Interview

SCOTT BURNHAM SCOTT BURNHAM: I did not have too much to do with Perspectives of New Music, but when I thought about it [in reaction to your prompt], I did recall that it made an impact on me at various stages. RACHEL VANDAGRIFF: Well I would like to hear about that, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. BURNHAM: Not at all. You know, I started out as a composer, as an undergrad. I was going to school in Ohio, in Cleveland, at a place called Baldwin Wallace College. VANDAGRIFF: Interesting. BURNHAM: Yes, they have a conservatory, which is best known for their annual Bach Festival. I was interested in composition, and I followed that up by going to Yale for an M.M. in composition. Then I 144 History of Perspectives decided that was enough of that nonsense (laughter) and went into music theory. But during my composer years I remember encountering Perspectives. I had been—and I think this is true for a lot of people of my generation—I had been dazzled by the journal Die Reihe, which has, at this point, been kind of debunked. In fact, which I am sure you may have encountered already, the very first issue of Perspectives . . . VANDAGRIFF: Yes, the very first issue of PNM published an article by John Backus entitled, “Scientific Analysis of Die Reihe” (Backus 1962). BURNHAM: Yes, his review. Well, I don’t know anything about math, so I was suitably dazzled by Die Reihe, plus I idolized guys like Berio, Stockhausen, Boulez, Ligeti, etc. I had encountered things about them in Die Reihe, and then in Perspectives. I remember that PNM made a real impression on me. It was an introduction into American intellection about contemporary music, so to speak. I remember being, also, kind of surprised—in a good way—that there was actual music in the journal! That people would put pieces—short pieces—of theirs in the journal. I also remember thinking that this stuff was beyond me. I mean, they were serializing Ben’s Meta-Variations at one point. I couldn’t get any traction with that stuff, and I thought, “Oh, this is what they do in the big leagues.” Princeton for me, at that point, was a distant . . . it was almost like a mirage. [Scott Burnham teaches in the Princeton music department.] I knew some of the names I saw in Perspectives, like Boretz and Cone, but the discourse was basically beyond anything I was doing at the time. It would probably even still be beyond me. It is just not my thing. Then when I switched into music theory for doctoral work I was impressed that there were theory things in Perspectives that weren’t about twelve-tone, or the ‘latest’ thing. There was some Schenker, even [actually, Schenker was among the “latest things” at that point]. Michael Kassler (1967) who was trying to formalize Schenker. There was a brilliant review of Eugene Narmour’s Beyond Schenker by a guy whom I was then studying with, Allan Keiler (1978). The idea that work by Allan Keiler would be in Perspectives of New Music really kind of blew me away. I remember thinking that that was odd. Then, much later, when I got to Princeton, I heard from Babbitt about how much they respected Alan Keiler, and they had invited him to come to Princeton to speak about Schenker. He got high marks from the Princeton crowd for his work on Schenker, and there it was, showing up in Perspectives. Scott Burnham 145 When you look at some of those early issues now, they are like time capsules. Really, really remarkable. I managed to dig up the very first volume—I had a copy of it. VANDAGRIFF: Isn’t it wild? BURNHAM: Oh god! It is really something! In and of itself . . . plus there is a fold-out in Ed Cone’s article, a bunch of graphs as a part of his analysis of Stravinsky. Wow, I thought that kind of thing was just so hard core! I mean, it must have cost a lot to produce this thing! VANDAGRIFF: At that point the Fromm Music Foundation was paying a lot...