AGP173: Spectrum: New American Music, part 2

Every culture and cultural era expresses itself
not merely in terms of "style" (whatever that is)
but through its media and means of expression
as well. The chiaroscuro of the Baroque con-
cerfino-tutti and aria with continuo and obbli-
gato, the homogeneous qualities of the Classi-
cal orchestra and string quartet, the mixed-
blended colors of the Romantic orchestra and
grand piano, are each characteristic of the age
that produced them. Similarly, the "sound" of
the 20th century — its most characteristic aural
image — is the mixed chamber ensemble.

From the first decades of the century (the early
Schoenberg and Webern chamber-orchestra
works, Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldar, and so
forth) until the most recent developments in
electronics and mixed media, the new "broken
consort" has dominated new music and created
its own musical and cultural forms.

It is in response to these conditions and new
repertoire that a number of remarkable chamber
series and ensembles, generally devoted in
large part to contemporary music, have sprung
up across the country. These groups, often
based in universities, have no single fixed form
but constitute a flexible unit out of which vari-
ous combinations and sub-combinations of
instruments — often with voice and/ or tape — can
be drawn. Drawing on the most brilliant and
idealistic young performing and composing
talent, these groups represent a coming-to-
gether of creator and interpreter unmatched in
Western music since the 1 8th century.

The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, one
of the most outstanding of these organizations,
was established in 1960 by conductor Arthur
Weisberg. Since 1965, the group has been in
residence at Rutgers University, New Brunswick,
New Jersey, on a Rockefeller Foundation grant.
The personnel consists of some of the best of the
New York players/ these recordings offer ample
testimony to their virtuosity and musicianship, as
well as their ability to deal with — and their
creative involvement in — the most difficult new
music.

Fredric Myrow, who was born in Brooklyn and
grew up in Hollywood, studied at the University
of Southern California and later in Rome. He

has received a number of grants, including a
Fulbright and a Guggenheim, awards from the
Young Musicians, the Fromm and Koussevitzky
Foundations, and a Dimitri Mitropoulos Com-
mission for a New York Philharmonic perform-
ance. He has been resident at the Buffalo Center
for the Creative and Performing Arts and, more
recently, at the New York Philharmonic.

Myrow's Songs From the Japanese were Jbe-
gun in Rome in 1964 and completed in Buffalo
the following year. The texts, set in English
translations, are arranged in two groups: "At
Twilight" ("In the blue sky," "Solo," "Preface")
and three "Haiku" (". . . leaves. . . ," ". . .
wind . . .," and ". . , memory . . ."). The
delicate, precise, very skillful and elegant writ-
ing for both voice and instruments has, certainly,
some of the character of oriental brushwork.
The use of unusual instrumental techniques —
playing inside the piano, slides, harmonics—
and vocal colors imparts a certain air of fantasy
and mystery without any overt exoticism or
orientalism. Everything is implicit, nothing is
overstated or forced. The work, first performed
in Buffalo and in New York by the Buffalo
Center, has since been performed at Tangle-
wood, at the Monday Evening Concerts in Los
Angeles, by the BBC, the French Radio, and by
the Contemporary Chamber Players under
Arthur Weisberg.

". . . quick are the mouths of earth, and quick
the teeth that feed upon this loveliness . . ." is a
quote from Thomas Wolfe that intrigued Roger
Reynolds and which, in his own words" .. .had the
capacity of generating musical images forme."
Born in 1934, Reynolds studied engineering
physics and music at the University of Michigan.
He was a co-founder of the avant-garde ONCE
group in Ann Arbor and has been the recipient
of Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants. He is
currently (7969) living in Japan as a fellow of
the Institute of Current World Affairs and has
been one of the organizers of Cross-Talk, a
series of avant-garde East-West events in
Tokyo.

Quick Are the Mouths of Earth was written
in 1965 in Paris and Rome. Its scoring calls for
oboe, 3 flutes, 3 cellos, trumpet, trombone,
bass trombone, pianist (who also plays har-
monica) and two percussionists (who play 21
sets of instruments between them). The work is
divided into six sections, each subdivided into
six parts which are in turn further subdivided
according to a system of proportions. The music
is composed in "moments" (i. e., a series of
events of distinct character) and textures — the
latter based on diverse, complex, and fanciful
ways of playing familiar instruments. The score
contains two full pages of instructions for the
instrumentalists on how to read and realize the

SPECTRUM: New American Music, Volume I
The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
Arthur Weisberg, conductor

Side One (7 7:57)
Fredric Myrow (b. 1939)
Songs From the Japanese (7965)
for soprano, flute & alto flute, clarinet
& bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello,
double bass, piano, harpsichord, percussion

(fiubt. Mills Music, Inc.)

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano

Side Two (79:75)
Roger Reynolds (b. 1934)
Quick Are the Mouths of Earth (1965)
for 3 flutes, oboe, trumpet, 2 trombones,
3 cellos, piano, 2 percussion

(publ. C. F. Peters Corporation)

This recording was made with
assistance from The Martha Baird Rockefeller
Fund for Music, Inc.

Thomas Nyfenger, flute & alto flute
George Haas, oboe
Arthur Bloom, clarinet & bass clarinet
Robert Nagel, trumpet
John Swallow, trombone
Paul Zukofsky, violin
Jacob Glick, viola
Ko Iwasaki, cello
Jeffrey Levine, double bass
Gilbert Kalish, piano
Raymond Desroches, percussion

with guest artists: '
Paula Sylvester, flute
Margaret Schecter, flute
Robert Wright, bass trombone
Fred Sherry, cello
Helen Harbison, cello
Lalan Parrott, harpsichord
Richard Fitz, percussion

a Dolby-system recording
recording engineer: Marc J. Auborf

various slides, rasps, hisses, whistles, wails,
raps, clicks, and knocks required. A certain
amount of spatial manipulation of sound is also
built into the work. The notation might be
described as adapted-traditional . While every-
thing is written out, the exact proportions and

ensemble effect may vary somewhat/ a certain
freedom and flexibility is built in. Thus, the
over-all shape of the piece is relatively fixed
but many of the details are left to the players'
immediate responses and may vary from per-
formance to performance. — ERIC SALZMAN

Stefan Wolpe, one of the most seminal figures
in recent music in this country — or, for that
matter, anywhere — is still scarcely known to a
larger public, undoubtedly because his mature
work was accomplished in the United States
rather than in Europe. Wolpe was born in
Berlin in 1902 and lived in Palestine from 1933
to 1938, when he emigrated to America. His
early work includes an extraordinary list of
operas, ballets, large-scale choral works, songs,
symphonies, chamber and keyboard music;
much of it seems to belong to the Gebrauchs-

musik and socially-conscious trends of the '20s
and '30s. In the 40s and '50s, Wolpe suddenly
moved with great force and originality into
new areas of musical expression. The dynamism
and creative energy of these works provide an
exact musical analogy to the contemporary
work of the abstract-expressionist painters with
whom Wolpe associated and who provided his
main (if not his only) public at the time. The
canvases of Kline, Pollack, and De Kooning
have brought fame and fortune to their artists
while the equally important and vital work of
Wolpe — of only spiritual and not, alas, finan-
cial value — is still little known.

Wolpe's influence, through his teaching, his
ideas, his music, and his vigorous presence on
the New York scene, has been very great. His
work itself will become known, not through the
traditional media of concert performance, which
(in spite of certain efforts on his behalf) remain
a basically hostile environment, but through
recordings.

Wolpe's Chamber Piece No. 1, written in
1964, is in a single long movement with a unified
tempo that never varies until the last few pages
(which contain a brief ritard and a slight final
speed-up). Nevertheless, within this unchanging
quarter-note pulse there is a great rhythmic
variety composed right across the bar lines and
the beats as well. Everything is set out with the
greatest exactitude, and the piece is scored not
only in notes and rhythms but in the most subtle
doublings of instrumental colors — extremely
difficult fp realize precisely, by the way. The
play of energies across f/ie fractured surface of
this work seems quite complex and abstract; yet
not far underneath there is a kind of unique
fantasy and wit, not the least manifestation of
which are the intentional, sly quotes from
Webern and Bartdk.

George Rochberg was born in Paterson, New
Jersey, in 1918. He began to compose at the
age of 12 and studied at the Mannes College
of Music in New York and, after military service
during World War II, at the Curtis Institute in
Philadelphia. With the exception of a year in
Italy on a Fulbright grant and a visiting Slee
Professorship at- the University of Buffalo, Roch-
berg has lived, worked, and taught in Phila-
delphia ever since — of Curtis Institute, as an
editor for Theodore Presser, and at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, where he is now chair-
man of the music department. He has received
Fulbright, American Academy, Guggenheim,
Gershwin, Naumburg, and Koussevitzky awards
or commissions. His earlier music is twelve-tone
and serial in character} more recently his work
has undergone a remarkable evolution in the
direction of quotation and collage.

SPECTRUM: New American

Side One (79:42)
Stefan Wolpe (b. 1902)
Chamber Piece No. 1 {1964) (8:29)
for flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet,
bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone,
2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, piano

George Rochberg(b. 1918)
Serenata d' estate (1955) (11:05)
for flute, harp, guitar, violin, viola, cello

(publ. MCA Music, a division of MCA inc.")

Side Two (16:25)
Seymour Shifrin (b. 1926)
Satires of Circumstance (1964)
(to poems by Thomas Hardy)
for mezzo-soprano, flute & piccolo,
clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano

Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano

Music, Volume II

The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
Arthur Weisberg, conductor

Thomas Nyfenger, flute & piccolo
George Haas, oboe
Arthur Bloom, clarinet
Donald MacCourt, bassoon
Ralph Froelich, horn
Robert Nagel, trumpet
John Swallow, trombone
Paul Zukofsky, violin
Jacob Glick, viola
Ko Iwasaki, cello
Jeffrey Levine, double bass
Gilbert Kalish, piano

with guest artists:
Philip West, English horn
Jeanne Benjamin, violin

Susan Jolles, harp
Stanley Silverman, guitar

a Dolby-system recording recording engineer: Marc J. Aubort
This recording was made with assistance from The Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc.

The Serenata d'estate ("Summer Serenade")
was written in 7955; the work is in one long
movement which is made up of shorter sections
of alternating measured and unmeasured music.
Although it belongs to Rochberg's twelve-tone
period, it has a relaxed charm, a graceful
swing, and an imaginative sense of instrumental
sonority and fantasy sometimes missing from the
usually severe serial music.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926, Seymour
Shifrin graduated from Columbia University and
studied composition with Otto Luening, William
Schuman, and Darius Milhaud. Shifrin taught
for many years at the University of California
at Berkeley and is currently Professor of Music
at Brandeis. His list of prizes, awards, and
commissions includes Beams, Copley, Horblit,

Fulbright, Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, ISCM-
League of Composers, Fine Arts Foundation,
and Fromm Foundation. His output comprises a
considerable body of serious and skillful orches-
tral, vocal, and chamber music.

Satires of Circumstance, a setting of three
poems by Thomas Hardy, was commissioned by
the Fromm Foundation and completed in 1964.
Shifrin s sober and carefully controlled style is
adapted here to the expression of poetic irony,
as in "Waiting Both," with its little vocal
melismasi'The Convergence of the Twain (lines
on the loss of the Titanic) ," with its complex
formal structure as well as opposition and higher
resolution of vocal and instrumental elements;
and "What's There to Tell?," with its ironic
"Lalla-la, lu!" refrains, marked "flamenco style,
with abandon." —ERIC SALZMAN

Jacob Druckman's Incenfers was written in 1968
for Arthur Weisberg and the Contemporary
Chamber Ensemble and first performed by the
group at Rutgers and in New York in the same
year. Druckman, born in 1928 in Philadelphia,
studied at Tanglewood, at the Juilliard School
of Music, and at the Ecole normale de musique in
Paris. Since 1957 he has been on the faculty of

Juilliard. His awards and grants include a
Fulbright and two Guggenheims, as well as
SPAM, Lado, Juilliard, Naumburg, Mercury
Music, Wechsler, and Tanglewood commissions.
He has produced a substantial list of works,
several with electronic elements.

An incenter is a triangle inscribed within a
circle, or a pyramid within a sphere; the term is
also related to a whole class of words derived
from the Latin incenere, p.p. incentus; to sound
an instrument, to sing, and also to weave
charms or spells. The piece is scored for flute,
oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trom-
bone, piano, percussion, and solo strings. The
brass dominate, and they set in motion each
chain of musical events by upsetting the equilib-
rium established by the other instruments. These
states of equilibrium derive from static, sym-
metrical chords whose ultimate, unlikely source
is Boris Godounov/ The actual Coronation
Scene chords are quoted shortly before the
final section of overlapping blocks of sound.
The notation is sometimes precise, sometimes
proportional so that the players relate to each
other freely or at the conductor's whim/ the
result is flexibility within a carefully structured
form.

Joseph Schwantner was born in Chicago in
1943 and studied at the Chicago Conservatory
and Northwestern University. He has received
BMI, Beams, and William T. Faricy Awards, at
present he is Assistant Professor of Music at
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Wash-
ington.

Diaphonia intervallum was written in Evans-
ton, Illinois, in 1966. The title means "dissonant
interval" and refers to the major seventh, the
building-block interval of the piece. The instru-
mentation sets a solo saxophone against con-
cerfante flute and piano and tutti strings.
The work has three main sections, of which the
middle one is a kind of trio for the solo instru-
ments. The work was given its premiere by the
Contemporary Chamber Ensemble at Rutgers
and in New York in 1967.

John Harbison was born in Orange, New Jersey
in 1938. He studied at Princeton University with
Roger Sessions and Earl Kim, and was a Junior
Fellow at Harvard. He is a violist and conductor
as well as composer, and has been active in
contemporary musical performance.

SPECTRUM: New American Music, Volume III
The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
Arthur Weisberg, conductor

Side One (24:51)
Jacob Druckman (b. 1928)
Incenters (1968) (12:40)
for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn,
trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello,
double bass, piano & electric organ,
percussion

(pub/. MCA Music, a division ol MCA Inc.)

Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943)
Diaphonia intervallum (1966) (12:03)
for alto saxophone, flute, piano, 2 violins,
viola, 2 cellos, double bass

Victor Morosco, alto saxophone

Side Two (15:1 5)
John Harbison (b. 1938)
Confinement (1965)
for flute, oboe & English horn, clarinet &
bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet,
trombone, violin, viola, cello, double
bass, piano, percussion

Thomas Nyfenger, flute
George Haas, oboe & English horn
Arthur Bloom, clarinet & bass clarinet
Donald MacCourt, bassoon
Ralph Froelich, horn
Robert Nagel, trumpet
John Swallow, trombone
Paul Zukofsky, violin
Jacob Glick, viola
Ko Iwasaki, cello
Jeffrey Levine, double bass
Gilbert Kalish, piano & electric organ
Raymond Desroches, percussion

with guest artists:
Victor Morosco, alto saxophone
Jeanne Benjamin, violin
Helen Harbison, cello

a Dolby-system recording
recording engineer: Marc J. Auborf

This recording was made with assistance
from The Martha Baird Rockefeller
Fund for Music, Inc.

Confinement, written in 1956, is laid out in
four rather clearly demarcated sections which
are, however, connected without pause. The title
(along with movement subtitles) was originally
associated with lines on the subject of illness,
drawn from John Donne s Devotions; the com-
poser, however, no longer wishes these specific
references to be given. Nevertheless, the con-

ception of "confinement" pertains not only to
musical restrictions but also to states of mind.
The basic idea is that of strict or rigid shapes
contrasted or in conflict with freer or looser
ones. Thus disparate elements are brought to-
gether in very close, tight forms which are also
intended to serve as analogies or metaphors.

—ERIC SALZMAN

The American compositional scene today is one of unparalleled rich-
ness and variety, and the music presented here offers testimony to
that fact. The diversity in attitudes, means, aims, and achievements
of American composers has arisen from this country's unique cultural
and historical position— as the recipient of musical traditions de-
stroyed in Europe by World War II, and as the syncretist of the thou-
sand multiform manifestations of musical culture in this no doubt
seminal, classical age.

The emigre Stefan Wolpe, who made his home in New York
after 1938, produced his greatest works in this country (as might be
asserted for Stravinsky and Schoenberg as well), and it was in the
United States that his influence as a teacher was most marked.
Wolpe's Quartet for trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, and percus-
sion, written in 1950 and revised in 1954, appears now as a fore-
runner of the works of his last and greatest period, when the intense
complexity of the music that he wrote in the mid-'50s— a complexity
rarely exceeded in this age or any other— was refined into an extraor-
dinary lucidity and concentration and a unique, elegantly discon-
tinuous yet organic structure. The Quartet, while on the leading edge
of that great effort of the '50s, presents a light and accessible side
of the composer. Towards the end of the Germanically "jazzy" second
movement, there are amusing puns on tonal-system usages, and both
the behavior of the percussion and the octave-doubled "theme" con-
tribute to a sense of play as well. The piece, as usual with Wolpe,
also proposes new, non-linear modes of formal continuity; this is
easiest to hear in the slower-paced first movement.

George Rochberg's Blake Songs, which were composed in Mexico
City in 1957 and revised for publication in 1962, date from the period
of the composer's involvement— later abandoned— with the twelve-
tone system. Of these settings, Rochberg has written, "The Blake
Songs attempt to reveal through voice and instrumental color the
hidden, below-the-surface aspects and resonances evoked in me by
Blake's poetry. The deceptive naivete of Blake's verbal art is only a
thin coating overlaying the dark and potent images he creates—
images that appeal directly to the heart,

"Each song derives its essential. form from its text. The point at
which the surface of the form of the music meets the surface of the
form of the texts is in the use of 'strophe' and 'refrain.' 'Ah! Sun-
flower,' whose vocal line is more florid than that of the other songs,
expresses the mystery of time and the world-weariness of human
existence. 'Nurse's Song' is almost somnambulistic, attempting to
capture the tenderness of love for children and its accompanying
fear and anxiety, while at the same time looking back down the
corridor of time and youth. Blake's poem 'The Fly' capsulizes the
whole existence of man with incisive whimsical insight and satiric
bite. 'The Sick Rose' is the dramatic core of the four songs, project-
ing the corruption of life and the presence of evil in the midst of what
is potentially good and even beautiful."

The songs were given their premiere in 1961 at a concert of
the International Society for Contemporary Music in New York; Ralph
Shapey conducted the Hartt Chamber Players with Shirley Sudock as
soprano soloist.

Jeff Jones's Ambiance, a setting of four poems by Samuel
Beckett, was composed in the winter of 1968-69 for the coloratura
Delia Surratt. The composer writes, "The title is an indication of what
I had in mind when writing the piece, which was conceived in the
tradition of the Renaissance tone-colorists. In a sense, it is program
music, depicting a world whose dense textures, opaque light, and
imperceptible connections intertwine to engulf anyone who chances
through them. And although highly structured, the compositional
process of the piece is subservient to the creation of this fog-grey
musical landscape.

"The four settings are performed without pause. The pro-
logue, 'Dieppe,' refers to a once-resplendent vacation spa of
the early part of this century (such as Cannes today), since
fallen into disuse; a long note tolled by the bell, trumpet, and
the horn (after the phrase Vers les vieilles lumi&res') leads
into the second poem, whose sibilant alliteratives are imitated
in the 'white noise' of maracas, 'breath only' in the winds, and
later by the singer in the 'decomposed' interpolations of the
English translations of the texts and in imitation of fa/a syllabi-
fication. The third poem, of a harried and frenzied nature, is
given a rushing, impetuous setting; the last poem is a short
epilogue on the joys of the death of one's beloved."

Jones's vocal writing abounds in special effects, especial-
ly of a non-pitched nature. Throughout, the musical textures
bespeak a concern with sonority and skill of instrumentation
that is European-oriented yet characteristically American.

CHARLES WUORINEN

Stefan Wolpe (b. 1902, Berlin) studied composition and or-
chestration with Paul Juon, Franz Schreker, and Anton
Webern, and conducting with Hermann Scherchen; his great-
est formative influence, however, was Ferruccio Busoni, who'se
musical circle Wolpe frequented during his mid-teens. In
1933, he emigrated to Palestine, and he settled in America
five years later. His early output includes an extraordinary
list of operas, ballets, large-scale choral works, songs, sym-
phonies, chamber and keyboard music— much of it stem-
ming from the socially-conscious Gebrauchsmusik trends of
the '20s and '30s. In the following decades, Wolpe moved
with great originality and force into new areas of musical ex-
pression, and he became one of the seminal figures in ad-
vanced music in America; his teaching, his ideas, his music,
and his vigorous presence on the New York scene exerted
an immense influence. Serious illness plagued his last years,
but he remained active as composer and teacher until his
death in New York in 1972.

George Rochberg (b. 1918, Paterson, New Jersey) began to
study composition at the Mannes College of Music in New
York with Hans Weisse and, after an interruption for military
service (1942-45), continued at the Curtis Institute of Music,
Philadelphia, with Rosario Scalero. He taught at Curtis (1948-
54), served as Editor and Director of Publications for Theo-
dore Presser Co. (1951-60), and has taught at the University
of Pennsylvania since 1960, where he was chairman of the
Department of Music from 1960 to 1968. Rochberg's com-
positional output is considerable, including orchestral, cham-
ber, and vocal works. During the late '40s he began to pro-
duce works cast in a personal version of serialism, but after
1963, he turned in new directions: his more recent composi-
tions, which combine a wide spectrum of old and new, reflect,
in the composer's words, his "deep concern with the survival
of music through a renewal of its humanly expressive quali-
ties." He has been the recipient of many awards and com-
missions, the most recent of them from the Pittsburgh Sym-
phony Orchestra for a violin concerto for Isaac Stern.

Jeff Jones (b, 1944, Corona Del Mar, California) received his
Bachelor of Music degree from Immaculate Heart College in
Los Angeles, where he studied guitar with Guy Horn and com-
position with Dorrance Stalvey; he has since studied with
Goffredo Petrassi, Arthur Berger, Harold Shapero, Martin Boy-
kan, Seymour Shifrin, and Franco Donatoni. Active as com-
poser, conductor, and performer, he has won numerous
awards, including a BMI-SCA, a Fulbright Fellowship, the
Premio d'Arti and Premio Bonaventura Somma from the Ac-
cademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome, the Premier Grand Prix du
Festival du Son of the ORTF (for his composition Variance),
and the Prix de Rome. He has also been a Composer-in-Resi-
dence at the Marlboro Festival of Music.

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, born in North Dakota, began early musi-
cal training as a pianist and continued general music studies
at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. At Concordia,
her vocal gifts came to the attention of composer-conductor
Gunther Schuller, who encouraged her to study at the Berk-
shire Music Center, Tanglewood, where she received a Fromm
Foundation Scholarship. During four seasons at Tanglewood
she appeared frequently as a soloist in contemporary works;
in this period she also won a scholarship to Syracuse Uni-
versity, where she earned music degrees. More recently, Miss

coord ins

SPECTRUM

New American Music, Volume IV

Side One (22:59)

STEFAN WOLPE (1902-1972)

Quartet (1950, rev. 1954) (12:27)
for trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, and percussion
publ. Josef Marx Music Company (ASCAP)

GEORGE ROCHBERG (b. 1918)

Blake Songs (1962) (10:22)
for mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, celesta, harp, violin, viola, and cello
Ah! Sun-flower— Nurse's Song— The Fly— The Sick Rose

publ. Leeds Music Corp. {MCA Music) (ASCAP)

SideTwo (16:09)

JEFF JONES (b. 1944)

Ambiance (Quatre poemes de Samuel Beckett) (1968-69)
for soprano, flute & piccolo, oboe & English horn, bassoon,
horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, piano, celesta, harpsichord, harp, and percussion

THE CONTEMPORARY CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
ARTHUR WEISBERG, conductor

PHYLLIS BRYN-JULSON, soprano JAN DeGAETANI, mezzo-soprano

Paul Dunkel, flute & piccolo— George Haas, oboe & English horn— Arthur Bloom, clarinet— Allen Blustine, oass clarinet—
Donald MacCourt, bassoon— Paul Ingraham, horn— Allan Dean, trumpet— John Swa'low, trombone— Susan Jolles, harp-
Jeanne Benjamin, violin— Jacob Glick, viola— Fred Sherry, cello— Gilbert Kalish, piano & celesta— Raymond DesRoches, percussion

with

Harvey Estrin, tenor saxophone— Frederic Rzewski, celesta (in Ambiance)— Edward Murray, harpsichord-
Richard Fitz, Howard Van Hyning, Claire Heldrich, Gordon Gottlieb, Joseph Passaro, percussion (in Ambiance)

recorded with the assistance of The Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc.
engineering &tape editing/ Marc J. Aubort, Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recordings, inc.)
mastering/ Robert C. Ludwig (Sterling Sound, Inc.)
a Dolby-system recording

texts & translations enclosed

Bryn-Julson has appeared with many of the major symphony
orchestras in the U.S.A. as well as with numerous contempor-
ary-music organizations, and she has appeared in recital
and oratorio throughout the country. Since 1971, she has
been active as a member of Leon Fleisher's Smithsonian
Chamber Players; since 1972, she has taught voice at the
University of Maryland. Noted for her performance of con-
temporary works— many of them written especially for her—
Miss Bryn-Julson has recorded for CRI, Columbia, Edici, the
Louisville Orchestra series, Vox, and Nonesuch.

Jan DeGaetani, born in Ohio, is a graduate of the Juilliard
School of Music, where she studied with Sergius Kagen. She
has performed in oratorio, opera, and chamber music, and ap-
pears frequently both in recital and with orchestra; she is
heard widely on radio and television in the United States and
Europe. Miss DeGaetani has been internationally acclaimed
for her presentation of contemporary works— many of them
written especially for her— and is also noted for her work in
early music. A former faculty member of the Juilliard School,
she has also taught at Bennington College and at the State
University of New York, College at Purchase. Since 1971, she
has taught at the Aspen Music School, and in Fall 1973 joined
the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, as Pro-
fessor of Voice. Miss DeGaetani has recorded for Decca, CRI,
Music Guild, Vanguard, Vox, Acoustic Research, Columbia,
and Nonesuch.

In 1960, Arthur Welsberg and about a dozen outstanding
New York instrumentalists formed the Contemporary Cham-
ber Ensemble, a group devoted to the study and performance
of modern music. The Ensemble received a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation in 1965 to set up a three-year res-
idency at Rutgers University, and, during the ensuing period,
developed an extraordinary repertory of new works, many of
which were presented by the Ensemble in their numerous
public appearances. Since then, the Contemporary Chamber
Ensemble has continued to perform throughout the U.S.A.;
they have been invited to appear at the Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C., for the last 12 consecutive years. In Fall
1973, the Ensemble toured England and Europe to wide ac-
claim.

Early in 1969, Nonesuch issued the first three volumes
of Spectrum: New American Music, recorded by the Con-
temporary Chamber Ensemble under a grant from the Martha
Baird Rockefeller Foundation (H-71219, H-71220, H-71221).
Each of these albums won honors for the composers in the
1970 Koussevitzky International Recording Award. Later
recordings by the Ensemble for Nonesuch have included
Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (H-71251); George
Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (H-71255); works by
Edgard Varese (H-71269); and Kurt Weill's Kleine Dreigro-
schenmusik and Darius Milhaud's La Creation du monde
(H-71281). The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble has also
recorded for Acoustic Research and CRI.

The American compositional scene today is one of unparalleled

richness and variety, and the music presented here offers testimony
to that fact. The diversity in attitudes, means, aims, and achieve-
ments of American composers has arisen from this country's unique
cultural and historical position— as the recipient of musical tradi-
tions destroyed in Europe by World War II, and as the syncretist of
the thousand multiform manifestations of musical culture In this
no doubt seminal, classical age.

Milton Babbitt's compositional-analytic wisdom has influenced
an enormous range of musicians; his All Set, for Jazz Ensemble,
shows a compositional-intellectual flexibility that seems possible
only in the American broil. Babbitt's prominent involvement with
the twelve-tone system and his extremely important contributions
to its understanding and extension— as manifested in his music
and in his writings about music— may cause some to be surprised
at his long-standing interest in jazz (as well as his encyclopedic
command of American popular music). All Set is a manifestation
of that enthusiasm, and the punning title— referring to the all-com-
binatorial twelve-tone set on which the work is composed— verbally
unites the two worlds of Babbitt's concern. He provides these com-
ments on the piece:

"All Set was composed in 1957 for the Brandeis University Arts
Festival, which that year was a 'jazz festival.' Whether All Set is
really jazz I leave to the judgment of those who are concerned to
determine what things really are, and if such probably superficial
aspects of the work as its very instrumentation, its use of the
'rhythm section,' the instrumental ly delineated sections which may
appear analogous to successive instrumental 'choruses,' and even
specific thematic or motivic materials, may justify that aspect of
the title which suggests the spirit of a 'jazz instrumental,' then the
surface and the deeper structure of the pitch, temporal, and other
dimensions of the work surely reflect those senses of the title, the
letter of which brings the work closer to other of my compositions,
which really are not jazz."

T. J. Anderson's concern with the wider recognition of black
cultural and historical experience informs his present oeuvre. His
Variations take as their "theme" excerpts from the work of the
black poet M. B. Tolson (Harlem Gallery, Book I: The Curator and
Libretto tor the Republic of Liberia), and the composer declares that
"the theme has to do with humanity. It is about black life, about
suffering. . . ." Anderson's polemical purpose is served through his
investing of the text with a recitative-like accompaniment and man-
ner of delivery, which unites his skills as a composer of twelve-
tone-derived music with certain elements from our general jazz
heritage. Much of the text, especially its central homiletic sections,
is spoken, and there is no attempt to ornament the words through
concerted or through-composed instrumental material. But, par-
ticularly in the blues-like concluding section, text and tone fuse in
an elaboration of accompaniment with repeated and atomized words,
phrases, and sentences of the text; and these propel the work toward
its explicitly blues-inspired final moments.

Variations on a Theme by M. B. Tolson was composed in 1969;
it was given its premiere in Atlanta in May 1970, with the composer
conducting' members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Richard Wernick's Kaddish-Requiem (A Secular Serv-
ice for the Victims of Indochina) was written in 1971 to a
commission from the Philadelphia Composers' Forum. The
first movement was substantially revised prior to the Con-
temporary Chamber Ensemble's 197,3 performance of the
work at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, Wernick
defines his compositional stance as a flexibly eclectic one
{"I find the mixture of old and new, consonant and dissonant,
tonal and non-tonal, a comfortable one to live and create in")
and provides these comments on the work:

"In the late '60s and early '70s, protest, frustration, dis-
may, and anger at the United States' military involvement
in Indochina was being expressed in countless ways. My
Kaddish-Requiem was written during this period. The work
is divided into three movements, played without pause. The
first, 'Alles Fleisch . . .', although entirely instrumental, draws
upon the line of scripture 'Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras'
('For all flesh is as the grass'), which Brahms set in the
second movement of his German Requiem. In a time when
flesh and grass can be recklessly devastated by napalm and
defoliants, the simplicity and beauty of the biblical image
becomes tinged with a cruel and bizarre cynicism. This is
reflected musically by the use of brief and disjointedly re-
composed portions of the Brahms as an ironic and nagging
commentary throughout the first movement.

"The second movement consists of a tape collage of sev-
eral versions of the Hebrew (actually Aramaic) Kaddish.
Although traditionally used as the Jewish prayer for the
dead, this curious doxology contains no reference to death
whatever, but extols with its lilting rhythms and cadences
the power and glory of the Almighty. The Kaddish sections
are set off by two instrumental interludes based on portions
of Lassus' two-voice motet Saner/ mei ('My holy people, who
in this world have known only toil and strife, I shall grant
you the reward for all your labors').

"The third movement is a setting for mezzo-soprano of
the traditional Latin Requiem aeternam. Here too, instrumen-
tal interludes based on older sources are used— in this move-
ment Palestrina's setting of Veni Sancti Spiritus ('Come
Holy Spirit'), the moving medieval poem v/ith its entreaty
to 'grant a death of hope and peace.' "

CHARLES WUORINEN

Milton Babbitt (b. 1916, Philadelphia) studied composition
privately with Roger Sessions; he holds degrees from New
York University and Princeton University and has been
awarded honorary degrees by Middlebury College, Swarth-
more College, New York University, and the New England
Conservatory. Active as composer and teacher, and a pro-
lific writer on musical subjects, Babbitt is a founder and
member of the Committee of Direction, Electronic Music
Center of Columbia-Princeton Universities and a member of
the Editorial Board of Perspectives of New Music, He has
taught at Salzburg, Tanglewood, Darmstadt, and the New
England Conservatory; currently he is William Shubael
Conant Professor of Music, Princeton University, and he
teaches composition at Juilliard. Babbitt has received a long
list of honors and commissions and is a member of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Fellow of the
American Academy.

T. J. Anderson (b. 1928, Coatesville, Pa.) holds degrees
from West Virginia State College, Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity, and the University of Iowa; he also studied at the
Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and at Aspen, and
he is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and of Yaddo. His
numerous honors include awards from the Fromm, Rocke-
feller, American Music Center, and Copley foundations, and
he has received commissions from Fisk University, the Berk-
shire Music Center, and the National Endowment for the
Arts. Active as composer, teacher, and lecturer, Anderson
was Composer-in-Residence to the Atlanta Symphony Or-
chestra from 1969 to 1971; from 1972 to 1974 he was
chairman of the Black Music Caucus (active within the Music
Educators National Conference), Since 1972, Anderson has
been chairman of the Department of Music at Tufts Uni-
versity.

Richard Wernick (b. 1934, Boston) studied composition with
Irving Fine and Harold Shapero at Brandeis University, with
Leon Kirchner at Mills College, and with Ernst Toch, Boris
Blacher, and Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. The recipient
of numerous prizes and honors (Brandeis University, Berk-

SPECTRUM
New American Music, Volume V

Side One (22:07)

MILTON BABBITT (b. 1916)

All Set, for Jazz Ensemble (1957) (7:53)
for alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, contrabass, piano, vibraphone, and percussion
publ. Associated Music Publishers, Inc.-(BMI)

T.J.ANDERSON (b. 1928)

Variations on a Theme by M. B. Tolson (1969) (13:55)
for mezzo-soprano, alto saxophone, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, and piano

publ. ACA (BMI)

Side Two (18:58)

RICHARD WERNICK (b. 1934)

Kaddish-Requiem (A Secular Service for the Victims of Indochina) (1971)
for mezzo-soprano, cantor, piccolo, flute, alto flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello, sitar, piano, and percussion

THE CONTEMPORARY CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
ARTHUR WEISBERG, conductor

JAN DeGAETANI, mezzo-soprano RAMON GILBERT, cantor

Paul Dunkel, piccolo, flute & alto flute— Allen Blustine, clarinet &bass clarinet— Allan Dean, trumpet—John Swallow, trombone-
Jeanne Benjamin, violin— Fred Sherry, cello & sitar— Alvin Brehm, contrabass— Gilbert Kalish, piano— Raymond DesRoches, percussion

with

Al Regni, alto saxophone— David Tofani, tenor saxophone— Linda Quan, violin (in Kaddish Requiem) -
Richard Fitz, vibraphone (in All Set) & percussion

recorded with the assistance of The Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc.
engineering & tape editing/ Marc J. Aubort, Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recordings, Inc.)

Kaddish-Requiem recorded by Phonag Studios, Undau/Zurich, in cooperation with Elite Recordings, Inc., New York
recording directors/ Helmuth Kolbe (Phonag Studios), Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recordings, Inc.)
engineering/ Helmuth Kolbe, Robert Lattmann (Phonag Studios)

Kaddish tape section recorded at Park Avenue Temple, Bridgeport, Conn,
engineering/ Marc J. Aubort (Elite Recordings, Inc.);
tape collage realized by the composer at Presser Electronic Studio, University of Pennsylvania

mastering/ Robert C. Ludwig (Sterling Sound, Inc.)
a Dolby-system recording

texts & translations enclosed

shire Music Center, Ford Foundation) and commissions (in-
cluding Fromm Music Foundation, Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the University of Chicago,
Philadelphia Composers' Forum), Wernick has composed
numerous solo and chamber works; vocal, choral, and band
compositions; and he has produced a large output of music
for theater, films, ballet, and television. He has taught at
the State University of New York at Buffalo, University of
Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania (where he was
chairman of the Music Department from 1969 to 1974).
Active as an orchestral and choral conductor in numerous
university series as well as for theater, film, ballet produc-
tions, and recordings, he is presently conductor and musical
director of the Penn Contemporary Players at the University
of Pennsylvania, where he continues to teach composition.

Jan DeGaetani, born in Ohio, is a graduate of the Juilliard
School of Music, where she studied with Sergius Kagen. She
has performed in oratorio, opera, and chamber music, and ap-
pears frequently both in recital and with orchestra; she is
heard widely on radio and television in the United States and
Europe. Miss DeGaetani has been internationally acclaimed
for her presentation of contemporary works— many of them
written especially for her^and is also noted for her work in
early music. A former faculty member of the Juilliard School,
she has also taught at Bennington College and at the State
University of New York, College at Purchase. Since 1971, she
has taught at the Aspen Music School, and in Fall 1973 joined
the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, as Pro-
fessor of Voice. Miss DeGaetani has recorded for Decca, CRI,

Music Guild, Vanguard, Vox, Acoustic Research, Columbia,
and Nonesuch.

In I960, Arthur Weisberg and about a dozen outstanding
New York instrumentalists formed the Contemporary Cham-
ber Ensemble, a group devoted to the study and performance
of modern music. The Ensemble received a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation in 1965 to set up a three-year res-
idency at Rutgers University, and, during the ensuing period,
developed an extraordinary repertory of new works, many of
which were presented by the Ensemble in their numerous
public appearances. Since then, the Contemporary Chamber
Ensemble has continued to perform throughout the U.S.A.;
they have been invited to appear at the Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C., for the last 12 consecutive years. In Fall
1973, the Ensemble toured England and Europe to wide ac-
claim.

Early in 1969, Nonesuch issued the first three volumes
of Spectrum: New American Music, recorded by the Con-
temporary Chamber Ensemble under a grant from the Martha
Baird Rockefeller Foundation (H-71219, H-71220, H-71221).
Each of these albums won honors for the composers in the
1970 Koussevitzky International Recording Award. Later
recordings by the Ensemble for Nonesuch have included
Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (H-71251); George
Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (H-71255); works by
Edgard Varese (H-71269); and Kurt Weill's Kleine Dreigro-
schenmusik and Darius Milhaud's La Creation du monde
(H-71281). The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble has also
recorded for Acoustic Research and CRI.

T, J. Anderson

VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY M. B. TOLSON

The Harlem Gallery, an Afric pepper bird,
awakes me at a people's dusk of dawn.
The age alters its image, a dog's hind leg,
and hazards the moment of truth in pawn.
The Lord of the House of Flies,
jaundice-eyed, synapses purled,
wries before the tumultuous canvas,

The Second of May—

by Goya:
the dagger of Madrid
vs.

the scimitar of Murat.

In Africa, in Asia, on the Day
of Barricades, alarm birds bedevil the Great White World,
a Buridan's ass— not Balaam's— between no oats and hay.*

"It is the grass that suffers when

two elephants fight. The white man solves

between white sheets his black

"problem. Where would the rich cream be
without skim milk? The eye can cross the
river in a flood.

.."t

Dr. Nkomo says: "The little python would not let go
the ass of the frog— so the big python swallowed both."
I seem to sense behind the mask of the Zulu Club Wits

thoughts springing clear of

the terra firma of the mind—

the mettled forelegs of horses

in a curvet.*

tt

"A stinkbug should not peddle perfume.
The tide that ebbs will flow again.
A louse that bites is in

"the inner shirt. An open door
sees both inside and out. The saw
that severs the topmost limb

"comes from the ground.

A fabulous mosaic log,
the Bola boa lies
gorged to the hinges of his jaws,
eyeless, yet with eyes . . .

in the interlude of peace.

The beaked and pouched assassin sags
on to his corsair rock,
and from his talons swim the blood-
red feathers of a cock . . .

in the interlude of peace.

The tawny typhoon striped with black
torpors in grasses tan:
a doomsday cross, his paws uprear
the leveled skull of a man . . .

in the interlude of peace, t

Come back, Baby, come back— I need your gravy.
Come back, Baby, come back— I'm weak and wavy.
The talk of the town, I'm Skid Row bound—
and I don't mean maybe! *

— M. B. Tolson

*from Harlem Gallery, Book I: The Curator (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1965)
tfrom Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1953)
Used with the permission of the publisher.