By Ken Meltzer, Fanfare Magazine
July/August 2022
This is your first interview with Fanfare. Before we talk about your new recording of piano music by Alec Wilder, tell us about your background.
Without any doubt, I have had the privilege to study with such exceptional piano teachers as Eugene List and Barry Snyder at the Eastman School of Music, and Claude Frank and Ward Davenny at the Yale School of Music. These remarkable performers and pedagogues not only taught me how to create music at the piano, but they influenced my attitude and approach to understanding music in general.
The opportunity to attend exceptional music institutions in America allowed me to grow exponentially in my awareness of a wide range of music performed on a very high level. I still can hear David Burge sharing his interpretations of the music of George Crumb at the Eastman School of Music, or John Kirkpatrick sharing his passion for the music of Charles Ives at the Yale School of Music. Barry Snyder once made a very early recording of some movements by Alec Wilder and undoubtably planted a seed of interest in Wilder’s music from the very start of my formal education.
Like the wanderings of Alec Wilder, my musical career has taken me to many varied and interesting locations. I have served on music faculties in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Minnesota in America; and have spent years teaching at the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music as well as taking a sabbatical leave in Italy.
My travels have found me performing in such foreign locations as Scotland, Wales, England, Italy, Canada, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, India, Japan, and Hong Kong. When performing abroad as an American pianist, it is always of interest to select various piano music of American composers that will be accessible to foreign audiences. The music of Alec Wilder is very American in sound, and I have found that it can be placed comfortably on an all-American music program abroad. As well, I have performed Wilder’s music over the years on several “Friends of Alec Wilder” concerts in New York City. As I will mention later, my first encounter with Alec Wilder took place one summer at the Tidewater Music Festival in Maryland.
Alec Wilder is best known as the composer of popular songs, recorded by such artists as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Cab Calloway, and Mabel Mercer. But he was also a prolific composer of concert music.
Alec Wilder had the ability to enjoy deep musical friendships from the classical realm and the jazz world to singers of popular song. He successfully bridged the diversity of styles, writing fresh, strong, and lyrical music for a myriad of musicians with significant careers and reputations. It is notable that he wrote almost entirely for friends. Popular musicians of importance to Wilder included such names as Mitch Miller, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett. Amongst classical musicians one finds such performers as Jan DeGaetani, Eileen Farrell, Gunther Schuller, Robert Levy, the New York Woodwind Quintet, and the New York Brass Quintet. Representing jazz performers were such friends as Marian McPartland, Doc Severinsen, Keith Jarrett, Stan Getz, and Clark Terry. Concerning works written specifically for piano, Wilder wrote hundreds of piano pieces. His penchant for writing for children brought about many elementary and intermediate level piano compositions. Pianist friends included jazz musician Marian McPartland and classical pianist Barry Snyder. Therefore, Wilder’s compositional output is extremely large and varied.
There are popular songs, art songs, instrumental sonatas, chamber music works, compositions for large ensembles, opera, film scores, and theater pieces. Probably, no one will be completely sure about how many compositions Wilder actually wrote. He often sketched new works for friends and simply left the manuscripts with them as gifts. In the past few years, many unpublished scores from private collections are still being contributed to the Alec Wilder Archive Collection at the Eastman School of Music.
Tell us a bit about Wilder’s life and career.
Alec Wilder is truly an American original, and the motivations and inspirations of such a unique personality are intriguing indeed. In short, it is extremely difficult to separate Wilder’s lifestyle from his creative beliefs and approach to music.
Despite being born into a family of bankers in Rochester, NY in 1907, Wilder eschewed a life of material ownership. He once wrote, “I’ve run from ‘things’ all my life. I’ve kept nothing, not a single memory trigger, not a letter, a photograph, not even a book.” He never married and spent years traveling the nation by train. Wilder’s formal education consisted of a few years of private study in counterpoint and composition at the Eastman School of Music. At this stage in his life Wilder once wrote, “I didn’t enroll because I’m afraid of groups of people and can’t concentrate among them. As far as counterpoint is concerned, little as I know about it, I’m convinced that it is the bones of music.” He often stated that he valued and trusted intuition over formal studies. “In all areas but the creative I am obsessed with the need for knowledge. But all my life I have shied away from knowing more than an essential minimum about the creative process. It is possible that had I studied more my music would be better, on the other hand, it’s also possible that too much knowledge would have put my creative muscles into a permanent charley horse. All I can say is that if any of my music is good, its sources are almost solely intuitive.”
With the help of some influential music acquaintances, Wilder entered the world of popular song in the late 1920s. It was a natural outlet that allowed Wilder to combine his instincts both as a poet and as a composer. However, his heart was in serious music, especially chamber music for various combinations of instruments. By the mid-1950s, Wilder’s output was almost entirely concert music that he wrote for special friends.
One deep-rooted aspect in Wilder’s life was his commitment to friendships. Over the years, friends encouraged him to write and helped bring his music to the public. Wilder wrote, “As a result of meeting all these talented musicians I have found myself for the past twenty-five years composing almost exclusively for friends.” Inner Circle, the artwork on the album cover, might very well be symbolic of Wilder’s warm circle of friends during his lifetime. Wilder once wrote of his sincere admiration for performers, “I have great respect for great performers.
I believe they do much more than interpret music; they re-create it. And in so doing they add a dimension to it. After all, the best marked music in the world is only a guide and it takes the awareness and sensitiveness of a conductor, a group or a soloist to put the breath of life into it.” Wilder avoided self-promotion and detested compositions that were designed simply to be innovative or new. “I am not against experiment. I am against moving out of the sacred grove of art into the anarchistic playpen of newness and nowness for their own sakes,” he once wrote. Wilder valued beauty, aesthetic integrity, decency, virtue, wonderment, and patience and deplored any decline of such values. He stated, “My concern is to transmute the very best of myself into disciplined, loving, and if possible, witty and civilized sound. I am interested in only those manifestations of art which, in my estimation, emerge from a profound need to create and an absolute insistence upon a professional point of view.” Trusting his intuitive creative inclinations and merging minimal traditional music studies with an absorption of the current musical trends of his time, Alec Wilder was able to produce music that is distinctively his own in concept and sound, a worthy achievement indeed.
Your first recording of Wilder solo piano music (Albany TROY1294) was made in 2010. When did you first become acquainted with Alec Wilder’s music? What aspects of Wilder’s music attracted you? Why another Alec Wilder album now?
Forty-two years after the death of Wilder, it is meaningful to have the chance to publish overlooked piano pieces and help shed further light on a truly unique American personality. Wilder was reluctant to promote his own music and once stated, “There’s something extra special knowing someone who is willing and eager to take the time and go through all the technical trouble to produce recordings. They’re like permanent concerts and affirmations that I exist as a composer.”
I first met Alec Wilder during the summer of 1977 at the Tidewater Music Festival at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, where I served on the festival faculty. Wilder was there to hear a premiere performance of one of his brass quintets, which he had composed for the Tidewater Brass Quintet. It was apparent to me that Wilder was an intriguing product of his musical instincts and the influences of his American times and background. His lyrical melodies and warm harmonies inspired by popular, blues, and jazz genres created succinct music that was memorable and sincere. My appreciation of Wilder’s music grew during festival chamber music performances, and my spouse, Dr. Jean Roberts, eventually used available unpublished piano pieces as the subject of her DMA treatise at the University of Texas in 1988. The piano pieces featured in her treatise are recorded on my first album Alec Wilder Music for Piano (TROY 1294), which was published in 2010.
Most of the featured pieces on the current album, Alec Wilder Pas Seul Music for Piano Volume II, were written for intimate friends, and not until later in their lives did these friends think to contribute the scores Wilder had given them to the Alec Wilder Archive Collection at the Eastman School of Music. Working with the Sibley Music Library at Eastman, I obtained these previously unavailable archived piano manuscripts and decided to make a second volume of Wilder’s piano music.
Were there any composers who had a particular influence on Wilder and his approach to composition?
At an early age, Wilder lived for a period in Italy. While in Italy, he was especially influenced and inspired by contemporary French composers such as Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, and Poulenc. The French melodic/harmonic experimentation and the infatuation with smaller forms for piano pieces made a lasting impression on Wilder. Towards the end of his life, Wilder wrote of “the loathing of Wagner and the profound love of Poulenc, a moment as opposed to an hour, one tear rather than a tantrum….”
Counterpoint plays a major role in the compositions of Alec Wilder. This is largely because he studied counterpoint privately at the Eastman School of Music, and as a result developed a particular admiration for the music of J. S. Bach. Some suite movements are actual fughettas displaying subjects that repeat a dozen times within the course of the short compositions, such as Suite V (Piece No. 21 and Piece No. 25).
Although not technically composers, many of Wilder’s intimate friends from the world of popular and jazz performers should be cited as serious influences on his compositional style. A short list of such performers might include Marian McPartland and Tony Bennett. Harmonically, Wilder employs 7th, 9th, and 11th chords as well as added 2nds and 6ths that give his music its distinctive jazz and popular sound.
Concerning Wilder’s compositional process, he often stressed that he would work in a wholly intuitive manner. From his years of private music study at the Eastman School of Music, he was aware of the rules of counterpoint. However, he emphasized that compositional technique is a composer’s secret and talking about technique was only offering a substitute for content. He was comfortable with his innate sense of order, shape, and balance in music. He would first insist on finding a seminal melodic idea that would sustain musical interest throughout a piece. Then he would meticulously work on secondary themes as the composition moved along. Working at the piano, he stated that “I will play the parts I’ve written very slowly, and I’ll work as hard on eight sixteenth notes, trying to get that right balance and flow and feeling, as I will on an entire piece.”
Do you have any favorites among Wilder’s popular songs?
This is a difficult question to answer, but making a short list of works that I love to accompany in recital might include the following: Blackberry Winter, Did You Ever Cross Over to Sneden’s, It’s So Peaceful In The Country, and I’ll Be Around.
An oft-repeated characterization about Wilder’s music is that it wasn’t jazzy enough for jazz musicians, or classical enough for classical artists. What is your reaction to that sentiment?
It is a normal human impulse to want to categorize and label objects to assume that one has reached a clarity of comprehension and understanding. However, such categorizations can often be simplistic or even misleading. Alec Wilder’s music is a product of his life philosophies mingled with the sounds of his time; whether popular, jazz, or concert music. His merging of musical styles and genres is not unlike several of his fellow Americans such as George Gershwin or Leonard Bernstein. His songs may appear in NYC night clubs as well as on formal voice recitals, and his instrumental ensemble works enhance university recitals across the nation. He inserts canons into his jazz pieces, warm popular harmonies into his art songs, and syncopated jazz rhythms into his classical movements. His sound is uniquely Alec Wilder and distinctly American. This is a significant achievement indeed. It should be noted that the last Alec Wilder Concert sponsored by the Friends of Alec Wilder Society was international in character, with performers from around the world contributing to the event.
I understand that a great deal of Wilder’s music remains unpublished (including all but one of the pieces on your new Albany CD). Why is that the case?
Many works have been published over the years by various major publishing houses such as Associated Music Publishers, Sheet Music Plus, Hal Leonard, and G. Schirmer, Inc. Gunther Schuller’s Margun Music, Inc. was particularly vigilant about presenting new works of Alec Wilder. Significant chamber music and instrumental solo works are readily available. The songs, of course, are published by TRO Ludlow Music.
Specifically, the solo piano works are a neglected area of Wilder’s output for publication. Wilder basically lived out of a suitcase and traveled extensively by train to visit friends around the nation. His short piano pieces (101 Short Pieces for Piano) were written apparently as sketches to allow him to experiment with various compositional techniques rather than intended for the concert stage. One can envision him sketching these short pieces in his notebook as he crossed the countryside.
Other piano pieces were very specifically dedicated to a special friend; the piece Pas Seul, for example, has the inscription “for Charlotte with deep affection, Alec Wilder.” Often, Wilder gave these original pieces to his friends upon his departure from his visit and forgot about them. Over the years, many of these special friends have gradually contributed their personal manuscript scores to the Alec Wilder Archive Collection at the Eastman School of Music. Another factor is that Wilder was not a promoter for his own music; rather it was the creative process that inspired Wilder to compose. At times, he could be rather scathing against some musicians that he labeled “hustlers” for their own personal music or career. He wrote that “those who turn to music in order to make money and achieve notoriety are as contemptible as old ladies purse snatchers and about as much a part of creation. The supermarket Wagners who hornswoggle the public into accepting their mongoloid creations are as grotesque as the illiterate ‘philosophers’ and ‘sociological prophets’ who whine in assonant rhymes and rummage sale melodies of the sins of the establishment.”
What are the resources for Wilder’s unpublished compositions?
The primary source for archived unpublished compositions of Alec Wilder is the Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester.
David Peter Coppen
Special Collections Librarian and Archivist
Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music
27 Gibbs Street, Rochester, NY 14604
Tel. (585) 274-1335 // Fax (585) 274-1380 dcoppen@esm.rochester.edu
Tell us about the repertoire on Pas Seul and why you selected the specific works.
With appreciation, I thank David Peter Coppen at the Sibley Music Library, who graciously provided me copies of the unpublished piano pieces that I requested from the Alec Wilder Archives. I spent time culling through the scores and selected compositions that were legible and complete as manuscripts. I set aside small manuscripts that were compositional working sketches, piano pieces that were obviously intended as elementary compositions for children, and piano scores that were arrangements of instrumental ensemble works. I then extracted a collection of pieces that I felt would sustain a complete album. The two suites are substantial sets and serve as core compositions for the disc. Other pieces were chosen because they encompass and demonstrate a wider spectrum of Wilder’s composing styles. Most of his compositional mannerisms are represented; the influences of the popular world of song, the jazz realm of rhythms and harmonies, and the classical sphere of counterpoint and forms are all apparent. There is an extreme variety of characters depicted on the album. Some pieces such as the infectious waltzes reflect a lighter world and are very accessible, other compositions are more meditative and lean toward a darker or more anguished character, and the suites are generally more serious in compositional intent. Finally, it was necessary to consider an overall pattern or arrangement for the diverse short compositions that would structure a larger album. In the final criteria, I simply gravitated towards compositional works that musically spoke to me.
Was Wilder an accomplished pianist in his own right? What are the special challenges in performing Wilder’s piano music?
Wilder did play the piano to some degree and used the piano while composing. Interestingly, his earliest instrument was the banjo, which he once played in a black jazz band for Jewish weddings. As for special challenges in performing the music of Wilder; I occasionally found the archived manuscripts difficult to read, and it was necessary to take time to carefully decipher and clarify the scores. Basically, the music is very direct and sincere. Wilder’s music is devoid of technical wizardry or empty passagework that masks any lack of musical substance. Therefore, demands are placed on the artist to voice, balance, and shape phrases as intelligibly as possible. Wilder once stated that he fully credited 50 percent of the success of any performance of his music to the expertise of the performer.
To what extent does improvisation enter into performing these Wilder piano pieces?
Marian McPartland noted that “Wilder is fascinated by improvisation, yet sometimes when someone takes harmonic and melodic liberties with his songs, he gets irritated. He insists on his point that at least the first chorus of a tune should be pretty much as the composer wrote it.” Except for Inner Circle, which was arranged by Jason Roberts as inspired by the improvisations of Marian McPartland, all scores are performed according to the archived manuscripts provided by the Sibley Music Library. Lullaby for a Lady, Why?, The Walkaway, Homework, and Where Are All the Good Companions are all performed with the conscious choice to allow the pieces to appear in their simplest and purest form or “pretty much as the composer wrote it.” Another exception on the album is Blackberry Winter which is truly a popular song that I indulgently added as an encore at the close of the album.
Do you have recommendations of other Wilder classical works for our readers to explore?
In the world of piano music, I would strongly recommend the Sonata- Fantasy for piano that appears on my earlier album Alec Wilder Music for Piano (TROY 1294) as a serious composition. This remarkable work has infectious jazz motives that are developed throughout and a haunting lyrical second movement. Unusual for Wilder, the entire composition has a cyclical element that gives a unity to this 15-minute larger sonata form. Following the Sonata-Fantasy, I find that Wilder has written many pieces of real substance in his six suites for piano. The range of emotions in these suites is extremely wide and expressive, and it is difficult as the performer to resist giving descriptive titles to individual pieces in each suite. As well, there are many enchanting pieces in the smaller sets such as Un Deuxième Assai and Hardy Suite. Beyond the piano pieces, of course, the art songs, chamber music compositions, and instrumental solo sonatas are well worth exploring. There are numerous woodwind or brass suites and quintets, as well as trios and octets for mixed ensembles.
What upcoming projects are on your horizon? May we expect more Wilder performances/recordings?
Performing, recording, and lecturing on the music of lesser-known composers has always been an interest in my career. There is a fascinating synergy between the creator of a composition and the performer who uses imagination to bring the musical work to life. For example, in the past I have recorded compositions by Harry Bulow, David Johnson, and Sister Mary Elaine Gentemann C.D.P. I very much look forward to further explorations into unknown music for the piano by other lesser- known composers. Actually, my current location in San Antonio is very conducive for investigating Latino and Spanish piano music in the future as well. Perhaps working with music friends to explore new ideas in the musical art is in some manner carrying on the creative heritage of Alec Wilder.
Further resources for Alec Wilder:
Alec Wilder, Letters I Never Mailed (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1975)
Alec Wilder An Introduction to the Man and His Music (Margun Music, Inc. 1991)
Alec Wilder, American Popular Song (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972)
Desmond Stone, Alec Wilder in Spite of Himself: A Life of the Composer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Whitney Balliet, Alec Wilder and his friends (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983) Publications: alecwildermusicandlife.com
Alec Wilder Piano Recordings by John Noel Roberts:
Alec Wilder Pas Seul Music for Piano Volume II TROY 1886
Alec Wilder Music for Piano TROY 1294