Surrounded by this Incredible Vortex of Musical Expression: A Conversation with Gunther Schuller

SURROUNDED BY THIS INCREDIBLE VORTEX OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION: A CONVERSATION WITH GUNTHER SCHULLER BRUCE BRUBAKER N BOSTON, BRUCE BRUBAKER directed “I Hear America,” a festival celebrating the multifaceted work of Gunther Schuller. A joint project of the Boston Symphony, Harvard University, and New England Conservatory, the festival included concerts in Jordan Hall, performances by the Boston Symphony, a public conversation with Schuller and James Levine, and a “Learning From Performers” event at Sanders Theatre. BRUBAKER: You are a serious thinker about music. I could even say you’re an “intellectual.” (Perhaps you don’t like this word?) SCHULLER: I love that word. [Laughter.] I A Conversation with Gunther Schuller 173 BRUBAKER: OK, good. In rehearsals, more than once, I’ve observed you noticing things—details about a performance—that didn’t seem to be coming from conscious thinking, but from somewhere else. I wonder if you can say something about the relationship between thinking as a musician and “intuition” or some kind of “feeling” that you get when you’re reacting to something that you hear . . . SCHULLER: It comes about through a vast accumulation of experience. I don’t think anything can be absolutely, completely without thought. But the “thought” part of it gets reduced when you’ve experienced the same kind of situations thousands of times—in my long life. So that one knows in a couple of nanoseconds what the problem is and how it has to be dealt with or fixed. In my case, a lot of this comes intuitively, or quickly, because I’ve been so wide-rangingly involved in all aspects of music. I don’t say this in any sort of bragging way. I’ve been a performer, I’ve been a conductor, I’ve been a composer, I’ve experienced music from every possible angle, and teaching it—all of that. I think that’s the answer. But that is all a product of intellect (“the mind”) and emotion (“feeling”) which is also a cumulative experience. We all know that one can feel too much, overdo the feeling part of it, and underdo the intelligence part of things. Or vice versa. So, as one grows musically, all of that gets sublimated and when necessary it just comes out, not only very quickly, but securely. BRUBAKER: Is there some kind of awareness you have of keeping a balance between spontaneity and “planning”? I’m not even necessarily thinking of a performance—it could be true in writing music too. SCHULLER: Oh, absolutely. It is a combination of those two things in varying degrees. I’m fortunate that in my composing or my performing, whether as a horn player or as a conductor—it often was what we call a “quick study.” I say this in all humility. Generally speaking, everything has come to me very quickly and rather easily. But, I’ve gone the whole range from, every once in a while when I have really struggled and eventually resolved the problem, all the way to, most recently, the piece that I wrote for Frank Epstein, the Grand Concerto. There, I wrote some things—I was almost unconscious of what I was doing. It was so spontaneous; it was so instantaneous. One could put it like this: I had just written a certain note and within a millisecond there was unquestionably—I knew what the next note or notes were. I knew the things that had to happen or were going to happen. That is an amazing experience. It was like it was improvised— at the speed that improvising musicians work. BRUBAKER: I wonder if that doesn’t relate to what you said before in 174 Perspectives of New Music terms of performances—some kind of long experience makes quickness possible? So that spontaneity is the result of some other process that’s gone on in the past. It’s not really spontaneous—it seems spontaneous in the moment. SCHULLER: That’s right. It’s an accumulation of experiences. And over a time one hopes those experiences have a certain consistency, so that you really can rely on them. Some people may think I’m arrogant, or that I’m too assertive, too quick...