:Music Research Group

Talking to composer Elena Kats-Chernin it is easy to see why she describes herself as a “subconscious sponge”. Her speech is somewhere between a gushing stream-of-consciousness and highly evolved critical reflection. The words pour out as does the self-analysis. This personal characteristic replicates the style of her compositions - a flowing progression of themes which follow an unconscious emotional tangent while also reflecting sophisticated ideas about music and tempo. Chamber Made Opera is about to follow-up its 1998 presentation of Kats-Chernin’s music-theatre piece Matricide with a production of her first operatic score, Iphis. 

Kats-Chernin says that she is “grateful I’m born now and I’ve got all this other music before me that I can ‘grab’ or ‘borrow’ from.” Hence she feels that in a way she just soaks up influences and then reformulates them in her own compositions. The omnipresence of various musical influences can however at times seem “almost like a nightmare. I don’t do it consciously, but every composer over the centuries has picked up on other people’s music and that which has come prior to them - because you can’t get away from it. It’s like a picture you’ve got in your head that you can’t get rid of. I’m not the only one who has that problem, but I see that as enriching - it’s not a problem!” Kats-Chernin’s work may therefore perhaps be seen as part of a trend within Classical and popular music where musicians quote, sample and reinterpret other forms within a new context. In such compositions, music almost becomes a type of self-conscious historical montage - and Kats-Chernin agrees that Matricide had an episodic, non-narrative style which made it akin to a form of “operatic collage”.

Kats-Chernin does not however feel that she herself is part of this current musical movement. Since coming to Australia fourteen years ago, she has been flat out composing. She does not therefore have time to listen to much contemporary music. “That would mean not writing five pages that I have to do every day,” she pragmatically observes. Consequently any ‘trend’ that she may or may not be a part of is not a product of her conscious interaction with figures such as fellow Chamber Made composer David Chesworth (whose latest C.D. reworks the music from Terence Malick’s film Badlands, which in turn reinterpreted Carl Orff’s compositions for schoolchildren).

The presence of various registers and references in Kats-Chernin’s music is therefore in her mind simply the result of what it is to be a composer in today’s world. “All my music has always been described as very eclectic. I hear something and it goes right into me and it comes out somewhere - I don’t know where! It’s a mixture of modern with old: it has some somewhat dissonant clashes, some unusual sounds and it’s very rhythmical. There are [classic-style] tunes but then they also collide with other feelings.”

Kats-Chernin is however most adamant regarding any comparison of her technique to actual sampling or quotation. “I don’t ‘borrow’,” she asserts. In taking themes from other composers, works and musical styles, Kats-Chernin significantly remodulates them - particularly with respect to the tempo. “I usually speed it up so that it becomes my own. It’s kind of my leitmotif. I don’t write complicated rhythms; mine are very direct. I speed it up inside and make it a bit more complex, but I like to have a basic rhythm.” Her compositions therefore often take 4/4 patterns and then double these with underlying internal sections, or layers, which are faster. Consequently her work cultivates a sense of both harmony and dissonance.

Given the dramatic modulations of style and feeling that Kats-Chernin’s work evokes, it comes as no surprise that she has worked in music theatre. Questions of plot and emotional journey are therefore central to her approach to musical composition in this field. Iphis if anything demonstrates this more clearly than Matricide, since Kats-Chernin chose the subject of this work herself, whereas Matricide was an already formulated project which she was commissioned to write. “What I do is try and find the right means to transfer this particular sentence into music,” she explains, “in a particular way that this particular character will say at this moment. So it comes out of the situation, and if I feel that this would be the right way to transport that idea then that’s how I do it. So I will use any style - I don’t care! It comes naturally. But I don’t go ahead and say: ‘I will try now the style of Baroque and I will collide it with the style of Schoenberg.’” It is the expression of the gender-bending sexuality at the heart the story of Iphis that Kats-Chernin is first and foremost interested in.

The article above was first published in “IN Press Magazine” (Melbourne: 1999).

Marshall wrote on music, sound, the avant-garde and performance at “IN Press” from 1995-2005. Sadly, “IN Press” back issues are only available in a handful of libraries today (notably the State Library of Victoria) and no proper indexing has been conducted. Nevertheless, a survey of the arts pages (”Interval”) offers an excellent gloss on the diversity of Melbourne performance culture throughout these years. During this time, Marshall interviewed such artists as Kats-Chernin, David Chesworth, Phillip Brophy, Darren Verhagen, Francois Tetaz, Dr John a.k.a. Mac Rebennack (whose name Marshall is now delighted to share!) and others, as well as composing multiple reviews.

Marshall’s articles for “RealTime Australia” are however readily available via the online archive of that publication as well as being held at most Australian libraries. Please contact the author should you require more information on Marshall’s previous criticism.

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