MOUNT ST. MARY’S COMPOSERS FORUM

Sunday afternoon, the Pacific Composers Forum gave a concert of five pieces by four of its members at Mount St. Mary’s College in Brentwood. A polite, sizable crowd attended.

It would be superfluous to describe these pieces individually since, like paper dolls, all five are stylistically and compositionally similar.

All but one are scored for clarinet, harp, violin and cello. All sway lullingly to a steady ostinato accompaniment played by the harp. All use the same innocuous tonal language that rigorously avoids any traces of chromaticism and occasionally tiptoes into a more adventurous but reserved pandiatonicism. All use overly simple song forms in melodic and overall construction. All never wander from duple or triple meter. And all make abundant use of an annoying, cliched harp glissando that never fails to conjure up images of Tinkerbell’s wand.

Now and then, Paul Gibson’s “The Calls of the Owl”--a relatively moving statement inspired by a Margaret Craven novella--does break out of the mold, with four movements of lush Romanticism, including cadenzas in which meter is suspended. Also, Peter Rutenberg’s Prelude for solo harp may be worth mentioning because it showcases the talents of one of the instrumentalists--harpist Liesl Erman, who performed adroitly.

Otherwise, Rutenberg’s meandering “Mississippi Nightfall,” Lynne Palmer’s loosely performed “The Peterboro Letters” and George S. Clinton’s “Inertia,” a theme with four variations, all fit the same description.