Benitez Interview of Gerald Levinson

A Conversation with Composer Gerald Levinson about Olivier Messiaen 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, George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ralph Shapey 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. 3 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. 4 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 Richard Wernick 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. 5 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. 6 . 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.

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