ABSTRACT
Peter Mennin and George Rochberg defy simple classification. Both dedicated themselves to abstract works in classical forms with symphonies at the core of their output. Mennin completed his First Symphony in 1941 at the age of 18 while he was a student of Normand Lockwood at the Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio. In the New York Herald Tribune, Virgil Thomson described the Third Symphony as ‘an accomplished work, in a sense that its shape holds together and that its instrumentation is professional. The Third Symphony aroused much comment and it was performed throughout the United States. The structure of the symphony is radically different. The emotional heart of the Ninth Symphony lies in the dignified, elegiac central Adagio. The First Symphony shows the influence of three composers he greatly admired, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok. In the symphony he brings the past into collision with the present, simultaneously commenting on the present with the greater wisdom of the past.
