Vol. XXII No. 7
April 2007
Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music Join Forces for Percussion Music of Wuorinen

By DANIEL DRUCKMAN

Daniel Druckman with the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall in 2005. (Photo by Hiro Ito)
Much has been written lately about the American composer Charles Wuorinen—about his steadfast resoluteness and conviction to his musical principles; his embrace of complexity in a minimalist-dominated world; and his unswerving allegiance to the continuum of Western European musical tradition in form, harmony, and content. Wuorinen's seminal percussion works—Janissary Music (1966), Ringing Changes (1970), Bassoon Variations (1972), Percussion Duo (1979), and the two works on the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble's program this month, Percussion Symphony (1976) and Percussion Quartet (1994)—together form a veritable treatise on writing for percussion. Wuorinen has challenged us percussionists and stretched the limitations of our instruments technically, melodically, and gesturally, immeasurably expanding our repertoire and broadening our horizons. His innate understanding of the capabilities and potential of our instruments is without equal, and we owe him an enormous debt for elevating our instruments and enriching our repertoire so significantly.

A Symphony of Drums

An interactive feature from
The New York Times online. (Registration required for first-time users)
As befitting its creator's uncompromising nature, there is nothing "practical" about Wuorinen's Percussion Symphony. Scored for 20 performers playing a huge battery of instruments, intensely challenging for most of its 38 exhilarating minutes, it is a piece that can only be attempted realistically in a university or conservatory setting, with ample rehearsal time and musicians willing and able to commit to a long-term project. While Juilliard's percussion department has always been too small to program this work, it has continually lurked in the back of my mind. When Pre-College faculty member Jeff Milarsky was named director of the percussion ensemble at the Manhattan School of Music, we immediately began discussing the feasibility of collaborating, specifically to program this piece. After a lot of planning and troubleshooting, the seeds of this collaboration will come to fruition on April 5 at the Manhattan School and on April 16 at Alice Tully Hall.

In the liner notes for the original recording of his Percussion Symphony on Nonesuch, Wuorinen writes: "Why a percussion work? Because it seems to me that our age has witnessed the rise of this class of sound-producers to true equality with older instruments. Of course, there are many ancient correspondences in non-Western musics; the gamelan—some of whose characteristics are echoed in the present work—is only the best known example. But the 20th century, and particularly the decades since Stravinsky's Les Noces (1923) and Varèse's Ionisation (1931), marks the first time in Western art music that percussion instruments have been elevated to a primary melodic, harmonic, and structural role in works of large dimension. Even more to the point, I like the sound of the instruments: they have—and this is true, I think, not just of drums, gongs, and other ancient instruments, but of vibraphones and celestas, too—a marvelous combination of clarity of sound (sharpness of attack) with a very ancient, layered set of associations, reaching well back into our distant past. Thus, modernity and antiquity are pleasingly conjoined. And when this is added to the fact that these instruments can, in the hands of relatively few people, create an enormous amount of sound, I find the opportunities irresistible."

Juilliard Percussion Ensemble

Manhattan School of Music
Broadway at 122nd Street
Thurs., April 5, 7:30 p.m.
Free event; no tickets required.

Alice Tully Hall
Mon., April 16, 8 p.m.
Please see the Calendar of Events for more information.
Also on the program is Wuorinen's Percussion Quartet, dating from 1994 and representing a very different period of the composer's output. While the harmonic language is somewhat similar, the later work's concision (18 minutes), formal clarity, and motoric rhythmic profile set it apart from the sprawling Percussion Symphony. It is equally difficult, and the quartet of Juilliard students who will perform it have been working on it nonstop since November. In his liner notes for an earlier, now out-of-print recording of the Quartet, Hayes Biggs writes: "While Wuorinen is always utterly assured in his handling of whatever musical forces claim his attention, he seems especially in his element when writing for percussion instruments, delighting in their nearly unlimited combinational potential. His Percussion Quartet (1993-94) tends to treat the ensemble, particularly in the first movement, as a collection of duos and quartets. The meticulous deployment of the instruments within each player's bailiwick is crucial to the structure of the work, and the resultant mixing and matching of the 'ensembles within the ensemble' can provide a convenient way to follow the progress of the music."

I hope you can join the combined forces of Juilliard and the Manhattan School's percussion departments in this very rare opportunity to hear these seminal percussion works back to back.

Daniel Druckman has been on the faculty since 1991. He is director of the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble and a member of the New York Philharmonic.
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