13 x 7 Anniversaries: Bernard Rands

Dan Albertson

[April 2025.]

[To Chester Liu 劉瓊頎 and Ellen Huang 黃珮雯 and their adorable kids.]

Far too often, the days, months and years slip away unnoticed, almost untouched. Bonds form and loosen if not dissolve, and as the cast of characters undergoes its periods of expansions and prunings, one is lucky to be left with a handful of souls that transcend labels and the limitations of friendship. This article is an homage to such a person, perhaps without the ability of being objective but written in the double spirits of affectionate and deserved gratitude and general spreading-the-word.

Composers do not always resemble in person the experience of listening to their music. Bernard Rands, while not reduced to a replica of what he composes, is nonetheless not far from it, the timidity of a mighty intellect coupled with fires seething deep within, of having much to say but being judicious if not constrained with what he allows himself to utter. A factor of intimidation could enter the equation, as well, but he is more than capable of standing on his own merits. No excuse or justification needed, he is aware of his stature, at times in disbelief of it, and while never doubting what he can do, also never seeking shortcuts.

For dozens of Fridays beyond counting, there we sat and chatted (and drank) the night away. Bernard is a racconteur of the highest order, for two reasons. He has experienced three-quarters of a century of musical life, first and foremost, but none of his anecdotes would be indelible if not for the delivery, which is impeccable. Who else still among us can speak of taking a long train to Cologne and shivering in the city’s Hauptbahnhof with Earle Brown ahead of the première of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen or of joining future sirs Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies at the première of the Requiem Canticles by Igor Stravinsky? Or of road trips, ones admittedly in which imbibing in moderation was not the way to go, with Luciano Berio and Umberto Eco? Or, thinking of his own career, of having works premièred by Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez, Cathy Berberian, Dorothy Dorow, Roger Woodward, Barry Guy, Francis Pierre, Robert Levin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Seiji Ozawa, and the list goes on?

A life spent in the service of music, moreover, in Bangor, in York, in San Diego, in Boston, in Cambridge, plus many summers at Aspen or Tanglewood. A daunting list of former students, working in myriad styles in continent after continent, testifies to his commitment to music as a relay of much more than technical information – lessons could be about fine-tuning, for sure, but could also be about completely extramusical subjects: language, philosophy, cooking, poetry (as a young man, he was unsure whether to follow music or literature as his vocation). A man of sharp opinions about people and their music, not always dovetailing with the consensus, and not always a simple pro or a simple contra, especially when the personality is factored in, he can exude both charm and ire, but then again, music is a matter of high stakes: for him, the orchestra as it exists is the defining peak of centuries of artistic evolution.

Rather than rattle off memory after memory (basta!, his voice chides), the intention here is to recall a selection of pieces from his six decades of composing. His output can be broadly subdivided into three periods, the first stretching until the mid-1970s, more or less coterminous with his decision to leave the UK and settle in the USA, where aleatory processes, occasional graphic notation and extremes of virtuosity lead to works in which the effect is visceral and overwhelming. What followed is a postmodern turn, one motivated, it can be guessed, less for commercial considerations than the sense of having exhausted the earlier trough: music, inexhaustible as it may be, does tend to drive its practitioners into dead ends from which, if they are wise, they will liberate themselves in due time. This period, hints of which linger into the present day, stretched in its purest form until the early 1990s, when a musical language of greater harmonic richness, with avowed debts to Claude Debussy (perhaps most conspicuously in the Concerto for English Horn from 2015), gradually moved to the fore.

For a contemporary composer, Rands is not bad off discographically, but even so, there are gaps that one can only hope will be redressed in future years. In chronological order – forgive the laziness – here are some of Rands’ notable achievements:

Metalepsis II (1971): A child of ‘68, and a child of Berio, for sure, but a mighty step toward the future, a solo mezzo-soprano is shadowed by six voices and a vivid array of twelve players. John Wain at the textual core, but with citations from sources sacred and profane.

Madrigali (1977): Five short movements based on Claudio Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals, each dedicated to a former student, scored only for flute, oboe, horn, trumpet, percussion, and strings, a deliberate stripping-down. In expanding upon Monteverdi, Rands reinvents himself.

…body and shadow… (1988): A breakthrough orchestral work, a synthesis of all that preceded it, potent and enigmatic, betraying its secrets only with the utmost reluctance without veering into the inscrutable.

Canti trilogy (Canti Lunatici, Canti del Sole and Canti dell’Eclisse) (1980–92): Multilingual song-cycles for soprano, tenor and bass, respectively, and all in ensemble versions alongside their orchestral counterparts, catenations of epochs and tongues and interludes, shimmering tapestries cut from a single cloth despite their far-flung origins.

Preludes (2007): A piano cycle, twelve of course, encompassing elegies and nocturnes and showpieces, a fount of unabashed melancholy.

Chains Like the Sea (2008): An orchestral diptych for the New York Philharmonic, elusive and familiar all at once, wisps worth grabbing onto, nonetheless needing time to form a sure way of navigating.

Dream (2019): A potent, at times almost fierce, tempest, surprising vehemence for a composer then in his mid-80s. Composed in the same year was the Symphonic Fantasy, with a gentler disposition and a more rhapsodic bent but no less urgency.

Chant (2021): Unknown, unheard, but listed here as a reminder to programmers – an orchestral work awaiting its musicians.

Many other pieces could be cited, deserving of a dusting-off and an infusion of new life. The sad reality of composers, as much as any other form of artist burdened by delusions of permanence, is the ephemerality of what they do, not only in the sense that music is air made to vibrate, then allowed to return to silence, but also in the broader sense of their work fading from concert life or public presence over time – within the span of their lives, celebrated or otherwise, but also into the great beyond known as a legacy. Great, and few, are the composers who survive their own age and illuminate the troubled times of another, and no one can know who they will be. Great, too, are those of more modest aims and ambitions, who write, teach, perform, partake of existence in all its richness, and leave treasures in their wake. We can at least hope that in the present case more and more candle-bearers will join the torch parade.

[Cover of “Rands at Oberlin” with Concerto for English Horn (2015) and Canti del Sole (1983), Oberlin Music OC20-01.]