George Rochberg

George Rochberg (1918-2005) was a significant figure in the American post-modernist movement at the end of the 20th century. Rochberg turned away from the serial avant-garde in the 1960s, and after experimenting with musical quotations and pastiches, came to accept tonality as the essential basis of his expression. Disavowing notions of originality and progress in favor of tradition and the search for a new "common practice," Rochberg made a definitive statement in his String Quartet No. 3. Through its open references to Beethoven and Mahler, and adoption of polystylism, Rochberg led the way for younger composers to explore neo-Romanticism at the turn of the millennium.