ENTREVISTA
Interview with Andrei Pogorilowski
by Ana M. Vernia. 2015, October.
Ana M. Vernia
To start meeting Andrei, we must also know his most recent work. What is the
fundamentation of "The music of the Temporalists"?
Andrei Pogorilowski
Well, I took great care to base the theoretical ideas presented in the book on various time-related perceptual phenomena discovered and substantiated along the
years by cognitive (or: experimental) psychologists (from Paul Fraisse to Bruno Repp)
or by musicians-turned-systematic-musicologists (Henkjan Honing or Daniel Levitin).
To make a long story short, the main idea is that the way we percieve and produce
discrete (musical) time is governed by a system of imuable perceptual thresholds and
that these interact functionally whenever we use note-lengths defined by two (or
more) such thresholds.
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case, the shortened versus prolonged durations are most times compensated by
other prolonged versus shortened musical notes, played over a quite rigid giusto
on the left hand. Some peasant songs coAP. I mean that there was neither a gras- llected in Romania in the first half of the
pable tempo, nor that I could have discer- 20th Century even defied the idea of muned actual rubati, clear aksak structures sical measure… but this is a long debate.
or a polytemporal pattern in that music. Anyway, the fact that some 30 years
AV. Do you consider a new form of
ago a teenager decided that that stran- musical notation is needed? Why?
ge music, sounding in his head only, was
great – has no significance whatsoever.
AP. Every notation system is a comThe bar-rhythmical "conventional nota- promise, or else musical interpretation
tion" indeed covers only a fraction of our would be a nonsense. As notations in fact
overall competence to produce discrete reflect ideas or concepts, it is important
time-patterns. Therefore there is no won- to see what are these concepts. The good
der that at some point I found it a bit res- old bar-rhythmical system is based of our
trictive with regard both to that "strange capacity to relate various durations cenmusic" – and to other, non bar-rhythmical tered around a main beat that is divided
musics.
or augmented by simple mathematical
ratios. It also implies repetition (that is
AV. The popular music of your coun- why most times we use measures). When
try has influenced in your musical trai- I learned about the time-related percepning?
tual thresholds (only those that are musically relevant, of course), I realised that
AP. Actually, a lot. I studied Bartók's or these might have formed the main conBrăiloiu's etc. ethnomusicological output cept laying behind a notation suited for
with great care and as such I was someti- that music that I used to involuntarily
mes baffled by the limitations of the clas- listen to. It took me nearly 20 years to
sical music theory. In some cases, it was put these thersholds together and weasimply unable to cope with the actual ve them into a comprehensive musicalmusic. For instance, parlando-rubato has representation system. The fact that this
little to do with the rubato we use when system required an original notation was
playing a Chopin Polonaise. In the latter a mere byproduct.
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ndré Pogoriloffsky is the pen name
used by Andrei Covaciu-Pogorilowski
for his book "The music of the Temporalists". He was born in Bucharest, Romania,
in February 1968. Starting with 1982, he studied music independently, helped by several private professors. In 1989 A.P. started to
hear in his head a strange yet beautiful music
that he was unable to notate. Short excerpts
were presented on the piano to his musician
friends who confirmed that the tem- poral fabric of that music could not be rendered satisfactorily with help from the traditional, bar-rhythmical, semiography. In the
late '90s, A.P. discovered cognitive musicology and started to merge his own discoveries with the bulk of scientific contributions from this interdisciplinary domain. After
abandoning several approaches, the final result was his last book "The music of the
Temporalists", available on Amazon.com.
AV. When you say that music sounded in his head but could not write to
conventional notation, what do you
mean?
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AV. You studied music with private teachers. Why?
AP. SBach, Mozart, Beethoven… They all studied with private teachers, poor fellows. No BA, no DMA, no PhD! No academic background!! No peer-reviewed dissertations!!! I wonder why we are still listening to their amateurish music.
AV. Do you consider that musical education should make changes?
AP. I know very little about music education, but I think that children should never be told that most great musicians were actual freaks and that the chance of becoming one yourself is one in a billion. Shostakovich was able to write down from
memory the whole classical repertoire. So did George Enescu. Glenn Gould knew by
heart everything he had ever played. What are the chances to equate these capabilities? None, no matter how much you work – if you are not that kind of exceptional… exception (sic!). We, the normal people, should rest content with keeping the
tradition(s) alive and with enjoying the beauty of music.
AV. To end the interview, what would be your message to an almost
dehumanized humanity?
AP. DEHUMANIZED HUMANITY! LISTEN TO ME VERY CAREFULLY! I HAVE NO MESSAGE TO YOU! THOSE WHO THINK I HAVE ONE WILL SEE THAT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
HAPPENS TO THEM!!!
AV. Thank you for your time.
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AP. De nada.|
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