... and what about Asperger's Syndrome ?

I posted about Hans Asperger a few days ago in my facebook, at the International Asperger's Day on Feb. 18th that coincided with Asperger's birthday in 1906, in which I confirmed and admitted that indeed I am convinced that besides Tourette's Syndrome, I also am an "Aspie" -- the popular term for us who have Asperger's Syndrome. (please read http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com.es/2013_05_01_archive.html for my entry about Tourette Syndrome). It is quite common for a person to have both Tourette AND Asperger, since they both fall under the same autistic spectrum. .............................................................................................................................................. It all began when I was diagnosed in 1996 with a clear Tourette Syndrome and a "high probability" of Asperger's Syndrome. I even don't understand why they put Asperger with an apostrophe "s", which they don't put with Tourette! Oh well, psychologists, they are all full of mysteries. From now on, I'll refer to them with AS and TS only. .............................................................................................................................................. AS remains a controversial diagnosis due to its unclear relationship to the autism spectrum since Mr. Asperger's paper published in 1944. Only in the 1980s that people took interest in it. I have indeed given a clue of my AS in an interview at the Jakarta Post with writer Bruce Emond, back in 2008 during the celebration of my 40th birthday : http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/horribly-lonely-in-jakarta-post.html . I quote myself answering Mr. Emond's question: What would people be surprised to know about you?. I answered: I have this strange hormone in me which provokes the feeling of extreme loneliness (even if I am in a crowd). It’s been working inside me since I was a teenager. And that loneliness cannot be cured by just being with someone. When it happens, it usually indicates that I should write music. My best music is written when I am feeling horribly lonely. .............................................................................................................................................. Being lonely, or alone, is a common trait for Aspies. AS, as with the other syndromes in the autistic spectrum, has more to do with social and psychological aspects than a physical one. I won't try to explain everything about AS, since I am not an expert in that, and also since AS is still a mysterious syndrome. The problem is that there are so many speculations about people in the past who allegedly suffered from AS which I find rather disconcerting, such as Thomas Jefferson, Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. Even Mozart! With Mozart, his Tourette Syndrome was pretty convincing, but how would one know that he had AS too? Anyway, there are similar traits of people with TS or AS. What I would like to say is just that we, people with AS and TS could, and even should, behave and socialize quite "normally". I certainly --and am sure I represent other people with AS and TS-- do not want to be treated differently. Yeah, during the Nazi era, people like us were put into concentration camps, but that was the case of everyone "different", such as homosexuals etc. In fact, it is proven that people with AS usually excel in one or even several fields, since a particular part of our brain is highly activated. Therefore, we get people with AS like Bill Gates or the founder & designer of Pokemon game, Satoshi Tajiri. .............................................................................................................................................. Another thing I would like to rectify is the common belief that people with AS can't be "empathic". That's very wrong. In fact, after talking with fellow Aspies, I can tell you that we are just the opposite: we are hypersensitive people. We just don't know, most of the times, how to express it physically. And I think this is where my music comes from : it can express things which I am unable to express through gestures, words or actions. I found a good article about debunking myths of AS and explaining it better here : http://psychcentral.com/lib/debunking-6-myths-about-asperger-syndrome/0008957/2 . So, that convinced me again of what I always said about music : We write, perform and play music to express, not to impress.

Tourette Syndrome and how much I suffered from it

Earlier this week I was taping an interview for one of the most popular talkshows on Indonesian TV, "Tea Time with Desi Anwar". Desi is one of the top reporters in this country, and meeting her in that session convinced me that she deserves her reputation. During the breaks I quickly decided that I will talk about a subject which I never talked publicly before (although everyone who looks at me knows that I suffer from it) which is the Tourette Syndrome (TS), and how I suffered from it. In all the hundreds of interviews with reporters I've done throughout my life, I haven't opened up this matter to any one of them, and they were all nice enough not to touch this matter. At Desi's program, it was me who decided to talk, not her. .............................................................................................................................................. I had TS since as early as I could remember. My mom took me to some psychologists on this matter, but they proved useless, which only much later in life I realized that this is a syndrome that still has no cure for. Needless to say, I got bullied a lot at school with this thing with me, and even now some people look at me in a strange way. TS is a "cluster" disorder: because it is made up of separate symptoms, no two Touretters are the same. It consists of physical twitches, vocal twitches, obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. You can control the obsessions and compulsions for a time, but eventually they have to find an outlet, like an itch that has to be scratched. .......................................................................................................................................... TS automatically brings different side effects in each person. The most common are depression, anxiety (nervousness), seclusion (anti-social) and hyperactivity. In my case, I remember that my mother thought that I had abnormality in my talking or hearing, because until the age of almost 3 years I still wasn't able to speak. Apparently this is quite common, because people with TS tend to be introverted character even from a very early age, so we are not interested in getting in touch with the outside world. This character is also a cause of depression, because often we think about things too deeply, often repetitive due to the muscles and nerves in the brain that works without control. .......................................................................................................................................... Learning deeper about TS, I realized that it not only give disadvantages, but also advantages. Since TS not only affects outer body movements but also inner, it affects how our brain work. Most TS sufferers are hyperactive at some times which then are compensated by strange obsessions. In my case, when music sounds in my brain, it just cannot stop. I just gotta write it down, and sometimes I became so tired (or I had been so tired from working something else) but I couldn't stop myself from writing. And I am obsessed with each and every note; those notes may not be the BEST notes, but those ARE the notes which HAVE TO be in my piece. After writing, obviously I became dead tired, exhausted beyond belief, and I need hours of rest. During that rest I still need to do things extramusical, like reading, blogging or for the last 3 years tweeting (which I admit, am quite addicted to it). Months later I could just forget totally how the piece sounds, but at the time of its writing I couldn't take my focus and attention off it. It was simply Goodbye, world. .......................................................................................................................................... Another obsession of mine is being alone and lonely. I do need so much time to be both. It is ok if I am lonely by being alone, but if I am in a crowd (and mostly when I am performing) this loneliness become unbearable. It is a strange thing that I suffer from being lonely, but I enjoy it on the other hand. It's a kind of mental sadomasochistic attitude. This is one of the reason that I cut many of my performing activities. While my brain cannot stop being creative (I'd rather to call it as such, than call it being obsessed), mentally I can't stand too much being in, or exposed to a crowd. Being a composer really helps in keeping me mentally sane. ............................................................................................................................................. If you have friends or relatives who have TS, although it still can't be cured, much can be done to help them. The most important is your understanding, that we don't want all the tics and we can't suppress it. The symptoms of TS are unstable; it may be reduced depending on the state of the patient, and therefore a calm situation without the pressure / stress overload is very helpful in this regard. During my life, I have also observed that caffeine and sugar somehow exaggerate those tics, that's why I rarely consume 2 things mentioned above. Due to excessive brain nerves work, the majority of people with TS have higher than normal intelligence and a certain creative potential that can be (far) above the average; this can be developed which can be useful for us and the society around us, but we need participation and understanding from the society too. There are so many (I do not know exactly the data) MENSA member (the club of people with IQs categorized as genius) around the world with TS. The role of teachers at schools are very important to explain to students that this disease is "normal" although it's still often considered mysterious. .......................................................................................................................................... The icon of TS sufferer in the music world is W.A. Mozart. My theory is that his father "abused" him of working the whole day and night not only to get money from his work, but also to cool him down of his numerous uncontrolled (and sometimes aggresive or even self destructive perhaps?) body movements. I might be wrong. Of course during his time the syndrome wasn't named as such, since Gilles de Tourette himself (who first diagnosed this disease) was born in 1857, while Mozart died in 1791. There is a good article on TS and also on Mozart here : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117611/ ............................................................................................................................................. If you suffer from TS, or know someone who suffers from it, let's have a chat and share your stories! Tweet me at @anandasukarlan , ok? And why not write your own story in a blog like this?

Half empty or half full, I just drink it!

A few days ago I got a message from India's leading inspirer / motivational speaker / personal brand expert Dr. Amit Nagpal expressing his interest in interviewing me for his highly popular blog "The Joys of Teaching" and it's been published here: http://www.dramitnagpal.co.in/2012/04/ananda-sukarlan-interview-with-piano.html . Now I am sure he expected a positive attitude from me and all other things that would encourage the readers to achieve success with hard work.

I am of course deeply honoured to be interviewed by him, but interviewing an artist or musician for positive motivational purposes is a bit against our nature of being since artists are more (hyper-)sensitive and therefore usually are pessimistic beings. Just remember Gustav Mahler who was obsessed with death (that includes the death of beauty, death of music as we know it, and of course his own physical death). Therefore when a dictator is rising in a country, the first people he gets rid of are scientists and artists: scientists because they know too much, and artists because we sense too much. But anyway, we did the interview and I did quite well (hopefully Dr. Nagpal agrees.. ?) as my first ever interview for this purpose. I expressed my honest opinions about life and music. I might not be the most optimistic person he interviewed, but I didn't predict the end of the world either :)

A big chunk of a work of art is a product of our subconscious mind. It has tremendous treasure in it, of course, but it is also there where phobias, paranoias, pain and other scary things (why do they always start with the letter p?) are hidden. Composing means letting ourselves delve deep into it, which means bringing all our darkest elements to the surface too. As any artist can tell you, when we are stuck with a huge block in our brain at some point while working on a piece, the best solution is try to forget it for a few days, and one day the block disappears by itself. I dunno why, I dunno how, and honestly I don't wanna know. The only problem is the approaching deadline of course, but that's why I try to work on pieces long before their deadlines are due (and I do finish many of them far before the deadline too, although there are some others which were finished, ehm, much after the deadlines were over) so we allow our subconscious minds to solve our mental blocks.

But it is due to our pessimism that we artists continue working. It is a catharsis to our negative feelings inside, even a cure, so that we become more human outside. By putting those dark thoughts on paper we reduce their existence in our subconscious mind. Yup, lots of darkness between those notes, guys! Gustav Mahler was so obsessed with his irregular heartbeat that he could only feel relieved after he wrote it down in his 9th symphony. Of course composing for him was also the cure to the great pain caused by the death of his daughter in 1907 (Mahler himself died in 1911). Mahler's music could sound like that thanks to all the pain he's suffered in his life. In other words, we now enjoy great works of art thanks to the sufferings of the artist. Thanks to Mozart's dad who abused him to overworking, we now have all those great masterpieces!

Talking about being a pessimist or optimist, what is clear to me is that I am not (anymore) a person who wants to change the world. I now realize only politicians can change the world -- to worse. It's due to their similarity to baby diapers: they're always full of sh*t and therefore they should be changed more frequently. If you want to make things better, the first thing is to make yourself better. That's why I never vote during elections, although they always say "vote me to make things better" ; no, no, we vote only to determine who are gonna take our money away. For unknown reasons. During campaign of course there are many promises in the air, but there's much air in the promises too.

I don't even know the secret of success. I am an artist, and an artist is very different than an entertainer. The difference is that an entertainer's job is trying to make everybody happy, while an artist should give his audience his honest expression and the highest possible quality of artistic product, which many times is not what is considered "nice". Just listen to Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" based on that very explicitly politically incorrect poem by Wilfred Owen, and tell me that's it's nice and entertaining! To make listeners happy one should make a piece of music which is easy listening (which means singable and repeated melody and not too many changes of chords), simple text of words (usually about love) and of course a short duration, while an "artistic" piece of music can be anything from a short piece for a piercing piccolo solo to a (more than) hour long symphony for big orchestra and even choir.

When we are feeling low, listening to great music can help us heal the pain. Imagine life without music, and nowadays without your CD players, radio or iPod. So, don't underestimate composers & musicians, eh? One can't realize what one has until one loses it. In this matter, composers have a great advantage: we listen to music all the time in our head. Of course the disadvantage is that we can't turn it on and off whenever we want to. Now you understand why we musicians hate those shopping malls with music blaring from every shop, right?

Some clarifications on the Jakarta Globe article

Yesterday an article, based on an interview with me, was published at The Jakarta Globe, a leading English newspaper in Indonesia. There are a couple of things which I'd like to clarify & rectify, but first, here is a copy-paste of the article, by Juliwati Cokromulio .

‘Limitation is always a source of inspiration for me. In limitation, I find freedom,’ says Ananda Sukarlan. Powerful words from a powerful pianist. Ananda may be based in Europe, but that doesn’t mean his heart isn’t in Jakarta. The 42-year-old has used the money he’s earned over the years, coupled with his talent and experience, to bring the children of the city a chance they might not otherwise have had. His foundation provides scholarships to Indonesians accepted to music schools in Europe, and here in the city it is teaching children how to play their favorite instruments. That’s music to our ears.

What can you tell us about being a musician in Spain? Can you compare it to Jakarta?

Spain is a huge country that hosts a lot of great music performances, making it quite easy to survive as a performing artist.
The same cannot be said of Jakarta. It’s rare that a person can survive here as a musician. Frankly speaking, when I’m in Europe I’m earning money, and when I’m in Indonesia I’m losing money.

Yet you keep coming back on a regular basis.

I recently established a foundation called Yayasan Music Sastra Indonesia to provide scholarships to poor students who want to learn how to play music. I come from a poor family and had a difficult time getting a scholarship, so I know what it’s like. I thought it would be great if I could get a number of sponsors, including myself, to support children here in Indonesia.
We particularly want to help kids below 10 years old who are passionate about music — such as street children — but don’t have the funds to go to the next level.

We didn’t start the foundation with the aim of turning kids into professional musicians, but we wanted to at least introduce them to music so it becomes part of their lives. We hope to increase their awareness and creativity, and reduce the odds that they’ll turn to crime.
The foundation also assists young musicians who have been admitted to conservatories in Europe but can’t afford the fees. YMSI provides financial aid for the first few months.

How do you help kids in Jakarta who want to play music?

We provide teachers, lend the kids musical instruments and assign a mentor to conduct an evaluation every six months. Most of them are beginners and we get them to start off with classics by the likes of Beethoven or Mozart. It’s not that we expect them to become classical musicians, but classical music creates a strong foundation on which to build technical skills.

How many children have participated in the foundation’s activities?

We’ve only be around since 2009. Right now there are two children funded abroad, in Germany and the Netherlands, and about 20 street children in the education program funded by the foundation.

Is it tough to run a foundation in Jakarta?

We spend the majority of our time fund-raising. If we weren’t always busy trying to make money we would be more productive. In Europe, foundations are supported by the government so long as the financial reports are transparent. The people’s taxes filter down to the foundations and organizations. In Indonesia, we never really find out where our taxes go, and the government isn’t exactly bent on developing a music culture.

Have you had any firsthand experience working with the government to promote music?

I’ll give you an example of a case of poor management of funds here in Jakarta. The government awarded Rp 4 billion [$450,000] to DKJ [Dewan Kesenian Jakarta, or the Jakarta Arts Council] in November 2010 and the money was spent by December 2010.
I’ve attended concerts under their management, and more than half of the seats are usually empty. They fail to promote events properly and often end up giving tickets away for free.
In my opinion, audiences should pay for their own seats even if that means keeping ticket prices low. This will tell Jakartans that to enjoy art you have got to pay.
Often, audiences do not respect a performance given for free and walk in and out of the auditorium during the performance. Free tickets achieve nothing in the end.

OK, switching gears, you also work with disabled children.

YMSI now has a sister foundation in Spain for disabled children. The foundation consists of composers who write music for disabled children and provide special instruments. For instance, piano music for the left hand only, a piano without pedals, French horn music written to be played only with the left hand and Braille musical notes for the blind. I’m among those composers. ‘Just a Minute!’ is a piece I wrote to be played with just the left hand.

How does a Twitter user like yourself relate technology with music?

Twitter is powerful. I use it to announce coming events. From an artistic point of view, I am inspired by a writer from Makassar, Aan Mansyur, who writes poems on Twitter using less than 140 characters. That inspired me to write a piece entitled ‘Re-tweeting @aanmansyur.’ It only took 10 minutes.
The essence of the piece is about how to express something clearly and quickly — for me in a space of just 10 minutes — for him in less than 140 characters.

--------

So, I'd like to talk about 2 things: The foundation in Spain for disabled children, and my piece "Retweeting @aanmansyur".

The foundation in Spain does NOT consist of composers. The foundation (called Fundacion Musica Abierta, or Open Music Foundation) commissions composers (most of them Spanish, such as Santiago Lanchares, David del Puerto or myself, if you consider me a Spanish composer hehehe ..) to write music for disabled children. Of course there are existing pieces for, say, left hand alone such as Ravel or Prokofiev's Concerto for left hand piano, but there are no, until this date, easy pieces for left hand alone or other disabled musicians. So that's what the foundation is contributing to the repertoire.

And about my piece, "Retweeting @aanmansyur", its duration is 10 minutes because the music consists of several tweets! You might wonder, what can one do with ONE tweet of 140 characters! I think there were 7 or 8 tweets of Aan Mansyur, I don't remember anymore. Anyway, it's not been premiered yet, since we are waiting for the winner of the Ananda Sukarlan Vocal Award in Surabaya next April to premiere it.

You talkin' to me??

These are some questions & answers that I found scattered around in my emails with journalists, students who are doing research about my music (and me), etc. Thought they would be useful to you.

1. I know that you don't perform much now. but is there any advice for performance anxiety?
An unfortunate answer : NO. Even if one is so so prepared, it happens still ! And different kind of symptoms could happen to different kinds of people : I have the same one as Benjamin Britten's (he was famous for his rituals!) : stomach problems before going on stage.

2. Are there any advices for those who want to make career in performing and composing music?
Well, unfortunately I can't think of any other way but to join & win the competitions, although competitions are so so inartistic . But for me, it was the way. Afterwards I started to re-educate myself musically (meaning , playing for artistic reasons, and not to please the jury. Not even the audience; I do it for the music, which is sometimes too honest to please anyone ) .

3. What is "good music", according to you?
Simple. Good music is that which is always better than its performance(s). While not so good ones depend so much on their performers. I'll put it simpler: imagine Beethoven's Sonatas, or Bach's Well Tempered Klavier or Gustav Mahler's Symphonies. I believe that noone, NOBODY, until now can reach the height of their real quality. And I am a big fan of Glenn Gould's Bach performances and Leonard Bernstein's repeated renderings of Mahler! And there is even a better evidence for this : Rachmaninov as a pianist of his own works repeatedly did performances of the same pieces in different interpretations throughout the years. He, I consider, was the greatest pianist of the history (well I never heard recordings of Liszt!), but he was a step under his greatness as a composer.
That automatically explains my music : I am desperately counting on good performers to make my music better than it is!!

4. From which composers do you learn the most?
From almost everyone, even though it means I learned what I should NOT do in composition. That's why I am interested in "bad" (according to me) composers too (mostly contemporary ones). You can even learn from the hour long Mahler symphony to apply it in a very short piece, or from a complex orchestration of Britten for writing a, say, trio or quartet. Anyway, I do admit that there are "fixed" composers, such as Bach, Britten, Mahler and Stravinsky to turn to every time I got compositional problems (and even blocks, which happen not seldomly.

5. Could you share any visions / plans in the future?
Have you read about Mozart wanting only to write operas and nothing else? Well, I am like that. If I can, I would only write operas and more operas. But it poses a lot of problems, mostly economic ones. And it's so complicated to produce! And I feel that through operas we can express our preoccupations about things like human rights etc . Do you know Stravinsky's saying "Music is unable to express anything " ? Noooo way ! It is so powerful to express, but what is expressed cannot be done in words. Not even in an opera; it is the music, not the words, that reaches directly to the heart of the listener. And it hurts, sometimes.

Horribly lonely in Jakarta Post

A friend of mine sent and reminded me of an article (to be precise, interview) of me at the Jakarta Post supplement The Weekender, published sometime in 2008 after I turned 40. So I post it here to just realize that things haven't changed. Or, the more things change, the more it stays the same, unfortunately. Just one thing I'd like to rectify, today almost 2 years later. Barack Obama is certainly not my idol anymore, and definitely cannot be in the same list with Plato or Mahatma Gandhi. He turns out to be just a great public speaker and fundraiser, but it takes more than that to run a country. And the good thing about him is that he is still black.

Ananda Sukarlan: ‘I write my best music when I feel horribly lonely’
The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Sun, 10/26/2008 3:11 PM |
Pianist Ananda Sukarlan is one of Indonesia’s chosen sons, bringing his musical talent to an international audience. Dutch and U.S. educated, he is now based in Spain, where he lives with his wife, Raquel, and young daughter. The winner of numerous accolades for his music, he achieved several milestones this year. On a personal level, he turned 40: “It feels great, I don’t feel old (am I supposed to?)” he says. On a professional level he composed a hymn for the Olympics that was performed throughout Asia, wrote his first cantata, Ars Amatoria, and his first opera, Mengapa Kau Culik Anak Kami (Why did you kidnap our child?). He is a thoughtful, independent thinker and speaks his mind – the qualities that have helped him succeed in the competitive world of music.

Your first memory?
Afternoon walks with my mom in the hospital garden behind my house, always wearing white (and tiny!) shoes.

And first musical memory?
Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

If you hadn’t gone into music, what would you like to have been?
A poet. I just love poetry, and literature in general (perhaps more than music, since I am always accompanied by a good book) and I’m so envious of those great poets in how they find and combine all those beautiful words. Writing poems should be, I think, easier than writing music, since their materials are words which we use daily ... but why is it so difficult for me?

Your best trait?
I’m a hard worker, and when it comes to music, nobody has ever complained about my professionalism. It may sound arrogant, but for my artistic projects I only want to work with people who are also 200 percent dedicated to their work.

And worst?
If I have to finish (or even start) a piece of music and get stuck, I get sooooo moody. Try not to catch me during those periods!

Happiest moment of your life?
The birth of my daughter ... and the many days afterward.

And saddest?
When a friend or colleague stabs me in the back out of envy (which has happened more than once; well, this is the ugly business of beautiful music).

Who or what has been your most important teacher?
Number one: Life. Number two: Naum Grubert, my professor at the conservatory at The Hague. Number two and a half are all my other previous teachers in Jakarta: Myra Suryadi, Soetarno Soetikno, Laura Susanti, Rudy Laban.

What is the craziest thing you’ve done?
I took a free train ride from Amsterdam to Bordeaux to take part in a piano competition during my student days. I went and stayed in the toilet every time I saw the officer. I had money to buy a ticket for the way back, by the way, because I won first prize.

What would people be surprised to know about you?
I have this strange hormone in me which provokes the feeling of extreme loneliness (even if I am in a crowd). It’s been working inside me since I was a teenager. And that loneliness cannot be cured by just being with someone. When it happens, it usually indicates that I should write music. My best music is written when I am feeling horribly lonely.

The piece of music you wish you had written?
Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto.

Your favorite, hands-down winning culinary dish?
Gudeg Jogja in a particular warung near Gadjah Mada University in Yogya, Valencian Paella, Kobe Wagyu Beef-Steak (accompanied by a Dom Perignon).

The worst stereotype of the classical musician?
Not only of classical musicians, but of all artists, is being a “celebrity” and using art for fame and fortune. The problem is that the Indonesian public still confuses “artists” with “celebrities”. They are totally different! Art has nothing to do with being a celebrity, although celebrities are, in some cases, artists. You don’t really believe Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan are artists, right? One doesn’t have to be handsome to make great music, paintings or poetry.

Who inspires you?
In life, Barack Obama, Plato, Mahatma Gandhi, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. In music, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Beethoven.

You seem such a calm presence. What makes you angry?
Every time injustice is committed against anyone. Which happens to be part of everyday life.

If you could solve one thing in the world today, what would it be?
Eliminate capitalism from this planet. Capitalism has been, and still is, the main catalyst of injustice, massive hunger and poverty in many parts of the world, and the fast-spiraling degradation of the arts since art is a reflection of the society where it belongs.

If you could go back in time, what era would it be and why?
Ancient Greece. I’d love having a symposium with Socrates or Plato (apart from the fact there was no air pollution in those days)!

Dream dinner guests, living or dead?
The old Greek philosophers above, or Andy Warhol. They must have been really cool and crazy people.

Any regrets?
Falling in love with one who I should not have fallen in love with in the past.

Life motto?
“What you think about me is your problem, not my problem.”


+ Bruce Emond
Illustration by Martin Dima

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 !

It ain't that easy ....

Am deeply immersed in the writing of my first (hopefully not the last) opera, Why did you kidnap our son ? . As this will be the first opera ever that uses "real" Indonesian language (not a poetic one), I am having trouble in some parts of it, especially the recitatives. I have no models to follow! (by the way, no complains to the script writer whose work I heavily edited -- not changed! -- , Seno Gumira Ajidarma ; he wrote a fantastic script !)
I've been watching a lot of operas by Mozart, Wagner, Britten and Bellini lately (oh, and Shosty's fantastic Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Enjoyed it sooo much but I don't know if it helps, since I don't understand any Russian. What one should be aware while composing is that the music should be communicative enough to people who do not understand the language of the vocal parts.) to see how they solve the problem of doing their dialogues. It's such a difficult language, Indonesian. I mean, I have written more than 50 songs based on Indonesian poems, but again, it's totally different from doing recitatives. An opera is not just a series of arias. Ohh... Being the first to do one thing is always a problem !

The arias are quite ok, the ensemble part is quite enjoyable to do (especially with Chendra's collaboration for the choreography ; basically all the movements, characteristics and durations came from him, so I am having an easy job on this), they don't pose many problems ... but uugh, those recitatives ! In Indonesian ! Can you imagine ? What shall I do with this bloody language ??? HEEELLLP !!! Aaarrrghh !!!

Another thing is that there is much violence in this opera, that somehow my "dark side" has surfaced ... and made me rather worried . I think this opera will be rated PG .... and all this after writing my new song-cycle "Love and Variations", and my sweetest, delicious, loveable cantata Ars Amatoria that includes a children choir !