
The Dress rehearsal of Christian Mason‘s orchestral composition “Eternity in an hour“, played by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and conducted by Enno Poppe, sounds really promising. We are all entranced by the imaginative music and keen to find out more about this piece, and Christian fortunately agrees to an interview.
Linnéa: I was really just taken in by the piece, whilst listening to it. For me it was so imaginative, that I immediately had pictures in my head and scenes. So one question I asked myself was if you ever thought about or had the idea to develop this or other music into scores for films or operatic pieces or musicals, because it just had that vibe to me.
It’s quite interesting that you felt that, because actually a lot of the material in this piece was written in sketches for an opera. The opera never happened. So I never made the opera and because I had all this material I didn’t want to throw in the bin, I decided to make the orchestra piece. So the opera was not really having a narrative so much, but we made interviews with people about their dreams or their thoughts, quite personal questions about their lives, and then this was made into a text. You could say, for example, the last movement of this piece, it’s in the voice of one person telling their story about something. So everything is always following a line, I guess.
Linnéa: So is it like one continuous line throughout? Because when you say different people told from their point of view, can it be connected in that way or is every movement in itself a story that you tell?
The last movement is one thing, and then there are these two interludes, which are kind of the same. And it happens twice, and so that was one idea, also separate, but I separated it. Instead of making it one moment, I made it into two moments, so there’s this kind of symmetry in the piece. And then the movement in the middle was actually not connected to the opera, it was another idea. And then the first movement was also not connected to the opera, but it was in the same sound somehow as the other ideas.
Linnéa: I know, especially in the last part, I felt like the woodwinds took center stage, kind of, at least to me, instead of the strings.
Yeah, then the strings were kind of coloring the sound, and the woodwinds were making the melody. The woodwinds and the brass. But it’s really just like one melody, and everyone is part of it. I mean, if you see in the score, I can tell you, that’s the beginning of the last movement. You know, everyone is playing the same thing, actually. But it makes this rich sound.
Linnéa: And the inspiration behind the name came from this poem, right?
That’s true, yeah, it’s the beginning of a William Blake poem, ‘Auguries of innocence’. „To see the world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour…“
I like this. The imagery is all about this kind of simultaneous existence of tiny things and huge things, you know, this like immensity, but it’s in your hand. And eternity and time are kind of opposed in a way, because eternity is outside of time. So you can’t really have eternity in an hour. The paradox, I think, is an interesting problem. And this piece is only 15 minutes, it’s not one hour. But it’s a great poem, and there’s not really a relationship between the poem and the music, it’s just this broad inspiration.And the idea of small things being like a window into bigger things.
Linnéa: I feel that with the flutes and the clarinets, these winding melodies felt like trying to escape from reality almost, and go into another dimension, at least for me. It was so magical, and I wrote down while the piece was playing, fairytale-like. I just felt these magical inspirations.
I think music is like a kind of magic, right? It’s got this power to take us, like if you close your eyes and you’re just in the sounds, you can kind of travel outside of where you are physically, into a new psychological, emotional experience. And I think that’s why music is interesting, for me anyway. So it’s nice if it makes stuff in your mind.
Écliézer: Do you hear eternity in the music?
Oh, that’s a good question. That’s an impossible question! I don’t know if you can hear Eternity in music, but I think there’s something that can happen when you listen to pieces of music. Not necessarily this one, any piece of music. When you really connect with it, it doesn’t always happen, but when you really connect with it, you suddenly feel like you’re not inside time anymore, you know? And it feels like you’re in another Dimension. Yeah, it’s like being in another dimension. It’s a musical dimension. And my dream is to be in that dimension, but I’m not always going there.
Lena: Are you in this piece going to that dimension?
I don’t know. It’s funny, because then when I’m in rehearsal I’m thinking about the details, and so I can’t really be dreaming so much, it’s more practical. But then maybe in the concert, if it’s really good, sometimes it happens, sometimes not. But hopefully, yeah. You never know. Are there pieces that do that for you? Do you have special pieces that take you out of normal life?
Lena: Well, for me, I think this festival in general is really close. This is something I’ve never listened to that thoroughly before, and because I have so many pictures in my head immediately, it just kind of feels like I’m going somewhere.
So everything is new to you, and it’s just like a real adventure. That’s great.
Linnéa: For me, some of these pieces have this typical “new classic” sound with very dissonant melodies at the same time, and sometimes that takes me out of it. But for example, this piece, I was just really entranced by, I guess I prefer classically beautiful music, because it just creates all these images in my head.
For me, I have many different pieces, but this one I feel is a very classical one. It was written for Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which of course has this tradition, and the premiere was in the Musikverein in Vienna, which is a really special hall with a lot of gold, and I felt like in that context, the music I was writing for that situation became… I was thinking about Schubert and this kind of stuff, which I also love, so I guess that’s what happens.
Lena: The piece is 15, 16 minutes long, right? How long did it take to compose?
I can’t actually remember. I have no idea. Maybe like a year. Normally for a piece like that, I would know that I have to write it two or three years before, and then I would start working on it maybe one year before.There’s a kind of cycle of pieces that begin and finish at different times, something like that. But I don’t have a kind of 9 to 5 schedule, so I don’t know how many hours I get on one piece.
Eliézer: Can you imagine a world where eternity is life?
Well, maybe. I mean, it’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Maybe that already exists, I don’t know. We’re not in it now, so maybe when you die, then you’re in eternity and you’re not in time, but you don’t know because you only find out after you die. It’s hard to get there otherwise. But I could imagine it, but I’ve never been kind of consciously in it. But maybe when you’re in dreams, dreams are kind of like that because dreams don’t exist in time, right? You feel like you’re in a dream. You don’t have a sense of how long you’re in a dream. And when you wake up, you have the whole image of the dream compressed into no time at all, and then someone asks you toexplain it, and you can’t explain it because it takes time to explain it. So I think maybe the unconscious part of ourselves is kind of already outside of time.
Linnéa: So would you say that this piece in particular is kind of like a dream in that way?
I think it could feel like telling a dream. You know, there’s a lot of repetition in the piece, and most ideas, sometimes they repeat straight away, sometimes they come back later at a different time, and for me it has that feeling of, which is also in dreams, of you don’t know where you’re going, but then you come back and somewhere it’s familiar, but then you go in a different direction. But honestly, I feel like in all my music, in a way, it’s part of the same journey for me. Of course, for people, everyone who’s not me, which is most people, then it’s a piece of music that they hear in a concert or on a CD or something, but for me it’s like my life, and my life is organised by my pieces. So I remember the years according to which piece I was writing that year, and so everything is part of the same kind of dream.
Eliézere: I’m wondering if there’s moments where you can’t compose, you can’t read or, I don’t know, do a thing, because of the environment where you are. Like, are you better in one room or another?
For composition? There are different parts of composing. There’s the inspiration part where you’re having your first ideas, you’re beginning a piece, then for that part it’s quite nice to be in a more special place. Like, I don’t know, if I take a walk in the forest or by a river or somewhere, nature is really good for this kind of energy. Then my main working place at home, I have a garden, and in my garden there’s a kind of working shed. It’s all made of wood, it’s like a cabin, a forest cabin, but with a piano and with a desk. So if I can, I like to work there, because I hear the sound of the birds. I mean, it’s in London, but just this place where our house is, it’s not near the road, so it’s very quiet. But then also I work on the train, because if I have a piece finished and I’m running out of time, I can do some of the work anywhere, but some of the work I have to do in a special place.
Éliézer: So for the idea, you have to be in nature or a quiet space?
If possible, yeah.
Éliézer: And then when you have the song or when you had it composed, then you can work on it?
Exactly, like I can have the structure, but the orchestration I could do anywhere, on the train or in a café.
Lena: You just said you remember the years by the pieces you composed, so you actually measure your life in music and not time?
Well, that’s a nice idea. You’re a poet! I think that because I put so much time into the pieces I’m writing, I mean, of course I put my time into other things as well. I have a son and family, and I have other jobs that I have to do sometimes. But apart from family, the thing where I put most time is in composition. So it’s the thing that most defines my sense of what I was doing at a particular moment.