Composer / Author George Heussenstamm
1991
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
[A few selected excerpts from this in-depth conversation]
Bruce Duffie You mentioned that you’re always going forward. Do you know always where forward is?
George Heussenstamm: No, no. It’s just moving from one piece to the next where there seems to be a continuity for looking back...Something is happening vertically without the necessary link to what’s been done before. That’s where in a way you have to find your own way somehow. I can’t describe it any better. There are no hard and fast guidelines for that.
BD: What do you mean ‘without the link to what has been done before’?
GH: Traditional procedures, traditional harmony doesn’t really help me, so I have to go on my own.
BD: I assume, though, you don’t feel you’re working in a vacuum?
GH: No, no.
BD: Is there a sense of tradition or lineage in you and your music and your ideas?
GH: A lot of it is Schoenberg-related in the earlier pieces. I’m inspired, and it might come out in any sense one can make the connections, but my favorite composers, the ones that mean much to me and move me, are Bach and Beethoven and Mahler. Those are my three gods. There are many wonderful composers, and I love Bruckner. I love the strength and the power, and I feel that influence. I want my music to be strong, and if this is happening more recently it’s coming on even more so. You can’t say it sounds like Mahler or Bruckner, but I feel the spirit of those guys is motivating me when I’m writing. I want to be able to capture that tremendous strength and beauty in those sonorities and what happens in that music. A lot of music just doesn’t have that, and I want my music to have that more and more.
BD: So you build that in?
GH: Yes. I feel it and I try to get it in, but in my own way. I don’t borrow from a soul. I never have, and I can’t stand that idea of writing pieces based on other people’s melodies. Everything I do is totally original from the start...
_____
GH: Do you know Leonard Stein? He became the director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute here in LA. He was teaching harmony at LA City College. I was young...enrolled in some courses...just to find out what harmony was all about...but, I never wrote a single original note...dropped the course...that was 1947-48. Years later, in 1960, I came back to Leonard Stein. In 1957 I had a talk with my wife, told her "I ought to be a composer." She said I should go for it, and this was a miracle...So I pushed my need by being mainly self-taught. Eventually I started to write pieces, and slowly built up a reputation. Among my colleagues I became accepted as one of them...
_____
GH: I wrote five brass quintet, and the Annapolis Brass Quintet has recorded one of them. My first brass quintet was commissioned by the New York Brass Quintet, and my third was written for the American Brass Quintet.
BD: These are good groups!
GH: Yes they are! The fourth was written for Annapolis and the fifth was premiered by Empire. These are great players...mainly they're written for the top professional level of playing. That's how I write. I definitely don't write technically easy works...
_____
BD: Is there a 'west coast sound', or a 'west coast school'?
GH: They say. I don't know what it means...Maybe it's not as nervous as New York.
BD: California is more laid back?
GH: Yes [both laugh] We're more comfortable with ourselves in the sense that we're not worried about what colleagues are going to think, or what they expect you to do. Maybe we're more independent minded...Look at Ensembles for brass quintet! This was inspired, and many other pieces were worked out by thinking of how to group those five instruments in duos, trios and quartet combinations. I worked out the whole sequence of all the sections in that piece according to various groupings...
___________
To read this entire 1991 conversation between Heussenstamm and Duffie, please make note of this external link: www.bruceduffie.com/heussenstamm.html
George Heussenstamm: No, no. It’s just moving from one piece to the next where there seems to be a continuity for looking back...Something is happening vertically without the necessary link to what’s been done before. That’s where in a way you have to find your own way somehow. I can’t describe it any better. There are no hard and fast guidelines for that.
BD: What do you mean ‘without the link to what has been done before’?
GH: Traditional procedures, traditional harmony doesn’t really help me, so I have to go on my own.
BD: I assume, though, you don’t feel you’re working in a vacuum?
GH: No, no.
BD: Is there a sense of tradition or lineage in you and your music and your ideas?
GH: A lot of it is Schoenberg-related in the earlier pieces. I’m inspired, and it might come out in any sense one can make the connections, but my favorite composers, the ones that mean much to me and move me, are Bach and Beethoven and Mahler. Those are my three gods. There are many wonderful composers, and I love Bruckner. I love the strength and the power, and I feel that influence. I want my music to be strong, and if this is happening more recently it’s coming on even more so. You can’t say it sounds like Mahler or Bruckner, but I feel the spirit of those guys is motivating me when I’m writing. I want to be able to capture that tremendous strength and beauty in those sonorities and what happens in that music. A lot of music just doesn’t have that, and I want my music to have that more and more.
BD: So you build that in?
GH: Yes. I feel it and I try to get it in, but in my own way. I don’t borrow from a soul. I never have, and I can’t stand that idea of writing pieces based on other people’s melodies. Everything I do is totally original from the start...
_____
GH: Do you know Leonard Stein? He became the director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute here in LA. He was teaching harmony at LA City College. I was young...enrolled in some courses...just to find out what harmony was all about...but, I never wrote a single original note...dropped the course...that was 1947-48. Years later, in 1960, I came back to Leonard Stein. In 1957 I had a talk with my wife, told her "I ought to be a composer." She said I should go for it, and this was a miracle...So I pushed my need by being mainly self-taught. Eventually I started to write pieces, and slowly built up a reputation. Among my colleagues I became accepted as one of them...
_____
GH: I wrote five brass quintet, and the Annapolis Brass Quintet has recorded one of them. My first brass quintet was commissioned by the New York Brass Quintet, and my third was written for the American Brass Quintet.
BD: These are good groups!
GH: Yes they are! The fourth was written for Annapolis and the fifth was premiered by Empire. These are great players...mainly they're written for the top professional level of playing. That's how I write. I definitely don't write technically easy works...
_____
BD: Is there a 'west coast sound', or a 'west coast school'?
GH: They say. I don't know what it means...Maybe it's not as nervous as New York.
BD: California is more laid back?
GH: Yes [both laugh] We're more comfortable with ourselves in the sense that we're not worried about what colleagues are going to think, or what they expect you to do. Maybe we're more independent minded...Look at Ensembles for brass quintet! This was inspired, and many other pieces were worked out by thinking of how to group those five instruments in duos, trios and quartet combinations. I worked out the whole sequence of all the sections in that piece according to various groupings...
___________
To read this entire 1991 conversation between Heussenstamm and Duffie, please make note of this external link: www.bruceduffie.com/heussenstamm.html