Excerpts from a telephone interview with Jerry Hadley during which
he graciously shared with FanFaire his insights on The
Conquistador and incidental thoughts on other matters musical.
Part 1. On the music of The Conquistador
Why do you think The Conquistador
is a terrific piece?
I think for one thing, it's a terrific piece
because it's real, because it's human. Because both the composer
and the librettist believed in the story of Don Luis Carvajal
150%.
And
I think Myron Fink writes incredibly theatrical music, incredibly
heartfelt music, and incredibly accessible music. Certainly it
is in a modern tonal vocabulary but considering some of the nonsense
that some composers write today, Myron's work is rather neo-romantic,
very accessible and very tuneful.
I think he is one of the rare people writing opera today who understands
that music is about an expression of the human condition. We are
not machines, we are not computers, even though we're living in
a technological age. And his music is very much based on the human
experience and not upon some theoretical nonsense that often gets
on the audience.
There's this attitude among a lot of composers today - that if
the audience can understand what they've written, then there must
be something wrong. And I think that's nonsense. The idea that
one can not write something that's interesting and creative and
at the same time accessible to an audience makes absolutely no
sense to me.
All of the great people who have written works for the lyric stage
in past centuries, from Mozart to George Gershwin and everybody
in between, wanted to reach people and touch them. And most composers
who attempt to write music for the stage today, particularly operas,
push the audience away by talking down to them. Myron didn't talk
down to anyone, but he certainly didn't pander to the lowest common
denominator either. His music is very sophisticated music. His
music is very beautifully crafted music. And I must say it was
a joy to perform Myron's music.
Myron Fink's music has been
described as dissonant and angular. Do you agree?
I think what is meant by that is that the canon of operatic literature
is rather diatonic and romantic 19th century and post 19th century
music. Myron's vocal lines, much like a lot of modern composers,
have sometimes large dissonances. But when you say dissonance,
it depends on the context in which you're defining the word dissonance,
because most of the words we use to describe whether music is
consonant or dissonant are based upon largely 18th and 19th century
definitions of what music should sound like.
Yes, there are some angular lines; but you know, the thing that's
interesting about it, most of the best composers of the 20th century
- people like Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten- like Myron, even
when they wrote angular music it was not for the sake of being
angular but for an expressive purpose. I never at any moment found
any of Myron's music to be difficult to sing or unnecessarily
awkward. It was always, always expressive. And there was nothing
random about the way he wrote those lines.
I think that people who expect to hear the kind of tune that Mozart
or Puccini would have written will be disappointed. However, we
have lots of composers who have since the beginning of this century
written angular music, people like Janacek and a host of others.
I think the angularity of the music is there in many cases because
of the terrible dramatic context that we often find ourselves
in.
The characters in The Conquistador lived in a very angular,
distorted world. And Myron found a way to be angular and dissonant,
but it was always to make a dramatic point. It wasn't random.
And you can find moments of dissonance but you can also find moments
of what I think are just transcendent beauty - the two duets that
Don Luis sings with Don Elena I think are just incredible moments
of lyric beauty - "You are a well spring..." moment
in the 1st Act is just unbelievable. And you can't get any better
than that.
Do you find that there is
a cinematic quality to Myron Fink's music?
I found Myron's music a joy to sing. Myron has an ability that
most composers for the stage today don't have - he has the ability
to evoke exactly what's happening dramatically through his music.
The people that know how to do that today are writing film scores
mostly - because film scores are very atmospheric and very evocative
of the dramatic situation. But we often don't pay much attention
to film scores, because we have an additional stimulus there.
In an opera, in a piece of musical comedy or whatever, you can't
separate the music from the action. It's all part of the same
fabric. I find that Myron writes music that is so direct and so
uncontrived that one cannot but respond to the honesty of that
music. And I think it is a very rare quality. Excerpts
from a telephone interview with Jerry Hadley during which he graciously
shared with FanFaire his insights on The Conquistador
and incidental thoughts on other matters musical.
CLICK the links
below for more of the interview:
The Music / The Story &
The Role / Working with San
Diego Opera & the Composer
JERRY
HADLEY sadly passed away on July 18, 2007. Let us remember him in
our prayers.
CLICK HERE if you wish to post a TRIBUTE to JERRY HADLEY.
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