Interview with Kati Agócs

A few months ago I was working on As Biddeth Thy Tongue by Kati Agócs for a performance at NEC’s Jordan Hall. I had the chance to go up to Boston and work with her a week before the concert. After the coaching we went to a cafe nearby for the latest in my series of interviews!

First, a bit about her:
Composer Kati Agócs was born 1975 in Windsor, Canada, of Hungarian and American background, and is on the composition faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston The New York Times has characterized her music as “striking” and “filled with attractive ideas” and has described her vocal music as possessing “an almost 19th-century naturalness.” The Boston Globe recently called it “music of fluidity and austere beauty,” while Fanfare Magazine described Supernatural Love as “serene and unworldly, exploring space with sound in a way that seems to evoke the time before the universe hosted life.” Recent commissions include Cyphers for Meet the Composer/Metropolis Ensemble (New York), Shenanigan for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Perpetual Summer for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada’s 50th Anniversary, …like treasure hidden in a field for the American Composers Orchestra (New York), and Requiem Fragments for the CBC Radio Orchestra (Vancouver). Awards include the Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center, and several Canada Council for the Arts grants. Kati Agócs earned Doctoral and Masters degrees from The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was Milton Babbitt. She is currently collaborating with Boston Modern Orchestra Project on a full-length CD of her orchestral music. She maintains a work studio in the village of Flatrock, near St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Requiem Fragments
live recording by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project at Jordan Hall

Identity
Zach Herchen – I like to start by asking composers if they identify with a certain country or location. You were born in Canada, your father is Hungarian, your mother is American, you’ve studied in New York City, did a post-doctoral Fulbright Fellowship in Hungary, taught in Newfoundland, and now you are teaching in Boston. How do you identify yourself with these places?

Kati Agóc – I’m really an amalgam of three: being from Canada by birth, my dad having come from Hungary (and having done a Fulbright in Budapest, which was important for me), and then having done my training in New York. I was in New York City for seven years, and the composers that I studied with are from the U.S. So, it’s really these three locations coming together. All three are really important, but I think that a lot of the younger composers, especially my generation (and yours, too), are polyglots because of how easy it is to share information and influences now. There’s very fluid sharing, whereas before you had to work harder to find music and resources for different areas. We’re more prone to blend those influences and have our music be a hybrid of influences. I think that’s true for me, as it is for many people my age.


Zach – Did your Fulbright studies in Budapest change your compositional style?

Kati – It brought me in touch with things that were innate in how I hear that were always there from the time when I first wrote. There’s a kind of chromaticism that I’m drawn to, a natural approach to dissonance. Finding how to introduce dissonances, and what exactly to do with them. I feel an innate connection to [Bela] Bartók and early [György] Ligeti (where he took a lot from Bartók). It’s not something I can easily quantify. I can’t always say I did this here and that’s from Bartók. Whenever composers feel that resonance with something bigger than them, it can mean a lot in terms of showing you that you’re going in a certain direction. That’s an intangible thing that forms who we are. I think this was really true for me that year. I sort of found that and connected with that.

Zach – Do you feel that you refined your voice there?

Kati – Yes, I feel that I refined my voice, and it was also the first year that I wasn’t a student anymore. That’s the first year that I started to stand behind my work. When I was a student, I felt [Milton] Babbitt’s influence all the time. Even though he wouldn’t say, “I don’t like this,” you could feel how he thought about music. I adore him like a grandfather, but it was really good for me to get out of school and be hearing on my own.

Zach – You said that you started to stand behind your music while writing in Budapest [2005 to 2006]. Do you ever retract pieces?

Kati – I won’t stop people from playing earlier works, but I won’t encourage them to play earlier ones. Occasionally performers play pieces of mine that were written as far back as 2001, and some of them are recorded and the recordings have been well reviewed. It’s not like I’m going to completely turn my back on them, but I don’t feel the same way about them as I do about the more recent pieces.

Culture
Zach – The text from your piece By the Streams of Babylon is very interesting to me. I saw the text described as “a lament of a people in a foreign land who can no longer bring themselves to sing the hymns of their homeland”. This strong cultural idea seems to resonate with your background in different countries. Do you think that culture is a big part of how you view music?

Kati – The cultural thing is really important for me personally. When I wrote By the Streams of Babylon, I was in Newfoundland all by myself teaching. It was my first job and I was off in the middle of nowhere. I actually felt like what the people in the psalm feel, exiled and away from home. Of course, it’s a different thing for me than it was for the original people who were exiled. I’m sure what they were feeling was much stronger and more important, but you have to connect to your texts in personal ways. I think I could identify with being uprooted and that was what I was feeling then. And I also like the idea that these people are trying to sing their hymns but they never can, so you never get the actual hymns. The whole song is about trying to sing the hymns – -but you hear something else. I thought that concept was cool to set.

Rustic Quality
Zach – While listening to your pieces, I hear a general rustic character. There is something decidedly non-industrial.

Kati – That makes sense, because I grew up on a farm and I’m attracted to big open spaces. Newfoundland’s natural physical climate was really attractive to me because of that – the pristineness of it. I still keep a studio there where I work.

Zach – How do you feel about living in Boston?

Kati – I like living in Boston because it’s just such a great musical environment, but I really like to spend time in the country too, especially writing. I sometimes feel a bit out of my element writing in an urban setting. I think that it’s easier to hear when there aren’t tons of other sounds around. There’s silence that you get in that kind of environment that’s compelling to me. It makes you hear it in a different way. I’m interested in the sounds that instruments and voices can make naturally. Natural acoustic properties and what we can pull out of them as performers and composers without anything extraneous. I think that’s still of great value even in today’s world where we have all of these technologies. That’s what I’m interested in.

Zach – Well, I know that your piece Elysium uses tape and amplified cello.

Kati – Yeah, in Elysium I used field recordings made in the ‘80s by folklorists that I found in an archive. These were recordings of old people talking about shipwrecks as a sort of found object and that’s the core of the piece. I used amplified cello, because I really wanted that slightly edgy electric string sound with a bit more presence to it, but I should say that I also have some background in electronic music. I trained at Dartmouth, and I know my way around the studio if I want. It’s not like I came totally from left field deciding to use recorded sound. I don’t usually use it, although I could see using it again. But that was a specific sound because I wanted the cello to sound like the voice of God. I wanted to set that apart sonically, so that’s why I used it.

Immutable Dreams
live performance by the New York New Music Ensemble at Merkin Hall
I. …i feel the air of other planets

Influences
Zach – The second movement of your quintet Immutable Dreams is an homage to György Ligeti. What other composers or musicians have inspired you?

Kati – That was a really specific thing, because Ligeti died right when I was writing [Immutable Dreams]. It was the summer of 2006 when I went to visit my brother in England and Ligeti died. I was just starting to envision that piece.

Zach – Did you know Ligeti personally?

Kati – No, but I always felt a real connection to his music, especially when I was developing as a composer and encountered Ligeti’s music. I didn’t know his music all along. I found his music, and then it opened all these doors. People, who I knew for longer, are [Olivier] Messiaen and Bartók. I’ve always been attracted to spiritual composers like [Sofia] Gubaidulina and [Arvo] Pärt. There’s a Russian composer called [Galina] Ustvolskaya who I listened to for a while. She’s pretty radical aesthetically. And Claude Vivier. And then I studied Ligeti a lot. I think I am influenced by the music that’s around, the music that my peers or those slightly older than me are writing, like Michael Gandolfi. I listen to his music. I was just listening to John Harbison’s symphonies. It’s not that I necessarily want to emulate them or write just like them, but it will influence my craft. There are many more names, too. There are probably younger people. I’ve always listened to what people around my age are doing. I’m always paying attention to what people my age are doing in visual arts also, because that’s a touchstone for me.

Painting
Zach – When you were a teenager you went to school for painting. Do you still paint?

Kati – I don’t because there really isn’t time to do both, so I had to give it up. But for a while I was really serious about it.

Zach – Is there a relationship between how you thought about painting and how you think about composing?

Kati – Yeah, there is a relationship, because I was really interested in color. I was a color painter at a time when most people weren’t interested in the tactile side of painting. I was always interested in real painterly things, with color as, maybe, the most important thing. It’s the same in my music. I’m really interested in color and timbre. Also, the way that you think about large-scale form sometimes translates from painting to composition. That’s technically something that’s underlying for me. I’ve always really trusted my innate sense of form, and I think that’s because I was thinking about form when I was a lot younger.

Spiritual Music
Zach – You said that spiritual composers influenced you. While trying to get a feel for your music, I noticed a religious theme. By The Streams of Babylon uses a text that’s a psalm. Hymn is titled after religious music. Requiem Fragments references a mass for the dead. Is religion a major part of your music?

Kati – Requiem Fragments is more personal than religious. The requiem in it is a borrowed model. In By The Streams of Babylon, the text is really interesting because it’s important in different religions. It’s ecumenical, so it’s really important in the Jewish religion and it’s also important in the Christian religion in a different way. I love when my music has spiritual references, but they aren’t necessarily tied to one particular religion. That’s kind of how I see religion. I like when music has universal spiritual references. I used to be a church [singer] when I was living in New York. I have mixed feelings about organized religion, but I do know that I, like every musician, believe in Bach. We have a deep connection through the music to spiritual things, so I really try to keep that alive.

Vocal Background
Zach – You mentioned your background as a church singer. I noticed that you’ve also sung your piece By The Streams of Babylon with Lisa Bielawa (there’s actually a YouTube video of the performance). Does your vocal background play a role in your writing?

Kati – I tend to sing everything as I’m writing. I sing the lines. I can tell if a vocal line is good that way. It really helps me and guides my process. It’s different in every work, but I think that it’s the underlying impulse that’s there.

Zach – Do you start to compose by singing?

Kati – Not always. Sometimes I’ll start with the sonority and I’ll play [piano], but if I’m thinking about melodic lines I often think vocally. The different lines in Hymn can all be thought of that way. Certain lines are more important at certain times, but they trade off. Sometimes the soprano is important—it’s leading things—and sometimes the inner voices are leading the texture. If it’s moving, it tends to be more important. I tend to think like that. I think everyone has a natural thing that they fall back on as a composer and that’s mine.

As Biddeth Thy Tongue
live performance by Zach Herchen at Jordan Hall

Detailed Writing
Zach – In working on As Biddeth Thy Tongue, I felt a contradiction between the piece’s detailed, complex rhythms and your instructions asking the performer to be free with the rhythm.

Kati – Oh! That’s so interesting, because to me those rhythms were just breathing. I sang that piece through every day in tempo, and I just felt those rhythms. To me they don’t feel complex but I could see how you would say that just looking at them on the page. I think I am trying to find an inflection of line. It’s difficult to notate, because it’s how someone would improvise a line.

Zach – Right. It felt like you were trying to write down something unmetered and natural. Is that type of specificity common in your music?

Kati – Yeah, I tend to write out those things. I tend to write them out because I hear them really specifically, and I find that if performers structure them improvisationally (or aleatorically) they don’t always achieve the exact pacing that I’m looking for.

Extremes
Zach – Parts of As Biddeth Thy Tongue and you other pieces, like Immutable Dreams, are harsh and dirty.

Kati – I’ve heard that comment before, and I wondered if maybe I don’t hear the music in the same way as other people. I have read in a couple of reviews that people thought that my music had a huge emotional range, and someone has described a passage as ‘harsh’ once. I guess that you don’t hear it that way when you are writing, it but it does come out that way.

Zach – Well, earlier you mentioned your interest in dissonant sounds. It seems like you have a different sense of harshness than some people. For me, at least in playing Biddeth, it feels like you want to explore extremes.

Kati – I am interested in the extremes. I think I have a naturally large emotional range and lyricism. It’s something that you can’t change, just who you are, and that comes out in wanting to explore those extremes of dynamics or timbre. It’s not something that I’ve thought about; it’s something I’m realizing now that I’m getting more reviews. When different people play the same piece you learn about what you did. It’s interesting for me. In new music you have to make a commitment to what you’re doing, a certain way of seeing things, and really put that across in the moment.

Titles
Zach – I think your titles are really intriguing. Some examples are Secret Gardens, Imagination of Their Hearts, Immutable Dreams, and As Biddeth Thy Tongue. I don’t think I saw any pieces that were just “Sonata for instrument and instrument.” How do you create titles for your pieces?

Kati – Somehow I get a title for each work and it simply has to be that, but I don’t know how exactly I get to that. It has to be that title for every one of those works.

Zach – Is it easy or difficult for you?

Kati – It’s really, really hard for a while. Everything about writing a piece is hard, and then it gets easy. Usually I’m not sure about the title until about 75% of the way through composition, although sometimes I had that title written down somewhere before, I just didn’t know that was the one. Sometimes I’ll have working titles and I’ll think that that’s the one for a while, and then it won’t be anymore! But sometimes what I choose has been there all along; I just didn’t know.

Listening To Music
Zach – What type of music do you like to listen to if, for example, you are hanging out at home?

Kati – I don’t listen to music when I’m at home, because I’m usually thinking about the piece that I’m writing and other music would impede that – – but occasionally I’ll listen to Bach.

Zach – That doesn’t impede your writing?

Kati – No. When I go running I listen to rock and roll, like the Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stone, or more recent acts like Eminem or Coldplay. Just to get the physical energy. It doesn’t really feed directly into my own work. And then I’ll listen to works that I’m studying. I write a lot for orchestra, so I’m always studying works for orchestra by Mathias Pintscher or [Henri] Dutilleux, people like that. I guess there’s a divide between the serious music and the music that’s recreational. I think that a lot of composers have that. The trained composer part of me is its own mind, operating on its own tangential path.

Venues
Zach – I have one question that I like to ask everyone. Do you have an ideal space you like to have your music performed?

Kati – Jordan Hall [at the New England Conservatory], hahaha! I mean Jordan’s a beautiful hall; it’s so responsive and it’s so warm. What more could you ask for? I’ve had my best experiences in Jordan Hall with performances, and I’m not just saying that. Though I obviously haven’t heard every hall in the world…

Zach – Do you like the idea of music played anywhere it can, or do you think it needs a hall?

Kati – I like a space that has resonance to it. I tend to like fairly wet halls. My music works really well in a church, because there’s a lot of resonance and it picks up that. It just works well for the way that I hear. I’m not going to say don’t play my music in a dry space, haha, but acoustically that tends to be better for my music. Performances are great anywhere, so it’s not the be all and end all.

Future Plans
Zach – Do you have projects that you want to do that haven’t been commissioned? Is there something on deck that you wish someone would give you time to do?

Kati – Yeah, I really want to write a concerto for solo instrument and orchestra in extended form – – but I don’t know for which soloist yet and I don’t know which orchestra. And I don’t know yet exactly how it’s going to happen, but that’s the next thing I’d like to do.