Interview with ROSS EDWARDS 1995

An Interview by Philip Cooney for his doctoral thesis on Ross Edwards.
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1. How do you respond to labels such as creative,
talented, prodigy or genius ?
R.E: All those labels, I think, are obselete and rather
irrelevant and I think they probably belong to a Post-
Renaissance world - particularly Europe - and that we are
now heading back to the situation where they don't apply.
In other words, that they are part of a (view of creative
individuals based on the) subjective ego, of an "artist-as -
hero", as something special and this is not applied in any
other culture other than the last 500 years in Europe, and
I think it's led us into a very sticky situation.
2. Do you feel comfortable applying one of these
labels to your work or would you choose
another ?
R.E: If they are at all applied to my work I would be very
embarrassed. "Creative" I think is reasonable but I would
like to replace the word "creative" or "talented" with
something like "skilled" or even "highly skilled". I would
prefer the word "inspiration" because I would think of
myself as someone who has developed a reasonable
degree of skill and craftsmanship but is visited by some
force which is mysterious (which I simply don't
understand and can't explain), at certain times and at
those times I receive whatever it is and I do the best I can
with it. So I would certainly feel much more comfortable
in thinking in those terms.
3. When and how did you first become aware
that you had talent in music ?
R.E: I suppose that I was always aware that I was good at
music, potentially, but I didn't develop it until suddenly at
the age of 13 it hit me very hard. I mean it was a genuine
vocation or calling I think, that to my intense surprise that
is what I had to be. I didn't expect it to happen, it just
suddenly arrived and I think it was triggered off by going
to a concert. I wasn't normally in the habit of going to
concerts. I hadn't been taken to any because the
household was not particularly into that sort of thing.
4. What was your reaction or response to this
awareness ?
R.E: My reaction was blind panic because I knew it was very
serious and I knew I had to follow it and I thought "right
now am I going to starve. I don't know how on earth I am
going to follow this through." All I knew was that there
was no getting out of it. So I was terrified, in fact.
5. What was the reaction of others (family, peers,
teachers) to your talent ?
R.E: I didn't tell anyone. I told my family in a rather oblique
way. I certainly would not have told peers or teachers.
My family's reaction was, of course, sceptical and when
they saw I was serious they were very concerned and quite
understandably so and of course they tried to talk me out
of it. Ultimately when they realised I was absolutely
serious they were supportive.
6. What other people were influential on your
development as a creative person ?
R.E: A number of people were influential. My aunt took me
to the concert at 13 so I suppose that was extraordinarily
influential. She is also someone who tried to teach me the
piano when I was very young but at the time I decided I
did not want to go through with that. I thought I was
rather above that sort of thing, for some reason, because I
thought that I was naturally able to play the piano. I
certainly wished I had [persevered with lessons] when I
was 13. This aunt was also an artist and I think watching
her was important and listening to her play the piano was
probably one of the most important events or series of
events when I was very young and it had an enormous
effect on me.
7. Were there any other factors that were
influential on your development as a creative
individual ?
R.E: I think that when I was young my father was
influential. He was an engineer and he was a very
precise, very extraordinarily meticulous sort of person
who did everything extremely well. During weekends and
so on he would actually do things around the house like
build furniture and so on. Anything he did, he did so well
that I used to watch and I mean he probably never
realised it but I would have been enormously influenced
by his attitudes to things which are still with me today. In
other words, with everything I do, to an absurd extent I
have this perfectionism which I have to try to come to
terms with in order to do anything at all. I am gradually
managing to do this over the years.
8. Are there any aspects of your personality which
you can identify as important to your creative
process?
R.E: Well, I am very introverted by nature and I don't have
any problem at all sitting for hours on end in a room by
myself. Were that not the case of course I would not be
able to do what I am doing, so that was one personality
trait which I am fortunate to have, at least in as far as my
work is concerned otherwise I couldn't do it.
9.Which personality characteristics have emerged or
been influenced during your creative processes ?
R.E: I think really what I have had to develop is the ability to
organise myself and to flow in and out of time. In other
words I am "out-of-time" when I am working and I know
that I have a certain amount of "out-of-timeness" and that
after that I have to get back into the mundane world. So I
try to make the most of these hours which have to occur
daily (even though the phone tends to ring through them)
where I can just be myself and be the vehicle, I suppose,
for some unseen force.
Of course most of what I do is largely mechanical but it
always does depend on some moment or moments which
are quite extraordinary because an idea will come from
somewhere and then I have to sort of deal with it and
cope with it over the ensuing weeks, months, years or
whatever. So these sparks are from somewhere else I have
got to be able to receive them and then I have got to do an
awful lot of hack work in many cases, requiring a lot of
imagination, but in order to retain the original enthusiasm
and inspiration - and I don't have any problem with that
word at all. So I have had to develop this ability to click in
and out of very disimilar states and I think as I get older I
am getting better at it. Also I have to learn to be an
organised person. I certainly wasn't. I think I have
learned to do that because I can deal with day to day
things and make sure that they get done so that I have
actually earned the out-of-time experiences or the time
when I am not conscious of time passing and I am entirely
wrapped up in a cocoon as it were.
10. At what stage did you perceive the need for
understanding the techniques and skills
associated with composition ?
R.E: The moment I realised I had to do it and I didn't know
how, the panic was that I had to accquire these as quickly
as possible. I was also at that stage having to attend
school which I found a disastrous time wasting experience.
I loathed every second of it, largely because there was no
music at the school I went to. It was entirely frowned
upon and in those days one didn't do Music for the H.S.C.
or you could but it was certainly not encouraged.
So immediately I had to learn these techniques and skills
and that was extended into my being a student at
university and the conservatorium and being apprentice
to various composers and I think this can come back to
the earlier questions about other influences. My teachers
included, Peter Sculthorpe, Richard Meale, Peter Maxwell-
Davies, Sandor Veress and they had a very strong
influence on me but also being virtually an apprentice to
Peter Sculthorpe and a copyist and also for Richard Meale.
So out of the more or less formal situation of lessons I was
accquiring techniques and skills of all kinds.
The way of being a composer I was learning from very
different perspectives. Some in just the formal ones and
others how you sort of manage to put time aside to do this
and that and how you organise your life.
11. What do you recall of your earliest attempts at
creativity ?
R.E: I remember when I was very very young making up
things at the piano and then playing them to my family
who didn't believe that I had done them and when they
finally did, on one occasion they said that it resembled a
certain hymn tune, which it probably did, and I was
mortified. After that I spent all my time wanting to be a
painter and that's what I would have done until this sort
of revelation or whatever it was at age 13. I was always
creative, had I not been a painter or a composer I would
have wanted to be a writer, so there was absolutely no
doubt about what I was going to do or what area I was
going to work in, which put an enormous amount of
pressure on me as a child and an adolescent. When I was
13, I do remember everything I ever wrote. I immediately
started to write songs in the style of Schubert and
Mendelsson (rather pastichy things) and gradually began
to accquire my own sort of musical personality. I recall
that they were fairly clumsy and if I were to think of them
today I would correct them in my mind.
12. How important to you is understanding the work
of past composers ?
R.E: It was extremely important at one point, certainly when
I was very young I read up the lives of composers to find
out what they got up to. I found that they usually had
most appalling lives and that was rather depressing. Of
course I was interested in all sorts of other composers for
many years and then suddenly there was a point where I
switched off to them all and I had no further interest and I
went into a kind of limbo where I recognised that I didn't
want to be influenced in anyway by anybody ever again
and at that point I actually stopped writing music, this is
going back to the early 1970's. I had a complete crisis
which was a very important thing to do and I rejected past
composers I suppose.
Today I certainly don't have a great deal of interest in the
western tradition of music although it is seeping back. I'm
seeing it in a new light largely because I spent a lot of time
listening to environmental sounds, listening to the
patterns that existed around me in nature and I found
that that was far more important than any received
information in the form of the art works of the immediate
past . Also looking at other cultures and at that stage not
being affected by the West, which I considered to be a
huge aberration where the ego of the artist took
precedence over the genuine function of art as I saw it at
the time. I was certainly influenced by people like
Ananda K. Coomarasony.1 Generally the music I heard
which I responded to and the fact that I found a lot of
western music, which I loved as an adolescent, had
become very stale. As I said I am hearing now it with new
ears and I can appreciate it once again to some extent, but
I don't actually have very much time for it as I am always
busy writing my own music.
1 Ananda K. Coomarasony was the Curator of the Oriental section of the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He is also the author of the book,
"Oriental Philosophies of Art".
13. Can you identify a time or composition when
you first recognised that you had an individual
voice or statement to make ?
R.E: I think probably when I started to write music again in
the early 70's and particularly I am thinking of the middle
or late 70's. It might be works like "Shadow D-Zone" for
Enzemble or particularly "The Tower of Remoteness" for
clarinet and piano. Well I realised that this was me, I had
felt it coming for sometime but I felt that I had integrated
all sorts of influences and patterns and sounds and so on
into something that was essential. That I had got rid of
everything I did not want and then I had something to
actually build up on. So I would say probably the piece
that I was really proud of when I wrote it was the "Tower
of Remoteness" and that was 1978.
14. Much is made of the mystery of the "creative
process". What stages or steps do you go
through ?
R.E: I suppose I have to work to commission because I have
been doing freelance for some years since I managed to
escape from the Con and I have a family to support. Sure I
try to get the commissions I want of course, but the stages
or steps I go through?
There has to be a moment of absolute enthusiasm and feeling
that I just can't wait to begin something which is an
indefinite shape, more than a shape it is a something, it's
an embryo I suppose which is located inside somewhere.
It is as much of the body as the mind this thing. Then I
will start to sort of think about it and, usually when I
going to sleep at night because apart from that, the day
intrudes upon it but I do like it when I go for a walk and
just contemplate whats happening and get excited about
it.
Then the next thing is sitting down at the piano and just
mucking about and getting very tense I must say until
suddenly a spark ignites and I know that this is the piece
and in almost every instance I am right about this.
Sometimes I have persevered, then after a matter of self
delusion, I realised that what I had thought was some kind
of divine spark was in fact my wishful thinking and that
makes it very hard to proceed with the piece once you
have done it and makes a very, very depressing
experience.
But having got that and somehow defined what the piece
will become the rest of it can be a enjoyable experience, it
can be a nightmare, I can lose sleep over it, it's just like
anything really, it a matter of just persevering with it and
getting it under control extending it and knowing that
every point where the thing has sort of legitimately
extended itself. Sometimes if I can't sleep at night when
I've done a certain amount I get up in the morning and I
know that day or that week has been in vain because I
have done this not quite right. So usually I just recognise
these days that you can't force this thing, you have got to
allow plenty of time. I'm getting much more efficient at it
I must say. I'm starting a piece at the moment which
seems to be going extremely well and I am very suspicious
of that, but from experience I think it is probably going to
be OK.
15. How much of the creative act for you is
conscious, unconscious or subconscious ?
R.E: I am very well aware that there is a conscious level or
whatever, that everything comes from somewhere else,
call it subconscious, unconscious or whatever and its
consciously manipulated. The conscious level is where I
am taking these ideas which have come from my
unconscious or subconscious or whatever or from
somewhere it would appear and I'm arranging them and
that is largely almost a clerical function, just checking
them just making sure, being aware that they're OK, that
they're practical, that they work, that they're performable,
that they're notated in such a way that people will
respond them as immediately as possible and so on and so
on. So that's the rather mundane aspect of it but I also
know that if get stuck and I've been trying to make
something work for a long time and it doesn't, all I can do
is leave off, go and do something totally different, like the
washing up or watch television or something or go to
sleep and then when I come back usually it's worked itself
out somewhere else and I am very much aware of that
other level.
16. Is it important for you to have an audience for
your work ?
R.E: Yes and no I suppose. Ultimately very much yes for
complex reasons. I suppose the fact that I have been
subsidised very generously over the years by the Australia
Council who I suppose expect results in terms of audience
reaction and the fact that my work will have some effect
on the community which is only reasonable and I would
think that itself is a reasonable expectation. I would want
it to be as positive and effective as it could possibly be in
the best sense.........I want it to bring something, perhaps
intangible, but [something] that is important to people.
Therefore the audience is extremely important and as
wide an audience as possible . There was a time when I
thought it didn't matter whether anyone heard my work
or not providing it was well made and it satisfied me and I
had sort of done the right thing, but I think that's a pretty
insular sort of attitude and it's an unreasonable one.
So, yes, audiences have become increasingly important. I
mean I want it to be heard as widely as possible. I can't
really say much more than that as to why but I am very
conscious of that need.
17. Is it important that your audience understand and
appreciate what you are doing ?
R.E: Yes, I want the music I write to have an attractive
surface and I want what is going on underneath it to
somehow be received. Now whether that is understanding
or not I do not know but at some level it should be
received by people listening and it should have some kind
of positive effect on them. This seems extremely
important to me. Understanding ? Again I don't know.
Appreciate doesn't quite seem the word either. It sounds
too much more like an intellectual understanding or just
an entertainment. I want it to be a force for good in some
intangible way that I can't quite put into words. Whether
it is or not is another matter. I want the surface to be
very seductive I suppose , in the hope that what the work
represents, the substance of the work actually goes to do
something that makes things better in some way.
18. How do you react to criticism of your work ?
R.E: A fellow artist said to me the other day that one bad
criticism can obviate a whole lot of good ones and that it
is upsetting. I think I would agree with that. I normally
don't bother to read critics. Obviously there are a lot of
good ones but they don't mean a great deal unless they
are particularly penetrating. People just saying, "well we
really like this" and so on is fairly irrelevant. If
somebody, as occasionally happens, because there are so
many different viewpoints, and some of them reach the
public press - some very narrow ones, where criteria are
applied to criticism which are quite unreasonable n the
public arena. If somebody is applying these narrow
criteria and writing for a magazine like Quadrant or some
specialised opinion, that seems reasonable, but when you
get some very silly ideas expressed which are also
political, yes I do get very angry I have to admit, and I get
angry with myself for getting angry. It's all rather
pointless I suppose.
19. What is the effect of the pressure that a
deadline , say for a commission or performance
brings upon your work ?
R.E: I am not one of those people that needs a deadline to
get on with it. I want to work all the time, it's my natural
state. I find it rather difficult to stop sometimes, but I'm
trying to balance that out. Its been a struggle, I must say.
Deadlines to me can be rather inhibiting and I always try
to make sure that I've got plenty of time to observe a
deadline and touch wood I always will. I always have but if
the time comes when I realise that I just can't do
something I just have to accept it. I've got a pretty good
record and the reason that I think I have managed to do
that is I haven't taken on too much work or more work
than I can reasonably expect to finish because I do know
from experience that I can't rush something and finish it
just to get ready by a particular time. It takes it's own time
and what that may be I have a great deal of difficulty in
predicting.
As a matter of fact at the moment I've finished something
much earlier than I expected, which is a very good
situation to be in and now I am starting another piece
which I did not expect to be able to start at this particular
time, but I certainly didn't take any chances on the
deadline for the piece which I have just finished, in fact
I've got a couple of weeks before it was due.