An Interview with John Feeley

Guitarist John Feeley speaks to Bernard Clarke about performing contemporary guitar music, his background in guitar teaching, and collaborating with composers.

Bernard Clarke: Is the guitar your first instrument?

John Feeley: It is my first instrument but I did play the accordion briefly before that. My mother bought it for me when I was quite young. I remember playing that, learning a tune very quickly. I was always frustrated by it because it wasn’t a chromatic accordion, it only had one row and you couldn’t get the chromatic notes. So I was always looking for the notes in between, so I gave it up pretty quickly I think.

BC: When you were a young player music education wasn’t anywhere as advanced as it is now?

JF: No, not at all. I got a guitar when I was about 14. My brother bought a guitar, a very poor, dilapidated one. I taught myself completely and I was playing rock music, pop, a little bit of jazz and country, and so on. I was playing with bands around the town and doing a little bit of touring when I should have been studying in secondary school. There were no guitar teachers around at that time. So I didn’t have any lessons and it was only when I went to Dublin I started teaching myself classical[guitar]. Again, there were very few classical [guitar] teachers around. So I taught myself and enrolled in the [Royal Irish] academy[of Music] for one term with Andrew Robinson. But Andrew was primarily a viola de gamba player and guitar wasn’t his main instrument. So I was essentially self-taught until I went to America and studied there when some of the top people.

BC: Guitar is a global phenomenon, acoustic and electric instruments are everywhere and they’re commonplace in a variety of musics around the world. Is it difficult to keep up with all of this stuff?

JF: Well it is. I mean the guitar is in every style of music, it’s in every country and there are so many different types of guitars. In fact there are many different instruments within the term guitar: different tunings, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, classical guitar, flamenco guitar. They’re constructed differently. But there’s a lot of cross fertilisation between them as well. Electric techniques have crept into some classical pieces, like hammer arms and things like that. In one way it’s very healthy because the whole scene has changed so much and there’s so much growth and development in different ways with each one [performance style] affecting the other. So in a way it’s very alive, the whole process. It’s difficult to know what’s going on but it keeps you on your toes.

BC: Few instruments are capable of as broad a palate of sound as the guitar. Its musical world though, in some ways, is beset not by guitars but with the picture postcards and chocolate box type trivia to which so many devotees are addicted. I’m talking about people who say, 'Guitar music equals eighteenth to nineteenth century Spain'. Do you ever come across those kinds of expectations when you say, 'I’m John Feeley. I’m a guitarist?'

JF: Yes. I remember Bill Dowdall and myself did a concert in Germany a few years ago and we thought we were being booked to play a full concert of contemporary Irish music. I played some solo works, we played Jane O’Leary’s Duo for alto flute and guitar. But somehow the public there, and there was a really good crowd at the concert, expected a traditional Irish session. We noticed that one or two people walked out but the other people stayed and then it became apparent that there was some miscommunication along the way. In the second half we still did some contemporary pieces but we improvised a few traditional pieces as well. So we kept some people happy. But there are a lot of, I suppose, expectations of nineteenth century repertoire when you mention guitar.

BC: But since the revolution of the electric guitar, and particularly someone like Jimmy Hendrix and some wonderful players before and after him, as we were saying earlier the guitar in some ways has become iconic. There’s some great and wonderful uses of the guitar now and in the last couple of years. There’s Glenn Branca’s Guitar Symphonies, Lou Harrison’s well-temperated guitar works. And then someone like Steve Reich -- Electric Counterpoint, and it was written for a great jazz guitarist, Pat Metheny. Is it becoming more and more difficult for the guitarist to keep up with the demands of the contemporary composer?

JF: I think it’s very exciting. I don’t think it’s that difficult because at any one time you’re only going to be working on a few pieces and you focus in on the problems of those particular pieces. There were pieces written from 1950-1970, like the Britten Nocturne, that have become the major pieces in the guitar repertoire from the twentieth century. But there’s a huge repertoire there by other composers from this period and earlier that are not played at all now. I think that guitarists have honed into a very small part of the repertoire and have excluded a lot of very good pieces.

BC: John, you’re a particular champion for contemporary Irish music and you’ve worked with a wide range of composers. You’ve worked with completely different generations, all writing in different styles. Are these composers all using the instrument to its full capacity?

JF: I suppose it depends what you mean by full capacity. There is a whole range of techniques you can use for the guitar -- all kinds of effects. Composers choose [the techniques] that suit what they want to express. From that point of view nobody uses the whole range [of techniques]. Maybe what you’re referring to is if they write well for the instrument. And it is a real problem, not just in Ireland, but internationally, because the guitar is a nightmare of an instrument to write for. Composers seem to find it extraordinarily difficult, non-guitarist composers. I think it was John Buckley that said, 'It’s a nightmare to write for', and he’s written 47 minutes of music for the guitar, so he’s had a lot of nightmares. John has done extraordinarily well because he actually bought a guitar and everything he’s written he tried to play it. Now that doesn’t mean everything will work of course, and there was a lot of interaction between the two of us when he was writing his second guitar sonata and the flute and guitar piece [In Winter Light]. So you wind up making suggestions and as it happens he’s very amenable to change and he would change things to suit because he wants the instrument to sound well. So generally speaking composers are very happy to get feedback from a performer and are quite willing to change things.

BC: The album Winter Light by John Buckley, which features yourself and William Dowdall, the flautist. For me that’s a wonderful album.

JF: Thank you.

BC: One of the things that comes to mind is John Buckley’s use of guitar sonorities and his use of, I don’t know if this is the right word, roles. I hear supporting roles, commentating roles, smart sophistication. He’s playing into the personae of the guitar.

JF: Yes. I think John’s music has a very broad range and he really uses the instrument. He goes from the lowest note of the guitar right to the very highest and everything in between. It’s very difficult but it works extraordinarily well.

BC: I’m sure it helps to play with someone like William Dowdall, who you have played with quite a lot. [Playing together] must be almost intuitive [for both of you] at this stage.

JF: Bill is a fantastic player. Bill was the main flautist with the [RTÉ National Symphony] orchestra for many years so he can sight-read anything. We both seem to enjoy it [playing together].

BC: You’ve been involved with teaching and developing guitar players and guitar music on this island. How are you finding your students at present, John? Are they interested in new Irish music?

JF: I would say that it’s been my experience that the guitarists are probably more interested in contemporary music than other instruments. I think that’s pretty evident too. A lot of my students have actually become composers. David Fennessy, Benjamin Dwyer, David Flynn, Ciaran Farrell. I think part of [the reason for]that is nearly all of them came from playing electric guitar, and improvising was part of the way they approach music. Maybe somehow it’s a more creative way to start music. If people start off improvising it seems to... I don’t know whether it whets the appetite to create more. With the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we’ve little or no repertoire by the main composers of the day. Whereas in the twentieth century there are some really good compositions for guitar by leading composers. So that’s important as well. But I do think that guitarists are more open to twentieth century music than other instrumentalists.

BC: Do you think the audiences though are more closed [to contemporary music], not all audiences of course? Some audiences will go to hear Henze, Takemitsu, Britten but they won’t go to Steve Mackay or Steve Reich. They mightn’t even go to Ciaran Farrell because he’s a name they don’t know. They won’t make the leap into the contemporary idiom.

JF: I suppose it’s got to do a lot with programming as well. It’s difficult to get an audience in for a full concert of contemporary music, although ensembles like Concorde and others do it. I think you can introduce people to contemporary music who normally wouldn’t listen to it just by introducing one or two pieces in a concert better than by presenting a full concert of contemporary music to them. There’s room for both [approaches]obviously.

BC: Just to develop that though. Have you any ideas as to how we could possibly make contemporary music less 'forbidding'?

JF: The problem must be that people are so used to listening to nineteenth century or baroque music. Maybe more contemporary music could be played on the radio or by orchestras. I’m not sure what the answer is but certainly I think preconception is a large part of it and if people are exposed more they wouldn’t have [these preconceptions] about contemporary music.

BC: You commission a lot of new music. Are there any set criteria for John Feeley when he commissions whomever?

JF: Not really, and I don’t like to impose any criteria because you’re constricting the composer. I usually like to see what the composer comes up with and give some feedback to that. If there are things that don’t work then you suggest alternatives. And it’s very different from one composer to another. Take Jane O’Leary, for instance. In Jane’s works there was a lot of consultation. She has a Duo for alto flute and guitar, it’s a wonderful piece. There was a lot of interaction between us on that. Again, Jane is very willing to change details just to get an effect. It’s more an impressionistic sort of style, a little bit like Takemitsu. John Buckley also -- his style is completely different but yet he really studied the guitar and how it works and what he could do with it. But again, he is open to what the performer can do and is willing to change things if they don’t work. But it’s very different from composer to composer. It’s very interesting because from the performer’s point of view you get an insight into the musical language of the composer. It’s like a doorway into their world, which definitely helps when playing the music.

BC: So you’re always up for a challenge?

JF: Yes. I played a new piece by Seóirse Bodley recently [Islands], a very interesting piece and I’ll be playing it again. It’s about a ten-minute work and I worked with Seóirse a little bit on it. I’m playing another new piece by Jerome de Bromhead in September. I find it very interesting because it’s a lot like learning a new language -- trying to get inside the music and it’s very interesting from a performance point of view to do that.

BC: It’s worth it in the end?

JF: Yes, hopefully.

John Feeley was interviewed on video by Bernard Clarke in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 7 August 2007.

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

Listen to full podcast here: 

Episode 1:

John Feeley was interviewed on video by Bernard Clarke in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 7 August 2007.

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