November 28, 2012
No octaves. Ever.
But living in Rome for a year in the 70s changed me forever. Giacinto Scelsi (“the Charles Ives of Italy’) was there back then (I used his Steinway piano to compose there). He would sit at his dual Ondolias in his apartment overlooking the Palatine Hill, recording primordial drones and spacey improvisations onto reel-to-reel tapes; Fredric Rzweski lived here, too — his variations on The People United worker song mixed Lizstian virtuosity with leftist political edginess, and made a big splash everywhere. Back then I used to trek up to see the gentle Goffredo Petrassi in his elegant apartment for lessons and lunch. I sat with Luciano Berio in Lukas Foss’ studio at the Villa Aurelia, as he lamented, “life is too short to have to sit through the mindless repetitions of those minimalists.”more from Robert Beaser at The Opinionater here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 10:37 AM | Permalink
Comments
Very moving. In this era -- the end of the 70s -- in Europe, I remember every serious artist I knew was struggling with the didacticism that ruled the day, either because they were an advocate of it, or they were trying to subvert it. You could not have been a more "well-placed" young artist than Beaser, then, and very few would have had, or did have, the courage to walk away from the very framework that composers were referents to, like it or not. To recognize that the questions posed by the culture are not the real questions, for you, shows integrity that is rare.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 28, 2012 11:21:44 AM
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