An Interview with Composer Peter Knell
Voci’s December 2010 concerts will feature the premiere of “Passing,” a new work by Los Angeles composer Peter Knell. Voci commissioned the piece in memory of long-time Voci member Alison Howard, who passed away in August 2010. Alison selected him to compose the piece, having fallen in love with his work in spring 2009 when Voci performed “On a Mountain Path” – a series of Japanese haiku set to music. Alison also selected the text - from Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d.”
At age 40, Knell is already an internationally known composer of piano, orchestral, chamber and choral works, and has received awards in numerous national and international competitions. Voci singer and Board president Susan Sands sat down with Peter in November 2010 to learn more about him, and about the process he used in composing this special piece.
Susan: When did you first know that you wanted to go into music?
Peter: I was in a rock band starting in junior high school and studied piano in order to play keyboards. I also played electric bass. Toward the end of high school, I decided to study music in college. I thought, "I really should pay a classical instrument," so I took up double bass. When I got to college, I auditioned for the orchestra and got in, with the admonition that if anything was too difficult for me I should stay out of the way. For the first concert, we played Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Ravel's G major Piano Concerto, and Brahms' 4th symphony. It was while I was playing the Brahms that I knew this was what I wanted to do.
Susan: What was it about this experience of performing the Brahms?
Peter: The structure and scale of it! It was so powerful, passionate, expressive. And I was part of something bigger--the whole orchestra was doing it with me. At the same time, I realized I was way behind as a musician—I was only a passable pianist and didn’t know the classical tradition very well. So I spent my four years at Princeton as a music major studying the repertoire and listening a lot, and doing everything I could to become a musician. By the time I got to Juilliard I was definitely up to speed, and when I went to the University of Texas for a doctorate, I was well ahead of my peers in compositional craft and knowledge of the repertoire.
Susan: Who do you think were the most important influences on your composing?
Peter: Well, in terms of historical, canonical influences, Brahms continued to be my favorite composer and probably still is, though Bach and Beethoven are very important to me as well. As for developing my voice as a 20th and 21st Century composer, I was especially drawn to Sibelius, Ravel, Bartok, Shostakovich - also Debussy and Stravinsky. There are few late-Modernist composers I’m drawn to. There was a fork in the road in the 1950s where some composers, like Barber and Copeland, continued to write music more in conversation with the tradition, while others, such as John Cage or Milton Babbitt, Elliot Carter, Pierre Boulez, sought a break with the canon. By the 70s and 80s there were more composers who were seeking to reconnect with the audience and to an extent with the classical tradition, like Christopher Rouse, John Harbison, John Adams, Joan Tower, and Aaron Kernis who were influential in my development as a 21st-Century composer. Also Stephen Albert, from Julliard, was the one who encouraged me to study scores of the composers I really valued and to transcribe them for piano in order to learn where all the notes were and how to use them. He also encouraged me to apply to Juilliard, which I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.
Susan: That comes through in “Passing” - it’s not strange or alien like some contemporary music but much more accessible and quite melodic in places.
Peter: Yes, my music always retains a sense of coherence. My goal is not to confound my listeners. I want to take them on a journey they haven’t been on before but not leave them behind.
Susan: When you were sitting down to compose “Passing”, how did you approach this task? How did this particular piece take shape? Can you sketch out your creative process?
Peter: You know, in this case the occasion and the text and the ensemble were all given to me. That’s helpful because I usually spend 80 percent of time finding the text - so the nice thing here is the text was already chosen, and I could spend my time on the music. (How was it working with this particular text?) It is a beautiful and powerful text, but it also has particular challenges. One challenge is that it is circular, and it keeps returning to the same set of images. Also, I was asked to set the final section of a 16-section poem, and the proportions of the section are oriented to concluding the longer poem rather than being a balanced text on its own. Because of that, the climax of the section comes relatively early, and then it subsides for the rest of the poem. This created an interesting formal challenge, which will hopefully be successful in performance.
There are 3 large sections to the piece—clearly defined in the poem in 3 different stanzas. The first has a clear ABA structure with the initial emphasis on the word passing, followed by a description of the song of the bird. The bird’s song is described as diverse—low and wailing and bursting with joy. That’s really the high point of the piece, but it happens near the beginning. Then the poem goes back to passing, closing back down—a nice ending to the first section.
In the middle section of “Passing”, the song ceases and the poem steps outside of the rest of the poem and becomes more ecstatic. This is the one point when the music opens up into a major key and becomes brighter, describing the “lustrous moon with silver face in the night.” Here the text gave me an excuse to create a section of contrast.
The last section feels like a winding down. It was the hardest section to write because there is less contrast in the text - it all has the same tone. The final lines bring together all the images of the piece - the lilac, the star and the bird - and provide an excuse to bring back the opening music to close off the piece.
Because the theme of the poem is about death and the occasion for the commission is illness and death, a fairly muted setting was called for. I use a lot of the lower tessitura of the voices and minor key sonorities. It’s a contemplative piece. Another challenge was to write a piece for 3 treble voices which can carry an 11 minute segment. In other words, the range of pitch space and sonorities is somewhat constricted to carry variety, shape and contrast. Jude and I debated about whether to use strings or a cappella. I think the intimacy of a cappella voices best conveys the contemplative mood of the poem.
Susan: How do you like composing for voice versus other instruments?
Peter: I like both, but they are very different activities. As a composer of vocal music, I’m really reacting to a text, and when I have the right text, it will tell me what to do with the piece. I’m trying to bring the text to life and find its character and to interpret it. Stravinsky said the more restrictions you give yourself - like having a text - the more freedom you have. But I certainly wouldn’t want to write only from text, because I’m really interested in formal structure and instrumental virtuosity. Each one has its rewards. The text will create coherence, which frees up the music, but when you have a text you are constrained by the mood and images of the text. You are a servant and interpreter more than a master.
Susan: Do you compose in a variety of styles?
Peter: I think the goal of all classical composers is to define their own style. I have worked hard to do so. That is not to say that I have not been influenced by other composers and styles - I think it is impossible not to be. But I always synthesize those influences into my personal style.
Susan: What are your most memorable musical moments?
Peter: Performing the Brahms 4th Symphony in that first concert I was telling you about. And when I was a senior at Princeton, a viola sonata I had written was performed by some professional players - my first professional performance and my first real piece. The next big moment was an orchestral tone poem I called “…the weakening eye of day” which was performed in Hungary as a result of my winning a competition. It was performed by the Hungarian Radio Orchestra and televised. It was the first orchestral piece of mine I heard performed, which was a big thing because when you write for orchestra, you never know whether you’ll actually ever hear the piece.
Susan: Peter, you have a full time job managing real estate and private equity funds, and a wife (Becky) and two young children, Benjamin, age 8, and Rachel, age 6. How do you do it all? Literally, how do you fit it all into one day?
Peter: With difficulty! When I get home from work, I have dinner with my family, play with my kids, have downtime. Then I do my composing after everyone is asleep. I take it right out of my sleep. For example, for a 15 minute chamber or orchestra piece, I’ll spend 3 months sketching ideas, and then when I get to the final 4 to 6 weeks, I have to look at what I have and I have to start committing rather than just generating. When I’m in the sketching phase, I sketch between 11 and 1 or 2 in the morning. Then, during the intense composing period I’m writing from 12 until 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning - if needed 7 days a week. I sleep from 4 or 5 to 10 AM. (How do you manage to go on functioning?) I don’t know. It’s probably not the healthiest thing to do, but I have always been able to work long hours and function on little sleep. After finishing a piece, I’ll take off a few months and let myself recuperate before starting the next piece.
Susan: Do you come from a musical family?
Peter: Not at all…
Susan: How about your wife, Becky and the kids. Are they musical?
Peter: Becky certainly is. We met playing in the orchestra at Princeton (she played violin), and she is an excellent choral singer. Very good ears. My kids have not demonstrated a strong interest in music, though Rachel has just begun singing in chorus.
Susan: And when you`re not doing music or work or family...are there other things you really like to do?
Peter: Well, I am kind of a political junkie, and I read the news pretty intensely. And I play on adult soccer teams twice a week. One of these days I’ll have the opportunity to read for pleasure again, but probably not until the kids are older.
Susan: What is the next step for you? Any other projects you are working on?
Peter: I am working on a song cycle for a wonderful alto and violin duo in Germany - a husband-wife duo for whom I have composed a lot of music over the years. It is a cycle of water texts by Pablo Neruda to accompany paintings by the violinist’s father.
More about Peter Knell....
Composer Peter Knell (b. 1970), whose new work "Passing" is premiered in Voci's December 2010 concerts, has received awards in numerous national and international competitions, including First Prizes in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's 10th New Music Festival International Composers Competition, the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival/Louisville Orchestra Prize, and the Omaha Symphony Guild International New Music Competition, and Second Prizes in the Fourth International Witold Lutoslawski Composers Competition, the First International Composers' Competition "In Memoriam Zoltan Kodaly", and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's Young Composers Competition. He has also received a Fulbright Fellowship, a BMI Student Composer Award, two ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards, grants from the Paloheimo Foundation and Meet the Composer, and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation/Ying Quartet, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Utah Arts Festival, Pacific Serenades, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and Dale Warland Singers, among others.
Knell's music has been performed at the Aspen, Bowdoin, Chautauqua, June in Buffalo, Norfolk, Oregon Bach, Ernest Bloch, New Music North and MATA festivals, by ensembles such as the Hungarian Radio Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, Filharmonia de Stat "Transilvania", Winnipeg, Omaha, Richmond, Memphis, and Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestras, the Onyx String Quartet, Verdi Quartett, Southwest Chamber Music, Volti Chamber Chorus, Voci Women's Vocal Ensemble, counter)induction, and by soloists including James Dunham, Martin Chalifour, and the German alto Ingeborg Danz. It has been broadcast nationally in Russia, Canada, Hungary and Finland, as well as in several US cities. His "Seven Last Words", based on paintings of Rolf Stein, is available in a book/CD format from Valve-Hearts, Cologne. A compact disc featuring his orchestral work, "...the weakening eye of day" in a live performance by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, is available on the Artisjus label, and a compact disc featuring German pianist Susanne Kessel performing two of his Four Snapshots was released by OehmsClassics in February 2006. An upcoming CD of his complete piano music performed by Markus Pawlik is in process. His orchestral work LINES/ANGLES was the American selection for the ISCM World Music Days 2009 and was performed in September 2009 by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Knell holds degrees from Princeton University (BA), the Juilliard School (MM), and the University of Texas at Austin (DMA), and he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. His principal composition teachers have included Dan Welcher, Donald Grantham, and David Diamond. He is currently a freelance composer based in Los Angeles, and he served as Composer-in-Residence for the American Music Festival in Cluj, Romania, in November 2004.
Voci performed Knell's "On a Mountain Path", a setting of five Japanese haiku, in May 2009.
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