MUSIC AND Fit INTHE MIDDLE OF WORKING ON THE SCORE FOR SATYAGRAWA, |GOT phone call from a filmmaker named Godfrey Reggio. “Hello, T'ma friend of Rudy Warlitzers about a film I'm working on. I've spent the last year kinds of music and I've decided that Ineed your music in my film." “Thanks, Godfiey. T would be bappy to meet you, but I dor! virite film musi: That was true, with the except Suvero, which I had recently complete ‘The next day I got a call from Rudy himself. “Phil, this guy has come here fom Santa Fe and he's not going \ leave New York until you look at his reel. So just go re st, say m and he'll go back home. Besides, I'm sure you! ‘A day or two later I met Godftey at Jonas on Wooster Street. Godfrey had a film montage about ten mi utes long that would eventually become the opening of his filn ‘Koyaanisgatsi, He told me that he had made two versions, one wi electronic score from Japan (he didn’t mention the composer’s nan and the second with my music, After viewing both reels he sa Yyou can see, your music works much better with the picture than tl electronic score.” agreed with him that my music worked better with the film, n realizing at that moment that I had tacitly accepted the assignment, Rady was right. I liked Godfrey right away. He's quite tall man, six foot seven, with a gentle demeanor and a soft voice. | found out later that he had lived in a Catholic monastery in the Cajun country of Louisiana, starting asa fourteen-year-old boy and remaining there until he was twenty-eight, Te looked to me as if the combination of serength, focus, and reserve, which one could easly associate with the contemplative life of a monastic, had never left him. What appealed to me from the beginning themes of the work. The fist was a ser moving images of the natural world, The film began with an opening part Godfrey called “The Organic’—from the American West and, in particular, the area known as the Four Corners, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet near Monument Valley, with its enormous landscape seulptures that were made by Mother Nature herself: Then, toward the end of the film, in the fifth reel, we would see “The Grid,” the hyperactive life in our big cities—in this case New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The oversimplified interpretation of the film is that technology run amok is the perpe- trator and the natural world is the victim. Godfrey himself has never accepted this black-and-wt interpretation, but he does use “Life Out of Balance” as a descriptive subtitle for Keyanisgatsi, a word in the Hopi language. Living in Santa Fe, Godfiey had gone to a Hopi settlement nearby for inspiration and wisdom and had become close to some of the elders of the tribe. The ideas he picked up from them, became the place where he began, second theme of the film is embodied in a series of film “por- ” of ordinary people in which the camera does a very long shot, coming in very close on theit faces. The perspective he brings to his intense and moving and is as powerful as the images of Daring our work on the film, I often met with Godfrey to hear rectly from him how his ideas were developing, He has described s process as a dialogue between us and has credited it that way the films we have done together: Koyuanisgatsi, Powaggatsi, Anima38 woRDs wirwour mosie ‘Mundi, Nagoygatsi, and, most recently, Visitors. The truth is clear an simple. Godfrey would talk ro me about his ideas for the films anf about the context of the films themselves, and I would listen, Gol fircy’s views were powerful and, though they are generally know how, were unique at the time of their conception. They are far fr the formulaic versio chnology is bad and indigenous life good, though he is constantly reflecting on the interaction betwee modern technology and “tradi his work much more free of judgmental posturing than most of us aly capable of in matters ofthis kind. In my film work, I continued, to the degree it was permitted, thy collaborative approach [had arrived at in my theater and opera wok Imadea point of being present through the entire process of mal 4 film, and that included extensive visits on location as well as hhours watching the editing proces the “normal” role of the composer in the traditional filmmaking process, where the music is considered parh of post-production and one of the very last ingredients to be adil before the work is completed, In fact, through the 1980s and ‘90% [ ‘was experimenting Wi y overall strategy was t0 seh aside as much as possi role of the composer in the overall work scheme. Godfrey was especially interested in this kind of innovative thinking and he welcomed all suggestions, For the beginning of the film, Godfrey decided that he wanted to use NASA footage of a rocket launch, “What kind of music do you think we should use there?” he asked “Look,” Isaid. “You're going to be showing this fim in big me theaters, The history of film i also the history of theater, and the tory of theater comes from the cathedrals. That's where theater begat, with che myseery plays, L into the theater, you're ent wg a huge temple, and the instrument you would hear in there would be an organ. Maybe it’s no coincidence that when theaters were built for silent movies, organs were instal and ready to be played.” ‘The opening music begins asa classic baroque passacaglia in which, 0 back to the idea that when you go the theme is stated in the deep pedal tones of the organ. The counter- point is then filled out by the ¢wo upper keyboards, and we hear one deep voice singing the name of the film—"Koyaanisqatsi.” The idea of the piece was to prepare people for a performance that would be similar to what they would seein a mystery play. I went to the Cathe- ral of St, John the Divine, on Manhattar’s Upper WestSide, where [ knew Dean Morton, the administrative head, and I asked, “Can you arrange for me to play the eathedral organ?” “Yes,” he said. “P’ll ger someone to open it up for you.” went there and, in a few hours, I wrote the piece right on the organ. ‘As the opening music ends, there is a moment of silence, and then a long, low tone slowly appears. The very next image, filling the , with the big sky and open landscape, in a very slow pan—a pristine, untouched environment. IE what we are seeing i the beginning of landscape, what we are hearing isthe begin- ning of music. ‘There are two ways that I could have composed the muse: to com- tment on the image, or to make the music identical with the image. L chose the latter. Apart from a sustained pitch, which increases and decreases in volume, the music hardly changes for a minute and a half, ‘Then the saxophones begin playing one note on an off-beat rhythm, suggesting that we are going back to the beginning of time, to some- thing very ancient. As the music begins to build and the landscape the church. screen, is Monument begins to change, we are clearly no longer ‘The post-production work on Koyaanisqatsi tok place in Venice, as Lwas New York-based, the kind of participation cd. The next four films Califor: Twas looking for was only T would work on—Powaggats recently, Visitors —were edited in New York City, often within walk- ing distance of my own studio. Ihad seen very quickly that the ear- lier the music came the film, the more it would help to determine the work process. Godfrey was very encouraging and allowed that to happen.a0 woRDs wirwour mu Some of my proposals, according to tradition tices, were really radical. Powuggatsi, the second flm in thet begins in the Serra Pelada gold mine in northern Brazil, Godfiey some film footage previously shot by Jacques Cousteau. Using a reference, I composed a short ten-ininute piece of highly th ‘music for brass and percussion. Then I traveled with Godfrey film crew to Brazil to Serra Pelaa itself, an open-pit gold mine atts high point had ten thousand miners working side by side. By the me we arrived in 1986, it was down to about four thousand This was quite a bizarre place. It could easily have been mi for a prison set in a jungle, but in fact it wasa startling display of italism at work. Every man there was an owner of part of a sixehy- nine-foor plot, They all belonged to the cooperative and, though there fences all around the site, the miners were, carth. When we got to the bottom, we just sat down and watch! the men digging and hauling bags of earth up bamboo ladders to the surface. Once there, they would dump the earth into a large woodei, tice chat was fed by a rivulet of water from a neatby stream, ‘The water cattied away the dist, leaving behind gold nuggets. Thad been traveling to Br for several years for a winter co posing retreat in Rio de Janeiro and could manage to speak Por guese reasonably well with the workers. Down below I talked to a ry ‘were consumed by gold fever. had never before seen an thing like it. Moreover, I realized how young they really were. I gut cles patcee hy cy ences gence a “Hey man, what are you doing her “Wetre here finding gold.” “Where is it?’ “There's gold everywhere, all over here’—this with a broad sweep) of his arm all around the horizon, “So how are you doing?” Musto AND Prem 33H 've been finding a few nuggets. But when I get a good big I cashit in and go home,” In fact, there was a Banco de Brasil at the top, right next to the pit. “Where are you from “A small town neat Belém” (275 miles to the north). “And what will you do when you get home? “Tl either open a restaurant with my family or maybe buy a VW dealership and sell cars.” ‘What they really did, when they found a nugget—the nugget could be worth ive or six thousand dollars—was to sell itto the bank, take a plane to Manaus, and in one weekend, spend all the money. ‘Then they would come back to work. There was one fellow who had alice restaurant there, just a tent and some tables and a fire. He said, {don't know what I'm doing making food here. This plac ably right over gold. I could dig right down here and find gold ‘The people there were obsessed with gold. They were convinced they were going to make a fortune, and some of them did, but they also spent it. Every morning when you woke up and walked outside, you saw a line of men in front of the Banco de Brasil, trading gold dust for cruzeiros, the Brazilian curreney at that time. They were making ‘mon every day. lc while later Godfrey and I climbed up the bamboo ladders to the surface. It was a good five hundred feet up and the ladders were only about twenty feet long. When you came to a ledge cut into the wall, you had to change over to another ladder, and once you got in the line moving up there was no stopping—the men behind you just pushed right on up. They were thirty years younger than us—tough, strong, and ina hurry. “We began filming that afternoon. The music 1 composed was on ‘a cassette and Leo Zoudoumis, our cinematographer, was set up with hheadphones to hear it on a Walkman while he was filming, The flm- “nally, one of the miners a listening to?” ing got started and went on for a w! noticed the headphones and asked, “What are “The music is for here. You want to heos worDs wirHour music Ofcourse they did, and, fora while, the Walkman and headphones ‘were passed among the small circle that had formed around us. “Muito bom! Muito bom!" —*Very good!" —wasalways the response, The music for Serra Pelada is driven by highly percussive drums mers) in Rio de Janeiro often during Carnaval, where you would hear ewo or three hundred players playing different drums in synchronization with one another, It was a tremendously powerful sound. If you were lucky, it would take eight or ten tutes for that group of people to parade past you, and you would heat nothing but this drumming. There were some eross-rhychms, maybe arees,chrees against fours, but most of t was just fic in perfectly in that piece. ‘When I came back to New York, I played t the people working on the film, They watched the footage, and they were shocked. was like for those people?” |, “Did you think I should have done a piece like “Yo-ho-heave-ho'? Is that what you think was going on there?” Later, when Iwas actually making the film score, Ladded the voices the brass and percussio ce energy and enth ldren, and I wanted to evoke that feeling with the dl dren's choir in the score. That became a memorable musical moment. Godfrey and I went coall the venues together, whether they were in South America, Africa, or somewhere else. I went because he wanted me to be a part of the work and he urged me to come with. hhim, The reason the music came out the way it did was that Thad been there. I could have made it up, but I would have definitely missed ready there, in order siasm of the mi to capture the chil they were dl 3, To m Music ap fram ge something. IE hadn't seen what it was like, not just on film but actu ally see it for myself, Twouldn’t have known to pat the children to make a sound track that lived in the muscle and blood le who were there. had managed to compl order of filmmaking. Instead of waiting, fo at the end, during post-production, I had moved it up to the front, nventions of fi prove anything, except that the “normal ing were just that—eonventions. Over the next ten years, I made all kinds of experiments of this ki able to carry over some of my procedures into commerci ‘The main problem is chat filmmakers already think they know how to make a film, so changing theix procedures would almost always be cout of their reach. a few rare instances, even Im work, ih Godfrey, I don't spend a lot of time look- image. I look at it once. Maybe twice, but not more than ing a twice, Then I depend on the inaccuracy of my memory to create the appropriate distance between the music and the image. I knew right away that the image and the music could not be on top of each other, because then there would be no room for the spectators to invent a place for themselves. OF course, in commercials and propa ganda films, the producers don't want fo leave a space: the strategy of propag: 10t to Teave a space, not to Jeave any question. Com- ‘mercials are propaganda tools in which image and music are locked together in order to make an explicit point, like “Buy these shoes” or “Goto ‘The strategy of art is precisely che opposite. I would describe it this way: When you listen to a piece of music and you look at an image at the same time, you are metaphorically making a journey to aphorical distance, but its areal one all the same, and it's in that journey that the spectator forms a relationship to the image. Without that, i's all made for us and we don't 1g, In works like Godfrey's, and in works, for music and. have to invent anon wonps wiruour muste that matter, like Bob Wilson’, the spectators are suppased to invent something. They arc supposed to tcll the story of Einstein. In God frey's movies Koyaanisqatsi and Powaggatsi, che words in the title are fords there are. The journey that we make from the ar Image is the process by which we make the image and ¢ music our own, Without that, we have no personal connection, The idea of a personal interpretation comes about through traversiny distance. AcconpiNe To coorney, in the Hlopi language, powaggatstisa conjunc: word: the word powuga, which refers to “a negative sorcerer who lives at the expense of others.” and gatsi, which means “life.” Most of Im was shot in South America and Aftica, and one of the ideas of the film is that the Northern Hemisphere is consuming the Soutl ‘em Hemisphere. At a certain point, much of the Southern Hen sphere has become industrialized like the Northern Hemisphere, It has become a mirror of it. When we were in Pera, twelve there was a ceremony going on. After hiking for a mile in the hi desert, we came to a church that faced a walled courtyard, twenty: five yards square. Ie was the time of year thatthe statue ofthe Black Vin taken from the altar, carried around, and put back, lowed by a crowd of perhaps two hundred people, In two diagos nally opposite comers of the courtyard there were two bands play= ing, each trying to ourplay the other. I stood in the middle ‘The musicians were village people from that area. Some of the! hhad come back from the army, and they had brought instruments back ‘with them, There were trumpets with some of the pistons not work: he notes, and drums wit see i as be ese were broken instr we army and taken back to the villages by young men who then formed small bands. After all, there were two bands and they were t than each other. I tried to record it but I didn’t succeed. When I came back to New York, [wanted to get the sound of what they were doing, sol tried to imagine that instead of hearing two bands, Ihad heard one band, And what if they had been playing real instruments—instru~ ments that were not broken—and what if they could actually play them? What would I have heard? I tried to remember what I had actu- ally heard, which was the failure of the music to sound like anything because of the distress of the instruments and the ignorance of the play- ers. But if ! accommodated for that, what would it be? From this came the music that would become the anthem of Pow- aggatsi, which was based on an imaginary music that never really existed, But I conjured it in my mind, and in a real way, it came right out of the experience. Without having been in that place, with those two orchestras play che courtyard, I never would have w. that music. I never would have even tried. A lot of the pieces for Powaggatsi were done that way. I traveled in different countries, and I brought home instruments that I could barely play myself: flutes, trumpets, drum cy were using. looked at the instruments and made up pieces that sounded like they ‘might have come from there, but they really didn’. Ijust used that asa point of departure, However, [can say absolutely that I wouldn't have that piece of musie unless I had heard what I heard, Afier the work in Brazil and Peru, Godfrey and his crew went ‘on to Africa to continue the photography for Powaggatsi. This time, is one of the to the Gambian griot Foday Musa Suso. Foday M most widely known and accomplished singers and kora players of the “Mandingo tradition. He became my guide, friend, and eventual col- laborator through Godfrey's insisten 1 with my own enthu= siasmn) that I include the sound and heart of African traditional music in the score for Pouagyats.just driving around and listening to music. Foday Musa was a superb guide because he not only knew so much of the music himself but ‘was a product, and a very famous one, of that very tradition, I went swith a wall around it and one door to get in and out. Inside was a large open space with houses built around ie with balconies and stare ways and windows, Everything faced in toward the courtyard— if you were standing in a window and looked down, you'd see the whole courtyard. The food was cooked there, Children were there. If the father was away working—maybe in Belgium or elso~ where in Africa—no one would worry, the children would be raised by a group of women. Four or five families —cousins and uncles and relatives—lived there together. Foday Musa told me he began his music studies at about the age of six, Part ofthe learning was to buil _ment with ewenty-one strings made with a gourd. The gourd your lap, as big as your belly, and then there is a stem. The line up along the stem, and each string has to be tuned separate teacher was his undle. If you're a griot, you are descended from a of griots, br your own father cannot be your teacher, so Foday Must ‘went to live in his maternal unele’s house quite a distance away in different village He told me a story about how, when he was living there, his uncle told him one day, “There's a man in a village that T want you 0 go to, He owes me some money, I want you to go and get the money.” Foday Musa took his bicycle and rode on path through the jungle, taking two or three days to get there. “What did you do at night?” Lasked. ‘i a tree and I would tie myself co the tree. I couldn't be on the ground. Sometimes the tree would be surrounded by hyenas and they would call out to you. They would try to get you so nervous and upset chat you'd fall out of the tee and is own kora, a harplike n " is © Mosre Amn prim a7 then they would destroy you, You have to resist. You have to tie your selfon tight.” “Flow long did it take to get there?” “About three days.” you could have died there.” didnt, but when I got to the village, I had no money. 1 found the man who owed my uncle the money and he said he didn’t have it” "What did you do?” “[ didn’t have any money to go home, and I had no food. But | found a dollar in the street"—he meant a dollar in the Gambian ‘money—“and it saved my life. I bought some food, and T could eat a little bi, but I didn’t know how to get home without having some Isat there about two days and I thought I was going to die inthe street” “Didn't anyone take you i “No, Lwasnt from there. They didn’t know me. No one was going take mein, Then another uncle of mine came by and saw me and gave me enough money to go home, and I went back the same way.” “Climbing and sleeping in trees?” pai “How long did the whole thing take?” “About a couple of weeks. Foday Musa was laughing, because I was having trouble believ- ing this story. “Ths is what life was like in the Africa that I grew up in,” he said, Griots are the keepers ofthe history of the people. Foday Musa told me that the history of the Mandingo people that he sings about goes back eight or nine hundred years, and that he had to learn 11r songs. In Affica, it isan oral history done through songs, some of which can last two or three hours, about all the kings and the people. It's not like learning 111 five-minute songs. I's a huge amount of material. “How do you know when you've finished your studies?” Tasked.a8 woxos witnour wuste “When Igot to bea teenager, my uncle sent me out to ples’ houses. So I went out to sing, and when they told my uncle ( knew the songs, it was done. Twent out a couple of times, people had to spend years before they were graduated. They gi ated the same way—you just go to somebody's house and they tell yal) ‘whether you sang the songs correctly.” spent three weeks with Foday Musa, going from place to and listening to music. “Where will we find the music?” I asked “We don't have any concert halls here,” he replied, “so we have to go out on the street.” ‘We would find a wedding where there would be music, or a dance celebration, o just someone sitting at the market playing. On my list day there, as we were getting ready to eave the Gam Foday Musa said, “Come on, I want to take you to hear something” We went to a place in Banjul, the capital, where there was a huge street fair that Foday Musa had arranged, to celebrate us, There were people singing and dancing, and Foday Musa ‘have to dance. You can't leave here unt a, “Okay, now you you dance.” Everyone was standing in a circle, and they pushed me into center of it, and [had to dance. There were men and women, ‘was dancing with them, and they pulled me and pushed me aro\ ‘until they said I had finished my dance. FODAY MUSA PLAYED KORA AND COMPOSED two important solo toward che end of the score for Powaggatsi, He and I continued to work together, our next important collaboration being a score for Genet’s The Screens, a play about the occupation of Alg¢ colonialists, We composed separately and together about fourteot compositions. He did the African parts and I did the European parts, although he also played in my parts and I played in his. By that time swe had learned how to play together. The production took place at Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 1989, the director being JoA\ Akalatis, We then began touring with The Saeens music as the basis for our repertory. We also added percussion, keyboards, saxophone, and violin along the way. We didn’t cravel all the time with such a large group, but it became fora time another performance ensemble T worked with. We continue, even these days, fo add new pieces that we compose together. The Screens has become the name for the collection of music that Boday Musa and I have jointly made, a collection that, as far as can tell, has yet to be com s really through working with Foday Musa that I began to have real insight into the r notated concert music and the music of indigenous sources and people. Working wi Raviji and Alla Rakha had opened the door for me. But it was really Foday Musa who pushed me through the door. On the first day that he and I began to compose together, we were in my studio on Broad~ ‘way at Bleecker Street, We didn't know where to start, s0 I suggested thae we should first tune the kora to the piano. Like the harp, the kora hhas a string for each pitch. So we began. “Poday, play your lowest note.” He played the A below middle C. I played the A on the piano and he tuned his kora to the piano A. “What's the name of that note?” Tasked. “The first note.” “Oh. Okay, play the next note.” He played the B above the A. I played the B and he again cuned his string, “Foday, what's the name of that note?” “The next note.” “Oh” I was getting a little nervous, but I pushed on. “Okay, play the note after that.” He played the C. I played it, and he tuned his third string to the C. Thesicated to ask, but I did anyway. “And what is the name of that note? “It’s the note after that.” 4-1 suddenly understood that, for Foday Musa, the ing a strange vertigo and I hung 1a between our Weste Lalmost fa notes did not have names, I was feae wos wirwour music con to my chair, In my very first uve lesson, fifty-four years bu at the Peabody Conservatory, Briston Johnson had placed my indies finger and the thumb of my left hand on two keys of my flute, presel the keys down with my fingers, and said, “Blow across the hole." |, after a few tries to get a sound out. hen said, “That isa B” .e he pointed to a note on the middle page of music paper with a G clef written at the left side. time than it takes to tell, he had locked together a sound, sm position, and a written note on the page. Now, fifty-four years the whole system of music I had learned, starting with Mr. J and going right through co Mlle. Boulanger, had been just, ts very language and no more etern: human beings that contrived it. It didn’t make it less beaut haps it was now even more beautiful. And as impermanent as an after noon shower, ever so lightly moistening the air we brea “We might consider a fourth in Foday Musa’ playing ascconda little sharp, and so on, so that the actual intervals of Af and Western music are not identical. What he has done is retun instruments to fit a Western scal that a lot of the players who come from Africa will not retune their instruments “What happens then?” I asked. “They cant play with anyone because they're never in tune. Ifyou |want to come to Spain or England or Germany and you want to play, you have to retune your instruments and most of chem won't do it. “Do you have any problem 2” Lasked. le “Thave no problem at all.” What happened to Foday Masa was similar to what happened t0 Ravi Shankar, When Raviji fist came vo America and then went back tolndia, he was criticized forthe success he had. He would have tocalm the critics who thought he couldn't play anymore, He would put ona big concert in New Delhi or Bombay and play the traditional music fantastically well. He had to prove to them that he could st stopped aftera while—they knew that he was able to do both. When Foday Musa would go back to the Gambia, because he had changed the tuning on his Western recordings, chey thought he had lost che music. Bat when he returned to the original tuning of the kora, they were satisfied that he could still play che traditional music, Foday Musa and Ravi were able ro move between musical cultures, and the real entry for them began with reeuning their instruments. “Through my contact with both ofthese men, Tlearned to adapt my playing co music that-was not part of Western traditions. Recently T made a record with some indigenous Wixérika musicians from cen- tral Mexico. I didn't know what they would play, but I knew what- ever it was, I would manage it. [listened to the music and said to iyself, “Whereis the music? Where does the music go? What can I play?” And then T began to play. "The work with Godfrey opened upa world of musicforme, because irmeant that in the end I could go and play with almost anybody. I've ‘experimented widely with musiclans—Raviji; Foday Musa; Mark ‘Atkins, the Australian didgeridoo player; Uakti, a group from B ‘Wa Man, the Chinese pipa player; and the Wixarika musicians. All of this music has been performed live or been recorded. Traveling with Godfrey forthe film shoots had made it possible for me to have reg skilled musicians in other traditions. The time lar encounters wi | spent with them gave me the confidence to pursue new directions, and my forays into global music—Indian, Himalayan, Chinese, Aus tralian, African, South American—have widened and deepened my understanding of my own musical roots. And not only that, over the years and as T ventured farther and further away from my musi~ cal “home base,” I have come to understand that all music, without ‘exception, is ethnic music. In 19901 became the artistic director forthe annual benefit concert for Tibet House US, which had been established in New York City in 1987 at the request of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. It owed his stated wish fora long-term cultural institution to ensure the sustainability of Tibetan culture in exile and to create an awareness of Tibet's contribution and relevance to the world’s cultural stage, The founders of Tibet House US included Robert Thurma Richard Gere, Porter McCray, Elsie Walker, Elizabeth Avedon, atl myself, The first concert was held at the opera house at the Broo ‘Academy of Music and included Allen Ginsberg, Laurie An Spalding Gray, and me. Having lived and worked in New York s 1967, [had developed, with the help of a committce from the mi ‘world organized for this purpose, a large pool of talent to draw fh in making the evening's lineup. I discovered that almost none of tht players I knew had ever played in Carnegie Hall, and that seemed i have been a major attraction for them, Perennial performers have been Allen Ginsberg, Patti Sill Laurie Anderson, and myself. Guest performers have included Any lique Kidjo from Benin, Caetano Veloso and Marisa Monte fi Brazil, Ashley Maclsaac from Cape Breton, Pierce Turner from Iie Jand, and Foday Musa Suso from the Gambia, as well as such Ti musicians as Nawang Khechog, Yungchen Lhamo, Tenzin yal, Dechen Shak-Dagsay, and Techung. In addition the concert his featured hugely popular performers like Paul Simon, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Ray Davies, Michael Stipe and REM, David Byrne, Richie Havens, Iggy Pop, Shawn Colvin, Emmyloit Harris, Taj Mahal, Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens, Rabzel, the National, the Black Keys, New Order, and the Flaming Lips, This extension into the pop-commercial-folk world has become the living confirmation for me that talent is among our most univer sal qualities, appearing where it will regardless of gender, race, age, cor nationality “When I studied with Nadia Boulanger, she was basically central European art music. That was her tradition, and that was wi she taught, She was not interested in teaching anything else, for the left her, I possessed an important skill and the tools with which to adapt music to different needs. [learned to move with ease from 0) tradition to another. Now, when I'm conceptualizing music on n Buiire vend sexy 9 ge ‘own, its easier for me to leave Western music behind, Piano was my instrument—that’s where I searted—but I had come to see that it was just a small part of the world of music. It wasn't che whole world SHORTLY AFTER KOYAANISGATS/ HAD BEEN COMPOSED and had come to be known, Paul Schrader, the director and screenwriter, called me and we began talking sbout his film Mishima, about the life and work of the controversial Japanese author Yukio Mishima. This would ‘become the first studio film on which I worked. Paul was filming jn Tokyo in November 1983, when I was there performing, with the ensemble, and I was able to be on location a number of times. Besides being on the set, I spoke extensively with Paul about his ideas for his film. Talso met Eiko Ishioko, whose visual imagery for the film was so beautiful and who would work with me on the Doris Lessing opera “Making of the Representative for Planet 8. ‘The music had an important role to play in the film. The score T composed was not meant as a musical decoration of the film. It vas, in fact, used to help articulate the film’s seructure. OF course this approach grew directly out of working with Godfrey, and in that ‘way, and particularly with Mishima, I think that integrating the com- position of image and music into a unified endeavor can provide the ‘most powerful tool for a filmmaker. ‘With Mishima, Paul had a clear idea. There are chree threads that run throughout the film, The first is the last day in Mishima’s life, which begi hhim putting on his uniform to lead his private in the attempted takeover of an army base. This last day co music—a snare drum and strings—that provides a military aspect. This march will become a march to his death. ‘The second thread is stories from Mishima’ life: the young boy, the young man, We sce him becoming a writer, becoming famous. “The music of. string quartet is generally considered to have an intro- spective quality, and here itis used for these aucobiographical pas- sages. Schrader chose to shoot these sections in black and white,aw woups wirnour muste farther separating them from the fictional aspects of the film taken from his novels—The Temple ofthe Golden Pailin, Kyoko's House, Ru «vay Horses, This, the third thread ofthe film, contains the most lj cal and sumptuous music. ate moment of the film, Mishima, looking out of a plane, receives a profound revelation about his work and his life. The string quartet music now takes on the orchess tral colors of the music associated with the novels, and leads him to the confrontation that is about to take place atthe army base. His life and the stories he has told have merged and pik (suicide), There may be no writer more autobiographical chan Yakto Mishima, Everything he wrote was about himself. The film Mis {sa portrait ofthe writer Mishima, and the music of Mishima is mes to add a further dimension to the fl. With the Mishima mate used my total immersion strategy, reading every book in Engl could find. I was very impressed with his writing, Ie was passionat life he had arrived at a stanscendent expe that was atthe core of what motivated him to be a writer. Fora writers I personally know, writing isa way of accommodating them selyes to the world, of making the world a bearable place in which to live, Mishima became a writer in order to make the world under= standable to himself, ‘That's very different from having an agenda, lets say, an agenda that has an ideological or theoretical basis. Mishims solution derives from his experience, and in that way, he resembles Céline and Genet, writers who were not political writers but who ‘were working out of the crisis of being alive, the ctisis of experience itself. This applies to the whole postmodern generation, of wh ‘we have to say we are a part. That which authenticates our work the genuineness and spontaneity of our intuitions. In this way, the activity of writing makes the world meaningful. It has no political status, and [would say it has no real social status. That's pr nt—it goes beyond the vis culminate in his sep- it was modern. In le world into a world in which being alive makes sense. For the postmodernists, writing. becomes the remedy. One of Allen Ginsberg’s T-shirts said, “Well, while Pm here, PII do the work. And what's the work? To ease the pain of living, Everything else, drunken dambshow.” That's at the movement, and even now, nearly two decades after Allen’s death, we respond to his poems immediately. ‘They need no explanation. WHEN I HEARD IN THE MID-19905 that Marty Scorsese was making a film, Kimdun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, I was immediately interested. Ihad previously had some contact with Marty in che 1980s through Thelma Schoonmaker, his longtime film editor, She was mar- ried to the filmmaker Michael Powell, director of The Red Shoes, who wanted to make a film out of my opera The Fall ofthe House of Usher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe story. Michael was quite an elderly gen= ‘tleman by that time and there was some concern among the produc- crs that the film might get started and he might not be able to finish it, Thelma asked Marty whether he would be the back-up director, in case something happened. We met, and we talked about it, and he said he was willing to make that commitment. The idea then was that there would bea contract that would involve Michael Powell, and the back-up director would be Marty, so that the people in Finland who were producing the film would be guaranteed a completed film. But before we finished the agreement with Marty, Michael Powell passed away, and the project never materialized. But it had put Marty and ‘me in touch with one another, so that later I'was able to call Marty and he took the cal like to talk with you about this film that Melissa Math~ {son has been working on with you.” “Come on over and le's talk about ‘When I saw him, I told him that I knew Melissa, the screenwriter for Kundun, through Tibet House, where we were both on the board of directors, and that I had had a long association with the Tibetanue woros wiruour Music He must have known my music, because we had spoken before about the Usher project. He never told me he had heard it, but I don't think he would have agreed to be the stand-in for Michael Powell if he hadn't known something about the music. Also, by that time Mishima had been done, and Paul Schrader was one of Marty's favorite writers, having w: Raging Bull, {vas pasionate about wanting to work on the fin, and May accepted my request. At that meeting I proposed that hhim music while he was shoot= ing, At first he was a little puzzled and hesitant, Industry films nor= ally do not tolerate innovations ofthis or scarcely any) kind, Finally T think he just succumbed to my end and acquiesced, and it becatne one of the few times I was able to follow my preferred wotk= ing methods with a film made by a major studio and with a well- known and highly regarded director. ‘When Marty was in Morocco filming Kundun, Twas sending him tapes of music for the scenes he was shooting. I knew that Thelma ‘was there making a rough “assemblage” of the film, staying perhaps no more than a day or two behind Marty's shooting schedule, At one point, he found that Ihad fallen behind on my film composing, and he urgently needed the music for reels, the “Escape to India" reel ofthe film. Thad afew days off from my concert tour in Europe, so I flew to New York and quickly sketched out the music for the scene. The score T was composing included contributions from Tibetan musi some of them known by the actors, who themselves were men and women whom Iknew from my work with the Tibetan com- munity in New York City. They were able to hear the would eventually become the sound track of che film, and T'm told chat the musie was very warmaly received. ‘Working with Marty, T became interested in everything he did, T would go to the editing room in New York almost every day that hhe and Thelma were working, Marty is famous for his knowledge of film history, and, for almost every scene chat we worked on, he could he screenplays for Taxi Driver and Jo “advance” Musre AND prom 347 clucidate something about that scene from the history of filmmaking, ‘When looked at his script, Ifound he had put in the camera positions ‘when he was writing, He knew how he was going to shoot it, and he knew how it was going to look. He talked a lot about his own films and how his working methods were developed for them. ‘Ar one point, he had been talking about Taxi Driver for a while, I didn't say anyching—I just was listening, which I normally did—but something must have piqued his interest, “Wait a second, have you seen Taxi Driver?” “You didn't see Taxi Dri Iwasa taxi driver. During the time when you were making ‘was out driving ahundred miles a night in New York: On my nigh off, thelas thing Iwas going ro. do was see a movi ‘Taxi Dri “Oh my god, we've got to fix that. I'm going to have a special screening for you. Before the special screening took place, Thappened to be in an air- tours and, by luck, they were showing Taxi plane on one of my mu: Driver and L watched it. "The firse thing I thought was Good lord, it's exas Iknew who worked at Dover Garagel Scort RUBIN. THE PRODUCER of The Hours, asked me if was interested in writing the score for Talready knew that there had been ‘two other composers but | didn't know who they were. Scott asked if T wanted to see the movie with the scores he had rejected, and ‘No, I don’t want to hear it, Give me your rough cut without any music in it a all and let me write the music.” The Hours, based on the novel by Michael Cunningha story of three women livin ginia Woolf, played by Nicole Kidman, who is seen during her the 1920s and then at her suicide in 1941; 2 1950s Los Angeles house-oe wonns witwour uesic \wife and mother played by Julianne Moore; and a woman played by Meryl Streep who is living in New York in 2001 and is preparing a party for her friend who has AIDS. saw right away that the issue with the movie was that the three stories were so distinct from each other that, like a centrifugal foree, they pulled you away from the center and made it difficult to ke non the movie asa whole, It seemed to me that to perform a kind of structural alchemy. Someho to articulate the unity of the film ‘The job of the music was to tie the stories together. What was needed were three recurring musical ideas—an A theme, a B theme, and a C theme. The suicide of Virginia Woolf, for example, was always the A theme. That was always her music. The B theme was always the music from Los Angeles, and the C theme was always New York. The movie progresses A, B, C, and all six reels follow that pl: it was as ifa rope had been threaded straight through -was a conceptta idea, and it could be realized by the music, romlee ana. s easy to accomplish ly any other way to do the other scores, so I don't know what che previous two compos had tried. Being the third composer lywood. Often two composers, or sometimes chree or four, fired and other people are brought in, until the studio decide: saw right away what I was doing. He liked it and he stuck wi Scott is extremel as abrasive as he could be in te at was true on every level. worked with him he would say, “That's wor derful. I loved the music. But there's one li fi knew I had to rewrite the whole thing, He would press his point, bur he began from a point of apprec tion, which I liked. He always listened to me, and I always gota fair hearing for what I wanted to do, I wasn't commanded to do some= ‘As soon as he said that Music ap prem 34g thing, I was persuaded to his point of view and, most of the time, his ideas were right. They prevailed not because he was the producer, but because his ideas improved the movie, And that was not only in the :usic, it was also in terms of the storytelling, and acting. After The Hours, 1 Notes on a Sea th Scott, another film con which he was, again, a very hands-on producer. But unlike a lot of producers who are hands-on, he knew something about film, He knew what made films work, Atone point, Lasked him, “Scott, why don't you just be the direc 1g anyway. “Qh no, no, no,” he replied. He ins ever be a director, and yet he often seemed ‘to.usurp that position, In any case, as the producer he had a very deci the two films | made with him. I liked the films and 1 li working with him. ted he cou d I HAVE NOW MADE CLOSE To THIRTY SOUNDTRACKS. There were others that I enjoyed working on, though perhaps not as well-known. David Gordon Green's Undertow, Neil Burger's The Illusionist, and Taking Lives, directed by D. J. Caruso, are among them. My all-time favor- is pethaps the least known of these—Christopher Hampton's The ‘Secret Agent. 1 thought Hampton's adaptation as well as his taut, no- nonsense direction totally captured the obsessive and sinister aura of the Joseph Conrad novel. Another favorite is Errol Morris, with whom I worked on three films—The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and The Fog of War. 1 found Errol to be one of the most brilliant directors, extremely funny Like Godfiey in many ways, Errol has hip of the viewer to the subject matter, and as I feel about Godfrey, I'm always ready to work with him, The experi- ence, though confusing and sometimes trying, is always rewarding. The director I found the most surprising was Woody Allen. 1 worked with him on Cassandra's Dream, and he completely le!ase wonos witout music alone to place the music in the film, He welcomed my suggestions as to the temper of the music as well Infact, chat is very much the way I work with my opera, theater, and dance collaborators. My sense is that if believe in their abiliy and talent, the best thing I can do is get out of the way and let them do their work. Woody seems to work in such the same way. THOUGH FILM SCORING HAS NOT BEEN THE MAIN THING I'was doing for thirty years, I have generally found it interesting. The writ- sctors, actors, and a few of the producers can be enormously talented. Even though the marketplace mentality is always present, it .0 make films of real quality and integrity. That they inly “industry” films does not mean they are necessarily made in Hollywood, Thave often compared film scoring to opera composing. I've a fair amount of both, More than other performance practice, «combine elements of image, music, movement, and text. Skill acquired in one easly eranslate to the other. I will add to these reflec= work just a few points: juite simple. If the movie or opera is actually telling a story, I've learned to leave it alone or, at least, not get in the way. If there is no story, I will not impose one, but instead allow another of oss the performance elements to assume a larger role Second, I've learned how to “underscore” the voice—ither spoken or sung—by letting the actor or singer assume the central role at that moment. Sometimes that requires the instrumental parts to play a secondary ot tertiary part. However, it's also quite possible to double up the vocal parts with solo or accompanying instruments id the range and depth of the sung, and, in this way, to actually ex or spoken parts. ‘The third point is the hardest to describe. It has to do with that imaginary between the cance” I mentioned before that spectator-listener and the film or opera. I've found that the music murre ayo rtem ue ‘can absolutely define that space. In the end, it is a psychological space. The closer the spectator-listener is to the “image”—sound or vvisual—the Tess choice he has in shaping the experience for himself. When the music allows for a distance to exist between the spectator listener and the image, then she will auromatically bring her own interpretation to the work. The spectator travels the distanee to the image herself, and by moving to the image, she b het own, That is what John Cage meant when he said chat the audi- ence “completes” the music. Modulating that distance precisely is an Talent, experience, and some innate sensitivity will now mad ill be needed.