Windblown Ceremonies in Search of Vocalissimus: An Interview with Matt Barber on His Composition To the Roaring Wind Bart Eeckhout MATT BARBER is a composer, performer, and teacher who studied at the Juilliard School in New York and the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. He plays the bassoon and the recorder, is a conductor with a repertoire ranging from Bach to Xenakis, and has taught composition and computer music courses at various institutions. In 2011, Matt published a 22-minute song cycle for soprano and percussion ensemble entitled To the Roaring Wind. Curious to find out more, we decided to get in touch with him in the context of this special issue. He embraced our suggestion of an interview, which was conducted by e-mail in the spring of 2019. To allow us to prepare for the conversation, Matt sent us the musical score as well as a weblink to a recording with scrolling score.1 For those readers who find score-gazing unhelpful or distracting, a stage recording of a 2011 performance, on the occasion of the work’s premiere, is also available online.2 Bart Eeckhout: Because the readers of this journal can’t be expected to be knowledgeable about contemporary composers, let’s start with a few questions about yourself. Your full name is Matthew Barber, but much of the time you seem to go by Matt Barber, also as a composer. Is this to avoid confusion with the Canadian singer-songwriter Matthew Barber or has this never been an issue? Matt Barber: Thank you for this opportunity to talk about my music. I waver on which version of my name to use professionally: I have preferred “Matt” since third grade or so, and nobody really calls me “Matthew” in conversation or correspondence. I did once get confused with the Canadian musician you mentioned; I taught for two years at Colgate University, and the students there, eager to find out more about me, found the singer-songwriter instead and were very confused when I walked in. Aside from that, there is a young amateur songwriter Matt Barber (from Iowa, I think) to whom friends occasionally compare me, and a conservative [End Page 152] firebrand Matt Barber whose name I regrettably hear in connection with rabid homophobia. B.E.: You went to Juilliard as an undergraduate, where one of your teachers was Milton Babbitt. Because Babbitt is such a towering figure in twentieth-century American music, can you tell us a few things about how you recall him and what impact he had on your formation as a composer? And how is this reflected in the piece for violin, piano, and computer you wrote as an In Memoriam for him in 2012? M.B.: This would take up the entire interview were I to answer in full detail. I started study with Milton at age seventeen, totally green and until then self-taught in the backwoods of Denver. (He had a joke about this: “You know the major problem with autodidacts, yes? They have such awful teachers!”) I was eager to learn anything and had an ear for twelve-tone music and other kinds of systematic music. What I remember most about him was his speech, which was so fluent and extemporaneous. You can get a feel for it by reading his writings: he spoke exactly the way he wrote, and when I read his writings I hear it in his voice. He called me “my dear boy,” and the year after John Elway retired, he joked that if I ever tired of composition I could go quarterback the Broncos. His guidance was intense, but not altogether methodical. He introduced me to a great deal of music I had been unaware of, and helped me learn how to think about it. The best advice I got from him was that whatever we call “form” in music is not some kind of vessel we pour content into, but both emerges from and controls content, and is content at various removes from the surface of the music. All of this went into my composition Call It What You Will, my memorial piece for him. It incorporates...