Note: Grammatical errors and other flaws have been corrected by Sonoloco. Some obviously irrelevant minor parts have been edited out, like spoken language idiosyncrasies etcetera, and order of words has sometimes been reversed. Some minor parts blurred by noise have not been sufficiently deciphered, and thus left out. The text is generally somewhat tidied up, to qualify for the print. However, otherwise the rendition below is true and faithful to the recorded material. The recording itself is available from Sonoloco on demand at cost price (CDR and postage), and free of charge for the participants.

FOLKE RABE:

Thank you! So, we have one member of the audience who will speak. I cannot see in the darkness. Please state your name.

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

My name is Fredrik Österling. I’m a composer.
I must agree with some of the things that Peter Schuback said here, because I have quite a hard time actually understanding what the question is all about. It’s only natural, as you said, that we develop different strategies for how we go about developing the musical language […], so it’s only natural that you have some composers now who actually put their instruments aside to compose only, and, on the other hand, composers who share their time between different disciplines of musical life.

Let’s reflect a little on the things Ivo said in the beginning, when he stated that it would be desirable that the musicians who perform… - performers is a better word, because the word musicians, to me, is a broader term – the performers, should take back the initiative of programming, for instance, but in Sweden, at least, we already have this situation, in a way, also in the Marxist way, because it is the musicians – or the performers, I should say – who indeed apply for the commissions, for example. They choose which composers should be played! You choose, and you choose all these kinds of composers: performing composers and composing composers and whom ever!
It is also assumed that the musicians – performers, again! – supposedly having a sounder judgment, in some way, about what kind of music is good or not so good, should apply some kind of quality aspect, by virtue of their tactile situation in music life. Did I understand that right?

IVO NILSSON:

Well, I mean, I don’t look at it that way, if you look at this particular festival. In the past there have been a festivals focusing on, usually, three composers, two or three composers.
As performers we always get the scores in the mail, and nobody asks if we want to… well, of course, we are offered to play the music, but there is no dialogue in the sense that if you as a group has a certain idea about what to play, that is never considered. This is actually quite common. In Sweden, of course, we have this wonderful opportunity to commission pieces, but where to play them? There is nowhere to play them! This is a common case. The power of the programming is very seldom in the performers’s hands. I’m not sure that it should lie completely in the perdformers’s hand. There should be a dialogue.

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

Yeah, but what you’re really talking about is not performers verses composers, but you’re talking about musicians verses the cultural-political system, which is a different thing. I dread the day when the opera singers start to tell us who should compose, which, in fact, they already are doing… but that’s another problem.

IVO NILSSON:

Yes, but this is, as Mats pointed out before, very much a matter of the market. In a festival, for instance, it’s a market thing that you can highlight certain composers, and this is easy to sell. It’s a kind of strategy to point out certain composers, stating that they are the important ones, the guaranteed, profound, culturally important composers. It’s much more difficult if you have more diverse intentions. In this case I wanted to create a festival with many sub-layers of complex relationships between the pieces. There are many ways to achieve that. This is not the only way of doing this, but I feel that this box thinking, that these are the composers who are important right now and we sell it; this is something that I wanted to react against.

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

Just a final remark: This structure that we have in Sweden, which certainly is unique, actually deprives the pure composer of initiative. That is part of the problem. When musicians – as is the case in this structure – apply for money for commissioning a composer, you have a separation in the first place. The composers sit around waiting for the spotlight to find them. I think this is a bad thing.

IVO NILSSON:

I want to point one thing out regarding festivals in general. I think festivals actually are very problematic, because for me the important thing is the continuous work, the continuous development of the art form, and the dialogue and the problems it poses towards life and the actual situations. Festivals tend to focus on highlight productions; the ultimate selection of the very best music made at the moment. An aim, making a good festival, for me, is to make a cross-section of the important streams at the moment in their continuous dialogue in artwork.

FOLKE RABE:

We have another friend in the audience, and after that Dror and Madeleine.

MICHEL WAISVISZ:

My name is Michel Waisvisz. I’m a composer, a musician and the director of the STEIM Foundation.
Of course I will say something about electronic solutions for some problems, as far as we acknowledge that there are problems […].
The history of electronic music shows that electronic music in its early days was started by people like Theremin and […] instrumental practice, but for most people the electronic music starts where electronic music is an independent genre, like in the 1950s, around Stockhausen and the French people, and later, through the work at IRCAM mainly, introducing a genre where it would add timbres or extend the timbres of the known practice of traditional instruments. […] We are very much in a state now where this is accepted as a practice where we use electronics to extend, to play with, and I would like to draw attention to another practice that […] is in need of people who compose and perform with instrumentation that allows you indeed to reflect, to assume a distance to what you do, because not all the physical moves a person makes are related to the playing, but I’m talking about a kind of meta-control, where you can change the whole timbre of a piece, or change the tonality by moving a slider, to put it very simply. The idea is to play an instrument that is composing for you at the very moment you are on stage. This is happening with several pieces of software at the moment. The influence of the composers can be using slides and changing modes, changing tendencies, but it can also trigger notes […]

I just want to point out that there is a practice that you se very much, of course, in techno and electronica, somewhere in between, where composers-performers are operators standing behind a desktop looking like they’re checking their mail. […] I expect that we will have a real physical interface allows the development of virtuosity in having performing composers or composing performers, […] or instant composers!
I just wanted to draw attention to new developments in this kind of meta-instrumentalism, which allows a composer to be a performer, while still retaining a distance. I agree with what you said about distance […]. As a performer you need to be inside. Now, are we going to allow the instrument to be the performer? This poses a lot of problems, and it needs a whole seminar to itself. […]
I think it’s an important development that could influence the development of this whole idea. It’s the first time in history that this can include the use of so-called intelligent machines.

MADELINE ISAKSSON:

I just had a reflection on the statement that the musicians should have the possibility of programming of what they are to play. I think one has to be a bit careful, because I have recognized that it happens quite often that […] the musicians and the composer don’t always agree on the quality of a piece. A piece, which might be hard to play and difficult […] could, with distance, become a masterpiece. One has to be careful with this, I think.

IVO NILSSON:

For us here, maybe it’s a natural thing, but I have been teaching at the Academy for the diploma classes, the instrumentalists. While teaching I had a seminar, and we had a dialogue with the performers of the diploma classes that come to the debut with their orchestras here in Stockholm.
When I came there my first question was “Which piece have you selected to perform at you debut?” and they said Brahms or Schumann or something. Then I asked them: “Why?”, and there was complete silence. Nobody could say why, and I think there are so many good answers to this question, from “I like it” to “It’s a piece that I have a certain relationship to because I heard it when I was a child, or “This is a piece that tells us something very important in the world of today”, that the Berg Violin Concerto has a message for us today, but none of them could say anything in response to this question.
That is a problem, I think, from the viewpoint of the performer, that we are educated in the academies not to take a position on the pieces that we perform […].

DROR FEILER:

I would like to continue your thought and move it to the composers. I’ll never forget when one of my teachers showed me one of his works, and I asked him: “Why did you write this ensemble?” He said to me: “I got a commission”. Then I asked about another work: “Why did you write this one?” He said: “I got a commission”, and on and on. Then I asked him in the end: “Have you never just wanted to write a piece for celesta, bass tuba and matchboxes, or something that you felt that you wanted to write?” “No, I never had the opportunity to do it”, so he never, ever… It’s like these instrumentalists. He didn’t have any time to think about why he chose a certain ensemble. I don’t speak about the idea of the music. I hope he had a reason, an idea, to choose what to write, but the ensemble he didn’t write, and this is also very problematic.

There are very few composers who decide to write an ensemble consisting of piccolo flute, sopranino saxophone and piano, because they estimate that there are not so many ensembles to do it; this will not be performed and so on. This is a very, very problematic situation, because it rules out many, many combinations that exist, probably, in the spirit of composers, but because of the structure of music life and the economical reality, these combinations are not realized. I think it’s the same with the pupils. They think about a good way to expose themselves, not to be extreme, to show their virtuosity or what ever. We have to think about this as composers too, not only as performers.

PETER SCHUBACK:

I think it’s very important to deal with each other, composers and performers, even if we share the same purse.
You said, Ivo, that you hade been teaching in the conservatory class. I was also […], and I asked young composers to write pieces […], and I gave them some time, and they came back after a month with a ready composition, and they didn’t change anything, because they were ready with the composition. That’s the way I am not working. We have to listen to each other and each other’s demands and to what we have to say to each other. […] So the separation and lack of contacts between people is very dangerous. The dialogue must go on.

PENNY ROSENGREN:

I would like to ask a question about the importance of titles, in as far as composers performing their own works is concerned. A long time ago titles were unimportant, really, in that they just described a formula that was recognized by everyone, and now titles often have, clearly, a very significant importance to the composers themselves. Sometimes it’s described […], and sometimes it’s just there as a title, and it seems to me to be a space for interpretation in just that, the connection between the title and the work itself, which must be different when it’s the composer himself who performs, or another performer.

FOLKE RABE:

Does anyone have a direct answer to that… Thank you very much! Peter Eötvös have to get ready for tonight’s concert, of course. He’s excused. Is there anyone who can directly comment on what Penny said?

PETER SCHUBACK:

I think titles have two functions. They have to make clear what it is about, giving a direction, more like the traditional titles sonatas etcetera, and also have some sort of attraction in the name, which appeals, in some way. It can also give some advice for the interpreter and for how we should listen, for the audience […].

DROR FEILER:

I can give a very cheap and demagogic metaphor. For me, it’s like when you go to the swimming pool, and you stand on the diving-board, ten meters: this is the title. From there you jump, and then the piece should unwind itself. This is for me the title idea, to give a kind of starting point, somehow, and the leap isn’t always very good, not always the water the same temperature that you expect when you’re standing up on the diving-board. You get surprises, because the pieces are not always what you expect, even if they have a very short duration.

I give titles that I think will be good starting points for listening, but they’re not describing the piece, albeit a kind of start. […] Sometimes the name is what triggers also my imagination, […] and sometimes the name comes afterwards. There is no special rule, but I hope the effect of the title is there. Some people go up on the ten-meter diving board, and they don’t jump, because they’re afraid, so… this can happen also.

MATS PERSSON:

First I want just to continue Ivo’s remark about the students who mentioned Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. […] It’s a matter of education.
Fredrik talked about the commissions, and the musicians designing programs as well as having the possibility to make commissions, but you never know what comes out; you never know into which program different pieces will fit.
Fredrik also said that it’s dangerous if opera singers should decide who should write an opera, and he says we have to be careful about musicians deciding a program. Why? Do they have bad taste, and in that case; who has the good taste? Is it the composer?

IVO NILSSON:

But Cage solved the problem didn’t he, in his opera? He let all the opera singers select the best arias […]

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

Well, Europeras is an interesting piece, I agree. It’s tediously long, however. What I was thinking when I said that about the opera singers was, for example, that it is hard for, let’s say, the fifth row of violins, for the last one, to actually perceive the entire music. It could be a marvelous music he or she hears from that position, but the intended music could be the one that the audience perceives. That’s why we often, even nowadays, have conductors, we have people who can read entire scores, and see things from that angle. I’m not saying that this is a better way of perceiving music or going about making music, than, for instance, improvising. I’m just saying that this exists as well, and I would not like if, let’s say, it was about commissioning operas conceived in a traditional way; I wouldn’t like someone who doesn’t know what that word – opera – is about, to decide who is going to do it, because if you don’t have any dramaturgical interest above making your own voice sound beautifully, then perhaps it’s not up to you to decide who should write for you. I mean, that’s what started an entirely other process: Rossini started to notate the ornaments, because he wanted to stop the fucking singers from exceeding their limits. They took minutes and minutes just to show off, so that’s another way of looking at it.

DROR FEILER:

But how many composers write opera without a commission; this is the question.

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

I do!

DROR FEILER:

Yeah, I know. I do to! But how many do? Nearly nobody!

FOLKE RABE:

Two!

FREDRIK ÖSTERLING:

That’s a dark figure. I know a lot of composers who actually write operas, but there’s no one staging them.

CHRICHAN LARSON:

I was going to link to this question of an eventual conservatism among players, musicians or performers, let’s say. I had a discussion with a violinist who is responsible for a musical institute here in Stockholm – Mats Zetterqvist – and we were both upset about the propositions coming from the students at this school each time for the exams. Every time the issue of contemporary music came up, there was one name mentioned; Alfred Schnittke. Finally we would say each year that “Yes, you can choose whatever you want, but not Schnittke”!
There are players and players, composers and composers. I think it can be interesting, and history shows us also that this has always happened. There will be particular structures among musicians, often in collaboration, by the way, with composers, to make some sort of demarcation against certain types of aesthetics that we don’t like, simply. You can always discuss how this is being done, but it’s obvious that the big institutions, I think also the orchestras - I don’t know exactly how this functions; I’ve never been on these committees - are generally fairly conservative, yes.
In the Ensemble Intercontemporaine in Paris, where I worked in the 1980s, I noted that we had discussions with Boulez concerning the chamber music productions, and, as a matter of fact, the repertoire was more conservative when the musicians submitted their own proposals, but this was back in the 1980s; maybe this wouldn’t happen today.
I don’t have a solution to this problem, but I can find it interesting to have an institutional structure that defends a certain type of aesthetics, and there are musicians that are vanguard players, interested in going beyond existing tendencies.

FOLKE RABE:

Thank you! We are getting close to the end, but… Peter!

PETER SCHUBACK:

I’m just coming up to the question you were discussing, about the opera singers and so forth. I just have a feeling that very often, when speaking about repertoire and new music and performers, we are dealing with compositions, […] but music-making is also singing, playing, different sorts of instruments, and that has nothing to do with the compositions.

We always tend to discuss pieces and compositions, but it’s very important to put music making into a much wider perspective than this, regarding instrument-building etcetera. This is also music making, and that part of our job is very important not to forget, because we will cut ourselves down into pieces just thinking about compositions and repertoire. […] That’s a slight objection I have.

IVO NILSSON:

May I suggest, to conclude, to ask, you, Folke just to relate something about your own experiences. We are colleagues, Folke and I, trombone players and composers.

FOLKE RABE:

Yes, well… I have never played my own music, but I’ve been playing in a group, which was composing in a collective way. It was a quartet, which was working for fourteen years in the 1980s and 1990s, and we actually started from scratch in a collective way. We had meetings for some days, and we were discussing the large form of what we were going to do. Then we went home. We were living very spread-out. One was living in Copenhagen, two in Stockholm and the fourth guy somewhere else in southern Sweden. Three of us were performers and composers, and the fourth guy was a visual artist, making films and slide projections and lighting etcetera. This group was an inter-media group. We were making performances with music on tape, music live and some acting, you could possibly say, and, as I said, projections and films and so on. Then we gathered one or two months later, bringing stuff that we had been doing by ourselves, trying to combine these parts. We hade made elements according to the large form we had been discussing previously. This was a very time-consuming way of composing. I think the piece that took the longest time to complete took seven years… but some other works were made in a year or two, perhaps. This was a very stimulating way of working, I would say. We were all very good friends since back in the 1960s, and it was sometimes very interesting, especially when we were working in the studio with the electroacoustic part of the show. Sometimes we had material which had to be limited in time, somehow, and we were playing a piece of tape, and we decided that we would make a note – you know, most tape recorders have a display saying that now it is four minutes and thirty-one seconds – and we were listening to the music and watching the display, and after playing we had a discussion about where one moment was to move into the next moment, and very often we had almost, within the limit of a few seconds, exactly the same opinion about where to break it and move over into the next section. This was a very interesting experience for all of us.

Well, there are many more things one could talk about in this context, but that is just an example. In the earliest pieces we made, we actually really did sections of the piece where all of us made contributions, usually on a kind of layer basis. One of us, the three composers, composed one layer which had a kind of, maybe, fundamental function in the section, and the others were doing layers which added things more occasionally into the whole.
Well, that’s history now...

DROR FEILER:

We should not forget who was playing in this hall! I don’t know if the guests here know, because this is a legendary hall. Great musicians and composers were playing here, from Charlie Parker…

FOLKE RABE:

I played here!

DROR FEILER:

From Charlie Parker to Folke Rabe! We hope that their spirit is still here! Composers and musicians.

FOLKE RABE:

Thank you very much for your attention!