Arts and Letters

Primavera! How Peter Mennin did love the sound and meaning of this word.

I had, on several occasions, approached Peter to consider a production of the Stravinsky-Gide mélodrame, Perséphone, at the Juilliard School. I had played for him the final sections of this great work, translated Gide's words for him. "For Spring to be reborn / The seed must consent to go underground and die / So it may come up again / The future's golden grain." These words are fitting today as I speak to you about our friend and fellow member, Peter Mennin.

He was born in the springtime. And he died in the springtime, a few months past his sixtieth birthday, the younger son (there were two) of Italian-born parents. He was only five years old when his piano teacher insisted that he learn the listening disciplines of solfeggio. This teacher, Tito Spampani, considered the piano a tyrant, and thought that only a good ear could conquer the tyranny of good fingers.

Peter was seven when he composed his first piece for the piano. He even tried to compose a symphony when he was eleven. We used to laugh a lot, in the early forties, when I first met him in the lower promenade corridor of the Eastman School in Rochester—tall, young, brash and handsome, debonair some called him, beautifully turned out in dress and demeanor, enthusiastic and ambitious, he knew that I, the older person by eight years had, in my Eastman years composed much but also discarded much that, once heard, I knew should not be heard again. In the school's Sibley Library was a first symphony in one movement composed when I was eighteen, overloaded with intricate chromatic counterpoint (this attracted Peter to my music, he told me) and Franckian harmonies and treatment, long melodic lines of cranky melodies and some sour notes. Peter had that piece of juvenilia clear in his mind's ear when we met. He told me more about my music then I knew myself. I had been performed regularly these years but I had not quite come to a point in my creative work when an assessment was necessary. So we went across the street to the Town Tavern on Gibbs Street where we drank our drinks and talked for what seemed like hours, he avidly questioning me about the great figures I had known in Europe, I embroidering tales (all true) of their foibles (which I found more interesting) rather than their virtues (which are almost always dull by comparison).

He had come to Eastman from the Oberlin Conservatory with a first symphony and a first string quartet. For a year he was in the Army Air Force and in 1943, upon being discharged from military service, he returned to the Eastman School, where he remained for four years. It was at this time that he showed me the first movement of his second symphony which I suggested he enter in the George Gershwin Memorial Competition, and, as Symphonic Allegro it won the prize and was introduced by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1945. His visit to New York was as sprightly and boisterous as the music itself, and at the party afterwards, Peter was all that his heritage had made him—volatile, assertive, ingratiatingly charming. The combination of Bernstein and Mennin energies was near-pulverizing. His self-assuredness antagonized the mediocre and the jealous but attracted the younger as well as some of the older impartial composers present.

Between 1945 and 1947 Peter had obtained his necessary degrees and left Eastman with his Ph.D. And not many regrets. He was specific about that and remembered that I had left there in 1934 with sparks flying in all directions from Dr. Hanson's office ("part of the Diamond legend," he told me).

In 1946 our Institute and Academy awarded him one of its prizes. Soon there would be a Naumburg Recording Award. Employment being essential, he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1947, then under William Schuman's direction I think, and remained there for eleven years during which time he married Georganne Bairnson whom he had known and fallen in love with while both were at the Eastman School. Georganne, selfless, beautiful, and commanding in presence, was Peter's radiant support. They were wonderful to look upon. Two marvelous children, Mark and Felicia, would come from this marriage. And success followed fast his inevitable accomplishments as composer and administrator of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where he would set up projects for young conductors and singers.

In 1962 he was appointed the fifth president of the Juilliard School, serving in that capacity until his death twenty-one years later, longer than previous presidents. When last I spoke with him, and he was already ill, there were plans, ideas, hopes for composers, faculty increases, building possibilities, recordings by Juilliard faculty and students. He was adamant about the latter, so many superb performances—by the orchestras particularly—could not be recorded because of union regulations. And the marvel of it all is that he was able to find time to compose as much as he did, even under pressure—nine symphonies, choral and chamber music, concerti—and there were even rumors of an opera in progress.

Peter had the attributes of a gentleman. And he seemed, especially in his last years, to be a gentle man as well. At times, when he was kindest and most considerate, it was often difficult to get close to him. I believe he knew more about me and others than I and others knew about him. He had fought hard in my behalf when he wished to bring me to the Juilliard School to teach. I was a controversial person, he was told by some of the trustees, and he would answer that he had known me for many years and far better than they did, and convinced the trustees that my qualifications as one of the best teachers was what mattered, and no matter my provocations, for, he is reported to have told them, and confided to me many years later, "David shoots from the hip. And on target. And has good reasons before he shoots. He doesn't put up with the unfair. He gets results even though you want to poke him one because in the long run he is on the right side, and well-meaning."

He knew much about music without the scholar's panoply of florid language. He hated gimmicks, fads, and opportunism as much as I did. We had that bond in common. We worked in large traditional forms and tried to imbue them with fresh vigor and imagination. We had no use for trivialities or dogmatism. If Art was Freedom, we wondered, why did so many free-floaters in the avant-garde spew so much dogmatism and ill-will? Even as president of the Juilliard School he was able to accomplish much by remaining a modest rather than an aggressive figure. He could be tough. But he was never hard or insensitive.

As he aged he became more distinguished in appearance. He laughed good-naturedly once when he took the words right out of my mouth, almost anticipating (perhaps from where my eyes were focused) my thoughts when he said, "I know, I know. You can't stand my sport shoes with custom-tailored suits." He seemed to be becoming more introspective and retiring. The youthful charm and energy were transformed into a physical sensibility of rare quality slightly tinged with sadness. Was I imagining this because I too had been going through periods of trial, tests, surgery and waiting? I don't think so. It was there, around his eyes, and in the way he entwined his long fingers as though anticipating some oracular statement. But the energy, in life and work, though often proportioned and postponed, remained intact and vital, in his music and in his duties. Music and responsibility were inseparable. But he was sometimes angry when he could not achieve what he had set out to do. For him, a practical attitude lived comfortably and constructively with his search for fresh and honest ways to express what the Past had accomplished with conviction and courage.

His melodies sang in long lines (he called them canti), with the full voice of his heritage, not sentimentally but with the dignity and the benevolently noble sonority of the Florentine and Venetian schools of vocal and dramatic music. His harmonies were rich, often explosive, his counterpoint expert, brilliantly articulated and masterfully manipulated. His orchestration had heat but it could turn icy too. His architectonic conceptions were large. Peter always thought big in a grand way because he could make small things seem expansive, the way Mozart and Beethoven taught him to do. Craft for him was the whole and more than all. If Peter felt himself to be as "one small bird," contrary to the elegiac poet, his wings fluttered vigorously, his forms were Seen and his strong voice Heard.

Peter Mennin showed us that, with his formidable courage and a reserve of quiet humor, he could delay the ravages of his mortal illness. He must have known that the immanence of death had the impermanency of unresolved conflicts. With them out of the way there would remain a larger permanency—his music. And here too he knew the reserves of the future were without guarantees of survival. He once said to me that a composer's "staying-power" as he called it, depended more on the good-will of the performer than it did on the virtues of the music; that no matter how limited the good-will, good music, honest music, fearless and strong music without frills or trills of affectation were more important aspects of creative survival.

Performance at Juilliard was his prime interest. Peter believed compulsively in life's potential for positive fulfillment. He once criticized me, one day in the late forties, when a burst of creative energy produced in me the need to set to music, in about ten days, ten poems on death and dying. "They're all beautiful," he said, "and very moving. But why don't you affirm your faith in life too?" And he added in his practical and wry way, "You'll need them for contrast, otherwise your audience will collectively commit suicide. What a blood bath in Town Hall." He was right, of course. "There are lakes and parks and light and darkness," he went on. "You spend too much time in the cemeteries. Are you that depressed?"

Peter "wore at his heart the fire's center," if I may paraphrase Stephen Spender. He was born of the Mediterranean sun, "travelled a short while toward [that] sun, / And left the vivid air signed with [his] honour."