Barney Childs
with Vincent Plush
Redlands, California
May 9, 1983
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Side A pp. 1-19
Childhood in Spokane -- music in household -- piano lessons -- reading -- cultural life of Spokane -- American Indian music -- move to Palo Alto -- interest in jazz -- New Music Quarterly -- Ives -- Harris -- Stravinsky -- interest in aeronautical engineering -- Deep Springs College -- Hindemith -- work at Douglas Aircraft -- San Jose State College -- clarinet study -- Army service -- amateur interest in music -- poetry -- University of Nevada at Reno -- study of music and literature -- Piano Trio -- Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford -- Oxford Musical Club and Union.
Side B pp. 19-39
Impressions of England -- tradition -- contemporary British music -- graduate work at Stanford in Renaissance literature -- dissertation on English madrigal -- music courses -- Tanglewood -- Chávez, Copland -- Considerations for Solo French Horn -- Elliott Carter -- New York, Composers’ Forum -- First Brass Quintet -- return to California -- work as draftsman in LA -- teaching English at University of Arizona -- Oxford M.A. -- Stanford Ph.D. -- performances in New York -- ”Nothing is easier than not to go to New York" -- composing activity -- Ives influence -- not writing for an audience -- Bassoon Sonata -- Changes for Three Oboes -- European music -- John Cage -- serialism -- making good sounds.
Side C pp. 40-64
Eclectic approach -- American Indian elements -- Concerto for English Horn, Strings, Harp, and Percussion -- jazz -- Milhaud -- indeterminacy -- Interbalances -- tape recorder -- Bowling again with the Champs -- Jack’s New Bag -- Music for Two Flute Players -- player choice -- Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Bass, and Percussion -- Nonet -- spatial music -- Music for Almost Everybody -- The Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company -- writing -- projected book called Ears -- different orderings and lengths of movements -- "beastly nightmarish pretensions" -- Fourth Brass Quintet -- Miles Davis, John Coltrane -- Variations on Poems by John Newlove -- Childs archive -- Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano -- Eighth String Quartet -- composing process -- musical space.
Side D pp. 64-88
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d -- The Golden Shore -- future of band music -- orchestration -- New Music Ensemble -- Music for Clarinet and Friend -- multiphonic techniques for clarinet -- reticence about music -- political music -- theater pieces -- The Roachville Project -- move to Redlands -- association with Phillip Rehfeldt -- composing block -- associations with England -- East Coast/West Coast dichotomy -- ASUC -- composers in academe -- lack of uniformity in American composers’ attitudes -- ”New Romanticism" of being a composer.
