BD: So you, the performer, overrule you, the composer?
GF: Sure, yeah!
BD: But some other performer shouldn’t overrule you?
GF: Ideally not. Of course, there’s no law that prevents that! [More laughter] I would say that is not the business of another
performer. When I’m working on a piece of mine, I’m still a composer to some degree. I’m still the guy who wrote it.
That’s my piece, and what happens, often times, is in the process of learning something, you may come up with certain ideas that are going
to be best realized if you change this and that.
BD: Little changes here and there?
GF: Yeah. That’s because as a composer, I know what I wanted there. When I get into it as a performer, I find that the way it
stands, what I had intended, given the context of the whole thing going by at speed, since I knew what I wanted in the first place, I’ll change
it to reflect that. Other performers don’t know that. They can’t get into my brain, as a composer. So that’s why they really ought not to change it.
BD: After you perform a piece and make the little changes, should you send out an addendum to everyone who’s already bought a copy?
GF: Sikesdi Press is distributing my music, and this is music that is available on Finale. When there are mistakes — sometimes
just plain wrong notes that I put in there, or accidentals that are missing, scribal errors of one kind or another — I
will change them and send a new copy of that page to Gordon Rumson, who’s the fellow in charge of Sikesdi Press. He simply replaces the old page with the new page.
BD: He tips it in?
GF: Right.
BD: But that is for future copies. What about somebody who’s already bought a copy of it?
GF: That’s a problem! I suppose that under ideal conditions you could keep a list of everybody who has bought a copy, and then send out those
pages. An army of secretaries that could do that.
BD: Now that everybody’s on the internet, you could get upgrades!
GF: Well, that’s right, and it’s entirely possible. It could happen! It could be that there would be several different versions out there,
and if I’m doing it, I can imagine that a lot of other people are doing it, too!
BD: Fifty or a hundred years from now, should performers or scholars listen to the tapes of your concerts to hear what you really meant?
GF: What they will hear is the best that I could do at the time. That’s going to be true of any composer who performs his own music.
That’s the way I feel about Ives playing or Debussy playing or Ravel playing any of their pieces. You have a good sense of the poetics.
These people know what they want, but technically, sometimes, they really don’t do as well as accomplished performers.
BD: So in the end, you want performers to look at the score?
GF: Oh, yeah! They have to look at the score.
BD: Rather than listen to what you’ve done?
GF: Well, there are mistakes. I make mistakes, sure. Rhythmically, if I’m doing something that seems to sound convincing that disagrees with
the score, then they have a problem. What they might want to consider doing is interpret the rhythm in a rubato manner in light of what I’ve done, which, I imagine,
is what people generally do when they listen to Debussy and everybody else!
* * * * *
BD: When you’re in your studio writing and tinkering with a piece, do you have
in mind a certain audience that is going to listen to it, or do you just ignore the audience until they come that night?
GF: Everybody writes for some audience. Babbitt and other people have talked about the audience, and ultimately it turns out to be an audience of
one, namely the composer himself. I suppose that that’s true. I imagine we all picture an audience of people whom we
like, or people whose taste we respect in one way or another. We certainly have an audience in that respect, because we also know that
we have other people whom we realize immediately that we are not writing for, and never will be writing for. We can never
reasonably expect those people to really listen to our music and appreciate it.
BD: Does this make you an elitist?
GF: Oh, yes! It certainly does! Everybody’s an elitist in that respect, in almost everything that they do! After all, consider
the way I design my living room and the way somebody else designs his or her living room.
BD: Yes, but your living room is for you. It’s not a public thoroughfare. Your music becomes, essentially, an aural public thoroughfare.
GF: Well, it can be. It can be, but it’s designed, obviously, for a certain group of people! It is probably not designed for Aborigines in
Australia, and probably not designed for people in this country who have had very little acquaintance with classical music in their lives,
let alone contemporary music. It’s not reasonable to expect that those people are going to listen to this. But then, Michael
Jackson is an elitist! He clearly isn’t writing for me! So everybody’s an elitist. It doesn’t bother me.
BD: Let me ask the great big question, then. What is the purpose of music?
GF: I’m not sure whether it has a purpose in any teleological sense. Obviously, for me, it’s a source of pleasure. It gives me
emotional satisfaction to take that material and create something that makes sense to me somehow. Whether it makes sense to a lot of
people, it certainly makes sense to me, so it has a function in my life. It probably answers to many things that a psychologist
could have a lot of fun dealing with. So it has purpose in that respect. If you are asking what you hope the music does to people
whom you want to have listen to it and appreciate it for what it is, then I would say that I would like to present experiences to those
people that perhaps represent a kind of large world that is elegantly shaped, with certain kinds of things happening in it of a tonal
nature. That means using tones that make sense in some way or another that might provide them with some kind of formal satisfaction or emotional satisfaction in their lives.
BD: You’re about to hit the big six-oh. Are you pleased with where you are in your career at this age?
GF: I suppose I should say no I’m not, because I’m not world-famous and not everybody
is breathing hard, waiting in line to play my music! On the other hand, I am not unhappy with my situation. I probably can trace a
great deal of my not being more performed than I am to my own personality, and to my own decisions that I’ve made earlier in life,
and to a number of factors that I had no control over.
BD: But basically you’ve been true to yourself?
GF: Well, I guess, whatever that means. I write what I want to write, and I haven’t been particularly concerned with farming it out and
getting it out there into the world. Perhaps I should have been more concerned over the years, but that would have implied a different
personality. That maybe would have meant that I would not be appropriate to be a faculty member, and what I hope is a good colleague at the university.
BD: And then, of course, you start progressing toward the idea of selling out.
GF: Oh, well yes, whatever that means! [Both laugh] That’s an interesting term. So I guess I have to say that I cannot claim to
be unhappy. We could always appreciate being performed more, and if everybody was jumping to perform my music, I suppose that would
present its own set of problems, but also its own set of pleasures.
BD: Would you want your music played on all kinds of concerts all over the world, and have it heard in elevators?
GF: Well, elevators... [More laughter] I would say it would be nice if I could have a lot of different pianists playing my piano music, and
different ensembles playing my chamber music and orchestra music. For one thing, the royalties would be nice. I would get larger
royalty checks from ASCAP. And I suppose you could take pleasure in the people who admire you, respect you, or genuflect in front of
you. You get strokes like that, and I guess that’s fun, too.
BD: Would your music be in any way different if you didn’t have to worry about money?
GF: I don’t have to worry about money with the music. You were asking would it be different if I did have to worry at all about money if I were
trying to make a living as a composer?