Jarre interview [2/2]
Vitaly Smirnoff
Приветствую, All!
Continuation. Begin is in the previous message.
JA:
The relationship in popular music is more direct, because we have more
composer/performers.
JMJ:
Yes, but you have to go through other media anyway. And the performance
itself, the tour, the concert stage, has become only an extension of the
record. The record is an original expression by itself. We can make a
comparison with film would you ask Stanley Kubrick to mount a stage version
of 2001? But records are stacked in the stores like bottles of whiskey
Чwhich means that the record is considered a low product, a consumer
product. And that's not right. The record is the modern version of the
novel, it's like the film. We have to consider two ways of using the
record. It can be a documentation of a live performance, as it has been
from the beginning, for Beethoven, or Kiss, or Elvis Presley, or Frank
Sinatra. It's a kind of souvenir. Or, on the other hand, we can consider
the record as an original expression, in its own terms as a medium, with
music that has been conceived especially for the record. That's the way
that Oxygene was conceived. Then, on top of that, you can consider doing a
live performance of the ,naterialЧbut I hope that the version of Oxygene
that I do on stage will be different from the version on record, because if
all I do is duplicate the record, you would be much better off staying at
home and listening to my music on your stereo.
[Image]
JA:
Some of the melody lines on Oxygene seemed reminiscent of Bach. Has he been
an important influence on you?
JMJ:
Not consciously. I love Bach, and I love Mahler and Wagner, but if we talk
about influence I must say that I am much more influenced by cinema than by
music, on an emotional level. I mean, so many composers during the
nineteenth century were influenced by literature, by novels: Wagner was,
Liszt was. And I should say that the masterpieces of our time are to be
found not in literature but in the cinema. Cinema is really the main
expression of our time. 2001 was a masterpiece because it was the first
film to describe our electronic age in a romantic sense.
JA:
The six movements of Oxygene flow into one another without any sharp
breaks. Why did you choose that kind of structure?
JMJ:
I think maybe we tend to think that the only possible music is a song
that's three minutes long. Just as, on the other hand we forget that Mozart
wrote some pop songs for the society of his time, and even made some pieces
for dancing, for balls, which were the discos of that time. And besides
that he also made symphonies, just pure music. When I left the Center, I
realized that the musician was quite isolated, and I decided to try other
ways of getting music to the public, making music for movies, for TV, even
jingles. That scandalized a part of the French intelligentsia, that I was
making music for the opera, and also music for jingles. But they're both
legitimate fields of music.
JA:
It's unusual for a musician to do a promotional tour that involves only
interviews rather than concerts.
JMJ:
I view what we are doing today as part of my job as a composer. It's part
of the music, if I may say that, because if the music is to be
communicated, it's the composer who has to communicate. His or her work is
not finished at the door of the recording studio. We are making perhaps a
kind of concerto for media and orchestra. There is quite a new wave in
France, of philosophers who refuse to make philosophy just inside the walls
of the university, of painters who refuse to stay in the garret. They want
to touch the public where it lives, even if that's in the midst of the
naked women of Playboy magazine, or on TV, or whatever. They're criticized
as pop philosophersЧbut I think we are living in a pop culture, and I
consider myself and my generation as pop musicians. If a painter does an
image for the TV screen, or the cover of a magazine, he or she will touch
the public more in one week than they would in their whole life if they
stayed in the garret I rerently did a TV show in France, and I began the
show by moving up to the camera and knocking on the lens and saying to my
guests, "You are not to be frightened by this machine. It's a part of us.
It's not a barrier, it's a help." This is the kind of attitude I think we
must have in our generation.
JA:
Do you think you could have got to where you are now if you hadn't studied
music in an isolated academic environment?
JMJ:
Obviously my music would be different, but that doesn't mean that academic
training is necessary. Nobody should be complexed by academic musical
training because it's nothing; it's just a way to make music, not the only
way to make music. When I work with electronic instruments, I am not using
my classical background. Why? Because electronic instruments are totally
new, and so I have a totally spontaneous approach to them. I couldn't
approach acoustic instruments so spontaneously, because I learned them.
When I ask a craftsman to make me an electronic device, I am at the
beginning again in front of it. I don't know how to play it, and I have to
find my own way. I agree that you are ,always a product of your background,
but maybe I'm using electronic instruments to go faster, to forget... no,
not to forget my background, because it's notbad. butoniv to take the music
to more of a sensitive level than an intellectual level. In our world,
which is harder and harder, the function of an artist becomes more and more
important. When you are listening to the music, or standing in front of the
painting, or watching the cinema, that is the only moment that you can use
your sensitivity, because in our world we are using our sensitivity less
and less, and it is atrophying. So when you are in front of the music, you
are refining your individuality. It doesn't matter whether you have a broad
musical background or none at all, you are right to like or dislike this
piece of music. It's not wrong to like or dislike a certain piece. You are
right for yourself. We have to be very careful, if we have a background in
music, not to use it to decide what's good and what's bad and to tell
people that they are right or wrong to like certain things. The main result
of that kind of criticism is that people bacome totally complexed when they
listen to music by their lack of background. Of course, it's because I have
the classical backgrou nd that I can make the statement that the classical
way is not the only way to go, and expen to be taken seriously. If I didn't
have the classical background and said the same thing, nobody would pay any
attention to me. So in that sense, it has a positive value to have the
background.
JA:
What is your feeling about KraRwerk?
JMJ:
I like some of their music, but not all of it. I don't feel very close to
them, because they approach music very intellectually; and they say that,
that's not just my opinion. They kind of glorify the machine. Maybe it's in
the German mind to do that. And I don't agree with the way they leave the
stage and let the machines play, because we must not forget that music is
the human treatment or organization of sounds. They have a very clinical
approach. They approach the music with white coats like doctors. I don't
agree with that use of the machine. I think it's superficial.
JA:
There's a sound on Oxygene that sounds very much like an acoustic hi-hat.
Was it?
JMJ:
No, that was an electronic rhythm box, but with special phasing on it. It's
funny. I didn't set out to make it sound like a hihat, but after the mixing
and the echoes it came out like that. This is an interesting thing about
the synthesizer: it's maybe the first impressionist instrument. I mean when
you look at a Van Gogh painting from a distance of 3 meters you see, let's
say, red flowers. You are sure they're red flowers. But from 30 centimeters
they're not red flowers at all, just a piece of red painting. You can't
paint a flower, but only the idea of a flower. On Oxygene, in the last part
where you have these sort of waves of the sea, obviously when you take this
sound out of the context and listen closely to it, it's not the sound of
the sea. But integrated into the arrangement, it is in fact the idea of the
sea. What is quite new about electronic instruments is that you can
integrate into your music the idea of the wind, the idea of the rain, the
idea of the sea; the idea of life, in fact.
End of Jarre interview.
С уважением, Vitaly Smirnoff.