Michal Trnka and the Tuning Metronomes.

Contemporary music ensembles are usually founded by composers and it is hardly a surprise that one of their motives should be the desire to hear their own latest pieces performed live. The composers and performers of the Tuning Metronomes, however have a further - and moreover a shared - interest. They want to play 20th-century music, and above all the difficult world repertoire, as well as possible.

Contemporary music ensembles especially "young" ones, often fail to survive the first year of life. Tuning Metronomes is just coming up for its second season, but the moving force of the group. Michal Trnka, has not succumbed to the defeatism that assails many in the unequal fight for grants. Histrony conceals energy and optimism, and so it seems that the "Metronomes" will be ticking on for some time to come.

When you formed the ensemble about a year ago, did you formulate some kind of "programmatic declaration" What did you consider most important at the beginning? What principles did you want to uphold?

You mean something like a Tuning Metronome Manifesto? All right, I can see it looks suspicious just playing for a year without any apparent purpose. But during all that inconspicuous rehearsal and concert time, ideas have been hatching in our heads that will ultimately stir the still waters of conventional musical life, and have journalists not just writing about first-class musical performance of the pieces but arguing about the social significance of our acts. We know that at election time the public is particularly indifferent to serious declarations - a reaction tends to set in and there are hidden consequences that rebound on the writers of a pamphlet in a very unfair way. And so for the moment we only communicate the secret ideological basis of our activities by word of mouth from member to member, which has its charm, of course.

Which of the thoughts hatched in your brains have turned out to be Utopian or impossible in local conditions? Have you had to resign yourselves to anything?

Well, one project that turned out to be Utopian in local conditions was a concert for the opening of the Pyrenean canal, and that was because in Spain and on the Spanish side they just didn't want to listen. Even though we offered to help dig the canal ourselves. But in principle we haven't given up on the idea of these accompanying acts for our concerts. They ensure a wider social impact for titles that would otherwise look too elitist 

I know that one of your initial resolutions was to try to rehearse as much as possible, so that at the concerts the pieces would be properly digested and "settled", Is that working out?

Roughly a month before a performance I get everyone to write down their free time and I find the overlaps. There aren't usually many, and so first I beg for small shifts of schedule and then I try to persuade partners I've hunted down to cancel their dates and excursions and finally I look for baby sitters. In the end we don't just use all the time overlaps, but even rehearse when one person can't be there. I try to make sure that when that happens it's always a different person. As you will have noticed, I eat into players' free time and personal lives, because we all feel that the fees in Tuning Metonomes can't be allowed to mollycoddle us so much that we start giving short weight to our jobs. At rehearsals I don't push the players into "settling" the piece and digesting it, since a piece should only really settle at the concert. And it's a bad thing if a work starts to settle at a rehearsal where someone is missing.

In this country there is a lot of talk about how difficult it is to find performers for contemporary music, and how performers aren't interested in it and don't know how to play it. Do you think that in the generation your members are recruited from there is some general visible change in this respect, or is it just a case of the exception proving the rule?

It seems to me that if a composer knows how to write music, then musicians will know how to play it. It emerges by itself, you can't force it. It's a waste of time long-windedly explaining the basics of interpretation when what is in the notes ought to be quite enough for the players to discover it for themselves. They have to have their freedom in the search for it I think it's a mistake to have an idea of the characteristic sound of an ensemble and to go after it without regard for the individuality of the players. If someone plays more romantically, for example, it's a good thing to "hide" him or her in a piece where that approach is appropriate and give a piece where it's inappropriate to someone whose style of expression suits the piece better. That someone usually has more interest in the piece anyway. Fortunately contemporary music is a wide category, and so everyone has enough space.

Although you are an ensemble founded by composers, it seems that there's equality between composer members and performer members in the group. Does that in any way affect the functioning and repertoire of the group?

The equality between composers and performers in our group is unheard of. We've even - theoretically - allowed the performers to compose for the ensemble, although fortunately no one has taken up the offer - which we had to make so I could play on the violin, The performers have the right to say that one of our pieces is awful and refuse to play it, and the composers can tell the performers that they are playing terribly and could damage their instruments. One small positive inequality is that while the performers carry the music stands, the composers carry golf balls - a fact I can mention here without fear because it is approved in the 184th supplement to our statutes.

At concerts I get the impression that the wind section of the group is more co-ordinated - and perceptibly more self-confident for that reason - than the strings. Why is that?

That's just an illusion. The wind section show off and give the impression that their interplay is more secure just because while they're playing they can chat, make a row and get up, as happened most recently in the Beria Quintet But try chaffing with a violin under your chin, or getting up and sitting down again and again with a cello. Coordinated play is easier for wind anyway, since the instruments are right at their lips, which we have a more than half a metre long instrument and it take a while to get from one end to the other. True, there's something called a "lightning bowsteroke," which could manahe to make up for deviations in interplay, but you get terrible thunder with it!

You are a group that happily selects any kind of instrument combinations, even a duo, from your "full-scale" membership. In fact, there are actually relatively few pieces for the whole group in your repertoire. Is this part of ensemble policy, or more "making a virtue out of necessity"? Isn't it a slight disadvantage that the group doesn't have much opportunity to play altogether and so "settle down" as a whale?

It's a virtue of necessity, since foreign publishers of note material mostly treat works for more than five instruments as orchestral music and the price for hiring them for one performance is many times more than buying outright the parts of a wind quintet, for example. We're forced to avoid works published under this system, especially since another problem is the fact that these parts come at the last minute and there often isn't enough time to rehearse the piece properly, so the investment isn't even worthwhile. We made an exception for Stravinsky's Septet, which would certainly not just get played by our ensemble every year but would be more often performed in the world at large if the parts could be purchased outright We could have chosen a septet by a local author instead, because we would have got those parts for free, but Stravinsky's music is worth all the trouble and expense, at least once. The high cost of materials is one reason why most of the ensembles here give priority to local music. It's pr actical, since none of the sponsors take account of the high prince of foreign noted material. On the contrary, it's paradoxical but local music, which involves no costs to ensembles because composers are willing to produce the parts themselves, is generously subsidised 

The works of the "home team" composers of the ensemble (Trnka, Nejtek, Smejkalova, Ptak, Cigler) are juxtaposed at your concerts with the great names of 20th-century music, and not only post-war music (Stockhausen, Berio, Ligeti, Feldman...), but also what are known as the "classics" (Stravinsky, Shostakovich and so on). Apart from yours, of course, there are almost no Czech names in your programmes. Can't you find composers here with whom you would like to be together on a programme, composers who have inspired you?

I've noticed that the older generation of Czech composers don't present their music alongside international work of the same generation at their concerts, but just mutually juxtapose their own work, or present it with some "classic" which is "beside the point". We respect their motives, and wouldn't like to embarrass them with tactless neighbours. And se we shall only be choosing those that we are sure we won't be hurting by placing their pieces in world context. We've already successfully performed a quintet by Hanus Barton, and we may approach other composers. I say "may" advisedly, because there's always the danger that composers will descend on our ensemble like locusts on a cornfield and so push out the disagreeable competition of the world repertoire. As far as our own compositions are concerned, it's up to each one of us whether he or she can cope with the neighbours. Some pieces have already been called off under these circumstances, but we all still have a taste for carrying on writing. I don't think we ought to have a common view of our own pieces. And I wouldn't like to give precedence to the young generation as such, as the field of student, or in the real sense of the phrase as juvenile experiments. I see Sylva Smejkalova and Michal Nejtek, for example, as convincing proof that a composer doesn't have to be past fifty to create something epoch-making. But the gulf between the level of their compositions and the heap of rubbish produced in conservatories and academies is so obvious that the term "young generation" is fortunately losing not only its sneeringly indulgent subtext, but also it content, and I want our choice of works performed to contribute as much as possible to that development

Is the music of the 20th-century "classics" just something that all the members of the group like, or do you really see it as the necessary context in which new music ought to find its place? Can you give any specific examples of the which pieces by the members of the ensemble draw on this music?

I'd hate to believe that any of us would spend his or her free evenings playing practically for nothing on account of some necessary cultural context I have been surprised by the consensus that we've found on music of the 20th century. For performers 20th-century music is a special opportunity. Not long ago I heard someone quip that a musician either plays rubbish for brilliant money, or interesting pieces for lousy money. Somewhere in between is the standard repertoire for mediocre money. You couldn't have a more accurate picture of contemporary musical life, and it's interesting that on a smaller scale the comment even applied to composer showcase events as well. And it quite clearly defines the position of our ensemble, a fact that gives me a certain pleasure. The ever more commercial exploitation of the classical repertoire is actually shifting music of the 20th century from the level of the incomprehensible to the level of the interesting.

What if anything do the "Home team" composers have in common? Is it just a generation group, or is their some shared aesthetic, musical taste...?"

We went though academy seminars where everyone passes superior comments on everyone else's work and composers huddle in cliques according to their style of work After school we developed a kind of peculiar agreement that we would mutually respect each other's freedom, That doesn't mean that debates on our pieces are taboo. On the contrary, they are all the more pleasant because nobody expects anybody else to act on his advice, which was the whole point of the seminars. We have a lot in common in musical taste, but I don't think it would make any difference to our relationships if someone went musically crazy.

Has active work in the ensemble chainged your approach to composition in any way?

Nobody can play music without uninterrupted musical imagination. As soon as a musician switches off, his playing becomes unbearable. But from my own experience I know that in composition it is actually possible to switch off for a larger or smaller part of the process., or at least it seems musically permissible. It's something that composers are often led to do by historically established composition techniques, by which I don't mean just those strictly serial techniques where a sequence of notes is to a great extent given in advance, but even classical harmony. In general I mean the techniques that in some way pre-organise what's known as musical material. In my own work I've turned the whole thing around. I have a pre-invented work process that is thought out in such detail that I can leave the specific notes to my musical imagination. As far as note pitches are concerned, I have thought up the technique of a kind of note chain. The difference between my chain and usual sequence is that the sequence is pr e-determined and given, or more precisely limited to a certain number of notes. My chain has emerged during my work, and while it is divided up, the division is variable and at any moment I can use a note according to my ear, without this breaching the serial character of the work. It's actually a chain creating an unlimited quantity of series, all more or less fleeting.

What are you planning for the next season? Will your concerts be held in the Atrium in Zizkov again?

Over the holidays I'm organising our Autumn project, for which we're preparing a chamber version of Ustvolska's Fifth Symphony, two longer Xenakis pieces, a Lutoslawski Quartet, Rychlik's Africa Cycle and our own now almost orchestral pieces. But what if I told you that none of these things will happen because these plans are too modest and we've already got more money from all sides than we ever wanted, and at our last concerts sponsors were jumping on us in hordes, and so in order to spend all this money in time we have to order much more expensive music and hire a foreign symphony orchestra Petr Cigler is going to try out his new and dangerous experiment on them.

After the experiment some members of the orchestra will never play straight again. But don't begrudge a young composer his fun! In my case, I shall be trying to put a string quartet in helicopters. It's every composers dream these days. The musicians will finally get masseurs. When we've managed to think up how to spend all the cash then we'll put together a specific concert programme. Whatever happens, everyone will know about it by the end of September. For nostalgic reasons I think we should remain loyal to the Atrium in Zizkov and put a bit of money into it We've already reserved the evenings of the 10th of October, 13th of November and 10th of December there.