Amaury CornutMoondog and the art of crossbreeding

Interviews 01.07.2021

We discuss the figure of Moondog with Amaury Cornut, the French specialist in the composer, author of a highly acclaimed Moondog (Le mot et le reste), and initiator for more than a decade of numerous projects around his music that have travelled all over France and have been exported to the United States.

When you published your book on Moondog in March 2014, its distribution was considered confidential. In the end, the book was a great success and was even reissued in 2017. How do you explain this craze? Why is Moondog in the air of time?
My publisher, Yves Jolivet, thinks that the numerous conferences I have given all over France on Moondog(Part 1 and Part 2), and especially the efforts I have made to 'publicise' him over the last ten years, may have had an impact. Today, this composer is indeed essentially played in France. But more than all that, Moondog has an exciting and unique trajectory. He liked to broaden the spectrum. You use the expression "air du temps", which is not insignificant. Moondog's music plays with anachronisms and paradoxes, he looked to the past for something to write the future, but he was firmly anchored in the 20th century, whether he liked it or not. He also made musical crossbreeding the spearhead of his work, and it must be said that it is also in the air of the time. If one is interested in early music, one should be able to find an interest in Moondog's music, and this can be applied to jazz, and to many other forms of so-called 'contemporary' music. It is accessible and rich music, produced by an endearing and singular character.

What attracted you personally to this artist?
I first heard Moondog at a friend's party, it was an album from the mid 50's, not the easiest period, that caught my ear. I was just 20 years old, and I discovered who was behind this music. I was able to get an idea of his atypical career, I listened to various productions spread over fifty years, and I realised that all this had not been promoted. This realisation that everything had to be done attracted me in particular.

How would you describe him in a few words for those who don't know him?
He was an American composer born at the beginning of the 20th century and died at the very end. He composed for almost 50 years, and has about a thousand works to his credit. The figure of 81 symphonies is regularly cited, although this is not necessarily where the charm of his work lies. He was a brilliant jack-of-all-trades, a mixer of sounds and influences, an inventor of instruments. He was an icon of New York from the 1950s to the 1970s. He was blind by the age of 16 and lived on the streets most of the time, wearing a Viking costume. His music is at the crossroads of ancient and classical European music, traditional Asian and Native American music, and jazz, and this mixture is absolutely sincere.

Can you talk in more detail about this synthesis?
There is undoubtedly the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on his work. He was his master, even if Moondog regularly had the idea that he had surpassed him (notably in the rigour of his counterpoint, and here we enter into subjects that I really don't master). Added to this is his passion for Native American tribal music, which goes back to his childhood. He connects the pulse of Indian drums to the jazz of the 20s and 30s, another of his influences. His father listened to a lot of ragtime, which is perhaps unjustly left out of his sources, although it already represents the fusion between European classical music and an early form of jazz. And then there is also percussion in general and Asian music. There are also sometimes Caribbean, Celtic and Oriental colours. 

What is his influence on the musical world?
I've always found this rather difficult to establish clearly. He is regularly cited by a whole host of musicians as a source of influence, and yet Moondog's music is not clearly reflected in the music produced by those who willingly cite him (there are rare exceptions, I'm thinking of the Spanish musician Borja Flames for example, especially in his first album).

I can launch into a quick, non-exhaustive evocation: "Take Five" by Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck is an ode to the five-beat metric dear to Moondog, who was opening a concert for them a few years before the composition of this piece.

When Janis Joplin joined Big Bother and the Holding Company in 1966, she imposed a cover of Moondog's ' All is Loneliness '.
The English band Pentangle literally sang Moondog on their album Sweet Child around the same time. It was Moondog who wrote an arrangement of ' Guggisberglied ' for Stephan Eicher, who became interested in classical strings after seeing Moondog in Rennes in 1988.
Was the rhythm of Bashung's ' Ma petite entreprise ' inspired by Moondog's 'Stamping Ground'?
Believe me, I could go on and on! It seems endless.


Moondog is often classified as a composer of minimalist music. I know you don't like this term. Why is that?
It is mainly the composers who are associated with this movement who do not like the name (Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine in particular). And Moondog himself did not like being considered by Steve Reich and Philip Glass as the founding father of repetitive music. He considered that repetition had been around much longer than he had. Steve Reich and Philip Glass obviously knew this, but what they meant was that Moondog had assembled all the ingredients that make up this 'minimalist music': the return to the pulse, the drones, the short phrases that recur regularly, an economy of means, etc. As such, I think Moondog belongs under this label. But not only that...

You have participated in several projects around Moondog, both scenic and discographic, notably with theMinisym Ensemble and the0 Ensemble, or as artistic advisor to the city of Toulouse for the 2018-2019 season. Can you tell us a little more about them?
All this has been my way of bringing Moondog's music to life over the past ten years. In addition to the conferences, there have been dozens of concerts and projects, including, with the help of Marie-Pierre Bonniol, the meeting between pianist Dominique Ponty and percussionist Stefan Lakatos, both of whom were close to Moondog but had never met, and who recently released an album. I have also done a lot of work collecting scores, always without knowing where to find a G on a treble clef, which has resulted in a collection of more than 300 pieces, which I regularly open to music schools, conservatories or musicians and ensembles.

Do you initiate these collaborations, or do people contact you?
They are almost systematically part of a Moondog theme initiated by a venue and/or a media library. It started with the Nantes Conservatory, where I organised my first tribute to Moondog (my first concert was held in May 2010 in the courtyard of the Château des ducs de Bretagne). In addition to a group of professional musicians from Germany, I wanted to have local musicians present, who were discovering Moondog for the occasion. It turns out that his music has real pedagogical virtues. Moreover, his science of mixing makes common times around Moondog really enjoyable for conservatories. They prove to be deeply federative, because the jazz teachers find themselves as much at home in them as the modern music teachers and even the classical/baroque classes - I should say naturally, but unfortunately it's not as natural as that in most cases. Added to this is the fact that he has written for almost every possible instrument, which makes it possible to imagine rich and varied programmes. I have worked with the conservatories of Saint Nazaire, Guérande, Châlon-sur-Saône, Châteaubriand, Laval, Poitiers and Toulouse, as well as with music schools in Rezé, Tournan-en-Brie and Challans. 

What are your links with the Murailles Music label?
Originally Murailles Music was in charge of broadcasting my conference on Moondog. Then Ensemble Minisym naturally joined the catalogue, which made for a nice project. Then, as our tour manager left the label, I accepted to replace him. Julien Courquin, its founder, became a real ally in promoting Moondog's music and imagining projects. In particular, he fought so that the creation "Moondog on the Streets" with Thomas Bonvalet,Jean-Brice Godet and Stéphane Garin could go and play in New York, and in general, Murailles Music was by my side throughout the Moondog Season in Toulouse, both in production, administration and communication positions.

You have been working for a long time on a project to publish Moondog's scores that have not yet been released. How did you get them? How far along is the project? Which works are involved?
It's a collection from his friends, family and musicians. I now have more than 300 of them, but our man composed about a thousand. These are scores, most of which come from Germany and were edited by Ilona Goebel, who was in charge of Moondog. She couldn't read the music, which means that there are sometimes mistakes hidden in it, and that some of the notations may seem a bit... esoteric to musicians who play them today. I do not wish to sell them, I usually give them away with the explanation that the recipients are free to make a donation that can help me, as all this work is done purely voluntarily. I am in regular contact with Moondog's lawyer in order to move this matter forward. I think that releasing the scores officially and correctly would be a good thing for his music. Unfortunately, I am also confronted with guardians of the temple, and this is a less amusing part, which I really don't want to go into here... But I have been told by the lawyer that a space is going to be opened online, where it will be possible to buy scores. This is something I've been trying to set up for many years. I think it's about time that you could get Moondog scores just by going to a music library, not least because of its incredible pedagogical virtues, but also because it would be a wonderful way of sharing it and getting it out there.

Interview by Guillaume Kosmicki.

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