Pierre Boulez Interview by Andrew Carvin and Joshua Cody

Pierre Boulez

Interview by Andrew Carvin and Joshua Cody (WNUR-FM, Chicago)
November 14th, 1993 in Evanston, IL., for the Paris New Music Review.

Pierre Boulez was one of the great composers of the 1950s and is one of the great conductors of all time. Above all, his interpretations of twentieth-century repertoire have made him famous, particularly the versions of second Viennese school and French impressionist works. His greatest impact on composers has been through the IRCAM, arguably the best-known electronic music center in the world. Writes commentator Norman LeBrecht, "No composer since Wagner has squeezed so much state money to pursue a personal dream. Computers, declared Boulez, were 'as necessary to a composer as a knowledge of counterpoint and fugue.'" Twenty years later, IRCAM has yielded a handful of worthwhile musical works and some minor contributions to submarine warfare but seems to have drawn no closer to the promised land. Boulez, for his part, is virtually silent as a composer, as politics, administration, and conducting consume his valuable time." We interviewed him in Chicago for our magazine, and spoke about his compostitions, the IRCAM, the Ensemble InterContemporain, and the relative merits of French and American audiences.

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AC: Mr. Boulez, you are performing tonight in Chicago with the Ensemble InterContemporain. Might you describe your affiliation with the ensemble over the years?I began with the ensemble in 1976, quite a long time ago. I attended all the auditions, and I myself, with the help of a jury of musicians, chose all of the musicians. I think that' s really the first step: to be able to choose the musicians that you want to have; and then, of course, to be able to educate them, to form them. In the ensemble, there is quite a turnover; you can imagine that, especially in an ensemble whose lifespan is over seventeen years, there will be musicians who want to go forward with their own careers. So there is quite a turnover; but at the same time, there is a kind of "tradition"--I don' t like this word, but there is kind of a... "relay" between the musicians who began and the musicians of today.
I was never the music director. I was only the president of the ensemble, because I wanted to have a different music director. We are now on our third music director. For a long period of time, Peter Eštvšs was at the head. He did a very good job with the ensemble, and then he wanted to have his own life after that; and I understand that. After a certain number of years, you need some change. Now I have as music director a young American, from California, as a matter of fact, but whose education was partly in Germany, partly in London: David Robertson. It is exactly one year ago this coming January that he began. His contact with the musicians is very good. He is only 32 or 33, so he brings new ideas and new visions: I think it is very important, after a while, to have that.
Of course, I am the one who founded the ensemble, and certainly I have a kind of special position with this ensemble. But I try, as much as possible, to avoid having my shadow constantly hanging over the ensemble.
AC: The ensemble focuses exclusively on twentieth century music.
It was founded for that, specially. You know, I have many experiences, as you can imagine, performing twentieth century music; and very often, I find that music of this century is left on the side. Or the ensembles who do specialise in modern music have no resources, or very little backing; so you see that in New York, for instance, the ensembles that perform new music are really in great trouble, because they cannot find money. And it' s the same in London, practically. An ensemble like the London Sinfonietta has a great difficulty in surviving. When I was asked to begin a new music ensemble, I said that the first condition is a permanent salary, a permanent contract, like a normal orchestra. Certainly it helps very much. You can base a certain number of things on friendships, on personal relationships; but you cannot go forever in this way, it' s not the way of life. If you have solid ties, a solid contract, and musicians who are committed--committed for good reasons, of course--then you have an ensemble that is coherent, made up of musicians who are ready to study contemporary music and make their lives--not just their livings--with that.

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I say always, every period is difficult. There is no easy period.

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AC: How do you find American audiences react to the twentieth-century repertoire?Among audiences you have many types. The majority are tied to the classical and romantic repertoire; it would be foolish to deny that. But I think that when you present concerts that are well-prepared, the audience feels confident, and then you definitely have a good audience. I don' t have permanent contact with American audiences. But I know that in Paris, the concerts that we are giving have very, very good audiences.
I am always trying to make sure that the audiences are in proportion to the pieces performed. What I mean is this: I remember that last year in Paris, we gave a concert of Webern and Ligeti, and of course we had more than two thousand people in attendance. If we give a concert with composers whose names are completely unknown, with very experimental tendencies, then I know that I cannot count on an audience larger than 200 to 400 people. I give these types of concerts in a smaller hall, one that will be full, rather than performing in the same large auditorium that would be either half-empty or half-full, depending on how you want to see it. There is a strategy for concerts. You cannot perform everything in the same place and under the same conditions. When there are works which are interesting and new, and which use new techniques or new technology, then often we create a kind of "workshop," in which we explain the compositional work of the composer, along with the team with which he has worked. There is a very loyal, steady audience for this type of program, at least 150, 200 people--which is quite a few, already, if you want to sustain this type of relationship.
AC: So do you always, ahead of time, select specific works for specific concert dates?
We always have a reserve of compositions ready; we have our own bag full of scores, let' s say. When we are preparing the season, we know very well how much we can do: a certain number of concerts in this large hall, a certain number of concerts in this small hall, et cetera. We make the programs according to the size of the hall, and according also to the scores we have. If a score has to wait one year to be performed at a more suitable concert, it is better to wait one year.
AC: You once said that music should be "collective hysteria and spells."
That was a quote from Antonin Artaud, the writer, and I think that it is something that' s true. The quote does not apply exactly, like all quotes; but certainly if you don' t have a kind of... well, "hysterical" purpose, let' s say, in music--or let' s say "expressive purpose"--of bringing the people out of their selves, out of their daily lives, then I don' t think that music is very interesting. In this, music is like all the arts; but music, perhaps, more than anything else, has this aspect--music and the theatre. It brings people out of themselves to go to some truth of the score, to some very important and deep reflection--on themselves, as a matter of fact. Proust has said another thing which is very important. He said that when you read a work, the work is reading yourself, the reader. You are not just discovering the work: if it is a very important work, then the work speaks about you--and not you about the work.
AC: Would you care to speak about your involvement with serialism?
For me, serialism was a short period, in the early fifties. It was a kind of approach to the language, a consequence from what we saw in Schšnberg, and in Webern especially. Webern very particularly, because his serialism is the most simple to analyze and to grasp. And therefore we went further--just to the point of absurdity, even--to see how it was possible to organize language in another way. But this period, a very experimental and abstract period, was just for a few years. It was between, let' s say, 1951 and 1953 or 1954; because when I began to work on Le Marteau sans Ma”tre, I was already beginning to go beyond this point, to try to make the discipline very flexible. If you have too strict a discipline, it kills your ideas, because you cannot put them anywhere. On the contrary, if you have a much more flexible discipline, your ideas can find their way. I think that there was the fight, after something very strict, to find a kind of invention which was very flexible.
Serialism itself was, for me and for my generation, very helpful because it gave a very strict discipline; and then after that, one can go everywhere. I suppose that' s exactly like, in the classical language, writing very strict counterpoint. It offers very strict constraints; it forces you to find a solution where you think there is no solution. After you have done that, you have a flexibility and a richness of invention which you could not have learned anywhere else.
AC: Michel Foucault once attributed what he called his "first great cultural jolt" to French serialism, and especially to you and BarraquŽ. Did you and Foucault influence each other?
I met Foucault very early, as a matter of fact, in 1951; but for a while I did not see him, because I was out of France. And he was out of France, also. Then, when we met again, that was very late in life--I mean, not terribly late, but it was not until I came back to France, especially in 1976, that I saw him quite frequently. But I knew his books, certainly. I think we are of the same generation. Therefore the way of thinking was very close, even without speaking about it. This kind of proximity of thinking, of looking at things, does not necessarily imply that thinkers are speaking together every day. When you compare us... For instance, look at the trajectory of Webern and the trajectory of Mondrian: here are two people who never saw each other, who never spoke to each other, who were completely ignorant of the other' s work. But you can see a very, very strong parallelism between the two trajectories. And I think that with Foucault the case is similar. At a certain time we met, and then for a certain period we did not meet at all; we were informed about each other, but that was all. Afterwards, when real meetings took place much more often, there was finally the opportunity of talking to each other.
JC: Some young composers of today look upon the compositional activity of the 1950s with envy; it appears as a kind of golden age to them. It' s a perception that I think is somewhat false; nevertheless, they feel that, in comparing that time with this time, the environment of today is depressing. They could cite a lack of faith in further aesthetic progress; the impossibility of individual creative volition; a feeling of entrapment, in which there are no truly original musical gestures left, only transparent references to past historical periods. They also have the conviction that the present historical position is absolutely unique and without precedent. So these composers sometimes find recourse in a sort of "neo-romanticism," or a kind of historical collage sometimes called "post-modern." Are these feelings, and these solutions, justified to any extent?
Well, each generation has to solve its problems. I cannot solve the problems of a generation which is forty years younger than me, certainly not. I say always, every period is difficult. There is no easy period. You know, when you think of the fifties, you might think it was very easy, whereas it was not easy at all. There was always the question of whether this new discipline was not completely absurd; there were many questions. Certainly, when I look, for instance, only at Paris, I see that practically all the composers of my generation have disappeared. They made the wrong choices, or they were not courageous enough, or they were not lucid enough; there are many reasons. Or, perhaps they were politically involved, and that political involvement brought them to solutions which were very trivial; this type of thing. So, no, it was not easy! No period is really easy.
As for historical monuments as things from which one steals a bit and places them in another context: that' s not a solution at all. You must find your own solution: I think that' s the main problem. If you are only quoting in your compositions, you are quoting! And you are quoting out of context, so there is no justification and no logic. It' s just like an antique shop, where you find a candle from the eighteenth century, you find anything from the nineteenth century; you can go all over the centuries, but you are left without a style. I think certain aspects of architecture have been going through the same problems exactly: "Well, it' s not possible to simply follow Mies van der Rohe, to simply follow le Corbusier"--and so they discover the Greek column, which is not exactly a very great discovery, in my opinion. In this way, architecture has exactly the same problems as music; but these are simply problems to be solved. But collage: I am not tempted by that, at all. Therefore, I cannot understand, really... I don' t simply want to be "original," but I want to take out of myself what is myself, and not only what I am looking at.
JC: Your enthusiasm for literature and the visual arts is one of the aspects of your personality that makes you a very appealing model for other composers. I don' t know how closely you follow extremely current events in the other arts; but if you do, I was wondering if you could generalise whether or not this period seems to have relative cohesion, or is characterised rather by a particular disunity. Perhaps it' s always impossible to judge.
Yes, that' s very difficult to judge immediately, because we tend to relate value and style, especially when looking at the past. When you are in the present, that is not always the case, because some works that don' t have an immense value nevertheless may have a kind of stylistic impulse which is necessary for this period. There are some works which are much better made, let' s say, much better fabricated; and they are not interesting because they don' t bring anything. So we are always too close to the fact, although you can have your personal judgement, of course; and I have my own judgements on things.
There are many ways of approaching the problems of music nowadays. But I think there are two things which I don' t like. First, the explicit reference to the past; because I think that' s useless. Second, oversimplistic solutions, which I find really useless. Sometimes when I read some manifestos--not manifestos, but declarations--of composers who want very simple styles, and so on, I think of what we have gone through historically in 1947, 1948, when you had the Stalinists saying that people should be happy... This kind of simplistic view is completely contradictory to the human being! The human being is not simple. The human being is really complex. When you have composers behind you like Wagner or Mahler, just to take two examples, who did find solutions which are challenging to you, you cannot say that they did not exist or were too complex, so let' s do something simple. Sometimes these kinds of solutions remind me of fast-food restaurants: convenient but completely uninteresting.
JC: How important a role does popular commercial music play, in America--not only in America, I suppose, but in Europe as well?
Yes, in Europe as well... The good side to popular music is that there is a vitality that is going into it; also, that popular musicians have no repertoire , so they are free from that, practically, even if they revive songs of the Beatles, things like that; that is not repertoire . Also, what I find the most interesting--sometimes--is the sound aspect. The sound aspect is completely new; they don' t use classical instruments, so they have to use electronic instruments, or electronically-manipulated instruments. So that is the interesting side. The side which I don' t like at all concerns the stereotypes and clichŽs: this language is absurdly full of clichŽs, it' s very simplistic, and after you have three minutes of it you have 33,000 minutes of it. But I like the vitality. I wish sometimes that the classical department would have as much vitality as one finds in the popular field.
JC: Do you think there remains a large difference between the place that contemporary music holds in Europe and the place it holds in America?
No. It' s approximately the same. People are not really very different in the same type of culture and civilisation. There is a small difference here and there, but globally it is approximately on the same level. Only, if I may say so, in the university... The danger here, in the States, is that the universities are sometimes like fortresses, and that there is not enough contact sometimes with the outside world. In England, it' s very much the same situation. In France, we have no campuses, we have no universities which are closed upon themselves; the universities are in the cities. Thus the intellectual or artistic life is a unification of the university life and the life of the city. If I see any difference between the States and Europe, that' s the difference: really, it' s between France and Italy on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon countries on the other. German countries also have universities which are very strong.
JC: Stravinsky warned against the university education. Would you warn against it?
No, not against the education, not at all; although I' m not really expert enough to have a judgement here. Only that if you could go outside more, if there were more ties with the city itself, I think it would be for the better. I spent only a semester at Harvard [teaching], and I looked at the relationship between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard--this was thirty years ago--and there was absolutely no connection. I find this detrimental for both sides, because you have a very high intellectual level on one side, a very high professional on the other side, and they would benefit from closer contact.
JC: Has your view on electronic music changed since you began IRCAM ? Has the course of electronic music been surprising?
What was surprising, what was quite unforeseen when I began IRCAM... I began the plans for IRCAM in 1969 or 1970, quite a long time ago. I had contacts in New York, and I must say that I had contacts with Max Matthews, who was at Bell Laboratories at this time, in New York. Although he never ordered me to do anything, through our conversations he made me aware that having a room for computers was very important. That' s all that I knew, both intuitively and through speaking with him. But I was careful, because at the beginning one can' t be sure; I was careful not to give everything to the computer. But progressively, and much more quickly than we had ever thought, the computer invaded everything, from the analysis to the synthesis of sound to the manipulation of instruments--everything. It' s a tool which is very general and which can be used in very different ways. The evolution of IRCAM is thus closely tied to the evolution of computer technology.
The second thing, which was not surprising to me at all, because I had always pushed in this direction... I had had bad experiences myself in the 1950s with electronic technology. If you did something electronic [as a composer], you had something on tape. Then [as a performer] you had to follow the tape; you were absolutely squeezed into coincidence with the tape. It was completely detrimental to the performance. Therefore I pushed the research in IRCAM towards live electronics and live computer systems, so that the computer would be geared towards the concert situation, so that the computer would have an instant response to the performer.
That was my first push in this direction. The second was the attempt to make the language [of computer programming for composition] more intuitive for the composer. I remember that when I learned, or when I tried to learn, computer music, there were only figures, figures, figures, which don' t speak at all to a musician. If you see a figure in Hertz, or in the number of decibels, or if you have to wait half an hour before you have a sound, you are discouraged completely. So for me, what was important was that you could at least make a sketch very rapidly. I wanted the ability to sketch with the sound first, to have sound instantly, even if you refine it later. Also I wanted the ability to use graphics as an instant notation, even if approximate. The musician' s imagination is stimulated only by a language which speaks clearly to the intuition of a composer. So those were the two things that I felt--and still feel--responsible for.
JC: Your two recent large pieces, Repons and ...explosante-fixe..., make use of electronics. How are they related?
Originally, I did Repons with the technology of the early eighties, and I abandoned the piece because I wanted a newer technology, especially one that uses the new MIDI pianos which give so much more data than was possible in 1981 and 1984. Therefore, I left that; I will write, later, another part of Repons which will use some of this newer technology.
The central role of the flute in ...explosante-fixe... is something that comes from a long time ago. When I was trying to do ...explosante-fixe... first in 1972, the technology was so primitive, you can' t imagine. You had still the connections with wires, and so on. It was clumsy and unreliable. I cannot explain the frustration we had. In the period that followed the first version of the piece, I thought always of that. Also, I was working with a flutist, who died in between the two versions of the piece, unfortunately, at a very young age. He was also very interested in connecting instruments to computers. He invented this kind of contact with the flute, in which the flute is registered with the computer immediately. The note you play is registered not only with the keys but acoustically, so you have the two aspects electronically controlled. Progressively, I pushed in the direction of a "score-follower:" this is the computer' s capability to follow the score just as the flute plays it. With that, you can then trigger whatever you want: you can not only modify the sound of the flute--which was still interesting to me--but you can also link the flute and the instrumental score to a third part, an "artificial" score. Currently, I' m working further in this direction. I want the computer to read the data of the flutist' s performance to simultaneously modify the artificial score; for instance, if the flutist decides to play very slowly, then the artificial score will be very slow. The idea is to achieve an interaction between the player and the machine.
JC: ...explosante-fixe... has a complicated family tree, doesn' t it? I' m trying to remember all the pieces that came from it: Originel, Rituel, Memoriale ...
Rituel is different. It is based on just one chord, that' s all, which I took from the others; so it' s just the harmony. But yes, I did ...explosante-fixe... first for seven instruments; and then I saw that that was too complicated, and the machinery was so terribly inefficient. But each part was written, so I have now a reservoir of possibilities which I will exploit progressively. I began with the flute. There was a violin part, as well, and I have began to transcribe that part for a work for violin solo.
JC: A lot of your pieces are interrelated in this way.
Yes.
JC: Your compositional activity seems very coherent, very consistent.
Absolutely: it' s a tree which gives another tree which is another tree. Therefore, the title DŽrive. DŽrive 1, for instance, is from Repons. Part of the material for Repons I did not use, actually, and that became the material for DŽrive 1. And DŽrive 2 is from studies I did for the part of Repons which is still not written. DŽrive 3 is derived from another piece, Le Visage nuptial. You can never use all the material. But I like these kinds of relationships. As long as the material is not used fully, then I like to have some derivations.
JC: Do you wish that you could devote more time to composition?
Yes, I wish that. I' ve wished that for a long time, already. The concerts I give generally consist of contemporary music. Not always, but mainly. But if you do contemporary music, you have to do the repertoire ; an orchestra cannot survive without the repertoire . Therefore, you have to make. . . not a compromise in the bad sense, but a good compromise. It has to do with the audience: when the audience is confident that you can conduct all the pieces, they will follow you more; because they are confident that what you do is not simply absurd.
JC: This is a local question, because we' re in Chicago... Do you find the audiences in Chicago different from those in New York?
Definitely better.
JC: Why is that?
Don' t ask me, I don' t know. A sociologist should answer that.
JC: You also conduct in Los Angeles.
Yes, Los Angeles has very good audiences also. It depends upon the continuity of the orchestra. There are a lot of factors involved. As for Chicago, you cannot decide it is this way because it is Chicago, just because of the city. I think there is, maybe, a tradition; there is a habit of going to concerts, of being more respectful. . . I don' t know.
JC: In the next few years, are you going to devote more time to composition?
Yes, to composition.
JC: Will you write an opera?
Yes--I am supposed to do so! The first thing I said to Daniel Barenboim [Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra] was that I don' t want any deadline. I have conducted opera, not quite a lot, but sufficiently enough to be aware of the difficulties. And I want to do for the opera what I did with Repons: to not have only a conventional setting. Of course, conventions are existing not just because they are conventional, but because they are efficient, for instance acoustically. Once I saw in Paris a production of Boris Goudonov. Joseph Losey, the movie director, was doing it. He wanted direct contact between the singers and the audience members. They covered the [orchestra] pits completely and placed the orchestra behind the singers, like a band shell. The contact was terribly difficult, of course, because the conductor could not see the performers; so there were only monitors, everywhere, in front of the singers, in front of the conductor. The balance was completely off! When the chorus was at the front of the stage, you could barely hear a note of the orchestra. You heard the singers out of proportion. When a singer was in front, you heard the singer with a kind of background orchestra. So you cannot simply decide, "I will put the orchestra there, I will put the singer there." You have to take into consideration the acoustical problems. I want to think about that, and to decide with the playwright how to use that. Music is much less flexible than theatre.
JC: You enjoy the theatre. Do you go to the cinema?
Rarely. I look at movies when I am lazy; when I am tired, I look at movies on television. They appear on television one year late; and most of the movies can wait a year, I suppose.
JC: But historically France has held the cinema in high regard; it is perhaps more serious than that of the United States, in some respects.
Yes, in a way: there is a conception that is tied much more directly to the author, to an individual. But not always for the better, either. It reminds me sometimes of theatre at the beginning of this century, at the end of the nineteenth century, with these kinds of psychological and family situations which are not terribly exciting. In film, in France, you have nobody the size of Beckett, for instance.
JC: Ever?
Now, I mean. You had [Robert] Bresson, for instance, who made very good films; but the best film I saw recently, not now but a few years ago, was a Russian one, by [Sergei] Paradzhanov. It was called Sayat Nova [The Colour of Pomegranates, 1972]. It lasted for only eight days in the theatre; but it was extraordinary.
JC: Tonight we' re going to hear the Ligeti Piano Concerto. One of the differences between your music and Ligeti' s is the presence of the past.
Yes: you must think of his origins. He was born in Hungary and cut off from the world for a long time. Before 1956, he had heard almost nothing new, because everything was banned in Hungary. So he discovered things when he was already 33 or 34. At 33, you are already an adult, really; so he kept this kind of traditional education for a long time. He was also very much influenced by Bartok, as a matter of fact. There is still quite a bit of Bartok there, much more than the influence of the Viennese school. When he approached my group in 1956, I was already 31. So there is always this difference between my music, let' s say, or Stockhausen' s, and his music. He is attached to another education, to another tradition; and then he chose... Of course, now his vocabulary is much richer than the one with which he began. But I think that he has kept this kind of tie with folklore tradition, and many times I find in a Ligeti work the rhythm to a Romanian or a Bulgarian dance that one finds also in Bartok. But if I may say so, Ligeti' s music is Nancarrowized, because he was also strongly influenced by Nancarrow. But in general, this notion of tradition is the big difference between my music and his.
JC: But in your music, the past is there, and it resonates; just in a different way, in a less specific way.
I think I... absorb the past, much more. Maybe that' s to exaggerate. I don' t like to write something that could have been written by somebody else. That' s really maybe the death of me! If I write something, I want that to be exclusively mine. There is influence, yes, but the influence has been so absorbed that you cannot specify it, really. I can see it, because I know the source; and if I tell someone, then they can see a relationship, vaguely. But if I don' t say a word, nobody will see it. That' s the main thing.
JC: You have remarked that you have strong affinities--spiritual affinities, I saw written once--with several visual artists and writers. Are there any specific figures in art that you feel work particularly closely to the way you work?
Yes; but I don' t want to be any of these figures! I want to be myself, that' s all. I have had contact, really, with some of the best writers in France, especially; but I don' t want to be them. I want to be me. But I recognise their influence, especially when I was younger; they had a very strong influence on me. Either RenŽ Char, or Michaux, or even people I did not know at all, like Proust, for instance. Or Beckett, whom I never met. But Genet I met quite often.
AC: When we started talking, you mentioned problems with orchestras and funding. It appears over the last few years to have been getting worse and worse; and a lot of people are afraid that it could seriously damage the orchestra system and, on top of that, the encouragement of young people to become involved in music and composition. Is this a serious problem?
I think that there are problems with funding, that' s absolutely true. But I think that' s the bill of listening to music; and the desire to compose music, and the desire to live in a world where art does exist, is really very strong. I will tell you one thing: because I was born in 1925, part of my youth was spent between 1940 and 1944, when times were very bleak, let' s say. You had only one thing to look at, that was culture, the theatre, music. And I have never seen concert halls more full than in this period.
This vision makes me optimistic, under all circumstances--and we are far from these circumstances. But certainly, barbarian conditions can kill. If you look at Sarajevo right now... I don' t know if you have read about the experiences of Susan Sontag. She was in Sarajevo in September, I think it was, and she directed En Attendant Godot, by Beckett, to give some hope to these people; and I thought it was really an extraordinary gesture.
I remember having seen, it was very striking, a piano recital given in a hall in Paris, maybe ten or eight days before the liberation of Paris. So the atmosphere was really tense, and you never knew what could happen; we could have been bombed... Because there was almost no transportation, everyone had to bicycle or walk: there was really a lot of inconvenience. . . but the hall was full.

Lutenist Hopkinson Smith - A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Musical styles and tastes come and go.  Individual composers and entire genres swing in and out of fashion, but the performance of Early Music — think pre-Bach — lay quite dormant for three centuries or more.  Yes, there were a few — very few — practitioners of these styles who kept the ideas alive during the Baroque through the Impressionist periods, but only since the mid-1970s or so have we had a renaissance of Renaissance music!  The end of the twentieth century saw (and heard!) a revival and the genuine interest in trying to replicate the authentic sounds and gestures that brought light to the world as it emerged from the dark ages. 

Hopkinson Smith is one of those who has pushed the expansion of these oldest sounds and has help to make us aware of these ideas and ideals.  Radical in their day, we now can appreciate once again the forward-looking advances that these player-composers gave society.  Many were attached to the courts, but some roamed the countryside bringing news and enjoyment to anyone and everyone.  At least we hope so with our all-inclusive egalitarian sensibilities of this electronic age.

Smith was in Evanston in 2003, giving a concert and master classes at Northwestern University, something he regularly does in his adopted home in Basle, Switzerland, and around the world.  He has made many recordings, so we all can learn and enjoy what he has discovered and implemented in his search.

Here is that conversation . . . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:    Do you like being a busy lutenist ?

Hopkinson Smith:    If busy means focusing my life on the music and the instruments, I love it.

BD:    Is that what you do, focus your life on the music and the instruments?

HS:    These days I certainly do, and the traveling doesn’t bother me because the traveling is all part of realizing something which is very close to my heart, which is the music I play.  Of course the instruments themselves have a very strong physical presence.  The lute being such a sensitive instrument, one is very intimately involved with the instrument physically, musically and emotionally.

BD:    When you play the instrument it’s in front of you, but are there times when it becomes a part of you?

HS:    I think in the best moments that happens with any instrument.  The music and the instrument seem to be one with the performer and the whole creative energy and spirit that’s behind it.

BD:    Is it at all odd to be living now in the twenty-first century and still be playing music from two, three, four and five centuries previous?

HS:    That’s a question that people ask sometimes.  It seems like a perfectly natural thing for me.  It may seem odd to somebody else, but it seems perfectly natural to me, because whatever you do as a musician, in the best moments it is a completely contemporary expression.  The music should have such an immediacy and clarity, and such a connection to the performer’s creativity and sincerity as an artist, that the question of the epoch in which the music was conceived becomes of secondary importance in terms of the basic message that is there.

BD:    Do you enhance this message at all, or do you bring exactly the message as it was put down on the paper?

HS:    What you try to do, always, is go beyond what you see on the paper to find the real spirit of the music which is behind any particular notation.  From the outside, it may seem that people who play early music on historical instruments, use historical technique, play music according to the rules set down in the Baroque or the Renaissance periods — all these different things which seem like a kind of rigorous set of postulates that one must follow are actually are just normally part of the language.  For instance, if you’re reading Shakespeare, does it bother you that the sentences fall into a certain rhythm?  Does it bother you that there are subjects and verbs in the sentences?  No.  These are things that are naturally part of the language, and his language is an eloquence and reflection that no one would actually use in this particular form today.  But it’s so intimately connected with the expression and the sort of nobility of reflection that he incorporates, that this is all one and the same.  In the best of moments, I think one should experience no limits at all in a certain instrument or a certain period, but rather find total freedom.  What we’re trying to do is find and communicate this total freedom, and at the same time liberate the spirit that is behind it.

BD:    How much is the music and the liberation, and how much is Hopkinson Smith?

HS:    Everybody has his own approach and every instrumentalist has his own sound, and every instrumentalist has an instrument through which his voice takes shape and becomes real.  I don’t think of it in terms of these categories — how much is the music and how much is me, for instance.  But I think there is certainly room for as much variety of personal approach in our days as there was in those days.  Just to elaborate a little bit on that point, there is a lute treatise from the seventeenth century, the Mary Burwell Lute Book.  Mary Burwell was an English woman who had lute lessons with someone who had studied with the legendary Vieux (Ennemond) Gaultier, who was the patron saint of all French lute players in the seventeenth century.  At one point in the book she lists the main players, apart from Gaultier, who were active at the time.  These were all composers and performers, and she gives a caricature of each one of these performers...  “This person should only have played at funerals and burials because his playing was so somber and morose; this person should have been an organist because he was so pedantic in the way he played; this person played too well because he added ornaments and tirades and what-all wherever he could, and the music was completely obscured; this player should have gone to the marketplace and accompanied the dancing bears because he made so much noise and such a racket,” etcetera, etcetera.

BD:    It sounds like these items should have appeared in the Daily Gazette!  [Both laugh]

HS:    Yes.  On the one side it shows that musicians spoke as badly of each other in those days as they do today, but more importantly it shows that the idea of a French school of interpretation, on a very individual level, is a complete fiction.  It shows that there were so many different approaches to something that we consider to be of one “French school” of the seventeenth century.

BD:    Are all these approaches right?

HS:    They’re all valid.  It’s also valid to say that not every one of these approaches will please you or me, so if you’re looking for right and wrong, this is not the place to do it.  There’s no room for a moral judgment here, but there’s plenty of room for openness of spirit and for trying to understand many different ways of doing things.

BD:    Have you discovered the way that you want to use and taken it, or have you created your own way?

HS:    I’m always looking.  People would say that I’ve created an approach, but I would never think of it as such.  I would think of it more as the way I think, the way I listen, the type of sounds I’m looking for.

BD:    Are you at an advantage or a disadvantage being able to look back at history and the music that you’re playing from a distance, rather than being in the midst of its creation?

HS:    I never thought of it as an advantage or disadvantage.  This is not an answer to your question, but one big advantage we have is that we have so many different instruments and different styles and different periods that fascinate us.  We can go from one to another and we have this variety that keeps everything fresh.  On the other hand, they often were experts in the one thing that they did.  Silvius Weiss played the music of Silvius Weiss.; John Dowland played mainly the music of his period; Francesco da Milano played and improvised, above all, his own pieces.  So there’s an important difference.

BD:    Should you not be playing and improvising your own music, then?

HS:    I am improvising and playing my own music in different styles.

BD:    Is there much, if any, music for your instruments being written today by other composers?

HS:    There are contemporary composers who write for the lute and other early instruments, and actually there are some performers who specialize mainly in this.  I’m always interested to see what people are doing.  I have piles of compositions that composers have sent me at home, and I’ve played through them all.  Normally I’m in touch with the composers about how I feel about them, but my heart is more in the earlier repertoires, and that’s still how I basically nourish myself artistically.

BD:    Without mentioning any names, do any of these contemporary composers get it?

HS:    A good composer — one who knows the instrument — certainly has something interesting to say.  I wouldn’t say they get it or they don’t get it.  I wouldn’t actually put it in a kind of black and white situation, but there are some interesting things happening. 

BD:    But mostly you continue to bring to life the old composers and keep them alive?

HS:    Yes.  The lute and the early plucked instruments in general have a vast repertoire for quite a few different instruments from about 1500 to the middle of the eighteenth century.  There is so much music that one could easily spend several lifetimes investigating historically.  Above all, something that takes much more time with the instrument in the hand is really finding the essence of a style, and a composer and individual pieces.  One could spend an enormous amount of time really bringing this to fruition.  A small part of the work that I do, actually, is bibliographical and historical, actually looking for sources here and there.  Much more of what I do is playing over and over certain pieces, certain phrases, trying to find the expression which really seems to come from the music itself.  This is something that just takes ages.  Dowland himself, in the introduction to his Variety of Lute Lessons, where he translates a section on how to study the lute, says that when you have a difficult piece you shouldn’t go over from the beginning to the end each time and play right through, but you should stick with it and work on it; go over and over the passages that are enigmatic, even if it’s a thousand times until “thou sees thyself prettily seen within it.”  That means until you find yourself really reflected in the passage you’re playing, or, in our way of expressing it, until I can identify with everything in the piece.  In our day and age where everything else is so automatic and so quick, and at the push of a button we have this information or that information, this is one aspect of studying music which has not changed in hundreds or thousands of years, and I don’t imagine will change in the future as well.

BD:    Is it ever possible to get any of these things completely right, or is this always an unattainable goal?

HS:    How I see it, the musical ideal that we are trying to approach always lies somewhat above and beyond the instrument.  Occasionally there will be moments when a kind of light of clarity shines in and illuminates a passage musically.  These are some of the most gratifying moments a musician can have.  But it is a very fleeting art, and I would never say that it was right or this is the right way, but rather that occasionally we have moments of clarity which are completely rewarding.

BD:    From your perspective of playing mostly the old pieces, what is the purpose of music?

HS:    I think I need a few years to answer this one!  [Both laugh]  Maybe in ten or fifteen years.  Once I read an interview with Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, and he was asked, “Why do you write?” and he said, “To raise the spirit.”  [Note: Kundera was born in 1929 at Purkyňova ulice, 6 (6 Purkyňova Street) in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971), once a pupil of the composer Leoš Janáček, was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček Music Academy in Brno from 1948 to 1961. Milan learned to play the piano from his father; he later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences and references can be found throughout his work; he has even gone so far as to include musical notation in the text to make a point.]  I think there’s a lot of truth for anyone involved in the arts.  The specific way of raising the spirit that one has through dance or theater or music or composition or writing.  The angle will change a little bit, although I wouldn’t really be able to define it in detail.  There’s something about an intense and profound gratification that one can find with music that for me, at least, would be very hard to obtain any other way.  Of course, playing an instrument involves your human spirit.  It involves your mind; it involves the way you think and what you’re looking for; it involves your hands.  So it’s a physical, mental, emotional, and extremely spiritual activity, and these are all important factors involved in this endeavor that many of us are taken with.

*     *     *     *     *

BD:    Do you play primarily the lute, or do you play equally all of these early plucked instruments?

HS:    I have done quite a lot with different early instruments — plucked instruments —different types of Renaissance lutes, Renaissance guitar, vihuela, Baroque guitar, Baroque lute, theorbo, etcetera.  These are instruments almost exclusively with double strings.  Whereas the modern guitar has single strings, on the lute you will have two strings tuned to the same note, or in the case of the basses, a lower note and a note an octave higher.  So they’re all part of a shared esthetic, which has quite a lot of variety from country to country, from time period to time period, and in some cases even from one composer to another within the same geographical and chronological area.  But there are certain basic aspects of the general aesthetic which are shared by all these different instruments.  In the first case, it is lighter construction of the instruments themselves, and being lighter constructed, the strings themselves are finer.  They are thinner than on a modern instrument, which is heavier.  So being lighter and double-strung, the sound is more transparent, more suggestive, has more overtones and not as much fundamental.  Being lighter, they also have a more speaking quality, not in the sense of exact vowels and consonants — although these are elements which one can certainly use in early instruments — but also the level of sound production that an instrument has.  There is also the speaking-ness of following the rise and fall of the voice that one has when one uses the language in a natural way.  If we say in a natural way, “Da-da-dum, ta-ta-tum,” there’s even a gesture involved.  “Da-da-dum,” tandem, one can imagine that hand moving in a certain way, and it’s actually this type of gesture and this type of clarity of declamation which is intimately related to the language of these early plucked instruments.

BD:    I assume that it gives you a sense of variety to be able to play several of these instruments rather than always going to a violin or a bassoon?

HS:    Yes.  But actually, if one played a certain violin for the music of Fontana, you might use a different violin or different bow for Tartini and a different one for Geminiani and a different one for Mozart or for Beethoven.  Actually one could follow through the evolution of the instrument itself — how the bow has changed, how the instruments themselves evolved — according to the exigencies of the music, the requirements of the music in any given period.  Actually, what we’re doing with the lute is exactly what the violinist would do if he were to change according to the music he played.

BD:    Aren’t there large differences among lutes and vihuelas and theorbos, more than just early and late violins?

HS:    The shape of the vihuela and the shape of the lute are quite different.  The lute has a pear-shaped body, a neck that goes up and a peg box that goes back.  The vihuela has a guitar-shaped body and a straight peg box, but both have double strings.  They have the same tuning, and to a large extent they have the same technique, even though geographically they were separated.  In the sixteenth century, the vihuela was played above all in Spain and somewhat in Italy, while the lute was basically in the rest of northern Europe.   Although they look quite different and they’re from different families of instruments, the tuning, the technique and very much of the music are similar.   The theorbo, of course, is a different animal.  It is a bass lute with a very long neck, and with a whole octave of bass strings tuned diatonically going down.  It was used above all as an accompanying instrument, first in Italy and then in France and in the rest of Europe.  There’s a small but very interesting solo repertoire, especially from France and Italy, but it is an instrument above all for power accompaniment.  In the big orchestras there were several theorbos, or as they were also known, chitarrones.  However, in a chamber music situation the theorbo can have a much more intimate function and be like a solo instrument.  The possibilities of color and volume can adapt very well to a variety of chamber music situations.  It is an instrument of the lute family, but is quite a different animal, so to speak.

BD:    I assume that most of the instruments that you play on are reproductions?

HS:    It’s true.  I have a number of them.

BD:    Have you been able to play on a few original instruments?

HS:    I have, not so much recently, but the first two or three recordings I made were on historical instruments from the collection in the German National Museum in Nuremberg

BD:    Do the reproductions stack up well against the originals?

HS:    Not all of the original ones sound well, and we never know exactly if the way they sound now is the way they sounded then.  But a good historical instrument that is well-maintained or has been carefully restored, has qualities that I have never found in a modern instrument; qualities of individual depth and interest in each individual note of the instrument.  These qualities I mentioned before about “speaking” are even more in evidence on a good historical instrument than on a good modern instrument.  There’s something of the depth of quality that is unique to earlier instruments.

BD:    But overall, are you pleased with the reproductions?

HS:    I have some very good, modern-made instruments, although the lute builder who’s made most of my instruments, Joel van Lennep, who lives in New Hampshire, would never say he really makes copies.

BD:    He is making his own things on the old pattern?

HS:    Exactly, the old pattern, and above all the esthetic of sound that he and I imagine the music to require.  Just as a player looks for certain qualities at the moment when his independence as a musician is clear and liberated, an instrument maker also is looking for certain sound qualities.  It’s important for an instrument maker to be very skilled as an artist with his hands, but the most important quality an instrument maker has are his ears.  He has to be looking for some sound; I don’t mean one single sound, but a sensitivity to sound and the possibilities of sound in all different registers of his instruments, according to the music that will be played on these instruments.  This is essential for a good maker.

BD:    There are, of course, recordings made by you and your immediate predecessors.  Is it a good thing or a bad thing that we do not have a recording of Dowland playing his own music?

HS:    Oh, it would be fascinating to hear the great personalities of the past!

BD:    Would it not remove some of the mystery?

HS:    It would still be a mystery and it would be fascinating to hear.  I must say, the recordings we have, for instance, from the first twenty years of the twentieth century are very different — even piano and violin where performers were playing mainly nineteenth century repertoire.  They are fascinating for us, and there is so much to learn about the aesthetic of sound and instrumental perfection that many of these earlier recordings show us.  So it would be great to hear Dowland and Silvius Weiss and all these virtuosi and incredible personalities of the past.  There’s still a lot to learn from these early recordings from the twentieth century, many of which, interestingly enough, in their aesthetic are much closer to the speaking intensity of sound production than performers doing the same repertoire at the end of the twentieth century.  So there are many more links to earlier ways of thinking and hearing and playing even in the twentieth century than one might imagine.

BD:    Does it please you that you have made a number of recordings, so that your legacy will not just be the concerts you have given, but also these recordings, which will presumably last?

HS:    I don’t think so much about a legacy in that respect, and I never listen to my own recordings!  It’s not as though I want to bathe in what I’ve done before.  My focus is almost always on what I’m doing right now and the future.  I’m glad that I have had the chance to make recordings.  Of course, a recording is always a moment.  You never really have a definitive version of a piece, but a recording gives you a chance to present your ideas under hopefully optimal recording conditions, in a way that is gratifying to the performer and is also interesting to other people.  I’m very glad that there has been some positive reception to these different projects that I’ve recorded over the years.

BD:    Do you play the same for the microphone as you do for a live audience?

HS:    In a concert, it’s very rare that you’ll have the quality of silence and focus and reflection that you can have in a recording.  There are so many factors involved in a concert itself, and actually the whole experience of performing in a concert is something quite different from the recording.  The concert is, for me, the moment of truth; it’s a moment of creativity, projection, communication.  Very often at the end of a concert, you can have a completely different feel than you had at the beginning.  Towards the end of the concert, one often has the feeling of getting to know each other a little bit.

BD:    You and the audience?

HS:    That’s right.  Once you’re on more intimate terms, one automatically plays differently.  There are certain pieces that you could play as an encore that would never have the same effect at the beginning of a concert!  So the recording and the concert are very different media.  In a recording, where there is no visual orientation to the gestures and the concentration that one can have on the stage, one has a whole different concept of sound, and a different type of intensity.

BD:    So recordings and concerts are two parallel lines?

HS:    Maybe they are parallel, I don’t know, but they’re certainly complementary while being two different approaches to something.

BD:    You’re pleased to be involved in both, I assume?

HS:    Yes, most of the time!  [Both laugh]  Always you’re involved so intimately with an instrument.  I think it was the Belgian violinist, Ysaÿe, who said that the violin was his intimate friend and enemy.  I think the same could be said for the lutes in my case, and probably the main instrument that anyone plays if one is devoted entirely to performing.  There are certain moments when one has to work through a difficulty or work through a blockage of some kind to make peace with the instrument, make friends with the instrument again.  This is just part of life.

BD:    Has your instrument become your lover?

HS:    I don’t think of it in that sense.  The instrument is my voice, my musical voice.

*     *     *     *     *

BD:    You’re here at Northwestern to give some master classes.  I assume that you have some regular students, and you go around the world seeing and hearing what younger lute players are doing.  Are you pleased with how they are coming along, as far as their technique and their musicianship?

HS:    I’m here in Chicago for the first time; I gave a concert yesterday and I will be teaching tonight.  It’s mainly guitar players who are here.  I don’t think there’s much lute activity here at Northwestern, but I will see tonight, and maybe there are some early music ensembles I will work with.  One basic direction that seems to repeat itself, when working with modern musicians on modern instruments, is the challenge to liberate their thinking and their musical spirits to find a natural expression on the instrument they play.  This is partly explaining certain characteristics of the music itself and certain characteristics of early instruments, and how the music and the instruments fit together in a way, and then trying to get them to understand this esthetically and do what they can with their instrument to give the music its due.  More often, however, it is trying to find a lyrical and natural expression with the instrument, such as they would do if they were to sing a line that they were playing.  For instance [softly sings a plaintive melodic line] YUM-da-da-DEE-dum-aww-dum-baa-lom, and you might have a modern instrumentalist who goes [sings] yum-BA-DA-dee, putting the accent on the short notes, whereas the short notes actually lead to the next longer note, [sings] YAA-dum-DEE-dum, in groups of two.  Then the guitar player might go [sings] yaa-DAA-dee-DAA; without realizing it, he would put the accent just out of place.  First of all, as a student you have to learn to listen the way the teacher listens; you have to hear what the teacher hears.  That’s the first step.  This also goes hand-in-hand with learning to be more objective about what one hears when one is playing.  Especially with such poetic instruments as the lute and the guitar, we’re so carried away with the tactile sense and the beauty of sound that we tend to lose the criteria of judgment that go into normal music making.  So if you ask your voice, “What do I want here for phrasing?” ninety percent of the music students will give a credible phrasing for a series of notes like that.  However, they need six months to be able to do that on the instrument!  [Both laugh]  Very often, learning an instrument is not just learning to use the fingers this way or that way, or do more even scales or more even arpeggios, or make the loudest sound possible.  These things can all be important, but very often what we’re trying to do is to remove any blockages between the musical spirit and what comes out of the instrument; the individual spirit, the sense of music, the musicality of a person and what their instrument actually is doing.  Very often, the direction that one takes when working with students that you don’t know in a master class situation is to try as much as you can to free this up through all different kinds of techniques; getting people to listen and to hear, and to try this and to try that.  I actually do teach regularly in Basel, Switzerland, in the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.  There I have a group at the moment of seven pupils from seven different countries.  We work basically individually and sometimes in ensemble situations, going more into depth, more into detail on exactly this type of approach to music making.

BD:    Again, without mentioning names, are you successful at getting them to explore all of these things?

HS:    Well you know, you always keep trying!  [Both laugh]  If the pupils are quick and gifted, you can save them a lot of time because they would eventually come to some of these conclusions by themselves.  But they can profit from your experience, and get there in a quicker way than they would if they had to figure everything out by themselves.

BD:    Then they can progress even farther?

HS:    Exactly, exactly, and with the less gifted students, one does one’s best.

BD:    This is advice that you have for performers. What advice do you have, if any, for audiences that will come to hear your performance, or others’ performances?

HS:    I feel that the more one is informed about a repertoire and about an instrument, the intricacies of the language of an instrument or a period or style, the more one can appreciate a performance.  But on any instrument of any period, the basic message — which is the one which one understands intuitively, that one absorbs from the heart, so to speak — should always be clear by itself.  This sounds like different compartments, different aspects of the same thing, and they’re all also intimately related to each other.  But the basic artistic integrity of a performer — the focus on what he’s doing, the sense of gesture and clarity of movement — all these things should be aimed at the highest artistic level.  This is the most important aspect, I would say, in terms of contact with an audience.  Then the education of an audience can go on ad infinitum because there’s always more to learn, always more interesting aspects to explore.  Sometimes I explain pieces in a concert, and I have to be careful I don’t talk too much because there are so many interesting things to say and so many interesting historical and musical angles that one can bring in.  One tends to do all these things to enliven a performance.

*     *     *     *     *

BD:    I want to be sure to ask about the transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach.

HS:    I made a recording which came out at the beginning of the Bach Year 2000 of my lute versions of The Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by Bach.  I prefer not to use the words ‘lute transcriptions of the originals for violin.’  I prefer to circumvent the issue by saying ‘lute versions of pieces based on the violin versions’, because the violin versions themselves are so often not born on the instrument themselves, but come from some musical ideal above and beyond any instrument.  In Bach’s lifetime, some of these works were adapted for other instruments by Bach himself, and by instrumentalists in his circle including his son and son-in-law.  So it seems a natural extension of these works themselves to try them on the lute.  There’s an interesting anecdote, related by a contemporary of Bach, that often in the evenings he would sit down at the clavichord and play the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, extemporizing the voices and harmonies which are impossible on the violin.  It’s no mystery to a lute player why he would choose the clavichord, because of all the keyboard instruments, this is the one with the musical language closest to the lute in terms of touch, dynamics and intimacy.  The work I did with the Sonatas and Partitas took me several years, and I played them all in concert before I recorded them.  It was an extremely creative and gratifying project because when one is playing so much Bach, one sort of lives artistically — and I think a little bit in some other way— on a different plane of existence.  As Stravinsky said, “Bach is our greatest European composer,”and I think almost anyone would agree.  There are so many instances in the Sonatas and Partitas, especially in contrapuntal passages, where the music seems to be almost not for the violin, but against the violin.  Often the violinist is reduced to an awkwardness of bowing, trying to play different voices at the same time with a bow primarily intended for playing a single line on single string.  Although there are other examples of polyphonic playing on the violin from Germany in the generation before Bach, the demands of the Sonatas and Partitas really seem to go beyond the instrument in several cases.  Anyway, I think it’s worth listening to the more peaceful approach, the more non-violent approach that the lute can bring to these works.

BD:    Didn’t Bach write some works for the lute?

HS:    Except for one little piece, all of the Lute Suites by Bach are adaptations in one form or another of pieces which were conceived for another medium, such as the unaccompanied violin or cello.  Other pieces are in mainly keyboard collections, and so forth.  The Fifth Cello Suite, for instance, is very different from all the others, and so it’s very interesting to study.  It’s essential to study what Bach has done, but it won’t give you necessarily specific solutions for the other cello suites.

BD:    Would it give you an idea of what path to take, perhaps?

HS:    Yes.  It can stimulate your creativity, it’s true.  About the Fifth Cello Suite, cellists will often say, “Oh yes, this is the one that’s got a different tuning; it’s a different style of composing.”  They might even think he conceived it for the lute and then adapted it for the cello, but we know that the cello suites were conceived in the early 1720’s, and although we don’t have a score of the Cello Suites in Bach’s hand, we know the dating.  The score we have of his adaptation of the C Minor Suite for the Lute in G minor is actually in Bach’s hand, and it looks like the rough copy that he used to write it out the first time.  The watermark on the paper was from the period 1727 to 1731, so the paper, at least, was later than the cello version.  It’s of course possible that both pieces were originally based on another model which hasn’t survived, but at least for the cello/lute question, it seems to be fairly clear that the cello version was there before the lute version was.
BD:    We talked about advice for the performer and the audience.  What about the composer who would like to write for your instruments?

HS:    The more he or she knows about the instrument — not just a tuning chart and some basic technical data about the instrument — the more that the composer intimately knows what is possible, this can help.  Occasionally you will have a composer who demands the impossible.  Just look at history, for instance the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.  When it was first composed it was considered impossible to play, and now everyone who’s an up and coming violinist has to know this piece.  Sometimes you will have new stimuli that a composer will come upon, and which it takes some time to evolve into the natural language of the instrument.  This can also be quite interesting.

BD:    Are you optimistic about the future of old music?

HS:    I’m optimistic about most things.  I think the future is in the past with old music.  I’m absolutely convinced that the intimacy and naturalness of expression that one finds in early instruments is something that is more and more essential to the human being in the general direction towards impersonality that our modern world envelopes us with.  It’s very important to conserve and communicate the special qualities that early instruments have in our day and age.
BD:    One last question.  Are you pleased with where you are at this point in your career?

HS:    I’m glad to be doing the things I do, but I don’t have time to stop and think if I’m pleased with this or that!  I’m pleased that I’m always pursuing things of great interest, and that are very rewarding and gratifying for me. 
BD:    Thank you for being such an eloquent spokesman for these composers and these instruments.

HS:    [With a big smile as we shake hands]  Good.

The American lutenist, Hopkinson Smith, began as a teenager he began to study the classical guitar and in his early 20's, he became acquainted with the lute which he started to learn by himself. He majored in musicology at Harvard and graduated with honors in 1972. In 1973, Hopkinson Smith came to Europe to devote himself to the lute in earnest. He worked in Catalonia with Emilio Pujol, a profound pedagogue in the 19th century tradition who instilled in him a sense for higher artistic values, and in Switzerland with Eugen Dombois whose sense of happy organic unity between performer, instrument and historic period has had a lasting effect on him. From the mid 1970's, he was involved in various ensemble projects including the founding of the ensemble Hesperion XX and a ten-year collaboration with Jordi Savall. This collaboration led to important experiences in chamber music which were a creative complement to his work as a soloist. Since the mid 1980's, Hopkinson Smith has focused principally on solo music for early plucked instruments. These include the vihuela, Renaissance lute, theorbo, Renaissance and Baroque guitars and the Baroque lute. In so doing has delved ever deeper into rediscovering the legendary powers of persuasion of the lute in former times: its noble eloquence and rhetorical clarity arising not only from great beauty and purity of sound, but above all from an infinite variety of nuances of touch and color of tone that gives its voice the immediacy of the spoken word. Smith's playing is frequently noted by reviewers for its tastefulness and expertise, while also being warm and always consciously expressive no matter what type of piece he is playing. With his recitals and a series of over 20 solo recordings, Hopkinson Smith continues to rediscover and bring to life works that are among the most expressive and intimate in the entire domain of early music. These include Renaissance fantasies, variations and dances of the vihuela and lute repertoires (Milan, Narváez, Mudarra, de Rippe), the avant garde contrasts of early Baroque Toccatas (Kapsberger), the super-refined 17th century French lutenists (Denis Gaultier, Vieux Gaultier, Mouton, Dufaut, Gallot, de Visée), Spanish music for S-course guitar rising directly from the popular tradition (Sanz) and from court circles (Guerau) and the flowering of the lute in central Europe in the high baroque both as a solo instrument (Sylvius Weiss), and in concertos with string accompaniment (Johann Friedrich Fasch, Hagen, Haydn, and Kohaut). Projects involving the music of J.S. Bach have been a recurring theme for Hopkinson Smith. His recording of the official lute works has been complemented by his own lute arrangements of the cello Suites (1992) and of the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (1999). The latter recording has been called 'arguably the best you can buy of these works - on any instrument' by Gramophone magazine. Internationally recognized as a leading personality in the field of early music and one of the world's great lutenists, Hopkinson Smith gives concerts and master-classes throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Australia and North and South America. He currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, where he teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

© 2003 Bruce Duffie
This interview was recorded in Evanston, IL, on April 16, 2003.  Portions (along with recordings) were used on WNUR soon thereafter.  This transcription was made and posted on this website in 2012.
To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests.  He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago.  You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.

Arnold Schönberg: Interview with myself

I. How is it that you have not written for the orchestra for such a long time?

To tell the truth, my last work using the orchestra is the Lieder for Orchestra, Op. 22, but Jakobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder), which is half finished, is also for orchestra, although I have not yet written the orchestral score.
This halt in my production for orchestra can be accounted for above all by the fact – as you know – that I have been occupied since the summer of I92I with my Composition With Twelve Tones, whose laws I have first had to explore with an ensemble of restricted size because, for the moment at least, doubling in octaves seems to me inadmissible.

II. Have you been able to avoid octave doublings completely?

Save for carelessness on my part or a slip of the pen, there are only a few rare places where octaves are doubled in passing. I am sometimes a little more tolerant in handling percussion instru¬ments. But believe me, this is not a question of imperfection but because of the first results of new developments in this technique, which I would prefer not to explain for the moment.
You know that my goal has for some time been to find for my orchestral structures a form such that the fullness and saturation of sound shall be obtained only through the use of relatively few voices. For some time, and more and more firmly, I have avoided creating orchestral sonority by a post facto laying on of instruments, and have achieved it spontaneously through the movement and reciprocal rapport of the individual voices. Take for example Erwartung. You will find in that score a great number of forte nuances when, without octave doublings, only a portion of the orchestra is being employed.
You will recall that for more than twenty years I have been advising my pupils always to consider, whenever they are analyzing a passage marked forte, whether they could conceive it sounding better if marked piano.

III. Since you have, in op. 16 and still more in op. 22, dissociated the orchestra and, ignoring the similarities between groups and families, simply chosen exactly the instruments necessary, I am amazed that your new work should be written for a practically normal orchestra.

If it were not for America, we in Europe would be composing only for reduced orchestras, chamber orchestras. But in countries with younger cultures, less refined nerves require the monu¬mental: when the sense of hearing is incapable of compelling the Imagination, one must add the sense of sight.
In radio broadcasting, a small number of sonic entities suffice for the expression of all artistic thoughts; the gramophone and the various mechanical instruments are evolving such clear sonorities that one will be able to write much less heavily instrumented pieces for them. Even the “agitators” in the musical world hardly ever attempt to yell their ideas anymore, and true artists never at all. The public is beginning to understand without one’s having to resort to shouting into their ears.
But disarmament is as slow here as it is in other areas; so long as there continue to be nations which, in art, have not yet won their place in the sun, so long will America demand large orchestras and Europe maintain them; Europeans will remain incapable of acquiring that finesse of the ear that artists long to see more generally acquired as long as they continue to maintain large orchestras.
From this point of view, I place great hope in jazz. As late as 1918 they were crowding brass instruments into rooms of the smallest dimensions. Now we are beginning to find that a piano and four or five instruments suffice in a large garden, so great has been the transformation in the auditory sense of one part of the public.
Nonetheless, art music has reaped no decisive profit from this progress. Before that can happen, it is necessary for the wind instruments that are found in symphony orchestras to adapt themselves to the needs of chamber music. They have grown too accustomed, through the symphonic repertory, to taking shelter within great masses of orchestral sound, and are not always able to rise to a level of execution that would give greater relief to musical intensities.
Thus I have often had troublesome experiences with the different instrumental groups of the traditional orchestra, from which have arisen great material difficulties in the diffusion of my musical thought. Now I would like, for once, to avoid them, and so I have decided, for all these reasons, to compose for the traditional orchestra.

IV. But how were you able to write all the parts that are required even in your most stripped orchestral compositions? How, in particular, were you able to keep all the instruments of a large orchestra busy in a way that would justify their use from the viewpoint of a just economy of the means of artistic expression?

Notice that the works of my middle period contained already several elements of the technique which is perfected in these Variations, notably in what has been called open work. But this method of promoting the musical thought by variations in color and not by dynamism results in an economy different from the old one, one which cannot be imitated without danger. It is intimately tied, in effect, to the make-up of the musical phrase. In general, orchestral works are constructed today on the principle of gradation, and different effects of contrast are employed in the same way, whether in order to unite or in order to separate. This method, be it said in passing, is extremely primitive, like the symmetry which Bach was already able to dispense with. In contrast, I have for a long time been occupied with the technique of intensity, with the dynamism characteristic of Mozart, which is different from that of Beethoven. With Mozart, the alterations of intensity generally underline limited oppositions only, oppositions born of a need for variation and for characteristic expression, so that the relations of intensity constitute less a means of construction than of expression and, consequently, change more frequently.
Musical color plays exactly the same role in my work. Coloristic changes serve, while animating the expression, to clarify the musical idea. That is their principal function; it is even possible to annul, as it were, the colors and to reduce the dynamic intensity of my works, to make (in a word) transcriptions of them for piano; and if one day we arrive at an age of musical intelligence alert enough to do without the props of a complete materialization, great pleasure will be taken in transcriptions.
One might imagine that in my orchestral style there is not to be found in any given work a passage that requires five trombones, because there is no forte that would correspond to their use. And nevertheless they are found indispensable in many places for reasons of clarity, which is more difficult to recognize.
The influence of chamber music on the totality of my conceptions was equally decisive in forming the character of my musical composition. This comes out not only in my chamber music, in Pierrot lunaire and in my Chamber Symphony, but long predates those productions. The proof is found in a song which I wrote in 1901 and which was performed at the Buntes Theater of Wolzogen to the audience’s enormous indifference. The accompaniment comprised piano, piccolo, trumpet (mostly muted) and side drum. This was perhaps the first specimen of orchestral chamber music and a forerunner of jazz.

V. Why is it that in your later years you have so often written in so-called traditional forms?

I am grateful that you speak of ‘so-called’ traditional forms. I hope that in time it will be realized that the form of these variations represents something new and I will be happy if I am still around when it is realized. The only old thing about traditional forms is their names, and these names are convenient, because we no longer hold to inventing poetic names, as in the time when they said fugue (at least, so it is asserted, but I have proved otherwise) because the voices were ‘fugitive’; rondo because one danced a round and toccata because one ‘struck’ the organ (which merited such treatment less than the musicologists). What good is it to explain that the organ is not being mistreated as punishment for its wickedness, that the German word for ‘playing the organ’ (Orgelschlagen) has essentially the same origin as other German words designating bird songs (Finkenschlag, Wach¬telschlag, Nachtigallenschlag, terms which designate the song of the finch, the quail, the nightingale); and we discover the same innocent character in such words as Schlagschatten (cast shadow) and Menschenschlag (human race).
Who then would claim to fix the forms of a fugue, a rondo, or a toccata? The conservatories, with their pervading influence, have long furnished – and in assembly line quantities – compositional diagrams which they take to be the forms of art; and their students, when they arrive at the age of production, model their compositions after these diagrams (or at least suppose they are doing so, for some of them have a guardian angel – talent). The aestheticians are happy because they have inspired these products, which are thus put an the market, but in reality all this has no existence in art, where every content produces its own form; and only a robot, a tool of the conservatory, as it were, could deliberately check the expansion of form which every work of art tends to produce. To stop the creative process like this is to systematize ugliness itself, and mediocrity, and banality.

VI. Why have you interrupted your work so long?

I am going to do myself a great deal of injustice in answering your question. This interruption merely confirms a truth that everyone already knows: that is, that I am a constructor. Here is what happened:
I began these Variations in May, 1926, and I made such progress that a few weeks later I thought I would be finished in several weeks. A trip interrupted my work. When, after a number of weeks, I tried to take it up again, I was unable to rediscover the idea of the variation I had already begun. I found an irregular number of voices at irregular intervals, beginning motifs of different lengths and breaking the principal line of the composition. About half the work was composed and it was impossible for me to rediscover the principle for the completion of the remainder, of which I had nothing but that sketchy outline. After searching in vain for a long time, I abandoned the work. Yet I kept on returning to it in the hope of finding what had escaped me, and last summer I determined to finish it at no matter what cost. I spent a week in the same fruitless search, working in the meantime on other sections. But I felt that I had to succeed in fixing permanently that variation, with all its relationships of weight and size. I set myself to the task one time more, and after a new effort and a new defeat, I resolved to renounce it and to adopt another principle for my variation.
I had arrived at a stage where it was not difficult to decide.
Just at the moment when I set to work, I found a sheet of paper which I had seen a hundred times without paying any attention to it, and an it was ... the solution that I had searched for so long, a solution that agreed perfectly with the one I had just invented anew!
This is a fate reserved for none save constructors: to have a plan of construction, to lose it and, what is worse, to find it again.

Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (16. Dezember 1928); English translation published in: Arnold Schoenberg – Self-Portrait, edited by Nuria Schoenberg Nono. Pacific Palisades 1988, 29–31