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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2017
In 2002 Christian Wolff was a guest composer at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and during the course of the festival he was interviewed by Christopher Fox and by James Gardner. Fox's interview took place before an audience in the Lawrence Batley Theatre on 25 November; Gardner's interview was recorded in private in the George Hotel, Huddersfield on 27 November, and edited excerpts from that recording were subsequently used in a programme produced by Radio New Zealand. The conversation presented here has been compiled by James Gardner from his transcriptions of the two interviews and presents a wide-ranging discussion of Wolff's musical preoccupations across every phase of his compositional career, from the early piano pieces of the 1950s, to his involvement with indeterminacy in the 1960s, to the political concerns evident in his music after 1970, to the works of the last three decades in which indeterminate and determinate methods of composition are combined.
1 György Kurtág, ‘oblivion, sweet oblivion’, from … pas à pas – nulle part …, Op. 36 (1993–98).
2 Christian Wolff, John, David (1993, 1997–98).
3 Christian Wolff, Peace March 8 (2002).
4 Christian Wolff, Exercise 26 (Snare Drum Peace March) and Exercise 27 (Snare Drum Peace March), both from 1988.
5 ‘The Loudest Silence: John Cage's 4′33″’ and ‘What Followed Silence: John Cage after 4′33″’, first broadcast by Radio NZ Concert on 29 August 2002 and 13 November 2002 respectively.
6 In fact, King Christian X did not parade with a Star of David. Unlike other countries under Nazi rule, Danish Jews were not forced to wear an identification mark. He was, however, outspoken in his support for the Jewish communities in Denmark. For more details, see the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008043.
7 Christian Wolff, String Quartet Exercises out of Songs (1974–76).
8 Barbara Koppel, Harlan County USA (1976).
9 John Coltrane, Alabama (1963), written as an elegy for the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 15 September 1963.
10 Tilbury, John, Wolff, Christian and Prévost, Eddie, Christian Wolff: Early Piano Music (1951–1961) (Matchless MRCD51, 2002)Google Scholar.
11 Steffen Schleiermacher, Christian Wolff: Early Piano Pieces (hat[now]ART 141, 2008).
12 John Cage, String Quartet in Four Parts (1949–50).
13 John Cage, Six Melodies (1950).
14 Wolff, Christian, Cues: Writings & Conversations/Hinweise: Schriften und Gespräche (Cologne: Edition MusikTexte, 1998)Google Scholar.
15 Christian Wolff, Apartment House Exercise (2002).
16 Christian Wolff, Six Melodies Variation (1993).
17 Christian Wolff, For Piano I (1952) and For Prepared Piano (1951).
18 Wolff, Cues: Writings & Conversations.
19 In ‘“I can't shake Webern's influence”’, an interview by Gerald Gable in which Wolff is asked to elucidate a comment he made in his article ‘Fragments to Make Up an Interview’: ‘In the article you wrote, “the writing about music that I like best … communicates a very strong sense of the dignity of music partly by refusing to treat it as an art”. Why should music not be treated as an art form? I think I wrote that a bit provocatively! I was writing about an idea of Cage's, which was interestingly transformed by Cardew, of not requiring a separation between art and the rest of what we do. In other words, by regarding music as an art, it is regarded as something which is specially privileged. What is distinctive about Cage's dealing with music is that he refuses to do that’. Ibid., p. 156.
20 Sonic Youth, Goodbye 20th Century (Sonic Youth Records SYR 4, 1999).