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Article Excerpt
Why do you so insist on using the word "percussionist" when it's a foreign word in Czech?
I think "percussionist" is already actually quite a common term in Czech parlance. Maybe it's not so old as "bubenik" ["drummer"] but it's often used. A "bubenik-drummer" is just a drummer, or as people sometimes say a "bicista" [literally, a "hitter"] when they are talking about someone specialized in drum set. A percussionist is someone who plays on all imaginable percussion instruments, but the word shouldn't be confused with "perkuse", a lay Czech term for ethno-percussion.
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When you were studying in Stuttgart, which approaches were taught there?
At that time there were only two progressive professors for anyone who was interested in more than just orchestral percussion, and they were Professor Wulff in Freiburg and Professor Tresselt in Stuttgart. Naturally I went around the other academies or professors, and I know most of them. Earlier, people used to study in Cologne, but that was already passe, or then with G. Sylvestre in Paris. Prof. Tresselt used to allow individuals their own specific programme, although officially it was orchestral play that was taught everywhere. He was very reliable, knew a lot, and had plenty of experience. He had played for a long time in a contemporary music ensemble, and was technically excellent--he had managed to systematise the whole thing. I wanted to learn everything possible from him, but I already knew what I wanted to do myself. And that was solo playing. For the first two or three years I wanted to be a marimba player, and spent a great deal of time on that, but as time went by I increasingly discovered the charm of multipercussion. During my studies I played chamber music and got to know composers, and multipercussion appealed to me with all the sound and technical possibilities it offered and the space it provided for imagination and creativity.
Sooner or later during studies, people often start to emancipate themselves from their teacher, or even to define themselves in opposition to their teacher. Did that happen to you? Did you have some alternative experience, something that you were doing apart from school?
Only in a fairly marginal way. I liked my teacher and he didn't try to limit me, and so I had no reason to go against him. And he encouraged me to go on other courses and gather experience elsewhere. For example he sent me to Helmut Lachenmann, who taught composition at the same school. In the 1960s Lachenmann wrote a major work for percussion, called Interieur I. It's probably one of the two most important pieces for percussion from this early period. It's a great piece, which every percussionist knows, and everyone who wants to be a soloist has to have played it some time, just as pianists have to play a Rachmaninoff Concerto. Professor Tresselt let me study it directly with the composer and didn't in any way interfere. Lachenmann surprised me by the amount of time he devoted to me, and the way he even adjusted to my rhythm, even though he was already famous, and second by how well and how fast he remembered the detailed problems of a piece that was already 20 years old. And it wasn't as if it was something often played; it's only played by people who are interested, who play multipercussion and are willing to invest half a year to a year's work just to have 15 minutes of music, and music not even specially spectacular for the public.
Studies in Stuttgart were based on the principle of independence. Anyone who wanted to get the most from the school and do well knew that he had to work, but nobody would force him too. I registered for only the minimum of subjects, and went to the school only one day a week. The rest of the time I practiced in a rented farm outside the town or devoted myself to other activities. Professor Tresselt knew I was working, and even respected the fact when I had to be absent, sometimes for as much as a month. I was playing in several contemporary music ensembles. One ensemble, focused on improvisation, experimentation and the avant-garde, was led by young composers and the old Erhard Karkoschka. Another, known as the Studio Ensemble, was already professional; it did standard New Music and the people who played in it included such big names as Mike Svoboda, Yukiko Sugawara or Hans-Peter Jahn. I attended courses given by the outstanding marimba player Keiko Abe, courses in African music (back then in the 1980s this wasn't so usual as today), seminars for snare drum, vibraphone or improvisation. We even organised a workshop of African music with the Guinea Ballet soloist Famouda Konate at my farm. Naturally I went to Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Witten and everywhere you can think of. I heard pretty well all the great solo percussionists play from the "founding fathers" to my contemporaries--even those I didn't think were so great. All this experience naturally influenced the way I saw percussion instruments back then. But mainly I was at home, on the farm, and practicing hard.
Did you already have your own instruments?
Yes, in fact my first teacher Johannes Beer helped me to get them. Before Stuttgart I studied for two years as an external student at the music academy in Nuremberg, in parallel with my civilian service (instead of army service), and I bought my first drum with a whole month's pay: a good Ludwig Snare Drum. Through Johannes I then got hold of a used but almost new marimba, and then kettledrums at a sale. I already had the vibraphone I had graduated from the music secondary school with. I still play on these instruments. Later on I had the chance to buy new instruments, for example a more space-saving marimba, and I thought about it, but in the end I couldn't bear to part from my old instruments.
When did you start to study with Johannes Beer?
At German secondary schools they had a system of preparatory classes for university. In their last two years students chose two main subjects, and I chose music and Latin. But at that point it wasn't possible to study percussion as part of the music course, and it turned out that my only option would be to go to Munich to the university and take an exam in front of a state-nominated committee--playing on the xylophone, drum and kettledrums. I mean it was possible to get an exemption and study an instrument that wasn't on the list, but of course I had to have lessons. At that time I was playing on a drum set and I wanted to play jazz. I was going through the transition from traditional jazz through modern to free-jazz, and I used to go to concerts given by Braxton, Taylor, Mangelsdorff ...
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A teacher had to be found for me. My father, a musician, remembered that a former pupil of his was studying percussion at university. That was how I got to Johannes. And one time when I went to a lesson with Johannes, at the music university in Wurzburg, I had a musical experience that was really defining for me. The percussion practice room there was an enormous cellar full of instruments, and everyone there had his own corner, his little district. When we entered there were terribly strange sounds coming from the back--wonderful, mysterious. I saw two deeply absorbed musicians playing piano and percussion. I said to myself, "but that's like composed free-jazz". It spoke to me, because it was what I loved, free-jazz, and at the same time what I was doing with Johannes--playing according to the notes and fulfilling tasks. The players were Jeff Beer, my teacher's brother, and Jurgen Schmitt. Soon I went to a concert Jeff gave, where he played Stockhausen's Zyklus, some smaller pieces for marimba and small set, and one of his own pieces for a large multipercussion set. It all amazed me and appealed to me hugely.
When I asked about an alternative, I was thinking of your work with Siegfried Wekenmann, collecting metal objects and putting new instruments together. How and when and why did that start?
That was a little later, about two years after I finished my studies, I met Siegfried by chance in Stuttgart, at our old university. He also studied there, piano, and composition...
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