MOVEMENTS

Not quite a review - but ...
with KELLY FERJUTZ

On a typical balmy day in Hollywood during October of 1958, a Russian-born composer headed for his studio, and a possible new composition. He wasn't too sure what it would be, exactly, but that had never been any sort of problem for him. Composing came rather easily to him, not at all difficult as it had sometimes been for his fellow-countryman, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

As he walked into the room, he noticed a box on a shelf and wondered what it contained. He didn't recall having put it there. Being of a curious nature, he picked up the box, and was astonished by its weight. Rather, the lack of weight. He shook it, of course (wouldn't anyone?), and it rattled. Well, actually, it sort of hissed, as though full of small pieces of paper, perhaps. Something like confetti, swishing around in there. Very strange. He decided to take it to his desk across the room and see just what was in there.

A breeze came up just then, and, wafting through the open windows scattered several large sheets of paper across the floor. It was new, unused music paper, already imprinted for orchestration purposes, with a line for each instrument. When he was younger, he'd used every one of those lines, and then some. He loved density! In his later years, however, once he'd created Neo-Classicism, he had been able to cut down on the number of lines needed per page. Sometimes he'd already put notes on lines, only to have to discard them later. But there were always more notes available where those came from.

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