Saints and Snakes

Stefanie Lubkowski

Interview by L. Valena

Can you please tell me what you responded to?

It was cool to get an actual piece of visual art this time, because I hadn't! Visual art would be the obvious match up, but that's one I haven't hit on till now.

I know- that's why I gave you this one! I realized that you had responded had writing and flavors. But no visual art.

I think what I responded to immediately were the shapes. Particularly like contrast between the straight arrows and sort of block formation of the woman in the center versus the this sort of curling filigree of the snakes, and then the sort of the decoration around.

Tell me how you responded to that.

Well, one of the first things that came to mind was with the arrows and the snakes, which are kind of these very bold, straight-forward and motion-oriented parts of the image. I immediately thought of big dramatic glissandos, like in a string instrument. I ended up using the cello and really making that a big focus of some of the moments in the piece.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how a straight line goes to cello?

I think for me the thing about the arrows was not so much their straightness of the idea of movement. In music, movement is often or most immediately portrayed by movement from one pitch to another. One way to really make that dramatic, I feel, is to have a glissando between the two pitches. A glissando emphasizes the motion, not the destination.

Can you tell me more about glissandos?

A glissando is instead of just moving discreetly from one pitch to another, particularly on string instruments, you slide your finger down the fret board. You get every single pitch in between the two, like chromatically, but also technically you're getting all of the, micro-tones in between.

Okay. That makes sense. So that's a way of showing movement.

Right. I feel like when, when I hear that, what I hear is the motion and the distance between the two pitches, not so much the starting pitch and the ending pitch. They don't get as much focus in my attention as the actual part where there's motion through all the pitches in between.

Gotcha. You were relating that to an arrow, which is much more about the direction that it's moving and less about the beginning and end.

I also felt like the snakes in the drawing kind of seemed to be about motion. The snake kind of curls around, behind the figure and seems to be moving to my eye.

I mean, it's interesting- snakes are like these weird little lines.

They are lines, but they move. And I was thinking about that too, the way a snake moves, the way it slithers. You know it, I think it has that, that idea of a glissando. The snake doesn't just take discrete steps like other animals. It sort of slides- touching all of the ground in between where it starts and where it ends.

It doesn't make any sense, does it? Every time I see a snake move, I'm like, what the fuck?

Yeah. How does that work? Like how is that a possible way and how was that a good idea?

Yeah. It's pretty wild.

For the boxy shape of the figure I decided to do these kind of big spaced-out blocks of chords. That's kind of how the piece begins and how it ends- with these big block cords that are sort of spaced out. There are high notes and low notes and only a little bit in between. So it's kind of like the pitch space isn't filled in.

So it's really more about drawing the outline of something.

Yeah. Cause I feel like the female figure in the middle, who seems like a Saint or a Madonna to me... everything else is kind of curly cues and round- a little amorphous. She's kind of like a diamond in the middle, and that was a really strong, static shape that kind of draws your eye. And to me that meant big block chords. A big static statement, with no motion.

So you're seeing motion all around her, but she's standing still.

Yeah.

It sounds like, you were responding a lot more to kind of the formal elements of this piece of art, but you did title it ‘Saints and Snakes’. Can you tell me more about how you feel about saints and snakes?

In this piece, I was very much going sort of with whatever my instinct was in responding to the piece. And when I looked at the drawing, that's what I saw- a saint-type figure and a snake. And that seemed like a cool title, so I ran with it. Like you, I think snakes are kind of weird, but they're also fascinating. They have like so much symbolism in art, religion and culture. They're this animal that's sort of strange and fascinating on its own, but maybe because of that, we've attached so many things to it.

The human species has always just been kind of dumbfounded by the snake.

Right. And so we attached so many ideas to it. So it's kind of cool to have that in the drawing and think about that. Strangely enough, I ended up just having like one simple idea: to respond to the snake with this one simple glissando and the round movement idea. In a piece this short... That's one thing I think that was challenging about this drawing. There's so much going on and there are so many different elements. But given the way that Bait/Switch is a quick turnaround, there's no way I could have responded to every aspect of the drawing. I could write 10 minutes about this. But that's also the beauty of it. Bring your reaction down to its most essential elements. What brings up the most immediate musical image? Some things in this drawing, if I were to respond musically to them, I might have to spend more time developing an idea. With this, it's more about what's the most immediate thing that comes out?

What's really calling?

Yeah.

I always feel weird asking people this. Are you religious yourself?

No, not at all. I do enjoy like medieval religious art, strangely enough. As part of my music education, I had to study early music- like medieval music, and that's all centered on religion. A religion I don't share, but yet, like there's all this beauty to it. So, even though I'm not religious myself, I enjoy religious art.

There's something so powerful about art of that time that was made for this higher purpose- connection with the divine.

There's something so pure about it in a way. They had their reason and they knew what it was for creating this music or this art and doing it in a certain way and they knew where it was going to be. There's a certain freedom in that, too.  In the modern age, we spend a lot of time thinking: where will my work live? Why am I doing this? What role does it play in society? But there's sort of compelling purity or directness that comes from art created at a time where people knew exactly what they were doing and why.

When we make art now, those of us who are not religious, we're still trying to connect with the divine on some level. Right? That's still the point. It's just that it has shifted and we don't have agreement about what that means. It's also interesting how in the past, people were willing to spend more money on art. To pay artists and musicians to make things that would kind of speak to that higher. power.

Having had to study all of these Catholic musical works in school, I feel like I live in an interesting sort of in-between stage with religion. Most of the Bible stories I know only come from a music piece that was written about them. So that's always been funny. It's like, did someone write an oratorio? Then I have no idea what you're talking about. But also, having learned all the forms and the symbols and the rituals (the basics about them), but like not actually practicing any of them at any time in my life or really sharing the beliefs that underpin them, it's kind of interesting.

When I look at this this drawing, I see the snake and the woman, and that's like a kind of an Adam and Eve/ Jesus and Mary thing. And then she's got this heart in the middle of which is clearly like some sort of sacred heart type image that you see in a lot of other works. So I look at it and I understand what a lot of these symbols mean, even though I don't share an attachment to them. That's a really interesting space, or relationship to have with religion. I can identify a whole bunch of medieval saints, but you know, I don't believe in them.

It's more of an anthropological way of seeing things. It's interesting that your lens for these things is through music. That's really like a weird interdisciplinarity: the fact that you understand stories through music. Are there any particular pieces of music that you can think of (off the top of your head) that have that type of significance?

I actually really like a whole set of motets- or maybe they're not motets, I think the technical term is organum. They are early polyphony by this French guy named Pérotin. He actually worked at Notre-Dame and wrote them there. They're these beautiful, early polyphony pieces that just kind of spin out, kinda like the filigree in this drawing. They're just so beautiful, and I can imagine how this person wrote this music to sound in this residence space, but also the music communicates a lot of joy and peace. In today's religious climate where there's a lot of conflict and political stuff, it's really interesting to think about a time when, someone contemplated a religious subject and just thought of something joyful and peaceful, and that's all.

Right. No bullshit.

Yeah, just full of beauty. I've never heard those pieces in a stone cathedral, but I'm sure they sound amazing.

I always forget how much music and architecture are linked in that way.

I've only heard Gregorian chant in an actual medieval cathedral once, and it was amazing. It really changed how I thought about that music and how it functioned, and how the people who wrote it must have thought about it. It sounded amazing, and it definitely sounded different than even a recording that was made in a church. Just the way the sound kind of kind of echoes and bounces around and fills the space in this way is really, really interesting. In the U S we don't have large stone cathedrals made in the 1500s. It's hard to imagine what that's like until you're actually in a cathedral, like an actual medieval cathedral and hear it. It's a very special, particular sound.

There are so many things like that, right? That you can't understand unless you experience it live.

I think one of the cool things about hearing the chant in that cathedral (it was the cathedral in Milan) is that when you listen to the music on a recording or something, it seems so very simple and plain. But when you hear it in that space and the way that it resonates and in the space and the way that it amplifies certain aspects of the sound of the voice, you realize that it's actually not that simple. In that space, the sound actually becomes incredibly complex. Even though it's just the single vocal line.

So there's like this element that just get completely missed unless it's heard in the space it was meant to be heard in.

In that space, it becomes a much more complex sound. It's not just this simple music made by simple people.

What would be the optimal architectural space for this piece that you wrote?

I think if I could have a small space, but that was incredibly resonant, that would be really cool because it would make the chords ring out and then it would kind of soften all the sections with a lot of activity, and make them sort of fascinatingly blurry. But at the same time, I don't imagine this piece happening in a large space, because to me it's like a little bit more intimate. So, maybe a cave? Like a grotto, but again, a space that's small yet resonant may not actually exist.

Maybe we should plan a reading of this at the Franklin Park bear cages. Have you ever been there?

Oh God, I love the bear cages. Do you know an artist named Dirk Adams? He does a lot of sound art, and one of the first pieces of his I experienced was this amazing sound walk at the bare cages where you put out a set of headphones with like an iPod and listened. What was on the headphones was a mix of storytelling and music and directions. So you were directed to move around the space. And he had like, I don't know, maybe six different iPods with different stories and directions and some of the directions asked you to interact with other people.

Whoa.

All the headphones had a different color. So in the first one I tried, I was directed to follow around the person with pink headphones or something like that. You don't know what the other people are listening to. And, and at the end, everyone ended up on the steps that lead up to the bear cages dancing to the same music. Except it's all just happening on headphones. It was one of the most beautiful, fascinating and meaningful experiences I've ever had.

That sounds incredible.

This happened like maybe eight years ago, and I still remember like so many details and how beautiful it was. It's one of my favorite artworks ever, so I love the bear cages. It's a fascinating space.

I haven't been to see a show there in quite a while. I don't think they happen as much as they did years ago. There were such an amazing underground scene there. But it wouldn't be cool to do like a daytime reading of this?

Yeah.

Is there anything else that you have to say about this piece or about this process, now that you've done it three times?

I really enjoy the process, obviously, since I keep coming back for more. I'm always fascinated with the way the pieces turn out. Because there's a short deadline on these, they compel me to write in a way that I don't usually write: faster, less self-reflective, more instinctual, and it's always fun to see what comes out. When I'm not dealing with large ideas of form or very particular things. It's just like, okay, glissando! Let's put a glissando in here. First impressions write to the paper. I do very little revising on these. Unlike normal.

So it sort of forces you to stop second guessing yourself or something and just go for it.

Yeah, and it's interesting to see what kind of music comes out of me when I don't have a particular goal or form in mind where it just kind of comes out in a stream of consciousness kind of way.

It's like, what does your subconscious want to listen to?

Right. What kind of instinctual composer am I?

I like the idea that as an instinctual composer, you're a different composer.

Yeah. I think one of the other cool things that has come out is that some of the things that I do in these pieces make their way into other pieces. Cause it's like, okay- I've discovered this is a thing, and it works like this, and I could use it over here. There's a nifty sort of discovery element to it.

That's exactly what we like to hear.

I sort of discover something about my own aesthetic.

That's buried under the surface somewhere and it takes a little exercise to come out?

Yeah.

Anything else that you want to say about this piece or anything else?

I'm really happy with the way it came out. I think it's an interesting approach to the piece too, because instead of sort of taking the totality of the piece, each little section of my music kind of points to a different element in the drawing, but there's no sort of zoom out and look at the whole thing. But again, that's just the way it came out, so I just ran with it.

 Call Number: C22VA | C28MU.luSa

Stefanie Lubkowski is a Boston-based composer who writes for various chamber ensembles, voice, wind band, and electronic media. She studied composition at Connecticut College, New England Conservatory, and Boston University. Stefanie creates sound worlds guided by harmony, punctuated by melody, and inspired by literature and the natural world.