On my very infrequent trips to New York City, I arranged to meet with several musicians who, for one reason or another, were not coming to Chicago.  One such encounter was with composer and psychotherapist Paul Ramsier.  He agreed to see me (as an interviewer, not as a patient!) and graciously offered to hold the conversation at his home. 

To the best of my knowledge, most of my guests over the years have done more than one thing, but usually within the scope of music or other arts.  Many are both composers and teachers, others are performers and historians, and one, Cecil Effinger, was also an inventor!  Only one other (to my knowledge) has seriously ventured into the field of mental health, and that was conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli.

As we were setting up for the conversation, the topic was about the two sides of his life-work . . . . .


Paul Ramsier:    So there’s a dichotomy there of some kind.  I’ll be glad to talk about therapy.

Bruce Duffie:    Well, let’s talk about composing, and come back and do therapy later.

PR:    Okay, fine.  [Moving across the room]  Let me close that window.  I hope you’re not too warm.  There’s nothing we can do about New York noises.

BD:    Oh no.  Even in Chicago we have car horns and traffic and all that.  As long as it’s quiet it doesn’t have to be silent.

PR:    Right.

BD:    [Settling in for the discussion]  Are you primarily a composer, or primarily a therapist?

PR:    That’s an interesting question.  In some ways the professions are very similar.  When I’m composing I’m a composer, but this is, of course, at the same time that I’m doing therapy.  I’m certainly not what you would call a prolific composer.  I really haven’t written a very great deal.  I’m fortunate, though, in that what I have written has been performed and published, and lately a good deal, which in a way is a surprise to me.

BD:    Do you get enough time to compose?

PR:    No, I wouldn’t say so.  There tend to be sometimes long periods when I don’t compose, and I don’t really seek it out.  Sometimes I get an idea, and I’ll say to myself, “This is very inconvenient.  I don’t really want to be composing.  I have too many other things to do.  I have too many patients to deal with.”  But the idea won’t leave me alone, and so it begins to take precedence and I have no other choice except to find time to do it.

BD:    Did you start out as a composer, or did you start out in the medical profession?

PR:    I started out in composition as a small kid.  I was composing little tunes at the age of five or six.  Fortunately I had teachers who encouraged me in that, and I was able to write them down.  As a matter of fact, lately I’ve looked some of them up, and I think I’m going to incorporate them into some pieces perhaps for double bass and orchestra.  In a way it would be doing something for myself as child, because I am now in a position to know how to orchestrate it, and give it, let’s say, the grandiose touch that I would have liked at that age.

BD:    Why this particular interest in the double bass?

PR:    I’ve been doing this work for the double bass for so long that I haven’t thought about that particular question for a while, because it seems such an organic thing for me to do at this point.

BD:    Do you play double bass?

PR:    No.  I met Gary Karr a good twenty years ago, and I was very taken with his playing.  It was just extraordinary, and one simply didn’t expect these kinds of sounds out of the instrument.  This was a pioneering personality.  He was very young, about twenty-three at the time, and I came up with an idea and we tried it out.  He lived in the neighborhood and would come over every day when I would have a little more written.  I was able to write that piece pretty quickly.  I’m ordinarily not a very swift composer in that way.  He would egg me on, and I would egg him on.  I’d say, “You think you could do this?” and he would say, “Oh, yeah, let’s give it a try.”  So then he had an opportunity to do a premiere.  As a matter of fact, it was with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia, and Seiji Ozawa.  I was absolutely blown away by that.  He listened to the piece and he said, “Fine.”  He said, “You can orchestrate this in a week.”  I didn’t know whether I could, but I said I could, and I did manage to do it.  I went out to Chicago to hear it, and it was very strange afternoon for me in Chicago.  It was one of those extremely overcast and rainy days, and at the moment that Gary was about to premiere this piece, suddenly there were these gales that were developing.  The canvasses were put down and everybody was very apprehensive.  But Gary rose to the occasion and it went very well, and it was, I’m glad to say, very well received.  He’s performed that piece and another piece of mine called Road to Hamelin well over a hundred times with orchestra, and many hundreds of times with piano, in recital, worldwide.

BD:    And these are the two pieces which have been recorded?

PR:    They’ve been recorded, and I think they’re probably the two pieces which are establishing a reputation for me now, at this point.

BD:    Now, you had to orchestrate it in a very quick amount of time.  You didn’t have to write it in a quick time, though, did you?

PR:    I wrote it in several weeks, actually.  I would say it took me about a month to write, which was an incredible speed for me because I tend to be rather slow.  Not when I get the original idea, but when I’m working out things, I take a lot of time.

BD:    When you’re working it out, are you in control of the pencil, or is the pencil in control of you?

PR:    That’s a terrific way to put it!  For the original idea, the pencil is in control of me.  It is an incredible feeling of inspiration.  I know that we’re careful when we talk about inspiration these days because of all kinds of thirties movies about composers being inspired, and doing the next Beethoven Ninth, but that does happen to me, and it still does.  If it doesn’t happen, I can’t write anything.  I have a certain amount of technique.  I’m pretty well-schooled in a lot of ways and I’ve done a lot of teaching, but I can’t grind out anything when I get an idea.  It’s very, very stimulating.  There’s just nothing like it, and I love the feeling!  It takes precedence over everything.  The working out of it then can become agonizing because I seem to have a third ear.  I’m very interested in communicating with the audience, and I try to listen with a third ear and ask myself, “Is this something that I might like to hear if I were sitting in an audience?”  Then I begin to simplify.  For example, I won’t simply do contrapuntal exercises to demonstrate that I can do it.  I’d just as soon take them out.  If I’m using a solo instrument I would try to keep the orchestration very light, so that it can have a range of ability to sing out.

BD:    Especially when it’s such a deep instrument.

PR:    Yes, yes, and that gave me a few problems.  Gary’s teacher, who at the time was Stuart Sankey at Juilliard, helped me a great deal with that, and I’m greatly indebted to him.  The piece is dedicated to him.

BD:    You’ve been pleased with the performances that Gary Karr has given of it?

PR:    Oh, they’re just incredible, just extraordinary!

BD:    Are you pleased with performances that other bassists have given?

PR:    Yes.  At the time that I wrote the Divertimento, it didn’t occur to me that other bassists would be able to play the piece.  It’s very, very difficult.

BD:    Did you write it to be difficult, or is that just the way it came out?

PR:    It came out that way.  It’s certainly not supposed to sound difficult, and Gary plays it with such ease, or apparently with such ease that it seems to be without any kind of complications for him.  At this point, it’s not, but it took a good many years before other bassists would tackle it.  Some of them are his students.  He’s really very generous and imparting as a teacher, but he knows.  Lately there have been a number of performers that are tackling that piece, and wrote to him.  Two of them are in Chicago.  One is Jeff Bradetich, who is teaching at Northwestern and has developed the International Society of Bassists to a very large degree, and Carol Hart, who came over a few months ago to play the piece for me.  I was very impressed with Carol.  She’s doing graduate work at Northwestern.

BD:    Have you basically been pleased with performances of your other works that you’ve heard?

PR:    When I hear a work of mine it’s very difficult for me.  I think, “What am I doing here?  Am I going to be able to endure this?”  Even if it’s very good, I don’t hear it until later... if that makes any sense to you.  I file it away, and I can also go over absolutely every note, every nuance, after the fact.  If I disagree with things like tempi or interpretation, it doesn’t really matter as long as it works.  I don’t feel rigid about the way people play my music, or whether the tempo is exactly right.

BD:    [Surprised]  Just how much latitude do you allow the interpretation?

PR:    As much as the artist wants.  I’m reminded of something I read about Ravel.  He said that it didn’t matter how fast or slow his music was played.  His music is just the epitome of perfection as long as it works.  And really, that’s the way I feel about it, too.

BD:    Are there times when performers will find things in your score that you didn’t know you’d put there?

PR:    Oh, absolutely!  All the time!  And it helps to renew the initial feeling that I had about the work.  By now, I wouldn’t listen to a performance of mine unless I thought it was going to bring something interesting and new to it.  It’s as though someone else wrote the piece at this point.

BD:    You’re continuing to write?

PR:    I am continuing to write.  I’m not absolutely blown away by any ideas at the moment, however I am doing a method for the double bass with Gary Karr.  It is a little bit on the Mikrokosmos style, in that it gets more complicated as each book unfolds.

BD:    He’s suggesting the technical difficulties, and you make pieces of music around them?

PR:    Right, absolutely.  The first book is entirely in harmonics, and I would like to tell you why.  It is because it helps people get around the instrument.  He gave me a lesson on the double bass when we started this, and when I first held the bass I thought, “How am I going to get around this elephant?”  But instead of asking me to play simply open strings

BD:    Let me ask the big, philosophical question.  Is music art, or is music entertainment?

PR:    That’s pretty philosophical in a cosmic way, isn’t it?  I don’t know that there can be any kind of a simple answer.

BD:    Well, where is the balance?

PR:    I don’t know.  All I can say is I certainly like to be entertained, and that means anything that turns me on.  That, to me, is really entertainment.  I don’t know that I’m embellishing on your question in any particularly meaningful way.

BD:    That’s all right.  The two bass pieces of yours that I have heard seem to be more melodic than some music coming out today.  Is this a conscious effort, or is this just the way it has to be for you?

PR:    It’s the way it has to be for me.  I don’t really know why that is.  I have trained as a composer in a great many different methods and styles

BD:    In the other half of your life you are a therapist.  Do you deal especially with artists?

PR:    I’m a generalist because I was trained in a general way, but probably because I am a published and performed artist, I have attracted patients who are also performing artists.  I think that’s appropriate because I certainly know what some of the problems are.

BD:    What are some of the recurring problems that you have in your work as therapist for artists? 

PR:    Of course every person is quite different, but there are about three different types of problems that I encounter.  I have almost touched on it before, but I might go into that in a slightly different way.  One would be the artist who is perhaps not going to get performed or have their work shown.  I help them with how to deal with that.  The next might be the artist that has recognition but absolutely no income.  Strange as that may seem, there is an assumption that if you’re famous in this country, that you automatically make a living and a pretty good one.  But that’s not always the case, especially in the case of composers and poets, certainly.  Painters, by the way, tend to go in a different category.  If they get any recognition at all, they might be able to make their living as painters because the work is realized and it has some value on the market if the artist becomes even half way well known.  This is not true for a composer who may have to teach or might have to conduct.  This is not full-time composing, when somebody has to teach or conduct.  So there is certainly a group of artists that have some recognition but barely enough money to live on.  That’s a terrible thing in our society, and dealing with that is difficult.  One might say they’re in the category of the poor and famous.  [Both laugh]  The third category would be creative artists or even performing artists who have attained a good deal of recognition, and are obsessed, so to speak, with how to maintain that.  A painter, for example, might find that as long as they supply the point of view that the gallery wants, everything is fine.  But what if something organic in them says, “Well, hey, let’s try something else.”  How do they handle that?  So that’s certainly a problem.  Another problem is the sense that many artists have that if they are not successful they’re somehow looked down upon, and I think that’s quite true.  When they’re not successful they’re seen as perhaps crazy or weird or bitter.  When they become successful, they’re suddenly delightfully eccentric.

BD:    And they haven’t changed a bit!

PR:    And they haven’t changed a bit!  In fact, they may have become even more so, or even worse.  Then, since dealing with all of this both on the level of being an artist and a sales person and trying to fit into society, sometimes it’s very hard to have relationships.  An artist may come in with a relationship problem and then get into some of this other stuff we’re talking about.  As a matter of fact, some of the great theorists in psychology were not particularly helpful to the practitioner.  Freud, regardless of his incredible contributions to the practice of psychotherapy, took a rather dim view of the artist as being a person whose pursuits led him pretty close to a state of pathology.  One wonders why he would have made those kinds of remarks or written in such a way, because he was certainly an artist himself.  Anyone who’s ever read any Freud has come into contact with an incredible artist, an incredible writer.  So there is a little bit of negativity within the profession in dealing with artists, or their problems are simply seen as internal, without these external factors impinging on development.

BD:    Being an artist and psychotherapist, can you help turn the tide a little bit, and maybe contribute to psychotherapy and the understanding of it?

PR:    I haven’t written on the subject, although I may start to do a little bit of that, and hopefully, yes.  Well, I’d have to think about that more, but it seems to me that after a dozen or so years of experience of being a psychotherapist, perhaps there is something that I can help other therapists to see in terms of dealing with artists and their problems.

BD:    Have you been successful in a number of cases in solving the problems for your patients?

PR:    Yes.  Psychotherapy is the awareness business.  If people understand themselves, if they understand their relationship to the world, their family, whatever, then change can begin to occur.  There is something in common in doing therapy and in composing in that you deal on an emotional level, and you don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

BD:    Are there ever times when you put a mirror on the couch and psychoanalyze the image that you see?

PR:    Oh, Bruce!  [Laughs]  I had a classical psychoanalysis, but that’s not a bad idea.  Yes, I guess I do that.  When I don’t do that, or when I have problems

BD:    Let’s go back to the ideas of music.  What are some of the ideas that you feel have contributed to greatness in music?

PR:    First I would have to know what greatness is.  Is greatness what I’m told greatness is?  Is Beethoven great?  Yes, sure, Beethoven’s great.  I picked Beethoven as an example because I’m not always taken well with Beethoven.  I can say that without too much apology because Stravinsky didn’t like Beethoven.  I had the privilege of working with Stravinsky when I was a staff pianist at the New York City Ballet, many, many years ago.  And some great music became great for me when I was able to analyze it as a music student, and some didn’t.  I can only say whatever greatness is appeals to me on an emotional level.  That’s all.  The intellectual, per se, is not for me.  It’s fine if it’s for somebody else.  For example, I’ve always liked Ravel, but when I hear it, it comes to me as such a fresh expression, such incredible perfection, that I think, “How could a mere mortal have written this?”  Then I think, “Why did it take so long for Ravel to catch on?”  A lot of scholars have been just paying him lip service until lately, and maybe they are still, but one certainly hears it a lot.  For some reason, it’s taken this long for it to communicate.  It’s ravishing, and everything that I hear of his is.  So for me that’s so incredibly great.  Now somebody else might say that Wagner is incredibly great, and I would agree.  I sat at the Metropolitan and heard a number of Wagner operas, and felt that my life has been changed, but I was never sure whether it was for the better!  [Laughs]  I can’t tell you why, and I’m not knocking Wagner, but it doesn’t matter because he’s already got plenty of supporters.

BD:    How long were you a pianist with the New York City Ballet?

PR:    For about five years.  That was fun because Balanchine and Robbins are such phenomenal creative people.  Balanchine’s sense of music was quite special.  I learned from him that it helps for a choreographer to be able to read music.  Now that may seem like a foregone conclusion, but that is by no means necessarily the case.  Some will play a recording of something over and over and over developing counts, but the fact that Balanchine could take a score and follow a recording with it, or a new score and follow it with a pianist and work it out that way facilitated things tremendously.  He was able to free himself of the notion simply of counts, and get into the spatial elements, the timbral elements

© 1988 Bruce Duffie

This conversation was recorded at his home in New York City on March 26, 1988.  Portions (along with recordings) were broadcast on WNIB in 1997.  This transcription was made in 2015, and posted on this website at that time.

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.