美国国家公共电台 NPR Ben Johnston Hears The Notes Between The Notes

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST: 

Ben Johnston celebrated¹ his 90th birthday this year, and he completed a decade-long project - the recording² of all 10 of his string quartets. That's in part due to the fact that Ben Johnston hears music differently than most people. He hears the notes between the notes. Maureen McCollum of Wisconsin Public Radio explains.

MAUREEN MCCOLLUM, BYLINE³: When Ben Johnston was growing up in Georgia, he questioned the standards scales he was taught in school.

BEN JOHNSTON: Because I knew I was hearing all this stuff, but I had no idea what I was hearing.

MCCOLLUM: So...

JOHNSTON: I played by ear, and invented my own chords.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 4")

MCCOLLUM: In Western music, we're taught that there are set notes and scales - Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So. But instead of jumping from Do to Re, there's actually an infinite number of pitches in between called microtones. Johnston works with those notes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 4")

MCCOLLUM: Ben Johnston's "String Quarter No. 4" four is probably his best known and most performed work. It's his take on "Amazing Grace." At his home in Madison, Wis., surrounded by a flock of peacocks and a herd⁴ of barn cats, the 90-year-old composer says the work has its roots in his childhood, in slavery and in his desire to hear what the song might have sounded like if Beethoven had covered it late in his career.

JOHNSTON: I was trying to take an aspect of the tune⁵. Let's hear it now from the medieval point of view. Or maybe - what about here? I'll refer to the Romantic period.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 4")

MCCOLLUM: It was actually Johnston's love of the Glenn Miller⁶ Orchestra and Broadway show tunes⁷ that made him want to be a composer. Then, during World War II, he heard Stan Kenton's band.

(SOUNDBITE OF STAN KENTON COMPOSITION, "PRELUDE⁸ TO NOTHING")

JOHNSTON: It was the first time I ever heard real jazz improvisation⁹. But immediately I could get it by ear, and it changed my whole approach to harmony.

MCCOLLUM: After the war, he apprenticed¹⁰ with the iconoclastic¹¹ American composer and instrument maker¹² Harry¹³ Partch and studied with Darius Milhaud and John Cage. All of them encouraged him to follow his own path.

(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing in foreign language).

LARRY POLANSKY: You know, we need Jackson Pollack, we need James Joyce, and we need Ben Johnston because they do question something that generally goes unquestioned.

MCCOLLUM: Composer Larry Polansky studied under Johnston at the University of Illinois, where the older composer taught for more than three decades. Polansky went on to become a professor himself and says Johnston taught him that there's more to music than the standard Western scale.

POLANSKY: To limit it and to kind of enforce and entrain a very specific set of pitches and reify them as somehow natural or what things should be just doesn't make any sense.

MCCOLLUM: Ben Johnston's used all the notes he can wrangle¹⁴ in dance music, percussion¹⁵ pieces, orchestral works. But he spent almost four decades composing 10 unique string quartets.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 7")

MCCOLLUM: It took the Kepler Quartet 14 years of rehearsing and recording to get them all down. Eric Segnitz is the group's second violinist.

ERIC SEGNITZ: There was a fair amount of invention and learning curve in getting rid of any preconception of what a chord actually sounds like. That's a big thing - what a scale sounds like.

MCCOLLUM: Segnitz says what struck him even more than the complexity¹⁶ of the music was the way Johnston has never veered¹⁷ from his vision.

SEGNITZ: I think it's really his integrity that impresses people because there are all sorts of pressures on modern composers to reach an audience, to be popular. You know, it's like high school, basically, right? So the fact that someone has really cut through all that is very meaningful.

MCCOLLUM: That doesn't mean the composer can't be playful. In his "String Quartet No. 10," Johnston subtly teases a traditional tune through four movements.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 10")

JOHNSTON: It's like you build up this enormous expectation until, finally, you get to the end and say, now the climax¹⁸ will reveal the tune, and it turns out to be "Danny Boy."

(SOUNDBITE OF BEN JOHNSTON COMPOSITION, "STRING QUARTET NO. 10")

MCCOLLUM: Ben Johnston now wants musicians to take his ideas into the future. He sees his string quartets as a foundation and wants others to build upon his tunings and continue what he calls his search for truth in music.

JOHNSTON: Well, I think a lot of this is music sounds that people never thought they wanted to hear, but as a matter of fact, they have.

MCCOLLUM: Just as he did as a kid back in Georgia almost nine decades ago. For NPR News, I'm Maureen McCollum in Madison, Wis.

SIMON: And tomorrow on Weekend Edition Sunday, we'll hear the music of three teachers who've gone punk rock.