# RIP Charles Wuorinen



## Lilijana (Dec 17, 2019)

Just heard the news about his recent passing on the 11th of March, apparently from injuries after a fall in 2019.

Probably one of the most imaginitive and best American composers from the second half of the 20th to early 21st centuries. He wrote some astonishingly emotive works and a notable teacher to many other successful composers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...d49530-64dd-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

composer jess said:


> Just heard the news about his recent passing on the 11th of March, apparently from injuries after a fall in 2019.
> 
> Probably one of the most imaginitive and best American composers from the second half of the 20th to early 21st centuries. He wrote some astonishingly emotive works and a notable teacher to many other successful composers.
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...d49530-64dd-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html


You know, I've never explored his music. If he's really the most imaginative post war US composer then I would like to rectify that - given that the US gave us Wolff and Cage. Suggestions for things to listen to much appreciated - preferably chamber scale!


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I also don't know his music at all and would like a recommendation or two for rectifying that.


----------



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Sad news. Rest in peace.

I haven't heard much but I have a disc of his 2nd piano sonata. I'll have to give it a listen today or tomorrow.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I first heard Wuorinen's music through Tzadik's Lepton disk, and TBH I don't know if I heard anything better since then. _Time's Encomium_ won the Pulitzer, but _Lepton_ may be more fun. I just saw that a reviewer on Amazon really liked _New York Notes_ and that reviewer's enthusiasm makes me want to hear it too.

Anyway, RIP to a fine composer.


----------



## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

A great composer.

Sit tibi terra levis.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Sorry to hear that Wuorinen is no longer with us. I've been listening to his music since the old vinyl days on Nonesuch.

My Wourinen CDs are stored in my 'American modern' section, right there between George Crumb and Roger Sessions. He is a 'whatchamacallit' serialist, using fractal composition and more. He will not appeal to exclusively conservative tonalists.

_Time's Encomium_ is an electronic work, using the same behemoth RCA/Princecton punch-card computer that Milton Babbitt used in works like _Philomel _and _Ensembles For Synthesizer. _It is definitely worth hearing, although it will not appeal to everyone. I always preferred the way Babbitt used the RCA, 'dry', without any added reverb or panning.













This work I keep returning to: A Winter's Tale with Phylis Bryn-Julson, soprano, with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.










I find his piano music appealing:


----------



## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

I am very partial to his orchestra piece "The Golden Dance"


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

A friend of mine, a jazz aficionado, introduced me to the music of Wuorinen back in the 80s. I was studying early music as a countertenor at Mannes College in New York and my friend decided that the _Percussion Symphony_ would serve as a good introduction to Wuorinen, with it's two "entr'actes" that surround the slow middle movement, otherworldly and beautiful reworkings of a 15th-century vocal setting of Petrarch's "Vergine Bella" by Guillaume Dufay. I liked it then and still do.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I was taught not to say anything if you have nothing nice to say. But...Wuorinen's "music" is exactly the kind of stuff that turns so many people off. It often sounds like random noises without rhyme or reason. He makes some interesting sounds, but is that enough? Listen to the Eighth Symphony. Can the average listener really follow any symphonic development? Can he make any sense of it. Couldn't Wuorinen write a tune? Interesting orchestration at times, but that's not enough. If the composer's intent is to make an emotional connection with the audience, does "bewilderment" count? If it's to uplift and vitalize people he falls far short. His music is obscure and probably deservedly so. More that mid-20th noise. Definitely for specialists, adventurers and listeners with musical IQs far higher than mine. Well, anyway, RIP.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> I was taught not to say anything if you have nothing nice to say. But...Wuorinen's "music" is exactly the kind of stuff that turns so many people off. It often sounds like random noises without rhyme or reason. He makes some interesting sounds, but is that enough? Listen to the Eighth Symphony. Can the average listener really follow any symphonic development? Can he make any sense of it. Couldn't Wuorinen write a tune? Interesting orchestration at times, but that's not enough. If the composer's intent is to make an emotional connection with the audience, does "bewilderment" count? If it's to uplift and vitalize people he falls far short. His music is obscure and probably deservedly so. More that mid-20th noise. Definitely for specialists, adventurers and listeners with musical IQs far higher than mine. Well, anyway, RIP.


I just listened to Time's Encomium, and for that piece at least, I think you're wrong. That's to see it seemed to me to be very catchy and jolly music.

But my oh my, that synth sound really does date it!


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> I was taught not to say anything if you have nothing nice to say. But...Wuorinen's "music" is exactly the kind of stuff that turns so many people off. It often sounds like random noises without rhyme or reason. He makes some interesting sounds, but is that enough? Listen to the Eighth Symphony. Can the average listener really follow any symphonic development? Can he make any sense of it. Couldn't Wuorinen write a tune? Interesting orchestration at times, but that's not enough. If the composer's intent is to make an emotional connection with the audience, does "bewilderment" count? If it's to uplift and vitalize people he falls far short. His music is obscure and probably deservedly so. More that mid-20th noise. Definitely for specialists, adventurers and listeners with musical IQs far higher than mine. Well, anyway, RIP.


I just listened to Time's Encomium, and for that piece at least, I think you're wrong. That's to say it seemed to me to be very catchy and jolly music. Smiley music. Having said that, I never bother with things like "symphonic development" even when I'm listening to C19 symphonies, so I'm probably a very superficial judge of these things compared to you.

But my oh my, that synth sound really does date it!


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> ...Wuorinen's "music" is exactly the kind of stuff that turns so many people off. It often sounds like random noises without rhyme or reason. He makes some interesting sounds, but is that enough? ....


I can certainly sympathize with these words, and I'm not one to deny they are open to debate. I remain a follower of contemporary music (avant-garde, experimental, "noise", whatever....) and I've followed Wuorinen for years, ever since first hearing the Pultizer Prize winning _Time's Encomium_ (For Synthesized & Processed Synthesized Sound) which I experienced by way of the release of the Nonesuch vinyl LP H-71225 released c. 1970 or so, which is when I got my copy. (And it is still in my collection, along with a later CD pressing.) I recall not especially liking the music upon first hearing, but I was fascinated by the way the synthesized sounds bounced around from speaker to speaker, left and right, confirming at least that this was a true stereo production. This was also my earliest notice of music that received a Pulitzer Prize, a topic which I subsequently looked into with more interest and eventually came to acquiring quite a few of the "classical" music works which won the Prize. At least up to 2018; I still don't understand that year's choice: _DAMN_., by Kendrick Lamar. It must be me. But the Pulitzer list has exposed me to some fine music, some of it rather rare, seemingly, (like 1959's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, by John LaMontaine, which is a great favorite of mine!), and so I treasure the Wuorinen winner for turning me onto that other music.









I do still, on occasion, listen to _Time's Encomium_ (every few years), but I still don't enjoy the music. However, one never grows too old to enjoy how the synthesized sounds bounce from one speaker to the other in a demonstration of fine stereo production.

What I listened to immediately after hearing of Wuorinen's death is a disc from a 12-CD box set titled _Southwest Chamber Music _on the Cambria label.

















I did enjoy tracks 2 and 3 greatly, the "Horn Trio" and the "Horn Trio Continued". I repeated play of those two pieces, which demonstrate exactly what to expect from Wuorinen's brand of music. No synthesized sounds here, but some odd moments. Still, I've grown (and my ears have, too) since those days in 1970 when I first heard _Time's Encomium_, and so I can not only appreciate the music but actually enjoy much of it. Wuorinen ranks beside Milton Babbitt in my consciousness of composers I find difficult but fun to explore but who never seem to really move me with any great effect (unlike, say, George Crumb can). But I mourn his loss, and I'm hopeful that perhaps someday I will better understand the man's music. At least I'm willing to keep trying.

I did note, too, while looking through my collection for Charles Wuorinen music that I have the artist featured as a pianist on several discs of music other than his own. He was quite the technician on the piano, as the pieces he plays, mostly very complex contemporary stuff, is seemingly not easy.

Much to lament.


----------



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

^I listened to _Time's Encomium_ earlier, for the first time. I didn't know what to expect, but that music kind of blew my mind. Apparently Miles Davis was fascinated with it, along with works of Stockhausen, in the early '70s. That really aroused my fascination as a lifelong Miles fan. I am determined to figure out what this music is about. Going to try and get it on CD, it appears it has been remastered and released on Tzadik.


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I remember back in the early '70s at the Tanglewood contemporary music festival there was a to-do about a work or two of his because of an excess of ledger lines in his scores for high and low notes that sometimes times made the exact notes really difficult for players to divine.


----------



## Lilijana (Dec 17, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> You know, I've never explored his music. If he's really the most imaginative post war US composer then I would like to rectify that - given that the US gave us Wolff and Cage. Suggestions for things to listen to much appreciated - preferably chamber scale!


Other people's have mentioned _Time's Encomium_, but I might add that although he's on the more conservative side technically, what he manages to do even within fairly traditional forms takes mid-century pointillistic serialism to new places that many other more famous 'serialist' composers kind of left behind. Even other serial composers, like George Perle, had what I would argue as a much more conservative (maybe _less_ imaginative? but I wouldn't try to quantify that!) approach to pacing/structure, orchestration, melodic construction among other things.


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> I was taught not to say anything if you have nothing nice to say. But...Wuorinen's "music" is exactly the kind of stuff that turns so many people off. It often sounds like random noises without rhyme or reason. He makes some interesting sounds, but is that enough? Listen to the Eighth Symphony. Can the average listener really follow any symphonic development? Can he make any sense of it. Couldn't Wuorinen write a tune? Interesting orchestration at times, but that's not enough. If the composer's intent is to make an emotional connection with the audience, does "bewilderment" count? If it's to uplift and vitalize people he falls far short. His music is obscure and probably deservedly so. More that mid-20th noise. Definitely for specialists, adventurers and listeners with musical IQs far higher than mine. Well, anyway, RIP.


That is enough to convince me to check out this composer, perhaps particularly because of its being written in an RIP thread. Some modern music certainly inspires passion! There seem to be lots of things that Wuorinen fails to achieve. I want to hear what he does and I doubt my musical IQ (whatever that is) will be challenged by it.

PS/Edit - I have now listened to the Percussion Symphony mentioned earlier in this thread and found it indeed an attractive work and not at all a difficult one to listen to.


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

RIP I haven't listened to many pieces even though I've known his name for many years.


----------

