There is no other single individual that has had more to do with the look, sound and feel of the Dressage Musical Freestyle than Alie Schoenberg. His ‘designer kürs’ are used by many of the superstars of Freestyle, and he is the man who put together the most famous freestyle of them all, Anky van Grunsven’s Song Sung Blue freestyle.
Alie recently visited Australia. He took time out for this exclusive interview with The Horse Magazine….
How did you become involved with making Kürs?
“I was a rider myself, and I studied music when I left school – but my parents decided I should do something ‘serious’ so I was a public servant with the German government for twenty eight years. Then following a heart operation, and serious back problems, I left government service and I had plenty of time. So I picked it up again…”
Who was the first rider you made a freestyle for?
“The first rider was a Grand Prix rider from Holland, Bert Rutten, he lives in my neighbourhood, and he said ‘Alie, you are a musician, you know how to deal with a horse, can you help me?’ So I started. My first World Cup freestyle was in 1986, for Anky van Grunsven, then she had her first horse, Prisco. Then I have helped riders like Gyulla Dallos and Aktion, Sven Rothenberger, I worked with Sven and Bo at the World Cup Final in Hollywood, then with Weyden at Atlanta.”
Perhaps your most famous freestyle is Anky and Bonfire’s Song Sung Blue Kür, can you describe how that piece was born?
“It was really quite easy. I had made another Kür for Anky and Cocktail, a very nice Spanish freestyle, and I thought she would compete at the WEG in The Hague on Cocktail in the freestyle. Suddenly they changed their plans and said, ‘we’ve got to take Bonfire’. Bonfire had never been a freestyle horse because he always got so tense. I was very surprised.”
“Bonfire’s movement and the whole picture were totally different from Cocktail. Just a couple of days earlier I had received some new music, including the Neil Diamond symphonies. When I heard the Song Sung Blue, dumm, dumm, do, I thought it would match Bonfire very well because he is really strong in passage and piaffe. He is very rhythmic and very regular – but I also warned Anky that it was kind of dangerous, if you are not exactly in the rhythm, it looks bad. But if you want to become a World Champion then you have to take some risks!”
“We kept coming back to this Song Sung Blue theme, started with passage piaffe, then something else, back to passage/piaffe, back to the theme. We kept coming back to it because when it worked well it was the part that really gave you goosebumps…”
Which comes first? You’ve picked your theme, now do you work the choreography to show off the horse’s movements and fit the music around that?
“It’s sometimes this way, sometimes that. Sometimes music offers certain movements and ideas. When the music gets big, this is always the opportunity for an extended trot or canter. With Bonfire, we combined it. Anky and Sjeff had some ideas, I had some ideas with the music. It was a lot of work, we came together very often, I had a little piece to add, they had a little piece to add, and that is the way to succeed.”
“The Kür must be trained very often. If you go to the theatre, they work very hard just to give a good show. The riders work on their piaffe/passage, their horse’s movements for the Grand Prix, of course they have to, that is the basis – but when it comes to the Freestyle part, they just play the music, do it once or twice, and say ‘that’s okay’.
“That’s not the way to do it. In the Freestyle you should know every metre of the choreography. If you get a little before or behind your music, and you know your pattern and your music very well, then you always have the chance to correct it, cut a corner or make it a little wider. You should know the pattern and the music very very well in order to be able to play with it.”
“This is what made Anky’s Kür so special, she had trained it maybe 200 times, she knew every inch of the arena, and she knew every tone of the music. She said to me once, ‘I can’t hear it any more’. At that stage, when you can play with it, you can concentrate on your riding – you don’t have to listen with one ear to what’s coming, then there is something that comes off the rider and the horse, and it jumps over to the public. This is what gives you goosebumps.”
On his visit to Australia the world’s most successful maker of freestyles, took a professional interest in the Saturday night freestyle program at the CDI. Alie Schoenberg is a very polite and cultured man, but he found it impossible to contain his amazement at the deficiencies of what we were assured is a brand new sound system at Horseworld.
“I always try to sit on the long side so you get a better view, and on the side I was sitting, the sound system was terrible. I don’t know what is wrong but it wasn’t good for the paying public…”
“What isn’t very nice, and we saw it at the CDI, is when the music changes very often. There should be a flow in the movement and also a flow in the music. Adding short pieces to each other is not very attractive. It’s the same with the technical riding part, you don’t do a little bit here, a little bit there – keep the whole thing flowing. Before you start riding you have to think very carefully, make your pattern and try to find what we call recognisable lines, like doing things in the mirror, if you do it in one place, go to the other side and do it again. It is attractive for the spectators and for the judges. It’s very very important that the whole pattern should be recognisable – if you have a flow in your pattern then you will get a flow in your music too.”
Do you use the music as you find it on a CD, or do you alter it with a synthesiser?
“I personally hate synthesised music. There is no change of colour, synthesised music usually is cold, and I don’t like cold music. I write what I want, then I go into a studio with some musicians and we play it. But right from the start you have to find music that is matching from one part to another. I try to stay in the same colour of the music. On an international level I don’t think you can just make it with home equipment – the standard at the international level gets higher every day.”
Were there any things you liked about our freestyles at the CDI?
“Oh yes, when the last competitor (Rachael Downs and Yardley Charisma) entered and saluted, this piece of music I liked, it was actually sweet, but then when she started riding it was BOOM! The difference from one part to another part was a little rough. I always try to build it up to a highlight and what I thought it missed was that a freestyle should go up and down in curves, an up and a down. All the riders tried to do a lot with colour, and there were no phases of rest, where everyone can take a deep breath, and then you build it up again. Even on a technical side, you should give your horse a rest as well.”
“With the winning horse if you had taken more ‘sweet’ instruments, like violins, you would have had a totally different picture. It’s a young lady, there could be more feeling instead of this Boom Boom… this hard, sometimes very aggressive music. Okay it matches the movement of the horse, not always but very often, say in the passage, when the horse looks very powerful. Okay you can do this, but not during the whole test. You must do it for a small piece, then try to find something that makes it lovely. Sweetness, texture, up and down….”
At the beginning of the World Cup finals, one rider wanted to bring her own live musicians to accompany her? Would that be a good idea?
“Not for the World Cup but for an exhibition. Pick a city and the top riders and an orchestra, that would be fantastic… and give the money from the performance to charity.”
Is there another freestyle left to compose that is going to be more memorable than Song Sung Blue?
“I think I have some music at home, I’ll keep it, and wait, and if I find the right horse…”