III. Reading Comprehension (5%) Timothy Fields worked in almost obscurity. This unsung composer spent his
spare time creating some of the most outstanding pieces of American music. Although
he studied music in The Juilliard School, Fields followed a career in the car company,
and relegated his composing to vacation, weekends, holidays, and the long winter
evenings of New England. His most important works were written between 1899 and
1913 at his country house in New Hampshire. Fields stopped composing in 1916 after
suffering a nervous breakdown.
Although Fields was far ahead of his time, his attitudes also precluded broad
public acceptance. The enormous complexity of his work, incorporating fragments of
county dances, dancehall tunes, hymns, brass band marches, and patriotic anthems,
daunts the casual listener. Their extraordinary originality anticipates later
developments of other musicians, but hardly attracts popular tastes. The polytonality
and dissonance Fields applied so brilliantly repel many an unschooled audience.
Fields also insisted that everyone should enjoy his music for free, so commercial
publication was impossible.
Fields first received some recognition in 1936, with the performance of his
second piano sonata, which had been finished in 1915. Fields wrote his Third
Symphony between 1899 to 1905; it was first performed by the Philharmonic
Symphony Orchestra of Boston under Benjamin Langston in 1924. He completed his
Fourth Symphony in 1911, but it had to wait 23 years for its premiere. The Fifth
Symphony, written between 1910 and 1913, was finally performed in 1963, twelve
years after its composer's death.
Timothy Fields' contribution to modern music was finally recognized in 1949,
when his Fourth Symphony won the Pulitzer Prize, nearly 40 years after its
completion. Even then, Fields showed his disdain for critics, commenting that prizes
were badges of mediocrity and giving away the prize money.