An Interview with Eric Sweeney

Jonathan Grimes: Eric, you've been composing for nearly forty years now, and since 1981 you've combined this with your position as Head of Music at Waterford Institute of Technology. How do you manage to get your composing done?

Eric Sweeney: Well, I suppose if you want to compose, you'll always find time to compose. I'm lucky in that my work in Waterford is part of being a composer: I'm teaching composition, twentieth century and contemporary music, and Irish contemporary music. While that occupies a lot of time, composers find time when they want to write. Like a lot of composers in my situation, a lot is done in the holidays, weekends and evenings.

JG: And is there a pattern to your composing that you've found over the years; are you composing more at certain times of the year or does it vary?

ES: It varies, looking back over the years I find I write maybe four or five works a year. I suppose a lot of the composition is done subconsciously; while I may be doing other things, ideas are going on in my head. Brian Boydell used to say that he wrote a lot of his music while salmon fishing! I can understand that: you're working out ideas and when you come back to the desk, you're really just writing down what has gone on in your head. I also find that listening to contemporary music sparks off ideas. The point has been made that composers listen to music in a different way to other people. It's not that you're copying someone's ideas -- I often hear a piece of music and think, 'now there's an interesting idea; but if I had been writing it, I would have done this with it.' It's a kind of starting point -- striking the match as it were. Listening to music, as I do every day in lecturing and analysing and so on -- I find that this is very often sparking off ideas, and I suspect if I gave that up I might find far less ideas as a composer.

JG: So your teaching and everything that you do informs your composing.

ES: I think I've always been very lucky in this regard. I know composers who resent the amount of time they have to give to teaching or whatever they do; I find that one half informs the other.

JG: There's a good healthy balance between the two.

ES: Yes, and also it's very important for a composer to be in touch with the performance side of music. I think throughout history composers have generally been like that -- think of Bach composing, performing on several instruments, conducting choirs and doing administration. It's also a great way of keeping your feet on the ground because if you write something for performers that doesn't work, they'll soon tell you. As a teacher, it's advice I give time and time again to young composers: get your music out there, go and badger a few friends into playing your music -- it's a huge learning experience. One of the problems with music technology is that you can do a score in Finale or Sibelius and you get a midi performance straight away. The computer isn't going to tell you 'no, this register is not going to work for the clarinet,' -- computers don't complain. It's immediately obvious [to me] looking at student works if someone has gone through the process of working with performers -- it's by far the best way for any composer to learn the craft.

JG: Going back to your early years, did you grow up in a musical family?

ES: I did. Most of the family was involved in music in one way or another. On my mother's side, my uncle [Edgar Boucher] was director of music in the BBC in Northern Ireland. My brother [Peter Sweeney] is a well-known organist and my cousins are also well-known musicians in Dublin. A lot of my family are organists and recently someone did a family history and found that this goes back generations. I don't know where it started or how these things are in the genes! On my father's side, my grandfather was quite an accomplished traditional musician and my father had a great love of Irish traditional music and dance.

JG: So you were always surrounded by music.

ES: Yes, I began piano lessons early. I was a choirboy at St Patrick's Cathedral, so from the age of ten or so I was immersed in music. Looking back on it now, it seemed a great imposition because you only got one month's holiday a year; however, from a practical point of view it was a tremendous start.

JG: So, you were receiving this musical education as a choirboy and in piano: were you always aware of your interest in composition or did this come later?

'I often hear a piece of music and think, "now there's an interesting idea; but if I had been writing it, I would have done this with it."

ES: I started writing music when I was about twelve or thirteen. I moved house about three years ago and I discovered boxes and boxes of music that I had written from this age! It would be wonderful to think these were undiscovered works of genius, but I read and played through them all and thought they were absolute crap! [laughter] It's hard to remember a time when I didn't write music and I suppose there's something to be said for that. Looking back on my teens, I seem to have done nothing else but write music.

JG: And were any of these works performed?

ES: Yes, I studied piano at what is now the DIT Conservatory of Music and there were always students around who would play the stuff, which was great. To come back to the point about getting your music played -- that's how I learnt to write. The fact that these were your contemporaries meant that they had no inhibitions telling you if something didn't work.

JG: And your earliest acknowledged compositions date from the 1960s: what was it like working as a young composer in Ireland during that time compared to today? Do you think you had a more difficult time starting out?

ES: Well, statistically I think it was easier to be a composer then. The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra played a lot more contemporary music in those days. The concerts [that the orchestra gave] in the Francis Xavier Hall [Dublin concert hall in use during the 1960s and 1970s] on a Friday night were free and there was wonderful, imaginative programming and a huge amount of contemporary music; so it was relatively easy to get your music played. Against that, a very formative influence for composers of my generation during the late 1960s was the Dublin Festival of Twentieth Century Music [festival running from 1969-1984]. My memory of so much of the music played during these festivals was that it was of a certain type -- atonal, post-serial etc. There was, I suppose, a kind of peer pressure to write that sort of music. That was a disadvantage because a lot of my early works were written in this style [atonal]; I didn't really believe in it, so I can't imagine why anyone else would believe in it! The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has said that he believes most composers don't write for themselves; they write to impress other composers. It's a slightly cynical remark but I think he's right -- you want peer recognition. If I'd written the sort of music I really believed in back then, very few people would have listened to it. At a time when most composers were pursuing what Webern did, I was always more interested in figures like Bartok and Stravinsky.

JG: It's interesting because Michael Holohan, another composer I interviewed recently, said he feels much more comfortable as a composer today than he did in the 1970s when there was a very strong pull towards serialism and post-serialism.

ES: It was fine for some composers who believed in it. There are obviously still very respected and honest composers today who write in that style, which is great, but I think overall the scene is much healthier today.

JG: And, as you've just alluded to, you had a style change during the mid 1980s when you adopted an approach based on minimalist techniques. You've identified your second symphony as being a turning point in this change; was the change in approach something that was building up over time?

ES: Yes, I think I had been searching for a new style. I was disillusioned with the post-serialist style, I had tried aleatoric techniques and wasn't entirely convinced by these either. I had a growing interest in Irish traditional music and around 1982 an American minimalist composer, Michael Hunt, came to Ireland to do research on Irish composers. He gave me a lot of recordings of music that I hadn't heard, and this opened up a new way of thinking about music. I remember talking to him about the possibility of using Irish traditional music with minimalist techniques; he seemed quite interested and encouraged me to have a go. American minimalism and Irish traditional music may seem very different fishes, but it occurred to me that they have a lot in common: they use repetition, varied repetition and they're tonal or modal. I began to experiment with these techniques. As a teacher, I think there's a great temptation to pigeonhole composers and say 'X belongs to this category or Y belongs to these composers,' and in my own music I've perhaps been guilty of that. Yes, the second symphony was a turning point, but when I look back to works I was doing around then, I could see I was heading in that direction. So, it wasn't an over-night conversion; it was a gradual process.

JG: You mentioned that you lecture in Irish contemporary music as well as other subjects in WIT. I read an article that you wrote recently in the Journal of Music in Ireland, in which you talk about your temptation to pigeonhole composers into tidy groups and your 'subsequent irritation when they don't conform to the neat packaging that you devise for them.' If you were to stand outside yourself, how do you think you'd categorise Eric Sweeney the composer?

ES: [laughter] That's a very difficult question! I've always been reluctant to analyse what I'm doing. I'm a very intuitive composer and I would hate to say 'Eric Sweeney is this sort of composer,' because next week I might decide to be another composer.

‘I think it's very important for a composer to be in touch with the performance side of music.’
JG: In general, I think composers now are more versatile and often have to move between different genres and different ways of doing things.

ES: Absolutely, and I think that's how it should be. As soon as a composer starts thinking seriously 'I belong to this camp,' warning bells should start ringing!

JG: Turning to your works, you've written quite a large spread of works spanning many different genres. Is there a particular combination that you enjoy writing for over others?

ES: I have written a lot of music based on multiple keyboards, which is a combination I like very much. I have a group with some colleagues in Waterford based on three or four keyboards. I was in Newfoundland recently for a premiere of a work for four pianos, flute, clarinet and violin [The Wilderness], and I thought it was one of the best things that I had written (composers always think that and change their mind the next week!). I very much like that combination -- I like the percussive nature of keyboards. A lot of the techniques I use are contrapuntal: the idea of phasing different rhythms against one another. To come back to this idea of a new way of thinking about music: that's what attracted me to some of the minimalist techniques, which of course are derived from eastern music, which is about as far away as you can get from Darmstadt. More recently, I've written a lot of organ music. I have written a lot of orchestral music but I think a lot of composers find writing for orchestra fairly frustrating in that orchestras are geared towards playing the standard repertoire. As a performer, I like to live with a work, let it sink in and maybe in a month or six months time get round to performing it. Obviously orchestras can't work like that, but I don't think it does much for contemporary music when you're sitting on the edge of your chair wondering, 'are they going to be able to play the notes?' They do in the end but...

JG: That familiarity isn't there.

ES: Yes, there's nothing new in this frustration -- Schoenberg, one hundred years ago, got fed up and set up his Society for the Private Performance of New Music. Also, I think that orchestras, because they're comprised of human beings, like to avoid difficulties if they can, so to play the standard repertoire is easier. It's better to work with a smaller group of people who are generally interested in what you have to say and will give the time and put in the rehearsals; I find that a much more rewarding process to go through.

JG: And you've written, as you just mentioned, quite a lot of solo keyboard works, the most recent of which is an organ work, The Widening Gyre. I've also noticed that you've become more active as a performer of your own organ works over that last five years or so.

ES: There's an interesting reason for that. I used to play the organ very seriously when I was in my twenties. When I moved to Waterford twenty-two years ago, there wasn't a good instrument and I stopped playing. About six years ago, I spent a term in Illinois University as a visiting composer. They noticed from my CV that I was an organist as well, and they asked me to give an organ recital during my stay at the university. So, I gave a number of recitals while I was there and this rekindled an interest in playing the organ. I had written a lot of music in the previous ten years, most of this for my brother Peter Sweeney. Since my time in America, I've continued to write for the organ and I've continued to play. I've given a lot of recitals this year and hopefully I'll continue; it's great fun!

JG: You obviously find being able to perform your own works an advantage.

ES: Absolutely, if you're playing it, it's your fault if it's not right. If a piece needs twelve hours a day practise, you go and practise it!

JG: And, I should add that the Dublin Choral Foundation released a CD, Circle of Light, last year featuring your choral and solo organ works performed by yourself and the Lassus Scholars.

‘As soon as a composer starts thinking seriously "I belong to this camp," warning bells should start ringing!’

ES:That was a project I wanted to do for a long time. I'm very lucky in that the organ in the cathedral in Waterford was rebuilt last year; it's a marvellous instrument that by pure chance seems to suit my music very well. In fact, the CD was made within a fortnight of the organ being rebuilt -- this was a great way to get to know the instrument!

JG: Turning to other upcoming performances of your work, I notice that your work for voice, clarinet and piano, The Moon Cradle, which you wrote for the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island, USA in 1995, is getting a repeat performance there in August this year.

ES: Over the last ten years the Newport Music Festival has, I think, commissioned a composer every year. This year the festival is having a retrospective and I'm delighted that this work is being done. It's had a fair amount of airings since I wrote it -- Concorde has taken it up and other groups have performed it too.

JG: In general, how do you find hearing works you've written in the past that you haven't heard performed for some time?

ES: Well, I think as a composer you have to be pragmatic about this. While I enjoy playing my own music, composers have to be prepared to take a hands-off approach once they've written a work. If a work is good, it will stand on it's own feet. I would also be wary of writing a piece that has to be performed in one way; I think it must be flexible. Sometimes I've been very surprised over the years to hear performances that were slower or faster than I had envisaged -- it gives a new dimension to the work. This is the great triangle in music: the composer, the performer and the audience. We rely on performers -- performers are generally the medium through which your music reaches the audience. I think composers need to keep their distance. As a performer, I feel there always has to be room for the performer's role, otherwise you may as well write computer music.

JG: What about musical influences? You mentioned Bartok and Stravinsky as influences on your early works. Are there other figures, past or present, whose music you greatly admire? Presumably there would be a few minimalist composers within that mix.

ES: Well, there are. I find I'm influenced by a huge number of composers. It's not just the contemporary ones who have shaped my own compositions -- I'm influenced by the whole canon of music. Of the twentieth century composers, Stravinsky, Bartok and Messiaen are the composers who have influenced me most. I listen to a wide range of music and it's difficult to be objective about it because composers just reflect what they hear. I greatly admire Louis Andriessen for the sheer energy and raw qualities of his music. A lot of the American minimalist composers I find boring. What attracts me to so much of that music are the ideas behind it: this new way of looking at music -- it is this, more than the actual music, I find exciting.

JG: You wrote an article in 1995 in which you spoke about Irish composers being 'poised to be matched against that of composers everywhere.' Do you think that this prediction has been realised in 2004?

ES: I don't think it has but hopefully it will be. I think the idea of Irish composers regarding themselves as Irish is a curious one, and it's paradoxical in that 'Irish music', as most people would define it, is enormously popular. What I find very encouraging is the confidence with Irish composers. The term 'contemporary music' is still a big turn-off to most of the public but I think it is changing. Again, it's the problem with pigeonholing and labeling things. I don't quite know how it's happened with music because people have no problems watching the latest film, reading the latest books, or even paintings and so on -- these will attract large audiences. Maybe the thing with contemporary music is to leave out the word 'contemporary'; in the long run, audiences don't care if a work was performed one hundred years ago or last week.

JG: And finally, to come back to your own work: are there any future works or projects that you can tell us about?

'While I enjoy playing my own music, composers have to be prepared to take a hands-off approach once they've written a work.'

ES: Well, I have a lot of projects at the moment. I'm working on a commission from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra -- I hope they'll perform it after all the rude things I've said about orchestras! I have a guitar concerto for John Feely, which is to be premiered in Washington next February. I've a commission from a festival in Oregon in the US for next summer -- it's a work for multiple keyboards and I'll be composer-in-residence there. I also have a commission for a young people's work from an arts centre in Wales for the spring. So, I have a lot of pieces on the stocks at the moment, and hopefully I'll get to write most of them this summer.

JG: So you've enough to keep you busy.

ES: Yes.

JG: Thanks very much, Eric.

Eric Sweeney was interviewed on video by Jonathan Grimes in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 22 June 2004.

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