Erik Homenick: How did you become interested in music and musical composition?

Agustín Fernández: I began at an early age singing Bolivian folk music and playing the charango, a 10-string small guitar. In the 1960s my duo Los Kallawayasperformed in folk clubs around the country, until my voice broke when I was 12 and I had to stop singing. My partner in the duo, Toño Canelas, went on to form the group Los Kjarkas (although soon after that he was to die tragically), whereas I became interested in classical music. Brahms’s Trio op. 40 was a mind-blowing revelation that immediately planted in my mind the idea of becoming a composer. That was in 1971, and since then I haven’t looked back.

EH: What led you to study music in Japan?

AF: In the late 1970s I played in a quartet with three Japanese musicians who were then in Bolivia as members of Japan Overseas Co-operation Volunteers. We were good friends, and they gave me a foretaste of a language and a culture I would soon grow to love. When they returned to their country they applied for a one-year training grant from their local government so I could come to Japan. This enabled me to spend a year studying in Japan from a base in my friends’ native province, Tochigi Prefecture.

EH: How did you get involved with Akira Ifukube and Takashi Iida?

AF: My main interests were composition and violin. Mr. Iida was teaching composition at Utsunomiya University, so he was the obvious choice for me to come and study with. My string-playing friends were involved in Sai-no-Kyoiku, a network of violin teachers grouped around Shinichi Suzuki, the creator of the now world-famous Suzuki Method. Among the high-ranking figures in this institution was Mr. Takeshi Kobayashi, eminent violinist and pedagogue. It was my good fortune that Mr. Kobayashi accepted me among his violin pupils. When, after a year in Utsunomiya, I moved to Tokyo, it was Mr. Kobayashi who suggested I should meet Mr. Ifukube and seek to study composition with him. Mr. Kobayashi arranged a meeting at Mr. Ifukube’s house – located, I seem to remember, in the district of Takanodai - at which Mr. Ifukube looked at my scores and agreed to take me on as a pupil.

EH: How long did you study with Ifukube?

AF: For two years from 1981 to 1983.

EH: What were your first impressions of Akira Ifukube?

AF: From the onset I was impressed by Mr. Ifukube’s grace and elegance in appearance and demeanour. He wore his hair neatly combed back, he dressed carefully, always in a suit and bow-tie, he had the most impeccable manners and he spoke with enormous polish and courtesy. It was immediately clear to me that this was a man of great sensitivity and generosity of heart, to whom respect for human beings came naturally. He was also remarkably modest, speaking about his achievements only when asked, and then only as was necessary to address the specific question that had been put to him.

EH: What aspect(s) of composition/theory did you study under Ifukube's guidance?

AF: We covered aspects of structure and orchestration.

EH: What were your thoughts of him as a teacher?

AF: He was truly inspirational. He gave of his time and energy with such unstinting generosity that one came out of his lessons in an ebullient mood, feeling renovated and energised. He was interested in discussing technicalities only as a means to an end, never getting bogged down in unnecessary speculation. His overriding interests, at least as manifested in his lessons with me, were structure and orchestration. He would relish talking about them and he would always find a vivid metaphor to explain his ideas simply and accessibly – no mean achievement, considering that my language skills in Japanese must have been fairly basic.

EH: What lasting impressions has Ifukube's teaching left on your compositional style?

AF: Mr. Ifukube set great store by clarity of structure and discernible direction in the flow of the music. To this day I tend to demand these conditions of my own pieces. Sometimes I do set out to write a new work without knowing in advance where it is going to head, but I feel naughty to do so when I remember Mr Ifukube’s injunction that the composer cannot afford to start jotting ideas aimlessly anymore than the architect can draw plans without knowing whether the project in hand will be a bridge, or a hospital, or a theatre. 

EH: Do you have any interesting stories/anecdotes from the time you spent with him?

AF: A remarkable aspect of our lessons was their duration, from about two in the afternoon till well into the evening. They would take place at his house. He would go through my score and make his comments, always useful and instructive. Then the conversation would take off in all directions: language, history, literature, trees and, of course, music. I infer he must have owned a veritable museum of musical instruments from the fact that he delighted in disappearing from the sitting room to come back a few minutes later bringing an exotic instrument the conversation had happened to touch upon.

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He enjoyed fine wines and cheese, and was fond of sharing them in convivial company. I believe we dispatched a bottle or two on more than one occasion. What did he see in me, I wonder, to induce him to lavish so much precious time on an obscure young Bolivian? Clearly not talent, since his final letter of reference was rather lukewarm in this regard - and he can hardly be blamed, for I, too, feel lukewarm about the music I was writing at the time. I think we just hit it off. I was voraciously interested in his teachings, and he, too, was interested in the different angles I brought to bear.

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