“When It Comes to Music Notation, I’m a Type Triple-A Composer!”

Abstract

Interviewed at her Massachusetts home in 2010 by Jennifer Kelly, the composer and professor Augusta Read Thomas recounts her experiences as a composer, curator, and teacher. When composing, she is always thinking about the conductors and performers who will interpret them. Thomas is drawn to the details of notation, explaining, “My scores are highly nuanced, certainly detailed, every note having a dynamic, articulation and/or adjective. The notation explains exactly what I heard.” In this interview, Thomas covers a wide range of subjects such as balancing work and non-work, the musicians who have inspired her and those with whom she has worked closely, her views on curating concert programs, the thorny issue of how to choose what is programmed at festivals, striving for beautiful, integral sounds in her work, her experiences with commissions and their “legacy,” the relationship between the notation on the page and the resulting composition, her compositional process and how she approaches teaching. Overall, it is a candid portrait of a “Type Triple A” composer whose love for music bubbles to the surface of the conversation.

In interview with Jennifer Kelly, 30 June 2010 (Becket, Massachusetts, at Thomas’ private residence)

From In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States. Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.