BD: Now you, of course, are a pianist.
LL: Yes, I am.
BD: Does that give you any more sympathy for writing for that instrument, either solo or concerto?
LL: Sympathy, yes. My piano music tends to be quite difficult, so I know the performers sometimes do curse me. [Both laugh] Sometimes I’ve written things that I knew were quite wicked to do, with full knowledge and sort of a gleeful little smirk as I wrote the notes down. [Demonstrates the smirk] I’m joking a little, but I firmly do believe in the concept of the play-ability of music, that it should be a pleasure for the performer to learn and to play. If you’re writing something that’s so technically difficult and so difficult to memorize and just so gnarly, the pleasure level for the performer really decreases. And being a performer myself, I’ve never lost touch with what that feels like. I think that partly because of the specialization that one finds in universities, where you have to be a major in one thing, for the first time you have students who were brought up as composing majors who didn’t play instruments, or didn’t keep up the performing.
BD: This is a big loss, is it not?
LL: Yeah. I think a lot of them have lost touch with what it means like to actually have the experience of performing and to keep that up, and remember what it’s going to be like to have to learn and play that thing you’ve just written.
BD: Do you feel, though, that it’s a collaborative art between you and the performer?
LL: No.
BD: Not at all?
LL: No, I don’t. I don’t.
BD: You don’t want the performer to put anything into it?
LL: No. They should bring something to it, but it’s not like the performer is taking your piece and then layering over their own ideas on it. Not at all, because they might as well just rewrite the notes while they’re at it. To a composer, almost the whole dynamic framework comes before the notes. It’s almost like the notes are what are being filled in when you compose, not the dynamics and the articulations. A lot of performers do think that the notes are sacred, but beyond that they can sort of do anything they like to a piece. I think the act of performing and interpreting a piece is trying to come as close as one can to what was in the composer’s imagination. Now, more often than not, that’s not entirely clear, and you have to interpret and figure out what did the composer mean in a lot of respects. But no, I don’t feel it as sort of a collaborative thing where the performer is an equal.
BD: You don’t want each performance to be a carbon copy of the previous performance, do you?
LL: No, but one doesn’t want them to be wildly different. If a performance was an absolutely perfect performance, I would want them to be a carbon copy.
BD: Is there such a thing as an absolutely perfect performance?
LL: No, of course there isn’t! Of course there isn’t. But one is constantly reaching towards an ideal, and one would hope. You see, the best performers, to me, sublimate their personalities into the music and become a vessel for the music. To me, it’s the bad performers that impose their own personality onto the music and end up with something that is not what the composer intended, necessarily.
BD: There’s no happy marriage of both?
LL: Not really, because it’s a diametrically opposed attitude. Either you’re serving the music or you’re using the music as a vehicle for your own expression.
BD: So it’s black or white. There’s no gray in there? No Gray, Mr. Dorian?
LL: [Smiles at the pun] I’m talking about the attitude; I’m not talking about the final result. It is the idea behind it. Either you’re taking an attitude that you want to find what the composer meant and serve the music and serve the composer, or you’re out to express yourself through the music. When you are interpreting a composer, playing a composer’s music, there is always that leeway for how much of a retard to do. That’s where the personality of the performer can come in.
BD: And how fast is the allegro.
LL: Yeah. But not, “Oh, there’s a ritard written here and I don’t like it, so I’m not going to do it. I’m going to do it accelerando.” That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
* * * * *
BD: You say there’s no such thing as an ideal performance. Do you get real close on a recording because you have a chance to fix any mistakes?
LL: One can come pretty close, yeah. I have been extremely lucky in the performers who have done my music throughout my career since I graduated from Julliard. I’ve been very spoiled in the performers and orchestras who’ve done my music.
BD: Maybe what you need is one great big flop! [Both laugh]
LL: Well, I’ve had a couple of very bad performances that I’ve attended, so I do know what that’s like. But the majority have been very good experiences. So I’m usually happy.
BD: You don’t need to mention the specifics, but are there times when you’re ecstatic?
LL: Oh, yes! Absolutely, absolutely.
BD: Is the audience generally happy or ecstatic?
LL: I don’t know if I’m the proper person to say that, but in my experience, yes! I’ve had very good audience reactions, generally.
BD: Are we getting beyond the point where the audience is actually surprised to see the composer walk on stage?
LL: I think so. We’re actually in a very healthy time right now for contemporary American music because we’ve gotten over several decades where composers were operating from an ivory tower attitude, writing a kind of very academic, complex music that neither audiences nor musicians were very much interested in. A lot of composers of my generation have discovered that it’s not a dirty thing to be interested in audiences and write music that audiences can actually relate to. That is not to say that one panders to an audience, but to me, music, like all arts, is a form of communication, and if the language is so difficult for people to understand, that’s usually a problem with the language and not with the audience.
BD: Maybe this is why the critics are likening you to names that other people know, to get them so they’re not afraid of you. If they said you were like Schoenberg and Stockhausen, then audiences would not come in droves!
LL: Right, right, right.
BD: I’m just looking for a silver lining!
LL: I don’t know. One tries to figure things out, and I try to pay as little attention to those external things, and concentrate on the music as much as possible.
* * * * *
BD: I assume you get a number of commissions. How do you decide yes, I’ll take this one; no, I’ll turn that one aside?
LL: I’ve been writing on commission since I graduated from Julliard, which was in 1987. I am basically doing that full-time; I don’t teach.
BD: Not at all?
LL: Not at all. I just compose, and every now and then do a little performing, or now more and more, conducting as a break from the composing, because it’s actually difficult to keep churning out music, one piece after another.
BD: [With a sly nudge] We can’t expect you to be an automaton, just grinding it out all the time??? [Both laugh]
LL: No, no! But I’ve been very lucky in that the commissions have been quite steady. I haven’t turned down many commissions. They’re not pouring in at an un-doable rate...
BD: But you must look at each one and decide.
LL: Yeah, yeah, you have to.
BD: So how do you make the decision?
LL: Maybe it’s a performer who you don’t think is terribly good, so you’ll politely say no; or it’s just a kind of piece that you’re not interested in writing. Every now and then you get a very odd request for a commission, and sometimes that can spark you because it’s so interesting. For instance, I had a commission for a piece for solo bass koto, the Japanese instrument. Then another commission was for orchestra and five Japanese drums — actually the Koto Ensemble, the Japanese drummers. Those were two commissions where I first thought, “Oh, that’s odd.” But then I thought, “Oh, that’s an interesting challenge.”
BD: And you were up to it?
LL: Those were two commissions that I did do eventually. I’ve had an awful lot of flute commissions because my music has gotten well known in the flute world.
BD: So when someone comes to you with a flute commission, do you try to nudge them to play what you’ve already written, rather than constantly coming up with something new?
LL: If it’s a commission that I’ve already written for that combination, I won’t do it. Actually I have written my last flute piece for a long time. I don’t intend to write another one for a while, because I’ve written for flute in different combinations and different flutes. Actually, my latest flute work is being premiered today at the flute convention in Arizona.