Stephen Albert was an impressively talented American composer who studied with luminaries, achieved great recognition early on, and produced an impressive body of work before his untimely death at the age of fifty-one in 1992. \u00a0\u00a0That said, it does little justice at all to the remarkable musician and thoughtful human being that he was.\u00a0 His reflections upon the artistic process, what it means to create art that speaks to our collective humanity, and the relationship between the musical past and contemporary music were extraordinarily articulate and cogent.\u00a0 As both composer and critic he poked holes in the received values of the classical musical world with alacrity.\u00a0 He sincerely believed\u2014and his craft is eloquent testimony thereof\u2014that much of the art music of the last century failed to reach out and speak authentically to most of the artistic community.\u00a0 Like most of his young\u2014and not so young\u2014contemporaries, he began his career firmly ensconced in the academic camp of the atonal serialists.\u00a0 But, after a series of \u201csuccessful,\u201d but personally unsatisfying, efforts in that austere style, so popular after WW II, he made a sea change into a completely different musical approach.<\/p>\n
That to which he deeply objected in the mainstream of classical musical culture (and our training of young composers) was a pronounced disconnect with the great musical traditions of the past.\u00a0 He believed that music that survived the test of time, and that which touched hearts and minds was musical art that communicated coherence\u2014especially harmonic coherence\u2014and which grew organically out of melodic material, scales, and harmonies chosen for that purpose.\u00a0\u00a0 He was dedicated to color and textures that are obviously connected with much of the Romantic tradition, and in general consciously took much of Brahms, Mahler, Bart\u00f3k, and early Stravinsky as artistic models.\u00a0\u00a0 Or at least, as points of departure for a truly contemporary direction that was nonetheless based in a coherent tradition.\u00a0 So, critics laud him for his proto-Romantic, at times lush, music that garnered broad acclaim from professionals and the general public, alike for its singular voice.<\/p>\n
He studied early on with a variety of well-known composers and teachers, and in his twenties began to enjoy recognition from all of the prestigious foundations, eventually receiving commissions from major orchestras.\u00a0\u00a0 His Pulitzer Prize-winning composition,\u00a0RiverRun<\/em>\u00a0(later also called his first symphony) sealed his position as one of America\u2019s first-rate young composers.\u00a0 Shortly after his death in a tragic automobile accident, he posthumously received a Grammy for his Cello Concerto, written for Yo-Yo Ma.<\/p>\n A deep and informing interest of his were the works of James Joyce–especially\u00a0Ulysses<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Finnegan\u2019s Wake,\u00a0<\/em>and they figure prominently in four of his major compositions.\u00a0 In the years 1983-84 he was working simultaneously on the important song cycle\u00a0TreeSong<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0 the symphony,\u00a0RiverRun\u00a0<\/em>(the title of the latter coming from the first line in\u00a0Finnegan\u2019s Wake<\/em>).\u00a0 Both of Albert\u2019s compositions are inspired by allusions in\u00a0Finnegan\u2019s Wake\u00a0<\/em>to the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde, and broader themes of mankind\u2019s fall, as well repeating cycles of human existence.\u00a0 The symphony openly is derived from the song cycle, and the two works enjoy a \u201ccoupled relationship.\u201d\u00a0 But, more specifically, the symphony\u2019s four movements are conceived as reflections of images in the novel of the Liffey River in four different settings\u2014in reality and metaphorically.\u00a0 The river flows through the center of Dublin before entering the Irish Sea, and, like the Mississippi River, has immense cultural significance.\u00a0 Albert spoke at length of the importance of Joyce\u2019s imagery evoked by the river, and its direct basis for the four movements of the symphony\u2014even alluding to the river as \u201cspeaking to the city of Dublin like a lover.\u201d While it is tempting to search for a story, or \u201cprogram,\u201d to hang upon what we hear in\u00a0RiverRun<\/em>\u2014Albert makes pellucidly clear that, as in Joyce\u2019s novel, there is no straightforward narrative thread.\u00a0\u00a0 Joyce\u2019s work informs the structure of Albert\u2019s music, but one will search in vain for that clear thread.\u00a0 Both are largely episodic and abstract.\u00a0 In other words:\u00a0 it\u2019s just about refracted images of the Irish river, inspired by the turgid and abstract episodes of the novel.<\/p>\n The first movement, \u201cRain Music,\u201d evokes the beginning of the river as streamlets, rising in Liffey Head Bog.\u00a0 While\u00a0The Moldau<\/em>\u00a0of Smetana may come to mind, the composer is adamant that it shouldn\u2019t!\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 \u201cLeafy Speafing\u201d stems from perhaps the most famous chapter in\u00a0Finnegan\u2019s Wake,\u00a0<\/em>described by the author as \u201ca chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone.\u201d\u00a0 They are discussing two ancestors who were in love\u2014who, obscurely, were Tristan and Isolde, but who are also metaphors for the city and river as lovers.\u00a0 In the third movement, Albert is inspired by his vision of children playing (there\u2019s a nursery tune) juxtaposed with a wake replete with a funeral dirge.\u00a0 An allusion to a drinking song undergirds the adults\u2019\u2014and all humanity\u2019s–desire to block thoughts of death.\u00a0 And then we return to the children, just as all would like to return to childhood.\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, \u201cRiver\u2019s End\u201d is just that:\u00a0 the river\u2019s inexorable passage down to the sea, broadening as it glides to the ocean\u2019s darkness, mystery, and finality.<\/p>\n -Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n \u00a9 2015 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[98],"class_list":["post-276","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-stephenalbert"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}