I met the composer Christian Wolff for this interview some time ago in Hamburg, Germany. There were a few other people in the roomâfrom the festival klub katarakt, which had a commissioned a new work from himâand I asked Wolff if he felt like performing an impromptu version of his prose piece âCrazy Mad Love.â He said, âIsnât it kind of complicated, actually, do you really want to do this?â and laughed. We got down to business.
VAN: Looking through your âProse Collectionâ pieces, I noticed that the instructions are often very wittyâone of the lines in âSticksâ is âAvoid fires, unless they serve some practical purposeââbut reading elsewhere about your work and your philosophy of composition, youâve said generally that the composer himself shouldnât go too much into the work. Isnât the wit in the âProse Collectionâ a good example of why the composer should put himself in the work?
Christian Wolff: The composer is going to be there no matter what. Thereâs no avoiding that. I think originally, when I startedâI mean, I wasnât the only one talking this wayâwe were reacting against the notion of artistsâ self expression. Thatâs really not very interesting when you get right down to it. You have to be really interesting to have that work. It seems to me that art has more facets than that, and that is were the notion comes from. The idea of artistsâ self expression is a 19th century, Romantic idea. When I was growing up, that was the assumption, and it still is. It seems very limiting, put it that way.
An oft-cited part of your biography is that you were a professor of classics. What are some of your favorite works?
Greek literature, mostly. I specialized in Greek tragedy. Euripides, in particular. But almost any Greek literature more or less up through Homer. Itâs just all great stuff, so I just really liked being involved with it.
And do you think that had any effect on your music at all, or was it completely separate?
I think everything has some effect. Not that I noticed, put it that way. I thought of it as a totally different activity. There am I doing this ancient stuff, and here I am doing new music, right? And yet there are sort of funny connections. One of them that I at one point realized was that I liked to teach a lotâthatâs how I got into being an academic. And then it occurred to me that my music has a very didactic character to it, in the sense that you engage with it. Itâs not just a matter of reproducing a score: you have to learn about how that score works, how music works. So thatâs kind of abstract, but at the level of teaching, thereâs a connection there.
The amazing thing about the very old stuff is that it still means something. Thereâs something there thatâs really very powerful. And that attracts me. I donât know if I should say it, but I would like my music to have the kind of durability that the old stuff has.

Do you every think about ancient Greek music? Itâs the subject of a lot of research.
I avoided it for a very long time. Because we donât know that much about it. The part that would have interested me is the music that would have accompanied the early poetry, and also the plays. But itâs mostly guesswork. Thereâs a lot of Greek music theory, but itâs about 100 years later, and itâs just, I find, totally indigestible and unreadable, just awful stuff. [Laughs.]
Do you feel like your day job complimented or interfered with your compositional work?
It interfered. I mean, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that I had to earn a living. I was going to have a family. Even now I couldnât get by on the music. Forget it. So I had to do something else. And the trick was to find something that I liked to do; and I liked to teach, I got motivated already in college. I went to Harvard, so there were very eminent people teaching me, and a lot of them didnât teach very well. I could do better than that. Itâs a good thing if your alternative work is something you enjoy doing. And then the music you do as best you can.
It came with support from the very start, because of Cage, who organized concerts in New York, so my music was actually performed from a very early period. But not very often. Then by the time I was out of New York, I had to do it all myself. But as far as doing the two things simultaneously, there would be times when I had to publish an article on something Greek, and then someone said, âWeâre doing a concert, could you make us a new piece?â No, I canât. I gotta do this other stuff. And the other thing is, I almost blew my academic life, because I didnât do enough articles to get promoted. It was a bit of a juggling act.
You had a period where you were writing some very political music, reacting to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the feminist movement. Are you still writing political music, related to the issues that weâre having today?
If I get a chance. My politics havenât changed at all. My music has changed. I mean, there was a fairly short time, where I felt, in the 1970s, and I wasnât alone, that everything I did should have some political connection. That every piece should have some explicit political dimension to it. You can do that for just so long and then things change.
As a Vermonter, what do you think of Bernie Sanders?
Heâs absolutely great!
Piano was your first instrument, but you stopped practicing seriously as a teenager. Do you play now?
Yeah. My wife likes to hear the piano being played. We have a wonderful piano which comes actually through her family, itâs a 1887 Steinway. We finally had to have it rebuilt, but still, itâs just a gorgeous instrument. It only comes up to high A, it doesnât go to high C. And she has memories of her mother playing it, so she likes me to play. But I only play old music on it.
What kind of music do you play? Stravinsky always used to read through Bach.
Yeah, mostly Bach. [Laughs.] Itâs quite playable, my technique will just about, maybe not at top speed⊠the Fugues [from the âWell-Tempered Clavierâ] are interesting to play.
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In an article for a Dartmouth celebration, Alex Ross called you a kind of âhyper-radicalized Brahms.â
Thatâs kind of a riff: My father actually met Brahms, when he was about eight years old. So there is a Brahms connection, and Ross knew that; thatâs what heâs riffing off of.
You once described a concert of Cageâs that you saw where the musicians deliberately sabotaged the piece. Do you think this kind of behavior from musicians was unique to the time when that happened, or is it something that all young composers need to go through?
Cage was a very controversial figure. I think the example youâre referring to is the New York Philharmonic, at a time when they just had no idea what was going on, and Bernstein wasnât really serious, that was the problem. Bernstein just didnât communicate to the players that he really meant this. As a result, they were just totally out of control. It was quite shocking actually. Completely unprofessional behavior from a distinguished symphony orchestra. But I think thatâs sort of an unusual case.
The other issue is more, with these open scores, say like the âProse Collection,â if you donât take that seriously, then youâre going to get a mess. And thatâs the kind of problem Iâve had, and Cage, repeatedly: people will figure, Ah, never mind the score, weâll just do something. And of course itâs not going to be any good. Usually, if something doesnât sound right in those open scores, I immediately go to a player and say, What is it that youâre playing? Show me on the score what it is youâre doing. And very often they canât. Or they havenât understood the notation. It turns out they totally misread the instructions. So thatâs an issue. But I havenât run across that for a while, things have improved a lot.
Looking back at the works that youâve written over the years, which ones would you say are your absolute favorites?
Well, I do like âBurdocksâ a lot. Iâm also very fond of âChanging the System.â It seems to me, if I may say so, very elegant, very simple, the structure, and it works. And I like that. Very economical. I still like my very early ones, the ones with just a few notes, that run for six minutes on just a few pitches. I like it that they still sound OK after all this time.
Wolff, Burdocks
Do you have a composing routine?
I donât really have any routine. I mean, we raised four kids. And I had a full-time teaching job. So whenever the opportunity arose, I was ready to work. I always had my notebook, and Iâd be in the kitchen and suddenly some kid has fallen asleep, and itâs quiet: alright, quick! [Laughs.] I can work anywhere at any time. Iâve never had a studio.
Youâve written about working with sound in and of itselfââSound comes into its own.â It seems to me that the general idea about the primacy of the sound has since become pretty widely accepted, except that now there are tons of different interpretations of what that means exactly. Iâm thinking for example of GĂ©rard Grisey, who would probably also have said that sound comes first in his compositions, but whose music is so completely different from yours.
Itâs a good point. Itâs all very well to say that sound comes first, but you have to make it happen. You can use recordings and then youâve got your sound, but if youâre writing for instruments youâve got to put something down on paper for them to do, which is not sound, thatâs pen and paper. I have the feeling, the more Iâve thought about it over the years, that all really good music has that character. Itâs about the sound.
Even something thatâs technically and musically very complex, like Renaissance counterpoint. Itâs not really about having all these voices, itâs about having a certain kind of sound which is produced by writing that kind of counterpoint. Itâs true even of Bach in a way. Itâs about sonority. Itâs about the kind of noise that a certain music makes.
You are asked to speak very often about the group of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Earle Brown and Morton Feldman. Do you miss them? And do you ever get tired about talking about the group?
Not necessarily, no. I get tired of repeating myself, which is inevitable, because I just have so much to say on the subject. Sure I miss those guys. On the other hand, Iâm younger, so it was inevitable that they would go first, in the ordinary course of things. ¶
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