Word: mennin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Pennsylvania-born Peter Mennin is something of a phenomenon among U.S. composers: at 25, he has already had three symphonies performed, and he is not a bit complacent about it. With a grin, he dismisses his first symphony, composed at 17, as "too damn long." He says, "Let's just forget about the Second"-even though it won the Gershwin and Beams prizes...
...Mennin's Third ("the so-called popular one," he calls it) has been played in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and in Sweden, and got first-string Manhattan critics out two years ago. The New York Times noted "a conspicuous advance...
Sounds Impractical. Last week, a Carnegie Hall audience got to hear just how much further tall, slender Composer Mennin had advanced. In picking his symphonic form, he had tried something that even Beethoven had never attempted until he was past 50 and had eight great symphonies to his credit. Mennin's Fourth, "The Cycle," was an ambitious choral symphony in which he worked out the chorus in all three movements instead of just the last (as Beethoven did in his Ninth). Said Mennin: "I know a piece that takes so many performers is impractical, but I wanted to write...
After hearing mop-haired young Conductor Robert Shaw lead his Collegiate Chorale and members of the New York Philharmonic through Mennin's Fourth last week, listeners and critics were glad the composer had gone ahead. At times, the Fourth sounded as if it were about to sound like someone else; there were Stravinsky-like dissonances, used sparingly and for punctuation, in the opening of the rhythmic first movement, and there were Hindemith or Shostakovich traces in the lyric andante. But each time, and overall, the music came out strongly Mennin-energetically powerful, open and clean...
...Symphony (Sun. 5 p.m., NBC). Beethoven's Second Symphony, William Schuman's Symphony for Strings, Peter Mennin's Folk Overture; Robert Shaw conducting...