'Wonderland' led composer through looking glass preview
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Soprano Hila Plitmann will sing the role of Alice in "Final Alice," composed by David Del Tredici and based on the last two chapters of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
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American composer David Del Tredici risked his career in the late 1960s when he began to move toward tonality, the common musical language of classical music for most of the past 400 years. After all, tonality had been pushed to the side in the mid-20th century as academic 12-tone and post-modern music dominated. But Mr. Del Tredici, who was only in his 20s at the time, didn't set out to start a counter-revolution. He felt the subject of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" stories pulled him to tonality.
"I resisted going tonal," says the composer. "I thought it was old and I would be made fun of. But I felt that the text demanded it. Its wit and whimsy and its Victorian charm I didn't think could be set any other way."
As Mr. Del Tredici started to traverse the fantastical world of Carroll (the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-98), he slowly began to shift from 12-tone music to the lush tonal style that occasionally recalled the Romantic sound of the 19th century.
"I did it very gradually," he said. "My first 'Alice' work -- 'Jabberwocky' (from 'Pop-Pourri' of 1968) -- was atonal. It was a monster and it could be atonal, but there was a chorale in it; I was using found tonal objects."
- With: Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Hila Plitmann, soprano; David Conrad, narrator
- Program: 'Peter and the Wolf' and 'Final Alice'
- When: 8 p.m. Friday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday
- Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown.
- Tickets: Start at $12; 412-392-4900.
"An Alice Symphony" (1969) cast tonality "like a visitor from another planet." "Vintage Alice" (1972) went further -- it is tonal, but with different keys competing with each other. It was only in "Final Alice" (1976), which the Pittsburgh Symphony will perform in its rare full version this weekend, that Mr. Del Tredici took his biggest step. Written for soprano-narrator, folk group and orchestra, he felt "it had to be really Romantic and tonal."
It was "Final Alice" that really jolted the orchestral community in the United States. No less than the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered it in 1976.
Leonard Slatkin, the Pittsburgh Symphony's principal guest conductor, was at the premiere, and explains it with a paradox: "It was not like anything we had ever heard, but it was like everything we had ever heard.
First Published May 5, 2011 12:00 am
