An Interview with Composer Earle Brown

Abstract

The following interview with Earle Brown, in which he discusses his evolution as a composer, was conducted on 25 September 1995 in connection with the then-forthcoming premiere recording of Brown's complete piano works performed by David Arden, which the interviewer produced: Music for Piano(s), New Albion Records. NA082CD.

Keywords:

• Earle Brown
• Form
• Graphic
• Interview
• Notation
• Open
• Schillinger System

Notes

[1] See Dowling & Shaw (1946).

[2] Composed in 1952.

[3] Composed in 1951.

[4] The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts was an influential Los Angeles dance academy founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, in operation from 1915 to 1931.

[5] It is unclear which work Earle means. Messiaen has no works or movements with this title.

[6] In full, Mode de valeurs et d'intensités, 1949, from Quatre études de rythme, 1949 – 1950.

[7] Composed in 1952/53 and later known under the collective title Folio and Four Systems, 1954.

[8] Composed in 1954; see above.

[9] Composed in 1952.

[10] Formally Octet I, composed in 1953.

[11] Composed in 1952. In an email to Dan Albertson on 4 December 2006, Christian Wolff explained, ‘The tape piece used by Merce was called For Magnetic Tape and the dance was called Suite by Chance’.

[12] Composed in 1966.

[13] Composed in 1953.

[14] The common English title of Bergson's Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Occasionally, the proper French title is taken as a subtitle, An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.

[15] Earle's memory is somewhat mistaken, as he was more than fourteen years younger than Cage, and Morton Feldman was nearly thirteen-and-a-half years younger than Cage.

[16] Earle may be right; I have been unable to confirm this.

[17] Earle was nearly right. The precise title is The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind.

[18] Composed in 1961 and 1962, respectively.

[19] Notoriously unfinished, despite being premiered in 1957; in progress since 1955.

[20] Composed in 1956.

[21] Leonard Bernstein.

[22] Composed in 1954.

[23] Composed in 1954.

[24] Written in 1950 with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford.

[25] Karlheinz Stockhausen.

[26] Earle is referring to Music Before Revolution, released not on RCA, but on EMI Electrola.

[27] Composed in 1963/64.

[28] Another late work, written in 1992.

[29] In full, Turangalîla-Symphonie, 1946 – 1948.

[30] Formally Hodograph I, composed in 1959.

[31] Earle is likely referring to Donald Jay Grout's History of Western Music. As this book was first published in 1960, before the Available Forms were composed, he must be referring to the 1973 revision.