David DeBoor Canfield Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Composer David DeBoor Canfield

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

David DeBoor Canfield (b. 23 September 1950, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.) is an American composer and entrepreneur.

Canfield's mother, June DeBoor Canfield, was a former violinist in the Columbus Philharmonic under Izler Solomon, and his father, Dr. John Canfield, had founded the Fort Lauderdale Symphony Orchestra (now the Florida Philharmonic) just before the younger Canfield was born, and was a music educator. It was natural, therefore, that Canfield's earliest musical studies (beginning at age six) in piano, violin, music theory and composition were all with his father, although by the time he had reached high school, these lessons had greatly diminished in frequency due to his father's busy schedule, and Canfield's increasing interest in the subject of chemistry. It was in chemistry, in fact, that he was accepted as a major at Stetson University in 1968, although he received a full scholarship from the school for playing in the University Orchestra, of which he was concertmaster for a year and a half.

Midway through his junior year, Canfield transferred to Covenant College, where his father was head of the music department, to study music, and he became the first composition major to graduate from that school. Taking two years off from his education after graduation, he played violin professionally in the Fort Lauderdale Symphony, the Miami Opera Association and the Miami Beach Symphony Orchestra. In 1974, Canfield decided to begin graduate school and was accepted into Indiana University. His composition teachers there included John Eaton, Bernhard Heiden and Frederick Fox. Canfield was awarded the MM in Composition in 1977 and the DM in Composition in 1983.

While at Indiana University, his dissertation piece, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, won the Dean's Composition Competition and was premiered by David Brunell, piano, and Keith Brown, with the Indiana University Orchestra.

Not interested in pursuing a career as a teacher of composition, Canfield then began Ars Antiqua, which in a short time became the world's largest mail-order business devoted to classical LP records. He also compiled, during the course of running this venture, the world-wide standard price guide for classical records, the latest edition of which contains almost 200,000 different records on all formats. He retired from this business in 2005.

During the 27 years he ran his record business, however, he has continued to compose and receive numerous performances of his works, which include the premiere of his Piano Sonata in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Festival European International in 1990, his Toccata and Fugue in E-Flat Minor in Holland in 1997, and his Overture: The Spirit of Challenger by two different orchestras.

Canfield is the composer-in-residence of the Bloomington Pops Orchestra, which has performed more than a dozen of his pieces. The largest scale of these, the American Patriot Overture, scored for large orchestra, chorus, auxiliary brass and cannons, the Pops performed three times. In 1986, Canfield won the Jill Sackler Cello Composition Contest with his Prisms for Violoncello Quartet and Orchestra of Violoncellos. This work was premiered at the Third American Cello Congress by Laszlo Varga, conductor, and an orchestra comprising some of the world's most distinguished cellists. It was subsequently performed at the Eva Janzer Memorial Concert at Indiana University in October, 2000 under the direction of faculty member, Emilio Colon. In February of 2001, a three-day festival featuring Canfield’s music was presented by the faculty and students of the University of Central Oklahoma at Edmond, OK. A number of works were premiered at this festival, including his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, by the dedicatee, Kenneth Tse, who is on the faculty of the University of Iowa. Tse has performed it widely, most recently at the World Saxophone Congress in Minneapolis. Also premiered at this same festival was his Sonata for Trumpet and Piano, performed by James L. Klages, who is on the faculty of the University of Central Oklahoma. In 2003, The Proclamation, a 90-minute oratorio jointly composed with his father was premiered in Bloomington, Indiana to critical and audience acclaim.

In January, 2005, Canfield’s Symphony No. 2 Israel was premiered by the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, and his Symphony No. 3, Retrospective, was premiered in 2005 by Stephen Pratt and the Indiana University Symphonic Band.

Canfield's list of works includes three symphonies, several works for solo organ, a string quartet, a string trio, sonatas for trumpet, piano, bassoon, horn and alto saxophone, two violin sonatas, two concert overtures and a suite of orchestra pieces for a projected ballet. Also in his canon are a number of works for brass ensemble, including Oklahoma Requiem, Intrada on a Hymn Tune of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Microtonal Fanfare and the Bug 'n' Bear Suite and several solo piano pieces. In July of 2006, his Martyrs for the Faith: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Symphonic Winds was a featured work at the World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In September of 1986, David Canfield was in Chicago on business, and he graciously took time to visit my home-studio for an interview. Full disclosure: I had been a regular customer of his for several years, and had featured recordings I had purchased from him as part of my series on WNIB, Classical 97.

I knew that he was also a composer, so our conversation revolved mostly on that topic . . . . .

Bruce Duffie:   You spend a lot of time buying and selling records, and you spend some time, I assume, still composing. How do you divide your time between those two very arduous tasks?

David DeBoor Canfield:   It’s not so easy, really. Basically, one must make a living, and that’s where the selling of records comes in. Whatever time is left over that is not demanded by my wife, is spent in composing. I recently had a piano sonata premiere, which took me two years to compose. It probably should have taken only two months at the most, but such are the necessities of earning a living in this present age.

BD:   Why have you decided to earn your living by being a vendor of records, rather than a teacher of musical skills?

Canfield:   I was a teacher of musical skills for a while at Indiana University, and after I’d done that for a few years I decided that I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. I got into records as a collector first, and I would go around to a lot of used record stores and look for things for my own collection. I kept coming across records that I thought were rare and out of print, and though I don’t want them, somebody out there must be interested in them. So I compiled a list and sent it out, and it’s gradually grown from there.

BD:   It’s enough to keep you going pretty well?

Canfield:   It’s enough to keep me and about seven employees going full-time.

BD:   [Somewhat surprised] My goodness! It’s a major operation.

Canfield:   A major operation!

BD:   With the presence of all kinds of music in and around you all the time, does that have an influence on the music that then comes out of your head and your pen?

Canfield:   Some composers would do anything to say that they were not influenced by any other composer, living or dead, but I like to think that I’ve been influenced by every composer that’s ever lived, or at least every composer that I’ve ever heard.

BD:   Influenced in a good way, or a bad way?

Canfield:   What is ‘influence’? I don’t think that composers can grow up in a cultural vacuum, or that any composer, very few composers anyway, create something just out of nothing. Maybe Chopin, someone would argue, and maybe Harry Partch, or John Cage, but the great majority of composers have been influenced by cultural things as they were growing up and listening to a lot of music, and no, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Originality per se for the sake of it is probably one of the worst things to hit contemporary music today. Rather, each composer must work to be true to his or her own inner conviction and artistic voice as unique individuals. If we are true to our artistic convictions, we will produce music that is unique and individual. It may not always be original or ‘innovative’, or path-breaking. There’s a difference there, and a lack of originality doesn’t necessarily mean that one’s music is not worthwhile.

BD:   You can still break a new path even though you’re driving an old car?
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Canfield:   I think so, yes.

BD:   Are you comfortable in your old car?

Canfield:   I think so! I write music to appeal to myself, first of all. Of course, I could write in a lot of different styles, and I do write in different styles, and I feel comfortable with a number of different styles. But there are some styles I don’t feel comfortable with, and I see no reason that I should write in those styles. Although I may like, for instance, the style of Anton Webern, I couldn’t write music like that if I were paid all the money in the world.

BD:   If someone commissioned you for a little piece in that style, I’m sure you could turn it out, couldn’t you?

Canfield:   Maybe, with a little practice, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, and therefore the end product would sound very much like a piece that was just written for money, and not because of any inner artistic drive. Wagner wrote some pieces like that. He said that the best thing about his American Centennial March was the $10,000 dollars he got for it. [Both laugh]

BD:   Thinking of the style that you write in, do you find it, or does it find you?

Canfield:   It’s something that’s developed over a course of time. It’s not something that I immediately discovered in high school. I was writing rather blatant imitations of Chopin, and Beethoven, but that was important for my development as a composer. If you don’t have some practice in the craft of composing, then it’s much more difficult when you do find your voice, to get it on paper, and to translate what you hear in the inner ear into a form which can be reproduced and performed.

BD:   Then where is the balance between the inspiration and the craft?

Canfield:   One feeds on the other, and one can’t be a good composer, and certainly not a great one, without a generous dose of both. I won’t try to hold up my music as such, but both inspiration and craft are necessary, and the music will suffer if both are not present.

BD:   Do you always have the inspiration when you’re calling upon it?

Canfield:   ‘Inspiration’ is a somewhat misused term, because a lot of people think of it as something that has to settle in like morning mist or dew, and then one can start to create. Inspiration is really more like just plugging down and getting to work. I don’t know how hard it is for most artists to paint, but I would imagine they don’t have to sit around and wait for inspiring thoughts to strike them before they can set down their visual impressions on a canvass. A composer will sit down either away from a piano or at a piano. I usually compose at the piano because I like to check immediately what I’ve written. Then you try things, and trying out one thing will lead you to an idea which you explore a little bit. Then that leads you somewhere else. Usually, when I write like this, I find myself going off in directions that I never dreamed when I originally sat down to begin the piece. It ends up somewhere totally different.

BD:   Pleasing or non-pleasing?

Canfield:   Pleasing usually. If it’s not pleasing, I strike out what I’ve written and start over again, or scratch out that portion until I get something I’m satisfied with. I’m very much a reviser. I try to work on music to a certain point until I’m satisfied with it. I could keep on improving any piece that I’ve ever composed, and if I lived with it long enough and worked at it long enough, I could get every piece I’ve written better. But at a certain point you have to let go and say that’s it! I’m through with that one, and I’m going onto the next one!

BD:   How do you know when you’ve hit that point to let it go?

Canfield:   When I can live with it.

* * * * *

BD:   While you’re writing it, are you conscious at all of the audience that’s going to hear the piece?

Canfield:   Very much so. A lot of composers say that they want to write for posterity. I don’t write for posterity. I’ll be very upfront about that. If posterity wants to hear my music, I’d be very flattered, but most composers down through the ages were writing for particular people in a particular setting and a particular place. That’s certainly true of many of the great composers. Beethoven, and Bach, and Mozart certainly were not writing for posterity, although their music was so great that posterity is enjoying it today. But I’m very conscious of my audience, and my style will adjust slightly depending on the audience that I’m writing for.

BD:   Would that then preclude a different audience from enjoying it to its fullest?

Canfield:   Perhaps. I can envision some audiences not liking some pieces that I’ve written, and there may be some pieces that I’ve written that no audience will like! [Both laugh] On the other hand, most music is going to find a receptive audience if the listeners in that audience have developed a musical vocabulary that matches the composer. In other words, if you were to take someone from India who had been raised and had studied nothing but ragas, and expose them to a Mozart symphony which all Western music lovers will agree is a masterpiece, what is that Indian going to think of it? Probably not very much because he hasn’t learned the language of Mozart.

BD:   Won’t there be something in the air that will transcend the lack of familiarity?

Canfield:   I doubt it. I’ve talked to some people from other cultures who have heard Western art music for the first time, and they have a great deal of difficulty with it. Many people can achieve an appreciation of music from the West after they’ve been exposed to a certain amount of it, but initially it’s very difficult for them. For instance, in Indian music there is nothing compared to our harmonic movement. It’s a very melodic-type of music.

BD:   It goes horizontally rather than vertically?

Canfield:   Exactly. So someone who has been raised on that is going to have a great deal of difficulty with the harmonic chord sequences of even Baroque- or Classical-era music in the West. That’s not to say they can’t learn to enjoy it, but initially it may be very difficult for them. It is the same with someone who is writing music today. If they are writing in a difficult or advanced style, what some people would call avant-garde, before the auditor can judge that piece of music, they’ve got to learn to speak his language. Otherwise those listeners would not have any grounds on which to say it is a good piece of music, or it is a mediocre piece of music, or even a downright bad piece of music. It would be like me trying to critique a performance of a play in Norwegian without having learned the language. How could I judge whether the actors were delivering their lines well, or whether the play was beautifully crafted if I didn’t speak the language?

BD:   [Playing Devil’s Advocate] And yet you would be able to say that the scenery worked very well, and that the lighting effects were good, and some of these things were meaningful.

Canfield:   Right, but that’s communicating on a basis that I’ve learned to communicate. We’ve all learned to see, and it doesn’t take too much training to learn some other communication skills. But language takes more training, and it is a great fallacy to talk about music as being the universal language, because I don’t feel like it is.
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BD:   You say it doesn’t take any training to learn to see. Does it take a great deal of training to learn to listen?

Canfield:   It takes some, and it even takes some training to learn to see. Otherwise, if it didn’t take any training to learn to see, then everyone would appreciate all paintings in the same way, and there’s clearly differences of opinion about what constitutes Great Art.

BD:   Then let me turn the question to our subject. What constitutes Great Music?

Canfield:   [Laughs] There’s been a lot of debate on this issue, and it might ultimately just boil down to the single statement that ‘Great Music is great because it’s considered to be great’. That sounds like a cop-out, and it probably is, but I am someone who personally likes almost every style of music, and has a record collection of probably 50,000 pieces of music in every conceivable style — with the possible exception of minimalism, which I don’t like. You’ll see that I don’t like it if you hear some of my music. But to me Great music is music that very selfishly I think is great. Of course, all those 50,000 works I may have are not equally great by any means.

BD:   What are some of the threads that contribute to the greatness?

Canfield:   There should be contrast in music. That’s one reason I don’t like minimalism. There’s no contrast in it. To me, minimalism has as much musical interest as an average pop song, because a pop song uses generally only a few chords and only one dynamic level, which is about a mezzo-forte.

BD:   [Gently protesting] I would have said about a triple forte!

Canfield:   [Laughs] Well, it depends on which group you’re listening to! Yes, it maybe triple forte. Typically, it uses no changes in instrumentation, whereas serious art music varies things such as form, instrumentation, orchestration, melodic contours, and harmony. Sometimes the harmonic movement will be quicker, and sometimes it will slow down. Maybe the thing that makes music great to my mind is when these elements all mesh in just the perfect way. If you change anything about that piece of music, you would be degrading it in some way. That, to me, is what makes a great piece of music.

BD:   Can I assume that you try to include these threads in all of your pieces?

Canfield:   I try to, yes.

BD:   It is a conscious thing, or is this just something that comes with your creative technique?

Canfield:   It’s mostly subconscious. I was helped in this area quite a bit by one of my teachers, John Eaton. When I was writing the Piano Concerto under his direction, at one point he said, “You’ve got too many measures of 4/4 in this passage together. Put a measure of a different meter in, and upset the flow of the notes a little bit. That will make it more interesting.” I thought about that passage, and knew I could improve it quite a bit by doing just that.

BD:   That would make it more interesting for him. Did it make it more interesting for you?

Canfield:   Yes, it did. He was absolutely right, and once these tricks of the trade are learned, they somehow become immersed into one’s subconscious. Now as I’m composing a piece of music, I don’t have to sit and think about keeping it from being repetitive or boring by adding a major of an irregular rhythm every now and then to keep the flow interesting. That’s something that has become part of my subconscious. But there is another level that’s more conscious where I can look at a piece and see things about it that can be improved. So sometimes I’ll go back with the old eraser and just scratch out something and try to fix it up.

BD:   Do you ever come back to pieces after they’ve been premiered and published, and tinker with them?

Canfield:   Yes, I have done that occasionally. After the Piano Concerto was premiered, I realized that there were a couple of things in it that could be improved, and I subsequently altered the score. This is not a good thing for a composer ever to admit, but sometimes I change things because of mistakes. At the very end of the concerto, there is a cymbal crash which occurs on the penultimate beat. Originally, I had scored that for the very last beat of the piece, so the piece ended with this huge orchestral climax, and concurrent with that was this big cymbal crash. In one of the rehearsals for the work, the cymbal player played the crash a beat early, and I realized it worked much better there. So I changed the score. It’s fine, and I’ve been very happy that I did.

BD:   You wouldn’t have come up with that if he hadn’t made a mistake?

Canfield:   No! Without that mistake, I may have never realized that it worked better in that location.

BD:   [With a wink] I assume you don’t encourage people to make mistakes to see if things work better.

Canfield:   No, I don’t do that! [Both laugh] It’s difficult enough to get a decent performance of a contemporary piece of music these days. You don’t need to encourage anyone to make mistakes! They’ll make enough on their own!

BD:   Is it too difficult bringing a work to performance?

Canfield:   Difficult enough but I feel rewarded that I’ve had some gifted performers to perform some of my pieces. David Brunell, the concert pianist from Northfield, Minnosota, premiered my Piano Sonata, and just did a bang-up job. I feel fortunate to get occasionally at least a performance of that caliber. Any composer would. Obviously, there are many cases where performances just don’t come off. Schoenberg said something to the effect that his music isn’t dissonant, only badly performed.

BD:   Is your music generally well performed?

Canfield:   It’s performed well enough to get the idea of the piece across. Most of the time I could wish that one or another place had gone a little bit better, but most of the time it’s acceptable.

BD:   Is there any such thing as the perfect performance?

Canfield:   I suppose that on some occasions, most composers would say they didn’t think the piece could have been performed any better, but that’s not to say by any means that it is the only way that piece could be performed. Getting back to what constitutes great music, that might be another criterion, because to me great music permits itself to have more than one valid interpretation. That’s another thing, if I can rail against minimalism a little bit more. To me, minimalism doesn’t really permit interpretation. What is there to interpret, really?

BD:   When you create a score, you try to give all the indications of pitch, and harmony, and dynamics, and interpretation. Are you not straight-jacketing your performers?

Canfield:   No, in fact that does not happen no matter how detailed a composer makes his scores. Think of Milton Babbitt. Wherever he has nuances, they are crafted in there. Some composers put in metronome markings that are down to the tenth of a beat. That’s really pretty absurd, because unless you’re having computers play your music, human beings are not capable of hitting it that precisely. No performer could perform a piece of music twice exactly the same way, even if he had studied it in a certain way for years. So when you talk about two different people, you’re talking about two different personalities who are performing a given piece. Just as composers have different personalities, performers certainly do too, and that means they’re going to bring their own perspective to bear when they perform a given piece of music. It’s going to be considerably different from one person to the other.

BD:   Are there ever times when performers discover little strokes of brilliance in your score that you didn’t know you’d hidden there?

Canfield:   All the time! It happened with this Piano Sonata. Some of the things I expected him to perform in a certain way, and he did, and other things, such as little turns of phrases, he put them there, and when I heard them they were nice, but I never thought of the possibility of performing it that way. That’s one of the joys of having a really gifted performer do your music, because they will find things in it that you didn’t even know were there.

BD:   Now you say that every performer will perform differently each time.

Canfield:   Unless he’s a robot, it’s inevitable.

BD:   Are records then robots in which the music comes out with the same nuances every time?

Canfield:   That’s true!   A performance on a record is set in concrete, and until they develop a record that plays differently every time, with some slight variation — which could happen, I suppose — that’s going to be the case. I’m not a performance collector. I’m a repertoire collector, so I have very little opportunity to compare performances one with the other. I don’t sit around comparing Karajan’s performance of Beethoven’s Fifth with somebody else’s. I listen to the kind of music where there is generally only one recording of that particular piece.

BD:   It’s take it or leave it?

Canfield:   It’s take it or leave it. How many recordings of a symphony of Einojuhani Rautavaara are there anyway? You generally have one choice.

BD:   Then you have to assume it’s a reasonable performance, and what you’re hearing is a reasonable representation of the score.

Canfield:   Yes, but unless you have the score at hand — which in most cases you don’t — you have to take it on face value to a certain degree. If it’s a performer you have learned to trust because you’ve heard him perform other works, and know that he’s a performer in line with your own musical taste, then it’s easier to trust him on music you’re not familiar with.

BD:   But he still could miss it completely.

Canfield:   He could, and it happens. I was talking with Oscar Morawetz, the Canadian composer. He’s a very gifted composer, and was giving a talk at Indiana University. I spoke to him afterwards and showed him a record I had of his Piano Fantasy performed by Glenn Gould. He said, “It’s not my piece, but...” [Both laugh]

* * * * *

BD:   Are you also a performer?

Canfield:   [Laughs] I would be doing an injustice to the word ‘performer’ to consider myself a performer. I play at the violin, which is my principal instrument, and I play less at the piano. I play the piano well enough to write things that I can’t play for the instrument... if that makes any sense. [Both laugh]

BD:   Does that make you a better composer because you understand those instruments. Do you write better for the violin than you would, say, for the contrabassoon?

Canfield:   Oh, definitely! Yes, there’s no question about that as a violinist, even a poor one, I know what works on the violin and what doesn’t. Similarly for piano, I figure if I can play it slowly at the keyboard, a real pianist can play it up to tempo. If I can’t play it at a slower tempo, then it’s probably unpianistic, and indeed pianists who have played my music, do tell me that it is pianistic.

BD:   That’s a compliment?

Canfield:   I hope it’s a compliment!

BD:   I mean, it’s not just saying I’m really glad you didn’t write anything that I really had to work at?

Canfield:   My music is challenging. Most of it is technically pretty demanding, but pianistic implies something more than just lying in the hands. By that they mean it works well on the piano and sounds good on the piano... at least I hope so.

BD:   When you write a piano concerto, obviously you’ve got to score the whole thing for the rest of the orchestra. Does it not obligate you to understand the contrabassoon a little bit?

Canfield:   A composer should know the instruments he’s writing for to a certain degree. Hindemith went to the extreme of requiring his students to know every instrument so that they could play on them. I don’t think you have to go to that extreme, but clearly if you’re writing notes that don’t exist on the instruments, or trills that aren’t possible, then your performers are going to sneer at you, at least behind your back.

BD:   Those details you could pick up from a book, such as knowing the range and just a little bit about the possibilities.

Canfield:   Right, but that stuff should be done before you start to write for an instrument. You should know the range. You should know what works well. You should know that maybe certain tonguing on an instrument is cumbersome, but those things are taught in either orchestration books, or in classes.

BD:   You don’t really need to pick up the instrument to understand all that?

Canfield:   No, I’ve never tried to play most of the instruments I write for. [Pauses a moment] The world should be grateful that! [Much laughter]

BD:   If you had an extra thirty hours every day, would you maybe add this to your calendar?

Canfield:   If I had an extra thirty hours every day, I would spend more time with my family and my wife, and I would write more music. I’m never going to be a very prolific composer, because nobody’s come up with that thirty-hour day yet. If I had another hundred hours a day, then I might think about taking up an extra instrument, or learning Russian, or a lot of other little projects that I would like to do. But there’s only so many hours in the day, and so many days that we’ve got on the Earth, so you have to make the best use of your time.

BD:   Do you feel that you accomplish all that you can in the time that you’ve been given?

Canfield:   I’m productive. Much of my productivity, of course, is involved in making a living, selling those tasty little bits of vinyl to voracious collectors.

BD:   If you received a grant, would that relieve you of at least a couple of years of having to toil?

Canfield:   Yes, but it would be a little risky just to take a sabbatical from my record business, because people might find somewhere else to buy their records, and I would be out of a job. [Wistfully] But it would be nice... I would love to be able to retire at an early enough age that I could devote my time in a more regulated way to composition.

BD:   Have you got ideas stacked up so that you know a couple of years from now you’ll get to this, and four years after that you’ll get to that?

Canfield:   I’ve got enough ideas to fill me up for several lifetimes, I’m sure. Some of these ideas I will probably never find the time for. I would love to write an opera about... I don’t think I’ll say, because somebody else will come along and beat me to it by the time I get around to it.

BD:   [Encouragingly] But yours will be better!

Canfield:   Maybe so, or maybe not. I’m not a good judge of my own music. A lot of composers will say that because they’re just too close to it. After I’ve had a piece out for a few years, sometimes I can come back to it a little more objectively and say that this worked and this didn’t.

BD:   Who should be the judge of whether a piece of music is worth hearing again or not?

Canfield:   The performers and the audience. I can’t think of anybody better.

BD:   Not the critics at all?

Canfield:   I don’t care too much about critics. Sure, they have to earn a living like the rest of us, but think of where music would be without each of the following groups... Without the composers, the music wouldn’t be there in the first place. Without the performers, it might exist on paper but you won’t hear it. Without the audience, the performers would be playing to a vacuum. Without the critics and the music theorists, I can’t think of too much that would be drastically altered.

BD:   Then what is the role of the music critic?
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Canfield: A music critic can perform a valuable function. They can tell the people what they should have heard, whether or not they were there. They can give some idea of what performance practice is like today. I don’ think that the critic is useless, and I don’t mean to imply that. But if there’s a weak link in the chain, I’m just glad that he’s at the end of the chain rather than somewhere in the middle. Music would survive without critics quite well, but I’m not sure that music would survive as an art form without any of the other three groups that I mentioned.

* * * * *

BD:   Have you written some vocal music?

Canfield:   Yes, I have.

BD:   Tell me the joys and sorrows of writing for the human voice.

Canfield:   You can’t really write for it like you would an instrument, but it’s the same case of knowing about it. You need to know the range of the voice that you’re writing for, and there will be different types of voices, so you need to know what kinds of things fit well in the voice. If you’re writing a certain kind of music, you better have a singer with absolute pitch if you’re going to get your piece performed. So, you have to be aware of certain things that singers require.

BD:   You’ve written chamber music for voice, or songs?

Canfield:   I’ve written some songs. One piece on the record called An Album of Cats [shown at right], is for mezzo-soprano or soprano, string quartet, harpsichord, and tape of cat sounds. So that’s a chamber ensemble.

BD:   Why cats?

Canfield:   Why not? Nobody else has done a piece quite like that yet to my knowledge.

BD:   Did you do it just to be different?

Canfield:   [Laughs] No, I did it primarily because of the composers you’ve interviewed, I’m probably the one who likes cats the most! I have a personal cat music collection, not only classical music but music from the areas of rock and pop and jazz, and every area that exists of music that has something to do with the cat. I’ve collected almost a thousand such pieces so far.

BD:   [Making a terrible pun] Is your collection then ‘the cat’s meow’? [This is an expression referring to something that is considered outstanding, coined by American cartoonist Thomas A. Dorgan (1877–1929).]

Canfield:   [Both laugh] I guess so!

BD:   Do you actually have the cat walking on the keys of the piano?

Canfield:   Well, not quite. That was the middle movement of a set of three cat dances. I had composed the other two movements, and was writing one for each of my three cats that I had at the time. I was stuck for an idea for the second movement, and when I was lying in bed, out of the blackness of the night came this sequence of notes. Here it was the cat who had not yet had her piece composed, helping me out a little bit. She played a sequence of notes, and I liked it so much that I jotted it down the next day, and it became the introduction for this waltz. The notes were exactly as she played them, although her tempo was a little shaky. Sorry to say, none of my cats has given me anything quite so suitable before or since.

BD:   There is one piece where the cat did play, Musique du Chat [LP cover shown below-left].

Canfield:   That piece was composed by one of my cats walking across the keyboard and it was overdubbed once to make two layers. This particular cat had a very strange quirk. If you scratched him behind his ear in a certain way, he would shake his hind foot, and when he did that, it would cause the key under his foot to be struck repeatedly. So I got some interesting effects by scratching his ear. Then I guided him up and down the piano. So, my part in that piece was rather minimal despite my disavowal of minimalism. [Both laugh] By the way, ‘musique du chat’ is a pun of sorts, because it is French for ‘cat music’, but it is also colloquial French for ‘cacophony’. That particular piece exhibits that characteristic. [More laughter]. You say ‘cat-cophony!’

BD:   [Coming back to reasonable ideas] What advice do you have for young composers coming along?
canfield

Canfield:   [Laughs] I would tell the average young composer to write all the music you’d like, but don’t try to make a living from it. There are probably enough composers in Bloomington, Indiana where you have the faculty of Indiana University, and seventy or eighty composition students, and probably a number of people who reside in the city itself, like myself, all of whom compose. Probably there’s enough talent right there, and enough composers to supply the classical music needs for the entire United States. The trouble is Bloomington is not the only such city where composers reside. There are also a few other places, like Chicago, where there also happen to be a lot of composers in the same boat. So, write all you want, but get a job that will put food on the table, and allow you enough free time that you can compose, and maybe give you enough money where you can promote your music. Maybe it will catch on. There’s going to be only a very few Aaron Coplands and Ned Rorems out there who can make a living composing classical music, but talent may eventually win out. Like everything else in this society, when the supply exceeds the demand, the value goes down.

BD:   The value of each composition???

Canfield:   No, the value of the product that is being rendered. So, for somebody who is writing classical music, just because the supply exceeds the demands for such a product, you can’t get very much for a piece of music. For instance, if there were only two composers in the United States trying to write all the music that’s required for this country, then their services would be in enormous demand. They’d be getting a million dollars or more for one piece of music. That’s not the case.

BD:   Should we try to create more demand for more music?

Canfield:   I would like to see more demand being created, and that could be done through programs like yours, and your radio station, which is playing classical music. That’s going to create a certain demand because there will always be new people tuning in who will say this music’s pretty good! They also will ask what else is there by this composer and others who lived in the same era? Then maybe their interest eventually will branch off. For instance, I had a great deal of trouble the first time I heard Berg’s Wozzeck. In fact, the first four or five times I heard it, it was just really painful to listen. But after a while I began to appreciate the true beauty of it. I became educated to speak this particular language, and saw what a masterpiece it was. So I have a great hope that the love for classical music will grow in this country, and there will be more of a demand for our product. But we’re up against some pretty stiff competition. The Michael Jacksons are out there! They’re attracting more people than we will.

BD:   Should we try to get the audience that goes to Michael Jackson, into the concert hall and the opera house?

Canfield:   Yes, but it has to be done from a very early age. Relatively few people come to classical music later in life, although I know it does happen. In my own case, I was brought up in a musical household. My father and I would sit and study Bartók string quartets. We would view the scores while the music was playing. I didn’t like them back in those days, but it did bring me to an appreciation of music. So I’m a big proponent of Young People’s Concerts, and the like.

BD:   I assume that you’ve had a good response from the pubic to the performances?

Canfield:   Yes, my pieces have been well received. I hate to say I’m writing for an audience, but I haven’t forgotten that audiences exist. I know there are going to be flesh and blood people out there sitting and listening to the music. That usually strikes a chord that way.

BD:   Do you want your music to be well-known and whistled all over the place?

Canfield:   I’d be happy if they could whistle it, but I know it’s never going to be heard alongside tunes from The Barber of Seville.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of music?

Canfield:   I am optimistic about the future of music, though it’s difficult for composers because it’s not only in the United States that the supply is not matched by the demand, but there are more and more people now composing. I’m sure there must be more composers alive now than ever before in history, and with the sheer amount of music that has been written, some of it is bound to strike a responsive chord out there.

BD:   So, how do we sort through it all?

Canfield:   That’s where you support your local record dealer, and your local classical music station. You find out what you like and what you don’t like.

BD:   Is that the advice you have for the music consumer?

Canfield:   Yes. Just try it out, but give it a try. Don’t just make pure assumptions that you’re not going to like something because somebody else said it was poor. Just give it a try, and give it more than one try! You might not like a piece of music for several hearings, but if it’s considered to be a masterpiece by many people you respect, or by many experienced musicians, give it an extra try or two, and see if there’s not really something worthwhile there. You might also discover that the piece of music isn’t worth anything, but then you have given it a try.

BD:   One last question. Is composing fun?

Canfield:   Yes! [Pauses a moment] Well, it can be. If it’s going well, it’s fun, but if you get stuck somewhere, then it becomes a little bit more drudgery.

BD:   I trust you don’t get stuck too often.

Canfield:   Not too often, but it does happen. Sometimes I just have to leave a piece for a little while, and come back to it later. I might run into a dead end somewhere, or feel it’s not going where I want it to go, or I’m not happy with what I’ve written. In fact, for that Piano Concerto, I wrote enough music to probably fill up three piano concertos. I threw out the two thirds that was the worst, and tried to keep the best third. I write a lot of music that never gets onto record, or published, or anything. It just gets thrown away, because it’s very much an experimental-type of thing. I have to see what works and what doesn’t work.

BD:   I hope most of your music works.

Canfield:   That’s ultimately not for me to decide. [Both laugh]

BD:   Is the Piano Concerto something you are really especially proud of?

Canfield:   It’s my most major work to date. It’s my longest work for the largest instrumental forces, and yes, I think it’s one of my best works. But again, that’s my opinion, and not anybody else’s. I certainly put the most effort into it of any piece ever. It was my doctoral dissertation piece, and it took an enormous amount of work to get it put together.

BD:   Thank you for chatting with me today. It has been fun, and I learned a lot.

Canfield:   My pleasure. It’s been a joy to be here.

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on September 8, 1986. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1990, and again in 1995 and 2000. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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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.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.