Interview with Charles Wuorinen

Abstract

Dear readers of the journal “Problemy muzykal’noj nauki / Music Scholarship”! The editorial board of the journal “Problemy muzykalnoj nauki / Music Scholarship” is happy to present an interview with the famous American composer Charles Wuorinen. At the present time Wuorinen is the most well-known composer of twelve-tone music in the USA. He was born in New York City in 1938, studied at Columbia University in New York, and subsequently taught at many universities and conservatories in the USA, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music (New York), Princeton University and Rutgers University (New Jersey), New England Conservatory (Massachussetts), etc. In 1970 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his electronic composition Time’s Encomium, composed with the use of the RCA Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In his music Wuorinen adheres to the musical traditions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky (especially the latter’s late period), and asserts that he was most influenced in his music by American composers Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt and German emigre to the United States Stefan Wolpe. The composer was also inspired by the fractal theories of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Similar to Babbitt, Wuorinen has incorporated serial rhythm, in many cases projecting the latter onto the formal structures of entire compositions, following his own invented system. From 1962 to the mid-2010s, along with composer and performer Harvey Solberger, he was one of the leaders of the concert series, the Group for Contemporary Music, devoted to performance of works by contemporary composers. In the 1970s Wuorinen wrote an orchestral composition A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky, in which he incorporated the last musical sketches of the great master. Wuorinen is the author of a book on serial music, titled Simple Composition, which he characterizes as a manual for composers, meant to teach them how to compose music, and not a music theory book analyzing already composed works. Wuorinen’s music is well-known in the USA and in the countries of Western Europe, where there are frequent premiere performances of his new compositions, among which it becomes proper to name his eight symphonies, his trilogy of ballets based on the theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy, compositions for chorus and orchestra on Biblical themes: Genesis and A Celestial Sphere, music for piano, various chamber ensembles, percussion ensembles and several operas. Music lovers in Russia have yet to discover for itself the music of this intriguing composer (see website www.charleswuorinen.com), and we hope that this interview, which is the first publication about the composer in this country, shall serve as an impetus for further popularization of his music in Russia.