DANIEL ASIA INTERVIEW FANFARE Magazine (SEPTEMBER 2017)
CC: The present disc, “To Open in Praise”, seeks to “look at the human experience through Jewish texts”. And via three different types of text: Jewish sacred (Psalm 30), poems of a New York poet (Breath in a Ram’s Horn) and an Israeli Jewish poet (Amichai Songs). The actual sound of Hebrew has a particular flavour: an ancient sound that seems to follow us through the centuries yet lose none of its archaic resonance. It strikes me that that aspect gives your music an added layer of power in Psalm 30. How does the actual sound of the language affect you and the way you write?
DA: Language is certainly at the center of this disc. When setting texts one is confronted with sound, prosody, and meaning. I am concerned with all three in my usage of texts that are in English or in Hebrew. Which is to say that I treat them both similarly. Hebrew is an ancient text whose words come from root structures that allow for a multiplicity of associational meanings. Having said this, I must choose a meaning and then proceed. English, while the language of Shakespeare, is a bit more prosaic and direct. But the nature of poetry is one that allows for dimensionality of meaning, so that like with music, upon repeated readings it reveals many possible meanings.
Why add a solo violin to the voice/piano combination for Psalm 30? The work was commissioned by Cantor Jack Chomsky for a concert with violinist Daniel Heifetz and pianist J. Randal Hawkins, and thus the inclusion of violin.
Regarding Breath in a Ram’s Horn, the texts are by Paul Pines, who I believe you met at the MacDowell Colony. Firstly, can you explain to readers who might not know how the MacDowell Colony functions as a retreat?
The MacDowell Colony was established by the composer Edward Dowell, as a retreat where artists and composers could come to do their work. Artists are given an individual workspace, and then lunch provided via a little basket left at one’s one door so as not to impede the flow of creativity. Resident artists start and finish the day with a collective breakfast and dinner. It is a wonderful location in which to refresh and to work in an uninterrupted fashion on your particular art.
Secondly, can you expand on the story of how you met; and how that blossomed into a lasting connection and collaboration.
Paul and I first met at the MacDowell Colony in 1978. We became close friends, partly as the result of a shared ferocity brought to the game of table tennis. At first he beat me and than I became unbeatable. He accepted this with a gentlemanly equanimity, even though he wasn’t happy about it. After a short time, I requested books of poetry, which was a dangerous act, because what if I really hated the work? But fortunately, I fell in love with it and haven’t fallen out since. His work has been a touchstone for my own musical development over the years, not to mention an important prism for how I process the world. I have written many works based on his writings over the last almost forty years and Paul is one of my dearest friends.
What is specifically about Pines’ wonderful poetry that appeals to you? Paul’s poems seem to bring together very disparate worlds, uniting a wealth of emotional perspectives. The imagery ranges from Ecclesiastes to the Blues, stating something universal that is culled from the simple and earthy. At the core of the work is man’s uneasy place in the universe; that of a curious bystander to his own inner world, living in a physical world he also hardly understands. How these interior and exterior worlds meet and interact is the enigma at the center of these poems. However, it is an enigma that is often imbued with a wry and delicate sense of humor.
The poems in Breath In a Ram’s Horn are imbued with images of family and Judaism, and their intertwining. One finds memories of the poet’s father, mother, and grandfather; memories of prayer shawls, phylacteries, praying; imagery of the high holydays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and the power of recollection; and a reflection on Job and David. And just like the lives of these two Biblical characters, the poems are not pretty or easy, but rather filled with the difficulties and anguish of a life as it is really lived. I find the stories of these poems rich, deep and endlessly engaging.
I’m interested in the economy of writing in Breath in a Ram’s Horn. And the brilliance of how many musics you can invoke—the end of “My Father’s Name Was” almost seems to imply a cabaret ending, for example (I also hear the Walton of Façade in this piece). Is this multiplicity of expressions something you deliberately cultivate? And do you find it offers you the greatest expressive palette?
Early in the career of a composer one is very often concerned with establishing one’s voice. This was true for me certainly. As I grew older I realized that whatever I wrote would be in my voice by definition. I began to relax and let the music flow more without quite so severe self-analysis. Particularly in pieces with texts I let those texts often lead me to their musical definition rather than imposing a solution from the outside, as it were. And yes, it means that I have a wide expressive palette—or at least I hope so. This allows for the widest, deepest, and richest emotional gamut to be presented, from giddy joy to utmost despair.
In connection with that, I notice you list Penderecki, Schuller and Yun among your mentors, which itself is a nicely diverse group!
Yes, while none of them were formative teachers, I did indeed spend time with them. Pendercki taught an orchestration course I took while at Yale and reviewed my music and offered comments. Schuller was my teacher while I was a Fellow at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) during the summer of 1979, and the following year I had a DAAD Fellowship to study with Isang [Yun] at the Musikhochshule in Berlin.
Also the scoring of Breath in a Ram’s Horn is brilliantly chosen: violin, cello, flute, clarinet and piano. There’s a lightness here, and yet you can also create a very mobile sound (“Job longed for the grave” for a fast version; the opening of “Yom Kippur” for a slower). Transparency seems to be very important to you?
Transparency is very important, as is the fact that this is the instrumentation of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and thus it is a combination that is found with some frequency in the performance world.
Incidentally, I notice there is a version of Breath in a Ram’s Horn, also by Robert Swensen but with piano, on a Summit DVD that I wish I had heard – not least because it is coupled with your E.E. Cummings Songbook. Broadening the discussion on poetry perhaps a tad deeper, can I ask what is it in poetry that impels you to set it to music? In other words,
why these poems and poets? And which other poets are you attracted to, and what is it about their modes of utterance that appeals?
I love what words conjure up in my mind for a musical analogue or setting. Also, much of my music, whether with words or not, is highly vocal, lyrical, cantabile. Which is to say I love melodies, and melodies that can be sung. So why not create melodies with words to be sung, where the melody and setting create a very individual and singular reading?
While a student at Hampshire College somehow I became intrigued with E.E. Cummings and read a huge amount of his work. His texts were of course de rigueur for composers of the 60s and 70s because of his use of words for their sound as well as meaning (a reason that Joyce was also a writer of choice for composers at this time), and for the way he split words into their constituent phonemes and splattered them on the page. For example, Berio used his texts in his important piece Circles. Because the use of his texts had become so commonplace I stayed away from them. It was only much later, when I returned to re-read him, that I discovered afresh what I would call religious texts, whose construction and display on the page was highly normative (rhyme structure, four line stanzas, etc.), and decided I would set these as not many had.
I know that in your interview with David Wolman in Fanfare 34:2 (2010) you describe how you go about taking poetry and setting it to music in a technical sense. That obviously still applies to Breath in a Ram’s Horn, which was written in 2003. But the Amichai Songs date from 2012, nearly a decade later. I take it the same techniques of dissection of a poem’s structure, identification of high points and so forth, and reflections of those in the musical surface was very much to the fore?
What you have stated is all true. I have read much of Amichai’s work. His is considered Israel’s modern master poet, essentially creating the poetic frame of reference for Israelis of his generation and then the next. He was there at the creation of the State and died only in 2000. His texts present an intriguing look at modern Jewish Israeli experience. Amichai works at unraveling the relationship between the people of Israel, the Jews, the Situation (Israel’s place in the Middle East, in all of its ramifications), the individual living in these circumstances, and his relationship to God and the natural world. The language ranges from discussions of God’s presence, slaughtered chickens, Auschwitz, the nature of life in Jerusalem/Israel, universal riddles, soldiering, and the natural world. It can be rough and gentle and I love its breadth.
I’m intrigued and heartened by your final comments in the booklet. “The music is Jewish in that I am Jewish, in the same way that Bach’s textual works are Christian as he was a Lutheran. But it is of course universal in the manner that all fine music is just that.” I found myself wondering about all religious thought systems carrying a central kernel of truth, and you just happen to be attracted to the Judaic expressions as that’s who you are. But those truths are constant, from whichever source, be it Judaism, Islam, Christian … would you agree? And if that is the case, is the wordless music that “accompanies” the words a non-verbal distillation of that all-encompassing truth? Finally, on this rather deep set of questions, the disc is entitled “To Open in Praise”: in the light of the immediately previous questions, to open in praise of what, exactly?
I think underlying all music is the human and divine spirit, which are intertwined, if we accept the premise that Man is made in God’s image. Of course, to open in praise means that we mortals open in praise to the Divine.
I’m interested particularly because I happen to be in London, but I believe you had a residency here as the result of a Fulbright Art Award? What were your experiences with this? How did you find us? And did your time here influence your way of composing, or inspire any music?
We—my family and I—lived in London for two years, while I was receiving the generous support of a UK Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. As we had a young family the entire experience was a bit of a blur. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there and the meeting of a new culture, because as you know, while we share a language, there is much that differentiates the English and Americans. We enjoyed the depth of culture and its integration into the general fabric of life. Concerts were plentiful with fine programming and playing. Musicians and music organizations were welcoming. I was fortunate to work with wonderful musicians such as Lontano, Endymion, and Domus, and those at the BBC.
In regards to composing I have found that my sojourns to other locations around the world have encouraged me to seek out what is most personal in me and my music, and this was true in London as well. Having all my time to compose, I was rather fecund, and my music became more direct, more American—maybe the two are synonymous.
Of course Breath in a Ram’s Horn and Amichai Songs were recorded in The Warehouse, London (so you got to know the, er, delights of the backstreets of Waterloo?! — or were you not present at the recording sessions?).
Oh, yes, I was indeed at all recording sessions. I have known of the Warehouse for years as Chachi (Odaline de la Martinez, conductor of Lontano) has performed her semi- annual American Music Festival there for years.
Odaline de la Martinez conducted on Purer than the Purest Pure as well; this implies a real resonance between your music and Martinez and her players?
Lontano has been performing my music since the late 80s. They very much know who I am and my music from the inside out. They are all like family now and I couldn’t be happier with their interpretations, which are full of soul. Robert Swenson has been a colleague from way back, and recorded the piano and voice version of Breath In a Ram’s Horn. He owns the piece. And Jeremy Huw Williams is a more recent friend and colleague, whom I met when he was performing a Harbison chamber opera with Chachi. His acting and singing blew me out of the water, which is to say it was superlative. He has since become a good friend and colleague who really gets to the core of my music. And to round this out, Ellen Chamberlain and Paula Fan are two shining diamonds who reside with me in the desert landscape of Tucson. All in all, it is a wonderful cast indeed (oh, I learned that “indeed” thing in London, I suspect!).
Well, indeed that’s eminently possible about the “indeed.” What is even more certain is that Daniel Asia’s music is intriguing, superbly constructed and infinitely rewarding, as the review below indicates.