Composer Interpreter Teacher Student

Interview with Willi Gohl

Brass Bulletin: How would you, Mr. Gohl, being an interpreter, conductor, music director and the director of the Conservatoire Winterthur (Switzerland) define the task of today's composers?

Willi Gohl: The present creative musician has, by inner urge and by necessity from without, to seek new ways of expression. These can be of different nature: f. i. they can express our time with all its disturbances and problems, or - as our great psychologist C. G. Jung wanted them to be — its compensation and completion. Then of course they can be a combination of both.

BB: Is compensation at all possible and leasable, do you think?

WG: Certainly. Did not Heinrich Schütz in Germany compensate the cruelty of the 30 years’ war by his spiritual music? And can one not consider Bach's music a counterbalance to 18th century frivolity and its inner joy a completion to mere pleasure?

BB: Does not the creative musician express rather his own personal feelings and state of mind?

WG: Perhaps the artist’s soul is like a mirror, reflecting our world, troubles and pleasure ... Anyhow there is no formula to answer the question — without doubt we find between the anachronistic late Romantics on one side and the bold avant-gardists on the other all shades and grades of composers.

BB: How do you see the musician’s social and material position as it is now?

WG: It has of course considerably improved during the last decades, one of the causes being mass media, since they are great consumers of music. It is their task to keep the audience informed about all that is new and exciting in the musical world and to bring live-transmissions as often as possible, thus stimulating both musicians and audience.