Episode 200: Max Richter

Rick Rubin (0:00)

JZ in 8

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Streaming next weekend on HBO in North America and on MUBI, everywhere else.

Max Richter (1:13)

I've been looking for new ways to tell stories, like new colors for the palette. So all through the 18th and 19th centuries, the orchestra gets bigger because they invent new instruments, the brass section gets bigger, the winds get bigger, more strings.

The piano keyboard gets longer, the longer Beethoven lives, he wants more.

Bach was a pioneer of so many things. And if you look at his organ music, his organ music is all about like new colors and enlarging like the emotional potential of the instrument. It's also like heavy metal. Like every Bach organ piece, doesn't matter what key it's in, it's got a bottom C in it because that's like the biggest sound in the organ. And you can feel it in the writing. It's a lot about sensation actually, kind of physical sensation. Obviously, it's amazingly put together and the sound point is incredible on everything, but it's also about physical impact.

Rick Rubin (2:16)

How different was organ music pre-Bach?

Max Richter (2:20)

A bit different. I mean, you've got sort of bookstahood and people like that, and sort of slightly earlier. But I think what's amazing about Bach is that he sort of puts it all together.

He sorts out all the tuning systems, so we can play in like all 12 keys properly. He organizes all of his disparate kind of materials which are around kind of before him. Yeah, he's extraordinary.

Rick Rubin (2:45)

Did you always approach music with an open palette?

Max Richter (2:49)

Yeah. I mean, I think we become musicians because we fall in love with music, right? That's why. You don't fall in love with one thing, you fall in love with the whole thing.

So for me, I always felt like the differentiation between pop music and classical music or electronic music, classical music. I just felt like those separations were not real. They were just imaginary constructs. Because people aren't like that. People aren't in boxes. We're a spectrum. We're a sort of continuity across our affections, our enthusiasm, things we love, things we don't love. I kind of always thought, yeah, this seems weird to me. This idea that thou shalt not use whatever that instrument.

And so when I was a kid, I was interested in classical music. That was, in a way, going back to when I was three. I fell in love. I had a kind of a lightning bolt moment. But at the same time, I was always listening to what was going on in pop music as well.

Rick Rubin (3:58)

Classical music has been a thread from the beginning for you? Yes.

Max Richter (4:02)

I have a few memories from when we still lived in Germany. So that was before I was, well, probably I was in my third year. My parents were musicians, but they had a few records.

And hearing this record of the Bach double violin concerto, that kind of fused with the sensation of sunlight sort of falling in through the window. And hearing this amazing melodies, and having this intuition that the melodies were amazing, but there was like a governing principle, there was like a grammar which was making them affect me the way they did. And I became like passionately interested in discovering what that was. You know, what is that secret code that makes these sounds add up to something more? Yeah, that was it for me, really.

Rick Rubin (4:52)

You can play two simple phrases. And one, if you never heard it again, you wouldn't think twice. And another one sticks in your head and creates some sense of emotion in the body.

Max Richter (5:03)

Yeah.

Rick Rubin (5:04)

How does that work?

Max Richter (5:05)

Well, it's a mystery, right? I mean, it's funny, you know, because at various points, you know, especially like when you're younger, you think, I understand this music thing. You know, I've got it. I know what's going on. But actually, you know, I've been doing this for decades now and it becomes more mysterious all the time.

You know, I know how many encounter point work, I know how things work. But there's something really magical and spontaneous in the way a piece of music can affect you. Something will speak to you one day in a way which it hasn't before.

Rick Rubin (5:39)

Are there any unbreakable rules in music?

Max Richter (5:43)

No, I don't think so. I don't think so.

Rick Rubin (5:45)

You're free.

Max Richter (5:46)

Yeah, I think music is, I mean, it is a boundless space, right?