In 1972 he abandoned his previous serial style and wrote a work that engaged with the language of tonality, the Third String Quartet, featuring stylistic allusions to Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Bartók. You can listen to a recording of this quartet on the Naxos database (available via the library website: go to Naxos and search for Rochberg string quartet - this is the only one they have.)
What this video of Rochberg talking about this stylistic shift.
Listen carefully to what Rochberg has to say and the language he
chooses. What do Rochberg's words reveal about the political and social
implications of music-stylistic choices during the decades of the Cold
War?
I was struck by Rochberg's last few words in the interview where he argued that you can’t produce art without “the stubborn tenacity of independence of mind and spirit.” A composer must be led by intuition to create music that speaks to their self, but as any semblance of self-expression contained relatable qualities that could be contorted as propaganda, tonality was abandoned in favour of Serialism. As Anne Shreffler indicates in “Ideologies of Serialism,” the cornerstones of American Cold War values were methodologies of hard science and political and personal freedom, however the idea of freedom is limited if they wanted to protect their music from being used against their will. Rochberg seems to indicate that his personal freedom was supressed by the need to keep music neutral. Music itself did not need to carry a message to be dangerous; it was its attachment to specific ideologies that incriminated its composers, so Serialism in its abstraction from reality, eliminated both the articulation and proliferation of messages. Without recognizable forms it could not be understood enough to be mistaken for saying something offensive, and was a safe way to placate audiences and protect its composers.
ReplyDeleteWithout recognizable forms composers could express themselves as freely as they wanted to within the constraints of avoiding all recognizable forms-an idea that is opposite to Soviet music, but similar in its limits. Although these parameters were self-inflicted, as Rochberg indicated in the interview, straying from these parameters caused significant backlash from audiences-a potentially career-ruing effect. The music Rochberg created during the Cold War was forcibly constructed due to the circumstances of the war, and is a reflection of the time and not of his personality.
The Cold War inspired not just a polarity of political ideologies, but also one of musical ideologies. Just as citizens were faced with the choice of being communist or non-communist, art composers were faced with the choice of composing tonal music that “had already been done” or breaking with tonality to be “free” to express themselves through abstraction. However, this mentality created its own limitations. This was the case in places like Darmstadt where there was constant pressure on composers to create music that was as abstract as possible. Music that came too close to being tonal or communicable was a faux pas that would not be permitted. This system, that was intended to give composers more freedom of expression, instead resulted in one that restricted them in the same way that the Socialist Realist system did composers in the Eastern Bloc. Rochberg refers to this mentality in his interview when he speaks of the “Nazi’ism in regard to aesthetics” that was present in the art community.
ReplyDeleteRochberg realized in the early 1960s that he wanted to be able to communicate through his compositions, and that atonality alone restricted his ability to do so. He started to view the music he was creating as a series of “replica[s] of some generalized abstract notion.” His decision to bring tonality and atonality back together resulted in his own self-inflicted alienation from the other composers of the period. Even his own wife thought that he was mad to attempt such a thing. Everyone feared that the use of tonality would make them sound too much like Brahms and Beethoven, but Rochberg was content to sound like these old composers because he felt that he could do it was in his own way. The result of his tenacity was the creation a unique style that gave him the freedom to use tonality and serialism together in his compositions.
In this video, Rochberg presents his concept of freedom, which somewhat (but not totally) contrasts our often stereotypical views of Cold War history. In our class and in a great deal of scholarship, it has been reiterated numerous times how the Soviet Union gave preference to traditional, tonal works and used them as symbols of their nation. America, on the other hand, utilized serial works to propagate national ideals of freedom and independence. Although historically these are not absolute truths, Rochberg presents an alternative way of viewing freedom in music. That is, that tonality is analagous to freedom whereas serialism represents aesthetic oppression and inhibits artistic autonomy.
ReplyDeleteRochberg explains the freedom of tonality with mention of science and naturalness. He claims that the "science" of serialism restricts musical freedom, and that this science is what the style is based on. This science is prescriptive and informs composers what they can and cannot do, such as ruling out scales, arpeggios, and other common tonal devices. In a radical sort of way, he compares this to the Nazi party and their oppression of the freedom of the individual. Rochberg discusses "rationalized abstraction," explaining that as composers engaged intellectually in a certain way with music they removed the naturalness from it, thus abstracting any truths that form the foundation of tonal music. His defense of his equating naturalness with truth comes from how he views music in terms of a language. Claiming that music is a "non-verbal language," Rochberg explains how tonality exhibits a conversational naturalness using concepts like articulation and cadential gestures. He contrasts this with serialism, in which he says there is no possibility for these natural elements and how that is the result of a systematic and rule-bound practice. Though largely contradictory in his rhetoric on science and the natural, Rochberg raises important questions about freedom in music and presents interesting ways to consider the implications of music in the context of Cold War politics.
Rochberg chose to make the change from composing serialist music to tonal music. He believed atonality restricted his music and the ability for him to communicate through music. This is ironic as atonal music was initially believed to have been associated with the music of America, the free nation, where tonality was more so associated with communism and restraint. Rochberg states tonal music has a natural progression of harmony and points of cadence, which allow for this music to be inclusive to many more people. Rochberg says since atonal music is a series of chromatic tones with no relationship to one another this cannot result in a natural cadence and therefore does not lend itself well as a vessel of communication.
ReplyDeleteI don’t believe Rochberg wanted his new tonal music to be associated with politics. “Beauty is not dead” as Rochberg says in his interview and he wanted to create beautiful tonal music to prove this point. I believe Rochberg desired to communicate with as many people as possible the idea that beauty is still alive and what better way to do this than through tonal music that is accessible to everyone.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDuring his youth, Rochberg felt a need to ignore what others said, to not listen to others opinions, or to live by those opinions. He states that a true artist must be himself. By choosing serialism, American composers avoided language and certain forms of expression to avoid their music being used the way that tonal music had been used in the Soviet Union. Composers avoided tonality, naturally progressive harmony, and music that had points of arrival or articulations like cadences. Due to the political climate, composers did not want to write tonal music as it could be used to further another’s political agenda or taken out of context to represent something other than the composer’s intention.
ReplyDeleteComposers were confined to serialism, which in a way, restricted their artistry by forcing them to compose in twelve-tone sets or other serial methods. Rochberg refers to these restrictions as a kind of “Nazism”. By following serialism, they were creating their own political oppression. The music didn’t have to be defended for the way it sounded or what it represented because it could be justified by its numerical excellence. For Rochberg, it became too confining to compose this way. Rochberg wanted to construct his music out of both tonal and atonal languages, to prove to himself and the world, that beauty could still exist. He was heavily criticized for including past musical styles (tonal). However, he found a contemporary language that, unlike serialism, was able to express his individuality as an artist.
In their desire for freedom of expression, American composers actually created an oppression for themselves by restricting their artistry to serialism. This only confirmed the control the American government had over their artistic expression. Rochberg reclaimed tonal music and by doing so made a statement for artistic freedom.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn this interview, Rochberg mentions that at no time in history has an entire generation of artists been convinced that “Eureka! They had found the ultimate and final answer.” First conceived of and popularized in the 1920s, this “ultimate and final answer” of dodecaphony and serialism became the default style of the western world during the cold war. As Rochberg said, “It came down to the problem of language. What you being permitted, by whom you were being or not being permitted to use certain forms of expression.” America was determined to create its own unique compositional style which would reflect the freedom and beliefs of their society and chose serialism to do so, while the strict rules and regulations of the Eastern bloc led to very traditionally tonal music being composed. Due to this, any reference in an American’s compositions to tonality was seen as sympathising with communistic principals; as he says, “There was a kind of Nazism in regard to aesthetics.” However, Rochberg felt stifled by the strict rules of twelve-tone music. As he says, “It goes back to language, how one expresses oneself...The true artist has to be true to himself or herself.” The science-based rules of twelve-tone music did not allow him to express himself and his beliefs. He says, “I had to comprehend for myself precisely what it was what I understood, what I wanted to do, and what I wanted my music to be. I did not want it to be a replica of some generalized abstract notion.” His turn back to tonality was not a rebellion against the American democratic system as some at the time may have seen it, rather, it was a movement towards his true self and his true expression. The fact that even his wife questioned what he was doing shows how engrained the ideas of the virtues of chromatic music were in society; he was essentially attacking the ideologies of the American people and he faced backlash from his audience. It seems his goals of reintegrating tonality into his works was a statement of a not-so-popular belief at the time of the Cold War that, just as atonality and tonality had to be integrated into each other, the two sides of the war had to learn to live and work with each other.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Rochberg’s interview gives us insight into the mind of a composer who seriously evaluated his own creative process in the context of the musical world at large. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Rochberg was beginning to realize that serialism’s destruction of tonal hierarchy was preventing him from exploring musical expression in the way that he wanted. Like many other composers of the decade, he reacted by returning to a tonal style that was connected to the past. However, the prevailing view in academic politics was that serial music was the best way to explore music through a pseudo-scientific approach. The compositional community as a whole was experiencing a crisis: does one write the music one wants to write, or does one write music that strives to do what has not yet been done. Tonal music “had been done before” and was thus, from a research point of view, not worth doing. Rochberg, despite the reactions of his colleagues and even his own family, made the decision to use the language of tonality in his own work, to break with serialism. He described this in an interesting manner: “I was lucky that I was able to do this.” Career-wise, Rochberg was able to write whatever he wanted, as he had been successfully teaching at institutions for decades by this point. A younger composer would have had significant difficulty making such a radical musical statement while attempting to secure a place in the compositional community.
ReplyDeleteTo be an advocate of modernism in music in the mid-twentieth century was to prize innovation and an almost scientific approach to composition. It has been established that this movement was driven in part by a general societal emphasis on progress, technology, and rationality, and also highly influenced by political trends, as compositional technique had become a mode of expressing (or denying) one’s political leanings, and aligning oneself with a certain ideology. It is clear that Rochberg believed that, far from being an expression of the freedom to experiment and innovate enjoyed by American composers, modernism had become yet another totalitarian regime, a musical “Nazism”, as he called it. He viewed the restrictions imposed by serialism as too constraining to suit his expressive needs. However, he also acknowledged that deviation from the modernist style, particularly in the direction of tonality, was viewed as at best, lacking innovation, and at worst, an indication of sympathies toward the communist cause through comparisons with Socialist Realism.
ReplyDeleteRochberg’s philosophies are evident both in his discussion of language and in his own word choices. Rochberg viewed music itself as language, as something that is communicative and delivers a message. His problem with modernist composition was that it restricted the language that composers were “permitted” to use to express themselves and therefore was exclusionary in nature. He speaks of atonality and tonality as opposites that “include” one another in their opposition, and refers to his shift toward tonality as an attempt to find an “inclusive” language to express himself. His Third String Quartet is an example of this inclusionary opposition, particularly in the first movement as moments of expressive atonality alternate with tonal, almost hymn-like chord progressions. Its composition in 1972 was perhaps influenced in part by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which brought to the foreground a new focus on inclusion and inclusionary language.
To listen to Rochberg’s interview, one would think that during the time he wrote twelve-tone music, he was under pressure to conform and compose in this genre that he never truly accepted. His language and demeanor suggest he was a dissident in a musical environment that had politicized twelve-tone music as superior to tonal music. (The irony being that for many, twelve-tone was a musical representation of American freedom and inventiveness.) His ultimate escape back to tonality placed him in opposition with his musical peers.
ReplyDeleteThe language Rochberg uses throughout the interview is very strong and at points disturbing, revealing a resentment of their (twelve-tone, serialist composers) ideology and subsequent treatment of him. At one point he paints them as “Nazis” who “forbid” certain forms or conditions of expression. What is also quite revealing is the shift in language when he describes tonality, using words like memorable, singable and expression. When juxtaposed with the negative vocabulary he uses to describe twelve-tone music, Rochberg describes conflicting stylistic ideologies at work within the pro-democratic American musical community, in some ways reflecting the narrative of the American-Soviet conflict.
Rochberg's argument against serialism (and for tonality) tells us how music-stylistic choices during the decades of the Cold War always held political and ideological implications, and that these had to be carefully navigated by the composer. His argument is compelling because he links it with a personal narrative in which he escapes the "straight-jacket" of a fascist, authoritarian musical style, via the hard-won realization that tonality, as a "non-verbal" language, "is broad enough, inclusive enough, so that I could say anything that I was capable of saying."
ReplyDeleteRochberg both implicitly and explicitly links serialism with Nazism, and his narrative generates interest because it is framed as him overcoming a broadly manipulative, over-rationalized and abstracted musical language through "stubborn tenacity." The "problem of language," for him, is really the problem of control over language; if a musical language is constructed via rationalized and abstracted principles, then it can only build upon itself, or communicate with itself, within that domain, which is abstracted from reality. Rochberg notes that this is similar to the development of the sciences.
The more subtle argument is reserved for tonality, and is based on linking the "language" to the natural world, freedom, individualism, and "what art truly is." Early in the interview Rochberg argues that the "true artist has to be himself or herself," and later on that "I don't know what art is, if it is not [...] a subjective projection of what it is the artist is concerned with." Tonality's emphasis on resolution, finality and balance is connected to the natural world, and these principles allow it to express something natural about the individual, and this is what Rochberg argues art should accomplish.
To me, the degree to which he has thought about these music-stylistic choices and their political and social implications, suggests that these connections mattered a great deal to the art community and beyond during the Cold War. In the case of Rochberg, he felt the need to take a strong position against serialism, and (re)construct an ideology for tonality just to switch his language of "non-verbal speech."
In asserting that the position and purpose of the artist is to be them self, Rochberg is explicitly rejecting any notion of external control on someone's own, deeply subjective musical expression. For him, serialism constituted such an external control as it impoverishes the language of music by placing constraints on what can or cannot be said. He describes serialism as 'rational abstraction' or abstracting things from reality and then trying to explain things in terms of that abstraction. I think what he means by this is that in selecting a version of reality and then trying to use the language of that version to describe an unabstracted reality, something is lost. Rochberg wanted instead the freedom to use all tools at his disposal to convey some personal experience.
ReplyDeleteThis can be heard in his third string quartet which is not completely tonal in that it includes many jarring rhythms and chromaticisms that would have been unheard of in the compositional styles of the previous centuries, and yet still retains some of the harmonic and stylistic markers of the 19th century romantics. Thus, his music does not entirely throw out serial techniques, but rather rejects the movement's polarizing ideology in which music had to be either strictly atonal or strictly tonal, but not something in between.
He also links Serialism to totalitarianism, likening it to a 'Nazism of aesthetics,' saying that it places straightjackets on people, and by extension, their expressive acts. He even uses the German word 'verboten' to describe certain musical features, strengthening this relationship. He also cites the reactions of many of those close to him in response to his turn to tonal music, saying that he faced censure and criticism. In this Rochberg seems to be suggesting that rather than being the utopia of (musical) freedom that it was portrayed at, composers in America were no more free than their Soviet contemporaries, they were just shuttered into different boxes.
“Stringent” and “straightjacket” are examples of the strong language George Rochberg uses to describe the musical-aesthetic climate in mid-twentieth-century America. After the Second World War, serialism had taken root in the United States; and by the 1960’s—the time during which Rochberg was active as a composer—serialism had assumed indomitable ascendancy in the (western/art) music world. Indeed, serialism’s status was so highly revered (almost dogmatically so), and its power and influence so pervasive in the musical community, that composers that felt writing in any other idiom was (to quote Rochberg) streng verboten. Rochberg’s use of that particular German phrase is particularly striking and affective, especially when taking into consideration his likening of the pressure upon composers to write serial to “Nazism, in regards to aesthetics.”
ReplyDeleteOne of Rochberg’s reasons for forsaking serialism and returning to tonality was that he wanted a musical language that was inclusive and broad enough so that he could express whatever he wanted. In other words, he was no longer satisfied with producing music that would only appeal to a very small and very particular audience—other serial composers. This desire to have broad musical appeal, as opposed to appealing towards others in the cult of serialism, stood at odds with the ethos of many serial composers, particularly Milton Babbitt. Indeed, in his polemical article “The Composer as Specialist” (more commonly and erroneously known as “Who Cares If You Listen?”), Babbitt declares that composers of advanced music (serial composers) have carried their craft so far, that is no longer possible for the uninitiated in serialism to understand their music; thus rendering the necessity of a public audience obsolete.