Der gerettete Alberich, Fantasy for Percussion and Orchestra
Christopher Rouse (born in 1949)
Composed in 1997.
Premiered on May 15, 1998 in Cleveland, conducted by
Christoph von Dohnányi with Evelyn Glennie as soloist.
Christopher Rouse, a native of Baltimore, was largely self-taught in music before entering the Oberlin Conservatory in 1967 to study composition with Richard Hoffmann and Randolph Coleman; he received his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin in 1971. Following two years of private study with George Crumb in Philadelphia, he enrolled at Cornell University, where his teachers included Karel Husa and Robert Palmer; he graduated from Cornell in 1977 with both master’s and doctoral degrees, and a year later joined the faculty of the School of Music of the University of Michigan. Rouse taught at the Eastman School of Music from 1981 to 2002, and has been on the composition faculty of the Juilliard School since 1997. From 1986 to 1989, he served as Composer-in-Residence with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; at the invitation of Leonard Bernstein, he was Composer-in-Residence at the 1989 Santa Cecilia and Schleswig-Holstein festivals. He has since held residencies at the Tanglewood Music Festival (1996), Helsinki Biennale (1997), Pacific Music Festival (1998), Aspen Music Festival (1999), Pittsburgh Symphony (2004-2005) and Phoenix Symphony (2006-2007).
Among Rouse’s many distinctions are the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in Music (for the Trombone Concerto), 2002 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition (Concert de Gaudí for guitarist Sharon Isbin), three BMI/SCA Awards, American
Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Music, Rockefeller
Chamber Works Award, Friedheim Award of Kennedy Center,
grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the
Arts, Warner Brothers, American Music Center, Guggenheim
Foundation and Pitney-Bowes, and honorary doctorates from
Oberlin College and the State University of New York at Geneseo; in 2002, he was elected to the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. In addition to his activities as a composer and
teacher, Christopher Rouse is also active as a rock historian and as a writer on various musical subjects. He is author of William Schuman Documentary, published jointly by Theodore Presser and G. Schirmer, Inc.
Der gerettete Alberich (“Alberich Saved”) initially gave Rouse pause as to its expressive tenet. “If the solo part could represent a character, and the piece could be specifically programmatic, or at least semi-narrative, I thought it could
work,” he recalled. He found his inspiration in that most powerful of all music dramas — Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. “At the end of Götterdämmerung [the cycle’s fourth and final opera], the greedy dwarf Alberich is the only main character who is still alive,” Rouse explained. “I’d always
wondered what happened to him, and decided to have a little fun with that idea. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but not making fun of
Wagner — more a case of having fun with Wagner….
“One of Wagner’s most interesting decisions in the Ring was
to leave unclear the fate of Alberich, the villainous dwarf who set in motion the inexorable machinery of destiny, leading in the end to the apocalyptic cataclysm that concludes Götterdämmerung. As is so often the case in Wagner’s operas,
Alberich is more than a cardboard villain and is not entirely
unsympathetic; however cruel his actions, they are often the
result of mistreatment at the hands of others. Thus, it is possible to recognize the inherent evil of his nature and deeds and yet still discern some measure of humanity in him and, in the process, to feel compassion for his plight.
“As Alberich’s whereabouts are unknown at the end of the Ring, it occurred to me that it might be engaging to return him
to the stage, so to speak, so that he might wreak further havoc in what is quite literally the godless world in which Wagner has left us in the final pages of Götterdämmerung. Der gerettete Alberich seeks to present a series of imagined moods which might underline Alberich’s possible state of mind after the conclusion of the cycle. Rather than a concerto, the piece is more of a fantasy for solo percussion and orchestra on themes of Wagner, with the soloist taking on the ‘role’ of Alberich. The solo percussionist plays from three stations placed close together (but still spatially separate) at the front of the stage.
“Much of the musical material in the work is derived from a
number of motives associated with Alberich in the Ring, among them the motives for The Curse, The Power of Gold, The Renunciation of Love, Annihilation, The Nibelungs and, of
course, The Ring itself. Only Wagner’s ‘Redemption through
Love’ motive stands beyond the ken of the other Alberich-related motives I have used, though I have rather maliciously distorted it to suit the purposes of my ‘hero.’
“Notwithstanding the discernible tripartite structure of Der
gerettete Alberich, this work is somewhat looser architecturally than other scores of mine to which I have appended the title ‘concerto’ — hence my decision to refer to it as a ‘fantasy.’ Beyond a brief passage in which Alberich serves a stint as a rock drummer, I was not attempting to paint specific pictures in this score. However, the listener is free to provide whatever images he or she likes to the sonic goings-on.”
Notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda