Scott Yoo meets with American composer Augusta Read Thomas to discuss the first draft of his composition, and with her help, gets out of his creative rut.
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TRANSCRIPT
So what I was trying to do with this movement was essentially homage to Fauré, but using Japanese scales.
And as you can see, once I got the harmony down and the basic tune, it was just like a airplane, but it just never took off.
I loved getting to know this piece.
Because I want to feel like, What would you make?
Yeah.
But I do have some some thoughts for you.
You know, when you're talking about sort of the French, the Fauré perfumes of the piece and then the Japanese modes.
One of the things that's interesting is where where are those layer cakes coming together and what happens at those moments where you intersect.
If it always shifts at the same rate...
Always shifting at the same rate.
then it's just like blue, red, blue, red, blue.
But if you go like blue, red, yellow, blue, red.
- Right.
Purple, blue, red, whatever.
I'm just totally making this up.
Then all of a sudden the underlying harmony, which is coming from the Japanese influence on the Fauré, comes to life like, Wow.
And I feel like this is absolutely fabulous.
Where you actually start to build up and you have this crescendo and you go here and it's like this beautiful modulation.
Yeah, - I wouldn't change that at all.
Okay.
But you're building this thing up and the whole thing's going, and then what do you do?
You just go, bop, bop, beep bop.
You could make that into 20 bars.
It's in the sound.
It's amazing how insightful you are.
Because you, you picked up on this feeling that I have of fear.
It's fear.
It's almost like a self-protection thing.
It's like, well, let's...
Okay, this is a good moment.
But, you know, people might not like it, so just get off it and go somewhere else.
My advice is to allow the music to sort of go where it needs to go.
Right.
There's so many great things about this, and it's incredibly musical and graceful and interesting and, you know, rich kind of harmonic world.
And you've got all of this in there.
And then I feel like you're kind of holding yourself back.
Sure.
So I would say just trust it and don't be reticent.
Because I think music has to have its own inner life.
It has to go.
And if we're reticent, we're like stopping the thing that's going.
So I would say you have to kind of like jump in.
And so I rewrote it.
I threw away most of the material, rewrote it.
And I hope...
I hope you like the new version.
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