Inhalt: #14 – Herbst 2011
NIKOLAUS BRASS
WEGE INS INNERE
CHRISTOPH GALLIO
SOZIALE MUSIK
GEORG HEIKE
NEUE MUSIK WOZU?
MISATO MOCHIZUKI
ALLEIN UNSER BLICKWINKEL ÄNDERT ALLES
FELIX PROFOS
ES BLEIBT DAS RISIKO
JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS
ARTIST PERSPECTIVES
MARTIN SMOLKA
MUSIC IS COVERED
MANOS TSANGARIS
WARTEN SIE GERN?
The environment in which i have grown up as a musician and composer, the school where i studied in Prague, all that was very traditional in a negative way. conservatism belongs to this place for ages. Even Bedrich Smetana had such troubles. i have to make that clear. When i talk about tradition, i am rather talking about traditionalism. For example, the professors at the academy who represented traditionalism to me, asked us to write like Shostakovich and Prokofiev and maybe like Martinu. Their arguments were that it should be musical, understandable, it should be for the people. So i opposed traditionalism and strongly wanted to be separated from it. I felt like a part of the European or, let’s say, Euro-american avant-garde movement. Furthermore, there was a communist ideology. in the 1980’s, i was closed in in my country by the so-called iron curtain and had no possibility to travel to the west. In this situation i got a chance to participate in a composition course in Poland. Through Marek Kopelent i got there, unofficially, because the academy in Prague would not have allowed the students to go there. They tried to keep us from being infected by avant-garde music. So i had the luck to go there privately, so to speak, with a scholarship though. In Poland i encountered a very open, free atmosphere; a lot of Western or rather international music. I personally met Louis Andriessen. That was very important for me. The next year i even met Luigi Nono and other strong personalities, also polish composers. This inspired and encouraged me.
- György Kurtag once said, “My mother tongue is Bartok and his was Beethoven.” What was your musical mother tongue then?
You know this is a very difficult question because i have fun exploring and learning all kinds of music. So i’m still interested in listening and analyzing. It’s really difficult to define my mother tongue within all this variety. As a student, i received very strong impulses particularly from Anton Webern through Marek Kopelent, and from Steve Reich and minimal music through my friends. There were also a lot of other influences like Morton Feldman, Stravinsky, or Beethoven. also from jazz. Between the ages of 14 and 18 i was sure that i would become a rock musician and write songs. And i really did. Over this period of time i thought that classical music was crap, stupid. Well, that was my teenage protest.
- But there is a strong Czech tradition and particularly a special sense of humor. What about these influences?
If i ever mentioned any inspirations or connections to another Czech art it was rather the humor and specific poetry of the writer Bohumil Hrabal, maybe the good soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, and the specific sense of humor of Czech literature and films. But anyway, we are living in a globalized time and i think that national schools in new music are close to being nonsense today. Maybe in such strong cultures like the French or German it makes sense. But for a nation which has only 10 million inhabitants, this global new music movement cannot really have its own Czech voice. We can be good European composers or simply good or bad composers, but why Czech? That was the ambition of the 19th century. Nations were looking for their own identity using folklore and folk elements.
- You mentioned literature. You yourself have a special sense for wordplays, for example in titles like Geigenlieder or Euforium. You once said that your experience as a composer was always close to poetry. In what sense?
All arts have something in common. It’s a fact that composers and poets are in a similar situation. They are sitting at home, writing on paper. Visual artists are much more active in the sense that they form something new with their hands. Actors or filmmakers are also very active. But when you are on your own only with a piece of paper, you have to find how to get energy from within yourself. You are on your own with the paper and ... your hormones? During my studies i experimented a lot. I was an improvising pianist in a special theater group and played prepared piano. There i learned a lot. The specific tension of the deeper concentration in the improvisation helps you to find out things which you probably would not find at home. […]
Excerpt from Martin Smolka: Music is covered
Read more in the physical issue #14 !