This article appeared in Philadelphia Music Makers magazine.

The Legacy of George Rochberg (1918-2005)

by Peter Burwasser

     Is serialism dead? This might be a positive development for many, but surely the obituary is premature. To respond to the question, it is useful to consider the origins of the original fervor for the methodology in terms of both musical development and history in general, and the case of one composer in particular. The first codified appearance of an atonal way of writing music occurred in Vienna shortly after the first World War, as formulated by Schoenberg and his followers. That work, known as twelve-tone music, was deemed degenerate and Jewish by the Nazi cultural censors, and formalistic and anti-proletariat by Stalin, and suddenly became dangerous in every sense of the word.

     With the defeat of Fascism in 1945, serialism found a new and vibrant life. The music of late Romanticism, as epitomized by Wagner, was seen as a veritable soundtrack of Fascism. The purple, false heroism and absolutism of that scourge and the esthetic that it engendered would be replaced with a rational, even scientific way of making art that celebrated the new and the experimental. It was an invigorating, exciting time for young musicians, and passions ran high, as manifested by Pierre Boulez' infamous statement that "Any musician who has not felt the necessity of the twelve-tone language is of no use!"

     A young infantryman from Patterson, N.J. by the name of George Rochberg was one of those new warriors. After his combat service in Europe, Rochberg finished his musical education in Philadelphia, at the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Pennsylvania, and soon became one of the leading lights of American serialism . By the time he became the chairman of the Penn music department, in 1960, there seemed to be no other way to make music, at least at the academic level.

     It was at this time that the composer faced another life altering experience, his son Paul's diagnosis of a brain tumor, and subsequent death in 1964. According to Rochberg's own statements, he was unable to find a way to deal with his grief with his own music, and so he slowly began the process of redefining his language, culminating in a series of string quartets written for the Dartmouth based Concord Quartet. It was in the third, premiered in 1972, that the first wholly tonal music would appear in Rochberg's mature work. The reaction in the music world was fast and furious, with many of his academic colleagues branding him a traitor. At the same time, many more outside of the ivory tower considered him a hero (Leonard Bernstein, most famously), including many of those who would become his students.

     Jay Reise , who is currently the Robert Weiss Professor of Music at Penn, was entering the academic world in the midst of this storm, and his career slightly overlapped that of Rochberg's . "To me, the conversion itself was significant because the quality of the serial music was so high. I do not think there is a stronger twelve-tone symphony than Rochberg's Second, so for him to move to tonality was especially significant. The proponents of serialism were certainly the most virulent in my lifetime. It's hard to imagine now, in our age of pluralisms, crossover, and multiculturalism how the serialist 'camp' could have been taken so seriously as 'The Way.' So when Rochberg made the switch the reaction was extreme. It certainly can be regarded as a watershed moment in American music - when the serial shackles came off."

     Uri Caine , the superb jazz pianist who is best known for his ingenious improvisations on the music of Beethoven, Mahler and Bach, among other classical icons, knew Rochberg when he was growing up in Philadelphia. By the time he was of college age, Caine was already an experienced jazz performer, but he wanted to study with Rochberg . "The only way he would teach me was from the beginning. I studied Bach chorales, harmony and counterpoint." As a composer with such an eclectic background, Caine was puzzled by all of the ideological bickering. "To me, that whole controversy seemed remote. He loosened a stranglehold, which didn't seem like a betrayal. It was ridiculous that music that was tonal or had a groove was considered bad. It was the very music that I was going crazy for."

     Another student was Robert Carl, who is now the head of the composition department at the Hartt School of Music. "I came to Philadelphia to study with George Rochberg . His Third String Quartet was the draw. The piece, with its incredible energy and daring to sample from a huge range of the classical repertoire, was exciting to me, a recently graduated history (not music) major."

     An important point that is emphasized by all of these Rochberg adherents is that even as the composer decried serialism as "finished, hollow, meaningless," it was never his intention to replace one dogma with another. Michael Hersch , an acclaimed young composer who studied privately with Rochberg , echoes the comments of Reise . "I would imagine George's supposed conversion in musical thinking to writing music with a more apparent and, for the public, a more graspable usage of tonality, had a strong effect on primarily those who knew and admired his twelve-tone works. However, not unlike the mature music of Berg, Schoenberg, much of Webern , and Dallipiccola [the Italian serialist was a friend, and early inspiration for Rochberg ] for example, George's earlier music was so profoundly propelled by voice-leading and harmony that the music he wrote after he declared a fundamental shift in thinking never seemed, to me at least, altogether different from those early works with the exception of those instances when he would refer at length to earlier composers and/or adhere closely and at length to stylistic conventions and harmony of earlier periods."

     The real importance of Rochberg's so-called conversion was not, as some would wish to believe, to render serialism obsolete, but to give composers a kind of permission to choose from a variety of styles. And even as Rochberg was making waves in the academic world, the American minimalist movement, including La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass were inspiring another paradigm shift in their own world. "Many styles can exist simultaneously," says Caine . "There are many ways to write music. Personally, I still love Scheonberg ."

      Reise concurs: "As far as my own work goes, when I was a graduate student, I was struck by how narrow and confining the serial sound-world was. I was impressed with the idea that Rochberg was on the road to developing a vocabulary that would be inclusive of more than one style or approach to music. In his case it involved serialism and tonality. My own and others' have gone on to include various combinations of modality, rhythmic approaches and other devices borrowed and developed from other classical traditions."

      Rochberg's ability to forge a strong new direction in music ultimately derived from two sources; the high quality of his music, and the strength of his personality. Michael Hersch speaks to both points: "At its best, George's music speaks with a clarity, force, honesty and searing lack of sentimentality that, like all powerful works of art, did so in spite of any analytical or philosophical dressings which were layered upon it at a later date - even if these analytical or philosophical pronouncements were made by George himself. George had an effect on those around him because he was a true musical force - not only as a composer, but through his lectures, essays and articles he was one of the finest musical thinkers of the past century. He expressed and lived his beliefs unflinchingly but was always flexible enough to recognize his own error or bias. He was one of the few composers I knew who if he did not like a work on first-hearing would immediately want to hear it again. With younger composers and instrumentalists he was extraordinarily generous with his time and was always there as a willing audience. His excitement and commitment to music never wavered. His absence will be deeply felt."

     In his last years, especially, Rochberg began to acquire a sense of himself that struck some, superficially, as pompous. But for Robert Carl, Rochberg's outlook was fundamentally vital and sincere. "Despite his reputation for exceptional craft, which is completely true, what I remember most from lessons was a moral education. He did often have blindingly specific insights, such as the fact that truly great composers break through and show their genius best in a coda, when other composers assumed the piece was over, but overall the legacy he gave me was to recognize that every note was a matter of life and death. There was no more important activity than making music. And seeing composing only as play devalued it, denied the importance of the artist. He once told me that if composers vanished, so would all civilization, in a blink. A lot of people might see that as self-serving or even delusional. The older I grow, the more I agree with him."