This post is contributed by Thomas Schuttenhelm. Thanks, Thomas.
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On Sunday, October 7, 2015 Hartt presents a concert in Berkman Auditorium at 2:00.
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James
Sellars (b. 1940) has enjoyed a long and varied musical career. His path to
becoming a professional composer followed a traditional course but his extraordinary
imagination has led him to create an increasingly original music that has set
him apart from his contemporaries.
His generation
includes some notable names such as Joan Tower, Charles Wuorinen, and Brian
Ferneyhough. But notability is not a consequent of ingenuity. All too often the
monotone of historians and commentators compress the narrative of music history
into a predictable continuum of pedigreed names that lead to an over-determined
ending. Only the most astute critic, such as Arthur Danto, has asked: what do
we do “after the end?” James Sellars has a most convincing answer.
If I had to identify a creative
artist equal to Sellars it would be Thomas Pynchon. Both create
counter-fictions with intricate interiors and alternative histories. Parodies
and puns pervade their work and they are the unmatched virtuosi of apophasis.
If Pynchon’s favored genre is the
novel, Sellars gravitates towards chamber music, and what is represented here
today is some of his best. In it he celebrates a distinctly American tradition
and by doing so he distances himself from the European models that could not
accommodate his accent in a musical language that was accustomed to convention.
His music is not without influence but his affiliations are self-selected and
add an interpretive dimension to the compositions.
His
earliest acknowledged work, The
Merry Guide (1961), is a series of short piano pieces
that were in stark contrast to the more ‘notable’ premieres of that year, that
included Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
and Pli selon pli:
improvisations sur Mallarmé (No. 2) by Pierre Boulez. The severity of the contrast is evident on many
layers, not the least of which can be detected in the titles alone. If Sellars
did not compose his Merry Guide in conscious opposition to these works
one cannot resist accompanying him on his alternate path which, interestingly, also
motivated Boulez, who was attracted to the phrase: ‘Dans le doute du Jeu
supreme” (“In the doubt of the supreme Game”) that provided the conceptual
impetus to his “portrait” of the poet.
Sellars excels at undercutting the ‘game
of music’ in whatever form it has presented itself and which has, regrettably, taken
over an art form that was once evaluated on craftsmanship and aesthetics. These
latter qualities were cultivated in careful and deliberate degrees by Sellars and
they occupy a central place in his music. Sellars
has an impeccable ear (at one time a necessary prerequisite for a composer) and
outstanding facility as a pianist, which he studied for many years. He has so
successfully fused technique and intuition that it is often impossible to
determine where one begins and the other ends and the pieces on the program display
this quality supremely.
