and for sight-reading student compositions.  

BD:    How has the teaching of composition changed over the course of your career?

AI:    Well, I think that there is more emphasis on private teaching than there used to be.  I’m not entirely convinced that this is a good idea.  I studied with Roger Sessions, and also briefly with Nadia Boulanger.  But particularly with Roger, I felt that the experience of being in a classroom with other people, of being in a seminar room, was a very good one.  When the instructor, let’s say when Roger would criticize somebody else’s work, I found that I was interested in his criticism, and tried to pinpoint in my own mind what the problem with this other person’s work would be.  Very often I realized that he could put his finger on it much faster than I could because of his great experience.  And I learned a lot by listening to what he had to say about other people’s work.  When he talked about my own work, I had to filter it through my own ego.  And I think that’s a common problem with teaching, that the student tends to be very defensive about his own brainchild, whereas he’ll be less so about somebody else’s.  So I think it’s a very helpful thing to have people taught in groups.  On the other hand, it’s more and more the case that I find myself teaching students individually a lot more than I used to.  That seems to be the fashion nowadays and I think it’s working out all right that way, too.  You just have to be very careful about not saying things in such a way as to cause the student to have a defensive reaction.  You have to be very careful how you phrase your criticism, and I think it takes a lot of experience to do that.  

BD:    Do you find that the students today are better or worse, or just different than they were twenty, thirty, forty years ago?

AI:    They’re more sophisticated, certainly.  I think that the musical life in this country has become very active and very intense over the last few decades, so that when I look back at what I was like at the age of my current students, it seems to me they have a much wider acquaintanceship with more different kinds of music, especially contemporary music.  There are so many schools now in contemporary music, and so many trends, that the danger is that of trendiness; whereas the danger in my day was simply embracing the twentieth century and coming of age, as it were.  That was a national thing as well as an individual thing.

BD:    Are there perhaps too many trends going on at the same time now?

AI:    I wouldn’t want to legislate against any of them!  I think they have to happen.  As long as people want to write a certain kind of music, they should write it.  The political aspect of it is very complex, and that’s less attractive.  But there are certain kinds of personalities who tend to dominate other people, and I think it takes a good deal of toughness on the part of a student to resist being pulled this way and that by all kinds of charismatic leaders.  But a student who has real integrity can withstand this, and it’s probably a good thing that one is exposed to all these influences.  But it’s not only contemporary influences.  We are now being inundated by music from the past and music from other civilizations.  There’s great interest in oriental music and African music, jazz and pop music and medieval music, you name it.  So the young composer today has probably more different kinds of influences being brought to bear upon him than ever before.

BD:    How much of this is the result of the great proliferation of recordings?

AI:    It’s very much a result of that, and also beyond that.  It’s the result of the fact that we have become a world power and that no country is as isolated as it used to be.  No civilization is as isolated as it used to be, and we’re all trying to wake up to the fact that we’re living in the world, and not just in the western world and not just in the contemporary world.  The past has its influence on us.  For example, thirty years ago, back in the fifties, a group of European composers were trying to isolate themselves completely from the past by writing a kind of music in which it could never be claimed that there was any influence from the past.  They tried to do this by total serialization, or perhaps by chance operations, in order to remove themselves from responsibility for their creations, and to be able to prove that this piece of music was sui generis, that it didn’t come from anything in the past.  Well, that has been pretty well discredited now.  I think people have to face up to the fact that they have a past.  We have roots; we all have roots someplace, and we have to go back to our own roots and reconcile it with everybody else’s roots, and reconcile it with what’s going on in the rest of the world and what used to go on, and somehow integrate it.  I don’t think this integration can be done by an intellectual process.  It has to be done just by being oneself; one’s integrity is important.  And what happens is all these influences are brought to bear subconsciously, and when a composer matures he starts writing his own music, if he’s any good.  Otherwise, he’ll never write his own music.

BD:    Is it your job, or is it the student’s job to figure out if the student is any good?

AI:    It’s partly the job of the teacher because you have to grade the student; you have to decide whether he passes or doesn’t pass.  We can only do the best we can, as any teacher does the best he can.  Obviously, we may not have the final answer.  We can always be wrong.

BD:    I’ve always been curious — is music composition something that really can be taught, or must it be inbred in each and every student?

AI:    When you say inbred, what do you mean?

BD:    I guess I’m really asking how much is technique and how much is inspiration?

AI:    Oh well, techniques can certainly be taught, but untalented students have a hard time with technique.  Those who have less trouble with technique, those who absorb it more quickly, tend to be the more talented ones.  I don’t think I’m really answering your question.  Obviously, talent cannot directly be taught, but inspiration can come from a good teacher.  A good teacher can get a student interested in what he’s doing.  I’ve found the best teachers I had were very inspiring.  It wasn’t that they taught inspiration as a commodity, as a subject, they just, by their presence and by their accomplishments and by their attitudes as projected through their teaching, they helped you mature as an individual and as a composer.

BD:    Are you pleased with the direction that music is going today?

AI:    [Laughs] I don’t really know what that direction is.  There are many different directions, and what I am pleased with is the fact that there are always talented students coming along who are doing interesting things.  They may not all be going in the same direction, but there’s something underneath it all which is reassuring.  One kind of experience that I find reassuring is that of serving on a jury, often made up of different composers with very different persuasions.  The jury will look at forty or fifty manuscripts, or tapes, and try to award a scholarship or a prize to the best one.  Over and over again I have been impressed by the fact that talent is recognized very readily by such a jury, even though the composers on the jury may be of very different aesthetic persuasions.  They all recognize what constitutes a talented young composer.

BD:    What exactly are you looking for?  Are you looking for the best piece, or the most potential?

AI:    Depending on what level you’re talking about, you can give awards to students or you can give awards to composers who have been professional composers for a number of years.  So in the former case you’re looking for promise, and in the latter case you’re looking for the best piece or what seems to be the most individual expression and the most convincing expression from many points of view.  I think that a really talented, original piece is recognizable by a group of experienced composers of many different persuasions, and that tends to suggest to my mind the fact that there is a common denominator of some sort which we ourselves may not be able to explain, but that we all have a feeling for what it means to be a good composer.

BD:    Do you feel that you and your music are part of a musical lineage?  Do you fit into the musical world which is going on?

AI:    Yes.  You’re asking a question which really urges me to pretend that I’m a historian, rather than a composer.

BD:    Right, right.  Take yourself out of the picture and look at it.

AI:    This is a very tricky area because everybody has an axe to grind.  Everybody thinks that the music he or she is writing is the best.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it; we’d be doing something else.  So to get out of that and try to decide whether my music is in the mainstream or a tributary would be impossible for me to say.  I do think that the music I write does have its antecedents.  I find that when I write music, I am constantly doing turns of phrase and composing things which certainly resemble other music that I have heard.  I’ve become less and less worried about that because I begin to realize that what constitutes originality is not just the physical fact of not sounding anything like anything that’s been written before.  Being original means somehow conveying a fresh vision of things, and the language you use to express that must, in some ways, resemble the languages that have been used before — just as if you are writing poetry, you still have to use the English language or the French language or whatever language you choose, but there has to be a language in which your ideas are communicated.  To that extent, you’re using the same words, the same constructions, that other people have used, but you’re using them somewhat differently.

BD:    In one of the biographies of you, the one in the Grove Dictionary, it says, “Your style is characterized by sharply profiled, often lyrical melodic lines, and by clarity of phrasing, brilliant orchestration, rhythmic animation, and a commitment to classical motivic development, balance, and overall shape.”

AI:    Wow!

BD:    Do you feel that’s an accurate description?

AI:    Well, I think that all of those things I would like to have said about my music.  I don’t see anything there that I would want to disagree with on principle.  I hope my music is as good as that makes it sound.  [Laughs]  When they say classical motivic development, I suppose it means that I recognize the fact that a certain group of intervals, played in a certain way with certain rhythms, can be recognized, and the fact that it can be recognized can be used by the composer as a way of creating continuity and coherence.  In other words, I’m not afraid of the idea of a motive, if that’s what they mean by that.  I’m not afraid of taking something and repeating it, or varying it in such as way as to continue the musical discourse in an effective manner.  I’m not one of those composers who try to avoid repetition of all kinds and try to make very moment absolutely brand new.  I don’t think that’s possible, actually.

BD:    Not possible, and not even desirable?

AI:    I don’t think it’s even possible to do that.

BD:    What do you as a composer expect of the public that comes to hear your music?

AI:    I would like them to meet me halfway! [Laughs] I think that’s what I would expect.  I would like them to listen, and not to start thinking about other things.  I would like them to be alert and to pay attention, and I would hope that if they are alert and if they do pay attention, that their attention will be rewarded.  And in order to do this they should have some experience with other music.  It isn’t possible to communicate with someone who has absolutely no background in music at all, but I would say the average concert-going audience certainly ought to be able to enter into what I’m trying to say, musically.  I’ve had the experience of having audiences respond positively, so I assume that it’s possible.  There are always some who don’t respond, and this is the way it always is, too.

BD:    Let me turn the question around.  What is the obligation of the composer?

AI:    Well, I think the obligation of the composer is to project his ideas.  Lots of people can walk along the street and say they have a wonderful idea, but they can’t put it on paper.  Or when they put it on paper, it doesn’t make any sense to anyone else.  What you have to do is to capture the essence of your own idea and try to project it as clearly as possible.  That’s where technique comes in.  You wear a critical hat as well as a creative hat when you compose, and you have to keep changing those hats back and forth, just the way a painter will step back from his canvas and squint at it, and then come back and paint some more.  I think the purpose of the squinting at it is to put himself in the place of the viewer, in this case.  Likewise, the composer is obligated to put himself in the place of the listener and imagine that this was a piece written by someone else.  Would it make any sense?  You don’t even have to go through that exercise; you know darn well, sometimes, that it doesn’t make sense.  You’re trying to say something and it isn’t coming through.  That means that you as listener are not in tune with you as composer; you haven’t quite figured out what it is that needs to be clarified in order to make that idea project across the footlights.  It’s like being an actor.  You have to have a sense of timing; you have to know how to project your lines, your words, your gestures, perhaps even a little larger than life, in order to make them as clear as possible.  I think this applies to the music of Bach as much as it does to the music of Tchaikovsky.  It’s not a question of hamming it up in a vulgar sense; it’s a question of your gestures being unmistakable.  That’s what I think the composer’s obligation is, in a nutshell.  Of course, this is all a great oversimplification.

BD:    Oh sure, sure.  You’ve spent a lifetime delving into all of this and you could probably write volumes and volumes about it.  A brief interview on the radio is just an overview.

AI:    I’d rather spend the time writing the music.

BD:    Ah!  Well, for whom do you write?  Do you write for a specific public, or do you write for yourself? 

AI:    In one sense, I write for myself.  I think everybody has to do that first, but I should qualify that by saying that I regard myself as a member of the human race, a member of the society in which I live.  So when I write for myself, I’m writing for myself as listener, assuming that if I like it, somebody else may.  If I don’t like it, I don’t think anybody else will.  I think you’ll find most composers will say this, no matter what their persuasion.  I’ve heard this same statement made by many composers on interviews and panel discussions.  It seems it’s sort of like the stock answer that every composer comes up with when asked that question, so I don’t claim any originality for this, but I think it’s true nevertheless.

BD:    Are there not pieces that you don’t like, which are either acknowledged masterpieces, or at least are quite popular among other people?

AI:    Oh, yes!  There are plenty of pieces that are very popular that I don’t like, and there are some that aren’t popular that I do like.  But when I write, I don’t write for a particular segment of the population.  I don’t say, “This is for you, and this is not for you.”  I’m too busy trying to make the darn thing work; too busy trying to make the piece really get off the ground and really stand there!  My main job when I’m composing is to put something together that won’t fall apart the minute I walk out of the room!  And if it stands on its own feet, as it were, then I feel that I’ve succeeded.  Now what does it mean by standing on its own feet?  It means that I don’t have to be there in order to have this piece do its job.  In other words, a group of performers can get together and perform that piece, and an audience can listen to it, and something, some kind of communication, will take place.  I would hope that the audience would be as large as possible; I never have any feeling of being in a little ghetto of composers who only write for each other.  This is a common myth that people invent about composers today; they think that composers spend their time writing for each other.  But I couldn’t think of anything less interesting than writing a piece just to be listened to by other composers.  I would find that a very futile occupation.

BD:    You say that it’s really a myth, that it’s not going on, though it seems to be.

AI:    I don’t think it’s going on at all!  I don’t think any composer would admit that it was going on.  I don’t know one single composer who would come right out and say, “I’m writing this piece for other composers.”  I’ve never heard anyone say that, or imply that.

BD:    Then why has the myth grown up?

AI:    I think it’s because a lot of the contemporary music is difficult.  It tends to demand a kind of listening which some people are not willing to give, so they assume that somehow the composer is pulling a fast one, or the composer is simply writing for someone else.  I suppose that’s what it really is.  A lot of people seem to think that if they don’t like the music, well, “It’s not for me.  It’s for somebody else.”  So that’s where this myth gets started, but I don’t the composer looks at it that way.

BD:    How do we get the public to appreciate, or at least enjoy, more contemporary music?

AI:    Well, that’s the question.  I think a lot of them do.  I think that the audience for contemporary music is a fairly substantial one, actually.  If you compare it to the audience for, let’s say, Mozart’s music in Mozart’s time, that was a very limited audience, limited to a certain class of people and a certain geographic locality.

BD:    But don’t we really have to compare the audience of today with other audiences today, rather than something that happened three hundred years ago?

AI:    Well, yes, that’s true.  But I don’t think that you’re going to get the same size audience for a new work that you’re going to get for Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky because these things are very familiar; they’re classics and people feel comfortable and safe with them.  Of course, they are marvelous pieces, and they keep revealing themselves anew each time you hear them.  They’re miracles.  I’m as much of a Beethoven fan as anyone else, and I wouldn’t want my music to supplant Beethoven’s.

BD:    But you would like it to stand alongside, yes?

AI:    I would like it to stand alongside Beethoven, and everybody else’s music.  If it doesn’t, if contemporary music doesn’t take its place beside the others, then the concert hall will become a museum instead of a living experience for people.

BD:    Another work I would like to ask about is On the Beach at Night. 

AI:    Yes, that’s an even older work.  It was written back in 1949, I believe, to a poem by Walt Whitman, and is scored for mixed chorus and string orchestra.  I wrote it, I think, while I was at the American Academy in Rome, and it’s been done a number of times.  It’s been done here in Berkeley by student orchestras, and was done recently at Brandeis University by their chorus and a professional string orchestra.  When I hear that piece, it’s like looking at a picture of one’s self taken thirty or forty years ago.  It seems very youthful and somewhat naïve to me now, but I still like it.  I wouldn’t write a piece like that now; my style has changed too much.  But I still like the piece.  I get a sort of a kick out of it, and it’s quite effective, actually.  But it’s the work of a young and very enthusiastic composer who is just starting out.  I still have a certain fondness for it.

BD:    I know this is a difficult question to ask, but is there any one piece, or two pieces, that you feel are the most significant of your output so far?

AI:    Well, I think there are.  The opera, Angle of Repose, is certainly my biggest work and the most important in that sense.  The Pilgrimage piece is one that I’m particularly interested in because it’s my most recent chamber work.  And then I think about the Requiem that I wrote in memory of my son, John, who died suddenly at the age of almost nineteen.  That piece was performed by the San Francisco Symphony a year ago last January.  Those are certainly three of the works that I consider important, and I also think my Fourth String Quartet is one of the important pieces.  That’s been recorded by the Emerson String Quartet on the New World Records label.  It was commissioned by the Pro Arte Quartet and was first performed in Madison.  They’re in residence at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and they have commissioned another quartet which I will write for them fairly soon.  They have performed all four of my Quartets and they are very good friends of mine.  I regard them as a wonderful group.

BD:    When you get a commission, do you know about how long it will take you to write it?

AI:    I have to try and calculate that, because, for example, the piece that I’m writing now is scheduled to be performed in New York on November 6th.  I’m about halfway through and I have to be able to promise them that they will get it two months before the premiere.  In other words, by September 6th I have to have it in their hands.  It will be a piece something like the Pilgrimage, although it will be for eight instruments instead of six, and it will be a good twenty minute work.  I have to be able to tell them that they can have it by such and such a date, and then there are other pieces that I have also promised to write that I have to somehow fit in.  Some deadlines are less definite than others, so you sort of juggle things a little bit.

BD:    I assume, though, you would rather have a deadline instead of having them say, “When you get it done, we’ll do it.”

AI:    Well, I like a combination of both! [Laughs] Too many deadlines makes for sleepless nights; not enough makes for a sense of insecurity as to whether maybe you’re on the shelf!

BD:    Let

BD:    Staying with the opera just a little bit, would you encourage or discourage students to write operas, or to become opera composers?

AI:    I think people should do what excites them.  At Berkeley, we have one student who’s on a prize now in Paris, and is soaking up the musical atmosphere there.  But his graduate dissertation is going to be an opera, and the question is whether we can get it performed or not.  He was able to get one scene of it performed just by getting some of his friends together and doing a scaled-down concert version of it.  I think people who want to write opera ought to try to do something like that.  I think if there’s a will, there’s a way.

BD:    The economic pressures against it are not overwhelming?

AI:    There’s an awful lot of opera being written for workshops and university environments, and I think people should certainly start out by writing modest-sized operas, like the one I did, which is a manageable thing and can be done by a university.  You can also hire some musicians from the outside if you don’t have an orchestra that can do it, and you can hire some professional singers; it still is possible to do it in a university setting. 

This interview was recorded on the telephone on April 26, 1986.  Portions (along with recordings) were broadcast on WNIB later that year and again in 1991 and 1996.  The transcription was made in 2008 and posted on this website in January of 2009. 

Award-winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.