Olly Wilson, an American composer that will change how you hear music!

00:00:00
John Banther: I'm John Banther and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's, Evan Keeley, and we are exploring the life and music of American composer Olly Wilson. He passed away in 2018, but left behind a tremendous legacy. From his pioneer work in early electronic music, decades of teaching and important work in the field of musicology. We explore three of his works and show you what to listen for, and we look at what kind of teacher and person he was through his students. Be curious, think critically. That is what I hope people really come away with as we talk about Olly Wilson. It seems like that was the foundation of his work in music, not just in composing, but also as he explored music historically and his musicology work. And we're going to explore, Evan, aren't we? Three of his works and also some of his musicology work that might really change how we hear music.

00:01:03
Evan Keely: Really to understand Olly Wilson's music. You can just listen to it and appreciate it. He's very creative, really a fascinating composer, but the more you dig into his thinking, he had a lot to say and a lot of his students are still living. He died in 2018 and lots of folks wrote about him after he died as well. So we know a lot about how he thought he was a teacher for many years as we'll get into John. And he was thinking very deeply about music on a number of different levels, and it's really fascinating to listen to his music, to hear what he has to say and to integrate all that.

00:01:38
John Banther: And we're going to be reading from a couple of things and we'll put links on the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org, one of them from a student. As you mentioned, Trevor Weston wrote in New Music USA after Olly Wilson's death in 2018. Trevor Weston wrote this, " There is a tendency to separate morality and music instruction. Music instruction usually focuses on the notes or the historical facts. Wilson's lessons by contrast were holistic. After my first encounter with Olly Wilson, I realized that I had entered into an artist apprenticeship with a master artist. His teaching humanized the learning experience in numerous ways. Music composition lessons with Olly Wilson were humanistic. By that I mean he assessed my music by one, what I actually wrote, two, what I perceived to be its musical intention. Three, how an audience will perceive it, and four, and whether or not there was a disconnect between those three previous concerns. This may not seem so obviously humanistic, but connecting the human reaction to the music with the construction of the music and the musical concept was a unique approach to me."
Already, Evan, we're seeing so much from this student in terms of where Olly Wilson's coming from.

00:02:54
Evan Keely: Yeah, he's really thinking about music in terms not only just the theoretical relationship between different pitches and rhythms and so forth, but the social and the communal aspects of listening. And Olly Wilson was really thinking very deeply about the social and moral functions of music and not just the aesthetic qualities of it.

00:03:18
John Banther: And we're also going to learn about his studies of West African cultures and music. It's really interesting how it all comes together. But Evan, let's look at his early life. Where was he born? Where did he go to school?

00:03:31
Evan Keely: Olly Wilson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, September 7th, 1937. And when it comes to his studies, he went straight through. You and I were talking about this, John. He had a rather remarkable career the likes of which you don't see a lot of today. He graduated with his bachelor's from Washington University in St. Louis. He got a master's from the University of Illinois and he got a doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1964. Immediately after that, he starts teaching at Florida A&M and Oberlin Conservatory, which was by the way, the first to admit Black students. And in 1970, he starts to teach at the University of California Berkeley. He remained there until retiring in 2002.

00:04:19
John Banther: That is quite remarkable. Going right from your bachelor's through to your doctorate, walking into a teaching position, as you said, that is really hard to accomplish today. And a lot of his work is within the university, and I think it was Olly Wilson, maybe it was someone else, but I think it might've been him talking about how the university is the composer's patron today. You think of Beethoven's patrons who pay him to write the music that they like to hear in their own Concert halls and their own parlors. For composers today, a lot of that is the university.

00:04:51
Evan Keely: Yeah, no Prince Razumovsky's today. But yeah, that's an interesting point where where's really some of the most exciting music making happening. It's happening at institutions of higher learning.

00:05:02
John Banther: So we have a couple of works to mention as we talk about Wilson. The first is A City Called Heaven, and he also wrote extensive program notes on most of his music too. So we're going to be reading these to give you a better idea of the composer. So I want to read some of what he wrote for this piece. " The title of the composition is taken from a traditional Black American spiritual whose principle theme serves as the musical inspiration for the central slow movement of the peace." The chorus of the spiritual has the following text. " Sometimes I am tossed and driven, Lord, sometimes I don't know where to roam. I've heard of a city called heaven. I'm trying to make it my home." And we should say, Evan, there's no text within the actual peace. There's no singing.

00:05:46
Evan Keely: Yeah, this is not a vocal work. So he's evoking this spirit, this idea, but without words.

00:05:52
John Banther: And going into the first movement he writes, " The composition contains three movements and a fast, slow, fast arrangement, each of which is inspired by different genres of African American music transformed by my own contemporary musical language. The first movement is based on a reinterpretation of a blues riff, a short definitive, melodic motive, which in traditional practice is repeated against a changing harmonic background. The piece opens with a somewhat rhetorical statement of a riff whose inherent swing qualities gradually take on greater importance as the piece progresses. The movement utilizes a great deal of unison writing cross rhythms and blues- like melodic patterns that collectively create a composed realization of an abstract blues improvisation. After the first movement builds to a climax, there is a short contrasting harmonically static section before the return of an altered version of the opening blues riff." The program notes, they explain so much they, Evan, it makes me think he's also writing these in the same way that he's composing. He's thinking about the words he's writing, their effect, their intended effect, and then their actual effect. We can almost reconstruct the piece based off of what he wrote here.

00:07:10
Evan Keely: And you really see even in those program notes and as you listen to this music, the social implications, the historical implications of what he's doing, he's drawing on these old traditions but reinterpreting them in a new way. He's thinking about relationships of different communities and different strands of history. And of course, being a Black composer, there's a lot of pride and there's a lot of fascination and ingenuity with drawing on these different distinctive traditions in Black music traditions, especially Black American traditions, but not only American. We'll get into that more as we talk more, John. And he's really thinking very deeply about all these things. And again, as I was saying before, if you never read the program notes, you could still just enjoy and appreciate the music, but as you read what he has to say about the music, you would enjoy it on so many different levels and layers.

00:08:03
John Banther: One thing I like about this movement is I've never thought of a blues riff like this or really thought this was kind of possible. It sounds like the ensemble is the improvising instrument itself. It's almost like sculptures you see on the beach that's got like a million moving parts and it's just kind of crawling along in the wind. Yeah, I just love how the whole thing is an instrument itself and that gradual, the gradual swing quality coming out too is, I love how he does that.

00:08:31
Evan Keely: And there's various very technical things that he plays with in fascinating ways. So repetition, for example, is a very important component of the blues. I mean, think even the stereotype of the blues, kind of happens over and over again. So that's an essential element of the blues and it's congenial to Wilson's compositional style as well. He knows how to use repetition in interesting ways, and we really hear in this movement how he loves to take these short phrases, these sort of musical aphorisms, these terse bits of thematic material and repeats them. But he repeats them in different ways each time, and so we're propelled forward by this rediscovery of the familiar. He introduces an idea, we get the idea in our heads, and then he brings it back again and again. It's familiar, but it's different each time. So there's this potent use of repetition. Also, these triplet rhythms in this first movement really very reminiscent of the blues. A lot of blues is in this kind of triple time kind of rhythm, and he's really drawing on that in an interesting way.

00:09:50
John Banther: Okay, so let's go into the second movement. What did Olly Wilson write here?

00:09:53
Evan Keely: " The second movement seeks to evoke the character and sensibilities associated with the original spiritual in a new musical context. After a brief introduction featuring the clarinet, there ensues a series of short sections, which while sharing similar musical ideas contrast with each other in character, texture, and tempo, there gradually emerges an altered version of the first line of the spiritual stated cantabile in the viola and violin. This music is then commented upon, expanded and modified by the entire ensemble. In a broad sense, the entire movement is a contemporary reflection on the original spiritual." So it seems to me this introduction really explains, it gives us a roadmap of what we're hearing. There's this introduction, it's about two minutes, and then we get into the expositional discursive part of the movement with the violin and the viola, and then there's this kind of, as that continues, the flute and the clarinet exemplify this call and response idea that is so important to Wilson's music

00:11:11
John Banther: And the call and response. It's not just call and response. In some music where we hear of Gabrieli or even Tchaikovsky and Romeo and Juliet, some of that cross arguing in a piece, it happens on so many different levels and also in fragments as well.

00:11:28
Evan Keely: And these echoes that aren't quite echoes, that's another Wilsonian kind of quality where you have a response that's, you can tell it's a response, but it's also introducing something new. So it keeps our interest in that way.

00:11:51
John Banther: I like what he does at the end of this because we have this line that is tonally, it feels like we're kind of just floating along, floating in the air, but they're not random notes. And then the piano has these pedals, these low notes that just anchor and it feels like it holds the whole thing down. And then for the typical listener, for especially the first time listening, the piece, oh, the movement, it ends, it's over now. But then there is something else, a little tag where we have the opening two notes played again almost uncomfortably, that closes out the movement in a way that is familiar from centuries past, but also completely different in the way that it's coming out, I guess emotionally. It's very interesting. I wonder why he did that.

00:12:50
Evan Keely: Yeah, there's a sense of intentionality. And as we were saying earlier, John, this idea of repetition with variance, that's a real style, that's a real important component of Wilson's style.

00:13:06
John Banther: Looking at the last movement here is what Olly Wilson wrote for this. " The last movement, which opens with an aggressive percussion solo is dominated by virtuoso passages for the piano and the lower register and percussion. The basic musical gestures associated with these two prominent instruments are inspired by rhythmic dynamism of the African American music genre Boogie Woogie. The entire ensemble beginning with pizzicato strings, shares in the development of this basic musical material that leads to several episodes whose distinct musical ideas grow out of previous sections. Ultimately, a series of duets between the percussion and piano culminate in a riff- like ensemble statement that brings closure to the movement." When I first heard this, Evan, I didn't actually see the program notes for this third movement and had not thought of Boogie Woogie that style. But as you listen to this, you hear it in so many parts of this and in so many ways, very obvious, very much in the background. Maybe just a quick response to something. I love how he's doing that.

00:14:11
Evan Keely: And you were saying earlier, John, about the way the whole ensemble is like the improvising instrument, and that really there's a clarification of that here as we begin this final movement. Percussive writing even not just for percussion instruments, but percussive writing is something that's very important in Wilson's music. So we really hear that in this third and final movement. Obviously the percussion instruments come to the fore from the very start, but even the non- percussion instruments have that emphatic percussive quality in this movement. And it's a deliberate contrast from the two movements that preceded.
So movement one, you have this blues with this rollicking rhythm in three, call and response, second movement, you have the spiritual, you're quoting this Black spiritual, but there's also that meditative lyrical quality of what the spiritual evokes. And then in this third movement, the final movement, there's this percussive dynamic driving force, and you definitely hear the Boogie Woogie effect. I'm not sure I would've noticed it had I not read the program notes. But once, it's one of those things with Olly Wilson's music, once he points it out to you, you're like, how could I have not heard this?
He also talks about in an essay in 1983, he wrote an essay, Black Music as an Art Form, and he talks about the fusion of Western ideas, western musical ideas and African musical ideas. And one of the things he says is, " One is concerned here, not with music as an abstract object of art, but as an agent, which causes something to happen." So I think it's a very provocative comment. I'm wondering what is it that he's causing to happen, especially in this final movement. It does feel like it's an intended to affect some change or to make us move in some way.

00:16:08
John Banther: What you're getting to there is really explained in that essay you mentioned, Black Music as an Art Form. I highly recommend everyone read it. And what's great is it is, I mean it's from a scholar, it's from a journal, so it's very academic and it's writing, but I think anyone can read this and understand, just be patient. I'm reading and I find myself referring back to, oh wait, what was this on this page that he mentioned? How does it fit in with this? It's really wonderful.

00:16:35
Evan Keely: If you can follow the conversations on Classical Breakdown, you can certainly read that Olly Wilson essay and not get lost to the academia. It's definitely very intellectually rich, but it's not just intended for a very specific academic audience. It's something everyone can really appreciate and I highly recommend reading it.

00:16:53
John Banther: Right, and actually on that essay, we will jump into a little bit of that because a significant part of Olly Wilson's legacy is his musicology work. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971, and he studied language and music in West Africa. And again, just a couple of sentences from that student of his Trevor Weston who said, " A thorough discussion of West African culture. And the opening week of the course was followed by Olly Wilson explaining his six conceptual approaches to creating music that links Sub- Saharan West African music to African American music."
So we're going to go into these points now, in Trevor Weston's write- up of Wilson after he died, he mentions these two, but they, they're paraphrased. So we're going to the essay by Wilson for the full points here. The first one says this, " The approach to the organization of rhythm is based on the principle of rhythmic and implied metrical contrast. There is a tendency to create musical structures in which rhythmic clash or disagreement of accents is the ideal, cross rhythm and metrical ambiguity are the accepted and expected norm." For this, I'm thinking this is not just like, oh, when you have moments of rhythmic clash like in three against two, like in Tchaikovsky, but the entire structure of the music here invites the very idea, not just invites, but expects that there to be this creative expression in terms of rhythm and metrical contrast.

00:18:29
Evan Keely: And ambiguity. That's another thing which I find really fascinating, and as you listen to Wilson's music, there's that metrical ambiguity, but there's also ambiguity in other levels. It's music that makes you think, music that makes you curious.

00:18:44
John Banther: And it's not ambiguous in the way of, oh, here is a stormy ambiguous moment. Who knows what's going on. But rather it is something that can be in the entire work itself, not something like, oh, look at this weird thing here. What's the second point, Evan?

00:18:59
Evan Keely: " There is a tendency to approach singing or the playing of any instrument in a percussive manner, a manner in which qualitative stress accents are frequently used." So I was talking about this earlier in that third movement of A City Called Heaven and the use of percussive sounds in all of the instruments, and you really see that tendency in Wilson's music and his way of integrating sub- Saharan African music traditions and Black American music traditions. You really get a sense of him exploring that in a very deep way.

00:19:39
John Banther: And for musicians, this is not something you generally see pre- 20th century, like when I play Tchaikovsky or Bruckner or any of these composers. There's very few times where I am making a sound that is quite percussive and blasting in nature, but more contemporary music there is that. The third point he writes is, " There is a tendency to create musical forms in which antiphonal or call and response musical structures abound. These antiphonal structures frequently exist simultaneously on a number of different architectonic levels." On different levels. I think that's very important here because it's not just the obvious call and response in a Gabrieli work for brass that we play today, a canzona. Rather, it is kind of like the first point. It is the expected norm and it appears in so many different ways, not just the very obvious call and response, I think.

00:20:44
Evan Keely: Right, the ways we were talking about, for instance, repetition with variants or echoes that aren't quite echoes, a lot of that in Wilson's music.

00:20:52
John Banther: And what is our fourth point?

00:20:53
Evan Keely: " There is a tendency to create a high density of musical events within a relatively short musical timeframe, a tendency to fill up all of the musical space." I mean, that's a fascinating phrase. " Fill up all of the musical space." I read that like eight times. What does he mean by this? But you really hear it in his music, this idea that there's a lot going on, in a way. How do you do that as a composer that doesn't just overwhelm or confuse the listener? He's really thinking very deeply about that. And as a composer, as a teacher, as a musicologist in this humanistic way of approaching music that Trevor Weston writes about. He's really inviting us to think deeply about a lot that's going on in any given moment, filling the musical space and the ways in which that's an African musical idea, the way that Black American musical ideas. I'm really challenged and fascinated by that whole concept.

00:21:47
John Banther: I too read it a bunch of times because while music fills time and also a physical space that you're in, but a musical space is different or can be different than those things too. To think of it in relation to something else like an art, I think of 19th century Korean or Japanese paintings in which the background might be just almost like it looks like it's white and the emphasis is on the line and the action or the movement in the foreground. I think of that where you have this very focused point here compared to maybe a very detailed painting that's got, you're taking the paint all the way to the canvas with endless details.

00:22:29
Evan Keely: Yeah, yeah.

00:22:30
John Banther: The fifth point is this. " There is a common approach to music making in which kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound timbre in both vocal and instrumental music is sought after. This explains the common usage of a broad continuum of vocal sounds from speech to song. I refer to this tendency as the heterogeneous sound ideal tendency." Continuum, I think that's a point here where with the instruments in what you're exploring, you're exploring every aspect of it, not just the eight or 12 notes you can play.

00:23:08
Evan Keely: And this fifth point, to me, really is a good corollary to the fourth point, this idea of filling the musical space, filling it with what? Filling with the whole continuum of possibilities.

00:23:19
John Banther: If you think of string quartets, for example, if you think of Haydn string quartets and Mozart, a lot of them do sound very similar. Some might say they all kind of sound the same. There's a point to that in that it was a standardized form and everyone was writing for it. But that doesn't mean that you can't apply these same points to those instruments as well, because people do that as we hear today. So I think it exists on multiple levels and also in places where it's super standardized like a string quartet. Okay, Evan, what is our sixth and final point here?

00:23:58
Evan Keely: " There is a tendency to incorporate physical body motion as an integral part of the music making process." Wow. Again, this is a very provocative remark. Now, you could also see how this is a function in Western music, especially in the Baroque. So much of that as dance music, those suites that Bach wrote for instance. And a lot of the musical forms come from those dance styles. But even as this music of Wilson where we're just sitting at a concert hall listening to it, there's a sense of emotion, physical motion that goes with the music. And again, had I not read that, had I not read this essay in which Wilson is talking about this principle, I don't know that I would've thought about it on that level. But once I'm exposed to this idea and I listen to Olly Wilson's music, I can't unhear it. I can't un- feel it in my body as I'm feeling this sense of physical motion listening to his music.

00:24:59
John Banther: And I think it can encompass several different things like using your entire body in music. If we think of the Juba dances that are in Florence Price's symphonies, which comes from the Juba dance where you're using your whole body as a percussion instrument and getting all of this tension out.

00:25:13
Evan Keely: Yes.

00:25:15
John Banther: So these six points really come together in a way that I think Trevor Weston, his student, again, describes well, " I consider these concepts to be the Rosetta Stone of Black musical analysis. It is the key to understanding the organization of music in the African diaspora." And Evan, we're also talking about decades of research and teaching at universities. And we've been here for 10 minutes. So this is just a glimpse. We're not able to really explain all of that because I don't claim to know all of this stuff either that I can't really fully embody that Wilson's writing. I'm still learning too.

00:25:54
Evan Keely: Well, and bear in mind, he went to Africa. He got a Guggenheim in 1971. He went to Africa. He was there on the ground experiencing those relationships and hearing these sounds and seeing people's bodies in motion and integrating those experiences into his thinking and into his composing and into his teaching and into his scholarship. So sitting here having a podcast episode conversation about it is just the beginnings of an understanding. And as you say, John, you and I are both still learning, and I hope our listeners are also really interested in learning more about these really fascinating ideas.

00:26:30
John Banther: To put a point in, maybe an applicable way to think about these things is also thinking of the word jazzy. That is a word that thankfully is used a lot less these days, but that was thrown around a lot and still do hear it today. I've never heard someone use it dismissively about something. But when you're using it's often, it is very dismissive. It's used to describe music that's vaguely related to either Black American music. It's got some blue notes in it's jazzy. I'm doing jazz hands for everyone right now. So when I say that to mean, when I hear that word, let a notification in your brain go off, oh, hold on a second. Be curious and think critically for a second. What is the thing that is making this " jazzy"? Is it something like in the rhythm? Is it something harmonically? Is it the instruments being used?
And from that, you can think to the next point, well, is this a caricature or is this something authentic? Because I think it can go both ways there. And I think with that and thinking critically, you can start to appreciate this music even more. So these are things you can hear in his music, especially in a chamber work like we heard, A City Called Heaven, since the music is distilled into fewer parts. But we also hear it in his symphonies, one of which we'll hear a little bit later. But we have an electronic work to look at right after this.
Classical Breakdown. Your guide to classical music is brought to you by WETA Classical. Join us for the music anytime day or night at wetaclassical. org, where you'll also find educational resources like take note, the WETA Classical playlist and our blog Classical Score. Find all that and more at wetaclassical. org.
Okay, Evan, another thing to learn about Olly Wilson is that he was a pioneer in electronic music in the 1960s and the 1970s. And this is despite the fact that he only wrote a few works in electronic music, but some of them, they are still played today, even recently. We hear it multiple times on my Monday evening show, Front Row Washington. So one we're going to look at right now is called Sometimes, it's a work for tape and for singer. And Evan, this is when he actually did not write so much in terms of program notes, didn't he?

00:28:58
Evan Keely: Right? He said very little about this. This is a brief comment he made. " The electronic tape was prepared at the University of California Berkeley Electronic Music Studio. The recorded voice sounds on the tape were derived from the singing of William Brown, who passed away in 2004. Sometimes is dedicated to my parents who through love and patience taught me how to sing." So here's someone who is often in the habit of giving us very detailed descriptions of his music. And here he's maybe being a bit cryptic, almost. Giving us this very technical aspect to how the tape was created. And of course, he mentions his parents in that way that's very moving. But what's going on in this piece? And it's a genre. We don't really hear music that's written for something and tape in the 21st century. This was kind of a thing in that era, the sixties and seventies, using a pre- recorded track to go with a live performance. That was a real trend in that era.
So it could feel a little dated, but because Wilson's such an interesting composer, I think it stands the test of time, but it definitely sounds like it's music from another era. I don't say that dismissively. I hear Bach, and it sounds like another era because it is. But this is definitely a genre that we don't see a lot of now. And the way in which the tape is prepared has that certain period piece kind of quality to it. But boy, I just find this music really exciting and interesting.

00:30:28
John Banther: I would also love to say to Olly Wilson, maybe back then, or maybe like 10 years ago, you wrote an essay for your piece, A City Called Heaven. You gave me two sentences here for Sometimes. I need more here.

00:30:39
Evan Keely: More. Tell us more, please.

00:30:41
John Banther: But thankfully, you also found a video performance, which includes a score, which includes a lot of information that I guess the audience wouldn't see. But our audience I think would like to see in terms of there's a key, because as you hear the singer sing, it's not a typical singing. There's different notation for that and how it fits in with the tape. And also there's a physical aspect. They're moving around on stage.

00:31:04
Evan Keely: Moving around on stage, and doing things with the voice that aren't just singing. You'll hear the singer making these other sounds like these percussive sounds with the lips and the teeth. And it becomes almost like this otherworldly chant or something. And even the notation for the tape, I mean, you look at his handwritten score and there's just these, these squiggly lines and so forth that are just sort of a symbolic representation as a cue to the singer who is live while the tape is playing, just to be aware of what's going on there. But yeah, a lot of layers to this piece.
And again, as you were saying, John wishing that he had told us more, but even without the extensive program notes, you really get a sense of a lot of the musical principles that we were talking about, those six ideas in that essay, integrating African music and African American music. And a lot of those principles are at work in sometimes this idea of fragmentation, this idea of percussiveness, this idea of filling all of musical space. You have a lot of these principles at work. And as you listen to this piece and listen, think about those six principles, it's really becomes this whole experience that's really engaging.

00:32:26
John Banther: You're right, we hear so many of those points, especially the percussive aspects and using the full range of the human voice, all those points being brought out here. I highly recommend everyone listen to this. It's such an experience. And I'm also going to put a recording of something I heard last night on the radio, which I still listen to the radio, Paul Robeson singing, Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child, because that is the basis of the tune, of the piece, sometimes. And I heard that after I'd heard this several times, a specific arrangement that Paul Robeson was doing. It was so beautiful, and it made me appreciate this in different ways too.

00:33:11
Evan Keely: Wilson is great at fragmenting things. So even the title, Sometimes. Not, Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child, which is in a way, this piece is a meditation on that old spiritual. But he could have called it Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child. You hear all of those words through the course of the piece, but they're really broken up. There's a lot of repetition. Mother, mother, mother, mother is this one thing that happens at one point. A lot of these principles just really coming to the fore in this piece. And again, if you never read the essay, if you never knew anything about this person, you would just have this really interesting experience with this strange and compelling music. And the more you know about Wilson and what he's thinking and what his experiences are and what his mindset is, the more exciting and compelling that experience is.

00:34:01
John Banther: Yes. And I'm reminded again about something, one of his students, Trevor Weston said in the beginning, how Wilson would have him examine what he wrote. What was your intent? What is the actual effect? What is the audience response to that? And I think how does that come into play here? What are the questions that Wilson is asking or dealing with as he is writing something like this? And I keep saying his student, Trevor Weston. Trevor Weston is a grown man, much older than me. He's a composer. You can hear his music. He's not like 20 years old. I keep saying student. I feel like that's a little misleading.
And now we get to his Sinfonia, which he composed in 1984. And this is a work that I heard, it's the first work of his that I heard. It was about 20 years ago. I mean, I was really just getting started finishing high school. The Boston Symphony Orchestra had recorded it along with another symphony that I was playing, which is why I bought it, because you didn't have John Harbison's first symphony on Napster or Kazaa back in the two thousands. So I had the CD, but I wish I had someone or a podcast to tell me about this music because I just didn't quite get it. But now I get it so much more.
Oddly enough, Evan, we just said when sometimes we've got just a little mention of a program note here, he's got like an essay for his program note for the symphony. We can't even get into the whole thing. So just to grab onto one part of it that I think is good for us here, he writes, " The third movement is an attempt to capture the essence of a stylized dance. A dance whose fundamental nature as a derivative of traditional Afro- American blues gestures does not become apparent until the closing measures of the piece." Again, I'm thinking of the questions he would ask his students, Evan, and the intent, and I wonder what is his intent for the closing measures? This is like the opposite of a Haydn symphony where the fundamental part of it is at the beginning and then it all expands. Here we have a sinfonia, like a symphony, and then it's like at the end, oh yeah, here's the thing.

00:36:06
Evan Keely: And this reminds me too, of what Trevor Weston was writing about Wilson's teaching style as a composition teacher and inviting the student to think about what is your intent in terms of how the audience will receive this? And I think Wilson in this third movement is really thinking about that in terms of waiting until the end of to reveal the key to the puzzle as it were.

00:36:32
John Banther: And we'll also put on the show notes page, a link to the full program notes that he writes. It reads very academic, as we've said a couple of times. But again, when you read it, you read it slow. It will guide you through from beginning to end. But it's also nice to hear it and then read the program notes. I like doing that too.

00:36:58
Evan Keely: Yeah, I can appreciate too, John, what you were saying about hearing this piece for the first time as a teenager, and it isn't the most accessible music. I'll certainly agree with that. Maybe it has a certain esoteric quality. Maybe it was written in the early eighties, maybe that's a factor as well. I really like this music though. It's really challenging and inviting. And a lot of these principles we've been talking about, you can really hear in this third movement, for example, it talks about a fixed framework and a varied part plate or sung over that. This idea of repeated patterns, call and response. You really hear that in this movement. But again, reading his ideas really helps me to appreciate the music. Filling up all the musical space is definitely something that I'm contemplating as I'm listening to this Sinfonia.

00:37:48
John Banther: We chose these three pieces specifically because it runs the gamut. We have a chamber work, a work for solo voice with a tape, and then the full orchestra. But despite it all, you hear all of those things coming out as you said. Olly Wilson, he died in 2018. There is so much to explore in his music. Much has been recorded, much has not been recorded. So we're going to put some further things to listen to on the show notes page. But it's also good to search in YouTube. If you just type Olly Wilson music, you'll get a bunch of stuff that was either broadcast at one point or not officially released commercially that you can listen to.
But for me, Evan, the last thing I have on this composer is he makes me feel a certain way. And that is, it reminds me of when used to teach privately, if I had a student that was younger and they come in and they play their music, we've been working on maybe like a piece in band or orchestra, they play all the right notes, the dynamics, the crescendos, decrescendos, tempo rhythms, et cetera. And that's when I usually tell them, " Okay, great. Now we can get to some real work." And oftentimes it's either like, " Well, what are you talking about?" Or maybe they roll their eyes, I don't know. But then it's like how we do all of these things is the work. It's not just an even crescendo decrescendo. Every single time I would ask, " What's happening here? Who's playing the line here? That affects how you crescendo or do anything in your music."
So I say all that to say, after 20 years, it feels like I'm listening to Olly Wilson's music and he has his arms on my shoulder and then turns me around and then points over in the distance. Oh, hey, the line to the ride starts over there. I'm not even on the music ride yet. He makes me think.

00:39:31
Evan Keely: Yeah, he makes you think, and he really makes me think about relationships. This whole question of history, this question of geography and human migrations, human relationships, human communities over time and over space. He was thinking about that very deeply in writing about it, in writing prose about it, and teaching about it and composing music about it. And this whole question of the thinking deeply about the audience. We want the audience to have a physical experience. We want them to have an intellectual experience and not just an oral experience of listening, but it's a whole body experience, and it's an experience that encompasses time and space. And Olly Wilson is a composer who was thinking about that in a very creative way. There's an intellectual rigor to his approach. And there's also a profound, Trevor Weston talks about his humanistic approach, and you really feel that and hear it and experience it, reading his prose, thinking about his teaching, and of course, above all, listening to his music.

00:40:36
John Banther: Beautifully said. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to classicalbreakdown@weta. org. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.