Malcolm Singer

Hello, Michael. Lovely to see you.

That's right, yes. I'm flying in on November the 4th, the day before your elections.

We—well, we met uh, in Fontainebleau and and in Paris. We both studied with Mademoiselle Boulanger together. And um, I have a spoken fugue which gets performed quite a lot, where the words of the fugue describe the structure of the fugue. And we must have performed it in, in, in Fontainebleau—I've forgotten this. But many, many, many moons later, during the COVID lockdown, when everyone started zooming around the world, I got this email from Neal saying, "I'm doing um, uh, uh, um, a podcast for the—for the supporters of the Dayton Philharmonic, and I'm talking to them about fugue, and can I um, have a copy of your fugue, and can I use it?" So that's how we got back in touch after many, many years. Anyway, he—he spoke to me, um, and I spoke to his, his, his, uh, people in, in Dayton, and uh, he used my fugue in that. And then after that, he said, "I've got this idea for a London concert that I really want to do before I retire. I want to do the Vaughan Williams London Symphony, Symphony No. 2, and I would like you to write a new kind of uh, opener, overture of some description, somehow linked to London, using the same orchestration as, as the Vaughan Williams," which is a big orchestra with triple winds, etc. And I think the original idea was to have a Haydn London Symphony as well, but th—uh, that—that went out of the program. And, and, and wonderfully, we have Beethoven's first piano concerto with Emil Naumoff, who was also a pupil with Mademoiselle—he was a child prodigy; he's a—he's about a decade younger than us. We were all there as postgraduates, and he was—he was the little prodigy studying with her. And Emil's now professor of piano in Indiana, and uh, he's coming to do—play Beethoven. So it should be a wonderful event.

Well, it's—I wouldn't say it's a programmatic piece, exactly. When I—when I originally wrote to Neal, I said, "It's going to be—have a—have to be a pre-Brexit London piece, not a post-Brexit London piece." [Laughs] Um, cuz London, London uh, in the last uh, 20 years has been incredibly vibrant. Um, uh, we had the Queen's Jubilee, we got the Olympics, and—and the City of London in terms of business has been thriving. And uh, my fear is that Brexit has slightly changed all that, um, and London is—it's still—it's still a pretty good place to live, uh, and work. But um,

A bit of both. Bit of both. But um, but it's—so, it—so, i— i— i— in some ways, it's—it's inspired by the, the skyline and—and the energy of the city. So there are slow passages um, with, with, um, very large range, orchestral range, from the very top of the piccolo to the double bass. And then there are some really energetic, fiery passages. And it's about a 7-minute uh, opener. It was great fun to write and to be able to write for triple uh, winds and everything at the big, a big brass section is uh, is a joy.

The brass is, is, is uh, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, and, and bass trombone. Uh, and then a big bi—up to 3 percussionists. Um, and I've, I've added a piano, which Vaughan Williams doesn't have, but I got permission from the orchestra, from the commission, to add a piano as well.

It'll, yes, and he's a wonderful musician, wonderful conductor, and it'll be a pleasure to be there for the rehearsals and and and to talk to the audience, and what have you.

Yeah, so I went to Siena, actually, first of all in '73, spent the whole of the summer there. I, like you, I thought I would go on the conducting course, but like you, I discovered it was not all it was cracked up to be. And I immediately met Donatoni, and, and that year, his—his assistant was Giuseppe Sinopoli, who went on to become a great conductor, but he was—he was, he was Franco's composition assistant. So I had an amazing summer in '73 and went back in '74.

Wh—when we—when we met, um, and uh, but in the summer of '73, the, the—the, the—the, Chigiana Settimana, at the end of the summer course, Ligeti had come for one week to talk about his music. And I'd met Ligeti, spent a whole week with Ligeti in the summer of '73. Summer of '74, Dallapiccola came, just before he died. Um,

Well, this was the very end of August, the beginning of September. I spent all—

Absolutely, and then I came to visit you in Zurich. I remember it well. So, um, anyway, as it—as it transpired, I got a French government scholarship to go to Paris when I finished—I was at university at Cambridge, and so these were my summer holidays from university when I was in Siena. And I learned much, much more in the summer than I learned all year at university. So those summers were—

I read music. Um, but reading music in the early '70s was um, a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Um, there—I mean, in retrospect, there were some very good things about it. Um, but there were also some, a lot of things lacking in the education I got there.

Yeah, well, I, I, I— I mean, the good things I got from Cambridge was, one, I got a scholarship to go to Siena in the summer, paid for by Cambridge, so that was jolly good. And I, I formed my own student orchestra, as everyone did at Cambridge, and I was conducting every week with a student orchestra, so I got to learn my conducting skills by standing up in front of a, you know,

Well, thank you very much. But I—that was all begun with my—my Cambridge, Cambridge days. Um, and then you also, you make friends because it's not a conservatory, you make friends with people who are not musicians. So I've still got very good friends from my Cambridge days who are mathematicians and historians and scientists, and what have you. Uh, and—and the course, do— it, the course does cover a vast amount of music. So later in life, when you suddenly get interested in 14th-century Spanish music, you kind of know where to go, because it kind of gets—you, you kind of remember something about it. So there were good things about it. Anyway, I got the scholarship and went to Boulanger. And um, so I went straight from that summer in '74 to, to her, to Paris.

Well, it wasn't the very first day I'd met her, because I'd actually met her as a teenager when she came to London. Uh, I mean, I always say the biggest break in my career was when I was about 14. She was supposed to come to the Royal Academy of Music, where I used to go on Saturdays, and I was supposed to play the Bach Prelude and Fugue in E Major from Book 2 for her. Unfortunately, she was sick and didn't come, because she would have crucified me, because I've seen her give masterclasses on that piece many times. However, she came the next year, and I was, um, the academy asked me to play one of my own compositions to her.

And, and this very old lady said, "Oh, you know, you must go to university, and then you must come and study with me in Paris." And it—and it kind of looked like she was about to die that week, but she was kind of a white witch, you know, and that's exactly what happened. I went to university, and then I went to study with her. And the first lessons in Paris, I would play my compositions to her, and after three or four lessons, she said, "Well, you're a composer, and I'd love to see your music when you're writing it, but as a musician, you're completely unprepared." Um, and I knew—and I knew this, because I had been moaning at Cambridge that I wasn't getting the kind of foundations in terms of ear training and harmony and counterpoint. I could kind of do it, because I was musical. I could fudge it, but I didn't really understand it. So I went right back to square one with Mademoiselle, and we started right back at the beginning of harmony and counterpoint, all the ear training with Mademoiselle Dieudonné. So I would see, uh, Mademoiselle Boulanger um, three times a week. So I'd have my one-to-one lesson with her, I'd go to the analysis class that everyone went to on Wednesday afternoon, and then I was one of the ordained students to go to Black Saturday. And Black Saturday was keyboard harmony. Um, uh, there were about six of us; Emil was there, I think Neal might have been there as well, and she would just put us through our paces and destroy us. See, you came out of Saturday morning a complete wreck from trying to do keyboard harmony with her. And then, and then, and then a lesson—and then a lesson with Mademoiselle Dieudonné as well. So I got a lot of tuition in those two years I was in Paris.

Great.

Yeah.

Absolutely, I find it's like painters who can't draw. I mean, you have to have the real technical background, and then you can feel much, somehow much freer after that, cuz you sort of know how it works.

How the woods—how the woods work, for example.

No, I'm too short.

Well, it's nice of you to say so. Uh, when I was at school, we had a music school every Saturday morning, and there was a—a group of string players, and I did not play a string instrument. And they were all my friends, so they said, "Well, why don't you do something useful? Like um, wave your arms around in front of us so we don't get lost." And so I conducted the Mozart divertimenti. One of the first pieces I ever did was Strauss's Metamorphosen, funny enough. I think I was 17 or something.

But, uh, it was—it made a nice change from being on the other side, in other words, looking at a conductor. Or, sometimes not looking at a conductor, but uh—but knowing how they got the results they did, or knowing why they didn't get the results that they did.

Uh, or simply the ones who talk too much, the ones who uh, led totally humorless rehearsals where everyone was bored within the first two minutes, just because they had no nice demeanor, shall I say. Um, I think, maybe it's just me, but I seem to remember there were—there were terrifying conductors even back then. Um, and, uh, then of course they were all male, as well, that's the other thing, cuz happily, that's all changing. Um, and then when I went to Cambridge, uh, I didn't know anything about early music when I went there, the early music stuff happened there. Uh, but I conducted the first orchestra, the second orchestra, and the opera at Cambridge while I was there.

Yeah, and you don't do anything at Cambridge for credit. Uh, you just do it. Uh, you just have to pass the exams, which are—in the music course when I did it, involved a lot of composition, actually, as well as uh, music history and pretty—first two years, harmony and counterpoint, that kind of thing.

Uh, Alan Ridout, his name was, is a sacred composer, very nice guy. I took over from him in teaching at Cambridge, actually. Um, wonderful, wonderful guy. Um, and they weren't terribly interested in what style you wrote anything, it was about ideas. Um, there were even composing exams, when they would sit you down for 6 hours and make you write something.

And it would be things like, you know, I remember one of them—I don't know if it was my year, but, "The BBC is going to do four programs uh, about sex education uh, and they want you to—they, I'd like you to write four things about different animals and their courtship which you could use for uh, for use on television programs." So it didn't matter what the animals were, what style you were going to use, they wanted you to use your imagination.

And of course, it's—it was absolutely wonderful, because you could have, you know, jumping kangaroos or uh, whatever you wanted to do. Um, it was the '60s after all, so, you know, it could be quite raunchy.

Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, it wasn't sort of uh, "Here is a—here is a fugue subject, please write on it." Um, that was the previous years when you did that.

Yes.

Yes.

We also had wonderful ones, uh, uh, "Write a short overture to a Shakespeare play of your choice." We had 6 hours for that.

Sure.

I think that's absolutely true. Having never had a conducting lesson in my life, uh, I look at the score and it makes me do what I do.

It has to come from inside, going out. It's very easy to do the, what shall I say, the sort of gestures that you would use to bring in a plane at JFK.

That you can learn, you can learn that parrot-fashion, but it—it doesn't—for me, it doesn't do anything, because, first of all, there's no emotions behind it. You're merely time-beating. You're not saying—you're not giving a hint as to how you want that to be played. One of the reasons, I don't use a baton, cuz I don't—for the stuff I do, I don't really need to, but it means I can use gestures with both hands to help um, get the gestures I want.

[Laughs] Yes. Yeah, it's wonderful. Um, and uh, also being quite short, with relatively short arms, I'm not likely to knock anybody over, so— plus I'm best—as a Brit, I'm best unarmed, so I don't use a baton.

I stuck one behind my specs once, and I'm not going to repeat that.

Uh, was it worth it?

I try.

The good—the goodies. The goodies and the greats, yeah.

It's a piece I actually don't know very well, so it's uh, but I've seen it several times.

Well, one thing would definitely be to not to say, "I want it to go this way," whatever, because it's a—a collaboration with the people who are on stage.

I'm not going to say, "The tempo for rejoice," in Messiah, "the tempo for Rejoice will be this," and someone would say, "Ah, but my voice works a little differently from that." Uh, in other words, it's always a collaboration.

In the same way as the composer wrote for specific people, too.

So, um, I—I've worked with conductors who say, you know, "It goes this way, and that's it." And a singer has to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't feel it that way," and "I'm the one who's on stage, um, having to perform it." Uh, so I think a conductor needs to take a step back, and, you know, "My conception—" My conception, it should be—is much better when it's our conception.

It is a collaborative art, and uh, and there's sometimes—I'm going to be very annoying now, and say this—there's also something that comes in, in opera, which is called the stage—who is called the stage director.

And I've had some conversations, for example, I've been talking to a singer saying, "How fast would you like this particular aria to go?" And the stage director comes in, "She will sing it like I have it on my recording."

To which the answer is, "No."

No, I have, and he's very nice, but it—it's uh, um, you know, it's— I've had choreographers like that, too. Not Mark Morris, I hate to add, but—uh, proud to add, but, uh, you know, it goes this—it go—they've re—it's been choreographed to a recording and that's the end of it.

So, you—you—your—the music then just becomes like turning the lights on. It's a part of—

Sure, it's got to be um, and that's why I say working with great stage directors and great choreographers like Mark is such fun, because it is a collaboration. Um, especially if it's a new piece, obviously.

And a very musical—they're a very musical one, very musical guy, too.

He—he's—every so often, he does me out of a job, and I don't mind at all. He conducts Dido, I know.

Which I used to conduct years ago.

We will.

We never answered the question, though, to go back. You were talking about Handel, we talked about 17th and 18th-century composers as be—who were the great opera composers and who really sort of advanced the form? The question is, um, you know, I—I Monteverdi, I think, is a must, cuz he really did—here is a man of the theater. Um, Purcell in his own way, though not a lot of it is opera.

It's just such wonderful music. Um, Handel does when he—when he can.

Uh, things like the mad scene in Orlando is a wonderful, wonderful piece. But sometimes I think, you know, uh, the conventions can get the better of you. On the other hand, Hasse, whose music I hardly know, seems to be a wonderful composer, but I don't get anything from the operas as such, as opposed to someone like Joyce DiDonato doing a lovely album of arias, which I'm very happy to—to buy, in order so that I don't have to listen to the operas, [Laughs] cuz they—she's someone that is such a wonderful singer and she makes such a great case for the arias. I think Vivaldi's time may come, actually. Some of his operas are really terrific. I really like them a lot. Um, whether they're great operas as opposed to really fantastic music is, of course, another question. Um, you know, Mozart—as you say, Haydn—Haydn's music is wonderful, whether his operas are great—I—the only one I've ever done all the way through was Orlando Paladino, which I did think is tremendous fun. Um, great as opera? I'm not so sure. Musically, it's got fantastic moments. Um, Schubert, as you say, I—I happen to have a soft spot for one of them, but uh, you know, that's like some recipe of something that you loved as a child. I did actually, The Conspirators, we did at high school. So I was probably 15, so I got in there early. But, you know, I—I've never warmed, for example, to Fierrabras. Um, and—

Yeah. The other operas that I—I don't have a great deal of time for are what you might call the Faustian operas, where a guilt-ridden man is saved by a singing Hausfrau.

Yeah, you know, she sings top C, bakes her own cakes, makes her own clothes, and tries to save him in some way for kind of suburban domesticity, whereas before he's been going around the world on a boat feeling terrible. Um, I just don't buy it.

It's a great pleasure, Michael. We should keep this up, let's have regular chats.

Great pleasure.