— Did he feel, I asked him, that hearing his own works played at last made a difference to his conception of them?
— No, sir, it made no difference, he said. He was very clear on that point. He said to me: When you are a real musician, Massimo, a real musician and hear with your inner and not your outer ear, then it makes no difference whether the works are performed or not. Of course, he said, it is of interest to hear with your outer ear what you have heard so far only with your inner ear. When I wrote my early work Sparagmos, for organ and two orchestras, I was curious to hear how it would sound in the concert hall, for many years I was only able to imagine it. But when I became famous I heard it at last for the first time at the Donaueschingen Festival. And I have to say I was disappointed. The organist did not know what he was doing and the two conductors did not know what they were doing and the players knew only how to do what players are trained to do, that is to play the notes put in front of them. After that I forbade anyone to play Sparagmos and contented myself with listening to it as I have always done, with my inner ear. In Venice in 1973, he said, after I had been, as they say, ‘rediscovered’, they gave a performance of my large orchestral work, Shi. Mazzini was to conduct it, a man I had known since the 30s, a real musician. Then I learned that he had broken his leg and that Milan Barras was to conduct it. He was in Cleveland, but we spoke on the telephone and it seemed to me that he had a clear idea of what needed to be done. But the next thing I heard was that he had picked up an ear infection and that he had handed over responsibility to a younger colleague, Sandor Balint. I did not hear a word from this man who was after all going to conduct a long and difficult new work, but the people in Venice assured me that he was the right person and that we would have ample chance to discuss matters in the two days he would be in Venice before the performance. However, when I got to Venice there was no sign of him and no one knew where he was. On the evening before the concert he contacted me at my hotel and said that he was on his way and that all would be well, he had worked with this orchestra before and he would give them three hours of rehearsal time, which would be ample. I got to the rehearsal at the time he had given me but there was no sign of him or of the orchestra. One hour later they began to drift in and half an hour after that Balint himself appeared, smiling and cheerful. It was too late to remonstrate with him, so I sat in the back and listened. It soon became clear that neither the conductor nor the orchestra had any idea of what the music was about. You can imagine how I felt, he said. It was all I could do to drag myself to my hotel and lie down to try and recover a bit of calm. I had already decided to pack my suitcase and head for home when Cassini, who had organised the whole thing in the first place, turned up and set about reassuring me. Like a fool I listened to him and, with a heavy heart, got myself ready. But when I reached the hall I could not go in. I left Cassini and rushed out into the street. I walked through the streets and up and down the canals for a long time, and eventually I began to calm down. At that moment I found myself walking past one of my favourite restaurants. I entered and was greeted with great warmth by the proprietor. Here at last, Massimo, he said, was an environment in which I could thrive. Needless to say, I was given a most excellent meal, so that I was able almost to forget the horrors of the performance of my work. Now I call the work Chie, not Shi, he said, because after Balint and his musicians had shat on it I had no wish ever to hear it again. But it is always the same, he said, unless you have a really dedicated musician prepared to work with you they will shit on your work and make shit of your work. That is one of the iron laws of performance, Massimo, he said. When I was in Nepal, he said, I heard some of the music they play in their religious ceremonies. To become a performer in a temple in Nepal and Tibet, he said, you have to undergo a rigorous training, not just a training in musicianship but a training in spirituality. The ears of the West cannot tell the difference between a trumpet blown by a spiritual person and a trumpet blown by a non-spiritual person, but the difference is everything, Massimo, he said, the difference is everything.
— Did he speak to you about his visit to India and Nepal?
— He said: I only spent five months in India and Nepal. I went with the expedition of the great Buddhologist Giuseppe Tucci, he said, and they were the most important few months of my life. I was interested in transcendence then, he said. There are many roads to transcendence, he said. There is the way of Indian mysticism, the way of Chinese mysticism, the way of Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhism, the way of Sufism, the way of Zen, the way of the Desert Fathers, the way of the Irish monks, the way of St John of the Cross, and of course there is the way of art. That is a very great way, Massimo, he said. Une grande voie. Une très grande voie. When he was excited Mr Pavone would lapse into French, one reason I believe why he liked talking to me was because of the time I had spent in France and my ability to understand the language. Une très très grande voie, Massimo, he said. And music is the most direct of all the ways of art, he said. It goes directly to the heart and directly to the body. Music became too conscious at the beginning of the twentieth century, he said, it was necessary to return it to its roots in the unconscious. Some people call this inspiration, a grand name for a simple thing. The root of the word inspiration is breath, he said, and all music is made of breath. If I have given anything to music, he said, it is that I have given music back its awareness of the importance of breathing, of breath. Ruach, it is called in Hebrew, and with this ruach God created the world and with this ruach God created Adam, and it is this ruach that makes us live and also makes us spiritual beings.