JAVS Spring 2013

NS : And you were great, though. Nico, 100% when we started working together, was like, “Okay, so explain to me, so you’re tuned in fifths, so each one of your fingers is like a whole step or a half step,” and then he made a ruler with all the strings written on it and physically figured out how to do it.

NS : Exactly. And so ultimately that was the relation ship that we developed where, if something literally, really was not doable, I would have a conversation with Nico about [how] I understood why he wrote that, because it always had some musical function, and [I would suggest] some things I thought might solve that. And sometimes he would pick one of those and sometimes he wouldn’t. And then, you know, there were other things that were like, “This sucks, but I learned it,” and he’s like, “Great!”

NM : yeah, because I was anxious about things being idiomatic, but not too idiomatic.

NS : Nico has a melodic writing style that is often based on fifths—fifth relationships, which can suck for string instruments because fifths are played by the same finger. However, you know what it doesn’t suck as much as? Is like, up-bow staccato. I mean, there are so many things that are hard on the violin, viola, and cello . . . that thing which people are like, “This is not idiomatic,” is still doable. NM : you can make stuff unidiomatic, but it has to come not from an antagonistic relationship between composer and player, it has to come from, “I write something that musically I know needs to be there,” and not asking for it just to be a pain.

NM : Like Étude 1a (ex. 2) is like that—

NS : It sucks, but I totally learned it, and now I can play it and it’s great.

AO : Xenakis talked about complexity and how he tried to write music that was on the verge of the impossible—in the hopes that the performer would then become hyper-involved as a creative problem solver in the piece, which also forces them into more of a compositional role as they try to figure out how idiomatically things are working . . .

Example 2. Nico Muhly, Étude 1a , one measure before figure 90.

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