Jeffrey Quick's Blog

Arnold Rosner

This is the first of a projected series of articles on neo-tonal composers. These are people whose music I find worth of consideration (else, duh, I wouldn't consider it). There will be praise and criticism as I feel it is merited, but the general idea is that any news is good news for these guys.

I thought that, since I slagged Arnold Rosner pretty well for his comments on Mozart, it would be only fair to write on his music first.

Rosner's area of musicological interest is Alan Hovhaness; he wrote the Grove Dictionary article. I am a big advocate of studying the music of 2nd-rate composers, because if you can figure out what's wrong and how to fix it, you know how to avoid it in your own work, and may have the basis for developing a style. There's no market for New-and-improved Mozart, though I think it would be great fun to hear Rosner rewrite the Mozart Requiem as he thinks Mozart should and could have written it. But Hovhaness has a number of partisans, so New-and-improved Hovhaness should do quite well. (Should those partisans be reading this, let me note that since 10th-rate composers manage to have careers in this country, being 2nd-rate is high praise indeed, especially coming from a 3rd-rate composer like myself.)

But actually, Rosner's stuff is quite a bit more than Hovhaness Plus.The basis of his style is a chromatic modalism combined with functional harmony and a classically-oriented thematicism. Or to be snide, Hovhaness with chord changes. There is seriousness, solemnity and energy, but very seldom fun. sOK; if it's fun you want, you can listen to Bolcom or Daugherty, or the "relentlessly cheerful" Robert Baksa. Does this mean that Rosner has a "limited expressive palette"? We report; you decide. Also, the function of counterpoint is more integral in Rosner than Hovhaness; it's generally there to some degree, whereas one thinks of Hovhaness as either homophonic chorales or showy fugues. What Rosner has done is evolved an individual and consistent tonal style. That's difficult enough to do, but he did it during the 60s, when it was all but illegal. You've got to give the man his props.

The core of Rosner's music is the chamber music, especially the string quartets, which he has a natural gift for. There are six thus far, the Bartokian number, and I hope he goes on to write six more (and a brass quintet and a recorder consort, while I'm busy barking out unfunded mandates). Three of them appear on Albany TROY 210 (#2,3,5 and the Duet for Violas, Op. 94). The 2nd, written when he was 17, would be an amazing piece at any age. It begins with some slow intense imitative counterpoint that George Rochberg should have given his left nut to have in a Concord Quartet. (It must have galled Rosner to see the Prodigal Son return to tonality and the critics kill a fatted calf over it.) The more active section immediately following is the weakest, full of the repetition I commented on earlier. (Rosner finds literal repetition much more useful than I do, but in his later music the ideas are longer and he doesn't use it as much, while in the quartet section at issue he apparently can't say anything once without saying it twice.) But the piece has strong ideas and a satisfying emotional flow and form. I'm less sold on #3 from 2 years later (though revised in 1992), though it contains some really fierce music. There's just more of a sense of discovery in the earlier work, much like Hindemith of the 20s as opposed to Hindemith post-system. Rosner's style has evolved, but has been remarkably consistent throughout his career. #5 is more luminous (not a word Rosner usually calls to mind) with influences of Indian music and fauxbourdon. And the duet is a thrilling work which should be required penance for anyone who tells too many viola jokes.

Albany TROY 163 contains sonatas for cello (#1) and horn, which are fine works. Of Numbers and Bells, Op. 79 for 2 pianos works less well for me. At 15', I find it a bit long for the material, but pleasant in a New Agey sort of way. There are some chorales which are reminiscent of Satie in his Rose-croix period.Nightstone: Three settings from the song of songs, for tenor and piano, is a bit unexpected. The vocal writing here is very Baroque: lots of text repetition and melisma. I find the 2nd song quite annoying though. Here's a lick set to "the scent of Lebanon" which gets repeated twice:

(minor) 5 4 3 2 1
It's harmonized differently each time, at least, but then he repeats the threefold idea....and then later in the piece you get both repetitions again. That's a pretty heavy workout for a descending scale fragment; had Rosner been listening to bad 18th-century music?

Albany TROY548 is a recording of orchestral music conducted by Nicholas Palmer with the Altoona and Owensboro Symphonies. The heavy hitter on this disc is the Concerto for Two Trumpets, Strings and Timpani, op. 107. The instrumental combination suggests Purcell or some other baroque composer, but there is nothing "broke" about this music, which is full of "rumors of wars." There's a Sephardic Rhapsody, op. 95, which is effective. A Millennium Overture, op. 112, is a transcription of the finale of the Cello Sonata #2. It favors the midrange more than you'd expect for a celebratory piece, and the tambourine part is overwritten (which is I suppose better than an overwritten Mark Tree part, though it did induce the same fantasy that the musical glasses in Schwantner's And the mountains rising nowhere used to induce in me, one involving an air rifle and selective editing of the orchestration.) The Tragedy of Queen Jane is a suite taken from the opera The Chronicle of Nine, about Lady Jane Grey. The Prelude features serene music which is interrupted by rude and martial sounds, becoming corrupted before returning to its original state at the end. A Masque follows, a suite of various dances. Here Rosner's own language is close enough to that of the Attaignant dance publications to be convincingly though not slavishly period. The Clarion takes after various 16th-century battle pieces, and a Dirge completes the suite. It would be interesting to hear this music within the context of the opera.The orchestra playing is not the greatest (think early Louisville Orchestra recordings), but I'd be thrilled to have them doing my music on CD. And at least they're Americans, not some former Soviet bloc orchestra working for peanuts for an American vanity press.

Unusually for an American composer, Rosner came to the concert band medium fairly late, with his Op. 84 in 1988. There are now 8 band pieces in his catalog, the last written last year. Three of them, Dances of Initiation, Eclipse, and Raga!, are published by Manhattan Beach Music, who very kindly provide downloadable mp3s. Each of these works shows a progression in handling of the medium. Rosner's scoring favors the brass, in both frequency of use and subtlety; he taught me a lesson about the usefulness of low trombone writing. The woodwind writing is less effective, with a non-coloristic conception. (A comparison with Timothy Broege's Sinfonia V at the same website is instructive; the piece is Po-mo claptrap, but Gods, can the man score!). While the other works are worthwhile additions to the band repertoire, Eclipse is a masterpiece. As we have seen, Rosner is at his best when he indulges his native seriousness and even moroseness. This is not a "happy talk" band piece; the work that comes to mind is Husa's Music for Prague, though Rosner doesn't sound a bit like Husa. I hope the piece gets many more performances that it is probably getting.

So, to sum up: is Rosner's music perfect? No. Is it worth spending time with? Definitely. Will it be to everyone's taste? Probably not. Will it be to the tastes of many people who don't know it? Definitely. So give it a listen.

Comments

Posted by: Arnold Rosner
Posted on: July 27, 2006 01:22 PM

I checked my name on google and was glad to see your piece about me,- when did it actually become reality and how did I miss it?

No point in debating any smaller points,- just expressing much gratitude for your serious, wise and generous coverage.

AR

Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: July 27, 2006 03:29 PM

I thought I'd dropped you an email, but I guess not. I tried to be fair and objective, which is exactly what I would desire from somebody writing about my own music.

Funny, I've never Googled my own name. But I am inordinately proud about the number of Library of Congress authority files I have; I guess I've turned into a librarian after all.