TT 401.5: More Leonard Rosenman

including a comment from Tom Myron

Frequently the community sends in further items that should have been in original post. It turns out my friend Tom Myron played percussion on Leonard Rosenman’s Chamber Music V — the piece I highlighted yesterday —and wrote a comment at the time of Rosenman’s passing in 2005.

I got to know Leonard Rosenman in the early ‘80s through my teacher, Charles Fussell. Rosenman had written a new work, Chamber Music V, for a Pierrot ensemble plus two percussionists. Collage had done an earlier version of the piece in Boston and Lenny had made changes. Charles programmed the work for the UMass Faculty New Music Ensemble. I was recruited to cover one of the percussion parts. The faculty had decided that as both a composer and a percussionist I would benefit doubly from working with Rosenman. It's a decision for which I will always be grateful.

Having Leonard Rosenman at the Five Colleges was a big deal. Seminars were held. He brought in enormous spiral-bound scores to accompany tapes of the LA Phil playing his music. There was a two piano concerto, a double bass concerto, a big orchestral essay & a Lorca song cycle. His music floored me. It just knocked me out. It was wildly inventive, crackling with amped-up colors and ferocious dramatic gestures. Ligeti & Berio meet Stan Kenton and a good time is had by all.

When the tapes had all been played he sat in front of the group chain-smoking Camel straights. He said, "I'm just gonna ramble here, but you'll get something out of it." He was right. He knew it. He radiated astonishing charisma.

We performed Chamber Music V at all five colleges. After a rehearsal it was agreed that a group of us would go out to dinner. Since the week was a hectic one my girlfriend had loaned me her car, which happened to be a beautiful, brand new Honda sedan. When I sat down at the restaurant Charles said to me, "That's a nice car. Has something changed in your life that I don't know about?"

I said, "Not really. It's my girlfriend's."

Lenny laughed, blew some smoke around and slapped me on the back. "Kid," he said, "Your career as a composer is off to a perfect start." — TOM MYRON

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As far as I know, Rosenman only published one item of solo piano music, Three Piano Pieces, which is hard to find and has never been recorded. A friend sent me a PDF acquired from a university library yesterday. A note at the top of the score says they were written 1950 -1953, so they predate Rosenman’s larger success.

Many composers write outrageously difficult and expansive piano music in their first flush of creativity; this huge set by Rosenman can be marked, “for hungry virtuosos only.”

Rosenman studied with Roger Sessions and Leon Kirchner, and Three Piano Pieces absolutely relate to the 1940s piano sonatas of Sessions and Kirchner — except that Sessions and Kirchner are more conventionally pianistic. Above, Rosenman is writing for a full orchestra but is putting it on the piano. (Although not marked, the opening low “C” can be sustained on piano with a working “third pedal,” which makes the first three lines a bit more plausible.)

At first glance, the most intriguing moment is the first page of the third movement, “Theme and Elaborations.”

It is still orchestral thinking, but in the right hands this theme would work well. The large leaps and breadth of register may recall a famous Rosenman cue, the planetarium music in Rebel Without a Cause.

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Further reading: Dave Hanson writes, “There’s a 12-tone analysis of The Cobweb in the Joseph Strauss book Twelve Tone Music in America.”