An Interview with Composer Larry Bell by Peter Burwasser (Fanfare,
March/April 2004)

      Larry Bell's development as a composer is a good example of how the
creative impulse grows like that proverbial rolling stone, amassing texture and
complexity, at times in an almost unconscious way. Bell was raised in rural North
Carolina, an only child of essentially unmusical parents. Still, they
acquiesced to their grade-school-aged child's request for a piano and lessons, which
continued into his teenage years. "I sang in a church choir in grade school.
After I discovered rock and roll, around age thirteen, I dropped the choir and
piano lessons, and went straight for the guitar." Bell joined a rock band,
became discouraged because no one really paid any attention to the music he was
playing, and returned to the piano as a member of a jazz trio. "Later on, in
college, I sang in various school groups, including a men's chorus. I was,
briefly, a ringer in an Episcopal church choir."
     This sounds like a toehold into a life in music, and yet, there is still
a hint of anguish in his voice as Bell recalls those years. "I had no role
models. I didn't know what to do next as a high-schooler." Meanwhile, other
musical influence continued to seep into Bell's aural consciousness, especially
regional folk music and hymns. "I was surrounded by vernacular American music. I
was born on January 17, 1952, in Wilson, North Carolina. My hometown was and
is about 35,000. It is a small town with rural roots. For many years, the
town's slogan was 'World's Greatest Tobacco Market.' Eastern North Carolina is at
the center of world tobacco exports. Despite the rising gap in our world
balance of trade, North Carolina has maintained a trade surplus since the 17th
century. The culture of tobacco has changed greatly in my lifetime. I quit smoking
on March 15, 1982, but, as you might imagine, the customs, attitudes, and
perspectives of Southerners evolve at a glacial pace."
      Bell eventually landed at Juilliard, where he studied with Roger Sessions
and Vincent Persichetti, both of whom were highly influential modernists. "My
music as a student was much different. Tonal music came gradually. The time I
spent in Rome [Bell had been awarded the Rome Prize], 1982 to 1983, was a
watershed. The Rockefeller Foundation supported the recording of a 100-album
collection of American music for the 1976 bicentennial. I don't know the exact
title of this collection, but it was released on New World Records. Many music
libraries were given this collection. It has wonderful examples of vernacular
American music: bluegrass, gospel, spiritual, jazz of all kinds, and so on. The
American Academy in Rome had this collection. I found myself studying music
that I hadn't listened to since I was a child. Maybe it was out of homesickness,
but I wanted to incorporate hymn tunes into my music." Bell continues to
incorporate hymns in his current work, such as the Idumea Symphony, and much of
his music for violin and piano. "In the 19th century, there were two big-selling
hymnals in the South, Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony. I am using Sacred
Harp for much of my source material. I have also met people, such as the
musicologist Gilbert Chase, who were very helpful with research."
      Like many other composers who shifted to a more accessible manner of
expression, Bell has experienced some backlash from those for whom the term
"pretty music" is still a sarcastic pejorative. "As a modernist, [using hymns]
didn't feel right. I asked Persichetti about this, whom I was still in touch with,
and he told me that in principle, quotations are not such a good idea, but
that he did it himself, which is such a typical thing for him to say. This led me
to worlds I hadn't been to. I've become more and more direct since.
Modernists have a problem with surface beauty. Many people thought Strauss was a
traitor when, after creating Salome and Elektra, he wrote Der Rosenkavalier. It is
still an issue in academia, although it is not with the audiences, or even with
performers. I've thought a lot about this over the years. If you want to find
your own voice, you have to confront something that is embarrassing."
        Bell elaborates on this fascinating concept, which he holds as a personal truism.
"I think one of the most difficult parts of finding your own compositional, or
poetic voice is to confront what it actually sounds like. Most people
experience a version of this when they hear their own voice on an answering machine
for the first time. 'I don't sound like that,' most people would say. A fine
line divides that which is personal and that which is embarrassing. Most of my
students are afraid of being trite, when in reality they are often avoiding the
discomfort of exposing their own fantasy life. As one gets more experienced as
an artist, one gets used to being naked in public, but it is always
embarrassing, I think."
      It follows that Bell's music continues to draw from his whole range of
influences. In speaking of the pieces on the new CDs, there seems to be few
genres he does not react to. The Short Symphony is "more like Persichetti than
any other piece. It has his kind of glib quality. The last movement has a kind
of rock influence, with its bass ostinato." His Song and Dance "grew out of my
experience playing pop music in a band. like Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks, it
has a bare bones jazz influence, but the construction owes more to European
traditions. It is light, sort of like Haydn, but serious." The Sentimental Muse
"has the lyricism and straightforward qualities associated with folk music."
And The Book of Moonlight reflects "an interest in a sort of second-side Abbey
Road flow [the Beatles album with a side B that has no breaks between the
songs]. It has an autobiographical feel to it."
       There are still some pieces that Bell speaks of with some
self-consciousness, if not embarrassment. A central work on the solo violin album is an
extended riff on a well-known hymn that gives the piece its name, Just as I Am. "I
was squeamish about using it. This was the theme of the Billy Graham Crusade."
Bell's music for solo piano is also filled with many personal artistic
signposts, but is generally more inward and less heart on sleeve. "The Preludes
and Fugues grew out of my serious interest in playing the piano. In Rome, I
started studying piano performance seriously [with Joseph Rollino; Bell also
studied with Joseph Bloch at Juilliard], and I wanted to write more idiomatic
piano music. These pieces also relate to improvisatory playing. Right now, I am
very interested in improvisation. If you have a disciplined sense of harmony
and counterpoint, then everything else is basically written by ear. I really
believe that many of my best pieces are the result of a casual, tossed-off
approach. This works only if you are a workaholic, however. That is, you have to
really be looking for something in order to get lucky. One of the most exciting
things about being a composer is that you really have no idea what the future
will be like or what you re going to do next."
        As Bell explains, the earliest sections of the Preludes and Fugues were
sketches for his own use. "Many were designed for other pieces. I didn't set
out to write a Prelude and Fugue set. At one point, I had a kind of grandiose
idea to writ 50 preludes and fugues based on 50 hexachords as scales or modes. I
use these as Bartók used the church modes that is, to create an equivalence
between the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of music; all of the harmony
and the melody is therefore derived from the same source. I discovered back
in Rome that many American hymn tunes are based on the first six notes of a
major scale, with no leading tone.
"Each of these hexachords seems to have a particular effect similar to
more traditional key affects, for example, F major is often described s
pastoral. In my preludes and fugues, I started by writing a fugue based on each one of
the 50 hexachords. This was only an experiment, mind you, but I discovered
that some of the hexachords were very difficult to use because they were limited
in transposition. The whole-tone scale is a good example. In the end, I only
used four or five of the 50 possibilities. This lends a certain unity to the
cycle. The first and last prelude and fugue are based on the same hexahcord,
for example.
     "My original plan was to say Prelude and Fugue on C rather than in C.
This is such a subtle and potentially confusing point that I decided to stay
with traditional practice."
      The result is a rich work that has drawn the attention of important
contemporary musicians, including Jonathan Bass, the pianist on this CD, who has
made the work part of his basic performing repertoire. "Pianists who play them,
including Jonathan Bass and Sara Davis Buechner, find a narrative in the whole
set, a kind of story being told."
     The work requires a very steep learning curve, which puts Bell in good
company. "I think that my teacher Roger Sessions's Third Piano Sonata is one of
the most profound pieces I have ever heard, but I know personally every
pianist who has ever played it! Elliott Carter is a personal favorite too, but his
work is too difficult for even most conservatory performers to attempt."
As a composer in an age in which questions about style have far less
import than they did a generation ago, Bell owes a debt to his great teacher, who
was revered for not imposing style choices on his students, but instead
imparting extraordinary technical skills. "Persichetti had a very open and eclectic
approach to style and composition. I remember telling him that I really
disliked some of Ives's music where there was diatonic melody and chromatic harmony
and equally detested William Schuman's music in general, because there was no
connection at all between the harmony and the melody. These kinds of things
never bothered Persichetti. On the other hand, he told me that stylistically he
was not a woman, that he did not have periods! All of his music is basically
in the same style. For me, style is an organic consequence of musical integrity
and coherence. It is never something generic or a pastiche.
     "On the other hand, Persichetti was always suggesting ways in which my
music could be more inclusive. In the past few years, I have written some pieces
that I hope will become repertoire works. Theses pieces, such as the new Four
Lyrics for trumpet and piano, are more traditional in form and
improvisational in content. Other works, like Tarab for eight cellos, are more experimental
and allow me to push the technical extremes. I like doing both kinds of
pieces, but my expectations are more realistic than they used to be."
As is the case for so many creative minds, Bell views his artistic
evolution more organically than might be expected in a more objective viewpoint. "My
earlier music is not really that different from what I am doing now, in my
opinion. I have found new and more efficient ways to approach technical
problems, but I am still preoccupied with line and rhythm. The sense of tonality that
one hears in the new CDs is driven by old-fashioned polyphony and the
techniques of modernism. The Idumea Symphony, for instance, has four themes and each
theme is made of three intervals. In the first movement the strings play minor
seconds, perfect fifths, and minor sixths; the brass play major seconds,
minor thirds, and diminished fifths; the winds play major thirds, perfect fourths,
and major sevenths, the harmonic inversion of the strings, and so forth. This
type of technical approach to melody is unthinkable without knowing the music
of post-Webern serialism. Ironically perhaps, this is also why I don't really
think of myself as a tonal composer."
        Ultimately, in the celebrated manner of Persichetti, Bell is not
especially interested in style wars. He tries to convey this in his teaching, as well,
at the Boston Conservatory and New England Conservatory. "I do tell my
students one thing, though. I have a very strong preference for pieces that have a
beginning, a middle, and an end."