View From the West: Roger Woodward—A Stranger in a Strange Land
 Dean Suzuki Photo by Ryan Suzuki |
The university where I teach, San Francisco State University, is like so many state universities across the nation. The mission of the university is to educate a very large portion of the college age demographic. Not an elite school, either in terms of prestige or finances, the standards for entry into the system are not as high as those of the Ivy League schools or even the University of California system, and the fiscal constraints, with threatened and sometimes imposed budget cutbacks every time the economy goes south as it has this year, can be daunting.
Even in the bountiful years, as we experienced in the late ’90s, the educational budget was not restored to anything close to the pre-Proposition 13 glory days when money flowed freely into California’s educational system, then one of the best in the country. Now with a primary and secondary educational system which ranks near the bottom in numerous categories, including spending, and the California State University system which is almost completely dependant on funding from the state for its fiscal health, new strategies have been mandated, not by the state, the university system, or even individual campus administrations, but by the harsh reality that faces each institution. Whereas the University of California is flush with grant, federal government research, and other monies, the poor California State University system must devise other means for supporting and funding areas beyond the bare educational necessities.
Still, without false modesty I think, our music program has significantly, even profoundly transcended the imposed limitations and constraints that might have held us back were it not for a very hard working, talented and dedicated faculty.
Last year, our music department merged with the dance department at San Francisco State University to create the new School of Music and Dance, in part to save dance from being eliminated altogether, but also in an attempt to generated a synergistic entity in which the total was greater than the sum of its parts. We then began a search for a new director, one who had a significant degree of visibility as an artist and scholar, success as an administrator, and a track record as a fundraiser.
We were for fortunate enough to find all of these in the person of Roger Woodward, the renowned Australian pianist whose repertoire includes not only the standard 18th- and 19th-century literature, but also a tremendous amount of 20th-century music, ranging from Debussy and Scriabin, to recent avant-garde and experimental work. Woodward has worked extensively with the likes of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Toru Takemitsu—several of whom have written works expressly for him.
Feldman cited Woodward as one of his three favorite pianists when it came to performing his own works. He once wrote:
… Triadic Memories has a double meaning for me. Not only does it have a lot to do with the way the piece was made … [b]ut it has to do with memories and recent memories of three very important performers in my life at the piano.
One was David Tudor, in the early years. The other is Australian pianist Roger Woodward, and of course Aki Takahashi. And more than any piece I ever wrote, many times it was as if I was just taking dictation, remembering the way David played, thinking about Roger’s playing and Aki’s playing. And to some degree, they’re part of Triadic Memories in writing a piece. The importance of a performer to a composer is just something one sees on a dedication page, and unless one is a musicologist or you really get into it, you just really don’t know the involvement, to what degrees a performer could influence the kind of music the composer might play… .
I’ve written down a thumbnail sketch about these three remarkable musicians to give you an idea in a sense what I was thinking about while writing the piece… .
Roger Woodward: more traditional, which also means more unpredictable in how he shapes and paces. I would call it a prose style. Where Tudor focused on a moment, Woodward would find the quintessential touch of the work, hold on to it and then as in one giant breath, articulate the music’s overall scale. Like Tudor, Woodward played everything as primary material. He is a long-distance runner. Tudor jumps high over the bar. Where Tudor isolates the moment, by not being influenced by what we might consider a composition’s cause and effect, and Woodward finds the right tone that savors the moment and extends it.
(Morton Feldman, “Triadic Memories” in Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, edited and with an introduction by B. H. Friedman, afterward by Frank O’Hara [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Exact Change, 2000], 153-54.)
As an artist, this is the man that we hired.
As an educator, astute musical thinker, but also an outsider, a non-American, Woodward brings a fresh perspective to our very American university. He believes that as a teacher of contemporary music, his role is, in part, to pass on not only his love and passion for the music, but also first-hand knowledge from his collaborations and close working relationships with Cage, Feldman, Xenakis, Takemitsu, Boulez, and others. To this end, he is writing a collection of essays based on recollections of his work with these and other composers and musicians. Such a document will serve not only as a memoir, but also as an educational tool for students and musicians, allowing them insights into the creative minds that produced important work that helped shaped music of the 20h century.
We all know the tradition of great performers leaving behind a powerful legacy as great teachers. There are, for example, piano teachers today who trace their training back to Liszt, Rachmaninoff, or Bartók, among others. Great traditions and techniques have been passed from generation to generation in a kind of guru/disciple fashion. Indeed, Woodward was himself trained by a student of Rachmaninoff’s. While we do not usual
ly trace lineage in a similar way with composers, Woodward sees great value for training musicians using the words and coaching he received from the composers with whom he worked. It certainly makes sense that one would heed the suggestions and ideas of the composer.
Woodward also believes that getting beneath the skin of a composer and fully contextualizing him/her can provide insights into the process of music making. As an example, we are all aware of Cage’s profound influence and inspiration for Feldman. However, Woodward took a closer look at Feldman’s background which included close work with his piano teacher, a Russian ex-patriot aristocrat, whom he revered and who taught him not only a kind of Russian technique, but also a kind of Russian aesthetic. While we may not traditionally think of Feldman this way, he is, in part, from the lineage of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. We know that Feldman described some of his earliest piano pieces as being “Scriabinesque.” Feldman’s own grandfather undertook a monumental trek out of Russia to escape the pogroms. With all of this in the back of his mind, when preparing for a performance of Piano, the first work written for Woodward by Feldman, the former thought that Scriabin’s influence inhabited the piece. Woodward says, “I didn’t dare say that to Feldman at the time, but later he said to me, ‘Just think of it as late Scriabin.'” Similarly, Woodward perceives of the refined musical language of the Music of Changes as manifesting the influence of Cages’ tutelage under Schoenberg rather than his studies of Zen or Duchamp. These kinds of ideas he hopes to share with his American students.
As an outsider in an American educational institution, Woodward may offer insight into an American musical ethic. Especially from his work with Cage and Feldman, he encountered a direct, no-nonsense approach, in terms of compositional aesthetics and also in coaching and shaping performances that he found refreshing and inspirational. He sees a similar “open quality” in the American lifestyle and ethic.
He contrasts the American approach with a more staid, circuitous, and convoluted process that he perceives as the European manner. The open quality of the American approach is in stark juxtaposition with what Woodward describes as a “more dressed” and affected method.
This more open-minded quality that Woodward perceives as part of an American ethic is made manifest in Cage’s ideals and approach to music making. Woodward notes that Cage had a “loving quality” and a sense of wonder. These combined in Cage in a way that took every artistic situation and made the best of it. Woodward says of Cage, “He always turned a negative, always, into a positive, which is the thing that I really liked about him. And that is essentially an American and not a European thing. He would use something that wasn’t satisfactory and create something beautiful from it.”
It seems that Woodward, a stranger to American culture, has much to offer to San Francisco State University’s School of Music and Dance. In addition to his musical gifts, his unique musical experiences with some of the most important composers and musicians of the second half of the 20th century, oddly enough, he provides us with a fresh perspective on American culture and arts that may provide our students and the broader musical community with new insights about the process and practice of music making in America.