Interview with composer Jiří Gemrot

Among other subjects, he reflects at length on the issue of why audiences are afraid of contemporary composers.

Mr. Gemrot, what inspired the beginnings of your colourful life’s journey with music?

As is often the case, music-loving parents. They both sang, my mother even professionally. And they had me learn the piano.

When did you first realise it would be right to focus on music professionally?

Around puberty I was overcome by a tendency toward sloppiness. When my parents threatened to cancel my piano lessons, it somehow became clearer to me that I wouldn’t be able to be happy without music.

At first glance it appears that your daughter Michaela, an outstanding opera and musicals singer, has taken after her father in this regard. What about your other children? How much do they need music to live contentedly?

My older daughter Kateřina is a violinist. She played second in the Pavel Haas Quartet before opting for a quieter life – she’s a member of the Prague Symphony Orchestra and also plays with the Prague Philharmonia but at present mainly spends most of her time with her sons, Jan and Adam. My son Adam played piano well but he quit the Conservatory in second year and is today following a different professional path.

Are your offspring also an inspiration in your work?

I’ve written something for each of my children. Music for Kačka arose (it was published) when Kateřina began playing violin. I composed Toccatina and Three Small Preludes for Adam; he performed it in children’s competitions and it too was published. For Michaela it was Lullaby for Soprano, Cello and Piano to words by Jaroslav Seifert, which she recorded at Czech Radio when she was starting out. I’ve just done arrangements for Michaela of the arias from Rusalka and the Cemetery Scene from Phantom of the Opera with a piano quintet and during the spring I’m going to orchestrate Dvořák’s Love Songs for string quartet; at the end of August we’re going to a festival in Luberon in France where I have a premiere of the third string quartet and Michaela will perform the Love Songs there.

Your pieces are, incidentally, often performed abroad. How satisfied are you with the frequency with which they are done at domestic venues?

Every composer wants to be played often and I’m no exception. However, I am not dependent financially on how often my pieces are played. What’s more, composing is for me a very intimate activity that I don’t want to, and am unable to, treat as a commodity. Therefore I never sell myself. I enjoy interest in my composition but never employ pressure in promoting it.

Today your music sits on the music stands of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, with which you are very closely connected as musical director. Could you explain that profession to listeners a little?

A musical director is responsible for a recording corresponding to the score. When recordings take place, he’s in charge. I enjoy consistent work with live music, getting to know the broad literature in detail, close cooperation with outstanding artists and the fact that my collaborators in the studio (sound engineers, technicians) are great experts and wonderful people. The cost of such work is tired ears and the occasional sense that working in the studio leaves less time for one’s own work. But that’s what life has decided and life makes correct decisions.

What composition are you currently playing with in your imagination? What would you like to create?

For the most part I write on commission. Currently I’m working up a composition for the Barok Collegium and among other things I’ve promised Vilém Veverka an oboe concerto this year. I’d like to write better pieces than I have up to now. That is, I believe, my main motor – the effort to make every future piece surpass the one I’ve just written. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes despite all the will in the world it doesn’t work out 100 percent. But the goal is clear. One should continually pursue the unattainable ideal.

Do you use modern technology when you’re composing?

Do you mean notation software? My students use it often but I don’t. I work in the old-fashioned way with a pencil and above all a rubber, which my teachers insisted was the composer’s most important necessity. Notebooks can be a good aid for the clean copy of a piece but they can also let you down, not only through technical faults but also in making the mind – which unlike them can function any time – lazy. If a composer is over-reliant on the help of computers, it tells in the result.

After years of composing, are you now aware what conditions and circumstances are, for you, a guarantee of a virtually ideal creative mood?

Of all my activities (alongside direction and teaching), composing requires the most energy. I prefer composing in the morning, when the mind is rested. I need to be alone to work, with an instrument to carry out a control, and it’s really all the same to me where I am. I wrote one piece, which I flew to Japan with soon afterwards, at the last moment on a holiday by sea.

Do you often feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of music? Or do you say, on the contrary, that there is so much wonderful music in the world that one cannot give up but must keep discovering more and more…?

I distinguish listening to music and musical smog: Unwanted listening to music in shops and restaurants annoys me. I think it leads to a numbing that leaves us unable to enjoy listening to good music of any genre properly. Silence is a similar gift to a view of the night sky undisturbed by light. There is so much wonderful music in the world that it’s not possible to listen to it all in a lifetime. That saddens me, but it doesn’t mean an easing off in composing. It’s a need that people have and if every person is a one-off original, that means they can also create original, one-off music.

There’s an obvious question on this evening – why do audiences fear contemporary composers? Any ideas?

I perhaps have a hunch: Managing contemporary music is to a certain degree a live workshop, and one, what’s more, that is influenced by various non-musical interests. Historical music doesn’t have those. Time has done its work and the best have remained. But we can’t stop there; we can’t just live off the family silver or a wonderful open-air museum.

I am also aware of the way listeners from particular nations approach new music. From the Dutch, who eagerly search out all that’s new, to conservative audiences who only want what they already know. For the most part, Czechs belong to the second group. It’s very much a vicious circle. What frequently contributes to this sorry state of affairs is artists’ lack of desire to study new pieces, sometimes even an inability to understand it, and also a dogged determination to stick with what they have learned at school throughout their entire lives.

Also contributing to this sorry situation is the fact that using the latest, meaning protected, music often means paying large amounts, not only to composers but also to publishers – not just for copyright but also rental fees. Protected music is therefore played less for economic reasons, leading to the public having less experience of it. Did you really like for instance Janáček on first listen when you were young? Or did you need to “grow into it” via repeated listens and only then marvel at how wonderful it is? It’s no different with listening to contemporary pieces.

Contemporary music is very multifarious. There is no unified artistic direction. A sophisticated listener is sure to accept even music whose language is relatively complicated. But it’s also possible to find in contemporary music pieces that are modern but also approachable and accessible. My appeal to listeners is therefore: Don’t be afraid, don’t make sweeping assumptions, don’t be put off by one bad experience. There are many living composers who write wonderful music, perhaps without being well-known. They’re waiting to be discovered by you!