The following article appeared in Mosaic in September, 2006
Composer Joins GBS and SweetWater
Richard Mascall pauses inside the living room of the house he shares with his partner and fellow composer Stephanie Moore to draw my attention to some paintings on the wall that were executed by his step-grandfather, whose implicit presence in the room, although unassuming, takes on an almost spiritual power. Elsewhere in the house, I am aware, hang reproductions of Rothko and Kandinsky (the latter being one of the significant proponents of the spiritual in art as well as music). Is it just my impression, or does the essence of the English pastoral tradition, Delius'music in particular, also hover over this idyllic Leith home and our conversation as well?
It is clear that Richard relishes the possibility of his grandmother's husband's presence in the room (and indeed they were close pals), as the younger man also prizes the irony of the deceased artist's having been buried in Leith cemetery nearby, along with his wife (Richard's grandmother), who spent her last hours in an Owen Sound nursing home with the drums of a pow-wow at Kelso Beach just evident as they wafted into the room. Richard himself, according to an early observer was "born to drum." Indeed his mother found him on the kitchen floor at one point with all her pots and pans dragged into service as a makeshift rhythm section!
Mascall has been clearly influenced by his family; for example, his mother, and her mother (who was an amateur opera singer), as well as an older brother and two sisters. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should compose since both his older brother and sister did. Aside from commandeering his brother's drum kit when it was not otherwise in use, the younger boy was the recipient of a focus-changing gift of, and lessons on, a guitar from the same brother.
Richard was also quick to identify Fate (a concept to which he frequently alludes) as another life-altering force for him. Coming from a family that has spent significant portions of time in both England and Canada, Mascall calls the move to North America in general, and the decision for him to attend North Toronto Collegiate in particular, as events that "completely changed my life."
Up until that point, the composer, thanks to his siblings and friends, had been assimilating musical information - rhythm through drumming, technique with the guitar, the creative impulse by means of jazz - but never in a deliberate and determined way. North Toronto Collegiate changed all that. Instead of the anticipated saxophone, he was assigned the violin, an instrument that put him in touch with other "like-minded young people"; and, after all, the compelling violin soundtrack in the Granada Television series entitled Sherlock Holmes had already begun to exercise an imaginative hold over the aspiring young composer! A recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto, placed in his way by his mother, clinched the matter. For him "this was the real deal; all the jazz and the other music I'd encountered was all good music, but all of it was like cardboard cutouts compared with classical music for me."
"When I discovered classical music by means of the violin and started to get into the practice of reading notes, it was by this stage second nature to me to start writing notes." Not much later family members were the proud recipients of musical gifts: a waltz for his mother, a mazurka for his sister, and a march for his father.
After a light hearted conversational foray into his early and largely intuitive attempts at writing for instruments, Richard observed that "the more knowledge you have, the more sensitive you become - with more attention being lavished on individual instruments as a result." In this regard he alluded to the good advice Christos Hatzis (one of his admired teachers) had given him concerning the particularly thorny question of how to write for the bassoon. Hatzis' advice: "look at how Mozart uses the bassoon to mirror what the violins are doing." In Mascall's opinion, a twentieth century composer who "wrote well for all the instruments" was Stravinsky.
"What's more, Stravinsky's music, unlike the music that preceded it, utilizes a clever balancing of harmonic and rhythmic ostinato patterns that makes what you hear melodic. Stravinsky grew up in the classical music tradition - it was in his blood. There is a certain lyricism in his music; and he was one of the first people to really start experimenting in bi-tonality and poly-tonality."
When asked if he would consider it a compliment to be lauded for his lyricism and well crafted compositions (after the manner of Stravinsky), Mascall answered in the affirmative; and went on to point out that the two composers most influential in his own work have been Stravinsky (particularly his Rite of Spring) and the American post-minimalist John Adams (particularly the CD entitled The Chairman Dances) -- the latter little known outside the U.S. when Mascall discovered him, but now world-renowned.
Mascall further explained that for a time he had "felt at odds with much of the contemporary new music" and couldn't shake the feeling that "music had lost its way somehow." "The music I was hearing at new music concerts," he continued, "could scarcely be described as music, and I didn't see any link between that and Brahms, Mozart and the wonderful tradition of the past."
"With Stravinsky I could see the link."
And with John Adams also. "What they were/are doing is writing contemporary music - it couldn't have happened at any other time in history, and yet it was very much part of the tradition of the past. I figured, if John Adams could have a career writing music that sounded like that, then maybe there is a possibility for me in the world."
"John Adams music sounds like Sibelius and it sounds like Debussy; but it also sounds like Benny Goodman and has an American flavour to it that we associate with Copland. The latter didn't re-invent the wheel; he went to study in Europe with Nadia Boulanger, and he was very much a part of the classical orchestral tradition: he just made it sound more American. He also made it modern in the process. Copland was of course influenced by Stravinsky -- who wasn't? John Adams sounds like a contemporary Copland in a way, a post-minimalist Copland."
Mascall would characterize his own music as being like John Adams without the American flavour. As he said, "One of my very influential teachers, Glenn Buhr, described one of my pieces favourably as "post Adams." "I liked that - whether it's true or not is another question! The composition of mine that Buhr was referring to was 'Grunge' (featured, incidentally, at the New Waves Composers Festival in Toronto, May 2006); and it's not entirely Adams-like; it's got its own kind of thing going on."
"We don't have in Canada," Mascall reminded me, "the kind of melting pot mentality that they have in the U.S.; here you maintain your place in the mosaic. My music is indicative of that mosaic. There are elements of European music, and East Indian music, of jazz and American music. Here in Canada we have various influences in our lives, so it's not so much about discovering new things as it is determining what you choose from the panoply of things that are available. Other pieces of mine, such as 'Illumination' [soon to be performed in the Georgian Bay Symphony Chamber Series], are illustrative of the same point; as is 'Labyrinth,' which will be performed at SweetWater Music Weekend (whether "with digital electronics" as originally envisaged, or acoustically, remains to be seen). This last composition (originally dedicated to Mark Fewer, by the way, and the recipient of a CBC prize), is described by Mascall as follows: "It conjures images... of contemporary urban planning, the interminable geometry of city streets, cars racing along highways and through 'spaghetti junctions,' or Mondrian-esque buildings soaring heavenward. It speaks of the urgency of a vicarious nation ever searching for a glimmer of hope, or at least, reality in this increasingly synthetic, plastic world. In addition it honours the venerable virtuoso violin tradition stemming from Paganini, as well as reflecting fiddle music, jazz improvisation and so forth. It is a young man's music above all!"
If there is a clear message that begins to emerge from our meeting, it seems to be that, as he said, "you can bring classical music to life again and it can be re-invented as new by synthesizing different styles into something that is genuinely contemporary but not completely turning its back on the past"; and he really does seem to have embarked upon that path as he produces compositions of incredible élan and poise, often requiring impressive technique and a compelling execution, but eminently accessible to the listener: in a word, tonal. Truly post Stravinsky and post Adams as he might hope!
Mascall remarked that "there is something solid, something substantial in certain works of art (Adams' music for instance) that is self evident to people and given time will be recognized independently of anything the individual can do or say." David Arditti, in an article entitled "New Composers of Tonal Classical Music," has observed that the composers, of whom Richard Mascall might be said to be typical, "live in their own time and are products of everything that has come before. They are trying to create an engaging modern and different music that nevertheless recovers those timeless principles of form, symmetry, clarity, line and transparency that were the unquestioned core of the craftsmanship of centuries of composers. In doing so, they hope to reengage the wide public alienated by the deliberate extremity, awkwardness and impenetrable complexity of many of the widely-promoted composers of the last fifty years" (EP&M Online Essay: Contemporary Music).
We wish Richard well as he takes up his duties in our area as Composer-In-Residence of the Georgian Bay Symphony, Conductor of the Georgian Bay Symphony Youth Orchestra, featured composer of SweetWater Music Weekend, performer and teacher.
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