Mel Bay's Creative Keyboard® Webzine | Misha Stefanuk - William Fred Scott Interview

William Fred Scott Interview

This is the second part of the interview with Maestro Scott.

Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera, William Fred Scott has become as known for its vitality and variety as for his own personal commitment to the arts and the community. Scott came to The Atlanta Opera in 1985, and under his artistic direction the company became one of the fastest-growing opera companies in the United States. By the completion of the 2003 season, The Atlanta Opera will have produced more than 60 productions and well over 200 performances under his direction. Maestro Scott made his European debut conducting The Marriage of Figaro at The Theatre of the Estates in Prague.

Last season, he appeared as guest conductor with the Hawaii Opera Theatre for Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, in a co-production which was presented to Atlanta Opera audiences this February, 2004. The Maestro asked me to be the Russian diction coach working with the principals for the Atlanta production.

Having known Fred for almost two years, since my wife was in his production of Verdi's Aida with the Atlanta Opera, it is my firm belief that he is an extraordinary musician and a fascinating and charming person. We have enjoyed his support and friendship. The interview you are about to read was given in March 2005.

Fred Scott's full biography can be found at
http://www.pinnaclearts.com

Misha V. Stefanuk with Maestro William Fred Scott

MS: How do you see the balance between classical and popular music?

FS: What does that mean?

MS: What part does it play, does it affect your life, do you see it as a positive thing?

FS: I listen, when I'm not listening to, when I'm not studying I don't listen to music much anyway. I make myself a little six cassette scenario, I keep music in a car, it keeps my brain active and keeps my heart happy, but I don't go home and listen to music actively, unless I'm studying, if I'm not listening to classical music, I'm generally listening to sort of cabaret style music, Blossom Dearie, Jo Stafford, Charles Trenet or jazz. But of the sort of lighter, the cooler jazz, the sort of jazz trio, the Oscar Peterson, the Tatum, the Brubeck, somebody like that. I must say, I think the overwhelming sound of popular music right this minute is so horrible, one thing it's monotonous, the musical structure and the texts is monotonous, there is no individuality in the singing, everybody sounds like everybody else to me, and I think we have a, I'm sure our ancestors said the same thing but in a different way, you know. I think that this sort of American Idol how loudly can you scream into a microphone, the idea that that is a musical standard is just repugnant to me. I was prompted to think about this from the article that was in the New York Times about Barbara Cook, who was a wonderful cabaret singer, and my friend Sylvia McNair has left the opera business to become a cabaret singer, that's what she really loves doing. The fact is, that man on American Idol, whose name is Simon, he says that the song like Embraceable You is just meaningless junk. Well, this is a horrible thing to say about one of the great songs of all time. If you are not willing to slow down and really listen to beautiful melodies and beautiful text, then all you are gonna get is screaming into a microphone, and that, frankly, is not satisfying to me. And I have no patience with the idea that this is something we should all aspire to. I really don't. I think it makes listening to Barbara Cooke and Sylvia McNair and Joe Stafford, it makes it seem like it's no good, and that's not fair. I worry about this, because I don't think that's right. You get talentless people singing loudly into a microphone and played like they're doing something that's really gonna stand for great American singing, that's ridiculous.

MS: What would be your advice to younger musicians about listening. What should they listen to?

FS: Well, I believe very strongly in listening. The way I learned what I learned from Paul Hume was by sitting down with him with piles of records, we would listen to something, and we would be in the middle of something, and he would jump up, and he would say: Just a second, I've got to get something else, so there was a flow chart that he was making up as he went along, and if we were listening to Nilsson, let's say, singing something of Wagner, immediately he would think: Oh, but you need to hear Frida Leider, and then he'd think: Oh, but you need to hear Leider and Melchure singing under Beecham, this part of the Tristan, the love duet, and then have you heard Bitchem do this, and so I listened very intently when I was learning music, and I think it is very important, certainly in the classical world, which is what I know about, I think it is very important for young people, or any age people to study by listening. Not because I think you should copy somebody, but I think you should listen so that you get a chance to hear all the possibilities that are available. And, unless you have heard the same Debussy song sung by seven different people, or twelve different people, male and female, old and contemporary, then for me, I don't get the idea of what's really available in that song. I certainly don't have the knowledge of music and French poetry to learn it on my own, and me and my coach, that's just two ideas, you know, I want to read what Pierre Bernac has to say about it, but I also want to hear Eileen Farrell, and Maggie Teyte, and Jennie Tourel, and Gerard Souzay, and Janet Baker, and Kiri Ti Kanawa, and Kathy Battle, and Cesare Valetti, I want to hear a lot of people singing that song so that I hear how the French feels to them, how the song goes to them, what are the possibilities, that makes when I come to the song, it makes it richer. When I'm studying an opera, I listen to many different performances of the same opera. For timing, for structure, for sonority, I mean, I'm gonna learn Italian on my own. I'm gonna learn the music on my own. I'm gonna know it inside. If the piece is rich, and the piece is strong, then I've got to assume that lot, lot smarter people than me are gonna tell me something about it. And so I listen to that, then when I start rehearsing, I don't listen to it again. Because then it has to be my own. When we did Onegin together, I listened to as much Russian as I could find, so that I would ultimately realize that this little symbol always sound like this, you know, But e: sounds like, fifteen different Russian singers sound different, my question to you is why? That way I can teach it better to people, and also, I can make the language my own. So I listened and listened and listened so that I would hear Vishnevskaya singing Tatiana, and my Russian coach in Hawaii when she said: Oh, but her diction is horrible, I wanted to say: How come she sings this word this way? Is it because she is from Georgia or she is from Ukraine, why does that sound differently. That's for me fascinating. And that's because I have an ear for language, and that informs my music mean, but I think that is very important for students. I think a student should listen to as many versions of the given piece as he can get his hands on. Because I think it unlocks the doors to possibilities, it's not a recipe for imitation, but it's an invitation for what's there. And then you make it your own.

MS: Many classical music fans prefer music written prior to the 20th century. What do you think of more contemporary classical music versus music before? For non-professional it is a big deal. Because they constantly oppose the 20th century as something that happened after the music was finished.

FS: That's true, that the very good way to put it. I have board members here at the opera company that are sure that if you sing a contemporary song, or a song in English, that sounds like something past Schubert, assume it's by Benjamin Britten, who is clearly the only composer who has written a song in English since Schubert, You know, they are sure it's by Britten, and therefore they don't like it. It used to just drive me crazy, because their grasp seemed to be so limited and an opera singer said to me once: You know, not everybody likes Carmen, not everybody hates Albert Herring, that was a great epiphany for me. She said: A lot of people don't know either piece, so you have to give them both, and then they'll make their decision. Well, for one thing the twentieth century is gone, contemporary music, I'm sort of a dinosaur, I don't want you to think that I mean by that that I don't like contemporary music or twentieth century music, I must say that all of the performers that I really like and respect stopped performing around 1957, so the people who are singing today or are playing today, I don't really know them, I don't really listen to them. I listen to Schwarzkopf and before, I listen to, nobody know for Moiseiwitch, but me and you, or before, there is so called golden age, whatever that was or what was instilled in me. Of the five people who sing Brunhilda today, I don't know any of them, but I can tell you in detail the difference between Frida Leiter and Birgit Nilsson. I am not concurrent on much music that has been written since about 1970 anyway, I just don't know it. There are certain works by certain composers that I like, Lowell Liebermann, Stephen Paulus, Libby Larsen, Jonathan Dove, I know some of their work, enjoy it, some, or not, I mean. I really don't know as a student or as a participant much past Britten and Messiaen. When they died that is kind of the limit of my contemporary music knowledge. So my contemporary music is already old fashioned to a number of people. For a while when I was younger I loved the sort of plush romanticism of early Schoenberg, Verklarte Nacht, Pelleas et Melisande, the older I get, the more I like the more I'm fascinated by that sort of a non hot house, the clarity of his later works, I find myself very moved by for instance Moses and Aaron, which I used to find very arid, very sterile, now when I'm older, I can appreciate it, I love Berg..

MS: I think I've listened to Moses and Aaron before Pelleas, and that ruined it for me

FS: Yeah, but I love Pelleas too, you see,

MS: I do, but not like

FS: Not like Moses and Aaron, you see, but I also like Roger Sessions. I think that Roger Sessions is one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, I love the way his mind works, I knew him personally, he was a friend of mine, we did Montezuma in Boston, so I really got to learn Session's music, I love his sounds, I love his textures, I love his intellect, on the other hand I found Elliott Carter not that interesting. But maybe just because I don't know enough of Elliott's Carter music to talk about. I must say I don't throw anything out, but my own musical tastes tend towards sort of a satisfying collection of sounds and melodies, which is why for instance I don't get Webern, because I'm not that cerebral,

MS: But Messiaen is fine?

FS: But Messiaen I do, because there is a sweep, a panorama, Messiaen is very theatrical, let's face it, he's writing good movie music. Messiaen is very very sweeping and romantic, and his approach is very cerebral, I know that, but I can get turned on by Turangalila or by ending works by Messiaen, the way I'm not turned on by pointilistic style of Webern. Britten, I think, is a genius in the same way that Beethoven is a genius. In that there can be no other note. At any time. To me that is so right. There are a lot of composers old and new that sort of any note will work. You know. It'be just fine. For me, Britten is, every note is exactly right note. So I like Britten very very much. There is an American School of composition of the fifties that I find a little overwrought, I've done works by them. Like the cleaningness of the Boulanger school, that sort of French cleaningness. If you could combine the cleaningness of the Boulanger school with the intellect of Roger Sessions', that's kind of the synthesis of the twentieth century music that I like very much.

MS: Improvisation, is it a bad word?

FS: No!

MS: What do you think the role of improvising is?

FS: No, for one thing, you see, I trained, for a good deal of my time I was sort of in the church organ business, so you have to improvise, that is important. That's certainly that great French organ playing school Dupre, Durufle and Frank and Lale and Messiaen, you learn how to make pieces of the top of your head while you sitting at the keyboard. I like jazz, so I also understand that sort of improvisatory nature of that, although people don't really understand how structured jazz has to be, or else you and your trio are never gonna be together. You kind of have to know where the harmonies are going, but I don't mind improvisation, I think improvisation is good, but obviously I like improvisation within limits. I don't think that free forming rhapsodizing works, I appreciate structure too, so if you can have two at the same time. In terms of performance improvisation, I am for it less rather than more. I think you can move, you can bloom, you can expend, but it has to be within the structure. People talk about the great sort of improvisatory nature of Furtwengler for instance. The fact is Furtwangler was inspired by harmonic and architectural structures, so what might have seemed like a willful ritard, is actually guided by the structure of the piece. And the more you know the piece, the more you realize that he is really really quite close to the structure of the piece. So I don't think you can just all of the sudden just go off, and something is fast or slow or I mean, just because you felt it that way, whatever that means. I think you have to be within the balance of good taste, and I think the more you know the structure of the piece, the more you stick to that. There are little differences, there are little nuances, of course, and certainly in the opera business. Because somebody has bad breath that day, I don't mean bad breath, I mean bad breathing, or he needs to move a phrase or hold back a phrase or a dramatic idea took a little longer to expand. But the fact is if you look at the timing of my performances, almost twenty years worth of performances, the timing of performance after performance does not differ but seconds, maybe minutes. A ballet conductor said to me once: I have cut twenty minutes of the Nutcracker today, you just can't do that! You can, but you have some strange dancers!

MS: I think, you can only if you don't understand the nature of the beast.

FS: Yes, that's true, that's absolutely right. So improvisation within balance.

MS: It's like you are in control of the music if something goes wrong, and it should be the other way around.

FS: Yes, that's good way to put it, I like that. You win.

MS: How important do you feel playing piano/keyboard is for you as a musician? Specifically for you, conducting from the keyboard, I have seen two people do it, Mikhail Pletnev and Roger Muraro while playing Ravel's left handed concerto at Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow.

FS: You know I like to play; I like to conduct from the keyboard when I do Mozart, the baroque works, but it goes back to that ensemble quality that I said much earlier. The beauty of being able to conduct Mozart opera, or Handel oratorio, or Concerto Gross from the keyboard is that you are all doing it together. And so, I am really a part of them and we're making the Mozart happen more than rigorous time beating just to prove that you can do it. I'm not interested in proving it; I think it makes the ensemble right, that's what composers had in mind. What was the question?

MS: That was good!

FS: The question was: Is that important to ply, I keep. I go home at night and play just for my own enjoyment, just because it's a good release, and I like to keep my piano skills up, I don't want to just stop playing piano and organ all together. But I do think, if you can, it's important for a conductor to participate, in terms of opera, to participate in the drama. The conductor is not the guy you hired to conduct the music while the rest of the show is going on. The conductor is supposed to be, in an opera situation, should be a stage director, and a stage director should be a conductor. I am not saying that the same person has to do both, although my mentor Sarah Caldwell did it, and certainly Karajan has done it, and others have done it. But I need to think of a piece as if I was directing it on stage, as well as conducting the music, and so and piece that has secco recitatives, if you can arrange it in the pit, that same person ought to be playing the secco recitatives that's conducting the rest of the opera, because they are the part of the structure, those recitatives, whether it's Mozart or Rossini, those are part of the piece, you don't just sort of wait around till they're finished, and now we'll do the real music, that's why these people that do operas whether they'll say they'll do the dialogue in English and the rest of the music in German or Russian or whatever. That's like saying to the audience: Half of that piece you don't have to care about. Park your brain for the half that you don't understand, you know it's all the part of the same piece, so the recitatives also should be by conductor, that's not when he gets a drink of water and has a little coffee until the real music starts again. That is as much the real music as anything else. That's why I love playing Giovanni, or a Barber of Seville, or Figaro from conducting keyboard, because it all flows, it's all a part of the same piece.

MS: Where do you see music go in the future?

FS: Oh, I have no idea. I mean I really don't. I don't pretend to know or need to know. I could not have told you when I've started in this business thirty years ago that there would be something called American Idol on television. That scads of people would watch. Or that people would watch so called reality TV. Or that there would be an opera on a subject of Richard Nixon, you know I wouldn't thought of that. So, I don't know, I don't need to know. I just want to be ready for whatever happens, and I do, it's interesting, I do at this particular moment of my life, now when I am finishing thirty years of active participation in the opera business and going back to the teaching business, I think to myself, what, because I will be teaching would be performers, do I want them to think that this is a business they should be in? This is a very big question in mind right now. Or do I say: Listen, the whole opera business in really roughen right now, why don't you go pick up accounting. If I assume that there is something down inside them like I think makes musicians tick, then I have to think to myself: How can I make them better citizens of the musical community? What do they need to know? Because I think the business aspect of the concert world right now is really retched, I think there is a great, great inability for beginning performers to make ends meet. And I don't know, I don't think it's up to me to solve this problem, but I have to be able to participate to tell somebody honestly just how difficult it's going to be, and keep their fire glowing, because you don't want to quench that fire, but where the business of music is gonna go, I don't know. Boulez said in the sixties: Oh, the symphonic orchestra is dead. And now he is having the biggest success of his life at eighty, and he is still doing the IRCAM stuff, which everybody thought: Well, that's just gonna be so dated and so passé, that'll be finished, and yet now that is having an enormous popularity. The whole elderly instruments, as my friend Michael Tippett used to call it, this whole old instrument thing, nobody ever though that will really take off, that was for a bunch of intellectuals in Boston, who played sackbuts badly. Countertenors, nobody thought countertenors will have any place on stage, certainly not in America, and yet they are very popular, there are operas written for them. II don't know where the future goes, I have to investigate it for myself and for my new students, as to how to stay in this business, because the business part of it is really taught now, and I'm afraid that that will drive the artistic part, people won't have an adequate number of rehearsals, because there won't be time to create these ensembles so that the music making is a happy occasion. Everybody would be thrown on stage unprepared and unhappy, and therefore there will be lots of screaming and yelling and no Verdi. You know to get good Verdi, or to get a good Bach, Medtner, I don't care what, you have to have time to listen. You have to have time to process, you know

MS: Medtner more than others

FS: Yeah, so it takes time, the making of music is not something you just throw together, I don't think. And it is quite possible that in sixteen hundred there was more time, but that also means that operas were four and a half hours long, we may have to rethink how we present ourselves, and what the public wants to buy. There is a great ease and a great possibility of being seduced into staying at home, you can buy CD's and especially DVD's now, for 14.99 I can have Aida, and I don't have to leave my house. We've become very insulated from our neighbors, and I don't think, in general I don't think that's good, and I don't think that's gonna be good for people coming together in darkened rooms listening to classical music. And may be that will pass. Everything is really a pendulum, nothing lasts, and the beauty of the opera business is that it has always redefined itself in terms of what the public wants. When opera was the plaything of rich people who had days to spend doing one thing, and who gave courtly weddings, then operas were four and a half and five hours long, because there was nothing else to do all day long when you went to a Medici wedding but to listen to a Monteverdi opera. When opera was a radio thing, when the Metropolitan opera broadcasts started for instance in the thirties, and people weren't looking at the opera as much as they were listening to the opera, thinking about the sound, then opera singers were gigantic. Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior were big people. They weren't dramatically believable, but they sounded so gorgeous, and people listened the same way that FDR was a great political leader because he sounded so good on the radio, people sit by the radio like I did to Marian Anderson. This is one of the things that I think I would like to add to the curriculum at Brenau is that public speaking is in fact a musical discipline. We have to use all of our voices.

MS: Just as the thing that he had in his mouth so he will not have the whistle

FS: Yes, exactly, so all that's gotta go into that, so that you.. But that's because people listened, people don't listen so much anymore, they don't read at all, they watch. Everything is done in sound bites. We elect the president over how convincing he is in thirty seconds on a TV, no matter how long his policy papers are on anything, the American public essentially doesn't read anymore. We take it by quick views. Opera singers now have to be, they have to look believable, they have to captivate you, the opera performance has to captivate.. The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan, right now there is a new production of Julie Taymore, is a series of thirty three baby movies strung together. Not necessarily a beautiful trajectory of the Magic Flute starting from start to finish, but I was talking about it with somebody yesterday, it's thirty three brilliant sketches for each scene. Each scene is a little opera into itself. So that the audience is never bored, the audience is constantly engaged, the audience is looking left, looking right, looking center, something is always happening, and this is what they spent millions of dollars creating. I'm not sure that it's the greatest Magic Flute ever.

MS: The music would be written differently

FS: That's right, but that's what the opera public right now. They did the same thing with Benvenuto Cellini, which I saw at the Met. It was Benvenuto Cellini, the musical. There was stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff going on all the time because that's packing the audiences in. So that pendulum is way over here and it may swing back, who knows. That's all I know about the future, is that I don't know anything about the future.

MS: What is the main genre of music that you prefer?

FS: I think you know that, I think I've said it already. Besides I don't just prefer one. There are times when I just want to listen to solo piano, there are times when I just want to listen to the Anglican chant with the organ, there are times when I just want to hear organ music, there are times when I just want to hear Beethoven symphonies, there are times when I just want to hear Poulenc songs, there are times when I just want to hear the Ring cycle. I don't know what makes that happen in me either, it's not conscious, it's like soul food, comfort food I think is even better, it's just something all of the sudden that you think: I need to eat it, I don't ever need to hear Lohengrin, actually but I need to hear the Ring Cycle. There are times when I just need to hear the Ring Cycle.

MS: The opening of Lohengrin?

FS: Yeah, it's pretty, but I don't. I like Wagner from Tristan on. That's real music. Everything else is just good. Parsifal, that's real music, Misha. The rest is just OK. Well, thank you, it was a great pleasure.

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