Eagle Minds: Selected Correspondence of Istvan Anhalt and George Rochberg (1961-2005)

1970

48 17 january 1970 Dear George, [ … ] I was of course pleased that you came to be a witness to Foci. I read, and reread, your response to this performance, and am grateful for your sincere act of agreeing to give so much attention and thought to this work. I respect your response, and, of course, it interest[s] me greatly. But I won’t comment on it, because I still don’t know how to talk about this work in an objective fashion. (I am expecting to receive shortly a tape of the performance. Perhaps listening to it will give me the necessary psychic distance for this, and possibly also for making some minor changes in it.) I also wonder how the visual part complemented the sound. Everybody in the audience saw this, but not I. Frustrating. [ … ] How is work? Hugh [Hartwell] tells me that your songs are beautiful . Could I have a peek? (I have to have the score of Foci recopied by a professional man, but if you wish to have a copy of this rough script I’ll be pleased to send you one.) [ … ] Istvan 49 21 january 1970 Dear Isty, [ … ] Hugh [Hartwell] was referring to the songs I wrote to Paul’s texts. Or was it Tableaux? I’ll do them with Neva Pilgrim April 1 here in Phila[delphia].1 Right now I have no extra copies but I will send you one 1970| 79 as soon as I can. There are 12 [sic] in this group and later (next year?) I want to do another set & again later a 3rd set.2 I am suddenly obsessed by the desire to “sing” again, to leave off speculation & “new” things & do what lies closest to my heart. Of course the head keeps up its steady demands too so once again I’m attacking my problem from a “new” angle—actually an extension of what started 5 years ago with Contra & Magic Theater. I’ve just written 49 “caprice-variations” for violin solo after Paganini’s theme (the same one Brahms wrote 2 books of p[ia]no var[iations] on).3 Everything is there including Baroque, Classical, Romantic harmony & gestures as well as, of course, a good sprinkling of “contemporary ” music. I felt good writing it. Unselfconscious. Happy to be able to think harmonically & rhythmically as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I passed the stage of writing tonally from a sense of irony to simply writing it. I’m more than ever convinced of the necessity to speak many languages—dialects to be more precise—& to match the gesture with the appropriate expression. My recent listening experiences confirm that contemporary music (or what we call “contemporary music”) is a limited palette of essentially neurotic, constricted gestures. All of it perfectly true—but only of certain kinds of experience—the worst ones (alienation, trauma, nihilistic-destructive withdrawal, etc.). Susan Sontag & others have tried to make the old sense of dignity & nobility into something “campy.”4 Yes, that is true when they are sentimentalized . But I hear nothing of the sort in Brahms or Beethoven or Bach or Chopin. They have their truths & we still live within their sphere even if that sphere has been extended almost to the breaking point. I’m trying to say that I think we are the provincials not Beethoven. The very size of the old gestures (was looking through Bach B minor Mass today!) is still to my mind unbelievable & cosmic in every way (& without, mind you, electricity!). Well, you see I’m at it again—but anyhow the important thing is to find a way out of the contemporary cul-de-sac & to feel like a musician again. [ … ] George 50 10 june 1970 My dear Isty, [ … ] I’ve started a large cycle of songs for voice & piano based on a beautiful English translation of Bengali songs: In Praise of Krishna.5 It is the “story” of how Radha falls in love with Krishna (God? Man?) and gives Part II: Musical Composition (1965–1976) 80 | herself utterly. All the stages of sensual love are represented in the poetry. I am letting myself go completely in order to produce a genuinely lyric romantic expression. Somehow I feel the inward psychology of the female & can make the necessary projection. So far I have been sketching “tunes” mostly. One song is about 1/2 done & will set the stage for the kind of pitch language, harmony, treatment...