See my interview with Otto Luening

At the end of July of 1987, I made contact with Lionel Nowak, and he graciously permitted me to call him on the telephone for an interview.  Portions were used (along with recordings) three times on WNIB, Classical 97, and now (mid-2024) I am pleased to present the entire encounter on this webpage.

As I was adjusting the equipment to make the recording of our conversation, I asked about his teaching of composition . . . . .


Lionel Nowak:   I haven’t taught composition in twenty years.  I am essentially a piano teacher.

Bruce Duffie:   But you have taught composition?

Nowak:   I have taught composition, and several of my students are around the country doing well.

BD:   I always like to ask people who have taught composition whether it is something that can be taught, or if it must be innate within each young student.

Nowak:   The reason I stopped teaching twenty years ago was that I said to myself, I can’t teach it unless there is a personal energy and thrust to want to do it.  Just to have control of certain techniques doesn’t really allow a personal statement to be involved.

BD:   How much should be the techniques, and how much should be inspiration?  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Henry Brant, and Vivian Fine.]

Nowak:   I can tell you one thing, there must be a certain talent, and also experience.  This also relates to one reason I took the position here at Bennington almost forty years ago.  As soon as a student enters their first year of college, we allow them to begin studying music, and they are very interested.  In that first year, they have to compose, whether they’ve ever seen any notes or not.  As they begin to worry themselves about the process, they begin to have questions about things like harmony and counterpoint.  That means that in their third or fourth year, they may study those courses tutorially.  In other words, all the things that are used in a conservatory as a foundation for composing, we think should be what the composer finally discovers he ought to know more about while he’s getting to discover his own sense of communication.

BD:   Are they told to compose, say, a string quartet, or just compose a piece?

Nowak:   It all starts on a primitive level.  The first classes are usually to compose something for a single instrument.  Then maybe the next assignment is for two instruments, and it would go up the ladder like that.

BD:   Each piece would be getting more and more complicated?

Nowak:   Yes, because the means are more complicated, and more questions arise.  During this they discover that what they had thought was something esoteric is really a matter of being acquainted with sounds, and deciding what it would be like to shape these into some sort of a communicative state.

BD:   Do you feel that this is a good way to jump into music, no matter whether you’re going to be a composer or not?

Nowak:   Yes, because the composition problems help them see that in their performance.  There is more just set before them.  There are some matters of understanding what is important, and, having done it themselves, they begin to take a little more interest in the shaping what they see as notation.

BD:   You’ve been observing this for nearly forty years.  Do you feel that the young students coming along have a better flare for this today than before?

Nowak:   On the whole, though the music scene has been developing more to the personal view of things, rather than to the traditional assumptions, I think that is one of the good things about the musical society right now.  People who would never have thought to put notes on paper are suddenly becoming willing to get them down for some of their friends.  Making music is more of an interpersonal thing than some abstract art in which somebody’s a composer and somebody else is the performer.  We’re trying to suggest that music is a language, like the English language, and we all can make statements because we want to say something to somebody.  Just as we can do it with words, we can also learn to do it with sounds if we’re given that opportunity.

BD:   It

BD:   Are you a better composer because you are also a first-rate pianist?

Nowak:   I don’t know that those necessarily go together.  It’s very important that a composer has some performance skills so he understands the nature of performing, and how to make a statement for an audience.  But otherwise, I don’t necessarily think there’s a connection, except if a performer keeps his performance alive, and has so a chance to play with other people, he becomes acquainted with the timbre and the textures of instruments.  To that extent, being a performer is useful in composition.

BD:   Then let me turn the question around.  Did your performing improve because you were also actively involved in composing?

Nowak:   I can answer that more clearly and positively.  I tried to manage greater insight in the things that I was playing.  It suddenly become apparent to me that as I was playing the music of colleagues and friends and contemporary musicians, when I would go back to playing Schubert and Mozart and Beethoven, I discovered I could take comfort in the fact that I had studied them when I was a pianist.

BD:   When you were writing a piece of music, how did you know when you had finished?  How did you know when you should put the pen down and say it was done?

Nowak:   [Laughs]  This is one of the difficult things to do, particularly when there are no standard forms!  This is part of the decision of the whole of each moment that happens.  As in life, other events come into play.  At any given moment, you’re making decisions, and finally you say that this is the final decision.  You’ve been searching to see all the possibilities, and today you’re going to sign something.  To some extent, what can be an important part of this whole process is to have a performance, so I have to make sure I’ve something ready to be performed.  I’ve said what I’ve had to say, and I’ve realized the material so that I haven’t lost my way.  But this is just an observation I make.  I don’t think you can measure it.

BD:   Do you ever go back and revise the scores after you’ve had them played or published?

Nowak:   I make small revisions, but nothing really basic.  I might change some of the details in the relationships of some of the instruments, or change pitch level, or maybe make a few rhythmic changes here and there, but nothing substantial.

BD:   Have you basically been pleased with the performances you have heard of your music over the years?

Nowak:   I haven’t heard them all, but the ones I’ve heard I’m generally pleased.  Since so much of the performance of my music takes place at the college where I know my colleagues, they’re first-rate musicians, and I have every reason to be satisfied with them.

BD:   Are you ever surprised by their interpretation?

Nowak:   There are moments when I hear something that I hadn’t realized the possibility of in a certain piece, and that is often very exciting.  It’s necessary to have a piece played by different people.  That way you become aware that what is on the paper is very static, and unless it is brought into motion you could lose part of the basic intent of the piece.  The motion which is brought into the work, and the balances you put into the score are somehow understood by the player, and those present new moments you hadn’t realized were there.  I enjoy hearing my music played by people, so a lot of my things are played by my students as well as my colleagues.  Student performances are very imaginative.  They may not always be professionally exact, but from the point of view of musicality, young people have insights which they should have an opportunity to explore.

BD:   It sounds like composing is fun.

Nowak:   Well, it’s fun!  Sometimes it becomes very trying when things get a little complex.  The decision-making process becomes more complicated, and that presents moments of frustration.  Then, tomorrow is a fresh day, and it will bring some new concerns in your mind.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of music?

Nowak:   That all depends on what you mean by music!  [Both laugh]  I’m sure the structures of sound will always be important and also exciting to people, but if you mean as music as a business, this will always have its ups and downs.  That part of music has hardly ever attracted me at all.

BD:   Is there too much business creeping into music?

Nowak:   Whatever has been creeping into it has been there for a long time.  I’m sure there was a lot of business in the past, even during the time of Mozart and Salieri.  But to the extent that music has become a kind of commodity, we’ve lost the broad view that music is a universal kind of language.  It is a special usage of sound, and that’s why it’s been important to all cultures, so that we see what we call music is a small incident of a large musical world.

© 1987 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded on the telephone on July 25, 1987.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1989, and again in 1991 and 1996.  This transcription was made in 2024, 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.