REVIEWS OF SONIC MOSAICS: CONVERSATIONS WITH COMPOSERS
Soundstreams blog - Lawrence Cherney “Informed, Imaginative & Multi-Generational”
"Paul Steenhuisen carried out at series of 31 excellent interviews with Canadian and international composers beginning in 2001. The book runs the gamut from Schafer to Boulez, and includes composers of all generations. So much of a good interview depends upon the knowledge and imagination of the interviewer, and Steenhuisen gets high marks in both areas. We are desperately short of informed information about Canadian composers of our time, and both Steenhuisen and the University of Alberta Press are to be congratulated for this long overdue achievement."
La Scena Musicale, May 2009 - René Bricault
"The reader is impressed by the intellectual prowess of so many underrated creators, and the special relationship between composers gives the work more substance. [If] one is interested in Canadian music, or composers who seem preoccupied by music history, they would be well-advised to look into Steenhuisen's book. Special praise is to be given to the Lachenmann interview, which captures the essence of his work in a simple, elegant and moving way."
Canadian Association of Music Librarians, Fall 2009 - J. Drew Stephen, University of Texas at San Antonio.
"Most texts dealing with Canadian music are organized as surveys – Elaine Keillor’s Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity of 2006 provides a recent example – that address significant trends in musical composition and place them into larger historical and cultural contexts. The survey format generally provides a clear overview of compositional developments, yet often prioritizes works and composers representing a modernist mainstream while seldom broaching in any detail the thoughts or personalities of individual composers. An alternate approach – and one that has, in the last forty years, become more common generally in contemporary music texts – is to present in a single volume a collection of interviews or conversations with selected composers. Although this approach is less inclusive and does not address explicitly any larger trends or developments, it often provides better insight into the musical activities of each composer, conveys a stronger sense of his or her individual personality, and explores the musical works on their own terms rather than in the way they fit into a larger picture. Paul Steenhuisen has chosen the latter path and the result, Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers, is an excellent – and welcome – view of contemporary music activity in Canada."
The thirty-one interviews included in the book were conducted by Steenhuisen between July 2001 and November 2004. Almost all were undertaken initially for publication in the Toronto-based classical music magazine, The Wholenote. The choice of interviewees was linked to current events – either a live performance in the Toronto area or a major CD release during the month of publication – that would be of interest to the magazine’s readership. While this was undoubtedly a practical solution for a regular feature in a monthly publication specializing in concert listings, it makes for an oddly diverse collection when the interviews are taken out of their original context and presented together in one volume. It also leads to glaring omissions. One can easily come up with a list of major composers (Anhalt, Hatzis, Hétu, Tremblay, Forsyth...) who were not interviewed and thus not included in the book. On the other hand, lesser-known composers (some in their early thirties) who certainly would have been otherwise overlooked are presented alongside established figures to present a wide range of compositional styles and techniques. The format also accommodates six composers outside of Canada, including such notable figures as Pierre Boulez and George Crumb. Their examples place the Canadians interviewed in an international context and greatly enhance the scope of the book. Sonic Mosaics makes no attempt to be inclusive or comprehensive. It provides instead a glimpse of the new music scene in Toronto during the early years of the twenty-first century.
Steenhuisen is excellent in his role as interviewer. He is an accomplished composer with strong new music affiliations and a history of service with the Canadian League of Composers, the Canadian Music Centre, and the International Society for Contemporary Music. As a result he knows the topic thoroughly and approaches the composers as an insider who is familiar with their work and sympathetic to their situations. “I soon realized,” writes Steenhuisen, “that composers were speaking candidly and openly to me about their work for two main reasons: first I’m a composer, I know their work, and while being critical, I asked questions as an ‘insider’; second, I happened to be talking to them about two of their favourite subjects – themselves and their work!” (xiii). Since most of the interviews were linked to a performance, the discussions often focus on a single work. It is here that Steenhuisen’s insider status is most apparent and appreciated. His knowledge of contemporary music and familiarity with the interviewees’ musical styles and oeuvres allows for intricate and detailed discussions. He engages the composers in a thoughtful and meaningful way to provide the reader with insight into the philosophical issues related to new music and the challenges and joys of composing. Steenhuisen approaches each composer on his or her own terms, asking questions that are unique and appropriate to each rather than following a set formula. He is also adept at asking good opening questions and then stepping aside to let the composers speak for themselves. In most cases a strong sense of each composer’s personality is apparent.
Beyond the interviews, Steenhuisen provides additional information in an eighteen-page foreword and a nine-page afterword. He uses the afterword to describe his own work as a composer, “so the reader can examine how my creative inclinations influenced the questions” (xiv). In the foreword, he outlines his methodology for conducting the interviews and discloses his relationship with the contributing composers (he had met, known, worked, studied or had been close friends with all but two of them before commencing the interview project). He also addresses issues of contemporary music making and provides insight into “the practicalities of life as a composer” (xvi). The passages outlining the working methods of professional composers and the challenges they face to gain their musical incomes are especially enlightening. Many readers will be surprised (and dismayed) at the amount of work required to produce a composition, the shortage of funding sources, and the meagre sums to be earned through commissions and royalties. Steenhuisen also provides a discography that lists a maximum of five recordings per composer, so that listeners can be introduced to or explore further the music of the composers interviewed. His familiarity with the repertoire makes him an excellent guide and one hopes many readers will pursue his suggestions. Since the book’s publication, numerous recordings of the works of most of the composers interviewed have become available online thanks to the Canadian Music Centre’s CentreStreams initiative.
Overall, Sonic Mosaics is an enjoyable book that provides pertinent insights into the new music scene in Toronto at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The fact that the interviews are short (most are around seven pages) makes the book easy to read and accessible. The focus on single works adds depth to the interviews, although in some cases the works discussed are not typical or representative of the composer’s output. Since the book’s format facilitates browsing rather than reading from cover to cover, the chronological presentation of the interviews is unwieldy and it is often necessary to consult the contents page. An alphabetical organization would have enhanced the ease of use. Despite this, the book provides a valuable and revealing overview of current trends in music. Whereas most books on music have difficulties addressing the twenty years prior to publication, Steenhuisen focuses almost exclusively on the current decade to reveal the thoughts, challenges, and artistic endeavors of contemporary Canadian composers.
Sequenza21.com. Introduction by Steve Layton. Review by John Oliver
Each generation of composers coming up through college is always a little dismayed to find their music history survey books fizzling out in their descriptions current composers. Maybe one compressed chapter at the end, with a jumble of names or the barest of thumbnail sketches. Half are already only half-remembered, and the other half are musicians you desperately want something, anything more from or about! Yet often somewhere out there beyond the curriculum, there’s another kind of book; one some dedicated fan, critic or participant created, providing fuller sketches and often interviews with the people that matter most to them in the here and now (one such that mattered greatly for me in the 1980s was John Rockwell’s All American Music). Another of my little quirks is a strong liking for a number of recent and contemporary Canadian composers. I have no idea how it happened — other than perhaps years of government funding and a certain image of some “outsider” isolation and independence — but to my ears Canada has produced a remarkably large group of surprising and creative musicians. So I was very happy to see that one of the latest “catch-up” books on composers comes from a Canadian perspective. Paul Steenhuisen, a fine Canadian musician in his own right, has recently published Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers (University of Alberta Press, 2009), a collection of interviews with (mostly) living composers from America, Europe and Canada. We asked another Canadian musician and journalist, John Oliver, to review the book:
Sonic Mosaics is a book of interviews conducted by composer Paul Steenhuisen over a three-year period from 2001-2004. Over half of the interviews were commissioned by Toronto’s monthly, short-run music publication WholeNote on the occasion of a composer’s presence in the city for a premiere performance or CD release. Two were originally published in Musicworks magazine and the rest were conducted by Steenhuisen afterward to complete the book and attempt to represent more Canadian composers.
Steenhuisen gets full marks for disclosure: he reveals the shortcomings and strengths of the book in the introduction. Although the book contains a large number of interviews with Canadian composers, the author admits that it is by no means representative of the entire country. The reader is treated to six interviews with non-Canadian composers, three of which occur as a result of a composer’s appearance as a guest of New Music Concerts. Five are with the most senior generation of international contemporary music “stars”: Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, Mauricio Kagel, Christian Wolff and Helmut Lachenmann; the sixth is UK composer Michael Finnissy. Equivalent Canadian senior composers include R. Murray Schafer, John Weinzweig, Udo Kasemets, John Beckwith, and Francis Dhomont. Yet equivalent senior composers of Quebec and the rest of Canada are not represented. The rest of the interviews give a glimpse into the creative minds of primarily composers who reside in the province of Ontario. Place-of-residence analysis reveals that, of the 26 Canadian interviewees, 16 reside in Ontario, 6 in Quebec, 3 in British Columbia, and one in Alberta: not an accurate proportional representation. The reader may also note that over half of composers represented here teach at universities, an understandable bias given the author’s background and the general tendency in Canada for composers to gain a livelihood from teaching. If this represents only a subset of important Canadian composers, the reader’s curiosity will be aroused to seek out information about more as a result of reading this book. A second volume is in order.
One might fear that a book of interviews in which one specialist interviews another in the same field would result in an impenetrable, jargon-ridden read that would send the reader crying out for generalists to give them something understandable and relevant to their own experience. This book, though not for the uninitiated, rarely crosses the line into the specialist realm. It should inspire the music fan to want to learn more and will be particularly attractive to musicians and music students. In this way, it achieves the goal to create a context of understanding for the music: mythologies melt away, though they may be replaced with new and more interesting ones! Steenhuisen as interviewer asks probing, well-researched and varied questions that elicit from his subjects responses that vary from candid and revealing to evasive or predictable. Thankfully, the latter moments are few. Rather, we experience a conversation rich enough in detail to please the contemporary music enthusiast (though rarely theoretical and technical enough for the academic), and broad enough in scope to introduce those in the earlier stages of discovery to basic paradigms of the art and to some major international figures and a cross-section of Canadian composers, most of whom are interviewed for the first time in such a volume. The sense of speaking in confidence brings authority and depth to many of the interviews that a journalist would be less likely to reach. Steenhuisen’s questions and style – sometimes probing, other times knowingly prodding the subject – create a text that never lags. The author states, again in the introduction, that “while trained in neither journalism nor interviewing techniques, I am instead a self-taught critic, and approached the interviews as an interested professional, with the goal that my own interests and perspectives on the work of the interviewee would overlap with those of other listeners.” This approach gives the reader a consistency of intent throughout the book, thus providing a book full of ideas about music, composition and the professional life, though few biographical details.
Considering the interviews’ length and generalist purpose, they are remarkably thorough. For example, we have a fine overview of the career of Pierre Boulez in 8 pages: “you should be autodidact by will, not by chance” and “I like specialists only for surgery and medicine, but not for music.” The personality of each interviewee shines out. Steenhuisen’s intends is to cover as much territory as possible. Among his many questions, Steenhuisen usually directs the interview toward the discussion of a specific work and its ideas and touches on the subject of social relevance by way of the topic of communication. Several of the senior composers have appeared in print in the past and are well-known in Canada, but may be new to non-Canadian readers. Entirely new information is contributed to our understanding of contemporary music in the interviews of younger generations. Among the most fascinating are Howard Bashaw, who speaks of pre-compositional planning, musical structure, the role of the piano, intimacy, exactitude, and performance energy; Michael Finnissy, whose continuous ramblings seem chaotic on the surface but clearly the work of a brilliant mind; and Chris Paul Harman’s discussion of recontextualisation, self-criticism and self-distancing from the materials of music. Helmut Lachenmann’s entire interview could function as a suitable introduction to the whole book, especially his description of his own music as creating a “situation of perception, which provokes you to wonder ‘What is music?’” Another great pleasure comes from comparisons among composers, and the echo of one composer’s ideas in another’s. To give just one example: the echo of Robert Normandeau’s birth of the musical material from listening to the sounds in Barbara Croall’s description of her way of composing; then the relationship of Croall’s attraction to the “imperfect”, “in-between” sounds to Lachenmann’s explanation of the use of such sounds as establishing “new contexts” for listening and composing. The book is full of such riches. A highly-recommended read.
The WIRE - Adventures in Modern Music, May 2009 - Philip Clark
Publishers persist in issuing books of Q&A interviews presumably because authors keep wanting to compile them, but their shelf life is invariably a short one. Richard Cook, the former editor of The Wire, once summed up the problem with characteristic bluntness - "Fundamentally it's a lazy way of working, and in a sense, not really writing at all" - to which I'd add the thought that interviews date surprisingly quickly, freezing subject and interviewer inside their momentary concerns, without an author's through-written historical context or the benefit of an argument nurtured over time.
Paul Steenhuisen's book of interviews with 32 composers, begun in 2001, epitomises these problems, while finding a niche that ought to give this book enduring relevance: in short, if you want to find out about recent developments in Canadian contemporary composition, Sonic Mosaics is where to go. Steenhuisen makes his allegiances clear: he's a composer first, interviewer second, and his choice of subjects feels largely (but not exclusively) governed by composers who have touched his own creative life personally. There are two Americans (George Crumb and Christian Wolff) and the one British composer Michael Finnissy (Steenhuisen's onetime teacher) is dealt with in an entertaining, if rushed, four pages. Pierre Boulex, Helmut Lachenmann and Mauricio Kagel make cameo appearances and their weighty presence means we hang off every word, but Central European music feels oddly like a sideshow to the prevailing Canada-centric concerns.
R. Murray Schafer, now 75 and Canada's most senior maverick, and plunderphonics maestro John Oswald, personify polarities within Canadian New Music. Steenhuisen's interview with Schafer is focused around his Patria, a ten part cycle of music dramas designed for performance in the great outdoors, and Schafer describes with moving clarity how his environmental concerns have transformed the fabric ofhis music. Oswald's music, with its meta-collage of often iconic recorded matter, is an entirely 'indoor' experience: Schafer's music plunders nature, while Oswald treats borrowed objects from the plastic world. The discussion begins with Oswald articulating how his work as an improvisor colours his compositions, the real-time dynamic of improvisation injecting a lifeforce into the sedentary activity of composition. Steenhuisen doesn't shy from more problematic aspects of Oswald's work - do pieces hooked around current sources have an expiry date? What do listeners who don't know his sources have to gain from his compositions?
The mosaic is greatly enriched by composers hardly known outside of Canada, names that I'm now keen to check out. James Harley writes pieces using Xenakis's UPIC software; Udo Kasemets is involved in a dialogue with Cageian aesthetics; Chris Paul Harman treats borrowed material in what's described as a "non-contextual way". Putting Canadian New Music together, piece by piece.
MusicWorks #105 - Allison Cameron
Sonic Mosaics is a collection of interviews conducted by Paul Steenhuisen with thirty-two contemporary music composers between September 2001 and November 2004. Most of these were originally published in Wholenote Magazine, a monthly Toronto publication covering all aspects of musical activity within the Greater Toronto Area.
James Harley: I’m willing to argue that all music is algorithmic.
In his introduction, Steenhuisen aptly points out the lack of adequate written information on contemporary composers in Canada. By publishing these interviews Steenhuisen hopes to foster “a greater sense of the cultural context and creative milieu in which the music is made.” He discusses the “practicalities of life as a composer,” focusing on the economic challenges faced by some Canadian composers. He also goes to great lengths to discuss his interview procedures, his relationships with the interviewees, and how each interview came about. The most interesting aspect of this writing is the final section on the “interconnectedness of the composers” and their geographical movements.
John Oswald: It’s easy to say you like Beethoven, a bit harder to say you like Tchaikovsky.
Some of the interviews are brief and cover a single topic, such as the interview with Alexina Louie about her opera. while others have far more detail, like the one with Martin Arnold. One harmonizing factor is that all are in depth. Even in the shorter interviews. Steenhuisen is able to scratch the surface and illicit interesting, engaging, and sometimes quite personal responses. This quality makes for some very interesting reading. Steenhuisen’s fearless inquisitiveness has his interview subjects giving us some direct and at times provocative answers.
Barbara Croall: Intuition is an immediacy of transferring your feelings into the outcome, whereas theory is thinking through all those stages and figuring out a method. Books such as this are defined not only by who’s in them but by who is not. Despite Steenhuisen’s claim that his book covers a range of composers who come from “diverse ethnic, educational and economic backgrounds,” there are contradictory demographics: eighty-five per cent of those interviewed are white Caucasian men; ninety-eight per cent have been trained at university music schools or the equivalent; and fifty-three per cent are either currently tenured or retired professors.
Udo Kasemets: The beauty and the beast, they are always living together – this is what life is about, and we cannot put it into clear compartments.
Although this book is lacking in representation of female, non-Caucasian composers, not to mention non-academic composers and those from Atlantic Canada, to be fair to Steenhuisen, he did not set out to reflect national demographics relating to composers. If anything, this book shows just how small the world of contemporary classical music can become in major urban centres. By focusing on composers who were visiting Toronto and Edmonton, and whose pieces were being featured in concerts of new music, Steenhuisen has inadvertently given us a picture of a tiny national community.
Linda Catlin Smith: Christian Wolff said that in the end, everything is melody. I’ve become more melodic, and part of the reason for that is pleasure.
Perhaps this book will inspire further interview collections with a wider range of contemporary Canadian composers, adding more to the Canadian cultural purview. Unfortunately, as several of the book’s subjects point out, writing about composers is a rare thing in our culture. Hopefully, Sonic Mosaics will start to fill the void of recognition that these important cultural contributors—and their colleagues—so desperately need.
Soundstreams blog - Lawrence Cherney “Informed, Imaginative & Multi-Generational”
"Paul Steenhuisen carried out at series of 31 excellent interviews with Canadian and international composers beginning in 2001. The book runs the gamut from Schafer to Boulez, and includes composers of all generations. So much of a good interview depends upon the knowledge and imagination of the interviewer, and Steenhuisen gets high marks in both areas. We are desperately short of informed information about Canadian composers of our time, and both Steenhuisen and the University of Alberta Press are to be congratulated for this long overdue achievement."
La Scena Musicale, May 2009 - René Bricault
"The reader is impressed by the intellectual prowess of so many underrated creators, and the special relationship between composers gives the work more substance. [If] one is interested in Canadian music, or composers who seem preoccupied by music history, they would be well-advised to look into Steenhuisen's book. Special praise is to be given to the Lachenmann interview, which captures the essence of his work in a simple, elegant and moving way."
Canadian Association of Music Librarians, Fall 2009 - J. Drew Stephen, University of Texas at San Antonio.
"Most texts dealing with Canadian music are organized as surveys – Elaine Keillor’s Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity of 2006 provides a recent example – that address significant trends in musical composition and place them into larger historical and cultural contexts. The survey format generally provides a clear overview of compositional developments, yet often prioritizes works and composers representing a modernist mainstream while seldom broaching in any detail the thoughts or personalities of individual composers. An alternate approach – and one that has, in the last forty years, become more common generally in contemporary music texts – is to present in a single volume a collection of interviews or conversations with selected composers. Although this approach is less inclusive and does not address explicitly any larger trends or developments, it often provides better insight into the musical activities of each composer, conveys a stronger sense of his or her individual personality, and explores the musical works on their own terms rather than in the way they fit into a larger picture. Paul Steenhuisen has chosen the latter path and the result, Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers, is an excellent – and welcome – view of contemporary music activity in Canada."
The thirty-one interviews included in the book were conducted by Steenhuisen between July 2001 and November 2004. Almost all were undertaken initially for publication in the Toronto-based classical music magazine, The Wholenote. The choice of interviewees was linked to current events – either a live performance in the Toronto area or a major CD release during the month of publication – that would be of interest to the magazine’s readership. While this was undoubtedly a practical solution for a regular feature in a monthly publication specializing in concert listings, it makes for an oddly diverse collection when the interviews are taken out of their original context and presented together in one volume. It also leads to glaring omissions. One can easily come up with a list of major composers (Anhalt, Hatzis, Hétu, Tremblay, Forsyth...) who were not interviewed and thus not included in the book. On the other hand, lesser-known composers (some in their early thirties) who certainly would have been otherwise overlooked are presented alongside established figures to present a wide range of compositional styles and techniques. The format also accommodates six composers outside of Canada, including such notable figures as Pierre Boulez and George Crumb. Their examples place the Canadians interviewed in an international context and greatly enhance the scope of the book. Sonic Mosaics makes no attempt to be inclusive or comprehensive. It provides instead a glimpse of the new music scene in Toronto during the early years of the twenty-first century.
Steenhuisen is excellent in his role as interviewer. He is an accomplished composer with strong new music affiliations and a history of service with the Canadian League of Composers, the Canadian Music Centre, and the International Society for Contemporary Music. As a result he knows the topic thoroughly and approaches the composers as an insider who is familiar with their work and sympathetic to their situations. “I soon realized,” writes Steenhuisen, “that composers were speaking candidly and openly to me about their work for two main reasons: first I’m a composer, I know their work, and while being critical, I asked questions as an ‘insider’; second, I happened to be talking to them about two of their favourite subjects – themselves and their work!” (xiii). Since most of the interviews were linked to a performance, the discussions often focus on a single work. It is here that Steenhuisen’s insider status is most apparent and appreciated. His knowledge of contemporary music and familiarity with the interviewees’ musical styles and oeuvres allows for intricate and detailed discussions. He engages the composers in a thoughtful and meaningful way to provide the reader with insight into the philosophical issues related to new music and the challenges and joys of composing. Steenhuisen approaches each composer on his or her own terms, asking questions that are unique and appropriate to each rather than following a set formula. He is also adept at asking good opening questions and then stepping aside to let the composers speak for themselves. In most cases a strong sense of each composer’s personality is apparent.
Beyond the interviews, Steenhuisen provides additional information in an eighteen-page foreword and a nine-page afterword. He uses the afterword to describe his own work as a composer, “so the reader can examine how my creative inclinations influenced the questions” (xiv). In the foreword, he outlines his methodology for conducting the interviews and discloses his relationship with the contributing composers (he had met, known, worked, studied or had been close friends with all but two of them before commencing the interview project). He also addresses issues of contemporary music making and provides insight into “the practicalities of life as a composer” (xvi). The passages outlining the working methods of professional composers and the challenges they face to gain their musical incomes are especially enlightening. Many readers will be surprised (and dismayed) at the amount of work required to produce a composition, the shortage of funding sources, and the meagre sums to be earned through commissions and royalties. Steenhuisen also provides a discography that lists a maximum of five recordings per composer, so that listeners can be introduced to or explore further the music of the composers interviewed. His familiarity with the repertoire makes him an excellent guide and one hopes many readers will pursue his suggestions. Since the book’s publication, numerous recordings of the works of most of the composers interviewed have become available online thanks to the Canadian Music Centre’s CentreStreams initiative.
Overall, Sonic Mosaics is an enjoyable book that provides pertinent insights into the new music scene in Toronto at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The fact that the interviews are short (most are around seven pages) makes the book easy to read and accessible. The focus on single works adds depth to the interviews, although in some cases the works discussed are not typical or representative of the composer’s output. Since the book’s format facilitates browsing rather than reading from cover to cover, the chronological presentation of the interviews is unwieldy and it is often necessary to consult the contents page. An alphabetical organization would have enhanced the ease of use. Despite this, the book provides a valuable and revealing overview of current trends in music. Whereas most books on music have difficulties addressing the twenty years prior to publication, Steenhuisen focuses almost exclusively on the current decade to reveal the thoughts, challenges, and artistic endeavors of contemporary Canadian composers.
Sequenza21.com. Introduction by Steve Layton. Review by John Oliver
Each generation of composers coming up through college is always a little dismayed to find their music history survey books fizzling out in their descriptions current composers. Maybe one compressed chapter at the end, with a jumble of names or the barest of thumbnail sketches. Half are already only half-remembered, and the other half are musicians you desperately want something, anything more from or about! Yet often somewhere out there beyond the curriculum, there’s another kind of book; one some dedicated fan, critic or participant created, providing fuller sketches and often interviews with the people that matter most to them in the here and now (one such that mattered greatly for me in the 1980s was John Rockwell’s All American Music). Another of my little quirks is a strong liking for a number of recent and contemporary Canadian composers. I have no idea how it happened — other than perhaps years of government funding and a certain image of some “outsider” isolation and independence — but to my ears Canada has produced a remarkably large group of surprising and creative musicians. So I was very happy to see that one of the latest “catch-up” books on composers comes from a Canadian perspective. Paul Steenhuisen, a fine Canadian musician in his own right, has recently published Sonic Mosaics: Conversations with Composers (University of Alberta Press, 2009), a collection of interviews with (mostly) living composers from America, Europe and Canada. We asked another Canadian musician and journalist, John Oliver, to review the book:
Sonic Mosaics is a book of interviews conducted by composer Paul Steenhuisen over a three-year period from 2001-2004. Over half of the interviews were commissioned by Toronto’s monthly, short-run music publication WholeNote on the occasion of a composer’s presence in the city for a premiere performance or CD release. Two were originally published in Musicworks magazine and the rest were conducted by Steenhuisen afterward to complete the book and attempt to represent more Canadian composers.
Steenhuisen gets full marks for disclosure: he reveals the shortcomings and strengths of the book in the introduction. Although the book contains a large number of interviews with Canadian composers, the author admits that it is by no means representative of the entire country. The reader is treated to six interviews with non-Canadian composers, three of which occur as a result of a composer’s appearance as a guest of New Music Concerts. Five are with the most senior generation of international contemporary music “stars”: Pierre Boulez, George Crumb, Mauricio Kagel, Christian Wolff and Helmut Lachenmann; the sixth is UK composer Michael Finnissy. Equivalent Canadian senior composers include R. Murray Schafer, John Weinzweig, Udo Kasemets, John Beckwith, and Francis Dhomont. Yet equivalent senior composers of Quebec and the rest of Canada are not represented. The rest of the interviews give a glimpse into the creative minds of primarily composers who reside in the province of Ontario. Place-of-residence analysis reveals that, of the 26 Canadian interviewees, 16 reside in Ontario, 6 in Quebec, 3 in British Columbia, and one in Alberta: not an accurate proportional representation. The reader may also note that over half of composers represented here teach at universities, an understandable bias given the author’s background and the general tendency in Canada for composers to gain a livelihood from teaching. If this represents only a subset of important Canadian composers, the reader’s curiosity will be aroused to seek out information about more as a result of reading this book. A second volume is in order.
One might fear that a book of interviews in which one specialist interviews another in the same field would result in an impenetrable, jargon-ridden read that would send the reader crying out for generalists to give them something understandable and relevant to their own experience. This book, though not for the uninitiated, rarely crosses the line into the specialist realm. It should inspire the music fan to want to learn more and will be particularly attractive to musicians and music students. In this way, it achieves the goal to create a context of understanding for the music: mythologies melt away, though they may be replaced with new and more interesting ones! Steenhuisen as interviewer asks probing, well-researched and varied questions that elicit from his subjects responses that vary from candid and revealing to evasive or predictable. Thankfully, the latter moments are few. Rather, we experience a conversation rich enough in detail to please the contemporary music enthusiast (though rarely theoretical and technical enough for the academic), and broad enough in scope to introduce those in the earlier stages of discovery to basic paradigms of the art and to some major international figures and a cross-section of Canadian composers, most of whom are interviewed for the first time in such a volume. The sense of speaking in confidence brings authority and depth to many of the interviews that a journalist would be less likely to reach. Steenhuisen’s questions and style – sometimes probing, other times knowingly prodding the subject – create a text that never lags. The author states, again in the introduction, that “while trained in neither journalism nor interviewing techniques, I am instead a self-taught critic, and approached the interviews as an interested professional, with the goal that my own interests and perspectives on the work of the interviewee would overlap with those of other listeners.” This approach gives the reader a consistency of intent throughout the book, thus providing a book full of ideas about music, composition and the professional life, though few biographical details.
Considering the interviews’ length and generalist purpose, they are remarkably thorough. For example, we have a fine overview of the career of Pierre Boulez in 8 pages: “you should be autodidact by will, not by chance” and “I like specialists only for surgery and medicine, but not for music.” The personality of each interviewee shines out. Steenhuisen’s intends is to cover as much territory as possible. Among his many questions, Steenhuisen usually directs the interview toward the discussion of a specific work and its ideas and touches on the subject of social relevance by way of the topic of communication. Several of the senior composers have appeared in print in the past and are well-known in Canada, but may be new to non-Canadian readers. Entirely new information is contributed to our understanding of contemporary music in the interviews of younger generations. Among the most fascinating are Howard Bashaw, who speaks of pre-compositional planning, musical structure, the role of the piano, intimacy, exactitude, and performance energy; Michael Finnissy, whose continuous ramblings seem chaotic on the surface but clearly the work of a brilliant mind; and Chris Paul Harman’s discussion of recontextualisation, self-criticism and self-distancing from the materials of music. Helmut Lachenmann’s entire interview could function as a suitable introduction to the whole book, especially his description of his own music as creating a “situation of perception, which provokes you to wonder ‘What is music?’” Another great pleasure comes from comparisons among composers, and the echo of one composer’s ideas in another’s. To give just one example: the echo of Robert Normandeau’s birth of the musical material from listening to the sounds in Barbara Croall’s description of her way of composing; then the relationship of Croall’s attraction to the “imperfect”, “in-between” sounds to Lachenmann’s explanation of the use of such sounds as establishing “new contexts” for listening and composing. The book is full of such riches. A highly-recommended read.
The WIRE - Adventures in Modern Music, May 2009 - Philip Clark
Publishers persist in issuing books of Q&A interviews presumably because authors keep wanting to compile them, but their shelf life is invariably a short one. Richard Cook, the former editor of The Wire, once summed up the problem with characteristic bluntness - "Fundamentally it's a lazy way of working, and in a sense, not really writing at all" - to which I'd add the thought that interviews date surprisingly quickly, freezing subject and interviewer inside their momentary concerns, without an author's through-written historical context or the benefit of an argument nurtured over time.
Paul Steenhuisen's book of interviews with 32 composers, begun in 2001, epitomises these problems, while finding a niche that ought to give this book enduring relevance: in short, if you want to find out about recent developments in Canadian contemporary composition, Sonic Mosaics is where to go. Steenhuisen makes his allegiances clear: he's a composer first, interviewer second, and his choice of subjects feels largely (but not exclusively) governed by composers who have touched his own creative life personally. There are two Americans (George Crumb and Christian Wolff) and the one British composer Michael Finnissy (Steenhuisen's onetime teacher) is dealt with in an entertaining, if rushed, four pages. Pierre Boulex, Helmut Lachenmann and Mauricio Kagel make cameo appearances and their weighty presence means we hang off every word, but Central European music feels oddly like a sideshow to the prevailing Canada-centric concerns.
R. Murray Schafer, now 75 and Canada's most senior maverick, and plunderphonics maestro John Oswald, personify polarities within Canadian New Music. Steenhuisen's interview with Schafer is focused around his Patria, a ten part cycle of music dramas designed for performance in the great outdoors, and Schafer describes with moving clarity how his environmental concerns have transformed the fabric ofhis music. Oswald's music, with its meta-collage of often iconic recorded matter, is an entirely 'indoor' experience: Schafer's music plunders nature, while Oswald treats borrowed objects from the plastic world. The discussion begins with Oswald articulating how his work as an improvisor colours his compositions, the real-time dynamic of improvisation injecting a lifeforce into the sedentary activity of composition. Steenhuisen doesn't shy from more problematic aspects of Oswald's work - do pieces hooked around current sources have an expiry date? What do listeners who don't know his sources have to gain from his compositions?
The mosaic is greatly enriched by composers hardly known outside of Canada, names that I'm now keen to check out. James Harley writes pieces using Xenakis's UPIC software; Udo Kasemets is involved in a dialogue with Cageian aesthetics; Chris Paul Harman treats borrowed material in what's described as a "non-contextual way". Putting Canadian New Music together, piece by piece.
MusicWorks #105 - Allison Cameron
Sonic Mosaics is a collection of interviews conducted by Paul Steenhuisen with thirty-two contemporary music composers between September 2001 and November 2004. Most of these were originally published in Wholenote Magazine, a monthly Toronto publication covering all aspects of musical activity within the Greater Toronto Area.
James Harley: I’m willing to argue that all music is algorithmic.
In his introduction, Steenhuisen aptly points out the lack of adequate written information on contemporary composers in Canada. By publishing these interviews Steenhuisen hopes to foster “a greater sense of the cultural context and creative milieu in which the music is made.” He discusses the “practicalities of life as a composer,” focusing on the economic challenges faced by some Canadian composers. He also goes to great lengths to discuss his interview procedures, his relationships with the interviewees, and how each interview came about. The most interesting aspect of this writing is the final section on the “interconnectedness of the composers” and their geographical movements.
John Oswald: It’s easy to say you like Beethoven, a bit harder to say you like Tchaikovsky.
Some of the interviews are brief and cover a single topic, such as the interview with Alexina Louie about her opera. while others have far more detail, like the one with Martin Arnold. One harmonizing factor is that all are in depth. Even in the shorter interviews. Steenhuisen is able to scratch the surface and illicit interesting, engaging, and sometimes quite personal responses. This quality makes for some very interesting reading. Steenhuisen’s fearless inquisitiveness has his interview subjects giving us some direct and at times provocative answers.
Barbara Croall: Intuition is an immediacy of transferring your feelings into the outcome, whereas theory is thinking through all those stages and figuring out a method. Books such as this are defined not only by who’s in them but by who is not. Despite Steenhuisen’s claim that his book covers a range of composers who come from “diverse ethnic, educational and economic backgrounds,” there are contradictory demographics: eighty-five per cent of those interviewed are white Caucasian men; ninety-eight per cent have been trained at university music schools or the equivalent; and fifty-three per cent are either currently tenured or retired professors.
Udo Kasemets: The beauty and the beast, they are always living together – this is what life is about, and we cannot put it into clear compartments.
Although this book is lacking in representation of female, non-Caucasian composers, not to mention non-academic composers and those from Atlantic Canada, to be fair to Steenhuisen, he did not set out to reflect national demographics relating to composers. If anything, this book shows just how small the world of contemporary classical music can become in major urban centres. By focusing on composers who were visiting Toronto and Edmonton, and whose pieces were being featured in concerts of new music, Steenhuisen has inadvertently given us a picture of a tiny national community.
Linda Catlin Smith: Christian Wolff said that in the end, everything is melody. I’ve become more melodic, and part of the reason for that is pleasure.
Perhaps this book will inspire further interview collections with a wider range of contemporary Canadian composers, adding more to the Canadian cultural purview. Unfortunately, as several of the book’s subjects point out, writing about composers is a rare thing in our culture. Hopefully, Sonic Mosaics will start to fill the void of recognition that these important cultural contributors—and their colleagues—so desperately need.
