Ben Johnston Interview 1995

Ben Interview BenJohnston Johnston withwasDerek bornBermel, in Macon, 1995Georgia in 1926, and holds degrees from William and Mary College, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and Mills College. He jo ined the faculty of the University of Illinois in 1951, and served as professor of composition and theory until his retirement in 1983. In May of 1988, the Kron os Quartet presented a program of his string quartets at the Kennedy Center in W ashington, D.C. The Kronos' Nonesuch recording of his Amazing Grace (String Quar tet Number Four) has been outstandingly successful, resulting in performances ar ound the world. This interview was completed in 1995 and is from the PNMR archiv es. Derek Bermel: Not many composers can claim to have had both Harry Partch and JohnBenCage Johnston: as teachers. I guess not! Although Harry insisted that he was not a teacher ; he considered me an apprentice. I went out to his ranch in Gualala, California , a little lumbering town up the North Coast. He had put all his instruments int o a smithy which had been converted into a studio. Partch was a master carpenter and something of a sculptor. I helped him to work on the instruments, but I was strictly relegated to the "gopher" role. I didn't do anything at all in the nat ure of building, because he didn't trust me. He had this regimen he went through every day, when he would care for the instruments. My job was tuning the instru ments; So he Well, it yes, was trying also he had histothat way train of mind, in training you. butmytheear. string instruments did have to be tu ned every day. I used his organ, the chromelodeon, as the pitch reference. Soon afterwards, we started to record his recent pieces, and I was involved in that.. . So Thisthis In 1950. would was Wehave werebefore way been doingwhen? a group he had even of pieces thoughtcalled of operatic the Eleven worksIntrusions. like Delusion o f theRight. Fury... Those large works began later with Oedipus, which he did it at Mills the year after I left California. The Eleven Intrusions were little ensemble pie ces. The largest one, I think, had four players. Up until then, Partch had writt en solo IWhich thought works, of his they featuring instruments were all himself great, did you primarily. butfind I enjoyed particularly workingattractive? on the marimbas more th an anything else. I was not a percussionist, so it was a problem for me to learn mallet technique, but not impossible. I mean, when it came to rolls I was prett y sloppy, but Harry didn't call for much of that. In fact, a conventional marimb ist wouldn't have had a much easier time than I did, because the design of the i nstruments I know that, was completely in order to different. play the marimba eroica, you have to stand on a pla tformWell, ... Partch hadn't built that yet, he had only just begun to build the bigg er instruments. Andhad He thethree, guitars?... A but lot one of the of them instruments he wasn't wereusing. stillOne in was the elaborately planning stage. harmonic, theHe Soother how did listened was Partch primarily to somefeel ofa it, melodic about then your instrument. hemusic? said, "I think there's a lot there; you'v e got to develop it yourself, and I won't presume to even comment. But in trying to develop it, be your own man." Harry just disapproved of the idea of trying t o influence other people. He didn't take kindly to academic circumstances at all . True, But hebut didnot useatuniversities that time. Madison for financial supported support... him; they were the first, and that started a long series of involvement with universities. In fact, I'm the on e whoYes, WaswasIllinois and primarily that's yourwhere responsible firstI met job?John for getting Cage. John him was to Illinois. one of the speakers at their contemporary arts festival. He did his lecture on composing with the I-Ching. I t was a sensation. I mean people were so angry, so upset! They walked out, they did everything they could do to destroy that lecture, but he just went placidly on. And at the end of the lecture, the head of the festival, my wife and I were the only people who went back to speak to him. Of course, at this time, my own m usic was totally unformed. I was primarily under Milhaud's influence because I h ad just At Mills Yeah. worked Milhaud, College? withbyhim. the way, was a wonderful teacher, very intuitive. His whol e role was that of critic. He would say, "This works...this doesn't work...I wis h you would do more of this...well, haven't we had enough of that?" And Cage was like Milhaud, a very penetrating and perceptive critic. I didn't work with Cage , though, until 1959. Up until then, I had been working in the dance department at Illinois Ð producing their concerts, conducting for them, and playing for them Ð and I was getting pretty tired of that. It was terrific for making me compose, b ut I was too busy. And I thought if I was really going to apply what I learned f rom IPartch, knew IIdidn't had better want to getbuild to it.instruments, because I could see that I didn't have any talent at it, so I decided on electronics instead. I went to ColumbiaPrinceton a year before they opened, but the state-of-the-art just couldn't cope . The instruments were inaccurate, undependable; they were just too primitive. S o John offered to give me a lesson every month instead. He knew that I had found my direction, just not my medium, and he pushed me ahead, saying, "okay, you ca n't do it electronically; you'll have to find another way." My decision was to u

se traditional instruments because it was the only thing left. I mean, what else could I do? This was a period when I had started to work with serial methods, w hichWell, You Oh But Cage no, weren't now... Iunderstood; Inever wasserializing only havedealing after been terribly all, your withdynamics hepitch, had interested worked then... at that with inpoint. serializing Schoenberg.other elements, b ut I have organized the other elements in various ways. I prefer to think of it as related to the proportionalism of my pitch approach. Just intonation is a mat ter of reducing pitch relations to simple ratios. When I did the same with rhyth ms, I got Knocking Piece. That piece has nothing to do with serialization; it ju st so happens that the pitch sequences that I used as the model for Knocking Pie ce came from a serial piece. But the rhythmic organization is proportional, very much so. I mean, it's sort of the ultimate exercise in Elliott Carter's techniq ue, In since fact, there's here'sa ametrical quote from modulation the score, in every "If the bar.rationally controlled shifti ng of tempi are not observed, the realization will deteriorate into feigned vand alism." Which In ...people But No, other ithas definitely won't words, often banging benot. been it that onjust Michael theinstrument. an way becomes... case. in the performance Udow really madetonight. a study of the timbre. You see, the aspect that I left to the performer was the exploration of timbre. Michael tookSince that we're missiononvery the subject seriously. of ratios, His version here's of another the piecequote, is excellent. this one dealing with pitch ratios, from the score of your seventh string quartet: "The aim of a ll this is to provide a harmonic logic to the ear which is even more compelling than the traditional tonal logic." Can you speak a bit about your use of just in tonation? I'll use an analogy. When Einstein devised his theory of relativity, he did not throw out Newton's physics; he generalized it. In other words, he worked out a basis for the laws of dynamics and thermodynamics which was more fundamental, and less exceptional, than Newton's had been. Nowadays, if you want to understa nd all possible cases, you go to Einstein, because Newton's physics won't cover certain things, whereas Einstein's will. Still, within its own area of expertise , Newtonian physics remains perfectly adequate, even after Einstein. Einstein di scovered a logic that was superior only in the sense that it was more generalize d, more basic, more perfectly abstract. The same thing is true of extended just intonation as compared with ordinary tonality. Extended just intonation is like a super-generalization of the concept of tonality. I'm not trying to compare it to Einstein's physics, but I see it as an analogous effort to build a more funda mental structure. So it should be even more compelling than ordinary tonal logic , because ordinary tonal logic is not applicable to higher overtones, for exampl e. That You use onecharts you'reand pointing tablestoinisyour an attempt scores totodemonstrate represent athe multi-dimensional ratios... c ontinuum in two dimensions, and that's a losing game. You see, the basic idea be hind those lattices is the Cartesian graph: x, y, and z, axes. But this is a gra ph which deals with more than three dimensions. The procedure is to compare ever y prime number with all other prime numbers Ð each prime number, that is, above tw o, since two is involved always Ð two is the cycling number, the octave. There's a three axis, a five axis, a seven axis, and so forth, and each axis adds a dimen sion.Did these structures affect the way you think about time? Time moves very di fferently In fact, in soon the seventh after Stockhausen string quartet, wroteasHowcompared Time Passes, with the I read sixth... it and was str uck by the similarity to the way that I think about time. In music, we deal with different time levels: countable time, which is what we mean by "rhythm," but a lso durations that can't be felt as tempi Ð because they're too slow Ð but which can be perceived as proportional relations. For example, the second section of a pi ece may be heard as being half as long, or double, the first section. The Fibona cci series is based on a proportion. That's why, in Bartok's music, for instance , time Havepasses Yes, you it's and read according Lendvai's fascinating, to the bookand Fibonacci onit's Bartok's true, series. music? by God, if you analyze those piece s, it's there! It's there! It is a form of proportional organization. Fibonacci is not Bartok the certainly only series, feltofthat course, the human but it's earawas particularly especiallynice sympathetic one. to the F ibonacci Well yes, series. you have the great tradition of the golden mean, the aspect of Anc ient Greek art. But this procedure of organizing material with lattices and matr ices I got from studying Adriaan Fokker's writings. Fokker was the Dutch theoris t behind the 31-tone-per octave tuning used by several composers in the Netherla nds, among them Henk Badings. Thirty-one notes gives a better approximation of c ertain just intervals. The major third, for example, is well approximated by thi s temperament. So is the seventh partial. The eleventh, however, is not well app roximated Do these Not really. at terms all.Youget justinhave yourtoway, realize majorthat third, allperfect terminology fifth... is a means to an e nd. And if you lose sight of the end, the terminology's not going to save you! A t the same time, if you don't have terminology, you can get totally bollixed up.

I don't want to throw out all the terminology, the way Partch did, because then my players have to learn a whole new set of terminology, which is equally unfam iliar for them. So I use, as often as I can, modified conventional notation and modified Theretraditional are many other terminology. Western composers who have dealt with the notes between our twelve tones. The Czech composer Alois Haba used quarter-tones, sixth-tones , and eighth-tones to approximate music from the Balkan folk tradition. Haba beg an by using tempered microtones, because his mind worked best dealing with a tem pered system. He felt that it was adequate to approximate these things. Gyorgy L igeti said that when he uses quarter-tone indications, he simply means that ther e's a note in-between, and the player must find something that works. Same thing withIt's DidEzra you interesting Sims. ever try,that say,you a big suggest staff,that, withbecause smallerPartch lines did in-between? try it. I actuall y didn't. From the very beginning, my whole aim was to keep my notation as close to ordinary usage as I could; in fact, for a long time I was only dealing with extended triadic usage, that is, no prime overtones higher than five. The only e xtraThe symbols syntonic needed comma areisthetheplus difference and minus, between whichthe indicate whole step the syntonic in-between comma. DO an d RE and the whole step in-between RE and MI. The first is a Pythagorean second, a 9:8 relation. The other is a 10:9 relation, which is the gap between a just m ajor third and the Pythagorean whole-step; the difference is 81:80. That differe nce must be indicated, because the lack of care about it is what makes playing i n just intonation so difficult. Hindemith talks about this problem in The Craft of Musical Composition, but as a violist, not as a composer. He speaks about the necessity to conceal the comma in playing. String players will naturally try to play Mozart, or any other triadic music, with just triads. But in doing so, the y run into the problem of the comma. Now, they won't make the mistake of playing LA-flat rather than SOL-sharp; that's an egregious mistake; it's 40 cents off, nobody would do that. But twenty cents off, maybe. The comma is only about 22 ce nts. Indeed, if they were to play the progression I-VI-II-V-I over and over agai n, they would move by common tone, dropping a comma every time. After five repet itions, So the theypluses wouldand be minuses a half-tone are necessary; flat! I just added those to the ordinary notation. Then when I wanted to go an extra step, I asked myself Ð what interval i s the seventh partial closest to? It's closest to a minor seventh, lowered by 49 cents. I altered this seventh, in other words, so that it became an overtone se venth. In my system of notation, every partial is treated that way. Compare the eleventh partial to the perfect fourth, it's 53 cents too big. The seventh and e leventh partials, therefore, approximate quarter-tone differences. So I write a 53 cent chroma, that is, accidental. The gap between a "blue" third and an ordin ary tempered third is not as much as a quarter-tone, but the difference between a blue Youthird know,and every a just tradition minor in third theisworld fullyisabased, quarterintone. one way of another, on s ome variety of just intonation, unless they have gotten "sophisticated" and adde d temperament. The only places that I know about where temperament, of any kind, has become a staple of the musical diet are Europe, Thailand, and Indonesia. In every other case, some form of proportional relationship exists. It's because t he mind Obviously works you've that way; found it'sstring that instruments simple. ideal for your purposes. I know yo ur Sonata Right,for andMicrotonal for severalPiano, reasons. but It's that asolution tremendous seemsamount less of satisfying. trouble to reach into the piano every time you change pieces. It's not harmful to the instrument in Absolutely any way,can't ...you but... not. getIthe cankind onlyofgetflexibility a selectionthat of twelve you've notes. just been I mean, discussing. they mig ht not be the usual twelve, but there won't be any more than twelve, because tha t's the way the keyboard's designed. So that's not very interesting. And woodwin d players have to use special fingerings which can't be generalized, because pla yers have their own particular habits and instruments have their own particular quirks. Why go for special fingerings? Why not just ask for the actual overtones fro m brass Well,andofwoodwind course, that's instruments? the only way to do it. I decide what I want, then I find out whether it can be done by checking with a good player. Then when I know that it works, I simply say to the player, "find this." Although I started work ing with winds early on, I didn't solve the problems for myself until the 70s. I n the first pieces I did with winds, in the early 60s, I had players write out t he fingerings which worked for them. But then by God, with other players, they d idn'tSure, What work! about a natural. instruments Since Iwith played pitchtheflexibility trombone, it built wasin, obvious like to themetrombone? that ther e were good possibilities there. And I knew perfectly well that you can lip bras s instruments all over the place. Actually, you can lip most woodwind instrument

s too; oboe is the big problem with the winds. But by the 70s, I knew players wh o were into this kind of experimentation Ð flutists like Tom Howell, clarinetists like Charles Yassky and Phil Reyfeldt, oboists like Wilma Zonn Ð players who care enough about learning all these extra fingerings on their instruments to explore these Andareas. That's Reyfeldt right.has Butainbook theofend, fingerings... string instruments are the easiest, the most d irectly So suppose approachable. a string quartet wants to do your ninth quartet and you only have one session to coach with them. How can you even begin to explain your ideas to them? No,Donever. you show Thisthem is why howthe to notation divide theisstring as close equally? to ordinary notation as poss ible; I would tell them, "Your triads ought to be as free of beats as you can ma ke it. That's all, just aim for the same goals as when you're playing Mozart or Haydn. If you have a natural seventh, it's about a quarter-tone lower than a jus t minor seventh, not than temperament." But, come on, these string players don't have temperament in their minds anyway! It's actually much harder to play in eq ual temperament than it is to play in just intonation. As you know, it takes a p rofessional to tune a tempered keyboard instrument. You can't do that as an amat eur.Stanford You havehas to just countrecorded beats, and youruseninth all quartet. sorts of Any devices; otherit's recordings too difficult. coming u p? Well, I talked to David Harrington recently, and Kronos seem to be quite ser ious about recording all my quartets. I would love it if they did, but that woul d take quite a lot of time, and quite a lot of money. Kronos already knows the s econd and eighth quartet, and they've recorded the fourth quartet. So, that's qu ite a leg on getting them all done. As far as I know, Nonesuch hasn't jumped on thatThree Have Yes, Do bandwagon, anyIyou ofof have written them. them butThe four use Kronos anyQuintet orchestra alternate large and for I tunings? ensemble pieces. areGroups always pieces? dates in touch from the aboutmid-60's. it. It uses very complicated tuning, involving as many as 83 different pitches. The orchestration includes two retuned pianos, two retuned harps, a huge percussion section, and a modest-sized orchestra. I also did a piece for the Springfield Symphony, with chorus and contralto soloist, about seven years ago, called Journeys. It's based on Well, a folk How didIsong, you adapt only fromseven-limit use a collection your tonal tuning system by Carl to the in aSandburg. group firstthat movement, large? which means that I'm only asking for one unfamiliar problem; it's just-tuned triads plus the seve nth partial. The folk song that I chose uses the seventh partial prominently; yo u can tell, it's a real blues sound. In the second movement, I used overtones of C, then overtones of E, then back to C, up through the sixteenth partial. I use d a lot of harmonics, and so forth, to introduce them to the sound. And it worke d; the orchestra learned it quite well! The chorus did an especially accurate jo b. Speaking of chorus, I particularly enjoyed the Swingle Singers' album featur ing your music. I guess voices work well for the same reason that string instrum entsYes, do --what easya marvelous access to group non-tempered they are, intervals. incredible talent. I also wrote a piec e recently for Toby Twining's vocal group. That piece uses a few extended techni ques,I'm What buthalfway are mostly youthrough deals with working myontenth the overtones now? quartet, which controlled was not by commissioned vowels. by anybody; I'm just writing it because I want to. I also did a set of arrangements for the Kronos Quartet. They want to do Partch's Barstow, which I'll be narrating with them on several occasions. And they're doing the "Two Greek Studies" from the In trusions. So I had to stop work on the quartet to do this rush job for them. And it wasn't easy; I had to re-notate the Partch first, to make sure I understood exactly what he had done. Then I had to decide how much of it could be transferr ed to string quartet. I tell you, though, if I had a wish, I would like to do mo re orchestra work, not because I think the orchestra is terribly well suited to all this Ð it isn't especially Ð but I think I would make more of a contribution tha t way. My whole aim has been to reestablish just intonation as a viable part of our musical tradition. But I'm not somebody that orchestra leaders think of, at all.Yes. Are there Larryyounger Polansky, composers althoughfollowing Larry's probably in your footsteps? more influenced by James Tenn ey than by me. And of course, many younger composers have been influenced by LaM onte Young. Several of my students have also taken an interest: Michael Pisaro, a guy who is presently teaching at Northwestern, has started to write in extende d just Andintonation. Ron your newcommissioned George piece So has is for Manfred thegamelan? piece. Stahnke, He'sfrom builtHamburg. what he calls the "American Ga melan." It's influenced very much by Lou Harrison. Ron was interested in what I would do with a gamelan, so he commissioned me and said he would build the instr ument. It's constructed of pipes, gongs, metal blocks, and metal squares, all tu ned very carefully. He chose all the timbres and I designated all the rhythms an d pitches. Almostpretty Yes, So it's like working similar been to a real with that. Partch, collaboration. Ron will a builder. be touring it on the West Coast, then he'll record it. In April, he'll bring the group to Iowa for the SCI national me

eting. And on the West Coast tour it will serve as a prologue to a real Indonesi an shadowplay! Javaneseand Puppets Puppets everything. and everything?