- NEWSLETTERS
Vol.3 -
CONTENTS
At the Marlboro Music Festival in the summer of 1996, I spent most rehearsal-free mornings in the college library doing work for my degree course at NYU's Gallatin School. Those were very serene hours when the heat seemed to stay outdoors and leave me in peace. The rest of the campus was filled with musicians and their family members, all talking about Beethoven, Brahms, or Dvorak. At the library, all that could be heard were only the sounds of the rustling maple trees outside.
During the middle of the summer, I noticed that I had a companion in the library. A woman busied herself at another desk quietly, leaving the rest of the world at bay, simply concentrating on her work. I later found out that she had been translating Chinese text into Hebrew. I enjoyed having a companion although we kept to ourselves.
This was my initial encounter with Amira Goehr who later introduced me to her husband, Alexander (Sandy), in the college cafeteria. When I met him, I noticed a quiet man with strong energy within. He was ever-so elegant, and there was also something rather severe in his expression.
I often went back to the memories of my first meeting with Amira, and then Sandy, as I worked on his Suite. It was not that I was trying to get clues to the interpretation from remembering, but they simply entered my consciousness.
The Suite is a fabulous balance of the beauty of the form with a sound palette that is almost exotic. It is not a sensual Asian exoticism, but it certainly has an oriental (mid-eastern) flavour. The music whines and emits a nasal tone combination. There is a rhapsodic feel within the old form that gives a sense of the music 'jumping off' the page.
One of the major challenges in learning this piece was its complex rhythm. It was enough to put any math-phobic individual on guard. (It did me). Between the two instrumental parts, there is a slight stagger in the symmetry of the notes when played correctly. The notes and the rhythm do align from time to time, and it is this combination of tease and pull created by the rhythmic configurations that makes this piece, in part, intriguing.
Click
the title to read the text.
• Midori on Meeting Alexander Goehr
• Breathing and Construction by Alexander Goehr
• Excerpt from an Interview with Alexander Goehr
• Midori on György Kurtág's Tre Pezzi
• György Kurtág: Miniatures for Piano, Violin
by Anthony Burton
• Interview with Robert McDonald
(Part 3)
• Links to Publishers and Societies
Readers are invited to submit questions, about contemporary music in general or Midori's all-contemporary program in particular. Time and space permitting, Midori will answer some of the questions on these Newsletter web pages.
Please address your questions to violin@gotomidori.com
by Alexander Goehr
We learn to construct music from the study of pieces, from textbooks dealing with the technical aspects of composing, from experimenting with systems, numbers, series, chance operations and the application of concepts. But to compose means to breathe life into these things.
At whatever stage one is, concentration on a chosen material and the realization of its properties and implications can cause one to forget to breathe. But from breathing in and out comes a range and variety of phrases, divisions and the accumulation of temporal units. From the shortening and lengthening of breath within possible limits come the fundamental characteristics of artistic creation: rise and fall, contrast, climax and closure. Without a conscious continuation of breathing - a thing which can be practised, one can create no more than a simulacrum of music. Singers and instrumentalists know this.
Photo by Maurice Foxall
Photo by permission of Schott
I believe that the
best way to experience Kurtág is through his music. He is not a
man of many words or overt actions. It is really incredible that his music
conveys so much in such enormous ways through such a sparse group of notes.
There is so much that cannot be said, and that actually says so much about
everything. In my opinion, this summarizes his Tre Pezzi. Tre
Pezzi is not a simplified representation through music of the world
as he sees it; it is a world that seems simple enough but, as you look
more deeply, there are complexities and much, much meaning. The world
itself does not change; it is how he and we are able to view it that gives
it its meaning.
by Anthony Burton
In addition to the works to which he has given opus numbers, Kurtag has also composed two continuing series of miniatures. The first is Játékok (the French "Jeux" would be a better translation than the standard English "Plays and Games"), which by now consists of more than three hundred numbers for piano, solo and duet. Kurtág began to compose these in 1973, when asked to contribute to a collection of teaching pieces; although they do not amount to a complete graded series like Bartók's Mikrokosmos, they are varied in their technical demands. They are in many different styles, and often embody experiments in notation, technique or sonority; they include transcriptions of music by earlier composers, and of fragments of Kurtág's own music; some are jokes, others deeply serious; many are designed as greetings to friends or colleagues, and many more as memorials to the departed or homages to musicians or other artists of the past.
The second such series is Jelek, játékok és üzenetek, or Signs, Games and Messages, for strings. Begun in 1989, this consists to date of over seventy pieces: solos for violin, viola, cello and double-bass, duets for viola with various instruments, trios, quartets, and a sextet. These are definitely not teaching pieces, having mostly been written for prominent soloists in the context of recitals; but they resemble Játékok in their fertility of invention, and in their mixture of sketches, studies, greetings, homages and memorials. It should be added that, for all their air of spontaneity, these pieces are not simply musical postcards or diary entries, but are carefully worked and reworked: for example, the one-page Carenza Jig for violin or viola bears five dates of composition and revision spread over eight years.
Anthony Burton ©2002/2006, reprinted by permission
Photo by Andrea Felvegi
Q.1. What should the audience do before attending a contemporary music recital?
More than anything else, ears and minds have to be open. First reactions will undoubtedly vary. When Midori and I performed this program in a series of concerts in Japan a year ago, educational opportunities were available ahead of time. Seminars were given, materials were distributed. When I spoke with audience members afterwards, I had a similar sense as after a concert with more traditional repertoire. People tended to single out pieces in particular that they really enjoyed or were taken with. The audience for these recitals was very receptive. We played conventional and contemporary programs back to back with many members of the public attending both.
Q.2. Why does the general public not always welcome new music today?
The challenge of something new is rarely an easy sell. The language of certain composers is more difficult to assimilate than others. An aesthetic element such as atonality can be forbidding to a listener. Most of the time people purchase tickets to hear music by composers that they know. In hearing a concert of new music, one simply needs a sense of adventure with a willingness to be surprised.
Q.3. Is the life experience and cultural background of the composer reflected in his or her music?
Isang Yun considered his music rooted in his own cultural background as a Korean, though he lived in Germany for much of his adult life as an artist, absorbing the European view point. The Violin Sonata that we are playing is deeply influenced by Chinese and Korean court music. We programmed this piece with Brahms and Beethoven on a recital in Seoul last year. People came backstage afterwards, having not necessarily fully understood it, but nevertheless feeling powerfully affected. The sense of their own folk music was a conduit that led them directly inside Yun's composition. The Sonata appealed to them with a different kind of force than a Westerner experiencing the same work.
The example of the intersection of life experience and cultural background on Lutosławski's work is quite different. Repression during the Stalin era came to bear intensely on his creative process. He said that since he wasn't able to write the music he wanted to, he learned to write the music he had to, working within the perimeters the state defined. This of course eventually changed as the political situation evolved in Eastern Europe. Also, it's interesting to mention that one of his composition teachers was trained by Rimsky-Korsakoff. There is an obvious connection here between the vividness of Lutosławski's orchestral sense and that of the Russian master's.
Photo by Sheila Rock
Alexander Goehr
• Schott
Music
György Kurtág
• Boosey
& Hawkes
• Universal
Edition
Witold Lutosławski
• Polish
Information Center
• Schirmer
• ChesterNovello
• Polish
Music Center at USC
Judith Weir
• ChesterNovello
• Schirmer
• BBC
Isang Yun
• International
Isang Yun Soceity
• Boosey
& Hawkes
