Music
After a long period of composition using the technique of serialism, Rochberg finally abandoned it upon the death of his teenage son in 1964, saying that serialism was empty of expressive emotion and was inadequate to express his grief and rage. By the 1970s, he had become controversial for the use of tonal passages in his music. His use of tonality first became widely known through the String Quartet No. 3 (1972), which includes an entire set of variations that are in the style of late Beethoven. Another movement of the quartet contains passages reminiscent of the music of Gustav Mahler. This use of tonality caused critics to classify him as a neoromantic composer. He compared atonality to abstract art and tonality to concrete art and compared his artistic evolution with Philip Guston's, saying "the tension between concreteness and abstraction" is a fundamental issue for both of them (Rochberg, 1992). His music has also been described as neoconservative postmodernism (Brackett 2008, xviii).
Of the works composed early in his career, the Symphony No. 2 (1955–56) stands out as an accomplished serial composition by an American composer. Rochberg is perhaps best known for his String Quartets Nos. 3-6 (1972–78). Rochberg conceived Nos. 4-6 as a set and named them the "Concord Quartets" after the Concord String Quartet, which premiered and recorded the works. The String Quartet No. 6 includes a set of variations on the Pachelbel Canon in D.
A few of his works were musical collages of quotations from other composers. "Contra Mortem et Tempus", for example, contains passages from Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Edgard Varèse and Charles Ives.
Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, and 5, and the Violin Concerto were recorded in 2001–2002 by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Christopher Lyndon Gee and released on the Naxos label.
Read more about this topic: George Rochberg
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