Transcript - S2 Ep2: Dear Diary…
Intro:
This is Mission: Commission [intro]
Melissa Smey:
This is Mission: Commission, a podcast where we demystify the process of how classical music gets made. I'm Melissa Smey, and I'm the Artistic Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City. The inspiration for this podcast is rooted in the same programming principles of the Composer Portraits, a concert series at Miller Theatre. The concerts are full evenings of a living composer's music, and at the center of those concerts is a discussion on stage with the composers themselves.
This podcast is all about those conversations, but also features something that allows us as listeners to go even deeper in understanding how a composer thinks, and that's the audio diary. All three of our composers record audio diaries to document their process. Sometimes words, sometimes music, sometimes both. It takes us into their inner worlds in a sense where we can hear the building blocks of the music coming together almost in real time.
So let's get started on that journey with our first composer, Oscar Bettison.
Oscar Bettison:
It's Oscar. This is the first one I've done of these recording diaries - diary recordings? Uh, compositional process diary recordings? I don't know what I call these. I'm sort of close to finishing another piece, and I was struck with an idea for the string quartet for this commission. And I was wondering about maybe doing a set of miniatures for this piece. I've never done that before. My natural inclination is not to do that, actually. I don't know how far I'm going go with that. Sometimes things come to you when you're really working on another piece the ideas for the next one come. I think it's sort of to do with having your mind open, you know, and really sort of working on something that ideas just sort of come to the surface somehow.
Melissa Smey:
Hello, Oscar!
Oscar Bettison:
Hi!
Melissa Smey:
Nice to have a chat.
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
I was really happy to hear in the audio diaries that you have started to record for the project, and in the first one, you talked about miniatures. And what was this idea of miniatures when it first came to you?
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah, I don't know. It's something I've never tried before. It seems to be that in this - this is a kind of project that I should just sort of… try something different. I mean, I sort of feel like that with every project, but in this one, especially, I don't know. I just thought it would be a nice idea to try these - just do these little small - maybe a set of small little gems. I have a lot of pieces that are big in duration and in scope. And I don't know, I just thought it would be really to try something else.
Melissa Smey:
I like it.
Oscar Bettison:
Installment four here in my diary. I did a bit of work on some harmony, on some chords. Working some things out, just to give me some underlying basis for things and get - try and work my way into perhaps, you know, getting some sense of the sound of the piece. I'm going to leave it for a bit and see how I feel about it later on tomorrow. That's always a good sort of barometer for me, you know? In the moment, you can sort of get into something, but if you leave it for a bit, and you still like it, I think that's a pretty good sign. So, we'll see.
Melissa Smey:
Something else you said in your diaries is that if you leave an idea for a bit and then come back later and you still like it, then that that's a good sign. So I'm curious, how long do you have to leave it?
Oscar Bettison:
Ha! Well, that depends on how long the timeline is, I suppose. [laughs] You know, it can be sort of like overnight, maybe, but sometimes it can be like, "Yeah, I'm definitely going with this idea. This is definitely my idea. This is the way that the piece is going." And you work on it for a few weeks and then it's like, "Nope." It's hard sometimes to actually know that. I have a sense of when I'm onto a winner, but I couldn't tell you. I could never say why; it's just a feeling, you know? It's sort of, you just know it when something feels true. And aside from that, there's definitely a feeling of like, "Is this good or is this bad?" I mean, I have cut, in pieces before, I've cut many ideas that I think are good. I've cut many, many ideas that I think are bad. Really what I'm talking about is getting an idea to a stage where I can live with it. You know? There's then further [laughs] checks and balances or whatever you want to call it after that. But just getting it to a stage where I can go - I can potentially let this idea out into the world - that's where really what I'm talking about with that, I think.
Melissa Smey:
Then you've worked on some harmonies. Is that right?
Oscar Bettison:
Yeah, one of the things I do when I start a piece after just putting down initial ideas instead of throwing everything - you know, throwing mud against the wall or something, you know - is, I sort of try and focus on harmony. Like chords, just writing chords that might not even make it into the final piece, but it's really about trying to find a kind of an overall sound for the piece. You know, it just gives me somewhere to start really, you know, whether it's a kind of, sort of a very resonant sound or a very kind of tight and close sound - coming from the idea that harmony is more than just chords. Like there's a kind of something beneath that that's sort of working on some level. So that's sort of what I was doing the other day. Yeah.
Melissa Smey:
Okay. So for this project, you have a short timeline, six weeks. How are you feeling about that?
Oscar Bettison:
Well, I feel about it as I do with everything else and I just feel like, you know... pretty stressed about it. [laughs] But that's how I always feel. I have to remind myself that it'll be fine in the end. Yeah, I feel stressed about it, but at the same time, I've actually - you know, I've got started, so that's a big deal, I think. I don't know how/what it's going be yet, but I have a couple of minutes written. I don't know if it's going to exist in that form in the final version, but at least I've made a start. And so I feel a bit better about that. Yeah, making a start is good.
Melissa Smey:
On to our next composer, Kate Soper.
So tell me, what has this week been like for you?
Kate Soper:
It's been fairly productive. It was a busy week, but sometimes that helps sharpen the focus in the morning when I have some time. So I think I'm trying to do two things - because this piece has a narrative structure, I'm doing this sort of mini script writing thing of "what's the plot," kind of. And then I've been working a lot of material, which for mostly has been harmonic material. So just banging around with pitches and loving it and then hating it the next morning and changing it, and then the next morning, going back two days and thinking, "Maybe, that was good." So yeah, just a lot of generating and wrestling with material on the one hand in the musical plane, and then just sort of thinking about story in the formal plane.
Melissa Smey:
Is that process of sifting for you at the beginning of a project, is that normal?
Kate Soper:
The sifting process is very familiar to me, but it's been a while. So it's interesting to remember how, what a strange activity it is because you're kind of using your ear, but you're also kind of trying to analyze as you go and you don't like it. So then you try to think, "Well, is it because there's too many half steps in this chord?" Or it's, "There's too many notes on the bottom," or is it just, "I don't like it." So it's sort of like, do you just - do I lift my hands from the keys and put them back down in a different shape and see if I like that? Or do I say "I'm going to put a major third on top and then marry that with a tritone on the bottom?" So it is this sort of weird back and forth of blunt thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback, plus kind of trying to be a little theoretical if that helps. But yeah, so I think that is based basically how I write pitches when I don't have a very set thing that I'm doing with pitch material.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. And so you recorded a series of audio diaries for us.
Kate Soper:
Okay. This is my first audio diary. This morning, I was working on writing a chord progression. I want in this piece to have some harmonic sequence I can return to that will sort of be like mysterious sound of time passing. And so I just made a simple four chord progression and I wanted a sense of circularity about it. So between each chord, there's always one note that is retained. And since I'm writing for string quartet, I thought why not make the retained note an open string of each of the instruments? So that is this - cello [note on keyboard], viola [note], violin [note], other violin [note] - that's just my keyboard. And then I put some mysterious notes around them. So this is the chord progression, uh, and I'll be emphasizing the held notes, which are going to be open strings [plays chord progression].
Melissa Smey:
Can you start with the chord progression that you were working on? Tell us about that.
Kate Soper:
It's funny, actually, it kind of came from - I did all this work over the pandemic that was just kind of weirdly like for fun and sanity. And I'd written this YouTube series called Unwritten Operas that kind of took some passages from books I liked and put some music to it. And for one of them, I wanted this kind of - it was this Mishima text about kind of cold, unfeeling beauty that oppresses us. So I wanted a chord progression for this piece that would have a sense of timeless circularity, but not functionality so we don't really know where we are exactly. And each chord has its own kind of internal logic, and thought, "Well, I like that chord progression I wrote last summer." So I had that idea. I ended up changing it a lot but was just thinking, okay - and this is where I think thinking about instruments versus like just material also comes into play - is that I want some thread to tie all the chords together and I thought I'll tie them together with open strings. So just kind of transposed and shifted things around until I had this progression that still, I think, had some sense of chromatic suggestiveness, but the open strings - they're going to - they have a little more power. So just some sense that there's some embedded, like you know, silver wire that's kind of connecting them. So that's how I made the basic chord progression.
Okay. So I was working my chord progression a little more this morning. So it goes like this [plays chord progression]. And there's an open string of each instrument that is held over between two chords. So then I was thinking that at some point, those could evolve so that they are the two octave harmonic on those open strings. So they start to kind of have this other stratosphere above the kind of more compressed register that is the original progression. So that would be from this [plays original progression] to this [chord progression with higher notes]. And we still have one note retained. It's just, instead of this [plays one note], it's this [same note two octaves higher]; instead of this [different lower note], it's this [that note two octaves up] etcetera. And that's always kind of a nice way to come up with stuff like, [chord with high note] kind of like that sonority, which is just, um, this chord [repeats chord without high note] with these two pitches [plays two notes] up two octaves because they're going to be harmonics [high note and chord].
And then - I don't know, I guess I was thinking, "Well, what am I going to do?" [laughs] And I have some plans for what the voice is doing at other parts in the piece. But I feel like maybe this is the ending, like the twist is that the chord progression changes in some way and the voice jumps in. So I made a progression where I am going to sing a note of the chord each time as it repeats, which means that one of the instruments will be free. And I think they'll be playing some kind of mysterious solo that relates to the material and the rest of the piece. So this is what I came up with. [sings along with the keyboard] Uh, save the high D for the end there. So yeah, I need to learn that and practice it.
Melissa Smey:
Something that you'd mentioned when you were working on that is the idea that maybe what you were hearing was the ending. And I thought that was so striking to me, and so like, is that normal for you that the ending would come to you before the beginning?
Kate Soper:
I don't think that happens more often than other things. Probably, it's more normal for me to think of the beginning. And I think I did think of the beginning here, which is basically like, "here's the problem," or just whatever - my just announcing, bringing us into this situation. But maybe like working out the musical material for the ending is a little unusual for me to have done. I usually have some spots I know are going to happen and maybe sometimes that's the ending, but I think as I was playing with this chord progression and thinking like, How can I expand it? I can have these harmonics. Okay, am I going to participate in this?... Okay. Yes, but maybe that can be a moment. Like usually the chord progression plays as a signal that we're returning to the time when I say like, "All right, anyway, so then this happened." But part of the concept of the piece is just what happens when we stop worrying, or like just chasing after, like "What's going to happen? What's going to happen? What's going to happen?" And then just start being part of whatever's happening. So it seemed conceptually to make sense that that would be the end, and then having me join into the chord progression means that there's always somebody who's not playing it, which means that there's some opportunity for the chord progression to be interleaved with some other material. So, yeah, I think I haven't written it all because I don't know what they're going to be doing, but yeah, it just sort of was a good confluence of like, "I have this material, I have this concept... Oh, I can put them together in this moment, and that feels satisfying to me musically and narratively as like an ending."
So, this morning, I'm working on the kind of script for the piece. The kind of premise and form is this little weird kind of sci-fi fable about trying to send messages to the future and get messages back. So yeah, just sort of thinking about these questions that this person is asking through this string quartet, uh, telephone. How did it turn out? Or, who won the war, you know? Whatever that might mean in the context. What was the answer? So, just kind of trying to have that laid out before I start figuring out what the music is there.
Melissa Smey:
And so, there's a narrative here, right? This idea that we talked about last time about a conversation with the future. How did that evolve this week?
Kate Soper:
Well, I think I am trying to think about how to be episodic without being tedious. I write a lot of music where I'm like, just talking about stuff just because I think there was some moment when I realized that that was permissible. You have some moment when you realize you can do whatever you want because nobody cares or whatever. And for me it was like, oh, I can just, like - I don't have to try to force this content that would be better expressed with me saying what it is into musical language, which is not a language, you know. But then I think sometimes I get carried away and I talk too much and too long. And so yeah, actually I have my little chart here. So I’ve just made a bunch of different kind of formal suggestion things. I mean, I don't know; we're not like - just kind of like Roman numeral stuff, and what I want to do is have the chord progression, which is time passing while I say, "Here's what we decided to do," and then testing the thing and then "Okay, here's the problem." And then, again, testing the thing.
Melissa Smey:
That's such a lot of progress in just a week. That's amazing!
Kate Soper:
I mean, some of this I maybe did last week, too, and I've been thinking about this since you and I talked a few weeks ago. So -
Melissa Smey:
I love it.
Kate Soper:
Yeah, so I already knew that, you know, I wanted that story idea.
Melissa Smey:
Mm-hmm. Well, so then as the text comes together, as you start to have a sense of it, will it change in response to the music?
Kate Soper:
Yeah, prob…I mean, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. It'll change somehow, so I'll have to see.
Melissa Smey:
And our final composer, Vijay Iyer.
It's always nice to chat with you, and I want to start by asking, what has this week been like for you?
Vijay Iyer:
It's a little hard to answer. I mean, the main thing that kind of looms for me is that two days ago, Greg Tate died, and he was a dear friend of mine. I've known him for like 23 years or something like that. Never imagined a world without him, so we're all still kind of trying to figure out how to contend with this loss. So that's kind of, I don't know when you asked me how my week was, like a lot of it is about that. Yeah, and I was - you know, I was in the band that he led called Burnt Sugar. I was in it for several years and like from the beginning. And so I'm on like nine of the albums that [laughs] they put out - I don't know how many dozen albums now, but I'm on nine of them and including the very first. I mean, I think about that line from Muhal Richard Abrams, he says, "When you make music together, that creates a bond that can never be broken." And I can't believe how true that is. I mean, like I'm reminded of it every day.
Melissa Smey:
Yeah. Music is unique in that way that it can be such a portal to a time or a place or a feeling or an experience.
Vijay Iyer:
Yes.
Melissa Smey:
It's funny. I don't think that it's limited to just being - the musician being in the practice of it or being in the ensemble, right? I think it's true for audiences also. Audiences know when something special is happening on the stage, and they're definitely part of it and the energy that they're returning back to the musicians becomes part of the experience.
Vijay Iyer:
Yes.
Melissa Smey:
And you can have those truly magical moments. And then the idea that it's a portal to another time or another place or a different feeling.
Vijay Iyer:
Yeah, and I was revisiting this, the first session we did in 1999. I had just moved here to New York, and I was suddenly enlisted in this project that, didn't really know what was going on or what I was getting into. I could go on and on about him, but I have a feeling, you know, that his presence will be felt in this piece.
Melissa Smey:
Sure, that makes sense. Is it okay to change topics a little bit and talk about the audio diaries that you recorded?
Vijay Iyer:
Sure. [laughs] I guess, um, they were pretty offhand at just little things. [viola excerpt]
Melissa Smey:
I loved it though. So on the first one, that's you playing the viola, isn't it?
Vijay Iyer:
[laughs] That's why it's so out of tune. Yes, that's me fishing around. [viola continues]
Vijay Iyer:
And so, I was just sort of exploring like things that my body can do on the viola, you know, or on the violin, too. So that's like a layout that I kind of noticed that my hand wanted to do [laughs] on the viola. It's not just the hand at work, but it starts there. And so it has this kind of like the warmth of familiarity, just because it's like, "Oh yes, I know what that feels like," you know? But then when I transliterate it - I guess would be the word for it [laughs] - onto the piano, you know, then it's like very different gestures to produce the same information. [plays piano] It's a particular stretch on the piano. It's a stretch on both instruments, but it's a weird stretch on the piano to try to do in one roll, you know, one roll of the wrist [piano continues] And then about how you shift it, like how do you transform it or develop it? [piano continues]
You know, when Thelonious Monk would write a piece like Trinkle Tinkle, and then ask John Coltrane to play it on saxophone. And it's like this very pianistic thing, it's all made of these pianistic gestures. What it elicits from the hands and the embouchure of a saxophonist, like what it does for him as a creative improviser, like how it launches him into this particular way of playing, you know? You kind of hear the ingredients of that carried forward into his solos. So anyway, all that for like 10 seconds of material [laughs].
Melissa Smey:
Well, but what's interesting about it for the listener is that knowing that it affords the opportunity to have insight into what the person who's creating in that moment - it's like the closest you can get to feeling like you're inside their head. Right? So in the Coltrane example that you gave, if you're listening to it, you can kind of hear how he's hearing that piano part and then translating it in real time, and like kind of goes in and then comes out and you can hear it. And so in this case, you know, I heard you playing it on the viola, then playing it on the piano. And then in the follow-up, in the kind of the second one - you know, the second excerpt in the diary - it feels like the same sonic home, but it's a totally different character. And then the second half of it feels very idiomatically piano. So, you know, you heard the first one - you hear viola, you heard the piano. Okay, those are very connected, but then it goes off in this whole other direction. [plays piano] And so, I would love to know what you’re hearing when you are playing that, right? Like, are you, hearing a string quartet? Are you hearing string quartet and piano? Like, what is it that's in your ear when you're recording those?
Vijay Iyer:
That second thing, it wasn't so clearly related to the first thing at all. It wasn't really trying to be, it was just an example of how - well, you remember that piece Crisis Modes.
[MUSIC – “CRISIS MODES” BY VIJAY IYER]
Vijay Iyer:
That's the three-movement piece for strings and percussion and the middle movement was actually a transcription of a solo piano creation.
[MUSIC CONT. - “CRISIS MODES” BY VIJAY IYER]
Vijay Iyer:
I mean, it was something produced in a similar way, which is to say that I'm not actually entirely aware of how or why it's doing what it's doing and yet it's coming from me or through me. So that’s sort of why I wanted to examine it, you know? And I mean, I've been doing stuff like that to varying degrees of success my whole life, I could say, you know, and I'm not really - at some point, you know, often I try to get away from the piano because the piano is where my habits are. And if I'm composing, I don't want to just sort of reinforce them. I actually want to reach outward, and that's why even just that one little thing on the viola gave me like a different way in, you know? But I also have come to realize that there's something going on in these piano meditations that I can't yet account for. [plays piano] It feels like it has a shape, like a direct - it feels like it has a direction. It's moving in some way that isn't exactly tonal; isn't exactly atonal either. It's born of my gestures. [piano continues] There's some kind of sense of development, but I don't know what, why - you know, so and I'm not sure I want to know too much about it. In fact, I just wanted to kind of - I guess I just want to listen back and try to understand a little more about it.
Melissa Smey:
[theme music] What's really exciting to me is hearing in these audio diaries, how does the music get made really? How did it come together? Whether they started with a chord progression or an idea, we get to trace it all the way to the end. How did it get into the piece? How do I hear it as a listener? I love that it's like a little chemistry kit. You know - put things together and see what you get.
Mission: Commission is a production of Miller Theatre at Columbia University.
Major support for Mission: Commission is provided by the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. Support for Miller Theatre is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for contemporary music at Miller Theatre is provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Amphion Foundation.
This episode was produced by Golda Arthur and me, with Adrienne Stortz, Lauren Cognetti, and Taylor Riccio. Erick Gomez is our sound designer and engineer.
This episode featured audio excerpts of pieces written by Vijay Iyer and Kate Soper.
Visit missioncommissionpodcast.com for a full listing of pieces, performers, and recordings included in this and every episode.
If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and, even better, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
