Speaking of Borders, I picked up a couple of disks there the other
day which I am thoroughly enjoying.  One contains Carter's 1st and 2nd
quartets, on Elektra Nonesuch 971249-2 (played by the Composers Quartet,
under the composer's supervision).  I may have more to say about this one
when I've assimilated it more.

The other is CRI CD 768:  George Rochberg's 1st quartet, Contra Mortem
et Tempus, and the 2nd Symphony.  The symphony, which dates from 1955-56,
is a wonderful example of what can be done with serial compositional
techniques, and I would recommend that anyone who is used to Beethoven,
Sibelius, Mahler, and that ilk but who is dubious about serialism give it
a try.

It starts off with a real bang -- this is how a symphony should be
launched, by golly!  None of that effete adagio introduction business --
are you listening, Papa Haydn? After equally impressive middle movements,
the classical scherzo and slow movement, the finale returns to the style
of the opener, with the intensity turned up a few notches, and ends in a
quiet, relaxed mood.  Needless to say, the New York Philharmonic, under
Werner Torkanowsky, does full justice to Rochberg's expert handling of
the orchestral idiom.  And not a hummable tune in it!

The Contra Mortem et Tempus, for flute, clarinet, violin, and piano, was
written in 1965, after his son died.  He wrote, "With the loss of my son,
I was overwhelmed by the realization that death--and time, which, as we
humans reckon it, brings an end to all living things--could be overcome
only by life itself; and to me this meant through art, by practicing my
art as a living thing ...  free from the posturing cant and foolishness
abroad these days which want to seal art off from life." It was one of the
works which marked his famous abandonment of serialism, yet, listened to in
connection with the symphony, it does not seem such a great distance away.
The two works make an arresting combination:  one heroic and expansive, the
other meditative and inward-turning.

Rochberg's string quartet, like those of Carter's, has not yet yielded many
of its secrets to me.  It sounds quite Bartok-y, which means that I will
have to spend a good deal more time with it.  The liner notes quote him as
writing of it:  "In composing the quartet, I came closer than ever before
to grappling with the rigors of the twelve-tone method without committing
myself as I did in the work that followed [i.e., the 2nd Quartet]."

In sum, listeners who are familiar with music up through Mahler and are
wavering on the brink of jumping into the dread waters of serialism and
beyond might do a lot worse than this disk as an attractive Siren, tempting
them to make the leap.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]