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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2014
This article is an interview with the Franco-Slovenian composer, conductor and trombonist Vinko Globokar, translated, edited and introduced by the author. It offers an overview of Globokar's musical development and a consideration of his artistic position, which straddles the worlds of composition and improvisation. Globokar's music combines complex organisation with an interest in non-hierarchical and improvisatory elements. He has always refused to pit the avant-garde claims of contemporary music against those of free jazz, his music embracing aspects of both, as well as of traditional Balkan musics. His genre-defying approach remains better known in continental Europe than in the UK or North America, and the present text is a contribution to the limited bibliography on Globokar in English.
1 See Globokar, 's reminiscences on Kagel in ‘Wir haben viel gelacht: Alte Erinnerungen an meinem Freund Mauro’, MusikTexte 119 (2008)Google Scholar, 23.
2 The scant writings on the composer in English include Erik Ragnar Lund, ‘The Discourse of Vinko Globokar: to speak – to play’, PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988, and Warnaby, John, ‘Vinko Globokar: revaluing a phenomenon’, Tempo, vol. 61, no. 240 (2007), 2–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This relative paucity contrasts with the wealth of secondary sources in German and French (cf. IRCAM composers' Database (Brahms) (http://brahms.ircam.fr/vinko-globokar).
3 Notably in the two collections of Globokar's writings published in German: Globokar, Vinko, Laboratorium, Texte zur Musik, 1967–1997, ed. Konrad, Sigrid (Pfau: Saarbrücken, 1998)Google Scholar; Globokar, Vinko, Einatmen–Ausatmen, ed. Jost, Ekkehard and Klüppelholz, Werner (Wolke: Hofheim, 1994)Google Scholar.
4 From a conversation with Globokar 30 October 2013. Also recounted in Kurtz, Michael, Stockhausen: a Biography, trans. Toop, Richard (London: Faber, 1992)Google Scholar, 174. The competing claims of composer and performer finds parallels in David Tudor's realisation of John Cage's Variations II. See Pritchett, James, ‘David Tudor as Composer/Performer in Cage's Variations II’, Leonardo Music Journal 14 (2004), 11–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Piekut, Benjamin, Experimentalism Otherwise (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011)Google Scholar, 4.
6 Lecture delivered in French (with simultaneous translation into English by the author) on 26 June 2010 in Studio 1 of the Experimentalstudio of the SWR (South-West German Radio) in Freiburg im Breisgau, as part of Matrix10, a workshop/festival for young composers.
7 Bojan Adamič (1912–1995), Slovenian composer of film music, conducted the big band that Globokar joined in 1951.
8 André Fosse (1890–1975), then principal trombone of the Paris Opera, was Globokar's trombone instructor at the Paris Conservatoire. Globokar studied at the Conservatoire from 1959 to 1963.
9 Michel Legrand (b. 1932), French jazz pianist, composer and band leader. Globokar played trombone in Legrand's big band for a time, and also began writing arrangements for it.
10 René Leibowitz (1913–1972), French composer and writer on music of Polish birth, who famously introduced French readers to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, and taught composition privately to such students as Pierre Boulez.
11 The artist André Masson (1896–1987), whose son, Diego Masson (b. 1935), French conductor specializing in avant-garde music, put Globokar in contact with Leibowitz.
12 After teaching at Mills College from 1962 to 1964, Luciano Berio (1925–2003) lived in Berlin in 1964–5 on a Ford Foundation Grant.
13 Composer Johannes Fritsch (1941–2010) played in the viola in the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1964 to 1970, as did pianist Aloys Kontarsky (b. 1931).
14 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Aus den sieben Tagen: Kompositionen Mai 1968. Nr. 26 (Vienna: Universal, 1968)Google Scholar. The precise text reads: ‘Think nothing/ Wait until it is absolutely still within you/ When you have attained this begin to play/ As soon as you start to think, stop and try to retain the state of NON-THINKING/ Then continue playing’.
15 Christoph Caskel (b. 1932), percussionist; Siegfried Palm (1927–2005), cellist; Wilhelm Bruck (b. 1943), guitarist – all prominent performers of contemporary music in Germany from the 1960s onwards.
16 Der Schall (1968), for five musicians; Exotica (1970–71), for non-European instruments. Released on LP by Deutsche Grammophon LP 2561 039 (1970) and 2530 251 (1972) respectively.
17 Atem (1970) for wind instrument.
18 Carlos Roqué Alsina (1941), Argentinean-born French pianist and composer.
19 Globokar's collaboration with Portal, Alsina and Drouet led to the establishment in 1969 of the New Phonic Art quartet (see, for example the LP New Phonic Art, Begegnung in Baden-Baden 1971, Wergo 60060).
20 Correspondances (1969) for four soloists.
21 Globokar had had a previous experience with free improvisation during the year (1965–6) he spent at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Lukas Foss (1922–2009) had founded the Center for Creative and Performing Arts, in 1963, through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. See Packer, Renée Levine, This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (Oxford University Press, 2010), 22–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Globokar was appointed to the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne in 1968.
23 Pierre Boulez founded IRCAM, the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique, a Parisian institution devoted to the development of interactions between musicians and technology, in the early 1970s, officially opening its doors in 1976. The original appointees included Jean-Claude Risset and Luciano Berio. Globokar served as Director of the Department of Instruments and Voice at IRCAM from 1973 to 1978.
24 Laboratorium (1973–1985), for ten instruments features one piece for ten musicians, two pieces for nine musicians, three for eight musicians, etc., and ten pieces for solo instruments. For a description of this work, see Klüppelholtz, Werner, ‘Die Alchemie des Alltags. Zum Musikdenken Vinko Globokars’, MusikTexte 11 (1985), 3–8Google Scholar. The Laboratorium Ensemble performed this work at the Salzburg Biennale on 13 March 2013.
25 Hallo! do you hear me? (1986), for mixed choir, jazz quintet, orchestra and playback tape.
26 Several works by Globokar explore the possibilities of writing music for a large ensemble without the aid of a conductor, including Das Orchester (1974), Masse Macht und Individuum (1995) and Les Chemins de la liberté (2003–4). In these works, Globokar displays an interest in the social and political dimensions of the orchestra. Each of the five sections of Das Orchester, for example, explores different kinds of synchronisation possible without a conductor. In the first part, each section leader conducts its own group with a metronome. In the second, members of the orchestra take on conducting duties at the podium; in the third part, the orchestra is divided into small chamber groups that are dispersed throughout the hall; in the fourth, rather than following a score, the orchestra musicians are asked to react to the sounds of a pre-recorded tape. The fifth and final part is a study in articulation in a historical perspective, from the Baroque to the present day (interview with Globokar, 7 December 2011, in Toronto). See also Warnaby, ‘Vinko Globokar’, 5.
27 Nobel prize-winning author Elias Canetti (1905–1994) published his study of the sociology of the mob, Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power) in 1960. In Masse Macht und Individuum (1995), Globokar uses three groups of musicians: a full orchestra that represents state power; an ensemble of 21 musicians who represent a disorderly mob and finally four soloists (guitar, accordion, double bass and percussion) that represent a small collective of individuals (interview with Globokar, 7 December 2011, in Toronto).
28 In Chemins de la liberté, each of six orchestral groups (violins, violas, cellos, double basses, woodwinds and brass) is conducted by its own section leader with the help of a metronome. To this is added the percussion section that trigger other events (e.g., a change of tempo). (Interview with Globokar, 7 December 2011, in Toronto).
29 The accordion figures in several of the works in Globokar's catalogue, including Réponse à ‘Letters’ après ‘Second Thoughts’ for soprano, flute, accordion and percussion (1997), Contrepoint barbare for violin, cello, accordion and tape (1996), and especially Dialog über Luft (1994) for accordion.
