This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dan Margolies: What led you down the path to becoming a composer?
Jonathan Leshnoff: Well, as the saying goes, it's not that I found music, it's more that music found me. When I was a child, my parents would hand me crayons and I'd use them as drumsticks. And this is back when I was a kid, and that predilection towards music just continued through my elementary years. I think I started composing around 8, playing the violin around 7. And, that just continued through my teenage years, though when I was applying to college, I wanted some more, well, roundedness, and other things to do than just music. So I was fortunate to enroll in a degree in anthropology, which, after I got that degree, I quickly dropped because I found that I just wanted to do music. And so here I am today just doing that.
DM: The Kansas City Symphony has recorded for Reference Recordings two works of yours, the Third Symphony and the Piano Concerto, both of them world premiere recordings. I first heard your Third Symphony when the Kansas City Symphony, which commissioned it, gave it its world premiere in May 2016. It is a remarkable work, inspired by letters written home by American GI’s during World War I. It was performed as part of the orchestra's season-long commemoration of America's entry into the war. How did that commission come about?
JL: This commission came about because of my long-standing relationship with Michael Stern, a longtime champion of my work who I met in 2003. We've collaborated many times and the Kansas City Symphony has been generous under Michael's leadership. The genesis of this project actually started in a coffee shop in Philadelphia around 2013 when Michael was talking about his plans for future seasons, as conductors usually have a vision of where they're going to take the orchestra. And Michael brought up the 2016 United States entry into World War I and mentioned that Kansas City has the nation's only World War I museum. And wouldn’t it be wonderful to combine the arts organization of the Kansas City Symphony and the museum in a project that has real relevance?
So, after this discussion, I got to work with Michael's blessing and I contacted the museum and asked if I could look at some of the materials that were there for inspiration. Lo and behold, the museum came up with many letters, as you said, that GI’s wrote back and forth. Some of them were very gripping and moving. Some of them were too gripping to even put to music: letters informing families that young men of the age of 18, 19 had given their lives to the ultimate cause of the defense of our country. But I was able to sift out two letters that had dramatic relevance, that were not too gripping, that wouldn’t shock an audience, and were able to get the message through of the difficulties of war, the yearning for home and the tenderness of life relationships.
DM: Let me ask you about something you wrote in connection with the second movement of this symphony. In your program notes, you wrote that the movement is associated with the Hebrew letter vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which you said in your notes refer to the attribute of gevurah in the strain of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. Gevurah is the Hebrew word for strength or valor. So my question to you is two-fold: In what sense is the second movement associated with the Hebrew letter vav? And what were you thinking in wanting to make that connection?
JL: Yes, it's a very perceptive question. In 2012 through around 2020, I would dedicate one movement of my major symphonic or oratorios or major works to one of the 10 mystical backbones, the skeleton, of Jewish Kabbalah or mystical thought. Each of these backbones or vertebrae, so to speak, is a “sefira” and it represents a way that, according to Jewish tradition, God approaches humanity or humanity could approach God. And as you've mentioned, then this movement, gevurah, is one of those sefirot, one of those methods of approaching God. Gevurah means withholding lovingkindness, withholding giving so that the recipient can grow on their own. Like a parent that wants to teach a child to walk, so the parent steps away and the child may fall the first few times until the child gets balance on their own and is able to learn how to walk. It's a type of love that comes from tough love, stepping away and letting the recipient grow on their own and reach their own potential.
How this is expressed in the music is that the music for this movement is a very lengthy, fast movement that's unrelenting. It has a lot of kinetic energy, a lot of gestures, musical ideas which are very sharp, painted with a broad brush and very angular. This was my way of representing an absence, an absence of visible lovingkindness in the divine realm. And of course, to me, as an artist, this relates so much to difficult situations in life, war being one of them. How can this happen? How could such things happen with a loving God in the world? That's the question I grapple with, and that's how the music represents gevurah, the perceived absence of this lovingkindness.
DM: I noticed that many of your works, including the Piano Concerto, reference Jewish themes and concepts, particularly themes and concepts derived from the Kabbalah. Can you talk to us a little about that?
JL: I've always found Jewish mysticism to be a constant spring of inspiration. I feel that music is the lowest part of the highest worlds and the highest part of this lower world. And it's an interface between this physical world and things above. If we even think about what music is, the whole thing is so ethereal. I mean, music is notated. I spend my days putting dots on pages, which represent ideas; the dots don't necessarily convey meaning when I put a note down. It takes a human player with skill and soul and emotion and passion to interpret that dot, that note, into something that really has life. So even the whole concept of notated music is very mysterious because the music exists well beyond and above what that page is. I find that mysticism, mystical ideas are similar, just like I explained before, with gevurah being the idea of withholding, and how does this apply in the world? I feel that these ideas can be best represented in the mysterious, ethereal ways of music. That's why I frequently combine Jewish themes, mystical themes, with my music.
"I feel that music is the lowest part of the highest worlds and the highest part of this lower world."Jonathan Leshnoff
DM: In your Piano Concerto, which the Kansas City Symphony premiered in November 2019, you incorporate in the second movement the notion in the Kabbalah that everything in the universe has a soul or a neshama. Of this movement, I came across an interesting quote of yours. You wrote, “On paper, this movement is written with very simple rhythms and melodies. It is up to the artist to connect her mind and essence with the music that will bring these simple structures to full breathing life. The movement is purposely slow and meditative, which brings the soloist and audience to internal contemplation without the distraction of virtuosity. It is this internal contemplation which is the essence of the neshama.” Can you elaborate a little more on that?
JL: Yes. According to Jewish mystical tradition, there are actually five levels of the soul. The lowest level of the soul, according to the Jewish mystical tradition, is what just animates life itself and gives matter the ability to exist, breathe, eat, grow, be planted in the ground and just have life. And the soul continues up in the chain until the highest level of the soul is actually in complete communion with God, almost inaccessible to the lower levels. This middle level of the neshama is the interface between the limits of the physical world and the upper world. It's a very ethereal type of soul. It's not the soul that would be satisfied by eating a turkey sandwich. It would be the type of soul that's stimulated by deep thought or contemplation or deep emotion.
And the score, indeed, as you said, is very sparse. There's lots of whole notes and half notes, and it's a wonder to me that these sparse notes are sprinkled on a very empty page at a very slow tempo. But suddenly what emerges out of that is a very soulful, very contemplative, introspective, almost mournful melody that Joyce (Yang) and Michael (Stern) and the Kansas City Symphony play just beautifully. The interpretation that all of these wonderful musicians and soloist and conductor bring out from this movement really makes me pause to this day when I listen to it.
I'd like to talk about Michael and the Kansas City Symphony and just say how my work with both are just some of the highest moments of my artistic life. The Kansas City Symphony is such a good orchestra. They are so responsive, so musical, so technically assured, pleasant to work with, and Michael Stern is a friend and mentor and collaborator. He is a tremendous champion of my music. He's just been such an inspiration and, you know, I'm jealous of Kansas City residents for having the time that they did (with him). I know with the new music director, the Kansas City Symphony is going to have a great future, but it's been such a pleasure to work with everyone.
DM: I take it that you hope to work with Michael Stern again one day, wherever he may wind up.
JL: Indeed.
DM: Jonathan Leshnoff, it has been an honor and a pleasure to have you on Classical KC. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
JL: Thank you for having me.
You can learn more about Jonathan Leshnoff at jonathanleshnoff.com.
