.

The, erm, "style" combines some suggestion of absolute certainty with "I haven't a clue where I am".

I'm not sure that it would be the easiest of sells.

[Beef Oven!]

Symphony No.2 is by far my favourite Rochberg symphony. Okay, it’s 12 tone (can bother, some) and quite Alban Bergesque (in a similar way that our very own Humphrey Searle is Webernesque).

Here’s a very interesting 1959 performance from George Szell and the Clevelanders. (I have the Naxos CD which, IMHO is very fine indeed).

[Lat-Literal]

Symphony No.2 is by far my favourite Rochberg symphony. Okay, it’s 12 tone (can bother, some) and quite Alban Bergesque (in a similar way that our very own Humphrey Searle is Webernesque).

Here’s a very interesting 1959 performance from George Szell and the Clevelanders. (I have the Naxos CD which, IMHO is very fine indeed).

Thank God - does that mean we can go back to posting links?