Volume 24 Issue 6 - March 2019

World War II, so the order is essentially inconsequential.”
Beecroft began organizing her enterprise in 1977, in a series of
letters to her intended subjects in Europe. She told me she was confident
in positive responses from the composers since she was known
to them, and that they trusted her knowledge of the subject. She was
by this time acknowledged not only as a composer, but as a highly
skilled broadcaster, and she had easy access to all her subjects. She
told me that Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), for example, said: “One
thing I like about you is your determination.” Her travels took her
first to Cologne, Berlin, Köthen, then Paris, London, and Utrecht.
Additional interviews were scheduled in the United States, and back
home in her Toronto studio, when possible.
The results of all these interviews were highly rewarding, and
revealed great amounts of both historical and personal details.
Beecroft’s subjects opened up to her highly focused line of questioning,
delving into the recent past, to a time when they were all drawn to the
artistic and technical challenges of this new musical medium. In the
very first interview, for example,
with Pierre Schaeffer (1910–
1995), inventor of the concept of
musique concrète using recorded
sounds, and who founded Le Club
d’Essai in 1942 and the Groupe
de Recherche Musicales in 1958
in Paris, it’s immediately clear
that Schaeffer’s focus is primarily
on research and engineering.
He refers to clashes in methodology
with Pierre Boulez (1925–
2016), Karlheinz Stockhausen
(1928–2007) and Iannis Xenakis,
and confesses: “I hate dodecaphonic
music, and I often say
that the Austrians shot music
with 12 bullets, they killed it for a
Bruce Mather
long time.” This was a somewhat
surprising revelation for me, but is typical of the sort of candid views
Beecroft’s colleagues were willing to share with her.
In the Stockhausen interview, by contrast, we find the other side of
the argument. “In Paris I became involved in the musique concrète
that was at that time just beginning to develop. Boulez made me listen
to a very few, very short studies, and immediately I was interested
in trying myself to synthesize sound, and to get away from the treatment
of recorded sound.” Stockhausen went on to mention his collaboration
with Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, who had suggested
a technique of combining pure sine waves to synthesize timbres: “I
have to say that the friendship with this Belgian composer, and the
exchange of letters with him, was a very important reason why I made
these first experiments, because we were both thinking that it would
be a marvellous thing if we could synthesize timbres. The general idea
of timbre composition was in the air from texts of Schoenberg.”
Goeyvaerts recalled in his interview: “I never thought that pure sine
waves could be heard. And suddenly I found that they existed with an
electronic generator, so I wrote to Stockhausen and said, now we can
go ahead.” He added: “When Stockhausen made the Study No. 1 and
when I made my piece in 1953, I must say we considered at last we
could come to a pure structure.” It was also in this year that the term
“electronic music” was coined by Dr. Herbert Eimert (1897–1972) at
the studio of the Cologne Radio.
Historical turning points such as these appear often throughout
Beecroft’s Conversations with Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic
Music. But as important as such details are, the personal notes of the
composers are possibly the more interesting aspect. An example is in
the interview with American composer Otto Luening (1900–1996),
who studied with composer and virtuoso pianist, Ferruccio Busoni
(1866–1924), and was friends with composer Edgard Varèse (1883–
1965). Luening said, of Busoni: “The essence of music, the inner core of
music was to him still a mystery and he was like Schopenhauer in that,
who I believe said somewhere if we knew the mystery and relationships
of music, we would know the mystery and relationships of the whole
“The publication is not intended to be a
scholarly document on technical matters
but an insight into the internal world of
the composer and sociological forces that
helped shape the person.”
— Norma Beecroft to Karlheinz Stockhausen
universe.” And of Varèse, Luening said: “We immediately hit it off.
Not only did I have great affection for him, and liked him very much
personally, but we had this Busoni tie.” He mentioned the various
stylistic groups of American composers current and pointed out:
“Varèse and I were on this other line, we were really free wheelers,
you know, and while we had a very strong aesthetic, it was not
organized, there was no movement or anything, and we never
wanted one. We used to talk together and so gradually we fell
into a group of friends, that were very interesting and all kind of
iconoclasts.”
These personal snapshots were entirely a part of Beecroft’s focus
and plan for her project. In a letter to Stockhausen after the first
edits were finished, she told him: “The publication is not intended
to be a scholarly document on technical matters but an insight
into the internal world of the composer and sociological forces
that helped shape the person.” She projected to him that, “I am
sure this modest document
will help fill a void when it
comes to musical matters in
the latter half of this century.”
The book is available through
the Canadian Music Centre,
20 St. Joseph Street, Toronto,
and can also be ordered online.
The details can be found here:
musiccentre.ca/node/155113.
Norma Beecroft continues to
compose. Montreal composerpianist
Bruce Mather invited
her to create a work for his
Harry Somers
Carrillo piano, an instrument
with 96 notes to the
octave, which is to say, it’s
tuned in 16ths of tones. Beecroft’s new composition will have its
world premiere on March 11 at 7:30 at the Salle de concert of the
Conservatoire de musique de Montreal, 4750 avenue Henri-Julien.
It’s a work for solo Carrillo piano with digital soundtracks. Beecroft
wrote: “Written for my friend and colleague Bruce Mather, this piece
posed challenges that I could not resist. Having worked in analogue
studios for most of my career, I determined to try my hand at
composing using digital software only. The Carrillo piano was another
challenge, as the entire piano keyboard consists of only one octave of
sound. Training my ears to hear the microtones was a new problem,
as was a system of notation for the performer. Herewith – my modest
attempt at combining the two elements!” She explains further that
the work’s design, “finds its analogy in nature, with the opening and
closing of a flower. The one octave is divided in half and opens up
slowly to create ever-widening intervals. And the flower slowly ends
its fragile existence in a retrograde movement.”
Also in Montreal in March, a special dramatic concert presentation
titled “Between Composers: Correspondence of Norma Beecroft and
Harry Somers, 1955–1960” will take place at the Tanna Schulich Hall
of McGill University on March 22 at 7:30pm. Composer and McGill
music professor Brian Cherney conceived the presentation, and he
describes the idea:
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