Matthew Greenbaum

Matthew Jonathan Greenbaum is an American composer and university professor best known for his composition Nameless, a 25-minute wordless psalm for three sopranos and two chamber ensembles. His music is characterized by lyricism, humor and contrapuntal complexity. Since 1974 he has worked with the same near-diatonic collection, which he treats as a sound object, vocal gesture, and polyphonic complex. Greenbaum is on the graduate faculty of the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lives in Manhattan. His work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the New York Foundation on the Arts.

Early life

Greenbaum was born in 1950 in New York, New York. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lehman College, studying privately with Stefan Wolpe. As a graduate student, he studied under Mario Davidovsky at City College of New York, from which he received a Master of Arts. In 1985, he earned a Ph.D. in Composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center.[1].[1]

Composer

Greenbaum has produced a broad canon of music in the symphonic and chamber music tradition. His compositions have been widely performed in New York city, Boston, Philadelphia, and Germany. Music critics generally allow his work to be highly complex, often alluding to literary work such as Ovid's Metamorphoses or the writings of Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky,[2] and sometimes challenging to play.[3] His work has been described as simultaneously witty and serious,[4] "succinct and broadly expressive,"[5] "poised and inventive,"[6] persuasively fluid and contemplative,[7] and "thorny."[8] New York Times music reporter Allan Kozinn describes Greenbaum as blending "antique rhythmic and melodic gestures" with "prickly, dissonant harmonies."[9]

Greenbaum is known for incorporating elements from very early music as well as contemporary allusions into his music. For instance, his composition Spherical Music alludes both to ancient dance forms and Thelonious Monk, according to Philadelphia Inquirer music reporter Daniel Webster.[10] Greenbaum's music also incorporates elements of early music like the fifteenth-century Italian Faenza codex.[11] Traces of early music appear throughout his work, especially that of the Trecento and the French Baroque. A long immersion in world literature, particularly in French and German, informs such compositions as L'homme approximatif (Tristan Tsara), Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Bernard de Fontanelle), Rope and Chasm (Nietzsche), and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (Whitman). The chamber opera A Floating Island is based on the Laputa episode in Gulliver's Travels. Greenbaum's childhood in New York's Lower East Side tenement community is reflected in nostalgic and wise-cracking titles such as You Crack Me Up (piano solo), 23 Skiddoo (electronic sound) and I Saw the Procession of the Empress on First Avenue (visual music).

Greenbaum's work is sometimes played in tandem with Wolpe's works, especially in concerts devoted to Wolpe’s students, who include Morton Feldman, Ursula Mamlok, and Raoul Pleskow.[7][12][13][14][15] Greenbaum's "Double Song for Viola Sola: In memoriam Milton Babbitt” is an homage to that composer’s contrapuntal inventiveness.[16]

Many of his works have also been recorded. Greenbaum's most significant work is Nameless, a 25-minute wordless psalm for three sopranos and two chamber ensembles, composed for the Momenta Quartet and the Cygnus Ensemble, which bears a quotation from the Medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides.

Though the majority of Greenbaum's compositions fall into the categories of symphonic and chamber music, in 1997, he made a departure, writing an opera titled Ovidiana, which is based on three of the stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Commissioned by the Network for New Music, Ovidiana features a libretto written by Martine Bellen, Greenbaum's sister in law. It premiered at Thomas Hall at Temple University and Greenbaum's wife, Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène, sang one of the roles. Eight instruments performed the music and the singers were masked during the premiere.[17][18]

Greenbaum said he got an idea for the opera while traveling in Leningrad. There, a tour guide characterized the city as built on the blood of slaves. Greenbaum used that idea in retelling Ovid's story about the founding of Thebes. The opera incorporates elements from Baroque music, Balkan dance, and "modern sonorities." Ovidiana reflects on the Roman belief in an inexorable fate.[17][18]

Greenbaum is also a video animator, who often incorporates animation in his works. The most significant of these is Rope and Chasm, an hour-long setting of excerpts from Friederich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. It consists of a series of episodes in which the performer sings and speaks with a recorded musical score and reacts to the video characters who themselves speak. It has been performed by the Israeli-American mezzo Re’ut Ben Ze’ev on a concert by the Philadelphia Ensemble, Network for New Music.[19]

Critic and teacher

Since 1998, Greenbaum has served as a professor of music composition at Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance.[20] Greenbaum has also written on Debussy, Schoenberg and Varèse in relation to Wolpe’s dialectical and “cubist” approach to musical structure. He is a former president of the League of Composers—International Society for Contemporary Music.[21]

Awards

Greenbaum's awards include the following:[1]

Selected Works

Solo Instrument

Solo Instrument with Piano

Chamber Music

Chamber Music with Voice

Theater Works

Visual Music (video animation and electronic sound)

With instruments/voice

Commissioned works

Recordings

  • Psalter, Joyce Castle/Parnassus.
  • Prospect Retrospect for cello and piano: Fred Sherry/Blair McMillen
  • from A Floating Island: Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène/Network for New Music.
  • Castelnau for string quartet: The Momenta Quartet.
  • Elegy: David Holzman, piano.
  • Untimely Observations, for viola and piano: Stephanie Griffin/Blair McMillen.
  • Nod Quiet Ox for oboe and piano. Fabian Menzel and Bernhard Endres. Antes/Bella Musica .
  • Amulet, for piano solo. David Holzman, Centaur CRC 2291.

Articles

Greenbaum is the author of the following articles:

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Matthew Greenbaum". American Composers Alliance. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  2. ↑ Holland, Bernard (6 May 1993). "A Requiem for a Russian". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  3. ↑ Buell, Richard (29 March 2000). "Fromm Players introduce compelling, creative pieces". Boston Globe. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  4. ↑ Rothstein, Edward (4 October 1991). "Parnassus Gives a Benefit for Itself". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  5. ↑ Webster, Daniel (4 November 1997). "School's Contemporary Players Open Season". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  6. ↑ Holland, Bernard (8 October 1994). "Silence and Salesmanship In a Program of New Music Merkin Concert Hall". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Griffiths, Paul (3 March 1998). "Two Restless Piano Works Come Home". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  8. ↑ Midgette, Anne (13 October 2005). "A Thorny Program, Made Piquant Rather Than Prickly". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Kozinn, Allan (6 May 2005). "A Modern Foray Into The Past". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  10. ↑ Webster, Daniel (30 March 1996). "James Freeman With Orchestra 2001". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  11. ↑ Allan, Kozinn (1 May 2005). "The Week Ahead May 1-7; Classical Music". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  12. ↑ Webster, Daniel (28 October 1999). "Oboist As Muse And Interpreter". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  13. ↑ Ross, Alex (3 October 1992). "Parnassus Plays Wolpe Ethical Culture Society Auditorium". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  14. ↑ "Jewish Music". New York Times. 6 January 1987. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  15. ↑ Griffiths, Paul (15 October 2002). "Wolpe at 100, Still Full of Ideas and Anger". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  16. ↑ Williams, Jeffrey. "MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series in Review". New York Concert Review. New York Concert Review, Inc. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Webster, Daniel (6 May 1997). "An Operatic Retelling Of 3 Ovid Tales". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Webster, Daniel (2 May 1997). "Gearing Up For His Opera's Premiere At Temple". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  19. ↑ "Rope and Chasm". Video interview. New Music Network. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
  20. ↑ "Matthew Greenbaum". Faculty biography. Temple University. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  21. ↑ Oestreich, James (30 October 1996). "When New Is Old and Modern Is History". New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  22. ↑ "Guggenheim Foundation awards fellowships to 283". New York Times. 8 April 1984. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  23. ↑ Greenbaum, Matthew (Summer 2002). "Stefan Wolpe's Dialectical Logic: A Look at the "Second Piece for Violin Alone"". Perspectives of New Music 40 (2): 91–114. doi:10.2307/25164488. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
  24. ↑ "Matthew Greenbaum - Google scholar citations". Citations list. Google. Retrieved 18 May 2014.

External links