INTERVIEW: Composer Virko Baley on his most recent compositions (11/07/04)

INTERVIEW: Composer Virko Baley on his most recent compositions

In the interview below, Virko Baley discusses his recent compositions with WNYC radio host John Schaefer on the eve of their premiere in two concerts in New York.

As producer and host of music programming at WNYC, New York's premiere public radio station, Mr. Schaefer is the creator of the new-music radio program "New Sounds" (1982), and "New Sounds Live" (1986), an annual series of live broadcast concerts devoted to many types of new, unusual and overlooked forms of music. He is also host of "Soundcheck," a program that showcases composers and performers with ties to New York's vital and vibrant cultural scene, as well as executive producer and host of the nationally syndicated series "Chamber Music New York." Since 1991 he has produced and hosted WNYC's programs of classical performances, both in studio and in various concert halls.

Mr. Schaefer's writings include "New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music" (Harper and Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); a biography of composer La Monte Young (in "Sound and Light," Bucknell University Press, 1996); and "Songlines: The Voice in World Music" (Cambridge Companion to Singing, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2000).

He was contributing editor for Spin and Ear magazines, and has written numerous articles and reviews. His liner notes appear on more than 100 recordings, ranging from "The Music of Cambodia" to recordings by Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby McFerrin and Terry Riley.

Mr. Schaefer was presented with the American Music Center's prestigious Letter of Distinction for his "substantial contributions to advancing the field of contemporary American music in the United States and abroad."

by John Schaefer

You know what they say about New York - if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. That's why composers leap at the opportunity to have their music played in New York City. Not everyone gets that chance, but Virko Baley, who lives a couple of thousand miles away in Las Vegas, has become almost a regular presence on the New York music scene. The middle of November is a particularly busy time for the Ukrainian American composer. On November 19, the New Juilliard Ensemble, at Alice Tully Hall, will premiere Baley's Symphony No. 2, "Red Earth." And on November 21, the Ukrainian Institute of America will host a recital of his chamber music, including the New York premiere of a song cycle called "A Journey after Loves," based on poetry by Bohdan Boychuk, translated from the Ukrainian by David Ignatow; the "Dreamtime Suite" No. 1; the world premiere of the complete Book I of Baley's "Emily Dickinson Songbook"; and other works.

Q: Your Symphony No. 1, "Sacred Monuments," had a subtitle and a very definite "program" - each of the four movements commemorating the life and work of a Ukrainian composer of the past. The new Symphony No. 2 also has a subtitle. What does "Red Earth" refer to, and is this "program music"?

A: The idea of the symphony came to me after visiting Sedona, Arizona, for the first time about a year ago. The beauty of the many canyons, the lush starkness of the triad of the vivid colors of red, blue and green caused a kind of epiphany. The infinite varieties of crimson that cover the earth reminded me of spilled blood. The opening lines of the Ukrainian poet, [Taras] Shevchenko's, astonishing poem, "Kavkaz" [The Caucasus], came to mind: "Za horamy hory, khmaroyu povyti, zasiyani horem, kroviyu polyti." [Beyond mountains, other mountains, veiled by clouds, sowed with woe, and watered with blood].

The color red, surrounded by blue and pockmarked with asymmetrical patches of intense green, suggested a triad of notes, simply three-note pitches, both close and yet, harmonically, far away: D, E and F. Nothing could be simpler; but this simplicity is exactly what attracted me. As the idea of the piece grew and themes began to gather around these three notes, I then decided that this symphony, which had the title of "Red Earth" before a single note was put on paper, had to be connected to my still unfinished opera, "Hunger." The red of Sedona, beautiful, on the surface serene - Sedona, the land of many vortexes and new age humanism - and the blood soaked earth of Ukraine in 1932, the subject of the opera. The libretto, by Bohdan Boychuk, deals with an event during the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine, put into effect by that great engineer of human souls, Joseph Stalin. "Hunger" is a work I've been struggling with for two decades. All the thematic material in the opera is based on just such three notes, which is from a folk song that I heard for the first time in Sergei Paradjanov's film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors." This theme, which in the opera is part of a flashback to a memory of a wedding a few years before the events happening on the stage, becomes, in the symphony, the ur-motive of the whole work. It is both triumphant and strangely doomed.

Q: You equate the colors red, green and blue with the pitches D, E and F. Do you have synesthesia - like Messiaen, or Scriabin? In other words, do you "hear" colors?

A: No, I am not blessed with synesthesia, unfortunately. But when writing certain pieces, I seem to be drawn to certain pitches, which I begin to hear in a coloristic way. In this case, D, E, and F did become associated with the three colors, but slowly morphed into a mixture of colors (one leaking into another) and transpositions began to create hybrids (as in nature).

In the "Intrada" movement of the symphony, for example, the theme echoes the idea of the Sedona mountains - monoliths in the valley, richly embroidered walls in the canyons. "Intrada" is linked to the second movement, "Duma," where the three-note motive undergoes many transformations and expansions, creating a necklace of such patterns. I became interested in creating a "new age" type of a texture, but one with an opposing force, the force of nature. The vortex idea, is a human construct; nature in Sedona is not. What you will hear is the two flowing concurrently, but not in harmony.

The third movement, "Incantations," a scherzo, is a wild dance where the interval of a third dominates the fabric. It is short, fast and brutal, as a sudden, dangerous encounter in a dark canyon at night might be.

The fourth movement, "In Memoriam: 'Heart of Glass,' " is an instrumental realization of the last scene in the opera "Hunger." A farewell to life, a lament, that is in some ways connected to the prophet Jeremiah's lamentation, "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for those who were slain" (9:1). This orchestral version is dedicated to the memory of Valentin Bibik, who died from a brain tumor over a year ago; a composer I profoundly respected.

Symphony No. 2 is for me a link between Ukraine's history and the natural tapestry of Sedona. But to come back to your first question: Is it programmatic? Certainly not in terms of a plot; but in a more profound and mysterious way. As a human being, and composer, I'm under the spell of both.

Q: "Duma" and "Heart of Glass" are titles that you've used before. Do you attach particular significance to them? Do they suggest specific types of musical gestures in your work?

A: "Duma" for me is like Minuet was for Mozart. It is now a form. Duma in Ukrainian is "thought"; it is also a folk form, a ballad, a historical tale done as a song, an improvisation, a rumination. Yes, I use it a lot - and will continue to do so. I suppose it is my "adagio."

"Heart of Glass" first appeared in "Dreamtime" (a large-scale chamber work for the California EAR Unit) and then in "Dreamtime Suite" No. 2 (for violin, cello and piano), and now in the second symphony. The other title which is becoming a form for me is "Hour of the Wolf" - there are now two such pieces, totally unrelated musically to each other (they share no common materials), but very closely related as to context: first time in "Dreamtime" and more recently in Symphony No. 1: "Sacred Monuments." It is the dark hour of the soul.

Q: Moving on to the music on the upcoming chamber recital, the settings of Bohdan Boychuk's poetry in "A Journey After Loves" are not the first time you've used Eastern European, Slavic texts. While you haven't done many text settings until recently, "Treny" - largely a work for two cellos - did use some Polish texts. Is there a connection, something peculiarly "Slavic," between "Treny" and the Boychuk settings, even if they're in English translation?

A: Perhaps both deal with loss: "Treny" with ultimate loss, "A Journey After Loves" with loss of love. In that sense, "A Journey After Loves" has a link with Winterreise (Franz Schubert's towering song cycle). I was very much interested in setting Boychuk's English version of the poetic cycle (and it is really an English version rather than just a good translation) with a Slavic accent. It is as if you were to hear someone speak excellent English, but with an accent. That is what I tried to do in "A Journey After Loves." I think I succeeded. By the way, there is a "Duma" in that cycle as well, although not called that specifically - it is the song "Withered Flowers."

Q: You've also set Emily Dickinson's poetry - a fair amount of it, it looks like. Are you familiar with the idea - first proposed, I'm told, by Dickinson herself - that all the dashes in her poem represent places where, in her mind's ear, music was to go?

A: Yes, I think I remember reading about it. But I didn't remember it when I was setting the first two books (there are 12 songs so far). Nor, frankly, would I want to do it in each and every case. I think the function of songs, as opposed to recitative or musical declamation, is to find a lyrical metaphor for the song as a whole; a kind of overriding ur-text, hidden within the words; a metaphor which binds all the words together. But now that you've mentioned it, I might try doing that in Book 3. My next Dickinson project is a setting for unaccompanied voice of one of her letters, actually a draft of a letter to an unknown recipient, written in early 1862, but no one knows for certain, that starts with "Oh, did I offend it." It will be a kind of tour de force, a real old-fashioned mad scene. But, solo voice. No accompaniment.

Q: How do the settings of the Ukrainian and American texts differ? The rhythms of the languages are different. Does that affect the "sound world" of each piece?

A: First of all, all of the songs are in English - Dickinson, obviously, but Boychuk's is also in an English translation; an excellent translation. But, in setting Boychuk's poems I was interested in creating a Slavic sound. The work is written in memoriam to Leos Janacek, who wrote one of the great vocal cycles about lost love, "The Diary of One Who Vanished." Throughout the eight songs I make very conscious references to a few other Slavic composers, mostly contemporary.

The Dickinson cycle I began after hearing the Portuguese cross-over group Madredeus and their lead singer Teresa Salgueiro. I think she is one of the great singers of our time. I actually saw and heard the group for the first time in a film by Wim Wenders, "Lisbon Story." I wanted to write songs like that, but, of course, in my style. Songs where the melody rules! Another aspect was the use of a certain kind of ostinato accompaniment; by that I mean, giving each song a clear acoustical space in which the voice will float in and out of.

Q: Back to the symphony - what was the genesis of the piece? Was it written specifically for this orchestra and this occasion?

A: Joel Sachs, that indefatigable and brilliant champion of new music, suggested that I write the piece for the New Juilliard Ensemble. I wanted very much to write my second symphony - but, this time of modest length and a more restricted numbers. Naturally, I probably failed in the numbers a bit, as I kept asking Joel if I could add this and that. I think he held out fairly well for a while and then let me have it between the ears, so to speak. Seriously, it is a symphony for a double string quartet plus bass, a woodwind quintet, a brass quintet, three percussionists (playing lots of different instruments) and piano. Twenty-three soloists in all.

Q: Is "Hunger," the opera that you've referenced a couple of times, actually being completed? Or is it simply spawning all these instrumental works while you wrestle with it?

A: Absolutely - it will be completed. And soon. I have worked on the opera "Hunger" (libretto by Boychuk) for almost two decades now - it's still uncompleted and in need of major revisions. It is kind of strange for one whose first love in music was voice, to have stayed away from writing for the voice for so long. The Dickinson cycle will probably continue throughout my life; Dickinson has become, by far, one of my favorite poets. I read her, at least, once a week. But I'm also planning on setting some texts by Yuriy Tarnawsky - and there are shorter, very personal poems by Taras Shevchenko, which will probably be the first all-Ukrainian songs I'll write. But, the first order of business in spring of 2005 is to return and finally wrestle to the finish with "Hunger." I think I've avoided completing it fully because I felt I wasn't ready to tackle such a difficult and emotionally costly subject. But now, I think I have the necessary musical muscle to do it justice. Ask me again in a year from now.

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