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Menotti was my teacher, but I learned many great lessons from Barber as well. Once I spent the night at Capricorn, and Sam excused himself after dinner to work on a commission for the Library of Congress. Later when I went to bed he was still at it, and I listened with mounting perplexity as he played the same sequence of notes, over and over, for well over two hours; just a couple of measures, with occasionally the tiniest variations of rhythm and distribution. It sounded like the behavior of a morose child. I wondered if he were stuck or having a breakdown. The next morning I asked him what on earth he had been doing. He said, and I thought about these words for a long time, "I was looking for the right notes." (The piece was "Le Départ.") Like a hand on my shoulder it slowed me down considerably; it gave me permission to pursue refinement and revision. I still tend to revise even after publication when I see that I didn't get all the right notes. Simplicity must be of the greatest refinement to stand out. No matter how simple the idea there are endless ways to express it, and one of them is the best. I have no natural connection with the liturgy, or the pop music of my youth. The drab bare aesthetic of the Lutheran church completely turned me off. So did the dance bands I played in, because they played so badly. I remember as a child praying to have a real faith, an unshakable faith, but I didn't. I didn't have it. I prayed for it, even on my knees; I prayed, but I never did get it. So I finally gave up. Only in the seventies, through my involvement with a spiritual community, did I realized that I had a spirit. In my late thirties I went through psychoanalysis, brought on by the fact that I ground my teeth in my sleep, and I didn't want to lose my teeth. I learned a great deal—yet in my forties I fell into a "dark night of the soul." So I went to search for answers because my life had suddenly turned on me, it didn't mean anything to me anymore. At that time I found the spiritual community that led me out of the dark night. It is called The Pathwork, and it exists in many countries. I think of my tonal language as a vast musical river that has been flowing for centuries. Nothing can ever really disrupt it, not even Arnold Schoenberg [laughter]. It will continually flow, it is such a powerful form of human expression, coming out of the very physics of sound. Lee Hoiby was born in Wisconsin in 1926. He studied composition at the Curtis Institute. His works have been recognized by awards and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. His principal works include the operas The Scarf (1958), A Month in the Country (1964), Summer and Smoke (1971), The Tempest (1986), and Romeo and Juliet (2004). He is also the composer of nearly 100 songs, as well as chamber music, music for orchestra, solo instruments, chorus, and the theater. He lives in upstate New York. |
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