Conversation with confusion between the gesture and what the gesture means. by Kevin Volans MF: I was a little embarrassed about it because I Feldmans's Second String Quartet was given its European thought there was too much in it. Somewhat. Oh, premiere by the on the evening of 25th July some parts are ... disgustingly beautiful. I mean, 1984 at the 1984 Darmstadt Summer Course of really. I mean really sensational. Contemporary Music. The next morning Feldman gave his 1984 "Darmstadt Lecture," the text of which is KV: That's what I wanted to ask you, are you ever reproduced in 's collection of surprised? Feldman's "Essays" (1985). After the lecture, Feldman had lunch with Kevin Volans who recorded the MF: Yes I am. conversation reproduced below. This conversation was first published in Volans's collection of conversations with KV: Do you have any idea where all this comes composers published under the title "Summer Gardeners" from? (Durban: Newer Music Edition, 1985) pp122-128. MF: You know, again, history doesn't begin ... KV: What I didn't expect at all from the string Just like God doesn't belong to some vested quartet last night, was how personal the music interest group, history doesn't belong to some was. After spending quite a lot of time looking at vested interest group. It's ... as I said, when my the score and analysing it, this was somehow piano teacher played a B flat I nearly fainted. So I overlooked. I don't know if I am overinterpreting think there's a terrific involvement with a kind of it, but it seemed ... TONE. I grew up just at the tail-end of the heyday of the great performers, playing in New MF: No you weren't. It was pretty sad, wasn't it? York. I used to go to concerts a lot. So I think it's just a question of hearing concerts, being involved KV: Yes, very. It was upsetting, especially that with the piano, involved with literature, and figure with a glissando over a major second. hearing it, that ... that I took the kind of distillation and then just brewing it back and kind MF: It's amazing in the context of the piece what of reconstructed it or something. In other words, that little thing does, isn't it? what is the historical symbolism in music? I mean, a viola in a certain place. And when I wrote that, the only problem was that KV: I felt the piece as a whole ... it was like I knew what was going to happen when I exposed stepping into a Joseph Cornell ... the viola. I knew there was going to be, for me, this kind of nostalgia. MF: Yes. KV: You know, when I went back to South KV: ... or rather a whole set of Cornells. Africa I found this wonderful pianist and piano The piece was very significant for me. But it teacher, Isabella Stengel, who has the most provides a good illustration of that tragic situation exquisite cantabile . And she made me suddenly that you talked about, in that there were people aware to what extent "touch" has disappeared as a there, who felt that the piece said nothing! I concept in piano playing in Europe. She voices mean, it's a nice idea that we're both right, but in chords in a way ... that would make you faint, too. fact it's difficult to accept. How CAN they be And in many ways I feel you represent that right? This is a major issue. If we could clear this tradition of touch. In composition. And that's a up, we would have made a lot of progress. concept that has all but disappeared in composition in Europe, too. We, (and I think I MF: Well I just don't know. Being a fact I accept speak for many) have been trained as musical the fact that there's a tragic situation, that they're architects, or structuralists or conceptualists, so right, and I'm right, I always want to know what it's not surprising that when you talk about their alternative for me would be. I mean, where registration and instrumentation, that some they would feel I said nothing. Is it in the people don't think you're talking about language, is it in the ... composition.

KV: I think it may be in the gesture. They don't MF: It's as if you have any involvement or feeling recognise the gestures. Perhaps they are too small for music, you're not a composer. And I said it, in for them to see. And then perhaps there's a a sense. It would be as if you were going to a theological no excuse. You can't say: "Oh I come from seminar, and they were talking about all the ways Chicago and we can make a left turn." They they could reach God, and they don't talk about would say: "This is not Chicago." There's no sign God or their feeling for God. It would be as if saying you can't make a left on a red light. they were talking about all the ways one could And that's what happens to culture: in Germany, reach God, all the techniques, all the arguments, America, the Soviet Union, Israel, the Arabs - so to speak, but God himself, they don't know we're living as primitive men with taboo. High what it is. tech taboos. You know, Freud, very great man, he said something fantastic, he said, we're gods, with ... artificial limbs. Beautiful. We're very primitive. Nationalism is primitive, religions are primitive. Even Christ is primitive. But the way logic would be used by people, to At the time, it was fine. Like John Cage - now we make their thought richtig [right]. Schopenhauer, don't have to love everybody. [Laughs] It was a to show the superiority of Christianity comes out primitive concept! [Laughs] with this remark, and it's brilliant: to show that He's conceptual. Cage is conceptual! We're very, Christians are superior to Jews, the justification is, very different. You see but he doesn't know he's is that for the first time in history there was a God conceptual, he thinks he's ... only American words that died. Humanised. And that the Jews still would explain it, he thinks he's neat, tidy, you see? believed like primitive people in an unseen God, In other words ... Cage feels that ... if this is over you see. And the logic is fantastic. The logic is here [moves glass to the edge of the table] he'll fantastic. feel it's going to fall, and he like takes it puts it But it's not true! To show that's uniqueness, that over here. And all his music, the way he writes, it's the uniqueness element is what makes it everything is like ... it's going to fall [laughs]. In better. Kids have it. A piano is too old-fashioned, that sense ... he does it for that sense - for that so they blow into some tube. orderliness, that neatness - to organise everything. Take for example ... I was talking to Metzger ... But he doesn't feel it's conceptual. It's the way his It's the problem of logic. The early Hebrews felt house looks. Tidy. that God created the language, the letters, so they You know what he showed me? He showed me felt that there was something ... holy. They took how to use a rapidograph. He'd say: "Tap it like literally the first sentence in the Bible: In the this, don't tap it with the point, because the beginning, God created the word. So they thought point's going to go," he said, "And the point's that the spelling of the word was holy - that it going to break!" Thirty years later, I'm going like came from God. They felt as if life already began this - I want the ink right away, and it falls and with a written language, so the Kabala and the like a knife it sticks, it sticks in the floor. And I Talmudist would do all kinds of things, looking started to laugh, I said: "Thirty years ago, John for some secret in the alphabet. Looking for some told me not to do that!" [Laughs] kind of formula to give them the secret of life. Also from the beginning there was a social commitment. KV: Do you think there's a way out of this So what is my social commitment? That some situation? I mean this new music situation. entrepreneur wants to sell tickets to a concert, or the church commissions a piece as a production? MF: No! Is that a social commitment? In other words, is it I think it's becoming a very interesting social, a social commitment ... is that the social life made musical problem. Not the audience. I think the in art? Either to dance around before they go to problem is growing with, not the audience, but war, or use music for messages through the with the neue generation of composers and jungle. So all those, like the taboo ... I always people like that. They're too competitive, too loved the Tahiti taboo, because ... it's very much aggressive, they're not realistic, they have no skills, like in society, there's a taboo one day, next day, techniques, they don't know too much, and the there's no taboo. And unless you live in this element of fantasy about what they do, has taken culture, you don't know that taboo, it's like you over more and more. And it doesn't make any can park there on Friday, but you can't park there difference if it's the left or the right, it doesn't on Monday [laughs]. Taboo changes all the time! make any difference if it's the Webern heritage or Some taboos don't change! But unless you're the Cage, it's the same kind of person essentially. really in it ... Like in some cities in America, you can make a KV: What piece are you writing next? left on a red light. Other cities, you would get a ticket. It's against the law to make a left on a red light. And then there's a rule that says ignorance is MF: I'm writing a piece, for a year in advance, for between the four instruments of the string a tour. Did you hear my piece CRIPPLED quartet]. For example, here here. Usually I start SYMMETRY? Okay. So it's the same piece, but here [indicates cello] so that by the time you get to the score is almost the same, but not the same. I the first violin, it's orchestrated in a way so that don't use the whole piece as ... very strict you had an accumulation of the different time individual parts, which were calculated all the time worlds going together. Like a canon of time on just a cheap calculator. In other words, after I worlds. And you hear it. It's not the same note, finished two or three pages, I then would want to but you hear the time of the cello going into the see how many eighth-notes ... and I would see viola ... passing the time ... and then this is the that the flute is maybe a hundred and fifty eighth- quick one, going that way. I love that. But not for notes behind, you see. And that the percussion is long periods of time. My first quartet ends that way ahead, because percussion moves quicker in way. I like that. And what happens then I get very time. You see what I like is to have them almost complicated subdivisions, of rhythmic formations, together, but for me acoustically they're all and as I look at it I know the possibilities. I hear moving ... like this is time, and the instruments are already the possibilities. And that's what gives me moving almost at a same rate, but not exactly. A the proportions, for example. I would say, maybe viola doesn't move at the same as a violin. You seven-sixteen is too fast. It would make for could make it move! [Laughs] But it doesn't move syncopation. And then I kind of make quick ... I this way, it doesn't speak, this way. It speaks, until do one measure and I see what the formulation is, the E string. The E string killed it off. So I'm very and you don't even hear it. It's almost like an into these different ... these times where it's echo, someplace else. almost the same time, but in my ear it's not the An imitation of PACING. An imitation of same time. breathing of another voice. That's another I'm very interested in a kind of pan-rhythmic, a translation I do: rhythm - pacing - duration - kind of pan-rhythmic situation. Almost the same breathing. So many of the rhythms you heard ... I mean, rhythm is notation, many times, outside were like breathing ... Not bad, huh? of the fact what you want to do with it. So what I'm doing now is having small modules, very KV: The method or the lunch? simple formations, very simple. Say one system, there are nine measures. And I'm writing, it's MF: Not a method ... my lunch. There it is: you flute, percussion and piano. And I look at it and I have a method for lunch, and the imitators have it give it ... the first five measures are in one-two, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, before they go to bed and then there are four measures of three-eight. ... Some of them begin, maybe, four measures, three-eight, another one begins five-eight. Sometimes I make a more complicated pattern, KV: What instruments are you writing for? but very simple [modules] and out of it I get very complicated rhythms. And the reasons I'm doing MF: Flute, piano, celeste, and percussion. it, I don't want to make a performers situation Essentially vibraphone and glock. I don't like the [where] they're looking to make a cue. I don't vibraphone too much when I hear it, but I like it want rhythm to become an aspect of syncopation. when I'm writing it, and especially without the There were very small modules in the quartet, motor. And what I'm doing now is chordal and though it had this almost canonic-like repetition just putting it in places and then I play it the same in different times, overlapping. But just for four time as the celeste ... as the glock, together. But I measures, because four instruments, four don't mind it in this piece - the vibe, I don't mind measures - they come out the same in time. Many it. times I would like it, a very extreme. I would use four measures, for example. Okay. Seven-two, KV: Have you ever had an inclination to work four double-dotted; seven-four, four double- with older instruments, like the viola da gamba? dotted; seven-eight, four double-dotted; and seven-sixteen. MF: No. No. It doesn't have the beating. It doesn't have the spectra, (what do you call it?). It's too archaic. I had a girlfriend who played the viola da gamba. I know the viola da gamba very well. It's very beautiful. But I don't think it's beautiful for contemporary music. So like tic tac toe [noughts and crosses]. So I What do you think of my idea, that pitch sounds make a design. And all kinds of formulations. better with very conventional instruments? That [Indicates how he would distribute the measures the pitches we use are not for ad hoc instrumentation.

KV: I don't know, I have two feelings about that.

MF: I know.

KV: Certainly intervals sound very different on different instruments. They tend to be clearer on early instruments. I wrote a piece recently, which I was trying out on a clavichord, and really enjoying the intervals - they had a very special quality, but when I came to play it on a Steinway it sounded terrible.

MF: You know there's a very interesting paper I once read about somebody ... played on the original pianos of great composers. How Schumann harmony sounded on that instrument. The clarity of the harmony was extraordinary. Under a big light. Chopin's piano sounded just like Chopin - that he never really played loud. The piano cannot play loud. That he made a mezzoforte sound big. And because of the level of the piano, that what he wrote on that piano was the best that sounded on that piano. Somebody once came to my house, and wanted a criticism of their playing some years ago, and for some reason played the SONATINE by Ravel, and she stopped and she said: "On your piano, it sounds like your music." Very, very interesting - the importance of one's instrument. Bunita Marcus, I went away, she used my piano. I came back, I said: "Did you work?" She said: "What I did, I did in half of the time, because I worked on your piano." I love the piano to work, because the balance on it ... marvellous instrument.

...

We have come back to Darmstadt, but without the kinder - just us - and talk. No students. Because it's nice to meet and talk. And we never do it.