As simple as that - Peter Sculthorpe
[A.F.] “But the naivety which you aspire to is an aesthetic naivety, rather than a technical one?” p. 39
[P.S.] “Back to being 11 or 12. I remember reading somewhere that, when he’d finished a piece, Debussy would tend to take notes out. So I began to do the same — to take notes out rather than add notes. It is an aesthetic naivety. I remember, in the 1960s, going somewhere in a taxi with Richard Male, and Richard was very excited because he said he had written one page of music containing 60 separate, unrelated events. And I said, ‘Well, how fantastic! But I would be as excited as you if I had written one page of music and there was only one event on it and I could get away with it.’ I suppose that’s why today I’m very sympathetic to minimal composers. I wish I could bring myself to be more minimal, but somehow I can’t. I suppose with minimal music I feel often a little let down, because it doesn’t get anywhere.” p. 39
[A.F.] “Can we go back earlier in the composition process, and can I ask how a piece starts for you? What comes first? And what excites you, at that early stage, enough to make you want to spend a long time getting a piece right?” p. 40
[P.S.] “In the very first place, there has to be some kind of emotional commitment. When an American donor phoned me last year wanting to commission Kakadu, I said I’d love to do it, but I’m to busy. And he kept putting the money up, and I kept saying, ‘Look, it’s not money that I want, it’s time!’ Anyway I felt badly about it — it was to be a birthday present for his wife — so, to be nice to him, I said, ‘What is your wife like?’ And he said, ‘Why, she’s the most wonderful person in the whole world.’ And there was something about the way that he said it — his commitment and love for her — and I knew at that moment that I had to write the piece. So that was it. I think a composer is a chooser. We need to limit your choices, and the more we limit them, the easier the piece is going to be to write. I knew Jorge Mester was going to conduct the piece, so I asked him how long he thought it should be. So, 20 minutes. Manny, the man who commissioned it, wanted the piece to have an Australian flavour. Well, I’d always wanted to write a piece called Kakadu and this was the opportunity (…) And then, because of Manny, I thought I would write a very chromatic melody over the Aboriginal melody, and this would be his voice speaking tenderly to his wife. These were all examples of me limiting my choices; this is how I go about it. I get my material and then I mess around on paper putting As and Bs and A1s and C1s and D3s — trying to sort out the shape. One I’ve got the shape and all the choices limited, off I go. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t always fit the original idea by this stage, but it’s something to build upon.” p. 40-41
[A.F.] “Kakadu was a commission, and I suppose most of your music is commissioned. But let’s take a hypothetical example whereto suddenly want to write a piece for its own sake. What would you start with? Something extra-musical, like landscape? Or sonority? Instrumentation?” p. 41
[P.S.] “It’s more likely to be something to do with a particular person. I’ve just arranged The Song of Tailitnama [1974] for cello and piano, for a recording by David Pereira and David Bollard, and I’ve had immense pleasure making this arrangement, thinking of the two Davids and the way they would play it. That’s what gives me the commitment. In fact, I think it’s always the person who inspires the music. Say somebody asked me to arrange the Song of Tailitnama for Rostropovich, Well, I don’t think I would, because I don’t know him and I wouldn’t be very committed. But I know David Pereira and we have a good friendship and it’s a simple as that really. As you know, writing music is hard work and there has to be some from of emotional involvement, otherwise there are a lots of easier things to do.” p. 41
[A.F.] “Do you ever wonder what is the point of composing music? Do you ever feel you’d be better employed as a fire-fighter or a doctor — doing something which is more obviously useful to society?” p. 41
[P.S.] “But I think that writing music is of immense use to society. It is a mirror of society, of a time, of a period.” P. 41
[P.S.] “I’ve always been attracted to ostinato patterns. It goes back to my early teens and was probably the influence of Stravinsky’s Rite of Springs. So to discover this extraordinary music of Indonesia — and Bali, especially — with these wonderful interlocking ostinato patterns… well, it was natural that I should turn to it.” p. 43