Name: Samuel Reinhard
Nationality: Swiss
Occupation: Composer
Current release: Samuel Reinhard's Two Pianos and String Trio is out via Präsens Editionen.
Recommendations:
Max Neuhaus - “Time Piece Beacon" (2005)
Agnes Martin - Writings/Schriften (Hatje Cantz Publishers, 1998)

If you enjoyed this Samuel Reinhard interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram. For an even deeper look into his thoughts on music, read our earlier Samuel Reinhard interview about sound.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

That’s a tough one. I’m not entirely sure where the impulse comes from, but I think of creating art as a way of observing and documenting our own perception and I guess thereby potentially offering the people around us a glimpse into how we experience the world. So in a sense you could say it might be linked to an impulse to communicate on a level that transcends language. Making art, to me, is a way of saying “this is how I see the world” or “this is what I hear or feel”.

As a recipient, I’m mostly inspired by works of art that allow me to take a peek at life and the world through someone else’s eyes or ears. Whether that’s in the form of painting, film, photography, dance, literature or sound doesn’t really matter.

As far as personal relationships, politics, my environment, my physical and mental health etc go, I believe they all influence the work insofar as they all contribute to my lived experience as an artist.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

In my work I very consciously try to create situations that allow a piece to steer itself, so that I myself can become an observer of hopefully intriguing things unfolding.

To achieve this, I employ indeterminate composition techniques or I work with aleatoric scores allowing the performers a certain degree of freedom within a designated framework.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I think art on some level always deals with perception, with our senses. And our senses are a portal to the world around us, to nature, to other human and non-human beings, in short, to the universe.

And once we seriously deal with that all-encompassing realm, we naturally enter territory that goes beyond our intellectual understanding, and I guess you could call that spiritual if you were so inclined.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practice?

I’m a strong believer in letting material sit and marinate. I often record stuff and then don’t touch it for multiple years. Very often something only reveals its meaning or its potential to me after I’ve left it alone for a long time.

As far as improvement or refinement go, for me this often takes the shape of not so much changing the material, but letting the material change my self, or at the very least completely imprint itself on me. In practice this means that if I believe I have something on my hands that could potentially be “a thing”, I will listen to it over and over and over again, for months, sometimes years, to the point where the piece almost becomes an extension of myself.

This is certainly not the most efficient or pleasant way of finishing work, but it’s what works for me and it’s what lets me determine whether I want to let something slip into the world or not.  

Even recording a solo piece is usually a collaborative process. Tell me about the importance of trust between the participants, personal relationships between musicians and engineers and the freedom to perform and try things – rather than gear, technique or “chops” - for creating a great piece.

Interpersonal relationships are naturally very important when trying to create something, whether that’s a composer’s relationship with performers, or relationships with engineers and assistants.

I would say even the state of your relationship with yourself at the moment you are capturing something is of fundamental importance, insofar as that I believe that everything you bring to a recording session will ultimately be embedded in the work.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a piece, what is the balance between the composition, performance and the arrangement?

To me all of these steps are of equal importance. Not every piece requires the same attention in every department.

Sometimes I’ll spend months on a score, a day on recording the piece, a couple days on mixing, and maybe a single round of notes to a mastering engineer. Sometimes I’ll record a piece in day, then spend months on editing and mixing. Other times, the recording and editing are super quick, but you’ll end up going to three different mastering engineers until you’re happy.

It all really depends on what the work wants.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I’m not sure I can relate to this, and here’s why: in the lead up to a release, let’s say when the material is in the pressing plant or on its way to the distributor, I will without fail go through a phase where I second guess the material. During this period, I’m convinced that it was a mistake to release that material in the first place, and I’m certain that this release will be the one record that will somehow stain my discography for the rest of my life.

Now the only way to get out of this spiral is for me to immediately start working on a new project. So that when faced with the challenges of pursuing a new piece, I tend to appreciate the qualities of the previously finished work that’s about to be released.

So in a way I always kind of just move ahead to a next project, before something is truly completed.