To the Editor,

The shocking screed about my piece in your latest issue leaves me perplexed. I had no idea you (B.L.C.) had such an animus against me or my music. Is it Blake you despise? There are hints of that in your remarks about "The Fly."

I don't think you understand how my piece is structured. I can see I should have included a program note explaining that. It would probably have helped to explain that this is a revised version of "Contraries: Visions of Blake", which was premiered about ten years ago. At that time it consisted of about half a dozen of Blake's poems set to music. On that occasion Marshall Coid sang the songs (but did not also play the violin). Each of the songs was followed by a variation on it for the instruments.

So the piece was a combination of song cycle and theme & variations. It is not correct to say, as you do, that "The Fly" is "the central theme in this seemingly endless …." It is only one of several themes that are given the variation treatment. All I did in this version was to instrumentalize the themes (eliminate the voice and the words) for the (former) songs, except for the first and last song. There was no other change. I gave the piece a title to differentiate it from the earlier version. If this means I have "a thing" for Blake, well, you explain what that means. Yes, I do admire Blake (something you obviously don't), but so what?

Your gratuitous remarks about the title (a sad and sadistic attempt to be funny at my expense) seem utterly irrelevant. I'd like to know what is "self-indulgent" about that title? The piece IS an attempt to capture something of the poet's personality, which seems perfectly acceptable to me, though obviously not to you. Or do you have some kind of mysterious animus against program music?

The performance wasn't perfect, but I don't think Mimi's tempos were particularly slow. The audience obviously liked it, judging from the rather prolonged and enthusiastic ovation, and the many comments made to me after the concert by members of the audience. But of course a critic must never allow such considerations to affect his god-like verdict, must he? If you can, would you please explain what you mean by "inspired by trivia or simply using the wrong model." Is this your general opinion of Blake? If so, I wonder how much you know of his work or of his life. Clearly the Metropolitan Museum wouldn't agree, judging from their recent Blake exhibit.

To sum up, I think your review was cruel and irresponsible, and I am shocked to think you would single me out for such treatment. What critic, except one with an irrational animus, would devote so much space to the act of destroying a piece of music and its composer? If that was your intention, I'd like to know why. What have I done to deserve this?

Regarding David Hollister’s Rites of Sumer [sic], performed by the Downtown Chamber Players, at the Theodore Roosevelt House, which review appeared in NMC, v3#4, Fall 1995: Mr. Hollister's ambitious 18-minute long "Rites" was originally commissioned by Paul Taylor, and so it was not at all surprising that a kinetic response was evoked, even in the rather solemn opening "Invocation of Anu." The second part, "Innana's Journey," however, was all joy and playfulness, with shifting meters and tricky syncopations that, if danced to, would require the skill and imagination of a major choreographer. Hollister's music is well-crafted with an especially keen sense of each instrument's role and capability. The players responded nicely to their assignments -- Andrew Bolotowsky, flute; Melinda Newman. oboe; Andrea Dembinska, viola; Joseph Pederson, cello; the composer conducted. B.L.C.

From ‘World Voices & Visions,’ a presentation of the Downtown Chamber Players with Mimi Stern-Wolfe at Hunter College, March 27, 1998, as reviewed in NMC, v6#2, Summer 1998: Mr. Hollister's eight-minute essay for voice and cello, set to Ilsa Gilbert's "Homeless Children" and played after the intermission, comes off as sincere and heartfelt but somewhat too simple and brief. There is a singular mood here, a deep sadness underscored by a plaintive solo for the cellist [Ann Kim]. One tends to believe that Ms. Gilbert's tragic poem may not be the best choice for a composer, as there is absolutely no opportunity for shifts of tempo, meter, dynamics. Opposites - or duality - may not be important in social journalism; they are in art. Here, there is not a single bright moment, not a glimmer of hope. The text begins with "War is the day they are born" and ends with "Peace is the day they die/ Never having lived at all." Ms. Gilbert has done better and Mr. Hollister has chosen better. B.L.C.

Composer David Hollister's recent 'summation concert' covered some 40 years of his music. That may come as a surprise to those meeting this erect and well-sculpted youngish gentleman for the first time, especially if they are unaware of the years he has given to the cause of new music. But his 'music of a lifetime' (his own phrase) may be said to have begun at the time of his birth into a musical family. At six he started piano lessons and later studied with Irving Fine, Wallingford Riegger, Henry Brant, John Mehegan and Charles Mingus. He also attended the University of Iowa and was accepted for a special grant program in Warsaw, Poland.

His diverse influences - dance (his mother was a dancer), jazz, film music, musical theater, song, and the music of social consciousness - appeared on this concert. The music for Highway (1958) and The Walk (1962) were heard via the now scratchy soundtracks while the films were being projected. After the showing of Highway, the Sinus String Quartet performed the third movement (marked Allegro con moto e deciso) which features a theme used in that soundtrack.

The Troubadour Songs of 1981 and To Life, the featured vocal works, rounded out Hollister's examples of social conscience. The former set's perfomance here involved a soprano, the Bolankha Woodwind Trio and the Sirius in music that has a decidedly ancient flavor, if in modem dress. The composer admits to a certain historical sadness over the destruction of a 'beautiful culture,' that of Languedoc and its Cathar religious movement that swept over what is now Southern France. (According to the composer, the movement was considered heretical and was put down by a Pope- and baron-led crusade.) To Life, a personal response to the Holocaust, is composed of two songs, 'Coronach' (1966; 1999), a Celtic song of grief, and 'Conscientious Objector,' a setting of an anti-war poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Some of the jazzy elements appear in the Woodwind Trio of 1965 and in Fanfare, Fantasies and Fugues (on the name Leonard Bernstein) of 1988. But the work that stood out firmly this evening was the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings (1958/80), music that began with a single movement as a student and which was completed in full maturity. It reveals no inspiration by any force or event other than pure musical expression and lyrical beauty. It carries on the Mozart-Brahms tradition unapologetically, and it had the good fortune on this occasion to receive a dedicated reading by the big- and mellow-toned clarinetist Vadim Lando with, again, the Sirius Quartet.

Perhaps David Hollister's many teachers have instilled in him an appreciation of diversity resulting in perhaps an unavoidable eclecticism. He is a composer apparently moved by a sense of occasion as much as by form, but the good musical values are, nonetheless, undeniable, and we never fail to find truly fine moments in his work.

The Sirius String Quartet is made up of Joyce Hammann and Mary Whitaker (violins), Ron Lawrence (viola) and Leo Grinhauz (cello). The Bolankha Woodwind Trio comprises Andrew Bolotowsky (flute), Mr. Lando and Khalil Calvin Curtiss (bassoon). T'heresa Snyder was the committed soprano and Mark Helias served as an added double-bassist in To Life.

From 'Men at Work,' celebrating septuagenarian composers, a presentation of Downtown Music Productions, at the Kosciuszko Foundation, March 9, 2001 (NMC, v9#2, Summer, 2001): David Hollister seems to have a thing for William Blake as much as Jack Gottlieb admires Cummings. So it hurts when we sense he has been either inspired by trivia or simply using the wrong model. Why "The Fly," of all poems. It’s a ditty that makes the annoying insect into a human metaphor, which may have meant something in its time. Better that Hollister would have concentrated his effort into Blake’s short but lovely "Morning" rather than making the former the central theme in this seemingly endless (actually 27-minute-long) "concertina" for voice, guitar and string quartet. And calling the work A Portrait of William Blake is like calling Leo Kraft’s fantasy A Portrait of Western Civilization’s Most Admired Instrument or dubbing An American in Paris of Gershwin A Musical History of International Relations. Sure, a composer has a right to call his music whatever he/she likes but then a critic has the right to recognize self-indulgence when he sees it. Maybe conductor Mimi’s soporific slow tempo was partly to blame. But, still, this piece needs a lot of reworking. Only Marshall Coid’s silky countertenor voice in the lyrical settings of the two poems stood out as an asset in the event. The guitarist was Freddie Bryant (Hollister’s brother), to whom the work was dedicated, and the quartet was made up of violinists Coid and Wolfgang Tsoutsouris, violist Sam Kephart and cellist Lin.