In the early 1990s, Princeton composer Steven Mackey started to explore the sonic relationship between the electric guitar — his chosen instrument — and the violin. He’s still at it; on Dec. 9 through 11, Mackey performs “Four Iconoclastic Episodes,” a double concerto for violin and electric guitar that premiered in 2009, with violinist Sirena Huang and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, conducted by music director Carolyn Kwan, as part of the HSO’s “Merry Mozart” program.
Mackey spoke about “Four Iconoclastic Episodes” and his career as an iconoclastic composer.
Q: What attracted you to the pairing of the violin and the electric guitar?
A: Twenty-plus years ago, I wrote a piece called “Physical Property” for string quartet and electric guitar. In that piece, I found that a slightly distorted electric guitar, which is the quintessential guitar sound, actually goes very well with stringed instruments, and violins in particular. It sustains and has a searing quality, the way a high violin solo has. It ended being very successful.
Ten years after that, I performed with violinist Anthony Marwood. He said, “Wow, the electric guitar and the violin: They work so well together!” We discussed sonic things, but also just the tradition of virtuosity, from the rock music of my youth: Led Zeppelin, Duane Allman, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the progressive rock of the 1970s. And of course, virtuosity was an important aspect of the violin tradition from Paganini back to Corelli. It was both a sonic thing and a shared tradition of “shredding,” to use the modern parlance. Anthony said, “You should write a double concerto for electric guitar and violin,” and he commissioned the premiere of “Four Iconoclastic Episodes.”
Q: “Like An Animal,” the first episode, was partly inspired by John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. What did that music mean to you growing up?
A: I had not heard classical music at all until 1976, when I was 20 years old. I was a serious guitar player. I started out in the late 1960s, learning basic rock and blues: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin. I practiced every bit as hard as any violinist would practice. In the summers, when I wasn’t going to school, I was in my bedroom eight hours a day, stealing Jimmy Page solos.
Then, to hear John McLaughlin and [Mahavishnu violinist] Jean-Luc Ponty: It was another jump up in complexity, not just in terms of virtuosity, but also, “What the heck chord is that?” Fusion was complicated, sophisticated music. It literally blew my mind. That’s where I started to put my energies. I spent all day trying to learn John McLaughlin licks. Eventually I discovered classical music, late Beethoven string quartets and Stravinsky ballets, and I thought, “Wow, this is the most psychedelic acid-rock I’ve ever heard!”
Q: Another influence on “Four Iconoclastic Episodes” was Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song,” a track with an elusive sense of meter at first. I didn’t get it until I’d listened five or six times.
A: Exactly! I had the same reaction. As I listened deeper into the song, I heard that those piano chords actually happen on “legal” points in this swing grid, but carefully placed to be odd-numbered. … It’s disorienting, but once you get the groove going, they fall on the grid somewhat. It’s not giving you everything at once. It’s structural dissonance, to use a term from the exposition of a sonata. There’s this real business that needs to be accomplished in the song, and it happens: A rhythmic idea that’s repeating, unchanged, that at first seems completely random, but with a gradually enriched context, that feels like it’s part of the flow. That’s the abstract idea that I took for the third movement of the “Four Iconoclastic Episodes.”
Q: Like most electric guitarists, I’m sure you have a preferred effects setup. Does your guitar sound factor into the compositional process?
A: In “Four Iconoclastic Episodes,” I’m thinking very simply as I compose: “clean,” “distorted,” “delay,” those parameters. I also use an octave harmonizer. With anything I play with an orchestra, I make a conscious effort to avoid loops; the orchestra can play the loop. Looping is complicated. It’s hard to set a loop, it’s hard to play with a loop, it’s hard to follow a loop, especially when an orchestra isn’t used to doing that.
I try to streamline things. I want the focus to be on my playing, on the virtuosity. You can ramp up effects and sound like a spaceship taking off without any effort. I’m thinking more about a classical audience watching me. I want them to get a sense of the sweat equity involved.
I also just finished a big project called “Orpheus Unsung,” a 75-minute piece for just electric guitar and drum set. There, again, I’m thinking of effects right from the start, but I’ve got the full array: two loopers, one with three channels and one with four channels, all these effects. I’m trying to think of the guitar as an orchestra: I don’t have an orchestra to back me up, so I’m the whole orchestra. … It’s the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. It was composed with the manuals [for the effects pedals] on my desk: “What can I do?”
Q: In 2016, are there still orchestra-goers whose noses get wrinkly at the idea of an electric guitar entering the symphony hall?
A: Absolutely. When I started doing this in the mid-1980s, noses wrinkled everywhere, even when I played with a string quartet or on some contemporary music concert. Nowadays, it’s really common to see an electric guitar at a contemporary music concert or festival. Many contemporary groups have an electric guitarist on their roster. That battle has been fought and won, but with an orchestra audience, there’s still some resistance.
Q: As a result, did you go through periods when you wrote for other instruments exclusively?
A: I’ve ebbed and flowed with the electric guitar. There have been periods when I’ve said, “The heck with it: Who needs the hassle of practicing? I’m going to prove I’m a serious composer.” I will say that some of my best works don’t have an electric guitar.
With “Orpheus Unsung,” you kind of have to be me to perform it. The greatest jazz guitar player in the world wouldn’t get the notation. It’s the culmination of this current period, which started in 2009 with “Four Iconoclastic Episodes.” It was me saying, “You know what? There’s nobody else that really does this. Let’s go for it!”
MERRY MOZART takes place in the Belding Theater at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford Dec. 9 through 11, with guitarist Steven Mackey, violinist Sirena Huang and conductor Carolyn Kwan leading the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets start at $38. hartfordsymphony.org.
