Joel Philip Friedman--composer/currator/colaborator

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Chapter 2.

"A Jigsaw Puzzle with Overlapping Pieces"

FJO: Yet, that said, you write music for the concert hall, that aspires to be part of the so-called "classical music tradition", that is the world you come from. . .

JF: That's very true. I very happily think of my work as a continuation and expansion of that tradition. But my work is very much a jigsaw puzzle with a number of different overlapping pieces: concert, theater, etc. Sometimes too many pieces! It is interesting that a number of my pieces have been revised, I'm very big, maybe too big, on revising things. I thrive on the feedback from the rehearsal process and performance - whether it comes from the performers, the audience, friends, or from myself internally. The realization, after hearing, feeling a work, that something just doesn't work as planned, It is amazing how every tiny flaw seems magnified in performance. So, when I sense that something it wrong, I go back and I fix. For example: Elastic Band, (scored for clarinet, string quartet and percussion, kind of the "Mozart Quintet with a twist"), has not only undergone some revisions in the outer movements, but I recently took the whole middle movement out and replaced it. I did some stuff with What Living Do (a setting of Marie Howe's poem recorded by Susan Narucki and Alan Feinberg). It's a remarkable poem, about Marie's brother Johnny dying of AIDS, but cast in everyday, not melodramatic images: the wind on my face reminds me I am alive, and you're not. But, it's really, really long. I felt there was a section where the text setting and dramatic pacing were too slow, so I took advantage of a series of upcoming performances by Susan and Alan did a rewrite. Pas de Deux, my cello and piano piece, is probably the most extreme example of revision. It was a 13-minute piece that I was never happy with. I liked the idea of what it should do but I didn't feel it did it, or did it well. So about six or seven years after writing the piece I finally got a chance to have another whack at it and it ended up being a 22-minute piece. It's one of my more lyrical works and now it's much more rich, varied, dark, and nuanced than before. A much better piece, I think.

FJO: Wow, so the other thing happened. . . it got longer. . .

JF: Yeah, it could go either way, because it's a question of "does the piece do what it's supposed to" in a very clear, interesting, hopefully very succinct way. I think writing for the theater teaches you that lesson.

FJO: You made me think of something I have never thought about before as a composer, whenever I play a piece when no one's around, time is suspended and it goes by really quickly. Whenever I play a piece and there's an audience around, and that audience could be just somebody hearing it or it could be somebody in a hall, and it could me playing it or anybody playing it, time is also suspended but it feels slower.

JF: Yes, absolutely. It always makes me feel that every flaw is magnified!

FJO: That's a strange thing. Getting back to the notion of music being created for something rather that being created in its exalted form of tablets coming down. We have this whole tradition of going to a concert; it's almost like going to a religious service, to a synagogue or to a church, and we sit there to worship the pieces of music. But in fact that's not what music is.

JF: Right, I mean there are definitely pieces that do that, there are moments in Mahler that feel like an unearthly religious experience, but, I agree with you, whether it's the presentation or the actual piece, it should be more intimate, more earthy, and definitely more approachable. That's what Bernstein excelled in doing. I learned this lesson from him and from teaching non music majors, teaching music appreciation, lots of kids who haven't heard much live music of any sort, whether it is rap, rock, let alone classical. They were so put off by the protocol of classical concerts. Although oddly enough, ALL concerts do have their own protocol. Ever wonder how people know when to light their lighters? The students couldn't understand why the musicians weren't looking at them or smiling; why they don't talk to them. They thought the musicians were real snotty, and they also felt intimidated- they didn't know when to clap and why they had to be quiet.

FJO: So to bring this back to you then, as a composer, and I thought of this a lot, I was a high school teacher for four years not teaching music, I taught ESL and English in East New York, Brooklyn, and it was a real hard time for a composer, I hardly work anything and so I thought "why am I composing?" It really made me question that.

JF: Right. You're supposed to say: "because I have to!"

FJO: And, it makes me ask you the whole thing of, what you perceive of as an ideal listener? Who do you want to hear this music? Is it for the standard concert hall goer, or is it for a larger world beyond that?

JF: Both. I think one of the characteristics of me, and perhaps my music, is a sort of straddling, of being part of different worlds. Sometimes I would love to have this ideal, or idealized educated audience of all musicians (all versions of me?) who could sit there and contemplate the structure and details of my piece. Yet, there are few things worse for us composers than to have our works performed for a room full of just composers. It's just death, and. . .

FJO: Especially since none of them would do it in the same way so. . . even your closest allies are going to think, "Well, I would have made that E-flat into a D natural". . .

JF: Yeah, exactly, and then you get into all the questions of aesthetics, and that some people just refuse to allow other things besides what they like. That's when I want to live with the "non-experts." In a way I like the rough and tumble aspect of music being outside its different little worlds. I'm not a Berg or Beethoven, but I prefer to be there with them, and with their sort of audience, as opposed to being relegated to just the new music community. Even though I love new music concerts, the ensembles and everything else, I think of myself very much as part of the continuation of a tradition. I think of myself as someone who is continuing traits of different kinds of music and still working within them.

FJO: At this point, at the early 21st century in New York City, there are many musical traditions that shape anybody who is seriously thinking about making music, and they are not limited to European classical traditions. We had a century of Broadway musicals, and that's a tradition. [JF: Yeah. . . ] We had a century of jazz improvisation, that's a tradition. We've had half a century of rock group recordings, that's a tradition. You're younger than all of these things, so all of those musics are "classical" music to you [JF: Right. . . ], in a way.

JF: Yes and each of these musics has also now reached the stage of "arteriosclerosis." There is now so much "Great History" behind them, even in rock, that there's a real danger of clogged arteries - the pipeline for the future is closed off by all the great past stuff! "Classic Rock," "Classic Jazz," "Classical Music," the "Golden Age of Musical Theater". . . It's funny, in a way, to go to Tower Records and buy a scholarly-boxed set not of Bach but of Hendrix! But as for the musical mix, I have my mother to thank. What I heard growing up was Beethoven, Charlie Parker, and The Beatles. So they were my "Three Bs." And there wasn't a sense of one thing being higher or better than the other. All of this music, for me, still has a very visceral, immediate emotional quality, and that's certainly something that is important to me. It is also really well crafted. Again, maybe this is the straddling kind of thing: straddling influences and genres, the "mundane" and the esoteric; straddling the emotionally visceral and the intellectual. It's a balancing act: I'm really into the craft of composing, but, while the mechanics of the piece are crucial, they're crucial for me, not for the audience. There has to be something about the work itself that can grab the audience. Granted there are all sorts of ways of doing that. It's fine to do things that are esoteric as long as they sound. I had a teacher who once said "The problem with most music is it aims either too high or too low." The key is finding the middle: a fusion of mind and heart. You can look at Beethoven or Bach, who is an even more frightening example and see/hear how incredibly constructed the music is. But yes, unless you're talking about the intense canons and sort of study pieces, there's a lot of Bach that is sheerly beautiful, sensual, etc. So trying to capture both ends, going down the middle and grabbing parts of both "sides." That's very important to me. It's also a very intuitive process. I hope all these different musics show up in my music in very intuitive ways. I try not to make a big deal out of this, to make it too labored or obvious. For me, it's been a process of quietly realizing that all of this stuff is in me and that I can let it out, take advantage of it, let it all quietly meld together. I don't think of myself really as a revolutionary in composing, and if I were to be a revolutionary it would be like Debussy with a silk brush. Lots of great composers explode the world, "man the ramparts," and it's wonderful. But I'm not sure if I'm one of those composers who in an overt, obvious way is setting off fireworks and explosions. I'm more of a synthesizer than an explorer. I think. . .

FJO: In the long run, it's the subversive revolutionaries who make the lasting changes. . . Robespierre ultimately changed nothing in France. Gorbachev is what caused change for Russia, the Soviet Union collapsed from within, not from somebody throwing a bomb. That rarely happens.

JF: True. While there's always a tempting catharsis in "tearing the system down" the interesting question for me is: "and now what?" I think it's harder, and more satisfying, to build. Hey, I grew up in the 60's.

FJO: Whether it's politics or music, most of the people who tore down the system, wound up creating their own system which is just as rigid, if not more so. . . you know, whether it's Lenin, or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or. . . Schoenberg [laugh]. . .

JF: Yeah. . .

FJO: Or even Cage. . .

JF: Yeah, right, you have to roll the dice.

FJO: In a way music can become its own sort of religious orthodoxy. But growing up in a polyglot environment of Beethoven, Bird and The Beatles, all of whom combine sophistication with audience awareness on a very high level. . . but for very different audiences, and through very different structures, but all very structural, very worked out stuff. Are there differences between musical styles that are valid? Can you say at this point "oh this is the good stuff, this is the vernacular stuff, this is obviously the sacred high art"?

JF: That's tough. I have a hard time with the "high" and "low" categories. Are there differences or not? Part of me still can't get over treating pop music in a scholarly fashion. But, you can see that it started with classical stuff, then went to jazz and theater, and now it's blues and rock, even disco. It seems a bit ridiculous but I guess it's about respect for the work, which is a good thing. I often feel I'm caught between the worlds, pop and classical. I have sympathy for both sides of the argument. I love the tradition of Classical music and hate seeing it marginalized by the sheer economic weight and volume of that "800 pound gorilla" - pop. But, I love a lot of pop too. Perhaps it's more a case of function and purpose for music and we only get in trouble when we confuse these functions - dance versus contemplation, for example - and apply them to the "wrong" music. Beethoven's Op. 111 ain't ever gonna be as "big" as "Good Vibrations." But, I basically want it all. I want music to co-exist as opposed to being in competition. But I do think there are differences and the shifting of gears between the worlds can be treacherous for either the creator of the listener. I had a set of songs performed at both Miller Theater and then about 4 days later at a small theater as part of a Golden Fleece Chamber Opera concert. The same performers did the same three songs at Miller Theater with a room full of composers and then at Golden Fleece for a room full of more or less musical theater people. At Miller it was a little bit like, I was talking about Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky to Charles Wuorinen.

FJO: [Laugh]

JF: Okay, then, 4 days later. . .

FJO: You became Charles Wuorinen. . . talking to Tchaikovsky. . .

JF: Yeah. . . [FJO: Big Laugh]. . . I literally had an audience member coming up to me accusing me of being Schoenberg, "Why did I write that Schoenberg music?" I know that there are unfortunately some things about classical music - the length of pieces, the complexities of the forms and texture, the materials - that cannot work necessarily with a rock audience in many cases. And there certainly is a difference between a 45-minute symphony and a 4-minute song. Both can be gems, but there unquestionably is a difference. . . there certainly seems to be in the audience's expectations! Still, I guess I like the tension created trying to straddle both sides.