Q. How did Mr. Anderson become interested in conducting rather than going into any other form of music?

A. Well, I was interested in both conducting and writing, both of them, I guess I always was. I also did playing, as Mr. Laskey could tell you, I played for a good number of years here in Boston. I played double bass, tuba, also piano. I was an organist. But I enjoyed conducting better than playing and I also like writing best of all, so that's what I do - for the most part now. You have to decide on one thing or another I've found, you can't do everything, so you try to figure out what you're best at and spend most of your time at that.

Q. As an artist has a favorite painting, do you have a favorite song?

A. I think that's the most common question I'm asked, probably everybody else is asked the same thing. One composer was asked what his favorite composition was, he said "the last one I wrote", meaning that's the newest, he doesn't know it as well as the others, the others he's heard over and over again. As far as I'm concerned I have no favorites at all. I think they're all good or else I would have thrown them in the waste basket, I wouldn't have put them out. My family doesn't think any of them are good. The trouble is they hear them so much, they hear them from the very beginning when I'm sweating the thing out, working it all out, so finally by the time the thing comes up, we get our first recording and I play it over, they say, oh don't play that old thing again.

Q. Do you wait for an inspiration or do you say that I'm going to write a tango and make it blue and then do it?

A. I was down in Washington recently and Hoagy Carmichael was there and he stood up and was telling about his various songs and he said, "you know", he said, "a good many years ago" he said, "I sat down one day and said to myself, I think I'll write a piece called 'Stardust' so I won't have to work again for the rest of my life." Well of course everybody laughed because it's ridiculous, you don't do anything like that. All you do is write music that you think is good. I think you probably mean working method, that is, if I deliberately set out to do something. A lot of things I've done, since they're descriptive like "Sleigh Ride", for example, started with an idea. I had the title about the same time I had the idea. I was undecided whether to call it "The Sleigh Ride or "Sleigh Ride". I decided "Sleigh Ride" would be better, that much I remember, because it was one summer, there was a heat wave. With that idea to start on, with the idea of Sleigh Ride I then wrote the music to go with it. "Blue Tango" was just a melody that came up and it happened to be in tango, and because of that little blues figure in there I called it "Blue Tango".

Q. Would "Saraband" be by any chance influenced by 18th century compositions, the Bach Suites and so on?

A. Yes. Well it is a sarabande in that it's in 3 with the main stress on the second beat, only I updated it. I doubled the tempo, instead of 1, 2, 3, it was 1's, 2's, 3's, that's with an off-beat. So actually you might say it's a modern adaptation of the old one, but it certainly is influenced by, it's supposed to be a sarabande like all the rest of the sarabandes, maybe it's not as good as the Bach ones.

Q. How long do you spend on one composition?

A. That varies, all the way probably from a day or two days to three or four years. I say three or four years because, because I've got one idea and one title that I've had around for three or four years, I've tried to write the music to go with it and I haven't done it yet, because I haven't been able to get it satisfactory. But it all depends on how it works out. Sometimes it comes very easily. I remember "Plink, Plank, Plunk!" was easy to do. I had to remember that because I had a deadline, I was going to record the second album and I had two or three weeks to go and there was an eighth of a side yet to be done, and I got the idea of the title and it didn't take me too long after that to finish it up. But others I've kept around, and then changed. "Fiddle-Faddle" I spent four months on and I rewrote four times; the one you know is actually the fourth one, and three other versions before that. Unless I'm really convinced about it, I don't put anything out, but wait around and mull it over a week or two, and then you go back to it again fresh, and if you're still enthusiastic about it, fine, but if you're not, you'd better not put the thing out and let other people not be enthusiastic about it. You should catch it yourself. In other words, you have to be your own worst critic, and doing that, it may take quite some length of time before you actually get a composition finished up.

Q. Have you ever considered writing lyrics to your songs?

A. I've been writing lyrics for a long time. I quit about two years ago when I found out that I couldn't write lyrics as well as I could write music and decided to do one thing well and not two things bad. I had about three or four things kicking around. I did years ago. When it came to setting lyrics to my own music, I decided I would spoil a good job, so I got Mitchell Parrish to write the lyrics. He's written lyrics to "Syncopated Clock", "Sleigh Ride" and "Blue Tango", and also "Belle of the Ball", we just finished that.

Q. What made you take a Scandinavian language -- for your doctorate?

A. I've always been interested in languages. When I was in high school I was president of the French club; I've forgotten a lot of my French now, but when I was an undergraduate we had to take languages anyway if you majored in music; you had to have French, German and Italian, and in addition you had a large number of electives and I got interested in Scandinavian languages. I had Swedish at home when I was a small boy and I learned it that way, and I was interested in learning the rest. I thought I was going to teach and I thought I would rather teach languages than teach music; so therefore I came out with a Ph.D. in the German Department, majoring in Scandinavian languages. I'd gotten all the course requirements, waded through old high German, middle high German and three years of old Icelandic and stuff like that, and finally changed my mind again. It came in handy during the war though, because I was sent up to Iceland as a translator. If you can call that a good break.

Q. "Blue Tango", it took you four months to write, then you record it, they record it in three minutes, how do they do that; how do they break it down so it only plays three minutes to play a record?

A. Well it takes me four months to write, the piece is still three minutes long. They don't have to, I write it three minutes long. All these numbers are written that's the regular length that they're written. They vary anywhere from about two minutes to a little over three minutes. "Serenata" turned out to be long. We came out three minutes and 40 seconds, and I had to make a cut in the thing when I recorded it. Victor, they let the Boston Pops run the whole 10-inch side, let them run three minutes and 40 seconds, but Decca didn't want to do it because we started to cross the label, and when you get down in the middle you know the grooves get small, that's where you get your distortion and that thing, so they didn't want to, so I had to make a cut in that, but they're all about the same length. Apropos of that, we learn in music history that it took Brahms 15 years to write his first symphony. And that only goes for about 35 to 37 minutes. In other words, it took him 15 years to mature to write his first symphony. It might be a month or two before one particular number is matured. It takes only three minutes to play it. You're not working all the time at it, understand; I mean you go bats. You work along and you try for a couple of days or so and pretty soon you can't get any ideas, the best thing is to quit and turn to something else. As a rule, I'm writing on three or four numbers at one time, so finally when one gets set, then I make a sketch, and say, okay, that's it, and then start the score.

Q. How many instruments do you play yourself and what are they?

A. Let's say that I used to play piano. That's the first thing I took up. I had piano lessons same as a lot of you did, as a child, and I never practiced. But I did a lot of playing, because I liked to play, but I didn't like to practice. Well, it turned out that I really didn't like being a piano student. But the instrument that I really became interested in was the organ. I took that the most seriously of all. When I was in high school my father gave me a trombone because he figured when I got to college I could play in the band, which I later did. So I started playing trombone in the high school orchestra and they had an old bass hanging around the place, and I got interested in that from seeing it at the Boston Pops. I used to sit up on the second balcony there, look down and see all these bass players, and I kind of took a fancy to the bass. So since they had one there I asked if I could borrow the bass and learn it. so I did. Later I studied bass, and I played trombone in the college band for four years. After that when I started playing in orchestras in Boston I played double bass mostly, I changed from trombone to tuba because when you play bass professionally you have to be able to double; sometimes on one job, for example, you may be playing double bass, you may be playing tuba with a larger orchestra and they may have another string bass player and they want you to play tuba at three or four concerts; I used to have to bring both. That was quite a job, it took two trips from the car. You can only carry one at the time. I also played accordion for a short time; probably a short time is just about the right time to play an accordion.