Yeah the title isn't mine, but the music is !

Just realized I haven't blogged for over a month, eh? So here I am again. When I was in Indonesia last month I got another negative comment about my Rapsodia Nusantara : the usual phrase that it is not my music but an Indonesian folk-tune instead. Well, it is ! Let me tell you how it works, for the n-th (and hopefully the last!) time :

The idea of "Rapsodia" (let's call it RN since now, although it sounds like another flu virus spread by Donald Rumsfeld's company) was first mentioned by my late friend, composer Yazeed Djamin. He wanted to do a series of RN (the title was HIS idea) for me, for piano solo, so that I could have a series of Indonesian virtuosic piano works and at the same time introduce Indonesian folk-tunes in my concerts. Until then (he died in 2001) there weren't any really virtuosic piano works by an Indonesian composer, can you imagine ? I mean, those ones that could bring the house down as the closing piece of a concert. Now, this idea itself is not original : it was inspired by (what else?) Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies. If you now go to Hungary and hear some familiar folktunes, well you can be thankful to our old friend Ferenc who introduced them to you by incorporating them (or using them as material) in his Rhapsodies. And Yazeed's (and my) argument was : why do we Indonesians always end our concerts with Hungarian Rhapsodies ? Why don't we make our OWN Rhapsodies ?

Liszt's case wasn't the first, nor the last time that composers "steal" from folk-tunes. It goes back to the 16th century and maybe before. You can hear them in works of Sweelinck, Rameau and Mozart. The extreme case are those pieces called "Rumanian (and Bulgarian) Folk Dances" by Bela Bartok, as if HE was the composer of those folk dances. Now what, would you point your finger to him again and say that he cheated ?

Guys, it's not the material that counts. It's the development of it, it's what you do with the material. It's like saying "When life gives you lemon, make lemonade". Materials (it's cooler for artists to say "inspiration") could be found everywhere; even you can DEFINE a material in words (such as "three short notes and one long note" for Beethoven's Fifth). It's like a grape, which you can just eat as it is, or turn into very refined wine. And yeah, wine IS grape ! Who said it's not? So, d'you get it now that I am not trying to boldly write music which no man has written before?

Anyway, you won't say that those running octaves and crazy arpeggios are not mine, right ? You say they belong to folkmusic, and many people would be dead trying to sing them !

So, enough of that. I am writing --to be precise, trying to write-- my third opera at the moment. Usually I love writing operas, but it is now a different issue. There will be no real strong protagonist in this opera ; at least 8 singers would be a soloist in a certain moment. The difficulty is that I don't have those singers in mind. I always have this wishful thinking that my music would still be around after I die, and they will be played and sung by musicians that I won't be acquainted personally, but at the time of writing the music, the figure of the musician in the back of my head really does help in making the shape of the music. One of my greatest pleasures in writing music was when I wrote a series of duos (for violin, bassoon, trumpet etc. with piano) for the handicapped people here in Spain : it was their handicap, and their love and enthusiasm to music that inspired the music that I wrote. And those duos can be (in fact, will mostly be) performed by any musician with complete limbs of the body. So it is not about the virtuosity or genius of the musician ; it is just themselves and each of their particular way of making music. Every person is special to me, and there is always an element in everyone that makes me fall in love with them, and therefore, be inspired by them. The proof is, everytime I wrote music for (a) certain musician(s) for the second time, it always turned out to be better !

Mourning becomes Indonesia

Just a couple of hours ago I landed at the Jakarta airport, picked up by Chendra. His first words were :"Rendra just passed away". WS Rendra was one of Indonesia's greatest poets, and a personal friend of mine. I have set a poem of him, "Tidurlah Intan" which you can listen to Aning Katamsi singing it at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrT3CCdbYo .

In 5 days, Joseph Kristanto will be the soloist together with ITB Choir and a small ensemble, all conducted by Indra Listiyanto in my newest work, my second cantata "LIBERTAS". It is now that I realize and understand the meaning and existence of this work.

When I was commissioned to write a piece to celebrate this year's Indonesian Independence day, I knew that I should have written a joyful, optimistic and celebrational work. After all, the occasion demands it, with the presence of Indonesia's president, vice president and many of our cabinet ministers. Instead, the piece turned out to be a cantata glorifying death. I was about to change the title into "Requiem" if it were not for my consideration that I didn't have any more time left to write the commissioned piece, a real "LIBERTAS". Apart from the poems which were specifically written for the occasion and included in Libertas (by Sapardi Djoko Damono & Ilham Malayu), all the poems I chose for LIBERTAS are about death. Death of all the fallen heroes, and one of them is by WS Rendra, "Ia Telah Pergi" (He has gone). But that was not the real coincidence. Another poem is "A Un Poeta Muerto" (To a dead poet) by Spanish writer Luis Cernuda, written as a requiem to the death of Federico Garcia Lorca. And this is the point I wanna make : The most crucial point in LIBERTAS doesn't lie in the most exuberant fortissimo or exciting moment in the piece. It lies in this number, where a pianissimo, etherial B-flat major chord starts the phrase "Para el poeta, la muerte es la victoria" (For the poet, death is the victory), after a long section of dark atonal utterances. I remember exactly that LIBERTAS in fact started when I read those lines by Cernuda. They trigger those chords in my head, from which LIBERTAS was born.

I certainly wasn't thinking of Rendra when I wrote LIBERTAS. In fact, the 3 big works this year (the other two are the opera "IBU--yang anaknya diculik itu" and a dance piece to be choreographed by Chendra next year which I will write about it in a few weeks in this blog) all deal profoundly, and exclusively with death. You can also check an entry I wrote here when I was deeply immersed in this definitely-not-my-favorite-at-all subject.

I can't help but dedicating LIBERTAS, in its entirity, to the memory of WS Rendra. LIBERTAS is so him. So Rendra. Sadly, it turned out that way, as I am assimilating it while I am writing these very lines.

And now, fellow Indonesians, you can shout your favorite word "Victory!" to Rendra. Because for the dead poet, death is victory.

Requiescat et libertas, WS Rendra. Your art will live forever.

Polit ... I mean, Peace and Prosperity

I just HAVE to write this even if I don’t want to, just because I was feeling like .. oh, why oh why ? Why do I keep receiving proposals to be involved in politics? I should tell you my own definition of the word “politics” : The ugly business of beautiful words. And those words are always the same : peace, prosperity, patriotism, … coincidentally all that equally begins with a “p”!

They are just crazy, all those who have invited me to join “concerts for peace”, or to take part of a campaign or even to be actively involved in a political party. Look, I could say that I hardly know how the Spanish politics work, but I just don’t know ANYTHING about Indonesian political parties and all that hillybillies ! Those offers and proposals appear more often before the elections, and in some cases after a disaster, like the one that happened a few days ago: the bombing of 2 American hotels in Jakarta. Isn’t that enough suffering already to be exploited further for an increase of personal fame and wealth?
Oh, and about my operas? You can say they are very political, yes! In fact they all deal with the victims of politics. I don’t glorify politics in my works, I insult them, I show how bad politics do in our lives, in case you don’t get the point.

I was always clear about my dreams since I started my career : to retire young. No, I am not like those guys who needs MORE money, MORE power, MORE fame, MORE this and that. Just give the opportunity to the younger generation. I am OK. By the way, you know what my real happiness is? It’s having lots of blank papers in front of me to be filled with those tiny black notes. That’s what I mean by retiring young : being boring and just get paid writing all those notes. And I have sort of achieved it. So let me work in peace, I mean, REAL peace, not a politically correct peace!

But let me rectify my refusal. I will take part in a political activity, only if he or she who proposes it to me has read Plato’s “The Republic” and would like to put at least 10% of it into practice. Until now, that is the only correct guide of how to run a country, in my opinion. And don’t tell me that I am old fashioned or I am 2000 years retarded. I can’t be argued about that. If you don’t agree, let’s just talk about something else, anything but politics.

May the best win ... but what about the rest ?

In the early 90s as a young and ambitious pianist I was active in the competition world as a competitor, and I always wonder how would it feel to be on the other side, sitting as one of the judges. My parents were not so well off, they couldn't act as my producer, sponsor and manager for my musical career (they didn't even know anything about this crazy artistic business), so that was the only way I could earn money back then. Now already about a decade I've been sitting, watching, listening and judging various competitions, both in Spain and in Indonesia. Naturally since then I have heard and received, directly and indirectly, protests or just insatisfaction from those who don't win, or even don't pass the first preminilary round(s). Not only protesting against the result, but later on they attack the system, infrastructure and even the very existence of an artistic competition.

I've always expressed my disagreement about competitions for the arts. Naturally I don't protest when I won a competition, but I do think that competitions could pick the "survival of the fittest" only up to a certain level, which is the technical point. So it's just about making sure if a pianist can play the running scales and octaves in a refined manner, a violinist plays in tune all the way from beginning to end or whether a young composer's harmony and counterpoint reflects his good ear and that he's not just writing, as we say, "paper music". But after that, do we have the right to judge a good pianist's interpretation of a Prelude & Fugue by Bach ? If I do it differently, would MY interpretation receive a higher point than his or hers ? And imagine a competition where both young Shostakovich and young Stravinsky participated, to who would you give a higher mark?

But why do I join the "competition club" ? Simply because I cannot think of a better base for a young artist to build a career on. Now in Indonesia, where the number of pianists is growing (incredibly) rapidly, voices start to go around how competition is bad for the arts. It is obviously an old issue (but still talked about) here in Europe, without anybody finding its solution. Of course those critical voices in Indonesia come from those who have joined and "lost" (I hate that word), either in a national, regional competition or by those who have participated abroad and ... well, you know the result. Now I tell you one thing, folks. I was really lucky to have won my first competition, but I have had my share of losing a couple as well. It is not a rule that if you win in a competition, you'd win in another, and the same can be said about losing. You just gotta do your best ! And stop talking and stop criticizing ! A successful person is not the one who never failed ; it is he who can get up and do it again after each failure. And success, my friends, is built on many failures. And if competitions are so bad .... can you give a better suggestion to what a young pianist, or any other artists should do to start their career ?? Nothing Machiavellian, I mean.

If you can, that's great. Because I can't.

Thanks, Alicia!

"When you give, you don't lose. You gain more by giving." That's what my mom always told me. I didn't understand it until many years later, and the latest example happened last week.

I judged a couple of piano competitions in a space of less than 1 month. The latter, in Bandung, used my new book “Alicia’s First Piano Book” as the obligatory pieces; hence each participant should choose one among the 35 solo pieces to be played in the semifinal round. I was touched how they treated my piece as anything BUT obligatory. In fact, after the competition finished, so many people (teachers, participants—including the ones who didn’t win any prizes, and people among the public) came to me and said how they enjoyed the pieces and thank me for my contribution to the piano repertoire for the young. And I discovered that many piano teachers have used them for teaching purposes, nothing to do with the competition.

Now, of course I am honestly happy that my book has sold hundreds of copies (in fact Chendra my manager is gonna re-publish a second edition of 1000 copies very soon). Another happy discovery is that apparently no Indonesian composers have done explicitly pieces for the young, so this is the first Indonesian “Album for the young”, “Children’s Corner” or “Mikrokosmos” or whatever you wanna call it. But the thing that made me happy the most is that I have given something which made those children enjoy playing the piano. And this is all thanks to my little daughter, Alicia. It was her who made me write all those pieces. In fact, one piece in that book called “12 Haiku” was commissioned by her … for 1 euro! (I think I wrote about this in this blog, you can check it out in my previous entries about 1 year ago). Apart from that, all the pieces are written without any money involved. That’s what you call, literally, “for the love of it”.

And I must confess, there is another thing that made me happy, but let me tell you one thing first. A few years ago, the ABRSM commissioned many composers from many countries a short piece to be compiled in their book “Spectrum”. I contributed a very short and easy (well, that was the requirement of the commission) piece called “Gentle Darkness”. Later on the commissioner told me that my piece is among the most popular & often played by students ….but none of them who played my piece is Indonesian!! Indonesian young pianists always choose other composers’ pieces from that book. So that shows my (un-)popularity in my own country ….and my narcissist instincts told me that it is not because my piece is inferior than the other pieces in that book!
But my book (or shall I say Alicia’s?) proved it wrong.

I have had fantastic performances of my music. Some of them sound even better than what I had imagined. But nothing, I tell you, nothing gives greater happiness than your own daughter playing your own music, especially music written especially for, and with her in our minds (or sometimes even sitting on my lap). And I have a hunch that she will inspire “Alicia’s SECOND piano book” (at least, there are already several pieces written for the next book).

When the black turned white (RIP Michael Jackson)

This morning, woken up and chased by the deadline of my piece for percussion and piano to be performed at the Meloritmos Festival in 3 weeks time, I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing away of my idol, Michael Jackson. He has certainly done to the 20th century world of music what Gustav Mahler did for the 19th century. Yeah, they are 2 different genres of music, but who is more influential to the music world in the fin-de-siecle period? How many composers (I mean "classical" ones) have been influenced by MJ ? I remembered talking passionately about MJ's music with 2 great figures, the late Sir Michael Tippett and Louis Andriessen (both of whose music have also influenced mine and my way of thinking). If you hear the "rap music" section in Tippett's opera NEW YEAR, well that was thanks to MJ. And I made my own version of rap music in my opera IBU--yang anaknya diculik itu, also thanks to MJ, in particular his Smooth Criminal. Two different versions, two different interpretations. Just two. I imagine there might be another ..10? 100? That is, I guess, what Stravinsky called "Music about music". And that proves just how rich MJ's music is and how he performed them, with his particular voice, body movements and style.
I can't help thinking about who, in my opinion, is the greatest figure of music in the second half of the 20th century. I won't agree if it were the Beatles, since their music is just "nice" and "beautiful" (which are 2 important elements as well!), but I doubt in the strength of the impact in the artistic world. You know what I mean, this posh circle of operas and contemporary classical music. If Mahler and Britten and especially Stravinsky were still alive, they won't be that immune from the strong influence of MJ, I bet you.
MJ's music has boldly gone where no man has gone before. RIP, Michael Jackson. I will always love you. And your music.

Missed!

It's been exactly 1 month since I last blogged. Many things have happened, which in normal circumstances should have made me happy, but am still having doubts about those changes in my music. I even have doubts in doing something so easy, such as "cutting and pasting" my music to make my Dance Remix no.1, to be performed in Meloritmos Festival in Palencia, next July. That involves "revisiting" my old pieces, and though the task is just reworking them for a new instrumentation, I can't help doubting my previous works.

I am this kind of composer which one normally can call "prolific", and many times I do set aside the issue of "repeating oneself", since I see that all composers of the past did repeat themselves anyway. And all this change in my music is not my intention. It just happened. Just like when you reach puberty, you know what I mean ?

Anyway, am totally immersed in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's "Mangir" these days. I can identify my musical language with his "colour", somehow. Can't help admiring him more and more.

Well, I AM repeating myself about "change". What a bore, eh? I guess this is my speciality, trying to say something new with the same old words.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. (TS Eliot, Four Quartets)

Now, just change "words" into "notes" and you'll know what I am going through ...

To boldly CHANGE that we can believe in

Now that's very fine, Mr. President, what you said about change. Most people are so conservative that they are afraid of any changes. In fact, one gets older in order to get settled down, and "well-established" instead of "seeking change, new life and new civilations". If one is comfortable with something, why change it, right? But what about this thing that happens to me now ? I am feeling a kind of change ... in my music. And it's not me who wanted this change. Now, that's ok, considering that I've been in and out writing music for the last 20 years, and I did have some changes in my musical language in the past. I do envy Rachmaninov who had been so consistent throughout his life. Even all his 4 piano concerti ends in the same manner: pam papapam !! (as if there are no other ways to end a piece of music). Oh yeah, I just finished my Rapsodia Nusantara no.4 a few days ago, and I was making sure that the ending is different from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd he he ..

Now back to change .. the thing is that I think I like my music more and more. I still am a Britten and Stravinsky wannabe, but hey, I write music because I want to listen to it and nobody has written it, that's why I write it down, right ? And then I know that many people also likes my music, and although I keep on telling this bulls**t to myself that "artists write not for people, but to express what they believe", I do feel flattered every time I realize that my music can "move" someone. Together with this change in my musical language, I also realized that I like new kinds of music which I wasn't really fond of previously. Two "H" composers have been my favorite lately : Hindemith and Hans Werner Henze. In the latter case, I even know him personally, and still wasn't a big fan of his music. Until recently, for the last few weeks.

So, what kind of change is happening ? First of all, with my 4th Rapsodia, I did something, an experiment if you like to call it so, which I never did before. I wrote about my method of composing in this blog about last month. At last it has 10 variations, but I couldn't avoid feeling rather jittery when I finished writing the variations, having 10 pieces of puzzle to construct. Even some silly questions popped up, such as "Why should the bare & naked theme appear in the beginning?" I still don't know if my "4th" would work as a solid construction, but that's the risk if one wants to "change". A work of art is never finished, said Paul Valery, and this phrase could serve as a big consolation in times like this ..

Another change is the harmony in my music : it's getting darker, and even thicker. Now usually when one gets older, his music tends to be simpler, more transparent. Just listen to all those guys : Beethoven, Liszt, oh well, most of them. And the bad news is ... I think you won't like it, folks. It's less "accessible", and shall we say, more "difficult listening" (in need for a better opposite of "easy listening").
Oh well, enough for now. Let me just go and boldly change. To seek out new music and new ideas .. Make it so, Number One! Energize !!