NEA Opera Honors: Interview with Philip Glass

my first musical memories are sitting on the stairs going up to the second floor of our home we lived in one of those homes that had the marble steps you know row houses like many people did in this thing and my father would come home late from work or was around nine o'clock and he would relax us into music and I would creep down from the bedroom and I was still on the stairs listening with him and in retrospect I believed that he knew I was there but he never said anything and so we listened to a lot of music together but the first outfit impressions were probably when I was a student at Juilliard and the Met was on and on 39th Street the old men and there were what they call score seats that would be there were tables away at the top of the house with the chair and you literally were looking vertically down on the Opera and I remember seeing that that at that time there the the vostok that they did in a few Wagner and Verdi opera so I saw no remark was there and I went up kind of dutifully because I thought this was a farthing de Gras that I should get to know though I didn't really know it very well and at the time I it never occurred to me that I would be running office I'd lift Baltimore when I was 15 and when to say the university should fall off no I was a it was part of a program that Hutchins had started at Chicago was a great books course and people came from all over to do that and and and age and was not a barrier nor was a high school diploma required all you have to do is pass the entrance exam which was surprisingly simple I think that they were looking for people and they just they like to see you pass but I don't know how they did it exactly but uh it was basically a great books a liberal arts course that I completed by the time I was 19 and at that point I went to New York and now during that time I was writing music and I was studying music kind of on my own with books from the library and studying scores and there were very few recordings of the modern music at that time we're talking about nineteen fifty two so that one a lot of those that there was a company called dial records you remember them and you could hear you could get maybe the vapor in opus 21 there or something like it you get a handful of pieces but a lot of those a lot of pieces weren't recorded at that point I would he imagine a 15 year old boy trying to figure out what Charles I sounded like from a score and it wasn't playing the piano that well then I was my piano was my second instrument and I developed it later but at that time playing the piano was not so easy well I was listening to Brompton and Mozart also an Mauer I was also listening to Marlin Bruckner III I had the great good fortune of a very very broad listening background my father had a small record shop in Baltimore this is before the days of the mega stores and a record store could be quite a small thing was it's like a candy store really it got bigger a little bit but I my brother and I worked at this store from the age of 12 and by 15 my memories that I was doing the I was the classical record buyer for the store but that wasn't all I did we also the one of the ways that we were kept busy because I think that was part of the idea was we were constantly doing inventories of the records constantly and you never ended you finished all the or see anything he wasn't Dudek and then yet he started to do the all the oddly wasn't then you started over again because by that time was three or four months and the inventory was different but I also knew popular music we had to know that I mean I remember in the early 50s when the first Elvis Presley workers came out and we it was RCA and we had boxes of Records behind the counter and we never even they never been done on the shelf you just took him right out of the box and sold them it was the first big big hit big big hits in popular music was whoops Elvis Presley and after that the Beatles and of course everything got going but of course I was very interested in records that sold that briskly and I knew all I knew a lot about music that music too while they were horrible my first or my first compositions were kind of hard but I didn't know much about composition but I had read something about Schoenberg and I began was twelve-tone music because it was it was a system that I could understand I could didn't understand it musically but I understood it if in a structural way so I began are imitating the the favoring of Schoenberg and Berg pieces that I knew which was the lyric Sweden this is Schoenberg quartets or the even the Verkerk Tanakh which is an earlier work and what I knew that and then the Burke office which that's why I was listening to Varrick when I was at Juilliard but my first and those first pieces were written when I was 15 and I barely could get through them but I was I was primarily saved from this what would have been an endless unassisted labor by by discovering by accident or the music of William Shemin and Copeland I said well that music made more sense to me intuitively and I I discovered that one shoe and taught in New York City or I thought he taught actually he didn't he was the head of the Julius corn and had all the consent and I did finally meet him the day I graduated I but and he was around and his music was around till and so I got to know that but I did I never really met him in the way that I I wanted near to study that kind of music which I thought that in a way it became an alternative kind of modern music but that also had us it also had his limitations and it was a really some years later that not that many years later that I got involved with a different strategy for writing music that had to deal with global music and world music and bringing together elements of music history that were that were born from countries that I had never even visited it never occurred to me to write an offer Baban muslin why we're talking and writing in music theater piece and on 1974-75 now by that time I had already spent quite a lot of time was a theatre company almost eight or nine years called my boo mine so I had been writing music for a theatre company that was a parallel endeavor that one was the music's right for my ensemble they really had nothing to do each other in a certain way but I spent a lot of time if they don't I've learned a lot about the theater it was through that experience that I came to know Bob Wilson and many other people Richard Forman and the Living Theater and and through them occur Tosca and Peter broke and the whole many the only other contemporary people that I would Meredith Malkin Richard Foreman and Bob Wilson were the ones that and living theater living here was not always in New York there was some times and when I first met them they were in there one in Marseilles doing well they were taking a piece called Frankenstein my belief is that possible that was the name it was a was a piece which indirectly uh got me thinking about offered because they did it in big houses when Bob and I began working in 74 my background was really in these kind of studio productions of evanka are working basically it was work that we made ourselves as authors or it was it would have been sent me a bucket challenge in a impressed the three great European for us at that time virtually unknown in America at that point Brecht for translation front problems and it has worked in the cross engine a for almost the same reason we didn't know very much about unions 50s and Beckett was known because it was in English and but it wasn't admired widely at that time in the early 60s when we were living in Paris that was my sailing I was living in Paris also he was not born during those years and that's when I began working with the theater company actually call them album wines that would have been join our colliders who was later the public theater a lien was roar David Warlow Fred Newman that was the basic company it's a very small company but we were doing back in place and they had lived in the neighborhood that was the 14th in Paris and one of us became appointed to be the contact with him and that was David Warlow who was virtually bottling while he was working as an Englishman working for magazine in Paris and was very interested in became as he eventually became a professional actor but it was through him that we were working with Beckett and I did oh eight or ten scores to make it work some of them nil with his full of cooperation though his estate denies that ever happened but yeah we did it anyway and and he was there helping and I have notes from him and all of those kinds of thing so I had a lot of background in theater and when I came to New York I started my own someone we working we're working with Ellen Stewart was the mobile - and then eventually as a public theater when she Pat was there and I stayed with that until Joe Papp died and then J Wayne took over and as a matter of fact I did work for the Public Theater listen was generally the bad guy so that's been I can continue as a relationship is still going on no getting to the question when Bob and I began working what I saw Bob's work I think was a life and times of I think was Joseph Stalin might have I think thought that was that one then I want to see it as a booking Academy music this was would have been in the early 72 or 73 this is before the next wave festival for sure but Harvey Lucas ain't had this big beautiful theater there and he put Bob and I don't know what he known Oh Bob was a big surprise I mean and never no no sir and the pieces went on I started at 6 o'clock at night anyone until dawn that's how it wasn't this of course that would interest to me but I'm watching I want to or performance of that none it's all that letter to Queen Victoria which was kind of on and off part was on a bit of Broadway theatre run for two or three weeks there and Bob and I began a conversation about doing a work together he had a very good composer Michael kalasa who we worked with a violinist and composer it's a very talented guy um but he liked uh like many people he'd like variety wanted to hear other musicians and I had and I I and in the same way I had only worked with one theory I was ready to work with other people and so we were at a kind of intersection in our own lives and we met and we began talking about a work and never occurred to us that it was an opera to be truthful we were doing a piece called I stand on the beach on Wall Street that was the actual title the own Wall Street we eventually jettisoned that it was a little bit long but uh the thing about I stand that we discovered and Bob wanted it he had just he had done these big pieces of Brooklyn he had done a big piece Broadway with Queen Victoria Bob one of the work work in a large proscenium stage he needed fly space and wind space and almost always these considers will have an orchestra pen he need lighting equipment you can call I said anything you want to but the only place you could really do it was around perhaps in fact since that one I've when I have to decide which of my pieces are offers and which are say these are theater pieces for me the operas that are that works that are done at opera houses or operas it was a very easy solution to that question but because there are kind of there are some indeterminate pieces like Bob and I did a piece called monsters regression which is a 3d video piece but it's not really an opera they start not done in an opera house whereas even a small piece like at least of whatever you which doesn't take a lot of people it only takes four singers in a small orchestra but it's done in our houses so oh it never occurred to us that we had written an opera until we discovered that that was the only place we could do them I need a convoy is a wonderful woman who was have been a producer and agent for our four katulski and and Peter Brook Oh had she had heard about what we were doing and came to see us in New York we were working the video exchanged there in West Bath I can't believe I remember all the stuff I mean I don't have a new set of anyway this is we were doing this as a video exchange theater at West birth which was a kind of a it began as kind of an artist co-op building but at that time there was a large place than we did we did our final rehearsals and I think she was there at which point she became her agent and exactly producer but she functioned in many ways as the person that that helped to bring the work out of the rehearsal room and onto the stage Michelle give was the head of the theater Avignon he had a theater festival there anybodys become there so that was the first place I think that was near my sister brought us there from there she began to book it around and she took it - now that's jumping ahead of the story because in order to do the piece we needed a course we needed a unsolveable of musicians and we needed doctors and we needed dancers we needed a rather large company which we couldn't really manage what we did is that we auditioned the people that were singers and dancers of which there are quite a few in New York because of the the Broadway tradition people studied how they studied to sing song and dance that's what they did and we auditioned a bunch of people we found our dancers there and we found most of our singers there so we were able to combine the singing company and the dancing company almost into one company we had a few actors uh precise listen to Charles of course she we had a few other people vowed to end and mr. Johnson who played it we had a few other people but uh and they were important people everybody was important there was so few of us that it had to be important but we probably did that production with less than 25 people and when we redid in 84 we needed 50 we were completely surprised Bob and I we were in New York doing it there it was it was sold out every night no matter where we went the two people who came to Paris to see the work with Jane Herman and go hums Lee the old house it was actually a lighter time and Jane Herman was a producer there they were on the staff there and it was their job the phone works to to be presented on the Sunday nights and they were the ones that came to Paris and afterwards Bob and I I remember going to their hotel rooms and having a drink with them and they and they said they were from the mat and they were looking 50 Bob and I thought it was completely we never thought it would happen in fact they were the ones that did it and we were we were guests that we've invited uh Jerry Robbins got them to come cherry bombs was an old friend of Bob's and I had known a little bit didn't know him very well but he was admirer of laughs and he he and he thought this would be something that would work there it was sometimes reported that we had rented them that if only we could have rented them that we didn't have any money to rent them that basically we were co-presented by them and they uh well Bob and I didn't realize was that operas operas lost money we didn't know that until the whole thing was over and uh when the whole thing was over we discovered we had they had a huge debt and we're talking about 1976 when were talking about $90,000 it was enormous that we had no idea how that happened Chris Bob and I weren't paying attention at all we thought we had full House's it never occurred to us but Nicole was she knew and we tweet when she had FBT with her where's the rifle Larry I said yeah wonderful her husband had been a Hungarian doctor she was enjoying herself he was famous doctor and I remember there was a little painting of him on the wall and she said she wanted her very serious talk with us he wanted her to know there had been a great success but that we had but that and that was the death and Bob and I almost fainted so my card isn't even how could you love that happy said look the only way to solve the piece was a solid at a loss we lost money every night we did we lost three or four thousand a night and we did 35 performances and she said this is what it had to be seen she said she said first he said does that know this is a devastating news but the fact is is that this eventually will make your career son I had to do it she was bright I'm sure she was right that was a big surprise Bob uh he got busy betray me he got busy working in Europe and we both are concerned with the debt but he he I think became we worried about it for years and he took it on as a personal possibility I I did what I could I sold some score and I did some concerts and Bob was I think he that in a way this pattern of losing money and making art is something Bob I don't say that he enjoyed it but he embraced it with it which I did and and to this day I mean he he's been raising money putting on projects for years I mean I said it was kind of a training program and he's done extremely well with this I mean you would say well why don't people like Bob why don't they are supported by institutions but we're not the work doesn't fit into into an institutional image of any time I I was I never expected it to do any more operas and I was and I was a hosta Rove it was at the Netherlands Opera House I was in in in Holland a little bit after and he for maybe a year or two after and he asked me to come and see him and he said he said well I saw hot I said it's a very interesting up I hope we'd like to do a real opera they said well what was that because we were already quite friendly said well it should be from my chorus and my orchestra and for singers trained and the tradition of opera singing and I said and I agreed I said I'd like to do that and he said think it over and I thought it over and I saw about a month or two later and I said how would you like to do an offer about Gandhi and he said that was fine and then I hesitate he said now you remember the Dutch were in South Africa he said oh that wasn't us and I've never had any problem with Holland with that was the Dutch and South African connection aid that connection was never made by anybody but general Smuts was a young it was a Dutchman the adversary of the Opera was the Dutchman anyway I wasn't doing it for that reason it was a I in fact it had come up this way when Bob and I were looking for a subject of the work we were doing we spent about six eight months talking we had lunch every day at a certain restaurant on Sullivan Street and every Thursday brother every Thursday we were both in town we had lunch there it wasn't every Thursday it was maybe a couple of Thursday's a month so maybe we six or eight minutes of that kind in the course of of six or eight months and we were talking about it we were doing over at subject man I was reading a book on because I had been traveling in Europe and India and I suggested Gandhian mom just didn't it's nothing it didn't catch his imagination he suggested he bomb like oh he didn't mind controversial figures like Stalin and he he mentioned what would evolve Hitler and I said no I didn't want to do that and then I said what about Gandhi he said no he didn't want to do that and he said what about I said I said yes I could do last night because I sent was a hero of mine from a very early age don't forget in 1945 I was already eight years old when he became almost with the Nagasaki with the bombings in Hiroshima at the atomic bomb the he became the probably the best-known scientist who ever walked on the planet and he was alive there are photographs of him and he gave lectures and he wrote books and as a boy I would go to public go but to the public libraries in Baltimore and here talks about relativity and swirling the animal all this stuff so I was very interested in science became a hobby of mine and still is to this day in fact I've done four or five operas about scientists just because of that connection besides I'm saying there was a Kepler and there was a Galileo and I worked on a film law with about Stephen Hawking so I've been wrestling with the idea of Newton but he's a difficult character basically he was such a recluse no one knew very much about him Darwin would have been a great character would have been a lot of Darin operas including one by a good friend of mine Gibson the voyage of the Beagle and I said well I better stay away from that woman it's been done enough and but he's on that level if that's the kind of person I was interested in so when he said ice and I was I was there so that became the subject but then we built this piece and we needed this material and we went on and she said we should and we shogi and before we know we're an opera house isn't we were at the finicky and the world burned down some years ago the old finicky and in Venice and we were its African weaken in Paris and we were what was just a surprise because we were invited to come but Bob and I never actually believed it was happening and we can't when we came we were met at the airport via Paul Walters a friend of us valve and wine and the first thing he said to us when we got off the plane it was in the first beginning in November he said you're sold out at the net did we had no idea and they immediately booked a second night then the next Sunday of course we later found out we were losing money every night and that was the end of it that we could have gone on we could have had a run I think that we could have gone for I don't know at least a number of three or four of the performances for sure but at that point when Bob and I realized we were losing it it wasn't anybody's fault it's just the structure of Robert it's very labor intensive you have very skilled talented people working in a house and they never prepping never leave it I mean it's the costs are high the work is intense and the box office can't do it so that's why you have fundraising for opera houses and that's what the old the whole drama of being on the board of an opera house is where do you find the money on this is so Bob and I were completely innocent of this they're not really you have to redefine what it what what a narrative is you have to redefine what drama is and that's what but we weren't doing it alone I don't the world we came out of the world of the living theatre and uh Peter Brook in Grotowski they had been working for decades was not narrative and and and and and and offer based on on fragments on of songs on words on images they the the Oh what Bob and I did which was so was surprising to some people we took an aesthetic that had grown up in its rona theater and put it in an opera house that's we do what it was that ecstatic existed Bob and I were young enough and brazen enough in our ambitions to put it in an opera house but I don't even know that we did it and whether it was people like Michelle Guillen in the car vise and uh and and the other are kind of the visionaries in Europe who are more used to that you have to know opera in America uh what often Americas it's not a homegrown it's not like movies that we invented or musicals that we invented mean we Americans invented we invented that stuff operas were invented someplace else and it was in those someplace houses places that we that we had a basic sensors of it took much longer for operas my operas to arrive in America the Gandhi Opera that I did in 1981 I think it was finally done in 86 that was a very short tour but there was one in Seattle and then Chicago and San Francisco and that work was seen there but no other operas of mine were done in America outside of a the booking Academy music became in effect the home for my officer for many many years and still is we just did a a couple opera which I did last year we didn't have the money to bring all the sets and costumes but we brought all the musicians and we did a we call it an oratory or a cantata version of it but that was then we're going to have any music uh and they've always first you know with uh now we have Joe Melillo oh but you know what's less than beginning it's been that has been our home and then gradually little by little small companies began doing like a a CT and in Seattle or the company and uh join our class worthless in Chicago and a RT in Boston those are theater companies of who they're worth it economies that were interested in but they're doing aa person and a Brustein of commissioned off a and he did he did the juniper-tree he didn't number of things he did Oh some pieces I did what they belong called the son of a voice so I felt began finding theater companies that did that but not opera companies it took a long time for opera companies to get on get on board and they're only gradually I miss just stopping now what I've discovered is it takes my personal experiences and is that you have it but you have very even a successful premiere and you wait about eight or ten years it takes that long for an opera house to get over the fact that they didn't have the premiere then a restaging becomes possible it takes about that long and then my catalog is a it runs about ten years behind by the time I write them but that's that's better than being dead it was to my and I said was the first of them as a young as a young boy I was very interested and that's what I was studying at Isis I began studying mathematics and and anyway Chicago I wasn't particularly good at it I was much better at music as it turns out and III big I I found out right away that there were people very quick in these classes and I wasn't that quick and if you're not quick at that stage it's not gonna work but but what I discovered was that the I discovered the poetry of science the the act of imagination the act of visualizing of the nature in terms of of numbers and systems of that kind the answer was vital to the production of Einstein there would not have been the insallah by that point had been together almost eight years we had a very solid base and Michael Britain was becoming a music director during that period which I handed over a lot of those duties to him which were he was an invaluable assistant we had a with Kevin Casey we had a sound producer and sound a sound producer and sound designer that was all from my original group that became that meant when BOM and I went into the building of Einstein I had all the technical help on my side that was part of my up part of my outfit I didn't have to go and find people we had been working with this kind of technology for almost a decade so it was very very important however I made to this is you don't know how conscious they were but after the great success of us and I did two things I wanted to do I wanted to do an opera and a real opera house like with with exactly what hospital Rose said with his singers in his orchestra you remember Julia that had the training to do that anyway I'd send him the course for two years which every one had to do if you are unless you were already a singer or if you were or if you were playing in the orchestra not to do it but you're a composer or a conductor or any you were pressed into service in the course I'd been singing the course for several years I knew a lot about that writing I knew about robocco writing from from being with singers and what I didn't know I I found very early on I'm talking with Claudia coming so it was the first soprano Bertha and I said to her I said now Chloe tell me how is the part for your voice now the fact is if you ask any singer about their part they will definitely tell you and they'll say well you shouldn't do this and this is better for me and I began to spend I began to discover that the best people to talk about senior singers they will tell you what's going on and I and uh I always saw when I'm working with opera I all right ride it - or do the auditions first like I like to know who the singers are and that work with them as closely as I can because I know a lot about how the some singers like to use the whole range of the voice and some say stay away from this and I don't have that note all kinds of things that you have to know about no that doesn't mean you can't you can make the changes in rehearsals but it helps when you can do it that way it's always a question of zinger well you have a is it Richard Croft uh who's saying mr. you know if he has a brother named David close Africa and he was singing oh I see he was taking another offer of wine when all this was going on so I had that I had the two Croft brothers in two hours at the same time but uh I think he was uh I think we're saying he was but but it was it was Richard who was saying that Richard was like what a good saying what any instrument would any performer whether they're singer or a player what they do do your music is they complete it basically I'm just writing down those on paper to put something on the stage or to put it on any kind of stage at all the the power of the interpretive powers of the singer of the performer are what will make an we'll we'll make it work succeed what's out that you have very little chance you'll just have to wait till that that person comes along the completion of the work really comes with the performer there's no doubt in my mind and I've worked as a for myself for thirty years forty years and I understand exactly how that process works so that when you have like a was coffee had a a beautiful interpreter without that was with uh was Perry uh does I had that was Douglas fir he was a wonderful so that's wonderful Gandhi and then I had it a second time but all my stuff I made was twenty years later it was another singer or they can bring something to the work which you which you can dream about what you could be you can hardly visualize it I began o I began operas was thinking about for the social content I don't like it word political because Blizzard was a shorter the short way of looking at things is social issues of the important political issues at that point the socialism of the paramon issues and that's what Gandhi was involvement and I did that for quite a while that the first three I was really are about that and has continued a little bit later won't it when I got into the in the 90s I began working with oppositely support or even whatever but and then I began thinking about the personal issues I got into that dimension of let's say of the moral tone of an opera but uh-oh for example of a liberal about with cocktail cocktail was always dealing with big issues but he did it in the form of a person like a fake or Paul vandalism or or let that in the moment that he had that ability to use the individual kind of as a prison for us all the issues to fault flown to well I thought that's what I've been such a great admirer of Cocteau I feel he has been never I think accorded the admiration and respect that he deserved when you look at the what I did I took three of his films I just want to read all about no fake I took the these screenplays and I've used them as librettos and by that time I had been working with librettist and when I started working in Cocteau said oh my god this guy he knew exactly when to bring a character and wanted all of the character he knew he understood it he and I would say the one there is one better than him in those Shakespeare Shakespeare was right but not because we'd love Sigma because he was he was a mechanic of the theater he was a technician that know exactly how to bring a character how to keep the attention how to do all that stuff but Cocteau could do it too but somehow because he was also a painter and a writer and a bit of a and E and a bit of a he wasn't at all it dilettantes he was sometimes accused of he was a he was a thorough of craftsman and all the arts that he worked in if you look at the paintings if you look at the plays if you look at the films he he had a total technical group and of artistic vision but with him he led me into the in the arena of the personal and and and I've been very comfortable in that place inside the funny thing is is that by they don't we got to ice on the beach that was 76 they were huge audiences and they were always big they weren't always consistent in the last year's the big audiences have become more consistent but what I discovered and Bob discovered also that there was a much bigger appetite for experimental work than anyone had imagined we were getting bigger audiences then our then Grotowski I mean we people that we had we had grown up admiring but we they were oh they were enviable audiences and and that was always true for I sent an entry from any of the other works they were not always but what you would call a typical opera audience they would come from different they would come from the world of dance the world of visual arts poetry related you know these different modalities of art they part of our audiences were that or logic as they were a composite of a lot of different things if you like movement or if you liked imaging like music even like text they were all in these operas and they were served in a and and and they were all done in us as it served in and in a progressive way I would say oh that has no I mean there are times when we wouldn't have been various recessions we've gone through there was a country in the world and when our only when everyone else's went down there's one down two when when the Broadway shows were playing at 70 percent we were playing against a 10% Hill when the commissions for a new when the money's for films was going down there's went on until we we were in the same economic boat as everyone else from that point of view oh the most interesting thing about the audience is that it has stayed very young oh it's more normal for the audiences to age with the audience so if you go to see the Rolling Stones you'll see people in their fifties they're you know you see kids of eighteen they're not really if you go to see your Leonard Cohen I know you'll get some younger people but what's Happ it's not every generation has never been new audience for this music and one of the reasons we've restaged some of the earlier pieces because we thought it was important for a younger audience to see the work because they were still there so the idea of a a you have a kind of an evergreen effect with this kind of work and I don't really know why that's true but I can I can attest that it is true well we've seen it it's not uncommon for people or to bring their children a people of 50 bringing their children in their 20s and they saw the first time and they want to make sure that kids didn't miss it that's quite it's quite encouraging isn't it oh very close siblings are the elements of opera text movement image music or the the same elements and film identical ah many other things are different the the the marketplace doesn't play such a decisive role in the Opera House as it does in the film world however that can be if we do experience than that till operas are revived when with the expectation that they can sell a few tickets here and there if something doesn't sell well at all it takes a it takes an opera company of courage to do it again if it sells well it will come back more easily in that way it's really different like the place but the one of the things that hasn't changed is that the upper house is the composer's house it always has been if you're the composer then the director cannot be appointed he has to be has to go through you and once you have the director then the director and you will talk about the designer and then it goes on like that but in the film world there's the only person lower in the film and then hierarchy is the writer the writer oh this is just the way this is a it used to be that the directors were in charge the movies and then it became the producers announced it's the marketing people this is the proof however that doesn't mean that that hasn't driven these art forms further apart it's not uncommon to find a film composer beginning to work in Opera House and the other way around because the that you're working with the same kinds of materials there are extremely talented people in the film world and it's a pleasure to work with them to work with them mr. work it's like working with an extremely talented person in the Opera House I've seen awesome very talented film composers have trouble in the world of constant reason not because their work wasn't not fit for it but because there were cultural differences that couldn't for example they did get enough rehearsal time I mean to do a new work after you do already 70 you get three or four hours maybe but that's not enough it never was enough and that can be I've known a film composers to spend their own money to get rehearsal times that they couldn't get from the from from the symphony you know and then they just couldn't do it so there are things like that that can happen you know and it's difficult for the composer yet the other thing that it to work in film takes a certain amount of flexibility but much more than you need in an opera house you can dictate the terms more fully in the Opera House but if you want to work in in the world of film you'd have to have there has to be some collaborative spirit or it's not going to work at all and even then it may not be enough but this elisa this way it's not uncommon for a film composer to be fired it's very uncommon for opera codes to be fired when you're talking about a work which is a composite of text image move in the music those are the problems the earth air fire and water that's it but there may be a fifth element I haven't found one yet you can do with less a dance might not have a text but it might a play might not have a movement I mean it could be there's a play of Becket's called comedy there are three heads in an urn there's no movement at all there's the length that moves so you can dispense with some of these in the theater always dance of the radio where do you place all these things are possible oh the king and queen of the of the theater of the entertainment world is the Opera and film I don't know which is the king of Italy you decide for yourself but that's what it is I've never considered myself a teacher I was afraid that I would be a poor teacher and I think there's nothing worse than having a poor teacher I just didn't have the confidence to be a teacher really and also I wanted to be in the thick of the music world and I felt the the academy was not going to allow me that privilege and I'm in that regard I'm sure I'm correct when people have come to the studio to work I take two or two usually two assistants at a time sometimes one and they sit here first of all that they know computers much better than I do so I hire them as true assistants I need them I still write with pencil and paper I have to remind people to have paper and pencils in the studio because if they don't they will disappear but I don't mean pencils and erasers at all times and there's a jar there and there is a music paper around here but uh but uh most composers unless anyone under 30 doesn't write music anymore sold on the computer I'm sure you know that in fact it's gotten to the point where all the copying is done on the computer not only that but if you want to buy music paper there's only one place in USA to buy music paper I have to send away for it and it comes the next day I can't there used to be five places in New York ago bunnies I could buy different shades of green or white or it's sizes or not there's that's gone my generation and the one beyond younger than me pronounced are several younger than me will be the last ones to use mix of paper however what I wha so what can they learn for me why I don't really don't know I they we do a lot of we do film work here I prepare music for operas here if you're interested in opera or film or plays or orchestras or writing commercials I do that too you want to know how to write a commercial for IBM I know how to do it I've got them out there so what I found and it's very interesting among the younger composers and Niko's oregano his extremely gifted young man but uh-oh these are young men and women who want to work in the music world and they make no bones about how they they don't mind making money working partly in commercial work importantly with in the concert hall in the Opera House oh there was a time when doing commercial work was considered very bad taste yet quite a few composers especially the European ones that during the war they ended up on Holi wouldn't and some of them did quite well and as unfit didn't it selfish they're hilarious Stuart hilarious stories about I don't have time for them know about what happened when share Americans Stravinsky showed up in Hollywood they didn't actually end up doing film using it but they they the the the the the the level of misunderstanding was very very it was very very funny but anyway now is that I think there we have to attend on and jonquil on oppose have won Oscars and they would not be considered how he proposes by any stretch and I I think that John I don't know tan done that well I think John is very pleased his one I think he's had a polar for surprise and and and in Alaska right I mean so I was like like I've had by the way I've had a third but well we have that you know a different that I found my own way that's I guess that way I can say it but I'm one when I when a composer become successful by that I mean he can make a living both doing art music and commercial music and my hats off to them because it's not easy and not everyone can do and only a handful of people ever did it anyway I mean a generation before there were a handful of composers german paul to sow and Threepenny Opera was a Brecht and Kurt Vile I mean Kurt Vile did that and then he ended up doing some beautiful song scores and he came but you have to look around and there was a history of that in in in Central European art music of people who did that that they were not admired by the Academy though they I think that I think that's over now no then you meet me and Nico and a bunch of people are waiting there with open arms and empty music pages ready to work I think what you're getting I think what you're suggesting you're suggesting that these self definitions of opera and theatre and commercial and high art they're crumbling and and what we're finding in the younger generation is an ease with which a young person can say well I said woody what are you doing to me so well I I do video game music and at the same time they'll say we'd like to see my new symphony you know and so I think there's an a certain lack of self-consciousness about that and the fact that we don't we don't judge people so much about our definitions or don't come come with judgments of that kind if you're young enough and you're strong I think a young man a woman a woman today could a man also are there some wonderful conductors around who are I mean the gender thing in conducting is over and you just wonderful conductors out there in summer so who does the who did off a very good conductor burn also but dynamic interpretive commands the respect of audiences and and and the orchestra so the gender gap is over there and I think it's it's going to be over in the in composition to this it's been hard the theater world has been a little less resistant but even then it's been difficult for very talented women in these fields to of course in the choreography that's always been true invariably the the best collaborator is a person who has arrived as some confidence in themselves oh the more confidence they have in themselves the more open they are to what their collaborators do but the less sure they are above themselves the more controlling they become about other people's work oh I was working with Woody Allen not too long ago a year or so ago I didn't no idea why they have now been making movies and wonderful news for a long time it hasn't worked with a lot of composers he was completely open about what I did it was the same way and and not and not just older people like them but some of some of the younger you know younger filmmakers have been like that - Bernard Rose has been like that it was not that young anymore but but there have been younger people not so well known who the more confident of the the collaborator is about themselves the easier is for them to work with other people because there's plenty of room here come on come and join me and what they do is they want to say well what can you bring not I can't like that I don't want that and I don't like elbows and please don't talk to me about French horns and they don't even sometimes know what an oboe is I mean you get very odd things can happen but uh the the best collaborators are people who who know what they want and and and and and feel confident about themselves and then the books collaborations are were where there are very few rules when I work with someone I never tell them what to do Bob and I when we worked on Einstein we never discussed orchestration universally I never discussed stage design with him I never once and all the time we worked together we were working on some things I said and there was it what said Mr Man I said it's a piccolo I said well he does anything else and I changed it to a flute and you notice anything else then one time I said Paul I think so one time in all the years of work is it was that was a piece of scenery don't know he said this is anything and it disappeared but this or two commas between two people work together for a long time he never said anything he never we talked about work and we talked about things we also talked about all kinds of things besides the work itself Bob always thought with Einstein for so well that everybody knew who any time was so we didn't need to tell a story and I thought the same way at the first rehearsal is only four strings and and winds and they began playing it and hit they were grumbling and moaning and groaning about this than that and uh look anyone doesn't want to play this work please leave know about who got up and left and suddenly the piece sounded much better we hadn't we didn't have to do that for nothing but okay it has been very or receptive to the work and but you know it's a bit a few years later and the course is wonderful with him and we didn't have that problem but the first performances and we're also with Dennis Russell Dave is doing it not him for the first time I stood guard it was the first rehearsals were really tough and they he was very very patient patient with them and they finally came around but uh oh yeah people that was a that was the role for a long time I didn't do orchestra music because it that kind of thing happened but I began writing symphonies really in the eighties I didn't write my first simply thought was in my 50s so I would have been Dennis commissioned it and by that time I knew so much about the orchestra from writing for Opera House's I I learned isolated orchestration Joey over like master orchestration in the Opera House and that by the time I was writing symphonies I really knew what I was doing vishay and Ravi Shankar and I met them about the same time in the early 60s in Paris I was Ravi Shankar's assistant I was studying with millivolt change and I've said time said that I one of them talked with love and the other through fear so it was like having two angels of my shoulder one on the right one on the left shoulder and in the end the the method murder not as much as the quality of the teaching talk to things that were that were that what you couldn't learn anywhere else she taught you to visualize music to hear it she she trained you so you could start to hear music actually come to power music complicado music in your head and she did it through a series of exercises and trainings that were that were that 104 hours and hours every day and it went on for years and years singing the Bach chorale czar singing every part and playing any other part transposing inside all this kind of stuff she she was she was able to do that the other thing that she did she did a very an amazing thing I can't go into it in detail now but she without question with her you learned the difference between style and technique you learned that style was a special case of technique so for example when you hear a measure of Mostar why do you know what's most fun you know it's mostly because because the his style was a special case of the technique of the day and that would be true of Rachmaninoff that would be true of me that would be 12 anybody that that the reason that we have to acquire a solid technique is only with a technique can a style be evolved is after the technique has been established that the style is also look at Stravinsky and she did that she she she had precise ways of teaching that and any of her students if we had time we could go into it but that's another conversation

Channel: National Endowment for the Arts

Views: 9,624

Rating: 4.8899083 out of 5

Keywords: opera, music, symphony, drama, theater, Philip Glass Ensemble Akhnaten, Koyaanisqatsi, Mishima

Id: ZvjTYmPzG7E

Length: 57min 14sec (3434 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 25 2010