>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
>> David Plylar: Good
evening everybody.
My name is David Plylar and I'm
a music specialist at the Library
of Congress and I'm very
pleased to be here tonight
with some special people.
First we have two members of
WindSync; Jack Marquardt, clarinet,
and Tracy Jacobson, bassoon.
And they are going to be
speaking with us a bit
about their performance and
what they're up to these days.
And in particular about
the new pieces going
to be premiered tonight
by composer Paul Lansky.
Paul Lansky is a major, major
figure in, I don't like to say
in electronic or computer music
because he's a major figure in music
in general, and so we're
very pleased to have him here
because he's doing a lot, kind of
in all realms of music these days.
He just recently retired
from Princeton University
after teaching there
for 45 years, I think.
[ Inaudible Response ]
[ Laughter ]
And I'm also pleased to say that
his wife Hannah is here who is on,
who provided the voice for the vocal
part in Six Fantasies on a Poem
by Thomas Campion in 1973.
Is that?
[ Inaudible Response ]
Sixty-eight, '78.
Okay so look like I have the sources
here to be able to correct me
with my frequent errors, but I,
so Paul Lansky was commissioned
by the Caroline Royal Just
Fund in the Library of Congress
and the Chamber of Music
Society of Lincoln Center.
He wrote a new piece called
the Long and Short of it.
So let's please welcome our guests.
[ Applause ]
So I thought we'd dive, we're
going to start with a focus
on the wind quintet because
our players need some time just
to get ready just before the concert
as well, but I'm going to dive
into it with wind quintet
repertoire.
I mean what do you have, for the
most part, is a lot of new music,
new transcriptions,
things like that.
How do you go about kind
of building programs
and doing the things you do?
What is it that draws
you to the ensemble?
>> Jack Marquardt: Well with
this program in particular,
we were so inspired by the fact
that the Long and Short of it,
the world premiere piece
tonight was inspired by one
of the seminal pieces of the wind
literature, the Mozart Gran Partita.
So what we decided to do was
pick three pairs of pieces,
three pieces that are
standards to the one literature;
Barbara Summer music, Antoine
Reicha Opus 88 number two quintet
in E flat major, and the Mozart Gran
Partita arrangement we'll be doing
of the Adagio movement.
And we decided to pair
each one with a piece
that either inspired directly
or indirectly, in a way.
So with the, obviously with
the Mozart Gran Partita,
there's the Paul Lansky,
the Long and Short of it.
And then with the Maslanka,
sorry with the Reicha we're actually
pairing, Antoine Reicha was one
of the most prolific composers
and one of the earliest composers
of the wind quintet in
the early 19 century.
He's often kind of seen as
the same way as Haydn was
to the string quartet, but
only for the wind quintet.
So he's kind of the
grandfather of the wind quintet
and David Maslanka is one
of the most prolifical writers
today for the wind quintet.
So we kind of paired these two.
They're going to bookend into the
program and then for Summer Music,
we're actually pairing it with
a piece called Winter Music
by a contemporary composer
named Adam Shurnberg
who lives in Los Angeles.
He's in his mid-30's, so he's still
kind of young and it's a piece
that he found direct inspiration
from and so that's kind
of how we put this program together.
More generally we like to do
a lot of our own arrangements.
So this program actually only
has one of our own arrangements,
the Mozart Gran Partita,
but generally you'll find
that almost 90% of our programs
are our own arrangements.
Not just the pieces
written for winds,
but orchestra, piano,
string quartet.
It really runs the gamut of
anything is possible for us to do.
>> David Plylar: Do all five of
you participate in that process
or is it do you kind of
switch roles every once
in a while, take the lead, and --
>> Tracy Jacobson: Well
Jack is our primary arranger
and then once Jack has put
the arrangement on the page,
it's a very collaborative
process from there.
Where we're taking a pencil or
a pen to the part and switching
around parts and seeing what's,
what really works best for all of us
and once we come up with
that then we perform it
and change it all again.
And that's one of the
really exciting things
about our particular experience
playing in wind quintet,
that we have so many
performances that we're really able
to in every performance have a very
different experience with the music
and be very playful
and learn new things
about the music every
time we play it.
>> David Plylar: Well that strikes
me as a very convenient scenario
to be able to have that ability to
have that flexibility on the fly
and make those decisions
depending on where you are without,
you know causing any, too much
consternation to the transcriber.
>> Tracy Jacobson:
Exactly [laughter].
>> David Plylar: Well maybe looking
at the new piece, the Long and Short
of it, I want to ask Paul
about it, but first I want
to hear what you have to say about
what you see as a relationship
between that piece and
the Adagio for the Mozart
or like how does it fit it,
how does the inspiration seem
to trace to you?
>> Tracy Jacobson:
Well it's very obvious,
even from the first few notes of
Paul's piece because even just
with the tempo marking and
the way that it's written,
it looks like the Mozart and there's
a particular rhythm that's present
in the Gran Partita which actually,
even before we played Paul's piece
we actually played the arrangement
of the Partita.
So we were in that mindset
when we first approached
the Long and Short of it.
And so when we first began, it
was this feeling of familiarity
from the beginning because
we were already familiar
with this same rhythm
and the melody as well.
It references very directly
the melody in the Gran Partita,
but with some very key changes and
then one of the most exciting things
about playing this piece is
seeing where it goes differently.
And to find those differences
and then with many
of the different movements,
they're not as directly tied
to that original, that original
theme and that original kind
of motor behind what's
going on in the melody.
So there's a lot of really
interesting wind textures
that are very well
written for wind quintet.
I must say that a lot of, a lot of
wind quintets that we've attempted
to perform or attempted to play
are not necessarily written
by wind players and they
don't understand the need
to breathe [laughter]
and some of these things.
So we really have appreciated
Paul's writing.
>> David Plylar: I think what's so
fascinating about the inspiration
from the Gran Partita is not,
you know one of the
beautiful melodies with,
actually from this accompanimental
figure that's so present throughout
and that's the launching point for
this whole piece and I think that is
so cool that the, he's
actually taken the heart beat
out of the Gran Partita and kind
of injected his own voice to it.
Whereas a lot of times
it's much more
of a straight forward inspiration.
So it's really amazing to see
that kind of, that heart beat kind
of wove into this really
amazing texture of this piece.
Well Paul, what are your thoughts
on maybe the genesis of it?
What led you to this idea as
having this be a kind of kernel
for the start of a wind quintet?
>> Paul Lansky: It's funny.
I don't really know how it happened.
I know the Mozart and I love the
Mozart and the Mozart always seemed
to me to epitomize
breathing in wind instruments,
you know you can imagine,
you can imagine string
instruments playing through them.
The basic rhythm goes --
[ Singing Out Rhythm ]
Which is a long note and a short
note and that's the genesis
of the title, Long and Short of it.
I think it's an inspired title.
[ Laughter ]
And so my idea, I started
out, I can't remember
where I started out in this.
I usually don't write pieces
in chronological order.
You know things, I think I actually
started with the first movement
or the second movement, but the idea
behind using the accompaniments sort
of as the DNA of the piece, as
it were, was, came pretty quickly
and I had mixed feelings when
I heard that we were going
to play the Mozart because
Mozart does it so well.
[ Laughter ]
And, but that's okay.
Okay.
>> David Plylar: Well one thing
about your title is I've
always thought that you,
you had a little certain sense of
humor similar to Milton Babbitt
with whom you studied
in terms of the kind
of clever titles [laughter].
One of the, did it get to a
point that was made earlier
about the writing well for winds,
I haven't been able to spend time
with the score, but I believe
that there's certain focuses
on different instruments
in the kind of the interim,
intermediary kind of
shorter movements.
I believe that that's true
and to me that strikes me
as a really smart way to give other
players a break even though I think
you're still playing, but [laughter]
maybe you can talk to that
or is that something that
you're very much thinking about?
Just knowing that these are going
to be, that there's a chops issue
as well as other types of --
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah, I
thought it would be a good way
to exercise the different
things that instruments can do.
I saved the last one
for the clarinet.
That's the biggest one.
[ Laughter ]
But it's nice, the, it
consists of what is it?
Five short movements.
There's a [inaudible] and
three interludes and four sort
of main movements which are slightly
longer and each of the preludes
and interludes features
one of the instruments.
So I start with the flute and
then I think bassoon is next.
>> Tracy Jacobson: Right.
>> Paul Lansky: And then obo
then horn and then clarinet
and I thought it was just
a nice way to do this
because these instruments
have different roles to play
in multiple wind quintets.
So that sort of came, that
idea came pretty quickly
and the writing the movements,
the other movements was sort
of an exercise in trying to,
and I have an escape philosophy.
You know get something going that
got away from the Long and Short
of it, but we'll see how that works.
>> Tracy Jacobson: If I might add,
another really great thing for us,
having these different
instrument features is
that the wind quintet features
these five very different
sounding instruments.
Instruments that produce
sound in different ways
and in different ranges and
one thing that can happen is
that the instruments get
pigeon hold into their range,
particularly you have the bassoon
always playing the bass line.
You have the flute always playing
the top voice and to do this
in the way that you did where each
of the instruments is featured
as a solo voice, it
creates, it turns everything
around throughout the piece and so
the audience is constantly getting
to hear different, different
parts of the wind quintet
and so I think it's really
exciting and it makes the piece
so much more dynamic as
you're listening to it.
>> David Plylar: So Paul, you're
a recovering wind quintet player.
[ Laughter ]
>> Paul Lansky: I played, it was one
of the highlights of
my life actually.
When I was just graduating
from college,
I got a call from the
Dorian Wind Quintet,
they asked me to audition for them.
I did and they called me before
I got home and I played with them
for a year or two before I went
to graduate school at Princeton
in composition, but it was great.
The horn was a great
instrument for me.
I seem to, for some reason I seem to
have a knack for it and it sort of,
I realized that when my junior high
school band teacher gave us each a
little audition and he said to me
I can see you've been practicing.
And I hadn't been practicing.
[ Laughter ]
So this has got to be a
good instrument for me.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: Well
Tracy and Jack,
what sorts of projects are you
working on now in addition to,
you know giving this
premiere tonight
and other things you're up to?
>> Tracy Jacobson: One of
the most exciting things
that we're doing right
now is actually a program
of music that's inspired in some
way or another by Shakespeare
and so we're looking at all
these different angles of music
that was inspired by Shakespeare and
a lot of these are transcriptions
and particularly of
Romeo and Juliet.
And so again, we're
featuring Jack's arrangements
in some pretty exciting capacities
and the other thing in this program
that we're doing that's beyond even
just Shakespeare is just classical
storytelling and looking
at the wind quintet
as a storytelling instrument
in a lot of ways.
And so in, I guess the common thread
of this program is that every piece
that we're playing tells a story
and in the telling or in the playing
of this piece, we're also
including the audience in this story
and because Shakespeare's
stories are all so well-known,
it's something that we can
all really relate to together.
>> Jack: And also on the horizon
this season we've actually
commissioned concerto for
wind quintet and orchestra.
It'll be getting its premiere in
May with the Lafayette Symphony
in Indiana and then next year
with the River Oaks Chamber
Orchestra in Houston.
That's by a young composer
named Michael Gilbertson and so
that will be really exciting thing
to have an entire wind
quintet standing up in front
of an orchestra playing a concerto.
>> Tracy Jacobson: And the
other aspect of what we do,
which is pretty substantial
for us, is we focus a lot
on building classical
music audiences
and particularly young audiences.
And so we have a project right now
which is called the Play
Different Project and again,
going with this storytelling theme
we're looking at the wind quintet
as a way of seeing five individual
instruments that look different
and sound different, but they play
beautifully together and the music
that we create is better
than the sound of our parts.
And so we look at this as a
way to relate to young kids
in elementary school and have
essentially created this campaign
where we're using a musical
performance and actually going
into classrooms to create
this environment of tolerance
and appreciation of
differences amongst young people.
So --
>> David Plylar: I have a
question that comes to mind
with these younger people
experiencing a wind quintet
for the first time, perhaps do
they have these issues that,
you know some composers have
and, about a lack of [inaudible]
of the sound between the voices
or, I mean I'm sure they hear
when you do things that
are like characters
and of each individual instruments,
but do they have that same sort
of bias or something that they,
not in a negative way I don't mean,
but you know what I mean?
>> Jack Marquardt: Well I
mean I think that it actually,
we work it to our advantage.
We have five distinct personalities
and five, you know people
who really shine as
individuals within the group
and so I think that's,
you know the [inaudible]
of the strong quartet
is interesting,
but I think we allow our
individual personalities to shine
through a little bit more.
So we feel like they get to know us
as people a little bit more as well,
I think, the kids do at least.
>> Tracy Jacobson: And we almost
become our instrument, in a way,
which is so neat and exciting
to share and not even just
for young audiences, but in general
our personalities really shine
through our instruments and
that's not something that we try
and dampen in a performance.
We really, we obviously want
to create a group sound,
but we want that group sound to
be based on five soloists rather
than five people that are
trying to blend initially.
>> David Plylar: That's
a great way to put that.
That's really nice.
How are we doing on time?
I just want to make sure we --
>> [Inaudible] at 10 minutes.
>> David Plylar: Oh great okay.
Why don't we, we'll come back
to Paul in just a moment,
but while we still have you here,
I'm wondering if you can maybe
say a bit more about this process
of commissioning that you do and how
you go about building repertoire.
>> Tracy Jacobson: Well we actually
commissioned on a few occasions
and one thing that we also
do is we try and find pieces
that are already written
for wind quintet.
Maybe that someone
else commissioned,
that have been played once, that
type of thing and that's going
to the piece by Adam Shurnberg
that we're playing today.
And that wasn't actually written for
us, but across our careers we've run
into a lot of composers and
composers that we really
like as people and whose
music we really enjoy.
And we always ask if they
have a wind quintet already
that we could read and see
if we'd like to perform
and when we're commissioning music
and when we're performing music
or selecting music to perform, we
look for a few key ingredients.
I think the most important thing,
which fortunately Paul's piece
really got quite well is the
playability for wind
instruments because a lot
of composers will write for winds
without truly understanding
the voices of wind instruments
and what we can do and how we shine.
And so that's one of
the main things.
We're always looking for new
iterations of wind quintet sounds.
One of the things that is, one of
the things about the wind quintet is
that our repertoire compared
to the repertoire of a lot
of other chamber ensembles
is quite limited.
Most composers wrote one or
two pieces for wind quintet,
if they wrote anything for wind
quintet and there's some composers
that were very prolific
for wind quintet,
but those pieces are quite
similar to each other
and so what we have is a relatively
limited pool of repertoire and so
when we're looking for composers
that want to add to that repertoire
that have added to that repertoire.
We want to find new sounds and
things that are really interesting
to us and the other thing that we're
really looking for is we're looking
for a composer that doesn't just
want to write a piece that's based
on anything, but we really like
music that will tell a story.
And that's been something
that's very important
to us throughout our careers because
we find that audiences will relate
to a piece of new music that
they haven't heard before
if they can relate to
the story behind it.
If they can understand
where it's coming from,
even before they've heard it, then
that's something that they're going
to be able to appreciate without
ever having heard it before.
I think one of the, one of
the disadvantages of new music
for audiences being connected to
it from the beginning is simply
that they haven't heard it before
and so that's one of the things
that unfortunately can't overcome,
can't send a CD ahead of time
and say listen to this and come to
the concert and hear us perform it.
And so we look for ways in the music
that we can connect to the audience
on an emotional; level so
that they're able to feel
as though they've heard it before in
a small place in their heart rather
than actually heard it before.
>> David Plylar: By tells a story,
are you privileging narrative
in particular or more just something
about the piece that
it has a graspable?
>> Tracy Jacobson:
A graspable point.
So it might be a narrative, but
it also might just be the relation
to the Gran Partita,
it might be something,
some other graspable exactly.
So something that they can
hold onto and relate to.
>> David Plylar: Well I think it's
a, one thing that I think is very,
a very positive thing that you
do and that I've always thought
that there should be ensembles
out there that dedicate themselves
to the second performance
of works [laughter]
because this is often the plaint of
composers who will write a piece,
it'll be performed a few
times, and, or one time,
and then it doesn't get picked
up because of a particular type
of commissioning culture that
sometimes is there, which is,
it's nice to see though
that there are more and more
of these co-commissioning
consortia that come together to
and immediately give
some pieces a leg up
and that's a nice thing to see too.
I guess would there be anything
more that you would like to add
about the pieces tonight?
In particular Paul's piece that
we haven't already talked about?
Before I let you go to
go ahead and get ready.
>> Tracy Jacobson: Well there's
some more really interesting names
of the movement.
>> David Plylar: Oh yes, absolutely.
Please go into that.
>> Tracy Jacobson: I
thought about adding them
when you were talking
about it, but --
>> David Plylar: Please.
>> Tracy Jacobson: So one
of the most interesting ones
and it took us a while to
really understand is the second
to last movement, which
is La De Da Da De Da,
La Da De De Da De Da and --
>> Paul Lansky: Almost.
[ Laughter ]
>> Tracy Jacobson: And
we were looking at it,
it's like La De Da Da Da De Da Da
Da La De Da Da, so we're trying
to figure out what
does this relate to?
Where does this come from?
And then in the music
there's a passage
which is Da Da Da Da
De Da Da Da De Da Da Da
and it goes throughout the piece and
so we were just rehearsing the piece
and we kind of given up on the name.
We hadn't really understood
the relation yet
and we were just rehearsing it
one day and it, we were trying
to sing this passage and it came
out as the title of the piece
and so we understood in that
moment where it came from.
>> David Plylar: There's also,
there's like a movement called
the Joy of B Flat Minor?
Is that right or -- -
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah that's right.
>> Tracy Jacobson: Yeah.
>> David Plylar: Which
has a precedent.
I believe you have another piece
called the Joy of F Sharp Minor.
>> Paul Lansky: The
Joy of F Sharp Minor.
>> David Plylar: Right [laughter].
>> Paul Lansky: More than F Sharp
Minor, this is B Flat Minor.
>> David Plylar: So
you've got some B,
it's a little series
that could have --
[ Inaudible Response ]
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: Well thank
you so much for being here
and for talking with us a bit.
We'll let you go get ready
and I'm sure you're going
to enjoy the concert very much.
Let's give a round
of applause for --
[ Applause ]
>> David Plylar: And so I'm going
to talk a bit more with Paul.
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah, go ahead.
>> David Plylar: Oh sure.
One, I was mentioning to him
earlier that my first introduction
to his music was through a composer
named Scott Lindroth through,
I forgotten the title of it, but
It's Table Clear, which is a piece
from 1990 and the, speaking
of a story element behind it,
I believe at that point
it was a recording
of your Children Clearing
the Table, is that where,
the kind of the genesis
of that work?
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah.
Several times, I have two
children; Jonah and Caleb
and they're five years apart
and several times before that,
you know I just sort of
tap something on the glass
and they'd tap on the glass and
we'd bang some pots and pans
and they'd bang pots and pans.
And Hannah would leave
the room [laughter].
So one night after dinner
I said well why not sort
of make something out of this.
So I got a tape recorder and I set
the kids free in the kitchen just
to bang on whatever they
wanted and I recorded them.
And they were great.
They, Caleb discovered that
if you hit the back of the pan
in a certain way it goes boing,
boing and Jonah got out his violin
and had some pluck notes.
And this is the only piece,
I think it's the only piece,
well at a certain point in
the recording Caleb decided
to use his own body for noises.
So he did armpit farts and
that's in the piece [laughter]
and he could also burp
on command [laughter].
>> David Plylar: Talented family.
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah I can't do it.
I don't know.
Jonah can't do it either, but
Caleb can do it [laughter]
and so I'm very proud of this piece.
I, it's consistent about 30 or
40 sounds and I sort of start
out with a scenario that could
actually really be something
that might happen.
It's sort of, you know rhythmic and
slow and it gets faster and faster
until it sort of starts to swirl and
it's supposed to be a kind of dream
like scenario where you get into
this swirling world and then all
of a sudden it stops
and it's clapping sounds
and armpits and things like that.
And then there's a big long
sustained section which I put
in last in the process and
at the end Caleb saying
that will be the best part.
[ Laughter ]
It's the only piece I know
that uses armpit farts
and carries the same commentary.
[ Laughter ]
So you can hear it on
the [inaudible], I can.
Table's Clear, the title comes
from a Street Car Named Desire
when Blanche DuBois asks Stanley
Kowalski to clear the table
and he just [laughter]
clears, table's clear.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: I bring up that
piece in particular because it kind
of represents one of many
different avenues that you pursued
over the course of your
career and a lot of these,
I know that there's
this sort of break,
not a break in a negative sense,
but a change that happened
in terms of ways.
You started to do a bit
more non-electronic,
non-computer music fairly
recently or at least starting
in the late-90's and to the 2000's,
but before that you were doing
predominantly, I believe,
computer music and
electronic music both synthesis
and in this case taking recordings
and then putting them together.
One thing I noticed about
this music in general and also
with everything else I've heard
that doesn't involve the computer,
computer in a major capacity, is
that you immediately get a sense
of a sound world of a piece
from it, of a piece of music.
You don't get this, you
don't feel like oh no,
here's an electronic piece that's
going to be, you know building
for 30 minutes and I have to, you
know not that there's anything wrong
with those types of
pieces, but you feel like,
I feel like you build
this world very quickly
and one thing I would love to hear
you speak about is that process
of building that world because
you have such distinctive ways
of creating the sounds that are,
it's a different type of thing
to say to write a wind
quintet than it is to actually,
you know create the sounds from
the ground up or collect the sounds
and put them together
in a particular way.
Some of them are more labor
intensive, I don't know.
What is your experience with that?
>> Paul Lansky: Well I grew up in
the really learning to love music
in the 50's and the 60's and part
of what I did was just
listen to records.
My father actually was a
recording engineer and he worked
for Capital Records in New York
and so I spent a lot of time,
you know visiting his recording
studio and so recording
in general is very
interesting to me.
And I realized probably quite early
on that there, as far as Avant Garde
or experimental or electronic music,
is really a sort of a bifurcation
of different kinds of
uses of loud speakers.
The standard electronic model, the
loud speaker is the instrument,
you know it goes crunch and
squeak and squeal and grind and,
and that's sort of you
know what we come to expect
from electronic music, but one thing
that I liked a lot was the idea
that loud speakers are
windows into a virtual space.
Let me repeat that.
Windows into a virtual space.
So you know you listen
to a recording
and if the recording is done
well, then this real tendency
of the recording engineer
to create the illusion
that something is actually
happening in the loud speakers
and I got very interesting
in doing that sort of thing
with electronic music and
creating the impression
that there's a world beyond,
behind the loud speakers
that's functioning that way.
And I spent a lot of
time working with voice.
I used Hannah, I'm very lucky to
have a, such a wonderful reader
for my pieces and I spent
a lot of time trying
to model real instruments.
And to get real instruments,
to get the sound of a violin
or the sound of, you
know armpit farts.
[ Laughter ]
And so a lot of my, most of my
pieces, actually I think almost all
of my electronic pieces consist of
something that is a virtual world
of its own and this became
sort of an obsession with me
and then one day I thought well
rather than synthesize the violin,
why not use a real violin?
And I had done a lot of
things with recording players
and using their sounds, but to
actually use the real violin
in a way that real
violinist would appreciate.
Sort of the point of the
exercise, so there's a real,
I don't want to go
too far afield here,
but let me just say really quickly
that there's a different kind
of compositional conception
behind created and frozen
in time electronic music
and music for instruments.
One thing that I like a lot
of is the idea of danger
in music, in performance.
So when you hear somebody perform,
there's always the possibility
that they'll miss a
note, that they'll die
of a heart attack [laughter], that,
you know something
strange will happen.
With electronic music, it's
always fixed and the only thing
that can happen really is the
tape machine will break down,
which has happened actually.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: At the same
time you have these certain times
where you have referential things
like say with cars going by
or something like that
where you do get the sense
of potentially sense of --
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah so almost
all the, I think I have one piece
that I did toward the end
of my time doing this,
which is truly electronic.
It doesn't reference real world
sounds, but all of the pieces,
virtually all the pieces that
I did consist of some aspect
of focusing on realities.
Some way to sort of peer into a real
world and it got, it was getting old
around 2005 or 6 with
Table's Clear turned
out to be a cathartic experience and
percussionist in particular ask me
for a transcription of Table's Clear
and there's no way I can do that.
I mean I used all kinds of
random number generators
and different things
to create the rhythms
and textures of Table's Clear.
So that got me into
writing percussion music
and I've written a lot of percussion
music and it's a different world.
You know I was basically
60 when I started sort of,
when I finished doing computer music
and started doing this
stuff and it was great.
It was like I was beginning
again and starting over.
So it's been a really
interesting voyage.
You know, my one regret is that,
well let me not go into regrets.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: Well it's,
there are certain things
that you said that, one thing that
I would like to say about your,
many of your pieces in
general is that there's
that great deal of activity.
There's a lot of things to say
with granular types of processes
and things like that going on,
but they're so controlled both
like in a tonal sense, well in
many cases a harmonic sense,
but also a sense of like you find
the pitch material and the types
of things in the types of sound that
you're using and you control them
so clearly even with
all this activity.
So it feels like there's this
great undercurrent of energy,
but you're kind of suppressing
it and kind of floating atop
and I don't know if
that's just something
that has always been a part of
your music or do you think of it
that way at all or maybe not.
>> Paul Lansky: Well,
it's complicated.
I did a piece in 1984 called Idle
Chatter, which has gotten a lot
of play and I started, I was
inspired by actually a trip,
driving into New York City going
through the Lincoln Tunnel coming
out at the end of the
Lincoln Tunnel.
Some people how lived in New York
remember the days when the mouth
of the Lincoln Tunnel was really a
pretty seedy place and you came out
and there was a bunch of teenagers,
[inaudible] teenagers standing
around the cop, sort of bouncing
up and down and he had a smile
on his face and I rolled down
the window and they were doing,
you know a rap to the cop
and he was enjoying it
and I thought well what
a great idea for a piece.
So I went home and started to
do it and I took Hannah's voice
and chopped it up into little bits
and tuned the bits and I started
to do a real fancy, you know
harmonic thing with all kinds
of weird chords and it just
became totally exhausting.
So I narrowed it down to an F. Every
one doing F and that time it's good,
but it got a little old after
a while so I added an E flat
and then I added D and B
flat and I had B flat major.
And you have to realize that in
the late 70's and early 80's,
that Princeton, nobody was taken
seriously if they wrote tonal music.
You know we were all
sort of experimentalists
and I had done my share of fancy
ways of organizing harmony,
but I realized that the
computer actually freed me
up to write tonal music and
I love writing tonal music.
I love tonality.
I think tonality is one of
the great accomplishments
of western civilization and the
piece sort of flowed in tonal terms
and since then, most of my pieces
are in way or another diatonic.
I don't, the piece tonight
is very explicitly diatonic.
I do other pieces which
are more or less diatonic
and so the electronic sort
of freed me, in a way.
So I still got respect, but I could,
I can do things with tonality.
>> David Plylar: Well
one, one other thing
that I have always been
curious about, I think people
who haven't tried to produce
their own electronic music,
especially back when, you know
you had to rent time at a computer
if you were going to
or you know just be
on the [speaking over one another].
Really, oh wow.
That was at university.
So back in the day when
it was really you had
to invest a great deal of time
to get any sort of feedback
versus today when you have a
bit more of immediate feedback,
but not necessarily mastery
of say if somebody were just
to go and look at software.
They would have some
immediate feedback,
but they wouldn't still
have mastery of that,
how to produce exactly
what they want to produce.
How does that compare what you were
doing in those days versus the way
that you approach composition now?
Do you, are you thankful
that you have like,
that you're a bit divorced from
those technological impediments
or was that something that
helped the compositional process?
>> Paul Lansky: Well I loved
getting under the hood.
I actually wrote a lot of software.
I discovered strangely that I
had a knack for writing software
and I did a lot of it, but I
always did it in the service
of a piece in one way or another.
So what was your question?
>> David Plylar: So the amount
of time that you would take just
to be able to get to where you, and
then utilize that software or --
>> Paul Lansky: Oh it was very slow.
I typically spend the
year on a piece
and you mentioned the Six Fantasies
on a Poem by Thomas Campion,
which I did in the late 70's.
It took me a year and a half and
it was a very tedious process.
For that piece I can actually
work at home with the line
at a time monitor, 30
characters a second,
which just was transmitting code
and then I'd have to go into school
and sign out a digital tape and
take the digital tape into a lab,
which had mini computers.
We used Hewlett Packard's very
first computer and there was noise
and whirling and it was
called the D Day converter
and I remember picking my son Jonah
up from nursery school one day
and I said he had a friend I had
to take home too and I said we have
to go to the D Day converter and
Jonah said he was I guess five
at the time, maybe six, said have
you ever been to a D Day converter?
[ Laughter ]
And I often wondered what
his consciousness was
like because he would go and hear
his mother's voice trans modified
over a loud speaker.
So the process was fun and I
had patience for it and I seemed
to get a lot of music out of
it, but it's almost the case
that these days when
it's so easy to do.
That, you know the sort
of fun is taken out of it.
>> David Plylar: Well I think in
some cases it might be easy to get
that start, but it's harder
to sometimes hear that mastery
that you're presenting in all
these pieces over the years.
With new projects that
you're up to you mentioned
that you're doing some
more percussion music?
I know that [inaudible] percussion,
you did a quartet for them.
Do you have anything else coming up?
>> Paul Lansky: I just heard
a song for guitar and voice
about insomnia [laughter] and
the song is, I wrote the words,
the song is called Just Once
and the insomniac says
just once let me sleep
through the night [laughter].
So --
>> David Plylar: Is that
for David Stirbin also --
>> Paul Lansky: No, it's for Bill
Anderson who composes [inaudible]
for New Jersey and yeah I have
a bunch of other pieces in the,
but nice thing about
being retired is
that I can devote all my time to it.
So it's fun.
>> David Plylar: Well that's great.
I think maybe we'll open it up to
ask if anybody has any questions
that they want to ask you.
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah, please
ask me a question [laughter].
I'll do what I used to do with
undergraduates, I say I'm going
to hold my breath until
you ask me a question.
[ Laughter ]
>> Have you worked
with, have you worked
with the Princeton Laptop Orchestra?
>> Paul Lansky: Yes actually
the last piece I did,
electronic piece was a piece
for the Laptop Orchestra.
It's called the Guy
Walks into a Modal Bar.
It uses things called
modal bar synthesis.
We had a guy at Princeton named
Perry Cook who was very good
at doing what are called
physical models, that is instead
of modeling the way the sound works,
the way the sound sort of evolves
over time like, you know you'd have
a pop and decay, it actually is,
well for a flute for example,
you have the right going wave
and the returning wave
and that sort of thing.
So I did it with undergraduates
and we did,
I must say I wasn't
thrilled with it.
It's, you sort of, you know you
can do anything in real time now,
but this was not my,
not my favorite.
Ask me another question.
[ Laughter ]
I'll hold my breath.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: If you wait,
I'll bring a microphone up to you.
Thanks.
>> Hi, you were talking
about tonality.
You use the word diatonic,
which I'm,
to be honest with you
not very familiar with.
Can you explain that
a little bit more.
>> Paul Lansky: What diatonic means?
>> Yes, please.
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah, you
hear a whole slew of notes
and you reference them in one way or
another, if you're, you know I think
with Milton Babbitt and George
Pearl and other composers like that,
they reference them as notes
of the chromatic scale.
With, one thing I love
about tonality is that,
or using diatonic tonality as
a model is that you hear a note
and you think of it
as a scale degree.
So if I go [singing harmony] you can
think of that as, or you can think
of it as the third note of a G
major scale [singing harmony].
Or you can think of it as the
second note of an A major scale.
[ Singing Harmony ]
[Inaudible] in a performance and
when I used to teach tonal harmony
to beginners, I would
take the [inaudible]
and fourth piano concerto
which starts
out with a G major chord
with a B on the top.
[ Singing Harmony ]
And then it turns into B major.
[ Singing Harmony ]
So you just, the ability to locate
a note as a place in a scale.
So the note has a quality and a
meaning that depends a lot on,
you know the tonal context and
I guess the short answer is
when I think of things in diatonic
terms, I do think of things
as members of a, as scale degrees.
So it's, you know it's
the second scale degree
or it's the first scale degree.
So the note has a quality
and the wonderful thing
about this is I don't want
to go too far afield here,
but the wonderful thing about
this is it give you a metric
for distance.
You do something in G major and it's
going to be very far from B major
and the wonderful thing Beethoven
does, he jumps from G major
to the B major and then sort
of wonders back to G major.
So that's the kind of thing
that I'm thinking about.
The, I did a lot work in the
60's on new theories of harmony.
George Pearl, I collaborated
with George Pearl
on a thing called 12 Tone Tonality
and it just didn't work for me.
So, but it's fun.
Does that make some sense?
>> David Plylar: I know you've
written about like reference
versus implication and those types
of things, but there's this element
of implication that comes with
the knowledge of a system and --
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah.
[ Speaking Over One Another ]
The wonderful thing about
tonality is that you can,
you can imply things
that are going to happen.
You know you do something and that
sort of implies a way of thinking
about things and it implies
a way of moving in time.
With 12 Tone music, it doesn't
work quite the same way.
That I used to differentiate
between the two we called
[inaudible] combinational system,
which was tonality and the
other [inaudible] system
which means you're worried
about different arrangements
of the same set of objects and
that probably confuses you more
than anything.
[ Laughter ]
>> David Plylar: I think
we had another question.
>> Yeah, you know one thing
about composing electronic
computer music is
that you don't need a performer,
at least not a living performer
and then you go back to composing
music that required performance.
I'm just wondering how you
felt about suddenly having
to have performers
involved in your work?
>> Paul Lansky: Well that
actually became the focus
of my intention especially
with percussion music.
When I started to write
percussion music,
I guess my first really percussion
piece was a piece called Threads,
which I did in 2005.
When I first started to do
percussion music, it was very much
like doing electronic music.
I'm worrying about envelope and I'd
worry about attack and decay and so
that felt great, but at a
certain point I lost the thread,
pardon the pun, and it started to
get mysterious and then I realized
that one of my roles as a
composer was to be a choreographer
and with percussionist, that's
really the name of the game.
You know, I imagine them
moving in various kinds
of synchronic ways
and, is that a word?
Synchronic?
Well it is now.
I imagine them moving in
various ways and you know
like with greased chests
and big drums
and when you see a percussion
group, there are some percussionists
who are like dancers
and so the notion
of being a choreographer became part
of the, part of the whole action.
I liked that a lot, so I'm actually,
a lot of my electronic
music had been danced to,
but I would never persuaded by it.
But looking at, you know
a percussion ensemble
as a dance troop really makes
it seem quite different.
>> David Plylar: Just to follow up
on that, you had mentioned earlier
that a lot of the work you were
doing in electronic music was trying
to get towards a more realistic
sound like something that was
in the real world, but
that was created by you.
Is there any flip of that?
Do you find with non-electronic
music that you're writing,
do you find yourself moving back in
some way towards a different type
of ideal idiom or something
like that?
>> Paul Lansky: Well
it's really different.
One thing that I have to admit is
that when I was doing electronic
music, it was before the days
of computer programs that
could write your score for you
and I remember writing a,
spending six months writing a piece
and spending a year writing
the parts and then hearing it
and wishing I could revise it.
So the great thing
about these programs is
that it makes revision possible
and my publisher is very graceful
about it and doesn't make too much
of fuss when I say please throw
out the score I just sent you.
[ Laughter ]
I've got the revised
version and I'm going
to probably revise
tonight's piece in some way.
So if anyone has any great
suggestions for ways to revise it.
[ Laughter ]
Please let me know.
Also one thing that
it makes possible,
which I like a lot is
it makes it possible
to compose and out of order.
So you know you write
something and then you say well,
in the middle of that there
should be this, something longer,
and actually the beginning
should be different
or there should be an
additional part of the beginning.
So I don't compose in, things
in time the ordered ways.
>> David Plylar: Well as
before you would be forced
to put together the
program, compile it,
and go through that before
you get any feedback?
>> Paul Lansky: It's very different.
It's very different and I'm
very glad that I did it.
You know I loved writing
electronic music.
It was great, you know I'd go
up to my studio after breakfast,
in my bathrobe, and I'd just
play with sound and it was great
and now I can play with
sound to a certain extent,
except you know the many
realizations as you do it,
you're pieces always sound
so dreadful that you have
to know what you're doing.
But it's very different and I love
this, one thing I really liked
about doing electronic music was
the feeling of being in a studio,
a pottery studio or a, you
know any kind of studio
where you fabricate something and
I'm a great admirer of composers
who can just sort of write a piece
out and, with a pencil and paper.
Which I don't do, but I love the,
you know the feeling of being
in a workshop type environment .
>> David Plylar: Even
though you're a [inaudible],
it seems like a performative
act to be doing all of that.
I don't know, that's to me --
>> Paul Lansky: Yeah I know.
It's true.
You're actually, as I said you're
scripting activity for humans to do.
So you're not just writing an
abstract piece, you're writing,
you're choreographing something that
performers are going to want to,
are going to actually physically do.
So next time you see a percussion
ensemble, just watch the,
there are two in particular; Eric
Chow Beach, that's soul percussion.
He's a skinny little guy and
he looks like he's dancing
as he plays the percussion
instruments.
>> David Plylar: We have
time for one last question.
>> Paul Lansky: I'll hold
my breath [laughter].
>> David Plylar: Somebody
please, we have one over here.
>> So I'm impressed that in the
audio file world people are going
from transistors back to vacuum
tubes and you composed during
that period of transition, I
would assume, where you started
with the amplification
was more based
on tubes moving into transistors.
Did you sense a lack of warmth as
things became so fully digital?
>> Paul Lansky: I sort
of think this whole back
to vinyl is simple minded.
My first experience with the
difference between digital
and vinyl was with
my Campion Fantasies.
I did the piece, I spent the year
and a half doing it,
and it was great.
I was very proud of it
and I got a recording.
It was issued on an LP
when I composing recording
and it was great.
I played it, played
it once and at the end
of the thing there's a loud
part and it sounded awful.
It sounded nothing like that.
I asked my father what was going on
and he said just inter
diameter distortion.
It's the angle of the
needle changes with,
as you get to the end of the record.
And I noticed back in those days,
you know I still had good high
frequency hearing and I'd listen
to a recording once and it sounded
great and I'd listen to it twice
and the second time
it sounded less good.
Actually a young faculty
members at Princeton used to wait
at the record library to get
recordings of pieces that were,
that were, hadn't been played
so you can take them home
and play them for the first time.
So I was really not thrilled
with the analog world.
Also the fact is that
if you made a copy
of something you degrade the copy.
So after recording something,
you know recording something then
recording the recording of that
and then recording
the recording of that,
it gets more and more distorted.
So I constantly was battling
with the, with the problems
of analog recording and the thing
I love about digital recording is
that you can copy it an infinite
number of times and I think this is,
you know a significant difference.
So it is, that's not to say
that there's not some problem
with digital recording, but I
think that anything that you can do
in analog you can do in digital
if you have a high
enough sampling rate.
Does that make sense?
>> Yeah.
>> David Plylar: That's
a great answer.
Well thank you, let's thank Paul
Lansky for speaking with us today
and I hope you all enjoy his pieces.
I'm sure we all will.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.