I am a passionate music lover who, after having studied composition and
conducting quite seriously at university, spent a lifetime doing
something I don't like for a living.
I took piano lessons around the age of six or seven, hated my teacher and quit.
When
I was a sophomore in high school, I discovered classical music. We had
a piano in the house so I began to teach myself to play. By my Junior
year I was determined to study music and become a conductor.
I
studied with some very fine musicians in college and was taken under a
few influential wings. I was fortunate enough to have studied with
Louise Talma, a wonderful composer, who sent me off to Fontainebleau
one summer to study with Nadia Boulanger. The world is full of
successful musicians who studied with Boulanger, but by the time I got
to her she was in her 80's and our lessons consisted of her reliving
and recounting a treasure chest full of absolutely fascinating
conversations she had with the likes of Albert Roussel and Bohuslav
Martinu. I learned a lot of music history, but not much else. Of
course, that what she appreciated most about me was the fact that I
always wore a tie to my lessons speaks volumes about what she thought
of my compositional talents.
But my path to fame and glory
came in the form of Jacques Louis Monod, a truly great French conductor
and composer, and the most wonderful teacher I have known. He was
invited to our college to substitute for a year for Talma who was off
to the MacDowell Colony. On the first day of class, as the students
were filing in and taking seats, Monod was sitting at the piano
playing. When the bell rang he looked up and his first words were,
"Does anyone know what this music is?" Not a hand moved, so I raised
mine and identified it as the beginning of the first movement of
Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 in D minor, the one he dedicated to Wagner.
In
those days there were only a few recordings of Bruckner available.
Monod had recently discovered Bruckner and was aching to conduct his
symphonies. My interest in Bruckner interested him.
He soon
began to give me private lessons and after several months of
counterpoint, pronounced me a minor 15th century composer. He Attended
a concert I conducted and called me at home the next morning to invite
me to come to Paris for the summer to study with him. When we got
there, he called a friend, Serge Baudo the conductor, to get me into
the rehearsals of L'Orchestre de Paris.
In New York, he took me
to meetings of the League ISCM, the International Society of
Contemporary Music, where I was delighted to discover exactly how
significant in the scheme of things he was. I was invited to after
meeting dinners with Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey, and
even Aaron Copland.
And it was at one of these dinners that I
discovered what the master plan for me was. Such luminaries as
heretofore mentioned were discussing the problem of having their works
performed. Not getting them performed, they were important and
recognized composers all, but the difficulty in finding conductors
capable of understanding the then new music, and doing it justice, was
a constant torment to them. Monod said to them at one point that that
was precisely why he had taken such an interest in me. He thought me
capable of being developed into exactly the kind of conductor they all
needed.
I was a made man.
Or not, there was a problem.
I had imagined myself conducting "La Bohème" at La Scala in Milan,
Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony in Prague, Rachmaninov's D minor Piano
Concerto in New York, but not Webern, not Schoenberg, and certainly not
Elliott Carter or Ralph Shapey. The sad truth was that I did not like
contemporary music. And I blew it.
That was 1968. Four years
later, in 1972, the City of Paris held a retrospective of the works of
Kandinsky: Hommage to Kandinsky from the City of Paris. The entire
history of Kandinsky's work, from the early Medieval paintings of
Russian damsels on horseback with pointed hats, tasseled, and castles
in the background, through all the experiments with line and color and
non-representational forms, to his full blown expressionism was spread
out before me. I was able to see in the progression of his life's work
exactly what the 20th Century composers were trying to do in their
music. They were turning away from melody and harmony as the sole basis
of music, and finding their way to a new music in which tonal
relationships, or dynamic contrasts, or percussive elements became as,
if not more, important. An epiphany. That exhibition changed my life,
sadly too late.
I was doing graduate work in composition at the time and
got involved with an electronic studio where I produced some minorly
interesting stuff. Then I heard an electronic piece by a fellow student
composer, a Persian who was on a scholarship sponsored by the Shah of
Iran. And I knew that I would never do anything like it. He, Massoud
Pourfarroukh was his name, had somehow managed to create an electronic
work of such incredible beauty. I knew he had understood what none of
us had even glimpsed: the new language.
Within weeks of this
event, I got a phone call from a friend asking me if I wanted a job. I
said yes before knowing what the job was. And now, thirty-five years
later and looking at the short end of the life curve, I will try to
recoup the beauty lost. I am composing again, I have returned to
serious study of the piano, and I am creating an on line world
inhabited by the great pianists and composers to whose heaven I would
like to adjourn at the end of my days.
Leni Bogat, Piano
Biography
I am a passionate music lover who, after having studied composition and
conducting quite seriously at university, spent a lifetime doing
something I don't like for a living.
I took piano lessons around the age of six or seven, hated my teacher and quit.
When
I was a sophomore in high school, I discovered classical music. We had
a piano in the house so I began to teach myself to play. By my Junior
year I was determined to study music and become a conductor.
I
studied with some very fine musicians in college and was taken under a
few influential wings. I was fortunate enough to have studied with
Louise Talma, a wonderful composer, who sent me off to Fontainebleau
one summer to study with Nadia Boulanger. The world is full of
successful musicians who studied with Boulanger, but by the time I got
to her she was in her 80's and our lessons consisted of her reliving
and recounting a treasure chest full of absolutely fascinating
conversations she had with the likes of Albert Roussel and Bohuslav
Martinu. I learned a lot of music history, but not much else. Of
course, that what she appreciated most about me was the fact that I
always wore a tie to my lessons speaks volumes about what she thought
of my compositional talents.
But my path to fame and glory
came in the form of Jacques Louis Monod, a truly great French conductor
and composer, and the most wonderful teacher I have known. He was
invited to our college to substitute for a year for Talma who was off
to the MacDowell Colony. On the first day of class, as the students
were filing in and taking seats, Monod was sitting at the piano
playing. When the bell rang he looked up and his first words were,
"Does anyone know what this music is?" Not a hand moved, so I raised
mine and identified it as the beginning of the first movement of
Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 in D minor, the one he dedicated to Wagner.
In
those days there were only a few recordings of Bruckner available.
Monod had recently discovered Bruckner and was aching to conduct his
symphonies. My interest in Bruckner interested him.
He soon
began to give me private lessons and after several months of
counterpoint, pronounced me a minor 15th century composer. He Attended
a concert I conducted and called me at home the next morning to invite
me to come to Paris for the summer to study with him. When we got
there, he called a friend, Serge Baudo the conductor, to get me into
the rehearsals of L'Orchestre de Paris.
In New York, he took me
to meetings of the League ISCM, the International Society of
Contemporary Music, where I was delighted to discover exactly how
significant in the scheme of things he was. I was invited to after
meeting dinners with Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey, and
even Aaron Copland.
And it was at one of these dinners that I
discovered what the master plan for me was. Such luminaries as
heretofore mentioned were discussing the problem of having their works
performed. Not getting them performed, they were important and
recognized composers all, but the difficulty in finding conductors
capable of understanding the then new music, and doing it justice, was
a constant torment to them. Monod said to them at one point that that
was precisely why he had taken such an interest in me. He thought me
capable of being developed into exactly the kind of conductor they all
needed.
I was a made man.
Or not, there was a problem.
I had imagined myself conducting "La Bohème" at La Scala in Milan,
Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony in Prague, Rachmaninov's D minor Piano
Concerto in New York, but not Webern, not Schoenberg, and certainly not
Elliott Carter or Ralph Shapey. The sad truth was that I did not like
contemporary music. And I blew it.
That was 1968. Four years
later, in 1972, the City of Paris held a retrospective of the works of
Kandinsky: Hommage to Kandinsky from the City of Paris. The entire
history of Kandinsky's work, from the early Medieval paintings of
Russian damsels on horseback with pointed hats, tasseled, and castles
in the background, through all the experiments with line and color and
non-representational forms, to his full blown expressionism was spread
out before me. I was able to see in the progression of his life's work
exactly what the 20th Century composers were trying to do in their
music. They were turning away from melody and harmony as the sole basis
of music, and finding their way to a new music in which tonal
relationships, or dynamic contrasts, or percussive elements became as,
if not more, important. An epiphany. That exhibition changed my life,
sadly too late.
I was doing graduate work in composition at the time and
got involved with an electronic studio where I produced some minorly
interesting stuff. Then I heard an electronic piece by a fellow student
composer, a Persian who was on a scholarship sponsored by the Shah of
Iran. And I knew that I would never do anything like it. He, Massoud
Pourfarroukh was his name, had somehow managed to create an electronic
work of such incredible beauty. I knew he had understood what none of
us had even glimpsed: the new language.
Within weeks of this
event, I got a phone call from a friend asking me if I wanted a job. I
said yes before knowing what the job was. And now, thirty-five years
later and looking at the short end of the life curve, I will try to
recoup the beauty lost. I am composing again, I have returned to
serious study of the piano, and I am creating an on line world
inhabited by the great pianists and composers to whose heaven I would
like to adjourn at the end of my days.