The S.E.M. Ensemble at 50

czech music | focus by Ian Mikyska SOMETHING WHICH SEEMS UNIMPORTANT PROVES TO BE QUITE INTERESTING IN TIME THE S.E.M. ENSEMBLE AT 50 The year 2020 marks the fi ftieth anniversary of the S.E.M. Ensemble, the oldest continuously operating ensemble for new music in the United States. It was established by the Czech-American fl utist and composer Petr Kotík almost immediately upon his arrival to the US in 1969. As Kotík says, the global COVID-19 pandemic is a good time to look back, as it has become impossible to look forward. But in the case of the S.E.M. Ensemble, we would no doubt be looking back over an eventful fi fty years in adventurous music making even if no such reason were forced upon us. It is impossible to discuss the S.E.M. Ensemble were supported by commissions from public access without discussing in detail the life and work of Petr radio stations, often also working in the electronic Kotík, its founder and director for over fi fty years, who music studios operated by these stations. In America, also composes for SEM, conducts, and performs on where no comparable publicly-funded broadcasting the fl ute. existed, composers found their new home in academia, teaching composition and music theory in universities Historically, composers were also performers, and colleges across the country. instrumentalists, vocalists, and conductors. From Vivaldi and Bach through Mozart and Haydn to Liszt John Cage once famously remarked that composing, and Chopin, composers were intimately involved performing, and listening to music were three entirely in the entire process of making music. However, different activities that have nothing to do with each the 20th-century process of professionalisation initiated other. Petr Kotík, however, received training in fl ute by the establishment of the European conservatoires playing as well as composition, and performance and in the 19th century led to a gradual division of the roles composition have remained intricately connected in his of performers and composers. artistic mentality over the last sixty years: “I look at myself fi rst and foremost as a musician. As a musician, This process culminated after the Second World War, I compose music and I perform music. Both are fi nding two differing institutional frameworks in the main equally important. I cannot imagine composing without geographic centres of contemporary music – Western performing, and I cannot imagine performing something Europe and the United States. In Europe, composers other than what I am truly interested in doing – which is 9 my music, music by those I associate with, and music Philharmonic, František Čech, joined the group, by composers who have some kind of signifi cance, for conducting a performance of Cornelius Cardew’s me or for music.” Autumn ’60 – “imagine that,” Kotík remembers. 1959–1970: Kotík also has some rather surprising things to say Before America – Musica viva pragensis about Czechoslovakia in the 1960s: “People’s essential The fi rst of the two groups which Petr Kotík founded needs were more or less taken care of. Money wasn’t in Prague was Musica viva pragensis. This is very important – it didn’t have much value and there how the composer described the establishment wasn’t much you could buy with it anyway. I don’t of the ensemble: “I started Musica viva pragensis remember ever worrying about how to pay these while I was in my last year at the Prague Conservatory. musicians, and these were the Prague’s leading During a break in our orchestral teaching, we went to players. There wasn’t all that much to do, everyone’s the conservatory canteen to eat something. We were employment was guaranteed, so intelligent people completely disgusted by what went on in the orchestra welcomed the chance to do something interesting and class. Šrámek was there –” Vladimír Šrámek was entirely different from what they were used to.” a composer and Kotík’s mentor at the time, “– and we said: why don’t we start an ensemble? Šrámek was When you look up Musica viva pragensis, you will excited and came up with the name Musica viva, and fi nd the dates of the ensemble listed as 1961–1973. then we added pragensis. It was him who inspired me By then, Kotík had already been in the US for several to compose. When we started the ensemble, I was years, and the concert programmes seem to suggest a total beginner, so to suggest that we perform my that he had left Musica viva pragensis while he studied music was out of question. But I was connected to in Vienna (1963–1966). When asked about his Šrámek and also to Jan Rychlík, another important departure, Kotík shared the following story: composer with whom I began studying. Rychlík was a close friend of my parents. In fact, it was my father “My compositions never belonged anywhere. And who suggested that I start taking composition lessons the music, especially with a new piece, caused more with him. So, when I decided, together with my friends, confusion than any other reaction. This has never to form an ensemble, Rychlík and Šrámek started to been easy – most musicians (along with everyone compose pieces for the fi rst concert.” else) scratched their heads and had no idea what to make of it. When MVP performed my piece Another key player in the early years of Musica viva Kontrapunkt II in Vienna, in the autumn of 1963, no pragensis was the composer Rudolf Komorous, who one liked it – no one. Komorous thought that I still later emigrated to Canada just a year before Kotík’s have to work on it – mainly to cut it down. Then, move to America. Komorous settled in the west we were invited to the Warsaw Autumn festival and of Canada, taking up a position at the University the question was: which composition of mine should of Victoria, where he fostered many generations the ensemble perform there? The musicians did not of experimental Canadian composers. What is less want to perform Kontrapunkt II. When they learned well known, however, is that he was a bassoon virtuoso that I was composing a new piece, everyone was fi rst. In 1957, he was Czechoslovakia’s representative relived. But the piece, Music for 3 in Memoriam at the Concours International d’Exécution Musicale Jan Rychlík, was even longer than Kontrapunkt in Geneva, and to everyone’s surprise, he won II and the performance in Warsaw caused a big the competition. scandal. About a third of the audience left the hall in protest. The offi cial delegation of the Czechoslovak Based on his Geneva Gold medal, he was invited to Composers Union led by the composer Ctirad teach bassoon at the Beijing Conservatory, which he Kohoutek stormed the backstage and assaulted did from 1959 to 1961. Immediately after his return, the musicians as they came off the stage, screaming he joined Kotík in planning their new ensemble – ‘What was this supposed to mean! How dare you!’ Komorous main interest was, after all, the newest and In Prague, the Composer’s Union didn’t leave it without most adventurous music. His star status, however, repercussions. And of course, it was unthinkable made possible that MVP stopped using conservatory for the musicians to stand up for the music, so I left players – “we wouldn’t get anywhere that way,” the group. The composer Marek Kopelent was Komorous told Kotík right at the start. “He brought chosen to smooth things over and he then took over the best players from the Czech Philharmonic and the ensemble.” other leading Prague musicians.” Things started Kotík recalls that almost no one spoke to him for moving quite fast and soon, even Kotík’s fl ute professor some time afterwards. There was another detail, he from the conservatory, the fi rst chair at the Czech remembers: “The night before, Xenakis had a large 10 The S.E.M. Ensemble in Buffalo in 1972 (Julius Eastman, Roberto Leneri, Jan Williams, Petr Kotík) orchestra piece performed at the philharmonic hall. “Composers and musicians of my generation in Europe, Part of the audience booed and whistled, another part meaning those who started in the late ‘50s and applauded. Xenakis was a striking fi gure, athletic and early ‘60s, they were all very attached to what had elegant, impeccably dressed. He went to take a bow happened in Darmstadt from the early ‘50s onwards. in front of the booing and whistling audience. And all Darmstadt represented this new wave of… everything the time, he had one hand in his pocket. This made – composition as well as music-making. Stockhausen, a huge impression on me. So the next day, when I went Boulez, Nono, Pousseur, etc. As I was performing to take a bow – of course, many people in the hall this music more and more, something happened that cheered and applauded – I stuck both of my hands in my started to turn us away from it. By the mid ‘60s, I was pockets. And that really made a lot of people angry.” studying at the academy in Vienna and my closest friend there was Kurt Schwertsik. He would say ‘Ich Xenakis also infl uenced the young composer in other hasse das’ [I hate it] – I wouldn’t be as harsh, I didn’t ways. Kotík sent a recording of his Kontrapunkt II (the hate anything, but I was becoming more and more piece no one in the ensemble liked) to Xenakis’ address sceptical about this whole scene. And something else in Paris. And suddenly a letter back came from Paris.

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