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3 unusual facts about William Bergsma


William Bergsma

The second is more lighthearted and comic; Bergsma wrote his own libretto after the story Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, which involves a dog transforming into a citizen of 1920s Moscow as a result of a doctor's experiments.

The partially aleatoric orchestral writing is intended to be the voice of Stalin, and quotes from Carmen, La traviata and Don Giovanni for comedic effect.

He eschewed the avant-garde—his obituary in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer describes him as having "never deserted tonality" and seeing "dozens of his former avant-garde colleagues returning to the fold"—though he did embrace aleatoric techniques later in his career.



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