Robert Gifford:
Welcome back to Strike Up the Band, featuring band music from the past 900 years. It's a pleasure for me, today, to welcome a very good friend, a colleague, and musical collaborator at different times over the years. Dr. Robert Fruehwald, who is on the faculty--has been on the faculty--and I'll let him explain his background and so forth…but at Southeast for many years. So, welcome, Bob, and maybe if we could start out…kind of tell us about your time and experiences at Southeast.
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah, there's been quite a few of them because it's been 34 years, which is a little bit unbelievable at this point. I started out here, I guess, primarily as the flute teacher. I say that with a question mark at the end because they also wanted somebody to teach theory and coordinate the theory area and teach electronic music and teach general studies within an interdisciplinary discipline. And I think oboe, as well, which I did manage…but there were a lot of things on the on the job description. So, I taught flute here for, I guess, about five years and taught some of these other things off and on. And then Paul Thompson showed up in town, and he's a fantastic flutist and flute teacher, and he started taking over some of the flute students and then more of the flute students and then all the flute students. And so, I eventually taught theory, music theory, and composition. We added a composition degree to the list of things that we do here at Southeast. I've done a lot of teaching over the years and a lot of composition. I've written for, I guess, all of the ensembles we have here, plus quite a bit of chamber music and a little bit of electronic music, too. And I've done some performing. I played flute a lot in the old days when I first got here and that's sort of dwindled over the years…but up until maybe two or three years ago, I still played.
Robert Gifford:
Well, and I remember working together in the Southeast Chamber Players.
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah.
Robert Gifford:
You know, it's hard to believe that group was together for 20 years. So, there was a lot of…a lot of collaboration there and a lot of very good music and fun music. Are there any of your fondest memories or proudest moments here at Southeast?
Robert Fruehwald:
Well, I mean, the question is, how much time do we have really?
Robert Gifford:
That’s good.
Robert Fruehwald:
There's quite a few of them. I mean, there's a lot of things that have to do with teaching, particularly classroom teaching, but somehow those don't make very interesting stories. I used to joke with people, you know, doing publicity that they should come in and take pictures of my students concentrating really hard sitting there in their desks in music theory classes. I don't think we'd attract a lot of students with that kind of publicity. But, yeah, in a lot of collaborations that that we did. One of them is a piece called “Nova Mater,” which was back in the 1990s, and it was for the…did we call it the Wind Ensemble in those days?
Robert Gifford:
Yes, we did.
Robert Fruehwald:
It was for the Wind Ensemble. It had…it seemed like a cast of thousands. We did it here several times, and then did it at the Missouri Music Educators Convention, which was fantastic. We had a huge crowd. The performance was really good. The band was playing really beautifully that day. And then I recently revised it and had some more performances. The local concert band did it back in Kentucky, and the University of Louisville band did it at the College Music Society National Convention, which was a big thrill. I guess it's technically not at SEMO, but it came about because of things I've done here at SEMO.
There was also a piece I wrote for the Chamber Players called Keviar, which was sort of a mini piano concerto, which was like six minutes long or something…solo piano with the Chamber Players and the ensemble from the middle school…from the Cape Middle School. They came in and played Orff instruments. Absolutely. Yeah, so that was a lot of fun, and I think fondly back on that.
Robert Gifford:
Well, you know…excuse me for interrupting. But as I remember that whole piece was based on input from the elementary students.
Robert Fruehwald:
Yes.
Robert Gifford:
Which was quite an accomplishment to take their many, many ideas.
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah, what I did was I went and heard of rehearsal of their group and asked them to play some things that they liked that were characteristic, and then I used one of the ideas, which was a little pentatonic melody they repeated over and over and over. And that's what they played. So, the Chamber Players would play; the piano would play; and then they would play; and then they all sort of came together at the end. I'm still fond of that piece.
The orchestra commissioned me to do a piece, too, which I rather like. It was called “River” and was a concerto for two flutes and a small orchestra. They took this to China, that's why they wanted the piece. They wanted something by a local composer. Paul Thompson did one of the solo flute parts. Tanisha Reeves did the other one. I don't know if you remember Tanisha.
Robert Gifford:
Oh, yes, I remember Tanisha. Fantastic flute player.
Robert Fruehwald:
That was revived. Dr. Edgerton did it again with the orchestra in 2021, I think, in the spring. It was nice to have, you know, a student and a former student doing that. That was that was kind of a thrill.
I think the other thing that really sticks out in my mind is a couple of visiting artists that we had. One of them was Karel Husa, the fantastic composer…a really, really interesting guy. I was chair at the time, so I got to spend quite a bit of time with him, and I socialized with him some. We…he and I went in the basement. We got bored and one day, and we went down to the basement of Brandt. I listened to some of his music, and he listened to some of my music, and we talked about and so on. That was a thrill to talk to him in that way.
There were a couple of other people…Clark Terry came and played. The great jazz trumpet player came and played with the jazz band a couple of times, and I got to hear him play, which was a thrill. And I got to spend a little time with him, too. And the other person I'm thinking about is Ian Clark. Maybe not quite so well known, but he is a fantastic flute player. He's certainly one of the best flute players in the world, and he was here maybe 10-15 years ago. I got to play with him, which was incredible. He did this piece called “Curves,” which was a piece for three flutes and piano. He did the first part. Paul Thompson did the second part, and I did the third part. And I must admit, it’s my one little experience, where I got to find out what it's like to play with a real world class player. And one thing I found out was that I basically couldn't keep up with them. But I did my best, and it was it was wonderful to have that experience. It was also kind of funny, because I was taking him to dinner one night, and he said, “You know, I don't quite understand…the piece is called “Curves,” and every time I tell people that, they kind of giggle a little bit.” And I said, well, I think the reason is that…they have this this gym, this workout place in town, that's primarily for women, and it's called Curves. And he looked at me, and he was like, I don't believe you. And we drove past Curves and I said see it says Curves, and then he understood.
Robert Gifford:
Well, it's interesting what goes into all those experiences. You know, we often do them for the students, and then we realize afterwards that we probably gained as much as the students did, if not more…
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Robert Gifford:
…because of those situations. Well, of course, this is a quote "band show." So, I'm wondering as a composer, and with all the experience you have of playing in bands and working with groups and students, what do you think is the present status in our country of bands whether that's wind ensemble or symphonic band or maybe even a chamber ensemble? And what do you foresee as a composer for what's going to happen in the future possibly?
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah, I think that's a good question. There are times that I feel like I'm in a real small minority, and one reason I say that is I'm pretty optimistic about the future of the band in America. I know some people that are quite worried that, you know, the public schools are going to be cutting back more and more and more, and we're going to lose our music programs and arts programs, in general, and so on. I don't really see that happening most places. I certainly don't hope it happens around here, but I've also noticed a sort of an expansion of what bands are and who's playing in them over the last couple of decades, maybe. When I was younger, there were bands in the public schools. Some colleges had bands. Most seemed to. Some of them had serious ensembles. Some of them had groups you just played in for fun. But once you got, you know, past college there weren't any more bands. If you wanted to be in the service, you could be in a service band, maybe. That was a professional group and they're wonderful. But out in the rest of the world, there just wasn't anything. And more recently, it seems like especially the bigger cities they're having what you might call symphonic bands that are serious. They're sort of semi-pro ensembles. And there's, you know, adult amateurs who are good and kept up their chops, and then professional players like college teachers and people who play in service bands and things like that. And a lot of these ensembles are really good. This group that played “Nova Mater” in Louisville is called the Louisville Concert Band, and I was absolutely stunned at how well they played. It's…that's one of the best performances I've ever gotten of anything in my entire life. And I remember asking…going backstage and asking the conductor and he said, oh yeah, we've got great players. A lot of the second chair wind players and so on from the symphony are playing in that group so that they can play principle and do the solos and get to play the band literature. So, I find that to be really very encouraging that we don't just have a sort of narrow range of, you know, a few bands here and there that people are in for fun. But everywhere, from just fun marching bands to serious sort of symphonic ensembles.
Robert Gifford:
Good. And I asked you today, as our guest composer, to share a work of yours with us. And so, what piece have you chosen? What can you tell us about the piece?
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah, this is a piece that I should have mentioned in my fondest memories, I guess. Its piece called “The Butterfly.” It was premiered last spring by the Southeast Symphonic Band, and it's based on an Irish folk song. The basic idea really behind it and of a lot of my recent music, is that I've become kind of interested in minimalism. And when I say that most people frown because they think of minimalism as being music that's based on little simple formulas that repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until you get so bored with it, and then they repeat a little bit more. But one of the things that… there are two things that sort of interest me about minimalism. One of them is that because they're using relatively simple musical materials, when things change you can actually hear it. When I was a young composer, it seemed like most serious music was supposed to be atonal and tremendously dissonant and tremendously complex, and that means you could do really cool musical things and nobody would ever hear it because the music was so complex. You just couldn't hear what was going on. So, I like to do sort of transformations of the melody. You know, every time it comes back, it's different. It's got different rhythms. It's got, you know, different emotions, modal inflections, and things like that. And so, you'll hear that when you hear the piece play.
The other thing I like about minimalism is that, quite often, these minimum patterns change in a quasi-predictable way. Like for example, Philip Glass, one of the big minimalist composers…he likes to do an additive process where he's got a little melodic figure, and he'll repeat it a couple of times, and then we'll add a note to it, so it gets longer. And then we'll add another note to it, and so, it gets longer and so on. And I do that in this piece at the very beginning. I bring in the first part of the melody from the butterfly folk tune, and it kind of comes in one note at a time. So, you hear a little bit of an accompaniment started, then you hear one note and one note and one note, and then two notes and then three notes, a little bit like Philip Glass would do. One of the reasons why I like this particular technique is that it works great in reverse. If you add a subtractive instead of an additive kind of procedure. One of the things that is so nice about that is if you're taking notes away, the pattern kind of speeds up and as it speeds up, you get a feeling of where the music is going. It gets a little bit more exciting, but you also realize eventually, you're going to only end up with one or two notes at the end, and that is a gives a composer a way to sort of structure the end of the piece. So, at the very end of the piece, the woodwinds are doing a pattern which is all just sort of straight eighth notes, but it's based on the melody: dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh-da. And as it gets closer to the end, they take notes dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh-da dee-duh dee-duh-da dee-duh…dee-duh-da da-dee da-dee da-dee da-dee da-dee and then it ends. And, again, you can listen to that, and you know…you can hear what's happening, and you can feel that the piece is winding down. It's a little bit hard to hear that because there's a few other things going on. The trombones are playing. I guess that's why I'm saying it's a little hard. But, in fact, again, I've used that kind of technique in order to help structure the piece and make it feel like it's going somewhere, and then when it gets somewhere, that it's arrived.
Robert Gifford:
Well, I always know myself, personally as a musician, and the students always love doing your pieces. And of course, when you do these, you get to work with a composer. So, you can't have really any better situation, any better world so to speak.
Well, it's been a pleasure to have you with us today. And I want to thank you for all your years of service here at Southeast and especially your deep concern for the students. I know you've developed some really wonderful, not only theory students but composition students, and want to thank you for that.
Robert Fruehwald:
Yeah. Well, I want to thank you back for mentoring. You certainly were very kind and helpful to me when I first got here and for everything that you've done for the band program at Southeast. I know that it's unfair always to say that an organization is mostly one person's thing, but that's certainly how I think a lot of us felt about the band program…that it was it was Bob Gifford’s world, and there were some wonderful things that happened in that world. Yeah, I appreciate you as well.
