Ten O'Clock News; John Harbison

[Reporter] The 45 year old Harbison is a professor of music at MIT. He's among the busiest composers in America and among the most articulate. He's a harbinger, it's been said, of a revived lyricism and humanism in contemporary music. This is actually his second big piece commissioned by the BSO. It's the first piece that John Harbison has chosen to call a symphony. Working out the phrasing of a new piece can be an ordeal for the orchestra. For listeners who don't have to play a note it can be even more intimidating. But it doesn't have to be. We found John Harbison a little shy about explaining the statement that he's making in his first symphony. Yet he was disarmingly direct in suggesting how he would like to be heard. [Reporter, speaking to Harbison] I wonder about the emotional statement or the social statement or the political statement or the statement of who John Harbison is and where he stands in the modern world that we all live in. [Harbison] I find that I can't think about the--

I can't really place myself in a larger context. When I'm thinking about music than really. Just getting from one day to the next. [music] [music] I'm unfortunately one of those composers. Who remains, in terms of my-- the source of what I do is somewhat of a mystery to myself. And that's one of the great sources of my own anxiety because it means that I don't have a secure feeling between pieces that I'm ever going to write another piece. I wanted in this piece, because of the occasion, to write a piece which was immediately present to an audience. I didn't want them out going out scratching their heads.

Saying "that was interesting". You know. That's the last thing I want them to be is interested. I'd rather have them care one way or another. [musicians practicing] I want the audience to not be able to forget about the piece too quickly. I I want it to be in their conscience, in other words, I think I want it to stamp some impression on them. Even those who don't like it. [Reporter] Do you know what impression? [Harbison] Well the impression that music has that's something you carry around and can't get rid of. I mean that's what I do when I teach students, they say 'what are we supposed to get out of this?" I say 'Well you're supposed to be inhabited by this, you know, for as long as possible' and I think that the better the work is. The more you will be haunted by it and carry it around The reason I choose the pieces for them to study that I always choose is there are ones that I think are the best and I want them in 30 years to be haunted by and inhabited by and changed by actually. And and I think that's what I want a listener to take away is something that-- there's something about it that doesn't

end when the piece ends. And that's what good pieces do for me. I mean you know I've-- I'm the sum of those pieces that wouldn't go away. And I think that's what a composer is when he writes, you know, he's trying to realize in a mature sense his own way of hearing. But he also is inevitably some sort of Meshing of all of the things that have affected him most deeply. And I think that what a composer hopes at best for his piece is that they will get inside the heads of listeners and be carried around somewhere. Not necessarily humming the tunes, but the impression of it that will stay. And it will have consequences, they'll say 'gee I'd like to hear something else by that composer, I will you know I will keep that in mind, I'll stay with it' or at the very least 'I just won't forget about that so easily.' I think that's what we want.