GEORGE ROCHBERG (1918–2005)Fantasies (1971)

This chapter examines George Rochberg’s Fantasies, written as a present for his wife on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. A set of four haiku-like miniatures for medium voice and piano, Fantasies makes an ideal introduction to a modernist vocal idiom for those who have yet to lose their inhibitions and plunge into new territory. A flexible mezzo would perhaps be best suited to the diverse range of styles packed into such a small frame. Clear projection is essential, in view of the economy of the vocal writing, and a certain forthright strength, as well as a poised lightness. There are just a few moments of Sprechstimme, whispered as well as spoken, and a couple of long, arching melismas, which require considerable breath control. In contrast, speech rhythms are also deftly employed. It is the pianist, however, who has the lion's share in shaping the narrative and illustrating the texts, in a most satisfying part, full of wit and humour, and incorporating some challenging figurations.

Interview with Composer George Tsontakis

This interview for the journal ICONI, taken by Dr. Edward Green, Professor at the Manhattan School of Music, is with one of the leading composers of the United States, George Tsontakis. A professor at Bard Conservatory of Music, he is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the prestigious Grawmeyer Award for his Second Violin Concerto. Professor Tsontakis’ work — nearly all of it commissioned — is wide-ranging in terms of genre, imaginative in its orchestrations, and always strongly emotional. Included in this interview are discussions of some of the biographical background to a number of his major pieces, including The Past, The Passion. Among the subjects discussed is the meaning of “concerto.” Several of his concertos and concerto-like compositions are specifically discussed in this interview, including Man of Sorrows (piano), and Sonnets (English Horn). The interview also touches upon his relations with two important American composers of earlier generation: George Rochberg, and Roger Sessions — who had been Tsontakis’ teacher of composition at Julliard.

George Rochberg's Road to Ars Combinatoria, 1943–63

George Rochberg often attributed his postmodern shift to the death of his son in 1964. Accordingly, the literature has described his practice of ars combinatoria (“art of combination”) as an “abrupt about-face”—a sudden rejection of modernist aesthetics. But the composer's unpublished essays, diaries, correspondence, and musical sketchbooks suggest that the road to ars combinatoria had well-laid roots in two of his least considered biographical periods: his service during World War II and his serial period. During these two decades, Rochberg actively sought positive models for humanistic composition, historical figures who rose to the level of musical heroes in that they served humanity through their art. But as the war had taught him, heroes are necessarily defined by their struggle against nemeses in ethical conflicts. Correspondingly, he constructed the other side of the artistic world as a realm of vain egoists who sought self-promotion and seemed unconcerned with humanistic modes of expression. As his ideas matured, Rochberg assigned different figures to these archetypes, but the guiding ethical criteria remained fairly consistent throughout. I therefore argue that ars combinatoria was less a sudden aesthetic reversal than it was the result of a longer cumulative process of self-assessment and compositional maturation.

The Apostasy Of George Rochberg

An exploration of George Rochberg’s much-publicized rejection of musical modernism—in particular serialism—in the early 1960s. The paper will explore Rochberg’s conception of musical time and space, duration in music and its relationship to the roles of memory, identity, intuition, and perception in the shaping of human experience. It will explain his notion of the “metaphysical gap between human consciousness and cosmos,” which he derived in part from Wittgenstein’s proposition that ethical and aesthetic judgments lie outside the property of language. In Rochberg’s view, serialism fails to provide an organic three-dimensional model of duration as experienced through the human perception of time: past (memory) and future (anticipation) become conflated into a continuous present, and the crucial balance between information and redundancy has malfunctioned.