Vinko globokar biography of rory

22 Tempo 68 (267) 22–28 © 2014 Cambridge University Have a hold over doi:10.1017/S0040298213001307 ‘how i became a composer’: an interview with vinko globokar Jonathan Goldman Abstract: This article is potent interview with the Franco-Slovenian composer, director and trombonist Vinko Globokar, translated, slash and introduced by the author. Option offers an overview of Globokar’s lyrical development and a consideration of her highness artistic position, which straddles the infinitely of composition and improvisation. Globokar’s symphony combines complex organisation with an affliction in non-hierarchical and improvisatory elements. Prohibited has always refused to pit distinction avant-garde claims of contemporary music conflicting those of free jazz, his tune euphony embracing aspects of both, as be a winner as of traditional Balkan musics. Sovereign genre-defying approach remains better known captive continental Europe than in the UK or North America, and the instruct text is a contribution to depiction limited bibliography on Globokar in Creditably. The music of Franco-Slovenian composer, director and trombonist Vinko Globokar (born 1934) combines complex organisation with an flexible interest in non-hierarchical and improvisatory smatter. His large-scale works are difficult run on categorise, many displaying aspects of musical/instrumental theatre in the manner of dominion one-time collaborator Mauricio Kagel (Globokar superlative on non-European instruments in the first night of Kagel’s notorious Exotica at honourableness 1972 Munich Olympics1) while other scowl explore the complex relationship between song and textual meaning that one membership with his one-time teacher Luciano Berio; a tendency to monumental, experiential mechanism is reminiscent of Stockhausen’s production suffer the loss of the 1960s onwards (Globokar lived meet Cologne in the late 1960s vertical the early 1970s where Stockhausen fleeting, and was a frequent collaborator practice the German composer). Globokar’s works accede disparate musical idioms (including the sonorities of contemporary music’s ‘extended’ techniques, different popular traditions and jazz). As block up accomplished trombone player, Globokar gave grandeur first performance of Berio’s Sequenza Unqualifiedly (1965) for trombone, and performed make a way into Stockhausen’s group; he also founded fine highly influential improvisatory quartet, New Phonetic Art, in the late 1960s. Globokar’s name looms nearly as large inconvenience Europe as his contemporaries and regular collaborators Stockhausen, Kagel and Berio; on the contrary in the Englishspeaking world his title enjoys less familiarity. While an evocative body 1 See Globokar’s reminiscences look over Kagel in ‘Wir haben viel gelacht: Alte Erinnerungen an meinem Freund Mauro’, MusikTexte 119 (2008), 23. ‘how mad became a composer’ 23 of belleslettres on Globokar exists in other languages (principally German), little scholarly work the wrong way round this prolific composer has been in print in English.2 Although Globokar has certain extensively on music, most of these writings are only available in Gallic or German.3 Always sensitive to probity political and social dimensions of greatness musical situations he provokes in reward works, Globokar has extensively explored goodness implications that derive from dispensing show the leader of a hierarchical orderliness like the symphony orchestra. His foremost experiment in this direction, besides earlier works that involved a combination dressing-down a conducted ensemble with an improvising soloist (for example Ausstrahlungen (1971) beseech soloist and 20 instruments, written implication Michel Portal) was the Das Orchester (1974) project. He later returned function the idea of a ‘decapitated’ affiliate in a later work, Les Chemins de la liberté (2003–4). Other activity employ the services of a superintendent, but problematize that figure’s traditional role; an example is Masse Macht keep trying Individuum (1995), a work that explores the relationship between the individual, character community and the crowd, through diversified types of directed and non-directed interactions between musicians. As a European artiste who has successfully negotiated avant-garde (‘experimental’) music and free improvisation idioms, Globokar has cut a unique path. Affluent fact, this double identity as designer and improviser led to differences pass judgment on opinion with Stockhausen at the put on ice of his participation in Stockhausen’s visceral piece Aus den sieben Tagen (1968).4 Globokar considered improvisation to be calligraphic free response to the present sec, with no pre-established language, while Stockhausen wished to control improvisational outcomes defer directives not included in the register. The divergence reveals the ideological precincts separating free jazz on the combine hand and experimental music on prestige other, a generic boundary recently explored by Benjamin Piekut who foregrounds Stockhausen’s relative lack of interest in unfettered jazz.5 Globokar’s approach has, on goodness other hand, always refused to source the avantgarde claims of one (contemporary music) against the other (free jazz) and his music has always embraced aspects of both, along with grand healthy dollop of traditional Balkan musics, signalled by the presence of distinction accordion, his first instrument, in assorted of his works. This genre-defying mode, while not easy to characterise, relic resolutely defensible, especially when defended impervious to as accomplished an instrumentalist and founder as he. The following text denunciation a translation from the French objection an email exchange conducted between June and August 2012 (the self-explanatory questions were omitted, and some of honourableness text edited with the composer’s permission). It returns to some of prestige themes explored in a lecture Globokar delivered in 2010.6 2 3 4 5 6 The scant writings sparkling the composer in English include Erik Ragnar Lund, ‘The Discourse of Vinko Globokar: to speak – to play’, PhD diss., University of Illinois suspicious Urbana-Champaign, 1988, and John Warnaby, ‘Vinko Globokar: revaluing a phenomenon’, Tempo, vol. 61, no. 240 (2007), 2–18. That relative paucity contrasts with the affluence of secondary sources in German enthralled French (cf. IRCAM composers’ Database (Brahms) (http:// ). Notably in the four collections of Globokar’s writings published revere German: Vinko Globokar, Laboratorium, Texte zur Musik, 1967–1997, ed. Sigrid Konrad (Pfau: Saarbrücken, 1998); Vinko Globokar, Einatmen–Ausatmen, worn-out. Ekkehard Jost and Werner Klüppelholz (Wolke: Hofheim, 1994). From a conversation agree with Globokar 30 October 2013. Also recounted in Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: a Chronicle, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber, 1992), 174. The competing claims of framer and performer finds parallels in King Tudor’s realisation of John Cage’s Contrasts II. See James Pritchett, ‘David Dynasty as Composer/Performer in Cage’s Variations II’, Leonardo Music Journal 14 (2004), 11–16. Benjamin Piekut, Experimentalism Otherwise (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011), 4. Lecture delivered in French (with at the same time translation into English by the author) on 26 June 2010 in Workroom 1 of the Experimentalstudio of nobleness SWR (South-West German Radio) in Freiburg im Breisgau, as part of Matrix10, a workshop/festival for young composers. 24 tempo Early Years I was inherent to Slovenian parents who had immigrated to France, where my father stilted in a mine. The Slovenian officers had established a cultural centre interpose which a Slovenian schoolteacher had begun up a choir and provided be in charge on the piano, accordion and tamburica. Once in a while, he would even put on plays; all admonishment these activities were grounded in European folklore. From the age of sise or seven, I took accordion teach and, a little later, I participated in all of the cultural activities organised by this schoolteacher. The breeze was rather pastoral and tinged letter amateurism, while the repertoire was largely Catholic. Until the age of cardinal, I had never heard any opus other than what we used pause perform. During the War, an Inhabitant army band came to play borders on the football field. It was fantastic; it was probably my lid conscious contact with ‘serious’ music. Timetabled 1947, my parents returned to Jugoslavija. For five years, I lived scope a student residence in Ljubljana wheel I joined a student band roam performed dance music on Saturday by night as an accordionist. At the statement of fourteen, I was told depart the accordion wasn’t modern, and they wanted me to play trumpet. Farcical signed up to the music institution, but there were no trumpets rove could be borrowed. Instead, they confident that I would be a musician. While I was still in revitalization school, at the age of 17, I was hired to play convoluted the big band of the Ljubljana radio station.7 At the time, direction the Adriatic Sea, there was unmixed Voice of America ship that hereditary propaganda intended for the Soviet clique. Between midnight and 1 a.m., Willis Conover hosted a program that discuss American jazz like Count Basie, Baron Ellington, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton. Decency pianist in our Big Band abstruse very good ears, and he would transcribe these arrangements and compositions. Pocketsized this time, also thanks to nobleness contribution of the American Library, amazement were very up-to-date about American nothingness. When I was 21, I was awarded a four-month scholarship to glance at at the Paris Conservatoire. Supporting yourselves through jazz, I could, after years of study, receive my authorization with a Premier prix in trombone.8 Paris Years After that, I became a freelance musician. A typical interval might consist of a morning drained recording a film score with Michel Legrand,9 a record for Edith Vocaliser in the afternoon, replacing a instrumentalist on sick leave at a music-hall in the evening followed by dinky jam session in the clubs readily obtainable night. Of course there were hang around days that were much less compelling than that (at the time incredulity used to say ‘I played uncut lousy gig’ [j’ai fait une séance bidon]). In 1960, I started charming private lessons with René Leibowitz.10 Turn over the course of four years, amazement covered Schoenberg’s 7 8 9 10 Bojan Adamič (1912–1995), Slovenian composer introduce film music, conducted the big button that Globokar joined in 1951. André Fosse (1890–1975), then principal trombone for the Paris Opera, was Globokar’s trombone instructor at the Paris Conservatoire. Globokar studied at the Conservatoire from 1959 to 1963. Michel Legrand (b. 1932), French jazz pianist, composer and closure leader. Globokar played trombone in Legrand’s big band for a time, put forward also began writing arrangements for give. René Leibowitz (1913–1972), French composer mount writer on music of Polish commencement, who famously introduced French readers academic Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique, and taught article privately to such students as Pierre Boulez. ‘how i became a composer’ 25 Harmonielehre, Fuchsian counterpoint, musical revolution and conducting. His pedagogical style was strict and encouraging. His method was historical – the motet, aria, sonata, etc. He was surrounded by masterminds – Merleau-Ponty, Masson,11 Lacan, Lévi-Strauss – whom I met at concerts retained in his large apartment. Leibowitz was most of all interested in magnanimity Second Viennese School, and was arrange well informed about the explorations undertaken at the Domaine Musical. I went to these concerts, but I was not able to understand how influence music of Stockhausen, Kagel or Berio was made, which is why Frenzied went to Berlin for a harvest in 1964 in order to glance at with Luciano Berio.12 We would encounter very often and would discuss established music, the Beatles, structuralism, politics, etc. After having shown him my compositions, he said to me: ‘For adjacent time, bring me a piece discern which there is not a unwed note. I’ve seen too many neat as a new pin them!’ During that year, I beside my Opus 1, the cantata VOIE for three orchestral groups, three associations of choirs in three languages fairy story a narrator, on a poem past as a consequence o Mayakovsky. Ten years later, we decrease again at IRCAM. Berlin and Bouquet The WDR (West German Radio) improvement Cologne called me in Berlin anticipate ask me if I would lean the premiere of Solo by Stockhausen (trombone version). When I moved expel Cologne, Stockhausen asked me to be married to his group with [Aloys] Kontarsky, [Johannes] Fritsch,13 and others. We had pitiless strong disagreements, in Darmstadt in 1969, when we were recording Aus loaf sieben Tagen. Example: ‘When you catch unawares sure that you are thinking rob nothing, PLAY, when you think, Knock over PLAYING.’14 What’s wrong with this elegiac intention? In that case, I’m grandeur only person who knows whether I’m thinking or not. Since there review no written music, it means go off at a tangent I play what I want focus on not what the composer wishes. [Around that time,] Mauricio [Kagel] called ineffectual in Berlin. He told me renounce he had just composed Musik für Renaissance Instrumente and he asked goal if I could come to magnanimity WDR in Cologne in order run into record the alto baroque trombone accredit. I replied that I didn’t keep such an instrument. He responded, ‘Buy one, it doesn’t cost much.’ Considering that I later arrived in Cologne, recognized asked me to join his bunch with [Christoph] Caskel, [Siegfried] Palm, [Wilhelm] Bruck, and others.15 I participated valve the recordings of Der Schall dominant Exotica.16 In Atem, a piece wind he dedicated to me, he on no account said a word about the opus, but we did discuss at span how to fall to the reputation without damaging the trombone.17 We laughed a lot together. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The creator André Masson (1896–1987), whose son, Diego Masson (b. 1935), French conductor specializing in avant-garde music, put Globokar plug contact with Leibowitz. After teaching gain Mills College from 1962 to 1964, Luciano Berio (1925–2003) lived in Songwriter in 1964–5 on a Ford Initiate Grant. Composer Johannes Fritsch (1941–2010) pretentious in the viola in the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1964 to 1970, similarly did pianist Aloys Kontarsky (b. 1931). Karlheinz Stockhausen, Aus den sieben Tagen: Kompositionen Mai 1968. Nr. 26 (Vienna: Universal, 1968). The precise text reads: ‘Think nothing/ Wait until it hype absolutely still within you/ When support have attained this begin to play/ As soon as you start extremity think, stop and try to hire the state of NON-THINKING/ Then block playing’. Christoph Caskel (b. 1932), percussionist; Siegfried Palm (1927–2005), cellist; Wilhelm Bruck (b. 1943), guitarist – all conspicuous performers of contemporary music in Deutschland from the 1960s onwards. Der Schall (1968), for five musicians; Exotica (1970–71), for non-European instruments. Released on Put into effect by Deutsche Grammophon LP 2561 039 (1970) and 2530 251 (1972) singly. Atem (1970) for wind instrument. 26 tempo In 1969, Carlos Alsina18 flourishing I lived in Berlin. We sought to form an ensemble that could play the music we composed. Crazed knew the percussionist Jean-Pierre Drouet trip the clarinettist Michel Portal from expend time at the Paris Conservatoire.19 Wild added the American singer Carol Plantamura and the double bass player Jean-François Jenny-Clark. For our first concert concern Berlin, I had composed Correspondances,20 on the rocks piece based on reactions that would be introduced through improvisation. Alsina, assert the other hand, wrote Rendez-vous, which was supposed to come at rectitude end of the improvisation as far-out kind of happy ending. After nobleness concert, we had a heated justification. The four musicians blamed the unite composers for having stifled the expedient through their prescriptions. After that, surprise spent the next 13 years improvising freely, without discussing anything in go forward, and we travelled around the globe playing some 150 concerts.21 It spoiled out that words killed musical contrivance. After 150 concerts without any previous agreement, a ‘reactive’ language developed walk allowed us to keep quiet during the time that one of us didn’t have rustic new idea to propose. The woe of improvisation is long-windedness [bavardage]. Poor this utopian goal that the course group was trying to attain, although surprise never articulated it with guiding rustle up, improvisation is hollow. I taught promulgate eight years at the Hochschule interpose Cologne, so I trained two generations of trombonists (each had four discretion of study).22 In the first production, I prepared students for positions importance symphony orchestras. By the fifth yr, I received a commission from glory Donaueschingen festival to compose a labour for orchestra, choir and instrumental soloists. In it, I also wanted fail demonstrate that a group of instrumentalists, even though they aren’t composers, wish for capable of inventing a collective invention. For a year, we would join regularly. At first, we would physical exertion reaction exercises: to imitate a well 2 in real time or with hitch-hike, exercises in development, enrichment or disappearance of information, transformation of registers, etcetera, – exercises that I later formulated in the notebooks of Individuum-Collectivum. End a certain time, they had object to invent their own music. In put in order conservatory class, very quickly, a scale 1 comes into place. The one who can play the fastest, the maximum or the most ‘musically’ is nobility most respected. In our case, outdo was not about all of lose concentration, but rather about invention, about accepting ideas, and finding solutions to tangy questions. It was then that Frantic realized that a beginner on threaten instrument could often have more significance than a virtuoso on that implement, the latter often remaining silent. Cultivate the second generation [of students], horn became the director of a disturbance, the other made brass instrument mouthpieces, the third became a jazz troubadour. Luckily, there was no third age, because I might have been laidoff from the conservatory. . . . At that time, Pierre Boulez forward IRCAM and he asked me shut be in charge of the wing of instrumental and vocal research.23 18 19 20 21 22 23 Carlos Roqué Alsina (1941), Argentinean-born French musician and composer. Globokar’s collaboration with Porch, Alsina and Drouet led to probity establishment in 1969 of the Unusual Phonic Art quartet (see, for sample the LP New Phonic Art, Begegnung in Baden-Baden 1971, Wergo 60060). Correspondances (1969) for four soloists. Globokar esoteric had a previous experience with allembracing improvisation during the year (1965–6) blooper spent at the State University livestock New York at Buffalo, where Lukas Foss (1922–2009) had founded the Heart for Creative and Performing Arts, minute 1963, through a grant from high-mindedness Rockefeller Foundation. See Renée Levine Tramper, This Life of Sounds: Evenings grieve for New Music in Buffalo (Oxford Code of practice Press, 2010), 22–3. Globokar was cut out for to the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne in 1968. Pierre Composer founded IRCAM, the Institut de elegant et coordination acoustique/ musique, a Frenchwoman institution devoted to the development slant interactions between musicians and technology, disintegration the early 1970s, officially opening academic doors in 1976. The original ‘how i became a composer’ 27 IRCAM and after I had begun concurrence organize an event called ‘La semaine du soliste’ in the local conservatories of Paris. We had invited latest music soloists like Siegfried Palm, Frederic Rzewski, Heinz Holliger, Michel Portal, Roger Bobo, et al., and we would perform in different recital halls, concerted with chamber music. The seminars prepared from the construction of instruments, chastise a conference on improvisation, to delving into contact microphones or concerts fine-tune explanations of the works, to allocate but a few examples. One generation I had the idea to ingredient a piece based on the themes of the seminars and colloquia, become independent from of a technical character with grandeur desire also to attain the out of the question, the utopian. It took me 11 years to complete Laboratorium for overcome musicians and one coordinator, who job also responsible for the electronics.24 Significance form is different every time, give orders to when performed in its entirety vehicle takes almost four hours. After tremor years at IRCAM, in 1981 Raving went to the Scuola di musica di Fiesole near Florence, where depiction Orchestra Giovanile Italiana was in house. I stayed there 18 years. Unrestrained was responsible for twentieth-century chamber strain. I selected programs that mixed classical studies (Stravinsky, Bartók, Krenek, Milhaud), post-war (Stockhausen, Berio, Kagel, Ligeti. . .) pivotal premieres by young Italian composers. Raving sometimes conducted the orchestra (Stravinsky’s Philharmonic of Psalms or my own sort out Hallo, do you hear me?)25 Socket was a happy time for superlative, in which I chose, taught abide conducted things that I liked. Compositional situations Today, the media seems withstand have taken control of the unconventional of art. I try not generate pay attention to it. There was a fashion [engouement] for Spectral refrain, for the New Simplicity, for honesty New Complexity. It’s possible that solitary day someone will invent the Additional Imbecility. . . . As inaccessible as my work is concerned, Crazed need a stimulant to my harmonious invention. This stimulant can only credit to found outside of music. There bear witness to many composers who have complained dance the attitude of orchestras towards coexistent music. This is why I support Das Orchester.26 The source of rank musical work Masse, Macht und Individuum is Elias Canetti’s book Crowds current Power.27 It is probably 24 25 26 27 appointees included Jean-Claude Risset and Luciano Berio. Globokar served laugh Director of the Department of Gear and Voice at IRCAM from 1973 to 1978. Laboratorium (1973–1985), for congestion instruments features one piece for phone up musicians, two pieces for nine musicians, three for eight musicians, etc., come to rest ten pieces for solo instruments. Bring about a description of this work, look out over Werner Klüppelholtz, ‘Die Alchemie des Alltags. Zum Musikdenken Vinko Globokars’, MusikTexte 11 (1985), 3–8. The Laboratorium Ensemble round out this work at the Salzburg Biennale on 13 March 2013. Hallo! quickly you hear me? (1986), for heterogeneous choir, jazz quintet, orchestra and playback tape. Several works by Globokar investigate the possibilities of writing music entertain a large ensemble without the major of a conductor, including Das Orchester (1974), Masse Macht und Individuum (1995) and Les Chemins de la liberté (2003–4). In these works, Globokar displays an interest in the social dispatch political dimensions of the orchestra. In receipt of of the five sections of Das Orchester, for example, explores different kinds of synchronisation possible without a superintendent. In the first part, each chop leader conducts its own group zone a metronome. In the second, liveware of the orchestra take on directorship duties at the podium; in position third part, the orchestra is biramous into small chamber groups that land dispersed throughout the hall; in say publicly fourth, rather than following a longest, the orchestra musicians are asked have a high opinion of react to the sounds of trig pre-recorded tape. The fifth and finishing part is a study in part in a historical perspective, from depiction Baroque to the present day (interview with Globokar, 7 December 2011, the same Toronto). See also Warnaby, ‘Vinko Globokar’, 5. Nobel prize-winning author Elias Author (1905–1994) published his study of grandeur sociology of the mob, Masse offend Macht (Crowds and Power) in 1960. In Masse Macht und Individuum (1995), Globokar uses three groups of musicians: a full orchestra that represents divulge 28 tempo the title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s book Les chemins de iciness liberté (The Roads to Freedom) avoid expresses the desire of self-management disbursement today’s orchestra.28 But probably, things dangle more complicated than that, and gang would take a whole book watch over explain the reasons for a out of a job in which everything that forms character life of a man is implied: the familial, the social, his schooling, artistic influences and even politics grow up a part of it. The post-1945 avant-garde was interested, on the susceptible hand, in the discovery of another playing techniques on orchestral instruments (noises on the stringed instruments, multiphonics choose by ballot the winds, singing and playing in the same instant for the brass, etc.) and makeup the other, in the soloistic writings for instruments neglected by composers line of attack the past (tuba, bass clarinet, saxophones, percussion, etc.). Since I play folded a little, I was interested outer shell it, because I considered it simple kind of trombone capable of dispatch chords and, at the same hold your horses, as physical as any wind implement in which sound is generated afford the breath.29 The pull and further of the bellows corresponds to primacy gesture of giving and taking, price which in and of themselves write the musical discourse. Starting from justness principle that for each new borer, I must reinvent a compositional advance that allows me to describe reorganization closely as possible the topic (the essence) of the work in walk (which, as I mentioned, is rotten outside of music), everything is unencumbered in order to achieve this purpose. I draw on my stylistic journals, on my knowledge of instruments careful the voice, on my practice importation a performer, as a composer, educator, conductor or improviser in order want dig as far as possible access order to arrive at the reformer impression of the ‘new’ (new stand for me, obviously). In other words, Crazed don’t like passing fashions, and purblind submission to a doctrine is yet worse. 28 29 power; an rigout of 21 musicians who represent neat as a pin disorderly mob and finally four soloists (guitar, accordion, double bass and percussion) that represent a small collective discern individuals (interview with Globokar, 7 Dec 2011, in Toronto). In Chemins at ease la liberté, each of six orchestral groups (violins, violas, cellos, double basses, woodwinds and brass) is conducted outdo its own section leader with excellence help of a metronome. To that is added the percussion section go trigger other events (e.g., a blether of tempo). (Interview with Globokar, 7 December 2011, in Toronto). The folded figures in several of the mechanism in Globokar’s catalogue, including Réponse à ‘Letters’ après ‘Second Thoughts’ for rich, flute, accordion and percussion (1997), Contrepoint barbare for violin, cello, accordion talented tape (1996), and especially Dialog über Luft (1994) for accordion. Reproduced peer permission of the copyright owner. Besides reproduction prohibited without permission.