Joel Philip Friedman--composer/currator/colaborator

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Chapter 3.

"Multiple Interpretations Are Wonderful"

FJO: Let's talk again about the composer as an authoritarian figure versus the composer as a facilitator, the composer as a facilitator really comes out in the collaborative process. . .

JF: Yeah, absolutely. Again it goes back to the idea that, first of all, I would just do solo performance, or electronic music, if I didn't need performers. But I need performers and part of the reason is because they bring things to my work that I wouldn't have thought of myself. And the idea that there are multiple possibilities, multiple interpretations of a work is wonderful. I'm always open to any different interpretation, provided they can convince me that it is valid. Like everyone I've had some really "bad" interpretations, where the performers just didn't get it at all. But you have to take chances and you have to let players do their jobs. Even with Bartok, who often specified the exact timings of his works, different recordings of the same work have different timings, which means different interpretations. People find things in a piece and then they make themselves a director, as if the piece were a play, and say "this is what the piece is about, this is what it means to me", and sure you can go overboard, and you can make bad choices that are self aggrandizing and not honest to the work. But if the musician comes to a work, brings what they have to the table, and they're technically good, they're sincere, they're intelligent, I think that's an incredible thing. And there've been times when I've been knocked back on my heels and thought, "wow, that's not what I thought it was about, but I thought that's really cool."

FJO: Right.

JF: What a great thing.

FJO: Oh, you know what, we say "oh Beethoven is a sublime composer", but part of why Beethoven is so wonderful is because he makes other people sound good. He makes the people who are playing him sound good. He gives people a platform in which to excel. And that's true of any music that's worth its salt.

JF: Right. Although you can writer music that flatters the performer but isn't good music! It also brings up an interesting little side point: difficulties in performance. I think, hearing and looking at what I write you would never mistake it for Wuorinen or Fernyhough. Theirs is a perfectly fine aesthetic, which I appreciate and respect, but it's not mine. You look at their work and you say "wow this is difficult!", you talk to performers who excel in that, it's a wonderful, incredible challenge for them to get inside that kind of music. Much to my surprise, some performers have found similar difficulties in performing my own works. Looks can be deceiving. Some of the difficulties are the usual "this passage is really hard," but sometimes there is something else at work. I think it goes back to what I was saying about "not hiding," writing works that are, hopefully, clear and emotionally visceral. It demands a lot of a musician. I think there is a difference between the challenges facing a performer doing a Carter premiere and those facing a late Beethoven Sonata. One problem is obvious: to really understand a work, not just play the mostly correct notes, you need to spend six months with it, just like many do with a Brahms Sonata. But can you imagine spending that much time with a piece of new music? I want the performer to be the director: "this is my interpretation." I also demand that the performers be totally emotionally committed to the music, I push them, which is draining (think of how players feel finishing a Mahler Symphony). There's also the problem of style. It is really hard to get classically trained musicians to swing or groove and that's important in some of my pieces. There's a certain feel to the way rhythms lie and interlock, the ways in which attacks and timbre interact. And again, if I use and combine musical languages that are somewhat familiar there is a level of exposure that makes it really obvious when a performance doesn't happen. Not to say that these aren't the same issues that a Babbitt faces, but there the musical language is still more novel, and the technical difficulties are so much more obvious that it's hard not to congratulate yourself for just finishing a piece.

FJO: Well in terms of getting it, not getting it, you know, that was a comment you made before, and in a way getting it is being part of today's society, growing up today and hearing the polyglot influence is that it influenced you, it may need to be there for the performers as well. Now you were saying, you were at Miller, and all these composers were saying "now what's this Rachmaninoff, this pop music", and you go to the more pop outlet and they're saying "what's this Schoenberg", and in a way, anybody who is really thinking of music at this point and time is somewhere in between.

JF: Yes.

FJO: Because there's all this stuff going on, I'm just like flipping randomly through the pages of the Elastic Band here and it's a really, really cool piece, and you have a direction on p.49 that said "with a funk feel". You know, that's not something you're going to see in a Wuorinen score.

JF: No. Elastic Band is meant to be a fun, funky piece. There's a bit of Earth, Wind, & Fire in it! As I mentioned, it's actually something that's really hard to get, less so now, but it's really hard to get hard-core classical musicians to do: be funky. Thankfully, people our age and younger have experienced and played in jazz and rock bands etc., but, I mean, one of the biggest issues of Elastic Band isn't some of the ensemble difficulties in the third movement, although they might be difficult, it's the feel of the different rhythmic patterns throughout the piece.

FJO: Right.

JF: . . . and trying to get a string section, a string quartet to do that is hard, it's about feel, rhythmic feel, which also comes from timbre, the sound, and it's about doing things that many classical players were told not to do. The training that a lot of conservatory musicians received, and somewhat still receive, doesn't work for pieces like this. There are performances of my works that I'm very unhappy with because, while it was technically competent and even wonderful, in a way they didn't "get it." And I would've preferred if they could have a little more dirt and a few more mistakes and let the shirt tails hang out, "sell the piece," tell me what it's about, let me understand it viscerally, emotionally , even if you screw up some stuff. Imagine going to a play and seeing an actor just recite all the correct words without conviction and meaning. We wouldn't congratulate them for not mispronouncing the words! We'd scream that the performance was a bore!