Daniel Paul Horn wrote:

>These comments have lured me out of lurkerdom for a response. ...

>Having spent enough time on the fascinating and elusive case of George
>Rochberg to produce a doctoral document on his piano and chamber music
>(Juilliard, 1987), I have to suggest that Mr. Copper is oversimplifying
>and somewhat misrepresenting the nature of Rochberg's work.  Although I
>am less familiar with Rochberg's work since 1987 than I am with his music
>up to that point, it is clear to me that Rochberg's "multi-gestural"
>experiments represent a phase in his ongoing development.   ...

Granted; but it was the Tempo Magazine article that oversimplified his
career into 'before' and then path-breakingly-and-very-importantly 'after'.

>...  William Bolcom openly acknowledged his debt to the older composer
>in editing a series of Rochberg essays for the book, _The Aesthetics of
>Survival_.  While his work tends to borrow more from American vernacular
>styles than from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classics (which he
>has also utilized), Bolcom's procedures at times greatly resemble those of
>Rochberg. ... Whatever one may think of Bolcom's increasingly large output,
>one can hardly characterize his music as barren.

Actually, William Bolcom is my favorite example of a Dreiser-worthy
American Tragedy in composers of music -- his rhythmic gifts are nothing
less than prodigious, and he has fine talents in all the parts of music,
but his work is --- IMO --- barren.  (Unless he has changed in the past
5 years or so, since I have not heard any recent music.)

William Copper
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