The Music of Vivian
Fine
Wallingford Reigger
American Composer’s Alliance Bulletin,
vol 8 no. 1, 1958
The subject of this article could easily have had
a career as a concert pianist, as I have recently
heard her play—most brilliantly and
beautifully. At the age of five she was given a
scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. Later
she studied with Djane Lavoie-Herz, who had been
a pupil of Scriabin. Under her guidance she went
through a huge repertoire, from Bach right on
down, playing in her teens, as she says,
“many of the works of Scriabin.”
Evidently, as we shall see, the Scriabin
influence was a determining factor in her
creative work in spite of her conventional
theoretical studies. These began at the age of
thirteen with Ruth Crawford, with whom she had
four years of harmony and composition, to be
followed by counterpoint with Adolf Weidig. She
moved to New York in 1931 and, beginning in 1934,
studied counterpoint, composition and
orchestration for several years with Roger
Sessions, at the same time continuing her work at
the piano with Abbey Whiteside, while finding
time to appear occasionally in public.
But her early contact with Ruth Crawford had
awakened the desire to create, and at the age of
seventeen she already showed her mastery of
dissonant counterpoint in her charming Four
Pieces for Two Flutes.
All the works in this earlier period were
atonal (i.e., devoid of diatonic tonality) at the
same time with no suggestion of twelvetone
writing.
Her second period, from 1937 to 1944, is
characterized by a more diatonic style of writing
and includes many fine works. The Race of Life,
brilliantly scored for small orchestra, was
written for Doris Humphrey and reveals an
astonishing versatility. Its weakness is the
weakness of all music written for a dance already
composed choreographically, that of episodic
treatment. It is to be hoped that the composer
will do some surgical operations on the work (as
I have had to do with the New Dance) to make it
satisfactory as a concert number: the material is
far to good to let fall by the wayside.
The third and last period to date is marked by
a return to atonality, tempered occasionally by
key impressions. One of the most successful
numbers in this category is A Guide to the Life
Expectancy of a Rose.
The idea of using such a prosy and factual
theme for musical treatment came to her via the
garden supplement of the Sunday edition of the
New York Times, where there appeared an article
bearing that title by a certain S.R. Tilley. This
she set for two solo voices (soprano and tenor)
plus five instruments—the pick, one might
say, of the softer instruments. By the use of
exaggerated stresses and clever prosody she has
transformed the pedestrian seriousness of the
words into something hilariously funny.
The music opens with a long six-measure phrase
containing many melodic elements, more or less
non-committal in character. One has the
impression that this is merely the process of
getting off the ground while the singers try to
look interesting. The consequent phrase begins as
a repetition, but in the second measure decides
to become an inversion. Presently the voice
(tenor) begins in a recitative manner, marked
“parlante”, which I take it, is a
gentle hint that the words are important and have
nothing to do with the German Sprechstimme. As
can be seen, there is but one accompanying
instrument (the ‘cello) for this stretch of
eight measures, presumably to keep the singer
from flatting.
As regards the prosody, the over-all plan
seems to be the alternation between the rhythm of
the spoken word and the exaggerated emphasis on
the unimportant syllables, giving a more or less
comical effect. Thus prosodical faithfulness is
carefully plotted in note values until the high G
flat. The stress on this note, however, seems to
be from purely vocal considerations, the vowel
being a good one. The next phrase, “and it
is possible,” has been stretched out to
five beats instead of a reasonable two; after
that there is more of this subtle
alternation.”
For some time now—well over a
generation—the deliberate stressing of
unimportant words and syllable has been quite a
la mode, le dernier cri, the hallmark of
emancipation, so to speak, in vocal writing, in
which turn of affairs, alas, twelve-tonism has
had its share. To our thinking this technique is
justified only in comedy, as, for example, in the
Mikado: “A source of innocent merriment, of
innocent merriment.” The present work is
another felicitous example.
To continue: following the exciting thought,
“At the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens there
are many that have been flowering for 25
years,” there are seven measures of
agitation in the flute and clarinet.
Throughout the work there is plenty to
intrigue the academic mind. There are recurring
themes, or rather fragments, but seldom a direct
repetition as such, thus heightening the
disarming casualness of the music. At the close,
lest one take it all too seriously, the
“man” intones again and again the
provocative thought, “And it is, and it
is,…,” while the “woman”
(the more talkative) has the complete sentence:
“And it s impossible to quote any real
statistics as to the longevity of a
rosebush.”
To sum up. It is true that we are gradually
overcoming our provincial attitude in regard to
adulation of anything from abroad at the expense
of the American product. Recognition, long
overdue, of Vivian Fine’s contribution
would be another step in this direction.
Here are the views of some others who got
there before me:
“In Line with the unusual instrumental
combination in Miss Crawford’s Three Songs
is a group of four songs by Vivian Fine,
published in 1933: “The lover in winter
plaineth for the spring” (sixteenth
century), for voice and viola; “Comfort to
a youth that had lost his love” (Robert
Herrick), for voice, violin and viola; “She
weeps over Rahoon” and “Tilly”
(both by James Joyce), the first for voice and
string quartet; the second, for voice, two
violins and ‘cello. It becomes increasingly
evident that at last American song writers are
beginning to adopt the procedure of their foreign
colleagues, and are making use of other than the
formerly invariable piano accompaniment for their
songs, thus opening up a field of new and almost
limitless possibilities.
“As we are to give later and detailed
examination to one of these songs, we content
ourselves for the present with noting some
distinctive effects in the last song
“Tilly.” First of all, the composer,
in the first four measures of this song, proves
to us once again the accuracy of the
equation:
6/8 + 9/8 + 3/4 +3/8 = 6/8 x 4
And this is far more than an interesting
mathematical formula for it testifies to the
composer’s meticulous care in handling her
declamation—an unfailing virtue in Miss
Fine’s song writing. In this song, too, our
composer shows that she is not unmindful of her
classic studies, for she introduces a true canon.
It has to be admitted, however, that while the
voice is, perhaps the voice of Bach, the hands
are indeed the hands of Schönberg.
* * * * *
“Turning now to the song by Vivian Fine
(“Comfort to a youth that has lost his
love”) we behold the ancient mold shattered
to fragments, and song emerging as a purely
instrument form….The voice part here,
considered as an atonal melody, is well
conceived. Indeed its first phase, from the
viewpoint of Schönbergian atonality, is well
nigh perfect, for in its fourteen tones it makes
but one repetition and omits no single tone of
the duo-decuple scale….The declamation is
extraordinarily well handled. Could anything be
more natural in its rhythmical nuances that the
setting of the first phrase, ‘What needs
complaints, when she has a place with the race of
saints?’ The rhythmic alertness and
spontaneity (almost that of the spoken words) is
one of the outstanding excellences of the
composition….Here we have the ‘new
vocal line’ and such a nice balance between
the vocal and the instrumental lines that, taken
together, the three form a homogeneous whole: a
skillful interweaving of equal
strands.”
“…As a miniature chamber work, and
as a composition representing atonality in one of
its peculiarly individual phases, this
composition is eminently successful.”
(excerpt from A Supplement to Art-Song in
America, 1930-1938, by William Treat Upton.
Published by the Oliver Ditson Co., 1938)
Lamar Saminsky, writing in the Musical Courier
on American Composers said: “Vivian Fine is
a creator of music of fine substance and
outstanding mastery….In her Concertante for
Piano and Orchestra it is a delight to follow the
novel diatonic flow. Even more impressive are her
splendid songs—beautiful in emotional depth
and a masterly mirroring of an amazingly potent,
fine intellect.”
At the start of her career Henry Cowell wrote
in “Musicalia,” a Cuban musical
review: “Among the composers in the central
part of the United States the most interesting
figure is Vivian Fine….Her work possesses a
good sense of form, and reveals a restless and
agile talent.”
More recently, Mr. Cowell wrote: “When I
first met Vivian Fine she was a Chicago girl of
seventeen, writing in the grimmest of dissonant
styles. She had developed a technique for
elimination of concord that gave her work an
angular, unladylike manner, which, however was
quite consistent. She had an extraordinary native
gift, good conventional training and the ability
to apply known principles of writing to new
media, which she handled logically and
uncompromisingly.
“In the course of her development since
those earlier times there have been many
superficial changes—dissonance has been
tempered with consonance and the form has become
more all-embracing, but the inner qualities are
the same—native gift technique and a rigid
lack of compromise with anything less than her
very best.”