Artan Hasani

What does music mean to you personally?

For me, the music is the best way to express what it sounds in my head, and what I cannot express with words.

Do you agree that music is all about fantasy?

No, the music is not a fantasy. The music is real. More we believe in music, more we are accepting the reality. The music is like the words, it can make the person happy or sad. In music, the combination of certain notes can make a person to be happy or sad.

If you were not a professional musician, would would you have been?

I am a big fan of painting. My preferred painter is Jackson Polock. If I would not been a musician, I would definitely be a painter, but an abstract painter.

The classical music audience is getting old, are you worried about your future?

I think that there is lot more to be discovered about classical music. My music is in the beginning of its growing and I believe that after some years it will be appreciated much more than now.

What do you envision the role of classical music to be in the 21 century? Do you see that there is a transformation of this role?

I think that music in the 21 century will be much more influenced by Jazz harmony and native rhythms but the electronic equipment will be used more and more, but hope they will use them more creatively than they did till now. I think that the modernism is mostly focused only in breaking the rules but more we break the rules, doesn’t mean that we are more contemporaneous. There are a lot of different ways to express the true face of the 21 century.

When I say that classical music is searching for new ways or that the classical music is getting a new face, what would come to your mind?

I think that the Impressionism is not finished yet and it has more to say. The 21 century music must go back a little bit and to find the gaps between Impressionism and dodecaphony.

Do you think that the classical musician today needs to be more creative? Whats the role of creativity in the musical process for you?

The musicians must always be creative if they attend to not be forgotten. The role of creativity in my musical process is to find new ways of expressing what I feel. I am mostly focused on harmony, and from the harmony I draw the melody. My advice is that we must not treat rhythm as a mathematical home work.

Do you think we musicians can do something to attract young generation into the classical music concerts? How will you proceed?

The music from Hollywood movies it is very much appreciated by all and I think that the classical concert repertoire must contain more themes from movie soundtracks .

Tell us about your creative process. Do you have your favorite piece (written by you)

My favourite piece is called “The Moon” (a string quartet).

I was very astonished about the fact that one side of the moon is always hidden from our sight and we can never see the dark side of the moon but we always see only the bright side of the moon. This was my inspiration to write a piece called “The Moon” and I decided that the piece must be divided in two sections ( the bright side and the dark side).

I decided that the first section must reflect the bright side of the moon and I have used more consonant chords for this section.

The theme is made from three intervals 5,4,1 and the piece is based on the modification of these intervals which sometimes are used in retrograde, inversion, inversion of the retrograde, augmentation etc…

For the second section (the dark side) I have used more dissonant chords. The section begins with long notes which precedes the appearance of new material and in the end we can clearly hear the theme from the first section ( but with harmony changes).

We, Moving Classics TV, love the combination of classical music with different disciplines: music and painting, music and cinematography, music and digital art, music and poetry. What do you think about these combinations?

Mixing music with painting, is the best combination in my opinion. The music score is a painting in black and white, we just have to add colours. Every instrument has its own colour but we must find the right colour for the right instrument.

Can you give some advice for young people who want to discover classical music for themselves?

Just give some time to Eric Satie…and definitely listen to the Moving Classics channel regularly.

Now it is a common practice in the media to talk that the classical music is getting into the consumption business, do you agree? We are speaking about the supply and demand rules and how to sell your “product” in your case your compositions. How do you see it?

Yes I agree and I think that there are some social network pages that give the opportunity for the composers to present their work (Moving Classics is one of the best) but the best way to sell the product is to write music for special occasions or projects ( music for movies, advertisement etc).

Do you have expectations what regards your listeners, your audience?

My audience loves to hear the real music and not an experiment based in a perfect mathematical order of notes – that sound very bad in the end.

What projects are coming up? Do you experiment in your projects?

Improvising… As Stravinsky said, composition is a selective improvisation. Experiment with chords – I always try to find strange unused combination of notes that sounds good. I also experiment with musical form structure – recently I have used the architectural structures of objects adopted for musical score.