Music:
JAMES, HIBBARD
MUSIC By Hibbard James Some Premieres Of New Music Agratifyingly large amount of new music is being performed all over the country today. To be sure, quite a bit of this music is on the dreary...
...As I listened to his barren technicalities, I couldn't help wishing that he (and others) would give up a little technique for some honest emotion...
...Often, her former students seem so busy avoiding heresy that they rarely get around to anything that might be called positive music for fear of violating their self-imposed restrictions...
...To wind up this gloomy appraisal, there is Jean Rivier's Fifth Symphony, which received its first performance by the National Orchestra Association under the direction of Leon Barzin...
...A surprising number of the contemporary composers —Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Mark Blitzstein are the most prominent among them—have studied under Nadia Boulanger...
...Miss Price's sensuous interpretation was memorable...
...Still another new vocal work was Joseph Liebling's setting for unaccompanied voices of the e. e. cum-mings lyric In Just-spring...
...Rivier is so eclectic as to be derivative...
...Recently, the Louisville Symphony—aided by a substantial Rockefeller grant—has been most active in commissioning original work...
...La Montaine provides a lush, romantic orchestration and melodic line...
...One such was the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra by the British composer Michael Tippett, which was given its first American performance by the Little Orchestra Society with Louis Kent-ner as soloist...
...He is technically facile and resourceful, but this only leads much of his writing into the paths of least resistance, so that no single style develops throughout the piece...
...Thus they find themselves in a type of negative enslavement that is just as debilitating as following the 19th-century masters note for note...
...his style can be called traditional without being in the least derivative...
...So large a segment of modern American music has absorbed her theories of composition that Winthrop Sargeant once issued the peevish admonition: "Composers, revolt...
...Tippett, a man in his early fifties, seems to have taken to composing relatively late in life...
...To be sure, quite a bit of this music is on the dreary side, but the fact that we are getting a chance to hear so much that is new and experimental indicates a healthy state of affairs...
...Liebling is so preoccupied with the musical treatment of a particular phrase (or even a single word) that he manages to miss the entire point of the cummings poem...
...Liebling is the founder and conductor of a group called the Master Singers, and an able interpreter of vocal music...
...Mme...
...Of the seven songs, based on the second chapter of the Song of Solomon, five are lightweight, but in the last two Mr...
...During the past few weeks, I have heard several new works by composers who are little known even to regular concert-goers...
...Tippett lets down his avant-garde and a real melody slips out...
...If the whole concerto had as much feeling as the slow movement, the piece would be a success...
...The trouble is largely that Tippett seems to have an almost pathological fear of either melody or emotion...
...Because many of the Boulanger graduates are both articulate and highly placed in musical circles, her notions are indirectly influencing many of the younger composers...
...So, instead of a tender evocation of spring, we have music that serves to accentuate the eccentricities of the verse, and at the same time obscures the lyric and romantic qualities which cummings expressed so subtly...
...I have heard a number of such premieres recently, and, while I have real reservations about many of them, it is good that the composers can test their work before concert-hall audiences...
...I also heard the first New York performance of John La Montaine's Songs of the Rose of Sharon, with Howard Mitchell conducting the National Symphony and the soprano Leontyne Price as soloist...
...On the basis of this piece, he is a composer worth hearing more from...
...Boulanger's ideas on composition reflect a marked eclecticism, plus what amounts to a compulsion to avoid traditional musical approaches to melody, harmony and emotion...
...You have nothing to lose but your Boulangerie...
...And yet, from time to time, Mr...
...Kentner's interpretation is presumably authoritative (he played the piece at its world premiere two years ago), so its poor reception can scarcely be laid at his door...
...Another model of technical ability, Mr...
...For a number of years, the late Serge Koussevitzky seemed to hold a virtual monopoly on the presentation of new work...
...Paradoxically enough, most new composers seem to be slaves to the past and to fear...
...But nowadays it is a rare concert or recital anywhere that does not include at least one "first performance...
...La Montaine is a young American composer with an almost 19th-century attitude toward melody...
...The new composition, recently performed by the Master Singers at Town Hall, is artful, but Mr...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 4
