We discuss the figure of Moondog with Amaury Cornut, the French specialist in the composer, author of the highly acclaimed Moondog (Le mot et le reste), and initiator for over a decade of numerous projects based on his music, which have toured France and been exported as far as the United States.

When you released your book on Moondog in March 2014, its distribution was envisaged as 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 zeitgeist?
My publisher, Yves Jolivet, thinks that the many lectures I've given all over France on Moondog(Part 1 and Part 2), and above all the efforts I've made to "publicize" him over the last ten years, may have had an impact. Today, this composer is essentially played in France. But more than all that, Moondog's trajectory is fascinating and unique. He liked to broaden spectrums. You use the expression "zeitgeist", which is not insignificant. Moondog's music plays with anachronisms and paradoxes; he looked to the past for something to write the future with, but he was firmly rooted in the twentieth century, whether he liked it or not. He also made musical crossbreeding the spearhead of his work, and it has to be said that it's also in the air of the times. If you're interested in early music, Moondog's music should be of interest to you, and the same applies to jazz and many other forms of so-called "contemporary" music. It's accessible, rich music, produced by an engaging, singular character.

What attracted you to this artist personally?
I first heard Moondog at a party at a friend's house. It was an album from the mid-50s, not the easiest period, but it caught my ear. I was just 20, and I discovered who was behind this music. I got an idea of his atypical background, listened to various productions spanning some fifty years, and realized that none of it had been promoted. I was particularly attracted by this realization that everything had yet to be done.

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 around 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, mixing sounds and influences, inventing instruments. He was an icon of New York from the '50s to the '70s. 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 Amerindian music, and jazz, all of which he combines with absolute sincerity.

Could you elaborate on this synthesis?
There's no denying the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on his work. He was his master, even if Moondog regularly felt that he had surpassed him (particularly in the rigor of his counterpoint, and here we're getting into subjects 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, perhaps unjustly sidelined in his sources, even though it already represented the fusion between European classical music and an early form of jazz. And then there's percussion in general and Asian music. There are also Caribbean, Celtic and Oriental influences. 

What influence has he had on the music world?
I've always found it hard to pinpoint. He's regularly cited by a whole host of musicians as a source of influence, and yet Moondog's music isn't clearly to be found in that produced by those who willingly cite him (there are rare exceptions, I'm thinking of Spanish musician Borja Flames for example, particularly in his first album).

Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is an ode to the five beat, a metric dear to Moondog, who opened a concert for them a few years before this piece was composed.

When Janis Joplin joined Big Bother and the Holding Compagny in 1966, she imposed a cover of " All is Loneliness ", a Moondog composition.
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 classed as a composer of minimalist music. I know you don't like that term. Why is that?
It's mainly the composers associated with this movement who don't like the term (Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine in particular). And Moondog himself didn't like being considered by Steve Reich and Philip Glass as the founding father of repetitive music. He felt that repetition had been around much longer than he had. Steve Reich and Philip Glass knew this, of course, but what they meant was that Moondog had assembled all the ingredients that make up "minimalist music": a return to the pulse, drones, short phrases that recur regularly, an economy of means, and so on. In this respect, I think Moondog belongs under this label. But not only...

You've been involved in a number of Moondog-related projects, both on stage and on record, notably withEnsemble Minisym andEnsemble 0, or as artistic advisor to the city of Toulouse for the 2018-2019 season. Can you tell us a little more about that?
Over the past 10 years, all these activities have been my way of bringing Moondog's music to life. In addition to the lectures, there have been dozens of concerts and projects, including, with the help of Marie-Pierre Bonniol, the encounter 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've also done a lot of score-collecting, always without knowing where to find a G on a treble clef, which has resulted in a collection of over 300 pieces, which I regularly open to music schools, conservatories and musicians and ensembles.

Do you initiate these collaborations, or do people contact you?
They're almost always part of a Moondog theme initiated by a venue and/or media library. It all started with the Conservatoire de Nantes, where I organized my first Moondog tribute (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 include local musicians, who were discovering Moondog for the occasion. As it happens, his music has real pedagogical virtues. What's more, Moondog's science of cross-fertilization makes it a real pleasure for conservatories to work together on Moondog. They prove to be deeply unifying, because jazz teachers find themselves as much at home in them as contemporary music and even classical/baroque classes - I should say naturally, but alas, it's not that natural 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 programs. I have worked with conservatories in Saint Nazaire, Guérande, Châlon-sur-Saône, Châteaubriand, Laval, Poitiers and Toulouse, as well as music schools in Rezé, Tournan-en-Brie, Challans... 

What is your relationship with the Murailles Music label?
Originally, Murailles Music was in charge of distributing my Moondog lecture. Then Ensemble Minisym naturally became part of the catalog, which made for a great project. Then, as our tour manager left the label, I agreed to replace him. Julien Courquin, the label's founder, has become a real ally in promoting Moondog's music and devising new projects. In particular, he fought to get the "Moondog on the Streets" creation with Thomas Bonvalet,Jean-Brice Godet and Stéphane Garin to play in New York, and generally speaking, Murailles Music was at my side throughout the Moondog Season in Toulouse, in production, administration and communications.

You've been working for a long time on a project to publish previously unreleased scores by Moondog. How did you obtain them? What stage has the project reached? What works are involved?
I've been collecting scores from his friends, family and musicians. I now have over 300 of them, but our man composed around a thousand. Most of these scores come from Germany, and were edited by Ilona Goebel, who looked after Moondog. She didn't know how to read music, which means that a few mistakes are sometimes hidden in them, and that some notations may seem a little... esoteric to the musicians who play them today. I don't intend to sell them, and generally give them away, explaining that the recipients are free to make a donation that may help me, since all this work is done purely voluntarily. I'm in regular contact with Moondog's lawyer to move this matter forward. I think it would be a good thing for his music if the scores were officially and correctly distributed. Alas, I'm also confronted with guardians of the temple, and that's a less amusing part, which I really don't want to dwell on here... But I've learned from the lawyer that a space is going to open 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 Moondog scores could be obtained simply by going to a music library, not least because of its incredible educational virtues, but also because it would be a wonderful way of sharing and discovering it.

Interview by Guillaume Kosmicki.