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Presser Award Funds an Examination of Unique American Composers By MIRANDA CUCKSON
On a summer day in 2003, I was browsing through scores at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts when I came upon Ross Lee Finney's Fantasy in Two Movements for solo violin. His name was vaguely familiar, and the Fantasy looked appealing and intriguing. Upon playing it, I was struck by its expressivity, sturdily crafted construction, and satisfying use of the violin's resources. Researching the piece's historical context, I learned that Finney (1906-1997), a highly regarded composer and professor at the University of Michigan, had been strongly affected by both American and European influences. Born in Minnesota, he grew up singing and playing American folk music with his family. He went on to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and with Berg in Vienna. Though fascinated by Berg's music, Finney was sensitive to the tension between modernist attitudes and his own background in folksong, and it was only after World War II that he sought to merge his diatonic style with dodecaphonic technique. His principle of "complementarity," in which 12-tone technique coexists with large-scale tonal grounding, was borrowed from the ideas of Berg and of physicist Niels Bohr, who postulated the necessity of understanding a subject through diverse approaches simultaneously.
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A recital of works by 20th-century
American composers reveals their ability to balance European classical tradition with uniquely American elements.
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I discovered Finney's work at a time when I had become especially interested in the tenuous place of American composers in contemporary society and within the context of classical music's largely European heritage. Finney's effort to reconcile tradition and modernism, and to link European and American elements, seemed to me to illustrate an essential dichotomy in America's cultural history—and this thought, combined with my musical response to his work, led me to make his recital works for violin the subject of my doctoral document. Eager to interpret and realize this music on my instrument, I also arranged to perform the pieces at the New York Public Library and to record them for Centaur Records.The satisfaction of working on these projects gave me another idea: What about a recital of works by 20th-century Americans? Having been intrigued by Finney's involvement with Berg and with nationalistic concerns, I thought it would be illuminating to place his work in relation to other Americans who were deeply influenced, in one way or another, by the German classical tradition and/or the 12-tone method emanating from Vienna. This focus has personal relevance, because my father, Robert Cuckson, is a composer of Austrian and English parentage, and a naturalized U.S. citizen like myself. His music features a predominance of melody and counterpoint, both tonal and atonal, as well as Bach-like figuration and forms. Nonetheless, his work neither adopts nor rejects German ideals, attempting instead a broad synthesis that freely incorporates various harmonic approaches. I excitedly thought of programming a new solo piece by him.I looked at music by a number of other composers, including some that were suggested to me, and I selected four whose works exhibit a variety of responses to Austrian/German influence. Ralph Shapey, known as a "radical traditionalist," took inspiration from the Germanic canon—Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms—and sought to emulate the strength of their structural and motivic ideas while conceiving his own unique gestural and harmonic language. Like Finney, but with much more forceful bravado, Shapey forged a bond between the European heritage and his own work as an American artist. Wallingford Riegger, one of America's prominent early modernists, aimed to express the uncertainties of his era and the conflict of new versus old, offsetting his fondness for Germanic contrapuntal procedures with a disruptive rhythmic sense and an atonal/dodecaphonic approach that he may have developed independently of Viennese influence. Morton Feldman's work essentially constitutes a reasoned rejection of past systems and paradigms. Seeking to abolish metric emphasis and formulaic rhetoric, he adopted an instinctual, gestural style inspired by visual artists' treatment of material and space. Ben Weber, on the other hand, wrote grand-gestured Romantic works that represent a wholehearted absorption of, and hommage to, the aesthetic and dodecaphonic approach of Vienna.I found many fascinating connections and comparisons among these six composers. They were each based in the cultural capital of New York for substantial periods of time. All avoided superficially nationalistic elements—even Finney, whose attachment to American folk music was deeply personal. All were profoundly affected by extra-musical influences: Shapey and Feldman were both stimulated by abstract expressionist painters during the 1940s and '50s; Riegger collaborated with modern-dance pioneers such as Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey; my father frequently takes literary sources as inspiration; Finney was drawn to scientific theories; and Weber was interested in philosophy and science. Of the six composers, three (Riegger, Finney, and Cuckson) were rigorously educated and share a contrapuntal tendency; the other three were more averse to formal training and veered either toward Romanticism (Shapey, Weber) or abstraction (Feldman). Whereas Shapey, Feldman, and Finney were all concerned with large-scale form and sectionalizing, the works of Riegger, Weber, and Cuckson generally treat structure much more fluidly, blending forms and developing material from moment to moment.While developing these ideas, I was concerned with the practicalities of presenting such a concert, and in this regard I found support from Juilliard's Presser Music Award. This $7,500 stipend is given annually to a doctoral candidate, as funding for a specified project; students are invited to submit proposals for endeavors that will enhance their artistic and professional development. Theodore Presser was a music teacher who made a vast impact on the dissemination of music and music-related knowledge. After starting the periodical The Etude in 1883, he became a music publisher and dealer, thus establishing the prosperous firm that bears his name. Having pursued his own musical training with determination, he devoted his philanthropy primarily to music education. In addition to funding classes in public schools and providing scholarships to colleges and universities, the Presser Foundation administers his foresighted program to strengthen conservatory training by supporting the development of advanced graduate students. The foundation's president, Edith Reinhardt, explains that the goal "is to make more important to the individual the study of music, and to aid the individual to continue the study of music throughout not only their educational experience, but thereafter. We're very much interested in having people succeed in music careers, but not only that, we're interested in having them succeed as teachers of music."Last spring, I was honored to learn that my proposal had been recommended by Juilliard's Doctoral Governance Committee and approved by the Presser Foundation. I am delighted that this award is enabling me to bring these remarkable works to listeners in a concert on March 22 at 8 p.m. in Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. I will play with two wonderful musicians—pianist Blair McMillen and percussionist Matthew Gold, both Juilliard alumni—and the program will include Riegger's Sonatina, Feldman's Spring of Chosroes, Finney's Fantasy in Two Movements, Weber's Sonata da camera, my father's Rhapsody, and Shapey's Evocation No. 1.Miranda Cuckson is a doctoral candidate in violin.
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