AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

138 saturday afternoon AMS Philadelphia 2009
SERIAL “TYRANNY” WITH A CHUBBY CHECKER
TWIST: SCHUMAN’S SEVENTH SYMPHONY AND
QUESTIONS OF HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Steve Swayne
Dartmouth College
I discuss four interrelated topics that emerge from the compositional history and reception
of William Schuman’s Symphony no. 7 (1960): the traces of the Philadelphia Orchestra as the
work’s original commissioner; the impact of serialism in America in the late 1950s; the concurrent
impact of popular music in Schuman’s life and work; and recent attempts to reinterpret
those forces upon music from this period in American history.
In October 1954 the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, on behalf of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, commissioned Schuman to compose a work in honor of the Orchestra’s seventyfifth
anniversary. Schuman initially imagined a work for chorus and orchestra, but by 1958 he
had decided on a piece for instruments only. The work itself was premiered in October 1960,
its delay explained in part by Schuman’s decision to accept a commission from the Philadelphia
Orchestra in 1959. Through letters, holographs, and the music itself, I will first explain
how and why this never-performed Philadelphia work mutated into the Seventh Symphony.
Second, I will discuss a previously unknown and contemporaneous manuscript in which
Schuman experimented with serial techniques. This period also finds Schuman writing to two
other composers who were employing serialism at the time (George Rochberg in his Second
Symphony of 1956 and Aaron Copland in his Piano Fantasy of 1957). The manuscript, the
correspondence with Rochberg and Copland, Schuman’s personal study of the music of Webern
in 1959, and occasional references to twelve-tone organization in the Symphony all show
Schuman struggling to essay serialism’s place in late 1950s America.
Third, I will position Schuman against the revisionist historiography advanced by Joseph
Straus in his articles and book about twelve-tone music in the United States. As Straus himself
states, “we should focus on providing thicker descriptions of the full range of musical activity—histories
that acknowledge modernist styles, including twelve-tone serialism, as vibrant
strands within the postmodern musical fabric.” (Straus, 2008: 390) In revealing the tensions
Schuman expressed and experienced during these years, I will assert that, while a serial “tyranny”
may not ineluctably emerge from the documents and performances of the day, a certain
serial agita was undeniably felt and transmitted by Schuman at the time.
Lastly, I will look at some of the serial gestures found in Bernstein’s contemporaneous theater
music as well as correspondence from Schuman to the publisher of one of his Tin Pan
Alley songs and show that Schuman, like Bernstein, hoped to expand the repertoire of popular
music of the day. I will join with Straus in arguing against a Darmstadt model for serialism
in the United States and argue that, for American composers of the late 1950s, the rise of rock
presented a competing challenge to serialism. I will conclude with a final examination of the
Seventh Symphony and consider how intersections of twelve-tone and popular sounds in this
work as well as in the lives of Schuman and other composers from this era allow for multiple
approaches to interpreting this music.