In January of 1988, I arranged to have a conversation on the telephone with composer Mary Jeanne van Appledorn.  It was cold where I was in Chicago, but quite mild where she was in Lubbock, Texas.  She was most gracious throughout the interview, answering my questions with enthusiasm and directness.  We spoke of many things, and here is what was said that afternoon . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:    You’ve been professor in Texas now for quite a number of years...

Mary Jeanne van Appledorn:    Since 1950.

BD:    Teaching theory and composition?

MJvA:    Yes, both undergraduate and graduate.

BD:    How has the teaching of theory and composition changed over more than 35 years?

MJvA:    With the present CAI, Computer Assisted Instruction, there are significant differences, really.  In the past we used to just rely on the piano with the ear training and the part-writing, and the textbook way of approach.  But now the students can go into the lab and work with all of these features.  In a way it’s far better than the drill sessions we used to operate.

BD:    Is it a better education for the students?

MJvA:    I think in the long run it probably will be.  It frees up the teachers, too, somewhat.

BD:    Is the personal instruction getting lost in the shuffle?

MJvA:    No, I wouldn’t think so here.  The other thing in regard to composition, the student can go right in and come out of the lab with a desktop-printed composition.  So no longer do I have to look at these little tiny notes and erasures.  They come off very nicely.

BD:    During this period that you’ve been teaching, has the actual musicality of the students continued to improve?

MJvA:    Yes, I think so.  For one thing, they can hear their pieces immediately, scored for the instruments and so forth; and not only those instruments, but completely new sounds as they rev them up on the Kurzweil 250.  They have immediate results, whereas often times in the past we would have to wait weeks before we got either a student or a faculty member to play lines for us.

BD:    I just wonder if it’s getting to move too fast?

MJvA:    Well, no.  I wish we had more than one Kurzweil!  There’s never enough of anything, computers or any of it.

BD:    Is there any chance that we’re turning out too many young composers?

MJvA:    Oh, I don’t think so, no.  We have the theory people working with the same equipment.  The numbers of our students in composition have not increased to that fearsome amount, I don’t think.  We have a lot more of the general students, not music majors necessarily coming in, too.

BD:    What about in more general terms over the entire country, or perhaps even the entire world.

MJvA:    Oh yes, this may be true.  The music business has gotten to be an immensely growing area, very definitely.

BD:    In amidst all of the business end of music, are the artistic values getting lost or repositioned in any way?

MJvA:    Somewhat repositioned, yes.

BD:    How so?

MJvA:    What I have in mind is the video production.  I have one doctoral student right now that is finishing up a big video, and much of it is very close to the television advertisement kind of thing — very close-up on everything.  It’s an amazing piece of work.  He’s been working with one of the Art professors on this project, and it was fantastically expensive.  They had to do an awful lot of promotion, PR stuff, and the premiere will be this March here at Lubbock.  They hope then to take it to Tokyo.  They’ve got quite a bit of interest even outside of the country for the use of it.

BD:    That sounds exciting for this young man.

MJvA:    Yup.  Certainly is, and for us! 

BD:    Then what do you feel is the purpose of music in society?

MJvA:    It has many, many purposes.  Goodness me!  On the one hand it’s a livelihood for people.  On the other hand it is an enjoyment all way around, even though it’s a livelihood.  I remember that shortly ago I was interviewed by a magazine, and I was asked to state my creative philosophy.  I simply quoted, “Music must be an evidence for living.”  This was stated by Toshiro Mayuzumi, and I think that is behind it for a lot of people; those of us who create it, who perform it, who teach it.  Therein is a tremendous area of existence for people, really.  You can reach people through this art in such depth that a lot of other areas you can’t begin to touch.  Music touches so many areas, when you stop and think about it.  Really there’s almost no end to it.  It’s extremely important for young children to begin with this, much more than what we now do in the schools.  Still much more can be done there.  They play maybe in a band or sing in the choir or something like that, but there is so much more to it than just that for the young student.  I know, because I started when I was about age five.  I was in a musical family.  That’s how it all went, and most of the training was done right in the home.

BD:    Are we losing any of this tradition of teaching it in the home with the current use of electronics?

MJvA:    I don’t know.  There’s a possibility that’s so.  Students are so much more having to go off by themselves and master the computer, with all the hitting of the right keys and so on and so forth.  It’s a very lonesome sort of a thing, I think, rather than the togetherness that can happen in a class with live teaching.  I would not want to forecast what the future may be.  I just hope they know how to operate these things when they come to us after five more years, because I do feel that some of our time with these people is being usurped by it.  It takes a while to learn this; it takes a good year out of the curriculum, almost, to master the computer, and then the musical uses of it is another whole ballgame.

BD:    Is mastering the computer going to take the place of mastering the keyboard?

MJvA:    I hope not.  [Both laugh]  David, the young man who is doing the video, was showing me the other day, and he said the Kurzweil is going to do away with the keyboard altogether.  At which point I thought,

BD:    Let’s talk a little bit about your own compositions.  When you’re writing something, do you have the audience in mind, or the performers, or whom?

MJvA:    If it is for a particular performer and the kind of thing that he or she is able to do, then the piece veers into that particular area.  For example, I have done a couple of pieces with Dale Underwood, who is the principal saxophonist of the United States Navy Band.  He is an alto saxophone player with altissimo range, a very, very high-note technique.  He really is a virtuosic, spectacular performer.  Liquid Gold is the one piece that I did with his kind of improvisation, his kind of tone, his ability with the high notes and so forth.  I really did that entire piece with him in mind.  Some of the piano things I wrote for myself for concert use.  As a matter of fact, Contrast and Set of Five were both written for myself, as was the Concerto Brevis for piano and orchestra.  I’ve used those many, many times in concert myself.  Set of Five and Contrast are going to be produced by the New York City Ballet this May at Lincoln Center.  So the pendulum swings back around.  I did both pieces in 1956 in Carnegie Recital Hall; that was my New York debut at that time.  So it’s sort of nice to have this happen this spring.

BD:    You’ve recorded a number of these works.  Are you the ideal interpreter of your own piano music?

MJvA:    Well, shall we say it is one interpretation.  You have to be very, very careful in your writing of the details of every piece so as to reflect what your intention has been, and then hopefully the others that perform these works will know.  I’m quite pleased when I hear them done by other people.  It seems to come across quite well, what is on the printed page.  Then, of course, you have to remember every performer is a person, a musician in their own right, and they look at these phrases; they interpret them in a personal way, too.  This is what goes on with Bach, for example, who never did even write dynamic markings and articulations and things of that sort.

BD:    Then how much interpretive leeway do you allow in your music?

MJvA:    It’s all right.  If the music is not being played at the proper tempo and so on, of course it will sound different, but...

BD:    Well, have you basically been pleased with the performances you’ve heard of your works?

MJvA:    Yes.  Some of it I have not had the opportunity to hear before the recording has been made.  I have worked as accompanist with some of these recorded things, so that’s always a joy to do.  We know for sure it’s all going to sound well, but I can’t get to every recording studio anymore.  It’s not possible.

BD:    You’ve been very fortunate in having a number of your pieces recorded.

MJvA:    Yes.  On the whole I have been very pleased with them.  The Opus One recordings are very excellent in quality, as well as the performance groups and solos and so forth.

BD:    Do you approve of the recording process in which they can get everything to be so technically perfect?

MJvA:    Well, yes.  The engineers have worked very hard.  For example, the engineer in the very recent Washington D.C. recording of the Missa Brevis talked to me at length.  He was very amazed and astounded at this piece.  It’s very hard to record organ, for one thing, and he said he worked a great deal in getting that balance really well in that church.  I think it was good; I think it was very fine; I’m pleased with it.

BD:    Speaking of instruments which are hard to balance, I want to be sure and ask you about writing for the carillon.

MJvA:    Oh, yes.

BD:    Tell me the joys and sorrows of writing for this, perhaps, unwieldy instrument.

MJvA:    Okay.  [Laughs]  That is, indeed, a good way to put it.  The instrument differs fantastically with every one that you come across.  Not only do they differ in size of bells and the number of bells, but also the ways they are pitched.  Some are transposing instruments.  They’re not all in C, so that the piece that you wrote might sound about a sixth away from where you wrote it!  [Laughs]  We have a smaller carillon here, so the pieces that I’ve done I’ve been lucky to hear and see what problems there might be on any of the large carillons.  I just finished another piece for carillon, a caprice, this past December, and it plays the whole length of the forty-seven bells.  So it will take one of the large ones.  The Riverside Church has a fantastic instrument.  You climb up into the tower for something like twenty floors, and the big bell is just immense! You can’t imagine the size of that thing.  You get way up above there, and look down and see all of these different sizes of bells.  But the problem of it is the little ones are way at the top.  With all the noise on the streets and everything, you simply cannot hear anything outdoors of those little bells.  You just have to be inside there for a carillon concert, or you don’t hear everything.

BD:    And yet if you’re inside, aren’t you too close to the large bells?

MJvA:    They suggest that you get about three fourths of the way up.  You can stand on the stairs and listen to it.  It was the most fantastic experience I’ve ever had.  It’s magnificent.

BD:    Is there a certain camaraderie amongst people who compose for the carillon?

BD:    Let me ask you to address the whole business of women in music.   Is it harder for a woman to be a composer than a man because of the extraneous circumstances but not because of the musical circumstances?

MJvA:    Yes.  I think that says it succinctly.  There’s a great deal of talent amongst the women composers, I have noticed in particular, and some of them are not actually connected with a university, which makes it a little tough, maybe.

BD:    Tough on the composer?

MJvA:    Yes, because you don’t have quite as much chance for performances unless you’re in a music unit of some sort.  I’ve looked at that situation as a problem with some of them.   Those that are connected with universities have a little more opportunity for performances with orchestras or with bands or with solo works.  I just have to complete a new work and performances come pretty rapidly.

BD:    Does that, then, preclude performances by the Chicago Symphony and other great orchestras of the world?

MJvA:    It’s very hard for either men or women to get performances with, say, the Chicago Symphony, or the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  It’s very, very tough.

BD:    Then what advice do you have for the young composers coming along today

either women or men?

MJvA:    Part of it is you do have to do a certain amount of promoting.  You have to write extremely good music, for one thing.  You have to know the kinds of music that these conductors are turning to.  The Meet the Composers business, for example can be helpful.  If you know any of those folks, it may be helpful to get a foot in the door with those orchestras, like Harbison or whoever.  [See my Interview with John Harbison.]  I have been doing some promoting on my own, to a certain extent, and have found several performers in this particular way of doing it.  Anatoly Selianin in Russia, for example, premiered the Missa Brevis before we did it here in the United States, and this next month he’s going to do the Trumpet Concerto with the band at the Saratov State Conservatory in Saratov, Russia.  [Selianin provided the translation when I interviewed trumpet virtuoso Timofei Dokshizer.]  It’s hard to know.  I have done it basically on just flyers and complimentary cassette tapes, and things of this kind.  The Missa Brevis was asked for in Prague just about three weeks or so ago.  I mailed a copy off to this gentleman.  Then in Hungary, the Trumpet Concerto was done at the Franz Liszt Conservatoire last year by a student, as best as I could make out from the Hungarian on the program.  It’s amazing how one comes upon these various things.  I knew nothing about this New York thing coming up in May, for example, and the choreographer came upon the recording of Virginia Eskin doing the Set of Five.  So I would say to my students, the thing to do is to promote by recording, getting the best performances possible, and getting as many performers playing your music.  This is not hard to do if you have music that appeals.

BD:    But you don’t change your style just to get it more accessible, do you?

MJvA:    No, no.  Oh, no, no, no, no.   Nor do I just write to please myself.  There is a certain amount of theoretical concerns that make for these sounds that one has to behave.  You don’t just haul off and improvise.  There’s a great deal more to it.  One must be concerned with what is the most striking way of projecting that which you have come upon.  Each day is a brand new world in this thing.  It can sound one way one day and the next day or two, after you go back to it, you find something else that you needed to take care of.  There’s a tremendous craft in it, and without that tremendous attention to detail, nothing is done until every finesse, every fine thing is there that needed to be there to make the piece come off.

BD:    Where is the balance, then, between the inspiration and the craft?

MJvA:    There’s another interesting end of it because I do improvise, and some of the pieces I have just simply improvised and then wrote them down later.  There comes in the necessary part of it, the rounding of it, that you are constantly criticizing that which you have done, and you need to get away from it.  That’s why I play it on tape quite a lot, so that I can stand off and hear and get the basic effect of it.  Where is it going?   Is there line?  Is it achieving that point?  Is it achieving the relaxation point exactly where it ought to come?  One of our greatest blessings is this business of being able to tape what we are doing.  I came up before that, even at the Eastman School of Music.  We didn’t have anything like that when I was there in 1947.  We started with what was called a wire recorder.

BD:    Oh, yes.  I remember those.

MJvA:    One of the guys from New Orleans had gotten a hold of a wire recorder, and boy was that something!  So I immediately bought a little tiny one when I came down here in 1950, one that ministers would use for taping their sermons.  It wasn’t anything sophisticated.

BD:    Very low-fi. 

MJvA:    Yes!  [Both laugh]  But I shortly realized the tremendous value of it.  Our students should use video constantly!  We should video ourselves in performance.  We need to know what in the world we look like.  There’s no way otherwise.  It’s this mirror of what we produce that is ultimately important.

BD:    When you’re writing, are you in control of the pencil, or is the pencil in control of you?

MJvA:    Sometimes I don’t even use the pencil.  The pencil is just simply to make these little notations.  I will often times revamp an entire thing by eye, by the look of something.  Sometimes, I will lay all of the sheets out from one end of the hall to the other end there at the university.  I do this sometimes with the students.  In other words, we can see the architecture of the entire thing, and this is very interesting.  I stumbled upon it when I was working with a doctoral student on the Schoenberg opera Glückliche Hand.  It has the color crescendo in it, and that is the point at which I realized what can be gleaned from looking at one’s composition almost as an architectural draft.  You can’t do that with just one page at a time; you really had to pass by the entire thing.

BD:    Are you ever surprised by where the music takes you?

MJvA:    Yes, in the cantata Rising Night after Night, which has not been recorded.  [Note: The work would be recorded on VMM and released late in 2011.]  The work is about 23 minutes.  It’s all in Hebrew, and I remember the pitch wanted to rise constantly.  I don’t know why this was, but it happened to be facing the mountain, and I suppose it was the height of the whole thing in the text.  It has a fantastic text by Abba Kovner, one of the principal Israeli poets.  It was done for the thirtieth anniversary of the State of Israel, and somehow or another I received two packets of the text materials.  There were three texts.  I don’t know who in the world mailed it to me.  I never did know, but it was a contest of some sort, and I didn’t finish in time.  I met Abba Kovner in New York when he was on a speaking tour reading his poetry in ’79.  We played a tape for him of our performance of it in the apartment of his nephew, Victor Kovner, and at that very moment he gave me the total permission for the use of it.  He told me that nobody won that contest.  He said, “You must submit it,” and I said, “Under no circumstances will I submit this a half a year later.”  The next day I happened to meander over to Carl Fischer with the score under my arm, and they asked me what I had.  I told them and he demanded to see it.  He didn’t even have to hear the tape.  He looked at it page by page, and he looked up and said, “What do you want me to do?”  I said, “Can you take this into the rental library?” and he said, “Yes.”  The safety factor of turning over a score scares the daylights out of me.  I feel better about it once I have flung it, so that there are multiple copies all over.  It’s a crazy idea, but I feel better about the whole business since there are the score and parts for the chorus and solo and piano rehearsal stuff.   The premiere here at Texas Tech was before something like two thousand people.  It got a standing ovation after the thing was over with.  There was not a dry eye.  We had used multiple carousel slides of the translation because the whole thing was in Hebrew.  We had scenes from Israel going on throughout the entire performance.

BD:    I hope it gets more performances.

MJvA:    It takes a humongous size orchestra, to say nothing of trying to record it.  At one point we looked and it was going to take $30,000 to pay the performers necessary for a rehearsal, one public performance, and then immediately going in to recording session. 

not just piano pieces, but the entire palette, whether it be orchestra, orchestra and chorus, opera — in other words, the ability to speak effectively in the very large forms as well as the very small forms.

BD:    Is the music of Mary Jeanne van Appledorn great?

MJvA:    I don’t know.  [Laughs]  People like to perform it, apparently.  I have to say that I do not have as large an output as some persons, perhaps, comparably.  I hope yet to write in some of the very larger areas yet.  I hope to address symphonic writing, perhaps, and opera.

BD:    You’d like to do an opera?

MJvA:    Yes.  I am at the moment camping on a text which would lend itself very well to a video type of opera, namely Fraulein Elsa, which is a Schnitzler play.  The libretto has undergone two or three writings at this point, and it’s quite set to go.  When one embarks on something like that, one can almost do nothing else.  It’s a very, very in-depth, time-consuming thing, and at the moment I am trying to finish up about three or four doctoral people either this semester or in the summer.  So I just don’t have an awful lot of time to engage in planning a very large work the way one would like to do it.

BD:    Do you have enough time to devote to composing, or is teaching gobbling up a little too much?

MJvA:    Yes it is, but nevertheless, after all, that was my mission.  Composition more or less grew with me.  I do not even have my degree work in it.  It’s something that developed.

BD:    What did you do your degree work in?

MJvA:    In piano.  The bachelor was in piano performance at Eastman.  Then I did a master’s in theory, and taught there also as a teaching fellow.

BD:    You figured you’d start a concert career?

MJvA:    Well, I had too small hands!  [Laughs]

BD:    You could tour playing Bach and Scarlatti.

MJvA:    Oh I know, but you’re not content to do that.  I suppose it really was one of the reasons I wrote some of this piano music, too, because of that.

BD:    You write pieces, then, for your hands?

MJvA:    Yes, but curiously enough, they sound big.  So I found a way to do that. 

BD:    Have you ever thought of adapting pieces by Liszt or Chopin for people with slightly smaller hands?

MJvA:    Well, my Liszt Fantasy really is that in a sense.  It’s on one of the CRS record albums.  Actually it takes about sixteen of the pieces of Liszt.  These are detailed in the back of the score, and they’re all worked into this piece one way or another.  So, it’s kind of an interesting, very big sounding kind of piece.  I wrote it for the Liszt commemorative year.

This interview was recorded on the telephone on January 20, 1988.  Portions were used (with recordings) on WNIB later that year, and again in 1992 and 1997.  A copy of the unedited audio was placed in the Archive of Contemporary Music at Northwestern University.  The transcript was made and posted on this website in 2014.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.