Interviewed at the 2019 Southwest ACDA Convention, Z. Randall Stroope talks of his early mentors, balancing a career of conducting and composing and where to find great texts for composition.

Musical excerpts:

Sure on this shining night - Stroope

Amor di alma - Stroope

The Road Not Taken - Stroope

Welcome to another episode of Texas State choirs

today. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Babcock and we are at

the SWAK convention in Little Rock, Arkansas. And we're very

excited to be talking with Dr. Z Randall stroupe, who is the

Director of Choral Activities at Oklahoma State University and is

also a world renowned composer and conductor. Dr. Stroup, thank

you so much for being here. We appreciate it.

Well, it's my honor. I think this is a really nice idea that

you have going here and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Since our our main focus our our

main audience is undergraduates. I always like to start with just

talking about your undergraduate experience. Where did where did

you go to school? How did it tell it? Tell us about your

undergraduate experience?

I think my undergraduate experience was I majored first

of all in piano and voice. So which is a little unusual to

have a double major. I also had a minor took a minor in was in

music education. By the way. I took a minor in economics and a

minor in German all all at one big time. So you were busy. I

was busy. I still graduated in four years, but wow, no grass

grow underneath my feet. And what was the what institution I

went to actually or Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma,

okay,

grad. And certainly all of those things came together into what

what your career

really did, because as a composer, of course, you can't

know everything about every instrument, but certainly having

a strong knowledge of the piano and have a strong knowledge of

coral and I was also a brass player there so of that part of

it, so I felt pretty well rounded in that sense.

Great. And I'm also going through your bio and such you've

had some wonderful mentors, particularly one that stuck out

to me was Margaret Hillis Margaret Hillis was just you

know, she was one of the very first, the very first symphonic

choir directors that really, there was just such spark in the

music that you made. Tell us a little bit about working with

Margaret,

she, she is an all business conductor. She really was. And I

would fly to Wilmette or to Chicago, which is right below

Wilmette, a once a month, and I would spend two days with

Margaret to mornings, I would take the train up to Wilmette to

her home, she taught in her office upstairs and from nine to

12. And she was at nine o'clock it started and exactly 12

o'clock. It ended. And we studied all the large works, you

know, Brahms Requiem, and Carmina Burana, and Hyden

creations and just all those, that's what we did. And in the

evening or the time between the two days, I would go back to the

hotel, and she would give me her parts to like the Hyden creation

or any number of the big works, that she had herself bowed. And

I would copy all those parts. So I have her Boeing's and her

markings on probably 30 large works. Oh my goodness. So she

was let me take them overnight. And so I made copies at one of

the coffee shops there. So, but she was all business and she

would often have visitors enters home like one time I remember

she had a visitor she named she says, Well, Danny is here. And

she said one moment so I looked out the door and there's Daniel

Barenboim's Danny Danny enter in a living room and they they

talked for a couple of minutes and then she came back up and

you know, she's she never said a word about it. She just said I'm

kept talking about the score is in front of us. But yes, she was

quite an inspiration. And I had her also come down to Omaha

where I was working at the time and conducted a concert there

for us. Oh, terrific. Yeah,

right. And I have I have to give you some props. I, I found that

most composers are not really good conductors and vice versa.

But you do both. How do you balance both of those things?

Huh?

Well balanced could be just knowledge about both crafts. It

could also be bouncing just the sheer schedule of those two.

Yeah. I ride every day between 4am and 6am. Just just without

fault. So for me it's a routine. And so the creativity is not

something you just like turn on, on the weekends or whenever you

have a few moments. It really has to be something that you if

you're serious about it that you have a dedicated time to it

every day, a dis it's a discipline. And you find that

when you do sit down and even though it's 4am that it's

amazing how much thoughts come to mind because your body and

your mind is so used to it. It's used to turning on at that time.

And

so you can imagine there's very little distractions. No,

no, no one's calling it that. And, you know, the day is fresh

and you're not mulling over what you didn't get done the day

before, and all that, like you would in the evening. So I find

it to be the best time to do it. And then the conducting part

really feeds that and vice versa. You know, what works in

rehearsal. And as a composer, you know, what works in

rehearsal. And as a conductor, you're looking back at the, you

know, the page, and so that they they both are mutually

beneficial. So I've really, they're very symbiotic. That

relationship is very tight, Yang

and Yang and Yang, who are some of the influences on your

composition, right? I find a lot about your conducting who have

what,

two two main influences really one is Cecil F. injury was a an

oboist at the University of Colorado, but the main one was

Norman Lockwood, Norman Lockwood and Cecil Avenger. Both studied

with natty Boulogne J, who was the great French core teacher.

And so I studied with Norman for about 18 years. He was like a

grandfather to me. His lessons were always on Sunday afternoon.

And we would work for about an hour there at his piano. And he

always smoked a pipe, he had no the tweed jacket, exactly what

you would think of a composer. And then we would take a walk

outside for a few minutes. And he had a little white house

there in Denver. And then we would come back in and Vona, his

wife would make tea. And then we would go back into the piano

room and work some more. So it was just that same the whole

ordeal took about two and a half hours really? So and he always

took a special interest in me. And a lot.

Messenger not a quarrel. No, not at all. You're

exactly right. But you know, there's a lot to be I was an

instrumentalist, as well as a choral. And again, it's that

sort of that general knowledge about about the two sides, which

really aren't two at all. They're just one with all Muse

all music, right. And so I think universities particularly try to

separate even instrumental conducting choral conducting

instrumental methods, choral methods. And I do think that

that's negative, because it is all one thing. It just is there

should just be method

or I'm pointing to our producer, Lucas, we were just talking

before this interview, how we want to do other things we don't

we don't just want to do choir, we want to reach out and do

other ensembles. Other opportunities, richer

experience, right? And, and I certainly teach that conducting

is conducting, there's no difference between conducting

choir and an orchestra. Those times are kind of, you know, the

days of the choral conductors that just did big circles,

constantly. I think we finally come away from

You're right about that, that both of my can my composer, my

composition, teachers Normand, and Cecil Avenger, they were

composers first. I mean, they they didn't really favor ones,

the voices over the instrumental orchestral. So they were really

holistic, I think in their approach, but I can show you to

this day, the marks in my music, that they their effect, and what

they taught me and how it's still being written into the

music, that influence so it's I really value that.

That and it's great to just show that we as musicians are always

growing and Oh, absolutely better and trying to make make

it better.

That's right.

How do you go about choosing your texts for your pieces, that

is a very difficult task. You can always choose the you know,

there's always a body of texts, maybe 100 that everybody writes

to, you know, a lot of your Sarah T's Dale's and just a lot

of Psalms, for instance. But to really find unique texts that

have not been set or haven't been set, but once or twice is,

is tough. And it takes maybe out of it takes me about 80% of the

time in a composition in a commission, let's say, to find

the text about 80% of my work is finding the text and only 20%

and writing it. What are the sources that you use? You know,

I go to be honest, I guess I do the old method, I go to the

library. What you see on Google is only about 5% of the poetry

in print. And it's usually the hot poetry that they're trying

to write because they want to sell ads. Frankly, I mean, you

go to that poem, and you're surrounded by ads if it's a poem

that's really obscure, no one's gonna look it up, then you're

not going to. So that commercialism, I think

negatively affects our choice of poetry sometimes. So if you go

into, like a modern day me, Alma is one piece that I, that I

wrote, and I went to Renaissance Spanish poetry in the library.

And you know, there's a whole section on it. And I spent the

afternoon just perusing through poetry and translations. And

that's what you have to do, you know, and so that's, that's the

investment. And that makes you be surprised how many pearls

there are there that just haven't made it to the surface

yet, if you will.

And as you're talking, it's striking me that, yes. Most of

the pieces I know of yours are not? Well known texts are

incredible. They're really, really exciting.

I don't, I don't write my own text, except on rare occasion.

Because I think writing poetry is takes the same sort of craft,

time, energy education, that writing music does that

architecture does that. And so just say, Well, anyone can write

poetry is a bit of an overstatement. So I think

there's so much master poetry out there, that it would be it'd

be hard pressed to write your own need to write your own. Now,

I have written a few, maybe three or four in my, I have 180

published pieces. But I don't, I don't make it a matter of habit

by any stretch.

Do you have any particular favorite poets or sources that

you use?

I think Garcilaso de la Vega is he's a renaissance poet of the

Spanish Golden Age. He's one of my very favorites. Certainly,

everybody loves Sara Teasdale. Sure, of course. There's just a

whole Robert Frost. I've said a couple of his poems, and he's

just an American favorite, of course, or again, everybody

loves frost. A lot of your Scottish poets, particularly

Scottish and British, I'm really attracted to. So there's just,

it's just the fount of the fountain of poetry is so huge,

there's really no reason to write your own unless, unless

somebody's just doodling at the piano and comes up with an idea,

right? Or we all do that. Oh, yeah.

I would say nine times out of 10, those words don't come out

very well. Well, composers, not a poet,

composers, not a poet. Yeah. And, and, you know, for those

that like to do that, then I think it's great. They have the

right to do it, but I think, but I think if they would explore

some of the master poets, they the writing would even be better

because it'd be more inspired by it. There's more layers of

complexity within a poem,

there's more that you can form that you're going to write sets

the form. Yeah. If you had to choose one, if he had to choose

conducting or composing, which would it be?

Well, I would choose composing budget,

that you feel like that's, that's, you're

right. I hope that I don't ever have to do that. But yeah, but

that's, that's my true love, I think is sitting down. You know,

it's, I grew up on a ranch in New Mexico, and I'm used to

being it's a solitary life out there, you know. And I'm used to

sitting in silence and just thinking, and just thinking, and

you'll be surprised how much music comes through your head,

is there's no problem with thinking of tunes. The problem

is sorting out the tunes, the one tune that you like, among

50, you know, so but but it's because, you know, music is, is

created on a canvas of silence. And one has to be in silence to,

for that to start pouring onto the paper. But I think every

human being has a great deal to, to give, if they only get into a

position where they can actually listen to do what's in their

head. Listen to silence Oh.

I just had a question. Oh, okay. So one of the main things you

were here to do today was the conducting master class where

the students that applied and came in, that we had six

students this morning that you worked with, talk to me about

your philosophy. I enjoyed your work very much this morning. As

we were walking in and preparing for this, I think he was right

on the money with everything. He said, You never said anything.

Don't do that or never do that. You took what the students

offered, and just made it a little bit tighter. Talk Talk to

me a little bit about your philosophy of conducting and our

role and What do you what do you think is are the important

things for us to tackle as conductors? What's our role in

this whole,

I think to really try to recreate what the composer had

in mind as much as we know, obviously, if they're living

composer, they're number one in our age. So we we share a common

humanity, and a time period in history where we understand the

relationships that they may be drawing on. Whereas with handle,

or ba, or Palestrina, you might you know, you're not living in

that time, that time period of history. So we understand them,

but not to the point that we might, someone who's our own age

and living presently. So our job is to try to as best we can do

resurrect sonically resurrect what those black and white, that

page of just try Inc, and make it alive. And as conductors we

have to do, we have to communicate with the audience,

because if music, at the end of it all, if music doesn't

communicate, then there is pointless, it's just, it's just

craft, it's just simply working out. A part writing exercise on

the on the paper is at the end of it all, you have to be able

to communicate to an audience, your thoughts, the thoughts of

the composer. And all of this chain has to make it all the way

to the audience to be successful.

And we have to do that without making a sound with it all has

to be silent, it has to be silent ation.

They say that 80% of communication is physical

gesture, facial expression, and only 20% is the language. And

that's why a political candidate, for instance, can get

up and do a speech. We don't know whether they really believe

in most of the presidential candidates, there's a speech

writer anyway, they read it as they're hopping off the

helicopter to make sure they have all the words pronounced

correctly, that we don't know whether the candidate they

actually believes that or not, because we don't know them

personally. But the way they say it and their facial expression,

their manner, tells us somehow, maybe wrongly at times, that

they're honest, that they truly believe that, and they have our

best interests in mind. Now, do they? Well, we hope so. But

we're basing a lot about because we don't know any of our

national candidates personally, we only read about them, and

maybe what the pundits say about them. So it's it can be a really

scary process, right.

And we're going a lot on perception of perception, what

we see, I loved in the masterclasses they, how much you

talked about engaging your face and how this is really where the

communication comes from, they're not looking at our

hands, they're not you're looking in our face. And I find

that so often with my own conducting students, that's the

last thing they think about,

you know, they're, they're busy getting the patterns, which of

course have to be there, it's, it's your craft, it's like being

able to spell words, and being able to write complete

sentences, but you cannot communicate with your neighbor.

You only know you only know the craft of putting English

together, let's say, but you don't use that to communicate,

it's just a craft. And so you've you've missed, you didn't take

that final step that puts it all together and uses it to connect

with another human being.

Mm hmm. And so and I try to tell my students that that's, that's

where the music becomes your own, when you've put your own

personality on it. When you when you've, when you have conviction

and belief in what you're doing. And you're showing that that's

when it's your piece, it's not somebody else's, or not a

recording that's laying around, it's yours, you've made that

music, and you just have to put your personality on

it. Some people interpret one of my works, let's say quite a bit

differently than I did. Or I do. And I always lean back and go

Well, isn't that great? Because they have every right to, to try

to represent my work, but also their connection to the peace to

their audiences in the way that they think is best so that they

can it can be organic to them, it can be honest. And so that

there's there can be kind of a tightrope there to see how much

of your own personality as a conductor comes to play with

trying to be really honest with with the score and what that you

think the composer intended. So it can be a bit of a bit of a

tug of war at times.

I was thinking earlier when we were talking about your

compositional process of letting go of it. And you know, so you

started you've done all the all the work, you've found the text,

and then at some point you have to say it's done. It's done. How

do you how do you get there and not well. And then just letting

go of it. And like you just said, letting somebody else do

it in a way that you didn't really think about, but not

storming the stage and telling the guy stop.

You know, sometimes it's better. Sometimes their interpretation,

you lean back and go, Well, I didn't really intend that. But

now that I think about it, that's a great idea. And so

it's great that you're okay. That's terrific.

And you just lean back. And then the next time you conduct your

own piece, you integrate what someone else had just done with

it. And you go, Oh, that's a great idea. I think I'll steal

their idea. So yeah, music is fluid. And we all should be in

this business together and not be territorial. We certainly

want to be a guardians of our craft, and try to constantly

push our horizons, our parameters. But I think we can

do do that in a very civil way, and really honor our friends and

other colleagues that are conducting and across the

country and composing, and there's room for everyone.

Absolutely.

It's it's not a sport, where we're beating each other, as

true as we are all in this community, community all of all

together. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of

your day to do this interview with us. I really enjoyed

talking with you. And I look forward to hearing your next

piece. What's what's on the burner. Now?

Well, I probably shouldn't say this, but I have a piece that is

due on February 1. Now that is behind us. I am 35 days or so

behind, somehow. So the creative processes don't care about

deadlines. It seems like I wish that they did because then I

would be a little more on time. So you'll find me the rest of

the weekend really scurrying about finding every available

minute to write in the middle of the weekend after I leave this

conference, I'm conducting the Beethoven mass and see at

Oklahoma State University on Saturday night. So that'll be a

good interruption, but a little bit of an interruption in the

process of having extra time. And

so what it is, was that can you tell us the title? Oh,

well, it's a it's a commission for a huge Church in Houston, is

their 50th anniversary in May. So it's not like that you can

you can put it off and tell him I didn't quite get it done. I'll

get it. Yeah, suddenly, the 50th anniversary becomes the 51st

anniversary, which isn't quite as celebratory as the 50. So, so

it's one of those that you will get it done. So yeah. So I feel

quite confident. I'm just running a little on the behind

side.

But we look forward to that, that coming out all your future

pieces. We'll keep an eye on that. Well,

thank you. I've really had a great time today. Thanks for the

interview. Absolutely. Thank

you. And this has been Texas State choirs today. We'll be

back with another interview before you know it. Thanks.