David Felder Interview and Premiere

 West Coast Premiere: Die Dämmerungen  

University at Buffalo alumnus Christian Baldini made the trek to Buffalo to premiere David Felder's For CW in September of 2021 (details here). Baldini is director of the UC-Davis Orchestra, and in that position will be giving the west coast premiere of Felder's Die Dämmerungen.

UB Alum Christian Baldini

On May 21, 2022, it will be my honor to conduct the West Coast première of Felder’s work Die Dämmerungen with the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra at the Mondavi Center. I had the chance of asking David some questions, which he responded to via voice memos, and below is the transcription of these informal but extremely illuminating exchanges.

Christian Baldini: Your music is often inspired by external sources, such as literature, painting, or even a tarot deck of cards. For this piece you utilized poetry by William Carlos Williams, Dana Gioia, and also a quote from Psalm 130, and a direct reference to Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols. Can you tell us how this fits into your creative process? Are there any particular ideas that come to mind first, and that inspire you to make references to these works through your music?

David Felder: Each one of the texts is set to instill an atmosphere for each one of the movements. In fact the texts were not picked first, but the music was conceived first. As I began working on the music I started searching for texts that would in some way tie the movements together but also create an atmosphere across the music.

I have a personal relationship with one of the poets. That is Dana Gioia. I have worked with his poetry before. We’ve been associated together and I very much enjoy his poetry. In this poem, he refers to Jacob and the Old Testament story. Jacob’s ladder. The ladder which angels used to ascend and descend to/from heaven.

There is a sadness and lack of awareness in terms of the opportunity. The heavenly and the mundane...

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CB: To me this piece seems very spiritual. Not only do you have these trajectories of descending and going into the depths of the human soul, but you also have these “impossible distances”, as referenced in the beautiful poem by Dana Gioia. You make a reference to “the Goddess of Dawn and a sense of personal rather than collective place in the second piece. Over the course of the first three of the four pieces the music is quite dark, intense, slow evolving, extremely beautiful and expressive. And in your final movement somehow it all seems to click into place, with bursts of energy that most composers could only dream of. You also make references to the “age of shrill” and the “incessantly repetitive propaganda.” How do all these musical materials come into place for you? How do you balance out purely musical material from all these external elements that are clearly influencing you and inspiring you?

DF: This balance of programmatic and musical elements is always a challenge for any composer. Programmatic ideas come in a pre-compositional way – I know what I want to say and I find the technical means to say that.

Simple binary forms make it much easier for the listener to understand the material presented in the piece – These forms rhyme much like the poets have a relationship in this piece – from a technical point of view, music is meant to complement and reinforce itself through self-similarity.

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CB: Besides your extremely successful and busy career as a composer you have been a remarkable teacher to so many great composers. Your influence and your legacy mentoring and reaching out to the future generations is invaluable. How have you balanced your life as a Distinguished Professor and Birge-Cary Chair in Composition at SUNY Buffalo, and as the Artistic Director of the “June in Buffalo” Festival since 1985, with your life as a composer?

DF: For almost 50 years I’ve been producing concerts. I felt very strongly that it’s very important for young composers to have their music produced at a very high level.

balance: I’ve never only wanted to do just one thing – It became very interesting and important for me to create musical opportunities for audiences, composers

Now, reverse engineering. There’s been a cost. It’s taken enormous energy to put this into place and maintain it. It comes at some expense to the creative work that you do.

I’m coming now to what I consider to be the end of my creative moment. I recently finished a second cycle of Jeu de Tarot. 14 movements.

After that I’m going to take a hiatus. That hiatus will continue until I have a good idea.

For more of this interview, visit Baldini's blog. 

David Felder For CW