‘Never give what the public asks’

[James]

Musician Peter Eotvos: 'Never give what the public asks'
COLIN EATOCK
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012 4:15PM EST



Musical modernism made a bold statement in the postwar decades. To this end, many composers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s broke from the past, creating an angular, dissonant kind of music that stood in direct opposition to the traditions of earlier times.

These were heady times for a young Hungarian named Peter Eotvos – talented both as a composer and a conductor. When the Moscow Conservatory rejected him for advanced musical studies, he applied to Germany. In 1966 he headed for Cologne, the epicentre of all that was avant-garde in European music.

Today, Eotvos is 68, and comes across as charming and avuncular in an interview at Roy Thomson Hall. His articulate English is peppered with snippets of French and German – evidence of a long career spent in several European countries.

"New possibilities to produce different sounds opened the musical imagination," he says, fondly recalling his formative years. "At the same time, the culture was ready for a break with the Nazi era in art, literature and music."

The chief reason for Eotvos's visit to Canada was an invitation from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to curate this year's New Creations Festival. Beginning on Thursday, he'll conduct four TSO programs over nine days – a mixture of his own music and works by other living composers. (As well, he'll speak at Soundstreams's Salon 21 lecture series on March 6, and will appear at a chamber-music program presented by New Music Concerts, on March 10. After that, he leaves Toronto to conduct the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, on March 15.)

The years have been good to Eotvos – and so has classical music. His works have been presented around the world. He's led major orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam and Tokyo, among many other places.

While he hasn't shunned the old-master composers, he's best known for contemporary music. Thanks to his skills with difficult modernist scores, he served for many years as music director of Paris's cutting-edge Ensemble Intercontemporain, and was principal guest conductor of London's BBC Symphony Orchestra.

It was his close association with two of Europe's leading postwar composers – Germany's Karlheinz Stockhausen and France's Pierre Boulez – that made him a key figure in the modernist movement.

And through them, he absorbed the ideologies. In its most extreme forms, modernism was overtly elite and combative. Boulez once called for the world's opera houses to be blown up, and declared that anyone who wasn't composing in an atonal serialist style was simply irrelevant. And, in the United States, the composer Milton Babbitt once penned an essay entitled Who Cares If You Listen?, in which he defended the obscurity of his cerebral music.

Eotvos stands by the modernist credo. According to him, it matters little that the music he champions hasn't achieved widespread popularity.

"I don't think it's important," he states emphatically. "If you start from a point of view of doing something for the public, you won't create a new world. In every era of European culture, from the Middle Ages onward, the new was always exceptional."

Moreover, he claims that modernism's departure from tradition was a matter of historical necessity – and will eventually be recognized as such.

"Never give what the public asks," he continues. "You must give the public what it needs – even if they do not always know it! Many people will understand 100 years later, and some people will understand immediately."

Perhaps – but not too far into modernism's march to future glory, it was sideswiped by postmodernism. Composers such as Arvo Part, John Tavener and John Adams challenged modernist ideas about musical progress and historical inevitability, and spearheaded a revival of tonality.

Today, the two camps don't always play nicely together. Adams once dismissed Schoenberg – a revered figure among modernists – as "a religious zealot cutting off his genitals to prove how totally pure he is."

Yet rather than jump into that kind of fray, Eotvos favours peaceful co-existence.

"Today, everything is possible for composers – and I accept it. Most significant for our time is individuality, so that each composer can produce his music as he wants."

After a lifetime as a prominent figure in new music, he remains adamantly optimistic – and he doesn't doubt that modernism still speaks to open-minded and adventurous listeners.

"Now, in Western Europe, we play the music of the 1950s and 60s with big success. At festivals, where I am a conductor and composer, there are full houses everywhere." And just last month, he adds, he led a program of new music with the famously conservative Vienna Philharmonic.

And if the music he loves requires interpretive clarification, for the benefit of performers and audiences alike, that's where he comes in.

"I've been conducting modern music for 40 years now. I understand what's happening in this music and why."

Special to The Globe and Mail

[some guy]

Cool.

I do wish Colin had been a little more scrupulous about his citations, though.

"Boulez once called for the world's opera houses to be blown up, and declared that anyone who wasn't composing in an atonal serialist style was simply irrelevant. And, in the United States, the composer Milton Babbitt once penned an essay entitled Who Cares If You Listen?, in which he defended the obscurity of his cerebral music."

Noting that the opera comment is unsourced, wikiquote presents it like this: "The most elegant way of solving the opera problem would be to blow up the opera houses."

As for serialism, what Boulez said was "[A]ny musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."

But that's all perhaps too nuanced for a popular article....

Babbitt once presented a lecture that was entitled "Off the Cuff," which became an article in High Fidelity under the title, given it by High Fidelity, "Who Cares if You Listen."

Here's the deal on that, from an interview with Gabrielle Zuckerman for American Public Media in 2002:

"Then, you know, we have to talk about... I know this became sort of infamous, too, was the piece that you wrote, was it for a newspaper or a magazine?

The "High Fidelity" mag, we're going to get to that, all right, and we'll straighten that one. It has been straightened out many times now, but probably not for public radio.

Right.

Okay. You're talking about a piece that was eventually entitled Who Cares if You Listen. That was never my title, though. I'll tell you the story from the beginning, because it's, of course, it's pursued me and angered me. When I taught at Tanglewood in 1957, Aaron Copeland(sic) asked me if I would give a lecture to the general multitude that came in on Friday before the big Friday concert, to give some sense of what it was like to be a composer in the university. I mean, as you know, most people don't realize that there is such things as serious composers alive and particularly in a university. They think, what the hell are they doing in a university? Well, I was the university composer in his eyes, so I said sure I'll do it. So I gave a lecture called "Off the Cuff" about what life in the university was like and why composers were there per force and what the advantages and disadvantages were. And that was the end of it. But in the audience there was a man who lived in Great Barrington down the road, who was the editor of a magazine quite perversely entitled "High Fidelity." And I, two days later, heard from him. He told me that he would like me to write this up as an article for "High Fidelity" magazine. Well, he said that I could write it down exactly as it was, and I said, "Look, I don't want it to be changed because it could be so misunderstood. It's a very delicate subject, so please don't alter it." Well, the next thing I know, it appeared under the title "Who Cares if You Listen?" ...They had to have something much more journalistic, something much more problematical, something much more adventurous. "Who Cares if You Listen," which had nothing to do with, it had little of the letter and nothing of the spirit of the article. Of course, I do care if you listen; above all I care how you listen! It was republished this way many times. They also knocked out a few sentences because some new advertising came in at the last moment. The magazine, as you probably know, is now well long out of existence, but it was very popular in those days, very widely circulated. That pursued me; it was published in anthologies until lately, but people had it published under its original title."

The most telling bit is of course this sentence: "Of course, I do care if you listen; above all I care how you listen!"

Indeed.

[snyprrr]

But what if the 'public' is made of of the 'elite' (such as here)? Don't WE have expectations of what greatness and excellence?

[eyeresist]

Oh, to be king of the echo chamber.

[DavidW]

I think this give what the public needs is a bit daft.  The public doesn't need classical music at all.  And at the end of the day when you're only performing for a small group of like minded listeners you're not serving the public as a whole.  That's okay, just don't pretend that performing difficult music is a public service, it is most certainly not.

This quote meets with my approval though: "Today, everything is possible for composers – and I accept it. Most significant for our time is individuality, so that each composer can produce his music as he wants."

A very sensible, and true message.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: eyeresist on Today at 02:38:49 AM

Oh, to be king of the echo chamber.

   
Hah!


  Quote from: DavidW on Today at 09:55:35 AM

I think this give what the public

needs is a bit daft. 
Aye, something of a cultural Nazi tone.

Where I think the never give what the public asks angle is "I'm in my bubble for good, now" talk.  The public does not, ever, ask composers to write music.  This Eötvös character must live a life sweetened by plentiful gubmint subsidies.  Nice work, if you can get it.

[Todd]

The public doesn't need classical music at all.

This very true statement reminds me of the Appearing to enjoy Classical Music section on Stuff White People Like, and in particular the opening:

"There are a number of industries that survive solely upon white guilt: Penguin Classics, the SPCA, free range chicken farms, and the entire rubber bracelet market.  Yet all of these pale in comparison to classical music, which has used white guilt to exist for over a century beyond its relevance."

[DavidW]

Ha!  I'll have to read that whole article over lunch.

[some guy]

This Eötvös character must live a life sweetened by plentiful gubmint subsidies.  Nice work, if you can get it.

Well, the last time I saw him was in the very ordinary waiting room of the airport in Vilnius, waiting to get on a very ordinary plane to Warsaw. No private jets, nothing fancy.

I don't know if he and his wife sat in the first class section, but those planes between Vilnius and Warsaw are smallish, and the first class section is maybe twelve very ordinary seats up front.

Though once he got to Warsaw, maybe his private jet and Nubian slaves and Persian dancing girls were waiting there for him. I mean, be fair, a gubmint subsidy that doesn't pay for private jets and Nubian slaves and Persian dancing girls ain't worth sh*t.

[Karl Henning]

Well, the last time I saw him was in the very ordinary waiting room of the airport in Vilnius, waiting to get on a very ordinary plane to Warsaw. No private jets, nothing fancy.

I don't know if he and his wife sat in the first class section, but those planes between Vilnius and Warsaw are smallish, and the first class section is maybe twelve very ordinary seats up front.

Well, I've been on planes out of the small airports in the Baltic republics, myself.

Of course, the word I used was "plentiful," not "extravagant"; and one could enjoy comfortable government subsidies without being a privileged apparatchik.

So … what I see is that one word I used was exaggerated and parodied, to humorous effect; but my larger points unaddressed. Maybe it's broken English, but "give the public what it needs — even if they don't know it" is at best fatuous, and possibly arrogant. Of course, in certain musical circles, arrogance plays well to the galleries.

Now, your story of meeting him in an airport, and the fact that he didn't have a private jet with Beluga caviar and chilled Slivovits served by waitstaff in indigenous folk costume — that means that in fact I am wrong, and government subsidies do not form any significant revenue stream? I ask only for information ; )

[Karl Henning]

Okay, I'll ask: what has the public asked Eötvös to write, which would be such a regrettable artistic compromise to agree to?

[some guy]

Sounds very like disingenuousness there, but I'll bite anyway.

"The public" first of all is an abstraction. Used to make general statements that are generally true, that is, true in a general way. No one is claiming a group of people large enough to be called "the public" is asking or not asking Peter Eötvös to write anything.

Generally speaking, a group of people large enough to be called a "public" is going to have generally conservative tastes in music. A composer shouldn't write to a general desire for what's already known now, but must give something challenging instead, something that a few will appreciate right away and that possibly many will appreciate in time.

That's my reading of his quote, anyway. Pretty standard stuff, really. An artist always has one eye to the needs of future audiences, audiences that won't be doing any supporting, as the artist will already be dead. So an artist always has one eye to the present, too, if not to present audiences then to present funding organizations (perhaps governments) for artistic endeavors that may very possibly nourish future audiences more than present ones. In any case, there will be people in the artist's now who will understand and appreciate now, while the artist's alive. Rarely enough to support the artist at even a subsistence level much less plentifully. But should artists turn their backs on the people who really get them and are nourished by them in order to write things that "the public" will like and hence reward. Penderecki and Glass are two people who answered that with "Sure!!" And those composers no longer feed the people, like myself, who they once fed. Too bad.

Anyway, tell me you really knew all this already and were just yankin' my cord.

Please.

[snyprrr]

There could be worse musicians on the dole?


I like 'someguy's defuse.

[Luke]

Just as an aside, Eotvos is a fantastic composer...

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: Luke on Today at 06:00:03 AM

Just as an aside, Eotvos is a fantastic composer...

 
I don't know the music, on which I am certainly not commenting.

[Karl Henning]

 Quote from: some guy on Today at 04:12:33 AM

Sounds very like disingenuousness there, but I'll bite anyway.

 
I love being called disingenuous first thing in the morning! ; )

To nothing of what you've said here, do I have any quarrel.  Chances are, if Eötvös had expressed himself on those lines, I should not have picked any quarrel in this thread with his citation.  You've met him, so I understand the degree of slack you give him, and perfectly right.

To a plain joe like me without that personal connection, what he apparently said comes off as smug and perhaps even a bit priggish.

[UB]

I also think Eotvos is a fantastic composer - he also seems to be a pretty good conductor.

BTW it seems Steve Jobs felt the same way about consumer products...that is do not make what the public wants, make what they need but do not know it yet. It seems to have worked for Apple and in my opinion it works for Eotvos.

[some guy]

Chances are, if Eötvös had expressed himself on those lines, I should not have picked any quarrel in this thread with his citation.

Or if his comments had been given a better context.

You've met him, so I understand the degree of slack you give him, and perfectly right.

He's a plain joe who writes really interesting music.

You two have a lot in common!

[CRCulver]

This Eötvös character must live a life sweetened by plentiful gubmint subsidies.  Nice work, if you can get it.[/font]

You could say that about pretty much any classical musician in Western Europe. No reason to rag on Eötvös because he prefers to conduct modernist repertoire. Ticket sales don't cover Brahms and Mahler either, and so something has to fill the void.

I think this give what the public needs is a bit daft.  The public doesn't need classical music at all.  And at the end of the day when you're only performing for a small group of like minded listeners you're not serving the public as a whole.  That's okay, just don't pretend that performing difficult music is a public service, it is most certainly not.

What the public needs is a diversity of choices available to them, so that some minority of them can find the classical music they enjoy (just as different minorities will choose jazz or bluegrass or various "world music" styles), adding up to a majority of artistically fulfilled citizens. At least voters in my neck of the woods overwhelmingly consider that support of figures like Eötvös is a "public service".

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Just as an aside, Eotvos is a fantastic composer...

Based on the one disc I have (Atlantis), I would agree. A review:

http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=3023