This interview appears in TSAR Volume
7, Number2
TSAR (continued): In the United States it is increasingly rare to find orchestras and chamber groups programming modernist works. The "neoromantic" movement, a reaction against the uber-complexity of the high modernists, has grown roots. My sense is that this is not true of European ensembles and presenters. Am I just romanticizing things?
AM: You are not romanticizing, but we don't know how long our privileged situation will last. There are still ensembles modernist music but tendencies of fusion with either popular music or other musical traditions are rowing as well. Also, in the current situation, the decrease in public funding leads to a dminishing ofrehearsing time or the number of musicians playing in premieres.
TSAR: In American much has been made in recent years about "American music" and an "American style." Copland and Bernstein, Virgil Thomson and Samuel Barber seem to be embraced by classical performers in a way that Babbitt, Carter, Shapey, Druckman, and other American modernists have not. What is the view from Europe about the music of the "American" school? Is this music performed, discussed, or considered
AM: Except for Elliott Carter, a friend of Pierre Boulez who is still a dominating musical personality in Europe, American music is not veryoften played and considered in France. In Germany the influence of Cageis stronger and has led to a more conceptual approach of music. Personally, if I think about an "American" school, I must say that I likevery much Charles Ives whom I consider as important and innovating asDebussy or Schoenberg.
TSAR: Now to your piece for bass clarinet, REIGEN: this works for me like a typography, not narrative but rather a physical thing, something fromnature. It's registral divisions work like layers, rings of a tree, strata ina rock face. What do you make of that impression?
AM: Your idea of layers, rings of a tree is very close to what I was thinking about while writing this piece; of course, something round (reigen means round) is the basis.
TSAR: Is there any connection between your use of REIGEN as a title and that of the middle movement of Berg's Opus 6 Drei Ochesterstucke?
AM: There is no connection with Berg's Orchesterstucke.
Annette Mengel’s REIGEN can be heard at Interviews
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