A new profession -- in classical music?

Well, you know that many new and prosperous professions nowadays didn't exist like 10 years ago, such as social media manager (or consultant) or anything to do with mobile phones and apps. That's how I feel now in Indonesia as a (classical music) composer. My European colleagues who are reading this might feel strange .... but yeah, classical music, in spite of its term, is something new to us Indonesians, starting from the second half of the last century. We do have pioneers of classical music composers, such as Amir Pasaribu (who died a few years ago with 92 years of age, after around 30 or more years of his last years not composing anything) or, still very much around us, the 80-year-young Trisutji Kamal. But now that the classical music scene is so robust in Indonesia, I am working with so many young (and not so young too) musicians who are playing my music, either as part of their educational purposes or with the intention of performing it professionally. ............................................................................................................................................. Before this, classical musicians are faced with music by dead composers only. You have all the materials provided, besides the music sheet. Now with the existence of youtube, you can even have all the historical recordings, you name it, Glenn Gould, Artur Rubinstein even going back to the recording of the composers themselves such as Rachmaninov or Prokofiev playing their own music (which sometimes are not so brilliant as other pianists performing their music. Even Rachmaninov admitted that about Vladimir Horowitz, as you know). So, you pick a Bach French Suite and you can listen to a few hundred different recordings, most of them artistically of high quality. You choose the best according to you, or the one you feel closest too, and there you get a clear concept of the music. You might not be able to imitate it (who could imitate Gould?), but you work on that piece of music with the sound of your favorite recording in your head, but mostly not your own idea. So, you are already conditioned to a specific interpretation of the music, not the music itself. ............................................................................................................................................. With newly written music, you are demanded to have a clear idea YOURSELF of the musical concept and its character. It's perhaps (a bit) easier if you are a singer, since you have the words to start with, although sometimes a poem could be so complex that it's the music that helps you feel the atmosphere between the words. But if it's a piece of instrumental music, well, it does need your musical sensitivity to grasp its idea. ............................................................................................................................................. This is why a new piece of music is very important in music competitions. It's much easier to perform a piece of music that has a "history" ---and like any history, it has so many different versions--- but it is through an interpretation of a really new piece of music that we can really see the artistic abilities of a musician. Nowadays we don't need more musicians who can read notes so well and play it with the nimblest of fingers; it is already expected from any musician. We need musicians who understand what lies between those notes, even though (s)he has never heard that music before. ............................................................................................................................................. So, for you who are performing my piano pieces in the next Ananda Sukarlan Award competition, you might have acquired my newest CD, A Virtuosic Christmas. I play some of the works that you could choose among the obligatory works to play there. But remember, I am counting on YOU to play it better. You've gotta be able to see other points of views, other ideas, other musical concept of it. I played it as an INTERPRETER, not as a composer anymore, as any pianist-composer could tell you when they are performing their own works. I have heard my music performed differently than I had in mind before, and many times. And some of them, I must say, are excellent. There are fresh approaches in some pieces on Henoch Kristianto's recordings of some of my Rapsodia Nusantara, and some performances of Edith Widayani were also more than artistically very admirable. And I must say that until now, nobody (I include myself here) matches the brilliance of Anthony Hartono's performance of Rapsodia Nusantara no. 10. I am just sooo much looking forward to hearing a mindblowing performance of some of my works in the next competition next July.

The problem of the opera, and a new look at KAMA

That is a stupid title, I know. Operas only poses problems. Or shall we say, if you are a composer and you wanna complicate your life, write an opera. But there are crazier people than composers : those who want to produce (an) opera(s). It's not an easy business. Right from the very beginning, one needs not only singers, but singers who can act, understand the language (yea yea, it's much more than just memorizing. It's a matter of understanding completely the text), sometimes dance. And like any other actors, they should be willing to learn new things. In Verdi's Aida they should learn how to ride a horse, and in mine ... ride a bicycle!

My third opera which I am writing now (and almost finished, thank God!) will be the "real" opera of mine. It is commissioned by Bimasena, who also was responsible for the birth of my second cantata LIBERTAS. My first two had only 2 and 1 soloists, and they can be called "chamber operas" (they made a sequel, both on Seno Gumira Ajidarma's fantastic drama scripts). This time it involves lots of soloists (4 baritones, 1 tenor who plays the very small but very important role as Soekarno, our first president, and 1 soprano), who have to really act (and even dance) and a real orchestra to accompany it. And now I understand why Verdi and Wagner were all nuts. I am letting all kinds of outer influences being absorbed and manifest themselves in this opera : Michael Jackson, Stravinsky, Salvador Dali, Chendra's choreography, Andy Warhol's pop art, avantgardism of the 1960s (especially the artistry of Cathy Barberian and Luciano Berio), Shakira ... and the long list continues. All this meshed into my (what I consider) "personal artistic" elements, or to say it in a different way, I stole all those exciting stuff and make an "arty" (read: "boring") version of them all. Just like what I did with my previous operas ; if you'd seen them you might slightly detect how Michael Jackson and Madonna influenced me so much. And I am doing one thing here for the first time in my life : write an additional libretto. Not so much though, but it's quite an attempt. Until now, not one word of the texts for my works are mine. And to be honest I don't really like those words I wrote too much, --apart from the fact that it took me too much time!-- so I'll stick with other people's texts in the future Writing one word took as long as writing a few bars of music for me.

This third opera of mine is called "Pro Patria". That title is mine. About 90% of the libretto is taken from the conversations in the novel "Kalah dan Menang" (To lose and to win), written by the late great Indonesian writer Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (STA). I studied Britten's libretto on his masterpiece "A Midsummernight's Dream" and learned how skillfully he extracted Shakespeare's play into the libretto of his opera. Without previous study of Britten, I would've been lost in the creative process of my opera. Sometimes I modified a few words in STA's sentences, but it won't change the atmosphere of STA's language. It is set around the 1940s, when the Japanese managed to get rid of the Dutch in their occupancy in Indonesia. The novel itself goes on until the 1950s, but I finish my opera with Soekarno (our first president) reading the Declaration of Independence, August 17th, 1945. Anyway, I laughed at the fact that the libretto of my first 2 operas are by SGA, and this time is by STA. And my initial is AS. Needless to say, obviously I play with the motif built on the notes "A" and "(e)S" in this opera. Sharing 2 letters of our initial, as I have experienced with SGA, would hopefully bring good luck again this time.

A post scriptum on my song, KAMA. Bernadeta Astari, my young & supertalented soprano friend who has sang many of my songs (and the dedicatee of my song-cycle "Senyap Dalam Derai") did a fantastic final exam yesterday at the Utrecht Conservatory. She acquired a 10+ for her mark, so she repeated history that I made 17 years ago. Now this should warn our fellow Indonesian music students, that this mark should not wait another 17 years to be repeated, ok folks?
She sang KAMA at her exam, and many people were moved to tears. I wasn't there, but our friends told me how powerful she did it. It was one of the highlights of her recital (yeah, knowing her, a concert could have many highlights!) And also bravissimma to her pianist, Kanako Inoue. The piano part of that song is not easy, not technically and even more "interpretatively" whatever it means. The silences are more difficult than the notes! In fact I never dared to think highly on that song. It was my very first setting of an Indonesian text, therefore I was still searching and trying many things in that piece. The poem was so powerful, written in a prison by Ilham Malayu, about his feeling of missing his son after 5 years or so rotting in jail and forgotten by the world. Not only it was my first Indonesian song, it was my first piece written exclusively in a non-modulating pentatonic scale. So it was a huge breakthrough for me. And I am glad that it works out well. Anyway, this experience has taught me that one's first attempt doesn't have to be a failure, or worse than one's next attempts. It would sound like an idiot, but honestly I haven't felt 100% sure in setting poems until now, after 3 operas and about 100 songs ; I still feel like a beginner!

Are they really outdated?

Music, as everything else nowadays, is changing so fast, and it just feels so strange that the most "radical" composers who wanted to boldly write what no man has written before during the 20th century becomes now outdated and their music become "expired" and in their worst case, obsolete. But are they really ? Would you say that the generation starting with Schoenberg and his 12-tone method and ends with ... --err, is it ended already?-- ...produced completely useless music ?

Well, not really, at least for me. Up till the 1960s, or even 70s, there was this catchy phrase popular among the composers : "Tonality is dead. Music should now be atonal" (This phrase was originally uttered by Arnold Schoenberg in 1920s ; you see how much he was so ahead of his time?). Now, 50 years later I look around and tonal music is everywhere ! In fact, there is ONLY tonal music everywhere. But sure, people say that academic composers in the US still writes atonal music, even using a "more advanced" serial method of Schoenberg and Babbitt. Needless to say, they are only heard (better said: analyzed) inside universities by the nerds. And I guess in some developing countries it is considered a novelty to start writing 12-tone or atonal music, eh ? Well, I remember that the Indonesian composer Trisutji Kamal (b.1936) wrote 3 short pieces for piano in 12-tone method back in the 1960s. But then they were the first and her last piece in atonal style. I guess she opened a door ... but didn't enter it herself. I wonder if there were some idiots afterwards that would enter that open door ...

I started my compositional career writing with that 12-tone method, and I did learn quite a bit from there. I still keep some atonal music of mine which I consider not sooo bad. Who knows that I'll write an opera about a haunted house or something, and they will be quite useful there he he ...
One thing I learn about twelve-tone method is that I have to win this battle between my own music and my willingness ; I mean, sometimes I want my music to sound one way, but the method insisted that I go another way. Now, in my Rapsodia Nusantara series those methods of retrograding, inverting and all the cutting and pasting motifs proved to be useful. And I can proof to myself that that method can be applied to tonal music. I couldn't believe it myself when I completely inverted a folk-tune backwards ... and it worked! I also used that method a lot in my cantata LIBERTAS : you might have noticed the most obvious one that "Requiescat"'s tune is turned upside down and become the solo baritone that opened "Krawang Bekasi". And I do find turning melodies upside down quite erotic ...

I haven't blogged for a few weeks since I was busy with the Jakarta New Year Concert and then some travelling, among others to Makassar (Sulawesi Island) for the first time (yeah it was memorable! And I loooove the food! And everyone's great too). Now I am back at my appartment listening to all the music I have performed during these days, while trying to figure out whither my music is going. I have some big pieces ahead of me to write, and honestly, I have no idea about anything. I remember that my sister who is a doctor once was so confused that she bought a book "What to do if there is no doctor around" .. well, I feel the same at the moment. Perhaps the most scary thing is my next opera, commissioned by the same institution, Bimasena, who commissioned "LIBERTAS". I'll write about it in my blog when I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Again and again, with all the compositional techniques that one has under his sleeves one cannot be sure what to write. One might know HOW to write, but WHAT to write remains always an unsolved mystery, even to the composer himself ....

Why no "Sukarlan plays Sukarlan" ?

My manager Chendra Panatan has always been bombarded with this question (especially by many, many young pianists) : Why doesn't AS record and play his own piano music ? He's always answered with "Later perhaps", but now I will tell you the exact reasons why.

1. There are still not so many pianists who play my pieces, so I do not want to dictate them how to interpret my own music. Ok, ok, Rachmaninov as a pianist or Samuel Barber as a baritone were the best interpreters of their own music, but how many composers could claim it so? I am always surprised in listening to other people performing my music ; I always found new things which I even didn't realize before in my music. The good musicians always find new points of view in looking at the music. Don't misinterpret me as an idiot ! It's true, I tell you. It has happened also in the opposite way, when I am interpreting someone elses music. Sir Michael Tippett, Peter Sculthorpe and many others have expressed this to me (and in case of Sir Michael, God bless his soul, spoke it out loud on BBC Radio 3!) when they listened to my playing of their music.

2. You must understand that composing is one thing, being an interpreter is another thing. My interpretation of my own music doesn't make it more "authentic" than other (hopefully better) musician's interpretation. As a pianist, my position is exactly the same when I am playing Beethoven or when I am playing Ananda Sukarlan. The composer/conductor Andre Previn told me once that good music is always better than its performance. Therefore, nobody yet can achieve what Beethoven really wanted his music to sound. His music is still far better than any interpretations of it. In my case, it's the contrary : I am counting on my musicians to make my music sound BETTER than I wrote it !

3. I prefer at the moment to record music by other composers who I esteem highly. Especially now I am focusing myself on my Indonesian composers colleagues. Almost nobody cares about their music, and those who care, cannot play the piano ! Some of our senior composers such as Amir Pasaribu and Trisutji Kamal deserve to have recordings of their piano music NOW (to be precise, it's been long overdue). In case of the late Yazeed Djamin, there is also a feeling of friendship besides admiration. I am proud of their music, and I wish that Indonesian musicians could be proud of their composers. Who else but us, Indonesians, can introduce those composers ? They are not even known in our own country.