Hearing The Pulitzers

In this special bonus episode, Dave and Andrew talk with 2011 Pulitzer Winner Zhou Long. Where did he find the libretto for Madame White Snake? What does he think of people analyzing the opera's music? And what role did Bedřich Smetana play in the opera's creation? We hope you enjoy hearing from him about these insights and more!

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore an opera by the composer of our podcast theme, Zhou Long. It's been fifty years since another staged opera won the prize. Is this a worthy work to break that streak? They discuss the opera's synopsis, the music, and how Zhou Long blends Eastern and Western music and themes in the opera.

If you'd like more information about Zhou Long and Madame White Snake, we recommend:

• Tong Cheng Blackburn, “In Search of Third Space: Composing the Transcultural Experience in the Operas of Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and Zhou Long” PhD diss., Indiana University, 2015.
• Fang Bo [方博], “The Transtextual Gender Construction in the Opera Madame White Snake.” Asian-European Music Research Journal 7 (Summer 2021): 1–18.
• Lu Tan, “The Integration of Chinese and Western Elements in Zhou Long’s Opera Madame White Snake” DMA essay, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2024.
• Zhou Long's publication site.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore a concerto by one of the most-performed living composers, Jennifer Higdon. Will they think the concerto deserves more play? How does it fit with the other Pulitzer concerto winners?

If you'd like more information about Jennifer Higdon, we recommend:

• This series of YouTube interviews between Higdon and Hilary Hahn
• Christina Reitz's book Jennifer Higdon: Composing in Color(McFarland, 2018)
• Laura Dallman's article "Considering autonomy and collaboration in three concerti by Jennifer Higdon" in The Routledge Handbook of Women's Work in Music (2021)

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore Steve Reich's Double Sextet, but can't help but talk about his earlier work. How does this later piece stack up to classics like Music for 18 Musicians? Could we also view this as a lifetime achievement award for a composer whose music would not have been considered for the Pulitzer Prize in the 1970s?

If you'd like more information about Steve Reich, we recommend:

• Steve Reich, Writings on Music, 1968 - 2000 (Oxford University Press)
• Steve Reich, Conservations (Hanover)
• Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Cambridge University Press)

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore an oratorio for voice and percussion that mingles minimalism, Bach, and a fairy tale. Will that mixture prove potent for them? And has Andrew ever been more excited for a particular winning piece?

If you'd like more information about David Lang and The Little Match Girl Passion, we recommend:

• David Lang's website
• Dominic Wells's "In the Footsteps of Bach's St. Matthew Passion: The Passion Setting of David Lang and James MacMillan" Tempo 67, no. 264 (2013): 40–51.
• Tom Service's BBC podcast "The Listening Service" on The Match Girl Passion
• William Robin's Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace New York: Oxford University Press, 2021

In this episode, Dave and Andrew listen to the first work without a written score to ever win a Pulitzer, Ornette Coleman's album Sound Grammar. What will they think about this new direction for the prize? And it wouldn't be Hearing the Pulitzers without discussing some drama from the judges! We also discuss a special certificate granted to a deserving late jazz musician.

If you'd like more information about Ornette Coleman, we recommend:

• Stephen Rush's book Free Jazz, Harmolodics, and Ornette Coleman (Routledge, 2016)
• Michael Stephan's book Experiencing Ornette Coleman: A Listener's Companion (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
• Nathan Frink's dissertation "Dancing in His Head: The Evolution of Ornette Coleman's Music and Compositional Philosophy" (University of Pittsburgh, 2016)

In this episode, Dave and Andrew discuss a piano concerto that the composer, Yehudi Wyner, said "permits expression of the raunchy as well as the refined." How will that duality sit with the hosts? Why doesn't a distinguished composer like Wyner get more performances?? And what former PP winners make an appearance in the episode?

If you'd like more information about Yehudi Wyner, we recommend:

• June Yin-Hsuan Chen's dissertation, "Analysis of Yehudi Wyner's Piano Concerto, 'Chiavi in Mano'"
• Chapter 17: "A Tale of Two Concertos: The Piano Concertos of Yehudi Wyner and Bernard Rands" in Observations on Music, Culture, and Politicsby Daniel Asia
• David Cleary's "An Intoxicating Wyner at 70" in The New Music Connoisseur 8, no. 2 (2000) 9–10.

In 2020, Dave and Andrew released their 9th episode, covering Douglas Moore's forgotten opera Giants in the Earth without being able to hear it or even see the score. Now, after 50 years after the last performance, Giants in the Earth has appeared again in a new production by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. Will it be a hit or a miss?

If you'd like to know more about the performance, we recommend:

• Information about the live performance by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra
• The streaming performance of Giants in the Earth
• Joshua Barone's coverage of the performance in the New York Times, "An Operatic ‘Diamond on the Side of the Road’ Catches Light Again."

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore a concerto for orchestra that achieved great heights by, in the words of its creator Steven Stucky, "standing on the shoulders of those who have already cleared the path ahead." But will our hosts appreciate the view? And who were some of the other nominees this year? We also discuss a rule change within the Pulitzer Prize award process that took effect with this year's winner.

If you'd like more information about Steven Stucky, we recommend:

• "Stucky, Hartke, Crockett: Conversations in Los Angeles." Contemporary Music Review, 10, no. 1 (1994): 51–73.
• Franklin Crawford, "Steal this concerto, please: An interview with Steven Stucky" Cornell Chronicle, April 21, 2005.
• Steven Stucky, Lutosławski and his Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
• This Washington Post article about the changes to the music prize from June 2004.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew dive into a work inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. Will the work live up to the Bard's reputation? And does this piece fit into the typical mold of a Pulitzer Prize winning work?

If you'd like more information about Paul Moravec, we recommend:

• Paul Moravec's personal website
• Dialogue with Moravecfor the Kansas City Lyric Opera's production of The Shining
• Paul Moravec's short article “Tonality and Transcendence.” Contemporary Music Review vol. 6. no. 2 (1992): 39–42.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew go back to the events of 9/11 and listen to a piece memorializing the day. But will they find the piece moving or maudlin? And how does the piece hold up some 20+ years later? By this point, John Adams was a famous composer, but should this particular piece of his have won the prize?

If you'd like more information about John Adams, we recommend:

• His memoir Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (you can read an excerpt at NPR).
• Dan Blim's article referenced in the show, "Disunity and the Commemoration of 9/11 in John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls" Journal of the Society for American Music, 7, no. 4 (November 2013): 382-420.
• Kalle Puolakka's article "Public Art and Dewey’s Democratic Experience: The Case of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 74, No. 4 (2016): 371-81.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the first experimental composer to win the Pulitzer since Charles E. Ives. With that pedigree, what will they think of Henry Brant's Ice Field? And why is this piece called a "spatial" composition?

If you'd like to learn more about Henry Brant and Ice Field, we recommend:

• This video of the work with commentary from Michael Tilson Thomas and organist Cameron Carpenter
• Maria Anna Harley's article “An American in Space: Henry Brant’s ‘Spatial Music.’” American Music 15, no. 1 (1997): 70–92.
• Frank Oteri's 2002 interview with Henry Brant in New Music Box

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the symphony of John Corigliano they don't know. After appreciating Corigliano's first and third symphonies, what will they think of the second? This piece, a rescoring and revision of Corigliano's String Quartet, is another in a recent stretch of winning works that began in a different form.

If you'd like to learn more about Corigliano, we recommend:

• This interview with Corigliano by Living the Classical Life
• Corigliano's composer's noteabout the Symphony No. 2
• Elizabeth Bergman's “Of Rage and Remembrance, Music and Memory: The Work of Mourning in John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 and Choral Chaconne.” American Music 31, no. 3 (2013): 340–61

In this episode, Dave and Andrew talk about a curious winner for the year 2000 since it was originally composed 25 years earlier! What will they think about this blast from the past? It's also the first opera to win the Pulitzer Prize in many decades.

If you'd like more information about Lewis Spratlan, we recommend:

• This video of Spratlan talking about the origins of the opera before the full premiere by the Santa Fe Opera.
• This video of Spratlan detailing the opera's history with the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
• A. Robert Lauer's article "The Santa Fe Opera’s Life Is a Dream" Bulletin of the Comediantes, Volume 63, Number 2 (2011): 155-60.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore a concerto featuring an instrument not often put into a concerto setting: the flute. But its title also promises a balance among three forces instead of a featured soloist. What will they think of this contradictory piece?

If you'd like more information about Melinda Wagner, we recommend:

• Frank Oteri's excellentinterview with Melinda Wagner from 2015
• Yujia Xia's dissertation "Melinda Wagner and Her Piano Concerto: Extremity of Sky" from 2021.
• Mark Alburger, "Winning the Pulitzer Can Brighten Your Whole Day: An Interview with Melinda Wagner," 20th-Century Music 6, no. 6 (1999): 1-7.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew return to the venerable string quartet for a piece that mixes tonality, modernist music, Baroque dances, and Medieval modality. But will this mixture work for them?

If you'd like more information about Aaron Jay Kernis and the String Quartet #2, we recommend:

• Leta Miller's book Aaron Jay Kernis, the first biography of the composer that we reference several times in the episode.
• A conversation between Kernis and Frank Oteriright after the biography was published.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew go deep into the tangled history surrounding the first jazz piece to ever win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields. But what will they think of the changes to the Pulitzer that allowed a largely-improvised piece to win an award previously reserved for notated music?

If you'd like more information about Wynton Marsalis, we recommend:

• Wynton Marsalis's official website
• Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life by Wynton Marsalis and Geoffrey Ward
• David Stowe's article "The Diasporic Imagination of Wynton Marsalis," in The Black Urban Community, edited by Gayle T. Tate and Lewis A. Randolph (Palgrave, 2006)
• Matthew Alan Thomas's dissertation "Dynamic canons: How the Pulitzer Prize, documentary film, and the U.S. Department of State are changing the way we think about jazz," University of Southern California, 2011

In this episode, Dave and Andrew discuss a song cycle in all but name, George Walker's Lilacs. From the outside, this win looks like another lifetime achievement award, but is it? And does Lilacs remind them of music from an earlier period in the Pulitzer's history?

If you'd like more information about George Walker or Lilacs, we recommend:

• Ginger Sharnell Jones-Robinson's DMA document, "An Analysis of Selected Vocal Works by George Walker" from the University of South Carolina, 2023.
• Mikey Thomas Terry's interview with George Walker, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 3 (2000), pp. 372–88
• This short documentary on Walker and his music

In this episode, Dave and Andrew discuss a composer from an earlier generation winning a Pulitzer in the twilight of his career. What will they think of Stringmusic?

If you'd like more information about Morton Gould, we recommend:

• J. Wesley Flinn's article, "Developing Variation in the Late Work of Morton Gould and Why It Matters" Gamut vol. 10. no. 1 (2021)
• Lee Evan's dissertation, "Morton Gould: His Life and Music," Columbia University, 1978.
• Peter Goodman's book, Morton Gould: American Salute (Amadeus Press, 2003).

In this episode, Dave and Andrew discuss one of the composers Dave wishes he had met, Gunther Schuller. But does Schuller's winning work Of Reminiscences and Reflections live up to his high expectations?

If you'd like more information about Gunther Schuller, we recommend:

• Schuller's autobiography, A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty
• The Gunther Schuller Society
• Read "The Compleat Musician in the Complete Conservatory" in Schuller's collection of essays, Musings.