Theater and Cabaret Music of William Bolcom

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

Today’s program focuses on the theater and concert songs of two prolific ad versatile composers, Darius Milhaud and William Bolcom, who met as teacher and student and went on to become close friends and musical colleagues. Bolcom first came to Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival in 1957. He had been awarded a full scholarship to pursue a master’s degree at Yale under Paul Hindemith the next fall, but after a summer studying with Milhaud, decided to follow him to Oakland, California where Millhaud was teaching at Mills College. This was a post Milhaud had assumed in 1941 when he and his wife Madeleine were forced to leave France, and where he continued to spend half the year after his return to his homeland in 1947. Bolcom’s decision was a fruitful one; he came to Milhaud as a fully-trained composer (“Maître” was not interested in teaching “technique”). And they shared a love for Latin music and rhythms. Milhaud had lived in Brazil for two years early in his life and some of his most famous works, including Le Boeuf sur le Toit, Scaramouche and Saudades do Brasil, borrow heavily from Brazilian popular tunes and dances. In addition, Bolcom was taken with Milhaud’s mastery of polytonality, the technique of writing music in more than one key at a time.

After a year at Mills College, Bolcom followed Milhaud to Paris, where he enrolled as his student at the Paris Conservatory (1959-61). The tone of Milhaud’s classes was polite, warm, open, and decidedly un-dogmatic, a great contrast to Paul Hindemith’s class of the time. Milhaud enjoyed showing his own new works (there were many) as well as making comments on their work. It was after class one day that Milhaud showed Bolcom a libretto which had been sent to him by his son in Florence. It was the work of an American poet on a Fulbright Scholarship – Arnold Weinstein. “Too American,” said Milhaud, suggesting it was better suited to Bolcom. Letters were exchanged, and the Bolcom/Weinstein collaboration was born. The libretto, Comedy of Horrors, became Dynamite Tonight, Bolcom’s master’s thesis for Mill’s College. Dynamite enjoyed a very successful run at the Actor’s Studio and off-Broadway, directed by Paul Sills; it was revived by the Yale Repertory Theater in 1966 and in 1977 as well. Since the 1964 premiere of this piece, they have written Greatshot (1968), Cabaret Songs Book I (1978) and Book II (1983), Casino Paradise (1990), and are scheduled for an October 1992 premiere at the Chicago Lyric Opera, McTeague.

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