Word: mennin
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...Peter Mennin is a young U.S. composer who refuses to admit he is prolific, even though at 26 he has had four symphonies published and performed, has heard his Third and Fourth praised. When he is commended for his productivity, he points with humility to Mozart, who wrote his three greatest symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, 41) within ten weeks. But tall, mousy-mustached Composer Mennin does admit, "I work hard, very hard...
Last week, a Dallas audience had a chance to judge just how hard Pennsylvania-born Pete Mennin had been working since his Symphony No. 4 last spring. Picked by new Conductor Walter Hendl (TIME, Dec. 26) to compose the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's $1,000 commission-piece for the year, Mennin had come through with Symphony No. 5. In Dallas' last concert of the season, No. 5 shared the program with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3. Mennin's short three-movement work did not have the "Eroica's" earth-shaking vitality, but it did have...
...fast first movement, Mennin led the strings and woodwinds over hill & dale on a merry chase, with the brass barking right along with them. The softly-bowed melodic slow movement gave everyone, including the listeners, a few moments of reflective rest. Then, in a galloping finale, the whole orchestra took up the chase again...
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...