Joel-Francois Durand in the Mirror Land

In the Mirror Land: Reflections on a Self-Reflection (2004)

IN THE MIRROR LAND: REFLECTIONS ON A SELF-REFLECTION JOËL-FRANÇOIS DURAND To Melanie, Nicholas, and Sophia, without whom none of this would be. In the Mirror Land 5 I. HANK YOU FOR JOINING US today. Please have a seat in the corner there, in front of the mirror. All right. Say, the lights are pretty bright over here. - We can turn them down a bit if you want. Is that better? Yes, thank you, it’s better now with the shadows. You know how I dislike interviews; it always comes out wrong somehow. - Well, if it comes out wrong today, there’s nobody to blame but you, I’m afraid. No, I can blame you. - Of course, and I’m sure you will. Well then, are you comfortable? Ready for the Self-Portrait in the Mirror? Self-Portrait and a Dream, rather. I don’t promise I’ll be looking straight at the mirror all the time. - We’ll see about that. Shall we start with a bit of chronology? You were born in France? Yes, and that’s where I studied music, piano at the Ecole Normale de Musique and music education at the so-called Vincennes University (Paris VIII). But before that I had studied three years of mathematics and physics after high school, “Mathématiques Supérieures” and “Mathématiques Spéciales,” as they are called. - So you came to music fairly late? I had been studying piano since I was seven, but as a full-time music student , I started after those years of scientific classes. I was twenty-one. That was a difficult period because I was very drawn to music but had no contact at all with musicians, so I had no idea how to make the switch. Then I met somebody who introduced me to Vincennes, and it sounded like the right place for me, considering my background. That was in my third year of math, and it took me about six months to decide on a complete change of direction. -T 6 Joël-François Durand In the Mirror Land - You weren’t interested in the more traditional approach, through the Conservatoire? I was very ignorant of what musical studies were at the time. For the Paris Conservatoire, it was my impression that you already had to have a strong preparation in order to get in, and all I had was many years of piano and some theory. So I didn’t even bother to look into that. When I heard about Vincennes, I thought it would be a more appropriate school for me, and that’s when I realized that it would actually be possible for me to go into music in a serious way. - Were you already composing then? I had written a number of pieces, mostly tonal, small movements for piano, that sort of thing. - Did Vincennes offer you what you expected? At first, yes, because their main emphasis was modern music and that was really what I had come for. I took all the traditional classes they offered: harmony, analysis, ear training, orchestration, and so on. Also some less traditional ones, such as electronic music, aesthetics, and philosophy. - That university had a rather progressive reputation back then, didn’t it? Yes, that’s when people like Deleuze were teaching there. The place had been put together pretty quickly following the events of May ’68,1 so there was a lot of momentum for change, for doing everything differently . The whole system was like that. In music there were some classes with very little planning, just discussion forever on this or that subject. I remember an argument I had with another student who thought I was too straight and challenged me to answer the question of how many times the main theme in the first movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony appears. I was supposed to know because I had studied piano! I think the subject of the course was minimal music (this was the mid-’70s, so it was a hot topic at the time) and the teacher was straining to demonstrate that the concept of minimalism was already found in Beethoven! Pretty basic, as you can see—it was rather loose. Another important aspect of my experience at Vincennes was the exposure to non-Western musical cultures. There were a few instructors there who were very involved in ethnomusicology...