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Trackings: Composers Speak with Richard Dufallo

Name: Trackings: Composers Speak with Richard Dufallo
Author: Richard Dufallo
ISBN: 9780195058161

by Richard Dufallo

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Overview

With the twenty-first century only a few years away, it is sobering to realize that what most of us call "modern music" is so very old: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, still shocking to many, is nearly eighty, while Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun, with which, according to the arch-modernist Pierre Boulez, "modern music awakened," is now closer to Papa Haydn's time than to our own. Yet controversies still rage, with composers quarrelling over aesthetic issues that go back decades and performers committing themselves with political zeal to one camp or another, while large segments of the concert audience vote with their feet.
Trackings is a unique attempt to make sense of this ferment. In conversations of remarkable breadth and intimacy, it captures the thoughts and personalities of twenty-six of the world's leading composers, revealing sharp disagreements, unexpected interrelationships, and a depth and delicacy of feeling that belies their reputation for dogged rationalism. We meet a surprisingly pragmatic Boulez ("We do the best we can to be attractive"), a meek Karlheinz Stockhausen praying for inspiration ("If one is not moved, one should wait"), and a militantly asystematic György Ligeti ("I hate all these pseudo-philosophical over-simplifications....I write music as it sounds, very concretely"). Dufallo elicits compelling self-portraits of nearly every leading composer of our time, casting new light on familiar figures (Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, John Cage Lukas Foss), deepening our understanding of recent celebrities (David del Tredici, Aribert Reimann, Peter Schat), and giving us direct, personal insights into such towering figures as Elliott Carter, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and Sir Michael Tippett, whose works are universally acclaimed but whose essence has hitherto eluded the general public.
Offering both detailed accounts of many of the cornerstones of the modern repertoire and a uniquely direct statement of the composers' human concerns, Trackings will be of great interest to musicians, listeners, and anyone else who cares about the course of contemporary culture.

"A fascinating and enjoyable book. Mr. Dufallo asks extroadinarily pertinent questions. He has the uncanny ability to get his twenty-six composers to speak out honestly."--Choice

About the Author, Richard Dufallo

About the author:
Richard Dufallo, a conductor of international stature, has premiered well over 200 works throughout the world. He has worked with and performed compositions by all the composers represented in Trackings. Combining standard and contemporary repertoire, he has conducted most of the world's major orchestras, including New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as the Metropolitan Opera and Edinburgh, Holland and Aspen music festivals.