Giya Kancheli: “God Almighty who refuses to accept me must have thought of giving me a chance to visit Malta”

“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on,” thought Prospero, the wizard and magician who lived on an uncharted island inhabited by spirits, elves and other magic creatures. This island had surfaced from the sea depths in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” accompanied by music of the legendary Giya Kancheli — and just like this music, it threatened to turn into a dream and disappear any moment.

The most famous Georgian composer on earth — oh, no, the most mysterious and unworldly composer on the planet who is gifted, like Prospero, with foreboding and clairvoyance, — he has for over half a century been forecasting the world’s rough weather. He has tamed the voices of the universe that reverberate from his scores, he has made silence that can last for eternity one of the tones of his orchestra. The silence of anxiety but not serenity, the silence that equally touches the strings of an individual soul and strikes the chords of the objective reality.

His music tinged with heavenly colors is so unearthly as to break any ordinary logic — either the dream or delusion. Sometimes it's playful, since Giya Kancheli is no stranger to Fellini's clowning unrestrained by any conventions. A real, genuine Prospero, the artist and alchemist who achieved a complete understanding of the universe and who, unfortunately, has been unable to improve human nature.

— Giya Alexandrovich, let's begin our dialogue with imaginary situation. Just suppose that the Maltese knights’ philosophy has so inspired you that you decided to embed it in music. Because it is hard to imagine that such lofty values and ideals still exist today — the Grand Master,  the Knights and Dames of Honour and Devotion... You as a highly spiritual person must have an affinity to such behests. Is that true?

— Behests that bring relief are close to my heart, as a rule. I am glad that the knights’ ideals dealt with kindness, personal integrity and decency. Though I do not have the Maltese Order of Merit, I try to abide by these concepts and postulates as much as I can.

— The 20^th century convinced us that silence may sound in various ways. It may be “4`33``” by John Cage – a completely soundless composition considered a piece for piano, though it is all about the silence that lasts 4 minutes and 33 seconds. But there is also Giya Kancheli’s silence that gives birth to music that follows. What is silence for you? A pause between…?

— You have partly answered your question. My dream has always been and still is the silence where music continues to sound in the listeners’ imagination. At the same time my “pauses” should precede the birth of music that follows. And it is not for me to judge to what extent I succeed in this.

— Sometimes things spoken in a low voice carry more weight than those shouted. Your low-key pieces hurt this world’s monsters more than something vociferous…

— I’d be happy if it was the case.

— In Al Niente [Exit to Nothing, Fading Away], one of your latest pieces, you went to nothingness… Why? And in what way did Temirkanov, who the composition is dedicated to, interpret it?

— Yuri Temirkanov is an outstanding conductor and I am glad that Fate brought us together already back in my early youth. He still remains a brilliant interpreter of both Al Niente, and my Fourth Symphony. As far as the Italian term al niente is concerned, this “going away – fading away” features frequently in my compositions. Why? Because it reflects my state of mind.

— Is it why there is so mush sorrow in your music? Take you liturgies mourning the sins of unreasonable mankind and your friends who are no more, the Angels of Sorrow, Mourned by the Wind and Styx? Does time dictate it?

— I had to live through all “grimaces” of time, hence such titles. I expressed my attitude to the life I have lived in the title of my piece – “Life without Christmas.” Pushkin put it brilliantly: “I want to live in order to think and suffer.”

— Your only opera Music for the Living with the libretto by Robert Sturua, your long-time stage champion, features the Birth of Music and the Tragic Pause scenes. What does this composition prophesy? What is in store for the living? Is it life, after all?

— Of course, it is life, if it has been lived by a decent person.

— Why have you turned to the opera genre just once?

— I had no plans to compose an opera. I did it solely for Jansug Kakhidze, my closest friend and genius conductor who got appointed the Tbilisi Opera's artistic director and principal conductor. He turned to me with a request: “Could you together with Robert Sturua and the set designer Georgi Aleksi-Meskhishvili write something like an opera? I would be very happy, if you did.” So, I wrote Music for the Living for the sake of Jansug Kakhidze. I never thought that I would have to compose an opera again. The opera won considerable praise, but the public opinion was divided over it — though the production boasted an orchestra, a choir, soloists, ballet and supers, — 50% claimed it was not an opera and 50% said it was.  

— Well, you know Theodor Adorno wrote in Sociology of Music: “One who under existing circumstances would want to turn all listeners into experts would be behaving in an inhuman and utopian manner.” Can one teach an unprepared listener to listen to or hear silence?

— I prefer not to categorise listeners into the prepared and the unprepared. Listening to music, every person perceives it in his own way. The abstract nature of music is actually its advantage in comparison with other types of art.

— Every generation has its own cults in the cinema. We had three “ku” and a screeching violin. From our planet we observed planet Pluk where there was no culture, yellow pants reigned supreme and people were extremely proud of themselves. We have by now shrunk to a handful of outcasts and the other Terrants have turned into Plukans who any stupid song would make happy. And many on our planet live like cactuses. Do you think that the stray Terrants will some day find their gravitsappa?

— This is exactly why Georgiy Daneliya and Rezo Gabriadze invented planet Pluk: to prove that something similar happens on planet Earth. Unfortunately, it will always be like this as long as religious fanaticism and exalted nationalism flourish on our planet.

— About the song, by the way. Why did you include the Lullaby by Isidor Philipp into your soundtrack for the Kin-Dza-Dza film? It is usually young violinists who “torture” this tune.

— It is strange. The Lullaby tune ascribed to Isidor Philipp matches that of the well-known-in-Russia gangster song “Mama, Mama what am I going to do”. I included this melody solely at Georgiy Daneliya’s request.

— An authorship mystery, one of many…You wrote scores for Ku! Kin-Dza-Dza, Georgiy Daneliya’s new animated cartoon film in which things are still not so good — Rostropovich’s double hears a repugnant humanoid say: “You ain’t play like this, me vomit.” And no one needs world class music here. But since after the film you wrote Eine Kleine Daneliade (A Little Daneliade), the situation is not that deplorable...

— I wrote A Little Daneliade at Gidon Kremer’s request who was at the time working on the Cinema project. When composing Daneliada I did not think about planet Pluk at all.

— Is it true that a ballet was staged after this charming opus?

— Yes, that’s true. I even attended its premiere performance at the Bonn Opera House and was very pleased with what I saw. String Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera sounded fabulously on recording, but what impressed me most was the way the mixed choir pronounced “ku!”.

— The title of the Seventh Symphony you wrote in the so-distant 1986 is the Epilogue. Why? In order to cheat Fate? Feared “the curse of the Ninth”?

— In order not to write the Eighth.

— There are names of war and terrorist acts victims as well as those perished in the Norwegian tragedy in the texts of your vocal and choral works… Do you mean to immortalize them in this way? Or is there another hidden meaning in all this?

— Everything is much simpler: I immortalize them in my consciousness.

— You often verbalise your ideas through children’s choirs – boys’ or girls’ ones. Is it a kind of symbol?

— I often think about what happens with people when they part with their childhood and enter maturity. I am completely at a loss as to where children’s purity and innocence vanish to, for children’s souls are immaculate, as a rule.

— Three years ago you celebrated your 80^th birthday and two orchestras — the National Orchestra of Belgium and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra — commissioned a symphony work for such an occasion which came to be titled Nu.Mu.Zu, meaning “I don’t know” in the Sumerian language. So, what don’t you know?

— I think it was Aristotle who said: “I know that I know nothing.” I simply used this quote because as I grew older I realised that it was consonant with inner feelings.

— I understand you left Tbilisi a long time ago, in the early 90s. Is your home in Antwerp now?

— I stayed in Berlin between 1991 and 1995 and moved to Antwerp in 1996 where I have lived ever since. I feel as if I am in hospitable boarding houses for artists filled with wellbeing and serenity. I wrote all my symphony chamber pieces in boarding houses for composers –in Dilijhan, Sortavala, Repino, Ruza and Borjomi. That’s why I kind of continue to stay in boarding houses for composers when I am in Germany and Belgium, but my heart is in my native Tbilisi where I return frequently. 

— Do you need complete silence to order to write? Or can a noisy city around you help create music?

— When I search for material and contemplate an overall structure and dramaturgy, I need complete silence. But when I orchestrate I occasionally listen to the internet radio on a parallel track where, by just pressing a button, I can access any radio station of interest to me. So, when I start orchestrating, conversation doesn’t bother me. But when I am collecting material and thinking over a composition’s scheme, I need silence.

— Does this mean that conversation somehow influences your choice of timbers?

— Oh, no, by no means. About timbers, by the way. When I first heard Anton Webern’s music, I realised that timber dramaturgy is no less important than the musical language and musical form.

— Before enrolling at Tbilisi Conservatory you studied geology at university. What made you give up this vocation and turn to music?

— As a second year student, I covered my first geological route at 40C with a backpack full of instruments, a hammer among them. It was 8 km one way plus 8 km back with my backpack already filled with rock. So when I returned to camp, where we slept on the floor in sleeping bags I started considering “sitting” occupations and the closest to me was music. That is why I still remain very grateful to geology.

— We keep talking about sad things, but you have always delighted us with your subtle and somewhat hidden, veiled sense of humour. If you were a woman, Jiulietta Mazina’s smile would certainly come to my mind…

— Well, maybe, because in her eyes, there is compassion and joy at the same time.

— A Different Kancheli, an audio-visual album featuring jazz variations by Georgian and Latvian musicians on your most famous scores was released in 2016. What is your attitude as the author of fixed sound to improvisations?

— Very positive. Jazz improvisations are manifestations of free thinking.

— I have read that for you jazz started with Glenn Miller…

— My close relationship with music did not start with initiation into the compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart or Schubert but with my admiration for jazz prohibited in the Soviet Union. Some people may remember that the Great Soviet Encyclopedia started the definition of the word jazz with Maxim Gorky’s (famous Soviet writer – translator’s note) words: “Music of the Fat Ones”. My idols were Glenn Miller, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and other great jazzmen.

— You have never use Georgian folklore in your compositions. Why?

— Georgian polyphony is a unique phenomenon. It was not born in crowd filled squares, but by great anonymous individuals. I believe this phenomenon is great Signature (with the capital letter) music I do not dare touch.

— A concert at the 6^th Malta International Music Festival will be dedicated to your music. The event’s organiser in the European Foundation for Support of Culture headed by Konstantin Ishkhanov. This foundation is among those magic communities that prevent Terrains from turning into Plukans. What scores will the programme feature?

— The programme will boast two compositions — Chiaroscuro for violin and orchestra and Letters to Friends for alto and string orchestra. I hope that the 6^th Malta festival will be a great success, if only my sorrowful and melancholy music does not dampen the public’s festive mood.

— Will it be your first time in Malta? Is it going to be The Island of the Day Before in Umberto Eco’s words?

— I have departed out of this world several times and wonderful doctors have brought me back to life again and again. So, God Almighty who refuses to accept me must have made sure that I get a chance to visit Malta I have heard and learnt so much about.

This interview originally appeared in the magazine “Maltese Herald”