The world premiere of Miklos Rózsa's Tripartita was given on 15 October 1973 by Ljubomir Romansky at Gelsenkirchen, where the work was enthusiastically received. André Previn conducted the British premiere with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 18 May 1975. The first performances in America were given by Antal Doráti and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, who presented the work at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on 12 October 1976 and at Carnegie Hall in New York three days later. Miklos (Rózsa) Meets Gunther (Schuller)
The following discussion featured both Rózsa and Gunther Schuller. Schuller also had a work on the program, his Concerto No. 2 for Orchestra. Neither the name of the interviewer nor details about where this interview was heard are available. This discussion has been edited.
Announcer: Gentlemen, is it confining or liberating to write for the symphony orchestra, considering the size and the scope and the weight of the material you're using? Mr. Schuller…
Gunther Schuller: I don't know about liberating, but exhilarating. I grew up in the orchestra. My father was in the orchestra, and the orchestra was part of my young life. I played in the orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, in the New York Philharmonic for some 20 years. And I still love the orchestra, and as a composer, I think it's far from exhausted as a medium. I say this despite some of the doom predictors for the orchestra (I won't mention any names) who have predicted that the orchestra is on its last legs as a concept, as a medium. I don't agree with that at all. I think it's practically an inexhaustible medium, and I love writing for it. And I think there that the general virtuosity and high level of playing, of today's American orchestras is such that, you know, it has given composers actually a new life on the subject, so to speak.
Announcer: Would you agree with that, Mr. Rózsa?
Miklós Rózsa: I do. I'm spending a lot of time now in Europe and recording and so on, and that's why I do agree with Mr. Schuller that American orchestras are far, far superior in many things. The only country where I find very high quality is England, of course. But dealing with with contemporary music in England is difficult, because they have usually two rehearsals for a concert, which means Grieg and Rachmaninoff, and Grieg and Rachmaninoff. And if you throw in a Liszt, this is already difficult, because what can you do with two rehearsals? But the orchestras are really very good. However, as Mr. Schuller said, in America, the possibilities are enormous, because he just told me, coming here, that he has recorded with his school orchestra the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, which was probably one of the most difficult works ever written for the orchestra, and he says this was flawless.
GS: Virtually, I said.
MR: This couldn't be done in Europe.
GS: Well, this is the point. I mean, I can speak on this a little bit because I'm in education. I'm president of the New England Conservatory, and we are a performing school for professional musicians. And the level of playing that we produce, but not just us, Juilliard, Eastman School, Indiana University, all the good schools. And of course all these young people go into the existing orchestras. So it has in the last 10, 20 years raised the whole level of orchestral playing to the point where the erstwhile "community orchestras" or "metropolitan orchestras" are now, in 1976, sometimes extraordinarily good orchestras. And, to follow up what Mr. Rózsa said, better than the provincial orchestras or long existing orchestras in Europe. So it's a very interesting situation, and I can speak to this from the point of view of director of Tanglewood, where we have of course a contemporary festival every year, and we have young composers, and they all feel enormously challenged by the orchestra. And I think the days when everybody was turning away from the orchestra, perhaps under the influence of electronic music and the synthesizers and so on. I think that's all waning. I think they're all rediscovering the orchestra as a pretty wonderful medium. That's good news.
Announcer: Mr. Rózsa, did you have an affair with electronic media tapes?
MR: Well, I had a fleeting affair, not with tape, but I introduced the theremin to American audiences, this is an electronic instrument, whether you like it or not. And I used it in a picture called Spellbound. And then The Lost Weekend. And this was, I think, the first time that an electronic instrument, although melodically and not with tape and so forth (there was no tape in 1945, of course) was used. So I am guilty in a way to use electronic instruments.
Announcer: Have you followed it up with some of the more recent devices?
MR: No. The so-called electronic music means nothing to me, I'm sorry to say.
Announcer: Well, to hear you talk, you think that this era has sort of passed or passed its peak. Well, but there is no such thing as something that's had that profound effect on young composers that won't have a lasting effect?
GS: I wouldn't say that it has passed its peak. I would simply that we live in a period now of general synthesis. By that I mean that all of the innovations, whether they are technological innovations of instruments or conceptual innovations, new concepts of music, new styles, new theories, new techniques, all of this is being sort of reassessed right now in the mid-60s and 70s. And we are sort of, as a collection of composers and creative people, we're all saying, "Okay, enough innovation, enough invention, enough radicalism, let's look at what we've got and see what is really of such value that it should remain with us, and then let's use that. And I think that's what's happening to the electronic medium, and I think it's sort of silly, dangerous to predict, but I think what's coming out of this is that the electronic medium is seen merely as another set of instruments, as another source for producing musical sounds, which will be integrated into the total picture. It will not be seen-- I mean, the thing that Miklos and I agree with him, that we both resented so much that it was being heralded as the new medium which was going to replace everything else, was going to replace human beings, everything, you know, which is nonsense. So that has all kind of peaked, I would say. And now it's being seen in a more integrated and better perspective. And in that sense, I think the electronic medium will produce very interesting and important works.
Announcer: In that way, is it similar to the situation with the computer, which, shall we say, some ten years ago was being touted as the thing which would replace teachers, bankers, students, I suppose, everything?
GS: Well, the computer is particularly limited because the computer can only do what a human being programs it to do. So there we are right back at the creative source.
Announcer: Miklós Rózsa and Gunther Schuller were in Washington for the premiere of their works, the Tripartita, and the Concerto No. 2 for Orchestra, which were heard on part one of this program.