George Cacioppo
George Cacioppo (1926–1984). Cacioppo received a master’s degree in composition from the University of Michigan studying with Ross Lee Finney and continued to live in Ann Arbor after that as a composer. Among his contributions to the ONCE Festival include:
String Trio (1960) for violin, viola, and cello, was among Cacioppo’s first pieces performed at ONCE. Cacioppo’s expressionist style is exhibited in the dramatic and sometimes violent melodic lines. Influences of Schoenberg and Webern are readily apparent in the string texture, dark color, and short melodic motives that repeat to create a coherent work. Cacioppo’s individual style comes through when the three parts intersect to sound like a single voice, and the constantly and rapidly shifting colors and textures of the instruments.
Bestiary I: Eingang (1961), for soprano and chamber orchestra, is a setting of a poem by R.M. Rilke. The poem, when read or sung aloud, has a strict meter. The music, in contrast, is indeterminate, created by the time it takes the ensemble’s instruments to decay. There are large spaces in between the instrumental entrances to further create the feeling of non-metrical accompaniment juxtaposed with a metrical text.
Cassiopeia is a selection from his Pianopieces (1962), for piano. The score is based on a star chart, encouraging performers to have a different perception of the musical process. Sheff explains Cassiopeia’s performance in Generation, a University of Michigan student publication: “Its notation is an open follow-the-lines chart. Size of the points indicated dynamics, letters are pitches, their numbers are octave registers, and white notes are harmonics. In performance, any conflict in following direction of lines is resolved by free passage between islands .”
Advance of the Fungi (1964) for three clarinets, three French horns, three trombones, percussion, and male chorus. Cacioppo based the title of his piece on a book by Ernest Charles Large that describes the fungi that plants and animals fought between the 1845 potato famine and 1940. The winds again use extended techniques such as singing through the instrument and using a variety of mutes to produce pitches that give the piece a creeping and moaning quality. In Generation, Cacioppo explains that the extended techniques “establish a close color relationship between the male chorus and the wind instruments.”
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