WHERE IS MUSIC HEADING?(interview with David Hush)(Interview)

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID HUSH

THE COMPOSER David Hush has taught composition at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney since 1998. This interview started during conversations at Princeton and continued via fax and letters between Sydney and Rostock.

HM: You lived in the USA for thirteen years. What is your opinion on the New Music scene there?

DH: American culture has always been famous for its extreme diversity, and music is no exception. There is no doubt in my mind that never before has the American music scene comprised so many composers each of whom is doing something quite different from the others. These differences make the imposition of categories very misleading. Take computer music. Two composers who use computers tend to be grouped together. But computer technology has become so advanced that it has given the composer far more flexibility than before, and so the differences in the finished products of two computer composers are considerable. In my opinion it makes no more sense to group together composers who use computers than it does to group together composers who write for acoustic instruments.

Perhaps the most fundamental yardstick for scores designed for real instruments is the degree of specificity of the notation. A score by Babbitt or Carter is very precise with regard to every aspect of performance, while the opposite extreme would be a so-called "open score" consisting of verbal directions for improvisation--but there are a great many levels in between.

I myself write for real instruments and voices. While I have been impressed with recent developments in computer technology I am not drawn to working with computers. I use relatively precise notation; I certainly do not ask the performers of my scores to improvise. The pieces that have most recently been released on CD are all very different from each other. The principal bond between them is their tonality. Yet each piece is tonal in a different way.

HM: We should take the time, I think, to comment on the different ways in which tonality is realised in your compositions.