Arts and Letters

In 1942 William Bergsma, a young composer fresh out of Stanford, breezed into the Eastman School of Music, where he soon became Howard Hanson’s newest “fair-haired boy.” This was a recognition of one side of this young man, his brilliantly talented and self-assured side. The other side, the sharp wit and almost arrogant intellect, would qualify him as a kind of “Peck's bad boy.” Occasionally this side got him into trouble, as when for his rather pompous sixteenth-century counterpoint teacher whose classes met in a small studio with two doors, one into the hall and the other into a closet, Bill decided to imbed “Three Blind Mice” into his imitation of Palestrina. The stuffy professor at first didn’t perceive the joke as he played through the exercise. But when he did, he rose in cold fury and, thinking to storm out into the hall, stormed into the closet instead.

Presumably this incident never got recorded on Bill's vita for when William Schuman became president of Juilliard and was of a mind to shake up the institution, one of his first appointments was Bill Bergsma. In a few years Bill became the Chairman of the Department of Composition and the new program in Literature and Materials of Music. Juilliard was a heady place in those days. The air was full of visionary ideas and optimistic dreams which have, in the decades since, spread to music education in every region of the country.

In 1963 Bill became the carrier of these visions and dreams to the northwest when he became the Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington. Within a few years he had brought about a major revision of the curriculum and strengthening of the faculty through the hiring of the Soni Ventorem Wind Quintet, the Philadelphia String Quartet, and a brilliant array of performer-teachers. He also founded the Contemporary Group, a stellar ensemble for the performance of new music. Then in the seventies he spearheaded efforts to build a performance complex to house the splendid concerts which the faculty and students were pouring forth. The result is Meany Hall which is considered one of the finest performance facilities in the country. He exercised painstaking care during the entire period of planning and construction to assure that the building was satisfactory in every detail. Today and for many years to come it will be a monument to Bergsma's solid and creative leadership.

One might well ask how he was able to continue to compose during the eight years when so much of his creative energy was being spent on administrative matters. The fact is that his musical output diminished noticeably during that time, but his acute musical perception remained very alive. For it was during this time that the greatly expanded possibilities in writing for the percussion occurred. New techniques such as “multiphonics” for winds were explored. Bartok's innovative string techniques and Henry Cowell's discovery of wonderful new resources inside the piano were becoming common in much new music.

It is not surprising then that in the burst of new music which flowed from Bergsma's studio following his release from administrative duties new facets were to be discovered in his work. He had absorbed the new vocabulary but had forgotten nothing from his earlier work. His great sensitivity to words was reflected in provocative titles such as Illegible Canons for clarinet and a lexicon of percussion instruments; Blatant Hypotheses for trombone (naturally) and percussion; and Voice of the Coelacanth. His program note on this last piece is revealing of his thoughts at the time. I quote: “The coelacanth is a large fish thought to be extinct for sixty million years, until an unwary specimen was dragged from the waters off South America in the 1930s. It thrashed indignantly for six hours, exuding large quantities of pungent oil. Its voice, if any, has not been recorded. A few others have been caught since. Although it is described as having a primitive gut, it is clearly a survivor, and I adopt it as a symbol at a time when some of my colleagues are tumbling pell-mell into tonality. I would like to report that I have never left home.”

As a matter of fact for my money, Bill was the very model of a model program-note writer. His note for his wonderful Quintet for Flute and Strings, of which more anon, reads: “When Doriot Anthony Dwyer asked me to write this piece, she was characteristically decisive. It was to be a full-scale work, and a serious one (there was enough frippery for the flute already). It was to use the full string quartet, not just three of them (she was tired of having the second violin play cards with the stage hand during her performance). I heard, trembled, and obeyed. The work is fairly straightforward. Its first movement is a first movement. The second is a short, muted Interlude, with the flute changing to piccolo. The third makes intermittent use of an irregular ground bass. The fourth is a finale.”

Now I must speak of the list of his works, the reason after all that he became a member of this Academy. This is the point at which all of us who paint or compose are at a great disadvantage in comparison with all of the writers among us. By choice I would now sit down and have you hear a few eloquent excerpts from Bill's very diverse catalog. It would serve the purpose of this tribute far better than my words. Bill's love of all kinds of music and of all kinds of musicians, whether soloists or participants in large or small groups, was total and life long. Within the list of his works are symphonies, operas, vocal works, piano pieces, and, perhaps most important of all, a cornucopia of chamber works. There too is the musical expression of a vast range of moods and passions.

Earlier I quoted Bill's bare-bones program note for his Quintet for Flute and Strings. It is a late work and to my ears one of the finest achievements in twentieth-century chamber music. The first movement begins with one of those lyric melodic lines which miraculously become the subject for extensive contrapuntal discourse. Here there is a clear echo of his earlier quartets. A perky second subject which enlivens the texture continues until interrupted by a dark and foreboding motive. What follows is extensive interplay of these ideas and a classical restatement which resolves in a restless coda.

The second movement is sheer innocence. This is a quality to which Copland gave memorable expression. In Bergsma there is the same quality equally memorable, but with a difference for here it is more remote and tinged with sadness. On each hearing I was reminded of a comment Bill made about his symbolically autobiographical work, Wishes, Wonders, Portents, Charms, dealing with childhood, maturity, and death. When questioned about some rather grim overtones in the childhood section, he remarked, “Perhaps that is because my childhood was not all that happy.”

The third movement of the Quintet again begins with one of his soaring melodies which is broken into violently and tragically by some of the harshest music he ever wrote. Strong portents of death are suggested and at one point the flute seems about to drown in the turbulence. When finally it emerges in a clarion restatement of its earlier melody, it is the voice of survival bringing immense relief. One wonders if the drama of this movement is a reflection of the very serious illness Bill had survived a few years earlier.

The finale, except for a brief reminder in the coda of the violent music of the previous movement, bubbles with joy. It is the kind of ecstasy Emily Dickinson expressed when she wrote, “Inebriate of air am I.” In commissioning the work Doriot Anthony specified, “No frippery” and for sure Bill magnificently fulfilled her wishes.

I have dwelt at some length on the Flute Quintet because it seems to me a consummation of the genius which illuminates work after work in Bill's rich output. Living on as his afterlife will be the joy which listeners and performers alike will find in his music.

He was a superb craftsman, and as a teacher for most of his professional life he passed on his knowledge of his craft to hundreds of students. Testimony to his dedication in the role of teacher is best heard from some of his students. Robert Priest has written, “He truly respected and encouraged my own eccentric eclecticism. For each student he was the facilitator of the student's own sense of growing self-awareness and self-criticism.” Another, Rob Duisberg wrote, “He encouraged me to read philosophy and history from Susanne Langer to Barbara Tuchman with the clear understanding that music relates meaningfully to such things.” Of his teaching, colleague Gerald Kechley wrote, "His perceptions were always helpful and accurate, given with honesty whether the truth was pleasant or otherwise. He expected much of himself and settled for no less from others, which I suspect is why young composers were willing to wait in line for a chance to work with him.”

The legacy of William Bergsma will long survive him. He was a composer whose music wedded the finest traditional skills with the language and spirit of this century, a visionary administrator who bettered the cultural life of a whole region of his country, a teacher who was an inspiring taskmaster, and, to those of us who knew him well, a loyal, superbly intelligent, generous, and witty friend. Let all of us be grateful for the enrichment he has given our lives.