George Rochberg has been one of the most important American composers from the last half of the 1950s. His historical position became clear rather quickly: At a time when commentators and academics around the world were proclaiming that tonality was dead and irrelevant for the composers of their time and the future, and that Webernian serialism or even more radical approaches were the only valid styles, Rochberg was a leader back into tonality. The impulse for this was the loss of his son. Evidently, he found it impossible to express his feelings in the serial system, and so turned to a tonal, post-Romantic idiom.

This lengthy observation is particularly relevant to Rochberg's 1998 composition Eden: Out of Time and Out of Space. This eighteen-minute guitar concerto in one movement begins in what is seemingly a fully fledged Bergian twelve-tone style. The work is inspired by the words of one of Rochberg's favorite poets, William Butler Yeats, in particular some lines from the verse play "The shadowy Waters" (1906). In these lines, Yeats asks "Is Eden far away ... ?" and "Is Eden out of time and out of space?"

Rochberg observes that Eden is not a place, that it is a "state of soul which answers to none of the illusory, hampering conditions that shape and bind us to the real world of out bodies, our appetites, our passions, and our beliefs." With music that intends, through "quietness and other-worldiness" to shut out much of these mundane considerations, Rochberg seeks to suggest that Eden "though still hidden, may not be so far away; though still unreachable, [it] may be close enough to almost touch."

The work was composed on a joint commission of Chamber Music Northwest and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Guitarist Eliot Fisk was the soloist and David Shifrin the conductor of the twin premiere performances, in Seattle on July 2, 1998, and in New York on November 15, 1998.

The work begins in a mysterious mode. The music is atonal, perhaps twelve-tone in construction, and is full of the unsettled, yearning quality that atonality most commonly produces. Before his conversion to tonality, Rochberg had demonstrated in early works, such as his Serenata d'Estate, that he could write music of beauty and meaning in that style, and he again succeeds here. Fragments of sound from the ensemble merge with the guitar's line to complete a feeling of alienation, yet hope. Does it represent the yearning for Eden, or the unknowable quality of Eden itself?

The central part of the work is entirely tonal. It is a slow rag, nostalgic, nearly comic, and comes as a relaxed moment after the yearning of the opening part. Is this tonal simplicity Eden, or does this music represent the mundane world? If it is Eden, then the place or state is like an idyllic turn-of-the-(nineteenth-)century town park with its bandstand. There is, though, nothing of the cheap or vulgar in this portrayal.

The mysteries of the opening section return in the longer closing section. Here, though the same motives and gestures are used, the music remains tonal, albeit primarily in extended tonality. There is nearly always a tonal center just beyond the chromaticism, shifting and elusive though it sometimes is. There is a moment when the chords are practically diatonic, the resolution almost complete. Is this the moment when Eden is reachable, if only one could act fast enough to stretch out one's hand?

In short, this is a fascinating and lovely piece of music, giving a listener much to discover and rediscover on repeated hearing.

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