Finished just weeks before his death, George Rochberg's eloquent memoir offers a detailed look at his fruitful life as a composer, publisher, and teacher of music. The volume traces a life immersed in music, with early study under George Szell and Gian Carlo Menotti and later long-term collaborations with the Concord Quartet and commissions for major orchestras and opera companies. Rochberg takes care to describe the intellectual and aesthetic changes that led him down certain paths as a composer, often challenging the conventions of the day. Reflecting on music, aesthetics, colleagues, and the life of the creative mind, Rochberg's memoir captures not only the spirit but also the intellectual climate of the second half of the twentieth century.
Rochberg's life as a composer was marked by an ongoing search for his artistic place between tradition and the avant-garde, with an extensive oeuvre comprising over one hundred works including chamber ensembles, string quartets, symphonies, solo pieces, songs, and an opera. In addition to his importance as an American composer, he was also a central figure in academia and publishing. He served as chair of the University of Pennsylvania's music department, and as an editor and director of publications at the Theodore Presser Company, he helped marshal the company into one of the premier American musical publishing houses.
Through the course of the book, Rochberg reveals the thought processes that led him in unexpected directions as he pursued the independent path of his career. This is the story of a creative mind developing, at times struggling, and constantly growing.
Publication for this book was supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
George Rochberg (1918-2005) composed six symphonies, three concertos, seven string quartets, and dozens of chamber and solo works over the course of a career spanning six decades. After establishing himself as a modernist composer, he grew dissatisfied with the expressive limitations of serial composition. Through explorations in his music and his writings, he arrived at a more inclusive compositional style that embraced both the old and the new, yielding groundbreaking works such as
Music for the Magic Theater, the String Quartet no. 3, and the
Concord Quartets. The revised edition of his collected writings on music,
The Aesthetics of Survival, was the recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 2006.
Gene Rochberg met George in 1938 while both were students at what is now Montclair State University. They married in 1941. After they moved to Philadelphia, Gene studied at the Hedgerow Theatre School and the Barnes Foundation and was actively involved in theater and the other arts. She collaborated with her husband on a number of works, including the monodrama
Phaedre and the opera
The Confidence Man. Richard Griscom is the head of the Otto E. Albrecht Music Library at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the coauthor of
The Recorder: A Research and Information Guide and former editor of the quarterly journal of the Music Library Association,
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