A Conversation with Composer Gerald Levinson about

Vincent P. Benitez

Introduction

Gerald Levinson (b. 1951) has been recognized as one of the leading composers of his generation.1 He has won numerous awards and honors in recognition of his work and music. Levinson studied composition with George Crumb, , and Richard

Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the University of

Chicago. From 1974-76, he studied composition with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris

Conservatoire. After his studies with Messiaen in Paris, Levinson served as Messiaen’s translator and assistant for master classes, lectures, texts, and program notes when

Messiaen was in the United States. Levinson is the Jane Lang Professor of Music at

Swarthmore College, where he has taught as a faculty member since 1977.

I became acquainted with Gerald Levinson in 2006 when both the Pennsylvania

State University (where I am a member of the music faculty) and Swarthmore College were hosting Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, authors of a then recent biography on

Messiaen, as visiting scholars.2 Hill gave all-Messiaen piano recitals at both institutions,

1I would like to thank Gerald Levinson for his assistance with this article. For detailed biographical information about Levinson and his music, I encourage the reader to visit the Web site of his publisher,

Theodore Presser (http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=GERALDLEVINSON).

2Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005). 2

with Simeone providing pre-concert talks. I exchanged a few e-mail messages with

Levinson as I was preparing for the visit of Hill and Simeone. I knew that he was not only a student of Messiaen but, more importantly, a person that I, as one interested in Messiaen and his music, should get to know. After spending two weeks in Paris and Assisi, Italy in

May-June 2006 conducting research for a book on Messiaen’s opera, Saint François d’Assise, I thought it would be a great idea to interview Levinson about Messiaen and his music. I was unprepared for the wealth of information about Messiaen that I was to receive on that hot Pennsylvania day, 14 July 2006, when I traveled from my home in State

College to the campus of Swarthmore College and Levinson’s office.

I met ‘Jerry’ in his office on the second floor of the campus’s music building. After exchanging greetings, I immediately went to work, setting up my digital tape recorder for the long interview that was to unfold. We covered a great deal of material on that day, including how Levinson became acquainted with Messiaen and his music, his studies with

Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and thoughts about Messiaen’s music and compositional techniques. Throughout the interview, Levinson demonstrated a profound esteem for Messiaen as a musician, teacher, and person.

In this article, I recount the conversation I had with Levinson about Messiaen. It is a portrait of one of the greatest composers and pedagogues of the twentieth century, as sketched by one of his pupils, a leading composer in his own right. I present the interview in three segments, beginning with how Levinson became acquainted with Messiaen and his music.

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Levinson’s First Contact with Messiaen and His Music

How did you become familiar with Messiaen’s music? What prompted you to study with him at the Paris Conservatoire? 3

I am trying to remember how I became familiar with his music. I think the first recording I ever had was the one in which Boulez conducted Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum and the Couleurs de la Cité céleste, which I remembered was issued by CBS

Records and had a white cover with silver letters; very modern, very spectacular.4 I believe

I read about Messiaen in William Austin’s book on twentieth-century music.5 Although he talked about Messiaen in a lot of ways that made me very curious, Austin focused on the earlier music. His book was published in the mid-1960s and thus covered music through the first half of the twentieth century. I remember that it included excerpts from Messiaen’s

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps and Les Corps glorieux, and the discussion of him intrigued me. Then I bought a recording of Et exspecto, and it seemed to have no relationship to the kind of music that Austin described. At the time, I was a Stravinsky devotee, and still am.

One of the things about Stravinsky that I found very exciting was that, in the 1960s, he was transforming his musical language into a highly exploratory, ‘ultra-modern idiom.’

3Gerald Levinson, Vincent Benitez.

4For a compact disc version of this recording, see Group instrumental à percussion de Strasbourg,

Orchestre du Domaine Musical, Pierre Boulez, conductor; Yvonne Loriod, piano; liner notes, Sony Classical

SMK 68 332, 1969/1978/1995.

5William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky (New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1966), 390-95.

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Considering that he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, that was truly amazing. So, I got the sense, listening to these pieces by Messiaen from the 1960s, that something similar was also true of him, which it was. I was struck by the stylistic distance that he had traveled, from his early music that Austin described in ways that intrigued me, to these new pieces, which sounded nothing like what I had heard and understood previously.

By the time I was in college, at the University of Pennsylvania, I was a fan of

Messiaen’s music, and I was talking about it to all of my friends. I probably bored them a lot. George Crumb told me that back then I introduced him to a lot of Messiaen’s music, and that it meant a lot to him. Two summers ago [2004], that came full circle, when both of us were invited to be in residence at the ‘Festival Messiaen’ in Le Grave.6 He could not go because it was his seventy-fifth birthday year, so I spoke on his behalf when his music was played. He wrote a beautiful tribute to Messiaen, on how much his music had meant to him, which I translated into French for the program book. Anyway, by the time I graduated, I had studied with Crumb, and then with and George

Rochberg. Wernick and Rochberg had no sympathy for Messiaen’s music. Rochberg admitted that the Quatuor was a great masterpiece, but he had no patience with any of

Messiaen’s other music. We used to argue about it.

By the time I graduated, I thought I should go to Paris and study with Messiaen. I wanted to find out how to do that, so I wrote letters to him at the Paris Conservatory,

6An annual summer festival celebrating the music of Messiaen in the towns of La Grave and Villar d’Arène in the French Alps, near Messiaen’s country home. Each yearly festival normally consists of a ten- day series of concerts, talks, and other events, celebrating themes predominant in Messiaen’s life and music in a beautiful mountain setting that he loved.

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which were not answered. Then I learned that he was coming to Washington, D.C. to play the world premiere of the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité. This was in the spring of 1972. One aspect of his music that I didn’t ‘cotton’ to was his organ music—I really didn’t get it. I didn’t like the organ, and I didn’t understand his organ music.

Even the earlier works from the 1930s?

I am not sure. At some point, I obtained the Ducretet-Thompson LPs of him playing all of his organ music. I still have those LPs, but they sound much better on their

CD-reissue.7 I do not know how long ago I had them. I tried listening to his organ music, and I guess I didn’t connect with it too much. Then I found out he was being sponsored by

Catholic University, so I thought, well, if I want to find out what it’s like to study with him, maybe I could try to arrange a meeting while he was in Washington. So, I left messages for him at Catholic University. People there assured me that they would pass them on to him. But I never got any responses, so I decided not to go. I thought, okay, this guy is world famous. All those pictures of him—he looks as if he is on another planet, totally unapproachable. But on the day of the concert, many of my friends asked why I hadn’t left yet, since I was in Philadelphia, just a couple of hours from Washington. They said: ‘It’s the world premiere of a new Messiaen piece. Why aren’t you there?’ I replied:

‘Well, . . . he didn’t answer my messages, and I’m not going to meet with him, and well

7Messiaen par lui-même: Organ Works, Olivier Messiaen, liner notes, EMI Classics CDZ 7 67401

2, 1957/1992, 4 CDs.

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. . . I don’t like his organ music.’ And after enough people said, ‘Are you crazy?,’ I finally got on the last possible train, and I remember I ran to the National Shrine where the premiere was taking place, and I got in just as it was beginning. Messiaen played the

Méditations and as in most churches, the organ is concealed from the audience, so there was this abstract experience with his music—an extremely strange music filling this vast space, full of 3,500 organists.

Afterward, Catholic University gave him an honorary degree. That’s the first time any of us in the audience saw him. He came down and there was an academic processional.

He actually had a cap and gown on. I can’t believe that he put up with that. It’s amazing, so uncharacteristic. Then he gave a speech in French on esoteric, theological subjects with which I was not familiar. Even if you understood French, which I did, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. I think he tried to explain why he wrote a piece about the Holy

Trinity to be played in the National Shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He talked about theological connections between the Virgin Mary and the Trinity, questions that were probably of no concern to anybody in the room. This just confirmed my impression that he was a truly strange person and on another planet, spending his time thinking about things very remote from what anybody else was thinking about, except, maybe, monks. So I thought, well, I guess it was interesting to have been here, but I didn’t understand his music. I won’t get to meet the guy, and he is really weird, but what the hell, I was here at the premiere.

Afterwards there was a reception line, with all 3,500 organists. Most of them had copies of the Banquet céleste. That’s the organ music of his that they knew, from 1928.

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This was 1972—they were a little behind. I had the sense from the room that everyone else was at least as bewildered by the music as I was. But I thought it would be interesting to see him close up—I thought, ‘I’ll just sort of sneak into the reception line.’ When I came up to him, I just suddenly blurted out something like, ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?,’ instead of everyone else’s, ‘It’s such an honor to meet you. Would you please autograph my score?’ I just sort of blurted this out, in my French, and he looked up at me, in that intense, direct way he had, and said, ‘You must be the young man that’s been sending me all of those messages.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, by all means.’ And Yvonne Loriod-

Messiaen got up and said, ‘Here, take my chair. Do you speak French? You can help translate.’ So immediately upon meeting him, I assumed the role that I would take up for so many years afterward. And so she said, ‘Can I get you a Coke?’ So there I was, being taken in by this maternal figure, and being asked if I could help a little bit, and talking to

Messiaen about studying with him. Just like that. I was in shock, because they were such nice people, so courteous, unpretentious, and friendly—and that was really a revelation, because I hadn’t thought of him as a human being. And the first meeting . . . well, he recognized who I was. He confirmed that by my conversation with him. He was very tuned into people. Actually, I think he was quasi-telepathic, or at least very, very intuitive about people. He had many students who didn’t speak very good French, and we all felt we could easily make ourselves understood to Messiaen, much more easily than to other people.

Was Yvonne Loriod in tune with people in the same way?

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Not in the same way. In fact, I always felt that I spoke better French in talking with

Messiaen than I did in talking with her. Partly because the way he spoke was very slow, beautifully pronounced, and very clear, and . . . she spoke—she speaks—very fast and with much more slang. She’s harder to understand, which made me more nervous, and my

French would fall apart. Since Messiaen was very patient, I felt that I could take my time and think it out; I probably did express myself better. Messiaen told me something intimidating at that first meeting, about all those terrible entrance exams at the

Conservatory. I was twenty years old and I was not a virtuoso in any way, and I thought all of this sounded pretty tough.

I was and still am an amateur pianist who loves the piano. But I did not have much technique, and I heard about these solfège exams and all the stuff they do, and I thought, I don’t think I would pass. They space these exams from October to December, so you have to actually go there and spend three months of your time just to find out if you’re getting into the school or not. Messiaen said, ‘If you come over, and you don’t get officially admitted, you are still more than welcome to audit the class, but the difference is, you won’t have your works played through the Conservatory,’—and this was a really wonderful thing. You got really good players, you got played over the radio, and so on.

And he said, ‘I don’t take private students anymore. I just don’t have the time, so it’s only through the Conservatory; think about it.’ I figured that maybe I should wait a little longer until I had better odds of passing those exams, and so I went to the University of Chicago for two years and studied with Ralph Shapey. After I got a master’s degree there, I thought, now that I’m a little older, I’d feel a little less at sea if I went to Paris and didn’t get in. So I

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got a grant from the University of Chicago to do that, and went over there in the fall of

1974. I found out that Messiaen’s class met for twelve hours a week—three four-hour sessions—talk about generous; that was just amazing!

Levinson’s Studies with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire

Were the classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?

I don’t remember. It probably was something like that. You know you can consider an American university class as one-third of the time of that—three hours a week. In order to help foreigners who had crossed oceans to try to get into his class, Messiaen was willing to come early to do dictation exercises with us.

Oh, really? That is interesting.

It was. Those of us who went, got in, and those of us who didn’t, didn’t. Messiaen knew that the training in other countries wasn’t the same. They didn’t drill this dictation solfège stuff the way they do at the Paris Conservatory, and we would have been at a disadvantage. What’s very interesting is that those dictations, are, to my mind, anti- musical. The melodic dictations were chromatic, pretty much atonal, but not music. They had no shape. They were these artificial test-tube things, which would test your hearing of intervals and rhythms, but they went on for so long that they became a memory trick—it was like memorizing random numbers. It wasn’t music; it was random shapes.

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Messiaen couldn’t bring himself to drill these kinds of non-musical melodies with us, so when he wanted to practice atonal dictation, he brought in Schoenberg and Berg— the actual music that was atonal and chromatic, stuff that had phrases. So, that was interesting. He still wanted to use actual music to train us. The other types of dictation that

I found valuable, and very French, were pure chordal dictations, which involved up to eight-note chords, where they would tell you what the bass note was. But these weren’t progressions, and they weren’t functional, and they could be quite complex as chords. For me, that was representative of the French taste for sounds in themselves, which was just like Messiaen’s music. He would play more or less random chords for us, training us to hear things like that. In hearing that way, I do well, and that’s something I have in common with the French way of hearing. Anyway, a Russian friend and I were both accepted for study there. Some other foreigners weren’t accepted.

Could you give me an overview of the class? How was it conducted? What was a typical class session like? What repertoire was covered during your two years there?

Well, let’s see. A lot of things you would have read about his class. There was his plainchant course, the Greek rhythm thing, including Le Printemps by Claude Le Jeune

[1528/30–1600], which combines Renaissance melody and polyphony with Greek meters— actually wonderful music.

That’s in the first volume of the Traité [de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie], correct?