Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

[Balthazar]

Tanglewood is the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in the Berkshire Mountains. I haven't been out there for the Festival of Contemporary Music for a couple of years now, since they did the Elliott Carter centenary appreciation.

This year, the FCM is being directed by Charles Wuorinen, another of my favorite living American composers. There's an interesting lineup of performances, but I'm hoping to make it out to see the Wuorinen world premiere, It Happens Like This: Settings of James Tate for 4 singers and 12 instruments.

[Despina41]

Cool! Let us know how it goes

[Balthazar]

Well, I traveled the hundred miles to Tanglewood last night for the opening session of the Festival of Contemporary Music. Though no fan of modern music, my wife accompanied me. Prior to the concert we walked around the grounds and took in the lovely views of the Berkshires.

Beautiful Ozawa Hall was full of casually-dressed, enthusiastic listeners. A good mix of older fans and young students made for an interesting audience. Artists, musicians, and professionals were everywhere. Tanglewood chairman John Harbison was a few rows in front of us. Just before the concert started, composer Augusta Read Thomas sat in the seat next to me. Seated on her other side was her husband, composer Bernard Rands.

Up first was Fred Ho's commissioned piece Fanfare to Stop the Creeping Meatball for two trumpets and two trombones. The brief work was a parody of brassy Americana, the title a reference to 50's humorist Jean Shepherd's critique of modern conformism.

Now the concert proper started. Charles Wuorinen is this year’s Festival director, a very appropriate choice by the Tanglewood folks. Although a musical iconoclast in the Sixties, Wuorinen has now become a mainstream figure without abandoning the principles of postwar art music. Now in his 70’s, vocal music seems to have become his passion. And who would have thought that his atonal composing style would lend such a droll wit to settings of American poetry?

James Tate, a poet and professor from nearby Amherst, wrote the wry, surreal prose poetry that serves as the text for the chamber works presented on this occasion. Never Again the Same, for bass-baritone voice and tuba, was the story of a sunset so beautiful it was frightening. After having to start over when a warm breeze blew the tuba player’s music off the stand, the duo performed the piece masterfully. The vocalist’s droning “Plutonian emeralds” in his lowest register drew appreciative laughter from the audience.

Then came the real treat. Wuorinen himself came to the stage to conduct the world premiere of It Happens Like This, six Tate poems set to music for a soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices; bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, harp, and 2 percussionists. The vocalists played various parts in Tate’s odd stories while the chamber orchestra punctuated the action in unpredictable ways. There was a masked dancer who acted out the part of various animals that appear in the poems: a goat, dog, and a wild turkey.

The Tate settings were very entertaining both as musical theater and as contemporary music. Wuorinen conducted the chamber orchestra so that their playing would be part of the drama, but wouldn’t overwhelm the vocalists. Familiar with his settings of poems by John Ashberry, I was prepared for the wit and skill with which he approached Tate’s texts.

Even my wife was pleased, probably because there were dogs in two of the stories.

[Despina41]

Thanks! I feel like I'm missing out on all the good Amuhrcan festivals by not being in MA. First the Boston Early Music Festival, now this!
Keep us posted

[Balthazar]

I certainly will. My wife is a BU alumna and we're planning on attending some of the faculty and student recitals in the fall.

I forgot to mention, I overheard a remark made by an older guy to his companion as they exited the grounds after the concert was over: "There's a lot of stuff by him I like, and there's other stuff by him I don't like." Now how much fairer can you be than that?

[Mambo]

Recall listening to music by Charles Wuorinen , but it was quite a time ago. What I do remember hearing was something fairly atonal (I would like to be more descriptive, but it has been awhile.) How has his musical style changed over the years - is his current and most recent style, easier or more difficult to listen to, than say, his works from the 1960's and 1970's.

Mambo.

[Balthazar]

Originally Posted by Mambo

Recall listening to music by Charles Wuorinen , but it was quite a time ago. What I do remember hearing was something fairly atonal (I would like to be more descriptive, but it has been awhile.) How has his musical style changed over the years - is his current and most recent style, easier or more difficult to listen to, than say, his works from the 1960's and 1970's.

Mambo.

Wuorinen's music has always been informed by serial techniques, and that hasn't changed. To me, his music has always had a narrative coherence and sense of drama that make it interesting to listen to. As a young composer in the 60's, he showed the influence of Babbitt and the Princetonians. The intervals of the tone rows he used also conditioned other factors in a composition. His Piano Concerto #1 (1966), isn't what you'd call traditional, but neither is it forbidding and avant-garde.



Thirty years on, Wuorinen was an established composer who was still interested in the possibilities of the post-tonal idiom. His ballet The River of Light (1996), demonstrates more delicacy and maturity, not to mention a more conventional rhythm.



Even these days, his music requires virtuoso musicians and an audience ready to meet the composer on his own terms. But the rewards are many for those willing to listen.

[Balthazar]

In addition, let it be said that Wuorinen is one of a small group of significant living composers whose work needs to be engaged to understand the last half century of American composed music. Elliott Carter and George Crumb are the others who come to mind.

However, I can't say I'm optimistic that their music will ever be considered the national treasure it is. I was very discouraged that Milton Babbitt's death earlier this year brought only half-hearted eulogies and not a belated appreciation of his body of work.

[Mambo]

Hey Bally - I agree completely. Most of the musical public is quite unaware of even how many 20th century American composers are out there, just waiting to be 'rediscovered'. I believe you had a previous post where you said listening audiences' brains just cannot cope with "all that is going on" when a piece of 20th century music is performed. Then in addition to all the unknown Americans, are all the
other 20th century composers, just as infrequently performed.
In a previous post, I noted how the Louisville Orchestra had issued discs of all 20th Century composers (most were American), and it was of compositions that had not been previously recorded.
The number of compositions was 413.
Mambo