Composer Aaron Jay Kernis
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
Credit: Richard Bowditch
Winning various prizes is a goal of many people. A few have succeeded, and after the flurry that accompany youth and promise, significant ones can be awarded toward the end of a creative life. Aaron Jay Kernis earned the biggest — the Pulitzer — rather early, before turning forty. He was a runner-up in 1994 and the winner in 1998, becoming the youngest to be so honored. Four years later he was given the Grawemeyer, another of the best-known and prestigious designations for a musician.
A thorough biography from his publisher appears at the end of this webpage.
Late in 2002, Kernis was in Chicago for performances with the Chicago Symphony and also for master classes and other activities. Despite his growing reputation and ever-increasing discography, he seemed genuinely pleased to speak with me and to know that I would be playing his music on the air.
Here is that conversation . . . . .
Bruce Duffie: Being the winner of two very prestigious awards, everyone comes to you wanting music. How do you decide yes or no?
Aaron Jay Kernis: It’s tricky. It’s actually very tricky. Often the advice I give to young composers, which for most of the years that I received commissions I took, is never say no to anything. When it comes to a point — as it has, where I simply can’t write all the projects I’m asked to do, and as the forces get larger and the pieces in size get larger — then I really have to start to make some decisions. A lot of it’s based on what feels right to me, what’s something that I could imagine wanting to do in this period of years.
BD: What feels right to you now, or what feels right to you a year from now and two years from now, as you’re getting it done?
AJK: Well, this is the thing! I’m already having to think in five-year — or even more — periods of time, especially with my next project being an opera, which I’ve given myself about three years to write. It’s very difficult to think, “Well, I’ll be an entirely different person in three years.” So it’s a little tricky for me to say, “Oh, yes, I want to write this symphony, then the next symphony,” or whatever. But I’m beginning to have to think that far ahead. There are pieces — like say a piano concerto or something that I know will be really, really difficult for me — that I hope to know, at some point, when I’ll be ready. Maybe it will be fifteen years from now. Pieces like that, I intuit that I’m not ready now.
BD: Then, no matter what you’re doing, you will just start working on it?
AJK: Probably at a certain point, if I feel I can imagine being ready, I’ll start either mentioning it to people or talking to people that have suggested that kind of piece to me.
BD: Let me turn the question on its head. When you’re writing any specific piece, if you get an idea that you think would work well in a different piece, do you stop and work on it, or do you just note it down and put it in a drawer?
AJK: I don’t even note it down. I just make a mental note of it. Sometimes I’ll write a little comment. I don’t typically have musical material coming into my head. I have images about what ideas I like and what colors I’d like to be in a piece, and I’ll just put that in the back of my mind and go on with what I’m doing, and then come back to it. If it keeps coming back to me, I know it’s something that I should pursue.
BD: That it’s important?
AJK: Yeah — or that it could be.
BD: At what point does it change from a picture image to a sound image?
AJK: Well, it’s funny. It sometimes is a sound image, but it may not be a specific sound image. It may be a texture. It may be just a tiny bit of a phrase of something that is very hard for me to describe. It’s often not very specific.
BD: At some point, though, you’ve got to translate it into something that’s readable by the horn player and the violinist!
AJK: That’s the hardest part, yeah. But that later-on process, that’s something entirely different. The images are like an early stage, a very early stage. Once I actually get to writing the notes, I’m not really concerned with those any more. The images give me a sense of maybe a shape of a piece or maybe a color to the piece. It’s just some way of sort of tagging some starting place into the piece, some entryway.
BD: Then do you work on it in your head specifically, or do you let it work on you?
AJK: I let it work on me, yeah.
BD: Once it’s done, are you merely transcribing it?
AJK: No! No, no. No, as I said, even when it’s working on me, those elements are just the beginning of something. Then it’s actually the hard work of working on the notes and the phrases. That’s why it’s hard to talk about. It’s big!
BD: But you work on it and you work on it, and eventually you do get it right?
AJK: I try.
BD: How do you know when it’s right?
AJK: I feel. There’s a certain point when you’re getting close to the end of something that I know I’ve gone as far as I can, and other than some details, it’s done. It’s a physical feeling.
BD: Is it up to you, as the composer, to get everything out of every piece?
AJK: No. No. I think in certain pieces, when I really want to cover a lot of emotional terrain in a particularly big piece, there are many elements, many dramatic concerns. But I can’t expect to do everything in one piece, or get everything into one piece. So I don’t have that expectation.
BD: Is it wrong for us to have that expectation of you?
AJK: I think for everything to be in one piece would be an experience that no one could take in because it would be too much. I think there has to be some reduction down to an audible, down to an experiential — something one can experience rather than everything all at once. We are a maelstrom of emotions and things going on in our mind. Can you imagine transcribing all of that at once into a work of art???
BD: Well then, are you focusing in on one section of you in each piece?
AJK: I wouldn’t say in each piece, but that’s a difficult question. I don’t know.