Great conversations: the composers / Eugene Istomin [video recording]

• Part 1. ROOTS
• Part 2. THE COMPOSER
• Part 3. TWENTIETH CENTURY MASTERPIECES
• Part 4. APPRECIATING DIFFERENT WORKS
• Part 5. ECLECTIC PROGRAMMING
• Part 6. PERFORMERS
• Part 7. ACCESSIBILITY
• Part 8. LANGUAGE AND TONALITY
• Part 9. EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
• Part 10. THE AVANT-GARDE
• FOOTNOTES

EUGENE ISTOMIN (MODERATOR):

We are here to talk about the state of music in America and the influence of Europe on our culture, as well as our own impact on Europe in return. My friends here, six distinguished composers whose high standing in the modern music world is beyond question, will speak about these shared roots. Their composing styles reflect their strong personalities. Obviously, they can only partially represent the entire contemporary music scene. Today, I hope to elicit responses from them to some challenging questions the general and advanced music lover might ask about their work, and the direction new music might be taking. Now let me present: Milton Babbitt, Richard Danielpour, Lowell Liebermann, George Perle, Ned Rorem, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

ISTOMIN:

Do you agree that European roots are fundamental in our culture-- not only in classical music, but pop music, jazz, and folk music as well?

NED ROREM:

I think it's a question of fact. In so-called classical or culture, certainly, it comes from Europe. Where else would it come from? But pop music does not come from Europe; it comes from Africa, originally via slaves. There's always been three kinds of music: the aristocratic music, music of the church, and music of the people. The music of the people was usually working-class music, with a regular beat, to keep them picking cotton; and that, of course, has become the music of our time, for better or for worse. Classical music, per se, is practically nonexistent today. By classical, I mean contemporary classical, for lack of a better term, of living composers writing serious music. And the music of the aristocracy is the music that is going on in concert halls now. We're the only civilization since the beginning of time in which the music of the present is less important than music of the past.

ELLEN ZWILICH:

Yes. I would agree that the roots of American music of all kinds are European, with the additional observation that there has been a lot of world music influence in the last 25 years, let's say.

GEORGE PERLE:

The first and most obvious fact is that we speak a European language, and that answers all the other questions, I think, as far as our basic culture is concerned. We have the same classical music as Europeans have.

RICHARD DANIELPOUR:

I think it's obvious that there is a profound influence that still, in some cases, exists in concert music, in classical music, from Europe to America. The Afro-American music that came, as Ned Rorem mentioned, through the culture of Africa through, via the slaves who were here, I think has had actually a powerful influence on Europe, as well.

LOWELL LIEBERMANN:

I know, in my own case, which I can speak of best, I grew up in almost a pop culture vacuum. Popular music was not listened to in my house when I was a child, so I grew up only knowing the European composers, and didn't really even hear much American popular music until I was in my early twenties and started going out to bars and things.

MILTON BABBITT:

I would point out one thing: that there has a tradition of popular music which derives as obviously from its European sources as any other. I mean, a Jerome Kern ¹ and composers such as that obviously derive more obviously from Brahms than they did from any African sources. But Ned, in that case, was speaking of jazz. And as one who did grow up with a great deal of popular music, I always had the feeling that this all derived from the same source. Of course, we may have a composer somewhere, today-- I wouldn't be surprised who went back to Byzantine chant. ² But I don't think that's any of us. No, I mean, obviously, we do derive from Europe in so many different ways, and our thinking about music, our thinking in music, has certainly come from that tradition. And the popular tradition is something else, which is a mixed breed, because the music that I grew up with, the New Orleans jazz, was based upon functional harmony that's as functional and as obvious as an elementary Piston exercise. So we are Europeans.

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Part 2.  THE COMPOSER

ISTOMIN:

What made you decide to be a composer? For whom do you compose your music?

ROREM:

I don't know that I sat down and decided to be a composer. I think what we would all say is I was a composer, so now what do I do? When I first took piano lessons, I was terribly intrigued at making up little pieces like the pieces that I was playing. So I was a composer, and it was a question, then, of: how do you become a professional one? For whom do I compose? I compose for myself, and another person who is out there someplace. The older we all get, the more we compose on commissions, and therefore I compose for whoever has asked for a piece.

ZWILICH:

Well, in my case, I had a kind of peculiarly American background. I crawled up under the piano bench when I was a toddler and found out what happened when you pressed down the keys, and I kind of have never left. I grew up playing instruments: the piano first, and then the violin and the trumpet, and always improvising music that I found to be more interesting than the junk I was given as a five-year-old who went to study piano. And I think all of us in our culture have had a whole variety of experiences. For me, it included a lot of what was then popular music and particularly, more interestingly to me, jazz, as well as the classical tradition, which I loved well enough to practice the violin, and play a lot of the violin repertoire, and then also play in professional orchestras.

PERLE:

When I started taking piano lessons, I didn't realize I was taking piano lessons. I thought what one did, when one got involved with music, was compose it. And I had pretty high standards about the kind of music one was required to compose, because the first piece I ever heard was Chopin ³ F minor Etude, ⁴ the first of the last three Etudes. It was a devastating experience, and I thought, "My God, I'm going to learn how to do something like that." And my piano teacher didn't know what was happening, and then she, something dawned on her, and she said, "Oh, people don't do that anymore. All the music we need has already been composed by people who are dead." And that was my first lesson in composition that I had.

DANIELPOUR:

First of all, I don't think anyone really chooses to be a composer the way you choose or decide on which car to buy or which university to go to. I think, rather, music chooses you. Or at least it did me. The way it chooses us, I think, is usually very unique, and I think the way it chose me was through a number of different avenues. I started formally studying music as a pianist. And so I was introduced to a lot of first-class music from fairly early on, around the age of 12, 13. Unlike Lowell Liebermann, I was very much aware of and entrenched in popular music, particularly in the mid-'60s, music of the Beatles and that music that came after, and a lot of, and a lot of music from Motown, which I loved then and I continue to love today. I remember-- it's probably one of my earliest memories-- watching and listening to something on television. I don't know what it was. It might have been Howdy Doody, for all I know. But it was some television program. And hearing the soundtrack and singing something along with it. And my mother came up, and she said, "What are you doing? What are you singing? That doesn't go with what you're singing." And I said, "Well, I've, I'm singing something to go with this music. I think it's better."

LIEBERMANN:

I'm not sure exactly how it was that I decided that I wanted to be a composer, but it was at a very early age. I was forced, as a child, to take piano lessons, and I absolutely detested them. Even though at that age I started composing and I didn't know how to notate, I didn't know how to notate rhythm or even pitches very well, so I'd kind of just guess where to put the dots on the paper, I'd, probably based on, you know, the spatial distance on the keyboard or something, I don't even remember. But about the age of 13, I decided I wanted to be a composer. And I'm not sure that I showed especial promise at it then, but I began studying. And my first composition teacher-- I think I started with her when I was around 14 or 15-- was Ruth Schonthal, ⁵ who had been a Hindemith ⁶ pupil. And I'll never forget my very first lesson with her, because she sat me down and in her very think Austrian accent said, "So you vant to be a composer. You know zis is a very difficult life. Nobody vill play your music. You vill be unperformed. You vill be miserable. You'll have to do something else for a living. You'll have to get a job. You'll..."

SPEAKER:

How perceptive.

LIEBERMANN:

And so on and so forth. And she said, "You vill only have two uses for your music: to have pieces for yourself to play, and to seduce women." So that was her way of summing up the profession to me as a 13-year-old.

BABBITT:

Mine will be very folksy, too, because I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and therefore the opportunities were not as great as for those of you who grew up in metropolitan areas. But I did-- my father sent me off to have violin lessons at the age of four, with a wonderful lady named Maude Hutchison. And one day, when she realized I was serious about this preposterous thing-- I was four years old-- she handed me the Mendelssohn ⁷ Violin Concerto ⁸ and said, "Here, you know, here's what you might want to write sometime and play sometime." But she gave me only the solo part of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. So I went home and began writing something I called a violin concerto for one violin, of course. And I had a very different life from any of yours, because I played jazz, I wrote popular music, I won a popular song contest when I was 12, I arranged it, I wrote it, I played in every kind of jazz band, mainly with jazz musicians who came up the river from New Orleans. So that's where I grew up in, and that's the repertory I knew best. And I do mean popular music even more than jazz, but all of it, every aspect of popular music. At the same time, all thanks to two relatives I had who were at the Curtis Institute, ⁹ I also heard Schoenberg ¹⁰ at the age of ten. So therefore, I was hooked, you see. And I can only tell you that as, you know, for whom do I write, well, I agree with, I guess, everybody else here, it would appear. I write the music I would most like to hear, and which I've never heard before, and for anybody else who's interested. I'm still looking for them.

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Part 3.  TWENTIETH CENTURY MASTERPIECES

ISTOMIN:

Distinguished composers and friends, what are the six greatest works written since the turn of the 20th century?

ROREM:

My list is significant for what it omits, I'm sure you'll be appalled. But it's simply the works that have had most impression, that have bowled me over the most. They're the Sacre du Printemps, ¹¹ Pelléas , ¹² Satie's ¹³ Socrates , ¹⁴ L'Enfant et les sortilèges , ¹⁵ Peter Grimes, ¹⁶ Rosenkavalier, ¹⁷ and the Copland ¹⁸ Fantasy. ¹⁹ Next question?

ISTOMIN:

Brilliant.

ZWILICH:

I would add to that, I think it's easier for us to have a handle on the early 20th century. It's very hard to have a handle on what's happened in the last 50 years, but...

DANIELPOUR:

I absolutely agree.

ZWILICH:

...the dust has kind of settled in the earlier part of the 20th century, and I think it's rich with masterpieces, including Elektra, ²⁰ Bartók ²¹ Six Quartet ²² is on my list, Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire, ²³ Berg ²⁴ Lulu, ²⁵ of course the Stravinsky ²⁶ Rite of Spring. Rather than just a canon of works, you have, you have huge influences. And I would also add to that something of John Cage, ²⁷ for instance, maybe the Sonatas and Interludes, ²⁸ because I think the, what we are seeing in the 21st century is the result of a confluence of many different ways of making music, all of which have had some degree of impact on most of the people that are writing.

ISTOMIN:

George?

PERLE:

Well, Le Sacre, obviously. Stravinsky. And the Schoenberg Five Pieces for Orchestra. ²⁹ Got to have a Bartók String Quartet; I think the Fifth. ³⁰ And three works by Alban Berg: the Lyric Suite ³¹ and the two operas. ³²

DANIELPOUR:

As Ellen Zwilich mentioned, for me, I think, I can only fairly speak of works in the first 50 years. I think we're possibly too close to the last 50.

ISTOMIN:

Do you really feel that way? I mean, I'm surprised to hear that.

DANIELPOUR:

I mean, you know, the other thing I could do is, is speak of six works in the first 50 and six in the last 50. Nonetheless, of the six from the first half of the century, two of them are operas: Wozzeck ³³ and Peter Grimes. I'd say also Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. ³⁴ I would say the Debussy Préludes, ³⁵ only in that they're a codification of a great deal else of Debussy.

ISTOMIN:

But that's almost 19th century.

DANIELPOUR:

Well...borderline. And I would say of course Rite of Spring, and Copland Third Symphony. ³⁶

BABBITT:

The Schoenberg Fourth String Quartet; ³⁷ the Webern ³⁸ Concerto for Nine Instruments; ³⁹ the Lyric Suite; later on Stravinsky Movements; ⁴⁰ the Sessions ⁴¹ Violin Concerto, ⁴² which, that influenced me tremendously, and I think I had something else written down here: yes, Elliott Carter's ⁴³ Variations. ⁴⁴

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Part 4.  APPRECIATING DIFFERENT WORKS

ISTOMIN:

Pierre Boulez's ⁴⁵ Pli selon pli, ⁴⁶ written to a text by Stéphane Mallarmé; Poulenc's ⁴⁷ La Voix humaine; ⁴⁸ and Bernstein's ⁴⁹ Chichester Psalms: ⁵⁰ can one equally value them? Different though they may be from one another? For example, can one treasure Brahms' Opus 119 ⁵¹ piano pieces, Strauss' ⁵² Salomé, ⁵³ and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, written within a 12-year period, those three works, within 12 years of each other? Can one listen to them and without, and enjoy them without blushing? Obviously, one can. What do you think of that?

ROREM:

Of course.

DANIELPOUR:

I think all of us have our own personal predilections. As somewhat educated musicians, we, we also have a great deal of respect for what we hear that we may not necessarily gravitate toward. So, you know, there is, for me, a difference between respect and love. You could list any half dozen group of works, and I may have a great deal of respect for them. I mean, you know, the Boulez piano sonata ⁵⁴ is from 1948, which I have a great deal of respect for, but I would never necessarily want to turn it on on the CD player and listen to. And yet I have great respect for that work. The four last songs ⁵⁵ of Strauss is also written in 1948. I have not only great respect for that work, but I have a lot of love for it. And it has, it has had an effect on me in many ways.

LIEBERMANN:

The way I understood the question, it was more: Can one appreciate different works equally of vastly different aesthetics? And I think the answer is yes. I mean, from a distance, I mean, we can listen to Brahms and Wagner ⁵⁶ and love each one as much as I do. For me, it might be a little close to appreciate, you know, Boulez and Poulenc, you know, at the same time, but in 50 years I don't know.

ROREM:

As for the Boulez, for example, you can, I can hear him as I heard him 50 years ago, and differently from the way I hear him now. I, he was, he had to leave his home country to become a prophet in his own land. And I heard the first performances of Marteau sans maître, ⁵⁷ and things that I couldn't dig them at all, but I hear him now as coming right out of French Impressionism. Color is as important as counterpoint in harmony, in Boulez, the way it was with Debussy, and to an extent with a rare bunch of other composers, too. And if you listen with those ears, there is a bigger difference, at least with me, and I'm old enough now to be able to appreciate that.

LIEBERMANN:

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you look, like, look at the Notations for orchestra, ⁵⁸ it's extraordinary what's going on there. It's a remarkable piece of orchestration. Is it my cup of tea? No. And I don't think it's something I would, at least in the next 10 years, return to of my own accord. Maybe after that.

BABBITT:

See, I wouldn't regard it as a remarkable piece of orchestration, because the orchestration has practically no role in the piece whatsoever, except to be there, as this thing in itself.

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Part 5.  ECLECTIC PROGRAMMING

ISTOMIN:

Stravinsky once commented on Gary Graffman's ⁵⁹ programming his Serenade in A ⁶⁰ along with the Rachmaninoff ⁶¹ Ètudes-Tableaux in E-flat minor: ⁶² "Oy, what a neighborhood for me to be in."

BABBITT:

I doubt that he said oy!

ISTOMIN:

Gary Graffman told me that story, so it comes from the pianist's mouth.

BABBITT:

Okay.

ISTOMIN:

Do you want your listeners to be committed, to believe in your music? And does eclectic programming such as Graffman's disturb you? Milton?

BABBITT:

No, eclectic programming doesn't disturb me at all. I grew up with it. I grew up with a range of programming that was always the question of: Does a composer want to be on an all-contemporary program? And I think most of us did not. No, of course not, but the idea of a committed listener. I mean, it's seems to imply that before he comes into the hall, he must take a pledge of some kind.

DANIELPOUR:

I think that in some ways, having older works programmed with newer works can, in some ways, make the older works feel new again. One might be able to hear, for instance, Tchaikovsky ⁶³ in a different way, if it's coupled with, with a composer, say, of the latter 20th century like Schnittke, ⁶⁴ another Russian composer.

ROREM:

But it's not a question that would have been brought up a hundred years ago, or ever.

SPEAKERS:

No. I agree.

DANIELPOUR:

But now that it is, and now that, you know, we're also at a point where I almost get the sense, especially in my generation-- that to be an American composer or, for that matter, even an American musician is to be, by definition, eclectic. We're also dealing with composers who have embraced melting pot languages, if you want to talk about language. So both in terms of what happens within one composer's work, as well as the juxtapositions of one composer to the other, I think it's not only perfectly natural, but I think, especially here, it's inevitable.

LIEBERMANN:

Well, I don't know a composer who likes being ghettoized. I mean, I think most composers I know like being on programs with other composers. I think that's the healthiest...

BABBITT:

You mean composers of a different era?

LIEBERMANN:

Yes. I think that's the healthiest situation.

ZWILICH:

I feel very much the same way. And I love it when my music is on a program with earlier music, and I think it's a reflection on the new piece, and the new piece, as Richard said, kind of reflects on the old. But it's, I think it's wonderful to be in the mix, and it's also easier for the audience to, to sort of cope with something that's new, when it's in that kind of a setting.

LIEBERMANN:

Can I say something about the issue of eclecticism that Richard brought up? Because I think a lot of people looking back in the past tend to think of composers as, as doing, like, one thing, and there's a Mozart style and a Beethoven style. And I had this brought back to me when a student in a class just this week asked me how, as a composer, do I form my own style? And I spoke about the fact that I, as a composer, just take what I want, and it's eclectic, and she said, "But what about a composer like Beethoven?" Well, he did the same. I mean, there are movements-- if you take a sonata, you might have a movement that was influenced by bel canto; ⁶⁵ you might have a neo-Baroque movement in the same thing. I mean, it's something I think all composers, or at least a lot of them, have done.

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Part 6.  PERFORMERS

ISTOMIN:

As to performance, Ned Rorem once said,: "Great players and singers have unique personality signatures. You can tell them in an instant if you have an ear. That comes along with matching flaws. Billie Holiday ⁶⁶ cannot not be Billie. Frank Sinatra ⁶⁷ cannot not be Sinatra. Heifetz ⁶⁸ cannot not be Heifetz. Casals ⁶⁹ cannot not be Casals. Horowitz ⁷⁰ cannot not be Horowitz." I certainly agree with that. Do you, composers? And what does that mean for the performance of your own music? What qualities do you require of the performer?

ROREM:

I think any composer will tell you this, with his listening to his vocal works, he will allow far more gradations and highs and lows with the singer than he would with a pianist. A pianist would never say to a composer, "I love this etude of yours, but do you mind if I transpose it up a minor fourth?" Or, "Do you mind if---"... There's a bigger difference between a male and a female singer than between a male and female pianist, so a composer allows for that difference, and makes all kinds of shifts. He'll let his, a song be faster or slower. Fauré ⁷¹ once, when he was asked, "What is the speed of this song, cher maître?" And he said, "Well, if the singer's no good, very fast." With Billie Holiday, of course, she takes a standard, masterpiece or not, generally by a white composer, and makes it her own. Sinatra did the same. But did Heifetz really...?

ISTOMIN:

Everything that he played, there's no-- inimitable. There's nobody who could play anything anywhere near the way he played it.

ROREM:

He wouldn't make adjustments in tempos...

ISTOMIN:

Never.

ROREM:

...the way Sinatra or Billie Holliday...

ISTOMIN:

It was, it had to be his way, and it was his way, and there was no other way to do it. Like it or not like it.

BABBITT:

And was his way the composer's way?

ISTOMIN:

No, not always.

ROREM:

I think there's a difference in kind between a vocalist and the instrumentalist, is, that's all I'm saying. And of course, a great performer wouldn't be great if they weren't, if they didn't have that added touch of them.

BABBITT:

Of singularity, of course.

ROREM:

As with composers. A derivative composer like Poulenc, for example-- he didn't write a single note that couldn't be traced to Chopin or to Musorgsky ⁷² or to this one or to that one. Utterly, utterly plagiaristic, and yet every note has that added je ne sais quoi that makes him pure Poulenc, and it's Poulenc and it's not Ravel; it's Poulenc and it's not so on and so forth. So-and-so.

ZWILICH:

Well, I look at it slightly differently. I, for me, coming up as a performer, and now just as a composer, I love the relationships I have with performers. I think that there is so much that is not in our notation about exactly how you spin out a phrase, exactly what the color is. So I think of the performer as kind of a mirror image, in a way, and they come to music from the other side, bringing with it a tremendous amount of intellectual understanding and emotional attachment to what they're doing. And I like that. I mean, I don't like performances that are not accurate-- I'm not talking about accuracy-- but just the whole notion of the, that extra level of artistry beyond getting the notes and getting it the tempo and getting it right, there's the sense of what an artist-performer brings that, to me, is just a great thrill as a composer. Now, you've said that performers are like trained seals, and I think just the opposite. I think they're like musical intelligences.

ROREM:

Some of them.

DANIELPOUR:

I would say that the, probably the best teachers I've had in the last 15 years have been the performers who have played my music. And it's not just a question of, of something having to do with the instrument idiomatically or perhaps even what makes more sense. But it sometimes has to do with their instincts. Where they will want to take more time, that I had not thought of, may actually be a better solution than what I had thought of, and I think that they help, they have helped me to evolve decisions. For me, the piece is not finished until, really, the first performance. I think, for me, there are still decisions being made in the first couple of rehearsals. And so they become, in some ways, not only allies but aids to the creative process.

ISTOMIN:

And subsequently, then, hopefully, for everybody here, that these are not only fresh performances, and down the road, if these works are played and played again and again and again, as the masterpieces are, there are different ways that you, people will play them, and these will be revelations in and of themselves.

DANIELPOUR:

Yeah. Sometimes there are revelations which are the wrong revelation, too. I mean, you can have, you can have a performer play something that, that gives you an idea, or that may even improve what you've done...

BABBITT:

Or displays a weakness in the piece.

DANIELPOUR:

Or, yeah, or at the same time, you might have someone who does something that, for that particular moment, may be, you know, may be a rush for the player or, or for that particular instant in the piece, but might actually do something that would be detrimental to the work as a whole. So, I mean, it goes both ways. I'm not saying that all performers are gods and we should listen to everything they say, but there is a great deal to be learned from them, and I think that we're better off for it.

LIEBERMANN:

I mean, for me, the best kind of performer is the one whose intent is to sublimate himself in the music he's playing, and that performer's personality can't help coming out anyway. Your question made me think of the whole cult of the performer, and there are these performers who use pieces as vehicles to present themselves, and those for me are generally the less satisfactory performances. But there are a lot of, you know, great performers out there who do have strong personalities, who are very careful and dedicated to presenting the composer's wishes as he or she can best understand them.

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Part 7.  ACCESSIBILITY

ISTOMIN:

Why is new pop instantly accepted by the public? Why is new serious music mostly inaccessible to even lovers of classical music, except for a small group of modern music buffs? Where do you place minimalist music?

ROREM:

First of all, what public are you speaking of that accepts? And what is the serious music that is inaccessible to lovers of classical music?

ISTOMIN:

Practically all of 20th century music that we're speaking about.

ROREM:

I think these things go definitely in generations. And I don't think music gets better or worse as the centuries progress; it simply goes from harmonic periods to contrapuntal periods and back to harmonic periods and contrapuntal periods. The harmonic periods have always been pretty easy to swallow. The contrapuntal periods are complex. Harmonic periods like the 19th century-- Beethoven, Chopin, Romantic music came from that-- but that turned a little bit into contra...counterpoint with Wagner, a lot more with Schoenberg. It became harmonic again with Les Six ⁷³ in France, and then it became contrapuntal, and so forth and so on. The public, however, in general, has become a lot narrower with the dumbing down that's been going on in the past 25 years, and I think it's getting worse by the minute. And as for pop music, I don't accept it, and nobody I know, or many people I know, don't. I don't even listen to it any longer, and yet it was part of my background. So I think it depends on who you're talking to and when. What we talk about with Steve Reich ⁷⁴ and Adams ⁷⁵ and so forth, Lou Harrison ⁷⁶ was doing it 60 years ago; in other words, extremely minimal music, but on top of which he would etch a tune, and when it was good, it was very good, and better than anybody else doing it now. Where do I place it? I don't know. I'll tell you in 50 years.

ZWILICH:

I think the field is very much alive, I think, because, I think, people are writing good music of many, many different kinds, and I think there is an audience out there, and I think it's, it's a kind of a 25- or 30-year-old notion that there isn't. It's definitely there. I think that one of the issues that many of us might have with contemporary popular music, so-called popular music, is that it's so heavily merchandised. It's the product of focus groups and mass-produced, in a sense. I'm sure there's an underground popular music that you don't hear that's maybe very, very interesting, that is not picked up by the industry, and it's one of the biggest industries in the world, the pop music industry. I think we are fighting an increasing sense of people not having even the most rudimentary music education. They haven't sung in a chorus; they haven't played in a band or an orchestra; they haven't heard--- what, not even classical music; they don't know jazz, they haven't heard anything from elsewhere in the world. Ironically, in this era of mega-choices, the vast percentage of the population has the most narrow focus of music that's being sold to them at probably any time in history. So I think it's a kind of a false dichotomy. And I think that there is an audience for all kinds of new music; it just may not be a mass audience. But when we look at the history of music, we find that some of the most important things happen in front of 25 people, or in a church, where Bach ⁷⁷ was doing something that maybe or maybe not, you know, the congregation were really aware of what it was. So I think that there are people who have an audience. It may not be a mass audience, but it's there, and it's, they're responding, and it's real.

PERLE:

But there's another aspect to all this, which is: When I was young, there were a lot of world-renowned composers around, and we heard their music. And then they began to die off, one by one, and nobody replaced them. And they're all gone now. I think the last one died maybe with Benjamin Britten, ⁷⁸ I don't know. But when I was a youngster, there was Ravel, ⁷⁹ he was still alive. Sibelius ⁸⁰ was still alive. Richard Strauss was still alive. Even Schoenberg was alive till 1951.

ISTOMIN:

Indeed he was.

PERLE:

And they died, and I began to notice it: Where is somebody to take their place? And there isn't anybody. Now, that may be all right. There may be a new, we may not be dealing with masterworks in the future as we have in the past. Maybe we don't need masterworks.

ZWILICH:

You mention Shostakovich. ⁸¹ He died in 1976 [sic]. It seems to me that...

DANIELPOUR:

Aaron Copland died in 1990.

ZWILICH:

Yeah. It's almost like saying there were no great people born in 1999. I mean, we don't really know.

PERLE:

But there were a whole slew of composers that people who were interested in music could listen to, and they were alive.

DANIELPOUR:

You're coming from a particular place in time, and you may not be able to see what's ahead any more than we might be.

LIEBERMANN:

If you look at the Grove's Dictionary ⁸² from, I forget what year it is - wartime-- I mean, the entry on Richard Strauss says that this is a minor composer. You know? And a lot of that did have to do with wartime politics and things. But I think there's always that sense of the good old days, and our perception of what is immediately around us is seldom as reverential as when we look back.

PERLE:

It's not so much what's around us. It around, what's around everybody. There's not a large audience who likes Stravinsky's music, his early music, while he's still alive.

LIEBERMANN:

I don't think the audience, though, is any necessarily smaller than it was 50 years ago-

DANIELPOUR:

I think that what happens is, you know, a generation passes through and all of a sudden you see that they're there again. And in the same way that Ellen is saying that, you know, how do we know who has been born in the '80s or '90s who was great-- I don't think we really see it yet.

LIEBERMANN:

It is the constantly equating popular music with classical music that has brought a good part of the crisis that, for instance, the recording industry is in today, when the accountant at the top of PolyGram ⁸³ looks at the figures and says, you know, "So-and-so is selling, and such-and-such a pop star is selling 30 million albums, and look, this classical stuff, it's sold fifteen hundred copies."

DANIELPOUR:

To me, the audience that you have for popular music, which, as Ellen mentioned, is essentially industrially based, it's, the bottom line for pop music is essentially to make money, I think in most cases, over creating a work of any lasting value. As a result, you're going to have a very different, a very different goal in mind, and a very different result in mind. I think you also have listeners which might be embracing something immediately, but they're also going to dispose of it a lot more quickly, too. A lot, I mean, the audience that you have for pop music is a very disposable one, whereas the audience that you have for concert, classical music, in its best case, is one that can exist over a long period of time.

BABBITT:

But first of all, let me remind you that a newspaper that presumes to call itself the nation's newspaper has referred to all of us and everything we do as a minor subculture.

DANIELPOUR:

In a large-scale way, not only in the press but I think generally in the culture, confuse art and entertainment. And I think while art can be entertaining and ought to be in most cases, in all cases, I think there is a difference, and I think the difference has, in some way, to do with what the bottom line really is. So, you know, as, when you have two different bottom lines, you will have two different types of audiences. And I have to agree with Ellen that we do have an audience. It may not be the same at a particular point in time in number...

BABBITT:

But as Ned also pointed out, it's shrinking.

ISTOMIN:

I just wonder how, when you write a symphony or a piano concerto or whatever, an opera, how that's going to be performed, it's going to be, how it's going to be rehearsed, probably many times by very good artists, where it's going to be rehearsed, who's going to be paid for their work, who is going to, who is going to fund that...

BABBITT:

Now that's an excellent...

ISTOMIN:

...how is that going to be done, and what value does whoever and whatever corporation has placed on the entire subject of our culture?

ROREM:

Just to have it recorded, you have to get down on your hands and knees and plead.

ISTOMIN:

Yeah, that's the point that...

ROREM:

It's very depressing.

ISTOMIN:

Whereas 50 years ago, when I was making my recordings and quite a few of them sold quite well, thank you, for Columbia Records, the president of which was a man named Goddard Lieberson..

BABBITT:

Whom we all knew very well.

ISTOMIN:

...who was the person who made, whom we all knew very well, who put Stravinsky's complete works, who decided that Stravinsky needed to, his works had to be recorded...

BABBITT:

When Stravinsky came up, may I add, to collect the royalties for those late works that were so small, he went to Goddard and thanked him for the tip.

ISTOMIN:

There you are. [Laughter.]

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Part 8.  LANGUAGE AND TONALITY

ISTOMIN:

Picasso once said, "In order to understand Chinese, I would have to learn that language. So Cubism is a way of seeing. You have to learn its alphabet." For an appreciation of atonality or serial music, should we refer to Picasso's analogy as well?

ROREM:

Of course you have to learn a language in order to speak it. But to use that as a metaphor for music, the arts don't express each other. If all the arts were the same, would express each other, we'd only need one art. We don't have to sit down and study harmony in order to appreciate Mozart or Debussy or Beethoven. We don't, I don't think the-- or The Rite of Spring. You could even play that for any uninitiated young person of the old days, and they'd dig it, because there's something carnal and physical about it, as there is, indeed, in all music, of Monteverdi ⁸⁴ or music that has words to it. So I think it's a false analogy. To learn Chinese, you have to learn Chinese, because that's a language, and it, in turn, all languages are metaphors. But music is, can't be proved to be a metaphor for anything. So as for learning, why should we sit down and learn the 12-tone system as distinct from basic harmony, or in preference to? I don't think that the final judgment of a piece of music is how well we understand it intellectually at all. Nor do I even know what understanding music means.

PERLE:

I don't understand what understanding music intellectually means. I understand music in a n...at first. I mean, I may, I may have looked into that, I know I did look into the Chopin Etude much more deeply for many years. I'm still looking into it, still marveling over it. But I also understood it when I was a child, and it was the first piece of music I heard-- I know that I understood it. I know the way it has stayed with me since then, and the references it's got. I feel exactly that same way about Schoenberg's Opus 11, No. 1. ⁸⁵ I didn't know anything about Schoenberg when I heard it for the first time. I was handed it by somebody who said, "Here's something crazy for you to look to, look at. It doesn't make any sense." I played the beginning of it, and it immediately, it immediately made sense to me. Well, it has something to do with intellectual matters, because I'm still looking at that piece, marveling at it.

BABBITT:

By the way, I agree with Ned. I think, you know, the language analogy I find fallacious for many reasons. But on the other hand, when you say learn Chinese, how do you, how does a Chinese child learn Chinese? He isn't studying the Chinese language. He has learned it informally by acquisition of the language.

ISTOMIN:

By hearing it.

BABBITT:

The same thing could happen in music, exactly, with regard to how one learns informally. But just, just only one comment about this. Remember what Stravinsky said, when Stravinsky accused, when he was accused of apostasy, of-- that he'd become a traitor to the cause, when he began writing 12-tone music, he said, "Why are you so surprised? I always wrote with intervals." And that's a crucial statement, because he understood something about the crux of the 12-tone system-- the very primitive, or the primary elements of the 12-tone system-- that most people who write about it and talk about notes or even pitch classes do not understand that fundamental, remarkable relationship of an interval which, frankly, no other field enjoys.

DANIELPOUR:

I think that just as there are many different types of listening, there are many different types of listeners. And I don't believe, if you're listening on one level, you have to necessarily know intrinsically the language of that level. There are, there are children who can hear a work as complex as the "Jupiter" Symphony ⁸⁶ of Mozart, which is very simple on its surface but incredibly complex beneath its surface, and derive great pleasure from it, without knowing anything about how it's put together. I think both are valid types of listening.

BABBITT:

But-- I'm sorry, but I mean, obviously, there are no innocent ears. There are no immaculate perceptions. I mean, everything that you perceive and everything that you listen to is a result of all that past experience in music and in other things. I promise you, this question of how one learns Chinese, I mean, you go to Chinese, you find four-year-olds who learn Chinese far better than you can learn it in 10 years of study.

ZWILICH:

Could I say something, also? I think that where Picasso's analogy might hold up, in a way: I always thought that music needs to be listened to the way it wants to be listened to. And that if you, for instance, come to Chinese, traditional Chinese music, with only a framework of Western tonal music, you'll say, "Oh, gee, that's out of tune." You won't understand the subtleties that are taking place in the actual language, pardon me, of the music. Where people come to jazz and they'll say, "Well, where's the tune?" You know. They're not listening to what's actually being given in the music. Everybody who's really educated in music has learned that there are many different ways to approach music, to listen to music of different cultures, of different types, and to listen to that music in the way that it's most appropriate.

ISTOMIN:

[To ROREM] My beloved, adored friend of 60 years, you made a quote about Stravinsky and Sacre. May I remind you that Debussy, who accompanied him to the rehearsal générale, not the scandal one, got up after the performance and said, "Maintenant, tu m'a quitté, mon cher ami." ⁸⁷

BABBITT:

Oui, oui.

ISTOMIN:

So even Debussy, the great genius, giant genius that we all bow down in front of, didn't get it.

ZWILICH:

I heard Murray Perahia ⁸⁸ play the Schubert B-flat Sonata ⁸⁹ yesterday. It was wonderful. It's not wonderful because it's in B-flat. It's wonderful because of the imagination of the, the development of ideas, the creation of this enormous structure that leads the listener through it. One of the elements is the tonality of it. I just think the question presupposes that tonality is some kind of a universal thing by which everything is measured. And I say it's not even the most necessarily important part of tonal music.

ISTOMIN:

Do you have to be experienced to get pleasure and be moved by a Beethoven, Brahms, or Tchaikovsky symphony, something that Ned said earlier. What about Stravinsky's Symphony in C ⁹⁰ and Schoenberg's Erwartung? ⁹¹

ROREM:

I think maybe an educated person, as we all are, finally are disposed toward one kind of music or another. I hear all music as tonal; I can't help it, I just do. And I feel that that doesn't, if I listen to a so-called atonal piece, I'll have a subconscious pedal point to hold me in check. I'm not particularly attracted to many of the pieces that you list here, which are not especially difficult pieces. And I am attracted toward, toward other pieces. So-- and I'm an educated person.

DANIELPOUR:

With respect to whether you're talking about atonal or tonal or serial music, I don't really think that's the issue to what makes, what makes something graspable or embraceable or something that we want to go back to. For me, so much of it has to do with how a piece allows one to remember itself. And I think a great deal of it has to do with memory-- it, the piece's own internal sense of memory, as well as, to some extent, perhaps the piece's external memory; in other words, how that work relates to other works. How a piece allows us to remember itself has a great deal to do with our wanting to come back to it again. Now, you may remember something very, very clearly and not want to come back to it. I mean, we've all had that experience.

BABBITT:

I mean, obviously, in a, the greater amount of repetition in the piece, the greater amount of literal repetition, the easier it is to remember. That's what very simple pop music does. It supplies memory for you, really. You don't have to remember anything...

DANIELPOUR:

But I mean Mahler ⁹² Ninth Symphony ⁹³ is not a very simple work, and yet it has a way, it has its own language of repetition, and it remembers itself very well, even though it's an extraordinarily complex work. So...

BABBITT:

And a very long one.

DANIELPOUR:

So...yes. So in a sense, is it's not even a question of length, to me, or whether it's tonal or atonal or serial or-- it's, the question is how well a piece remembers itself, and the language of its creating an internal sense of memory. That's, that I find much more important.

ISTOMIN:

That's, I find this a very good point, indeed.

ZWILICH:

Can I agree with this, and add to it that we have spent so much time in the last 50 years talking about what is, in essence, language, whether you use this language or that language, when it's what people do with it that really makes-- I mean, all the pieces on our list were in kind of different languages. Languages don't write pieces. Composers write pieces.

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Part 9.  EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

ISTOMIN:

What is experimental music? Which are experiments, and which are works of art?

ROREM:

I don't know that any composer ever sits down and says, "I shall now write an experimental piece." Every one of Beethoven's sonatas is an experimental piece. He's experimenting with the form of sonata, as well as the harmonies and counterpoints that...

BABBITT:

You can say any piece is an experimental piece.

ISTOMIN:

Yes, but those are masterworks. Those are works of art.

ROREM:

Well, who says? And-- not if I say they aren't. Why am I wrong and why are you right?

ISTOMIN:

Well, then, it's in the ear of the listener.

BABBITT:

Ah, now we're getting to the real question.

ROREM:

Any time any of us sets pen to paper, we are experimenting, we're hoping for the best, we're doing something presumably we haven't done before. How do you write a piece? I don't know how to write a piece. Then you write it.

ISTOMIN:

But you will agree that the term "experimental" has been used for works of art and for works of music.

BABBITT:

Taking it seriously, then no piece, I mean, it makes no sense at all, because experiments begin with hypotheses that you're trying to verify or not. The performance, therefore, is the experiment, and then wha, how do you decide whether the experiment is a success or not? Depending on what the guy in The New York Times says?

LIEBERMANN:

Well, wasn't there that famous quote from Varèse, ⁹⁴ where he said, "I don't let the public see my experiments," you know? "And when I finish the piece..."

BABBITT:

He had a reason.

LIEBERMANN:

I suspect the term really gained vogue when Varèse had the piece premièred at the Science Pavilion of the World's Fair, and it's a pseudo-scientific term, and it's basically...

BABBITT:

We want to be one of those experimental, yeah...

LIEBERMANN:

...one of those silly, silly terms, as silly as I find being classified as a neo-Romantic.

ZWILICH:

It might be of interest to people to know that when the six of us sit down to do our work, none of these words come up, you know? Minimalism, ⁹⁵ postmodernism, ⁹⁶ modernism, ⁹⁷ experimentalism, ⁹⁸ serialism. ⁹⁹ I mean, these words do not come up. I mean, it's not a part of what it is that I do, and I think probably everybody else.

DANIELPOUR:

Ellen is absolutely right. The term sonata form doesn't appear in a dictionary until 1866.

BABBITT:

A.B. Marx.

ZWILICH:

Yeah. And Beethoven died in 1827.

DANIELPOUR:

Exactly. So the issue here is how we affix titles and names to things that have been, in a sense, part of an organic, evolving process. I think a lot of the terms maybe that come after the fact, as Ellen is saying, may be the result of something that, that may not be really part of our own process.

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Part 10.  THE AVANT-GARDE

ISTOMIN:

As for the unquenchable thirst for the new, will instant obsolescence render the avant-garde passé even before it arrives?

ZWILICH:

I can't speak for everybody here, but I just can't believe that anybody sitting here sits down to exemplify a style or a trend or something, like we're doing something, we may not be able to articulate exactly what it is we're doing, but I'm doing something that's very profoundly involving of all that I am as a human being, and it, none of it fits under any of these little rubrics.

ROREM:

Twenty-year-old composers, though, think differently.

ZWILICH:

Well, I'm not 20, you know? I'm, you know...

ROREM:

We're talking of ourselves, but Eugene's asking the question about planned obsolescence.

ZWILICH:

The eyes are getting bad!

BABBITT:

You've always...

ROREM:

And the few, the one tenth of one percent of young people who give a damn anyway do think in terms of language. "I shall now write like Steve Reich," or this one or that one. Richard sees it, as I do at Curtis. The overall scope is extremely tonal, doggedly tonal now, and that might change radically, as it did from 20 years ago and so forth. These things come or go. They either work or they don't. The obsolescence is, is not planned; it's there if they're no good. It's as simple as that.

ZWILICH:

Isn't it natural for a young composer to try on different clothes, so to speak? To try this, or to try that?

DANIELPOUR:

Yes. That's part of what Ned is saying.

BABBITT:

I hate to say this, I'm sorry, but there are European composers who regard all of us as very obsolescent. They have a new modernism, which they reward and which they perform. All you have to do to find out who they are is just notice the way they're regarded, the way they're rewarded. I know these people only because they get so much publicity, so much money. I get so much propaganda in the mail about them, I even know a couple of them personally. And the Lachenmann, ¹⁰⁰ for example. Do you have any idea of how many recordings of Lachenmann, how much money he makes, and how he regards all of us as being as least two centuries behind the times? It was a question of whether there is an avant garde, and these people regard themselves as the avant garde and we are the derrière.

ISTOMIN:

Well, at the beginning of this session, I remember asking a question about why do you write music, and Milton scandalously replied, "For money." Which, of course, he was joking.

BABBITT:

Not for money only. I fail!

ISTOMIN:

Only...fractionally.

ROREM:

You don't sit down just filled with inspiration like you did at the age of 16, writing to express yourself. You write what people ask for. You write what you're commissioned to write. You're usually commissioned to write something you want to write anyway, because they're commissioning...

BABBITT:

Because they have the...

ROREM:

Well, because they know what you can do, and what they expect from you.

ZWILICH:

You can pull a lot of examples out of Europe which tends to be more corporate, and the rewards tend to be higher and decided by fewer people and all of that, but American music has been a very different thing, because when I read historical descriptions of what's happened in the 20th century in America, it doesn't even describe half the people that I know were working at any given time. I think that's been our, our value as a nation of composers who are able to really kind of follow the, your heart and your mind and your own direction, taking whatever there is. And I think the notion, it's a very cynical notion, you know, "I'm going to do this because it's successful," and, I think that's one that you don't have to live with in this country. That there is something much deeper about all of this, and why we do it.

ISTOMIN:

This not just the local American scene; it's what six major composers among others feel and think --other equally major composers, and I'll admit that there are some more like yourself, not many more, and that there are other composers in Europe, in other places, that would be very interested in what you say and what you think. And for that, I thank you most heartily and most sincerely for having given me the honor of your presence and...

BABBITT:

Thank you, Eugene.

ZWILICH:

Thank you.

ISTOMIN:

...and enhanced modern music for everybody. New music. Contemporary music.

BABBITT:

Music.

ISTOMIN:

Music, yes.

BABBITT:

While you experiment, I compose. [Laughter.]

---

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FOOTNOTES:

1 Jerome Kern (1885-1945). American composer. Back to transcript

2 Byzantine chant is the general term applied to the liturgical music of the eastern Christian Church. Back to transcript

3 Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-1849). Polish composer and pianist. Back to transcript

4 Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, Trois nouvelles études, for solo piano: Ètude no. 3 in F Minor. Back to transcript

5 Ruth Schonthal (1924- ). German-born American composer, pianist and teacher. Back to transcript

6 Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). German composer, theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. Back to transcript

7 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847). German composer, conductor, pianist and organist. Back to transcript

8 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, op. 64. Back to transcript

9 The Curtis Institute, founded in 1924 in Philadelphia, PA, is considered to be one of the finest music conservatories in the United States. Back to transcript

10 Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Austrian-born American composer. Back to transcript

11 Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du printemps [French, The Rite of Spring]. Ballet. Back to transcript

12 Claude Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande. Opera. Back to transcript

13 Erik Satie (1866-1925). French composer. Back to transcript

14 Erik Satie, Socrate. Ballet. Back to transcript

15 Maurice Ravel, L'Enfant et les sortileges. Opera. Back to transcript

16 Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes, op. 33. Opera. Back to transcript

17 Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier. Opera. Back to transcript

18 Aaron Copland (1900-1990). American composer, writer on music, conductor and pianist. Back to transcript

19 Aaron Copland, Piano Fantasy. Back to transcript

20 Richard Strauss, Elektra, op. 58. Opera. Back to transcript

21 Béla Bartók (1881-1945). Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist and pianist. Back to transcript

22 Béla Bartók, String Quartet no. 6. Back to transcript

23 Arnold Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire, for speaker, chamber ensemble. Back to transcript

24 Alban Berg (1885-1935). Austrian composer. Back to transcript

25 Alban Berg, Lulu. Opera. Back to transcript

26 Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). Russian composer. Back to transcript

27 John Cage (1912-1992). American composer. Back to transcript

28 John Cage, Sonatas and Interludes, for prepared piano. Back to transcript

29 Arnold Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra [Fünf Orchesterstücke], op. 16. Back to transcript

30 Béla Bartók, String Quartet no. 5. Back to transcript

31 Alban Berg, Lyric Suite [Lyrische Suite]. Back to transcript

32 Alban Berg's two operas are Wozzeck, op. 7 and Lulu. Back to transcript

33 Alban Berg, Wozzeck, op. 7. Opera. Back to transcript

34 Béla Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra. Back to transcript

35 Claude Debussy, Préludes, for solo piano. Back to transcript

36 Aaron Copland, Symphony no. 3. Back to transcript

37 Arnold Schoenberg, String Quartet no. 4. Back to transcript

38 Anton Webern (1883-1945). Austrian composer and conductor. Back to transcript

39 Anton Webern, Concerto, op. 24. Back to transcript

40 Igor Stravinsky, Movements, for piano and orchestra. Back to transcript

41 Roger Sessions (1896-1985). American composer, teacher and writer on music. Back to transcript

42 Roger Sessions, Violin Concerto. Back to transcript

43 Elliott Carter (1908- ). American composer. Back to transcript

44 Elliott Carter, Variations for Orchestra. Back to transcript

45 Pierre Boulez (1925- ). French composer and conductor. Back to transcript

46 Pierre Boulez, Pli selon pli, for soprano and chamber ensemble. Back to transcript

47 Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). French composer and pianist. Back to transcript

48 Francis Poulenc, La Voix humaine. Opera. Back to transcript

49 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). American composer, conductor, and pianist. Back to transcript

50 Leonard Bernstein, Chichester Psalms. Cantata. Back to transcript

51 Johannes Brahms, Clavierstücke, op. 119. Back to transcript

52 Richard Strauss (1864-1949). German composer and conductor. Back to transcript

53 Richard Strauss, Salome, op. 54. Opera. Back to transcript

54 Pierre Boulez, Sonata no. 2 for piano. Back to transcript

55 Richard Strauss, Vier letzte Lieder [German, Four Last Songs], for soprano and orchestra. Back to transcript

56 Richard Wagner (1813-1883). German composer, poet, and writer on music, philosophy, religion, and other subjects. Back to transcript

57 Pierre Boulez, Le Marteau sans maître, for alto soloist and chamber ensemble. Back to transcript

58 Pierre Boulez, Notations, for orchestra. Back to transcript

59 Gary Graffman (1928- ). American pianist. Back to transcript

60 Igor Stravinsky Serenade in A, for solo piano. Back to transcript

61 Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Russian composer, pianist and conductor. Back to transcript

62 Ètudes-tableaux, op. 33, for solo piano: Ètude no. 3 in E-flat Minor; and/or Ètudes-tableaux, op. 39, for solo piano: Ètude no. 5 in E-flat Minor. Back to transcript

63 Piotr Il'ich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Russian composer. Back to transcript

64 Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998). Russian composer. Back to transcript

65 Bel canto [Italian, "beautiful singing"] refers to a vocal style cultivated in Italy in the 18th and early 19th century characterized by agility of technique; more narrowly defined, it refers to the style used in Italian opera of that era. Back to transcript

66 Billie Holiday (1915-1959). American jazz singer. Back to transcript

67 Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). American singer. Back to transcript

68 Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987). Russian-Born American violinist. Back to transcript

69 Pablo Casals (1876-1973). Catalan cellist, conductor, pianist, and composer. Back to transcript

70 Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989). Ukranian-born American pianist. Back to transcript

71 Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). French composer, teacher, pianist and organist. Back to transcript

72 Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881). Russian composer. Back to transcript

73 Les Six [French, "The Six"]: a group of composers working in France during the early 20th century: Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and GermaineTailleferre. Back to transcript

74 Steve Reich (1936- ). American composer. Back to transcript

75 John Adams (1947- ). American composer and conductor. Back to transcript

76 Lou Harrison (1917-2003). American composer. Back to transcript

77 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). German composer. Back to transcript

78 Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). British composer. Back to transcript

79 Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). French composer. Back to transcript

80 Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). Finnish composer. Back to transcript

81 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Russian composer. Back to transcript

82 Grove's Dictionary: first published between 1879 and 1889 by Sir George Grove (1820-1900) as A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, this work has grown to become The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie; London: Macmillan, 2001; in 29 volumes) and is considered to be the standard reference source for musical subjects in the English language. Back to transcript

83 PolyGram: an international group of recording companies, including Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, which merged in 1972; this corporation is currently known as the Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company and distributor. Back to transcript

84 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). Italian composer. Back to transcript

85 Arnold Schoenberg, Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11, for solo piano. Back to transcript

86 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony no. 41, K. 551 (1788). Back to transcript

87 French, "Now you have left me, my dear friend." Back to transcript

88 Murray Perahia (born 1947- ). American pianist. Back to transcript

89 Franz Schubert, Sonata in B-flat major, Franz Schubert for solo piano. Back to transcript

90 Igor Stravinsky, Symphony in C. Back to transcript

91 Arnold Schoenberg, Erwartung, op. 17. Opera. Back to transcript

92 Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Austrian composer and conductor. Back to transcript

93 Gustav Mahler, Symphony no. 9. Back to transcript

94 Edgard Varèse (1883-1965). French-born American composer. Back to transcript

95 Minimalism denotes a style of music which emerged in New York in the mid-1960s and which is characterized by a "minimum" number of musical elements presented in a generally restricted or repetitive manner. Back to transcript

96 Postmodernism, applied to music of the late 1970s onwards, is a term used to describes a broad range of musical styles, the essence of which is a conceptual approach to the role of music itself in culture and society. Back to transcript

97 Modernism in music is a general term which refers to 20th century trends in musical composition, aesthetic theory, scholarship and performing practice. Back to transcript

98 Experimentalism in music simply describes the use of non-traditional musical elements and sound production techniques in musical compositions. Back to transcript

99 Serialism denotes a method of composition, initially developed and explored in the early 20th century primarily by composer Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples, in which a fixed series, or patterns of musical elements (most commonly the twelve notes of the Western equal-tempered scale, but extending to rhythmic or durational patterns as well) form the basis for a musical composition. Back to transcript

100 Helmut Lachenmann (1935- ). German composer. Back to transcript

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