SAN DIEGO — Receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 did not radically transform Roger Reynolds' career. About the only difference is that the 57-year-old composer now has more commissions on his desk than he has time to complete.
"After spending half of my life working to get to the point where I can realize my aspirations, I now have more opportunities than I can possibly handle," said Reynolds. Articulate and soft-spoken, Reynolds is the quintessential philosopher-composer. All he lacks is a pipe and tweed coat with suede elbow patches, touches too obvious for the natty UC San Diego music professor.
Faced with a surfeit of composition projects, Reynolds could easily resolve his problem by leaving teaching and devoting all of his energy to composition. It is a step he considered and rejected "out of pure economic cowardice," not to mention the continuing stimulation of his UCSD music students.
Reynolds' compromise is to hole up for weeks at a time in his monastic Borrego Springs hideaway and do nothing but compose.
But, if winning the Pulitzer has stimulated a fresh spate of compositions from Reynolds, the opportunity to hear his music today is no greater than before 1989. There has been no appreciable increase in the performances of his music, especially in this country, where the award carries the most weight.
When Reynolds' former UCSD faculty compatriot Bernard Rands won the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1984, Rands had just begun a three-year stint as composer-in-residence for the San Diego Symphony. For three consecutive seasons, local audiences heard a revealing sampling of Rands' orchestral music. After the Philadelphia Orchestra appointed Rands composer-in-residence in 1990, that orchestra took one of his orchestral suites on a cross-country concert tour.
"At first, there were a flurry of inquiries," Reynolds explained. "But when they looked at the scores, their interest cooled. My music is demanding and not as straightforward as that of some contemporary composers."
Originally trained as an engineer, Reynolds brought a highly conceptual approach to his composing. Even when he does not use computer-generated sounds in his music, he uses the computer to solve compositional problems and to plot each work's substructure. Now that accessibility has become the byword in contemporary American music, Reynolds' style, which favors atonal, abstract and densely textured scores, could not be more out of step with musical fashion.
Tonality in music has made an unexpected comeback, and the easy-listening minimalism of Philip Glass and John Adams' dramatic stage collaborations with Peter Sellars have caught the public imagination.
Reynolds takes some comfort, however, in the continued acceptance of his music abroad.
"For some reason, my music flourishes more in international circles, especially in Japan, England, France and Finland."
The reception of Reynolds' first two symphonies is symptomatic of this polarity of attitudes. When the San Francisco Symphony premiered Reynolds' first symphony, "Symphony (Vertigo)" in 1987, San Francisco Chronicle senior critic Robert Commanday dismissed the 21-minute work as a disorienting collage of self-canceling musical effects. When the Tokyo Philharmonic gave the inaugural performance of Reynolds' second symphony, "Symphony (Myths)" last season, Toru Takemitsu, Japan's premier composer, wrote a laudatory program introduction to the new work in which he praised Reynolds' "new poetics of sound."
With Reynolds' upcoming two symphonies, scheduled to be presented respectively by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Diego Symphony in their 1992-93 seasons, the composer will at long last have opportunities to make his case to mainstream audiences in Southern California. Tentatively titled "Seasons of Life," the five-movement symphony for the L.A. Philharmonic was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation. With that commission and Pulitzer in hand, Reynolds approached the Philharmonic to premiere the symphony.
"When Roger came to us, it was really a mutual courtship," explained Ara Guzelimian, L.A. Philharmonic artistic administrator. "We had been interested in his work for a long time, and he knows (music director designate Esa-Pekka) Salonen. Given Salonen's strengths in new music, it seemed the right match."
When the philharmonic performs Reynolds' symphony, it will be the first time Los Angeles subscription audiences will hear his music, although the Philharmonic's New Music Group played a chamber work, "Mistral," on one of its concerts in 1985.
