Joshua Rosenblum reported, "I don't think any of my teachers in music school ever actually said 'Will you please be serious?' in exactly those words, but the strong implication was frequently there," and the assortment of vocal and chamber music collected here bear out his non-serious bent. The composer accurately described his music as a melding of classical and popular styles. Most frequently, the popular influence is the Broadway musical, and the vocal pieces in particular show the composer's indebtedness to the musical in the text setting and the conventionally patterned melodies and harmonies. Rosenblum deploys enough complexity and unexpected twists, though, to keep them from ever falling over the precipice into cliché. Will you please be serious, written for the amplified string quartet
Ethel, is a polystylistic romp through a variety of idioms, with quotations from numerous popular songs thrown in. The jaunty suite 5 X 4 = 20, for piano four-hands, is full of allusions to various popular dance forms, similar in spirit to
Prokofiev's take on waltzes in his Waltz Suite, but with somewhat more tongue in cheek. The pieces sound like they were a blast to write and perform, but their whimsicality can wear thin over the course of an hour. Taken individually, any one of these pieces would be utterly charming, but they would benefit from being heard in the context of some music that wasn't so doggedly determined to be goofy. The album should appeal to listeners who appreciate genuine musical humor, with the caveat that the pieces might most profitably be listened to one at a time, with a palate-cleansing sorbet of works by Corelli or Schubert or Webern -- your choice -- interpolated between them.