George Perle: An Appreciation

George Perle: An Appreciation - ? Dave Headlam But in the recapitulation [of theLyric Suite, movement I, at m. 45], Berg substitutes the inversionfor theprime in an alternative segmen tation that ismaximally invariant in dyadic pitch-class content with theprime, and that showshis awareness of the typeof invariant rela tion throughwhich . . .the cyclicseries establishesa closed systemof row forms. [These] program notes . . .are some of themost insightful and infor mative writings of this sort that I have ever read. There isno question that theycan help tomake you a better informed and more insightful music lover.But if the openingfigure ofBeethoven's Fifth or the first phrase of Mozart's G minor Symphony has no spontaneous, intuitive, 160 PerspectivesofNew Music and immediate effect for you, there is nothing that ... I can write that will create that effect.Even ifwe could put it into words, the moment we had succeeded in doing so the effect would no longer spon taneous, intuitive, and immediate. Schoenberg's abnegation of the classic tonal functions is certainly the most significant single achievement in themusic of our century, a radical act which revealed toa new age itsspecial destiny} "Hile it is too soon after the recent passing of the noted composer VV and writer George Perle, at the age of 93 on January 23rd of 2009, to present a comprehensive overview of his contributions tomusic scholarship and composition, this article presents an initial appreciation of his scholarlywritings.2 Perle wrote extensively on his own music, par ticularly on the aspects of his compositional technique which have become known as Twelve-Tone Tonality (TTT), but he was farmore prolific when writing on the music of other composers, most volumi nously on that of Alban Berg and Bela Bartok, but also including Scriabin, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Varese, and others.3 The quotes at the head of this article present three significant aspects of thiswork. First, the rigor and precision he brought to his theoretical and analytical asser tions; second, his delight in the immediate experience of the musical surface and the importance ofmusical intuition; and third,his belief that the turn from tonality brought about initially in Schoenberg's music was the central musical issue of his time and one that all serious composers had to face. Although he explored many facets of this turn from tonality in the music of Schoenberg andWebern, he ultimately found Schoen berg's techniques incomplete. Early on, from 1937 when he was 22 years of age, Perle turned instead to Alban Berg, and here he found answers to his musical questions; the music of Berg had the greatest influence on Perle's own compositional and scholarly development. His system of TTT, although written initially in response to a misunder standing of Schoenberg's rows, developed into a completed system of Bergian symmetry and cycles.4 As with many of his peers, Perle's theoretical, analytical, and compositional activities were all strongly related: to varying extents, the topics in thewritings adumbrate his own compositional interests, and he himself pointed out that his theoretical work fed into his compositional explorations and vice versa.5 But many other topics emerge in Perle's George Perle: An Appreciation 161 writings, and combine to paint a complex portrait of this influential musician. Born in 1915, Perle is in the generation ofMilton Babbitt (b. 1916), Leonard B. Meyer (b. 1918), and Elliot Carter (b. 1908), and a generation or two later than Schoenberg (b. 1874), Bartok (b. 1881), Igor Stravinsky (b. 1882), Webern (b. 1883), Edgard Varese (b. 1883), and Berg (b. 1885), and as well as Charles Ives (b. 1874), Paul Hindemith (b. 1895), Howard Hanson (b. 1896), Henry Cowell (b. 1897), Roger Sessions (b. 1897), and Ruth Crawford-Seeger (b. 1901). In this context, we might also mention Theodor W. Adorno (b. 1903), a pupil of Berg and writer on Berg's and others' music (along with many other topics), and, about a generation later than Perle, the music theorists David Lewin (b. 1933) and Allen Forte (b. 1926). Perle had many interactions with his own and later generations of scholars and writers. Along with his treatise on TTT, which appeared firstin book form in 1977, then in a second, expanded...