He has been given many labels. From (post-)minimalist to hardcore modernist and from neo-romanticist to neo-spiritualist. 'I don't pay attention to them anymore,' says composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (Estonia, 1959). Yet he responds somewhat surly when I ask in an email what he thinks of such descriptions: 'You either like my music or not.' Via Skype, he answers eight questions about his orchestral work De profundis, which will have its Dutch premiere on 17 April. The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will be conducted by its compatriot Olari Elts at a concert in Vredenburg Friday, one of the four principals.
Although you say you don't care about the labels people put on you, you seem to struggle with them.
Yes, that's actually true, but I'm fifty-five now and don't want to worry about this anymore. If people want to pigeonhole me, who am I to challenge their judgement? But the whole idea of labelling is absurd these days, because there is no one style anymore, there are no homogeneous groups. OK, you may still have some followers of the pure Darmstadt school (in which mathematical models determine the course of a composition TD), but you can be neo-romantic or neo-spiritual at the same time and still be very constructivist. In my youth I latched onto minimalism, then experimented with contrasts between tonal and atonal blocks, but since the beginning of this century I have found my own style, which, for lack of a better term, I describe as vectorial.
What should we imagine with that?
The word 'vector' comes from Latin and denotes a quantity that represents both a value and a direction and can be represented by a directed line segment. This sounds cryptic, but it simply means that I choose a particular numerical sequence of intervals for each composition. It is a kind of genetic code, which determines the shape of the piece. For instance, whether the overall curve goes up or down, but also how the voicing goes, how the harmonies are established and how the relationships between them are.
Every part of a work can be traced back to that basic code, which I use quite freely, by the way. It is mainly a tool to guide the material, which partly arises spontaneously, and to form it into a coherent whole. De profundis is made up, for example, of the germ of a minor second (the distance ti-do), a minor third (the distance la-do) and a major second (the distance do-re), in figures it is 1.3.2. These intervals play an important role in the piece and gradually acquire the most versatile ramifications.
Which came first, the title De profundis, or the orchestral piece itself?
It's hard to say. I always start with a graphic visualisation of a piece and right from the very first sketches there are lines that strive upwards from deep darkness. This fits perfectly with the text of Psalm 130: 'From the depths I cry out to you, O Lord', and also fitted perfectly with my situation at the time. I had to undergo major surgery and was thinking about serious matters, about life and death. That operation even forced me to stop working for two months; I had no energy at all. Something like that has a big impact on your sense of life, and the first drafts turned out to be very close to my state of mind. The music expresses how a person cries out for light and redemption from the deepest inner need. [Tweet "Erkki-Sven Tüür: 'In my piece De profundis, someone cries out from an inner need for light and redemption'"]
If I De profundis listening, I see images of an ocean, at times swaying slowly in dark depths, at others lapping wildly at the surface, with seagulls flitting anxiously about. Does that fit your intentions?
What the listener feels is always true, there is no right or wrong. I can talk about the images that helped me determine the musical form, but that is irrelevant, or at least, only relevant to myself. Everyone hears and experiences different things, which is fine. My main motivation is to stimulate the listener's creative energy, and I love it when my pieces do indeed trigger something. The great thing is that the same music can evoke completely different reactions in different people. I offer a range of emotions and hope that the listener is deeply touched.
Surely you don't want to give away which images you yourself have at De profundis sees?
The general form of De profundis consists of a slow, dark section, which gradually moves to a higher, more shiny level. As if we are in a tunnel, at the end of which we see light. Personally, I see the piece as a series of rooms, with each successive room getting brighter and the last one opening up completely to the light and to the vast nature. Incidentally, we should note the title De profundis don't take it too literally: in that desperate state of mind, there is still room for hope, which gradually grows stronger. Meanwhile, we do experience very contrasting atmospheres, but I try to let them merge as organically as possible. I always work hard to make the transition as smooth as possible.
How do you choose your instruments?
Intuitive. I hear the music in my head and it feels completely natural which instrument should go where: there is a need for a certain colour. I can't explain why, can only analyse it afterwards. Timbre is all-important and every motif that comes to mind already carries the characteristic of the instrument that fits it. Just how the inset of a tone sounds in my head determines whether it should be played by an oboe, a clarinet or a percussion instrument. I often don't even have an idea yet what the melody or harmony will be like, think purely in orchestral colours. [Tweet "Erkki-Sven Tüür: 'I think purely in orchestral colours'"]
While composing, I always keep my sketches handy, but they are very brief and often only cover about five or six bars. Moreover, I depart from them just as easily if the piece demands it. I always work directly in score and do not make a kind of piano excerpt first, as some colleagues do. Colour is essential to me and I determine it instinctively, not by mathematical constructions, like spectralists like Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. But like them, for me it is purely about sound reality.
At De profundis piano and harp seem to play an important role; the piece begins and ends with them.
That's right, these are hushed passages with solitary chords from the piano, against which the harp plays swirling strings of notes upwards. At the beginning, a lament is heard from this by the alto oboe, echoed by the alto flute. At the end, the alto returns briefly and there are descending lines in the trumpets. To me, those recurring swirls depict a kind of vortex, but the overall movement thrusts upwards. Towards the end, it gets progressively softer, with sweetly undulating strings and tinkling percussion. The whole thing dissolves into the rarefied, ethereal sound of a bow-tapped crotale. Then the sun really seems to break through.
What is the function of music for you?
Music can hold up a mirror to us. We live in a hectic world and are becoming increasingly superficial. See, for instance, the way world news is covered in the media - the first answer from Google search is considered the ultimate truth. I also find so-called multi-tasking frightening, because we can no longer concentrate: we are just too busy to think about essential things. This is why music - and art in general - is so important to me: only by setting aside time for worthwhile things can we learn to fathom our deepest being.
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