A Conversation With Glenn McClure – Composer, Performer, Arts Integration Consultant
This article appeared in March 2004 addition “Choral Cues: the Official Publication of the American Choral Directors Association of NYS”. Permission was granted from the author and the editors of “Choral Cues.” ACDA of NY for the article to appear on this website.
(Note: this is the fourth of a series that Sue Fay Allen is writing on New York State choral composers.)
I first saw Glenn when he was working on one of his compositions with an Erie County Junior High Chorus. His piece with them was from St. Francis in the Americas. The choristers loved him. The next time I saw him was at a national ACDA Conference. There were a number of us who had dinner together, and I asked him if I might interview him. Then at the Summer Conference, under Anton Armstrong, those of us in the Conductors’ Chorus had the opportunity to sing another one of his pieces. I knew I had to find out more about this composer! After playing phone tag for about a month we finally got together over the phone for about an hour and a half one Sunday afternoon. What follows is a distillation of our conversation.
SFA: When did you first start composing?
GMc: I’ve been composing music since I was a little boy. For me the place that music fits in my life is unique. Though many of my colleagues don’t know this, I am a severe stutterer. Up to the time I was eleven years old, the only way I could communicate – the only way I could feel beautiful without the grimaces, contortions, and embarrassment of stuttering, was when I sang. Music was very important to me early in my life. At eleven I went to a six week, intensive summer program at SUNY Geneseo that taught me a way to control the stuttering. I use this control every time I speak and it allows me to sound like most people. Even though I learned the control, music didn’t diminish in my life.
SFA: I hope all of us realize how freeing it is for a stutterer to sing.
SFA: Was your family musical?
GMc: Yes, My oldest brother had a rock n roll band that practiced in our living room every Tuesday night. I learned to sing harmony in church, and my other brother, sister and I sang in a trio – we performed in churches, nursing homes, etc..
SFA: When I grew up I thought all families harmonized in four parts around the dinner table!
GMc: We didn’t sing at the table, but I was lucky to have many different kinds of music around me when I was a boy.
SFA: So what is your educational background?
GMc: In high school I studied at Eastman – in the jazz program – and oboe, sax. At that point in my life, I expected to go to college at Eastman and become the next great saxophone jazzman. But circumstances changed, and I really needed to stay closer to home, so I went to SUNY Geneseo for college. I spent a lot of time with ethno-musicologists, and a lot of time studying Dante and Chaucer.
SFA: The broadening of your education was important to you?
GMc: As a composer, it made all the difference – this broad background. I had a double major Music Theory/ European History and a minor in Medieval Studies. I studied in Siena, Italy for a while also. That’s why a guy with a Celtic name is writing a lot of music with Italian lyrics. These were rich experiences.
SFA: All this exposure to other fields of thought and study. .
GMc: It was invaluable. You know when folks commission a new piece from me, they often come from community organizations, not necessarily music ensembles. They don’t want to talk about Neapolitan 6th chords and tri-substitutions; they want to talk about ideas. I see the role of a composer as a servant to those who commission new work. The composer gives a musical voice to the heritage, hopes, ideas and dreams of the commissioning group.
SFA: You use steel drums in many of your pieces. Explain this Latin American influence in your music.
GMc: Well, I was brought up in the Genessee Valley, which at first glance looks like a relatively homogeneous, caucasian community. But if you look beyond this first layer, it is an area rich in ethnic traditions. I grew up dancing to traditional Celtic and Italian musicians. Some of them also played a mixture of square dance tunes and swinging jazz. My Dad was a pharmacist and Mom was an elementary teacher. They started our volunteer ambulance squad and were very involved with local health. On Wednesdays we would go to the different migrant worker camps, give check ups to the kids and delivering the prescriptions. I heard Puerto Rican, African American and Mexican music in the camps. I was surrounded by diverse musical traditions when I was little.
SFA: So in “St. Francis in the Americas: A Caribbean Mass,” you combine many different languages, instruments, and music styles.
GMc: The idea for the St. Francis came to me in 1992, when all those bleak documentaries came out about Columbus’ voyage to the new world. These documentaries focused mostly on the tragedies that occurred when native peoples, Europeans, and West Africans mixed together in the New World. But the tragedies comprise only half the story. It seemed to me that the music we listen to, the food we eat, and many of the people I know and love are all a products of this mixture of cultures. I wanted to create a musical work that would explore the beauty that was born out of these tragedies in our history.
SFA: I remember several different languages in the piece we sang at NYSSMA.
GMC: Yes, in the movement you did with Anton (“Kyrie”), I combined the Greek prayer from the concert mass with an Italian poem and placed it over a Brazilian samba rhythm accompanied by Trinidad steel drums and a European piano.
SFA: It sounds improbable, but it was an extraordinary piece. I can understand why Anton Armstrong chose it for us to perform.
GMc: Multi-cultural music means different things to different people these days. I am particularly interested in ways of placing elements of more than one culture in a piece. The different elements can be contrasted or fused together, depending on what the piece needs to say to the audience. In this way, the music imitates our world in which people of diverse backgrounds need to live, work, and celebrate together.
SFA: How do you choose text?
GMc: There are several ways to choose a text. In some cases, I can simply set a text that I enjoy. But the choice of text for commissioned works has to be a joint decision, in order to give a musical voice to their ideas. For example, I’m in the middle of collaboration with a Lakota poet from the Sioux tradition. Since the University of S. Dakota had performed some of my works, we found a grant to fund this new project. We searched for texts but eventually decided that the Sioux poet (Jerome Kills Small) should write new poems for the work in traditional Lakota song forms. . The new piece explores the Lakota view of Lewis and Clark’s legacy. This perspective is not commonly known.
SFA: We have the Tuscarora Reservation near us. The language is quite different.
GMc: Yes, there are different sounds – the learning curve was steep for me! I think it is important for today’s composers to write for these under-recognized languages.
SFA: Collaborating like that sounds exciting and challenging.
GMc: Then there are times when a traditional text is chosen. I just finished writing music for Dr. Mark Zeigler and the Nazareth College Choir. They chose the Aztec Creation Text in the original Nahuatl language. This piece will be performed in Mexico City in March 2004. Later it will be performed at the Hochstein School in Rochester.
SFA: But there is another way to determine text?
GMc: In some situations, I sit down and write it myself. For instance I was part of the “Continental Harmony” project last year. This NEA grant (administered by the American Composers Forum) places composers in small communities in every state. I was hired to work in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where they have the Amani World Festival.
SFA: Why is there a World Festival in Carlisle, Pa?
GMc: Well, a very courageous group of citizens started this festival ten years in response to racial tensions in their area-not the least of which was a significant presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Carlisle. The KKK was holding rallies in downtown Carlisle.
SFA: Ohhhhh?
GMc: And the folks didn’t want their town to be know for hatred. They inaugurated this World Festival to celebrate diversity through music. Ten years later, 5,000 people show up to this one-day event and the Klan rallies are gone. They created a powerful artistic response to a political problem.
SFA: This is extraordinary! What a success story!
GMc: In my job, I get to spend time with amazing people that are making a difference in their communities.
SFA: And back to the commission –
GMc: I was hired to write a piece that would articulate their vision of “many diverse voices in one.” They gave me musicians from 5 traditions to work with. (And he immediately rattled off five disparate ethnic musicians)
SFA: Stop stop. No one will believe this unless I get each one down.
GMc: The ensemble they gave included an Indian tabla player, an Australian dijeridoo player, a West African drummer, an African American blues player, and a group of five Korean drummers playing large drums and gongs. They had never played together before.
SFA: I had no idea commissions could be this challenging!
GMc: Well western notation went out the window immediately. I led the group through a series of guided improvisations that revealed the musical possibilities, not only of this set of instruments, but also this group of individual players. I assembled a couple of these improvisations into an accompaniment to the choir part. The choir added both structure to the piece and also gave me a chance to articulate their ideas in lyrics. Brady Allred brought in the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh to perform the piece while I directed the instrumentalists. Each section of the piece was born from these guided improvisations. Over time, the instrumentalists formed into a wonderful ensemble. They really worked together, despite their diverse backgrounds.
SFA: What text did you use for this piece?
GMc: This group of courageous people created something in their town through many years of sweat, energy, teamwork, and savvy. It struck me that the piece should be about “creation.” I found many creation texts, but they all dealt with a single tradition, and this group was all about combining traditions. We tried to obtain permission to one text, but it wasn’t possible. Eventually, I decided to write the lyrics myself. I used the structure of several creation stories and then wrote specific lyrics for the Amani group. The piece is called, “Gonna Make a New World.” This commission was real wild ride, but I was very pleased with both the process and product that came from this community-based project.
SFA: Your title at the top of this interview: “composer, performer, arts integration consultant” - Explain the last title please!
GMc: Over the last ten years, a new field has opened up to teaching artists. It has grown in response to all the new brain research like Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory. An arts integration consultant (or “teaching artist”) partners with educators on a project that animates the curriculum area for kids of many learning styles.
SFA: Can you give an example?
GMc: Sure. I had a commission for an orchestra piece with steel drums. I worked with middle school students in Mt. Morris, NY. The science teacher led the students through an extensive unit on rain forest ecosystems. The kids taught me what they had learned, and together, we wrote a tone poem to describe a rainforest, emphasizing the interdependency between the four layers of the rain forest, and the respective animals and plants. Just as a student can describe their knowledge by writing an essay or drawing a picture, the student can convey their knowledge through a tone poem.
SFA: This is fascinating. I wish I could have seen this interaction.
GMc: In the early discussions, we had to decide how best to paint a “musical picture” of the rainforest. We spoke about the interdependent relationship between the four layers of the rainforest. One student from a Caribbean background, mentioned that when he plays hand drums at his church, “we each play different rhythms on congas, bongos, claves, and shakers. None of the individual parts sound like much by themselves, but they sound really hot when we all play together.” I took a Cuban rhythm with four interlocking parts. Each part represented a layer of the rainforest. The interlocking nature of the rhythm became a musical metaphor for the interdependence of rainforest ecosystems.
SFA: But the commission was for an orchestra to play with them.
GMc: Exactly. How could this be accomplished? They decided each of the four members of the string family would also represent a layer. The string bass part represents the forest floor, the cellos represent the understory, the violas are the canopy and the violins the emergent layer. The students also noticed that by giving the string section the rhythmic groove of the piece, this would be a new challenge for players that are used to playing only melodies and harmonies. Now the Mt. Morris Middle School steel band will be accompanied by the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra sometime this spring!
SFA: In other words when the students create with you, they’re using a wide range of knowledge, information and skills. This certainly involves higher levels of thinking when you are manipulating the material to create the new work.
GMc: It gives a chance to some of the marginal students in the classroom to shine. This work lines up with state learning standards as well- Music is placed in the center learning, not at the fringes. Beyond the students and educators, Arts Integration offers a composer an immense opportunity. The composer gets to work in a highly collaborative environment with dynamic, talented educators and also gets to help students succeed.
SFA: What do you do first when asked to compose a piece for a chorus?
GMc: At first I need to understand what the commissioning group wants to say. What do they believe in? What do they want to communicate to their audience? Sometimes several sessions are devoted to this. If the group hasn’t already discerned this, I bring have a grab bag of ideas to start discussion. Then, it is important to spend time with the ensemble to find where their strengths are. We’ve all heard occasionally of commissions where the piece was beautiful but could not be performed by the particular group that commissioned it
SFA: When you start to compose, where do you begin? A key – a theme – a rhythm – a feeling?
GMc: Yes-all of the above. Sometimes one element sparks an idea and then I build the rest around it. Painters use shapes, lines and color to communicate concepts, emotions or a new ideal of beauty. The composer does the same thing with pitch, rhythm, harmony, texture, etc. For me, most of the time, I start with the text. Music can add new meaning to a text.
SFA: Do you compose at the piano? Your desk? A computer?
GMc: I write most of the piece inside my head, and then I transfer it to the computer. Once it’s transcribed, I may make some adjustments. But I usually don’t harp over it very much once it is written down.
SFA: Do you set aside specific times for composition?
GMc: Actually – when I’m driving in a car or walking. And . . . when I’m supposed to be doing other things with other people, I often find myself composing. I do have to set aside time for transcribing it to the computer. That consumes a lot of time.
SFA: Were there any composers or pieces that influenced you? That were seminal to your experience?
GMc: I listened recently to the Dvorak “New World Symphony” and suddenly during the well-known 2nd movement with the English horn solo it all came back to me. This was the first piece of classical music that showed me what classical music could be –and that made me understand what a composer could be. I think I was nine years old. Dvorak was so good at painting musical landscapes. It has stuck with me ever since.
SFA: And were there other composers?
GMc: I was always a big fan of Ravel. In college, Schoenberg was fascinating to me. I think it was his process of generating music through a non-musical structures, which basically isn’t too different from what I do as a composer of community-based projects.
SFA: Any guiding words for would-be commissioners?
GMc: It’s most important for them to ask the question, “What do you want to say to the world with the new piece?” The answer to this question will drive the structure of the piece as well as the nature of the collaboration with the composer.
You’re going to give birth to a new piece of music. Composing/commissioning is a lot like parenting. You need lots of input from a wide variety of people to raise this new musical “life.” After creating and nurturing it, the new piece will travel, meet new performers, and will grow in directions you can’t always predict-just like children! When many people are invested in creation and nurturing of the piece – when more folks feel they have a piece of it, the more it will be heard and understood. There’s no shortage of reasons these days for creating beauty. It is the most important thing we do.
SFA: What haven’t we covered that we should know about you?
GMc: A composer is a person who serves the community with music. When energetic, dynamic people get together and take risks to share their ideas and dreams through music, they make the world a little more beautiful. Creating and nurturing new music is often challenging, just like parenting. Just as it takes a “village” to raise a child, it also takes composers, performers, conductors, audiences, and many more people to create beautiful things that respond to the unique challenges of our time.
This article appeared in March 2004 addition “Choral Cues: the Official Publication of the American Choral Directors Association of NYS”. Permission was granted from the author and the editors of “Choral Cues.” ACDA of NY for the article to appear on this website.
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