William Bergsma, Composer

William Bergsma reviews

William Bergsma's “Wishes, Wonders, Portents, Charms” was given its first performance at Avery Fisner Hall Wednesday night by the National Chorale, which had commissioned the piece...The new work is in three sections, which concern themselves successively with childhood, maturity and death. But all three interrelate, and there is something simultaneously childlike and despairing throughout. The music is simply diatonic and supported by only a few instruments, but the way Mr. Bergsma makes use of his forces sounds fresh and attractive. This is one piece that should have a future with other choral groups, instead of disappearing after its premiere.

Music:Bergsma - "Wishes" THE NEW YORK TIMES FEBRUARY 15, 1975

Kurt Stone has described Bergsma's music as "resourceful and imaginative, essentially tonal, texturally conventional and predominantly lyrical." - ROB BARNETT

Opera: The Wife of Martin Guerre

Richard Franko Goldman, writing in Musical Quarterly, praised Bergsma’s opera The Wife of Martin Guerre for its lyricism, clarity, and skillful orchestration:

“Bergsma possesses what is possibly the rarest thing in American Music: a genuine lyrical gift of the utmost refinement. The sensitiveness of his line is extraordinary, as is the delicacy and clarity of his contrapuntal texture … Bergsma ranges from unaffected gentleness to intense passion without descending to the commonplace…” morningstarmusic.com

The Complete Piano Music (Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International)

This detailed review assesses the first commercial recordings of Bergsma’s piano works:

“Bergsma’s music is resourceful and imaginative, essentially tonal, texturally conventional and predominantly lyrical.”
Barnett notes that the piano collection ranges from Tangents (which alternates between neo-Bachian spiciness and kinetic, Copland-like energy) to the Fantasies and Variations, the latter described as a much tougher nut to crack than the other two pieces.
He concludes: “He always has something strong to communicate.”musicweb-international.com

Luening / Ussachevsky / Bergsma – A Poem In Cycles And Bells & Other Music For Tape Recorder (Aurora Rising, 1958/2016)

You would never believe this record to be a relic from a past of electronic music that happened before anybody even spoke about rock music. In 1957 this compilation of electronic and orchestral compositions by the three masterminds Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky and William Bergsma saw the light of the stars for the first time and has become a cult piece among lovers of electronic space music since then, despite the fact that only the first side features the so called tape compositions of Luening and Ussachevsky from the 50s while Bergsma’s lengthy piece from the B side gets performed by a regular orchestra consisting of living beings. You certainly have to lay back and let yourself drift away upon this stream of sound but it is still a very human effort all in all. All instruments are for real and even though this piece of music moves within the narrow borderlines of classic orchestral music patterns, there is a warm and gentle flow of energy pouring out of it and reaching out for your mind.

Violin Concerto by William Bergsma (22:25 Min.)

William Bergsma's music is difficult to pidgeonhole. Strictly speaking, he does not follow the trends set by any of the early twentieth-century giants, such as Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky or Hindemith, nor has he been felt as a force in the avant garde. All of his work has been devoted to a furtherance of the tradition- al musical media. One can see in it strong emphasis on linearity. He is a lyricist and a contrapuntalist. His structures are Beethovenian in their economy of means and he shows marked interest in integrating contrasting timbres.

Bergsma was somewhat of a prodigy, He was born in 1921 and at the age of 16 wrote Paul Bunyan Suite for his high school orchestra which is still played by such groups. He studied at Stanford and at Eastman with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. He received a Guggenheim in 1946 and taught at Juilliard from 1946 to 1963 when he was appointed Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington in Seattle. Probably his most extensive work is his opera, The Wife of Martin Guerre. In it one senses a typical Bergsma concern, extreme attention to the balance between voice and orchestra, which manifests itself as well in the Violin Concerto (1965) in the careful relation he makes between the orchestral and solo lines.

Bergsma's caution against overextending himself with dramatic force shows in the reserved manner in which he treats anything virtuosic. He is never flashy, but always concerned with precise relations between individual sounds. One arresting tech- nique is his manner of treating the temporal spacing of harmonic elements. It provides pointed references in time, very cyclic, though in a style that is not primarily rhythmic in its emphasis. This, along with constant lyric and contrapuntal variations pro- vides deep structural strength in a music poetic in impact.

There is a long list of works to Bergsma's credit. Some important ones, besides the piece presented here and the opera, are his Second Quartet (1944), commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, Tangents, a large work for piano, a Symphony, Music On a Quiet Theme for orchestra, The Fortunate Islands for string orchestra and his Toccata for the Sixth Day, commissioned for the inaugural week concert of the Juilliard Orchestra in 1962 during the week of dedication of Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

DAVID ROSENBOOM

As can be deduced from his music and his teachers (Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson) Bergsma is a traditionalist inclined to melody without much interest in the atonal. His major work is the opera The Wife of Martin Guerre (a plot well known from various films) substantial extracts from which were on an old CRI LP. His strong melodic talent (perhaps comparable in that work to the present day Daniel Catán) is evident from that work. That talent flows in strength into the 1965 Violin Concerto. Accepting that the hyper-tense lyricism alludes somewhat to William Schuman's concerto (e.g. III 2.04) the overwhelming voice is one that can be compared with Frankel and Walton. There is nothing of Stravinsky or Hindemith. Bergsma's gift for song rises to one of several peaks at the start of the second movement. He carries with him none of the cloyingly heavy honey of the Barber concerto. This is a masterful movement and the work is well worth the investment for the Bergsma alone. I hope that in due course someone will record his viola concerto - Sweet Was the Song the Virgin Sang.

ROB BARNETT

In the old LP days one might often be introduced to a composer because he (or she) occupied the obverse side of an album that you bought for what was on the other one. That happened to me once or twice with the composer William Bergsma (1921-1994), I believe a Turnabout and a CRI LP (which I still have around here someplace). The music impressed me to a point that I sought out other recordings of his music. Time moved on and at his passing in 1994 I was not aware of much coming out of his. Yet he left an impression that made me jump at the chance to hear a newly issued recording of his music, The Voice of the Coelacanth (Centaur 3371). It is an anthology of chamber works for small ensembles and solo piano, spanning a time period between 1943 and 1983.

These are mature, modern works in a kind of neo-classical style somewhere between Stravinsky and Hindemith, that somewhere being Bergsma's own turf. Thematic memorability and drama are embedded in harmonically advanced terms.

We get "The Voice of the Coelacanth" for violin, horn and piano (1981), which has a dramatic turn that makes especially good use of the power and dynamics of the horn. "Changes for Seven" (1971) for woodwind quintet, percussion and piano has a rather dreamy yet declamatory sort of gestural quality and again makes the horn stand out from the ensemble at points.

Then there are two suites for solo piano, "Three Fantasies" (1943, rev. 1983), and "Tangents" (1951), both of which cover a lot of moods and modes in impressive ways.

The performances are very decent, sometimes very, very decent. In the end you are exposed to a good batch of first-rate Bergsma, who indeed still deserves to be heard and comes through with plenty of excellent music to contemplate.

Any student of 20th century American modernism would profit by getting to know this disk--and derive some genuine pleasure as well.

GAPPLEGATE CLASSICAL-MODERN MUSIC REVIEW MARCH 25, 2015