1987
1987 109 8 january 1987 Dear George, [ … ] Your letter from Australia was a treat. It must have been a strange experience. (The place seems to draw. Presently, 2 young former associates of mine—student copyists—are spending a year in Sydney, one of them studying with Sculthorpe whom she likes much, and are delighted with the Aussie way of doing things …) I admire your fortitude in exposing yourself to the rattling that such a displacement is likely to entail. I find myself becoming more and more a ‘stay-put’ one, and this seems to agree with me. (Mind you, I have not been tempted to go far afield. I don’t know how I would respond. Only one trip abroad is in the works now. I am reading an ‘invited’ paper at the yearly conference of the Royal Musical Ass[ociatio]n to be held at London University in April. Their (our) theme is ‘Words & Music.’ I was asked to say my bit on ‘new’ music for the voice.1 I am trying to see how I could get beyond where I left off with Alternative Voices. I have oodles of notes on scraps of paper, and a few dozen new scores, tapes, to consider for it. However it is unlikely that I shall be able to give more than—say—a week for pulling ‘the thing’ together for a ca. 45' long ‘Spiel.’) [ … ] Presently I am preoccupied with writing (on a ‘rush’ commission for an Oct. ’87 premiere by one of the leading orchestras of the country, the National Arts Centre Orch[estra], a new orchestral work. It promises to be (as requested) about 20 min. long. I have (now) much pleasure in writing it (by the month’s end—Jan.—I should have the 1st version of the short score done. It will be my first ‘non-vocal’ piece since the late ’60s. (On| 195 that account I was a bit wondering what I would want to say purely orchestrally. But I need not have worried.) The provisional title of the work is Simulacrum. It has a hidden scenario, of a vague sort, and proves to be the framework vehicle for getting into territory where I wanted to go since quite a while by now. It will even be a kind of exploration (this is one aspect of it) of my own Jewishness, whatever this is.2 Lately I’ve been reading about things Jewish and am much stimulated by the syncretistic richness of it all. I see now that what I thought (wholly in the ‘gut’ way) that there are many ways of ‘being Jewish/etc.’ has been felt by many before me. (Discovering the wheel, once again …) Oh yes! But the nuances in my mix will matter. Other stimuli included (this was before I was thrown into the Simulacrum whirlpool) reading The Selfish Gene and a book on the Anthropic Cosmological Principle3 (the latter would interest you; the former is a frustrating, arrogant, yet interesting geneticist’s vantage point view of existence). Another was a volume of a magnum opus by the philosopher Mario Bunge (the title escapes me momentarily) in which he takes a critical view of most contemporary fads (computers, A[rtificial] I[ntelligence], genetics, etc.).4 An attempt of a polymath at sorting out things at our own level, where things ‘are at,’ presently. [ … ] Istvan 110 18 january 1987 My dear Isty, [ … ] Australia is now a kind of very pleasant memory, almost a dream of sorts. Humanly, very gratifying considering how many truly warm & intelligent people we befriended. “Professionally” (odd word, fully deserving quotes around it) everything went off like clockwork. [ … ] There were excellent performances, especially at the end in Canberra. Perhaps the most interesting residue of the trip are the 4 or 5 one & a half hour ABC broadcasts scheduled for March ’87 & interviews I had in Sydney (6 hours in one day!) cum recordings & tapes of my music. The Aussies are in for a real dose. Along the way I was supposed to meet Sculthorpe but it never materialized. He’s considered one of Australia’s best composers but I don’t know enough of his music or Australian music in general to comment on that judgment. I brought back an ABC recording of 4 orchestral works, one of them by Sculthorpe—but I much prefer a work called Viridian by Richard Meale to Sculthorpe’s Mangrove.5 It was with tremenPart IV: Politics, Religion, and Society (1986–2000) 196 | [3.144.187.103...
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