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2022 update and expansion of original version that appeared in the 2009 AAA Festival Journal
As the reader may recall from an earlier article in this series, Robert Russell Bennett, an American Composer who will probably always be remembered more for his brilliant orchestrations of American operas and Broadway musicals than for his original compositions, was first commissioned by the AAA to write his delightful solo suite, Four Nocturnes, in 1959. A prosperous and generous-hearted person, he did this gratis for our organization. The Nocturnes were premiered by Carmen Carrozza on a program sponsored by the Association for American Composers and Conductors at Carnegie Hall in its twenty-seventh season on November 21 of that year. This was the sixth commission of the AAA Composers Commissioning Committee in its then five-year history (though the first commission did not occur until 1957 with Paul Creston’s Prelude and Dance). Three years later Bennett would take on a second, more ambitious project for its twenty-first commission.
It was typical of the committee’s chair, Elsie Bennett (no relation to the composer), to keep in close contact with all her past commissioned composers, writing to them frequently and often sending them birthday cards and holiday gifts. Many of them became close, warm friends and often dedicated their accordion pieces to her. Robert Russell Bennett was no exception to these customs. Elsie offered him the commission in a contract dated September 15, 1962. He cheerfully complied, deciding to write for accordion and string quartet, a combination inspired, he wrote to her, by David Diamond’s recently commissioned Night Music, the premiere of which he heard in company with Elsie at Carnegie Recital Hall. He told her at first that he wanted the work to be in only two movements (as was the Diamond quintet), but he obviously changed his mind later since its final draft divided into the more customary four movements.
This time around Bennett did accept financial compensation for his work, the usual AAA sum at that time of $250. (Today, of course, a composer of Bennett’s stature would require at least an extra zero to be added to that figure, and only for a short solo at best.) Nonetheless, he used much of that money to pay his copyists prior to its first performance. The piece was completed by mid-November.
The work is programmatic and carries the subtitle “Psychiatry.” There is no mention in any of the articles on the quintet or in the correspondence between the two Bennetts as to what prompted the composer to apply this extra-musical element. In a letter to Elsie, however, he made it clear that the work was to be presented in all performance programs as “Quintet for Accordion and String Quartet (“Psychiatry”),” thus de-emphasizing the programmatic element. He did not want this humorous subtitle and the other titles (more like quips or parting shots and possibly better referred to as “post-titles”) appearing over the final measures of each of its four movements to be the focus of the composition, thus potentially distracting the listener from the intrinsic value of the music itself. This is indeed a true danger to all programmatic music and often gives concern to composers. Hector Berlioz, for example, decided that the detailed program of his most famous work, Symphonie fantastique, should not be distributed to the audience at consequent performances after its debut, insisting that the music should stand on its own without its special story line. (An exception was to be made, however, whenever it was to be paired with its programmatic sequel Lélioi on the same program.)
The world premiere of Bennett’s quintet took place in the composer’s hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, and was performed by accordionist Joan Cochran (presently Joan Cochran Sommers) and string artists from the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra who formed the Mid-America String Quartet. Known and highly respected far and wide in the accordion world for nearly seventy years as of this writing, she represented the United States in the international Coupe Mondiale two years running, in 1955 and 1956, and two years prior to performing the Bennett quintet she established the highly successful accordion department at the University of Missouri Kansas City Music Conservatory. It was there, in Pierson Auditorium, on Sunday afternoon, April 21, 1963, that the performance took place. The composer was present and very pleased with both the piece and the musicians. Audience reaction was very positive as well.
The University of Missouri Kansas City’s Pierson Auditorium as it appears today and Joan Cochran around 1963 when she and the Mid-American String Quartet gave the premiere performance of Bennett’s quintet there. |
Also present at the concert was Sandor Kallai, music critic for the Kansas City Times. He had favorable things to say about the performers but expressed some concerns about the work itself. For example, he felt that the intentionally comic and cacophonic third movement (to be described below) drew too much from twentieth century devices and therefore stood out too much from the comparatively conservative styles employed in the other movements. He also thought that the accordion did not blend very well with the strings (in contrast with the views Elsie Bennett heard from the music professors present at the concert). The composer addressed these misgivings in a thank-you note to Cochran and the quartet:
| I was sorry that the critic on the Kansas City Times objected to the balance between the accordion and the quartet which, as it happens, was precisely what I was hoping for, and in those places where the accordion was part of a 3 or 4-part harmony I didn’t see how the balance could have been improved. |
Another complaint Kallai had for the above mentioned and very eccentric third movement (employing what the composer humorously described to Elsie as “chicken yard counterpoint,” to also be explained below) was that it was too “obvious” in its programmatic intent. To this, the composer remarked, “As far as I’m concerned it would be quite acceptable if it were more obvious.”
Two other momentous performances followed in short order. The first was at Carnegie Recital Hall on November 10, 1963, during the first concert of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors series. Carmen Carrozza performed with the Phoenix String Quartet. Though no critic was present, Elsie Bennett, who was in attendance with the composer and his wife, observed that many in the audience felt that the quintet was the most novel and unique composition on the entire program and that many bravos were shouted during the applause. The concert was simultaneously broadcast on New York City’s classical music station WNYC.
Left: Carnegie Hall; one of its three internal concert halls is the formerly named Recital Hall, now extensively remodeled and renamed Zankel Hall. It has always had its separate 7th Avenue ground entrance (far right in the photo). Middle: Carmen Carrozza around the time of his and the Phoenix String Quartet’s New York premiere of the Bennett quintet in the Recital Hall; Right: Robert Russell Bennett and Elsie Bennett at the concert, November 10, 1963 (Elsie Bennett photo album). |
The second New York performance took place two months later, on January 25, 1964, not too many blocks southeast of the famed concert hall at the long established and popular Turtle Bay Music School. While on tour in the United States the celebrated Danish accordionist and strong proponent of contemporary original classical repertoire for the instrument, Mogens Ellegaard, taught there for a short while. When he had to return to Denmark, Mario Tacca joined the faculty and took over his students. Shortly afterwards, Tacca’s accordion mentor, Carrozza, encouraged him to give a recital at the school and include the quintet on the program. Tacca complied and decided to also perform the other AAA commissioned Bennett work, the solo Four Nocturnes. Four string players on the faculty had recently formed the Colby String Quartet and agreed to play the Quintet with Tacca. The composer dutifully appeared to hear yet a third outstanding interpretation of his piece all three of which took place within a mere eight-month period. Afterwards he sent a letter to the school and Tacca in gratitude for and in high praise of the performances of both of his AAA works.
Left: Mogens Ellegaard; Middle: Turtle Bay Music School, 244 East 52 Street, New York, established in 1925 and closed in 2020; Right: Mario Tacca around the time he taught at the school and performed both AAA commissioned works by Robert Russell Bennett there in 1964 (from Mario Tacca personal photo collection). |
As was her custom with the commissioned composers, Elsie requested a brief description of the Quintet from Bennett that she could use in her intended articles in accordion and other musical publications. The composer responded with just a brief paragraph:
| As to an analysis of the quartet [sic], there isn’t much necessary beyond the titles, except that the listener should be warned that it is a serious work in spite of its very unserious moments. One might include a short description of the scherzo (“Crazy Mixed-Up Kid”) by making a list of the many tunes that are being played together in what I have called chicken yard counterpoint. |
From this sketchy description, one is still left wondering just why Bennett chose the psychological theme. What can be surmised, however, is that all the verbal captions in the work poke fun at the process of psychoanalysis rather than viewing it as a serious or valid area of mental treatment, thus revealing a bemused skepticism towards the science on the part of the composer.
A more thorough account of the Quintet was given by Ellegaard, who had not yet left New York for Europe after resigning from the school and was able to attend the concert along with the composer. He later wrote a review of it for the April 1964 issue of The Music Journal (vol. 22, no. 4). Declaring that Psychiatry was “much more successful than [Bennett’s] piece for solo accordion [the Nocturnes],” he continued:
| Each of the four movements was exciting, refreshing, fascinating. Several humorous touches throughout the entire work sustained interest—even without the funny but perhaps not so dignified “psycho-titles” which accompany the traditional music titles of each movement. The composer shows a never failing sense of sonority, tonal balance, and contrast. Particularly effective were many passages of sustained notes or long melodic lines in the accordion, against string pizzicati . . . succeeded by passages of legato strings, interrupted by dynamic staccato explosions in the accordion. The expressive, sometimes nostalgic tone of the accordion was utilized in dramatic recitativo passages, and the composer always avoided those sore spots in the left hand—exploiting, instead, the rhythmical, percussive-like, dynamic and sustained qualities of the instrument. |
Ellegaard finished with yet another declaration of praise for Psychiatry, saying that it was “without any doubt one of the most successful [AAA] commissions to this date.”
The tempo markings of the first movement, titled “trying to find oneself” at the end, are Recitativo, con brio, followed forty-nine bars of 3/4 time later by a sprightly Allegro in 2/4. The latter is quite lengthy, too, lasting 139 measures.
The accordion does indeed “sing” a lengthy line somewhat suggestive of the meandering nature of opera recitative. The strings either supply harmonic punctuation or more often, similarly flowing lines in counterpoint with the accordion. See Example 1.
Example 1. Beginning of “Recitativo” opening section of first movement of Bennett String Quintet. Sound Sample 1 |
The ensuing Allegro section is more frenetic and “troubled,” and is carried mainly by the strings, with well-placed incursions by the accordion. Bennett wisely used the violin and musette right-hand stops throughout this movement and often in the others, to create a good timbral blend with the strings. The melodic and harmonic language is unusually chromatic and dissonant at times for Bennett, perhaps suggesting the Freudian, expressionistic world of Schönberg’s dodecaphonic music (with which Bennett is not characteristically associated). Even so, there are many glimmers of tonal writing. Furthermore, the rhythm is quite conventional. See Examples 2 and 3.
Example 2. Beginning of Allegro section of first movement, introduced by strings alone. Measures 67-73. Sound sample 2 |
Example 3. Entry of accordion and counter theme to the now elaborated opening theme in the strings. Measures 67-73. Sound sample 3 |
The second movement, Andante e mesto, and post-titled “not loved and wanted,” is in a brief A-B-A form, but very cleverly and skillfully constructed. The A section features a moping, extensive, and constantly changing unbroken melody that is introduced by muted viola and then handed off to a succession of other instruments (described in more detail in Example 4 below). This varied, meandering line is undergirded by two somewhat subliminal but clearly noticeable and persistent motives in the remaining instruments that are not carrying the main melody at the moment: a wobbly ostinato figure consisting of alternating eighth note pairs and triplets and a second repeating subliminal sub-theme of four half notes, A-flat, D-flat, C, A, echoing the “ground bass” procedure hearkening back to so many works from the baroque era that employed the device. Could this repeating figure in Bennett’s offering suggest an obsessive subconscious foreboding of some kind, ripe for the psychiatrist’s couch? See Example 4.
Example 4. Beginning of second movement, Andante e mesto. Far ranging main theme tracked by the red line, beginning with the viola, switching briefly to the cello, then violin 1, and finally to the right-hand manual of the accordion, ending in rising, near-12-tone, triplets mostly in 014 pattern trichords. Repeating, ground bass-like accompanimental 4-note motto in cello and later in the accordion left-hand manual, marked by the blue line. Additional accompanimental motif of alternating eighth-note pairs and triplets, marked by the green line, in 2nd violin and viola, and later in chordal left-hand buttons of accordion. Sound sample 4 |
Gradually, each of the other instruments makes its voice heard with similar themes to that of the viola until a rather climatic but no less cheerless solo by the accordion defines the middle section. See Example 5.
Example 5. Middle theme of second movement. Measures 21-31. Sound sample 5 |
Before long, however, the ensemble sinks back into the brooding motifs of the movement’s beginning, allowing one more slight “outburst” of the accordion before all come to a rather unsettled resolution on a quiet A-flat major triad.
The third movement, Allegro, carries the terminal caption “crazy, mixed-up kid.” It is the humorous scherzo that features the “chicken yard counterpoint” the composer refers to above. It is, in fact, more like what fifteenth century composers would have described as a “quodlibet.” Psychologically, it may intend to depict a kind of “free association” of unrelated items via the many different melodies, thus suggesting a delusional and confused mind. Following Bennett’s suggestion to “make a list” of the well-known tunes incorporated into this freely dissonant, contrapuntal stew, this writer recognizes such disparate, familiar old “public domain” melodies as “Joy to the World,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” “Hail to the Chief,” “Rally Around the Flag,” and many others. Perhaps this is partly a tongue-in-cheek salute to the great eccentric American composer Charles Ives, who was fond of inserting many strains of familiar marches, hymns, popular parlor songs, college sports fight songs, and the like into much of his music, often rendering it very rhythmically and contrapuntally complex and dissonant. See Examples 6 and 7.
Example 6. Beginning of the third movement, Allegro, opening with strings alone and employing familiar melodies of the past (titles, when known, inserted by the writer), thus yielding Bennett’s humorous “chicken yard counterpoint.” Sound sample 6 |
Example 7. First entrance of the accordion in the third movement, measures 10-14. The title of its tune uncertain. Sound sample 7 |
This opening multi-song flash flood of cacophony continues to rush forward until measure 32 at which point it is abruptly halted by a stiff, militaristic, drumbeat-like rhythmic motif in the strings and left-hand manual of the accordion that seems to try to bring some level of order and sanity to the madness. This does not quell a bit of “misbehavior” now and then, however, on the part of the accordion’s right-hand manual with its occasional fritterings of subdued, downward sixteenth-note runs. See Example 8.
Example 8. Middle section of the Allegro with new militaristic rhythmic motif. Measures 36-39. Sound sample 8 |
Order soon gives way to chaos again, however, with a sudden return to the “chicken yard,” now much shortened and varied. It is kicked off by the two violins playing the tune “The Irish Washerwoman” in close two-part canonic imitation and in the usual 6/8 meter that is soon undergirded by the viola and cello playing in unison a jaunty melody unknown to this writer in 2/4 time, thus requiring a hemiolac double time signature. Following is an exact return of the initial accordion entry displayed in Example 7, as brash and “drunk” as before. It is accompanied by wild interminable sixteenth note runs in the strings that reach a fevered climax after which the entire ensemble quietly and meekly whimpers to the end as each string instrument drops out, one by one. The accordion, however, weakly perseveres during this winding down of the movement, slowly fading away in a final upward climb until it stops for good, punctuated by a faint, staccato B-flat artificial harmonic in the three upper strings. This is by far the most radical and dissonant, though intentionally comical, movement of the entire composition and that which had raised the eyebrows of the Kansas City critic at the world premiere.
The final movement, marked Vivo, casts final doubt upon the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in its closing title, “Well adjusted—to what?” The music is a frenetic moto perpetuo in three major thematic sections, the first of which features rushing scalar runs emerging from constant sixteenth-note ostinati and occasional hard pumping oom-pah basses or sharply attacked dissonant polychords. The accordion is featured more often as the main instrument in this movement than it was in the previous ones. See Example 9.
Example 9. Beginning of fourth movement, measures 2-9. Sound sample 9 |
The second thematic section strongly asserts itself with a double-stopped violin solo after having been dramatically and dissonantly introduced by a highly chromatic, disjunct, four-measure succession of rising sixteenth notes in the accordion’s right-hand manual. Hard pushing though it is, the somewhat syncopated, almost stumbling nature of this theme might be interpreted as a lack of assuredness on the part of the “patient,” thus validating the verbal caption of the movement. After six bars, the first violin is joined by the other strings to gradually morph into a quintal ostinato arpeggio that will serve as an accompaniment to the accordion’s entry which, in unison with the first violin, repeats the same theme. See Example 10.
Example 10. Fourth movement, measures 70-75: entry of accordion, in unison with violin 1, of second main theme accompanied by a harmonic C/G drone in the cello part and a C-G-D-A quintal chord arpeggio in the violin 2 and viola parts. The theme was initially introduced as a double-stopped solo by violin 1 in measure 59. Sound sample 10 |
The third clearly delineated theme is introduced by a dramatic upsweep by the strings beginning at measure 83 which initially suggests the exposition of a double fugue. The first appearance of the would-be fugal “first subject” is carried by the viola. It is joined three measures later in strict imitation by the second violin. As these lines continue to unfold, a second thematic motif joins them in the first violin yet two more measures later which is soon partially imitated by the cello in its lowest octave. Following this ten-measure contrapuntal tour-de-force, the accordion enters with the first of the two imagined fugal subjects but continues as just a solo with only occasional accompanimental string punctuation rather than ongoing contrapuntal development, thus refuting the earlier notion that a fugue might have been underway. See Example 11 for the accordion’s portion of this segment.
Example 11. Fourth movement, measures 93-97. Accordion entry of third main theme, following a contrapuntal upsweep of all the strings, begun by the viola in measure 83. Sound sample 11 |
The accordion continues to hold the center of the stage until another contrapuntal uprising of all the strings alone, and like the one just described, commences at measure 124 and ushers back in the second main theme, featured again by the accordion. The accordion also brings back elements of the first main theme by measure 141. At this point the entire ensemble goes on a wild, contrapuntally dense, and cacophonous romp until the fever breaks with one final repeating and heavily hammered, dissonant polychord at measures 161 and 162. Following this high moment of “crisis,” a lonely accordion solo, marked con passione, and a few measures later, “sweet and sad,” meekly descends from the heights to what seems to be the depths of despair, sinking to pianissimo and finally cadencing on a hallow, long sustained, gradually fading A-sharp/D-sharp perfect fourth dyad that, near its end, is suddenly dissonated and cruelly maligned by three rude and increasingly louder pizzicato and then arco C-major triads in the strings.
It is unfortunate that no performances of this brilliant musical tour de force of Bennett’s are known to have taken place as of this writing in 2022 since those three reported here from the 1960s, nor have any commercial recordings of it yet been produced. This dearth of post-1960s performances is possibly due in part to the fact that the score has yet to be put into print. Bennett intended to have it published by Chappell, as he had done with the Four Nocturnes, but no record of this having happened can be found (though a copy of the final manuscript submitted by the composer to Elsie Bennett may be acquired from this writer). Furthermore, while the Four Nocturnes is listed among all his scores preserved in the Robert Russell Bennett Papers archived at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), the Quintet is not.
Another possible cause of the Quintet’s invisibility may be that the professional musical world knows and reveres Bennett more for his brilliant, masterful, and truly historic orchestrations of operas and Broadway musicals than they do his own personal creations, prolific though he was in both activities. These regrettable predicaments need to be remedied, for, in this writer’s opinion, Ellegaard was more than justified in his praise for the Quintet. It is indeed a remarkable work, displaying the highest level of musical craftmanship and expression, and is very different in style from anything Bennett had produced before (including his Four Nocturnes, which is quite traditional and very “Broadway-ish”). It should therefore be of interest not only to the accordion community, but to the contemporary music world and twentieth century American music scholars in general.
Mario Tacca (seated), first place winner in a special contest at Carnegie Hall, 1962 (two years before performing the Bennett Quintet), being congratulated by a distinguished representation of the accordion world: Anthony Ettore, Pietro Deiro, Jr., Carmen Carrozza, Charles Magnante, Louis Iorio, Joseph Biviano (Mario Tacca personal photo collection). |
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