Interview by Robert Schulslaper on the release of Keypunch, keyboard music for solo and four-hands by composers John McDonald, Ryan Vigil, and David Claman

Fanfare Magazine, December 19, 2014.

Although John McDonald likes to describe himself as “a composer who tries to play the piano and a pianist who tries to compose,” the Fanfare reviews he’s garnered testify that he’s equally accomplished in both areas (see David DeBoor Canfield, The Violin Music Music of John McDonald, Fanfare 37:3, for starters). Furthermore, according to two of his former students, Ryan Vigil and David Claman, he’s an exceptional teacher, innovative, imaginative, and supportive.

Today, Vigil and Claman are established composers and teachers in their own right, who, along with their former mentor, have released a new CD, Keypunch, featuring their mingled talents.

Echoing the tripartite nature of their collaboration, the following interview might be read as a trio sonata of sorts, with John McDonald’s  “theme and variations” followed by Vigil and Claman’s “continuo” commentary. 

Q: Would it be fair to assume that as a teacher of composition, one of your aims would be to allow students to find their own way while simultaneously functioning as a more experienced guide?

A: Yes, I agree that the primary goal in “teaching” a composer is to identify a path to walk that is traveled only by that person. Each individual route is different, though composers you might think would never meet often find intersecting paths. Disparate aesthetic stances share similar concerns more often than one might think. So we all can find things we have in common.

I talk pretty readily and freely with my students about what I’m working on and my own compositional problems/concerns. Usually there’s something that applies to what they are trying to accomplish. In this sense, the “more experienced guide” part of your question comes into play. I also perform in my students’ compositions as a pianist, which allows me to know their work from the inside—from a player’s point of view. Practical solutions to problems can be directly addressed once a piece or excerpt is ready for rehearsal. We also try to study “workshop-style”—bringing performers into lessons and seminars as part of the regular work flow.

I try to teach by example by keeping my own ideas alive (composing all the time) and, as I’ve said, by committing to performing everything that my current students write. In short, I hope to model the behavior of a working, thinking musician.

Q: Do you assign exercises to improve their counterpoint, knowledge of harmony, etc, all the traditional craft that a composer supposedly needs? Since certain trends in contemporary music seem to want to dispense with many of the “givens,” i.e. melody, rhythm, harmony, etc. do you think that such “foundational” studies are still necessary?

A: I find that I am making up “assignments” (we could call them “commissions,” but they’re just for students) all the time. And in a sense, every study is foundational—especially if we’re trying something new, which I hope we always are. I remember that when David Claman began studying with me years ago (1987, I think), he sought both compositional and keyboard skills. So we set about “teaching” him piano by having him write a book of music to challenge and move forward his own piano chops. I still have that book of music in my score collection, and have given some of the pieces to other students to play. I recall a number of canons and some rhythmic experiments among the entries in that early Claman album. Similarly, around the same time, I was serving as one of Ryan Vigil’s first piano teachers at the Rivers Conservatory (Massachusetts). He was eight at the time (1986-87, I think), and I recall sending him home one day with a plastic bag containing some blobs of Mortite weather-stripping to use as mutes on piano strings; I had written him a couple of “Mortite studies” to ignite his interest in unusual sonorities and novel ways of thinking about playing an instrument. I think it may have worked, given the ways his music experiments nowadays…

I try to attend to the things that “traditional craft” concerns itself with. There is no substitute for purposeful, aware practice (yes: practicing composing regularly and often is vital to fluency, and can be very different from “making pieces”). But I am not fond of the way most “traditional” exercises are construed. Every “assignment” or “exercise” must be compelling even if small; I believe that any project is real work, not just a tryout that needn’t stand on its own. Every piece we make is “real music.” And we perform it fearlessly. I like to think of it as applied teaching in the best possible sense.

Q: Following on from the last question, do you ask students to write fugues, sonatas, or anything else with a specific form? What are you thoughts on teaching orchestration or extended instrumental technique?

A: I have taught via model composition, and have carried similar approaches into my teaching of instrumentation/orchestration. One of my favorite courses to teach is a “theory principles” topic that I teach through composition projects and analysis of anthologized examples. A Mozart Minuet (model K.355); a set of four Schubert dances (many touching 16-bar examples); a Chopin Mazurka/Paganini Caprice or hybrid of these; a Schumann song (can be set in any language; and a choice of something Grieg-like, Janacek-like, Bartok-like, or Scriabin-like. When teaching this way, I am always more interested in what aspects of each composer’s methods the student takes to be “like” the model(s) than whether or not the student’s response sounds markedly like Mozart or Janacek. Inevitably, if the student understands and internalizes something from the compositional example, their own original touches hang out very clearly. And without exception, they’ve learned some compelling ways to travel from point A to point B.

I fully encourage private students to devise specific forms of their own that they think work for their ideas. I have often turned in my own work to number series, myriad syllabic poetry forms and rhyming conceits (refrains, really), and forms borrowed/translated to musical techniques from visual art before attempting to create my own “forms” that do not rely on but often recall sonata-like habits, imitative forms (echoes, rounds, what have you).

Similarly, when wrestling with issues of instrumentation and orchestration, models can be superb tools. Even better is to hear a model played live next to one’s own attempt to do something similar. But with every working success, I like to ask if there might have been six to eight other ways to highlight the same ideas, but even more uniquely or unexpectedly. One of my favorite recent works for study in this regard is Stravinsky’s Eight Instrumental Miniatures, his 1962 chamber orchestra version of the little piano collection Les Cinq Doigts from 1921. His instrumental characterizations of these piano pieces are never predictable; they charmingly and precisely turn the original ideas on their heads without hurting them.

I am interested in extended techniques that work. The unreliable ones are frustrating. I am fortunate to know a number of players in the Boston area who work on pushing the capabilities of their instruments, so a gorgeous soft multi-phonic, a strange instrumental pairing, an unidiomatic register, or an electronic/acoustic sleight-of-hand would all fascinate me and probably get the compositional imagination going…

Finally, in the context of specific forms or outmoded styles, I mention “Influences Across Time,” an evolving recital notion that I have presented in several iterations over the years. About fifteen years back, I became enamored of hearing pre-Baroque keyboard works of all kinds played on the piano—old English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish organ, clavichord, and harpsichord works by composers like Tomkins, Bull, Gibbons, Couperin, Scheidt, Froberger, Frescobaldi, Cabezon, Cabanilles, and more. I have built piano solo programs on which I play my own works before, after, or between their Tudor or Renaissance inspirations. These “old” works are often astonishingly modernist, and their forms and procedures pre-date and pre-figure fugal technique, sonata forms, etc.—the ways of writing that our prevailing musical educational institutions in the USA identify as core. To me, core repertory is much larger and more full of quirks and curiosities than most of us realize. When I play my own responses to some of the ideas and figures in these stimulating, seemingly timeless pieces, one is forced to ask: which is old, which is new?

Q: There are those who say that composition can’t be taught: Would you agree?

A: Composing is the only thing I am interested in teaching. Building something from the ground up is absolutely the best way to learn how music can work—what it might be able to do. Developing the skills needed to build something you imagine simply must happen, and the “teacher” is challenged to be able to enable the development of whichever skills are deficient for the needs of what’s being built. So yes—not only can it be taught, it needs to be thought about much more in violin lessons, orchestral rehearsals, chamber music coaching, etc. (all of which could be compositions lessons in their own right). I see every musical act as closely related to composing, and many musicians compose without realizing they’re doing it.

On the other hand, I understand why some musicians might claim that composition cannot be taught. You can’t tell someone what to express, but once they articulate to you what they want, you can help them learn how to say it. In other words, one can teach craft in the profound sense, but you can’t falsely impose or layer too much onto the innate impulses that made a student want to compose in the first place—you can merely try to understand and help shape those impulses.

Q: Have you had students whose style you found unappealing? If so, how do you reconcile your own preferences with your obligation to teach or would you just not accept them as students?

A: Yes, I have taught many students whose “styles” I didn’t relate to and whose goals or habits I didn’t or couldn’t understand. But that’s OK. I’ve never tried to teach my own preferences, though I am up front about what they are insofar as I am aware of them. That awareness is important, but I think composers are notoriously weak at hearing their own tendencies but are much better at flagging them in other peoples’ music. I say this in order to indicate that we have to reserve judgment in almost every case. I’ve thought I disliked things that I then did an about-face with later, hearing something newly touching in what had previously been blank for me. This happens with students and young composers all the time as well. Just when I think someone might have nothing to say, they hit it. And just when I might think a student is reaching a new plateau of strength, a crisis can ensue. You just never know. We have to keep working.

I would enjoy it if a student showed me something new that music could be. So if I have a sense that a prospective student is devoted and interesting, I would hope to work with them even if I didn’t “like” their pieces.

Q: In your own music, do you write in different styles or do you believe that your language is more or less consistent throughout your body of work?

A: I like to think my “language” is consistent and that it would come off as understandably “mine” for listeners who might hear something from the 1980s next to something written last evening. I am going to hear a performance of some viola/cello duets I wrote in 1988 at the end of next week; I’m curious how they’ll strike me after so long.

In fact, I think I decided at some relatively early point in my working life that my habits were in fact TOO consistent. I am prolific (never quite get it right; gotta keep trying), so it’s easy to write the same piece again and again. So I consciously try to change something up every time—to tinker with the stylistic surface of new projects so they might accommodate more and more new musical states. I think of Beethoven in this regard; there are so many varied musical states of being accomplished in his music that so few Beethoven pieces “sound the same.”

I don’t want to rewrite the same thing again and again.

Q: Teachers often say they learn from their students: has that been your experience?

A: Absolutely. The people who come to the studio teach me the most and inspire more of my own ideas than any other source. The Keypunch album is a pleasurable case in point, I think.

Q: Speaking of Keypunch, both Ryan Vigil and David Claman (your fellow performers) studied composition with you in the past. What was their writing like then compared to what it is now? Can you hear echoes of your “voice” in their works? Are you pleased with their progress? Would you like to engage in future collaborations? Also, when and how did you meet each one?

A: As mentioned above, I became Ryan Vigil’s childhood piano teacher. He began composing precociously later, working with Marti Epstein through high school. After completing his undergraduate degree at Manhattan School of Music, he came to Tufts for his Master of Arts and studied with me again, as a mature and clear-minded composer this time. David sought me out at the Longy School in the 80s—a bass guitar player working as a carpenter looking to compose seriously after having studied Indian classical music (the vina) at Wesleyan and in India. He remains probably the quickest study I have ever taught; he was so primed to compose that his very first conscious creations were fully formed and deeply considered.

Both David and Ryan possessed the sensibilities that they still show when they worked with me as students. Funny how that works. The most noticeable development is how far they have taken their respective sensibilities into new media and have found new shapes and sizes—David has continually embraced electronic media as well as the forms, procedures, and values of classical Indian music, blending these interests to write unique chamber music; Ryan has taken a uniquely perceptive stance that I might describe as “modernist and pastoral”—extremes of time span (he has an extraordinary 98-minute untitled solo piano work, and many other large canvases in addition to miniatures) and comparatively open performance instructions (sometimes independent parts simply run at the same time in the same room but are not synchronized) couple to make manifest the observations of an awestruck bystander (i.e. Ryan the composer). Needless to say, I admire both artists and don’t really know how studying with me made any difference. I don’t hear my voice in their music; I hear David and Ryan themselves. I would love to collaborate again on another recording project, and we cook up performances together now and then. I would be delighted to perform new music by either composer, and to record it—as long as we can work with recording engineer Joel Gordon again. Joel really made this collaboration a quartet—he is every bit the musician that any of the three of us are.

Q: Where did the idea for Keypunch originate? Was the music written for the CD or was some of it already composed? Prior to this, had you ever played piano (or anything else) with either of the two composers?

A: The origin of the “Keypunch” project traces itself back to the Tufts premiere of Claman’s UnPact, which Ryan and I commissioned from David through Tufts. David wrote it with Ryan and me in mind; it was his first interaction with Ryan, but he knew me well as a player from long ago. He wrote a super-active piece for us and unbeknownst to any of us, had created the centerpiece for the present recording; it is the biggest and perhaps most urbane of the contributions to Keypunch.

None of the pieces was originally conceived with the recording project in mind, but we built the CD program together and selected works that seemed to relate by contrast and by some shared sensibility. I think Ryan’s untitled duets and solo Haiku and Meditation act as placid anchors to the program. David’s duet is already described above, and his much earlier solo was written specifically for me to perform in the last few weeks of our time together at Longy; it is outgoing and visceral and serves as a clear precursor to UnPact. My initial little duet was also written for Ryan; we premiered it at a Tufts Parents Weekend performance in 2002. Disappearances was composed for composer/pianist Marti Epstein, who is like the absent influence over much of the music on the album. I have known and worked with her for over thirty years, and she mentored Ryan during a long formative compositional phase. My Duettino uses some quick quoting of Grieg, Bizet, and Brahms— three composers whose works were being performed on the recital I intended the piece for.

The recording process was a reunion of sorts, and working with Engineer Joel Gordon brought the three of us together to edit and create a collective sound world for the entire album. I feel like our three musical personalities complement one another and add up to something with more musical dimensions than any one of us could achieve alone.

Ryan Vigil

Q: When did you meet Mr. McDonald? How would you describe the music you were writing before then? In what ways did it change under his tutelage (if it did)?

A: John was my first proper composition teacher. I began working with him when I was eight years old (he also taught me piano and theory). Before that time, I had been writing things down as they came to me, but with no real guidance.  John introduced me to basic concepts, like how to *think* about things like harmony, rhythm, melody, as aspects of what I was doing. He also introduced me to composers and music that was new to me, sending me home one time with a pack of weather stripping with which to prepare the piano that lived in my family’s dining room; composing a piece for me called Out of Place, that had me jumping all over the keyboard playing unexpected notes in unexpected registers. John was imaginative, energetic, and inspiring.  Most of all, he was wonderfully encouraging.

When John took up a full-time teaching position at Tufts I moved on to another composition teacher (Marti Epstein), who was very important to me as well.  After college, I went to Tufts to pursue a master’s degree, thus working with John for a second time, rather close to the end, as opposed to the beginning of my career as a music student.  The experience was remarkably the same, except that I was different. I was, obviously, much more fully-formed; but the energy, enthusiasm, and support I received from John were what they were before.  Our discussions were, I hope, somewhat more musically and aesthetically sophisticated, but the open atmosphere, inspiration, encouragement, and impeccable musicianship John cultivated remained at the core of the experience. I would not say that my music changed remarkably, except to say that it was on a trajectory, and John helped it along—before that time it had settled into a generally soft, reflective place, and that is where it has largely remained.

Q: Do you find yourself thinking of his approach to teaching when working with your own students?

A: One thing that John does with his students is share with them what he is doing.  He does not simply sit back and critique what is put before him; the experience is more interactive. Something he sees in what you’re doing reminds him of something he’s doing, or something he recently did, and he shows you.  John lets the students into the workshop, as it were, creating an environment where composing is simply “what we do,” but thoughtfully discussing the motivations, intentions, and techniques that lie behind his own working process, thus inviting the student to be reflective about those things in terms of his or her own work. I do some of that with my students. Mostly, John is an untiring advocate for his students, and that is the main thing I take with me into my own teaching.

Q: Were your contributions to the CD written before the collaborative idea was broached or were they specifically composed for this project?

A: My pieces on this CD were simply written because I wanted to write them, I had no specific notion of a collaboration with John and David. These were written during or after my second period of study with John (which was from 2002-2004), so some distant idea of John’s pianistic personality might have lain deeply in the background of my thought. One of the four-hand pieces was specifically for him and another former teacher (Marti, mentioned above), but as far as the content of the piece is concerned, it is simply what I felt like writing.

Q: Would you like to say something about Keypunch?

A: I love all the music on this CD; John’s contributions are, as always, incredibly musical, witty, literary, vibrant, cogent, and strongly felt. His music is unique, and possesses an unusual immediacy and intensity —unusual because, unlike much music, which confronts the listener, it has hidden depths that open up as soon as you enter in.  David’s Unpact is one of my favorite pieces. I have a special relationship with it, of course, because I’ve performed it. A wonderful experience occurred when working on this piece: practicing my individual part, I found it intriguing, but a bit beguiling; then, when John and I put our parts together there was an utter revelation; I was not unaware of John’s part throughout the period of learning my part (of course, I studied the whole composition); but when the two parts were put together a new and unexpected level of physicality was created which was truly moving. The piece is rocky, rickety, and uniquely lyrical; it breathes and flows, and gradually comes to a peaceful halt: everything is out in the open, and there is nothing more to be done.

I always worry a bit about placing my music alongside music by other composers.  It does not necessarily get along well with others. My music cultivates a very intimate and quiet musical space, which, on the one hand can seem violated by different music around it, and on the other can denature that music, or place it in a confining or awkward context. Because John and David write quite different music from each other as well as myself, I think the grouping actually “works” insofar as each piece is its own entity, and a constellation of connections and contrasts emerges over the course of the entire program.

David Claman

Q: When did you meet Mr. McDonald? How would you describe the sort of music you were writing before then? In what ways did it change under his tutelage (if it did)?

A: I met John McDonald in 1988 while I was studying solfège and harmony at The Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was twenty-nine years old. I’d been involved in music for many years but had not written much music. I had played horn in high school, and studied the classical music of South India in college and in India. After college, I’d played electric bass in rock bands and arranged and written a few songs. Composition lessons with John opened up a new world of creativity and musical expression for me. His extraordinary musicianship and ear for complex sonorities were near-revelatory for me, and his enthusiasm and generosity were inspiring.

 Q: Do you find yourself thinking of his approach to teaching when working with your own students?

 A: I do not teach composition at my college. I do, however, teach theory, orchestration, and electronic music. There are some creative assignments and undoubtedly I bring some of his approach to bear. John was invariably encouraging and I am similarly supportive of my students’ creative efforts. Too much criticism in the early stages of creativity is generally not helpful. John was also good at “cutting to the chase” when looking at my compositions; focusing in on the essential issues in a piece. So I try to do the same.

Q: Were your contributions to Keypunch written before the collaborative idea was broached or were they specifically composed for this project?

A: Both of my pieces were written before the idea of the CD took shape. Dedication: Thanks John was written in 1990 for John as a parting gift before I went off to Graduate School in Colorado. Twelve years later, in 2002, John, Ryan, and Tufts University commissioned Unpact after John and Ryan had formed a four-hand duo and began performing together. They premiered Unpact along with several of their pieces, so I guess the CD grew out of their performances as a duo.

Q: Would care to comment on the music from Keypunch? 

A: One of the things I like about the music on the CD is how different the styles of the three composers are. In addition, there’s a kind of synergy that can be achieved by two musicians who have known each other and worked together for years. John and Ryan’s ensemble playing is simultaneously loose and precise and thus a joy to listen to. Also, hats off to Joel Gordon, our recording engineer, on the amazing job he did recording and mastering the tracks: The sound of the piano is just fantastic.