A group of composers, known as "Converts," began as "post-tonalists" and experimentalists and then moved toward more tonal idioms in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first composers to leave the "post-tonal" world was George Rochberg, who began using collage and other borrowing techniques in his compositions of the mid-1960s. He began quoting his contemporaries and slowly moved to allusion of past composers and eras with his Third String Quartet. Another composer to use collage and allusion was David Del Tredici, who used various traditional and popular tunes to support the texts of Lewis Carroll. William Bolcom, John Harbison, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, and Anthony Davis began mixing art music and popular music through quotation, allusion, and homage to create a tonal idiom unlike those found in the music of Rochberg and Del Tredici. In the 1980s and 1990s, young composers also looked back to the Romantic period, but they did not use quotation or other actual borrowing techniques to the extent of the Converts. The young Romantic composers usually composed original music that only alluded slightly to the former composers of the 1800s.

Works: Rochberg: Music for the Magic Theater (546), String Quartet No. 3 (546-47); Del Tredici: Pop-Pourri (547), Vintage Alice (548); Zwilich: Concerto Grosso (561); Larson: Symphony: Water Music (563).

Sources: Mozart: Divertimento K. 287 (546); Bach: Es ist genug (547); Traditional: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (548), God Save the Queen (548); Handel: Violin Sonata in D (561), Water Music (563).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew Altizer