Chaya Czernowin (Compositora) 

Entrevista con la compositora. El próximo 6 de Febrero del 2016 la compositora Chaya Czernowin, impartirá un seminario sobre música contemporánea en el Centro Superior KATARINA GURSKA, titulado Música-Metáfora. Una oportunidad única para trabajar con una de las mejores compositoras del momento musical actual. Es uno de los diez seminarios que forman parte del Máster de Composición Instrumental Contemporánea. Abierto el plazo de inscripción.

  

1. Ruth Prieto: On February 6, you will be giving the first of 10 seminars organised in Madrid by the Katarina Gurska Centre on the subject of contemporary instrumental composition. What can you tell us about this initiative?
 
Chaya Czernowin: As far as I understand, the aim of this initiative is to bring people to Madrid who are working outside of Spain. This is a very important thing for any location where composition is studied seriously: to have not only the local people, as excellent as they might be, but to involve also people who are outsider to that particular scene or school coming to present their perspective.

​2. R.P.:  ​Each of the composers (the teachers) taking part in the initiative will be talking about his or her musical language and technique. What can you tell us about your musical language and technique?
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Chaya Czernowin: My musical ideas, language and techniques are intertwined and connected. If I can answer this and the next question together, I would say the temporal aspect, sonic aspect and ideas, other aspects and metaphors at the base of my work are like different systems of the same body, (for example the blood veins / the lung and breathing/ the nerves or the skeleton etc.), they are overlapping intertwined and here in the music, even fused. I hope to show some things in regards to this strong connectivity and necessity of this internal correspondence and to talk about how each piece forges its own "body". 
 
Saying that, I should mention that from my experience in many seminars at different places in the world, I have also learned that when I teach the individual composers of the specific program I become aware of their concerns and at that time I try to address these directly in my seminar about my own work, pointing to various readings of the questions and demonstrating ways in which I considered the specific questions at hand. 

3. R.P.: Also, for you as a creator and teacher, what place does teaching of composition have for you?

Chaya Czernowin: M​y first students for composition were given to me by my teacher Abel Ehrlich when he went away on a sabbatical. 
I was 19 and my 2 students were 14 and 15.  Already then I felt the force of that encounter, where both sides are able to learn. I still cherish this: I meet very interesting composers, am allowed into their worlds and when I help someone to figure out something, if their music present problems which take the best out of me to resolve, then it is really a lesson for me as much as it is for the student. While it does not always happen, when it does it connects very directly to my compositional work. Just like I talked about the necessity of bringing artists from the outside into a certain scene, lessons, at their best, composition lessons can be the outside inquires brought into one internal scene.