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CRITICAL MOMENTS 2 (in nine movements) (2001)............................................... Galaxy 12'
Flute, Clarinet in B flat, Violin, Violoncello, Piano, Percussion
First performance March 5, 2002, eighth blackbird, New York, Alice Tully Hall
Cedille Records CDR90000 067 (eighth blackbird)

George Perle rarely writes music with words; his compositions are exquisitely formulated solutions to musical problems that are best confronted in their abstract state. (A lovely exception to the rule is the composer’s “Thirteen Dickinson Songs,” from 1978, which were sung by Lucy Shelton on a recent New York concert celebrating Perle’s ninetieth birthday.) Of all the American modernist composers to emerge after World War II, he has proved to be the most delectable craftsman; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1986 for his Wind Quintet No. 4. He has also authored definitive texts on the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Scriabin, Bartok, and, especially, Berg. The eminence of George Perle the expositor and theorist is so high that it may have diverted some attention away from his own compositional output. To miss the music, though, would be a mistake, according to the critic Andrew Porter, who lauds “the vividness of [Perle’s] melodic gestures, the lively rhythmic sense, the clarity and shapeliness of his discourse and, quite simply, the charm and grace of his utterance.”

Critical Moments 2 (2001) is a fine showcase for these qualities. As Perle describes it, “The instrumentation of these nine short, self-contained, and strikingly individual movements for six players corresponds to that of Pierrot Lunaire, except for the substitution of a percussion part for the quasi-spoken (Sprechstimme) vocal part of Schoenberg’s work. I had taken much pleasure in the composition of a set of six such pieces in 1995-96, and was already strongly inclined to undertake such a project again when an unexpected commission from the Naumburg Foundation gave me an opportunity to do exactly that for [the group] eighth blackbird.”

Before listening to this fetching piece, we might dwell on the double implications of its title. On the face of it, “critical moments” refers to especially intense episodes of experience—and each one of Perle’s little movements—as the air of a denouement, however quiet and subtle its atmosphere may be. But “critical” also implies the acts of evaluation and examination, and as such may be a door, however modest, into the composer’s Lilliputian formal strategies. A number of the “Moments” state a strong idea at the outset—enunciated by one player or by a group of instruments—and return to it in altered form after a diversionary idea quickly counters the first one; a general discussion of these elements follows, with the initial ideas retaining their recognizable shapes. (Some ideas, like the snare drum roll in No. 5, are dramatic devices; they undergo no change at all.) It seems like an echo of the so-called “stratification-interlock-synthesis” technique which American theorists evinced in the later work of Stravinsky, a composer also recalled in Perle’s deft and nimble rhythmic play. (The piece cries out for choreography.)

In a famous quip, Olivier Messiaen, looking over the avant-garde scene of his heyday, harrumphed about the “international grey on grey” sound-palette that infected so much postwar serialist music. But Perle, with his unique system of “twelve-tone tonality” (which readers can further explore in Paul Lansky’s essay on the composer ), never succumbed to that school. Throughout these “Moments”—as in many of his other works—there is a remarkable, and rewarding, correlation between the flow of consonance and dissonance and the expressive intentions of Perle’s ingratiating musical gestures.

—Russell Platt

PHANTASYPLAY (1995).............................................................................................. Galaxy 8’
First performance April 2, 1997, New York: Bruce Levingston

“The title Phantasyplay, derived from the German word Phantasiespiel, was chosen by Mr. Perle to
reflect the music’s spirit of ‘dual citizenship’ as well as its character, which is, indeed, both fantastic and
playful (and not unlike some of the multi-faceted fantasies of Schumann’s Kreisleriana). Immensely concentrated and certainly difficult (at least for the player), this eight-minute work essentially falls into five sections:
      (1) an impetuous, cross-rhythmic opening with daring leaps and chords, delicate double-note passages,              and jagged octaves;
      ( 2) a tender Andante in which questioning, arching intervals portend deeper developments;
      (3) a mischievous scherzando with teasing syncopations and humorous, graceful arabesques;
      (4) a haunting, dark-hued Adagio in which earlier motifs are brought to their full lyrical bloom;
      (5) a recapitulation of the opening material with a subtle, Puckish reordering of events that leads to an unexpectedly brief but explosive coda. The final clarion chord is classic Perle: restrained, yet ecstatic.”
— Bruce Levingston, program notes for the world premiere