Joel Philip Friedman--composer/currator/colaborator

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Chapter 5.

"Putting On Different Hats"

FJO: So you take this experience back to your workshop, back to where you're in right now. . . and it isn't the workshop where this particular piece was created, but metaphorically speaking. You've written a successful viola concerto. . .

JF: It was a really important work for me: my first extended orchestral piece, it got great critical reception, it was my Carnegie Hall debut, I had the chance to work with Paul Neubauer and Jorge Mester, and, most importantly, it was how I met my wife. I do think there's a little bit of a difference. . . it is like putting on a different hat to go from a musical to a concerto. Actually, what's rather ironic is that when I was doing my Masters at BU, now we're talking about the early 80s, I was actually told by some to write for theater under a different name because it would "ruin my career" as a concert composer. . .

FJO: Yeah, people might like your music. . . [laughs]

JF: Exactly [laughs]. . . it's just funny how things have changed in the last twenty years. . . There's no question I've been perceived as a much stronger candidate in the teaching job market, have received job offers, and have taken jobs precisely because I'm this Columbia doctoral composer who can teach musical theater, as well as rock and jazz. Anyway, there are differences and similarities writing the two styles. A difference is, obviously, the lack of a "plot" and "characters" - although instrumental pieces can be programmatic. Another is that songs in a musical are more expository themes, or tunes, while concert works are more developmental, built more from smaller motives. However, I do think of both as drama. I think of expectations, and I think that comes from theater. . . maybe it's only internal, in my working process. It may not be something readily apparent to the listener, I don't know. But what I mean is musically setting up something, perhaps by being clear, by being simple so the listener is in on it too, and then not necessarily following through, twisting or deflecting it. It's the old Haydn trick where you set up phrases that are 4 + 4, so the expectation is for more of the same. But, when it's repeated it's 4 + 3. The fourth bar of the second half of the phrase has become the first bar of the next section. So it feels like stepping off the curb without looking and realizing that it was much shorter, or taller, than you thought. You get an unexpected jolt. I think of music, instrumental or abstract music, in those terms, as if I were writing for characters, trying to play with expectations. . . "this sonority is familiar and has always resolved this way, but now I'm going to stretch it, I'm going to interrupt, I'm going to deflect it," and so on. Or maybe it's the moment to finally follow through and just let it do what it's been hinting at doing. That idea of trying to create, and either play with, or defeat expectation is important to me.

FJO: So, you've got this amazing section that goes from C minor to A major. . . [JF: Laughs. . . And I. . . ] And it doesn't work for some reason. Does it get cut out of the instrumental piece as well? For the same reasons, in a way. . .

JF: Yes, absolutely! There is a internal logic to the piece and its proportions. Sometimes those are the very things I revise in a work. Mentioning someone like Rachmaninoff who obviously, for all of the dirt that gets heaped on him could be a wonderful composer, very skilled, etc, perhaps illustrates what happens when a composer doesn't edit enough: going for that moment too many times in a piece. . . I would save it; make it special, unique. It's another Hammerstein musical theater lesson: never reprise a song just because it's the hit song. Make it count, make it do something new. It's the same in an instrumental piece. By the way, I think large-scale hearing, proportions and so forth, is the hardest kind of hearing for a composer.

FJO: So let's talk about your vocabulary. . . You got accused, proverbially speaking, of being a Rachmaninoff by a Charles Wuorinen; accused of being a Schoenberg by an Alan Menken. . . So what is your musical vocabulary? What are the kinds of formal linguistic techniques that you're using, that inform all these pieces. . . are they different from piece to piece?

JF: Yes, they can be. It's all some form of extended tonality. Going "in and out of focus" with tonal sounds and syntax. It can be very different from piece to piece. Each piece demands its own internal logic and sound world. It comes from the materials themselves, if you let it. It also goes back to the function of music: what's this piece for? So, I guess there's a quasi-theatrical aspect there too: it's like finding out who the character is or what they want. Once I know the details of the sound, language, etc. it will fall into place if I'm open and honest about the work. Although that process isn't necessarily fast! Perhaps this is just my "mental trick" which allows me to adjust from one project or another. The interesting thing is I think all of these pieces are me: the piano trio, the pop song, the orchestra piece, a musical. I'm the one making the musical choices. At times there can be a very clear sense of shifting gears when going from writing a pop song to an extended instrumental piece. It's funny that something that can work in a more pop idiom can be death in a "concert" idiom. In some cases I'm baffled, I'm not always sure why it's that way. But a progression that works in a rock song is incredibly corny when part of an orchestral piece. It comes down to taste and inclination as I think you can do anything, if you do it well. But, more and more I've been finding ways to accommodate and fuse the different sides to my writing so there is more of a continuum in my work, less changing hats. I do think of music in rather traditional ways: melody, harmony, counterpoint. I also try to be clear in terms of intent, emotion, and technique in my writing and try not to fall into that trap of "Schoenbergian density" ï over-writing. I'm not a theorist although I obviously teach theory. But, I think like a composer. . . So my definition of "extended tonality" isn't quite how a theorist might define it, it's simply how I hear my music. It's not restricted to the parameters of any period: say the 17th or 19th centuries. Obviously if you listen to what I write I don't necessarily write functional, tonal music, especially in my concert works. But, all of it is certainly referential, it certainly uses sonorities that are tonal. It's funny, but it actually took me a while to realize how much jazz there was in my writing: harmonies, syncopations, gestures, extended tonality. Maybe it was a holdover from being told that "you can't do this, it will ruin your name" that initially kept me from consciously incorporating into my concert music all these jazz chords floating around in my head. It's another divide between worlds. The difference is the jazzer will just say "Well, this is a C7 altered" while a concert composer will say "Well that's using the Octatonic scale". . . But again there's something kind of fun about playing in the shadows between those two worlds. Melody is very important to me, as is feeling the pulse and rhythm, having clear form, and a sense of consonance, dissonance, although that's relative, right? I could be a Schoenberg or a Rachmaninoff on any given night!. So, I am a traditionalist in some ways. I mentioned clarity before, clarity of intent is important, that goes back to expectations, setting up materials, knowing the difference between confusing an audience and being confused yourself. Generally I think rather organically as a composer ï one idea is derived from another, development and use of motives, that sort of thing. It's all of that Beethoven and my classical training. On the other hand, I have a piece Extreme Measures (for violin, cello, and prepared piano) in which I tried not to be that way and it really pushed me compositionally. It was very hard to write, it's also probably the hardest piece of mine to perform. It's full of cuts and jumps, I was thinking of film splicing. The idea was "chop!," you're suddenly somewhere else, that kind of thing. I didn't want it to feel "inevitable" or organic. I wanted it to feel like after a splice the music abruptly jumped to an unexpected place, that ideas would be cut off, not finished. But, I didn't want it to be a confusing mess. The challenge was to make the spices audible, could I set up expectations as well? Of course, in retrospect, oops!, it ended up being a lot more organic than I had thought at the time. There are more connections and more developmental ideas than I had imagined. Much of my composing is initially very intuitive, not so systematic. Then I often go back and see where things are heading so I can take better advantage of those tendencies. Sometimes I'm amazed at what I find after a work is done; the connections and so forth. I can't say I'm unaware but I'm also not entirely conscious of everything while it's happening, which, in and of itself, is fun.

FJO: Do you ever use tone rows?

JF: No, I did do that in school assignments, but I just don't hear that way. The closest I come is to use intervals, or sonorities, or themes/motives and develop them as "families" - as a series of related versions of an idea. I can be quite systematic about their use but I have to be careful as sometimes that creates music that doesn't "breathe." It's too logical and predictable. So I try to be a bit less pedantic. Also, my intuition seems to pick these things up and use them regardless.