Unorthodox Combinations

...On Music UNORTHODOX COMBINATONS BY HAL GOODMAN GEORGE ROCHBERG is hardly a household name But he is arguably one of today's most important American composers, and certainly one of the most controversial The controversy springs from his reconciling tonality with atonahty (or, as many would say, unsuccessfully attempting to), and from a career that has moved in the opposite direction from the vast majority of other composers Born in New York in 1918, Rochberg was for much of his life a strict defender and practitioner of atonahty and serialism, a follower of Arnold Schoen-berg and Anton von Webern "I was convinced of the historical inevitability of the 12-tone language," he wrote several years ago "I felt I was living at the very edge of the musical frontier, of history itself " Bythe early 1960s, though, Rochberg found himself feeling more and more constrained by the 12-tone system, and he began to level at it the same sort of charges atonal composers had long brought against traditional tonality "I had become completely dissatisfied with [serialism's] inherently narrow terms I found the palette of constant chromaticism increasingly constricting, nor could I accept any longer the limited range of gestures that always seemed to channel the music into some form or other of expressionism The over-intense manner of serialism and its tendency to inhibit physical pulse and rhythm led me to question a style which made it virtually impossible to express serenity, tranquillity, grace, wit, energy It became necessary to move on " What Rochberg moved on to was his Third String Quartet, completed m February 1972 In the composer's words, it was "the first major work to emerge from what I have come to think of as 'the time of turning '" With all the fervor of a convert, I have played the Third Quartet for a fair number of people since I made its acquaintance Most hated it A few liked it No one was bored The abrasiveness of the piece and to me, its charm ties not in the use of tonality or atonahty, but in how it brings together the most extreme forms of both and leaves them to do battle From the opening, where jagged screeches alternate with long, gentle 19th-century chords, through the beautiful and defiantly tonal Variations, to the violent, dissonant conclusion, the Third has something to offend everyone wedded to one style or the other If you share Rochberg's love for two contrasting worlds, though, the work is a call for unity and a masterpiece, and its composer seems like something of a prophet Let all this serve as an introduction to Rochberg's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Quartets, just issued for the first time on a two-record set (RCA ARL2-4198) In these three pieces (called the Concord Quartets, after the group of musicians for whom they were written and who perform them here), the composer further explores and refines his mode of usually peaceful coexistence Tonality and atonahty still meet head on, but the encounters are less jarring In the Fifth and Sixth Quartets tonality easily dominates The best effects are achieved through cooperation rather than contrast Conceived as a sequence and composed in less than a year and a half, the Concord Quartets prove what the Third Quartet promised The opposing styles need not exclude each other, and their union, when handled with wit and brilliance, can produce magnificent results—in this case, one of the most important albums of recent years Written in 1977, the Fourth Quartet is, predictably, closest in flavor to the Third It starts with a tense Fantasia, marked Ironica, followed by a slow, gorgeous fugue that, like the Variations in the Third, is wholly tonal and den ves much of its power from contrast with the surrounding music The third movement, a Serenade, opens with a restrained atonal dance before moving into a lush Mahlenan section, which in turn leads gracefully back to the beginning The finale, another Fantasia, is atonal throughout, except for a brief romantic gush near the end In the Fifth Quartet, though it was completed only three months after the Fourth, Rochberg comes down solidly on the side of tonality The first movement is a witty dance that draws on Beethoven from start to finish Two and three are tonal as well...

...the only atonal movement is the fourth, a Serenade The fifth movement, a rondo, is the high point of the three-quartet series?by itself worth the price of the album A vigorous minor theme, given impetus by the rhythms of the lower voices, alternates via some marvelously clever transitions with a somewhat slower section in a rhythm reminiscent of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge The theme's final statement leads to a stunning conclusion The Sixth Quartet, completed in August 1978, is the longest ofthe cycle and the most assured As in the Fifth, there is no overlap of genres The first and fourth movements are atonal, the second, third and fifth unequivocally tonal...

...Most striking are the opening Fantasia, the delightful third movement?a set of variations on Johann Pachel-bel's ubiquitous Canon that occasionally seem on the verge of falling over into atonality yet never quite do—and the finale The last contains, among other things, direct quotes from Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart It is an affectionate tribute, and an affirmation of Rochberg's creed' "There is no virtue in starting all over again The past refuses to be erased I will not praise amnesia ' While Rochbero has been joining tonality and atonality, numerous other composers have for some time been looking into a different kind of combination—the unconventional ensemble The goal of bringing together instruments that might be considered unlikely bedfellows should, of course, be the production of wonderful new sounds The danger here is that the composer will concentrate too much on creating a titillating assembly of noises, and not enough on what he is going to do with it In any case, a brief look through the Schwann record catalog reveals the following intriguing alliances tubaandstnngquartet.fluteand doublebass, harmonica and orchestra, piccolo, ocarina and percussion, and my favorite, soprano, 30 string basses and percussion Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't It does not work too well in Charles Bestor's Lyric Variationsfor Oboe with Viola & Tape (1980), one selection on an album of oboe music performed by Charles Lehrer (Orion ORS 82432) Bestor wisely holds the oboe and viola primarily to long, floating lines, and has the electronic tape provide punctuation that is much enhanced by his deft use of stereo The composer also restricts the tape to relatively pure sounds that effectively set off the harsher tones of the oboe Having thus circumscribed his use of the instruments, Bestor should likewise have curtailed the composition's length The music is interesting, but goes on too long in the same vein, no basic change in mood occurs until a sprightly fugal section is introduced near the end What might have been a wonderfully inventive eight minutes is, instead, a 16-minute piece that sags in the middle Far more successful are Josef Alexander's Three Diversions for Timpani and Piano (Serenus SRS 12097) Alexander was obviously aware of the limitations of his chosen combination, and organized the work with them firmly in mind Each Diversion experiments with a different relationship between the two instruments Alexander states a theme, develops it, and ends before ennui can set in The fast, basically rhythmic first Diversion includes a good deal of unison playing In the slower second, the instruments set off each other's phrases The third combines the two techniques in a driving dance that builds to a dramatic conclusion, with the timpani getting the last word Timpani are just plain fun to listen to, and Alexander milks them for all he can David Fein is allowed plenty of long rolls across the full range of his six drums, and Alexander makes ingenious use of "bent" notes (performed by changing the pitch of the drum while a note is still resonating) Pianist Joshua Pierce adds a precise and spirited accompaniment Al-o on the record are Alexander s Five Bagatelles for Piano, and two works by Joseph Goodman Although the idea of a saxophone quartet is not that new or daring, there is still something funny about it, no doubt becauseof the instrument's overwhelming identification with jazz One just does not think of the sax playing classical music Nonetheless, its versatility has attracted many composers, three of whom are represented on Paris, anousdeux' (translated as Paris, Here I Come', Nonesuch H-71402), performed by the Netherlands Saxophone Quartet The album's title comes from its showpiece, a comic opera composed in 1954 by Jean Francaix (bornm 1912) Scored for chamber choir plus the four saxes, the work satirizes Parisian musical society Characters include a hostess who remarks, "How exquisitely divine'" after the quartet tunes up, a snob who complains that he heard two conventional chords in a modern piece, an excruciating child prodigy, and a ruthless social climber Paris, anousdeux' is charming, but most of the charm comes from the words, not the music The smooth, cynical sound of the saxophone makes an effective backdrop to Franz Roche's witty libretto, yet its full musical potential remains unexploited The listener increasingly finds his attention turning to the enclosed translation of the lyrics For a far more impressive demonstration of the saxophone's abilities, flip the record over and listen to Francaix' Little Quartet for Saxophones, a tuneful and virtuosic piece he wrote in 1935 Here the composer shows both the technical flexibility and the expressiveness of the instrument, the former in the lively, airy outer movements, the latter in the slow middle movement, which smacks of Prokofiev Gabriel Pierne's Introduction and Variations on a Folk Dance (1930) and Jean Rivier's Grave and Presto for Saxophone Quartet (1938) are appealing, too, and permit the musicians some staggeringly fast displays of fingering So the next time you have the gang over for an evening of chamber music, throw on a saxophone quartet If\our guests take it in stride, perhaps they're ready for the real test Bring out the Rochberg...