Cygnus Ensemble

Brickle Interview:

Anderson:

Over the last ten years, you have gotten me thinking about the Pre-Raphaelites. It started with the arrangement you did for Cygnus of Perotin's Sederunt Principes for our Pre-Raphaelite I concert. 

Can you explain your interest in the Pre-Raphaelites? 

Brickle:

The essence of the Pre-Raphaelite strain is not to express the self, but rather to use the self to express and reflect what is uncommon in the collective. 

What I'm doing now feels so thoroughly American in the better sense, I hope. What it's not is solipsistic, maybe. What's interesting about it is not me (hence not expression) but what I see around me and perceive, and have the opportunity to embody and reflect.

A:
In our Audo Tour of The Creation we try to make those references clear--Medieval, Gershwin, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, etc.  So, through your musical language and aesthetic sensibility you try to summon something extraordinary in the collective.  So any individual may have a different reaction, but you are trying to guide the listener to something powerful.  These references, through your particular treatment of them, will hopefully stir strong and meaningful associations in your listeners.  And the musical references jangle with the text, become all mixed up with it.

Yes, and yes, I hope so. 

A:

In your earlier modernist phase you were onto so many interesting and daring approaches to musical structure.  Have you abandoned those in favor of simpler and more familiar approaches?

B:

No, in fact I'm applying the same techniques, but I do it better now. 

A:
I have run across the term "syncretic universalism" in connection with Pound, and also with Stravinsky and Antheil.  I think this term has to do with what you are talking about.  Are you paying tribute to Stravinsky as another syncretist through your clear evocations of Stravinsky in The Creation?

B:

Absolutely.