on the page 2012
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In this publication we have included selected essays that provide a deeper insight into some of our established, emerging and legacy composersthrough their own, their interpreters’, or distinguished musicologists’ voices.We hope you enjoy the journey through the world of Universal Music Publishing Classical: our composers come from all over the globe, areworld citizens, and we are committed to making their music heard throughout the Universe.TRANSCRIPT
RICORDI
MÜNCHEN
CASA
RICORDI
DURAND SALABERT
ESCHIG
RICORDI
LONDON
EDITIO MUSICA
BUDAPEST
HIGHLIGHTS OF SELECTED COMPOSERS FROM OUR CLASSICAL CATALOGS • UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING CLASSICAL: GIVING MUSIC A UNIVERSAL PERSPECTIVE
Please contact our promotion team for any
questions, perusal scores or recordings:
Casa Ricordi, Milan
Editions Durand – Salabert – Eschig, Paris
Ricordi Munich
Ricordi London
Editio Musica Budapest
Universal Music Publishing Classical
Santa Monica, California
© Universal Music Publishing Classical, 2011
Printed in France on Chromomat,
a Forest Stewardship Council certified paper.
Design: Anna Tunick (www.atunick.com)
Editor: Silke Hilger
2
Table of conTenTsForeword .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
PÉter eötvös on GyörGy KurtáG.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
ConduCtinG FranCesConi. An interview with Susanna Mälkki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
the return oF Moby diCK & LuLu. Two new operas by Olga Neuwirth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
baCK to the Piano. An interview with Nicolas Hodges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
the searCh For a voiCe. Ricordi London composers 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
disCover, enCouraGe, ProsPeCt. An interview with the art ist ic director of hcmf// . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
new FroM aCross euroPe. UMPC Acquisit ions and signings in 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
what MusiC has to say about nietzsChe. An interview with Pascal Dusapin on o Mensch! .. . .32
“reaL-tiMe”, a Modern ChaLLenGe. An interview with Phil ippe Manoury & Pierre Morlet . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Four Quartets by Fabio vaCChi ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
essentiaL PoPPe ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
andras szöLLösy ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
donizetti’s Le duC d’aLba by GiorGio battisteLLi .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
GiaCoMo Meyerbeer CritiCaL edition ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2012 worLd PreMieres ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3
The prominent globe in the Universal Music Publishing Classical logo is a very meaningful symbol. Universal Music Group consists today of a
thriving record and publishing business with more than fi fty offi ces throughout the world.
Therefore it should come as no surprise that the roster of our composers is as diverse and multi-cultural as their publisher’s name suggests.
For example:
In this publication we have included selected essays that provide a deeper insight into some of our established, emerging and legacy compos-
ers through their own, their interpreters’, or distinguished musicologists’ voices.
We hope you enjoy the journey through the world of Universal Music Publishing Classical: our composers come from all over the globe, are
world citizens, and we are committed to making their music heard throughout the Universe.
Antal Boronkay, Managing Director, Editio Musica Budapest
Silke Hilger, International Promotion Director, UMP Classical
Cristiano Ostinelli, General Manager, Casa Ricordi, Milan
Reinhold Quandt, Managing Director, Ricordi Munich
Nelly Quérol, General Manager, Durand - Salabert - Eschig, Paris
Liza Lim is an Australian of Chinese
descent, lives in the UK, and is published
by Ricordi Munich, London and Milan.
Oscar Bianchi is Italian, lives in Amsterdam,
and is published by Editions Durand in Paris.
Samir Odeh-Tamimi is half Israeli, half
Palestinian, lives in Berlin, and is published
by Ricordi Munich.
Wenjing Guo is Chinese, lives in China,
and is published by Ricordi Milan.
György Kurtàg was born in Romania, is a
French-Hungarian citizen, lives in France, and
is published by Editio Musica Budapest.
Dai Fujikura is Japanese, lives in London, and
is published by Ricordi Munich and London.
The hoMe for coMPosers froM across The Globe
4
5
PHO
TO ©
Ká
lmá
n G
ar
as
You are one of the musicians whom Kurtág regards as the most
important and authentic living performers of his works. The strong
professional and personal relationship between you is demonstrat-
ed not only by first performances of significant orchestral works but
also by dedications such as those of …quasi una fantasia, the Double Concerto, the Homesickness movement of Hipartita and two pieces in
the Games series. How long have you known each other?
I can’t say exactly, but certainly our acquaintance dates back to
my student years, to the beginning of the sixties. Kurtág at that time
hadn’t begun teaching at the Budapest Music Academy, yet somehow
he belonged there and was “present’, mentally and physically. He was
two decades older than us, and we students of composition kept a
curious eye on his work and opinions. His personality and intellectual
radiance had a powerful influence on us.
In the seventies all this developed into mutual professional empathy
and friendship when, together with Zoltán Jeney, Zoltan Kocsis, László
Sáry, László Vidovszky and Albert Simon, we founded in Budapest the
New Music Studio which, in the following two decades, played an
important part in the evolution of experimental music in Hungary.
Among the “elders” it was perhaps Kurtág who best understood what
we were engaged in at that time. He listened to our concerts, knew
our works intimately, and indeed our pieces served as inspiration for
him too, as is reflected in the “homage” movements of the Games
series written for us and about us. We reciprocated with a jointly com-
posed work, Hommage à Kurtág, composed for his fiftieth birthday.
As a conductor, when did you become involved with Kurtág’s work?
From 1979 I worked in Paris with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Sylvain Cambreling premiered Messages of the late Miss R.V. Troussova
with that ensemble, but before long I too was conducting the work
more and more frequently. That was the first Kurtág work that occupied
Bartók Seminar
and Festival
Szombathely,
1989.
by tünde szitha
a conversaTion wiTh PéTer eöTvös abouT GyörGy KurTáG
6
me very seriously. Later, however, I conducted virtually all his chamber
and orchestral pieces worldwide. I remember what a lot of work I did
correcting the Troussova parts, clarifying the characteristic “Kurtág”
style of writing, which reveals the inner freedom and emotional
extremes of Kurtág’s music, which despite its unfamiliarity neverthe-
less with time becomes comprehensible to musicians.
Reading and interpreting Kurtág’s scores confronts every musician
with peculiar and difficult tasks, both technical and intellectual. It is
no accident that the best performers of his works are musicians who
have worked a lot with him personally or have been his students.
Kurtág’s scores are special because the performing instructions
regarding tempo, tone-color, note-hierarchy and dynamics appear in
them as if they were precise comments on an interpretation exist-
ing in his imagination. His scores are reminiscent of the scientifi-
cally precise notation used by the folk music researchers Bartók,
Kodály and Lajtha, which for every note convey the fine shades
of intonation and articulation of the peasant singer’s performing
style. It is interesting, however, that as composers Bartók, Kodály
and Lajtha did not make use of this method of notation: they wrote
down their works in a manner adapted to musicians brought up
in the classical performing tradition. Kurtág’s idiosyncratic nota-
tion is unusually brave even today, or rather it indicates that he
has found the most appropriate method of notation for his own
musical style, which in a certain sense forces performers to ac-
commodate to his music and to that end widen their repertoire of
expression. The powerful effect of Kurtág’s art unfolds of its own
accord when his works are played with sensitivity and openness to
their special demands, and a musician who senses this becomes a
dedicated performer of this music.
Through studying and conducting his works I came to realize that
it is not enough to analyze his scores for myself; I have to become
their interpreter, and I have to develop a method that enables me
to mediate a dialogue between these very individual score images
and the musicians. For example, I vividly remember the difficulties
I encountered in the rehearsals preceding the 1988 Berlin premiere
of …quasi una fantasia. Kurtág took part in those rehearsals, and the
excellent musicians of the Ensemble Modern, thoroughly experienced
in every field of West European contemporary music, had to face the
realization that with Kurtág interpretation of the written notes and
performing instructions doesn’t work in the customary way, and that
in order to give an authentic performance of his works it is necessary
to be familiar with every gesture of his music and also, to a certain
degree, its cultural roots.
Has Kurtág’s music influenced you as a composer as well?
Very strongly, but not in the stylistic sense. It is rather its freedom
that has influenced me, and its virtual “unstructuredness.” Scores writ-
ten by composers who compose in a strictly structured form tempt
one to the sort of analysis that reveals the composer’s way of thinking.
Kurtág’s music is not of that kind. I don’t look for the “structure” in it,
because that would contradict its basic nature. It would be like locking
a wild animal in a cage. Of course it has its own laws, but what is most
important are the processes taking place, the imaginativeness of the
ideas and their emotional expressiveness. From a composer’s point of
view the spontaneity of Kurtág’s music has always captivated me; in
fact at the same time it has definitely liberated me. Just one example:
my Windsequenzen, which I wrote for Kurtág’s fiftieth birthday and
which was composed in every detail within a strict system, I made use
of as the basic material for my orchestral work entitled Chinese opera,
but there I dared to allow these same musical ideas to be imagina-
tively “free.” For me this marked
a change. Although I don’t be-
lieve there is any stylistic similar-
ity between his works and mine,
it was probably from him that I
learned the courage of creative
freedom.
You both come from Transylvania, both studied in Budapest,
yet the genre focal points of your activity as composers differ sig-
nificantly, probably not only because of the generation gap but also
because of the different way in which your careers have developed.
Neither of you denies, however, what a strong influence Bartók’s
music had on you, or that for you, folk music and Hungarian musical
traditions are important sources of inspiration. Does this mean there
are points of contact that still lurk in the background today?
These points are extremely important, not only in Kurtág’s music but
in Ligeti’s also. I always feel that Bartók, as a primary source, belongs
to the present, above all in vertical, harmonic relations. Kurtág’s har-
monies to my ear are always natural, listening as I do not only as a
composer but with a conductor’s ear as well. I hear the “hidden” funda-
mental notes in the same way he hears them, and the progression of
his harmonies too is always natural to me. Probably a foreign musician
not brought up on this tradition immediately senses that somehow we
speak a shared but not West European language.
How does the powerful expressiveness of Kurtág’s art affect you?
Although in Kurtág’s vocal works there are a lot of melodramatic or the-
atrical elements, he has only now, at the age of 85, begun to compose
the PowerFuL eFFeCt oF KurtáG’s art unFoLds
oF its own aCCord...
7
PHO
TO ©
bm
c / sc
Or
e © em
b
an opera. On the other hand, right from the start of your career the-
ater music has been important to you, and in the last fi fteen years
you have written nine operas.
In Kurtág’s music the emotional extremes are potent, which makes
his style markedly gesticulative. In his vocal compositions all this fre-
quently manifests itself as expressive textual depiction. He followed
this path very consistently from as early as the sixties, when this was
by no means regarded as progressive in West European composition.
I clearly remember, for example, in 1968 at the Darmstadt premiere
of The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza to what an extent the professional
audience of the day failed to understand this music, and that to begin
with this very intense system of gestures was alien even to Boulez.
But it seems that time has proved Kurtág justifi ed, since it is by this
means perhaps that his music has the greatest impact. The friend-
ship and untroubled cooperation in performance that has developed
between Kurtág and me may be partly due to the fact that expressive-
ness comes naturally to me as well.
Is his opinion of your works important to you?
Of course! Although with regard to this we are not in daily contact,
each of us always knows what the other is working on. Kurtág rarely
voices an opinion—and often only years later. But his comments are
always relevant and thought-provoking, and whether positive or nega-
tive they usually refer to technical aspects or methodology and are
always related to the questions he is mulling over at that moment.
What does it mean to you, as a conductor, to work with Kurtág? Do
you have joint plans?
Our shared work is nowadays provided by international concert life,
since Kurtág’s pieces have become part of the concert repertoire every-
where. In 2009 at the Carnegie Hall in New York we premiered his Four
Ahmatova-poems with Natalia Zagorinskaya and the UMZE Ensemble,
and since then I have conducted the work several times. In 2012, I shall
conduct Messages in Toronto and Stéle in Paris. The rehearsals at which
Kurtág himself is present are for me—and also for him—occasions for
extremely intensive work, and at the same time friendly, aff ectionate
cooperation.
Translation: Lorna Dunbar
Natalia Zagorinskaya,
Peter Eötvös, György
Kurtág and Ildikó
Vékony. Rehearsal
before the world
premiere of Four Poems by Anna Akhmatova (left).
—
First page
of Kurtág’s
Homesickness(right).
8
PHO
TO ©
sim
On
FO
wle
r
In the spring of 2011, Susanna Mälkki, undertook the daunt-
ing task of taking up the baton at the Teatro alla Scala to conduct
the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, an opera in
13 scenes, based on the play of the same name by Heiner Müller,
drawn from Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses. A brilliant exponent
of the Finnish conducting school and since 2006 musical director of
Ensemble Intercontemporain, Susanna Mälkki, still in her early for-
ties, is perfectly at home on the podium in front of the world’s most
prestigious orchestras. Driven by a keen interest in the music of
today, she spoke to us on a sunny afternoon in Chicago about Quartett
and the music of Luca Francesconi.
You have been working with Luca Francesconi now for a number
of years. In 2007, before taking on the challenge of Quartett, you
conducted and then recorded for Kairos Etymo, Da capo, A fuoco and Animus. Then, in 2010, Francesconi invited you to the Venice
Biennale to conduct a concert featuring music by Berio and Romitelli.
Could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with Francesconi
from an artistic, cultural and human point of view?
Extremely rich and inspiring in every respect. I have chosen to per-
form his music a lot, because it speaks to me very directly. My musical
instinct is very strong and almost without exception it knows which
way to jump. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that Luca Francesconi
by MariLena Laterza
Susanna Mälkki
9
an inTerview wiTh susanna MälKKi
10
PHO
TO by
ru
dy
am
isan
O ©
TeaTrO
alla
sca
lahimself has had a background as a musician; he doesn’t
forget (or wish to avoid!) the input of the performer:
quite the contrary, his music actually calls for it. So I
imagine that it’s something he values, and, of course, I was
really honoured when he asked me to do the premiere of
Quartett. And then, if by “cultural” you mean the general
avant-garde framework, I certainly feel an affinity with his
approach, which is less rigid and less dogmatic than that of
many others. An artist must always “zoom out” and see the
bigger picture.
So how would you place Francesconi’s music both in terms
of the contemporary music scene and in terms of tradition?
It all depends on how we define “tradition.” Personally
I think that there are still a lot of dimensions to be discov-
ered even in so-called modernity… But yes, it is fascinating in
Luca Francesconi’s case, because, having the necessary com-
positional skill, he is able to use even the strictest modernist
vocabulary very well—if he chooses to (like in some parts of
Quartett, perhaps more on that later), but he never feels obliged
to. So there is definitely a little bit of a “mutant” in him too, in
my opinion, thinking of the theme he has chosen for the Venice
Biennale this year.
From your vantage point as an orchestral conductor, what are the
salient technical and stylistic features that you see in Francesconi’s
music?
If we start with three traditional elements—melody, harmony,
rhythm—whatever the order of their importance in the particular
musical context, I think they are all always still there, which is in itself
something that could be considered “traditional”, but, as the propor-
tions change all the time, the music remains fresh. As for timbre and
orchestration, well, that really depends on the piece. All in all there is
quite a broad range, with Ligeti-like microstructures at one end and
at the other big symphonic landscapes that remind me at times of
Sibelius! So I would say that he has a very large musical vocabulary.
This is what I would define as “writing techniques.” More interesting,
however, is to observe how these are used—or not used—in order to
serve the dramaturgy of the piece.
What type of relationship does the music establish with the text
and dramaturgy of Quartett?
Actually, I think that with this score Luca Francesconi has given a
complete interpretation of the play as he reads it. If you read the orig-
inal Müller text, there are very few markings apart from the spoken
words: no question marks, no exclamation marks, just words. Also, we
have to remember that any composer of an opera is also the dramaturg
of the piece as well, for the pace of the events is fixed in the score
(music happening in linear time which, compared to theater, is usually
quite strictly proportioned). I found very impressive Francesconi’s way
of giving musical “hints,” of making connections with different stories
or thoughts in the text, not necessarily in the form of a leitmotiv but
definitely something of the kind, suddenly triggering memories and
giving references. Some of the most moving moments in the opera for
me were just these. So there is definitely a deep psychological insight
present in the score. The other important thing to note is the use of
different kinds of music in order to highlight different “manners” of
interaction between the two personas, or to highlight the difference
between their exterior façade and their hidden vulnerable personality,
as in the “dream” sequences.
What contribution do the electronics and the technology make?
Luckily, from the performer’s point of view, music technology has
advanced at such an incredible speed over the last few decades that
most things in electronics can now be done in real time—as was the
case in Quartett too—and this is really revolutionary and fantastic,
because it means that the flexibility of time and timing is not limited;
the music can breathe just as it needs to, which is especially important
Quartett (left).
—
Luca Francesconi
(right).
11
PHO
TO by
ma
sOTTi
in opera where timing is everything! But what really
brings us to a completely different musical landscape
is the fact that the electronics can also vary the con-
ditions of the sound and manipulate the sound itself.
The sound can move in space, it can be transformed
and treated in hundreds of different ways. As a simple
example, the vocal line of Mme Merteuil was treated
with a harmonizer in a couple of places in order to
stress the line, the thought, to highlight it in the con-
text. This immediately gives us a new point of view,
or better, a new angle of hearing.
And also a new compositional approach to such
a highly historicized genre as opera?
All the important opera composers throughout history have both
used existing forms and added something new. And if you compare
the baroque opera scene today with how it was some decades ago,
we have now discovered, with new directors, that these old works
were actually really radical and still are! But of course it is absolutely
essential to have sufficient knowledge of the “genre,” just to be able
to manage such a big machine to begin with: renewing the tradition
is, paradoxically, only possible if you are very familiar with the tradi-
tion in the first place. Francesconi has that knowledge, and since this
foundation is so solid, he can add new features and do so very suc-
cessfully indeed.
I imagine that these novel elements in Quartett have involved dis-
tinct problems and led to particular interpretative choices.
As I said before, Francesconi’s music is very clear to me, so I never
actually even thought of having to make choices of interpretation: it’s
all there in the score! But then again, making all of this feel natural for
the others—helping the singers in their incredibly concentrated study
period, the musicians and the choir—that was, of course, as intense a
journey as it always is with new works. It takes time to digest things
that are completely new and at the same time very virtuosic, and we
had very little time!
Luca Francesconi has said that Quartett came out of a reflection on
the sense of identity, which is lost “in an infinite multiplication of
mirrors where nothing has value, in a nihilistic and tragic delirium
that can be seen as a metaphor of the whole of Western civilization
and […] of a destiny which seems to have deep repercussions for the
role of art today.” Do you think that in the context of the pluralism
that characterizes music today it is possible or necessary to try to
achieve a shared identity?
I wouldn’t say “shared identity,” because it is actually a beauti-
ful thing that we are all individuals and we should be allowed to be
that, but yes, sharing a cultural framework and, most importantly, a
cultural heritage will be a key factor if we want to sustain civilization,
or the arts, or contemporary music or anything of intellectual value,
really. Human memory is extremely short, individually speaking, but
collective memory and heritage are vast, and real culture is just that.
Responsibility comes as a consequence (I’m an optimist), but pluralism
is not necessarily a bad thing.
Ambiguity between the real and the virtual is by now a fundamen-
tal condition in our lives as human beings in the 21st century and in
Quartett this ambiguity is an integral part of the music, the visual
spectacle, the text and the dramaturgy. What are your thoughts on
all this?
I think—in the case of Quartett—that the use of all these different
“virtual” technologies in the production was something that in the end
made it easier for the audience to understand the different layers in the
existence of Merteuil and Valmont, their different mental spaces. The
multimedia component is not a game just to show off with but a tool to
open up new horizons. And let’s remember that the origin is to be found
in the play by Laclos, written centuries ago! Another ambiguity present
in Quartett is the one between public and private—a phenomenon that
seems to have always existed in society but there is no doubt that in the
21st century the nature of the mass media makes it a much more domi-
nant part of our lives…. It’s about manipulation on a mass level. This is
another good reason to keep the arts alive, to keep questioning all this.
Most thinGs in eLeCtroniCs Can now be done in reaL tiMe...this is reaLLy revoLutionary
12
neuwirTh reworKs Two classics
13
The Herman Melville of Olga Neuwirth’s reworking of Moby Dick
plays a key role in the psychodrama; aspects of the author’s own char-
acter are all too evident in his protagonists: the sociopath, Captain
Ahab, the gruff Bartleby and Ishmael, (who in this version of the story is
a woman, just as in the modern day 2010 film of Moby Dick). The central
character of Melville’s version of Moby Dick is Ishmael (a Hebrew name
meaning “outcast”) who survives to tell the tale of the destruction of
the Pequod. In the book it is Ishmael who is the observer and narra-
tor, seemingly able to hear his fellow-protagonists’ inner thoughts. In
The Outcast by Olga Neuwirth by contrast it is the
author himself (played by
an actor) who narrates,
exploring not just
the action which
unfolds
before us, but also reflecting on the privations of his upbringing and
battling with the erosion of his ego, caused by his declining recogni-
tion as a writer. Ahab represents his masculine side, a man who takes
a crew of men devoted to him to their unnecessary death, in pursuit
of a personal obsession. Bartleby too is a “man’s man,” resistant to
Melville’s control over his life and seemingly immune to Ishmaela’s
flirting. Ishmaela, one can presume, is Melville’s feminine side, an
aspect of the author’s exploration of gender roles further examined
in the posthumously-published Billy Budd. The narrator in the Melville
original instructs his reader to “Call me Ishmael” and admits he goes
to sea in an attempt to break his cycle of depression and an unhealthy
obsession with death. It is therefore paradoxical that “Ishmael” is the
sole survivor of the shipwreck.
In writing The Outcast, Olga Neuwirth sets a libretto created by the
screenwriter and playwright, Barry Gifford, who previously collabo-
rated with her on the opera, “Lost Highway,” and wrote the screenplay
for the eponymous film. This opera deflects attention away from
the role played by the androgynous Ishmael by taking
the form of an exploration of the psyche of
Herman Melville, who was
left penniless at the
by Miranda JaCKson
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age of twelve when his father died. Despite a good education, pro-
vided for him by other members of the family, he chose to run away
to sea and joined a whaling ship. His first three novels, recounting his
experiences in that world, brought him great success, but from that
point his popularity declined, largely because of his unconventional
tendency to explore the philosophical, political and social back-
ground to his novels. In The Outcast, the composer allows Ishmaela to
goad Melville into further self-reflection beyond the scope of Moby
Dick, including his relationship with his God, his portrayal of wom-
en in other novels, (most notably Pierre: or, The Ambiguities) and his
anger at the loss of his father as a child, but then the two characters
virtually merge at the end as Melville realizes it is time to end his fight
to be heard. The Outcast was commissioned by the Nationaltheater
Mannheim and will be given its world premiere in May 2012.
In 1957 in Frankfurt, a high-class call girl who slept with many promi-
nent businessmen was found murdered; no one was ever convicted
of her murder. She was a notorious figure, known for driving around
the city in an ostentatious Mercedes with red upholstery. A 1958 film
entitled Das Mädchen Rosemarie, (loosely based on her life, although
embellished with a fictional element) was made in which the protago-
nist sells secrets learned from “pillow talk” to French competitors of the
German businessmen who were her clients. This is the underlying con-
cept of Olga Neuwirth’s reworking of the story of Lulu. Alban Berg’s Lulu
was based on two plays by Frank Wedekind depicting a society “driven
by the demands of lust and greed.” Wedekind’s two plays, Erdgeist and
Pandora’s Box, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in the the-
ater at the turn of the 20th century because of the violence and break-
ing of sexual taboos he depicted. Berg died in 1935 before completing
the opera. Olga neuwirth has not only written her own completion of
the opera, but also written a new libretto which transports us to New
Orleans in the 1950’s and finally to a swanky New York apartment in the
1970’s where this African American Lulu finally meets her death. This
is the world of the film, The Cotton Club (1984), in which the talented
black women performers are seemingly accorded more power than the
Olga Neuwirth
15
average white woman, but are still subject to commercial exploitation
and collateral abuse by rich white men. Instead of being randomly killed
by Jack the Ripper, the clients of Neuwirth’s Lulu have a motive for her
demise: for American Lulu is a woman with the power to bring down
business empires by “insider trading,” which, incidentally, can carry a
higher prison sentence than murder in some states of the USA. She is
the archetypal siren whom men can’t help loving, but at the same time
love to hate because of her ability to exert more power over the most
powerful men in society than they can tolerate. 20th century America,
too, is a society “driven by the demands of lust and greed,” not to men-
tion the era of Black Civil Rights campaigns (which form the backdrop to
some scenes in the opera) and regardless of the gradual emancipation of
women during the period of this Lulu’s life. Much has been written about
the Freudian nature of Wedekind’s portrayal of his “earth spirit.” His Lulu
is in a position of power throughout his plays, destroying the lives of the
plethora of men who get too close to her flickering flame. But the wealth
and notoriety she initially gains do not bring her happiness and, at the
end of a long process of decline, she is fatally punished for her attempts
to abuse her abusers. In Berg’s Lulu, she is killed by a mass murderer
whose identity is still the subject of speculation today; in American Lulu
her murderer is unseen as well as unidentified. In neither version is Lulu
depicted as an attractive, charismatic, innocent free spirit, but rather as
an arch-manipulator. The turn of the 20th century plays can be read as
a moral tale of what happens to young women who are not demure and
submissive, but give free rein to their primal sexuality. The American Lulu
of the mid-20th century is perhaps more clearly an oppressed woman,
but she is still ultimately punished for her attempts to address the imbal-
ance of power between men and women. In Olga Neuwirth’s realization
of the Lulu story, lust and the lust for power both degrade and dehu-
manize most of the principal players, especially Lulu herself. American
Lulu has been orchestrated for what can be loosely described as a “Las
Vegas” band. It is a co-commission between Berlin’s Komische Oper, who
will present the premiere production in 2012, and The Opera Group who
will premiere it the following year at the Young Vic in London.
instead oF beinG randoMLy KiLLed by JaCK the riPPer, the CLients oF neuwirth’s LuLu have a Motive For her deMise: For [she] is a woMan with the Power to brinG down...eMPires
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eA synonym for excellence and virtuosity at the piano, the name
of Nicolas Hodges stands also for courage and tenacity in his artistic
choices and his remarkable career.
The British artist, now based in Germany, is active on the best
stages throughout the world and embraces in his programs the
“new complexity” composers as well as the Romantic generation.
In this exclusive interview, he gives us some insights into his admi-
rable commitment to contemporary piano music, from the works of
Georges Aperghis to Hèctor Parra through Pascal Dusapin and many
other key figures of our modern aesthetic.
How did you get in touch with Georges Aperghis’ piano music?
I knew the Récitations and few other pieces when I was at school. I
met Georges for the first time in the late 90s at the Southbank Center
in London where they
performed many pieces
previously unheard in
the UK, which made a
big impact. We met a lot
of other times, he heard
me play, and very soon I
played his music.
Patrick Hahn the mu-
sicologist writes about
Georges Aperghis’ music
for piano: “This music has
abandoned the blurred in-
toxication of impression-
ism.” Would you subscribe
to this statement, too?
It is a very interesting point. What Hahn is talking about is the sur-
face of Georges’ music. It is a good point, a musicological point in the
sense that it says something about the score—but in a way it doesn’t
really say anything about the “music.” To me, Georges’ music is all
about subterfuge in a way. If it makes very loud strong gestures, it isn’t
necessarily a simple statement. Georges’ music is very direct, but there
is nothing obvious about the actual meaning.
So which are, in your opinion, the very individual elements of
Georges Aperghis’ pianistic “pictures,” the main figures of his style?
It is very obsessive; it moves and stays at the same time. Technically
it is staying off and doing the same thing obsessively in one
place—without ever repeating itself really exactly. It is an obsessive
re-examination of the same material.
nicolas hoDGes on The renaissance of wriTinG for Piano
interview by eriC denut
Nicolas Hodges
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PPelTGeorges’ music is also obsessive in terms of color; it comes back
often to similar colors in piano writing, a lot of textural ideas which the
composer obsessively uses.
Your recording for Neos is dedicated to Georges Aperghis’ music.
Have you ever performed a concert fully dedicated to his music?
No, I’ve never done it. But it would be a very interesting thing to
do. Usually the programs mix contemporary pieces but it goes very
well with classical; in terms of his material on the instrument, it is very
limited, probably a result of his obsessions. Georges has a strong
relationship to classical music. He never does any funny technique.
Obviously in other ways, in terms of the essential idea of his music, it is
a million miles away from the classical style. Texturally it may be often
close but psychologically it couldn’t be further.
Would you say Georges Aperghis shares certain stylistic charac-
teristics with his “generation” in a broad sense—composers born
immediately or within a few years after World War II? Or is he rather
“outside space and time?”
Yes, indeed he is. I think Georges has done so many individual
things, even early in his career, compositionally and theatrically, that
he ended up very quickly being very individual. That separated him
from his “generational” colleagues.
Would you say that we are experiencing, mostly thanks to your
actions and those of your colleagues on stage, a new golden age of
piano music? Something even similar to the 1830s? From Ligeti to
Furrer, through Carter, Birtwistle, Rihm, Sciarrino, Chin, Aperghis,
Dusapin, Manoury…
Of course it is hard to talk in such big terms at this point. I do think
that people are writing for the piano in a very interesting way now.
The experiences in the 50s, 60s and 70s have been hugely important.
I would never want to lose that repertoire, on the other hand, people
have come back to what the piano does best and have really relearned
in a way what idiomatic piano writing is. They are trying again to have
a relationship with the instrument.
In the 50s-60s-70s, it is a horrible generalization of course, there
was a kind of scientific reappraisal of piano writing which meant that,
for example, the kind of pointillistic writing of Stockhausen concentrat-
ed on often very separate things, and the relationship between those
things, that they are not meant to be connected in the same way than
sometimes they must be. I think people are now coming back to the
connections that can be made.
To put it in a kind of bland, economic way: there is a lot of piano
writing decades ago when if the piano was not very good, if the instru-
ment itself was a poor instrument, cheap, it didn’t make any difference
in the performance, not at all.
Now it is very different: for ex-
ample, with the Dusapin Études,
this is especially true, because
they are so extraordinary subtle
pieces, to play them on a piano
which is not absolutely first class
is immediately perceptible. The
range of colors available to the
performer has to be as wide as
possible in those pieces.
Would you say the revival of
melodism in modern composition
contributed to this piano renais-
sance?
I wouldn’t put it like that—the
ideology of the melody is to me not one that really helps in this discus-
sion. It has to do with relationships and colors. In Stockhausen’s piano
music for example, very often there is a stratification of dynamics and
basically the most important thing is to keep the strata separate, where-
as now, a generalization again, for instance with the Études by Dusapin
there is a huge amount of information on the page about dynamics but
these are all interrelated and all these strata have to be joined.
Let’s go deeper into your view of this genre “Études.” Could you
imagine the 21st century to be, like the very last years of the last
century (with Ligeti, Chin, Dusapin among others) the “century of
the piano études”?
If this turns out to be the case, I will be partly responsible for that
since I just commissioned twelve studies from twelve different com-
posers! I did that because Ligeti has still a very strong hold and I really
wanted to bring other composers into this area. A lot can still be done.
The étude is a very interesting form since as we know the étude is as
much an étude for the composer as for the performer: using limited
means, restricted colors, and restricted materials is a challenge with
historical background.
Would you recommend composers to write their piano études at
the end of their career?
Some of the composers I chose for this collection are not really young
composers anymore, like Frédéric Rzewski, Michael Finnissy, Brian
Ferneyhough—but also artists like Luca Francesconi or Beat Furrer.
May I return with you to the genre which introduced our discus-
sion: the piano concerto. You have premiered many of the very latest
pieces written for this form. What is at stake there for the pianist, for
Georges Aperghis
(left).
—
First page of
Piano Sonata by
Hèctor Parra
(center).
—
Hèctor Parra
(right).
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the orchestra, for the audience?
Writing a concerto for piano is probably a huge challenge for a lot of
composers. It is such a historic genre, like the symphony. With contem-
porary concerti there is often a big challenge of balance. There is indeed
an essential diff erence between tonality and atonal orchestral writing: if
the orchestra is playing atonal music, or very dense, complex music, it
becomes, in a way, louder and the dissonances make it a lot harder for
the piano to come through. I personally fi nd the form fascinating.
Are there in your opinion piano concerti pieces from which
you could already say: “They will be part of the mainstream pia-
no concerto repertoire alongside Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms or
Rachmaninov?”
Just look at my repertoire list and you will fi nd the answer. If you
look at it, you will see that the range of pieces composed in the last
twenty years is much wider, in terms of ideas, styles, forms, than in the
19th century.
The saddest thing about it is that promoters so often don’t want
to do second or third performances. If you commission a concerto,
sometimes you can be lucky and the concerto is taken on by a lot of
people—but sometimes you are not so lucky, even if the premiere hap-
pened in a major venue.
Wouldn’t you say this has to do with the fact that a lot of musi-
cians, probably for very good reasons, don’t really “pressure” the
promoters? The competition is tough and you can’t, unless you
have become a kind of cult fi gure like Pollini or Argerich, allow your
competitors to ”override” you…
That’s absolutely true but I think Pollini is the right example. He has
always promoted contemporary music either performing himself or
programming it. He is someone we should not only admire but also imi-
tate because he brings contemporary music to audiences which would
never have heard it before and he uses his name to do that.
Your argument is correct but on the other hand, even if a soloist
would present a contemporary concerto he has previously performed
to an orchestra he plays with, the chances it will be programed are
rather small—ultimately it is the promoter’s decision. This is a pity
since a concerto is a very interesting medium, a medium that audiences
also fi nd very attractive; it is not abstract—a piece just for orchestra or
for the piano is much more abstract. Thanks to the theatrical interplay
between both parts it becomes chamber music writ large.
After the étude and the concerto, a third form is being “reborn”
recently, maybe the most abstract form in the piano genres: the
sonata. Last year you performed Hèctor Parra’s astounding Sonate for piano. In your opinion, what are the reasons that would cause a
young composer like Hèctor Parra to use a term with such a profound
historical background for the title of a work?
You know, many people think “this is just a title”—the same with
an “Étude.” So many things have been done under the title “Sonata”
that you can no longer say there are formal implications to the word.
In Hèctor’s case, there is a part of him which has a strong relation-
ship to the tradition, not just in terms of the title, but in terms of form,
of the sound, of the relationships within the piece. Choosing the title
“Sonata” is a perfect thing for him to do because it allows him to have
a very strong relationship to tradition and at the same time to fl ex his
modern muscles, so to speak.
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Ricordi London is fortunate to claim one of the most instantly rec-
ognizable voices in British composition—Graham Fitkin. One of several
British composers to be drawn in the early 1990s to American mini-
malism and postminimalism, he has stuck with it longer than most,
developing a style that is ear-catching, flexible and deceptively smart.
Subtle isn’t quite the word, but Fitkin’s music has a craft and surety that
are easy to take for granted but actually difficult to achieve.
The discovery of voice is a challenge for any artist; for composers the
situation is doubly complex because they must also contend with the
interpretive voices of their performers. Fitkin often sidesteps this issue
by working with his own nine-piece band, but in his K1.1 of last year and
his Cultural Olympiad commission for 2012, Track to Track, he has sought
ways of combining his ensemble with classical orchestras. In his Cello
Concerto for Yo-Yo Ma and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, performed at
the 2011 BBC Proms, he took another approach, creating space for the
soloist not by writing music of great virtuosity, but instead by turning to
the richness of sustained tone for which Ma is admired. His forthcoming
chamber opera (his first) for the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre is
sure to provide its own set of challenges and solutions.
When he talks about the Cello Concerto, Fitkin alludes to a broad,
underlying political program. The image he returns to is that of self-
determination versus a faceless bureaucracy. That is an image as old as
Kafka, but in another concerto, No Doubt for Midi harp and orchestra,
he takes a more specific line. The Midi harp, developed and built by
Camac Harps, allows composers to assign different samples to each of
its strings. In No Doubt most are set to normal harp sounds, but Fitkin
introduces a series of samples taken from speeches—by members of
the US administration—made in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of
Iraq. The sonic effect recalls the two string quartets by Steve Reich
(also politically charged), Different Trains and WTC 9/11, but Fitkin is
interested in the visual impact too. By having the instrument trigger
samples from the machismo of war he plays with the harp’s normal
place within our culture—as a feminine instrument of romance, peace
and heavenly beings.
Pianist and composer Rolf Hind has also been deeply involved with
the concerto form. He wrote his first, Maya-Sesha, in 2007 for himself,
and he is returning to it in 2012, giving the Dutch premiere in April
with the Dutch Radio Orchestra and James MacMillan.
Hind’s studies of Indian meditation have increasingly come to
inform his composition. Rather than a search for voice, it is perhaps
by tiM rutherFord-Johnson
21
The coMPosers of ricorDi lonDon in 2011
more true to say that he is interested in the search for the self. The
composition in 2011 of his clarinet concerto, Sit Stand Walk, for Stuart
King and CHROMA, was in part about finding appropriate ways to dra-
matise this musically.
Inspired by sketches for a planned music theater piece set in a
silent retreat, Sit Stand Walk possesses its own elements of music the-
ater. The three main movements refer to the three types of meditative
position; a fourth, “Open”, serves as a conclusion. Each uses a differ-
ent layout of performers. In “Sit” they are mostly offstage, in “Stand”
they gather, and in “Walk” they arrive at their final positions across
the front of the stage. But there are less visually apparent elements
of drama too. Through techniques of rhythmic layering that he is
developing, as well as an ear for highly unusual sound combinations,
he has found ways to characterise individual instrumental elements,
sidestepping typical expectations of forward momentum. The instru-
ments find themselves, in a state of meditative stasis beyond any
wider continuum.
Hind’s works are rapidly increasing in scale, indicating a new confi-
dence or fluency in his writing. Sit Stand Walk was his second largest
piece to date. 2012 will see the first performance, by Robin Michael,
of Original Face for cello and tape, which the composer calls a “mon-
ster” of a piece. But both will be eclipsed by the forthcoming accordion
concerto, The Tiniest House of Time. Written for James Crabb and the
BBC SO, and to be performed at London’s Barbican in November next
year, Hind jokes that it is “rapidly turning into the Busoni of accordion
concertos!”
Graham Fitkin
(left).
—
Rolf Hind
(right).
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Ian Wilson is known first for his concert music, confirmation of which
may be found in his major new work for chorus and orchestra, The stars,
the seas, commissioned by the Ulster Orchestra Society and to receive
its first performance in Belfast on February 17th. A commemoration of
the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, The stars, the seas responds
not only to scenes from the Titanic’s tragic story, but also to the way in
which the ship and its passengers live on in our minds.
Yet in recent years Wilson has diversified into music theater, elec-
tronics and improvisation. In these ways, much of his recent work
has involved accommodating the voices of others—from improvising
performers to sampled interview material. In The Book of Ways (2011)
he collaborated with the saxophonist Cathal Roche, using his improvi-
sations to create material which would, in turn, become the basis for
semi-improvised group compositions. And, despite its conventional
title, the Double Trio (2008) combines classical and jazz performers
with extracts from interviews conducted with residents of Glencullen
in Ireland. His other major project for 2012 will be his most unusual yet:
a work of experimental music theater based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Much remains unconfirmed, but it will involve world-class improvisers
in Phil Minton, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener and Cathal Roche, as well
as the black metal vocalist Attila Csihar, of Mayhem and the ultra-heavy
Sunn O))).
But of all Ricordi London’s composers, it is perhaps Jonathan Cole
who intrigues the most. Despite years of growing success and acclaim,
in 2006 he ran into a profound compositional crisis—a crisis of voice—
and fell silent for two years. He reemerged in 2009 with burburbabbar
za, written for the London Contemporary Orchestra with whom he is
now associate composer. It couldn’t have been a greater surprise: the
beguiling textures and harmonic refinement of his earlier music had
been replaced by squeaking balloons, crumpled plastic bags and a
rough palette of instrumental noise.
Cole is still finding his feet with this daring new style, and new works
arrive at a cautious pace. Yet those that have, including burburbabbar
za, Ash Relics and Forum, his piece this year for the LCO, mark him out
as one of the most strikingly original and provocative voices in British
contemporary music.
Ian Wilson
(left).
—
Jonathan Cole
(right).
23
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) is the UK’s
largest international festival of new and experimental music and has
enjoyed a long relationship with our composers. We asked its festi-
val director, Graham McKenzie, about why the festival prides itself
on developing special working relationships with composers.
A number of Universal composers have been presented for the
first time in the UK because of hcmf//. Can you give a recent example
of a successful “discovery” and how that has worked for both com-
poser and festival?
Enno Poppe is I think a good example. We (hcmf//) have been instru-
mental in introducing Enno to the UK and have very much championed
The arTisTic DirecTor’s Many roles
an interview with GrahaM MCKenzie by eLaine MitChener
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his music in this territory. I was delighted to finally be able to present
Interzone in November 2010. It provided a fantastic opening to the fes-
tival and a performance that will go down in history I think as one of the
major Huddersfield concerts. Interestingly, Interzone was the first piece
of Enno’s that I heard—it was my introduction to his music. Just the
recording of course—without the visuals—but it was so strong and
direct in its message. It’s an astonishing and mature work! I was sit-
ting next to Christine Fischer from Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart at a
British Council lunch in Paris—it was the first time we had met—and
all through lunch she talked to me about Enno Poppe and this fantas-
tic piece Interzone. Later on she sent a recording. I believe this was in
2007—so it took us quite a few years to find a way to present the work.
It is a big piece and for us quite expensive of course, so you need some
time to find a way to put all the resources together. Also, I think that
when you are looking at making a considerable investment in present-
ing a composer’s work who may not be so well known in this country,
then it is prudent to think about other opportunities to introduce that
composer’s work to your audience in the first instance—to build an
understanding and momentum. The first concert of Enno’s music we
presented was in 2008 Knochen, Salz, Öl—a “trilogy” performed by
Klangforum Wien with Enno conducting. I love to watch him conduct—
he is very expressive and really draws you into his sound world. I think
the best performances of his works are always when he conducts him-
self! We have also presented Tiere sitzen nicht with musikFabrik—a
crazy work with over 200 instruments on stage, and Wald, a fantastic
work for string ensemble with Ensemble Resonanz.
What do you feel are the particular strengths of our catalog?
I think that at the moment UMPC has numerous composers with
strong individual voices. In recent times the festival has programed
works by Graham Fitkin, Dai Fujikura, Liza Lim, and of course Enno
Poppe. Last year we presented the world premiere of a new string
quartet by Oscar Bianchi for Diotima. Bianchi really is a rising star
of the European scene. He brings something quite different at
this moment, and he is certainly someone we hope to continue to
build and develop a relationship with for the future. We have also
profiled Fausto Romitelli with a performance of Professor Bad Trip
with the Icarus Ensemble which was incredibly exciting. His work
is not so well known as it should be and rarely heard in the UK. He
died so young—really a tragedy! The strength of the UMPC catalog
is the fact that you have in your roster composers who are quite
distinctive in their sound, but are also very driven and very clear
about how they want to develop their practice. As music publishers
however you could also look a little “left field.” There is perhaps a
criticism that publishers will look to a composer who they think will
attract commissions for a certain type of work—written for a par-
ticular type of environment. There is another group of composers
out there who are equally in demand—also very marketable if you
want to deal in those terms—but making work for a different envi-
ronment. They are multifaceted and equally comfortable writing a
piece for an orchestra or a traditional concert hall environment, but
also with gallery based work or in
new opportunities such as the
games industry. The younger gen-
eration of composers is more con-
nected to the live presentation
of music. If UMPC moved a little
in this direction you would then
really have a strong and radical
catalog that truly represented
the wide diversity of contem-
porary music practice.
In our discussion you men-
tioned an interest in encourag-
ing the creative development
of composers, their ideas and
their burning desire to push
musical boundaries—can you
explain further?
I think what we touched
on here was that I rarely approach a composer or ensemble with a
very fixed idea of what of their work I wish to program. I am much
more interested in working with them to further explore how they
wish to represent their practice at that moment—to genuinely
curate the program with them. I am also interested in the things
they genuinely have a burning desire to do at that moment—to
help them articulate their ideas—and then if there is artistic syn-
ergy between us—to try to facilitate those ideas and ambitions. As
the curator and artistic director of a large-scale contemporary music
festival like Huddersfield, I feel a responsibility to work in this way.
Sometimes this can be a lengthy process of discussion and listen-
ing. It’s also about trust and building relationships, and therefore it
can be some years before the work is fully realized. This leads me
to work with composers and artists across a number of years/festi-
vals. You can say that the philosophy of hcmf// is for the festival to
profile the composer’s artistic practice going forward and not to be
steeped in the past.
the strenGth oF the uMPC CataLoG is the FaCt
that you have in your roster CoMPosers who are Quite distinCtive in
their sound, but are aLso very driven and
very CLear about how they want to deveLoP
their PraCtiCe.
Graham McKenzie
(above).
—
Enno Poppe’s
Interzone at hcmf//
(right).
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Hèctor Parra
Hèctor Parra (born in Barcelona in 1976) studied at the Conservatory
of Music in Barcelona, where he was awarded prizes with distinction
in composition, piano and harmony. He received commissions from
many institutions (among others, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Ensemble
Intercontemporain, WDR, Klangforum) and was awarded the Siemens
Foundation Composers” Prize in 2011. He is the author of the widely-
noticed “projective opera” Hypermusic Prologue, about which Fabrice
Fitch, writing in the magazine “Gramophone” in 2010, said: “Of the
contemporary discs I’ve reviewed recently, this is one that undoubtedly
stands out. I look forward to hearing more of Parra’s work.” His work for
ensemble Caressant l’Horizon published under our Durand imprint was
premiered by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in November 2011.
uMPc acquisiTions anD siGninGs in 2011
27
Benoît Mernier
Benoît Mernier (born in 1964) is a Belgian composer and organist. He
is the author of the remarkable Frühlings Erwachen (after Wedekind),
which delighted the audiences of the opera houses in Brussels and
Strasburg. The Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie commissioned a new oper-
atic piece, La Dispute (after Marivaux), for the playwright’s 250th anni-
versary in 2013; undoubtedly an outstanding contribution to Durand’s
world-famous Franco-Belgian lyrical catalog (Debussy and Dukas/
Maeterlinck, Dupuis, etc).
Jean-Frédéric Neuburger
The image of the pianist-composer, so flamboyant during the romantic
period, is being revived through Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s exceptional
talent and work with multiple materials. Though he is only 26, the
young prodigy is already a very solid composer. Maldoror and Vitrail
à l’Homme sans Yeux for piano solo are two of the most striking recent
works in the genre, deserving a place in the Durand catalog next to the
recent works of Philippe Manoury.
Balázs Horváth—En route to a poetic synthesis
For Balázs Horváth (born in 1976) composing is primarily construc-
tion, a system of relationships between notes. On one occasion he gave
his own definition of music: “’Music for me means that I select notes and
attempt to create order for them in time.” Partly connected to this is the
fact that his works are characterized by a strong experimental tenden-
cy and a receptiveness towards the new. His career has been fortunate
Hèctor Parra
(left).
—
Benoît Mernier
(center).
—
Jean-Frédéric
Neuburger (right).
28
in that many of his pieces have been performed several times in differ-
ent ways and with differing interpretations within a short time of their
premieres. He has profited in recent compositions from the experience
of these performances. Horvath is also active as a conductor. Following
the example of his more senior colleagues – in particular Péter Eötvös
and László Tihanyi – he frequently undertakes to teach performers his
own and other composers’ works and conduct them, integrating the
experience he thus has acquired into his activity as a composer. In
2009 he started his own group of musicians specializing in modern
music called THReNSeMBle, of which he is both the conductor and
the artistic director. Balázs Horváth studied at the Budapest Liszt
Academy, graduating in 1999. In 2005 he earned his doctorate at
the same institution with a thesis on the spatial aspects of music
(The types of spatial music in the music history of the second half of
the 20th century; the presence of musical space in composition). His
early works were already marked by strongly intellectual and con-
ceptual features, and the subject of his DMA thesis was inspired
primarily by his experiences as a composer. Since then he has
returned in several works to the question of a composed space.
His thinking has been strongly influenced by his teachers at the
Academy—above all Zoltán Jeney and Andrea Szigetvári—as
well as the composers he has met at various master classes,
like Marco Stroppa, Louis Andriessen and Péter Eötvös. The de-
velopment of his own musical language and style draws from
many sources, ranging from the classic composers to jazz, HO
rv
áTH
© a
nd
rea
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while from the world of modern and contemporary music names to
be highlighted include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gérard
Grisey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann and Simon Steen-
Andersen. In recent times the influence of the works of György Ligeti
can be felt in his music.
Since his student days Horváth has taken part in various compos-
ers’ competitions, with outstanding results. In 2007 he was awarded
first prize at the international “’In memoriam György Ligeti” competi-
tion in Berlin with his composition entitled POLY. In 2009 he won
second prize in the orchestral music category of the New Hungarian
Musical Forum with his work entitled Borrowed Ideas, and in the same
competition in 2012 he won second prize in the chamber music cat-
egory for his (Tec)tonic and first prize in the orchestral music category
for his Faust Groteske.
The composer’s list of works contains more than sixty compositions.
The biggest group is made up of pieces for symphony orchestra and
various ensembles (many needing large forces). The majority of his
chamber works are for groups of one instrument, (e.g. clarinets, flutes,
saxophones or trombones) or ensemble groupings of instruments,
Horváth rarely composing
for the traditional classical
chamber formations. His
solo pieces have for the
most part been written at
the request of fellow musi-
cians. His electronic works
are typically of a study-like
character. Vocal works chiefly
figure at the beginning of
his career, and today Balázs
Horváth is primarily active in
the instrumental field.
In contrast to most of his
contemporaries, Horváth is not
active in the world of occasional
music (film, theater) and has composed no works specifically for the
theater. However, an interesting feature of his instrumental pieces is
the frequency with which he takes into account the spectacle of a live
performance, often prescribing theatrical movements and making use
of gestures outside the music, only visible to the concert audience. It
was in his set of vocal pieces Lines, words, letters (2002) that Horváth
first reckoned with the fact that a concert performance is of necessity
also a theatrical action. In the interludes of that work, he prescribed a
series of dramatic actions (“’dramatic episodes”). And in his From Miles
away for solo trumpet (2004) the soloist has to act out the “role” of
Miles Davis by reproducing his typical movements and gestures on
stage. In nearly all of his works written since then there occur simi-
lar dramatic and theatrical moments. In one of his most recent works
(Faust Groteske (2008-2011) there is even a role for multimedia, the
work being introduced by a prologue spoken by the composer recorded
on video.
In his use of instruments Horváth requires of his musicians versa-
tility, virtuosity and an openness to unusual sounds. His scores call
for traditional ways of playing alongside special effects doing away
with the usual traditions of the instrument. His sound world naturally
makes use of noises, and of chance encoded in special performing
instructions. His notation is very precise, at times unusually elaborate.
To notate his extended techniques he employs equally the signs that
have become generally accepted together with notational signs he
has created himself. Where necessary he assists the performer with
detailed explanations of the signs. Horváth ascribes great importance
to knowledge of the instruments for which he is composing, but his
works never give the impression of being just technical experiments.
Following the example of Lachenmann, the special sounds required
by Horváth’s compositions are not just for their own sake but conform
always to the order which the work concerned is creating for itself. But
whereas for the older generation (for example Kurtág or Lachenmann)
these possibilities are accompanied by a heightened expression, this is
not the case with Horváth.
Naturally, the experience acquired by the composer from the perfor-
mances of his works and from attending master classes, together with
his increasing activity as a conductor and coach, has had an influence
on the relationship between his music and its notation. This influence
is twofold, and partly contradictory. On the one hand his notation in
the past years has become more accurate and detailed, on the other
hand Horváth’s scores are now more lucid and economically written
from the standpoint of the conductors and players. In this respect an
outstanding example among his works is POLY (2007), which is full of
complex technical demands yet, in terms of the resulting sound required
by the composer, very accurately notated.
International interest in Horváth’s works has increased noticeably,
and recently several works for large forces have been heard outside of
Hungary, including Divergent (ISCM World Music Days, Zagreb, 2011),
Looking back (Göteborg, 2009), and POLY (New York and Tokyo, 2008).
The premiere of his latest work Assemblage – written for the Ensemble
Modern – will take place in Frankfurt.
Balázs Horváth
. . . he taKes into aCCount the sPeCtaCLe oF a Live PerForManCe, oFten PresCribinG theatriCaL MoveMents and MaKinG use oF Gestures outside the MusiC, onLy visibLe to the ConCert audienCe
30
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iThe music of Balázs Horváth is imbued with a passion for the search
for new ideas. But this does not mean his music contains no references
to other music, particularly contemporary music. The concrete quota-
tions arising in his works often lead to further associative and structural
relationships within a piece, as well as to works by other composers. He
never keeps these references secret, since his intention is not to evoke
the model of an earlier work, but to take it on further. A telling example,
almost to be regarded as his ars poetica, is the introduction he wrote to
Waiting for (2005), in which he lists in detail the earlier examples that
inspired particular moments of the work, from works by Luciano Berio
to László Tihanyi, Gérard Grisey to Pierre Boulez, Zoltán Jeney via Endre
Olsvay, to one of his own earlier compositions. After mentioning the
most important of these (music by Helmuth Lachenmann) he wrote of
the inner motivation for composing it – a sort of poetic synthesis: “’one
of the things I have tried to realize in writing this piece is to make all the
above composers belong to our circle for a short time simultaneously.”
—Szabolcs Molnár (Translated by Paul Merrick)
Daniele Ghisi
Born in Italy in 1984, Ghisi earned a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics
at the University of Milano Bicocca in 2006, and has studied composition
since 1997 under the tutelage of Alberto Colla and Stefano Gervasoni
at the Istituto Musicale “Gaetano Donizetti” in Bergamo, where he re-
ceived the 2007 Prix de Composition cum laude with full marks. He has
participated in several different seminars and master-classes, such as
the 2005 IEMA Seminar in Frankfurt with the Ensemble Modern, and the
2006 Royaumont “Voix Nouvelles” session. He returned to Royaumont
in 2008-09 for the “Transforme” session. He also writes music for the-
ater and dance. He has won several competitions and prizes (Concorso
“V. Bucchi”, “Rotary” Prize, “J.S. Mayr” Prize, “F. Donatoni” Prize) and
has received multiple commissions including, most recently, those
from the French Ministry of Culture, Divertimento Ensemble, Vortex
Ensemble, Royaumont and Texture Ensemble. His music is performed
at festivals such as Archipel, Biennale di Venezia, Rondò, MITO and the
Agora Festival. In 2008-09 he followed the Cursus en Composition et
Informatique Musicale at IRCAM (Paris), where he returned in 2010-11.
In 2009-10 he was composer in residence at the Akademie der Künste
in Berlin. In January 2012, Ghisi takes up a one-year appointment as
composer in residence at the Académie française in Madrid.
Daniele Ghisi began his collaboration with Casa Ricordi with his
piece abroad for soprano, ensemble and electronics, which premiered
on June 15th, 2011 at IRCAM’s Espace de Projections (as part of the
Agora Festival).
Matteo Franceschini
Born in Trento in 1979, Matteo Franceschini studied composition
under Alessandro Solbiati at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in
Milan. He went on to do further studies at the Santa Cecilia National
Academy in Rome under the guidance of Azio Corghi and attended the
Cursus Annuel de Composition et d’Informatique Musicale at IRCAM in
Paris. He has received a number of prizes both in national and interna-
tional competitions such as the Tactus (Brussels), the Guido d’Arezzo
and the Giornale della Musica – RAI. He has also received commis-
sions from the Filarmonica della Scala, the Venice Biennale, the Milano
Musica festival, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, the MITO Festival,
RAI, Agon, the Divertimento Ensemble, the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn
di Bolzano e Trento, the
Orchestre National d’Île de
France and the French State
(Commande d’État) as well
as from a number of other
prestigious international music
bodies. His works, conducted
by Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Pascal
Rophé, Gustav Kuhn, Ronald
Zollman and Arturo Tamayo,
among others, have been per-
formed in various international
festivals including the Venice
Biennale, the MITO-Settembre
Musica festival, the Società del
Quartetto, Milano Musica, the
Festival Traiettorie, Rondò, the
Unione Musicale, IRCAM, the Festival Agora, the Festival de Radio
France, the Münchner Opernfestspiele, the Operadhoy Festival, the
Nederlandse Muziekdagen, the Zukunftsmusik Festival, the Festival
för ny musik, the Prague Premieres, the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest
and the Harvard University festival. They have also been broadcast on
a range of international radio stations. He has composed works for the
theater, soundtracks for movies and multimedia installations, the
most recent of which (Luci Futuriste + La Guerra dei Suoni) won the
2009 Best Event Award (BEA).. He has presented his music at the
Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, at IRCAM, at
the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in
Milan, at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and at IULM University
in Milan. In 2010-2012 he acted as composer in residence at the
Orchestre National d’Île de France and at the Accademia Filarmonica
Daniele Ghisi
(top).
—
Matteo
Franceschini,
(bottom).
[tre Media] reCeived reCoGnition FroM the suisa Foundation For MusiC...with an award
“For its extraordinary enGaGeMent on behaLF
oF the CoMPosers oF switzerLand.”
31
Romana. Recently he received the title of Italian Affiliated Fellow of
the Arts (Musical Composition) from the American Academy in Rome.
His first monographic CD, Il risultato dei singoli, performed by the
Divertimento Ensemble, was released under the Stradivarius label
in April 2011. World premieres in 2012 include Zazie, a children’s
opera to be performed in February at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris
and a piece for children’s chorus and orchestra to be performed in
May at Teatro alla Scala. Since 2010 Matteo Franceschini’s music
has been published by Casa Ricordi-Universal Music Publishing.
Tre Media
Tre Media was founded in Karlsruhe in 1994 by Friederike
Zimmermann with the goal of publishing contemporary music, dis-
covering and publishing new composers, and working consistently
to ensure dissemination of their works. The publishing house has
distinguished itself particularly within the Swiss music scene, and
the company received recognition from the SUISA Foundation for
Music in 2001 with an award “for its extraordinary engagement
on behalf of the composers of Switzerland.” In addition, the cata-
log also includes interesting discoveries, work supplements and
additions by composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as
Bach, Schubert and Schumann.
In September 2010, the Tre Media catalog was taken over by
Ricordi Munich and transferred to the global Universal Music
Publishing Group Classical to be represented on a wider basis
throughout the world.
The catalog includes works by contemporary composers
such as Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Thomas Bruttger, Jean-Luc
Darbellay, Franz Furrer-Münch, Werner Heider, Noriko
Kawakami, Rudolf Kelterborn, Heera Kim, Mela Meierhans,
Madeleine Ruggli, Ernst-Albrecht Stiebler, Jacques Wild-
berger, Caroline Wilkins and Gérard Zinsstag.
In 2012, in addition to the world premieres of chamber
music and ensemble pieces by Jean-Luc Darbellay, Rudolf
Kelterborn and Michael Reudenbach, there also will be the
premiere of a new orchestral piece Taroq by Stefan Pohlit
at the Stuttgart Eclat Festival. In addition, the premiere of
Michel Roth’s chamber opera Im Bau will take place at
the Lucerne Festival.
32
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Pascal DusaPin on O Mensch!
33
There can be no doubt that
Pascal Dusapin’s long experience
with the stage has made him one
of today’s most distinguished art-
ists when it comes to issues such as
the relationship between text and
music, stage direction and composi-
tion, narration and musical drama-
turgy. We were therefore delighted
to have him talk about these subjects
last autumn in his new Parisian ate-
lier; they were particularly pertinent
at that time because he was preparing
to direct his highly-anticipated stag-
ing of his own Lieder-cycle, O Mensch!, based on poems by Nietzsche, which
premiered in November 2011 at the
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris with
Georg Nigl, baritone, and Vanessa Wagner
at the piano. Listening to Dusapin, we
feel convinced in our opinion that music
definitely has a lot to say about literature,
about Nietzsche and, last but not least,
about our world.
Pascal, would you remind us how your project O Mensch! began?
How I came to write O Mensch! is a slightly unusual story. I’ve always
enjoyed reading Nietzsche, whose work is full of particularly grand and
far-reaching themes. A small book of his poems was published in the
1980’s, and I discovered them a dozen or so years later; I remember
thinking at the time that one day I would set the poems to music.
As is so often the case, my lyric projects are conceived long before
they are ever composed. Then there came the day when I wrote Faustus,
The Last Night for the Berlin Opera, followed by Passion, both pieces
that featured Georg Nigl. A great friendship grew from our highly in-
tense working relationship. One day Georg said to me, “I’d like you to
write some Lieder for my recitals.” I immediately thought of Nietzsche.
Here was the perfect opportunity to set the poems to music for very
small forces, voice and piano. I discussed it with Georg while Passion
was playing in Amsterdam, and he agreed wholeheartedly. The project
was born, a score whose subtitle is “a non-rational musical inventory
of Nietzschean passions.”
O Mensch!, more than just a piece written for Georg Nigl, is an
attempt to answer one simple question: how can I do this thing that
I don’t know how to do? And why don’t I know how to do it? Because
it’s one of the most difficult things that exists. After having composed
six operas, some quite spectacular, O Mensch! is my way of saying I
am going to use the bare minimum: voice, naturally, and a piano. It’s
like something that’s been “dehydrated”: I remove everything and ask
myself, how can I tackle temporality and keep the lyric question as
close as possible to what I have previously done in my operas, and
what I hope to do in my future lyric projects…?
Speaking of which, there was the “warm-up” in Vienna when a few
songs from the cycle were presented in a recital. Did this then have
an impact on the writing of the piece?
Well, of course it was necessary to respect the wishes of the Wiener
Konzerthaus. Georg chose ten minutes out of the cycle and premiered
five short songs .
The cycle was premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in
Paris, a conscious decision on your part. What is your connection
with this extraordinary venue?
Les Bouffes du Nord has become an almost legendary venue today,
and a great many different artists are quite passionate about it. This
is partially due to its architecture but also because of its history with
Peter Brook. Needless to say, I’ve known the theater for quite some
time, but on top of it Georg Nigl had said to me, “if we ever put this
show on one day, I hope it will be at the Bouffes du Nord.…” The man-
agement of the theater accepted.
interview by eriC denut
Pascal Dusapin
34
The venue isn’t the only sensational thing about the show, there’s
also what’s on the poster: Stage Direction by Pascal Dusapin. Is this
the fi rst time that you’ve directed?
It’s not really the fi rst time, since I also staged To Be Sung myself.
This time, however, we’re talking about something very diff erent: the
desire here is to bring a musical score to the stage. The process is bet-
ter known to theater directors such as Joël Pommerat or Olivier Py,
who conceive their pieces as a whole, and whose staging becomes an
integral part of the writing. I basically asked myself the same question.
The choice of Nietzsche’s text was mine and I didn’t want to leave the
interpretation of it to any one else because, at heart, I consider it to be
my personal concern. So I decided to stage the score and I asked my-
self how I could embrace the entirety of the project up to and including
its physical dimension. When I proposed my ideas to Olivier Mantéi,
the director of the Bouff es du Nord, he was generous enough to take
the risk and accept the project.
Naturally the cycle could very well be directed by someone else one
day. What is certain is that once I have presented my own version, the
direction to take will doubtless be clearer. If another director is inter-
ested in staging O Mensch!, he or she will henceforth have a theatrical
key – even if they decide not to use it.
Could you describe for us some of the scenography and stage
direction that you have chosen for the piece?
To put on a staged production, I asked myself a musician’s ques-
tions. I thought about how I myself function when I am writing music.
For a composer, the act of composing, or advancing in time, consists
in “leaving behind” and accumulating the passage of time. The lis-
tener’s memory then shapes the time that is yet to come in a sort
of infi nite cycle that alternates between what lies ahead and what
has already passed. But how to proceed when the whole process is
visual? For the last few years I have been in the habit of working with
Thierry Coduys, a truly remarkable collaborator. This time I asked him
questions that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do
with images, or more precisely the “leaving behind” of images, those
Vanessa Wagner,
(left).
—
Georg Nigl
(center).
—
Manuscript page
of Pascal Dusapin’s
O Mensch! (right).
35
PHO
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that are created by the body and that will be “left behind” in memory.
We’ve developed a concept that utilises exceptional technology that
is complex in its handling but which nonetheless will remain discreet,
a highly unusual system of projection, a system of form recognition
for the singer.
Will Pascal Dusapin the director go so far as to put Pascal
Dusapin the composer in danger? Will he put singers in positions
that are contrary to the physiological laws of vocal production,
for example?
No, because the thing that is so wonderful about this project is the
collaboration with Georg Nigl – we both wanted to do this project
together and I would never do anything that would go against his grain.
I know what he can do and I know what he doesn’t like to do. But I also
know that if I explain how to do something that he doesn’t like to do,
then he will be able to do it very well…
After all your different experiences working with the directors
who have staged your operas, some of whom have been long-term
collaborators such as Peter Mussbach or Sasha Waltz, would you
say that their respective views and feedback has had an impact on
your composing?
When I wrote my operas, for some very diff erent musical forma-
tions, I always imagined what the staging would be like. In fact, my
operas are accompanied by a fi le of images that I give to the stage
director – not so much to indicate a path as to suggest a metaphori-
cal environment. Sometimes while composing, I simply know that the
director will need more or less space at a certain point. The problem
of course is that when you tell a director that there is extra space
somewhere in the play, he has a tendency to take it all! (I’m exagger-
ating.) It does mean that in some ways the connection is never really
made: we don’t always know what we’re talking about together. On
the other hand, this can lead to some really wonderful surprises. For
example, at the end of Medea when Sasha Waltz brings six or eight
airplane propellers on stage, each of them over three meters tall, and
stops the music to play the sound of a Boeing taking off , all to express
the torture that Medea is going through… it’s so powerful, so outra-
geous, that I am simply dazzled by such a strong artistic choice. So I
can also be quite fl exible…. But when a director changes the meaning
of a phrase by adding an additional element so that you not only
hear something else but also understand in a diff erent space, then
I see red….
You have produced a catalog ranging from “grand opera”,
to chamber opera, to experimental theater and now to a song
cycle that you’ve staged yourself. What new territories will you
explore next?
This coming year I will be working on a project that I fi rst began
in 1979. It’s a work based on a great German classic text and my
challenge will be to treat the problem of war. In my work this far, I
have always been interested in pain, in God, and this time I wanted
to handle a subject that would encompass those themes and more
specifi cally, wars between mankind. War has always been something
that I am utterly incapable of understanding; the small space I have
been given on this earth allows me to confront the question. In fact,
it’s not so much war that I don’t understand, as the savagery and
murder. Opera allows me to approach the subject, since it is a space
where the composer can confront the collective psyche. Opera can
“lift” the music to a point of absolute transport while allowing you to
say, through the text and literature, the things that you want to com-
municate. I would like to convey some of my worry about the world.
I naively believe that art is here to be vigilant, and that this vigilance
is more and more necessary.
36
37
Tensio, Philippe Manoury’s second string quartet, was premiered
in the 2010-2011 season at IRCAM’s Espace de Projection in Paris by
the Diotima Quartet, and has gone on to be performed on a number
of international stages. Manoury, who is the symbolic figurehead of
real-time electronic music, has written a piece that has been univer-
sally acclaimed as one of the most successful examples of the genre.
How does this piece fit in with the rest of the composer’s career?
How was it developed with the performers, in interaction with the
researchers at IRCAM and the composer? What new directions has
the piece taken?
These are among the many questions that we hope to answer in
our exclusive interviews with Philippe Manoury, who will take a ret-
rospective look at his numerous writings on the subject, and with
Pierre Morlet, the cellist for the Diotima Quartet.
PhiliPPe Manoury & Pierre MorleT
interview by eriC denut
Philippe Manoury
38
PhiliPPe ManouryPhilippe Manoury, we are accustomed to immediately associating
your name with “real-time” and its recent history. How did you come
to devote so much of your creative energy to this technique and its
associated technology?
For more than twenty-five years my thoughts have been preoccu-
pied, not to say haunted, by the invention that twenty-five years earlier
had so sharply divided the world of music: electronics.
My first contact with electronic music was in the 1970’s. At that
time in France, electronic music and instruments did not mix. Of the
many disputes that took place in the 1950’s, the most famous was the
breach between composers “who write” (chiefly Barraqué, Boulez and
Stockhausen) and those who relied on “experimental intuition” (rep-
resented by Pierre Schaeffer and the Group de Recherche Musicale). As
someone trained in traditional instrumental writing, I felt no particular
attraction to the possibilities offered by electronic music. The starting
point for me was when Mantra was premiered in Paris in 1973. I dis-
covered the rich potential in combining the worlds of instruments and
electronics that were to be found in what, even at that time, we could
call “real-time electronic music.”
It seems to me that combining the two worlds has never been an
easy process, has it?
It’s true that there was an element of frustration in my first at-
tempts, due to the difficulty in uniting these two modes of expression.
It was only at the beginning of
the 1980’s, when Guiseppe di
Guigno at IRCAM began con-
structing the first real-time syn-
thesisers, that I saw a possible
opening towards greater flexibili-
ty in terms of time. Electronic mu-
sic was freed from the rigid time
constraints imposed by magnetic
tape and the instrumentalist could
become his own “master of time.”
Over the course of the following
decade, I conducted a series of re-
search projects in collaboration with
the mathematician Miller Puckette.
The initial result, Jupiter, composed in 1987 for flute and electronics,
was the first work ever to use a score follower. Step by step I began a
sort of “search for lost time,” that of the music played by musicians,
as soMeone trained in traditionaL
instruMentaL writinG, i FeLt no PartiCuLar
attraCtion to the PossibiLities oFFered by
eLeCtroniC MusiC.
39
scO
re ©
du
ra
nd
which is continuous, organic and fl exible, and which I then tried to
reintegrate into the electronic music. In other words, I wanted to
endow synthetic music with the capacity to be interpreted.
Many of your compositions, in addition to the score that you just
cited, are important milestones in the world of contemporary mu-
sic, and in the treatment of real-time electronics with all its inherent
musical challenges and the specifi city of its technology. Since then,
you have also turned your hand to composing string quartets and
you have written two works, one of which includes electronics. What
were the challenges with this piece, entitled Tensio?
Tensio is probably the most experimental piece that I’ve written thus
far. The quartet puts to use a large number of new musical practices
that it was necessary to experiment with and to perfect: physical mod-
elling synthesis, interactive inharmonic synthesis, harmonic spinning
tops, and continual monitoring of the instruments’ tempo. Another
avenue of research was undertaken concerning acoustic descriptors
that, in the long-term, would allow a fi nely-tuned and stable analysis
of the instruments’ sounds in real time.
The fi rst part of Tensio presents an extremely mobile musical form,
allowing the real quartet to interact with the virtual quartet, entirely
made up of synthetic sounds.
The second part uses a new synthesis model based on the physi-
cal modelling of a cord stretched across a violin’s sound box. This
model allows the simulation of the pressure, speed and position of the
virtual bow on the imaginary cord. Here I have discovered some truly
surprising sound categories. In this section I have used a very inno-
vative aspect of score-following developed by the researcher Arshia
Cont at IRCAM: the continuous monitoring of the tempo. The electronic
events are registered on a score that automatically adapts its tempo
to the fl uctuating tempo of the instruments. The two perspectives are
thereafter united and merged into one continuous tempo that is con-
trolled by the instrumentalists.
IA
= 72nat pont
1
2
3
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3
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"
5 5
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arco
pizzord
4
pont
le plus vite possibledétaché
5 6
( )
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(pizz)9
IC= 60
arcoricochets
10
Alt Vl 1
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( = 60)
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ID = 72pizz
11
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D & F 15957
TENSIO
Philippe Manoury
© 2010 Éditions DURANDParis, France
pour quatuor à cordes
Tous droits réservés pour tous pays
Violon 2
Tous droits réservés pour tous pays
IA
= 72nat pont
1
2
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5 5
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5 555
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TENSIO
Philippe Manoury
pour quatuor à cordes
Violon 2
Tensio by Philippe
Manoury
40
PHO
TOs
© F
ra
nc
K J
uer
y
Pierre MorleT, DioTiMa quarTeT
What has been the Diotima Quartet’s experience with “real-time?”
Our experience is more limited than one might imagine, but it has
permitted us to explore two masterpieces: The Fourth Quartet by
Jonathan Harvey and Tensio by Philippe Manoury, which has been
unanimously recognized as a major work. The piece is undeniably
a success, both because it makes sense in terms of form, but also
because the use of real-time is optimised in the hands of a composer
who is accustomed to working with the most recent technology, and
therefore is capable of taking risks.
When Philippe Manoury discusses Tensio, he explains that it is
“his most experimental work yet.” It must have been a long and
sometimes difficult process for the quartet. What were the different
stages of your preparation and involvement?
I knew Philippe from the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique in Lyon
where he directed the class in composition. For all of us in the Diotima
Quartet, it seemed obvious that if we wanted to develop the string quar-
tet repertoire using real-time electronics, then he was the person best
The third part is a sort of interlude based on harmonic glissandi and
thus reabsorbs the “tensio” of the preceding section.
A new synthesis system arrives at the beginning of the fourth part:
the pitch of each instrument being played is analyzed, and serves to
construct complex inharmonic sounds whose density varies according
to the relationship between the instrumental sounds.
The fifth part reintroduces the grammar of generative sounds from
the beginning.
The sixth section ends this long development by introducing an
additional voice. A flurry of pizzicati in perpetual movement unfurls in
the heights, made up of the inharmonic sounds derived from what the
instruments are playing. Here, the instruments are the ones to engen-
der the “Inharmonies” which in turn generate melodic movement.
For the seventh section, I’ve used the principle of harmonic spinning
tops: the instruments project sounds that spin at a speed correspond-
ing to the intensity of the instruments’ sounds.
In your opinion, what are the most fertile fields of study for the
future of real-time electronic music?
There is still a great deal of resistance to the combining of acoustic
and electronic music into one common musical timeframe; a highly
opaque frontier divides these two very different ways of conceiving
time and has to do with the very nature of controlling tempo in music.
We know how to organise the various dimensions of pitch, tone, and
spatialisation in electronic music, but we are limited in terms of organ-
ising time in a truly musical fashion. Real advances have been made in
this field but the venture still has a long way to go.
Many composers still hold tightly to an old dream, that of creating a
method for notating music synthesis. How to represent the microtonal
evolutions with a system of coordinates in such a way that the voices
can be read? How to write all of the voices on a single “score?” To what
extent can traditional music notation be integrated, and how can it be
unified with a different type of notation if the more traditional means
are insufficient? The answers to all of these questions still lie ahead of
us. But it seems obvious to me that such a tool would resolve numer-
ous problems, especially those concerning temporal structure such as
changes and variations in tempo.
Left to right:
Pierre Morlet,
cellist, Vanessa
Szigeti, violinist,
Yun-Peng Zhao,
violinist, Franck
Chevalier, violist.
41
able to help us advance.
Once Philippe accepted,
he immediately sent us a
plan, one that was exclu-
sively devoted to electron-
ics, and explained to us
exactly what he wanted to
accomplish. That’s when he
talked to us about score fol-
lowing, which, at least two
years ago, was very much in its
infancy. A great many work sessions and a great many tests ensued.
When one isn’t accustomed to it, one might think it a waste of time.
But it mustn’t be looked at that way; those are the rules of the game,
the time must be invested so that the experimental can become func-
tional and begin to work.
How did the quartet perceive the presence of electronics? Did it
cast a shadow or was it an ally?
There was a progression in our perception of electronics the more we
worked on the piece. We learned how to modify the way we listened.
At the beginning, one makes a sound and, to sum it up, one barely
hears one’s own sound because the electronics take precedence. This
is not always the case. For us it simply meant spending time with the
composer and asking him, passage after passage: right here, what takes
precedence? Our sound or the one coming out of the speakers? Once
we had the answer, then we just had to listen, which is really only a
continuation of the work we do on a daily basis.
In the end, if you had to judge your impression of electronics, on a scale
ranging from jubilant to terrifying, where would you place the bar?
I would have to say jubilant, in fact that’s the word that best
describes the masterpieces we’ve just been discussing. It is imperative
that people performing on stage understand what they are playing. It
is not enough to enjoy the experience; they must know that the signs
they are playing make sense. The whole difficulty in working with elec-
tronics is that one doesn’t understand the signs right away. One must
become accustomed to it, and then work with the right people, find the
right intermediaries. This was the case with Tensio. It must be said that
Philippe was very easy to work with and very precise, very concrete in
his intentions. We knew immediately where we were going, which is
very important.
there was a ProGression in our PerCePtion oF eLeCtroniCs the More we worKed on the PieCe. we Learned how to ModiFy the way we Listened.
42
PHO
TO ©
Ga
ia m
enc
Hic
ci
a coMPoser of DuraTion anD TransiTion [vacchi] never oPeraTes by juxTaPosinG secTions. DoubTless This is why The lisTener is aTTracTeD by The uniTy of The whole which... MarKs each of The quarTeTs, whose TexTure is a vehicle for sensual seDucTion anD affecTive exPression.
by Jean-JaCQues nattiez
43
In the 19th century, absolute music was embodied in the quar-
tet genre and especially in Beethoven’s quartets. Proust said that
when he listened to them he recognized “a kind of moral quality
and intellectual superiority … the transposition of depth into the
realm of sound.” Like Beethoven who wrote seventeen quartets,
20th century composers who have tackled this genre have written
them in cycles. Webern wrote three, Schoenberg and Carter four,
Bartók six, Murray Schafer seven, Shostakovich fifteen. One of the
requisites of the Beethoven model is to take up the challenge of
so-called pure music, while expressing oneself in a language of
one’s time that is, however, distinguished by its originality. This
is what Fabio Vacchi seems to have succeeded in doing in the
four quartets – of the five that he has written to date – collected
together here; he has nothing to fear from a comparison with
his predecessors.
In fact, this is also a cycle. Written in 1992, 1999, 2001 and
2004 – within the framework of an extensive output in which
operas and symphonic works predominate – these quartets
are evidence of a consistent project that adopts the same
general structure each time. The second quartet that does
not have a number is entitled Movimento di quartetto. This
could very well be the title of the other three, too, since
the four quartets do not consist of separate movements,
but they develop without interruption linking together
homogeneous moments through subtle, smooth transi-
tions. Vacchi achieves this by exploiting the instrumen-
tality of the quartet. An extraordinary expert in stringed
instruments, he combines all their resources of timbre
and tone in new ways: sul ponticello, sul tasto, con legno
(meaning with the wood of the bow), non vibrato, tremo-
lo, sautillé, détaché, pizzicato, crescendo-decrescendo on
the same note, without forgetting staccato double stops,
portamenti and harmonics.
But though Vacchi has used the same structure and
the same procedures for all four pieces, the listener
has no need to fear repetition or monotony, since each
composition corresponds to a specific intention. The
Fabio Vacchi
44
beginning of the first quartet is characterized by a rhythmic unit that
can be readily identified (two or more short notes followed by a lon-
ger one), which becomes more complex as it develops. The different
kinds of relationship between the four instruments are explored here.
The second part is dominated by homorhythm – the rhythmic values
are the same for each of the four instruments – before giving way to
a polyphony of superimposed rhythms that are always clearly indi-
vidualized, followed by a long fugued passage. Finally Vacchi makes
systematic use of double stops for each of the instruments, so that
the texture of the whole is intensified, whilst remaining perfectly clear,
before creating an atmosphere of contemplative serenity that the last
breath of the cello brings to a sweet close.
The form of the Movimento di quartetto, which is shorter than the
other three, can be immediately identified on listening, but it differs
from the first quartet in its development. Here beautiful, diaphanous,
long moments of adagio dominate, separated by “furious” phrasing
that becomes longer each time. Vacchi often asks the musicians not
to use vibrato and this is often accompanied by playing on the fin-
gerboard. Thus, when it is explicitly required, we are bathed in a new
warmth. Vacchi then adds a vibratissimo passage that becomes faster
and faster until, without interruption, the musical fabric, with diminu-
endo and rallentando, returns to the large chords and slowness of the
beginning, to end as though in a spasm.
CD cover from
Decca release of
Vacchi’s String
Quartets (left).
—
Detail of Vacchi’s
String Quartet
No. 3 (right).
45
scO
re
© c
asa
ric
Or
di
The third quartet is
also all in one piece.
For sixteen minutes we
listen to an astonish-
ingly fluid, long musical
development. The dis-
course moves constantly
forward without ever re-
prising themes we have
already heard. The whole
obeys a progressive, inexorable dynamism (pop musicians would
speak of “drive!”), whose force is somewhat reminiscent of the last
movement of Chopin’s Funeral Sonata. The composition of this quar-
tet is without doubt the most complex of the four, but it is always
legible, even when Vacchi demands a fast and furious pace from his
musicians in the last third of the work, before returning, as he often
does, to a slower tempo. This is a quartet which, for these reasons,
deserves to be listened to again and again, for the pleasure of under-
standing it more profoundly and experiencing more profound pleasure.
From the beginning the scherzando tone of the fourth quartet con-
trasts with that of the previous ones and when it returns at the end of
the piece its well-defined rhythms give it a dance-like character. While
here we find the procedures already adopted in the three previous
works – the exploitation of all the different possible timbres of the
strings, the progression of the tempos, the opposition of ferocity and
slowness, the sense of evolution and continuity – the organization is
different. In this case Vacchi employs several times another form of
polyphonic organization, which we have already found sporadically in
quartets Nos. 1 and 3: the contrast between the cello and the other
three instruments from which it is distinguished by different melodic
and rhythmic writing.
Vacchi is a composer of duration and transition he never oper-
ates by juxtaposing sections. Doubtless this is why the listener is
attracted by the unity of the whole which, apart from their specific
features, marks each of the quartets, whose texture is a vehicle
for sensual seduction and affective expression. The compositional
intention is always clear to the ear and the technical procedures
are placed at the service of the aesthetic and semantic project. I
would even describe Vacchi as a Romantic composer were it not
for the fact that he adopts the musical language of atonality in
the four works. In fact, he never has recourse to the tonal uni-
verse with which we are familiar, but this atonalism is not that of
the 1950s and 1960s modernist orthodoxy, consisting of explo-
sions and cerebralism. At the turn of the century, Fabio Vacchi
shows, with tenderness and energy, that it is still possible to write
music capable of speaking to the heart.
here beautiFuL, diaPhanous, LonG MoMents oF adaGio doMinate, seParated by “Furious” PhrasinG that beCoMes LonGer eaCh tiMe.
pont. tasto
pizz.
6
gett.arco legno e crine
gett.
gett. gett. gett. gett. gett.gett.legno e crine 3
49 gett.gett.legno e crine
33
3vib.ss.
sim. 3 pont. tasto
3
pizz.arco tasto
loco
463
espressivo
3
II = 96gett.
3 ord., espr. 3 3
3 ord., espr. 3
8va
ord., espr.
43
6
46
PHO
TO ©
Ka
i bien
erT
Enno Poppe was born on December 30th, 1969, in Hemer, Sauerland,
Germany. He studied conducting and composition at the Hochschule
der Künste Berlin, with Friedrich Goldmann and Gösta Neuwirth, among
others. He undertook further studies of sound synthesis and algorith-
mic composition at the Technische Universität Berlin and at the ZKM
Karlsruhe with Heinrich Taube.
Since 1998 he has been musical director of the ensemble mosaik. His
works are regularly performed live by a number of illustrious musicians
and ensembles: Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Contre
Champs, musikFabrik, Ensemble 2e2m, Ensemble Intercontemporain,
Arditti Quartet, Kairos Quartet, SWR Vocal Ensemble, New Vocal Soloists
Stuttgart, Young German Philharmonic Orchestra, SWR Symphony
Orchestra, BR Symphony Orchestra, and have been conducted by
Stefan Asbury, Pierre Boulez, Susanna Mälkki, Emilio Pomárico, Kasper
de Roo, Peter Rundel, among others.
The works of Enno Poppe often appear very transparent at the start,
building on the presentation of a single component which subse-
quently develops in an organic fashion. He often uses mathematical
and biological forms of growth that determine the dramaturgy of the
piece. Poppe’s compositions show the continual struggle of musical
idea and formal structure which lends his pieces contour and tension.
The consequence of this is that his works achieve a profiled contour
and tension.
Although Poppe’s music emanates entirely from natural phenom-
ena and impulses, it avoids all the stubborn consistency that lies in its
course, which could possibly lead to musical tautologies.
The typical, distinctive titles of Poppe’s works, (“fruit’, “heart’, “ani-
mal’, “market’, “grapes’) allow him to find inspirational starting points
for his concrete compositional work and also allows the listener to find
“associative spaces.” The ensemble piece “Shards” which […] written
in an eccentric fashion represents an initially confusing and convolut-
ed mix of fragmentary matter, whereas in the three pieces of “wood’,
“bone” and “oil” the nature of each “affected” organic material is musi-
cally “processed.”
In 2012, in addition to the ensemble piece “Speicher VI,” which is
to be premiered at the World Music Days in Belgium by the Ensemble
Intercontemporain, a new orchestral piece commissioned by the
Munich Musica Viva, and a music theater piece [working title “IQ”] has
been created for the Schwetzingen Festival. Thus, after “Interzone”
[2003-04] and “Arbeit Nahrung Wohnung” [2006-07], Enno Poppe’s
third stage work will also be presented.
Translation: Richard Toop
by steFan huber
Enno Poppe
47
GerMan coMPoser enno PoPPe TaPs socieTy anD naTure
48
PHO
TO ©
Ká
lmá
n G
ar
as
49
For a few years in the final third of the last century, the music of
András Szőllősy was present – if in small quantities – at the most
important forums for new music. True, it was somewhat overshad-
owed, since compared to the music of his most well-known con-
temporaries it was less easily labelled as belonging to one of the
more typical stylistic developments of the time. Five years have
passed since the death of one of the most important representa-
tives of Hungarian music after Bartók, a contemporary of György
Ligeti and György Kurtág, and this perspective allows us to declare
that Szőllősy’s life and music display qualities which ensure him an
undisputed place not just in the history of Hungarian music, but in
the history of music in general.
by andrás wiLheiM
( 1921-2007)
“… iT is quiTe liKely ThaT all MeThoDs ThaT MaKe any sense have been TrieD ouT alreaDy.”
Szőllősy (left)
with György
Ligeti in 1993.
50
PHO
TO ©
an
dr
ea Felv
éGi
Szőllősy never referred to postmodernism, the fashionable watch-
word of his time, but on the evidence of his works, it is clear that he
put its ideals into practice. Furthermore, he did so not in the sense of
amassing obvious allusions that gave his music a surface attractive-
ness, but in a much deeper, one might say structural, sense. We could
even take as his ars poetica what he said at the beginning of the 80s
about his views on originality in composition: “’I believe personality
does not lie in a composer’s capacity to devise something radically new.
If we were to delude ourselves that someone has succeeded in doing so,
it suffices to study the history of music in any depth to realize that ideas
that may appear to be totally new have emerged in the past (often cen-
turies ago)....Originality manifests itself in the rearrangement of musical
phenomena based on an individual approach to interrelationships of the
existing constituents of music.” (from: Bálint András Varga: 3 Questions
for 65 Composers, University of Rochester Press, 2011, 249 p.; 2. Op.
cit 250)
Of course the question of their relationship to living tradition was
an important one for composers in all periods; in the second half of
the twentieth century especially so, since the death of the mainstream
meant the simultaneous appearance of a multitude of styles, directions,
ideals and principles. It became clear in this new unresolved situation
that tradition meant first of all a question of choice: when compos-
ers experience many kinds of style, musical language and technique
all at the same time, each may choose a web of “tradition” tailored to
suit himself, and to which he wishes to contribute. At several stages of
his career András Szőllősy was forced to take stock. First as a pupil of
Zoltán Kodály, then of Goffredo Petrassi, he had to weigh up the great
classical tradition, at the same time recognizing that for a composer at
the start of his career the unique path taken by Bartók could at most
act as an ethical example; in terms of style it could not be followed.
The historical situation in music at the turn of the 50s and 60s which
created some new styles and buried others was experienced by him as
an aesthetic and practical problem. He was preoccupied by the ques-
tion of what ingredients – what sound, what style – could go to form
that tradition starting from which it would be possible to make a valid
utterance. The alternative was to remain silent.
In fact, an important aspect of Szőllősy’s temperament was to be
in continual readiness, without his having necessarily an all-pervading
need to create an actual work as its primary form of expression. This
also accounts for why he left behind a relatively modest output. For
him the question of when to give utterance was an ethical question;
a new work should only be written if it has something really new to
say, something considered to be of interest and surprising – whether it
arose from an internal inspiration, or an external commission.
The real start of András Szőllősy’s composing career had to wait
a long time – until 1968. Before then he was known primarily as a
CONCeRTO NO. I I I was written at an exCePtionaL MoMent in MusiCaL history; it was the resuLt oF reaLizinG that
a new CLassiCizinG attitude had arrived.
51
musicologist: it was he who compiled the first scholarly catalog of the
works of Bartók and who first published Bartók’s collected writings. His
Concerto No. III was written at an exceptional moment in musical his-
tory; it was the result of realizing that a new classicizing attitude had
now arrived. It was the time when the aggressive avant-garde period
following the second world war came to an end, during which each
new direction had tried to be the dominating one. In its place there
began a pluralist musical culture adopting different possible stylistic
orientations, all equally valid. Here it is worth mentioning what it was
that Szőllősy did not adopt from among the procedures of the then-
recent past of modern music, and its present as it was then. Above all,
he did not accept the declamatory melodic style typical of the direc-
tions taken in the 1950s usually given the label post-Webern – and he
did not make use of the aleatoric methods which appeared in works by
Polish composers beginning in the 1960s.
Still, however, after the Third concerto another four years had to
pass before there could appear in a mature form the sound world
with its formal procedures which we recognize to be the real Szőllősy.
Objective analysis can demonstrate that he used the same building
materials in all his works after Trasfigurazioni (1972) – it’s just that in
each work they are differently combined, showing precisely the way
the composer “’has the courage to stake the frontiers of his imagination
ever wider, enriching the world he can call his own.”
The espousal of this musical ideal did not mean there would not
be any eclecticism – he might not have aspired towards it, but neither
did he keep away from it. If we accept that his individuality is not
to be sought in his invention of things, but in the interrelationships
between them, then this kind of eclecticism became Szőllősy’s own
response to those trends of the 50s and 60s that aimed at economy
and homogeneity.
Szőllősy’s musical world is indeed one that is
rich in interconnections, a world forming and
following its own rules. Inner coherence, even
the connection between particular works, is
provided by the continuous reappearance of
numerous technical ingredients, the use of
certain recurring tone rows (familiar from clas-
sical dodecaphonic technique) – these in turn
providing connections in the tonality of cer-
tain pieces. The building blocks of his works
remained constant, but their combinations
always differed; their sequential order was
changed, their proportions altered. As a
result they have differing import in a given piece. Even so, the most
important types can, for the most part, be demonstrated. There are
glissando-blocks meandering among strictly-specified pitches and
structures with angular rhythms whose internal constructions, even
when they bear a striking resemblance, are given an audibly-different
character due to their different manner of performance; typical also
are clusters spanning the entire range of the instrumental forces used,
whose inner rhythm gives the music a special pulse which otherwise
in terms of its positioning is motionless; similarly in many works we
find a kind of textural weave in which the different instruments play
motives very similar in construction and moving in the same register
with differing regular tempos in a kind of organized but barely gov-
ernable heterophony. His rhythm is characterized by a particular kind
of ostinato technique which has both repeated rhythmic formulas
together with a continual changing of the notes, reminding us equally
of certain Bartókian procedures and some moments in minimal music,
which began to appear at that time in the 70s.
However, the most important characteristic of Szőllősy’s compo-
sitional technique is, unique among his contemporaries, his unusual
polyphonic technique. This counterpoint cannot be compared, for ex-
ample, to the phenomenon aptly called micropolyphony which we find
so often in Ligeti, but neither is it a pure distillation of the structural
polyphony we encounter in Webern’s works. Its forerunner is Bach’s in-
strumental counterpoint, as well as the baroque stylization of Stravinsky
and the counterpoint of Bartók’s middle period, indeed perhaps certain
Italian examples as well, like the pre-serial period of Dallapiccola. Most
of all, though, a kinship can be felt with the late works of Kodály and
Stravinsky. Even so, Szőllősy’s music is by no means a continuation of
these; the relationship and its influence is far more indirect. Szőllősy
developed his material in partnership with Kodály’s free polyphony
and Stravinsky’s block-like formal construction, creating the composi-
tional technique that was suitable for him to work with.
András Szőllősy was not a lone composer in the last third of the
twentieth century – far from it. In some senses his classical aspira-
tions foreshadowed the dominant tendencies of the time. But not for a
moment did he ever abandon his strict self-criticism and radical think-
ing – even when it led to his staying silent. He happily embraced con-
trapuntal construction and ostinato-type rhythms, broadly phrased
melody and interval structuring, but without any desire to make a syn-
thesis or summing up. Instead he embraced the excitement of moving
towards ever-new experimentation and discovery.
Translation: Paul Merrick
Szőllősy in 2006.
52
an inTerview wiTh The coMPoser by steFano CatuCCi
53
PHO
TO b
y m
asO
TTi
Giorgio Battistelli has just finished working on his completion
of Le Duc d’Albe, a magnificent example of 19th century opera that
Donizetti had planned for the Opéra de Paris but which he himself was
not able to bring to completion. On the composer’s death in 1848 the
presence of this singular, incomplete manuscript among the papers
of a musician who was normally quite averse to leaving works unfin-
ished behind him constituted a huge stimulus to the imagination of
heirs, critics, publishers and composers alike. The lacunae, however,
were too extensive for it to be possible to complete the work just by
making a few additions and/or interpolations. Around 1875, Matteo
Salvi, a pupil and collaborator of Donizetti, was charged with complet-
ing the opera and Angelo Zanardini with translating the libretto by
Eugène Scribe, which in the meantime had been reworked by Scribe
for Giuseppe Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes. But in spite of the fact that
it was recast in this way, Le Duc d’Albe never assumed a stable place
in the standard opera repertoire. Giorgio Battistelli’s new version of
the opera is based on the critical edition by Roger Parker, which brings
Donizetti’s text back to life in the form it had existed prior to Matteo
Salvi’s intervention. The new Le Duc d’Albe will be premiered at the
Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp on May 6th, 2012.
Giorgio
Battistelli
54
Can you tell us how the idea of working on Le Duc d’Albe came about?
Aviel Cahn, the director of the Flemish Opera, had talked to me about
this project—one which goes far beyond a mere question of music—for
quite some time. The figure of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duca d’Alba,
the man who from 1567 to 1573 incarnated in the most brutal man-
ner the struggle of Catholic Spain against the spread of the Protestant
Reformation, is for the Flemish world not just a memory from a distant
past but also a point of reference that still contributes to defining the cul-
ture and tradition of a people. Terror and fascination, the two extremes
of what as far back as Plato already represented the dilemma of tyranny,
are the poles around which revolve Flemish memory, the dramaturgy of
Scribe and the music of Donizetti. Aviel Cahn asked me to venture into
this imaginary space and, eschewing any exercise of mere restoration, to
breath new life back into the opera. I knew very little about Donizetti’s Le
Duc d’Albe. I talked about it with Hans Werner Henze, who told me about
a production by Luchino Visconti at Spoleto in 1959 under the direction
of Thomas Schippers. Henze’s thoughts on the opera encouraged me a
great deal because they pointed to how the work is in fact a marvellous
“work in progress.” When I began to study the score, however, I realized
that the situation was quite a bit different from how I had imagined it.
The freedom to intervene was much more limited than I expected and
the restrictions were much more stringent.
Can you tell us exactly what these difficulties were?
Basically in having to come to grips with 19th century opera at the
moment in which it had reached its most perfect form. If you think
of other examples of composers working on incomplete operas, the
peculiar nature of Le Duc d’Albe is immediately obvious. Naturally I
had very much in the front of my mind what Friedrich Cerha had done
with Alban Berg’s Lulu and even more the finale of Puccini’s Turandot
as rewritten by Luciano Berio. In both cases, however, the relation-
ship with a more modern form of composition is almost anticipated
and suggested by the original composers themselves. Take Puccini’s
Turandot: here you have a composer who reflects the musical climate
of his time, locates himself in an open harmonic space, and even
arrives at the point of entering the terrain of 12-tone music without los-
ing the coherence of his own language. With Donizetti, finding a terrain
of mediation between history and contemporaneity was an altogether
different task. There is in Donizetti a classical model of bel canto and a
solid compositional structure that makes it difficult to tamper with the
harmony without risking the banality of provocation or parody. While
I was writing, I was sorely put to the test by the compactness of the
opera’s granite-like harmonic universe. Moving out of the gravitational
pull of an E-flat major tonality meant exercising a huge effort, all the
more for the fact that it was necessary to write not just a single, brief
scene but 35 minutes of music. To overcome this problem I decided to
approach Le Duc d’Albe not so much from the point of view of seeking
to mediate between musical languages but from the point of view of
the theater. I endeavored to enter into the world of Donizetti’s drama-
turgy and that of French opera: I tried to extract the relevant historical
and narrative models and to base my work on extra-musical elements
that helped me to construct a network of references.
Did you examine Matteo Salvi’s version of the opera?
I had to. In fact by now I think of Salvi as a long-lost friend, “my pal
Matteo.” Salvi worked on the opera in the manner of a plastic surgeon,
extracting from the first two acts—the only ones brought to completion—
tiny fragments that he then used to stitch together the other components
terror and FasCination, the two extreMes oF what as Far baCK as PLato aLready rePresented
the diLeMMa oF tyranny, are the PoLes around whiCh revoLve FLeMish MeMory, the draMaturGy
oF sCribe and the MusiC oF donizetti.
55
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of the opera. In the finale, however, there was not just a gap: there was a
chasm. And so Salvi cut the text, shortening everything, almost as though
he wanted to shorten his agony as shadow-composer. Instead, the only
way to give substance to the task confronted by Donizetti was to work
on the opera in an aesthetically autonomous manner. In this respect I
found myself immediately in agreement with Aviel Cahn: the completion
of Le Duc d’Albe had to be a thoroughly creative enterprise, it could not
hide the differences but rather had to bring them out. My job was not to
offer some form of restoration but rather to rewrite, and it was precisely
this rewriting that interested me.
The process of rewriting can lead one away from stylistic exercises
and the observance of compositional canons and instead push one to
enter into a world different from one’s own, to actually dress
oneself in the attire of another epoch. From this point of view,
one distinctive trait of the world of Donizetti is the singing.
The bel canto style is difficult to assimilate even for inter-
preters who dedicate their lives to it. It is necessary to learn
the rules, the metrical style, the breathing, the expressive ges-
tures, the agility, the sense of the repetitions. Today it is not a
code that it is easy to gain direct access to. On the contrary, it
requires a great deal of musical and cultural mediation. I tried
to work more on the mediation than on the assimilation:
without imitating the phrasing or the style of bel canto I held
fast to the idea of singing, just as I held fast to a certain idea
of the harmonic structure, which I nonetheless extended,
passing from a 19th century language to my own harmonic
system. There is definitely a caesura there and you hear it,
but it is not traumatic and it is not irreverent. There is, as I
see it, the continuity of growth brought out essentially by
the dramaturgy.
A dramaturgy that compared to today’s is no less dis-
tant than bel canto.
To date I have written 25 operas, so I am used to work-
ing with texts that are more or less comparable to the
old librettos and to dealing with situations in which the
music takes shape by way of contact with the theater.
This experience made it possible for me to recognize
immediately that Scribe’s libretto worked perfectly, but
it didn’t prepare me for the surprise of discovering the mass of action
and feeling that this type of opera involves. Pain, terror, passion, love,
desperation and hope all coexist in the same scenic space and follow
on from one another at an astonishing pace, with a rhythm that the
opera of the time was perfectly capable of supporting but that today
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-
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766 Acte IV
140640
Excerpt from
Duca d’Alba.
56
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irepresents a challenge of an altogether different magnitude. By restor-
ing the French text I managed both to avoid the cuts that Salvi effected
and to give back to the protagonist his grand final aria, an extremely
extended but at the same time very concentrated number, where the
various feelings brought onto the stage need to be organized in a kind
of counterpoint.
Can you tell us about this aria in a little more detail?
It is the very protracted and desperate aria of a tyrant seen above
all in his role as father: his son, whom he had just come to know, has
been killed by Hélène, who was actually in love with him. With the
body of the son lying before him on the stage, the father gives vent to
his desperation, yet, in spite of everything, he would still like to forgive
Hélène, the daughter of his old enemy Egmont; she too is present on
stage and observing the scene in a state of desperation. At the same
time there is the exultation of the chorus, the Flemish people who
rejoice ferociously in the suffering of the tyrant, interrogating him on
whether he now understands what it means to behold the blood of
one’s own children. The Duke is about to leave Flanders, the chorus
of sailors urge him to set sail, but, just as he is heading down to the
quay, he suddenly pulls up, turns around and heads back. The mood of
the crowd suddenly changes; it lowers its tone, exultation gives way to
terror, if not for the return of this particular tyrant then for the arrival
of another who will take his place. To give operatic expression to this
sudden change in atmosphere is extremely difficult. It is necessary to
immerse the music in the drama, trying to keep everything in a state of
precarious equilibrium. The drama comes to an end without a defini-
tive resolution: there is no triumph on the part of the Flemish people,
no complete forgiveness, nor any fully-satisfied vengeance. In order
to give definition to such a non-conclusive atmosphere, you have to
concentrate on the theater: you need to leave to one side the philo-
logical coherence of the fragments, the plastic surgery I mean, and
you mustn’t even give too much importance to the meanings, to limit
yourself, that is, to a mediation between languages. The action almost
reaches a standstill: with extraordinary ability Scribe constructs a com-
plex architecture of feelings that cry out to be put in movement by the
music. Donizetti knew how to do this perfectly, the opera composers
of the era knew how to do it, it was practically a format. What I have
attempted to do is face up to this task directly without posing ques-
tions to myself about style and form, with which in any case I would
never have succeeded in taking up again the panoply of feelings put in
play by Le Duc d’Albe.
Translation: Nicholas Crotty
the aCtion aLMost reaChes a standstiLL: with extraordinary
abiLity sCribe ConstruCts a CoMPLex arChiteCture oF
FeeLinGs that Cry out to be Put in MoveMent by the
MusiC. donizetti Knew how to do this PerFeCtLy
Excerpt from
Duca d’Alba.
57
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Vlles etCb.
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Bsn.
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.�ran!…
(On voit dans le lointain à l’horizon toute la flotte mettre à la voile. Le Duc debout sur le vaisseau amiral étend la main versle peuple comme pour le maudir. Les trompettes et les tambours se font entendre, et sur le devant du théâtre Daniel et Hélènesont à genoux près du corps de Henri qu’ils baignent de leurs larmes. La toile tombe.)
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140640
N. 10 Chœur, Marche et Final 783
58
59
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RICORDI Munich, Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Complete Works. “Best
Edition” 2011: Robert le diable · “Performance of the Year” 2011: Les Huguenots
Ricordi Munich’s new Complete Works of Meyerbeer had two nota-
ble successes in 2011. Robert le diable (Sy. 5601), the first published
volume, won “Best Edition” honors in Germany while the Brussels
debut of Les Huguenots was proclaimed “performance of the year” by
Opernwelt Jahrbuch 2011. The new Meyerbeer edition is an enormous
work in every aspect, and has kept the editors, as well as our publishing
company, exceedingly busy and highly-motivated for over a decade.
An important work, Robert (Meyerbeer’s debut for the Paris Opéra,
a landmark for the Grand Opera, and at the same time a yardstick for
many subsequent works) previously had only been presented in an
abbreviated and unfinished form. It is now fully restored, and con-
sequently reflects the composer’s intentions. It was an enormous
amount of work, so much so that it wasn’t feasible for a single per-
son to cope with such an immense piece and submit a comprehensive
GranD oPera GiacoMo Meyerbeer’s coMPleTe worKs
Les Huguenots
at Théâtre Royal
de la Monnaie in
Brussels.
by oLiver JaCob
60
final score alone. The complexity of creating something
that previously was available only in different stages of
development and versions, was a long and hard process.
Satisfying the demands of contemporary philology and
textual criticism while creating comprehensible editions
on the one hand, while bringing together reliable perfor-
mance practice information and producing practical mate-
rial for use, on the other hand, was a major task.
It is an important and immense work, which fortunately
has found considerable popularity. At the Frankfurt Music
Fair in March 2011, it was announced that the jury of the
German Music Edition Prize had awarded the new critical
edition of Robert le diable the prize for “Best Edition 2011”
in the category “Critical Editions: Complete Works.” The jury
explained their decision: “This publication is a pioneering ef-
fort. It is a comprehensive study and presentation of a central
work from the 19th century. We explicitly praise the editorial
courage to publish such a piece of work. The excellent presen-
tation is particularly noteworthy, as is the special attention to
the printing and the setting of the image. Additionally the high
academic standard is to be praised.”
What is particularly pleasing about this formidable scientific
and academic publishing success is the fact that this edition of
Meyerbeer’s complete works have primarily been dedicated to the
code of performance practice. The new version of Robert was the
basis for a new production which premiered on September 16th,
2011 at the Theater Erfurt as a co-production with the Opera de
Monte Carlo.
Another major event of 2011 for Meyerbeer was the premiere
of the new edition of Les Huguenots at the Théâtre Royal de la
Monnaie in Brussels. The as-yet-unfinished critical edition was
tested here for the first time in an almost unabridged version – and
proved to be a great success internationally, not least with the critics
from Opernwelt, which declared this production of Les Huguenots to
be “the best performance of 2011” .
The Brussels Huguenots production will again be performed in
March 2012 by the Opéra du Rhin, in Strasbourg.
The main text of the critical edition, which is used in Brussels and
Les Huguenots at
Théâtre Royal de la
Monnaie in Brussels.
61
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les huGuenoTs / Press coMMenTs “Meyerbeer, the Great seduCer [. . . ] one has to have seen this—in this exaCt LenGth and veheMenCe” —DIe WeLT
“this traGedy has not been as PLausibLe For aGes.” —DeUTSCHLAND RADIO KULTUR
“Few worKs Can be said to have ChanGed the Course oF history as, LeS HUgUeNOTS did. anyone who Cares about oPera shouLd see this ProduCtion.”—THe NeW YORK TIMeS
“with its Five aCts and Four-hour duration this is a CoMPLex, but at the saMe tiMe aCCessibLe “GesaMt-KunstwerK”” —Le MONDe
“a Meyerbeer For our tiMe [. . . ] the deGree oF CoMPLeteness FroM the oriGinaL sourCe Proved to be a Key FaCtor For its suCCess.” —OPeRNWeLT
62
Strasbourg, is based on the first edition of the score from
1836. This version, which Meyerbeer accepted nolens vo-
lens for pragmatic reasons, was enhanced and completed
by an autograph found in Krakow and other originals which
had remained in Paris. As a result of this reconstruction
Meyerbeer’s representation of the entanglement of histor-
ical-political and private disaster now has a perspective
and depth which could not have been recognized until
now by either the performers or the audience.
As it does to Robert, this also applies to the Huguenots.
The extensive inventory of relevant sources and the
complexity of the work’s genesis (Meyerbeer’s own sen-
sitive and consistent demands to ensure the quality of
his work, as well as having to deal with censorship, the
practical realities of the operation of the Paris Opera,
and other adversities) to create and summarize into a
compatible edition that is suited both to the academ-
ic and the performer, has been huge. The publication
of the critical edition of Les Huguenots will take place
in the “Meyerbeer year” in 2014.
There is even more reason for celebration, as
inquiries from opera houses regarding Meyerbeer’s
works steadily increase. For example, it is already
confirmed that the new critical edition of L’Africaine
will be performed on stage on February 2nd, 2013
at the Theater Chemnitz.
The editors and publishers who have perse-
vered and put great amounts of energy and time
into the Meyerbeer project are confident that
this enormous project they have taken on will
blossom and bear much fruit in the future. The
signs are good that Meyerbeer, the great pio-
neer, visionary and theater practitioner, and
his works will again receive due attention and
recognition.
Translation: Richard Toop
Les Huguenots
at Théâtre Royal
de la Monnaie in
Brussels.
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63
64
JANUARY
10
Riccardo Nova
Nineteen Mantras,
Rome
14
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Hohes und tiefes
Licht, Munich
21
Philippe Hersant Les
Rêveries, Chambery
FEBRUARY
2
Debussy/Manoury
Première suite
d’orcheste, Paris
5
Matteo Franceschini
Zazie (opera) Théâtre
du Châtelet, Paris
9
László Tihanyi: Two
Imaginary Dialogues
for ensemble,
Moscow
11
Luca Francesconi
Herzstück for six
voices, Stuttgart
12
Robert HP Platz
Branenwelten 6,
Stuttgart
16
Carlo Boccadoro
Succede ai pianoforte
di fiamme nere, Rome
17
Enno Poppe Welt for
orchestra, Munich
Giorgio Battistelli
Tail up for orchestra,
Turin
Ian Wilson The stars,
the sea for orchestra
and chorus, Belfast
24
Hèctor Parra InFall 3,
Barcelona
27
Sergej Newski new
work for violin solo,
Moscow
MARCH
4
Luca Francesconi
Encore da capo
version for six instru-
ments, Montreal
6
Giorgio Battistelli
Pacha Mama for
orchestra, Münster
Dai Fujikura Grasping
for string orchestra,
Tonyeong
18
Pascal Dusapin
Genau!, Karlsruhe
22
Graham Fitkin Track
to Track, for band &
string orchestra for
Cultural Olympiad,
London
30
Philippe Schoeller
Tiger, Avignon
APRIL
2
Matteo Franceschini
new string quartet,
Paris
5
Mauro Lanza new
work for solo cello,
Brest
16
Fabio Vacchi Triple
Concerto for 2 flutes,
harp and orchestra,
Bari
27
Enno Poppe IQ.
Eine Testbatterie,
Schwetzingen
29
Emmanuel Nunes
new work after Die
Blendung by Elias
Canetti, Witten
MAY
3
Giorgio Battistelli
Mystery Play Saint
Paul, Minnesota
6
Gaetano Donizetti
Le Duc d’Albe (critical
edition by Roger
Parker and com-
pleted by Giorgio
Battistelli), Antwerp
19
Marco Stroppa Re
Orso (opera), Paris
22
Silvia Colasanti
Metamorforsi (opera),
Florence
José-Manuel Lopez
Lopez Eppur si
muove, Firminy
24
Michael Reudenbach
new work, Hannover
25
Olga Neuwirth The
Outcast (opera),
Mannheim
(selecTion)
65
JUNE
1
Philippe Manoury
Piano Concerto, Paris
8
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Im Lichte wollen
wir wandeln II,
Saarbrücken
14
Gerhard Stäbler
Erlöst Albert E., Ulm
16
Nikolaus Brass Der
Garten, Munich
19
Luca Francesconi
Una Atopia for
chorus and
orchestra, Madrid
JULY
21
Philippe Manoury
Partita II, Festival de
la Meije
Samy Moussa
Quatuor, Darmstadt
SEPTEMBER
14
Michael Roth Im Bau,
Lucerne
30
Rudolf Kelterborn
Nachtstück,
Winterthur
OCTOBER
1
Giorgio Battistelli
new work for soli,
chorus and orches-
tra, Naples
6
Pascal Dusapin
Concertino pour
piano, Strasbourg
15
Dai Fujikura new
work for five solo-
ists and orchestra,
Seattle
Dai Fujikura Bassoon
Concerto, Tokyo
25
Eric Tanguy Photo
d’un enfant avec une
trompette, Paris
NOVEMBER
16
Baptiste Trotignon
Concerto pour piano,
Bordeaux
24
Rolf Hind The Tiniest
House of Time
(accordion concerto),
London
RICORDI
MÜNCHEN
CASA
RICORDI
DURAND SALABERT
ESCHIG
RICORDI
LONDON
EDITIO MUSICA
BUDAPEST