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Geoffrey Gordon Interview
Posted on Saturday, May 24, 2008. © Copyright 2004-2008 David Bruce
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C:T talks to composer Geoffrey Gordon who is currently writing a new piece for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project
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Geoffrey Gordon
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Tell us something about your background.
I grew up on the East coast of the US—New York mostly, Connecticut—although we moved around quite a bit due to my Dad’s job with General Motors. As a result, I spent my high school years playing rock androll in Detroit … an indulgence which quickly morphed into a love of classical music—fewer drunks, onaverage, in the audience—and opera. I have degrees in vocal performance and composition, and for a time, I pursued both.
How did you start composing?
This morning? Grudgingly. In general, I began writing songs—pop songs, really—on guitar, when I was about twelve. But I always wanted to explore larger forms. I was—and still am—a big Beatles fan, and that, more than anything else, drew me to a variety of musical styles and instruments when I was young. Think of it as a front door to classical music. Later infatuations with opera and bebop jazz pushed metoward the language I use today. I am pleased to say there is evidence of this even in my early scores.(But you’ll have to take my word for it; they’re securely locked away!)
What drives your work, what are you passions?
Good music … interesting sounds … defensible architecture … honestly capturing a text or an idea and conveying it to an audience. Brilliant colleagues. Working hard and getting paid for it.
Tell us something about your working method as a composer. Give us something that might be or might have been a starting point for a piece.
I tend to become more engaged with a piece when I am inspired by a very specific idea or something conceptual, as opposed to “pure” or abstract music (not that I am opposed to that, either, necessarily…!).For example, I am working now on an orchestra piece called Shock Diamonds, which is a reference to the shock waves in the exhaust plume of an aerospace propulsion system—they’re really beautiful, and the words are very evocative, I think. Another example would be a work which premiered in Chicago earlierthis year, called lux solis aeterna. Originally, I had planned to write something derived from the lux aeterna—eternal light: the incipit of the communion chant for a Requiem Mass—but in the course of reading stuff, I came across some research on the study of neutrinos and the creation of sunlight, by Dr.John N. Bahcall (among other things, he helped develop the Hubble Space Telescope). It was positively shot through with amazing, even startling, imagery. (My favorite factoid: about 100 billion neutrinos from the Sun pass through your thumbnail every second!) This dovetailed, in my mind, perfectly with the original concept for the piece, joining the Son with the Sun, if you will. Lux solis aeterna is the result.
Which non-musical influences have affected your music most?
The visual arts, primarily. Lots of my work is inspired by either specific works — like Cool RED Cool, which is a reaction to Andy Warhol’s 1984 Self-Portrait—or techniques usually attributed to the visual arts … like Collage a Trois Trobar, which assembles fragments of 12th and 13th C. troubadour songs into a kind of collage. Poetry continues to be a big influence as well; Ted Hughes has been especially profound in that regard.
What is your musical philosophy?
"Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” —Paul Gauguin
I strive for the second one
Interview by David Bruce © Copyright 2004-2008
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