An Interview with Fergal Dowling

Jonathan Grimes: Fergal, are you working on any pieces at the moment?

Fergal Dowling: Yes, I’m working on a new piece for the EAR Ensemble. We have a concert at the National Concert Hall at the end of November as part of the Composers' Choice Series. I’m writing a piece for the ensemble for eight instruments and live electronics.

'There’s a large repertoire coming out now that doesn’t naturally find its place in concert halls.'

JG: And when do you hope to finish that?

FD: I should finish that in the next month or so.

JG: And what sort of combination of instruments?

FD: Flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano, possibly guitar and voice, and violin, viola, cello and bass.

JG: So it’s quite a large-scale work. What sort of length is the piece?

FD: It will be about eight to ten minutes long.

JG: And will you be doing the live electronics part?

FD: I will and will probably conduct it and operate the computer and diffuse it live as well.

JG: So two jobs in the one. And you’ve just had a piece premiered in June for guitar orchestra and tape called Fun with Numbers. How did you end up composing a piece for guitar orchestra?

FD: The German guitar orchestra, GuitArt, was invited to do a tour of Ireland by the guitar orchestra at NUI Maynooth. They were looking for pieces by Irish composers and I was asked to write a piece for them. They were especially interested in getting a piece for guitar orchestra and electronics.

JG: And where did you get the idea for the title?

FD: Well, the title is a throwaway title, but a lot of the pre-compositional work in this piece involved defining densities of pitches and densities of electronic samples distributed in time and space. The title reminded me of the kind of books I used to read as a kid, with all these tricks you could do with simple numbers and how you could divide six digit numbers in a simple mental operation for instance.

JG: That’s what I thought when I heard of it. I think I must have read the same books! So you’re quite involved in the EAR Ensemble. Can you tell me a little bit about EAR and what your aims are?

JG: And how important is it for you as a composer to be involved with this type of group? What do you gain from it?FD: Well, EAR evolved naturally itself some years ago at Maynooth University [NUI Maynooth] with some students and [the composer and lecturer]Victor Lazzarini. I joined the ensemble about two years ago. The core ensemble now is really a group of four composers: Victor Lazzarini, David Stalling, Rory Walsh and myself. There’s a larger outer group of instrumentalists who play with us as well. The original name of the group was the Electro-acoustic Review and we’ve dropped that now, so it’s just Ear. But we still specialise in electronic compositions and electro-acoustic works, usually mixed pieces for instruments and live electronics or instruments and tape, or even just tape pieces.

'I have been making music all my life and I perhaps see my own music-making as a continuation of a family line of music-making.'

FD: I think if you’re going to compose it’s essential to have a platform like this, principally because the types of work we produce don’t find a way into normal concert programmes so easily. A lot of the work is quite experimental, and deliberately experimental. For the most part we are a group of researchers as well as composers, so frequently pieces are highly experimental or involve new forms, and it’s very difficult to get these kinds of works into usual venues or concert programs. It’s very important for us that we have a place to experiment and get our works out and also to have a group of like-minded people who can work together and give each other administrative and organisational support.

JG: It seems to be a pattern that more and more composers and instrumentalists are taking this approach by forming their own groups and structures to perform their own music. Overall, do you think this is a healthy sign or does it point to some sort of bigger problems for new music?

FD: Perhaps it underlines maybe a fracturing in serious art music repertoire and in the organisations that support this type of music. There’s a large repertoire coming out now that doesn’t naturally find its place in concert halls. So it may be a sign of myopia in concert organisers. Is it a healthy thing? It probably is.

JG: And in general, how would you assess the audiences for electronic or experimental music in Ireland now? Is it improving?

FD: It’s definitely growing quite rapidly. There’s a lot of interest from a lot of different areas -- people interested in audio research, electronic music generally, popular electronic music and dance music, and there is a lot of interest from the existing classical music world as well.

JG: Sure -- which is why presumably the EAR Ensemble is doing a concert in November at the National Concert Hall. So, Fergal, just to take you back a little bit: how did you become involved in music?

FD: I’ve been involved in music all my life. As a child I played traditional music with my father and in my teens I played in garage bands and pub bands and this kind of thing. Later in my twenties I studied classical guitar independently -- I didn’t go through the normal conservatoire-type education.

'I always attempt to be as neat and as clean and as elegant as I can.'

When I was thirty I returned to university and took an undergraduate degree in music at Trinity College, Dublin. Because that[studying music at tcd.ieTrinity College, Dublin] was a clear formal change in how I approach music, I mark that as the start of my serious music career. But I have been making music all my life and I perhaps see my own music-making even now as a continuation of a family line of music-making. My father was a musician, although not a professional musician -- his family was one of those families where everybody played music, everybody would be called upon to sing or play something, and everybody could and would. So when I think about it now, as I get older, it’s easy to see a line that goes back.

JG: So it’s not a case of you seeing yourself as being a late starter in music in terms of starting a degree at thirty.

FD: Yes, it’s a long line going back.

JG: You mentioned studying in Trinity. At what point did you become interested in electro-acoustic experimental music?

FD: Again, probably before that time. As I said, in my teens I was playing in rock bands. There seems to be a disproportionate number of electronic composers now who have begun their musical life playing guitar or electric guitar. Maybe there’s something about the twiddling of knobs on the amps that you want to take it a little bit further -- you want to find out why that knob does what it does. I was always experimenting with things, with tape recorders, with multiple tape recorders and recording onto one tape recorder and then onto another until I could get my hands on a multi-track tape recorder.

When I left school one of my first jobs was as an electrician. I actually think that was quite a good training. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like it might be but I did an apprenticeship with CIE [Irish Railways] where we took a whole year off site just working on electrical problems. We were presented with a problem of how the electrics on a train would function and be asked to design it ourselves from the ground up. So maybe my training with funny maths books when I was a kid led into this area as well. It was all part of the same kind of thing: inventing problems and solving problems; inventing systems and working them out.

JG: Which you’re able to apply to your composing?

FD: Yes, now it’s just become more abstract. I use a computer instead of wires.

JG: You still have that connection with the physicality of making systems work as opposed to just dealing with the front end through a computer.

FD: That’s what it feels like, yes. It feels like a physical process.

JG: So after Trinity you did a DPhil in composition.

FD: I did an M.Litt in Trinity then, and I’ve just finished a PhD now atYork University.

JG: And that was funded by the Arts Council’s Elizabeth Maconchy Composition Fellowship. How did you find this experience?

FD: Well, I had lived in England before but when I moved back to study there I had a family, so I found that part of it quite stressful and a huge burden on top of work. We had to move kids at school and so forth, and then move them back [to Ireland].

JG: So you all moved over to York?

FD: Yes. The university was quite helpful -- they arranged housing and so forth but it was still quite a stressful experience to move everybody. I wouldn’t recommend moving and studying with young children.

JG: And in terms of your work as a composer and your development, how important was that stint in York?

JG: And you achieved everything initially that you had set out to do?FD: It was great for me because at the time I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had a list on one page of all the projects I wanted to do in those three or four years. It was a question of working through my own projects. I was very clear about what I wanted to get out of it. At the start of the time it was wonderful to see that vast open space of years in front of you and nothing to do except work on very specific pieces.

FD: I did, yes. I ticked all the boxes. For me it was a great to have that. It was a real luxury.

JG: Some composers might have a rough idea of what they want to get out of their studies, but you had very clear ideas as to what you wanted to achieve during your time in York.

'It would be nice to just sign the bottom of the page and stick the score in the post, forget about it and let someone else worry about it.'

FD: I had a very specific body of works that I wanted to write and I knew what they would sound like and it was just a question of sitting down and joining up all the dots really. I had a very clear idea of the aesthetic forms that I wanted to use.

JG: So your biography mentions that recent works combine 'sound spatialisation with real time interaction and can be presented as installations or as concert pieces.' Maybe you could explain a little bit about what you mean by this.

JG: You mentioned sound diffusion in a space -- how important is the physical space which you’re composing for?FD: This goes back to the body of work that I was working on in York, which involved principally two almost separate approaches, techniques and materials. The first group used multiple loudspeaker arrays to diffuse noise samples, using granular synthesis techniques but combining this with spatialisation to create large voluminous forms in space. And the second body of works involved almost exclusively real-time interaction between a singer and a computer, using just sound -- no triggers or any external sources of control -- but just using the singer’s sound and the computer’s response to the singer’s sound. So it’s a very simple and straightforward paradigm.

FD: The ultimate performance site?

JG: Yes. How much do you take that into account? Or can you adapt your works to any given physical space?

FD: Well, this is possible to do at performance time but I try to make works that are robust enough to be performed in virtually any space but flexible enough to adapt to the space. For instance, the real-time pieces that I mentioned are in some way dependent on the space -- the reverberant aspects of the space and how a given microphone will respond to the singer’s voice in a particular space. So sometimes you’re spatially dependent as well.

JG: And in terms of the process of composing these works, how does it differ, say from composing for a purely acoustic piece notated in traditional form? What sort of process do you go through to arrive at these pieces?

FD: The actual process and the pre-compositional work of the piece may or may not differ. If I’m using loudspeakers I will try and do something that’s quite idiomatic for loudspeakers, which may seem odd because you would think you could put any sound through loudspeakers. But then we have to think about other problems -- how we expose the loudspeakers, how we arrange sound between the loudspeakers and so forth, so there’s a whole set of problems that you don’t normally have with instrumental music. So if I was writing something for any combination of instruments I might try to make that idiomatic to those instruments. So in the same way, if I’m writing for a computer to interact with a singer, I’ll try to do something that’s just purely idiomatic for that form, for those forces. Otherwise the normal compositional process is no different.

JG: Right. So it’s just the medium that you need to take into account in terms of what works, in the same way as you would for a particular combination of instruments and what works best for them?

FD: The forces available are the form.

JG: And with your electronic work, is there a lot of computer programming involved at the composition stage or does that depend on the nature of the piece you’re writing?

FD: For the tape pieces the programming often comes quite late. Maybe some early experiments to make sure that the ideas work but otherwise most of the work will be done on paper in conceptual form. When a piece is ready to be rendered or come into being that only takes moments and only a matter of transferring the idea to numbers.

JG: So for you it’s not a big, complicated process -- it’s incidental to the whole process.

FD: Programming code into a computer may actually appear as a large part of the finished project because there may be pages of code or a number of programs involved in finally making the piece, but as a proportion of the time of compositional work this would actually be very small.

JG: So it’s just one process or one tool that you need to use to arrive at your finished piece.

FD: Yes, well usually the tools I use are homemade tools -- hand coded processes. So it can be time consuming but out of the whole compositional process I’d spend a fraction of the time coding and a huge amount of the time thinking, considering and reconsidering.

JG: And just on the thinking -- in terms of inspiration, this old fashioned word with nineteenth century connotations and all the rest of it, where do you get your ideas? What sparks you off in terms of ideas for pieces?

FD: I don’t know. It really is just the forces available and always trying to be true to the available forces. I always attempt to be as neat and as clean and as elegant as I can. Maybe my pieces don’t sound elegant in a nineteenth century way; I mean elegant perhaps in the way a programmer might use the word elegant, meaning that the pieces propose something and explain it as quickly and as neatly as possible -- whether that’s a musical problem rather than a musical argument, let’s say. So my pieces tend not to be discursive or necessarily evolve over time but propose a musical state and then explain it very simply.

JG: So you’re not listening out continuously for particular sounds -- you’re really dealing with the forces available.

FD: No, I’m not a sound fetishist or a sound pervert at all. [laughs]

'I can remember being surprised when people would find differences between Luke Kelly and The Clash and subdivide music into genres.'

JG: And when you’re composing for electronics or amplified instruments or voices, do you find that you have to be more involved in the actual performance of your works as opposed to other composers who might write a piece and hand it to an ensemble and say, 'There you go, perform my piece'?

FD: Yes, definitely. Even with tape pieces, because I’m writing a lot for multiple loudspeaker set-ups and often they’re difficult to come by and need to be purposely arranged. That can be a level of involvement that most composers mightn’t get to enjoy. The real-time pieces I almost always perform myself, and anything with live electronics I perform myself.

JG: And do you enjoy that element?

FD: I do and I don’t. Like you say, it would be nice to just sign the bottom of the page and stick the score in the post, forget about it and let someone else worry about it; and not have to carry a computer around and not show up for sound checks. And not be the last guy to leave and the last guy in the pub because you’re the one wrapping up your own cables. At times this can be a bit frustrating and when I’m the last guy in the pub I always say to myself, 'Right that’s it, it’s going to be a piece for a solo violin next.' Of course it’s a good excuse to force you to take a more active involvement in the production of the music, maybe take the role of composer/conductor type figure.

JG: So presumably it does have a number of benefits because obviously you’re closer to the actual performance itself if you’re involved in it.

FD: Absolutely. But again it’s another factor that makes it more difficult to distribute the works. It makes it more difficult to record the works and broadcast the works, but just the limitation of having to be physically present of course reduces the possible performances.

JG: And is there any way around that?

FD: Well, if you give clear instructions, which I think I do, I could give it to anyone to perform but there’s a limited number of people with the facilities or the technical wherewithal to pull off such pieces. Not that I’m making hugely elaborate works that are resource-hungry pieces, but it is something I haven’t trusted anyone to do yet. The other problem is that if anyone can do this kind of stuff they tend to be composing and making their own music this way and they’re not so interested in performing other people’s works.

JG: I remember asking Jennifer Walshe about this issue. She was an integral part of performances of many of her works. The one thing she said is that the notation helps things along an awful lot. So you’re clearly saying the same thing in terms of other people performing your own works.

FD: I can explain simple instructions to someone over the phone in a moment but it’s nice to be present anyway to make sure it goes how you'd like it to go.

JG: Sure. And as a result of being involved in the performance of your own works do you often find that you’re having to tweak certain things or maybe change or revise some of your works as a result?

'There’s no yearning for an opera or a symphony or anything like this. I’m still focusing on very deliberate and very clear, short, medium forms.'

FD: Not necessarily. For me there is a lot of experimentation and if something goes wrong or has a non-musical or unpleasant result it’s not necessarily a problem for me because this is only proof of another behaviour of the system or the process. So for me there’s rarely a non-musical result.

JG: And in terms of your own musical influences -- people that have influenced you down the years -- who influences you or what influences you most at the moment?

JG: And 2006 and 2007, you mentioned the Composers' Choice work that you’re writing and you also have a piece for cello and tapecoming up at the end of July.FD: Like I said, I started playing traditional music when I was very young. In my teens I started listening to punk music and all kinds of stuff -- classical music, Varèse and Stockhausen. I can remember at the time being surprised when people would find differences between Luke Kelly and The Clash and subdivide music into genres. I could hear there were clearly stylistic differences but what interested me in the music I was listening to was the force behind the music -- the sense of integrity that someone like Luke Kelly or The Clash would bring to music, that directness, immediacy, singularity of purpose and the lack of any front or veneer. And this is still what interests me in music and is what I try to get across in my own music -- immediacy and directness.

JG: And what about the longer term, in terms of plans for your own works? Are there any particular directions that you want to go in that you haven’t yet had an opportunity to go in or any pieces that you want to write that you haven’t written yet?

FD: That’s with Concorde in Galway on 29 July. This is a very busy year for the EAR Ensemble as well. We’ve got the Composers' Choice concert in November and we have our own festival in Trinity College at the end of October, and next March we’re having another week-long festival in the Project here in Dublin. We may be making a tour of New York, London and Paris but that’s still to be decided. We’re bringing out a CD -- maybe a few CDs -- and we’ll be launching a webeaming site featuring electronic music. So there’s a lot happening for EAR this year as well.

FD: No, there’s no yearning for an opera or a symphony or anything like this. I’m still focusing on very deliberate and very clear, short, medium forms. So there’s now a new list of projects that I have to start working through now that I have finished the PhD. But there’s no grand design, I'm just working through the list.

JG: So you have a new list now.

FD: I have a new list.

JG: Well, that’s all I wanted to ask you, so thanks very much Fergal.

Fergal Dowling was interviewed on video by Jonathan Grimes in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 11 July 2006.

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.