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There was also Vivian Fine, whose music I admired so much that I
copied it out to study and to play. And then there was Paul Bowles–
he was the expatriate member of the group, then spending most of
his time in France. Perhaps the most extraordinary music to come
out of the group is Israel Citkowitz's cycle of five poems from Joyce's
"Chamber Music."
It
is a tragedy of our time that Citkowitz stopped
composing early in his career. He felt himself, as a neoclassicist, out
of step with musical progress.
Coppock:
Were the piano pieces you wrote at NYU played?
Berger:
No, no I hid those. I didn't take them out until many years
later, for the volume of twentieth century piano music edited by
Joseph Prostakoff. Among the many reasons why I stopped compos–
ing, an important one was the particular orientation of the Young
Composers Group. They were unsympathetic to the kind of "atonal"
music I had been writing.
Coppock:
Did you see Charles Ives in those days?
Berger:
I was very much in touch with Ives, but I never went to see him.
His wife took care of the correspondence, which was enough to give
me the necessary data for the articles I started writing about him in
the early thirties. But you have to understand that many of us were
quite polemical in those days, both musically and politically. And I
was warned it would be bad for his heart if he were engaged in talk
that was too controversial.
Coppock:
How did you know about him, just by word of mouth?
Berger:
Well, the songs were being done at the New School and at
Yaddo, and I guess even the League [of Composers] started doing
things, and the [International Composers'] Guild ...
Coppock:
Were there any twentieth century pieces that had become
standard repertory by then?
Berger:
If
any, they would more likely be by Scriabin or Prokofieff
or Shostakovich or Sibelius or Vaughan Williams . Outside of the
special efforts of conductors like Koussevitzky and Stokowski, and
later Mitropoulos, new music was heard at the chamber concerts of
the avant-garde groups. That's what made the League and the ISCM
concerts such unique and distinguished events.
Coppock:
Whose music was played at those concerts?
Berger:
Well, Louis Gruenberg: he was' a big name. So were Bernard
Wagenaar and Werner Janssen. Middle of the road types, in the sense
of romantic conservatives . Howard Hanson was successful.
It
was
mostly music written in the tradition of the nineteenth century and
also, of course, the products of neoclassicism, though these were
considered austere and intellectual.
