Walter Meyer wrote regarding a CD he purchased. purporting to be Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 1 and Phantasmata, all performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra w/ David Zinman conducting: >The CD display indicated one track only, and what I heard was a seamless, >highly repetitive work sounding to this unsophisticated ear like an >annoying cross between New Age and minimalism, that seemed never to end >and indeed, checking the playing time, I found that, rather than a total >of 46:28, the darn thing had played for over 78 minutes! ... > >But if the recorded works' identification, rather than their description >was in error, what do Rouse's Symphony No. 1 and his Phantasmata sound like? The CD containing these two works (Elektra Nonesuch 9 79230-2) has a total playing time of 46:28, the Symphony (track one) running 26:58 and Phantasmata (tracks 2-4) running a total of 19:30. I feel the disc you listened to was mislabeled. This is what Rouse says of the works: "In my Symphony No. 1 I have attempted to pay conscious homage to many of those I especially admire as composers of adagios -- Shostakovich, Sibelius, Hartmann, Pettersson, and Schuman, for example -- but only one is recognizably quoted (the famous opening theme from the second movement of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, played both in the original and here by a quartet of Wagner Tubas). The work is scored for two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), two oboes (2nd doubling both oboe d'amore and English horn), two clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), four horns (all doubling Wagner Tubas), three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (3 players), and strings. It is dedicated to my friend, John Harbison." http://www.christopherrouse.com/sym1press.html And the following about Phantasmata: "The work as a whole was completed on March 22, 1985 -- four years and a day after The Infernal Machine was finished -- and was composed on commission from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra through a fellowship grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The title comes from the writings of the great physician and occultist Paracelsus, who refers to phantasmata as "hallucinations created by thought." The first movement, "The Evestrum of Juan de la Cruz in the Sagrada Familia, 3 A.M.," also makes use of Paracelsian terminology -- "evestrum" is Paracelsus' name for the astral body; thus, this opening movement represents a dreamt out-of-body "somnambulatory journey" through Antoni Gaudi's remarkable Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Scored only for strings and percussion, it is followed by The Infernal Machine, which employs the full orchestral apparatus. This constitutes a darker hallucinatory image, as the immense juggernaut, eternally in motion for no particular purpose, is represented by a perpetuum mobile wherein the leviathan sometimes whirs along in mercurially unconcerned fashion but at others groans or throws off slightly hellish sparks, grinding occasionally as it changes gears. Bump is a "nightmare conga" characterized by a bass drum stroke on every fourth beat whose oppressive obstinacy adds to the overall feeling of menace. The title, referring as it does to dance floor bumping with hips or buttocks, may imply a certain impish quality to the movement, but the harrowing surrealism of its execution should belie any suspicion that it is largely "light classical" in orientation; if I had a corresponding visual image for Bump, it would be akin to a gala Boston Pops performance in Hell." http://www.christopherrouse.com/phantasmatapress.html -Gene Halaburt