Despite being a viola player and a composer, you are most well-known for being a theremin virtuoso. What first attracted you to the instrument?

I’ve been playing the instrument since the early age of 7, so I can hardly remember what I actually really thought about the theremin back then. But I remember very well that I have always been fascinated with being able to produce sounds just by slightly lifting a finger in the air, like a mystic figure in a tale.

It is not that easy, of course, to make music out of this ‘fingerplay’, but it has always been somehow like that – fingerplay, refined by hard work.  

Do you prefer playing on your own or with a group of musicians? Why?

Actually, I like both! But playing with others is maybe even more attractive to me than playing on my own, especially when we play in a jazz-style. I love interacting with improvisation, the invention of sounds, or better to say, the rising up of sound ideas that have to be discovered and processed at once. It gives me a feeling of satisfaction and curiosity when the unexpected is just a few moments away.

On the other hand, playing on my own means complete freedom to me in a way that I can’t have with others – from time to time it can be a very meditative way to explore new borders.

The theremin is still quite a new and unusual instrument in the music world, and not as popular with beginners as many more traditional instruments. Do you think that the instrument will get more popular with time?

Yes, I am sure it will. There are of course other ‘new’ instruments like the accordion that were widely disseminated in a much shorter period of time compared to the theremin. The most important reason for this is the similarity of these instruments to older ones – the accordion, for example, can be seen as a very special kind of piano. By contrast, the theremin really is a completely new instrument that still has to be explored.

There are more and more composers and conductors that are interested in taking part in this exploration process, getting familiar with the theremin, and the number of pieces or even symphonies written for the theremin is steadily increasing. This year, for instance, I took part in three wonderful world premieres: the symphonies ‘Mesopotamia’ and ‘Universe’ by the Turkish composer Fazil Say, and the Theremin Concerto ‘Eight Seasons’ by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho.

The reactions to my first method book, The Art of Playing the Theremin, also indicate a rising interest in the instrument. I hope that I will be able to boost this effect with a revised and extended version of my book that will be published hopefully next year.

With reference to your method book, the first of its kind to completely outline a theremin technique, do you think that studying technique is essential to being a good musician, or can expression ever be enough on its own?

There is no music without expression. Expression is actually an essential condition for every kind of art. Technique, on the other hand, does not seem to be necessary to the same degree. But without technique sooner or later you will inevitably reach a point where further development, exploration and innovation are no longer possible. A solid technique can therefore be compared to the solid foundation of a building: it is not really necessary at first glance, but very soon you will ascertain beyond doubt that because of it, you have the ability to upgrade your ‘house’ whenever you want to do so. For me, this ability is a vital feature of my creative work.

You studied with Lydia Kavina, the grand-niece of Leon Theremin. Do you think studying with a direct descendant of your instrument’s creator gave you any inspiration or deeper insight into interpretation?

I owe a lot to Lydia Kavina as she was the only one of my teachers who already had advanced skills in playing the theremin. Although we met maybe only once a year, she always helped me to improve my skills substantially. My other teachers were my parents, who helped me a lot in the first several years, and from the age of maybe 13 or 14, I started to develop my own style of playing the theremin. They all influenced my way of playing and interpreting the music.

I thoroughly enjoyed the YouTube video of you playing a transcription of Fauré’s ‘Après un rêve’. Do you think that music is something that should always be transferable from one instrument to another, or are there some pieces that should only be played on the instrument that the composer intended?

This, I think, depends on the piece. The basic ideas of a composer are always deeply connected with his choice of instruments, of course. And this year I had a lot of opportunities to experience the special intensity of pieces that were really written for theremin. But, somehow, there are pieces of universal beauty, like ‘Après un rêve’, that can be played on every instrument. There is a German saying ‚Einen schönen Menschen kann nichts entstellen‘ (‘Beautiful people can get away with anything‘); this applies to some pieces also.

For you, as a virtuoso on an electronic instrument, what defines an instrument? When does a musical instrument just become a machine?

The difference between a machine and an instrument is that an instrument still has to be played by someone. If something is producing music by itself, it is a machine.

Lastly, instruments tend to change and improve over time as they become older. If you could make any changes to the theremin, either for serious artistic reasons or just for fun, what would you change and why?

Most actual theremins have some weak points. Among them is a restricted playing range, unequal tone spacing, sensitivity to external RF interference from other electronic circuits nearby, temperature sensitivity, technically limited expressivity or simply the weight and dimensions which can be crucial for the frequently traveling professional thereminist. The main cause might be that many of the existing instruments have been designed by excellent engineers who did not have the sufficient musical skills needed for understanding the professional musician’s point of view. That’s why I decided to initiate a collaboration with the French-German theremin expert Thierry Frenkel in order to develop a series of instruments which will be significantly improved compared to those actually on the market. While the solution for all problems cited above will still require much research and development time, the first prototyping results are very promising: a new technology, never used in theremins up to now, gives a much more sophisticated volume response and range of expression in conjunction with considerably reduced sensitivity to interference, while the use of an optimized classic oscillator structure on the pitch side will greatly reduce temperature and stability problems and give the player a vast and homogenous playing field. A first public release of the standard model is planned for 2013 while the professional variant will follow later.

To find out more about Carolina and her work, visit her website at www.carolinaeyck.com/.

How do you find talking about music?

I’m not comfortable with talking about music because it’s a very subjective thing; it’s a deeply personal thing. I’m more comfortable in helping people express their musical ideas and to release any things that they want to share in the music, their perceptions of music, with ease, with comfort, with confidence. I tend to talk about music in the room that I’m teaching and not outside. In a way, people who know me well know that I’m a musician by profession – I’ve been very fortunate to have had a lot of success, especially in the playing field – but it’s not my chief area of interest.

Why did you choose to specialise specifically in music as a profession?

I started learning the piano very young because my elder sister, Alison, did.  The piano came into the house and I was fascinated by this thing and starting playing it immediately, picking out tunes, and was clearly quite precociously gifted at it, I have to say looking back. And it went on – I went through school and played the piano and went through the grades, but I was very fortunate, terribly fortunate, and right from the word ‘go’ in my kindergarten had a very good teacher – Miss France, bless her. I had a little audition when I was about six years old with Marjorie Withers, who studied at the Royal Academy back in the 1920s, and she said yes, she would like to have me, and she was a fantastic  teacher. She was ahead of the game in as much as she encouraged improvisation and didn’t mind me playing syncopational jazz, and she was all for it provided I did my scales and went through the grades. As I see looking back, it was understood that I was going to be a pianist. The only person who didn’t understand it was me.

You’ve mentioned the influence of teachers obviously being a big thing for you, and I know you do a lot of teaching yourself. How important do you think a teacher is in forming an artist, and what things are there that someone can only learn intuitively by themselves?

I think a good teacher is immensely important in the formation of anybody. I had the good fortune, after Marjorie Withers and boarding school, of getting a scholarship to go to the Royal Academy of Music and study with Gordon Green, a legendary teacher. And he used to say ‘there’s no such thing as a good teacher; there’s only such a thing as a good student’, and I remember not agreeing with him then, but it was an interesting concept. I’ve always had an interest in amateurs, and in people more, let us say, more modestly talented. I’m less interested in people who are just talented and can do it and teachers who just twiddle the knobs – for a gifted teacher, or a teacher who’s interested in helping to create a young musician, that’s not the issue. The issue is to release what innate ability’s there, no matter what grade or ability or level it is. Talent will out; talent will take care of itself. I think if you’re talented, by and large, it will happen, and you can get the best from even bad teachers, but a great teacher will help even the moderately gifted to achieve great things.

Do you have any views on the direction that contemporary music is going in at the moment?

I’ve noticed that there’s been a tremendous reaction against this arid atonality of the post-war period, the sixties and seventies perhaps in particular. But with the eighties and nineties, the latter part of the last century, there’s been a more rear-guard action to more tuneful music, which I’m delighted about, and the sort of ‘plinkety-plonk’ era has abated to some degree. And I’ve played ‘plinkety-plonk’ quite a bit, but… What I would say is that if you do struggle with the ‘plinkety-plonk’ – I shouldn’t say ‘plinkety-plonk’: ghastly noises really, hideous noises – it does teach you to look at scores in great detail and in a way that you wouldn’t ordinarily. The great thing about contemporary music is that you’re turned in on your own resources. I think it’s terribly important to do a substantial piece, like it or loathe it, and really use all your musical resources, and those who have resources will play their Chopin Nocturnes even better, and those who don’t, shouldn’t be in the music profession.

What do you think is the difference between music for performance and music for study, and how should we approach those differently? Or is there a difference?

I’m finding teaching in a sense more difficult than I ever have – I’m finding it problematic now because I find students are so ambitious and all they can think of is the performance, not the study. They think of the prize, not the work; they think of the exam result and not the graft. Now, this is a tremendous generalisation – I’ve had the most wonderful exceptions – but overall, this is what I perceive. I think I’ve been deeply influenced by Gordon Green, who I always remember saying to me on one memorable occasion, ‘dear boy, you must understand that I’m not concerned how you play today, but I do care about how you play in ten years’ time’. And I don’t see the evidence of that in much teaching today: I see microwave teaching, the instant result, put it in the oven for two minutes, finish performance, go and get your prize, now let’s do the next thing. This is not the way to mature things; this is not the way wine matures, and I say to my students, ‘please don’t perform at me. Lessons are… it’s not an audition, it is not a Radio 3 studio. This is a workshop: we’ve got our boiler suits, our oily rags. We’re learning how to learn. We’re learning how this piece was conceived, put together, and we’re going to reassemble it.’ The trouble about that is people want to perform it, but I think the real learning is not necessarily in the performing process. I think people always think of the performance more than the study.

When it comes to performance and competing…

Competing?

Competing.

Pornographic word.

I know that you have a somewhat… tentative relationship with competitions and you’re not a big fan of them.

I’m not.

Can I ask you, do you think competition is ever useful in music, and if not, why so?

[long pause]

I feel bound to say that, in my deepest heart, I think that I do parody my own prejudices. I think competition does have its place, but I think that is has become a parody of its own. I think there are too many competitions – they’re in competition with themselves – and you get this whole competition circuit, competition repertoire… The Young Musician of the Year¸ which is a competition I abhor, is certainly televised and it’s now become like a sort of horse race: you have commentators… I sometimes joke to students here, ‘They’re coming up to the coda now! They’re coming up to the double octaves! Are they going to make it? No, they’ve taken a wrong turning and played an F# – how do they get out of that and forget?’ You know, it is as absurd as that – it’s become like horse-racing. And I feel this is all wrong, and the public see performance in a competitive light. Today, there is no time for vulnerability, and it’s often the vulnerable players who have the most to say. So in that sense I think competitions are iniquitous. But when you get to things like festivals for children and that kind of thing, I’m much more comfortable with that. That’s fine – it’s the international jamboree circus that I object to very, very strongly.

Hear an audio clip of Philip’s view on competitions: Download audio file (Philip-Fowke-1.mp3)

Do you find it less offensive when this ‘jamboree’ is aimed at older, more mature artists? Is it the damage to young musicians that you find particularly…

Enormous damage, and if not damage, pressure. And it’s a lost cause in a way… I just don’t know what to say. Except this: that my love for amateurs, just to see the smile on somebody’s face when they’re playing a well-known Chopin Prelude or Nocturne, and suddenly, they’ve been doing it for thirty years and they haven’t got it right, give them a fingering, just a few little tricks, a few little exercises and they do it. The smile on their faces: that’s what matters. I think that is so important. And the future of music, I think, lies in the amateur arena. We’ve become so over-professionalised.  It’s all hyped up to a grotesque degree now: people are over-taught; people are made to play better than they ought. People come to college and they can’t even read music. You ask them to improvise, and they look at you in horror. And I think, these people: should they be professional musicians or should they be accountants and bankers? I leave the question hovering uneasily in the air.

When it comes to performance for you, what’s more important: being true to your vision of the music or entertaining an audience?

I’ve always taken the view that any form of performing is also a form of entertainment, but I think it’s people’s perception of the word ‘entertainment’, and also the word ‘fun’… I mean, ‘You’re not really supposed to enjoy yourself, are you? Is it supposed to be fun? This is great art.’ I have no time for that, absolutely no time for that, and I love to see people leave a concert hall or come up to you afterwards with smiles and joy, they’ve had an enormously enjoyable evening, and that matters to me more than anything.

Hear an audio clip of Philip’s view on fun in Classical music: Download audio file (Philip-Fowke-2.wav)

At what point for you does music become sound?

I think the greatest music is silence, and it’s at a real premium these days, to hear silence. Now here we are sitting outside: I can hear various noises, but I can hear the pattering of the rain on this umbrella  – that’s music. When I walked to the station through the woods this morning, hearing the birds and the wind in the fallen leaves – that’s music. And I think that the birds and the leaves and the wind have it, and music is really only a rather pale imitation of the ultimate music which is silence.

So to finish, what is the best performance you’ve ever listened to?

Oh, I always… one can’t… I mean, what a question. It’s like… you’re asking me is an apple better than an orange, and I like both. I could never say. I can remember specific performances, but I couldn’t comfortably answer that question.

For more information on Philip Fowke, visit his website at www.philipfowke.co.uk.

Apart from the occasional handful of popular nocturnes peppered in an otherwise ‘traditional’ concert program, it’s a very rare occurrence to see a piece by John Field offered up to the audience at a piano recital, let alone any other type of concert. On the surface, it’s a no-brainer: Field’s primary claim to fame as being the ‘father of the nocturne’, the first to coin the term in reference to the short night-inspired character pieces and consequently a huge influence on Chopin and other later nocturne composers, means it’s only natural that these pieces receive the bulk of the small amount of attention cast in his direction. But to dismiss John Field as a one-trick pony seems a little narrow-minded given that the composer’s musical output during his lifetime was broader than just a handful of character pieces, and his influence more important that it is generally given credit for.

Field, born in Dublin in 1782, was somewhat of a child prodigy with a great aptitude for music in his early childhood, and by the age of eleven, the already accomplished pianist was apprenticed to Clementi to work in his piano workshop in London. He continued performing and gaining a reputation for his virtuosic skill as a pianist while there, in the meantime helping in the workshop to build and maintain instruments. He was also required to help sell the pianos by demonstrating for the public in the workshop, and it was during this time spent with Clementi that his first major compositions appeared: a piano concerto and three sonatas, the sonatas consequently published by Clementi himself in 1801.

The majority of his compositions, understandably given his disposition for performing on the instrument, are works including a piano as the main focus; there are indeed chamber works for strings and a small quantity of songs, but the high proportion of his compositions are pieces including a piano, either solo, duo or with orchestra. His most substantial contribution to the piano repertoire (apart from the nocturnes) is a collection of seven concertos, the previously mentioned first written in 1799, the last in 1822. On listening to the first (see above), Classicism shines through with an air of late Mozart/early Beethoven, but by the seventh concerto (see below), the style has matured and there’s a definite Romanticism in flavour not completely dissimilar to Chopin – compare with the Chopin First Piano Concerto, for example. The stately first movements (coincidently both in 3/4) certainly share similarities in style, and the rondos at the end of each of the concertos are equally sprightly. Both concertos are also imbued with a Romantic lyricism not yet entirely devoid of Classical structure, and since we’re already well aware of the influence Field had on Chopin through his adoption of the nocturne form, it can be deduced that Chopin picked up a few other tricks from the composer, whose work he clearly had an admiration for.

So, having established that Field was indeed an important influence on Chopin (possibly too much of an influence, given Field’s own reported distaste at the similarities between his Romance and Chopin’s later Nocturne Op. 9 No.2), were there other composers influenced by his life, works or performances? Certainly, Brahms was said to have owned some of Field’s music, but the influence seems little more extensive than that. However, there is an interesting connection with Mendelssohn to note: a shared teacher, Ludwig Berger, leads a direct line from Field to Mendelssohn, and there are some works which would suggest an influence from the former to the latter. Certainly, the majority of Field’s rondos (noteworthy are Rondo on ‘Come Again’ H.53 and, to a leser extent, Rondo in Ab, H. 18) would not be out of place in a book of Lieder Ohne Worte, and it can’t help but be ruminated that perhaps the older composer had an influence in the compositional style of the younger; whether indirectly or directly, it is hard to ascertain.
So with a position of influence woven into the fabric of the early 19th century music scene, why is Field not given more credit nowadays? His work was original for the time, imbued with a sense of great lyricism and style acting as a precursor to the Romantic era, and given his influence on various composers who are today better remembered, it most certainly seems that he was not unrecognised for his talents at the time. To me, it appears that Field’s legacy has not lasted as well as it should have simply because there have not been many attempts at a revival: while Busoni planned to showcase a new way to play Field in the 1920s before his death, even these programmes were saturated with nocturnes, and no-one else has dared touch the bulk of Field’s repertoire. Just as the Schubert Piano Sonatas were not given any attention before their 21st century revival, it seems that Field is destined to suffer the fate of being completely unrecognised until some brave soul sees fit to drag his legacy onto the concert platform; let us just hope it is not another two centuries until he finally gets the audience and wider share of attention that he deserves.

Carmen Jones, with a book by Oscar Hammerstein II, was initially presented on Broadway in 1942 with an all-black cast. It is not hard to see parallels between this production and Porgy and Bess (1935), which was also intended to showcase African-American performers on Broadway. As Alex Ross discusses in the chapter ‘Invisible Men’ from his book The Rest is Noise, there were a number of shows written for the many talented and classically-trained black performers who were often limited in their performing opportunities. Carmen Jones, which essentially preserves the original music, requires the same level of skill as the opera itself. In the movie, the part of Carmen was sung by Marilyn Horne in her first major classical role; Dorothy Danbridge acted the part, which was viewed as too challenging for her to sing.

While the melodies remain intact, there were considerable changes to the lyrics and to the settings, making the opera a modern adaptation of a classic. Take, for instance, Pearl Bailey’s ‘Beat Out That Rhythm,’ a new version of ‘Les tringles des sistres tintaient.’

From this clip, it is clear that Carmen Jones poses some problems in terms of race depiction: there is an exoticism that can be found throughout the film, much like the exoticism that drives the opera itself. If anything, the exotic qualities are made even more apparent since the movie takes place exclusively in a black world: we see effectively no white characters in the entire production, creating an artificial sense of segregation. Yet at the same time, the characters in Carmen Jones are less of a caricature than their operatic precursors. In fact, by making these characters more human, the traditional interpretation of this work gets turned on its head.

Borrowing from Catherine Clément’s Opera, or the Undoing of Women, Carmen’s fundamental flaw is herself. She is unwilling to compromise for anyone, repeatedly subverting attempts by the males in the opera to control her and disregarding conventional mores, such as the impending wedding of Don José and Micaëla. As a result, Carmen must die: violently and in full sight of the audience. The implication of this interpretation is that if she had chosen to follow the rules of society, she never would have suffered the fate that she did at the hands of Don José. It is her character’s traits that effectively kill her. To put it another way, she has brought this upon herself.

Carmen Jones shares some of the original Carmen’s traits. She has little interest in conventional society, proclaiming that she does not waste time worrying about the future. Her greatest fear is being trapped in a cage, a metaphor that can be applied literally (she refuses to go to jail) or figuratively (she is aloof in relationships). In the film, which never states the year in which it is set, she works in a parachute factory which is next to an army base, where Joe (Don José) is stationed. Before he gives in to Carmen’s charms, he is slated to go to flight school and become a pilot, a position of high esteem. However, he is forced to leave his position after he kills one of his commanding officers because he was flirting with Carmen. Joe murders the officer by beating him to death with his fists, seemingly unaware of his power. He and Carmen flee to Chicago to avoid his capture. While he is trapped in the apartment, he continues to make threats to her: if she leaves, he will find her. Of course, in the end he does, and strangles her on camera.

Joe’s character is contrasted with Husky Miller, the stand-in for Escamillo. His introductory song, to the tune of ‘Toreador,’ is ‘Stand Up and Fight’ (seen in the preview of the movie).

Undoubtedly, a toreador would be out of place in rural America, so his role is transformed into a boxer. During a stopover in Carmen’s town, he was besotted with her and demanded that his manager bring her to Chicago, where he is about to fight. Carmen is initially reluctant, then takes the money to transport her and Joe after he has murdered the officer. Carmen does succumb to Husky eventually. However, we see that his personality is different than that of Joe’s. Husky tries to seduce Carmen, but when he is rebuffed, he does not threaten her. Instead, he is patient. When Joe seeks to fight Husky, Husky is the one who refuses since he knows that he has the power to kill Joe with his fists. This contrasts heavily with Joe, who was oblivious to his strength.

In Carmen Jones, then, the problem is not so much Carmen, who is content to live her life. The problem is Joe. He is unable to control his impulses, killing a man–then later Carmen–with his bare hands. Certainly, it is easy to say that he was driven to this behavior, but that does not work in this interpretation, particularly after we see that Husky is able to control his emotions even when under the influence of the bewitching Carmen. It is not her fault, then, that she died. It is Joe’s fault that he is unable to stay in control when he should.

This lack of control is treacherous, not only for Carmen, but also because of Joe’s role in the military. He was supposed to become one of the elite members of the air force, a position that is repeatedly referred to by the various characters as one of great prestige. But his inability to control his emotions makes one wonder if he was really suited for this position. This work debuted during wartime and in 1954, audiences would have been cognizant of the importance of discipline for members of the military: World War II was not that far in the past and the Korean War had just ended (1953). What if a Joe were in the military? We start to see that his behavior is not merely damaging to those who are killed in the film, but potentially threatening to other officers and to the integrity of his unit.

Carmen Jones takes a classic opera and reinterprets it for a modern audience. In doing so, though, it also provides an alternative understanding of the characters by rendering them more human. While the film is worth seeing in and of itself, for opera buffs, it is particularly recommended since it offers a new take on a perennial favorite.

Interesting fact: the role of Joe was played by Harry Belafonte, although his voice was also dubbed in the songs because they were considered too difficult for him. Belafonte would later refuse to play the role of Porgy in Preminger’s Porgy and Bess because he felt it was a demeaning portrayal of a black man. Of course, Belafonte is far more famous for his songs, two of which were integral to another film that I watched on my trip, Tim Burton’s 1989 Beetlejuice.

Photography by Tom Hayes

The blog responses to Justin Davidson’s provocative piece, “The New New York School” from March 20, 2011 in New York Magazine—an appraisal of the music of several young New York composers—are so far coming down almost unanimously against Davidson’s thesis that our contemporary inclusiveness gives young composers nothing to rebel against, leaving their energies scattered and ultimately diluted, no matter how much energy the pieces exude on their surfaces. He is called out as being an old school modernist, entrenched in a decrepit idea—that making something new requires rejecting the formerly new.

More mixed is the response to the assertion that much of the music from the New York composers in their thirties, which he dubs the “New New York School”, ultimately sounds the same. Depite challenges to Davidson’s ability to evaluate this sameness, I think it can be said that determining a salience of similarity is more of a statement of personal perspective than literal fact. All composers and pieces are obviously literally different, but generally they can also (eventually, at some reductive level) be seen as similar too. In Davidson’s case he’s interested in the similarities of the music of this particular scene. And one similarity he hears is a neither-here-nor-there absence of motivational direction. He says, “[the] composers seem muffled, bereft of zeal.”

He then connects this personal reaction to a conundrum in our current lives: we have access to and openness towards everything, which is sometimes like having everything but sometimes like having nothing. He says this group of composers “seems disoriented by its own open-mindedness“ and that the results of their “nonsectarianism” are “shockingly tame.”

Critics are supposed to connect dots to a bigger story and if Davidson feels that something is missing in the musical zeitgeist of this time he is supposed to point it out. Of course the composers are supposed to refute and ultimately ignore this. But the critic’s assessment is not based upon the composers’ opinions, or even their intentions, but rather his or her experience. In his follow up comments, Davidson admits he was expecting to write a ringing endorsement but he actually, as a listener, found the music somewhat lacking. It may not be your feeling, but it was/is his.

The one line that probably sparked the biggest reaction was the last: “What they badly need is a machine to rage against and a set of bracing creative constraints.” And the blogosphere heaves an eye-rolled sigh, exclaiming rhetorically, “Aren’t we past this kind of thinking?”

—–

The blowback from this, I think, interestingly highlights a significant cultural paradigm shift. The thirty-somethings of today (of which I am one) are the second generation of the everything’s-okay, no-style-can-hold-us ethos. For us this thinking is more normal than revolutionary, though we don’t take it for granted—I think we still own our omnivorous tastes with (probably unnecessary) pride and even a sort of left-over fervor that our parents’ generation has relaxed on. If the next generation ends up taking it for granted, it will be because the core ideal of nonsectarianism has almost complete ascendency now, even in the stodgy, unfashionable halls of academe.

My undergraduate composition teacher, David Vayo, told us that when he was in school the composition students would get together and do their own thing away from the presumably close-minded gazes of their teachers. I think he was disappointed when he found out we weren’t secretly meeting in such cabals, developing our own rebellious faction. But how could we? He was leading us in improvisational games where people crawled around on the floor and blustered lip-raspberries into the wrong end of a euphonium. There was nothing off the table left to be secret about.

His mild disappointment in our lack of conspiritoriality somehow lines up with Davidson’s thesis in my mind. I’m sure that David’s experience of the bond between young composers having to strongly and vividly assert their view point was a powerful experience. Whatever conflicts (real or imagined) existed to them must have helped sharpen their focus and redouble their conviction. Ironically the power of their vision led to the open-minded future they wanted and subsequently (unintentionally) denied their students the opportunity to similarly respond.

There is something different about this world where everything goes. We, the thirty-somethings, seem to largely be ardent believers of the new order and we readily shoot down dissent, but, as with anything relatively new, there are aspects and consequences of the changes in culture that we can’t yet fully anticipate or understand.

—–

In his follow up comments, Davidson says that today is, “one of those scary and exciting transitional periods when conventions have fallen away and are difficult to replace.” In other words, the last ardent rigor (which one was that now?) has dissolved into transition. And Judd Greenstein, one of the composers under discussion, couldn’t be happier to agree in his response. He sees no problem in this dissolution and in fact welcomes the end of this historical narrative which perhaps never really existed in the first place. Greenstein’s blog and others as well form a kind of chorus of agreement: “We don’t need to invoke a separate Other in order to define ourselves.”

This is, as I was saying, the essential reasoning of our generation and I, for one, can’t fault it. But I can also appreciate that resistance and conflict can be a powerful crucible not only in helping one define oneself, but also in inspiring urgency in that self-discovery. I think becoming the best composer you can be is, to some degree, a process of uncovering yourself and maybe it’s true,to an extent, that it’s hard to get as deep inside yourself as you want to go without some external pressures to reckon with.

But, just to take one example, in today’s composition teaching, everyone that I know teaches toward the student’s core individual aesthetic and not towards a single, universal aesthetic. As a teacher, the goals of [1] challenging students to grow while simultaneously [2] being receptive to whatever it is they are trying to do (whether you like it or not) aren’t contradictory, but sometimes there is some tricky balancing. The point is that teachers today work hard to reach around significant aesthetic differences with their students rather than lean into them.

That’s not going to change soon and I personally wouldn’t want it to. And I don’t think Davidson is advocating that either, but his central point—that composers of my generation haven’t met with substantial resistance in terms of defining their voice—still has a ring of truth to me.

I think the push-back assumes that Davidson is advocating some kind of reactionary return to days when teachers forced students to write a certain way and powers-that-be shut out promising young artists. But I don’t read his article that way. I see him starting from his experience in recent concerts and extrapolating to a larger question about how we arrive a vital sense of who we are such that we can powerfully express that sense of self in today’s new cultural environment. Granted this could have been done more circumspectly, but he wasn’t writing a book: he was wrapping up a 1000 word column filled mostly with review-type specifics. And beyond being a passive Chamber of Commerce-like spokesperson or assuming a sort of patronizing role as interpreter between a supposedly inarticulate artist and a supposedly unimaginative public, what is the critic to do other than speculate broadly about things that point to larger cultural issues?

I could be wrong, but I prefer to assert my own version of reality and read his text in a way that makes sense with my world vision. Let’s chalk it up to my generation’s mandate to be both self-absorbed and radically inclusive.

—–

In adding my voice to the online response to Justin Davidson’s, “The New New York School” I considered his suggestion that composers face new challenges in the recently evolved paradigm that he calls nonsectarianism—the oppression of too much freedom. My initial (conditioned?) response of disagreement was in-step with other writers, but further reflection led me to feel that the issue isn’t entirely obvious and there was at least sufficient reason to pose the question. After all, as I asserted in closing, posing challenging, provocative broad cultural questions would seem to be a critic’s most important job.

But I think critics get into trouble when they move from assessing into advising, and Davidson’s closing line about artists needing a machine to rage against reads to a composer like unwanted advice, whether or not it was intended that way. At the Musik der Jahrhunderte festival in 2009 in a public panel, my wife, composer Karola Obermueller, got into it with a critic regarding collaboration in contemporary opera. The critic had constructed a narrative that said that “real” collaborative opera would look radically different from what we see today and that no one was actually doing what he thought should be done (which he then tried to specify). But I would assert that laying out blueprints for the future is the wrong approach for a critic. He envisions some kind of magical “newness” and wants to be the forward-thinking guy who predicted it would happen before it did, leading the artists by the hand to the pot at the end of the rainbow.

But if anything that’s antagonistic to the creative process. Creators have to stumble onto things on their own. Otherwise they can’t totally own it. So we can critically access all we want, but if there is a problem in the musical culture it’s up to the musicians to fix it, to find a way through. They’re the ones who have to imagine, write and perform us into the future. And they’ll have to do it on their own time as it comes.

As a composer I feel I can’t legislate innovative pieces out of myself any more than I can promise myself I’ll write great masterworks. I have to write the piece in front of me and see what happens. I’m not saying that the composer is without any agency at all, but I do think composers (at an artistic level) are largely powerless to determine the cultural relevance and impact of their work. The one aspect of control I think a composer has is her ambition. But ambition isn’t at all synonymous with progressivism or experimentalism or grandiosity or really much of anything, I guess, other than work ethic, determination and bravery. I think the composer has to write her passion with wild unashamed intensity and let the chips fall where they may.

As an audience member I feel like I don’t ever expect the “next great thing” to happen out of a new piece, but I’m hoping it might happen anyway. I’ll not be surprised when I feel like a piece is only okay, or that it’s like other stuff I’ve heard before. I’ll not be surprised if it’s muffled or lacking zeal. But there is always the opportunity for remarkable things, lovely things, audacious things to burst through, often in fits and starts, sometimes even a whole piece front-to-back. And the possibility for the extraordinary remains tantalizing. I’ll bet Justin Davidson feels the same way.

Photography by Tom Hayes | www.tom-hayes.com

Gabriele Vanoni, why a festival of Italian contemporary music in Boston?

The Italian music scene has a lot to offer: It is situated between the music cultures of France and Germany in many respects, but it has also its own great and rich tradition. It often presents a fresh and unusual point of view on the contemporary music scene. Unfortunately, the support for music in Italy is not as good as in other countries, as the fact that half (if not more) of the Italian composers currently active, live and work mostly abroad. Therefore, festivals like Suggestioni among others are aiming at making this music known a little more. My hope in the long run is to install a continuous collaboration within the Italian scene and the world of American contemporary music, either at US universities (like this year and last year with Harvard and Boston Universities) and/or with American group such as the Talea Ensemble who were our guests last year.

When you compare the Italian and US scenes for contemporary classical music. What are the differences? Are there any communalities?

It is very hard to condense a question like this into a few sentences. What I see is that the Italian scene lives this funny paradox: it is not really big, it has a few world-renowned festivals (Biennale di Venezia, Milano Musica, etc.) and a few more local institutions, but it is pretty much stylistically confined, and it generally has difficulty to grow and survive, due to the lack of funding and support. The General Consulate of Italy in Boston is a happy exception in this respect. On the other hand, I feel in the US there is definitely more space for artistic development. But if we focus on the “content” level, I sometimes think that the price of a (welcomed) broader range of freedom is maybe a little less use of critical sense. Again, this is a broad generalization, and such a topic should be expanded and discussed in greater detail in order not to be misunderstood.

Has your own experience in the US changed the way you go about composing? If so, how?

Indeed so. I think back to my year in Milan Conservatory with great affection and as an intensive learning experience, but it was at Harvard during my studies with Julian Anderson that my compositional voice started to find its own space and contours, and I hope this work continues today. The lack of “stylistical pressure”, in this case, was indeed a piece of luck!

—
Gabriele Vanoni was born in Milan in 1980. After a few experiences as a very young composer at Yamaha schools, he started studying music at the Conservatory of Milan, where he graduated in Piano and Composition.

After his studies in Milan, he continued his education with a PhD in Music Composition at Harvard University, where he’s currently enrolled. This experience allowed him to get to know closely the US music scene, where he met and worked with some of the most interesting composers of today, such as Helmut Lachenmann, Julian Anderson, Brian Ferneyhough, Tristan Murail and Chaya Czernowin, his current teacher.

Thanks to this wide range of experiences and encounters, his music has recently spread internationally and has been now largely performed in Europe (Italy, Norway, UK, Russia) and Americas (United States, Canada, Mexico), in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Biennale di Venezia, Moscow Conservatory, Milan State University, NYU, BIT Teatergarasjen in Bergen and Accademia Chigiana di Siena, among many others. Likewise, various soloists and ensembles have now been involved in performing his music, like the Moscow Studio for New Music Ensemble, Mario Caroli, Gustav Kuhn, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne with Lorraine Vaillancourt, Lost Cloud Quartet, Ensemble Fa and Barrie Webb. His music has also been awarded prizes and mentions in local and international competitions (among others: Concorso del Conservatorio di Milano, 3rd Jurgenson Competition, Concorso Filarmonica, Previsioni Musica 2009, Bohemians Prize, IBLA Grand Prize New York).

By Zoë Lang

Recently, I have been thinking quite a bit about Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, mostly due to the fact that we are talking about it in one of my classes. I’ve found this work to be fascinating from several perspectives, particularly in Gershwin’s incredible fluency between different musical styles. His ability to move seamlessly from one idiom to the next is unmatched and makes him stand out from many of his contemporaries who sought to integrate new sounds in their music but were ultimately unsuccessful. Porgy and Bess shifts from what sounds like a Hollywood soundtrack (‘Bess, you is my woman’) to complex ensembles (the funeral scene that opens Act I, scene ii) to standards that continue to be performed even today (one rendition of ‘Summertime’).

Yet despite the many riches that the score has to offer, I found myself strangely frustrated with the ending, specifically the actions of Bess. During the opera, Bess becomes involved with three different men: the dangerous and powerful Crown, who murders a man over a game of craps; the crippled beggar Porgy, who shows his dedication and steadfastness throughout the opera, including his willingness to kill Crown and neutralize the threat he poses on the community of Catfish Row; and Sportin’ Life, a drug-dealing smooth talker who spends most of the opera trying to win Bess over by offering her drugs and the promise of urban life in New York. We see Bess go from a drug-addled woman of loose virtue (when she is with Crown) to a member of the community (when she is with Porgy); in the version that I watched (the Trevor Nunn production) she walks around for much of Acts III and IV with an orphaned baby, physical proof that she is fully integrated and a responsible citizen of Catfish Row. In the end, though, Bess succumbs to her darker nature. With Porgy in jail for a contempt of court violation, Sportin’ Life makes his move by offering her drugs. While she initially tries to resist, we learn upon Porgy’s return that Sportin’ Life and Bess have left for New York (you can hear Sammy Davis Jr. entreating Bess to join him on the boat to New York starting at 5:35. Sammy Davis Jr. played Sportin’ Life in the 1959 film).

I will admit that I was disappointed with Bess: I had hoped that her character had moved beyond her sordid past and become a permanent fixture in the community. However, the more I thought about the fact that I found Bess’s actions to be disappointing, the more I realized that I was accustomed to operatic women seeming to have little to no control over their fates; so many of these stories make these deaths seem inevitable: Carmen, Tosca, Violetta, Gilda, Mimi, Desdemona, and others. Yet this train of thought also opened my eyes to the fact that women with no agency occupy my operatic world. When one of them makes a decision with which I disagree, I am disappointed in her and wish that she had behaved better. Whereas if a soprano is violently assaulted and killed on stage, I view this as completely normal.

Opera relies on an almost super-human suspension of disbelief, drastic temporal shifts, improbable plots, and violent acts. At the same time, there are few genres that have proven as malleable and durable. Perhaps it is in these incongruities that the fascination lies: knowing the end, we can no longer believe in Bess from the beginning, even though her failings make her one of the most human characters to appear on the operatic stage.

Casting a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud from 1956. Photo by m:con Agentur Mannheim

By Paul Michael Coleman

Paul Michael Coleman: I am delighted to have Marios Joannou Elia with me here at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Marios, an internationally acclaimed composer for his pioneering and visionary works, composes not only for concert halls and opera houses, but also for large-scale multimedia events. Marios, I read in the press that your guitar music has been recently performed in two festivals in Poland, in Nysa and Wroclaw, in fully booked concert halls ending with standing ovations. Last Monday you had a piano piece performed by Michael Finnissy during the “New Works Festival” in Southampton. You are now here in London working in the studio for a new composition that is going to be premiered beginning of January. Afterwards, end of January, follows a premiere of your work “Cicadas” in New York City, at the Steinway Hall. And of course, you have being continuously working on the huge spectacle “autosymphonic” for 250 musicians. For this 2-Million-Euro event, you are the general music manager as well. This is just an example of what you are currently doing – how do you manage all this?

Marios Joannou Elia: It is a matter of self-organization and endless working process. The projects I am especially interested in, like “autosymphonic”, have a high-qualitative musical character that is eminently motivating. Moreover, I am interested in bringing music, in an unconventional and contemporary way, towards a responsive audience. In the case of “autosymphonic”, 16.000 spectators are expected, which is a huge responsibility for my team and myself. This requires an active engagement, both in creating the music but also during its realisation.

Paul Michael Coleman: Your signature is that you use vehicles in your music in a highly extensive manner. Is it difficult to work with such ‘instruments’ and how did all begin?

Marios Joannou Elia: I employ vehicles in a very systematic and musically complex manner. The machinery alone does not provide me with a particularly artistic per-spective. It has to be extensively investigated before being applied in the music. Be-sides, this is how the works are composed – in juxtaposition with, for example, a symphony orchestra and a choir. In 2003 I was working on a composition specifically written for the space of the Volkswagen Transparent Factory in Dresden. I wanted to use the entire main hall of the factory in the music, thus providing a number of practical difficulties, such as the coordination of the musicians that were placed everywhere in the space and in dif-ferent heights. Then, I thought that the VW Phaeton car that is manufactured there was the perfect machine to achieve this. So it was primarily applied as an assisting component for the conductor, but also for a variety of musical applications. Furthermore I make use of bicycles, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, shipping and aviation elements. In 2008, in the opera “The Hunt”, I have employed six cars such as an Aston Martin, a Jaguar and a Ford Mustang as part of the plot as well as part of the musical instrumentarium.

Paul Michael Coleman: Tell us about your music that you are now developing here in London.

Marios Joannou Elia: These days I have been working in the studio with audio pro-ducer Nick Elia creating a trio for cars: a Mercedes-Benz SLS-AMG from 2010, an old-time Aero 6218R from 1934, and for the first car ever built, the patented tricycle by Carl Benz from 1886. This is the most complex musical piece I have to date com-posed, in which the interactivity between the automobiles and their performers is highly coalesced. The three automobiles will be performed by an ensemble of 14 percussionists. The car trio is an integral part of “autosymphonic”. It will be premiered on January 6th 2011, celebrating the New Year in the city of Mannheim in Germany, in Rosengarten Concert Hall.

Paul Michael Coleman: Tell us bit more about “autosymphonic” and the employment of the automobiles…

Marios Joannou Elia: It is a one-hour symphony, consisting of a large orchestra, choir, two vocal ensembles, percussion ensemble and electronics. In addition to this, I am employing a car orchestra of 80 automobiles, including old-timers, super sport cars, limousines, tracks, busses, tractors etc. Since May I began casting numerous types of automobiles all over Germany. To date I have cast circa 120 cars of all types and ages, including Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Maserati and Cadillac. The music will involve a scenery construction of laser, lights, videos, urban screening, LED projections, etc. The symphony is especially commissioned for the 125th anniversary celebration of the car in Mannheim, Germany and is going to be the highlight event of the so-called “Automobile Summer” in Baden-Württemberg.

Paul Michael Coleman: So Marios, when and where will “autosymphonic” be pre-miered?

Marios Joannou Elia: On the 10th of September 2011, in the central square of Mannheim. It will be an open-air production in which the latest technological devel-opments will be applied, but also new ones have to be specifically developed, in order to enable a three-dimensional acoustical irradiation. For example, the 360-degree spatialization system will produce a holographic effect of the music projection. Hence, the square will be transformed in an ‘arena’ of musico-visual events.

Paul Michael Coleman: Is it a central feature in your work to reflect the technological development within music in respect to the evolution of the car as a burgeoning multimedial functional apparatus?

Marios Joannou Elia: I do follow the developments of the automobile culture in the conceptual sense, however I reflect it in an idiosyncratic artistic expression. The issue of interaction between humans and machines is of central meaning in my work and it also finds multifarious application in “autosymphonic”. Current and future-oriented technological developments show the high degree of amalgamation between the two elements. On the one hand, the automobile behaves autonomously with human mannerisms. On the other hand, humans adopt machine-like features. In both situations a form of hybridism occurs. In this context, the aspect of hybridism is essential in my music.

Paul Michael Coleman: Thank you very much, Marios, for a highly enlightening dis-cussion.