His first interest in music surfaced through listening to his mother’s records at home and again when his older sister gave him a recording of Peter and the Wolf. At fourteen or fifteen, he read Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, and decided at that point to become a composer. In the story, the hero is a fictional composer who invents twelve-tone composition, but goes mad by the end (it was a thinly-disguised portrait of composer Arnold Schoenberg, who actually sued the author). At seventeen, Rose spent a summer at the Bones Brothers Dude Ranch in Birney, Montana, where he learned to mow hay, drink whisky and ride a horse. He also studied Sanskrit while at the ranch, and brought with him a volume of Schirmer’s Contemporary Piano Literature for study.

Rose went to Yale from 1953 to 1954, where he enjoyed a class in ancient Greek poetry. He was “chucked out” as he recalls, from his other three courses —philosophy, chemistry, and German. Rose learned to read music by looking at scores and listening to recordings. He studied carefully the Bartók string quartets, the first symphony of Shostakovich, and an unfinished viola concerto of Bartók, reconstructed from Bartók’s notes by Tibor Serly.

In 1955, Rose studied with Isadore Freed at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford. Rose remembers Freed as amiable and very supportive of the young composer, but dead-set against the Schoenberg style of composition. When Rose told Freed he was relocating to Germany, he was cut off from contact. Being Jewish, Freed couldn’t imagine anyone going to Germany at that time. It was Darmstadt that lured Rose to Europe. His father loaned him the money to buy a Volkswagen, which he picked up in Frankfurt. Rose moved to Germany with his wife Georgene and daughter Adrien, and surveyed schools in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Dusseldorf. Freiburg with its Black Forest was the most scenic, he thought, and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik itself was also very beautiful. Wolfgang Fortner had come into residence there in 1957, and Rose decided on Freiburg for his continued studies.

Other members of Fortner’s class at Freiburg included Peter Westergaard and Robert Langworthy. Rose recalls, “Fortner was always on the telephone, so we taught ourselves…Westergaard was brilliant”. Rose remembers the arrival of Nam June Paik, a political refugee from Korea, sent by Stockhausen to study composition with the class in Freiburg. Fortner was too conservative for him. Paik rolled marbles, created sounds, and wanted to meet John Cage and go to New York. Rose recalls one of Paik’s pieces at Freiburg involved throwing an egg against the wall. Paik asked Rose to write a letter in English to John Cage to help him make a connection.

In the summers of 1958 and ‘59, Rose studied at Fontainebleau with Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger. He moved with his wife, pianist Georgene and two daughters to the village Gouhenans, in France, about two hours from the German border. Paul Sacher had recently brought Pierre Boulez to the Akademie der Musik in Basel. Rose was admitted to Boulez’s class, which he recalls was “very expensive,” and met every two weeks through the winter semesters 1961 to ’62. It was here that Rose met Claude Lefebvre and Louis Andriessen. Rose found Boulez to be extremely severe, like Boulanger, but with a different perspective.

Above, Rose (left) greets Cage after the Arcady Flute Quartet concert, 1987, as baritone Jacques Bona looks on.

There was no camaraderie between Boulez and Stockhausen, according to Rose. Stockhausen had also broken friendship with Cage. Rose recalls “Stockhausen’s arrogance was incredible,” but concedes that his more flexible approach to composition was a welcome respite after studying under the severity of Boulez.

Rose had met conductor Paul Mèfano through Lefebvre in the Boulez class in 1962. When Mèfano saw Rose’s score for his first viola concerto, commissioned by John Watts and the Composers Theatre in New York City, he immediately issued a commande (commission) for a second viola concerto, to be performed by his then newly-formed ensemble 2e2m, based outside of Paris in Champigny. Jack Lang was the cultural minister in France at the time, and Mèfano was encouraging and supportive. A “golden age” of creativity began for Rose with these new connections.

Rose “taught” briefly in Dusseldorf when he was asked to substitute for the class of Manfred Trojahn. He never felt that one could actually “teach” composition, however, and managed to support himself and his family outside of academia.

In 1965, he was divorced from wife Georgene. In July of that year, he moved to Sète, Herault (France). Rose and his friend Bernhardt took turns making dinner for his children, after Georgene had an accident and could no longer cook or take care of them. Rose moved into a 17th-century house with the children; Bernhard and Georgene lived as a couple in the 19th-century manorhouse on the same property.

Rose spent five years in Sète with his second wife, Annick, from 1965-70. They also spent some months in New York City where Rose rented an apartment on Barrow street. In Sète he composed many works. He also met the poet Marie-France Armstrong there.

Rose and Armstrong fell in love at first sight. They left their spouses and eloped to Switzerland. They moved to Cassis, near Marseille, in 1970. The two girls from the marriage to Georgene moved in with them. A third child, Patrick, stayed with his mother Annick. Griffith Rose and Marie-France Armstrong were married in 1972. They lived happily in various residences in Brignoles, Paris and Venice through 1985, and since then have divided their time between Mèze, in the south, and their house in Paris.

Rose’s musical compositions are encoded with significances that are inaccessible to those who do not possess the key. All of his works are based on a certain fetishism—of numbers, names, lovers, friends, objects, games, works of art, quotations, and other systems of meaning.

Works of art served to inspire both Ziggurat (a painting by Riccardo Licata) and ,même (the Grand Verre of Marcel Duchamp). Paintings, like poetry have been frequent points of departure for the composer.