JAVS Fall 1998

19

After this time, he expanded his compositional range to include tonal idioms and worked to assimilate traditional elements. Rochberg also included quotation of tonal repertory (from com posers such as Beethoven and Mahler) to affirm his integration of traditional with contempo rary elements. An example of this type of work is his String Quartet No. 3 (which will be dis cussed later). 5 What is the aim of Rochberg's reactionary music? His writings give us the answer. They focus on two subjects regularly: serialism and modernism. While Rochberg finds no fault with Schoenberg he rejects the perversions spawned by serialism. Of serialism and the twelve-tone method, Rochberg writes: It is the method itselfwhich is the point of real break. It helped spawn all the aberrations, perversions, and distortions which go by the name of contemporary music: aleatory music, pointillism, total serialism ... a whole Pandora's box. 6 Rochberg views modernism as a reactionary movement in the European culture; a way of expressing freedom from regimented political systems, social classes, and human injustices. He believes modernism compelled composers to reject the past and neglect their musical heritage. Viewing the effects of serialism and modernism Rochberg made two conclusions: music should encompass the past and the present, and music must have an era of renewal. (Since Rochberg's writings in these two areas are prolific, the following material represents only a sample of his thought.) Rochberg argues against discarding the past in order to create something "new," asserting that ancestral ties can rejuvenate music: All acts of renewal through uses of the past renew both that past drawn upon and that present in which the act occurs. Far from being acts ofweakness or signs of the depletion of creative energy, they reveal a profound wisdom about paradox of time, which does not consume itself and its products as if it were fire, but gathers up into itself everything which has occurred in it, preserving everything as the individual mind preserves its individual memories. 7 One of Rochberg's most assertive works is the Third String Quartet. In this work Rochberg makes a strong statement that the old and the new can coexist. Rochberg views the Third Quartet as "a multi-gestural work ... which denies neither the past nor the present." 8 The Quartet's fascinating idea is the confrontation of styles, the (not always peaceful) co existenc~ of tonality and atonality, the mixture of gestures toward different pasts. The con frontation of recognizable new and old idioms is what makes this music modernist. It does not have a modern sound, which would be superficial, but its conception is thoroughly modernist for the first time in Rochberg's career. 9 Along with evoking the past, Rochberg's writings contain these additional proposals: First, music should not be created and analyzed solely for cerebral purposes. Rochberg as serts that those dissecting works solely for cerebral purposes often overlook the real meaning of music: It is curious that Le Sacre is the subject of rhythmic analysis, Wozzeck of structural analysis, and more recently Lulu of harmonic and intervallic analysis, not to speak of rhythmic and metric analysis. They are treated as though the balletic and theatrical impulses which brought them to life are as nothing compared with the formal designs and patterns which articulate their audible surfaces. The passions ofman, which are the very heart of theater and theater music, seem to escape or to embarrass those who write about music today. They [composer theorists] ... are lost in the labyrinth of academic abstractions. 10

Second, music should be affirmative. As Rochberg draws from the past, he experiences a resurgence of affirmative energy: ·