In 1978, a tonally groundbreaking opus by a female composer caused a stir at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, which had the objectively descriptive title Music on Open Strings: music on open strings, i.e. not fingered. At that time, being a woman still made a huge difference to one's artistic career. When Gloria Coates appeared on the musica viva program in Munich in 1980, it was the first work by a female composer to be performed in this concert series, which was founded in 1946. Music on Open Strings is a particularly successful example of the radical path taken by the American composer and remains one of her best-known works to this day. […]
There is also a historical model for the two vocal works “We sound alone” and “Cette blanche agonie”, completed in 1988: the orchestral song. The Mallarmé setting also takes on a concert-like character through the inclusion of a wind soloist who is almost always required to be virtuoso. For her orchestral songs with posthumously published late poems by Paul Celan (1920–1970) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), Coates chooses texts by two poets who were considered radical at the time, whose sometimes cryptic content invites many attempts at interpretation. […]
Coates' “16. Symphony” was initially located outside the series of her symphonies. As “Time Frozen” for chamber orchestra, it was on the occasion of the Hamburgers’ 25th anniversary
Concert series “The New Work” was created. After later revision, which, among other things, resulted in new movement titles, the piece became her last contribution to the genre. Even if music as a temporal art ultimately evades the idea of freezing, i.e. standing still, it is still possible to play with different ideas of time musically. […]
Michael Zwenzner