I put up a symphony by Walter Piston as an envoi to my post yesterday on varied topics. After listening to it I realized that Piston is very likely a seriously underrated composer. One suspects that in the welter of programs featuring women composers like Fanny Mendelssohn, black composers like William Grant Still and black women composers like Florence Price, music by mere dead white men like Walter Piston is likely to be over-looked. And so it is.
You need to start by reading the Wikipedia article on Walter Piston. He died about the time when I was still a young musician so my only awareness of him was the name on the cover of various textbooks:
I think I came along just a bit too late for those texts. For harmony, for example, we used Aldwell and Schachter and in my Fugue course we just used Bach. But my musical DNA does connect back to Piston, indirectly. One of my composition and theory teachers was Robert F. Jones who studied with Arthur Berger who was a student of Walter Piston. Piston himself was a student of the ubiquitous Nadia Boulanger:
On graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, Piston was awarded a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship.[7] He chose to go to Paris, living there from 1924 to 1926.[9] At the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Paris, he studied composition and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, composition with Paul Dukas and violin with George Enescu.
Piston taught at Harvard from 1926 until he retired in 1960 and the list of his students is mind-boggling:
His students include Samuel Adler, Leroy Anderson, Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Gordon Binkerd, Elliott Carter, John Davison, Irving Fine, John Harbison, Karl Kohn, Ellis B. Kohs, Gail Kubik, Billy Jim Layton, Noël Lee, Robert Middleton, Robert Moevs, Daniel Pinkham, Mildred Barnes Royse, Frederic Rzewski, Allen Sapp, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies,[2] as well as Frank D'Accone,[10] Ann Ronell,[11] Robert Strassburg,[12] Yehudi Wyner,[13] and William P. Perry.
So as a teacher he is probably one of the most influential music professors in North America in the 20th century. What about as a composer?
In 1943, the Alice M. Ditson fund of Columbia University commissioned Piston's Symphony No. 2, which was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra on March 5, 1944 and was awarded a prize by the New York Music Critics' Circle. His next symphony, the Third, earned a Pulitzer Prize, as did his Symphony No. 7. His Viola Concerto and String Quartet No. 5 also later received Critics' Circle awards.[2]
[All quotes from Wikipedia.]
See the Wikipedia article for the long list of works that include pieces for every conceivable combination of instruments except for solo voice, opera and guitar. Let's listen to two symphonies and a string quartet to get an idea of his work. First, the Symphony No. 3 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. This is the premiere recording from 1948.
The Symphony No. 7 with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Jorge Mester. The premiere was in 1961.
Finally, the String Quartet No. 5 with the Harlem Quartet:
So, what do you think?
14 comments:
Piston's music books are better than his music but they do share the same virtues. This works fine for the books: conciseness, clear style, moderate well balanced judgment. For music it sounds, well, sort of academic and polite enough for afternoon tea.This is despite his dabbling with 12 tone techniques. Compared to many who followed that now seems preferable. Bernstein was a student but never championed Piston's music. Faute de mieux I think his rep is rising somewhat along with similar composers. Oddly enough neoclassicism may be the most enduring classical style of the 20th C.
After the romantic trance of the 19th century the cool. clear water of neo-classicism was not such a bad idea--with a little primitivism for flavour. I often suspect that one of the real problems for composers in North America is that the only way to make a living is to have a university job.
The reactive quality of neo-classicism is fairly normal musical stylistic progression. What is unusual is the self conscious declaration that this is a modification of some other period's stylistic reaction.
Bruckner may be the sole example of a great composer who was also a long time professor. He also blazed trails for modern youngsters by being a part time student into his 30s. Apparently he was a very good student in a variety of subjects. He was a social misfit not an academic simpleton.
Very few composers have composed extensively without a day job of some kind however nominal. Given the collapse of the patronage system, modern non commercial composers have a very tough time and it's not getting easier.
Maury, are you in academia? And yes, I agree with everything you say.
No I only majored in academia, minored in music theory/history, loved graduate school in science. Since they wouldn't pay me to stay in graduate school forever on a decent stipend, I was forced to graduate and go out into the cold cruel world. I was not yet 30 however so Bruckner has me beat as well as myriad youngsters. I say fie to academia until they bring back the trivium and quadrivium.
Good for you! The wages of being a classical guitarist are so poor that my income actually went up when I attended graduate school in my forties.
Vagn Holmboe, who wrote in a rather restrained neoclassical style, has these days a decently respectable fanbase. That Piston and David Diamond didn’t get that renewed interest, but are still described as dry and unappealing, is sad.
It might have helped that Taruskin was saying nice things about Holmboe.
With respect to Holmboe vs Piston/Diamond critical approval, I suspect the difference is their nationality.
You may have to unpack that for me. I think that, in the case of Piston, there is often a kind of a null period after a composer dies before he is "rediscovered."
Classical critics are dismissive of American composers on general principles.
If you mean European critics, that might be the case. But there is also a kind of home-town boosterism that we find in the American media that magnifies the importance of everything American. I suppose I notice this more being Canadian.
Classical music overall in the US is becoming progressively more niche and classical critics here are a niche of a niche. As a practical matter, noted conductors are more relevant to concert programming. In the US there used to be conductors who if not born in the US put down extended roots here such as Ormandy, Stokowski, Reiner etc. Then of of course there was the outsized Bernstein. Now in the 2020s every major orchestra in the US is headed by a non-American (given the retirement of the last holdout Michael Tilson Thomas). Why would they have any interest in American repertoire? Not only that, they all bounce back and forth between Europe and the Americas.
The only minor growth area here is with the second rank Baroque composers below Bach and Handel that were mostly forgotten. Because of the smaller forces, the economics of performance are not as daunting and the style is more popular than ever.
You know, I really hadn't noticed that trend! Looking around I see a 2018 New York Times article on the trend noting that the problem is partly that the US has few good training programs for conductors. Looking at a Wikipedia article we see that conductor's posts worldwide are often, very often, filled by foreigners. Some countries, Germany, Finland, Sweden etc, have long-established deep-rooted institutions, professors and training pathways for conductors. Most countries do not. But I do see that there are a large number of American conductors heading up orchestras, but less so the major ones. Of the three New York Orchestras, two have Canadian conductors. In Canada, about the only place you can become a good conductor is Quebec with its fine conservatory system.
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