Word: brahmsian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Stephen Addiss '57 contributed an optimistic little Allegro for Woodwind Quartet (1957). Based on a Brahmsian "ladder motive," it proved attractive enough, though rather monochromatic and pallid in effect...
...Mandelbaum wrote both the music and the libretto. His work is mostly a spoof on the conventional opera form, although in the course of an hour he also parodies Freud, 12-tone composers, science, and the self-made man. The music enlivened the parody, especially in a romantic mock-Brahmsian chorus to the text "The complete and utter destruction of the universe." Saturday night's performance suffered from inadequate rehearsals, but the general informality helped make the opera delightful...
What listeners heard from Conductor Izler Solomon and the CBS Symphony was honest and surprisingly modest music. As Composer Bergsma himself noted, it was "quite reasonably diatonic," i.e., based on traditional harmony. It also had a quiet, respectful, lyric feeling, expressed in almost Brahmsian lengths of line. It was purposeful and direct. If Symphony No. i fell short of any of its composer's professed aims, it was in its lack of variety, either harmonic or rhythmic. Even so, grinning Composer Bergsma, sitting in the audience with his young wife "Nickie " got a nice, appreciative hand of applause...