Dror Feller

(1951 - )

Dror Feiler was born in Tel Aviv, 1951. After completing his studies at an agricultural college (1965-1969) and serving his military service as a parachutist (1969-1972) he settled in Sweden 1973. In 1977-1978 he studied musicology at Stockholm University and in 1978-1983 studied composition at the state college of Music in Stockholm for Gunnar Bucht, S.D.Sandström and Brian Ferneyhough.

 

When speaking about his music he shows a will to work with music that deals with the world. " I want always to deal with the grim problems in life: Beat the White the red wedge (Revolution); Schlafbrand (Second World War); Let the Millionaires go Naked (Revenge of the poor); Intifada (Israeli-Palestinian conflict). Aesthetics per se do not interest me. More than that it is dangerous. When I compose or play I do not look for beauty, but for truth ". He often depicts, fortissimo and at great length, a violent struggle, but concerning Maavak (struggle) (1981) he says: "Maavak does not describe the struggle Maavak is the struggle."

 

His thoughts about his music can sound like this: "My music is difficult in the sense that Adorno finds Schoenberg's music difficult - not because it is pretentious or obscure, but because it demands active participation from the listener (as well as from the players, who are themselves listeners). As organized sound, this music demands from the very beginning active and concentrated listening, the most acute attention to simultaneous multiplicity, the renunciation of the customary crutches of a listening and the intensive perception of the unique and the specific. The more it gives to listeners, the less it offers them. It requires the listener spontaneously to compose its inner movement and demands of him not mere contemplation but praxis. Is it possible to enjoy music like this? Enjoyment is a historical experience. People enjoy Mozart, Dvorak, Berlioz or pop music. If I want to enjoy a melody, I go to Schubert or to old Jewish prayer tradition. This is a cultural historical and aesthetic experience. But of a work that was written the day before yesterday, I expect other things. Enjoyment is only a part of my listening. Art is too serious a matter to limit it to the concept of enjoyment. When a work is reduced mainly to appeal to taste, it is appealing to a lowest common denominators level: This is the same taste that chooses the colour of a car, or a table. This is the same taste that chooses what ice cream to lick. For audience of the modern new music is unfortunately intellectual escapist and refuses to make an effort, even if it is capable. For many years now, the audience is lost, in a aesthetic, philosophical and cultural crisis and is establishing a dictatorship of tiredness, despair and the demand for Italian espresso. They aren't interested in hearing the truth and only want to be caressed. So please: Be caressed. But not by me.

In the recent years his reputation as a musician and composer is growing fast and some of the most important European orchestras, Festivals and ensembles has commissioned works from him.