George Rochberg is one of the most important American composers of the last half of the twentieth century, particularly noted as one of the first to return to a tonal, post-Romantic style after having started writing music by the twelve-tone or serial technique. Since then (around 1970) his music has usually been tonal, although there are cases in which he uses forms of atonality for contrast.

Muse of Fire is one of the largest and most notable works for flute and guitar. It is a work concerning big ideas and large gestures, uncommon for this chamber combination. Sensitive to the loss and tragedy inherent in war (perhaps because of the loss of his own son in the late 1960s), Rochberg here seems to be confronting the impossibility of adequately conveying through art the full horror of war.

The title is from Shakespeare. The opening line of Henry V is "O for a muse of fire / That would ascend the highest heaven of invention." Since the subject of the play is one of England's most renowned warrior-kings, Shakespeare first cautions the audience of his time with a speech by a Chorus concerning the sounds and carnage of war. Shakespeare's only tools were his words. Shakespeare is saying that mortal invention is not sufficient to the subject absent a "muse of fire."

The work was written on commission for flutists Eliot Fisk and Paula Robison by the Carnegie Hall Corporation for part of the Carnegie Hall Centennial Season. It was premiered by them at Carnegie Hall on February 1, 1991. As it happened, this was during the brief ground fighting phase of Operation Desert Storm of the Gulf War, the biggest war involving the United States in nearly twenty years, and the composition was written during the run-up period to that war, along with another Rochberg composition, Ora Pro Nobis, which shares some of its musical ideas and intent.

Muse of Fire is in one movement but many subsections are in strongly contrasting moods. It begins with percussive sounds from the guitar, and short, disturbed patterns on flute. At points during the work, a military tattoo pattern on guitar becomes dominant in the texture. At the very end, a variant of that pattern relentlessly accompanies horrified shrieks and a screaming high note from the flute. However, along the way there is a lovely section of frankly beautiful melodies of nearly popular music appeal. It is this wide variety of musical textures and styles, in service to a major idea, that makes Muse of Fire one of the most striking and individual of all flute and guitar works.

© All Music Guide