A Conversation with the Composer: Mark Carlson’s This is the Garden
I have been posting little essays here as previews to my February 6th and 7th recitals with Victoria Kirsch: one essay for each of the cycles we are performing. My first post in this series included general observations about the genre of art-song as a whole; if you’ve not read that one, I recommend you have a look! The last cycle I am going to highlight for our program is a fantastic three-song set by a living composer, and my friend, Dr. Mark Carlson. Carlson’s This is the Garden sets three poems by the ever-exuberant E.E. Cummings (Mark advises me that capitalizing all three initials is correct, although I am still very attracted to the lowercase styling, e.e. cummings, which was used in publishing and criticism for so much of the twentieth century…something about it suits the whimsy and earthiness I associate with Cummings’ work). Instead of another meditation from me (and since, unlike Schumann, Ravel, and Barber, Carlson still lives and breathes) I thought it would be a special treat to do this blog post in the form of an interview with the composer. Please enjoy this back-and-forth on Mark’s extraordinary career, and what listeners can expect to experience on Thursday and Friday:
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Photo of Washington state (well, a portion of it, anyway) by Justin Birchell
JB: Our recital will present your cycle This is the Garden in University Place on Thursday evening and in Seattle on Friday evening. You mentioned that the University Place performance may be the closest to your birthplace that your music has ever been performed! Tell my readers a little about your Washington roots.
MC: My father was born in Spokane, one of 5 children of Swedish immigrants. Three pairs of uncles and aunts remained in Washington, in Spokane, Wenatchee, and Bellevue, and their children—my cousins—and most of my cousins’ children and grandchildren live in Washington. My father was stationed at Ft. Lewis during the Korean War, and when he returned from Korea and was being discharged, I was born at Madigan Army Hospital at Ft. Lewis. I was only there long enough for my parents to pack up and return to California, where they had met and married and had their first two children. I was the only one of five to be born in Washington. I have since visited many times, including for an interview for a teaching job at Evergreen State. I didn’t get the job, but I would have loved living in my home state.
JB: Can you talk about your relationship to the genre of art song?
MC: I have always loved songs, in general, and loved singing—alas, without the benefit of a good voice. My family sang together quite often, and especially loved folk songs and the songs of the folk movement of the 1960s. I also loved the songs of what is now called “The Great American Songbook”, though I took them for granted for a long, long time. I dipped my toe in the water of classical music songs during college, but I really didn’t discover the wealth of these songs until I moved to LA in 1974, after graduating from California State University, Fresno. My mentor, Alden Ashforth, was fairly obsessed with songs, and he immediately started inundating my ears and my brain with songs of Schubert, Schumann, Schoenberg (The Book of the Hanging Garden was a favorite of mine at the time), among many others, including Debussy, Ravel, and Faure. Alden was very particular about how words are set—both in terms of rhythm and meaning—and that has stuck with me ever since. I wrote my first good song in 1975—a song I still love; it was the final song of my first song cycle, “Patchen Songs”, eight songs on poems by Kennet Patchen. I took voice lessons for a couple of years in my late 20s, ostensibly just for fun, but also so that I would have a better sense of how to write for voice. I LOVE poetry, and love setting appropriate poems to music. I have now written more than 60 songs, and I intend to keep writing songs as long as I am able.
JB: How would you describe your compositional style to those who are wondering what to expect?
MC: That’s always a hard question to answer, as it always feels limiting. My best answer is that my music is always melody-oriented (flute—a melodic instrument, if ever there was one—was my main instrument, which I played professionally for most of my life), lyrical, overtly emotional, largely tonal, and stylistically eclectic.
JB: I love the poetry of these songs; in fact, a line from the second song, “the goal of living is to grow,” became my choice for the title of this entire recital! What led you to these poems by E.E. Cummings?
MC: When I was teaching my first undergraduate composition class at UCLA in 1986-87, I assigned the students to each write a song to an existing poem, and I had them bring in poems of their own choosing. One student chose a Cummings poem, “if there are any heavens”, which I had not previously read. I was stunned by its beauty and was intensely moved. As soon as I could, I went down to the campus bookstore (remember those?!)—which had an amazing selection of poetry—and bought a volume of his Complete Poems. I was in love, and I pored over those poems for a long, long time. It so happened that I was soon to write songs for a concert on the first full season of my chamber music series Pacific Serenades, and I chose three Cummings poems for that project; it is these songs which Justin and Vicki will be performing on their upcoming program.
JB: What should listeners listen out for in your cycle?
MC: It’s all about the words!
JB: Do you feel this cycle, or your songs in general, have any affinity with the other composers & cycles on this program—Schumann Liederkreis, Op. 39, Ravel 5 Greek Popular Melodies, and Barber Three Songs, Op. 10?
MC: Yes! Among the most influential music on me as a composer are the Schumann cycles, Dichterliebe and Liederkreis, Op. 39, and perhaps oddly, Ravel’s Chansons Madecasses—for voice, flute, cello, and piano—which I performed as an undergraduate. All of those not only influenced how I treat text in writing songs, but really made me think a lot about the textures of the piano parts—and of the ensemble, in songs that are for other/additional instruments. I do not know the Five Greek Popular Melodies well enough to comment on any connection there, and I don’t yet know the Barber songs at all. But Ravel and Barber are among my favorite 20th century composers, and I have long loved Barber’s courage in writing overtly beautiful music during a time when that was far less acceptable than it was in earlier times [i.e. in the mid-20th century when the “sophisticated” thing to compose was supposedly dense, thorny, dissonant, highly cerebral and atonal music].
…this is the garden… Photo by Justin Birchell
JB: In another correspondence, you told me, "[The three songs together] have a shape, an arc, to them that is part of the essence of the songs." We have three songs here on three Cummings poems: 'The Moon is Hiding in her Hair,' 'In Time Of...,' and 'This is the Garden.' Could you say something about the overall arc of the three-song set, or the journey on which you believe these three poems bring the listener?
MC: Though it is a short set, being only three songs long, I do believe that it takes us on a journey about beauty—natural, spiritual, and artistic beauty—and about our relationship to it. It opens with a crystalline expression of wonder at earthly beauty. From there, an exuberant series of lessons for us to learn from various flowers while we are here on earth—and a glimpse into the essence of what really matters. And finally, a return to awe, this time at profound otherworldly beauty in the guise of a garden so beautiful that even Death and Time are awestruck.