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Feature Story: Composer Eric Funk
An Interview with Eric Funk
For a classical composer, writing an opera or symphony is considered a pinnacle of achievement. A large multimovement work that can last up to – and sometimes more than – an hour, is a significant undertaking, requiring months or even years. Most composers wouldn’t normally take on a project of that scope without financial backing or a commission from an ensemble. So the fact that Eric Funk has composed ten symphonies without any commissions is remarkable in itself. Without an external prompt, what drives him to compose these large-scale works?
“I wanted to start digging into symphonic form,” Funk explains. “I love symphonic writing. I’ve written 172 works – five operas, 10 symphonies, concertos, etc. I love the fullness of a large orchestra and all the options you have with that many players.” Working within the form and structure of a typical 19th century symphony’s four contrasting movements, Funk explores the sonic possibilities of timbre (orchestral color) and dramatic arc, choosing from an almost endlessly variable array of sounds and colors. “I think if you call something a symphony you have a responsibility to attend to the forms that were used,” he explains.
Funk, who was born in Deer Lodge, MT in 1948, grew up in a large and formidably talented musical family. In a 2018 interview, he recalled, “My parents were both professional musicians, so all of us kids were also. We really didn’t have a choice … we were like the von Trapp family. We had uniforms, we sang as a choir, each of us played three instruments in different combinations, and we’d do these fundraiser concerts for my dad’s professional choir who was touring in Europe.” As a young man, Funk studied composition with Czech composer Tomas Svoboda at Portland State University, where he earned an undergraduate degree and worked on a doctorate. Funk later studied privately with composers Sandor Veress and Krzysztof Penderecki, the latter chosen specifically and somewhat paradoxically because Funk admired him greatly as a composer but didn’t especially care for his music.
After teaching in in Oregon and Texas, Funk came home to Montana in 1985, and has been presenting a wide range of courses on music and creativity at Montana State University’s School of Music since 2002. In addition to his busy teaching and composing activities, Funk is the artistic director and host for Montana PBS-TV “11th & Grant with Eric Funk,” the Emmy Award-winning showcase for Montana musicians from all genres.
In March 2023, the Bozeman Symphony will present the world premiere of Funk’s Symphony No. 6 “Apocalypse: Phoenix Rising,” which grew out of Funk’s response to the September 11 attacks in 2001. “The idea is that things
My music reflects this landscape ... every time you look around, you’re like,
fall apart in the first three movements, and in the last movement I pull it back together – that’s the phoenix rising section,” says Funk. “It has to do with human impacts on the earth.”
Funk, who is currently working on his tenth symphony, says all his symphonies are connected; the first five form a pentalogy called “Beyond Time.” “I’m suggesting life on earth is incomplete without humans on it, but we need to live consciously,” says Funk. Although the initial impetus for “Apocalypse: Phoenix Rising” came from a specific terrorist attack at a specific moment in time, the overall themes of destruction and rebirth continue the conceptual ideas Funk explored in “Beyond Time.”
While watching the attacks unfold on television that sunny September morning more than 20 years ago, Funk began to hear music emerging in his mind’s ear. That music became the basis for a threnody, or a lament, what Funk describes as the “tragic section” in the first movement. “The second movement is kind of eerie and haunting in a threatening way,” Funk continues. “It has a spiky ostinato underneath, the intention being to create the foreboding nature of an impending apocalypse.” The closing movement, “Phoenix Rising,” features a chorus singing James Agee’s poem “Sure On This Shining Night,” which Funk says is a description of Elysium, the ancient Greek mythological concept of Paradise. Paired with the expressive nature imagery of Agee’s poem, Funk also includes the English Renaissance composer John Dryden’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Funk was particularly drawn to the words, “And music shall untune the sky.”
Like many composers, Funk thinks and feels most intuitively through music. “Music is my language; I’ve been hearing music in my head – that I was aware of – since I was about three.” This inner music is not triggered by an outside stimulus, nor is it an earworm (repeating fragment) of pre-existing music that gets stuck in your head, something most people experience at one time or another. Funk’s inner music is unique to him. “Once you realize that what you’re hearing isn’t a signal that’s external, you start trying to figure out a way to grab it, poke it out on the piano or guitar or something,” he explained in a 2017 interview with Steven Harris-Weiel on the podcast You Are Admirable. “I think every one of us is born an iPod, and we’re full of original information. If you can tap into it, it’s just there.”
Montana itself is an essential component in the sound of Funk’s music. In 2012, Funk remarked, “In Europe they tell me, ‘Your music is so big.’ I couldn’t compose the music I do if I didn’t live here.” Montana’s expansiveness – physically, biologically, and spiritually – gives Funk the creative room he needs to express the music inside him. “My music reflects this landscape, all the way from the subtle lighting of eastern Montana over by Miles City, and the Hi-Line, where I lived from 8th grade through the junior year of high school,” said Funk in 2018. “So those subtle places of Glacier Park, which I just love, to this beautiful Gallatin Valley, the space, the altitude – it’s just magical. Every time you look around, you’re like, ‘Wow, and I live here.’”
The Bozeman Symphony will perform the world premiere of Eric Funk’s Symphony No. 6 “Apocalypse: Phoenix Rising” in Willson Auditorium on March 25 and 26, 2023. For more information, go to www.bozemansymphony. org/poulencsgloria
