20 Questions (More or Less) for Composer Jeffrey Jacob

BY CHRISTOPHER ABBOT

Music for Haiti is the title of a new CD featuring music by the American composer Jeffrey Jacob. In addition to writing orchestral and chamber music, Jacob is a pianist who specializes in modern music, with a special focus on contemporary American composers (he is also a teacher, currently at Saint Mary’s College in Indiana). Fanfare readers may recall an interview by Peter Burwasser in issue 29:3 that provides ample background and insight into Jacob’s multifaceted musical life; for readers new to Jacob’s art, I refer you to that informative and entertaining piece rather than rehashing biographical material here.

Four of the works included on Music for Haiti are scored for piano and orchestra ( Elegy includes two pianos); the last, For the Children , is for piano solo. Death and Transfiguration is the largest work, originally planned as a symphony and scored for full orchestra; the other three— Music for Haiti, Elegy, and Remembrance of Things Past —were written for chamber players. Each work could be called programmatic in the broadest sense, having been inspired by a specific event or, in the case of Death and Transfiguration and Remembrance of Things Past, literary works. The direct emotional appeal of this music is obvious from the first measures, and that led me to my first topic.

Q: Your music is unabashedly tonal and easily evokes emotional responses. Yet there is also an almost pictorial aspect to these compositions. Have you ever been criticized for writing music that is so easy to apprehend? This raises the whole “accessibility” issue, a topic you addressed in your previous interview with Fanfare , but maybe you could expand a bit on the theme here.

A: The strange thing about my dual careers as pianist and composer is that as a pianist, my specialty has always been progressive, avant-garde music of the late 20th and 21st centuries, especially George Crumb (I’ve recorded all of his music for piano and commissioned and premiered his Gnomic Variations ). I’ve also played Eliot Carter’s incredibly dense Piano Sonata, and four years ago I recorded an entire 70-minute CD of advanced post-serial music (on my series of CDs, Contemporary Eclectic Music for the Piano , for New Ariel Recordings).

However, I have indeed been accused of writing music that is too accessible; in the words of one composer, “I’ve sold out my principles.” In my mind, the resolution of this conflict is that as a pianist, I want to promote the best music of deserving but often unknown composers regardless of musical style or idiom. But like a growing number of composers, I personally don’t want to write music that only someone with a doctorate in composition can fully understand and appreciate. And I’m haunted by something I read about George Rochberg. He said that World War II caused him to adopt serialism, but the tragic death of his son at a young age compelled him to return to tonality. I want to evoke emotional expression of all kinds in my music, and I feel, like Rochberg, that atonality is limited, especially for today’s audiences who’ve grown up with the association of atonality and horror films. And I firmly believe it’s possible to do many new things with traditional harmonic materials.

The late, great science fiction writer Frank Herbert, author of the Dune novels, once said that what he tried to do in all of his fiction was first of all to provide his readers a good story, then give them as much more as he could in terms of language, dialogue, character development, philosophy, etc. Long ago I thought that this is similar to what I want to do with my music. I want first of all to present listeners with attractive, evocative sonorities and then as much more in terms of musical substance as I can. For me musical substance is primarily a matter of melody and counterpoint with attendant rhythm and harmony.

Q: On a related topic, have you considered writing for film, or have you ever been approached to do so?

A: I would dearly love to write film music, but alas, I’ve never had the opportunity.

Q: Each of the pieces recorded on this new disc features an oboe in some way. Is the oboe an especially appealing instrument for you?

A: I’ve always loved the oboe. It’s capable of so much variety of expression: poignancy, sweetness, sadness, delicacy, intensity, to name a few characteristics.

Q: You have written that Death and Transfiguration was a project for which you tried to engage other composers before taking it on yourself. The music is obviously programmatic, but is there any autobiographical subtext beyond the reference to Strauss and Ritter?

A: I wrote it for my father. I began the work when he was 97 and his health was beginning to fail. The first half of the last movement is an unrestrained outpouring of grief for his passing.

Q: The content of the piece raises the issue of an afterlife. Does a religious impulse or belief system influence your music?

A: I have tried in this work to write the most spiritual and emotional music I possibly could, but without reference to a specific belief system.

Q: This piece was originally conceived as your Symphony No. 3. Did the Death and Transfiguration program impose itself on the composition, or did the symphony somehow metamorphose into the tone poem?

A: Both titles were in my mind from the beginning. I originally thought that a Death and Transfiguration title would seem like a gimmick. And the work has definite symphonic qualities: It’s in three separate and distinct movements, the first and third of which are epic, dramatic, and the second has qualities of a scherzo. But in the end, the emotional content overwhelmed the formal structure, and faced at the same time with my father’s death, the work became Death and Transfiguration. I would also like to credit the wonderful conductor Daniel Spalding, who conducts the three major works of the CD with the London Symphony and his own Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, for his numerous suggestions regarding orchestration and organization that greatly improved the work.

The next piece on the CD is the title piece. It was inspired by the earthquake in Haiti in January of 2010. The work focuses on the emotions of a young survivor and is cast in three movements with descriptive titles: “Grief,” “Fear,” and “Grace.”

Q: The piccolo in “Grief” has an especially appealing quality, evoking (for me) a child’s voice. Was there a particular image that you had in mind as you composed for that particular instrument?

A: The most specific image I can imagine. I saw and heard a news report of a child lying in a makeshift hospital in Haiti. He was injured, but would survive. But he had lost nearly his entire family. He could not speak. I wanted to give him a voice, the voice of the solo piccolo in “Grief.”

Q: The movement titled “Fear” you describe as “anxious, turbulent,” and yet the oboe seems to evoke the piccolo of the first movement. Was there an intention to link the movements or am I interpolating a connection?

A: I’m always thinking about, worrying about musical structure and coherence, especially with so much variety of emotional expression. I’m delighted that you perceived this second-movement reference to the melodic material of the first!

Q: You write that “In the final movement, ‘Grace’ exists on a different plane.” Bells feature prominently in the orchestration. Was there a specifically religious connotation in this choice, or is there a more secular meaning?

A: The bells are a not-so-subtle reference to the church bells of this extremely religious country. The title “Grace” for this movement is almost metaphysical. I recalled a TV image of children playing soccer in the ruins, their musical laughter, their temporary release from the tragedy of their country. “Grace” is the only word I know to describe this scene. The origins of Elegy are in the tragic conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The specific tragedy involves the deaths of two boys, one Palestinian, the other Israeli, on the same day.

Q: The two pianos in Elegy might be said to become the voices of the two children. Was it your intention to characterize their voices particularly, or is this too literal an interpretation?

A: I chose two pianos instead of one for greater resonance and more sonorous possibilities, but perhaps, since they share many harmonic and melodic motives, I was unconsciously characterizing their independent voices.

Q: The sometimes sardonic contributions from the winds and brass might be interpreted as the voices of various factions involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Comment?

A: I wanted to introduce both a sense of discordance and later resolution as purely musical qualities, but yes, conflict in the Middle East was never far from my conscious thought during the composing process.

Q: Classical musicians are often characterized as living in a rarified atmosphere, or living only for their art . Elegy, Music for Haiti, and For the Children were prompted by particular real-world events. Is there, in any sense, a political element to these or others of your pieces?

A: The Nobel-Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, in a critique of Western postmodern poetry and fiction, remarked that in much Polish poetry of the 20th century, you can tell by the context and content the year the poem was written. His implied criticism was for the extreme personal introspection of much of recent Western poetry (and its relative “inaccessibility”). His comments reinforced my belief that historical events are legitimate vehicles for musical expression. But no specific political elements consciously inform my music.

Q: Remembrance of Things Past would seem to have an obvious reference point until one reads your note: the phrase occurred originally in Sonnet 30 by Shakespeare (printed in full in the review below). This prompts an obvious question: Remembrance of Things Past has the longest title and the shortest program note in the CD booklet! Was there a particular event or situation that inspired this piece, other than Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30?

A: I wanted to write a composition about nostalgia and related emotions: longing for the past, sadness, regret. I was experiencing a very difficult time emotionally, and the process of composing Remembrance was particularly cathartic for me.

Q: That sonnet makes several references to memories of regret and opportunities missed, but in the final couplet all is made possible again when the “dear friend” is recalled. Why did this particular sonnet strike a resonance with you?

A: I had read the sonnet many years ago, but its sentiment came back in full force when I lost a close friend. I found myself paralyzed professionally—I could neither practice nor compose. A friend of mine, a poet, told me emphatically that I needed to write a work evoking my feelings. At first, this seemed self-indulgent, but for several weeks it was all I could do, and the piece seemed to complete itself.

Q: The second movement comes as a stark contrast to the first. At the risk of being either naive or offensive, it reminds me of music by Ravel or even Mahler, from the turn of the last century, which was meant to evoke the Far East. The cello is especially evocative here: I can imagine sitting in a Zen garden at twilight.

A: This is an extraordinary insight. I did indeed have in mind a combination of Eastern and Western elements: the gong, the meditative quality, but also the intense emotional commitment expressed through the cello and oboe lines. A direct inspiration here was the music of Arvo Pärt, whose music also combines Eastern and Western elements.

[Jeffrey had written me a note accompanying the answers to my questions that I think is relevant at this point: “One element of my music or my musical procedure that might be interesting to readers is the following. You’ve probably noticed many repetitive ostinatos in much of these works. Many years ago while listening to a variety of Minimalist works (that utterly violent reaction to the complexities of post-serialism) especially composers Steve Reich, Henryk Górecki, and Arvo Pärt, I imagined using repetitive motives first in the foreground, but then receding to the background as accompanimental patterns for long melodic lines with more frequent changes of sonority and harmony. An example is the opening piano part to the second movement of Remembrance . It seems to me that this combination of the anchoring possibilities of repetitive Minimalist patterns combined with more complex melodic, harmonic, and sonorous elements offers many compositional options.”]

Q: The final work on the new CD, For the Children , is the most intimate of all of the pieces, and you are the only artist on the track. Since For the Children was composed for piano alone, it takes on a more intimate scale. Was this a more personal expression of your reaction to the tragedy in Haiti?

A: Since the piano is my own instrument, I’ve felt that despite the outbursts of grief and fear, the expression here is definitely more intimate, more personal.

Q: The piece traces an emotional journey of the child from the immediate confusion and despair to “joy, hope and grace.” Yet, in the music-box tones that you describe at the end of the piece, I can still hear some disquiet; this isn’t quite a happy ending, is it?

A: You’re exactly right about the ending of the piece. There is disquiet in the music box, and it’s also in the distance . I was thinking that the moments of joy and hope are temporary, and the ending reflects the promise, but not the certainty, of a better, happier life.

With this discussion of the last work on the CD, our conversation drew to a close. Though this interview was conducted via e-mail, I had the sensation of an actual discussion of his work with Jeffrey, and of the kind of give-and-take that is conducive to gaining insight about things that matter. He is as accessible as his music, and learning more about these very moving and approachable pieces served to deepen and enrich the experience of hearing them. I only need to add that 75 percent of the proceeds from the sale of the CD will be donated to the Bill Clinton-George Bush Fund for Haiti, a further incentive (if one is needed) to acquire this new disc.

JACOB Death and Transfiguration. 1 Music for Haiti. 2 Elegy. 3 Remembrance of Things Past. 4 For the Children • Jeffrey Jacob (pn); 1,2,4 Daniel Spalding, cond; 1 London SO; 2,4 Philadelphia Virtuosi CO; 3 Jon Mitchell, cond; 3 Royal Queenstown Ph • ARIEL NA1210 (67:51)

This disc contains five recent compositions by Jeffrey Jacob. Each features the composer at the piano, but the piano is just as often an integral part of the orchestra as it is a solo instrument. The works all directly engage the listener’s emotions, but each has its own dramatic signature.

Death and Transfiguration (2008) is a gloss on the eponymous work by Richard Strauss. More particularly, Jacob returned to the poem by Alexander Ritter to re-imagine the situation from a contemporary viewpoint. Each of the three movements (Jacob had originally conceived the piece as a symphony) bears descriptive phrases—in English—that characterize its emotional content. The first movement, “Dark, Solemn with Dignity,” is a fugue for strings and oboe. Jacob’s descriptors are well chosen; as in the Strauss piece, we are in the presence of a man on his deathbed. Tam-tam and bells accompany the arching, questing fugue theme; piano, horn, and bassoon join the oboe and strings to limn the final moments of the dying man.

The second movement, characterized by Jacob as a “scherzo in ternary form,” is given the adjectives “Delicately, Lilting, Graceful.” The scherzo character, then, is more in the form of total contrast to the first movement than as a light or humorous piece. The oboe and arpeggios in the piano offer a nostalgic, warmly lyrical melody that is taken up by the violins and horn. We are now witnessing “the salient moments of his largely contented life.” Dashes of percussion punctuate the movement. With the third movement, we are back in the presence of death: “Dark, Poignant, Ecstatic, Exalted.” The emotional quotient increases with the progress through the stages implied by the descriptive indications, the piano seeming to provide a sort of desperate commentary, becoming agitated as the moment of departure approaches. Here, though, death isn’t frightening, as the “ecstatic” section takes hold, and the tam-tam has the last word.

Music for Haiti (2010) is also in three movements: “Grief,” “Fear,” and “Grace.” The first movement (called “Grief” in Jacob’s program note, though the CD lists it as “Loss”) is scored for piccolo and strings. Jacob mentions Vivaldi as an inspiration, and this piece has the same consciously archaic quality as Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte . The main theme is a subdued, mournful melody, and the piccolo has a poignant, almost keening quality that evokes panpipes or a recorder; this choice for a solo instrument is especially effective. This is not the sound of lashing out in anger but the sound of incomprehension in the face of disaster.

“Fear,” scored for piano, percussion, oboe, and strings, opens with a clash of percussion that effectively banishes the emotion and sentiment of the first movement; then a sinuous threnody for strings and oboe takes hold, punctuated by stabs of percussion and ostinatos in the piano. The final piece in this triptych, “Grace,” opens with lovely rippling piano phrases that dispel the anxiety of the previous movement, and orchestral bells evoke both a religious and secular sense of hope renewed. The oboe enters with its own calming theme, offering succor and sympathy. The sense of loss so powerfully evoked in the opening is here at least partially assuaged.

Elegy (1998) (scored for orchestra and two pianos), like Music for Haiti , was inspired by a specific event: the simultaneous deaths of two children, one a Palestinian, the other an Israeli. A heartfelt, soaring theme in the strings with low tones from the pianos is accompanied by a solo oboe; then the pianos enter, trading phrases in a sort of conflicted dialogue. Other instruments add their own commentary. In the final moments, the pianos take on the “mechanistically precise” nature of music boxes, and their quietly chiming notes add a plaintive, plangent appeal to the melodies originally heard in the strings.

Remembrance of Things Past (2009) owes its genesis not to the familiar Proust title but to its progenitor in Sonnet 30 by Shakespeare:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancel’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

The first movement, marked “Restless, expectant,” features another of Jacob’s yearning, meandering melodies propelled by the piano’s tinkling, celesta-like phrases. Cellos provide a contrastingly darker coloration in the accompaniment. The oboe, less obviously featured than in other pieces, adds a plaintive voice, often imitated by the violins. The second movement, a chaconne marked “Meditative, nostalgic,” is reminiscent of Percy Grainger’s arrangement of music by Debussy through its use of tam-tam and chimes. The cello adds its voice, and then the oboe. The music rises in volume and intensity from its quiet opening, and then, wave-like, subsides to the quiet of its beginning.

For the Children (2010), a piece for solo piano, also took its inspiration from the earthquake in Haiti. The work is in four continuous sections, defined by Jacob as despair, confusion, memories of the earthquake and its immediate aftermath, and finally, joy, hope, and grace. It is essentially a companion piece to Music for Haiti but given a more personal voice in the use of the solo piano. The music is highly expressive and moving in its evocation of the succession of emotions felt by a child caught alone in the quake, emotions often in conflict with each other but ultimately resolved in the realization that his family has survived. This is no simple happy ending, however, as the listener is left with the sense that still more healing will be needed.

For Death and Transfiguration, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, the London Symphony Orchestra is given a full-bodied, somewhat closely focused sound. Elegy, recorded in Philharmonic Hall, Hradec Krávlové, Czech Republic, sounds quite intimate, as does the solo piano in For the Children (recorded at Jacob’s own St. Mary’s College in Indiana). The two pieces featuring the Philadelphia players (recorded in St. Michael’s Church in Philadelphia) are quite closely miked and sometimes sound a bit distorted. Other than that minor quibble, though, this is intriguing and substantial music given dramatic and convincing performances. It will repay your investment handsomely. Christopher Abbot