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The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music
Bálint András Varga is perhaps the world's most respected interviewer of living composers. For The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music, Varga has confronted thirty-three composers with quotations carefully chosen to elicit their thoughts about an issue that is crucial for any serious creative artist: How can one find courage to deal with the sometimes tyrannical expectations of the outside world?
The result is an imaginary roundtable at which we encounter fresh, revealing, previously unpublished statements from such world-renowned composers as John Adams, Friedrich Cerha, George Crumb, Sofia Gubadulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Libby Larsen, Robert Morris, and Wolfgang Rihm. Also represented are composers who are becoming more prominent with the passing years -- Chaya Czernowin, Pascal Dusapin, and Rebecca Saunders -- as well as conductor-composer Michael Gielen, festival director Nicholas Kenyon, and music critics Paul Griffiths and Arnold Whittall. In The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste, composers and other insightful individuals comment on choices made, traps avoided, unforeseen consequences, proud accomplishments, occasional regrets: the whole range of experiences central to artistic creativity.
Bálint András Varga is the acclaimed author of György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages; Three Questions for 65 Composers; and From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (all available from University of Rochester Press).
The result is an imaginary roundtable at which we encounter fresh, revealing, previously unpublished statements from such world-renowned composers as John Adams, Friedrich Cerha, George Crumb, Sofia Gubadulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Libby Larsen, Robert Morris, and Wolfgang Rihm. Also represented are composers who are becoming more prominent with the passing years -- Chaya Czernowin, Pascal Dusapin, and Rebecca Saunders -- as well as conductor-composer Michael Gielen, festival director Nicholas Kenyon, and music critics Paul Griffiths and Arnold Whittall. In The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste, composers and other insightful individuals comment on choices made, traps avoided, unforeseen consequences, proud accomplishments, occasional regrets: the whole range of experiences central to artistic creativity.
Bálint András Varga is the acclaimed author of György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages; Three Questions for 65 Composers; and From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (all available from University of Rochester Press).
274 pages, Hardcover
Published May 1, 2017
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March 15, 2020
Bálint András Varga is a former promotion man for Editio Musica Budapest and Universal Edition, and through his interactions with composers in the course of his work, he has also come to love interviewing them. Besides book-length interviews with one specific composer (there is one with Iannis Xenakis, for instance), Varga has also produced several collections of interviews where he poses the same question or question to a number of composers.
This book thus asks thirty-three composers the questions of what role the courage to challenge conventions has played in their own composing. The composers are, in alphabetical order:
Additionally, Varga interviews three critics (Paul Griffiths, Wolfgang Schreiber, Arnold Whittall), and two festival directors (Heike Hoffmann, Sir Nicholas Kenyon). Some interviews were carried out in person, while others were the result of e-mail or fax exchanges.
Ultimately this is a very uneven collection, because some composers gave answers in great depth, sometimes even going beyond Varga’s initial question into interesting trivia about their own works, while other composers responded with only a few brief lines. Thus, the interviews with, for example, Hans Abrahamsen, Friedrich Cerha and Unsuk Chin will prove very informative for fans of those particular composers. John Adams and György Kurtág talk in some detail about their formative influences and opinions about other composers or their own earlier works. But Giya Kancheli, on the other hand, offers only a one-paragraph answer that doesn’t tell readers much at all, and e.g. Libby Larsen and Siegfried Matthus are similarly laconic. Georg Friedrich Haas's response on courage will raise eyebrows for being less about his music and more about his decision to publicly reveal that he lives in a full-time BDSM relationship with a submissive woman.
This book thus asks thirty-three composers the questions of what role the courage to challenge conventions has played in their own composing. The composers are, in alphabetical order:
Hans Abrahamsen, John Adams, Vykintas Baltakas, George Benjamin, Friedrich Cerha, Unsuk Chin, George Crumb, Chaya Czernowin, Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Pascal Dusapin, Lorenzo Ferrero, Michael Gielen, Detlev Glanert, Sofia Gubaidulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, Giya Kancheli, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Libby Larsen, Liza Lim, Luca Lombardi, Siegfried Matthus, Robert Morris, Olga Neuwirth, Enno Poppe, Karl Aage Rasmussen, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, Allen Shawn, Johannes Maria Staud, Manfred Trojahn, Jörg Widmann, Christian Wolff.
Additionally, Varga interviews three critics (Paul Griffiths, Wolfgang Schreiber, Arnold Whittall), and two festival directors (Heike Hoffmann, Sir Nicholas Kenyon). Some interviews were carried out in person, while others were the result of e-mail or fax exchanges.
Ultimately this is a very uneven collection, because some composers gave answers in great depth, sometimes even going beyond Varga’s initial question into interesting trivia about their own works, while other composers responded with only a few brief lines. Thus, the interviews with, for example, Hans Abrahamsen, Friedrich Cerha and Unsuk Chin will prove very informative for fans of those particular composers. John Adams and György Kurtág talk in some detail about their formative influences and opinions about other composers or their own earlier works. But Giya Kancheli, on the other hand, offers only a one-paragraph answer that doesn’t tell readers much at all, and e.g. Libby Larsen and Siegfried Matthus are similarly laconic. Georg Friedrich Haas's response on courage will raise eyebrows for being less about his music and more about his decision to publicly reveal that he lives in a full-time BDSM relationship with a submissive woman.
Displaying 1 of 1 review