The first thing on my to-do list when I moved in was to cleanse the house, in the energy sense. I loved the place, but the previous occupants had split up and there was a cloud of sadness hanging in the air, and I got rid of that. I was like a witch: I went from room to room with a bowl of smouldering sage, smoking the bad energy out of every corner in the room. When I’d finished, the atmosphere was clear and fresh and the house was ready to become my home. That was ten years ago now, and I’m still delighted at the close ties I have to the place – I hope it likes me too. I came here with my family in September to teach composition at Harvard University in Boston. Our son was allowed to choose which area we were going to live in. He was fourteen, which is an important time in young people’s lives. So we figured he should first choose which middle school he was going to attend and then we would put down roots nearby. My husband, the composer Steven Takasugi, was pretty taken with the photos he saw online. He called me, really excited: »I’ve found our house!« But I wanted to see the place first. And then I came upon a poster of Philip Glass in the hall. I’m not a massive fan of Glass, but it was a good omen: this was a place of music!

For me, this house is more than a house. It’s intertwined in the trees and bushes outside. It’s both permeable and protected. Sometimes I meditate at its central point. I’ve read that something wondrous can happen if you do that: you can have this sensation of branches growing out of your body, up and out through the roof and then arching down to the ground and into the soil, like roots. That’s how you develop a profound link to a particular place. Unfortunately, I don’t meditate nearly enough, but I still enjoy the peace and quiet in the morning. As soon as I’m up I go down to my office on the ground floor and check the computer, to check everything’s ok, see how my family in Israel are, friends around the world, my son, who’s left home now. Often, though, I just stand there and look out of the windows, these lovely big muntin windows. They’re going on a hundred years old and much too thin for the northern winter. But we’d never put new ones in!

Light filters through winter cherry outside Chaya Czernowin’s house. In the composer’s words, she couldn’t live or compose if she were not in communion with nature. © Chris McIntosh

 

I love the light they let in. It has a unique quality, shimmering and ethereal, yet very physical. Actually it’s this light that is my place of serenity. In the spring and summer it filters green through the leaves, layers and layers of leaves, changing every minute. And I just stand there looking and looking and looking.

Later I work upstairs in my room at a table without a computer. That’s where I do my composing. I wrote HEART CHAMBER there. In that piece the sound pervades the room from all sides, moving on through it, not unlike it does here at home. At night, when everything’s quiet, noises are easy to hear; they come in layers, too. First you have the various types of cicadas close by, then the birds. Further off there are the cars, but they don’t bother me. The noise they make is kind of a blended sea noise, quite soft and comforting.

I couldn’t live or compose if I wasn’t in communion with nature. I’m her pupil; she teaches me so much. I often go out and take photos on my smartphone, pictures of grasses and dewdrops. Once I was sitting in my car during a storm and filming the way the leaves were whirling around and dancing in the wind. The way they moved was both logical and magical. A lot of parameters were combining and creating the movement, but it wasn’t something you could analyse. It was as if the leaves were writing signs in the air, signs that it was my task to decipher. I was imagining them as sounds, with rhythm and pitch and all the other aspects. Not that I’m trying as a composer to transpose images like that into sound.

Sheets of music in Czernowin’s studio. For her compositions she looks for the outrageous. © Chris McIntosh

 

Rather I ask myself what I’m feeling here, what I find interesting. And when I get a hint of an idea, I go after it like a detective, following leads into unknown spheres. I’m looking for the outrageous in my work, looking for risk. I wouldn’t see any point in doing what I do if there wasn’t an element of daring in it. Sometimes when I’m tired or a bit sad in the evening I drive to a lake near here, Crystal Lake. I think of it as a kind of forward outpost of our house because it’s hemmed in by vegetation as well. Most people you see there are on their own or with one other person. I’m guessing they’re looking for peace and quiet, like I am. Trains pass by in the distance and the poignant sound they make gives me pangs of wistfulness. But it’s comforting to sit there on the bank. It’s a poetical spot.