A conversation with composer Franck Bedrossian

[@nathangale7702]

I really appreciate you doing these interviews with contemporary composers, it's helping a lot to get an idea of what the musical landscape is currently.

[@haggai0n0i]

absouletly!

[@ThePianoFortePlayer]

Great interview, thanks for doing this

[@ricardoferro1217]

Thank you for this video Samuel. I stumbled upon this interview after performing L'Usage de la Parole last December in Toronto. It has been a very enlightening view into his process, and has become very influential in my own writing. So truly, thank you for your great contributions to music education, much appreciated!

[@RanBlakePiano]

Fascinating. Love the music also !

[@MrInterestingthings]

Wow! A student of Grisey no doubt ! It's good many composers understand the vitality of pop music and its sounds as well as integrating it into their aesthetic . This is the great thing about?classical muic and serious creativity in general :it allows all thinking in!

[@leonardosilva6669]

Very nice interview, thank you very much!

[@julienvincenot7974]

Great interview Samuel ! One additional question that would have been nice in the end, as F.B. said again how he enjoyed to spend more time on a project and work slower, is what advice he would give more specifically to younger composers to be able to sustain a slower or less dense production in a context where overproduction by colleagues - either partially true, in certain contexts, or just an illusion of social media - seems to be the norm. Especially from someone who spent a lot of time in U.S. academia, not only in the European "circuits" of new music...

[@samuel_andreyev]

Salut Julien, what do you mean, overproduction? How much is too much?

[@julienvincenot7974]

Salut Samuel, yes I realized this is very (too) subjective and could induce confusion, I was thinking of developing the idea, but this is why I wrote "seem to be the norm". I don't think there can be too much music produced at all, every artist has their own capacities AND needs regarding quantity of production. I was thinking more of this in relation with the assumed expectations of the networks where those artists live, plus the acceleration and densification of communications about those new works - a globally "perceived" overproduction that can feel overwhelming sometimes for artists having sparser production. To give a more specific and personal example, I encountered sometimes colleagues making me feel that I'm not a serious composer if I don't compose n pieces a year - or n scores of instrumental music even though I do a lot of different things that I still tie to my work as a composer - which seems "pragmatic" in the world we live in but not exactly encouraging to find other ways to exist as a composer. I don't know if this makes sense... :D

[@YuriRadavchuk]

The first question is kind of a revelation to me because that's the conundrum I'm in for a 15+years trying to navigate between all the colors of today's music world and at the same time discovering my voice.

[@arrowfitzgibbon7775]

"...The will of an institution..." to quote the Captain: "I never heard it put quite that way before."

[@zubrz]

wow, thanks! would you also make an analysis of his work?

[@samuel_andreyev]

I only published this video 4 minutes ago. I tell you, some people just are never satisfied!

[@zubrz]

​@@samuel_andreyev i was just wondering , interview is good enough for me. you are awesome : )

[@samuel_andreyev]

@@zubrz you are too kind :)

[@suereed]

@@samuel_andreyev This is essential stuff Samuel, I'm enjoying every excursion into new music you put my way, I listen to Webern most days now, after buying a complete works cd box set straight after the Zwei Lieder Op19 show, Schoenberg hasn't been off of KZbin for week now, since I listened to your Pierrot Lunaire show. Thanks for your satisfying work. ( I can't wait to hear what Felix de Villiers thinks of Franck Bedrossian).

[@samuel_andreyev]

@@suereed I'm very happy to hear that -- many thanks for your encouraging remarks.

[@matiasocarez]

So amazing! Do you have by any chance a transcription of this interview? I'd love to make a spanish translation, i feel the information available to the spanish-speakers community it's very arid at the moment about the current music landscape in general :/

[@samuel_andreyev]

Thanks for your remarks -- unfortunately I don't have a transcription of this video, but I'm always happy when people contribute subtitles.

[@GreenTeaViewer]

To most people, Boulez, Messiaen and Dutilleux are obscure avant gardists. To Mr Bedrossian, they were the basic "classics" of his student days, soon to be supplanted by the Spectralists and other new music (these latter pretty much unknown to the general public). That is a sign of the distance between a general audience, even a musically educated audience, and academic composers.

[@samuel_andreyev]

There is no 'general audience', any more than there are 'general people'.

[@n7275]

If it were somehow possible to track down Marc Sabat, and have a videoed conversation with him, that is a video which I would also be interested in watching.

[@BacaOConnell]

AAAAA

[@archangecamilien1879]

I wonder why I'm under the impression the interviewer is Canadian or something, haha...the way he says "about"...but I'm not really good at that...

[@archangecamilien1879]

Hmm...2:58...I suspect that for some people the decision might not be terribly conscious...some people might have one musical tradition "closer to their heart", so to speak...I mean...they might only be able to write one kind...certainly some cultures are a restriction...it would be very difficult for someone who isn't familiar with Beijing opera to come up with music written in that style...I've heard some critics accuse composers who tried to write music in foreign styles of not succeeding, of only converting Western-style music into the other style...I'm sure many a 19th century composer attempting to convey, I don't know, oriental music didn't really succeed, only conveyed the idea Westerners have about those styles...in such cases, that's clearly something that one cannot control...but I think it goes further...one might listen to jazz, rock, classical, all kinds of music, even like all of them, but only come up with rock, or classical music, and not the others, or at least not easily...

[@suereed]

I think the interesting thing to come out of this interview is not especially Bedrossians music but his attitude to who should fund it. Socialists seem to think that its OK to tax people to pay for esoteric non popular music. "How can I afford three bassoon's, a staircase and a kitchen sink on my wages? I need state funding". Samuel makes the point that, the selection of who gets the funding is a flawed process, to be fair. Surely the days of society being taxed for such "luxury" has long passed? Charles Ives held down a day job all his life and composed in his spare time he never asked for a penny from anyone.

[@celliot]

I am a composer And I have a channel where I post my original compositions if you’re interested.

[@davideberhardt100]

fr dave- sing a row for me- see if i like it?!?!?!?

[@davideberhardt100]

for whom r u composing???????????? other academics?

[@eikenhoutvanwildenbos14]

I'm surprised at how many things people can say without even really saying anything. The shallow opening talking of Franck is so boring it just turns me off and i don't understand why it doesn't just completely turn everyone off. As a supposed to be "professional" talk i'm not all that impressed. I only saw the first 4 minutes but it just makes me feel ill, the shallowness.