AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES                                                                  150 a-e

George Rochberg

(and Gene Rochberg)

with Vincent Plush

Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

October 12, 1983

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Side a                                                                                                             pp. 1-19

History of Rochberg family name--family origins--cultural background--first music lessons--first compositions--Julius Koehl--Prout, Counterpoint--playing in a honky-tonk band--big band arrangements--Bob Russell (Sydney Rosenthal)--Montclair State Teachers College--Edna McEachern--George Wedge (Juilliard School)--Jaines Sauber--David Nannes--Hans Weisse--parents reaction to composition studies.

Side b                                                                                                            pp. 19-35

No model of how to be a composer--meeting his wife, Gene--George Szell--Heinrich Schenker--Szell as a teacher--Second Symphony--drafted in 1942--war experiences--war’s effect on his tastes in music--Bartók, Stravinsky, Schoenberg--Rosario Scalero at Curtis--learning the craft--Menotti as a teacher--Rochberg’s intellectual side--teaching at Curtis--working at Presser's.

Side c                                                                                                                         pp. 35-50

Night Music--First Symphony--the twelve-tone methodology (and Schoenberg)--Babbitt and Perle--George Gershwin Memorial Award--hearing his own orchestral music for the first time--Fulbright and American Academy Fellowships--meeting Dallapiccola--Tanglewood 1952--Leonard Rosenman--Berio--Ulysses Kay--Copland's Piano Quartet--Dallapiccola’s reaction to serialism--Trio (No. l)--"the whole question of modernism"--Paul, his son’s, brain tumor and death--Paul’s poetry.

Side d                                                                                                            pp. 50-65

Contra mortem et tempus, and the pieces that went into it--Music for the Magic Theater--Melvin Strauss--quotation and "spatialization"--Henry Brant--Webern--Varèse-forthcoming book of essays; William Bolcom, editor--career at University of Pennsylvania--opinion of critics--Romanticism--computers in music--Third Symphony--Caprice--Variations--Third Quartet--the quartet as a personal medium--"Concord Quartets"--Simon Saydorff--Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue--Seventh Quartet, with baritone--Ricordanza.

Side e                                                                                                             pp. 65-73

This side devoted to Rochberg’s opera, The Confidence Man:

Its genesis--choosing a text--American quality of Melville’s book--musical structure--production arrangements and composing pressures--Santa Fe premiere and criticisms of that production.

AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES                                                                              150 h-k

George Rochberg

with Ingram Marshall

Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

October 26, 1998

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Side h                                                                                                                                    pp. 1-17

Elliott Carter’s Variations for Orchestra with Ormandy--fifteen years of retirement from teaching--M.A. in music--teaching at Penn--American Society of Univ. Composers--book of essays--Bartók’s Fifth and Sixth Quartets--informal seminar situation--Fifth and Sixth Symphonies--Oboe Concerto--Clarinet Concerto--works for Eliot Fisk--Muse of Fire--Caprice Variations for solo violin--Ora Pro Nobis--essays of Iris Murdoch--Paula Robison--Robert Beaser--Eden: Out of Time and Out of Space.

Side i                                                                                                                          pp. 17-34

Eden (con’t)--Fifth and Sixth Symphonies--Solti--Violin Concerto with Issac Stern--Imago mundi--Lorin Maazel--Russian vs. American audiences--Oboe Concerto--nationalism--music in the next century--Schoenberg--Circles of Fire--symmetry--Polarity in Music: Symmetry and Asymmetry and their Consequences--Rochberg’s book: The Aesthetics of Survival--Philadelphia--Philadelphia School:  Rochberg, Crumb, and Wernick--Bang on A Can--colleagues and friends importance to his work--Concord Quartet--Second Quartet--Charles Ives.

Side j                                                                                                                          pp. 34-49

Third and Seventh Quartets--Double Cello Quintet--The Confidence Man--Leonard Stein--composers, performers, critics, audience--Michael Tippett--Schoenberg Op. 11--Phaedra--Piano Trios--Cheltenham Concerto--Cantio sacra--Black Sounds--Ives--Central Park in the Dark, Unanswered Question, Fourth Symphony--Nach Bach.

Side k                                                                                                                                    pp. 49-59

Varèse--Rochberg’s Duo Concertante--Varèse’s Poème électronique--influence of filmmakers: Alain René, Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman--craft and art--Concord Quartets--Post-Modernism--Second Piano Sonata--solo piano pieces--Seventh Symphony.