Oh dear, did I write that Mahler is the greatest composer of all time in my last entry? But I've been saying that about Stravinsky too. And Britten. And Sibelius. And Mozart. And ... many others. Oh dear, it shows how unfaithful I am, eh.
Anyway, I do think that Mahler is one of them, if I have to mention my top 5 composers. Since I was listening to his great (and long! It's a bloody 70-minute piece) "Das Lied von der Erde" last week, I couldn't help uttering my total admiration and blind love to that music. And I do admit, I am obsessed again, as I have been about 10 years ago with him. So, in the course of 5 days, I have listened to "Das Lied" about 4 or 5 times complete, from beginning to end. And I plan to do it again one of these days. More than once, most probably.
What I have been lately thinking is about the "alcoholic" elements of the poems which Mahler used for "Das Lied", and how it became an important part of this Sturm und Drang thing of those Romantics. Some poems are by the Chinese poet Li Po, and in his poems he poignantly mixed the drunken euphoria with a deep sadness. A translation in English on one of his songs which I googled would sound sort of like this:
"The wine in the golden cup calls us, but first let me sing you a song of sorrow which shall ring laughingly in your soul. When sorrow comes the gardens of the soul lie waste, joy and song fade and die: Dark is life, dark is death. Master of this house! Your cellar is full of golden wine! This lyre I shall call mine, for emptying the glass and sounding the lyre are things that go together. A full beaker of wine at the right time is worth more than all the riches of this world: Dark is life, dark is death. The sky is endlessly blue, and the earth will long remain, and bloom in Spring. But you, Man, how long will you remain? Not even a hundred years shall you enjoy all the mouldering trinkets of this earth! A wild, ghostly figure crouches in the moonlight on the tombs - it is an Ape! Listen, its howling cuts through the sweet scent of Life. Now, drink the wine! Now is the time, comrades! Empty your golden cups to the lees! Dark is life, dark is death."
That reminds me of another dark, pessimistic and "alcoholic" poem, "The Age of Anxiety" this time by a Westerner, the great W.H. Auden, which I also have been obsessed by, many years ago. The poem talks about man's quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialized world, set in a wartime bar in New York City, the most capitalistic spot on earth then (if it were now, I would say Hongkong or Singapore, eh? Or even Jakarta).
In both works of art, drinking becomes the symbol, a part of communal existence in the search of the meaning of life. One just wants to remain intoxicated .. and to sing, either with poetry or with a symphony. Both deal with the loss of personal identity and the gaining of total identity in a Bergsonian idea of the all and the nothing being equal. And both end with a farewell full of agony, once the effect of the alcohol dried up. All the four characters in Auden's poem thus said their farewells:
MALIN: "My deeds forbid me
To linger longer. I'll leave my friend,
Be sorry by myself. I must go away"
EMBLE: "I must slip off
To the woods to worry"
ROSETTA: "I want to retire
To some private place and pray to be made
A good girl."
QUANT: "I must go away
With my terrors until I have taught them to sing" (W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety)
But also I was struck by a tweet by a certain @ravatama at twitter who said (and I retweeted it yesterday) : There are only two types of honest people in the world, small children and drunk people.
And therefore I believe them: Li-Po, Mahler and Auden. Apart from them being drunk I also believe that they remain small children when they wrote those mentioned works. No grown ups could create such masterpieces.
viernes, 4 de marzo de 2011
martes, 1 de marzo de 2011
A cat has nine lives, composers do too. But not more.
I start enjoying myself preparing programs for my radio show, Eric & Ananda Classical Eve. Since next Monday (March 7th) will be the birthday of my favorite composer Maurice Ravel, I tweeted and asked which favorite piece of Ravel should I broadcast. It turned out to be unnecessary, since we all know what it is. Hundreds of replies through twitter vote for: BOLERO! ....
... which led to another composer who I knew & worked with, the late Russian Jew Alfred Schnittke. The reason was because he parodied "Bolero" in part of his music for the film "Meister und Margarita". And that led to another topic, a conversation I had with him in one of the dinners we had back in 1993. He talked about "the curse of the 9th symphony" ; he was at that time writing his 6th. "I have 3 more to go", he said, and when I asked why, "well, noone except 'that guy' survived to write a 10th". I must keep "that guy" a secret for now, since I will reveal his name in my radio show next Sunday and tell you that in fact the curse wasn't broken at all by "that guy". Someone did die from his 9th symphony. It was from Schnittke that I learned for the first time about that particular curse, that nobody could survive further than writing 9 symphonies. Since then I lost contact with Mr. Schnittke, partly because he was already weak (he had 2 strokes in the previous years) and of course partly since communication was not that easy then as it is now, with emails. So it was my last contact with him. I performed under his supervision, by the way, his amazing Piano Quintet dedicated in memory of his mother.
Now the greatest composer of all time (at least according to me) Gustav Mahler was so afraid of this curse, that he took every way he could to NOT write a 9th after he finished his 8th. He wrote "A symphony for tenor, alto and orchestra" which is called "Das Lied von der Erde" (The song of the earth) in 6 big (when Gus said big, he meant REALLY big. The 6th and last movement "Der Abschied" alone lasts for half an hour, almost as long as the total of the 5 preceding movements) movements. He thought he could get away with it. Therefore he wrote his real 9th afterwards, and ...yes you guessed it right. He died when he started writing his 10th. He finished one movement of the 10th, by the way, but it was just one farewell too many. He succumbed to the curse : a composer should leave the earth with his 9th symphony. Just like Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Dvorak, and more after him: Ralph Vaughan Williams (he died when he just started to write his 9th, therefore his "official" number was just 8), Alexander Glazounov, Roger Sessions and of course .... Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998). I think there are more names. I remember I had goosebumps when I learned Schnittke's death, especially because I talked with his publisher a few days after, asking what he was composing when he got the fatal stroke and died a few days later. He had the same fate as Vaughan Williams.
RIP, maestro Schnittke. I'll never forget our meeting, our working together and of course your great music.
This entry I dedicate to my good friends, Spain's most prominent composers of symphonies today David del Puerto and Jesus Rueda. Both of them, in their late 40s (Jesus Rueda will celebrate his 50th this year) had written 3 great symphonies. May they be granted long and productive musical lives !
... which led to another composer who I knew & worked with, the late Russian Jew Alfred Schnittke. The reason was because he parodied "Bolero" in part of his music for the film "Meister und Margarita". And that led to another topic, a conversation I had with him in one of the dinners we had back in 1993. He talked about "the curse of the 9th symphony" ; he was at that time writing his 6th. "I have 3 more to go", he said, and when I asked why, "well, noone except 'that guy' survived to write a 10th". I must keep "that guy" a secret for now, since I will reveal his name in my radio show next Sunday and tell you that in fact the curse wasn't broken at all by "that guy". Someone did die from his 9th symphony. It was from Schnittke that I learned for the first time about that particular curse, that nobody could survive further than writing 9 symphonies. Since then I lost contact with Mr. Schnittke, partly because he was already weak (he had 2 strokes in the previous years) and of course partly since communication was not that easy then as it is now, with emails. So it was my last contact with him. I performed under his supervision, by the way, his amazing Piano Quintet dedicated in memory of his mother.
Now the greatest composer of all time (at least according to me) Gustav Mahler was so afraid of this curse, that he took every way he could to NOT write a 9th after he finished his 8th. He wrote "A symphony for tenor, alto and orchestra" which is called "Das Lied von der Erde" (The song of the earth) in 6 big (when Gus said big, he meant REALLY big. The 6th and last movement "Der Abschied" alone lasts for half an hour, almost as long as the total of the 5 preceding movements) movements. He thought he could get away with it. Therefore he wrote his real 9th afterwards, and ...yes you guessed it right. He died when he started writing his 10th. He finished one movement of the 10th, by the way, but it was just one farewell too many. He succumbed to the curse : a composer should leave the earth with his 9th symphony. Just like Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Dvorak, and more after him: Ralph Vaughan Williams (he died when he just started to write his 9th, therefore his "official" number was just 8), Alexander Glazounov, Roger Sessions and of course .... Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998). I think there are more names. I remember I had goosebumps when I learned Schnittke's death, especially because I talked with his publisher a few days after, asking what he was composing when he got the fatal stroke and died a few days later. He had the same fate as Vaughan Williams.
RIP, maestro Schnittke. I'll never forget our meeting, our working together and of course your great music.
This entry I dedicate to my good friends, Spain's most prominent composers of symphonies today David del Puerto and Jesus Rueda. Both of them, in their late 40s (Jesus Rueda will celebrate his 50th this year) had written 3 great symphonies. May they be granted long and productive musical lives !
jueves, 17 de febrero de 2011
An Orgasmic Overture for piano & orchestra
Can music be erotic? If you think of Sigmund Freud's statement that describes music (or arts in general, I believe) is the sublimation of sexual desire, then one should ask if music can NOT be erotic.
There are a lot of experiments in this piece that I am doing. It is commissioned to be premiered at the birthday concert of Erza S.T, founder of Indonesia Opera Society and producer of several musical events, and a gay activist himself. I am meant to write a short & festive (read: loud!) piece for piano & orchestra. Originally I was inspired by the legend of Fountain of Eternal Youth (which would really be appropriate for a birthday piece), where it was said that it was a secret place as a tryst for Alexander the Great with his lover (you know that he was bisexual, a very common thing in Greece which in his time was not controversial). So the image of a fountain with all the young & beautiful people with shining auras around it became me and I toyed with the crazy idea of writing music without any melodies. There are themes to be developed of course, but what you remember after hearing the music will be its exhilarating energy and harmonic progressions, not melodies or catchy tunes.
I acquired the chords from watching the splendorous sky in Galicia during sunsets, where I toured for more than a week in the beginning of February. You can't get that spectacular gradations of colours anywhere else on this planet, especially mixed with the rough waves breaking themselves on the jagged rocks at the Atlantic Ocean. That landscape easily transformed into the modulations of strange, gorgeous chords in my inner ear, and I just wrote them down without writing the real music. The point of departure of composing this piece is not unlike a painter, collecting the colours of the paint he's gonna use for his painting. I have decided that the brooding atmosphere of the sunset would not influence my music this time, I just use the colours and make something completely new from it. I hope I will succeed. I use those chords & modulations for a totally happy, boisterous & exuberant piece of music. I'll write the music when I am in a better mood.
But those "fountains" became so manneristic in the piece, and I swear to you, it's like they wrote themselves in the development of the music. The music reminds me of Leonard Bernstein's saying, that making music is like making love, but with hundreds of people. So this piece turns out into a kind of perpetual orgasm ... for 6 minutes. I still call it the Fountain of Youth, of course... and I hope this serves as an elixir of youth to those who listen to it next August.
There are a lot of experiments in this piece that I am doing. It is commissioned to be premiered at the birthday concert of Erza S.T, founder of Indonesia Opera Society and producer of several musical events, and a gay activist himself. I am meant to write a short & festive (read: loud!) piece for piano & orchestra. Originally I was inspired by the legend of Fountain of Eternal Youth (which would really be appropriate for a birthday piece), where it was said that it was a secret place as a tryst for Alexander the Great with his lover (you know that he was bisexual, a very common thing in Greece which in his time was not controversial). So the image of a fountain with all the young & beautiful people with shining auras around it became me and I toyed with the crazy idea of writing music without any melodies. There are themes to be developed of course, but what you remember after hearing the music will be its exhilarating energy and harmonic progressions, not melodies or catchy tunes.
I acquired the chords from watching the splendorous sky in Galicia during sunsets, where I toured for more than a week in the beginning of February. You can't get that spectacular gradations of colours anywhere else on this planet, especially mixed with the rough waves breaking themselves on the jagged rocks at the Atlantic Ocean. That landscape easily transformed into the modulations of strange, gorgeous chords in my inner ear, and I just wrote them down without writing the real music. The point of departure of composing this piece is not unlike a painter, collecting the colours of the paint he's gonna use for his painting. I have decided that the brooding atmosphere of the sunset would not influence my music this time, I just use the colours and make something completely new from it. I hope I will succeed. I use those chords & modulations for a totally happy, boisterous & exuberant piece of music. I'll write the music when I am in a better mood.
But those "fountains" became so manneristic in the piece, and I swear to you, it's like they wrote themselves in the development of the music. The music reminds me of Leonard Bernstein's saying, that making music is like making love, but with hundreds of people. So this piece turns out into a kind of perpetual orgasm ... for 6 minutes. I still call it the Fountain of Youth, of course... and I hope this serves as an elixir of youth to those who listen to it next August.
lunes, 14 de febrero de 2011
The truth on Dalam Doaku
Today's Valentine's Day, and with the many requests for my "top hit" Dalam Doaku for my radio program yesterday Sunday prior to the V day I was asked by several fans of our program thru my facebook about this particular song and what was the circumstances of my composing it.
To tell you the truth, it was far from any kind of turbulence caused by love. It was written during the darkest hours at my hotel in Antwerp, Belgium in 2007. I was touring to 3 cities at that cold January winter (and it was snowing, yes). Since Belgium is a small country, I stayed in one city, which is Antwerp and in the afternoons before the concerts someone from the organizer picked me up and took me to the cities where I played (it was Ghent, Bruxelles and Antwerp itself). I didn't know anyone in Belgium at that time, so I was terribly, horribly lonely. Winter was severe, and the sun already set at about 4 p.m. I always arrived at my hotel around or after midnight after the post-concert party (and pretty drunk too), and I couldn't sleep because of both exhaustion and loneliness, so on the second night I decided to compose instead of being in a bad mood trying to sleep. It was also a method to forget the same repeated music I played in those concerts. At that time I brought Sapardi Djoko Damono's book of poems everywhere with me, since I was completely in love with them, and I felt that his poem Dalam Doaku clicked with the darkness of the nights outside the window. I composed in bed till it would be almost dawn, and I just fell asleep with music papers scattered all around me till just before lunch time (I always skipped breakfast). After the tour finished, I tried it on my piano back home and changed some small trivial things (being drunk meant that I made some mistake in writing some chords!), and even during the recording with Bernadeta Astari & Joseph Kristanto we did change one bar of the baritone part although the score was already published. In fact, I do not have that revised bar with me, only Joseph Kristanto had it in his copy (I hope he hasn't erased it since it was done, as I remember, in pencil).
And a few days prior to the Valentine's, a friend of mine, young pianist Felix Justin made a very beautifully done video clip on the recording. Check it out, when it's finished it could bring tears in your eyes, I tell you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhGGGKMIApg
Dalam Doaku in fact, if I am not mistaken, became the first piece that was part of my first cantata, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love). Originally it was written with the accompaniment of english horn, flute, piano & a keyboard (which is in fact a kind of short score for a string orchestra). One day I would like to orchestrate it.
So, pretty boring eh? You'd regret asking the reason it was composed, right? And you might ask, is there a secret message in this song, just like most of my music? The answer my friend, is yes. But as it is defined by the word, then it has to be kept so :) . If you wanna clue: it has nothing to do with the words. The magic craft is "polyphony".
To tell you the truth, it was far from any kind of turbulence caused by love. It was written during the darkest hours at my hotel in Antwerp, Belgium in 2007. I was touring to 3 cities at that cold January winter (and it was snowing, yes). Since Belgium is a small country, I stayed in one city, which is Antwerp and in the afternoons before the concerts someone from the organizer picked me up and took me to the cities where I played (it was Ghent, Bruxelles and Antwerp itself). I didn't know anyone in Belgium at that time, so I was terribly, horribly lonely. Winter was severe, and the sun already set at about 4 p.m. I always arrived at my hotel around or after midnight after the post-concert party (and pretty drunk too), and I couldn't sleep because of both exhaustion and loneliness, so on the second night I decided to compose instead of being in a bad mood trying to sleep. It was also a method to forget the same repeated music I played in those concerts. At that time I brought Sapardi Djoko Damono's book of poems everywhere with me, since I was completely in love with them, and I felt that his poem Dalam Doaku clicked with the darkness of the nights outside the window. I composed in bed till it would be almost dawn, and I just fell asleep with music papers scattered all around me till just before lunch time (I always skipped breakfast). After the tour finished, I tried it on my piano back home and changed some small trivial things (being drunk meant that I made some mistake in writing some chords!), and even during the recording with Bernadeta Astari & Joseph Kristanto we did change one bar of the baritone part although the score was already published. In fact, I do not have that revised bar with me, only Joseph Kristanto had it in his copy (I hope he hasn't erased it since it was done, as I remember, in pencil).
And a few days prior to the Valentine's, a friend of mine, young pianist Felix Justin made a very beautifully done video clip on the recording. Check it out, when it's finished it could bring tears in your eyes, I tell you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhGGGKMIApg
Dalam Doaku in fact, if I am not mistaken, became the first piece that was part of my first cantata, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love). Originally it was written with the accompaniment of english horn, flute, piano & a keyboard (which is in fact a kind of short score for a string orchestra). One day I would like to orchestrate it.
So, pretty boring eh? You'd regret asking the reason it was composed, right? And you might ask, is there a secret message in this song, just like most of my music? The answer my friend, is yes. But as it is defined by the word, then it has to be kept so :) . If you wanna clue: it has nothing to do with the words. The magic craft is "polyphony".
jueves, 10 de febrero de 2011
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.
‘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.
martes, 18 de enero de 2011
Rapso and not so rappy
The winner of Ananda Sukarlan Award last year, the just-turned 21-year-old Edith Widayani had a big success in her short visit to her home country during the turn of the year with concerts in Makasar and Jakarta. She has played my 4th Rapsodia Nusantara several times during this visit, and now that it's uploaded to youtube the interest is even more mounting. She performed that piece quite well during the ASA competition in July 2010, but it is only now that the piece has really matured in her hands and that its virtuosity flourished in her performances. She had made a paper for her school (now she's studying at the Texas Christian Univ. under the guidance of Tamas Ungar) about my Rapsodias, and we did an interview through email several months ago.
Before you read this, you might like to refresh your memory with another entry of mine here: http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2009/09/yeah-title-isnt-mine-but-music-is.html
So, here is an excerpt of our interview:
How would you describe your compositions? Like for example, Liszt’s are more of improvisational pieces. What compositional technique do you use composing these Rhapsodies?
I try to experiment new kinds of forms and ways of "marriages" between the two folksongs in one Rapsodia. My only Rapsodia until now which is based on one (instead of two) folksong is Rapsodia no.4. Its form is variations on the theme "Buka Pintu".
But characterwise, I always try to make the lighter and improvisational ones (hence true to its title, "rapsodia") in the uneven numbers (1,3,5), and more "serious" or adventurous (or someone has defined it as "rather weird pianistic stuff") in the even numbers. It also means that the even numbers are usually longer in duration and more complex in its forms, and the uneven numbers more "flashy" and more a showpiece to end a concert with. I know that it is diametrically opposed to its title, "rhapsodic", but in my case I think "Rapsodia" becomes just an excuse to my way of tinkering new ways of treating the basic materials, in this case, main melodies of folksongs.
Does the Indonesian pentatonic scale affect you in any way for composing the Rhapsodies? Do you think that it sets a parameter in which you have to work in?
Not until now, although it existed in disguises in Rapsodia 2 and 4. Now it is magnified ( I would even say "glorified"!) in Rapsodia 8 which I am writing now, based on "Janger" , a Balinese popular folktune. In its existence at the moment it is exclusively based on the Balinese pentatonic scale, but using the most "un-oriental" form which is a passacaglia (therefore it doesn't sound too Balinese, or perhaps let's say that it could sound as if Bach had travelled through the time machine to the 21st century .. and finds himself in Bali !)
We know that there are a lot of Indonesian traditional instruments, of which the folk songs might have been performed by. Is there any particular Indonesian musical instrument that is presented in your Rhapsodies? If so, what are they, and do they make the music sounds more characteristically Indonesian?
It's the Balinese gamelan in the Rapsodia I'm doing now (no.8). Otherwise I treat the piano as it is, a simple western instrument called the piano!
How do you decide which folk song to be featured in your Rhapsodies? Is there any categorization in any way that makes you grouped them?
Well, I have to admit, having lived 23 years in Europe I don't know much of Indonesian folk music. So I listen to them through youtube (!!), transcribe the melodies and look for the melodic materials which suits well to my compositional technique in every Rapsodia to be worked on. I try to do each Rapsodia representing a province of Indonesia, but then I broke that rule in the 2nd Rapsodia : I used Tokecang (from West Java) and Cublak Cublak Suweng (from Central Java) : just because I had the idea of making a double fugue and needed 2 themes with a common intervalic motif. Coincidentally those 2 songs are both children folktunes (but Rapsodia 2 turns out to be one of the most difficult technically, nothing to do with children to play it!)
(You can watch Edith Widayani perform my Rapsodia Nusantara no.4 here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoD4hTz1_Ws )
Before you read this, you might like to refresh your memory with another entry of mine here: http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com/2009/09/yeah-title-isnt-mine-but-music-is.html
So, here is an excerpt of our interview:
How would you describe your compositions? Like for example, Liszt’s are more of improvisational pieces. What compositional technique do you use composing these Rhapsodies?
I try to experiment new kinds of forms and ways of "marriages" between the two folksongs in one Rapsodia. My only Rapsodia until now which is based on one (instead of two) folksong is Rapsodia no.4. Its form is variations on the theme "Buka Pintu".
But characterwise, I always try to make the lighter and improvisational ones (hence true to its title, "rapsodia") in the uneven numbers (1,3,5), and more "serious" or adventurous (or someone has defined it as "rather weird pianistic stuff") in the even numbers. It also means that the even numbers are usually longer in duration and more complex in its forms, and the uneven numbers more "flashy" and more a showpiece to end a concert with. I know that it is diametrically opposed to its title, "rhapsodic", but in my case I think "Rapsodia" becomes just an excuse to my way of tinkering new ways of treating the basic materials, in this case, main melodies of folksongs.
Does the Indonesian pentatonic scale affect you in any way for composing the Rhapsodies? Do you think that it sets a parameter in which you have to work in?
Not until now, although it existed in disguises in Rapsodia 2 and 4. Now it is magnified ( I would even say "glorified"!) in Rapsodia 8 which I am writing now, based on "Janger" , a Balinese popular folktune. In its existence at the moment it is exclusively based on the Balinese pentatonic scale, but using the most "un-oriental" form which is a passacaglia (therefore it doesn't sound too Balinese, or perhaps let's say that it could sound as if Bach had travelled through the time machine to the 21st century .. and finds himself in Bali !)
We know that there are a lot of Indonesian traditional instruments, of which the folk songs might have been performed by. Is there any particular Indonesian musical instrument that is presented in your Rhapsodies? If so, what are they, and do they make the music sounds more characteristically Indonesian?
It's the Balinese gamelan in the Rapsodia I'm doing now (no.8). Otherwise I treat the piano as it is, a simple western instrument called the piano!
How do you decide which folk song to be featured in your Rhapsodies? Is there any categorization in any way that makes you grouped them?
Well, I have to admit, having lived 23 years in Europe I don't know much of Indonesian folk music. So I listen to them through youtube (!!), transcribe the melodies and look for the melodic materials which suits well to my compositional technique in every Rapsodia to be worked on. I try to do each Rapsodia representing a province of Indonesia, but then I broke that rule in the 2nd Rapsodia : I used Tokecang (from West Java) and Cublak Cublak Suweng (from Central Java) : just because I had the idea of making a double fugue and needed 2 themes with a common intervalic motif. Coincidentally those 2 songs are both children folktunes (but Rapsodia 2 turns out to be one of the most difficult technically, nothing to do with children to play it!)
(You can watch Edith Widayani perform my Rapsodia Nusantara no.4 here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoD4hTz1_Ws )
jueves, 6 de enero de 2011
Is it really the food of love?
It is quite superfluous to talk about my very tiny (1-minute) piece for trumpet solo, written down in perhaps even less than 1 minute. But "E-A Theme Song" is now used for the opening of our (with my friend, the terrific trumpetist Eric Awuy) radio show and many of you have showed much interest in it. I am, of course, honoured & appreciate your kind words.
First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to my friends Ella & Tika from Delta FM Radio who have trusted me to have my own radio show. Since I was feeling pretty insecure about doing it alone, plus having the problem of distance (Spain to Indonesia is not what you call next door, eh?) I have asked Eric Awuy, who has had some experience on being a radio anchor to be my partner. Our show then is called Eric & Ananda Classical Eve, and after our first show last Sunday suddenly an acute curiosity entered in me on how the first Oprah or Larry King show had been. I mean, both Eric & me (well, I did more, I think) made so many silly mistakes! Eric & Ananda Classical Eve will be aired LIVE every Sunday evening at 8-10 p.m, West Indonesia Time. Me from Spain, and Eric from the Delta FM studio in Jakarta. It's all about classical music : symphonies, vocal & instrumental works, opera etc. Real opera, not Opera Winfrey!
Back to the E-A theme, it was written during one of our meetings at the radio. You have asked me why it sounds so sad. Well, the circumstances weren't so much so. We had some nice laughs in that meeting, the atmosphere was quite relaxed at that time. And we thought that the theme song should be built on the motif E and A, and should involve the trumpet -- Eric Awuy, naturally. Suddenly this theme took shape in my head, and you know how music could do that to you: it's like a dream, where you can hear everything in one split second (they say that Mozart could hear an entire SYMPHONY in one split second!). So I asked for a paper and wrote it down quickly.... which made me quite surprised myself, since it has nothing to do with how we were at that time : happy, relaxed and cheerful. I remember three people wearing purple shirts at that time: Ella from the radio, Chendra and myself. That colour did have an effect on my music, I think. But it is also from music that we know ourselves better, and know what is really inside us or our heart. Music doesn't deceive oneself. It's too honest. And it's too scary. Too scary, since sometimes it brings out things which one would like to hide deep down inside unfrequented spots in us .....
If you want to hear the theme, and know more about our radio show, you can hear it at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eric-Ananda-Classical-Eve/186138124730174
First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to my friends Ella & Tika from Delta FM Radio who have trusted me to have my own radio show. Since I was feeling pretty insecure about doing it alone, plus having the problem of distance (Spain to Indonesia is not what you call next door, eh?) I have asked Eric Awuy, who has had some experience on being a radio anchor to be my partner. Our show then is called Eric & Ananda Classical Eve, and after our first show last Sunday suddenly an acute curiosity entered in me on how the first Oprah or Larry King show had been. I mean, both Eric & me (well, I did more, I think) made so many silly mistakes! Eric & Ananda Classical Eve will be aired LIVE every Sunday evening at 8-10 p.m, West Indonesia Time. Me from Spain, and Eric from the Delta FM studio in Jakarta. It's all about classical music : symphonies, vocal & instrumental works, opera etc. Real opera, not Opera Winfrey!
Back to the E-A theme, it was written during one of our meetings at the radio. You have asked me why it sounds so sad. Well, the circumstances weren't so much so. We had some nice laughs in that meeting, the atmosphere was quite relaxed at that time. And we thought that the theme song should be built on the motif E and A, and should involve the trumpet -- Eric Awuy, naturally. Suddenly this theme took shape in my head, and you know how music could do that to you: it's like a dream, where you can hear everything in one split second (they say that Mozart could hear an entire SYMPHONY in one split second!). So I asked for a paper and wrote it down quickly.... which made me quite surprised myself, since it has nothing to do with how we were at that time : happy, relaxed and cheerful. I remember three people wearing purple shirts at that time: Ella from the radio, Chendra and myself. That colour did have an effect on my music, I think. But it is also from music that we know ourselves better, and know what is really inside us or our heart. Music doesn't deceive oneself. It's too honest. And it's too scary. Too scary, since sometimes it brings out things which one would like to hide deep down inside unfrequented spots in us .....
If you want to hear the theme, and know more about our radio show, you can hear it at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eric-Ananda-Classical-Eve/186138124730174
jueves, 2 de diciembre de 2010
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.
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.
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