Philip Cooney: An Interview with Ross Edwards, October 2010

PC: Much is made of the mystery of the “creative process”. What stages or steps do you go through?

RE: Having been a freelance composer for many years I’ve needed to work mainly to commission. This means I’ve had to be very disciplined in my approach to composing in order to meet deadlines. Fortunately, I’ve usually managed to get commissions that inspire me.

For me, the biggest challenge is always beginning a new composition.

There has to be a moment of absolute enthusiasm and conviction. An idea – a spark – has to ignite. Not a rational or intellectual idea, but something that springs directly from my unconscious and just feels right. I have to be sure that I’m not deluding myself. If I start working with an idea that turns out to be a bit dodgy I begin to feel uneasy as I get further into the piece. Perhaps I won’t sleep at night. I remember once getting up at 4 am and starting a piece over again from scratch – a very depressing experience.

Once a piece is under way it grows – usually very slowly – by a process of accretion. I have to begin at the beginning and gradually add on. I don’t preconceive structures, although I can feel their shape emerging. For me, composing is essentially mysterious. When something feels right I go with it. I don’t question, analyse or try to understand it – at least, not at the moment of conception – but once I’ve got it safely down on paper (I work with pencil and paper – and rubber eraser!) I spend many hours refining it. I have to believe that every detail is properly notated before I can proceed. I don’t make sketches or short scores and I write directly for the instrument or vocal resources – including full orchestra – sometimes trying things out as I go on separate sheets of paper. Of course I’m not for a minute advocating that this rather laborious procedure is the ‘correct’ way to compose. Every composer does it differently and has to develop a method that’s congenial – that feels right.

PC: How much of the creative act for you is conscious, unconscious or subconscious?

RE: Every particle of my music comes from my unconscious. Once it has emerged into the light of day and been accepted, it’s thoroughly scrutinised, processed, refined by my conscious mind, which decides how it’s notated, where it fits in relation to all the other particles, how it’s notated – it’s timbre, dynamic etc., etc. The unconscious mind is at work when you’re not (consciously) composing. You might be sleeping, washing up – whatever. I find that you can’t force it to produce. If you’re stuck for ideas or you feel jaded about your work it’s best to give it a rest and become absorbed in some completely unrelated activity like reading a book or watching a movie. Even if you go for a walk or perform some household chore like washing up, your conscious mind will be wrestling with the composition and remain stale. It needs to be engaged elsewhere so that your unconscious can get on with its work behind the scenes.

PC: Which personality characteristics have emerged or been influenced during your creative processes?

RE: Composers are often ‘interior’ people who don’t crave the society of other people and can spend hours happily absorbed in their own world. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’m not one of them. I was always good at being alone – it’s not something I’ve developed, but it’s certainly an asset in my work, if not in other circumstances. My wife and kids have often been frustrated by this trait, but they’ve also been very understanding. To work effectively I need to enter a timeless domain where I feel secure – no telephones or other interruptions. I’ve actually had the experience of sitting down to work in the evening and suddenly the sun is up, the room’s flooded with light – and there are notes on the manuscript paper in front of me that I didn’t recall having put there. Pretty weird stuff.

Of course, there’s also a lot of clerical work involved in being a composer – checking, proofing and so on – where you’re operating within linear, or ‘clock’ time, and this can actually be a relief: you feel at home in the everyday world. As a congenitally vague person, however, I’ve had to train myself not drift off at inappropriate moments – like in the middle of a conversation. I suppose we all have to make adjustments of one sort or another.

PC: Can you tell me about how you deal with living in an urban environment, especially with the importance that the bush environment has had in the development of your music? How do you nurture that inspiration from the environment?

RE: I miss going for walks, breathing clean air and feeling at one with the natural world. I always love going to the mountains. I sometimes work there in a studio on the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park, into which I can wander at any time and come back feeling regenerated.

PC: In the address that you gave at the Conference of Belonging you said that there was a point when you felt that you had found your own direction and then you would go back and listen to European music with new ears. Can you identify when that point was?

RE: There was a point when I couldn’t write music at all. That was between1974 and 1976. All I wrote during those years was the Five Little Piano Pieces, which, interestingly enough, I thought were marginal pieces at the time which had nothing to do with my ‘real’ work because they were just children’s pieces – a rather arrogant and misguided attitude I can see now. Actually they later became rather important to me and the South East Asian scales I used permeated all the later Maninya pieces.

In 1977 I was struggling to write music again and for the next few years (well certainly 78, 79) I avoided European music. That was when I was really listening to the environment and trying to draw everything from the environment because I wanted it to be fresh and new and based on my own perceptions.

At that time I was a lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium. It was a strange experience because I was busy rejecting everything I was obliged to teach. So that I found very difficult – I felt that I wasn’t being genuine.  Any enthusiasm I had for my teaching sometimes felt rather contrived. Even the Western system of tuning started to sound wrong to me and I found that I couldn’t use it. Those [sacred] piano pieces and The Tower of Remoteness, and so on, are based on what I felt were the only possible combinations of the sounds available from the piano and they’re confined to the extremes of the keyboard. I found that Equal Temperament and Western harmony was unacceptable to my ears. Later it came back in a much-simplified form based on drones. I suppose I was just reacting against atonality, because the relationships between pitches have always been of the utmost importance to me and I could never have compromised in that direction.

PC:    Can you identify a time or composition when you first recognised that you had an individual musical voice ?

RE: I think probably when I started to write music again in the early 70s and particularly the middle or late 70s. I recognised that works like The Tower of Remoteness for clarinet and piano had a unique quality that was “me”. I had felt it coming for some time – a gradual integration of all sorts of influences and patterns and sounds into something that was essential. Having got rid of everything I didn’t want I started to develop a language that was my own. So I would say probably the first piece that I was really proud of when I wrote it was the Tower of Remoteness and that was composed in1978.

PC: I know this is a very obvious or often-asked question, but I look at the Piano Concerto (1982) and I hear how Australian that is … can you explain that quality to me, what is it about that music?

RE: I think it was the result of my jumping out of a navel-gazing attitude to one where I suddenly became acutely aware of the ecstasy of the natural world and not just its minutiae, or ‘close ups’. I was living in a village on the Central Coast of New South Wales in a physical environment that was spectacular. That’s what got into the concerto. I had a sudden revelation that I should be communicating this ecstasy. I dared myself to go through with it – to do what I actually felt which, of course, in those days you certainly weren’t supposed to do … it was 1982, and orthodox modernism still prevailed as a very narrow Eurocentric attitude of “thou shalt not do this  or that and if you do we’ll get you and sideline you”. And the English press did just that when the piece was performed at the London Proms.

For me the Piano Concerto, apart from being a response to the sheer ecstasy of being at Pearl Beach, was a rude gesture against the establishment whose response was predictable. When you say it sounds Australian, I allowed the richness, the colour and the ecstasy of the place where I felt at home into the music. To me it certainly has an Australian quality which I think I’ve defined in the music. I’m incapable of defining it in words – people have tried: I leave it to them.

PC: What’s interesting is that there is that on top of all the environmental influences, which are probably the most discussed and documented about your music, I hear things like an optimism in what you’re saying … almost a brashness, a confidence in what you’re saying which is one of the things that people would associate with Australia.

RE: I got very sick of dicta from the Northern Hemisphere as to what you should and shouldn’t do. I reacted spontaneously. I suppose it is a brash piece. I mean it’s not a subtle piece. I’d had enough of being subtle at that time.

PC: Let’s talk about the importance of the Enyato series in the 1990s. The decision to write multi-movement pieces – which the Enyato pieces are – with the contrast which is the essence of the Enyato series; I’m wondering how conscious that was. Given the distinction earlier between the sacred and the maninya pieces, were you consciously drawing them together or did that just happen?

RE: Well, it probably was. I think I was quite conscious from the beginning that was what was happening. By the time I wrote Enyato V, I was   actually exploiting the idea of contrast.

PC: White Ghost Dancing is a different form of the blending of the sacred and maninya, this time in a single movement with a very commanding blend of all those different stylistic elements or influences.

RE: At the time it seemed to be getting everything together – and by the way, I’ve recently revised it: I think it makes a more emphatic statement now.  There’s plainsong, but there is also a hint of Aboriginal chant – not actual Aboriginal chant but based on recordings I’ve heard: the gestures, the drones, the sound world are all integrated. The surface of the music seems to be much more chameleon-like, kaleidoscopic, constantly shifting material. … It’s a mosaic of little bits: plainchant and Aboriginal chant, bird song, imagined bird song, drones, you know, we’ve even got the “maninya” gesture. The “maninya” pattern (rising minor 7th+falling minor 3rd) seems to have a permanent place in my music. It obviously signifies something positive – an optimistic gesture. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but I know it’s very significant.

PC: Do you discover that meaning as you use a figure or does it begin with that association?

RE: The association gradually accumulates until you know that it’s important, if not precisely what it means. I don’t start off with, “this is a symbol for something”, but it acquires its meaning, or at least its place in my work over years sometimes.

PC: What holds the mosaic of a piece such as White Ghost Dancing together?

RE: The associations, well, the fact that they are all bits of me, I think. They seem to hold together but there isn’t one thing in that piece that hasn’t been used in some way or touched upon before. So, it’s all these icons glued together in different combinations, little fragments that recur and recur slightly modified and that’s all done by intuition. But, I realise that the whole piece had been, in a sense, composed before and is now reassembled in a different form. Well, that’s maybe too strong a statement but nearly everything in it is either in the style of, or touching on, something I’ve done before – a direct quotation in which it is placed in another context so that it’s renewing it in some way.

PC: You’ve spoken about the shapes of Aboriginal melodies becoming important in your music. You’ve talked about recognising over time that there is an Aboriginal influence in the shape of melodies.

RE: That’s not of paramount importance. I think more of the drone that underlies everything, symbolising the earth. Again it’s not something I’m consciously cultivating but it’s always there. Whereas Peter Sculthorpe has used actual Aboriginal melodies, I’m always hinting at something over the horizon – a shape, a sound world, which hasn’t quite crystallised and can’t quite be justified rationally.

PC: You mentioned the use of plainsong in White Ghost Dancing. What is it about plainsong that appeals to you?

RE: Its stillness, remoteness – although I do prefer to listen to other kinds of meditational music, the shakuhachi repertoire, for example. With plainsong, it’s probably got a lot to do with association. For me it represents spiritual as opposed to “Enlightened” Europe, which is perhaps the way I think about Europe in an idealised form.

In the case of Ave Maria Gratia Plena (Hail Mary full of grace), it’s symbolism of the feminine in nature. And being full of grace means, to me, living in an appropriate, in a right manner in your environment and with gratitude. Gratia could be “with gratitude”. It’s really about not despoiling your environment but being integrated with it, which, of course, is one of the great challenges of our time, to which we have to respond in order to survive.

I think it’s a beautiful chant and I used it once in a nativity play I wrote when I was very young and it survived in some carols which I extracted from that. And I quoted it because the associations never left me, the beautiful melody though, of course, only now can I appreciate the significance of what it means. To me, plainsong symbolises the spiritual side of our European heritage and it symbolises the need to revitalise the landscape we’ve devastated. Where do we stand? I mean nobody quite knows, it’s a very difficult question. Without appropriating Aboriginal music … I have to use something that is more from my own culture as a symbol but place it in a context which is also where it could be renewed.

PC: Your music could be described as Post-Modernist. How do you respond to labels such as that?

RE: I find that sort of label very ephemeral and it’s only for critics and boring, conformist people wanting to establish themselves as authorities in universities and so on. No, it’s not me.

PC: And yet, some of the supposedly defining aspects of post-modernism such as an appreciation of the value of things from the past, ancient things, a spiritual awareness and recognition of different cultures apart from the Western world is represented in your music isn’t it?

RE:  Oh sure – and people are welcome to label me a post-modernist if they think it’s useful. …I’m just rather suspicious of labels/pigeon holes. People say to me, “What sort of music do you write?” and I never know what to answer. But I would never say, “I’m a post-modernist” because it somehow suggests I’m being led by the nose, or categorised, so I can safely be put on a shelf and allowed to gather dust. I might, after all, change – evolve.

PC: When the film and theatre director Peter Greenway was in Australia in 2000, he talked about Art and Culture as a spiritual resource, a concept with which you would agree, I think.

RE: I couldn’t agree more. Music is an incredibly powerful resource whose spiritual potential is due for a huge revival, I think. I don’t mind people making money out of writing music (in fact I’d like to myself!), but I think the main reason for doing it is to somehow enhance life, the community, as it has always done in healthy societies.

That’s why I hope that I can transcend the concert hall in the music I’m writing now … All those so-called sacred pieces were written for the concert hall but I wanted them to be something more. I wanted to try and use them myself as a sort of tool for meditation. That’s one instinct I’ve been following.

PC: One extra-musical aspect of your compositions is the unusual names that you give your pieces and your use of ancient, historical and sometimes almost extinct languages in the titles. From where does that interest come?

RE: I spend a lot of time trying to find titles that are appropriate to the music. I suppose I also try to make them catchy so that people will notice them and perhaps be curious enough to listen. Sometimes, as was the case with White Cockatoo Spirit Dance, the titles are added after the music has been composed. It’s important to me that people are drawn in by the title – and, of course, it’s up to me to make sure the music meets expectations. My most recently completed work is titled Sacred Kingfisher Psalms. It was commissioned jointly by the Edinburgh Festival, The Song Company and Ars Nova Copenhagen and it combines Psalm texts in Latin with the names of birds in the Cadigal language of the Sydney area. I like to bring seemingly diverse materials together and find points of similarity which may be recognised as universal. Before Sacred Kingfisher Psalms I composed Missa Alchera – Mass of the Dreaming – which has oblique references to Aboriginal Chant – so, as you can see, my music casts a wide net in its intuitive search for unity within diversity.

PC: The last decade seems to have been your busiest yet. Have you had  time to reflect on the music that you have been writing and how would you describe the music that you are writing now compared to twenty years ago?

RE: I’m not so much consciously trying to break new ground as to explore in more detail the territory I’ve already defined. I don’t, unfortunately, get much time to reflect, much as I’d love to, because since July 1980 I’ve depended on writing music for a living. I have to do it almost every day of the year and being constantly creative can be very draining. (Of course, I also feel privileged that I’ve never been short of commissions.) I read and think at the end of each day and before I begin a new piece so that I’m mentally prepared. I notice that the music evolves, becomes more technically complex and broadens its horizons, but this happens intuitively and it’s more about going deeper into my own sound world than moving into another.

PC: How do you decide whether a piece is successfully completed?

RE: I’m very bad at that. There are pieces I wrote a long time ago that still need attention. I listened recently to a wind quintet I wrote 25 years ago and decided that it had a serious structural flaw which I must fix if I ever get the time. At a surface level, I’m always finding details that I want to modify, however slightly. It’s a nuisance, of course, if the score’s been published. These days I resist allowing anything to be published until it’s had many performances and I’m as sure as I possibly can be that I won’t want to change anything.

PC: In the 2009 concert at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre Peter Sculthorpe spoke of the differences that he could hear between the understanding and performance of his music by Australian and overseas performers. How have you found the experience of hearing your music played in Europe and the United States?

RE: There’s sometimes a bit of puzzlement at first, but good professional players come to terms with my quirks, especially the rhythmic and metric ones, remarkably quickly. They often try to relate my music to other music they’re familiar with. For example, the maninya pieces sometimes remind them of Bartok. At a subtle level they’re quite different, of course – as they discover as they start to shape the details – but it’s a helpful starting point. They do recognise that the music has an unusual quality which they identify as ‘Australian’ quality. I really can’t comment on this – I don’t know if they’ve been influenced by what they may have read, but I always go along with it. I’ve found that, especially in America, both musicians and audiences respond enthusiastically.

PC: In our concert we will hear at least one piece with the lighting dimmed. Can you explain how and why you began requesting this in performances of your music?

RE: I first started experimenting with lighting in 1983. People were a bit suspicious at first but by now it’s more or less expected of me and I often write lighting instructions into my scores. Some are quite elaborate, like the following, from my Oboe Concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming:

“An atmosphere of expectation. Hall and platform lights fade rapidly to darkness leaving a pool of light where the soloist would be expected to stand. The soloist begins the performance offstage in darkness. The lights on the orchestra’s music stands fade up, and when the glockenspiel sounds, the soloist steps, bird-like, beak (oboe) upraised, into the spotlight. From here the platform lights begin to fade up, until it is suffused with dim, mysterious light, the conductor spot-lit. The soloist turns and walks to join the woodwind ensemble on a podium beside the cor anglais. The lighting gradually becomes brighter, whiter – an optimistic dawn. Darkening, the stage becomes pale, intimate and mysterious, and still intimate, but gorgeously rose-tinted; it fades to darkness. Lights begin to come up as the soloist returns to the front of the front platform and a defined area where free movement can take place. The soloist and conductor vividly lit, the orchestra in semi-darkness. Abrupt blackout with final chord.”

But my initial interest, which remains the supreme one, was to create an atmosphere conducive to contemplation.

PC: What advice would you give to young composers?

RE: Do it with love and enthusiasm or not at all. Don’t let anyone force you into a mould that you instinctively reject or put your career ahead of what your heart dictates.

(This interview first appeared in the program booklet of a concert/workshop of Ross Edwards’ music given by Ensemble Offspring at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, Penrith, NSW, in October 2010).