George Rochberg (July 5, 1918 – May 29, 2005) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique had proved inadequate to express his grief and had found it empty of expressive intent.[1] By the 1970s, Rochberg's use of tonal passages in his music had provoked controversy among critics and fellow composers. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania until 1983, Rochberg also served as chairman of its music department until 1968. He became the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities in 1978.
Rochberg served as chairman of the music department at the University of Pennsylvania until 1968 and continued to teach there until 1983. In 1978, he was named the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities.[3]
He married Gene Rosenfeld in 1941, and had two children, Paul and Francesca. In 1964, his son died of a brain tumor.
A longtime exponent of serialism, Rochberg abandoned this compositional technique upon the death of his teenage son in 1964. He said he had found serialism expressively empty and that it had proved an inadequate means for him to express his grief and rage.[1] By the 1970s, Rochberg had become controversial for the use of tonal passages in his music. His use of tonality first became widely known through the String Quartet No. 3 (1972), which includes an entire set of variations that are in the style of late Beethoven. Another movement of the quartet contains passages reminiscent of the music of Gustav Mahler. This use of tonality caused critics to classify him as a neoromantic composer. He compared atonality to abstract art and tonality to concrete art and compared his artistic evolution with the painter Philip Guston's, saying "the tension between concreteness and abstraction" is a fundamental issue for both of them.[4] His music has also been described as neoconservative postmodernism[5]
Of the works Rochberg composed early in his career, his Symphony No. 2 (1955–56) stands out as one of the most accomplished serial compositions by an American composer. He is perhaps best known for his String Quartets Nos. 3–6 (1972–78). Rochberg conceived Nos. 4–6 as a set and named them the "Concord Quartets" after the Concord String Quartet, which premiered and recorded the works. The String Quartet No. 6 includes a set of variations on Pachelbel's Canon in D.
James Freeman, musician and teacher at Swarthmore College, said this about Rochberg and serialism: "If George Rochberg can do something like that, there's nothing that I can't do and get away with it. I don't have to write 12-tone music; I can if I want to. I can write stuff that sounds like Brahms. I can do anything I want. I'm free. And that was an extraordinary feeling in the late 1960s for young composers, I think, many of whom felt really constrained to write serial music."[6]
Writings
Rochberg's collected essays were published by the University of Michigan Press in 1984 as The Aesthetics of Survival. A revised and expanded edition,[7] published shortly before his death, was awarded an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 2006.[8].Selections from his correspondence with the Canadian composer István Anhalt were published in 2007 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.[9] His memoirs, Five Lines, Four Spaces, were published by the University of Illinois Press in May 2009.[10]
Works
Stage
The Confidence Man, an opera in two parts (1982); libretto by Gene Rochberg, based on the novel of the same name by Herman Melville
Orchestral
Symphonies
Symphony No. 1 (1948–49; revised 1977; 2003)
Symphony No. 2 (1955–56)
Symphony No. 3, for double chorus, chamber chorus, soloists, and large orchestra (1966–69)
Night Music, for orchestra with cello solo (1948) (based on 2nd movement of Symphony No. 1)
Music for the Magic Theater, for small orchestra (1965–69)
Time-Span I (1960)
Time-Span II (1965)
Transcendental Variations, for string orchestra (based on 3rd movement of String Quartet No. 3) (1975)
Zodiac (A Circle of 12 Pieces), (1964–65) (orchestration of the piano work Twelve Bagatelles)
Concerti
Clarinet Concerto (1996)
Oboe Concerto (1983), written for and premiered by Joe Robinson
Violin Concerto (1974; rev. 2001), written for and premiered by Isaac Stern with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Donald Johanos conducting. The concerto was commissioned by the Steinfirst family in memory of Donald Steinfirst, the music critic for over 35 years of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which participated in the commission. Long a friend of Mr. Steinfirst, Isaac Stern consulted with the family. He premiered and recorded the concerto in Pittsburgh, and included it in his repertoire for several years.
Eden: Out of Time and Out of Space, for guitar and ensemble (1998)
Wind ensemble
Black Sounds, for winds and percussion (1965)
Apocalyptica, for large wind ensemble (1964)
Chamber
2 players
Duo for Oboe and Bassoon (1946; rev. 1969)
Duo Concertante, for violin and cello (1955–59)
Dialogues, for clarinet and piano (1957–58)
La bocca della verita, for oboe and piano (1958–59); version for violin and piano (1964)
Ricordanza Soliloquy, for cello and piano (1972)
Slow Fires of Autumn (Ukiyo II), for flute and harp (1978–79)
Viola Sonata (1979)
Between Two Worlds (Ukiyo III), for flute and piano (1982)
Violin Sonata (1988)
Muse of Fire, for flute and guitar (1989–90)
Ora pro nobis, for flute and guitar (1989)
Rhapsody and Prayer, for violin and piano (1989)
3 players
Piano trios
Piano Trio No. 1 (1963)
Piano Trio No. 2 (1985)
Piano Trio No. 3 Summer (1990)
Trio for Clarinet, Horn, and Piano (1980) see recording below
Rochberg, George (1992). "Guston and Me: Digression and Return." Contemporary Music Review 6 (2), 5–8.
Rochberg, George (2005). The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composer's View of Twentieth-Century Music (revised and expanded ed.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN978-0-472-03026-2.
Wlodarski, Amy Lynn. 2019. George Rochberg, American Composer: Personal Trauma and Artistic Creativity. Eastman Studies in Music Series, senior ed. Ralph P. Locke. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ISBN978-1-58046-947-0.
.png){kind=small}
