movement, then?

PB:    In that sense, yes.  The first five shots are on four, three, two, one and one, and that’s where we put them.  And we have to take the time lag into account.

BD:    I see, so you think about where the guns are and make sure that the sound of the guns will be at the right time?

PB:    The sound must get to the audience at the same time the sound from the orchestra gets to the audience.  Sometimes it’s in a triangle situation, so there’s a lot of human judgment involved.

BD:    You have to be an acoustician, then, also?

PB:    I suppose, yeah.

BD:    Do test shots have to be made at each location, because of the difference in the ricochet time and echo time and the distance between the cannons and the orchestra?

PB:    We’ve fired test shots every place we have worked, even at places where we have been for twenty years, just to make sure everything is right.  We’ve shot the same load at Wolf Trap since 1979, with the exception of one show where we dropped it one ounce and then went back up.

BD:    Why the change?

PB:    Atmospheric conditions and all sorts of other things may affect it.  Actually, we seem to get the best shots in a fog.

BD:    Really?  Why?

PB:    I suppose the lay interpretation would be that the air is heavy, as opposed to being fluffy as it would be in the middle of a desert.  But we do test shots every place, and usually the load stays the same from one year to the next in the same place.

BD:    Is each installation unique?

PB:    Yes.

BD:    Is it a purely sound idea, or do you think about the flash and the visual?

PB:    There is a tremendous visual effect, and this is something you don’t think about when you hear any of the recordings that have been made across the years.  There’s a terrific flash that comes out of each gun.  It’s very much part of the show, and there would have been in 1880, too, when he wrote it.  There would have been a beautiful visual effect to it if it had been done, but it wasn’t done.

BD:    So Tchaikovsky never got to hear the cannons?

PB:    Apparently not.  He wrote it in 1880 and it was to be performed in 1881.  Part of it involved the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coronation of Tsar Alexander the Second.  It was to have been performed, I believe, in September, but the Tsar was assassinated in the spring and that kind of let the air out of the program.  It was to have been done in the square before the Cathedral of the Redeemer, which Tsar Alexander had commissioned to commemorate the Battle of Borodino, but the cathedral wasn’t finished until 1883.  And according to what I have been told repeatedly across the years, the Overture was first performed in 1882 indoors at the Moscow Arts and Industry Exposition with conventional orchestration.  And I’m told that Tchaikovsky was under pressure to do it in various other venues, but it was done without the cannons.

BD:    Do you know when the first use of the cannons, or any kind of live ammunition was given?

PB:    No, not exactly.  But Tchaikovsky died in 1893, and the final theme in the Overture is “God Save the Tsar.”  Of course, after 1917 the Russians weren’t much on playing “God Save the Tsar.”  [Both laugh]  I’m told by musicians who have worked with Russian orchestras that they substitute something else for “God Save the Tsar.”

BD:    They just re-wrote the ending!

PB:    Of course, they don’t do that now!  They’re playing the Overture as written again.  In downtown Leningrad in 1990, we had the pleasure of working with the Leningrad Philharmonic.

BD:    Is it special to you that that was put on record so that your performance is everywhere?

PB:    Oh, boy!  That was just a marvelous experience!  They flew the guns to Russia and we were able to get the supplies we needed to Leningrad.  We were there having pleasant conversations with the military and police, and presumably the KGB and everybody else!  I’m told that people were backed up in Arts Park for some distance.  There was a Russian music school that let its students out to come down and see the 1812 Overture.

BD:    I can just imagine your visa application.  “Why are you coming to Russia?”  “Well, I’m going to bring some cannons...”

PB:    Yes, exactly!  [Both laugh]

BD:    Did they take your equipment or your ideas and manufacture different or similar kinds of things to use there now, forever?

PB:    To my knowledge, no.

BD:    Have you licensed this to anyone else?

PB:    [Laughs] No, no.  I don’t think there could be any licensing involved.  Our only claim to uniqueness is that we’ve been doing it for a long time.

BD:    Now does it disappoint you if you hear about, or see on television, a performance where the cannons are not accurate, or the cannons are not what you expect?

PB:    You have to feel something about that, sure.  I suppose if I were a trombonist, I would watch the trombone section very carefully!

BD:    Does it please you, though, that people are at least trying to get things right now that they’ve heard it accurately through your efforts?

PB:    Yes, sure it does.  With the old Dorati recording, for instance, it was so important that on one side they had the Overture, and on the other side they had an explanation of how it was done.

BD:    I remember that LP.

PB:    They took a gun at West Point, shot it and recorded the shot; then in the lab they dubbed the shot in sixteen times.

BD:    At the right places?

PB:    At the right places, yeah.  It’s going a step further to do it with an electric switch box, as Tchaikovsky intended in 1880.  Of course, he was probably dealing with big knife switches at the conductor’s podium, and we’re dealing with nice little toggle switches!  They are much less cumbersome.

BD:    Do you envision a time when your mechanism would just be put within the percussion section, and the third percussionist would be the cannon-firer?

PB:    No, because he couldn’t handle the time lag.  The shots have to go through one mind sitting at the switch box, watching and listening to the guns and listening to the orchestra.

BD:    So actually you’re listening more than watching the conductor?

PB:    I can’t even see the conductor.  My back is to the conductor usually.  I’m watching the guns; I’ve got my hands full there with the guns and the switch box, and keeping the guns synchronized with the orchestra.  It might be a little hyperbolic to say I guess I’m thinking in milliseconds.

BD:    But you do have to adjust your pushing the toggles to compensate for the time lag.

PB:    Exactly, yeah.  Judging from the sound of a camera shutter, for instance, I would guess at Wolf Trap we’re shooting a sixteenth of a second ahead of time.

BD:    What’s the longest time lag you’ve had?  Or is that the longest?

PB:    I don’t know that there have been any longer ones than that.  At Ravinia, where we work every year, it’s almost simultaneous because the guns are close in; it’s close in sight.  Wolf Trap is very expansive.

BD:    I was going to ask if there’s ever a time where you actually push it and hear it.

PB:    I think Ravinia’s closest on that.

This interview was recorded in Chicago on November 20, 1999.  Portions were used (along with recordings) on WNIB in 2001.  The transcription was made and posted on this website in 2009.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. 

Award-winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.