Brian Collins Interview

I’m sure that this interview with designer Brian Collins will resonate with other composers. He talks about being “different” as a child, and embracing his unique view of the world and his personal interests (reading and drawing) rather than allowing bullies to bother him. He talks about designers not merely being problem solvers; he thinks of them as “problem creators.”

Isn’t that exactly what composers do? We create musical problems, and we try to solve them in the most expressive ways possible. Collins talks about envy (and what composer doesn't carry a bunch of envy), and he talks about periods of depression being useful (if not essential) for growth.

Performing musicians do their best to identify problems in musical situations, and then they draw on the depths of their creativity to solve them. Performing musicians also create problems while they are performing (I made this crescendo, and now I have to maintain it; I need to get to another part of the bow; I have to adjust my intonation to match the clarinet; I have to match a bowing; I need to take a breath somewhere; I'm not sure where I am; I made a counting error, and now I have to make up for it, etc.), and they have to solve them on the spot, and without anyone noticing.

Composers make all those problems possible. (And some make solving them impossible.)

I think musicians (composers and performing musicians) will find it interesting listening.

Why I (Still) Blog

In the beginning of May, Fresca, a person who often comments on Michael's blog, posed a public question to people who continue to keep blogs on the internet. Michael answered promptly in this post, but it has taken me a while to come up with an appropriate response. I have decided to make my contribution in the form of an interview because I can. I have full editorial control of my blog. I'll even have an old alias (a name I used to use to deflect unwelcome male attention in public places) do the interviewing. Veranda Davenport hasn't been in my life for a long time.

Veranda: I see that even though you are on Facebook you still keep a blog. Why do you need to write long blog posts when you can instantly share pictures, birthday greetings, and observations with hundreds of people you know?

Elaine: There is a "notes" feature on Facebook which works kind of like a blog, but most Facebook users prefer to scroll through pictures clicking "like" when they see something they like, and leave brief comments that are either witty or supportive. Facebook is a good way to stay "in touch" with friends without going too far beneath the surface. It is kind of like "seeing" a lot of friends in a crowded cafeteria (all the cafeterias of life combined, perhaps) and exchanging, smiles, brief greetings, and words of support. The greetings have to be brief and pleasant because the cafeteria is a public space and there are many people to greet. I find the "cafeteria" a bit too noisy for substantial relationships.

Perhaps the blogosphere is more like an array of sit-down restaurants that you go to for interesting well-prepared food and intelligent conversations.

Sometimes I make links to blog posts (posts I write or posts from Michael's blog) on Facebook. A handful of Facebook friends read them, but most of my Facebook friends don't.

People do more and more of their on-line browsing using smartphones. The little box for comments and the clumsiness of the smartphone keyboard makes it more and more difficult to comment. That is a shame. I miss the free exchange of comments that used to be part of the blogging experience.

Veranda: Your blog posts do not seem to have any rhyme or reason. Why don't you give your blog more structure?

Elaine: I like to write what I feel like writing when I feel like writing it. Blog posts are not really bound in time. It's probably a good thing that most of my posts concern subjects that are not connected with current events. My Thematic Catalog blog is very structured, but that's because it's a functional catalog of music that I have written. I don't see any reason to structure my Musical Assumptions blog, so I don't.

Veranda: A lot of people keep blogs in order to promote themselves and the work they do. Why don't you use your blog to promote your work?

Elaine: I love the idea of sharing information, music, and ideas, particularly ideas about playing and teaching. I do what I can to let people know about the music I have written by linking to my Thematic Catalog blog, but I really see no reason to go beyond that. I prefer to have my work evaluated by people who play it and people who hear it. I don't feel any desire to make any claims about the quality of the work I do. People can make their own choices.

Veranda: Thank you, Elaine.

Elaine: Thank you, Veranda.

A Short Interview with Frederic Rzewski

Words of wisdom and music of real beauty.

Marcel Tabuteau Interview

The last part of this video has an interview with Marcel Tabuteau. By demonstration he makes the case that musicianship has everything to do with personality, while stating that his method of teaching makes music into a disciplined intellectual activity rather than one of feelings (because there are days when you might not feel that good). Clearly his cup ran over with an abundance of both.

Gore Vidal on Why We Make Art

I heard an interview this morning that was part of this episode of The Story. Here's part of what Gore Vidal had to say about things that matter to me a great deal (and things that might matter to you too).

You’re born into a society and you are shaped by it whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. Each of us is born into a prison of received opinion, of superstition, and of prejudices. Now, one of the functions of art is to try and define the prison. A: the artist must know he’s in it, and many of them don’t, and those are the bad artists. They just take it for granted this is the way things are. They don’t know that there are worlds, as Shakespeare said, “there is a world elsewhere.” They don’t see anything past these bars . . . and that to me is . . . Alfred Whitehead said something fascinating about this. He said “you can always determine the nature of any society by the things that it does not write about itself." 'Cause it takes them so much for granted they feel no need to state it, so by the omissions you can determine what a society was like.

The prison is going to break you eventually, but you can at least get a look out, and it’s the look out that is art: seeing something that is elsewhere; an alternative to the life that you’re leading. To get to try to see the thing; the whole, that’s what we want, that's why we write. To try and get. . .

There is no purpose to life, there is no point to life, other than what you invest with yourself, by your own actions. Or the making of a book, or the making of music, or the making of any creation is to try and hold the moment, to give it certain order, to bring order out of chaos, and for an instant to say “here it is, held, seen whole," even though, of course, it really isn’t.

Gore Vidal speaking with Studs Terkel on WFMT in 1961

A Terrific Musician in a Musical No Man's Land

KOZINN: You studied classical music formally, didn’t you?

PARKS: Yes. In 1952 I went to the Columbus Boychoir boarding school, near Princeton, and that same year I was on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera, with Victoria de los Angeles — I was an urchin in “La Bohème.” Our choir worked with Beecham, Ormandy, Mitropoulos, Walter, Toscanini — all of them. I had an immersion in legitimate music that is absolutely indescribable in its abundance and opportunity. Now I’m caught in no man’s land. I’m not “legitimate” because I lie down with dogs. And yet, doggone it, I’m not a rocker because I work with a premeditated intent. So I’m not really at home in either camp, but I’m at home between them.

From Allan Kozinn's interview with Van Dyke Parks in today's New York Times.

Masumi Per Rostad Interviews Bernard Zaslav on WGBH

You'll need flash to listen to this interview with a real mensch. After hearing it, you'll certainly want to read his book and hear the two CD recordings (one filled with viola and piano music, and one filled with chamber music) that come with it.

Echolocation and Music in its Natural State

I just learned that echolocation can be developed in humans (i.e. people) to such a great extent that blind people can learn to "see" objects from the way that they reflect sound.

Here's an article that describes the matter in scientific detail, and here's an interview with Brian Bushway that describes how it works for him.

After listening to the Bushway interview on my walk today (through an electronic device, of course), I went out into the natural world of my back yard to pull some weeds (my latest way of being useful). I noticed that once you remove the headphones, hearing sound in the real world is truly multidimensional. It is possible to hear how far one bird is from another (generally speaking), and to hear how directionally we really are able to hear. (You can't hear weeds though: separating them from the grass takes a sharp eye and a ruthless spirit.)

I began to understand why the fact that most people experience music only through electronically-generated media bothers me so much. Very expensive recording equipment that is operated by very experienced engineers can come close to simulating the experience of a multidimensional world of surround sound, but the difference between close and real is huge when it involves listening with your whole being. Also, the difference between close and real can involve some serious manipulations on the part of the engineer that render the sonic "image" in ways that "improve" the sound of the original raw material. It's kind of like what you can do in the darkroom of you are adept at photography, or kind of what you can do with photoshop if you are adept at using computers.

Too many performance venues (new concert halls and churches in particular) are constructed with the idea of projecting amplified sound, which is, after all, simulated sound. I have played in some of these halls. The sound that bounces off the walls (if there is anything reflecting the sound at all) tends to be brittle and unfriendly. I have played in churches are "wired" so that all the amplified sound goes through a board that is manipulated and balanced by a board operator. I much prefer the experience of walls (particular old ones made of plaster), and balances that are manipulated by the people playing the music.

Of course I listen to recordings, and I have learned to love a lot of the music I hear on them. I also really appreciate being able to hear things I otherwise wouldn't be able to hear (because the people playing are no longer living, among other obvious reasons). But I do not believe that a musician develops the ability to hear him or herself play (and therefore improve) without developing the ability to listen in 360 natural surround sound. You can hear what is wrong when you use a recording device to play something back, but figuring out how to make the music have real meaning in the larger world of sound bouncing off stuff has to be developed by bouncing your sound off stuff (and stuff, of course, includes the sounds of other musicians playing in the same physical and acoustic space).

My concluding thought? Musicians need to play with one another in order to get better at what they do. They also need to play for people (as in audiences) in order to understand that what they do has meaning that goes beyond their own enjoyment. Eliminating or reducing either of these is a recipe for serious musical decline.

A Wonderful Time to be a Musician

DICK GORDON: [it] must have been such a wonderful time to be a talented musician in New York.

FRANK GLAZER: . . . It’s a wonderful time to be a musician any time.

What a treat it was to hear this interview with the 97-year-old pianist Frank Glazer.

Placido Domingo and Stephen Colbert Interview Transcript

After hearing Placido Domingo and Stephen Colbert sing together, I was pleased as punch to find this interview transcript. You will need to scroll down a bit to read it.

Ira Glass Interviews His Cousin Philip

This interview on today's Fresh Air (it was actually recorded in 1999) threw me for a loop. Here's a section where Philip Glass (who celebrates his 75th birthday today) talks about studying with Nadia Boulanger:

GLASS: You know, I find, I tell you, I'd finally after I'd been there about two years I finally figured out why I was there. We were having a lesson and I had come in with my harmony. We came to a place in the music and she said, it's wrong here. And I said, Madame Boulanger, it's correct. I cited the rules of voice leading and said that all these things are correct and there's nothing wrong with this. And she said yes, she said, but if Mozart had done it he would have done it like this. And she plays it the correct version, which was that perhaps the soprano was in the - the third was in the soprano instead of the root of the chord was in - whatever I had done I'd done it wrong. And I looked at her and I said but look, the rules are right here. And she said yes, but it's still wrong. I was astonished. And I - it was at that moment that I understood what she was teaching me. I realized that she was teaching the relationship between technique and style.

For example, now let's put the question another way. If you listen to let's say a measure of Rachmaninoff and then a measure of Bach, you know which is which without, you know immediately. And the question is well, why do you know that? They both are following basically the same rules of harmonic, of voice leading. But what happens is that you have in your, the course of your listening, you have taught yourself - you've recognized that Rachmaninoff will always solve a certain problem in a certain way. You may not say that to yourself, but your ear will tell you that. And that Bach will do it in his way. And you say, oh, that sounds like Bach or that sounds like Rachmaninoff or that sounds like Stravinsky. And what you're hearing is let's put it this way: You're hearing the predilection of the composer to resolve a technical problem in a highly personal way.

So in other words, now let's...

GLASS: And from that point, how hard is it to design your own personal way to solve it?

GLASS: Well, this is the point. The point is - and this is the other thing which she didn't say in words that day, but which I understood totally, was that in order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with. In other words, when I say that style is a special case of technique, you have to have the technique.

You have to have a place to make the choices from.

GLASS: Yeah.

GLASS: If you don't have a basis on which to make to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all, you have a series of accidents.

GLASS: Looking at your career from the outside, one of the things that's striking is the number of different collaborators that you've worked with and I wonder if part of it is because you had the seminal experience of confronting somebody else's work.

GLASS: Well, that's exactly - that's exactly what happens when you find your place, yourself in a place of total ignorance of that kind. And that's the place where you can begin again, you can begin learning again. You know, the difficulty with any - well, it's not just artists or musicians but with anybody in any ordinary part of life - walk of life - the difficulty we have is how we continue to learn.

I mean, this is - everybody has this problem. Because you get what we call our training and education to a certain point and we spend the rest of our life changing gears in the same way. And the biggest - this is particularly true of composers, they pick up a style or way of working a certain way, but the real issue, I've always said to younger composers, it's not how do you find your voice but how to get rid of it.

Getting the voice isn't hard, it's getting rid of the damn thing. Because once you've got the voice then you're kind of stuck with it.

GLASS: You've said to Terry Gross - in fact, she's asked you - do you ever try to compose so it doesn't sound like Philip Glass?

GLASS: I do it all the time and I fail all the time.

You can listen to the interview (or read a transcript of it) here.

Instruments for Political Figures

From Barack Obama's Interview with Barbara Walters

"If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I deeply regret not having learned a musical instrument. And I regret not having focused more on Spanish when I was studying it in school. I would love to be able to speak Spanish fluently and play an instrument."

What instrument do you think Barack Obama would have played well? My guess would be that a polyphonic instrument like the piano would work well for him. And he would probably make a good chamber music pianist. (There's always time to learn as an adult, Mr. President, though I know that it might have to wait until after your second term.)

People who have chosen instruments successfully (or have had them successfully chosen for them) tend to develop personalities that correspond to the way those instruments behave in performance situations, collective or otherwise. What instrument would you assign to which prominent "in the news" political figure (even political players who are no longer in the headlines and/or no longer running for office).

[Our son Ben, who found this interview on line and shared it with me, suggested at breakfast that a good instrument for Ron Paul would be the Erhu.]

Lilia Skala

Last night Michael and I watched the film Roseland. He was interested in it because of Teresa Wright, but that was all he knew about the film. What a thrill it was to find the actress Lilia Skala, the actress who played the Mother Superior in Lilies of the Field, in the role of Rosa.

Now THIS is acting. Here's a clip from the film where the character of Rosa begins with an impression of Marlene Dietrich, and after a bit of Puccini, contemplates a proposal of marriage.

Encountering acting like this echoes the line that the character of Arthur, played by David Thomas, says at the end of this clip: ". . . but gee wiz, I know it when I see it. The real thing. When I see that, something in me goes "bang, bang" instantaneously. Never fails."



and here's another very short clip:



Acting like that does not come without brains. Skala was the first Austrian woman to get a degree in architecture. She had to go to Germany to get one because in the second decade of the 20th century Austria wouldn't accept women in the university (at least in technical fields).

Skala's granddaughter, who is also an actress, wrote and performed a one-woman show about her grandmother a couple of years ago, and Libby has generously put some clips from it on YouTube:

Slow Learner
Never in Love

Here's part one of a four-part interview with Libby about her grandmother.

The Secret Life of Pronouns

I just heard a radio interview with James W. Pennebaker, the writer of The Secret Life of Pronouns, and immediately, before even putting my groceries away, went to the website for his book to look at the various tests he offers.

I found virtually every statement he made to miss the mark as far as determining what our use of language, as analyzed in computer terms, says about us and how we communicate. There are a bunch of tests on his website, and I took the one that required the least amount of time. The test analyzes a chunk of text written by two people, and then determines the quality of the relationship that those two people have based on the compatibility of their language style. I put a chunk of text from this blog (to represent me, of course), and a chunk of text from my husband's blog into the analyzer, and the computer determined that we had little in common language-wise. Then I put the same chunk of text from my blog in with a different chunk of text from his blog, and the computer determined that we had a great deal in common language-wise.

I became skeptical when Pennebaker used a double "is" ("The thing is is . . ") multiple times in the course of his interview. Someone who does that repeatedly can not be very self aware when he speaks.

I just compared this blog post (minus this paragraph) with some prose from Pennebaker's website, and the computer analyzed it as .77 (the average is .68). Then I compared it to one of Michael's blog post. The computer gave that .81. Four points difference between me and a person I just heard speak on the radio, and me and my husband of nearly 27 years? I think that this method of analysis needs some serious work.

Now I'll put my groceries away.

Frederic Rzewski Interview

I have been spending some quality time during the past few days looking at and listening to the music of Frederic Rzewski, while helping the good people at the IMSLP's Petrucci Library and the Werner Icking Music Archive with their colossal merging project.

(You can help too.)

Rzewski is a composer who never "crossed over" into using computer notation software. He never embraces fads or writes in a formulaic way, and, as far as I can tell, he never stops writing deeply expressive music. He's a fantastic pianist with a wonderfully sensitive touch, and his view of the place of the 20th century in the grand scheme of all things musical is illuminating. The passage below comes from an interview he did with Daniel Varela in 2003 for the online music magazine Perfect Sound Forever.

. . . I believe very strongly that live music, as opposed to recorded music, will continue to survive and recorded music will collapse. I think perhaps the 20th century will be regarded by future generations like the "recording century," which leads to confusion between a work of art and its industrial reproduction. In a way similar to the notion of the ancient Egyptians about life after death (a very strange idea), in the 20th Century there was the strange idea that it was possible to freeze the music into a piece of plastic which you could then buy it in a store. I think that we have had some kind of return to a more traditional view, namely that music is something that one does, not something that comes to you. It's some form of activity so I think that we'll find new forms of folk music, something that appears spontaneously.

One of the things that I'm personally interested in is writing- writing as opposed to recording, a form of projecting ideas potentially far into the future which is something that recordings cannot do. It's been said that recordings are forever and do not change, but maybe in the future, we will discover new means of recording. Today, we have CD ROMs and things like that but it seems that even they are very primitive means. They're primitive if we compare them to a simple page of music. One of the interesting things about writing is that it's possible to define structure very, very precisely and at the same time, by doing it in a such way, it is still capable of a multiplicity of interpretations all of which can be equally interesting. This is the reason to see Beethoven as a master. Beethoven could be interpreted in different many ways and we know that future generations will discuss how to play the "Hammerklavier" sonata.

You can visit the Rzewski IMSLP page (still in progress and growing every day) to have a look at PDFs of his music. You can also watch and listen to him play some of his piano music here, listen here, and visit his page in the Werner Icking Music Archive to hear more performances and see more scores.

Here's a piece for four violists to play while reciting Shakespeare called Fortune (the versatile violists are Leanne King, Dominic De Stefano, Michael Davis, and Sara Rogers). Here's the score.

Interview with Myself

I: What inspired you to do a self interview for your blog?

E: I was inspired by my friend Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi’s interview about performing the Beethoven Violin Concerto that she put on her blog. I have been practicing the Beethoven Violin Concerto during the past week or so, and I thought it might be a nice starting point for a discussion.

I: Are you working on it for a particular performance?

E: Oh no! I’m working on it partly because I want to become stronger playing in the violin’s high register, and that piece requires real strength up in the higher ledger lines of the treble clef. I’m actually playing two concerts this fall of music by 20th-century British composers who love to write in that register. As a violist who plays the violin for fun, it’s a real challenge to find comfort in the flute register.

I: Didn’t you used to play the flute?

E: It’s a very different experience playing up high in the flute register from playing up high on the violin. It’s almost like they are opposite experiences. It requires real strength to get a good sound in the violin’s high register, while the flute’s high register just requires a bit of force and a lot of support. It’s almost impossible to play a true pianissimo above high G on the flute, while there are a whole range of dynamics below mezzo forte in the register surrounding high G on the violin. Dynamic levels above mezzo forte in that register, with my fiddle, are still something I hope to be able to reach.

I: You seem to add tools for musical expression every ten years or so. You started playing the violin at 7, stopped at 11, started flute at 13, added recorder at 21, added baroque flute at 25, went back to violin at 31, added viola at 33, began composing seriously at 40, and added viola d’amore at 48. Do you have any reasonable explanation for this pattern?

E: I’m fickle and restless. Because I live in a place with little stress, and I'm often underemployed, I need to do things that stimulate my mind. I usually concentrate on practicing one stringed instrument at a time (I never touch the flute, unless I’m writing music for it). I play my recorders and my viola d’amore every Friday with my collegium.

I: Your collegium?

E: Yes. I meet with a group of 6 or 7 friends, and we play Renaissance and Medieval music.

I: How do you find 6 or 7 people to play Renaissance music on recorders in your remote Illinois town of 20,000 people?

E: One is my recorder student, and another is my former composition professor. One moved back to town after many years away (once, many years ago, this town was a relative hotbed of musical activity). Two others (a married couple) are instrument collectors. Both were music majors in college and graduate school, but ended up doing other things for a living. The last member of the group is a university student. He's a euphonium player who appreciates the real musical education he gets from playing great music on recorders and his new rackett.

I: And you also play in a string quartet?

E: Yes. We have played together for years, and because we are dispersed between Illinois and Indiana, we now play mainly for weddings. I enjoy making arrangements for the group. I find that writing arrangements is a wonderful way to exercise creativity while not really being bound to do anything really original. I find it a relaxing pastime, and, because the people in my quartet are such fine musicians (they really are) the arrangements always sound good. They make the people getting married and their guests happy, and they make us happy.

I: Do you find that it is work to write music?

E: I find that it’s a wonderful pleasure to write music. When I am writing something I can make all sorts of decisions without having to compromise or consult with anyone. I am the CEO of my musical domain. I can also be expressive and critical at the same time, and I can allow myself to feel the physicality of what I am writing. If I’m setting a text, I allow myself to explore that text much more deeply than I would if I were simply reading. I also get a real kick out of the idea of making something totally new; something that has never been written before. I often have to make sure that a significant amount of time passes between finishing one piece and beginning another, just to make sure that I'm actually writing something new and not just an extension of my last piece.

I: Would you like to be able to make a living from your compositions?

E: I would love to, but I know that it is a total impossibility. I consider myself an accomplished composer, and I’m very proud of the work I have done, but I find it very difficult to think of it as something of a set monetary value that I can sell. I have a lot of music published by publishers that own the rights to what I have written. From that I see very little in the way of royalties. Royalties for composers come to about 10% of the price that a person buying a piece of music pays. When I began working with my first publisher, Raoul Ronson, I saw considerable royalties. My first royalty check, which came after 6 months, was for $500.00, which meant that the music I wrote generated $5,000.00 in revenue. This went on for a while, but after Raoul Ronson died, and his company, See Saw Music, was sold to Subito, royalties have trickled down to around $25.00 every year or so.

I: Have you thought of starting your own publishing company?

E: I have. I even thought of a good name. But I don’t have any sort of business sense, and I'm sure that I would fail as a publisher. Publicity and promotion is the way of the 21st century, and the closest I can really get to self promotion is by posting this interview with myself on my blog. I have always believed that if what I write is of any quality, and if it is the kind of music people will want to play, they will seek it out if I make it available without selling it. I make everything new that I have written available in the Werner Icking Music Archive, which is now about to merge with the ISMLP's Petrucci Library. I do hope that musicians won't think less of me as a composer because I do my work in a non-commercial way, and do not spend the money that I would otherwise make (perhaps) on hiring a professional publicist and someone to do my accounting.

I: Isn’t composing without monetary compensation doing a lot of work for very little in return?

E: Absolutely not. The greatest return for me is to hear a performance of something I have written. It is far more valuable than money. Unfortunately success has come to be measured in dollars and cents (not so much cents anymore, I suppose), but I don't measure it that way. I measure it through doing something that gives me true satisfaction. Another benefit I find (in the abstract much of the time) is to help people communicate with one another musically, and perhaps even communicate with me. I keep hoping that some old friend will come across a piece of music I have written, will play it, and will get in touch with me. People so often think of composers as dead people or people who are inaccessible. I pride myself on my accessibility and enjoy the fact that I’m still alive.

I: That’s probably a good place to end this interview. I’m glad you took the time to talk with me.

E: I enjoyed our conversation too.

Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers

Bálint András Varga's Three Question for Sixty-Five Composers is a goldmine. It was published in Budapest in 1986, and just came into print in an English language edition, which has been revised to include post 1986 updates, and a handful of younger composers who are still living.

Here are Varga's questions:

1. Have you had an experience similar to Witold Lutoslawski's: he heard John Cage's Second Piano Concerto on the radio--an encounter which changed his musical thinking and ushered in a new creative period, the first result of which was his Jeux vénitiens (1960-1961). [N.B. Varga was referring, of course, to John Cage's Concert for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra.]

2. A composer is surrounded by sounds. Do they influence you and are they in any way of significance for your compositional work?

3. How far can one speak of a personal style and where does self-repetition begin?

I'm surprised to find composers I haven't heard of before, like Sandor Balassa, who responded to the third question in a most compelling way.

The artist, while changing his subject, tells of this and that--what he has experienced and dreamed of in the course of his life.

The permanent and repeated moments are manifested through the author's personality and his limitations. The fact that his subjects are communicated by him, means that we see through his eyes, we experience his works filtered through his personality.

He goes on to say:

I also want to tell people to remain faithful to their youthful ideals. Why should I only do so just once? The fact that modernist music has lost the sympathy of listeners is due in part to its renunciation of the principle of repetition. Look, I am no linguist. I have no intention of inventing new languages. I would like to communicate something in the language we have, so that my message should reach its addressees. My main concern is for them to understand me.

My next excerpt of particular note comes from Sir Harrison Birtwistle's response to the second question:

Color is like orchestration, if you like. You can't divorce color from a picture, it is part of it. You cannot divorce orchestration from a composition.

I just find smell very evocative, in a purely Proustian sense. Like taste. I do not know if it has anything do do with music but it seems to me to be a very potent recaller of material. Smell is something . . . I smelt something the other day that I hadn't smelt for forty years: the smell of a dairy. The sour smell of slightly stale milk--no matter how you clean the place you can never get rid of it. I went to a farm, and I smelt this and it was amazing--it was my childhood.

But do you get any musical ideas from smells?

No.

Then there's Elliot Carter:

To work out a series of stylistic devices and then use them as formulae bores me as a prospect and it bores me in others who do it. Self-repetition is to me a sign of fatigue.

and George Crumb:

All of the great composers of the past had immediately recognizable fingerprints. With a more recent composer like Stravinsky, for example, even though he is referred to as having changed style many times, what strikes me about his music over his whole lifetime is its consistency.

I find the response to the third question by the "humble" Morton Feldman quite interesting:

Many people feel that if they hear one piece of mine, they heard it all. Yet all Rembrandts are more or less the same. All Giottos are more or less the same.

You are not hurt when people make this remark? Perhaps you agree?

About my music? I don't agree. It means they are not listening. All Proust is the same. Kafka is the same. All gardens in Vienna are the same.

Why is it people expect music to be so different? I'll tell you why. Because people get very bored, they can't listen to music. They can't listen to music . . . My problem is that I want all my pieces to be the same but I haven't got the discipline to make it the same . . .

Pierre Schaeffer's response to the third question comes as a surprise:

I cannot answer this question because I am not a composer. Why did I stop writing which I had always regarded as an experiment? I had a positive and a negative reason.

The positive reason has nothing to do with music. I used to work a great deal in radio and television--but after all, we only have one life and for me, writing was my actual vocation. I only have a few years left to write my books: philosophical works, novels, and other things. For me, music was an accident. An unfortunate accident.

The negative reason: music today is in a crisis. My contemporaries try to flee from their all-encompassing metaphysical fear in that they seek an impossible sort of music: stochastic or repetitive music, Stockhausenian blah-blah, Cageian clownery. I do not wish to become the victim of new simplicity--I prefer to reject it all.

There are many more interviews I could quote, but I'll save further discovery and delight for you. Gunther Schuller's interview is so compelling that I cannot bear to take only an excerpt. It certainly whets my appetite for his forthcoming memoir Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty, which happens to also be published by the University of Rochester Press.

Violinists' Speaking Voices

This WQXR radio interview from February 2, 1955 was part of a celebration of Fritz Kreisler's 80th birthday. Before the Kreisler interview begins there are audio birthday greetings from Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, Erica Morini, Joseph Szigeti, Ruggiero Ricci, and Isaac Stern. What an ear-opening experience it is to hear the speaking voices of these violinists, particularly after being so familiar with their violinist voices. I had no idea that Isaac Stern's voice could be so rich and mellow, and I noticed that Menuhin's voice sounds significantly more American than it sounded when he became older. Don't you just love the way Kreisler pronounces "works" as "woiks," and "first" as "foist?"

Jordi Savall Interview

Yesterday I listened to a 2008 pre-concert interview with Jordi Savall on an "Overgrown Path" podcast. You can get the link to the (free) interview here. I have transcribed a few of Savall's statements.

Music is the art of the dialog, and I think it’s the best training, the best school for everybody to learn to establish a dialog with other people with other cultures, because when you are doing music you do music with people with [whom] you have a sympathy. Normally then you have to respect them. You have to tune in the same tuning, you have to listen to them to make music. And this is the best school for all the situations in the life.

[For] many hundred years there was thinking the music was in evolution, even Stendhal in the 19th century, says while now Haydn and Mozart are really great composers, and they have advantaged all the other ancient composers. This is a mistake. I say it was the quality of the music that brings the emotion. And you can be so much touched by a simple voice combined by a lute or another instrument so much emotional as you can have with a big vocal ensemble from a hundred singers, and a big orchestra from a hundred musicians. The quality of the emotion, the quality of the art, has nothing to do with the strongness of the sound, with the bigness of the orchestra, and with the complexity of the music.

More Alice Herz Sommer Interviews

Here are some more YouTube clips of Alice Herz Sommer: a two-part BBC interview, and another video of her talking about music and playing. What a terrific pianist!