Reflections on Rochberg and "Postmodernism"

Abstract

Reflections on Rochberg and "Postmodernism" tetTfcl JamesWierzbicki i Commenting on the "postmodernist turn in music," Richard Taruskin in his voluminous new Oxford History ofWestern Music declares that the "story begins (or we can begin effectively to tell it) with the firstperformance, on 15May 1972, of the String Quartet no. 3 by George Rochberg."1 In 1972 "postmodernism" had yet to enter the vocabulary ofAmerican cultural commentators, but by the early 1980s it had become a buzz word.2 Soon the label was applied toRochberg, and Rochberg vehemently opposed it. In an essay that triggered a blustery debate within the pages of the journal Critical Inquiry, he articulated the "simple enough" reasons forhis objection: Reflections on Rochberg and "Postmodernism" 109 While I acknowledge the purely temporal sense inwhich the term is used, it ishardly that fact alone which is sufficientfor acquiescing to a term in which the word "modernism" remains embedded and which is intended, I suppose, to describe, referto, indicate those col lective effortsalready set inmotion which are attempting to create a new and more balanced culture, one which must base itselfagain on the past and its relation to the present and the recognition of the validity of continuity. In this sense, itwould be better to invent a new term, and ifone does not come to mind quickly or easily, it would be just as well to get along without a label while we get on with themain business at hand.3 The word was problematic for Rochberg mostly because its root posed "a constant reminder of the sickness of spiritwhich themodern movement engendered, of the loss of values itbrought on, of the imbal ances it caused."4 Vis-?-vis modernism and all that it implied, Rochberg had no use for such a reminder. Once a champion ofmodernism, in the 1960s he found himself caught painfully between modernism's demands and dictates from his artistic conscience.5 Although his writings from the early 1970s resonate with conflicted thoughts, Rochberg nonetheless believed thatwith his Third Quartet he had at last escaped the dilemma. After a long and emotionally tortuous period that he called his "time of turning," Rochberg was convinced that by means of the Third Quartet he had started to move beyond modernism.6 By the time "postmod ernism" came into fashion, Rochberg had made bold strides along his chosen path. Chronology notwithstanding, there was simply no point, he felt, in affixing to his currentwork a tag that smacked of a backward glance. Rochberg died on 28 May 2005. Surely the passing of a prominent American composer warrants new evaluations of his output as a whole, but this essay has only a narrow focus. Prompted by Taruskin's recent pronouncement that the story of musical postmodernism begins with Rochberg's 1972 Third Quartet, the goal here is to suggest that amuch more prophetic model formusical postmodernism can be found in a work for chamber orchestra thatRochberg completed relatively early in his "time of turning." Before discussing Rochberg's 1965 Music for the Magic Theater, however, it is necessary to put into perspective both Rochberg's pre-1965 career and the still slippery concept of musical postmodernism. MO PerspectivesofNew Music II It iswith a curious conceit thatRochberg begins his 1973 "Reflections on Schoenberg," a rambling appreciation published in this journal on the eve of the Schoenberg centennial. In a literaryflourish that at the time must have shocked at least some readers of Perspectives ofNew Music, he likens Schoenberg to awerewolf. Rochberg makes no reference to lycanthropic transformation of the sort enacted by Lon Chaney Jr. so famously in the movies. For Rochberg, therewas nothing moonstruck about Schoenberg's dramatic leap from the safe ground of functional harmony into the atonal vocabu laryof Pierrot Lunaire, nothing so pernicious in Schoenberg's method of twelve-tone composition that itwarranted curing with the musical equivalent of a silver bullet. Rochberg did not compare Schoenberg to a creature occasionally fanged and hairy; the comparison, rather, is to Harry Haller, the central character of Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel Steppenwolf Quoting directly from the preface to the 1963 English-language edi tion of the novel, Rochberg notes thatHesse's protagonist, who truly believed that his human...