BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
What is a modern composition?
There’s no solid answer, and the term itself has a transient feel: things once considered modern can change depending on their style, or the era in which they were written and heard.
The Perth Orchestra Project will this month explore the idea of “modern” through a program spanning multiple centuries. Modern culminates in a truly new work from POP composer-in-residence Victor Arul.
In this interview, Victor tells us about the way he explored the concept of “modern” while writing his latest piece, Interpolations.
Victor, it’s great to learn that you are the Perth Orchestra Project’s composer-in-residence for this season. How’d this relationship come about, and why was POP an orchestra that resonated with you?
I have been a keen attendant of POP’s concerts in the past for several reasons.
One of the key aspects of POP that has always charmed me is the ethos of showcasing ostensibly disparate pieces within the belts of elegant themes. As someone who enjoys identifying and exploring these types of relationships, I feel that POP has resonated with my central values to music.
Aside from this, [conductor] Izaak Wesson has always been someone I have had great respect for in both his work as an artist and researcher. Considering this, I suppose it is only natural that I have been drawn to his work directing POP.
So how would you describe the experience of the POP residency — in particular, the ways you’ve worked with Izaak or the musicians to create your new music?
I had worked with co-members of POP’s Artistic Advisory Panel earlier in the year to discuss the potential program for this concert. The idea of ‘modern’ is something which grew very close to me, as well as the pieces placed in corresponding program. As a result, the ways I have gone about creating my music have been conscious attempts at responding to this theme.
Your new piece of music is called Interpolations. What’s behind the work?
Interpolations takes its name from an existing piece by Pierre Boulez: Incises.
Incises is a very thought-provoking piece for me, as it attempts to consolidate its materials under Boulez’s attempt at ‘hypermodernist’ conceptualisation of form, where traditional precepts of tension and resolution are skewed.
My piece is a recontextualisation of some corresponding structural ideas from Boulez’s piece.
How would you describe the ‘sound’ of your music that comes from these ideas?
My music tends to have a surface quality that is somewhat silly or childish to it. I think the assemblage of this ‘sound’ came about as a manifestation of my own sense of humour, which is somewhat inane.
Interpolations will be premiered next to some interesting music — a 1920 arrangement of Debussy, Webern taking on Bach, and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1. How do you feel about where your music fits inside this program? That is, how do you feel about your music in the context of “modern” composition?
Whenever a new work is created, there is always some relationship between it and things which have existed in the past.
That being said, I do not share the visceral feelings of musical lineage that someone like Schoenberg had in relation to figures including Mozart, Bruckner, Brahms, and so on.
I see that my music fits into the program as a personal response to the modernist ideals foregrounded in the works, rather than as a logical progression of these artistic products.
I was reading that Bach is your favourite composer. How does it feel to have your music rehearsed and performed alongside an arrangement of his?
Really awesome. I have an immense amount of respect for J.S. Bach’s music, so it is only natural that I find this experience to be quite gratifying.
Hear the premiere of Victor Arul’s new work in Modern. The Perth Orchestra Project concerts take place on 25 and 27 November at the Callaway Music Auditorium, UWA Conservatorium of Music.
Images supplied.
