JAMES STRECKER: If you were asked for 50 words for an encyclopedia to summarize what you do, what would you say?
PETER TOGNI: I am a composer, organist, pianist, improviser, conductor and broadcaster. I express my love for humanity, my life and my Roman Catholic faith though these mediums. I am constantly looking for new ways to express this.
JS: What important beliefs do you express in your work?
PT: The encounter with the divine is a part of what makes us human. Being touched by God is what is at the centre of music itself.
JS: Name two people, living or dead, whom you admire a great deal and tell us why for each one.
PT: I admire Igor Stravinsky, the constant question in his music and his craft, the technique that underscored his quest for things new. He was very open about his borrowing of material from other composers. Of Mozart he said “I steal because I love it” I also admire the American composer Harry Partch. He had a tremendous sense of self and wrote only the music he wanted to hear. He rejected European tradition and invented many of his own instruments, such as the Chromelodeon, an instrument that played his use of a 43 note scale. He was a brave man living from his music, often living a life of a hobo. His independence was of upmost importance.
JS: How have you changed since you began to do creative work?
PT: My way of beginning a new project is now somewhat different than even the way I worked ten years ago. I am no longer waiting for the “big inspiration” A new work can come from just two notes or a visual idea or one chord accidentally played on my piano. The smallest light of inspiration can be all it takes. Perhaps this is because I am lot busier than I was and don’t have the time to mull things over for too long!
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
PT: The biggest challenge for me is to find the right kind of inner silence that one needs to go deep.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life.
PT: A major turning point in my life was when I was twenty two and living in Paris. I was studying organ and improvisation with Jean Langlais. It was through my studies with him in improvisation that I began to find my voice as a composer.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about what you do?
PT: The hardest thing for many people in North American to understand is why I do it all, devoting oneself to classical composition is not the easiest way to put bread on the table and the audience is quite small. It’s hard to explain one’s love for this. It’s rather like trying to explain why one has fallen in love with someone?
JS: How and why did you begin to do creative work in the first place?
PT: I started to do creative work when I was six or seven as I never played exactly what was one the page in my piano lessons. I was always adding things or embellishing, often not practicing. My teachers were sometimes exasperated with me, but I really just wanted to play my own stuff!
JS: What haven’t you attempted as yet that you would like to do and please tell us why?
PT: I have not yet attempted to write a setting of the Passion of Christ. I still don’t know if I’m ready to take that on but I feel it is going to happen someday. I still think it is the strongest story of sacrifice, surrender and the ultimate love and even if one is an atheist this event can be understood as all of us suffer every day and all want to be happy, it is the human condition.
JS: What are your most meaningful achievements?
PT: My most meaningful achievement as a composer so far is the creation of my Lamentations of Jeremiah, a concerto for bass clarinet and choir. I wrote this work for my dear friend Jeff Reilly and it was recorded by Jeff and the Elmer Isler Singers for the German label ECM.
JS: What advice would you give a young person who would like to do what you do?
PT: The best advice I would give to a young composer would be not to worry about originality, that comes with time and lots of listening!
JS: Of what value are critics?
PT: Although critics often gets things wrong, certainly with respect to new pieces of music, there is usually something in the review which can be true and that can help you think about what you are doing. It is also a good way of keeping the enormous egos we artists have in check!
JS: What do you ask of your audience?
PT: What I ask of the audience is nothing! The music will speak to them or not. It is presented and hopefully they can hear what I hear.
JS: What specifically would you change about what goes on in the world?
PT: I would hope that people would find some time of silence, even a few minutes a day. We live in such a culture of constant interruption, it could ultimately destroy us!
JS: If you could relive one experience from your creative life, what would it be and why would you do so?
PT: There is nothing in my creative life that I would like to relive. I try not to either look back or be attached to an outcome.
JS: Tell us what it feels like to be a figure in the media. What effect does this presence have on you?
PT: Being a figure in the media has mostly been a very rewarding experience, particularly from my days as a broadcaster on the CBC, (people don’t generally come up to composers and ask them anything these days, except for spare change) I am very moved when someone tells me how much my radio show meant to them and how they felt they really knew me. Radio is a one to one medium and most people that listen in are as broken as I am.
JS: Name two places you would like to visit, one you haven’t been to and one to experience again and briefly tell us why
PT: I would very much like to return to St Petersburg Russia. I was so moved the beauty of this place, a strange beauty at times, certainly a difficult history. I performed in the Shostakovitch Hall with my trio Sanctuary. It was almost too much to take in as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony number 6 was premiered there as was the 7th symphony of Shostakovich. I would love to go back and hear a concert there and visit many of the churches and the Winter Palace. I would absolutely love to visit Shetland or the Shetlands Islands as they are sometimes called. This is a part of Scotland that has a mystical and bleak beauty. The weather there is perfect for me as it rains a lot which I love and the average temperature is 12.3 degrees, also perfect for me as I do not enjoy summer heat or summers that much. In fact I find too much sunshine actually depressing!
JS: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on, are preparing, or have recently completed. Why do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
PT: My opera Isis and Osiris was premiered in Toronto this past April. It is the great Egyptian love story and the story of love over power. I would love people to hear this, as many aspects of my compositional world are there, in particular my fascination with ancient themes mixed with a romantic sweep. I am writing a new concerto for bass clarinet and orchestra for Jeff Reilly and I am reworking a concerto I wrote for percussionist Jerry Granelli (he was the drummer in the Vince Guraldi Trio) titled Warrior Songs – it is a concerto for percussion and choir. Next year I will record a CD of my music with the American cellist Jeffery Ziegler in New York. I plan to begin work on a setting of the Stabat Mater for the Canadian soprano Suzie Leblanc.