Jacques-Louis Monod
Encyclopedia
Jacques-Louis Monod is an influential French-born
, American domiciled
composer
, pianist
and conductor
of 20th century
and contemporary
music.
), a northwestern suburb of Paris, to an affluent family of privilege and of French Protestant affiliation. Early indications of his musical prowess came when he enrolled in 1933 at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique
as a child prodigy
at the age of six, under the official minimum age of nine. Monod would attend the Paris Conservatoire intermittently but remain registered for nearly 20 years, receiving his Diploma in 1952. Monod's teachers at the Conservatoire were Yves Nat
and Olivier Messiaen
; including master classes under the visiting conductor, Herbert Von Karajan
; he also studied with his godfather, Paul-Silva Hérard, the organist at Paris's St. Ambroise Church.
Although impressed by Messiaen's technical prowess as a teacher of the Classical repertoire; Monod did not accept Messiaen's vision of the New Music, imbued with Catholic mysticism combined with a tinge of Orientalism. Yet it would be in Messiaen's classes on harmony and analysis where Monod would encounter the many composers who would eventually comprise the New Music movement in post-WWII Europe, including Pierre Boulez
, Jean Barraqué
, Iannis Xenakis
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
.
A decisive turning point for Monod occurred in 1944 and at the age of 17, when he took private lessons in composition and theory for five years and subsequently remaining a life-long supporter and president of an association promoting the music of the French composer and conductor René Leibowitz
, a Webern
disciple and émigré from Warsaw, Poland (rumor has it that during the German occupation of France, which lasted until December 1944, the young Monod surreptitiously brought food to Leibowitz, a member of the French Resistance
). Leibowitz, who was an outsider among the French musical establishment, and a major catalyst in the promotion of Schoenberg's
music and in the subsequent development of serial music
in Paris after WWII, became Monod’s principal teacher and mentor within a circle of devoted pupils, including Jean Prodromidès, Antoine Duhamel
, Pierre Chan, Michel Philippot
, Serge Nigg
, André Casanova, Claude Helffer
, and for a brief period, Pierre Boulez.
Monod's oeuvre is historically significant among the early cadre of post-WWII proponents of the New Modernism in Paris (ca. 1945-51), promoting initially the music of Schoenberg and later, the serial music of Webern. Interest in Schoenberg's music had seen a steady growth in Paris, beginning with the work and teachings of the Polish-French vocalist Marya Freund, who premiered Pierrot Lunaire
to French audiences in 1927, followed by Schoenberg's brief emigration to Paris in 1933, before departing for America during the same year. The Schoenberg pupils Max Deutsch
and Erich Itor Kahn
also relocated to France during the early 1930s, where Deutsch subsequently taught at the Sorbonne for the next 40 years. Schoenberg's music - considered "radical" for a brief period in France after WWII - was soon regarded as outmoded by the early 1950s and superseded by that of his pupil, Webern. Yet it would be Schoenberg - an autodidact from humble origins, possessing an extraordinary combination of sharp intellect with creative energy and the self-proclaimed leader from fin-de-siècle Vienna of the New Music - who conveyed a mesmerizing, almost overpowering persona to those who were smitten by his music and teachings, and who would ultimately alter the course of twentieth-century music through his particular invention of the "method of twelve-tone composition" and promotion by his many disciples, such as R. Leibowitz, J. Rufer, T.W. Adorno
, E. Stein
and J. Cage
; and earlier, A. Webern and A. Berg
. And during the course of new music developments from France after WWII, Monod would not abandon Schoenberg's music throughout his long career - as many in the French avant-garde had under Boulez's direction, as exemplified in his polemical 1951 article, "Schoenberg is Dead" and in his subsequent influence upon the development of "experimental" serialist
and related music at Darmstadt. Monod's debut (1949) as a pianist took place in Paris at a concert organized by Leibowitz for Schoenberg's 75th birthday. His performance in the European premiere of Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47, missed being the world premiere by only a few hours (the world premiere took place in Los Angeles on September 13, 1949 with Leonard Stein on piano and Adolf Koldofsky on violin).
perform in Harlem, while Monod met with Milton Babbitt
and undertook graduate studies at Columbia University (conducting under R. Thomas and H. Allendorf) and at the Juilliard School (composition under Bernard Wagenaar
). (Monod also accompanied Leibowitz in 1948 to the earliest composition seminars in Darmstadt at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik
; and later during the early 1950s, Monod attended Boris Blacher's composition seminar and Josef Rufer
's analysis seminar at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik.)
At a time when the musics of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern were least performed in America, Monod was among their earliest champions. He spent much of the 1950s as a pianist, performing works of the Second Viennese School for piano and voice, similar to the careers of pianists, E. Steuermann
; P. Stadlen
; C. Helffer
; Paul Jacobs
; the Viennese pianist, Karl Steiner; and the American pianist, L. Stein. Under the direction of Leibowitz, Monod performed and recorded the piano part of Berg's Chamber Concerto and Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Op. 41; and more importantly, Monod also performed on historic recordings of chamber music by Webern for the Dial Records
label in the early 1950s (a label founded by Ross Russell
, who also produced historic jazz recordings of Charlie Parker, Max Roach
and Miles Davis
), including the earliest recordings of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21, conducted by Leibowitz with the Paris Chamber Orchestra; the Concerto
for nine instruments, Op. 24; the Variations for Piano, Op. 27, performed by Monod; the Four Songs, Op. 12, performed by the American virtuosic soprano, Bethany Beardslee
with Monod on piano; and the Quartet for tenor saxophone, clarinet, violin, and piano, Op. 22.
On Dec. 18, 1950, Monod performed in a special concert of Alban Berg's
chamber music at Juilliard, featuring the American premiere of Berg's Two Songs (unedited extract from Die Musik 1930) with Ms. Beardslee. The duo also performed Berg's Seven Early Songs (1905–08) and Four Songs, Op. 2 (1908–10).
Monod also promoted other musics in addition to the music of the Second Viennese School: on January 24, 1954, The Three Japanese Lyrics, composed by Igor Stravinsky
in 1912–13, received their Carnegie Hall
premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with Ms. Beardslee, soprano; the pianist Russell Sherman
; and a chamber ensemble conducted by Monod. Also evident during Monod's residency in the USA was his extraordinary analytical ability: while attending a Columbia graduate 20th-century music seminar taught by the Varèse disciple Chou Wen-chung
, Monod's cogent analysis of Varèse
's Ionisation led to him teaching the remainder of the course. Monod's studies at Columbia University during the 1950s would eventually lead by the early 1970s to an Associate Professorship position at Columbia's music department, wherein Monod with the former Schoenberg pupil and specialist in medieval music theory, P. Carpenter, were instrumental in establishing the department's undergraduate and graduate core curricula.
, assisting Richard Franko Goldman
(of Goldman Band
notoriety) in directing the first all-Webern concert in the USA, which took place in New York City on May 8, 1951 and included the world premiere of Webern’s Five Canons on Latin Texts (Moldenhauer, 1975, p. 713). Under the direct influence of Webern's American students (e.g. Mark Brunswick
, Arnold Elston
, Roland Leich and George Robert) and several of Webern's disciples who emigrated to America (e.g., Ernst Krenek
, Frederick Deutsch-Dorian and in particular, Stefan Wolpe
) and the development of American composers who adopted serial techniques in their music, such as Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter
, followed by older American composers, Roger Sessions
and Aaron Copland
, including the Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky, who attributed his "discovery" of serial music to analyses of Webern's music (under the influence of Robert Craft
); Monod's performances of Webern's music in New York City during the early 1950s were a part of the growing movement in America among the music intelligentsia that ultimately recognized Webern as the "Apostle" of the New Music—concurrent to the Webern movement in Darmstadt, whose music was promoted by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, et al. Notwithstanding, Webern's influence had cut a wide spectrum in contemporary American music during the 1950s, including "uptown" music in New York City from the Columbia and Princeton establishments; and the so-called, "downtown" New York School
, e.g. Morton Feldman
, Earle Brown
and Christian Wolff
—under the influence of a former Webern pupil, Stefan Wolpe upon the music of Feldman; including Cage's role in influencing Wolff's earliest music, which are closer to Webern's music than Cage's. On March 16, 1952, Monod gave the world premieres of Webern's Three Traditional Rhymes, Op. 17, and the Three Songs on Poems of Hildegard Jone, Op. 25, all with his then wife, Ms. Beardslee, with whom for years, they gave critically acclaimed concerts of new music with the Camera Concerts under Monod's directorship (Moldenhauer, 1975, pp. 713,717). Further, Monod was instrumental in promoting in America the music of the relatively unknown composer, Erich Itor Kahn; and a composer whose music is similar to Monod's is the Webern disciple Leopold Spinner
, whose Fünf Lieder for voice and piano, op. 8, was premiered by Monod and Ms. Beardslee on March 15, 1954. Also beginning in 1952, Monod took over the editorial position led by the former Webern pupil Kurt List for the publishing firm Boelke-Bomart, founded by W. Boelke.
Hermann Scherchen
(with an introduction by Pierre Boulez
) premiered Edgard Varèse
’s Déserts in Paris on January 20, 1954; while Monod gave its American premiere at Town Hall in December, 1955 with Varèse controlling the Ampex tape recorder. In 1956, Monod received an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his creative work in music.
, E. Stein. W. Goehr
, R. Gerhard, T. W. Adorno, K. Rankl
, L. Spinner, E. Kraus, E. Spira, etc.). Webern also visited England twice to conduct at the BBC
. Their influence upon British music did not take full effect until the 1950s and 1960s. Influential proponents of serialism in Great Britain were the composers Humphrey Searle
, L. Spinner, Roberto Gerhard
and the presence of Luigi Nono
at the Dartington summer courses during the 1960s. Also influential was the British journal, The Score with many articles pertaining to serialism. Notable were essays written by the one-time Webern pupil, the pianist and musicologist Peter Stadlen. During the height of serialism
in Great Britain in the 1960s and under the influence of Sir William Glock
and Hans Keller
, Monod relocated to London and was appointed conductor of contemporary music for the BBC Third Programme
from 1960 to 1966–67, directing dozens of premieres, including works by Roberto Gerhard, Peter Maxwell Davies
, Ernst Krenek, Luigi Dallapiccola
, and L. Nono, whom he befriended during Monod’s London premiere of Nono’s, Polifonica-Monodica-Ritmica. Further, "during his seven years as the conductor for the BBC Third Program, he [i.e. Monod] presented a live concert broadcast of new music every Tuesday throughout the concert season. Each program was different and was broadcast internationally to a wide listening audience...[Monod] has conducted major orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and Central America" (Equinox Music CD 0101 Liner Notes). Included was Monod's 1962 and 1963 world premieres of Roberto Gerhard's, Concert for Eight with the Melos Ensemble and Hymnody with the Virtuoso Ensemble, respectively; and his 1963 performance/recording of Gerhard's film music for Lindsay Anderson
's critically acclaimed, This Sporting Life
, a British New Wave
film.
Monod also directed contemporary music with notable ensembles in London and Zurich during the 1960s to early 1970s: in 1962, Monod directed and recorded for Epic Records
, Elliot Carter's Suite from Pocahontus with the Zurich Radio Symphony Orchestra (N.B., it was in Zurich where Monod befriended the Schoenberg disciple and conductor, Erich Schmid). On November 19, 1964, Monod conducted a concert of Austrian music at the Commonwealth Institute with Margaret Kitchin
on piano, the Leonardo Wind Quintet and the London Octet. On October 25, 1965, Monod conducted the first London performance of Gordon Crosse
's Symphonies for chamber orchestra with Susan Bradshaw
on piano and the Macnaghten Chamber Orchestra. Further, his interpretation of Seymour Shifrin's Three Pieces for Orchestra with the London Sinfonietta
received the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, Inc. Award in 1970 for best recording. Also notable in Monod's career as a conductor was his superior coaching skills: his performance (1962, recording issued in 1966) of Schoenberg's Serenade, Op. 24 with the Melos Ensemble was the first time the pianist and Schoenberg amanuensis-editor Leonard Stein had encountered Monod's masterly interpretations of Schoenberg's music. Monod's work as a conductor follows the line of distinguished directors of the music of Schoenberg and the new music (e.g., A. Webern, H. Scherchen
, H. Swarowsky
, H. Rosbaud
, R. Leibowitz
, W. Goehr
, E. Schmid
, C. Abbado
, M. Gielen
, et al.).
, Claudio Spies
, Mario Davidovsky
, Seymour Shifrin, Earl Kim
, Donald Martino
, George Edwards, Robert Helps
, David Lewin
; and Milton Babbitt
, who composed an earlier work, Du, dedicated to Monod and Ms. Beardslee. During 1995-2000, concerts of the Guild of Composers were directed by the Monod protégé, the Princeton- and Columbia educated American composer and conductor, Daniel Plante.
New York City during the 1960s through the 1980s played host to numerous concerts and "happenings" devoted to contemporary music: the development of a "downtown" contemporary music scene during the 1960s and mid-1970s, for instance, may have been a reaction to and/or caused by "uptown" contemporary music promulgated at the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center - which remains to this day a beacon of European-derived, "high-art" music - and primarily at Columbia University by concerts of the Guild of Composers; and earlier, by The Group for Contemporary Music
concerts, directed from 1961 to the 1970s by two former Columbia students, Charles Wuorinen
and Harvey Sollberger
. Columbia's renowned music department, characterized by a tendency to promote modern music from its earliest years under the influence of the Paris Conservatoire-educated American composer Edward MacDowell
- and which much later had invited composers as diverse as Bartok and Varèse
during the 1940s and 1950s - was dominated during much of the 1970s and 1980s by Columbia- and Princeton-educated composers and theorists who shared a strong bias toward the European-derived, historically deterministic theories of Schoenberg - which composers from the downtown music
scene opposed, developing instead a multicultural, improvisatory, and pop-influenced music also influenced by the indeterminate music of John Cage
, who paradoxically was a former pupil of Schoenberg's, and by the New York School
of American experimental music.
Monod was a major proponent in New York City of "non-experimental" serialism, promoting the music of American composers from the so-called Columbia-Princeton "axis" (and to a lesser degree from Harvard) at the Guild of Composers concerts. The music performed for 25 years at the Guild of Composers concerts exemplified the ideological view that contemporary American music remains very much a part of the Western polyphonic tradition. Further, Boulez's provocative work as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic
at Lincoln Center during 1971-77 also contributed to the public's increased awareness of concerts devoted to contemporary music, albeit with a much wider palette of works.
Throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, Monod also continued to perform the music of Schoenberg in New York City, leading the music critic Allan Kozinn
to write an article published in the New York Times (March, 1985) acknowledging Monod as the "Guardian of the Schoenberg Flame." His promotion of Schoenberg include a notable performance in the early 1980s of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
, Op. 21, with commentary by George Perle
.
A partial list of Monod's compositions include works from the series, Cantus Contra Cantum:
Throughout his distinguished career as a conductor, pianist, composer, theorist/editor and pedagogue, there appears to be a deliberate effort by Monod to avoid the transient nature in much of contemporary music, evidently propelled by the post-WWII avant-garde credo of experimentation to create and promote music that tended to over-emphasized 'novelty', often accompanied by media hype. Notwithstanding, Monod's performances of world premieres of works by European and American composers for forty years during the 1950s–1990s demonstrate his commitment exclusively to promoting and advancing contemporary music. Although Monod was keenly aware of the speculative excessiveness in contemporary music trends during the 1950s–1980s, he has remained strategically opposed to many of his former colleagues from France for instance, who embraced avant-gardism in Paris and at Darmstadt under the influence of Boulez, et al. Further, the music at Darmstadt can be directly attributed to the legacy of Schoenberg (and more so to Webern) - since many of their disciples taught at Darmstadt; whereas, Monod has promoted the musics of Schoenberg, Webern and many others from a purely musical and more specialized "plateau"; demonstrating instead, a critical perspective with an agenda emphasizing 'pitch-centric' or polyphonic implications in modern music. Ironically, Monod has become an increasingly solitary figure in advancing the cause of contemporary music, based upon the seemingly anachronistic, Western ideological premise of "progress". Nonetheless and unswerving throughout the passage of time, Monod has remained steadfast in his views regarding the significance of Western polyphony and its central role in the grand debate on the future of contemporary music; i.e., whether the new music will emphasize the "emancipation of sound" or the "primacy" of pitch-relations.
Monod's music has been performed sparingly and has yet to be fully recognized. As in the music of Webern, there are no extraneous musical elements nor is there any degree of fortuitousness in Monod's rigorously composed music, which gives the discerning listener a means to distinguish musical relationships with aesthetically compelling results. The strict formal characteristics of his non-experimental and non-improvisational, highly controlled music requires superior technical abilities on the part of performers. Also noticeable in Monod's music is the apparent avoidance of strictly adhered row permutations, as originally advocated by Schoenberg. And none of the clichéd characteristics of "pointillism
" that are prevalent in many representative works of post-WWII serialism are evident in Monod's music. Moreover, the overly-mechanical and superficial aspects exhibited in some earlier works of integral or total serialism are entirely absent and circumvented in Monod's music; which as a result, provides listeners with lyrical attributes. Monod has set many of his works to texts by French poets, such as Eluard, Valéry, Renard and René Char (Steinberg 2001).
The title for his extensive cycle of serial compositions, composed during the course of the past forty years, namely "Cantus Contra Cantum", refers to the late-medieval concept of "line against line" as a progression beyond "punctus contra punctum", i.e., creating advanced music that is correlated to the development of modern Western polyphony: "music-synergy", wherein the interaction of two or more parts or voices in each work creates a combined effect that is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
In 1979, the ISCM in New York City performed his Cantus Contra Cantum I for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra, the first of a series of works that realizes Monod's advancement of a polyphonic "langue". More recent performances took place in New York City during February 1987 and in March 1989 of his provocative, "Tränen des Vaterlandes - Anno 1636" (Cantus Contra Cantum IV), a four-minute choral work accompanied by "sackbuts", based upon "a gruesome poetic depiction of carnage and devastation by Andreas Gryphius
...[the music is] stark but appropriate for the horrors described" (John Rockwell
, NYT: 3-30-89); and his two a capella works, Elergies, evoking "the ghost of Anton Webern...music as exquisitely beautiful as any this listener has heard in some time" (Tim Page, music critic, NYT: 2-5-87).
Moreover, to state that the development of Western polyphonic music has been the result of a largely "Euro-centric" activity is inaccurate, since the history of modern Western music during the 20th century for example, has been very much a "multi-cultural" creation, if taking into consideration that creating and promoting Western music has been a widely-practiced activity and international in scope; and is therefore by definition a multi-cultural phenomenon, albeit derived from European sources. To a certain extent, the advanced polyphonic music and legacy of Schoenberg has left an indelible mark in the history of mid- to late 20th century contemporary music in America and abroad, as a result of major promoters, such as the work by Monod, et al. Well-endowed orchestras and ensembles in America will also continue to include the music of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School
in their repertory. However, if the over-arching concern is whether there would be a role and future for 'new' American "serious" music (e.g., music that is polyphonic and European-derived) promoted by the likes of Monod and others, their influence may appear less over time, as this genre of music may be relegated to the larger category of non-correlated musical genres, including non-Western musical forms and practices in contemporary American music; while the influence of a solely Western and more specifically, a European-derived, American "polyphonic" music, appear either gradually assimilated or ultimately ignored for the time being by the forces of American popular culture, the masses and of modern society. Contemporary American music may evolve into its own indigenous 'identity' or it may take generations before a renewal of interest occurs in America for serious contemporary music with European influences.
Monod has also edited numerous works for publication at Mobart Music Publications/Boelke-Bomart, Inc. (now part of Jerona Music Corp.), where he was editor-in-chief for thirty years between 1952-1982. These scores include Charles Ives
' Central Park in the Dark, Hallowe'en and The Pond; and Schoenberg's Kol nidre, Op. 39 and the Three Songs, Op. 48; and two works that are arguably among Schoenberg's greatest works from his late period, namely the String Trio, Op. 45, and A Survivor from Warsaw
, Op. 46; and Webern's Quintet for Strings and Piano.
Monod's editions of Schoenberg's music have been described as the standard by which other [editions] are to be judged (Haimo 1984). In 1983, Monod edited and published at Mobart, "René Leibowitz 1913-1972. A Register of His Works and Writings".
and IRCAM
, Monod returned to Paris under the sponsorship of the Sterling Currier Fund to direct an advanced music composition seminar at Reid Hall
. Students were primarily from Harvard and Columbia, including the Harvard-educated composer, Christopher Yavelow
, and a former composition pupil of Chou Wen-chung, Joel Freedman, et al. During the remainder of the late 1970s, Monod continued to teach at Columbia. In the early 1980s, Monod returned to France and taught theory and analysis at the Sorbonne, returning several times to New York City to conduct performances of modern music. Later during the 1990s, he returned to New York City, devoting the remainder of his years as a pedagogue at the Juilliard School, where he taught advanced theory and analysis, composition, and conducting. Over the years, Monod has also given private lessons to talented musicians, including those influenced by mathematics and the computer sciences: many occupy various professional positions in the USA and abroad in the areas of conducting, composition, and theory.
Although Monod's theoretical work and pedagogy primarily at Columbia have focused on the development of Western polyphony from the earliest examples of plainchant to J. S. Bach to Schoenberg, the music of his many former students (and those who were affiliated with Monod through his editorial work) represents a diverse array of genres, cultures, and styles, from contemporary "classical" music to electronic music and beyond. Among them are the composers, Leonard Bogat, Jack Briece, Bruce Hobson, Robert Pollock, Martin Matalon
, Manuel Sosa, Dariush Dolat-shahi, Eve Beglarian
, Eugene Lee, Conrad Pope
, Thanassis Rikakis, Maurice Wright, Jeffrey Hall, Thomas S. James, Joel Feigin, Pablo Ortiz, Eric B. Chernov, Tod Machover
, Mark Hagerty, Daniel Plante, David Winkler, Michael Rothkopf, Bernadette Speach
, Philip Lasser
, Kitty Brazelton
, David Glaser, James Walsh, Meir Serrouya, Peter C. Clark, and Harold Bott, Jr. Monod also taught students who specialized in musicology, several becoming prominent, including Richard Taruskin
at the University of California at Berkeley, David Bernstein at Mills College, Michael Beckerman at New York University, Clovis Lark at the Utah Symphony Orchestra, Sean Y. Wang at the University of Houston, and the composer-musicologist, Otto Laske.
Monod has also taught conducting to many who have specialized in this profession, including Peter Schubert, Michael Alexander Willens, Gilbert Levine
, Markand Thakar
, Joel Eric Suben
, Peter Frewen, Rachael Worby
, David Leibowitz, Richard Fletcher, et al.
, Roger Sessions
, Edward T. Cone
, Arthur Berger
, Godfrey Winham
, Will Ogdon
, Ursula Mamlok
, Rolv Yttrehus
, George Edwards, Philip Batstone, Robert Ceely, Mark Hagerty, et al. Monod has also edited music for APNM, including Godfrey Winham's Composition for Orchestra and Stephen Peles' Intermezzo for solo piano.
; and later, to a translator of East German descent, Margrit Auhagen.
His closest associates in America include the composers, Earl Kim, Seymour Shifrin, Arthur Berger, Mario Davidovsky, Claudio Spies, and Malcolm Peyton; and in France, Michel Philippot.
of wide-ranging influences in French government, theology, the sciences and medicine, banking and the arts. His great-great-grandfather, Adolphe Monod
, was a noted pastor and theologian. His father, Pierre Monod was a noted surgeon. His cousins include the naturalist Théodore Monod
, the industrialist-politician Jérôme Monod, Jacques Lucien Monod
, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist, the pharmacologist Daniel Bovet
, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and the French New Wave
film director Jean-Luc Godard
.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, American domiciled
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
of 20th century
20th century music
20th century music is defined by the sudden emergence of advanced technology for recording and distributing music as well as dramatic innovations in musical forms and styles...
and contemporary
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
music.
Paris 1940s: early years under Messiaen and Leibowitz
Monod was born in Asnières (now Asnières-sur-SeineAsnières-sur-Seine
Asnières-sur-Seine is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France, along the river Seine. It is located from the center of Paris.-Name:...
), a northwestern suburb of Paris, to an affluent family of privilege and of French Protestant affiliation. Early indications of his musical prowess came when he enrolled in 1933 at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
as a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
at the age of six, under the official minimum age of nine. Monod would attend the Paris Conservatoire intermittently but remain registered for nearly 20 years, receiving his Diploma in 1952. Monod's teachers at the Conservatoire were Yves Nat
Yves Nat
Yves Nat was a French pianist and composer.-Biography:Yves Nat was born in Béziers and showed an early aptitude for both piano and composition. By the age of seven he was allowed to improvise each Sunday at the organ of Béziers' cathedral during mass...
and Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
; including master classes under the visiting conductor, Herbert Von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
; he also studied with his godfather, Paul-Silva Hérard, the organist at Paris's St. Ambroise Church.
Although impressed by Messiaen's technical prowess as a teacher of the Classical repertoire; Monod did not accept Messiaen's vision of the New Music, imbued with Catholic mysticism combined with a tinge of Orientalism. Yet it would be in Messiaen's classes on harmony and analysis where Monod would encounter the many composers who would eventually comprise the New Music movement in post-WWII Europe, including Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Jean Barraqué
Jean Barraqué
Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output of highly complex but passionate works.-Life:...
, Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
A decisive turning point for Monod occurred in 1944 and at the age of 17, when he took private lessons in composition and theory for five years and subsequently remaining a life-long supporter and president of an association promoting the music of the French composer and conductor René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz was a French composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher born in Warsaw, Poland.-Career:...
, a Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
disciple and émigré from Warsaw, Poland (rumor has it that during the German occupation of France, which lasted until December 1944, the young Monod surreptitiously brought food to Leibowitz, a member of the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
). Leibowitz, who was an outsider among the French musical establishment, and a major catalyst in the promotion of Schoenberg's
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
music and in the subsequent development of serial music
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
in Paris after WWII, became Monod’s principal teacher and mentor within a circle of devoted pupils, including Jean Prodromidès, Antoine Duhamel
Antoine Duhamel
Antoine Duhamel , is a French composer, orchestra conductor and music teacher.Born in Valmondois in the Val-d'Oise département of France, Antoine Duhamel came from a cinematic family and studied music at the Sorbonne. He wrote the score for his first film in 1960, going on to work with many of...
, Pierre Chan, Michel Philippot
Michel Philippot
Michel Paul Philippot was a French composer, mathematician, acoustician, musicologist, aesthetician, broadcaster, and educator.-Life:...
, Serge Nigg
Serge Nigg
-Biography:After initial studies with Ginette Martenot, Nigg entered the Paris Conservatory in 1941 and studied harmony with Olivier Messiaen and counterpoint with Simone Plé-Caussade. In 1945, he met René Leibowitz, who introduced him to the twelve-tone technique of composition...
, André Casanova, Claude Helffer
Claude Helffer
Claude Helffer was a French pianist noted particularly for his advocacy of 20th-century music.-Biography:...
, and for a brief period, Pierre Boulez.
Monod's oeuvre is historically significant among the early cadre of post-WWII proponents of the New Modernism in Paris (ca. 1945-51), promoting initially the music of Schoenberg and later, the serial music of Webern. Interest in Schoenberg's music had seen a steady growth in Paris, beginning with the work and teachings of the Polish-French vocalist Marya Freund, who premiered Pierrot Lunaire
Pierrot Lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...
to French audiences in 1927, followed by Schoenberg's brief emigration to Paris in 1933, before departing for America during the same year. The Schoenberg pupils Max Deutsch
Max Deutsch
Max Deutsch was an Austrian-French musical composer, conductor, and teacher.He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and founded the theater Der Jüdische Spiegel in Paris. Here, many works of composers like Schoenberg, Anton Webern, or Alban Berg were debuted in France...
and Erich Itor Kahn
Erich Itor Kahn
Erich Itor Kahn was a German composer of Jewish descent, who emigrated to the United States during the years of National Socialism.-Biography:...
also relocated to France during the early 1930s, where Deutsch subsequently taught at the Sorbonne for the next 40 years. Schoenberg's music - considered "radical" for a brief period in France after WWII - was soon regarded as outmoded by the early 1950s and superseded by that of his pupil, Webern. Yet it would be Schoenberg - an autodidact from humble origins, possessing an extraordinary combination of sharp intellect with creative energy and the self-proclaimed leader from fin-de-siècle Vienna of the New Music - who conveyed a mesmerizing, almost overpowering persona to those who were smitten by his music and teachings, and who would ultimately alter the course of twentieth-century music through his particular invention of the "method of twelve-tone composition" and promotion by his many disciples, such as R. Leibowitz, J. Rufer, T.W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, E. Stein
Erwin Stein
Erwin Stein was an Austrian musician and writer, prominent as a pupil and friend of Schoenberg, with whom he studied between 1906 and 1910. He was one of Schoenberg’s principal assistants in organizing the Society for Private Musical Performances...
and J. Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
; and earlier, A. Webern and A. Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
. And during the course of new music developments from France after WWII, Monod would not abandon Schoenberg's music throughout his long career - as many in the French avant-garde had under Boulez's direction, as exemplified in his polemical 1951 article, "Schoenberg is Dead" and in his subsequent influence upon the development of "experimental" serialist
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
and related music at Darmstadt. Monod's debut (1949) as a pianist took place in Paris at a concert organized by Leibowitz for Schoenberg's 75th birthday. His performance in the European premiere of Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47, missed being the world premiere by only a few hours (the world premiere took place in Los Angeles on September 13, 1949 with Leonard Stein on piano and Adolf Koldofsky on violin).
New York City: 1950s and the Dial recordings
Soon after Leibowitz’s earliest travels to the United States (first in 1947 to visit Schoenberg in Los Angeles), Monod followed, accompanying Leibowitz to New York City in 1950. Leibowitz was to hear the legendary jazz musician and saxophonist Charlie ParkerCharlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
perform in Harlem, while Monod met with Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
and undertook graduate studies at Columbia University (conducting under R. Thomas and H. Allendorf) and at the Juilliard School (composition under Bernard Wagenaar
Bernard Wagenaar
Bernard Wagenaar was a Dutch/American composer, conductor and violinist.Wagenaar, not related to the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar, was born in Arnhem. He studied at Utrecht University before starting his career as a teacher and conductor in 1914. He moved to the USA in 1920, where he became a...
). (Monod also accompanied Leibowitz in 1948 to the earliest composition seminars in Darmstadt at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik
Darmstadt New Music Summer School
Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt , held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works...
; and later during the early 1950s, Monod attended Boris Blacher's composition seminar and Josef Rufer
Josef Rufer
Josef Rufer was an Austrian-born musicologist. He is regarded as a significant figure mainly on account of his association with and writings on Arnold Schoenberg....
's analysis seminar at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik.)
At a time when the musics of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern were least performed in America, Monod was among their earliest champions. He spent much of the 1950s as a pianist, performing works of the Second Viennese School for piano and voice, similar to the careers of pianists, E. Steuermann
Eduard Steuermann
Eduard Steuermann was an Austrian pianist and composer. The actress Salka Viertel was his sister...
; P. Stadlen
Peter Stadlen
Peter Stadlen was a composer, pianist, and musicologist, specializing in the study and interpretation of Beethoven....
; C. Helffer
Claude Helffer
Claude Helffer was a French pianist noted particularly for his advocacy of 20th-century music.-Biography:...
; Paul Jacobs
Paul Jacobs
Paul Jacobs can refer to:*Paul Jacobs , American activist**Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, documentary film about the above*Paul Jacobs , Flemish author*Paul Jacobs , professional hockey player...
; the Viennese pianist, Karl Steiner; and the American pianist, L. Stein. Under the direction of Leibowitz, Monod performed and recorded the piano part of Berg's Chamber Concerto and Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Op. 41; and more importantly, Monod also performed on historic recordings of chamber music by Webern for the Dial Records
Dial Records
Dial Records has been the name of at least four different record labels in the 20th century:* Dial Records – a US based company.* Dial Records – a US based company.* Dial Records – a US based company....
label in the early 1950s (a label founded by Ross Russell
Ross Russell
Ross Russell was an American jazz producer and author. He was the founder of Dial Records....
, who also produced historic jazz recordings of Charlie Parker, Max Roach
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...
and Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
), including the earliest recordings of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21, conducted by Leibowitz with the Paris Chamber Orchestra; the Concerto
Concerto (Webern)
Anton Webern's Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24 is a twelve-tone concerto for nine instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and piano; containing three movements: I. Etwas lebhaft, II. Sehr langsam, and III...
for nine instruments, Op. 24; the Variations for Piano, Op. 27, performed by Monod; the Four Songs, Op. 12, performed by the American virtuosic soprano, Bethany Beardslee
Bethany Beardslee
Bethany Beardslee is an American soprano particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music....
with Monod on piano; and the Quartet for tenor saxophone, clarinet, violin, and piano, Op. 22.
On Dec. 18, 1950, Monod performed in a special concert of Alban Berg's
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
chamber music at Juilliard, featuring the American premiere of Berg's Two Songs (unedited extract from Die Musik 1930) with Ms. Beardslee. The duo also performed Berg's Seven Early Songs (1905–08) and Four Songs, Op. 2 (1908–10).
Monod also promoted other musics in addition to the music of the Second Viennese School: on January 24, 1954, The Three Japanese Lyrics, composed by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
in 1912–13, received their Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) with Ms. Beardslee, soprano; the pianist Russell Sherman
Russell Sherman
Russell Sherman is an American classical pianist, educator and author.Russell Sherman made his debut at The Town Hall in New York at age 15; later studying piano with Edward Steuermann and composition with Erich Itor Kahn...
; and a chamber ensemble conducted by Monod. Also evident during Monod's residency in the USA was his extraordinary analytical ability: while attending a Columbia graduate 20th-century music seminar taught by the Varèse disciple Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung , Shandong, China) is a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States where he lives.-Life:...
, Monod's cogent analysis of Varèse
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
's Ionisation led to him teaching the remainder of the course. Monod's studies at Columbia University during the 1950s would eventually lead by the early 1970s to an Associate Professorship position at Columbia's music department, wherein Monod with the former Schoenberg pupil and specialist in medieval music theory, P. Carpenter, were instrumental in establishing the department's undergraduate and graduate core curricula.
New York City: conductor of Webern and the New Music
Beginning in the early 1950s, Monod directed American premieres of many works of Anton WebernAnton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
, assisting Richard Franko Goldman
Richard Franko Goldman
Richard Franko Goldman was a conductor, educator, author, music critic, and composer.After graduating from Townsend Harris High School in Queens, New York he attended Columbia University, graduating in 1930 with an A.B. . He then went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger...
(of Goldman Band
Goldman Band
The Goldman Band was formed by American musician and composer Edwin Franko Goldman in 1918 from the earlier New York Military Band. Goldman had organized the New York Military Band in 1911...
notoriety) in directing the first all-Webern concert in the USA, which took place in New York City on May 8, 1951 and included the world premiere of Webern’s Five Canons on Latin Texts (Moldenhauer, 1975, p. 713). Under the direct influence of Webern's American students (e.g. Mark Brunswick
Mark Brunswick
Mark Brunswick was an American composer of the Twentieth Century. He had only recently completed the second act of an opera based on Ibsen’s The Masterbuilder when he died suddenly in London in May, 1971, at the start of what was to have been an extended tour of Europe with his wife, Natascha...
, Arnold Elston
Arnold Elston
Arnold Elston was an American composer and educator. Though he studied with Anton Webern, he did not himself use the twelve-tone technique.-Early life and career:...
, Roland Leich and George Robert) and several of Webern's disciples who emigrated to America (e.g., Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...
, Frederick Deutsch-Dorian and in particular, Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...
) and the development of American composers who adopted serial techniques in their music, such as Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
, followed by older American composers, Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
and Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, including the Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky, who attributed his "discovery" of serial music to analyses of Webern's music (under the influence of Robert Craft
Robert Craft
Robert Lawson Craft is an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate working friendship with Igor Stravinsky, a relationship which resulted in a number of recordings and books.-Life:...
); Monod's performances of Webern's music in New York City during the early 1950s were a part of the growing movement in America among the music intelligentsia that ultimately recognized Webern as the "Apostle" of the New Music—concurrent to the Webern movement in Darmstadt, whose music was promoted by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, et al. Notwithstanding, Webern's influence had cut a wide spectrum in contemporary American music during the 1950s, including "uptown" music in New York City from the Columbia and Princeton establishments; and the so-called, "downtown" New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
, e.g. Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
, Earle Brown
Earle Brown
Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems...
and Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (composer)
Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.-Biography:Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S...
—under the influence of a former Webern pupil, Stefan Wolpe upon the music of Feldman; including Cage's role in influencing Wolff's earliest music, which are closer to Webern's music than Cage's. On March 16, 1952, Monod gave the world premieres of Webern's Three Traditional Rhymes, Op. 17, and the Three Songs on Poems of Hildegard Jone, Op. 25, all with his then wife, Ms. Beardslee, with whom for years, they gave critically acclaimed concerts of new music with the Camera Concerts under Monod's directorship (Moldenhauer, 1975, pp. 713,717). Further, Monod was instrumental in promoting in America the music of the relatively unknown composer, Erich Itor Kahn; and a composer whose music is similar to Monod's is the Webern disciple Leopold Spinner
Leopold Spinner
Leopold Spinner was a Ukrainian-born, British-domiciled composer and editor.-Biography:Spinner was born of Austrian parentage in Lemberg...
, whose Fünf Lieder for voice and piano, op. 8, was premiered by Monod and Ms. Beardslee on March 15, 1954. Also beginning in 1952, Monod took over the editorial position led by the former Webern pupil Kurt List for the publishing firm Boelke-Bomart, founded by W. Boelke.
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
(with an introduction by Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
) premiered Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
’s Déserts in Paris on January 20, 1954; while Monod gave its American premiere at Town Hall in December, 1955 with Varèse controlling the Ampex tape recorder. In 1956, Monod received an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his creative work in music.
London: 1960s and the serial movement
Many of Schoenberg's and Webern's disciples had relocated to Great Britain during the 1930s as a result of the rise of National Socialism (e.g., E. WelleszEgon Wellesz
Egon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...
, E. Stein. W. Goehr
Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for...
, R. Gerhard, T. W. Adorno, K. Rankl
Karl Rankl
Karl Rankl was a British conductor and composer of Austrian birth. A pupil of the composers Schoenberg and Webern, he conducted at opera houses in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia until fleeing from the Nazis and taking refuge in England in 1939.Rankl was appointed musical director of the...
, L. Spinner, E. Kraus, E. Spira, etc.). Webern also visited England twice to conduct at the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Their influence upon British music did not take full effect until the 1950s and 1960s. Influential proponents of serialism in Great Britain were the composers Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle was a British composer.-Biography:He was born in Oxford where he was a classics scholar before studying — somewhat hesitantly — with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music in London, after which he went to Vienna on a six month scholarship to become a private pupil of Anton...
, L. Spinner, Roberto Gerhard
Roberto Gerhard
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder was a Catalan Spanish composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Robert Gerhard.-Life:...
and the presence of Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
at the Dartington summer courses during the 1960s. Also influential was the British journal, The Score with many articles pertaining to serialism. Notable were essays written by the one-time Webern pupil, the pianist and musicologist Peter Stadlen. During the height of serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
in Great Britain in the 1960s and under the influence of Sir William Glock
William Glock
Sir William Frederick Glock was a British music critic and musical administrator.-Biography:Glock was born in London. He read history at the University of Cambridge and was an organ scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...
and Hans Keller
Hans Keller
Hans Keller was an influential Austrian-born British musician and writer who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being an insightful commentator on such disparate fields as psychoanalysis and football...
, Monod relocated to London and was appointed conductor of contemporary music for the BBC Third Programme
BBC Third Programme
The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...
from 1960 to 1966–67, directing dozens of premieres, including works by Roberto Gerhard, Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...
, Ernst Krenek, Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.-Biography:Dallapiccola was born at Pisino d'Istria , to Italian parents....
, and L. Nono, whom he befriended during Monod’s London premiere of Nono’s, Polifonica-Monodica-Ritmica. Further, "during his seven years as the conductor for the BBC Third Program, he [i.e. Monod] presented a live concert broadcast of new music every Tuesday throughout the concert season. Each program was different and was broadcast internationally to a wide listening audience...[Monod] has conducted major orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and Central America" (Equinox Music CD 0101 Liner Notes). Included was Monod's 1962 and 1963 world premieres of Roberto Gerhard's, Concert for Eight with the Melos Ensemble and Hymnody with the Virtuoso Ensemble, respectively; and his 1963 performance/recording of Gerhard's film music for Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
's critically acclaimed, This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British film based on a novel of the same name by David Storey which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. It tells the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining area of Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting...
, a British New Wave
British New Wave
The British New Wave is the name given to a trend in filmmaking among directors in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The label is a translation of Nouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others.There is considerable overlap...
film.
Monod also directed contemporary music with notable ensembles in London and Zurich during the 1960s to early 1970s: in 1962, Monod directed and recorded for Epic Records
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...
, Elliot Carter's Suite from Pocahontus with the Zurich Radio Symphony Orchestra (N.B., it was in Zurich where Monod befriended the Schoenberg disciple and conductor, Erich Schmid). On November 19, 1964, Monod conducted a concert of Austrian music at the Commonwealth Institute with Margaret Kitchin
Margaret Kitchin
Margaret Kitchin was a classical pianist, born in Switzerland but long resident in the United Kingdom. She was strongly associated with contemporary music and gave many premieres of works by composers such as Michael Tippett, Thea Musgrave, Priaulx Rainier and Peter Racine Fricker.-External...
on piano, the Leonardo Wind Quintet and the London Octet. On October 25, 1965, Monod conducted the first London performance of Gordon Crosse
Gordon Crosse
Gordon Crosse is an English composer.-Biography:Crosse was born in Bury, Lancashire and in 1961 graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford with a first class honours degree in Music. He then undertook two years of postgraduate research on early fifteenth-century music before beginning an academic...
's Symphonies for chamber orchestra with Susan Bradshaw
Susan Bradshaw
Susan Bradshaw was a British pianist, teacher and writer. She was mainly associated with contemporary music, and especially with the work of Pierre Boulez, several of whose writings she translated...
on piano and the Macnaghten Chamber Orchestra. Further, his interpretation of Seymour Shifrin's Three Pieces for Orchestra with the London Sinfonietta
London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and...
received the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, Inc. Award in 1970 for best recording. Also notable in Monod's career as a conductor was his superior coaching skills: his performance (1962, recording issued in 1966) of Schoenberg's Serenade, Op. 24 with the Melos Ensemble was the first time the pianist and Schoenberg amanuensis-editor Leonard Stein had encountered Monod's masterly interpretations of Schoenberg's music. Monod's work as a conductor follows the line of distinguished directors of the music of Schoenberg and the new music (e.g., A. Webern, H. Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
, H. Swarowsky
Hans Swarowsky
Hans Swarowsky was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth and Jewish descent.Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss...
, H. Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud , was an Austrian conductor, particularly associated with the music of the twentieth century....
, R. Leibowitz
René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz was a French composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher born in Warsaw, Poland.-Career:...
, W. Goehr
Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for...
, E. Schmid
Erich Schmid
Erich Schmid was a Swiss composer and conductor. He was born on January 1, 1907 in Balsthal, Switzerland and died December 17, 2000 in Zürich. He studied composition with Bernhard Sekles at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt und später mit Arnold Schönberg...
, C. Abbado
Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera,...
, M. Gielen
Michael Gielen
-Professional career:Gielen was born in Dresden, Germany, to opera director Josef Gielen. Through his mother, Rose, he is the nephew of Eduard Steuermann and Salka Steuermann Viertel. He began his career as a pianist in Buenos Aires, where he studied with Erwin Leuchter and gave an early...
, et al.).
New York City: 1970s–1990s and music from uptown
In 1975 he founded, and for 20 years served as president of the Guild of Composers, a New York-based group that produced concerts of "uptown" contemporary music. At the Guild of Composers concerts, which often took place at Columbia University's Miller Theater, performances included the music of Elliott Carter, Arthur BergerArthur Berger
Arthur Victor Berger was an American composer who has been described as a New Mannerist.-Biography:Born in New York City, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston...
, Claudio Spies
Claudio Spies
Carlos Claudio Spies is a Chilean-American composer.Born in Santiago, Chile, of German-Jewish parents, Spies completed primary and secondary education in Santiago in 1941, when he passed the Bachillerato...
, Mario Davidovsky
Mario Davidovsky
Mario Davidovsky is an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the US, where he lives today...
, Seymour Shifrin, Earl Kim
Earl Kim
Earl Kim was a Korean-American composer.Kim was born in Dinuba, California, to immigrant Korean parents. He began piano studies at age ten and soon developed an interest in composition, studying in Los Angeles and Berkeley with, among others, Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch, and Roger Sessions...
, Donald Martino
Donald Martino
Donald Martino was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola...
, George Edwards, Robert Helps
Robert Helps
Robert Helps was an American pianist and composer....
, David Lewin
David Lewin
David Lewin was an American music theorist, music critic and composer. Called "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation" , he did his most influential theoretical work on the development of transformational theory, which involves the application of mathematical group theory to...
; and Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
, who composed an earlier work, Du, dedicated to Monod and Ms. Beardslee. During 1995-2000, concerts of the Guild of Composers were directed by the Monod protégé, the Princeton- and Columbia educated American composer and conductor, Daniel Plante.
New York City during the 1960s through the 1980s played host to numerous concerts and "happenings" devoted to contemporary music: the development of a "downtown" contemporary music scene during the 1960s and mid-1970s, for instance, may have been a reaction to and/or caused by "uptown" contemporary music promulgated at the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center - which remains to this day a beacon of European-derived, "high-art" music - and primarily at Columbia University by concerts of the Guild of Composers; and earlier, by The Group for Contemporary Music
The Group for Contemporary Music
The Group for Contemporary Music was an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1962 by Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen and was in residence at Columbia University from 1962 to 1971...
concerts, directed from 1961 to the 1970s by two former Columbia students, Charles Wuorinen
Charles Wuorinen
Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...
and Harvey Sollberger
Harvey Sollberger
Harvey Sollberger is an American composer, flutist, and conductor specializing in contemporary classical music.-Life:...
. Columbia's renowned music department, characterized by a tendency to promote modern music from its earliest years under the influence of the Paris Conservatoire-educated American composer Edward MacDowell
Edward MacDowell
Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose"...
- and which much later had invited composers as diverse as Bartok and Varèse
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
during the 1940s and 1950s - was dominated during much of the 1970s and 1980s by Columbia- and Princeton-educated composers and theorists who shared a strong bias toward the European-derived, historically deterministic theories of Schoenberg - which composers from the downtown music
Downtown music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used...
scene opposed, developing instead a multicultural, improvisatory, and pop-influenced music also influenced by the indeterminate music of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, who paradoxically was a former pupil of Schoenberg's, and by the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
of American experimental music.
Monod was a major proponent in New York City of "non-experimental" serialism, promoting the music of American composers from the so-called Columbia-Princeton "axis" (and to a lesser degree from Harvard) at the Guild of Composers concerts. The music performed for 25 years at the Guild of Composers concerts exemplified the ideological view that contemporary American music remains very much a part of the Western polyphonic tradition. Further, Boulez's provocative work as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
at Lincoln Center during 1971-77 also contributed to the public's increased awareness of concerts devoted to contemporary music, albeit with a much wider palette of works.
Throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, Monod also continued to perform the music of Schoenberg in New York City, leading the music critic Allan Kozinn
Allan Kozinn
-Biography:He received bachelor's degrees in music and journalism from Syracuse University in 1976. He began freelancing as a critic and music feature writer for the New York Times in 1977, and joined the paper's staff in 1991...
to write an article published in the New York Times (March, 1985) acknowledging Monod as the "Guardian of the Schoenberg Flame." His promotion of Schoenberg include a notable performance in the early 1980s of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
Pierrot Lunaire
Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds 'Pierrot lunaire' , commonly known simply as Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 , is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg...
, Op. 21, with commentary by George Perle
George Perle
George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...
.
List of compositions
Monod's music is published by the Jerona Music Corporation.A partial list of Monod's compositions include works from the series, Cantus Contra Cantum:
- Cantus Contra Cantum I (1968/1980) for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
- Cantus Contra Cantum II (1973) for Violin and Cello
- Cantus Contra Cantum III (1976) for Chorus (a Piano reduction exists)
- Cantus Contra Cantum IV (Tränen des Vaterlandes - Anno 1636) (1978) for Mixed Chorus and SackbutSackbutThe sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, i.e., a musical instrument in the brass family similar to the trumpet except characterised by a telescopic slide with which the player varies the length of the tube to change pitches, thus allowing them to obtain chromaticism, as...
s or Trombones - Cantus Contra Cantum V for Orchestra
- Cantus Contra Cantum VI for Mixed Choir and Chamber Orchestra
- 2 Elegies (1978) (incl. Canonic Vocalise, 1978)
- Chamber Aria (1952) (or the Passacaglia)
Style
There are three phases of development in Monod's oeuvre: first, his initial education in Paris during the 1930s and 1940s, bearing distinctively French influences and characteristics as to his role in the origins of serialism in France (e.g., extensive training at the Paris Conservatoire, including studies under Messiaen and later, private studies under Leibowitz); followed by his relocation abroad during the 1950s and 1960s to NYC and London as a pianist and conductor of the New Music, with the advancement of music by composers of non-French origins, particularly American music (e.g., C. Ives, E. Carter, M. Babbitt and S. Shifrin) and the music of Schoenberg, Webern and the serial movement (e.g., A. Berg, A. Webern, R. Gerhard, E. I. Kahn, L. Spinner, E. Krenek, L. Nono, et al.), including the music of a fellow émigré, Varèse; and thirdly, his own musical legacy as a composer and pedagogue at music schools in the Northeast during the 1970s and 1980s, primarily at Columbia University and at the Guild of Composers concerts with the advancement of a post-Schoenbergian generation of "non-experimental" music by American composers—many who were directly associated with Monod.Throughout his distinguished career as a conductor, pianist, composer, theorist/editor and pedagogue, there appears to be a deliberate effort by Monod to avoid the transient nature in much of contemporary music, evidently propelled by the post-WWII avant-garde credo of experimentation to create and promote music that tended to over-emphasized 'novelty', often accompanied by media hype. Notwithstanding, Monod's performances of world premieres of works by European and American composers for forty years during the 1950s–1990s demonstrate his commitment exclusively to promoting and advancing contemporary music. Although Monod was keenly aware of the speculative excessiveness in contemporary music trends during the 1950s–1980s, he has remained strategically opposed to many of his former colleagues from France for instance, who embraced avant-gardism in Paris and at Darmstadt under the influence of Boulez, et al. Further, the music at Darmstadt can be directly attributed to the legacy of Schoenberg (and more so to Webern) - since many of their disciples taught at Darmstadt; whereas, Monod has promoted the musics of Schoenberg, Webern and many others from a purely musical and more specialized "plateau"; demonstrating instead, a critical perspective with an agenda emphasizing 'pitch-centric' or polyphonic implications in modern music. Ironically, Monod has become an increasingly solitary figure in advancing the cause of contemporary music, based upon the seemingly anachronistic, Western ideological premise of "progress". Nonetheless and unswerving throughout the passage of time, Monod has remained steadfast in his views regarding the significance of Western polyphony and its central role in the grand debate on the future of contemporary music; i.e., whether the new music will emphasize the "emancipation of sound" or the "primacy" of pitch-relations.
Cantus Contra Cantum and other works
Monod’s music is based upon historical precedents of Webern’s music and represents the French school of post-WWII serialism, combined with subtle lyricism. Among his early works, only the Chamber Aria (or the Passacaglia) from 1952 has been published. His doctoral dissertation, completed with distinction at Columbia in 1975 and assisted by the Princeton-educated pianist-composer, Thomas S. James, consists of a detailed exposition on the compositional premise of his seminal work, Cantus Contra Cantum II for Violin and Cello; music which represents a tour de force in rhythmic and serial complexity.Monod's music has been performed sparingly and has yet to be fully recognized. As in the music of Webern, there are no extraneous musical elements nor is there any degree of fortuitousness in Monod's rigorously composed music, which gives the discerning listener a means to distinguish musical relationships with aesthetically compelling results. The strict formal characteristics of his non-experimental and non-improvisational, highly controlled music requires superior technical abilities on the part of performers. Also noticeable in Monod's music is the apparent avoidance of strictly adhered row permutations, as originally advocated by Schoenberg. And none of the clichéd characteristics of "pointillism
Punctualism
Punctualism is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear"...
" that are prevalent in many representative works of post-WWII serialism are evident in Monod's music. Moreover, the overly-mechanical and superficial aspects exhibited in some earlier works of integral or total serialism are entirely absent and circumvented in Monod's music; which as a result, provides listeners with lyrical attributes. Monod has set many of his works to texts by French poets, such as Eluard, Valéry, Renard and René Char (Steinberg 2001).
The title for his extensive cycle of serial compositions, composed during the course of the past forty years, namely "Cantus Contra Cantum", refers to the late-medieval concept of "line against line" as a progression beyond "punctus contra punctum", i.e., creating advanced music that is correlated to the development of modern Western polyphony: "music-synergy", wherein the interaction of two or more parts or voices in each work creates a combined effect that is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
In 1979, the ISCM in New York City performed his Cantus Contra Cantum I for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra, the first of a series of works that realizes Monod's advancement of a polyphonic "langue". More recent performances took place in New York City during February 1987 and in March 1989 of his provocative, "Tränen des Vaterlandes - Anno 1636" (Cantus Contra Cantum IV), a four-minute choral work accompanied by "sackbuts", based upon "a gruesome poetic depiction of carnage and devastation by Andreas Gryphius
Andreas Gryphius
Andreas Gryphius was a German lyric poet and dramatist.Asteroid 496 Gryphia is named in his honour.-Life and career:...
...[the music is] stark but appropriate for the horrors described" (John Rockwell
John Rockwell
John Rockwell is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture....
, NYT: 3-30-89); and his two a capella works, Elergies, evoking "the ghost of Anton Webern...music as exquisitely beautiful as any this listener has heard in some time" (Tim Page, music critic, NYT: 2-5-87).
The beginning of the end
It remains to be determined whether the influence of Monod will have long-standing ramifications in the development of contemporary American music in the new millennium. The situation today is pessimistic. The current ebbs and flows of American music for example, seem mired in a mixture of appealing to mass consumer interests as well as to the comparatively few who are aware or interested in the contemporary music promoted by Monod, et al. during the past 50+ years. As more orchestras and ensembles are finding it difficult to economically sustain their contemporary music objectives, the future also appears uncertain as to whether modern music will survive in America as an artistic genre without having the financial resources of an interested public. Another difficult assessment pertains to whether the specific "non-experimental" music promoted by Babbitt, Monod, et al. will have lasting significance in supporting the cause for contemporary music performance practice in America, without sacrificing artistic standards in lieu of artistic compromise, which presumably is the premise of the above-mentioned artists and their work. Monod's own music has yet to be fully assessed in view of the avant-garde and modernist music of his contemporaries, such as the works of Boulez and Babbitt, respectively. Certainly, the complexity of his music as well as our times make the task all the more difficult, given the challenge of what it means to attribute Monod's uncompromising persona and exemplary musical legacy as specifically being that of a "modern classicist". Nonetheless, the "non-experimental" music promoted by Monod in America following Schoenberg's death could be viewed as part of a "post-Schoenbergian" generation of music by modern polyphonists. Further, the various conflicting forces and/or 'differences' in contemporary American music today represent a 'crossroads' for Western music that may be better understood from a dialectical perspective.The end of the classical
If on the other hand, popular music and related popular culture in America continue to grow among the general public, the effects of the economic system would render the appeal toward contemporary "serious" music for limited tastes only, and within more limited budgets and more elite conditions for performance practice, thereby alienating further the general public from acquiring access, and from having any understanding and appreciation for contemporary "serious" music. Their interest and support if any, for serious music-making would be doubtful. The current socio-economic conditions in America for instance, indicate that contemporary "serious" music persists to a limited extent through isolated instances of independent recordings made and issued, and in the few academic institutions that are staffed with qualified instructors, from a diminishing list of uncompromising composers and their few supporters, committed conductors, and the few capable performers. There are few indications in American culture today that performances of contemporary "serious" music has had any measurable effect upon improving or educating the public's awareness level.The "late European period" and the future of American music
Other important issues relate to the overriding concerns of Monod's legacy, namely the future of the Western polyphonic tradition in America, since demographic shifts in America with the development of non-Western musical forms influencing the public, have generated a considerable amount of interest and support today for a multi-cultural agenda with multi-cultural perspectives toward creating music, creating new art and in teaching. Notwithstanding, the Western polyphonic tradition constitutes a specific musical repertory and substantial theoretical discourse, that entails hundreds of years of musical development in integrating linear and vertical pitch relationships—the relatively recent advent of non-Western musical influences in 20th century Western music and performance practice with mutually exclusive compositional criteria, will undoubtedly effect Western music's continual development in America—presumably inhibitive. That there are "cross-over" effects and relations in contemporary American music with both Western and non-Western compositional elements are at best a musical compromise, since American composers who have advocated and have applied non-Western compositional criteria in their music have yet to contribute to the underlying tenets of advancing polyphony, as this may not have been their aesthetic intentions nor interests. Thus the apparent dichotomy and position taken that "non-experimental" and "experimental" serial music have little in common—other than their common source of origin (i.e., Schoenberg-Webern)—may be tenable, since the avant-garde music of the experimental serialists have generated a multitude of various styles (e.g., chance, aleatoric, minimalism, free-jazz, etc.), each having little to do with the music that has been promulgated by Monod et al. in the Western polyphonic tradition. Further, the American experimental tradition in music is more likely to develop into two related but distinct movements of indigenous American musical culture—one containing the more academically influenced repertory with various musical and multi-cultural influences; and the other, consisting of music with an iconoclastic "downtown" aesthetic—each development having less in common musically with their European-derived influences (N.B.: it may be interesting to note that Monod's editorial work include one of America's earliest 'experimental' and academically trained composers, namely the music of Charles Ives).Moreover, to state that the development of Western polyphonic music has been the result of a largely "Euro-centric" activity is inaccurate, since the history of modern Western music during the 20th century for example, has been very much a "multi-cultural" creation, if taking into consideration that creating and promoting Western music has been a widely-practiced activity and international in scope; and is therefore by definition a multi-cultural phenomenon, albeit derived from European sources. To a certain extent, the advanced polyphonic music and legacy of Schoenberg has left an indelible mark in the history of mid- to late 20th century contemporary music in America and abroad, as a result of major promoters, such as the work by Monod, et al. Well-endowed orchestras and ensembles in America will also continue to include the music of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
in their repertory. However, if the over-arching concern is whether there would be a role and future for 'new' American "serious" music (e.g., music that is polyphonic and European-derived) promoted by the likes of Monod and others, their influence may appear less over time, as this genre of music may be relegated to the larger category of non-correlated musical genres, including non-Western musical forms and practices in contemporary American music; while the influence of a solely Western and more specifically, a European-derived, American "polyphonic" music, appear either gradually assimilated or ultimately ignored for the time being by the forces of American popular culture, the masses and of modern society. Contemporary American music may evolve into its own indigenous 'identity' or it may take generations before a renewal of interest occurs in America for serious contemporary music with European influences.
Theorist and editor of Schoenberg and Ives
During much of the 1970s, Monod taught courses in music theory and analysis to Columbia students with an original theory of tonality which has yet to be published.Monod has also edited numerous works for publication at Mobart Music Publications/Boelke-Bomart, Inc. (now part of Jerona Music Corp.), where he was editor-in-chief for thirty years between 1952-1982. These scores include Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
' Central Park in the Dark, Hallowe'en and The Pond; and Schoenberg's Kol nidre, Op. 39 and the Three Songs, Op. 48; and two works that are arguably among Schoenberg's greatest works from his late period, namely the String Trio, Op. 45, and A Survivor from Warsaw
A Survivor from Warsaw
A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46, is a work for narrator, men's chorus, and orchestra written by the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg in 1947. The initial inspiration for the work was a suggestion from the Russian émigrée dancer Corinne Chochem for a work to pay tribute to the Holocaust victims of...
, Op. 46; and Webern's Quintet for Strings and Piano.
Monod's editions of Schoenberg's music have been described as the standard by which other [editions] are to be judged (Haimo 1984). In 1983, Monod edited and published at Mobart, "René Leibowitz 1913-1972. A Register of His Works and Writings".
Teacher at Columbia and Juilliard
During the summer of 1977, when Paris was all the rage for the newly designed Centre Georges PompidouCentre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
and IRCAM
IRCAM
IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...
, Monod returned to Paris under the sponsorship of the Sterling Currier Fund to direct an advanced music composition seminar at Reid Hall
Reid Hall
Reid Hall is a complex of academic facilities owned and operated by Columbia University that is located in the St. Germain des Prés district of Paris, France. It houses the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in addition to various graduate and undergraduate divisions of over a...
. Students were primarily from Harvard and Columbia, including the Harvard-educated composer, Christopher Yavelow
Christopher Yavelow
Christopher Yavelow , the son of a film professor and visual artist, is a composer and proponent of computer assisted composition....
, and a former composition pupil of Chou Wen-chung, Joel Freedman, et al. During the remainder of the late 1970s, Monod continued to teach at Columbia. In the early 1980s, Monod returned to France and taught theory and analysis at the Sorbonne, returning several times to New York City to conduct performances of modern music. Later during the 1990s, he returned to New York City, devoting the remainder of his years as a pedagogue at the Juilliard School, where he taught advanced theory and analysis, composition, and conducting. Over the years, Monod has also given private lessons to talented musicians, including those influenced by mathematics and the computer sciences: many occupy various professional positions in the USA and abroad in the areas of conducting, composition, and theory.
Although Monod's theoretical work and pedagogy primarily at Columbia have focused on the development of Western polyphony from the earliest examples of plainchant to J. S. Bach to Schoenberg, the music of his many former students (and those who were affiliated with Monod through his editorial work) represents a diverse array of genres, cultures, and styles, from contemporary "classical" music to electronic music and beyond. Among them are the composers, Leonard Bogat, Jack Briece, Bruce Hobson, Robert Pollock, Martin Matalon
Martin Matalon
Martin Matalon is an Argentine composer and musician, and recipient of the 2005 Grand Prix des Lycéens and 2001 Prix de L'Institut de France Académie des Beaux Arts...
, Manuel Sosa, Dariush Dolat-shahi, Eve Beglarian
Eve Beglarian
Eve Beglarian is a contemporary American composer, performer and audio producer of Armenian descent...
, Eugene Lee, Conrad Pope
Conrad Pope
Conrad Pope is an American film composer and orchestrator. He has collaborated with acclaimed composers such as John Williams, James Newton Howard, Danny Elfman and Alexandre Desplat.-Background:...
, Thanassis Rikakis, Maurice Wright, Jeffrey Hall, Thomas S. James, Joel Feigin, Pablo Ortiz, Eric B. Chernov, Tod Machover
Tod Machover
Tod Machover , is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist....
, Mark Hagerty, Daniel Plante, David Winkler, Michael Rothkopf, Bernadette Speach
Bernadette Speach
Bernadette Speach is an American avant-garde composer.-Biography: was a nun at St Joseph of Corondelet from 1966 to 1977, teaching music in parochial schools during that time. She studied with Nicholas Roussakis at Columbia University and with Franco Donatoni at Siena in 1976. After 1977 she left...
, Philip Lasser
Philip Lasser
Philip Lasser is an American composer, pianist, and music theorist. He is a professor of music at the Juilliard School in New York City.-Career and contributions:...
, Kitty Brazelton
Kitty Brazelton
Kitty Brazelton is an American vocalist, composer, flutist, and lead singer of the art-rock/alternative rock/avant-garde jazz band Dadadah. Brazelton is the daughter of pediatrician and author T. Berry Brazelton....
, David Glaser, James Walsh, Meir Serrouya, Peter C. Clark, and Harold Bott, Jr. Monod also taught students who specialized in musicology, several becoming prominent, including Richard Taruskin
Richard Taruskin
Richard Taruskin is an American-Russian musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis. As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia...
at the University of California at Berkeley, David Bernstein at Mills College, Michael Beckerman at New York University, Clovis Lark at the Utah Symphony Orchestra, Sean Y. Wang at the University of Houston, and the composer-musicologist, Otto Laske.
Monod has also taught conducting to many who have specialized in this profession, including Peter Schubert, Michael Alexander Willens, Gilbert Levine
Gilbert Levine
Sir Gilbert Levine, KC*SG is an American conductor. He is considered an "outstanding personality in the world of international music television."-Education:...
, Markand Thakar
Markand Thakar
Markand Thakar is an American conductor. He is music director of the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, principal conductor of the Duluth Festival Opera, and co-director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Conservatory.-Biography:From the age of six,...
, Joel Eric Suben
Joel Eric Suben
Joel Eric Suben is an American composer and conductor known primarily for his recordings of music by contemporary American and European composers.- Early Years :...
, Peter Frewen, Rachael Worby
Rachael Worby
Rachael Worby is an American conductor who was the First Lady of West Virginia, she rose to fame during her long tenure as Music Director and Conductor of the Symphony Orchestra in Wheeling, West Virginia...
, David Leibowitz, Richard Fletcher, et al.
Association for the Promotion of New Music
In 1975, Monod established a new music publishing firm, the Association for the Promotion of New Music (APNM), consisting of many works representative of the New York "uptown" movement and beyond. Notable works include the music of Eduard SteuermannEduard Steuermann
Eduard Steuermann was an Austrian pianist and composer. The actress Salka Viertel was his sister...
, Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
, Edward T. Cone
Edward T. Cone
Edward Toner Cone was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist.Cone studied composition under Roger Sessions at Princeton University, receiving his bachelor's in 1939...
, Arthur Berger
Arthur Berger
Arthur Victor Berger was an American composer who has been described as a New Mannerist.-Biography:Born in New York City, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston...
, Godfrey Winham
Godfrey Winham
Godfrey Winham was an English-born music theorist and composer of contemporary classical music who moved to the United States....
, Will Ogdon
Will Ogdon
Will Ogdon is an American composer. He taught at the University of California, San Diego beginning in 1966, and retiring in 1991.He was originally from Redlands, California...
, Ursula Mamlok
Ursula Mamlok
Ursula Mamlok is a German-born, American composer and teacher.-Education and influences:Mamlok was born as Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany and studied piano and composition with Professor Gustav Ernest and Emily Weissgerber until her family fled Nazi Germany following the nationwide pogrom in 1938...
, Rolv Yttrehus
Rolv Yttrehus
Rolv Berger Yttrehus is an American composer of contemporary classical music.He holds degrees from the University of Minnesota and University of Michigan and a Diploma from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He studied harmony with Nadia Boulanger and composition with Ross Lee Finney, Roger...
, George Edwards, Philip Batstone, Robert Ceely, Mark Hagerty, et al. Monod has also edited music for APNM, including Godfrey Winham's Composition for Orchestra and Stephen Peles' Intermezzo for solo piano.
Personal life and close associates
Monod was previously married to the soprano Bethany BeardsleeBethany Beardslee
Bethany Beardslee is an American soprano particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music....
; and later, to a translator of East German descent, Margrit Auhagen.
His closest associates in America include the composers, Earl Kim, Seymour Shifrin, Arthur Berger, Mario Davidovsky, Claudio Spies, and Malcolm Peyton; and in France, Michel Philippot.
Notable relatives
Monod is from one of the oldest families of the French (but of Swiss origin) Protestant bourgeoisie with a history since the Napoleonic EraNapoleonic Era
The Napoleonic Era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory...
of wide-ranging influences in French government, theology, the sciences and medicine, banking and the arts. His great-great-grandfather, Adolphe Monod
Adolphe Monod
Adolphe-Louis-Frédéric-Théodore Monod , was a French Protestant churchman. His elder brother was Frédéric Monod....
, was a noted pastor and theologian. His father, Pierre Monod was a noted surgeon. His cousins include the naturalist Théodore Monod
Théodore Monod
Théodore André Monod was a French naturalist, explorer, and humanist scholar.-Exploration:...
, the industrialist-politician Jérôme Monod, Jacques Lucien Monod
Jacques Monod
Jacques Lucien Monod was a French biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and Andre Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis"...
, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist, the pharmacologist Daniel Bovet
Daniel Bovet
Daniel Bovet was a Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of drugs that block the actions of specific neurotransmitters. He is best known for his discovery in 1937 of antihistamines, which block the neurotransmitter histamine and...
, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
film director Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
.