David Rakowski (b.1958)

## Introduction

**David Rakowski** was born in **St. Albans Vermont.** In High school he played trombone and keyboards in a rock band called **"Silver Finger"**. He received his musical training at **New England Conservatory, Princeton,** and **Tanglewood** and studied under composers **Robert Ceely, John Heiss, Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard, Paul Lansky, and Luciano Berio.** He finished his dissertation in 7 years at **Stanford University** after a 1 year appointment.

## Work Analysis

He has been known as *"That Piano Etude Guy"* in the press as he has written so many, (upwards of 70 and ironically, does not play the piano per se!). Within the confines and structures of some of the pieces can be found rather funny performance directions such as hands crossing over each other as the left and right hands switch playing the into their respective bass and treble areas, thus twisting the performer into knots. Musically, they are quite related to **Berg** in their tone color and textures, though without the use of 12 Tone rows. I his **"Stolen Moments : I. Fast"**, he uses a Jazzy pulse throughout, while exploring what perhaps at first sounds very atonal, but is actually far from it. His use of Jazz chordal structures along with the combinations of orchestral wood winds and horn primarily makes for a playful sounding orchestra interspersed with solo piano moments, (more of that Piano etude mentality!). More than anything, he seems to avoid the staid sounding atonalities of modern composing bringing a freshness to the work that even in his slower and more reflective pieces, ("Stolen Moments: II. Slow and expressive"), there is a mischievous glint i the eye of the composer as a hint to take much of the music not too seriously.

## Comparisons

The composer himself has likened his work, (specifically his Piano Etudes), to **Bartok, Berg, Brahms and Martino**. Though both **Berg** and **Martino** both used 12 Tone rows for composing, **Rakowski** has only ever used it once for a Jazz ensemble piece called **"Overdrive". Frank Zappa** posed the question as to whether humor belongs in music. **Rakowski** certainly believes that is so and much like **Zappas** own "serious" music, fits them with titles such as **"Schnozzage",** where parts of the melody are indeed played by the performers nose, (though that is more like a direction from someone like **John Cage**, who also had a sense of humor about his work and music.

## Observations

His use of "Jazz" chord structures as in the "Etude 68 **Absofunkinlutley"** is a playful piece that melds Jazz structure with Classical form in a seamless melange. Nothing feels forced in any way and is reminiscent of **Bartok or Berg** in its "atonality", though not in the way 12 tone rows tend to be. "*Atonal is sort of lingua franca for a kind of music that doesn’t use diatonic scales and triads. So I use it. I think of my music as tonal. Every piece has its own tonal center and voice leading, and sonorities that I tend to use more than other sonorities, and ways of getting to places rhythmically and harmonically that are a lot like, say, what Brahms does over a long range of structures in voice leading. But there are no priority sonorities and no priority scales. There are no filters like that. There are simply just the chords that feel good to me, and when I get to a place and this sounds like the right chord, that’s sort of where I stop.*

## Works Cited

http://home.earthlink.net/~ziodavino/album1\_001.htm

http://www.ziodavino.net/

http://www.wqxr.org/story/delicious-wit-composer-david-rakowski/

https://www.bmop.org/explore-bmop/musicians/david-rakowski

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/david-rakowski-the-piano-etude-guy/

https://www.bmop.org/explore-bmop/musicians/david-rakowski