George Rochberg

George Rochberg (born July 5, 1918 in Paterson , New Jersey , † May 29, 2005 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ) was an American composer .

Life

Rochberg was born to Ukrainian emigrants. He studied from 1939 to 1942 at the Mannes Music School in New York , where he studied with George Szell , Hans Weisse and Leopold Mannes , among others . As a soldier he was wounded in Normandy during World War II , but was able to continue his studies from 1945 to 1949 at the Curtis Institute of Music with Rosario Scalero and the University of Pennsylvania . He later taught himself at the Curtis Institute of Music, worked as a music publisher and, from 1960 to 1968, was President of the Music Department of the University of Pennsylvania. 1979 to 1983 he taught as Annenberg Professor of the Humanities. In 1985 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1986 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Rochberg died on May 29, 2005 at Bryn Mawr Hospital, Philadelphia.

plant

Rochberg wrote, among other things, six symphonies (the sixth was premiered in 1987 by Lorin Maazel , a 7th symphony remained unfinished), concertos for violin (1974), oboe (1984) and clarinet (1996) as well as chamber music in various ensembles (from the seven string quartets Quartet No. 6 with variations on the canon in D major by Johann Pachelbel , which was composed in 1978, achieved greater popularity). For wind orchestras he composed Apocalyptica for Wind Ensemble in 1964 , Black Sounds for Winds and Percussion in 1965, and Fanfares for Massed Trumpets, Horns and Trombones in 1968 . He dedicated his 2nd piano trio (1985) to the Beaux Arts Trio .

He gave up his initially serial notation after 1963. Since then, his complex, at times pathetic works have been determined by a tension between tonality and atonality , in which tonal episodes often predominate. The turn away from serialism sparked heated controversy among colleagues. Rochberg himself compared atonality with abstract and tonality with representational art and saw his artistic development in analogy to that of the American painter Philip Guston . He himself once characterized his musical language as “a world in which everything happens at once”.

Web links

• Theodore Presser Company Composer Information: George Rochberg
• George Rochberg's Revolution, by Michael Linton in 'First Things' 84 (1998)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members: George Rochberg. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 22, 2019 .