Composer Robert Kritz
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
Chicago composer and WWII Veteran, Robert Kritz
(born November 20, 1925), died peacefully April 14 at the age of 92. "His
life was a tapestry of sonatas, adventure, art, life-long learning and family
-- especially children," said his long-time companion, Georgeanna Fischetti.
Although he spent much of his adult life in marketing, including running
Robert Kritz and Associates, Bob came into his own after retirement when
Georgeanna urged him to return to his music. His compositions, including
"Connections" and "Diaspora Dances" were played across Europe, South America
and the US.
He is survived by Georgeanna, his 3 children, Harold Kritz, Angie Atkins
(and husband Norman) and Daniel Kritz (and wife Susan), Joe and Paul Dunfee,
and many loving grandchildren.
== Chicago Tribune, April 20, 2018.
|
In Mid-June of 1998, it was my pleasure to meet with Chicago composer
Robert Kritz for an interview. He was re-establishing himself in the
concert music world after having spent much of his life in business. A
few of his works were being performed, and he was very enthusiastic about
having his musical ideas brought forth.
I was able to produce a program featuring recordings of his pieces
and part of this conversation on WNIB, Classical 97, and now, a few months
prior to his centenary, the entire chat is presented on this webpage . .
. . .
Bruce Duffie: My first question is about the
program note for your Saxophone Concerto. It lists you as
a businessman. Why does it not list you as a composer?
Robert Kritz: I was a composer for the first
ten years of my twenties, and then personal problems arose which forced
me to go back into the commercial marketplace.
BD: You needed cash?
Kritz: I had debts.
BD: A lot of composers will teach or perform,
and you decided to go back into business?
Kritz: At the time, that was the avenue which
was most open to me. I didn’t have the qualifications to go into
teaching, and the path I chose seemed the easiest for me to pay my debts
with.
BD: Being a composer who is then in business,
were you able to influence some non-musicians to come to concerts, and
get them interested in music both old and new?
Kritz: My mission then was just to try to
keep as much involved in music as I could, while continuing to earn a
living. So I studied and composed at night, and played some chamber
music. The job of trying to spread the word didn’t occur to me
until much later when I finally decided to come back into music after
a commercial career.
BD: [With a gentle nudge] When you
were in business, you were just that crazy guy who composes at night?
Kritz: [Laughs] That’s right, and I
kept it to myself pretty much. Once a week, we would play some chamber
music, and once in a while they would dabble with something I had written.
But mostly it was just to keep in it, and not give it up completely.
BD: When were you able to give up the business
and go back into composing full-time?
Kritz: Three years ago I saw that I was soon
going to be seventy, and the question I had asked back in my twenties
and early thirties was whether this music I’d written have any value?
That question just continued to gnaw at me, and if I was going to
find out, it better be now. So I decided to leave the business and
take a chance. I went to Northwestern where I had studied fifty years
ago, and went to see Dean Richard Green. He’s the man to whom I
owe the first real debt for not laughing at me when I showed him a fifty-year-old
manuscript that was yellow. He really studied it, and called in some
of the other composition instructors and professors.
BD: Is this not to say that you changed your
styles or ideas in fifty years, or where you looking to pick up where
you had left off?
Kritz: I was hoping to pick up where I had
left off, but I wanted to know if the path was worth continuing.
I needed some kind of validation.
BD: Before you asked for this new advice,
did you feel that it was valid?
Kritz: Yes. I felt there was some merit
to a couple of the pieces. They had been performed fifty years
ago to some degree of success, and I thought that if I could remember the
melodies after fifty years, there must be something worth saving.
After hearing the music at several performances, what I discovered was
that it did need some tightening and some structuring, but that the material
on which it was built, did have some merit. I felt comfortable with
that, but it took an awful lot of work to get it into shape. This
was work which I didn’t follow through on fifty years ago, but when I picked
it back up in 1995, Green had a few things to suggest. I was then
to bring it back and he’d arrange for a reading. I was flabbergasted
that I was given that much encouragement, but I did as he suggested. When
I brought it back, they gave it a reading, and pretty soon set up a masterclass
for credit of some five string players at Northwestern that were in the
Master’s program. Their job was to analyze, rehearse and then perform
this Quintet.
BD: Were you pleased with what you heard?
Kritz: I was pleased, but as we were getting
into it, I could see that it did need that tightening.
BD: They played it before you had actually
tampered with it?
Kritz: They played it for an entire semester.
I had tampered with some details, but as the rehearsals continued, I
saw that it needed more tightening, more structure.
BD: [With a wink] I hope you didn’t
get it down to the size of a Webern piece.
Kritz: [Laughs] No, no, no! It
ended up being thirty-five minutes, so I hope it still has a great deal
of breadth and depth.
BD: Does it still have a great deal of you?
Kritz: I’m glad you asked that, because that’s
really what we’re after. When you write something, or paint, or
work in any art form, it’s got to speak for you. It has to sing your
song, and it did. Then, the next challenge is to make that song listenable
and accessible. What I had to say is important to me, but I want to
make it somewhat important to you, and that takes a skill which doesn’t
come by itself, except to a very few, like perhaps Mozart. It takes
real work. Finally, after five or six sets of revisions, and twelve
performances by various chamber music groups, I got to where I think it
says what I want to say. It tells you my song!
BD: Is this the only song you have in you,
or do you have more songs?
Kritz: [Laughs] Yes, I have more, and
I’m working on several. The String Quintet was the first
that I brought back to life from the 1940s, and it’s received a good
deal of notice, and many performances. The Pro Arte Quartet, the
quartet-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, has put it into
their repertoire, and that’s more validation than I ever dreamed I’d
receive when I started. In the meantime, I’ve worked on other pieces.
The Northwestern group performed it on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial
Concert Series, and it was heard on a broadcast by a very fine saxophone
virtuoso named David Pituch.
David called me up, and just said that he liked my sound.
He liked the fact that it had modern contemporary textures and timbres
and harmonies, yet was accessible and lyrical. For me, that was
quite a compliment because I wasn’t trying to be avant-garde. I
was trying to sing my song, and he was telling me that he heard it, and
that felt very good.
BD: Probably the most important thing is when
you resonate with performers. Then they can then resonate to the
audience. You need that intermediary.
Kritz: That’s right. David said he
would like to meet with me, and consider having me write something for
the saxophone in the same idiom. So we met, and I started out
with a little sketch of an idea, just for a short piece for saxophone.
It ended up being a three-movement concerto for full orchestra and
saxophone! He’s performed it now in several countries including Spain,
Poland, and the United States, with several more performances coming up.
A few other saxophonists have now picked it up and are performing
it in still other countries.
BD: Are you pleased with the way the various
saxophone players have taken it and have interpreted it?
Kritz: It’s an interesting question because
the way I heard it, there were certain jazz idioms in it, certain things
that represented what I was living through when I wrote it and when
I first sketched it. David’s approach to it was a classical approach,
which he was very adept at loosening up into a jazz field, but it was coming
from the classical constructed area, and so it had a totally different sound
than a woman in Poland who picked it up, and plays it from the jazz standpoint,
and tried to impose classical restrictions on the jazz idiom that’s part
of her. It’s looser, it’s less disciplined, but in many ways it’s
also very, very interesting. I can’t say I don’t like it even though
it isn’t exactly the way I wrote it. I still enjoy it.
BD: So, they’re both right?
Kritz: That’s the point! I’m glad you lead
me there, because the performer has as big a stake, and as big a responsibility
as the composer in bringing an art form to fruition.
* * *
* *
BD: Now you’re letting the new ideas flow from
your pen in more and more pieces?
Kritz: Yes. Some of the things I’m doing
are resuscitating old pieces by trying to use the material that has
already been written, and discipline it into the classical structure
that I’ve learned in the last few years. I was taking some classes
in the last couple of years at Northwestern to brush up on some of the skills
in structure and form. So that’s helped me. I have an Octet
that I’m working on, and a Piano Quintet, and songs. I have a
song that I wrote to wonderful poetry which I found when I was twenty-one.
There were some love poems written by my sister when she was sixteen, and
I found them lying around when she was married and out of the house. I
fell in love with these poems, and wrote nine songs.
BD: Do they have a special familial resonance?
Kritz: That’s right. So I wrote these,
and three of them have been performed at least a dozen times by four
different sopranos.
BD: With different performers, you really
get to hear what you have written.
Kritz: Yes, that’s right. I do enjoy
that.
BD: Do you like what you’ve written?
Kritz: The three pieces that I’m really satisfied
with now are the Saxophone Concerto, the Three Songs of
the nine, and the String Quintet. There are some of the other
pieces I feel I can get to where I want them.
BD: You’re in a nearly unique position of having
worked in music, and then gone away from it, and now come back to it.
Is there anything in fifty years in business that has helped or influenced
the music, or are they completely separate?
Kritz: There’s a sense of logic that the business
world imposes on you, and that becomes part of the disciplines that
would impose on your art. You’re looking to sell it, not in the
commercial sense but you’ve learned in the commercial world that whatever
you do has to be perceived that it has a value. In music, that
was an important lesson for me. It wasn’t just to show off a skill,
or to show-off something different, nor was it the opposite, which is just
to speak my own heart, and if the public doesn’t understand it, that’s their
loss. That’s how you feel when you’re twenty, but now I wanted to
take that material, and I wanted you to hear it. I wanted you to sing
with it, and I wanted it to make you feel something, either what I was
feeling, or what it evokes in you.
BD: Should we participate in it?
Kritz: Of course you should, and that’s what
I learned in the commercial world. The tree falling in the forest
does not make a sound. It has to be heard, and I want you to hear
it.
BD: The vibrations mean nothing until they
hit the eardrum?
Kritz: Yes, and in the emotional sense, in
the aesthetic sense, until it communicates to you, it says nothing.
* * *
* *
BD: You used a word that I want to pounce on, and
that’s ‘value’. Can you write value into it, or do you just have
to find that it has value or not once you’ve written the music?
Kritz: It is, it’s a tough word. I
don’t know how to get past that one, because who determines that value?
Is it the number of performances you receive? Is it how many years
from now it will be heard, if any? Is it how deep the impression
is that it makes on one listener, or on many listeners? I can’t
tell you how to judge value, or how I would judge value. I would
settle if I were confident that half a dozen people would hear it in
fifty years. That would represent some measure of value, that I could
say it has some value.
BD: I would assume though that you’d rather
10 million people would hear it? [Vis-à-vis the recording
shown at right, see my interviews with Peter Schickele, and
Augusta Read Thomas.]
Kritz: [Laughs] Of course, I would love that!
But to stick to your question, which is how to measure it in a quantitative
sense, I can’t do that. But in a qualitative sense, if I make contact
with a half-dozen people fifty years from now that hear it, and they
feel something from it, or hear what I’m trying to convey, I won’t say
I’d be satisfied, but that would represent value, and would make everything
I’ve done have some meaning.
BD: Do you have any advice for either young
composers coming along, or men and women in their seventies who want
to either get back composition or even start composition?
Kritz: For young composers, just don’t quit. If
you’ve got it, and you have to say it, and you’re feeling it, you must
let it out. You must not let anything deter you. I know that
sounds like I’m saying I’m sorry for having passed up these fifty years....
BD: [Interjecting] Not really. It
was due to your particular circumstance.
Kritz: Yes, and I don’t feel that fate conspired
against me, or anything like that, because if you have to do it, you’ll
do it. But my advice to the young composer is not to let anything
stop you. If you have to speak, you have to sing. To the older
guys that have felt all these years that they have something to say,
it’s a tough battle because you have to learn the disciplines that add
structure. But do give your voice a chance to be heard in a coherent
manner. Any one of us has got a song to sing.
BD: [Surprised] Really??? You
think everyone has a song?
Kritz: In our hearts, I think everyone has
some agony, or ambition, or regret, or yearning, that he wants to convey.
I’m not saying that it’s necessarily by singing it in the sense
of composing, or in any art form. But we all have some kind of a
yearning that we want to tell someone, or everyone.
BD: That’s the human spirit?
Kritz: Yes. If you want to speak what’s in
your heart, and your language is music, then the job is to find the most
effective meaning, an efficient way of conveying what you are feeling.
If it has good ideas, but is sloppily put together, you’re not going to
get much out of it, except maybe just a nice tune. So what?
BD: Then you’ve wasted the good idea?
Kritz: Yes. It’s the responsibility
of anyone who wants to convey something through an art form to make sure
that it has the best possible chance of connecting.
BD: Let me ask a balance question. Either in
your music, or music in general, how much is art, and how much is entertainment?
Kritz: That’s a good question following what we were
just talking about. Is it entertainment to connect to make somebody
want to sing your song? By that I don’t just mean to whistle the
tune that you presented. I mean to sing your song and say what
this guy is trying to tell me.
BD: To feel your feelings?
Kritz: Yes, feel. Entertainment has to
be the device, the vehicle, to carry your feeling, but the goal has
to stay the same. You’ve got something, and you want to convey it
honestly. If you want to write a song, and you have the gift of
being able to write a song, you should write a song. When I’m trying
to say something, to sing something more than a song, I don’t know if I’ve
succeeded. But I’ve tried to do all I can in developing the skills
necessary for that song to at least have the chance to get to you. Then
it’s up to you to tell me whether you feel that I’ve been successful.
* * *
* *
BD: I asked you before if you had helped to get some
of the businesspeople back into music. Now that you’re away from
business, are you conscious of those businesspeople that you’ve left
behind, and are you trying to touch them perhaps more especially than
other musicians?
Kritz: I can’t say that I have. No, I can’t
say I’ve made any effort. I’ve tried to get them to come to a concert
that looks good and that looks like it would be pleasing, and I have tried
to introduce people that weren’t exposed to serious music.
BD: I’m trying to make a connection,
because you’re one of the few who has successfully gone into both camps.
Usually, musicians aren’t particularly successful in business, and most
businesspeople are not particularly successful musicians.
Kritz: I don’t think that you could say I was successful
in business in the sense of working for a large company with affluent
results. In a manner of speaking, I was able to support myself in
the business field while maintaining an interest in a form of art.
BD: I’m glad you maintained that love of
music throughout.
Kritz: Oh yes, I had to. Every three
or four years, I’d pull out this Quintet that had had several
performances fifty years ago, and I would just go through it. Sometimes
I would try to transcribe it for piano so I could hear some of those
harmonies again. I was always trying to find out if this thing
worked. Does it speak? Does it sing for me? But every
time I would get into it, after five or six hours of trying to transcribe
it I’d end up having to get back to business. Finally, at age sixty-nine,
I went for it. I mentioned earlier Dr. Richard Green, and David Pituch.
Then, a year ago, at a performance of the Do-It-Yourself Messiah,
I met the conductor Susan Davenny-Wyner, and her husband, the eminent composer
from Brandeis University, Yehudi Wyner. They
were at the reception afterwards to which I was invited, and I was introduced
to Yehudi Wyner as a re-emerging composer. He showed some kind
of interest, although I didn’t know why because he’d never heard of me.
But he was just a nice guy, and he said to send him some tapes. So
I thanked him for being willing to listen, and he said, “Don’t
thank me yet. I may end up telling you that they’re no good!”
[Both laugh] He wrote a few weeks later with some very encouraging
and glowing remarks that gave me great encouragement to continue at a
time when I was deciding to go one way or the other. He sustained
my faith in the fact that I did have a song to sing, and that he wanted
me to keep singing it.
BD: Now, you’re back into music completely?
Kritz: Now I’m back completely into it.
BD: Do you have any regrets?
Kritz: None, no! I’m fine with it,
and I’m so glad that you’ve offered to play some of my music on WNIB.
BD: Now that you’re back into it full-time, is composing
fun?
Kritz: Yes. It’s a way of getting lost in trying
to find who you are and what you have to convey. That’s the real
pleasure, the real joy of doing it. The satisfaction is you understanding
what I’m talking about or singing about, and maybe gaining something
from you... perhaps an insight or two! [Both laugh] But the
joy of doing it is indescribable, even getting lost and reworking one measure
for three hours.
BD: Are you ever finished?
Kritz: [Laughs] That’s a good question,
because, in the case of the first three pieces that have been performed
so often recently, I’ve made revision after revision.
BD: I would think that would drive your publisher
nuts! [Both laugh]
Kritz: I suppose if I had studied all through these
fifty years, and stayed in the business
— not the business of selling
the music, but the business of constructing it with form and coherence
— I’d be more
fluent in the language, and I wouldn’t have to work so hard at finding
every single thing I’m trying to convey. But now, since I’m working
at this, I’ve had to search for everything. I talked about this briefly
with Yehudi just last week, and he says it never stops. [Laughter]
But I’m satisfied now that the Quintet will stand or fall just
the way it is. As to the Three Songs that have received all
these performances recently, I’m satisfied with the original version,
which is with string accompaniment. I’m not satisfied with my piano
transcription, nor am I satisfied with the piano transcription of the
Saxophone Concerto. After David had performed it with several
orchestras, he asked me to do what they call a reduction for saxophone
with piano, so it could be a recital piece as well as a concert piece.
But I’m not satisfied with the job I did on that.
BD: Is this because it’s a distortion of
the original?
Kritz: That’s true, but it can still be better, and
it is going to be better because that’s all I’ve been doing for the
past month.
BD: Should you spend your time fixing that
up, or should you spend your time writing new pieces and getting a few
more songs out?
Kritz: That’s a hard choice. I am working on
one piece right now at the same time as the revisions. Dr. Fred Hemke, the assistant
Dean at Northwestern Music School, is also a saxophonist, and he heard
the other saxophone piece that I wrote for David, and has commissioned
me to write a piece for him for a new CD that he’s going to do.
He asked me for a six-minute intermezzo, and I’m working on that, and
that’s great fun. So, you’re right! The supreme joy is the
new composing. But working on revising, and refining, and getting
it exactly where you want it is joy, too. It’s not tedium.
It’s fruitful and it’s rewarding.
BD: Thank you for coming back to the music.
Kritz: I’ve enjoyed so much talking to you.
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© 1998 Bruce Duffie
This conversation was recorded in Chicago on June 17, 1998.
Portions were broadcast on WNIB the following November, and again
in 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.
* * * *
*
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.
