INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH SWENSEN

How would you describe the process that led you to compose Saga Trilogy?

I've already said and written a lot about this creation. But for me, all the pieces l've written are still evolving in my own mind. It's difficult to describe how I felt when I was writing them, I hardly remember, and I feel differently about them every time I conduct them—or even think about them—because my context in the present is different. I see them from a slightly different vantage point each time. Many performers talk about staying true to the composer's intention, but that idea is really impossible for me. When I compose, I don't really know if I have any intention other than to write something I hope is beautiful, has a sense of proportion and continuity, and is meaningful-something that tells a kind of story, with a sense of climax, of surprise, something people can follow. And that's why the word "saga" is important to me: everything I write feels like a story—not a new one. When we think of the word "saga," we think of something old. For me, it's like I'm telling or retelling a very ancient story—one that nobody knows, not even me.

You wrote Saga Trilogy in the context of the Covid pandemic. How did this affect your work?

What I discovered was that the pandemic caused a kind of emptiness in daily life. Many things we normally do, we just didn't. Some of us tried to fill that space with something; for a long time, I just didn't. I wanted to experience that emptiness. Some would call it boredom, but I developed an appreciation for it, I formed a relationship with it, and that's where the music came from. It's not that the music filled the space- it was already there, but it had been hidden by all the other activities I normally did. When those were taken away, I found what I thought was empty space-but it was filled with music. I realized I had a choice: I could fill the space with distractions and obscure the music, or I could keep it empty and find the music. I don't feel like composing is what people normally would call "creative", I feel it's more like an exploration, a discovery of something that's already there. I still try as much as possible, even though I'm working now in the so-called "real world", to make space in my mind. It's like a different reality, and if I'm not in the right frame of mind, it feels empty in a boring way. But that’s where I discover the music. Everything l've written since- including a large symphony based on the Persian poet Hafiz- came from that same space. It's become my "new normal" creative process, though it takes daily effort. Nature abhors a vacuum, right? If I don't protect that space, it fills up again. I live in a tiny apartment on the shore of New Jersey, about two-hour drive south of New York City. When I'm alone, I can walk on the beach, the most beautiful beach l've seen in my life, for days in a straight line, from sunrise to sunset, and that's when I can connect the most to this empty space. I think my work mainly consists in maintaining that space, expanding it, through a creative process that is as temporary as a sandcastle, as our own lives are.

You mentioned Hafiz, the dedicatee of Song of Infinity. What are your musical and extra-musical influences?

I think the one who influenced the entire trilogy the most is Olivier Messiaen, especially his Quatuor pour la fin du temps. That piece is everywhere in the trilogy. Sometimes I quote him consciously, but most often unconsciously. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of hidden quotes: it's like he's always present. Then there's popular music, my first love. I started composing when I was 7 years old-but not classical music. I was writing songs for a rock band I had with three other boys of the same age. We were in love with The Beatles. I still remember, for my seventh birthday, I got Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I must have listened to it 10,000 times. I found the LP again many years later, and it was so worn you could barely hear anything. I had completely destroyed it with love. At that time, my world wasn't Mozart. My hero was John Lennon, I wanted to be him. Mozart was this distant, almost unreachable genius, but The Beatles— that was our folk music. That was the music we breathed. It belonged to us. We sang it, we danced to it, we could feel it in our bodies. That kind of connection... it stays with you forever. Of course, I was also studying classical music- piano, violin, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, Shostakovich. But The Beatles gave me something different. Freedom. Joy. I didn’t have to study to love it. I didn't have to analyze it to feel it. It was just... natural. It was like food, like sunlight. I didn't even realize I was learning. And to this day, even if I write music that might seem complex, I hope it still has that same feeling of naturalness. Like a beautiful tree that grew in good soil. You can describe its structure, you can measure its height, but at the end of the day-it's just a tree. It's alive. That's how I want my music to feel. Alive. Rooted. And, in a way, still singing with the voices of The Beatles. And then there's Hafiz. He's been part of my life for over forty years. I discovered Hafiz and other Sufi poets when I was about 21 or 22. I became curious about their tradition. It's not really a religion—you could say it’s a philosophy, but more than that. It includes specific exercises, almost like yoga or martial arts. I had several teachers—one particularly wonderful- and through them I built a relationship with Hafiz and Rumi. These teachings were passed down through a chain of teachers and students, unbroken since the 14th century. For me, it was a way to walk backward in time to Hafiz himself. This was just for my own curiosity, my love of his poetry. That it became an inspiration for music was just natural.

What does the idea of "cosmic roar" mean to you, and bow did it resonate during the composition of Primordial Cosmos?

The idea of Primordial Cosmos came to me long before I started composing the piece. I had heard an interview on the radio with a NASA astrophysicist, Kimberly Weaver. She was describing a strange phenomenon: something they called the "cosmic roar." It fascinated me. The way she spoke about it- this sound that exists everywhere in the universe, a kind of background resonance—it stayed with me for years. Later, Kimberly and I became friends, and l asked her about it again. She explained that what they had actually discovered were gravitational waves-vibrations caused by interactions between black holes. These waves are real. They move through space and can shake everything they pass through. According to her, the resonance of these waves is a specific pitch: a B-flat. And not just any B-flat —a very, very low one, far below human hearing. But it's there, constant: the voice of the cosmos itself. Now, what’s extraordinary is that many of the pieces I've written —and many of the pieces I love the most—are in B-flat. I had no idea why, I never thought about it. But when heard this, it made me smile. Maybe I was already hearing that B-flat somewhere inside me, maybe we all are! Like a kind of collective memory, something ancient, buried in the cells of our body, vibrating with the universe. What's even more beautiful is that I didn't know this while composing Primordial Cosmos, I only learned it afterward. If I had known it before, I might have tried to be clever —to imitate the sound, to be literal. But because I didn't, I was free to imagine it, to dream it. And in the end, I think what I wrote came much closer to the real thing, because it came from inside me, not from science. I think that’s essential: mystery is more powerful than certainty. In today's world, people are so hungry for information. They fill their minds with facts, as if knowledge were nourishment. But for me, imagination needs emptiness. It needs space. If the mind is too full, nothing can grow. That's why I value doubt, mystery, as I think that's where creativity lives.

What's the story behind SAGA, the cello concerto?

It's based on the birth of my son Jonathan, a wonderful musician who plays the cello on the recording. That day was the most traumatic of my life. He nearly died, but he fought for life - held somehow gotten bits of oxygen now and then, even as he suffocated. That was the only explanation for how he wasn't dead or brain-damaged. On that day, the doctor said: "No one has ever been so happy to be born as your son." Because to be born meant to survive. Most people wouldn't remember birth positively-but for Jonathan, it was everything. For me, this was mythological-like Wagner's Siegfried and the dragon. The umbilical cord was the dragon, and this tiny baby had to defeat it. That's why this story matters: every person eventually faces a dragon. Jonathan faced his right away. Others face theirs later. But the challenge is the same: you either slay the dragon or get slain. The concerto tells that story-not just his, but a universal one.

The instrumentation across the trilogy evolves greatly. How do you choose what instruments to use?

I usually don't think too much about instrumentation—at least not at the beginning. As I start to sense what the piece might be—or rather, what it has always been—I begin to associate certain sounds with that emerging shape. And gradually, the orchestration reveals itself. The choices I make—of colors, of specific instruments- are based on mysterious associations, they're metaphors. I have certain deeply ingrained emotional responses to the sound of specific instruments. Part of that is personal, and part of it is from everything I've ever heard. For example, the accordion carries all sorts of meanings for me. In the cello concerto, l associate it very specifically with Eastern European folk music, that of the Roma people. It evokes something profoundly joyful-dancing, improvisation, and above all, freedom. It's the sound of someone who values liberty more than order, and that's precisely what I needed in that piece. Of course, there are other instruments that carry their own symbolic worlds. The harp and choir in Song of Infinity, for instance. I hesitated, because it felt like a cliché- those associations with death, heaven, the afterlife. But then I asked myself: is it really a cliché? Or is it simply powerful? I thought of all my favorite pieces that use choir in that way-long, floating lines, harmonies full of light and color, so unmistakably French. Claude Debussy, of course, was the first to use those kinds of chords. Partly influenced by Indonesian gamelan music, which he heard at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. That kind of harmonic atmosphere stayed with French composers. And Maurice Ravel—when he writes for harp, it always feels like he's pointing toward another world. His music, for me, is transcendent. It doesn't speak to human emotions the same way Debussy's does. Ravel is less romantic in that sense, his music isn't autobiographical like Beethoven's, it's not about his own life; it's about perfection-something heavenly, beyond the material world. That's why I finally decided: no, this isn't cliché. These associations with harp and choir are real, and meaningful. They're part of a long lineage of composers trying to reach something eternal. Wagner, too, used the harp in moments of profound tenderness. And like Wagner, I associate romantic love with death. When Isolde dies, it's not because o f tragedy-it's because of love. I feel I've died many times in that same way. So yes, the harp carries all of that for me.

And the clarinet?

That's my father. He's 90, and still plays. He and my mother were my first music teachers. As a baby, I lay in a basket under the piano while they rehearsed. I couldn't see them-just my father's toe tapping time. That's one of my earliest memories. So somewhere in Song of Infinity, when you hear the clarinet, maybe you can imagine that toe, keeping time…