Larry Kart

In this piece, "Guston and Me,” in which Rochberg sees his latter-day style of tonal pastiche as parallel to the return to representation (after decades as a celebrated abstractionist) on the part of the IMO great painter Philip Guston, it seems to me that Rochberg really lets the cat of of the bag: http://books.google.com/books?id=k0xjK0iaMz4C&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=rochberg+guston&source=bl&ots=vmK5eW9I0R&sig=MiCEmXwi7Qj1ahlmL_enE_X7jd8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KGLZU6-_BtevyASM7YD4Bw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=rochberg%20guston&f=false In particular, Rochberg goes on here to equate tonality in music with representation or concreteness in painting and abstraction in art with atonality and the like in music. In this, it seems to me, Rochberg forgets or ignores several things. First -- and one could, and should have to, write a book about this, which I don't have the time or the ability to do -- all representational art has an abstract dimension, has abstract meanings. And tonal music of any value does, too — it doesn’t purely or merely or (to use Rochberg's favorite term) "concretely" represent specific emotional states. Further, did Rochberg actually look at any of those latter-day Guston paintings that he feels run parallel to his own music? Did he not notice the nature of their imagery, which is as far as one could imagine from the widescreen “heroic” and “lyrical” gestures for which Rochberg’s music strives? Herewith some latter-day Guston (and I love Guston’s work of all periods): philip guston images

In what year he said that? After the death of his son? Did he, years later when his music had changed, keep that same opinion, or was there a retraction? We say a lot of dumb things. We also change our minds. That Rochberg article is from 1973, when he was age 55, surely old enough to know better when it comes to saying so many things in an article that IMO were dumb and close to outright false -- that aside from his perfectly justifiable opinions about what he does and doesn't like in art. ​About the death of Rochberg's son and what followed, here is some information from a Rochberg admirer, who deals with R's entire career: http://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/06/005-george-rochbergs-revolution-6 "But in 1961 the Rochbergs’ seventeen-year-old son, Paul, fell ill with a brain tumor. He died three years later, throwing his father into despair. Confronted with his son’s death, Rochberg struggled to give that tragedy some meaning through his music, but the serialism upon which his career had been built he now found empty and meaningless. It was a language that could not bear the weight of his sorrow." The piece that Rochberg eventually wrote to mark/commemorate his son's death was: Contra Mortem et Tempus ("Against Death and Time"), for violin, flute, clarinet, and piano (1965) As for "Rochberg struggled to give that tragedy some meaning through his music, but the serialism upon which his career had been built he now found empty and meaningless. It was a language that could not bear the weight of his sorrow" -- I would say, instead, "he now found empty and meaningless" and "could not bear the weight of his sorrow." Again, that this is how Rochberg himself felt cannot be denied. That he felt free to conclude from this personal emotional fact that such music was "empty and meaningless" per se and for everyone and to suggest, further, that such music could not "bear the weight of"/express anyone's sorrow, strikes me as ... you fill in the blank. The Berg Violin Concerto, anyone? Whether Rochberg eventually changed his mind, I don't know. As I said above, I've found some of his piano music (on a series of Naxos CDs) to be quite effective.

Stefan Wood wrote: "I think the context of when the quote was taken is important." For sure, in terms of Rochberg's opinions about what he does and doesn't like, but that's no excuse for a presumably sophisticated man saying so many dumb and close to outright false things in the act of defining what he likes and doesn't like in art.

Looking at the Rochberg piece, the paragraphs that begin section 4, "Forgettable Music," seem to me insultingly wrong-headed, even close to stupid. In particular: "This decreasing profile of identity [of thematic and harmonic content in music] could be graphed in a rough sort of way, moving from a music with precise identities (Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Braahams, Wagner, Bruckner, Verdi, Strauss, Mahler, early Schoenberg) to a music with a marked decline in its profile of identity (the atonal and 12-tone works of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, late Scriabin, Ives) to a music entirely lacking in any aurally meaningful, identifiable characteristics (post-Webern serial works of Boulez and Stockhausen among others; works of Cage, Feldman, Brown, based on aleatory principles; recent works of Elliott Carter, who in an interview expressed concern that his music cannot be remembered). In short, from a music that can be remembered to a music which can be remembered with varying degrees of difficulty, and finally to a music which utterly (or almost) defies memory." Rochberg then goes on to say that the same thing "can be traced as well in painting and literature." First, what is this "identity" he speaks of? That piece of music X, once heard, can be recognized as piece of music X? That music that has identity has a readily recognized and identifiable (and/or "translatable") set of emotional meanings? A bit later on, Rochberg adds: "I used to think it was pure nostalgia [that led to his views of what had happened in music and the other arts], a longing for a past Golden Age which always brought me back to the supremely wrought clarities and identities of the old music. Now I realize that it was not nostalgia at all but a deep, abiding personal need for clear ideas, for vitality and power expressed without impediments, for grace and beauty of line, for convincing harmonic motion, for transcendent feeling...." Well, it can't be the first kind of identity. What piece of of music, once heard, could be more identifiable as what it is than, say, Berg's "Wozzeck" or even Boulez's "Le Marteau"? So it seems like the second sort of "identity" is what Rochberg has in mind, with an emphasis not only on sets of translatable emotional meanings but also, as the second passage suggests, meanings that are attractive to a man like Rochberg -- ones that are marked by "clear ideas ... vitality and power expressed without impediments ... grace and beauty of line ... convincing harmonic motion [and] transcendent feeling. OK, so Gesualdo and Biber among others, way back in time though they are, probably would be a no go for lack of "clear ideas." As for Beethoven -- vitality and power, yes, but if Rochberg thinks that those traits were "expressed" in Beethoven's music without impediments, I wonder what the heck he was listening to. Struggling with and overcoming all sorts of impediments (both dramatic and purely musical) is what much of Beethoven's music is about. Returning to the first passage, I suppose Rochberg's "a music entirely lacking in any aurally meaningful, identifiable characteristics post-Webern serial works of Boulez and Stockhausen among others; works of Cage, Feldman, Brown, based on aleatory principles; recent works of Elliott Carter") could be modified to music that has characteristics that are not "aurally meaningful, identifiable" to Rochberg. But does he also think that everyone who finds that music to be meaningful is lying? I'm reminded of a concert-goer who once told pianist Eduard Steuermann that Schoenberg's works could not be played from memory because they lacked what Rochberg calls identity and, thus, memorability, When Steuermann told him that he had just played Schoenberg's Piano Concerto from memory, the concert-goer said just that: "You're lying."

Also, he was a lousy tipper.

I too say "And???" Also, who ever said that Schoenberg said that we "should begin all over again"? Not Schoenberg, for one, AFAIK. As for "In each generation .. . the past is indelibly printed on our central nervous systems. Each of us is part of a vast physical, mental, spiritual web of previous lives, existences, modes of thoughts, behaviors and perceptions of actions and feelings reaching much further back than what we call history," well, for sure. The problem is that if we're talking about music, we're talking about a lot of different ways of making music over the course of time, while Rochberg, when writing music in the pastiche-of-styles mode that he more or less came to favor because he found Schoenberg's ways of music emotionality invalid, tended (to use a term that usually I don't like but that fits) "privilege" ways of making music that date back to, at the earliest, only the mid-18th Century. Also, the turning point for Rochberg, previously involved in writing music in what he felt was a Schoenberg-influenced manner, came by his own account after the death of his young son and his resulting inability to write music in his prior manner that in his view adequately expressed the intense emotions he felt about his young son's death and that he wanted to convey in music. Well, if that was how Rochberg felt, that's how he felt. But what a strange thing to say or imply of a composer, i.e. Schoenberg, whose music frequently was emotionally eruptive to an extreme. What, for example, of Schoenberg's String Trio, which scarifyingly conveys the composer's near-death experience from a stroke? And "Ewartung" isn't exactly a walk in the park. One could say that there is little or no Schoenberg music of any period that is, say, amiable, but then he wasn't an amiable guy. I should add that while I tend to dislike the often geschrie-heavy music that Rochberg wrote in the first flush of his conversion/reversion experience, I've recently discovered his expertly crafted piano music, which so far isn't that way at all.

Ubu, it is clear that Moms has very strong opinions which is fine. He does not like Perahia's Mozart Concertos. To say they suck is, ridiculous. The Mozart concertos are among my classical music favorites. I have versions of the concertos by a variety of pianists. There is no one "correct" way to play these pieces, and I personally enjoy hearing them played by Perahia, Serkin, Casadesus, Curzon, Brendel, Fleisher, Rubinstein, and quite a few others. Each pianist brings something of themselves to the music, and hearing a variety of interpretations is, for me, an enriching experience. So, in my opinion, Moms is simply wrong, though reading his posts can be very interesting. FWIW, a representative anti-Perahia comment from the rec. music.classical.recordings list, where anti-Periaha feelings tend to run high: "If you want pretty, soft-grained, dresden-china mozart, then Perahia's your man. Personally I like a little more testosterone in my Mozart than Perahia's willing to provide." Such folks can't stand Uchida either, for similar reasons.

Prompted by a dream, I looked again at a book by a fairly obscure poet Katherine Hoskins (1909-88) that I stumbled across years ago and liked (Robert Lowell did, too) and found the two lines of hers that stuck in my mind from a poem called an “An Environment.” They’re the last two lines of this first stanza: Down in the basement with the bargain-hunting Parents — while they prowl wild-eyed Piles of glad rags, piles of mourning weeds, Ill-fitting, out of date and very dear — The children scamper mud-coloured fields Of floor, ancient in grime and cambered like An oily sea. Half lost amid incessant Legs and feet, they play they’ve lost each other — Hide back of night-gowns dripping off a counter, Under a fallen coat or skirt; there mute And breathless stay till found. Interminably Found and finders start the game again; For as the big ones put on parent masks, Files of babies stagger to the gaps. Hoskins can get clotted at times, the poem's second stanza almost grinds to a halt, but when she breaks into the open...

"Flute Flight" --Prestige 7124 One side with Herbie Mann, Bobby Jaspar, Joe Puma, Tommy Flanagan, Wendell Marshall, and Bobby Donaldson; other side with Jaspar, Eddie Costa on vibes, Flanagan, Doug Watkins, and Donaldson. I prefer Jaspar to Mann, though Herbie is OK here. Fine solo work from Puma and Costa, and Doug Watkins is in exceptional form, generating tremendous subtle swing by at times anticipating/playing into the next change. I've thought of that as mostly a Paul Chambers move (albeit Freddie Green did it with the old Basie band), but Watkins, a fellow Detroiter of course, is all over it here. It's especially noticeable because his intonation is more precise than Chambers', but then I'm fairly sure that Paul often played "between the cracks" for analogous harmonic/rhythmic reasons. Sessions were produced by "O.C." (i.e. Ozzie Cadena), not Bob Weinstock. Anyone know how often that was the case at Prestige?

About the only box of any size (jazz or classical) that I've listened to all of is the Mosaic Tristrano-Konitz-Marsh set, and that's because I had to listen to all of it in order to write notes for set. Not that I regret having the various box sets (jazz and classical) i do have, it's just that a lot of each set I'll probably never get around to. Two mostly unlistened to sets that make me feel kind of guilty are the complete Bach cantatas (Harnoncourt-Leonhardt) and the complete Bach organ music. Shucks, even the complete Faure chamber music lies in wait for the most part.

I'm retired, too, but can't imagine sitting through all or most of what's in one of those boxes. My attention flits around too much; even when I'm in a heavy-listening mode, I tend to jump associationally from one work or album to another that the work or album I've been listening to brings to mind.

Yes, athletes exactly. The orientation/interests of those on teams/in locker rooms and those in the press box and in the stands (however knowledgeable those in the stands/pressbox might be) understandably tend to diverge, if for no other reason than the roles of these various figures are different, though to some degree obviously interdependent. With no one in the audience, football, baseball, jazz performances, etc. pretty much would not take place. I would say that, within reasonable bounds, the orientation/interests of all those divergent but interdependent groups are legitimate. But your "Nobody else notices musicians dropping in here off and on just to set the record straight? What do you suppose one can properly infer from that?" implied that our orientation/interests here on this board are not. Insulting on your part? Oh, no. BTW, by what exactly do "you suppose one can properly infer" from the supposed fact (tell that to Michael Weiss, for one; there are others) that musicians drop in here "just to set the record straight" but not otherwise?

I've been wondering about that myself.

It was him. Nobody else notices musicians dropping in here off and on just to set the record straight? What do you suppose one can properly infer from that? They've got other fish to fry? That the interests of musicians and fans tend to be dissimilar? But I'm sure that you've got a darker/more negative interpretation.

This is the "Orfeo" DVD you should be looking for: http://www.amazon.com/LOrfeo-Claudio-Monteverdi-Netherlands-Opera/dp/B001FZQONQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1406077342&sr=1-6&keywords=orfeo+monteverdi It's at Berkshire for $6.99.

Maybe, ask me anything?

The Tristano-Konitz-Marsh set is worth it just for the liner notes.

Tardo -- really like your playing: solo and comping, too (e.g. with Grant Stewart).

I reviewed that one for Down Beat way back when. First time I heard Breuker. It's a gem. Jeanne Lee!

I remember sitting in Hal Russell's Southwest Side Chicago apartment with his wife, Russell Thorne, and Russell's girlfriend Shelly Litt -- inspiration of "Knell (for Shel)" -- as we listened to a test-pressing of the about to be released album. I recall sarcastic things being said about the staginess of Joe's announcements tacked-on announcements. This was a turbulent band made up of three turbulent guys.

dd. Now that's kinda funny.Where else would Duke Pearson be,? Even though he played other instruments and wore many different hats.I cant see or want to see him anywhere but the piano.Churning out those slick and soft melodies of his. I think you missed the word "not" in what I wrote. Of, course, one would expect Pearson either to be at the piano during performances or in front of the band, conducting. What Cranshaw said in the interview was that Pearson often was not at the keyboard during performances but elsewhere in the room, chatting up female fans of the band. That's what I found amusing.

As compared with their Contemporary opposite numbers I had that LP on UK RCA, but it didn't have a little above logo phrase Guess UK Decca had a little more taste or modesty or something. MG Shelly's is one of the worst golf swings imaginable. Hawes' might be OK; Mitchell's is a decent warm-up move; can't tell about Kessel's putting style.

What's the instrumentation? That might help.

Isn't it very close to Coltrane's "Locomotion," which many thousands of listeners are quite familiar with?

There's s lot of fine stuff on Wallace's blog: wallacebass.com