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Robert Beaser on Composing in The New York Times

Dec. 04, 2012

Robert Beaser on Composing in <em>The New York Times</em>

The New York Times' digital column The Opinionator now features our very own Robert Beaser on the shifting artistic, social and technological paradigms facing composers today. Beaser constructs a fascinating narrative viewed through the lens of his own experiences drawn from a long and distinguished composing career and framed by his time spent at the American Academy in Rome both as a Fellow in 1977 and again in 2011.

Composers today have complete access to the entire cosmos of sound and the means to deconstruct and reorganize it, without boundaries...

The flattening of history has been achieved in extremis, and the notion of authorship and intellectual property in music is being ambushed. With centuries of music now reduced to malleable digital files, the craft of written composition that has existed since the invention of early notation is being directly challenged...

Several decades of cultural relativism has helped to hasten the decline of the dominance of the Western canon; now a multiplicity of styles and musics, commercial and conceptual, synchronic and diachronic, coexist equally. This condition is likely here to stay. The post-enlightenment notion of the singular creative genius may be yielding to a more porous, village-driven process. Collaboration in the arts is becoming fashionable again.

Read the complete article at www.nytimes.com.

Beaser's orchestral curtain-raiser, Manhattan Roll, continues to see massive play across the country in its new version for wind ensemble. The new wind ensemble edition was commissioned by a consortium of 25 universities in 2010 and offers a thrilling and challenging addition to the wind band repertoire. The University of North Carolina, Greensboro Wind Ensemble performs Manhattan Roll on December 2, 2012 conducted by Prof. John R. Locke.

In other news, Innova has released Open House: Songs by William Bolcom and Robert Beaser, a compilation of Beaser's Songs from the Occasions and Bolcom's Open House featuring tenor Paul Sperry. Songs from the Occasions was commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra through a Nonesuch Commission Award in 1984 and saw its premiere in 1985 in St. Louis featuring tenor Paul Sperry and members from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Details on the recording are at www.innova.mu. Order your copy on amazon.

Learn more on the music of Robert Beaser by visiting www.schott-music.com.

Watch pianist Christopher McKiggan perform Beaser's new solo piano piece Pag-Rag as part of Schott Music's Petrushka Project here.

Robert Beaser
Manhattan Roll (1998)
pic.2.2.ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn-4.4.2.btbn.1-timp.5perc -hp.synth.pno-str
7’

Songs from the Occasions (1985)
for tenor and chamber ensemble
text from six poems by Eugenio Montale
fl.cl.hn-pno-vn.va.vc
24’

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