![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/AbbeyRoad_Fuchs-Falletta-Williams.jpg\")
<\/a>The disc is Fuchs\u2019s fourth collaboration with the world-renowned London Symphony Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta, one of America\u2019s leading conductors and Fuchs\u2019s Juilliard classmate, and features Naxos recording artist baritone Roderick Williams. The recording was made at Abbey Road Studios in London and was produced by Grammy winner Tim Handley. Grego Applegate Edwards\u2019s Classical-Modern Music Review blogsite describes Falling Man<\/em> as \u201ca masterful work.\u201d BBC Music Magazine<\/em> describes Fuchs as \u201ca master of orchestral writing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read the novel in 2007, I knew I had found the creative impetus for what I wanted to write,\u201d Fuchs says. \u201cDeLillo\u2019s unflinching prose, describing the terror and chaos at Ground Zero, immediately inspired musical ideas. The novel\u2019s protagonist becomes everyman, as he experiences the burning twin towers tumbling around him. That character suggested a single human voice collectively supported by a symphony orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n Fuchs says he was \u201castonished\u201d that the famously private author quickly agreed to his proposal to use the novel as the basis for his composition. He also found a collaborator in J. D. McClatchy, the editor of The Yale Review<\/em> and an experienced opera librettist, who adapted the novel\u2019s prologue and epilogue to describe the collapsing skyscrapers for the composition\u2019s text.<\/p>\n While Fuchs is known for his melodic and tonal orchestral works, he decided to employ a non-tonal style of writing for Falling Man,<\/em> an 18-minute composition he describes as \u201ca dramatic scena for baritone voice and orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTonality is about resolving dissonance, but the tragedy of 9\/11, which called into question all the norms of Western civilization, is still unresolved,\u201d Fuchs says. \u201cTonality by itself would have been too limiting to express the enormity of this tragedy. There are elements of tonality in the music, but DeLillo\u2019s text required a more complex and nuanced musical language. The austere contrapuntal textures act to deflect the drama of the text, in effect highlighting the drama by contrasting rather than competing with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The disc also contains compositions inspired by other literary works Fuchs has admired for many years that the composer felt would work with Falling Man<\/em> \u2013 poetry of William Blake and John Updike.<\/p>\n Fuchs originally wrote a series of compositions based on Blake\u2019s iconic 1794 collection of poems “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” as an undergraduate composition student at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Fla. The works are among a few of his earliest compositions still performed today.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read John Updike\u2019s new novel Rabbit is Rich<\/em> in 1982, I knew I had come upon a writer whose words would inspire me for a very long time,\u201d says Fuchs, who first composed music for a seven-poem cycle \u201cMovie House\u201d in 1987, and revised his work several times over the years. \u201cUpdike\u2019s observations about American life and the objects and desires of the American sensibility spoke directly to me. It took 25 years and considerable life experience to be able to express in music the subtlety of Updike\u2019s words. The Blake and Updike cycles, taken together with Falling Man,<\/em> suggest a journey through a particular period of life in America.\u201d<\/p>\n The CD booklet cover for Falling Man<\/em> features a painting by Helen Frankenthaler, one of America\u2019s leading Abstract Expressionist artists. Frankenthaler paintings have been used as cover art for all of the composer\u2019s recordings on the Naxos label.<\/p>\n Fuchs met the artist in 1983 when he was a graduate student at Juilliard and wrote her a letter expressing his admiration for her work. Frankenthaler invited him to a gallery exhibition of her work and they began a friendship and correspondence than continued until her death in 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cHelen generously gave me permission to use the images as a way of supporting my work,\u201d Fuchs says. \u201cShe\u2019s been a part of my creative life for more than 30 years, and her wonderful creative spirit is never very far from me. The cover of the\u00a0Falling Man<\/em> disc features her stunning 1967 canvas \u2018The Human Edge.\u2019 Take one look at the painting and you will immediately sense what the music is about even before you hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A composer’s response to national tragedy leads to a musical collaboration based on a post-9\/11 novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":96432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-96279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 16:33:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96279"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96449,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96279\/revisions\/96449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/96432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96279"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=96279"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=96279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>