Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last of the mavericks?

"There's nothing musically important happening here in Canada, and your son will never have a chance to develop as a composer. You need to move to New York." --Henry Cowell to Henry Brant's father

Fun interview with Henry Brant at All Music Guide (I didn't know they interviewed composers!):

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=61::65SC

Other interesting quotes:

Two major events happened in modern music in America in 1930: first, the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra told Leopold Stokowski to lay off that funny sounding, up-to-date music, and he did. Second, the New York Symphony Orchestra folded completely.

On writing "experimental" music, and getting paid well for it: There were ways in which unusual, experimental music would fit into a Broadway show or radio program -- nobody objected if I wrote parodies, or made fun of other music. Well-established composers also employed me for scoring and conducting jobs -- I did a lot of that -- and that helped this avant-garde composer pay for his groceries.

On Charles Ives's skill as a pianist: One thing about Ives was that he could play anything he wrote, himself -- I asked Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles about that, and both said that Ives's keyboard playing was "first rate."

On precedents for spatial music before Ives: J.C. Bach's "Symphonies" are only nominally spatial. I regard him as one of the low-voltage Baroque wimps. The first true spatial composer was Giovanni Gabrieli (1555-1612) of both instrumental and poly-choral spatial music. I've conducted his sonatas and canzonas. Only one composer, Hector Berlioz, is known to have written any spatial music whatever during the 19th Century. I've heard his famous Requiem at the Invalides in Paris, the place for which it was written. It uses both echo-procedure and identification of musical material via timbres of the most contrasted character.

On performances by amateur ensembles: Many community and school orchestras in this country are very good, a situation that wasn't even imaginable in the 30s. The problem wasn't one of level of performance so much as the competence of conductors, or that of incompetently written music being performed by incompetent conductors! But you don't need to have your music played by big-name orchestras and a famous conductor to get a good performance.

posted by Christian Hertzog 5/22/2006