William Bolcom was 17 when he first read William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience." He was so moved by the visionary poetry that he began setting it to music. Over the years, he tucked the pieces into a big, gray envelope and finally, in 1982, turned them into a massive three-hour composition.
The extravaganza uses 46 of Blake's poems and requires 300 instrumentalists and vocalists. Last November, the work made its English debut at the Royal Festival Hall in London. BBC Radio aired the entire performance live. Bolcom even got good reviews, he says, "for an American."
"Songs" is Bolcom's most famous composition, largely because of its length and its variety of styles, ranging from rock and reggae to American ballads and English dances. But the expense and logistics involved in presenting a work that calls for everything from a children's choir to a rock band make performances rare. Since it premiered in 1984, "Songs" has been produced only 12 times in six cities, including Chicago and New York. The New York Times critic described the 1992 Carnegie Hall performance as "astonishing, exhilarating, exhausting and exasperating."
Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Ironically it was not for "Songs" but for his far lesser-known "12 New Etudes for Piano." He claims that winning a Pulitzer is like winning an Oscar: "You always get it for something later."
Bolcom started playing when he was 2 years old, picking out "I Love You Truly" with one finger. At 11, the Seattle native started studying music at the University of Washington and wrote a string quartet. In 1961, he came to Stanford to do a doctorate in musical arts in composition. Now he composes for the New York Philharmonic and the Boston "Pops" Orchestra, teaches composition at the University of Michigan and records with mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, his wife of 22 years. Together they have made 19 albums.
At 59, Bolcom is still composing eclectic pieces, sitting at a $20 drafting table that he found in New York 30 years ago. He doesn't use a piano because he hears the music in his head as he writes down the notes.
"He writes effortlessly, and he's a delight to work with," says William Mason, general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which recently commissioned its second Bolcom work, based on the Arthur Miller play, A View from the Bridge. Miller himself called him to do the project for the 1999 Lyric Opera season, and Bolcom says he felt honored by the request. "I just do whatever amuses and interests me," he says. Fortunately for his fans, that's just about everything.
--Karen Springen, '83
