Conversations With William M. Hoffman; John Corigliano, Pt. 3 Of 4

. . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Zach safely on the point. On the Oscar it goes. John he really on. Oh. Here's in the first Oscar for John Purdiano and his second nomination. He was nominated in 1980 for scoring Alton State. Welcome to Conversations.

Lehman College's series of discussions with major theatre and musical artists of our times. For the third of a four-part chat, our guest today is the celebrated composer, winner of both an Oscar and Pulitzer Prize for Music, my old and dear friend and collaborator. I have the great honor of presenting the Lehman College Distinguished Professor, John Corion. Thank you very much. Last time we discussed at some length, your involvement with the music, with writing the music for the red violin for which you won an Oscar. As is your won't, you have since that time developed further, I almost say spinoffs, but they're not there. You have developed the concerto, a sweet based on the red violin.

Could you talk a little bit about that? Sure. Well, the concerto part actually started in the writing of the film score, because this film score was written in three parts. The first part had to be written before the film was shot, so that the violinist, Josh Bell, could record all the cues, and then people could mime the actual fingerings of the violin, the bowings, so it was accurate. And so that was part one. Part two was writing a piece for violin and full orchestra, whereas the film score was violin and strings, for a performance by the San Francisco Symphony in Josh Bell, in, I think, November of that same year, and at that point, they had just finished the shooting of the film, and I hadn't seen any of it. So during that summer, from the time that they went off to shoot the film, till November, I wrote a piece for violin and orchestra, and it was based on the materials I had written for the red violin. That is the seven-core check-on, honest theme, the romantic theme,

and some of the achards. But it was a completely different piece. It was an orchestral piece for violin and orchestra. It was developed in an orchestral manner. It was 17 minutes long and had its own shape, which had nothing to do with the film score. Then I wrote, and they recorded the film score after that, and they put the red violin check-on on as the final band, even though it doesn't appear in the film. Now, that piece got played a lot, and it's still being played a lot. It's played around as a single 17-minute piece. I mean, we're hearing that in New York. The E.O.S. orchestra did work. The E.O.S. did the suite and the Boston Symphony, and Sejiozawa did the check-on with Josh Bell at Carnegie Hall. And it's okay the way it is, but there are two reasons where I thought I needed to expand it. One was because when you have a piece that's about that long, 17 minutes, it's an odd duck. It doesn't really sit into the programming of an orchestra with a guest soloist.

Because if you have a guest soloist, you need about 30 minutes of time, of a major piece, or more, to sustain the bringing of a guest soloist for that week, and the preparation, all of that. So what happens is that one guest soloist played this piece, they sort of tie it up with another piece to fill out the time. They'll add another 15-minute piece, or two 10-minute pieces, or something like that, and that's how they'll get there evening. So first of all, I thought, well, that is sort of hodgepodge, one piece by me, another piece by sawsaws, another piece by Ravel, to make the violin appearance. So I felt I could add more movements and make it a concerto, but there was an important musical reason for me, and that was that the first moment is extremely romantic, and I'm not ashamed of that, but it's one side of me. It doesn't really picture me completely, because there's a wild side, a side of, oh, sonority, for its own sake, and clusters of sound, and new sounds made by instruments,

and all sorts of other things that I love just as much. And I wanted the concerto to be a full experience of what I do. And so to balance that, I ended up writing a four movement concerto, in which the first movement is the seven-minute check-on, and it's followed by a very fast, very fleet pianissimo scherzo. Everything's soft, it's like the beating of bats wings, and bees fluttering and clustering, and everything's soft and wild and not thematic to break the emotional tension from the first movement. Then the third movement, after that, could be lyrical and romantic, and the fourth woman brilliant. So it turns out to be about almost a 40-minute violin concerto, and we did the world premiere in September of 2003, and it's been played by five different orchestras. That's extraordinary, that's unheard of, actually. Well, I mean, Josh had something to do with that. I mean, he is a world famous star, and there's a film,

and I must say that orchestras are very fond in this day of dwindling audiences to be connected with something that connects with film. So the red violin idea appealed to the melod, and now they've got a full-length concerto to do that, and then Josh is playing it all over the place for that reason. This is part of your, when I think of the concerto, it feels, since I've known you since, we were both practically children. This feels like a continuation of your childhood in a way because your dad was the concert master of the New York Philharmonic and a celebrated violinist, and over the years, your connection with the instrument the violin has been very strong. It has. In fact, this piece is dedicated to the memory of a great violinist, John Corjano, my father. He was a senior, and I was junior, but we both took that off. I mean, he didn't have a senior on, but I put it on when we did a recording of my violin sonata

and he played the violin. I said, well, I'll put a junior on if you would seen your own. He agreed, but I don't like it because junior always implies something, and I don't feel that way. We're just in different fields. He was a violinist performer, and I was like, I'm a composer, so it's different. But I did grow up. When I was seven, eight, nine, and ten, hearing him practice a piece at home, then practice it with a pianist, a concerto, then go to Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic and have rehearsals, and then play it at Carnegie or the subscription audience at the New York Philharmonic. It affected me very deeply because my father was very nervous about doing well. Every year he played a concerto with the Philharmonic, although he played other places, that was a very important thing for him. So he got nervous, and I knew all the difficult spots in the concerto that he could really mess it up. So I never sat in the hall that was just too nervous. I sat in the green room, which is where the artists go.

At the end, to greet people who want to come backstage, it's backstage upstairs, and it has a speaker, and it plays what's happening in the hall. And I would listen to the concertos sitting on a couch through those tinny speakers, and sort of hunching over every time a difficult passage came and straightening up after when he made it, and that kind of thing. And also, I mean, it didn't stop there. After it was over, and it was a success, and he was happy, then the next morning, I would get up at 7.30 or 8, and run out and get the seven newspapers that would say what he did, and how he did it. And again, that was a very traumatic situation, because if there was anything negative in the New York Times or Harold Tribune or those papers, he would be terribly affected by it. And so for quite a while, so my state of happiness, in a sense, depended a lot on the success of his performances. So I was very tuned to that. I was very tuned to the difficulties of one person with an 18-inch piece of wood standing up

and having 85 musicians with trumpets and trombones and back, and mastering that, going over that, and the idea of the romantic concerto of the hero performer. And I think that it affected me always, because I've written now about 10 concertos. It's affected me deeply on that interplay between players of the soloist and the ensemble. And I think that gave me a good feeling for it because I obviously lived the life of a performer without being one. Right. I think it's time to hear some of the violin concerto. Can we cue that up, please? Yeah. What will play for you here is just actually what you've been hearing since the show began, because it's on a theme, but it's played now as a concerto theme with violin and full orchestra. And it's the beginning of the first movement that then develops that material in the Chacon. And then there are three moments of follow. And this is Josh Bell, performing it. Very romantic.

Very romantic. Very romantic. Very, very, very, very, very. He just came back from seeing that piece done by the Los Angeles for a moment. Right. I did. It was done in LA in the New Disney Hall. And it was a wonderful spot. And actually, one of the people who nominated Thomas Newman, who since has become a great friend, even though I beat him in that Academy Award. But I got to meet him later. And he's a wonderful guy. I was at the concert and a lot of film composers who I know were there. And it's nice because it kind of bridges that gap, because it's taken from a film, but it's also very much concert music. Now, I can't think of a composer who has worked in more forms or done so many different kinds of music than you, actually. And among the most extraordinary pieces that you've done,

as far as I'm concerned, is I wanted to get the title right. Mr. Tamberine, man. Seven poems of Bob Dylan. Right. When I heard that you are going to take seven of Bob Dylan's lyrics, and reset them to music of yours, I felt surely that you had lost it. Maybe I'd have. And the most extraordinary part of this, to me, and to practically everyone who heard of this, was that you had never heard Bob Dylan's music when you set out my gig, doesn't it? Well, yeah. Please tell us. I will tell you that this. I will say this. After these were played, because I didn't want to hear them, obviously, because they would influence me, even if I tried to avoid them. But after the performances of this,

one of my students, in fact, at Lehman, made up a CD with all the seven songs performed by Bob Dylan. How'd you like them? Well, I was shocked, actually. I knew he was. It was very surprising, because, like, Tambury Man is an eight bar phrase with no first chorus, even, no alternation. It just seems the same eight bars, whether he's singing the verse or the chorus. And it's such a colorful text. And no matter where it goes and the text is the same, eight bars repeat. That's, I guess, why I say I didn't hear it. Now, what may have happened, and, you know, I may have been in a coffee shop, and they were playing low and in the wind or something. That could have been the case. But my ears don't gravitate towards Bob Dylan's music, where they do, for the words. This is not insulting him or anything. It's just, for example, the Beatles. When they started doing their stuff, and Sergeant Pepper and all that stuff came out, I found that, as a composer, extremely interesting. I found they would do seven bar phrases that have eight.

They would do a certain modal things. They'd do certain rhythmic things, harmonic twists the goal in a strange direction instead of the traditional modulations. And, you know, my composers perked up and I said, I want to hear more about these people. I want to buy their records, which I did, and listen to them, and learn what they're doing. But if somebody is really in the tradition to the point where the next line is going to be pretty much for your thought, it would be musically from the last line, I stopped listening. I would don't listen carefully. It becomes music for me. And it's not an insult. It's just the way I am. I'm curious when people take things places. But doing the cliche, doing the thing that's always done has never been that interesting. It's surprising, because I know some people, like the head of none such records, Bob Hurwitz does not want to hear my piece because he says Bob Dylan was one of the ten most important musical influences on his life. And I would probably say, okay, if he said he was one of the most important influences. But as a musician, it's bare bones, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, he's got wonderfully gritty voice. I love that. And half sings, half speaks. Like Lottie Lenya did, which I really appreciate. But Kurt Weill, under Lottie Lenya, was very interesting. The music was interesting. So I fascinated by the music and then the performance. In this case, I didn't have that. Whatever possessed you to do it. Well, it was really an odd thought. It's an odd thought, but in a way it's not an odd thought. The odd part is that people assume that lyrics are not poetry. There's an assumption that lyrics go with songs. On the other hand, if you write an art song, you set poetry like Gerta, like Schubert did or Brahms did, to music. And that's supposed to be poetry set to music. And my feeling was, well, good lyrics can be poetry. Can't they? And when I was asked to do this cycle, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the Millennium, I wanted to do an American work. But I also didn't want to do one of the past,

like Dickinson and Whitman. I wanted to do something that related to people now. And a composer that actually spoke to, maybe even the younger generation. And who would that be? And I talked around with people and discussed it. And finally, someone said, have you ever looked at the lyrics of Bob Dylan? They're very poetic and fascinating and rather interesting politically and philosophically. So I got online and I sent for this big, thick book of hundreds and hundreds of his lyrics and no music. And I went through the whole thing. And some of the very religious and some of them are kind of hay-babe-type songs, which I'm not going to exactly do a good job with. But then there are the other ones. The very interesting lyrics that I found quite fascinating. And I Xeroxed them. And then I put them this way and this way to see how I could order a cycle that had a real build to it. In this particular case, the five central songs are about becoming politically aware. And the first song is kind of a famous tambourine manner. A song of the times to set the period

and the last one is kind of forever young. It's like a benediction feeling that everybody should stay forever young in spirit. And I thought they set up the five middle ones, which talked about a young man who was very unaware in clothesline. And he said, more or less, I do what I'm told. Then my mother told me, and I closed all the doors. And he lives in a small town. Two, blown in the wind. How can you be so closed, in a sense, when things are happening that are so terrible? How could you not champion things? Two masses of war, which is a savage poem that relates extraordinarily to what's happening right now about the war machine and the people who run the war machine. And it's the most savage poem I've ever read by anybody and got extremely savage music for me on that because it really, the words were terrifying. Then all along the watchtower, which is the kind of insurrection, the idea that the Joker and the thief, these crazy people are planning something

and plotting something to change the world whereas all along the watchtower, the wealthy with their servants don't notice it. And you see, there's a song that has three verses. Each verse is completely different. The first verse is wild with this Joker, his insanity. The second is oozing with kind of cunning with the thief. And the third one is ignoring all of that. The people who ignore it and underneath their rustling around but the song should ignore it. I said it is three different ideas. When I heard the original, it was all, of course, set to the same tune. Then after blown the wind, chimes of freedom, which had to do with the idea that we will win this battle, that the chimes of freedom will ring for everyone which seem to finish that cycle. And then for every young is a kind of, and we must stay for every young for it. So I was sort of looking at them as a single statement, all of them. They weren't meant to be, of course,

but that's why you put things together. I mean, I had the choice of putting these together, certain ways. And I thought that would be very exciting, and I loved the words. And the song was done. It was done first for voice and piano. And it worked very well, but some of it, especially as a tambourine man in masses of war, is so enormously big that you really want much more sound. You want the sound of amplification, for example. So I orchestrated it for large orchestra, not the kind of orchestra that should accompany a light soprano, let's say, but a large orchestra and then made it for amplified soprano and orchestra so that someone who's singing without having to have that operatic thrust that you would have to have if you had to rise above that orchestra with a natural voice with no amplification. But someone singing with amplification could use a more natural voice production and a large orchestra and can tell this story. It's an extraordinary piece. I wanted to hear a little bit of the Mr. Tambourine man. Can we cue that up?

Yeah, that's going to be the piano version. We don't have a legal version yet of the orchestra version to play for you. So it's going to be much more restrictive. But did you choose from the beginning? I believe so. Well, if you can play it through the entrance of the tambourine man, that would really be nice because otherwise you're just going to hear something very quiet and contemplative. And then it gets going. OK, you did get the fast point. Yes, we did forget about that.

Now, that piece is being done a fair amount. I've noticed. Starting to be. Well, yeah, the thing about this piece is that it needs a very special singer. I think you found one in the room. I have found one in the remarkable Hilleop Littman who went to Juilliard and who was extraordinary, who's singing it there. But many classical train singers approach it in the wrong way. I mean, you know, in a grandon manner, and that's absolutely wrong. And many pop singers don't have the technique that you need to be able to sing in the range and leaps and rhythms of this piece. There are a few other McDonald's could do it, you know, a few people. But it's really for a half a dozen singers. And it's getting done. But it needs to be done by the right person. Always. To work. I noticed that you don't hesitate to use amplified voice. No. No. Not one is the right thing. You're not a purest about these things. No.

I think when you and I wrote The Ghost of Versailles for the Metropolitan Opera, which is the Great Opera House, and actually has a very good sound in acoustic, even though it sees 4,000 people, the challenge there was can you make an opera of tradition because it was for the 100th anniversary of the Met, and, you know, we were dealing with the past with Figaro and all these characters. For there was can you make natural sound? Can you make these singers balance with that orchestra in such a way that it works in the way all of the other operas in history of work? However, when you're dealing with a text, for example, that's contemporary, like in this case, I think that it calls for an amplified voice. It almost demands it. I mean, I know that some operas are written about contemporary situations using opera singers without amplification, but I always think they sound really weird because they had big vibrato's and they sound totally out of character. I took to Halcyon. They didn't work. Now, I can't set that line for an opera singer, and yet that was a line, you know, in John Adams opera that he set for a metso with a nice big vibrato,

and I think it's funny, you know, when I hear that. So it's all about what texts require what solutions. When amplifying is the right solution, especially for contemporary texts, I insist upon it. It has to be that way. I believe that you are the person who said the difference between opera and musicals is amplification. It is. In many ways it is. Now, of course, that wasn't the case when Ethel Merman was around. Then we had people like that, and they could, they called Belters, and they were small theaters and you could do it without it. But ever since amplification was perfected enough that, like in the 50s, on, it has become the difference. For example, you hear every word. In opera, just to produce the sounds that carry that much, you have to distort the words. You can't pronounce them correctly, because if you do, you can't carry enough. So they're always on a kind of, you know, a seesaw, do I project, or do I have diction? And the more they want diction,

the less they project. So it's really difficult, and that's why they have, you know, super titles and operas. You go see them even when it's operas in English. You'll see a super title. It's necessary, because you don't get most of the words because they've got to project. And of course, with a microphone, that's taken away completely. You hear every word. You'll notice if you go to an opera, there's a big synopsis that you read on the plot. That's because... No one can ever follow that. You can't follow it, because you can't hear the words. You go into a musical. Think of you the place and the time. The show starts. You'll have to be with it. They make you hear every word by very brilliant amplification, so that when you have that, it's like going to a player, going to a movie. I mean, movies with subtitles are basically relegated as art films. We had trouble with Red violin in that case that it was in five languages, and they wanted four of those languages to be subtitled and English, of course not. And that's what happened. But in many ways that cut the viewership of the movie and made it into an art movie,

whereas if you want to be a popularist and go out there, you write something that people can really hear and understand. You don't have to give them printed words to read. You make that the case. And that's what I believe too. John, I'm getting the high sign that we have to wrap up this segment. Okay. Our next segment, we're going to talk about new directions and music. And I look forward to talking to you again about the rest of your incredible career and your ideas. John Coriano, thank you for coming to conversations and a welcome to our studio audience again. And we hope to see you next time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.