Composer  Barney  Childs

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie



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Born in Spokane, Wash. on Feb. 13, 1926, Barney Childs led a colorful life as both a scholar and a composer. Childs attended the University of Nevada where he earned his B.A. As a Rhodes Scholar, Childs went on to earn a B.A. and M.A. in English language and literature at Oxford University. In addition, he earned a Ph.D. in English and music from Stanford University. Childs was largely a self-taught composer. In the 1950's he did, however, have the opportunity to study with Carlos Chavez and Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. He also spent time studying with Elliott Carter in New York. Many of his pieces were performed throughout the United States by the late 1950's.

As a teacher, he began his career in the English Department at the University of Arizona from 1961-65. He later advanced to dean of Deep Springs College from 1965-69. From 1969-71, Childs served as composer-in-residence at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. The remainder of his career was spent teaching with Johnston College and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Redlands from 1971-93. During his career, Childs was active with a number of publications. He served as poetry editor of "Genesis West" and co-editor of "The New Instrumentation" book series. He was co-founder of Advance Recordings and served as an associate editor for "Perspectives of New Music."

Together with Phillip Rehfeldt (University of Redlands), Childs was a performing participant in the commissioning series "Music for Clarinet and Friend." He also served as co-editor (with Elliott Schwartz) of the book "Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music."  Barney Childs passed away on Jan. 11, 2000, leaving behind some 160 compositions and the poetry text "The Poetry-I Book. A Collection of childs' Manuscripts" is currently held and being processed in a special collection at the University of Redlands.


==  Biography from the website of the American Compaosers Alliance  
==  Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.  BD  



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To prepare a radio program marking his sixty-fifth birthday, I arranged to speak with composer Barney Childs on the telephone in the fall of 1990.  He was clear and precise in his responses, and seemed happy with the questions I posed.  The program, with portions of the interview and recordings of his music, was presented on WNIB, Classical 97 the following February, and again five years later to mark his seventieth.

Now, in 2025, I am pleased to present a transcript of our complete conversation . . . . .


Bruce Duffie:   You are both a teacher and a composer.  Do you get enough time alongside your teaching, to compose?

Barney Childs:   Yes.  After one has taught much the same set of courses for a while, you get pretty well seasoned at squeezing time in around the corners, and in odd places to work.

BD:   You don’t find that the keeping up with the youngsters takes too much energy?

Childs:   No, I don’t think so.  It’s something I like to do, and somehow it doesn’t get to be too much.  One has had much worse jobs.

BD:   [With a gentle nudge]  There are worse jobs than teaching basic music???

Childs:   [Laughs]  Yes, and contrary to popular opinion, I expect there are a few.  I taught Freshman English for a number of years, and that’s on a par down there.  Fortunately, I passed the stage now where I have to teach too many courses here at Redlands.

BD:   Most of your courses are for advanced students?

Childs:   Yes.

BD:   They are the ones who are truly interested in the material?

Childs:   I hope so, yes.  Generally, this is the case.

BD:   Do you find that their interest carries on beyond the classroom?

Childs:   Ideally yes, and generally yes.  Either people are or they aren’t, and by the time they get up to about their third year of college, they’re beginning to find out whether it means enough to them to continue, or whether they ought to change over to something of a more accessible nature.

BD:   Do you find that most of your students continue, or that quite a number of them drop out?

Childs:   Most of them continue.  The University of Redlands is a small school, and it has a considerable reputation on the coast.  We get a few misfires, but generally it’s a pretty good bunch.

BD:   You’re teaching theory and composition?

Childs:   Composition and music literature.

BD:   Are you pleased with some of the ideas that you see coming from the pages of your students?

Childs:   That’s an interesting question.  I think all of us in this business have found that the direction the students wish to go has slowly altered and expanded over the years.  I get many more people now who are interested in a future in commercial music, instead of people who want to write the great American string quartet, or the great American piano sonata.  That puts a damper on me sometimes, because I’m not all that qualified to deal with somebody who wants to be a heavy metal composer.  I have to back it down and show them that there are general things in writing pieces that one can learn regardless of the genre, and then go on from there.  So, yes, it is certainly entertaining to see — especially with the graduate students — what they’re trying to do.

BD:   Do any of these graduate students go one to be professional composers, or will they do other things such as teaching?

Childs:   That’s pretty much as to how things break from them.  You can’t second-guess.  Most of the people who get a master’s degree at Redlands do go on.  The undergraduates sometimes do, and sometimes don’t.  Sometimes people take composition, not because they want to be professionals but simply because they want to have a shot at seeing what it’s like writing music.  Sometimes it’s required by various academic syllabus arrangements, so they must take a semester whether they like it or not.  Sometimes they take composition, sometimes they take orchestration, and sometimes they take electronic music.

BD:   What do you say to people who are there by force?

Childs:   Sometimes one can prove that they do have interest, and they do have concern, and they can do it if they want to.  But one of the things that the undergraduate finds after about the first two semesters at college, is that he discovers that nobody told him it wasn’t going to be fun.

BD:   It winds up being fun, or winds up not being fun?

Childs:   It winds up not for quite a while, but if they can survive, then they probably enjoy it.

BD:   [With mock horror]  Is college, or even real life, supposed to be fun???

Childs:   No!  [Laughs]  But there are people that would have us believe so.  That’s a complex ethical question, or even an aesthetic question.  Having fun in the long run probably has more to do with music than they might think.

BD:   Is music supposed to be fun?

Childs:   If one approaches it as such, and wishes it to be so, then one can enjoy it.
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BD:   Do you approach it that way?

Childs:   I’d like to think so, yes.  One of the criteria for someone who is going to enjoy any of the arts includes the desert island question.  If you were stranded on a desert island, and all you had to do was write music, but you knew that no one would ever find any trace of you, would you still compose?  If someone can enthusiastically say yes, then they’ll probably enjoy doing it.  It would be the same with a painter...

BD:   When you’re writing a piece of music, do you assume that it might just sit in the drawer for a few years?

Childs:   That doesn’t matter to me.   When I have the piece finished, it’s done, and I draw the double bar at the end.  What happens to it then, who knows?  Somebody may want to play it, or somebody may not.  People may enjoy it, or they may not.  Finally, I have the responsibility of doing the best job I can, and when I get through the piece, I go onto the next.

BD:   Do you ever go back to old pieces, and just look them over for your own enjoyment?

Childs:   Oh, yes!  It’s a remarkable tonic in that it’s like the Penitentes, the Indians in New Mexico who flog themselves with an Ocotea cactus in ceremonial processions.  Sometimes just getting out an old piece and looking at it is a tonic...

BD:   ...to know that you’ve made some progress?  [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at left, see my interviews with David Ward-Steinman, and Bertram Turetzky.]

Childs:   No.  We tend to equate the word ‘progress’ with a positive gain of some kind.  I would think any progress would be just moving from point to point.  I hate to write the same piece twice, and once one work is over, then it’s on to do the next one.  I have a big argument occasionally with a friend of mine who is also a composer.  He keeps talking about the composer’s responsibility, and I have occasionally met people when I’m out lecturing who say, “You mean, you don’t write for the audience???”  Of course, I don’t write for the audience.  I don’t submit it to the audience as to whether the next note is going to be A-flat or A.  I make the best guess, and there it is.

BD:   Do you take them into consideration at all?

Childs:   They’re there, and they may do as they choose.  If they wish to come and hear the music, that’s fine.  If they don’t, that’s also their prerogative, even as you and I have our choices as to whether we do or don’t go to a concert, or whether we do or don’t pay attention to a particular piece.  The arts have always been egregious in one way or another, and I don’t think this has gone away in any regard.  I have colleagues and friends who are much more interested in making it big, than other colleagues and friends who just write because they have to.

BD:   Why does Barney Childs write music?

Childs:   That’s a good question!  It’s because I can’t not do it.

BD:   So, you’re one of those people who are on a desert island, where nobody’s going to listen, and you’ll still compose?

Childs:   Yes.

BD:   Do you view music as painting at all?

Childs:   No!  We’re not making images.

BD:   What are you making?

Childs:   Sound.

BD:   It’s not sonic images?

Childs:   No, I don’t think so.  Otherwise, they would have clarified music as a language long since.  Music is supposed to be the universal language, but it’s very curious that the only thing it can be about is itself.

BD:   Then let me ask the big philosophical question.  What is the purpose of music?

Childs:   Whatever one wishes it to be.  He might wish it to bilk greedy teenagers out of hundreds of dollars.  He might be writing music so the rain will fall on the corn crop to make it grow.  He might be writing music to play at a friend’s wedding.  Who can say?  Each of us has a different underlying feeling about it whatever it is.  I don’t think it can be lumped into a single definition of any kind.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   You’ve been hearing performances of your music for many years.  Have you basically been pleased with those performances you’ve heard?

Childs:   When anyone or any group wishes to get the piece together and give it a try, I am enthusiastic about them, and I don’t mind if they fluff occasionally.  If they’re students, one expects a certain amount of ‘studentness’ to set into a performance, and if I write a piece for a seasoned professional, a virtuoso, or someone like that, then you know what you’re going to get, which is a very, very strong performance.  It’s encouraging to see people try the pieces, and sometimes they come out very effectively.
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BD:   Do you basically write pieces you have to write, or are some of these on commission?

Childs:   Probably about seven out of ten are requested by somebody, the other three would be pieces I decide to write for myself.

BD:   If someone comes to you and says they’d like you to write a piece, how do you decide if you will accept it or turn it down?

Childs:   If I know the person and respect him or her as a performer and as a musician, I will say sure I’ll write you a piece.  Sometimes people come up and ask out of the blue, and I’ve been very surprised and pleased that people say they’d like one of my pieces.

BD:   Taking it one step further, I asked if you were pleased with the performances.  Are you pleased with the recordings, because those have a certain kind of permanence?

Childs:   Mostly yes, I am quite pleased, because most recording artists who work for small labels — which is what I find myself on — are thoughtful enough to send rehearsal tapes if you can’t work with them individually.  The ask me what I think, and I find it better to talk into a tape in reply, and discuss the recording.  I might say they should start the second movement a little more slowly, or the trombone is a little sluggish here, or that was a very nice trumpet solo.  They take it in good humor, and fix it to make it work.  Sometimes recordings come out which are better than others, and that seems to catch the feeling that I have in the performance.  The solo trombone piece that Miles Anderson recorded [shown at right] is exactly the way I would play the piece if I were a virtuoso trombone player.  One is not always quite that fortunate, but most of the time it comes out right.

BD:   Is that a wonderful recommendation of the piece, or of that recording?

Childs:   It’s a wonderful recommendation of Miles Anderson.

BD:   Is there only one way to play any of your pieces?

Childs:   Oh no, there are a number of works in which there’s a lot of indeterminate choices the performers make, and, of course, there are all sorts of ways those will come out, depending on the degree of choice that the performer has.

BD:   Yes, but I’m talking above and beyond indeterminacy.  Even when all of the notes and the rhythms are exactly notated, is there no room for interpretation on the part of the performer?

Childs:   Of course there’s room.  There’s always room that any performer is going to do it his or her own way.  I had a short period in my life when I was working for an aircraft company, designing machine tools and such things, and I drew up something which was going to hold a bomb bay door hinge in position while holes were drilled in it.  I took it up to the lead man and said, “Here’s what I’ve done with this.  What about it?”  He asked, “Can they put the part in backwards?”  I replied, “I never thought of that, but I suppose they could.”  He said, “Always remember one thing.  If it’s possible for some dummy to put the part in backwards, or upside down, or wrong side up, someone will figure out a way to do it.”  [Both laugh]  That also pertains to performing musicians.  Someone is going to find a way to fowl it up hopelessly, just as there’s always going to be somebody who finds a way to make it really go.

BD:   But if you’re putting in a bomb bay door, there’s only one way that should be put in.  But aren’t there perhaps several different ways that a certain piece of music should be played?

Childs:   I don’t think there’s any ‘should’.  If the performer is giving it his or her best shot, it’ll come out right.  I’ve heard different versions or different performances of certain pieces, and most of the time, there are performing differences, and they seem to all work.

BD:   That speaks well of the music.

Childs:   I suppose it might be thought of in that fashion.  I think it speaks well of the performers that they do it more than one way.  Anybody can play a line of pitches, but going from the beginning to the end and making musical sense out of it in whatever best terms they have, is another matter.  You can teach people to play.  I have no doubt that you’ve put in your time at senior and graduate recitals, particularly piano recitals where the more notes you play, apparently the better the piece is.  Or the harder the demands placed on the performer, the better the work is.  This kind of thing is a mistake.

BD:   It seems counterproductive.

Childs:   Yes, I would agree.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   Coming back to your teaching, is composition something that really can be taught, or must it be mostly innate within each young artist?

Childs:   That’s an interesting question, and one that we are faced with often.  More and more I find myself in a position where I am saying that something isn’t going to work!  I show them why, and tell them to try something else.  They produce amateur-like performances, with errors of judgment and technique.  I encourage the students to do their best.  What seems to come best is when he has new ways to go, and new ways to look.  I suppose it’s like brain surgeons, or anything else that requires a good deal of training.  Some people are going to make it, and some people aren’t, and it’s easier to work with the ones who are going to make it, because for the one thing, they keep writing.  They bring in work once a week or twice a week, instead of spending a whole semester on six measures, and have excuses, and don’t really want to do the work.  Composing is not simple.  I don’t think any practicing art is simple.  It’s very difficult work, and analogical sometimes to slave labor, such as shoveling gravel or digging septic tanks.
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BD:   I trust you don’t ever approach your desk thinking that you simply have to put in the work because you have to put in the work.

Childs:   Not in the composing part, no!  But when you get down to making parts, that’s slave labor.

BD:   Hopefully you can pawn that off on copyists occasionally.

Childs:   Yes, but I’ve had trouble with copyists because they seem to want more money for less work, and the manuscript is not always accurate.  I end up doing it myself, although there’s a lot of computer programs now that apparently do the work pretty attractively.

BD:   I was going to ask if you had gotten into the new machinery which will extract parts for you.

Childs:   Yes, I had a small computer at one time, but it turned out to be two jumps ahead of me, and I couldn’t make it work.  It did some very strange things [laughs], so I figured it was like the old dog and new tricks.  So I went back to doing it by hand.

BD:   But I hope you’re an old dog with new tricks in music!

Childs:   I like to think that I’m still not writing the same piece twice.

BD:   In the end, is composing fun?

Childs:   Yes and no.  It’s like any hard work which one gets caught up in.  You realize it’s demanding hard work, but at the same, you fall into it.  I found a definition of the creative process by John Ruskin, of all people, who said, “The whole man stands in an iron glow,” and that’s probably the way I feel about it.  I essentially agree with that.

ruskin
John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, political economy, education, museology, geology, botany, ornithology, literature, history, and myth.

Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.

Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability, ethical consumerism, and craft.

The full quote that Childs cites, suggesting a healthy imagination, is this:  The intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight.

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BD:   When you’re sitting at your desk and have the ideas coming, are you always controlling the pencil, or are there times that you feel that the pencil is controlling your hand?

Childs:   I’m in charge most of the time, but the more that gets written, the more easily it will go, because there are more things revealing themselves as to what you can do with them.  Another one of my clichés is that painters start in the upper left-hand corner!  When you’ve written a page of music, it may be the beginning as you intended it when you started, or it may turn out to be the end.  It may even turn out to be the middle.  It also may have to be thrown away.  So, in a sense, after you get past a certain point, it gets a lot easier, but I don’t think I’m ever at the mercy of the pencil.  I can’t call to mind any time that I’ve been.
 
BD:   No shots of divine inspiration?

Childs:   Oh no, I’m afraid not.  Sometimes it comes out better, and sometimes you work hard to fix it up.  The inspiration thing would be great if only the muse would hover over my eager quill as I sit starving in my garret, and make the music come out.  But the muse is usually somewhere else!  [Both laugh]

BD:   When you’ve got a whole bunch of notes on the paper, and maybe even a double bar at the end, you go back and tinker with it.  How do you know when to put the pen down?

Childs:   There comes a point where you’ve got it as right as you can get within its circumstances, and at that moment you say, “Okay, I’ve done the job.  I’ve given it the best shot I’ve got, so we’ll see what happens.”  Then there is always that time six months or a year later, when you hear it played for the first time, and sometimes you think, “Wow, it works,” and sometimes you think, “Oh boy, how did that get by?”  I have several pieces with little spots in them which are clearly wrong.

BD:   Do you go back and fix them?

Childs:   I tried that once, and the fixings were so much worse than the original flaw that I decided to leave it there.  But I’m always embarrassed as I hear the horn coming closer and closer to this bar-and-a-half solo, that I know what’s going to happen, and it happens.  [Both laugh]

BD:   What happens if someone comes up to you and says, “Those couple of bars are just absolutely extra brilliant!  Where did you come up with them?”

Childs:   Yes, and now we’re into the territory of informed criticism.  I have another anecdote about that, in fact it’s the Clarinet, Cello, and Piano Trio [LP label shown above-left], which was performed in England.  Four different critics in four different journals reviewed the thing.  One of the people was quite happy with it, and said it was the best piece on the program.  But another one used a phrase which I’ve always cherished, ‘Mr. Childs’s piece has nightmarish pretentions’.  There’s a mouth-filling roll to that, and I think he probably meant what he said.

BD:   Hopefully he’s of the minority opinion.

Childs:   Well, we don’t know.  Who can say?  I don’t necessarily require that everyone hear everything I write in the same way, or even one thing I write in the same way.  The Trio is a particularly good example because it’s a very dark harsh piece.  I have a friend who used to teach in Chicago at a school that shall remain nameless, and he couldn’t listen to the recording.  He said, “It’s just too intense, too dark.”  At the same time, I had a performance in the Middle West where a lady came up afterwards and said, “Oh  Mr.Childs, I so enjoyed your piece.  It sounded like little animals frisking in a mountain meadow!”  [More laughter]  So, what do you do?  If you look for permanencies and definiteness, you’re in trouble!

BD:   Eventually, toward the end of this piece, you abandon musical sounds and go to spoken words, and finally abandon those, too.
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Childs:   Right.

BD:   Is this your idea of philosophical progression?
 
Childs:   No, this piece is a memoriam for the poet Paul Blackburn.  It’s simply showing that there are long solos which are loosely woven against each other, and the music gradually falls together.  There’s one short section, the only section where all three instruments are playing in the same tempo, and it becomes evident, even then, that music isn’t going to work.  So all that’s left is speech, and speech slowly breaks down.  At the end of the piece, in the face of the enormity of the fact that the piece is memorializing, there’s silence.  So, you can say that was a program if you wish to.
*     *     *     *     *

BD:   Here is another big philosophical question.  Where’s music going today?

Childs:   [Laughs]  My first response in answer to your question about where music is going today, is, “To hell in a hand basket!”  [Much laughter]  But that’s too much fun, and it’s not true.  [Pauses a moment]  I don’t know.  I must say that it’s becoming more proliferate.  There are far more composers writing far more music.  I suppose if one wishes to drag out the education of Henry Adams, and look at his idea about multiplicity from Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth-century up to the twentieth-century, fortunately we’ve gotten out of the idea that there are certain little walled-off, partitioned, bounded enclosures in which there are certain kinds of music and certain kinds of sound.  It’s all loose and open now, and people are writing things in various overlaps and crossover styles.  I think this is very healthy and very good, and this may have something to do with the fact that occasionally at major universities, you do get people who want to be commercial musicians, and write heavy metal rock, and whatever.  I don’t know where it’s going, and I don’t much care!  I am surprised and pleased by some things I hear, and bored to tears by other works I hear, and that’s the way it’s been for a while.  If I could second-guess where the arts were going, I’d be rich, rich, rich, and have copyists copy my parts for me!

BD:   Are there, perhaps, too many young composers coming along?

Childs:   I don’t see how there can be too many.  Fortunately, the venues and options for performance are also slowly increasing, although they started out way behind the demand, and the more music by more people, so much the better!  They’re certainly a lot more skillful performing groups dedicating themselves to new music nowadays.  This involves soloists as well as groups, and I hope to live to see the day when every university will require — as we now do on the senior recital — one piece from the last few decades of music.  It is a pleasant change, instead of the ninety-third performance of The Shepherd on the Rock, or the Liszt Sonata.

BD:   In other words, you don’t want to abandon the Schubert or the Liszt, but you want something else along with it?

Childs:   Sure.  Let’s hear something from everything!

BD:   Is that the advice you have for performers today, to get more involved in new music?

Childs:   No.  I have a new music ensemble here, and I teach twentieth-century music, and a course called Experimental Music, and hopefully all this gives the opportunity of opening doors for performers and students, so that they can experience music in our very own time, and in our very own century.  This is the time they’re really going to be concerned with, and they will find out that here is what’s happening.  I am hoping to stir up some excitement and some challenge, and some ‘appreciation’ — if I can use that somewhat sleazy word — for what’s going on, and why it is happening the way it is.  They can then make it happen that way if they want to.  They will find out if they can play it, and it will let them play it.  Though the new music ensemble here is small, the people in it have become pretty dedicated, and continue performing the music.  Some of them even start writing it themselves.

BD:   What advice do you have for the composers who are coming along?

Childs:   That varies from person to person.  As I was saying earlier, sometimes you have to tell them that it would be wise to pursue some other discipline, unless they want to do it just as a side discipline.  But I suppose the advice you give outside of technical musical maters is simply to hang in there.  There’s going to be four or five unpleasant years after your get your last degree, and you go out ready to blow the world away, but the world isn’t ready for you.  But if you can tough it out, and you want to stay with it, who knows?

BD:   Is the world ready for Barney Childs?

Childs:   I don’t think it really concerns itself much in those matters, and it is just as well.

BD:   Now perhaps the fatal question.  What advice do you have for audiences?

Childs:   Set all the expectations back to zero.  Just listen to sounds, and see what you think.  If the program says a piece is by Chopin but it didn’t sound like Chopin, it means you’ve got the wrong punch card in your mind.  What you have to do is go back and ask what are you supposed to hear, and what are you hearing?  It may not sound like little animals frisking in the meadow.  Just because you want it to sound like a specific idea doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re prepared to listen.  Keep your ears open to accept anything.

BD:   I assume that there’s no problem with someone coming to you and saying that your piece sounded like little animals frisking in the meadow.  That’s what hit them.  It’s the result rather than the expectation.
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Childs:   Yes, I would agree.

BD:   I assume you continue to work on compositions all the time?
 
Childs:   Yes.

BD:   What are you currently working on, or what is the most recent completion?

Childs:   The current project is as commission from an outfit calling itself The Ensemble of Santa Fe, which is a very entertaining instrumentation.  I write sometimes for strange instrumentations, and this is one of the strangest.  It’s four players, two flutists and two oboe players.  Each flutist doubles piccolo and alto flute, and each oboe player doubles oboe d’amore and English horn.  So they have four players and twelve instruments.  If I can finish it, it’s going to be done in Santa Fe in January, and done very well, too I’m sure, because the English horn player who commissioned it is just an absolute delight to hear play.  He’s an incredible fireball... really impressive.

BD:   Would it not be better to have twelve players rather than four players on twelve instruments?

Childs:   I would gladly write for twelve if that’s what he wanted, but he said that’s what he’s got.  People ask me for a bassoon quartet, or if I have a piece for tuba and harp.  As you know, A Question of Summer, was a commission from a tubist and a harpist.  [LP shown at left.  Also, see my interviews with Rolv Yttrehus, and Brian Fennelly.]  I try to write what they want.  Many years ago, a friend of mine and I got very drunk one night and agreed that we would write an opera if we were paid enough, but we would not, under any circumstances, write an accordion concerto!  That was when I lived in Milwaukee for a couple of years, and I poked around in the country up there.

BD:   I would think there would be more actual chances of getting an accordion concerto played than an opera.  [See my interview with accordionist Robert Davine, who plays concert music!]

Childs:   Oh, absolutely!  The Great American Accordion Concerto is yet to be written, and there’s probably somebody toiling in a garret somewhere who is writing it even now as we speak.  One thing I do with my students is have them write pieces that they can get played.  I tell them to find friends who need pieces for recitals.  Don’t try to write big glamor instrument pieces.  Write bass clarinet pieces!  Write baritone horn pieces!  Write pieces for two oboes.  This is the way to get performances.  If the piece is any good, there are performers who are looking for repertoire, and they’re looking for their instruments.  What about a horn choir?  How many people write pieces for eight to twelve horns?  And yet there are many universities that have horn choirs that are looking for something other than transcriptions.  That’s a useful point to make.

BD:   Rather than just a piece written in the last thirty years, maybe you should require a world premiere of a new piece.

Childs:   A colleague of mine here is very open-minded about it, and very much into new music himself in his own performance.  He has no objection if students wish to program one of their recitals with the works from the last fifteen years, or works composed for them.

BD:   Might that stir the balance too far the other way?

Childs:   Yes, I think you’re right.  Probably they ought to be able to play pieces from the beginning of their instrument.  I don’t mean necessarily saxophone transcriptions of Bach Sonatas.  Bach repertoire for the saxophone is rather thin...  [Both laugh] ...but one semester of new music ensemble never hurt anybody yet, even though for some people it’s sort of castor oil.

BD:   Would you rather have your works performed on an all-new music program, or a mixed program?

Childs:   Whatever.  I don’t care!  If people wish to play them, I say fine!  I hope they have fun with it.  It means a great deal to me to have a player come up afterwards and say, “Hey, I really liked your tune, man!”  [Both laugh]  If it feels good playing it, and they have fun playing it, that means more to me than having some critic say it was ‘an interesting work’.  That’s one of the words which has been written...  or the entertaining line, ‘I cannot praise this composition too highly!’

BD:   [Laughs]  You don’t know whether he means it up or down!

Childs:   Right!

BD:   If someone comes to you, and you know that it’s made a mark on them, is that success for you?

Childs:   For that person, it means some of what I think I put into the thing came out the other end.  But I don’t think there is ‘success’.  If the piece works for the player, in those terms I suppose that’s a success.  If someone asks me to write a piece for three cellists who have been studying for six months, it’s just as tough to write a good one, one that will work, as it is to write a virtuoso solo cello piece for somebody who’s a dynamo player.
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BD:   As you approach your sixty-fifth birthday, is there anything completely surprising that you didn’t know was going to happen to music?

Childs:   I don’t know why that particular number certifies me any more than the others, but I guess it does.

BD:   Not so much a certification, but just a milestone.

Childs:   Yes, I suppose it’s a right of passage, or a new miracle challenge, or something like that.  I’m just pleased to see lots of music going on, and I’m glad I changed over and finally found a way that I could make a living in music, and could abandon my previous vocation of teaching English.

BD:   You’d never go back to English?

Childs:   I do still teach poetry courses here, but I don’t want to ever go back to make my living teaching freshmen English, with comma recognition for two weeks.  First of all, you learn to recognize the comma when you see it.  After you spend two weeks doing that, then you can go on to the advanced considerations, like what do you do with it?  But as to being sixty-five, I wouldn’t make any remarks at all about being surprised, though I’ve been surprised that inventive younger people are producing exciting and challenging things.  Even though there’s a lot of very bad music being written today, some of it is great stuff.

BD:   Bad music is great stuff???

Childs:   Yes, there’s a degree of badness in some music.  The Liszt B Minor Sonata is, to me, one of the most pretentious comic works written, especially the fugue subject.

BD:   I trust you mean that it is unintentionally comic.

Childs:   Yes, unintentionally comic in our terms today.  I’m sure it wasn’t comic in those days.  It was deadly serious.  The Romantics were all deadly serious, which may have been one of their big problems.  I have laughed aloud at the fugue entry, as one is sometimes tempted to do, and I figure it is fair game to laugh at a piece of mine.  People have fun...

BD:   I hope you don’t have to suffer through the Liszt too many more times in your life.

Childs:   No, they’ve got good doors on our studios now, so we don’t nearly hear things as loudly in the next room as we once did.

BD:   I appreciate your spending some time with me this evening.  I’ve learned a lot about you, and about music, and the compositional process.  I look forward to putting together this program, and using your music at various other times here in Chicago.

Childs:   It’s always fun to talk music with other fans and enthusiasts.  That’s what one is doing with one’s life after all.  I appreciate your taking the time.








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See my interviews with John McCabe, George Rochberg, and Peter Sculthorpe





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See my interviews with Robert Erickson, and Robert Lombardo




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See my interviews with Alan Hovhaness, and Vincent Persichetti




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See my interviews with John Cage, Morton Subotnick, and Henri Lazarof

© 1990 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded on the telephone on November 26, 1990.  Portions were broadcast on WNIB a few weeks later, and again in 1996.  This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time.  My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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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.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests.  He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago.  You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.