Interview with Charles Wuorinen
Main Article Content
Abstract
Dear readers of the journal
“Problemy muzykal’noj nauki / Music Scholarship”!
The editorial board of the journal “Problemy muzykalnoj nauki / Music Scholarship” is happy to present an interview with the famous American composer Charles Wuorinen. At the present time Wuorinen is the most well-known composer of twelve-tone music in the USA. He was born in New York City in 1938, studied at Columbia University in New York, and subsequently taught at many universities and conservatories in the USA, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music (New York), Princeton University and Rutgers University (New Jersey), New England Conservatory (Massachussetts), etc. In 1970 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his electronic composition Time’s Encomium, composed with the use of the RCA Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In his music Wuorinen adheres to the musical traditions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky (especially the latter’s late period), and asserts that he was most influenced in his music by American composers Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt and German émigré to the United States Stefan Wolpe. The composer was also inspired by the fractal theories of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Similar to Babbitt, Wuorinen has incorporated serial rhythm, in many cases projecting the latter onto the formal structures of entire compositions, following his own invented system. From 1962 to the mid-2010s, along with composer and performer Harvey Solberger, he was one of the leaders of the concert series, the Group for Contemporary Music, devoted to performance of works by contemporary composers. In the 1970s Wuorinen wrote an orchestral composition A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky, in which he incorporated the last musical sketches of the great master. Wuorinen is the author of a book on serial music, titled Simple Composition, which he characterizes as a manual for composers, meant to teach them how to compose music, and not a music theory book analyzing already composed works. Wuorinen’s music is well-known in the USA and in the countries of Western Europe, where there are frequent premiere performances of his new compositions, among which it becomes proper to name his eight symphonies, his trilogy of ballets based on the theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy, compositions for chorus and orchestra on Biblical themes: Genesis and A Celestial Sphere, music for piano, various chamber ensembles, percussion ensembles and several operas. Music lovers in Russia have yet to discover for itself the music of this intriguing composer (see website
www.charleswuorinen.com), and we hope that this interview, which is the first publication about the composer in this country, shall serve as an impetus for further popularization of his music in Russia.
Article Details
Copyright
The rights on the results of intellectual activity and equated means of individualization are protected in accordance with Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. The authorship, author's name, executor’s name, inviolability of the work and result of execution are protected by the rules of Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation of the author or executor, regardless of providing legal protection of such results of intellectual activity at the time of their forming.
Copyright laws regulate the civil legal relations for using works of science, literature and art. Such relationships are formed as the result of the author’s writing his or her texts. In this case the author can rightfully claim copyright of the work.
The author has certain rights to reuse the work (see: “Ethical Aspects in Terms of Multifold Publications).
Licenses
All copyrights on the articles belong to their authors. The author transfers the rights on using the article the publisher.
PDF versions of scholarly articles of the journal PMN are published by using the license Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives cc by-nc-nd, allowing loading and distributing works on the assumption of indicating the authorship. The works may not be changed in any way or used for commercial interests.
Criteria for Authorship, Co-authorship
The term “author” refers to all persons (co-authors) who have made a substantial contribution to conducting the research and creation of the manuscript and responsible for its content. The person (author) who has submitted the manuscript to the editorial board shall bear responsibility for the complete list of the group of authors and the changes made to the manuscript in accordance with the results of the peer reviewing and editing.
1. Authorship is based on the following criteria:
1) The author made a substantial contribution to the research activity and development of concept, collected the data, made analysis and interpretation of the data.
2) The author carried out the writing of the text of draft articles and edited it attentively and substantially.
3) The author approved the final version of the article prior to its submission.
4) The author bears responsibility for the integrity of all parts of the manuscript.
2. The authors shall guarantee that the submitted manuscript is the original work.
3. Scholarly reviews for some issue or other should be objective, present material in a wide range and at the same time take into account the views of the author of the review.
4. The authorship of scholarly publications is obligated to reflect accurately the contribution of individuals to the research activity, with specific information about the authors.
5. The authors may not mislead the readers by publishing acknowledgements of gratitude to people who were not actually involved in writing the work. Other persons who made contribution to the work, but are nevertheless not the authors, may be listed in the rubric of “Acknowledgements,” with indications of the type and extent of their activities.
6. Authors are obligated to provide a description of their contribution to the publication.
7. The order of authorship must be a joint resolution of co-authors. The authors should be ready to explain the order of their enumeration and listing.
8. The authors shall be entirely responsible for the correct definition of authorship acting in accordance with the rules adopted in their institution.
9. Investigators must ensure that only those persons who meet the criteria for authorship (that made a significant contribution to the work), shall be considered the authors, and the researchers who do not merit authorship will be excluded from the list of authors.