Maria Linnemann - Gentle Sophistication

  Maria Linnemann grew up in England studying the piano and violin from an early age, and later went on to become a conducting student at London’s esteemed Royal Academy of Music. It was by chance, as a young teacher that she eventually found her way to the classical guitar, an instrument she immediately fell in love with, and one that she would devote herself to for over forty years . In 1976, after writing her first guitar composition, she in many ways began a new trend for the guitar. Her works are often shorter, but very attractive and musically rich, and what is perhaps most important about Maria’s music, is that it is easily accessible to players of all levels.

Maria eventually moved to Germany where she has remained much of her life working as a composer, recording artist, and teacher. She has composed more than 500 works for the guitar; solos, duos, trios, as well as chamber music, and she has worked with esteemed publishers like; Ricordi, Trekel Verlag Hamburg, and Henri Lemoine in Paris.  

  Maria’s music is rich with classical tradition, while also drawing on elements from Folk, Blues, and South America, often depicting imagery from French Culture as well. A quick YouTube search will prove just how popular her music is, as there are page after page of videos posted by guitarists from all around the world. 

 Maria recently sat down with us to discuss the classical guitar, composing, A Simple Song of Hope, Julian Bream, and more... 

Maria Linnemann

Brad: How would you describe the classical guitar to someone who isn't familiar with the instrument? 

 Maria: It is perhaps the most intimate of instruments because of its small sound, or relatively small sound. There is also something about its shape and the way we hold it, the way that we bring it physically very close to us. I would say it's very intimate in that way. I grew up with symphonies, concertos, playing in orchestras, a student of conducting opera, and I wasn’t as familiar with the chamber music repertoire, with smaller, more intimate sounds. 

While I was teaching the piano at the local music school, the Head came one day and told me, "Frau Linnemann, we need someone to teach the guitar." I said, "I don't play the guitar." "That doesn't matter. You start learning in April, and you will begin teaching in October." I thought, "Very strange." 

I had studied the violin for nine years, and have played the piano since I was four, so I knew that there was a bit more to learning an instrument than six months could provide. I had very little idea that this was going to become my life's focus... The Head eventually sent me to see a delightful man, Martin Nicolai, a fabulous guitarist, violist, painter, composer, and all-around artist. He sat me down and played for me a little piece of Coste, Napoleon Coste. 

I was overcome; this world of intimate sound just filled me up, and I wasn't expecting that at all. I just fell in love with the instrument and the man behind it too. He gave me a guitar and a little tutor, which I still have to this day. I went home and began to practice - for seven hours a day. The guitar just became my whole world 

I have always composed music, even since I was little. I have written for piano and other instruments, but my music very minimal. Every tone has to have a reason, and every note has to have a reason to be there. This is what I have found on the guitar, that every note has to mean something and speak for you. It is my voice, and I think classical guitarists sing and speak through the instrument. The classical guitar has a gently sophisticated kind of language. 

 Brad: Your music has many different elements in it; classical, South American, and sometimes there are even blues elements too. What was influencing all of this in your compositional style? Where were you hearing all these things? 

Maria: Well, it's the story really of my life from the beginning to now. Because I was brought up just on the classics. So, my language is classical, if you will, but I was also brought up on British folk songs, which are the most beautiful in the world for the ear... the Scottish, the Irish, the English, and they are still, for me, the most beautiful music. 

While I was learning the guitar... I think, from the age of 17 when I left home, I was in contact with other music. With other people, you'll hear blues music, you'll hear some jazz. I'm very much on the edge of that because there's a whole way of living behind these styles. It's not just the sort of surface, that's how they sound. It's whole philosophy of life. And so, I'm very much on the edge of these. Although, blues is something that I very much feel from the inside. Being a melancholic, it's a bit... You know? And of course, in school we learned a lot of the original gospel songs, hymns, and I had a folk group in the '80s. 

We have French blood through my mother, and there's a lot of French in my music too. I love French literature. I'm very Francophile. From an early age... My father was a doctor of romance languages and taught French too. So, we were in France as young people several times and for the holidays. I just adore French, and so there is a lot of it in my music. 

All these little things come together, and it is the particularly emotional moments which bring out a certain style. A certain kind of music. I don't intend to write anything, it just comes to me, so to speak, and then I have to deal with it. I have to get it out, I have to perfect it, and throw away all the notes that don't have to be there. I'm not a real composer in that way, where I sit down and write just because anybody wants me to, or because I think I might make money... There's a German saying; 

Auf einen Grünen Zweig kommen 

Which means to attain a certain wealth and that you’re doing really well. So, I have my music, my books, my guitar, my piano, and my little home. I don't need anything else, and that is my green twig, and to have people playing my music all around the world, that is the fruit on the edge of the twig, on the branch. 

Yeah. So, what was the question? 

 Brad:  Are you an improvisor? Do you improvise around on the guitar? 

Maria: No. I think that could come from not being very strong. I have very weak wrists. But maybe there are several things that have played into my not improvising. The first thing is that I was brought up on the classics and played very intensely what was there on the page. Then when my own piano pieces came, I played them, and they were statements of something going on inside, but they were statements and not ’improvising’. I also have Prussian in my blood... from my grandfather, who was born in Ukraine, this kind don't ramble. They make a clear statement, and get it over with, So, that's probably the reason why I've never gone in for improvising. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Jazz is rambling! Improvising is intelligent music and I admire anyone who can do it! I've been so busy for 20 years just trying to capture the song-like music that was already pouring out; there really hasn’t been any incentive to improvise. Improvisation goes with jazz more than anywhere else, and it’s not my music, not the way my head works. I've got three little gray cells, and they don't go dance about at that level. 

I'm not strong, so I have to conserve my energies too. All kinds of reasons come together when you think about them later in life - Why did I do this, why didn't I do that? My first language was music. This has always been my main language. Besides, being one of 10 children, you don't chatter a lot because 10 children chattering would drive your parents to distraction. 

Maria Linnemann

 Brad:  Can you take s through your compositional process? 

Maria: Well, it comes into my head. Since I've lived music since I could think, and as a conductor, I am always dealing with scores, orchestrations, and a lot of notes, I have a good capacity for keeping things in my head. The music must not be written too soon. If something comes into my head, and I start writing it down too soon, I lose it. I remember when I didn't have this experience, I wasn't careful enough, and I would start to write something down, and it would go, which was upsetting. It would turn into something completely different. One piece of mine was totally unrecognizable by the end, because of trying to write it down too soon. It was a very good piece actually, and more difficult than I wanted it to be. (Laughs) 

Generally, the whole piece is there before I start to write it down, but it's not necessarily what is there finally, because there may be a place where I think, "Oh, well, that's not really the harmony that I heard here. I have to think again. What was actually there?" Sometimes bringing it out is not so easy with all the right structures, so I often have to reconstruct certain elements, phrases, chords, etc. I have had the good fortune of a very good music education with regard to grammar and form. I also have a harmonic sense which over time becomes like your native language. You speak without thinking about the grammar, and this is the way that my head works with music. 

When I was about 13, I sat down at the piano every evening, and I worked out every single kind of harmony in every key, so I was tiptop with that. I didn't have to work at that again, and from playing the piano from the age of 4 and the violin from 11, studying and listening to classical music, the music language just grew inside me, as a spoken language does... So, that's the way it came. I think I can call myself a kind of songwriter, not a composer of bigger forms, and as a song writer, the instrument is my voice. 

 Brad: Do you ever feel like a piece is finished? 

Maria: Well, mistakenly, yes. It's just sometimes that 20 years later, I think, "Oh no. Not that note. It should be this note." Yes, and I've never rejected any piece that I've regarded as finished at the time, but I've looked over, for example, a piece that I wrote some 25 years ago. It was on my Secrets CD. I was playing one of those pieces, and I thought, "Oh! That note was missing." And, "This should be an F major seven there. That's the sound that I was really hearing, and I went straight to the sixth, but the seventh first and then the sixth." So, twenty-five years later I might make a change, and that's okay. 

 Brad: Writing for the piano and writing for the guitar, two different worlds?  

Maria: The actual mechanics of writing are of course the same, but the inspiration, the circumstances that bring on one music or the other are different, in my experience. I'm playing the piano again, brought on I think because of the present situation (Pandemic). There have been three times in my adult life of huge emotional crisis, and piano playing has then begun again, and piano compositions have emerged. 

I started the piano when I was four, and this was very, very intense, but then when I discovered the guitar, I didn't touch the piano for 20 years. Then it came back to me in a huge emotional crisis. So, there was something inside that needed that instrument to express itself., Playing the piano is a whole physical experience. You can't play sitting quite still. It involves the body in a way that the guitar doesn’t. 

There are two things that have happened in crisis times, with me. I have started to play the piano once more, and I have started to dance again. With the guitar, the soul is singing very intimately, and it makes me very still, which works its way into the compositions. 

The piano is a bigger world acoustically, but I can still write very intimate pieces on the piano. I have a couple that are very, very intimate, and this probably has to do with my experience with the guitar over the years. I didn't write this way when I was young, but all these intimate years with the guitar have influenced my piano writing. 

 Brad: You once mentioned that you like to play through the shorter works of Carulli, what is it about his music and Carulli that you like? 

Maria: Carulli is... First of all, he's a romantic. A little melancholic as well, but I somehow feel that I'm entering into a very familiar world when I play his music, and in his small pieces, every note speaks, and says a lot. He is on the same wavelength, or I should say, I'm on his wavelength. He lets every note carry a lot of emotion and a lot of life. That is something that can get lost as soon as you start to play fast and furious with a lot of notes. That's why I adore Carulli. The shorter works, they're best for me, though maybe not for other people; for me, they're gems. They make the composer warmly human, for me in a way, that the larger works don't. It's a strange thing. 

Brad: Julian Bream just passed, were you a fan? 

Maria: Yes, very much so. He was the best musician ever on the guitar, He also played amazingly on the lute, quite differently from any other lutenist. Not that other people His guitar playing moved me very much. Yes, and there's a school of thought that has come from people who have recognised Julian Bream's genius, and who have tried to follow in his musical footsteps. I think it's a great, great pity that the guitar seems to be still in a world of its own, and often not given the status or respect of other classical instruments. 

Julian Bream did so much for the guitar. His repertoire is sadly still largely one that people who don't play the classical guitar aren’t familiar with. Maybe there's just too much other music in the media for his music to remain a presence, and that’s a great shame. I always said there are three heroes of mine. Well, actually four because in my opinion Segovia is one of the very greatest guitarists. For me, his playing is just out of this world. He's one of my guitar gods. 

Julian Bream is number two and the others are Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya. Nobody, nobody has reached the level of that duo. When I was a young student I would come to play for Martin, my mentor, and we would sit down afterwards and have coffee, and listen to those greats... I don't know, let's just say they were my guitar gods. 

 Brad: How have you seen the classical guitar change over the past 25 years? 

Maria: There has been a lot more music about for young people to play. There is a lot more of the middle difficulty repertoire which is very, very good. When I started, I had another of those nice emails from a fan who played the guitar and said, you know, with you this all began in 1976, my first piece. People began to want to write like this, never mind what the gurus were saying, you know; It must be modern, it must be a tonal, it must be clever. 

These days,, there's so much more beautiful music that is playable, and this has been good for teachers. It's been good for music schools. I often used to say to one of the Ricordi editors that I don’t feel a part of this guitar world. I've always felt out on a limb, because in the beginning, there were very clever young men here in Germany poo-pooing, laughing at my music, or making very little of it. Now some of the professors in Germany are Facebook friends and I think they understand more what I have been doing. I didn't write music with any kind of intention. In fact, the first piece came into my head whilst I was playing a Bach Sarabande and Double. It was a great surprise. The music just came, and it had to be written down. Then, some time later, people asked for it, and I was happy that it would be played.. 

What would you tell young people if they're playing for an audience? 

As I have often said that you need to move the hearts of people who are listening to you. That's all. For me, that's what we're there for, particularly these days. You don't want people to go, ooh and ah because they can go ooh and ah when someone is on a skateboard doing wonderful things. It’s wonderful that you have an instrument that does something nobody else can do and you must hold the ear of the listener in a way that will hopefully – well, just move them. I've seen people coming out of ooh and ah concerts completely empty. I’ve been one of them myself. You want people to come out differently than when they went in. You don't practice all your life to hear people saying ooh and ah. 

You don't need that. We're musicians, and we are interested in reaching people, their hearts, and changing something on the inside. I've seen children changed by playing music. I've always loved teaching children for the reason that you can really make a lasting impression on them, and hopefully to help them develop into sociable and happy people. 

Maria Linnemann

Brad: What's it like to see your music being played all around the world?  

Maria: Oh, well, sometimes I interact, but most of the time I just sit and listen and say, "Oh, ist that how it's meant to be? How nice!" Actually, it's rarely how I play it, but it doesn't matter. It's very humbling, and it's a great joy, and I can get quite carried away. Then I’ll come 

down to earth and think, I’m not living on YouTube and the whole world, and I’d better get up to clean the bathroom floor, before my next pupil arrives. YouTube is a fabulous gift to everyone who loves music and wants to make music. 

You know, while I was in China for five years, there were many times where I just had to remind myself where I was. Where you are, where you work, with lovely people around you, thoroughly concentrated on what you are doing, it's not the other side of the world, it's just ’here’. So, when you listen to someone playing, whether it's in South Korea, or wherever, fabulous young people playing a solo or duet of mine, they are ‚right in front of you’, though physically maybe on the other side of the world. 

This is what music does. It transports the listener and the performer. You're right in front of each other. So, at that moment when I'm listening, I'm certainly not thinking about, "Oh, they are on the other side of the world." But whatever, each time it is really humbling and really an incredible experience. I've always found that when very young people are playing and they are getting their fingers around the pieces, it is marvelous to listen to. They're giving everything and they're so focused and always giving a 100% at that moment., That is very moving. 

I like to say that there are two things that make a human being seem like an angel. One, is when he sleeps. The other is when he's totally, totally focused in what he's doing. In any art, any form of art, or a sport or whatever, this 100% focus is something so beautiful. It's a giving of yourself totally into the art form, to express yourself... I always find that there's something very angelic about that 

 Brad:  You sit on the jury for some international guitar competitions. What's... I don't know if I want to say the biggest mistake, but something that you see a lot of the young competitors doing that you would advise them to maybe approach it a little differently? 

Maria: Well, I actually dislike competitions because of what it often does to young people. I’ve heard people who've played so beautifully and given so much when they played, and who have later written to me and said, "What did I do wrong?" because they hadn’t received a prize. I have answered saying, "The only thing to focus on, and to want to do when you're sitting there, is just to play as though you're in a concert. Never mind the competition at that moment, because this is not what music's about. It's not about sitting there and being better than someone else. No, at that moment, the music demands everything of you; just perform it as you want to give it to an audience in a concert. Nothing else. If you're giving it and thinking of being judged, you're not giving it the right way. There is no joy for you. You want to communicate the same way as if you are giving a concert. 

We have to think this way, otherwise competition becomes something ugly. I was brought up with graded examinations. You measured yourself against yourself. You'll ask, "How did I do with that? Have I progressed? Has my music become better? Have I become more fluent? Am I more expressive?" You don't think of anyone else; you just measure yourself by yourself. It's the healthiest way to advance. When you are a young person, competitions sometimes have to be a part of life, unfortunately. I would rather have festivals where people come and say, "Oh, that player is interesting. I think I'll get him for a few concerts." Of course, in the competitive world today, it's doesn’t work like that, but it would do, in an ideal world 

 Brad: Tell us about your new piece, the Simple Song of Hope.  

Maria: Yeah, that came at a low moment, and so often in my life, I feel that I have a guardian angel, at least one, working all the time. Like all of us due to the Corona Virus, I'm missing all the festivals, missing all the people, and friends, I was quite low. I had the operation where I couldn't speak for a while, and it took a long time for my voice to come back. So, my playing was different, and I was really low. 

Then this solo came to me, and I sat for a long time. I sat very still and listened to it, and it just flowed. It flowed through my head. I have a very good shorthand so I could write it down very quickly. I thought, this is great. One of the simplest things I've ever written, It's pieces like this that I really treasure. It just flowed, like a message to everyone seemingly, and I was thinking, I'm in the same boat as so many people at this time. Maybe that’s why it came. It just seemed to be a, "Come on. We'll get through this." 

The solo had been there, I think, for four days. Quite naturally, then, it turned into a duet. Marvellous, I thought, and now this is going to be for everyone who wants it, for now. I have just sent it to anyone whose wanted it. I'm sitting here not being able to do much for anyone, and I thought, well that's a nice thing to give, give some music, and I'm just very happy with it. 

I thought it might be the very last thing that I compose. I've been so lucky to have so much music flying through my head since the first piece in 1976. After the first piece, I was so happy and I remember thinking, I don't care if I never write anymore. . I didn't expect things to happen the way they have over the past 40 years. It’s wonderful to have written so much music that people seem to really like. I am just so thankful. 

Yes, and I have said this after every piece that I've written. Last piece... Wonderful. Every time. I just don't try to write again. It's not my business to try and pull things out if they're not there. You know, I'm 72. I feel I'm tired. And I think probably my brain, such as it is, is slowing down. And I want to be able to think more about being human and about life and to pray more for other people. To listen to people playing, I think is wonderful, but also not to worry about being creative anymore, because I've been given so many things. 

 Brad: What advice do you have for us young artists during this crazy time that the world is in right now? 

Maria: That’s a difficult question! Who am I to give advice? But I’ll try. So: If you do have a chance to give a little bit of your art, even just to one person, do it. I’ve seen many young artists doing that already! We've been on the edge of annihilation so often, and we'll get over this thing, though it is extremely tough at the moment and to be optimistic is difficult. I’m finding that too. An artist can at least say: "I have my hands; I have my head. I can spend the time on getting better on my instrument. I can work on learning new things. I can open up a new kind of music to get to know." To learn at a time like this is also a great kind of therapy, because it can help to relieve the sadness and worry a little. 

It’s an awfully stressful time for most performing artists. If one is financially struggling, it's very hard to concentrate on one’s art. If one has the good fortune to have a family who can help, or to be with as well, that’s very good. As far as just getting through the days and weeks is concerned, perhaps it’s even a time to think of learning some new skill or other. For myself, I have started writing about my time in China. I’m learning to compose words rather than music. In the past I have had little to do with the written word – apart from reading. So now 

I'm learning to deal with this new skill, and with some horribly difficult German grammar while I'm at it! 

If  0ur skills don't grow and advance, they go backward This is something that every player, is afraid of. At a time when we can't be giving our music for other people, giving concerts, we can use the time to find different ways to work and practice. Of course, it is always a great experience to learn a new piece or technique. And to suddenly find: "I've never done that technique that particular way. It works better that way!” When we have a lot of time on our hands, as during this difficult period, it’s good, as I am finding, to be able to play through pieces very slowly indeed, just listening to each note and discovering once again what single notes can do. 

Re listening, I've often told young people, if you're going to learn a new piece on the guitar, do take care to listen to the end of notes, because a lot of young people will play quite well, but the end of notes often seem to be...not there. We pluck the string and the action in the hand is finished, So maybe we're not listening so intently to that note any more and are more concentrated on the next note. As a result, the note is often cut short because the left hand has mirrored the action of the right and released the note. Being aware of how each note is ending is something that one can practice when there is time - and peace in one’s surroundings! - to play slowly, listen carefully, and be aware of the longer action in the left hand. 

Record yourself as often as you can, and listen to the end of the notes, and be critical about that, because fluency on the guitar is the most difficult thing. And to be fluent depends greatly on what I’ve been talking about: the end of notes being listened to as intently as the beginning of them.