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All about Universal Music Publishing Classical keys activities during the year 2012TRANSCRIPT
RicoRdi
München
casa
RicoRdi
duRand salabeRt
eschig
RicoRdi
london
editio Musica
budapest
new insights into our classical catalogs, contemporary composers and the music scene. umpc: giving music a universal perspective
2
Table of conTenTs
Foreword.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
ensembles: AT The heArT oF modern music .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
“i Feel preTTy much Alone in This”. László Tihanyi and his music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
oriGinAliTy And chArAcTer. Maverick Composers giving essential new impetus to music l i fe:
An Excursion through the catalogs of Ricordi Munich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
operA: An ArT Form oF TodAy. An interview with Peter de Caluwe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
The ForTunATe converGence oF Two musicAl worlds. An interview with Ferenc Jávori,
leader of the Budapest Klezmer Band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
umpc new siGninGs in 2012 (Francesca Verunell i , Samy Moussa, Adam Schoenberg) . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
A new wAve in iTAliAn operA ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
operAs For younG Audiences .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
vision, innovATion And chAllenGe. An interview with Southbank Centre’s Gil l ian Moore . . . . . .46
“whAT remAins is music”- György Kurtág and Samuel Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
GiovAnni simone mAyr (1763-1845): Historical-crit ical edit ion of the complete works . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
spAnish conTemporAry music surGes AheAd ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
encore: Composers committed to the defence of Authors’ r ights.
An interview with Laurent Petitgirard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
2013 world premieres .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
3
The year 2012 has been tumultuous for the music publishing and
record industries and the future probably will not be much different.
In an age of acquisitions and mergers and an ever-changing landscape
of new products and technologies, continuity and stability become
invaluable qualities.
This is particularly true for composers, who must use all their time
and energy for their creative output, and who need to be able to rely on
their publisher to promote their works, produce their scores, and dis-
tribute their sheet music through sales and rentals in a well-informed
and educated manner based on years of experience.
This is what the houses of Universal Music Publishing Classical have
been doing for the past 200 years and this is why excellent composers
from around the world feel well taken care of within the UMPC family,
and new composers are eager to join. We are particularly proud of our
new signings (see page 34) and of the new works with which our estab-
lished composers are entrusting us.
We are happy to share once again with you some of their key activi-
ties in some depth. Following current trends and interests, we have
included articles on operas for young audiences (page 42), Klezmer
music (page 30), and music theatre (pages 26 & 38). We hope these
stories make you feel engaged and inspired to explore further these
topics and composers.
Antal Boronkay, General Manager, 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 Querol, General Manager, Durand - Salabert - Eschig, Paris
The home for composers from across The globe
4
Periods in history can be recognized by their particular sound: the
Baroque period is intimately connected with the harpsichord; music
from the first generation of Romantics furls and unfurls around the
piano; and generations of Post-Romantics released the generous tem-
perament of full orchestras into auditoriums of increasing magnitude.
One can argue convincingly that the particular sound of the twentieth
century is that of the ensemble, be it instrumental or vocal.
Originating from the twin influences of acoustic transparency and
economy of materials, the instrumental ensemble saw the light of
day through a visionary act during the first decade of the last century
(Kammersymphonie op.9 by Arnold Schoenberg, written in 1906 for
an ensemble made up of the families of a symphonic orchestra but
limited to only “one per voice”) and reached full speed during the first
two post-First World War decades. Composers from the period of neo-
classicism [broadly: from Milhaud’s Le bœuf sur le toit (1920) through
Stravinsky’s Concerto for piano and wind instruments (1924) and
Janáček’s Concertino (1925) to De Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto (1926)]
found an antidote to Romantic chamber music and the Wagnerian
orchestra; those of the Darmstadt school (the Nono of Canti per 13 or
the Maderna of the second Sérénade) found a manageable platform for
the acoustic deployment of serial structures. In both cases, the illusion
of a single universal raison d’être for sound disappears and is replaced
by a panoply of varied styles whose joint lines of action are apparent:
the clarity of the presentation of the melodic lines, and the freshness
EnsEmblEs: at thE hEart of modErn music The ensemble, an audible
symbol of moderniTyby eric denuT
5
PHO
TOS:
ICE
© A
rm
En E
llIO
TT
of the instrumental juxtapositions, forging a new palette which dis-
regards the massed texture of the multiple strings of the symphonic
orchestra. These several “qualities,” attractive to composers and audi-
ences alike, inevitably led to the creation of many instrumental ensem-
bles dedicated to this repertoire, and the development of these groups
in turn fostered an explosion of growth of the ensemble repertoire.
The vocal ensemble didn’t really appear until the years following
the Second World War. The contemporary composers of the first half of
the twentieth century still wrote masterpieces of the mixed chamber
choral (i.e., requiring at least 32 singers) repertoire, including Debussy
(Trois Chansons), Ravel (Trois Chansons), Poulenc (Messe en sol),
Schoenberg (Friede auf Erden ) and Strauss (Der Abend). The watershed
occurred shortly after 1945 with the appearance of ensembles “with
music stands drawn closer together” (i.e., three singers per voice) and a
repertoire composed of more transparent, almost neo-madrigalesque
sounds, after the fashion of Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants [It is worth not-
ing, however, that at the same time Poulenc (Figure humaine) and
Schoenberg (Dreimal tausend Jahre, De Profundis) were continuing to
be faithful to the more symphonic sound of the chamber choir].
Development on all continents
With its tradition of chamber music having been well integrated
in its music schools and its symphony orchestras since the inter-war
period, Europe is at the forefront of creating dedicated performing
EnsEmblEs: at thE hEart of modErn music
International
Contemporary
Ensemble (ICE)
6
Left: musikFabrik
Cologne
Right: Neue
Vocalsolisten
Stuttgart
i communicATed wiTh ice... viA skype And e-mAil,
recordinG sAmples And sendinG Them bAck
And ForTh; i FelT As iF They were in my room in
london while i composed.—Dai Fujikura
7
nEu
E V
OC
AlS
OlI
STEn
© m
Ar
TIn
SIg
mu
nd
ensembles. For example, in France, autonomy in the
vocal domain began immediately after the Second
World War (including groups such as the Marcel
Couraud vocal ensemble, of which the Groupe Vocal
de France in the 1980’s, Musicatreize founded in
1987, and Les Jeunes Solistes, which became Solistes
XXI, formed in 1988, are all worthy “successors”);
and in the instrumental domain during the 1960’s
(the decade which gave birth to the Ensemble du
Domaine Musical and also the formal inception of
Ars Nova) and has since continued without interrup-
tion with the creation of groups including:
• 2e2m, L’Itinéraire and Ensemble Intercontemporain
in the 1970’s,
• Aleph and Alternance in the 1980’s,
• Court-Circuit,
• Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain,
• Proxima Centauri,
• Sillages,
• Télémaque,
• Linea and Cairn in the 1990’s
and, more recently,
• L’Instant Donné,
• Le Balcon,
• Multilatérale.
The other larger European countries, begin-
ning with the historical and geographical
birthplace of this repertoire, the Paris-Berlin-
Vienna triangle, have the same dynamics,
with such high-profile groups as the renowned
• Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt (founded in 1980),
• Neue Vocalsolisten from Stuttgart (1984),
• Contrechamps from Geneva (1984),
• Klangforum from Vienna (1985),
• Ensemble recherche from Freiburg (1985),
• musikFabrik from Cologne (1990),
• Ictus from Brussels (1994),
• Ensemble XX. Jahrhundert, Vienna (1971),
• Ensemble Aventure Freiburg (Germany) 1986,
• Schola Heidelberg / ensemble aisthesis (Germany) 1993,
• Collegium Novum, Zürich (Switzerland) 1993.
All of these groups are all fixtures at festivals in the same way as the
Ensemble Intercontemporain, which, as noted above, was founded
a few years earlier. All echo the 1958 creation of the ensemble “Die
Reihe” in Vienna and the London Sinfonietta in 1968, – groups that
are still prominently on the scene today. In the wave of this dynamic,
all the European countries, including even those most geographically
distant from the “triangle of origin” of the genre, saw a blossoming of
dedicated ensembles across their lands, including:
• from the Iberian Peninsula (most notably with the Ensemble Remix,
which, despite its relative youth - it originated in Porto in 2000
- has acquired an enviable reputation amongst public and profes-
sionals alike)
• to Scandinavia (Avanti from Finland, BIT20 and the Oslo Sinfonietta
and Ensemble asamisimasa, Nordic Voices, from Norway,
KammarensembleN from Sweden, Athelas from Denmark)
• via Italy (Divertimento Ensemble, Ex-Novo, Alter Ego, Icarus)
• and Hungary (the Intermodulation Ensemble founded in Budapest
in 1985, the UMZE Ensemble there in 1996, and Componensemble
founded in 1989).
The originating countries have continued, like France, to pursue
institutional expansion:
• from the Netherlands (again most notably with Asko | Schönberg,
now reunited, the Nieuw Ensemble and the specialised ensemble
Vocaallab),
• Belgium (Musiques Nouvelles, Spectra),
• Luxembourg (United Instruments of Lucilin),
• the UK (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Exaudi),
• Russia (the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ensemble St.
Petersburg),
• and the Germanic-speaking regions (KNM Berlin, eNsemble Mosaik,
Ensemble Resonanz in Germany).
This phenomenon has become world-wide in the last twenty-five
years with the appearance of important players on the scenes of other
continents, including:
• Canadian groups such as the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne of
Montreal created in 1989,
• US groups such as 8th blackbird (1996), the Argento ensem-
ble (2000), Alarm Will Sound and the International Contemporary
Ensemble (ICE) (2001) and the Talea Ensemble (2007),
• Asian-based groups including the Tokyo Sinfonietta (1994) and the
TIMF Ensemble from Tongyeong, South Korea (2001)
• and groups based in Oceania, such as the Elision ensemble in
Melbourne, Australia (1986).
The transplanting of the “European model” onto other continents
has been so successful that active composers as aesthetically and
8
generationally different as Georges Aperghis and Dai Fujikura, based
on the “Old Continent,” have built up over the last few years privi-
leged relationships with ensembles situated on the other side of the
Atlantic. Fujikura wrote of his concert piece Mina for five soloists of
the International Contemporary Ensemble and orchestra: “Despite the
fact that we have a vast ocean between us, I communicated with ICE, a
chamber ensemble with whom I have long-standing relationship and
with whom I can work most intimately, via Skype and e-mail, record-
ing samples and sending them back and forth; I felt as if they were in
my room in London while I composed.” Concluding with these words,
in which he accurately summarizes what a number of contemporary
composers believe: “I think that this is the best composer-player rela-
tionship you can ask for!”
An exceptional corpus in 50 years
Such institutional power cleared space for a repertoire which,
from Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie and the Neo-Classical opuses
of Stravinsky to the first Darmstadt works of Nono, Maderna and
Stockhausen, already comprised an exceptional body of instrumental
work (the vocal repertoire was yet to be built up, as previously men-
tioned, but soon would follow). The three decades of the 1960’s, 70’s
and 80’s can be considered to be a golden age for the two repertoires.
The greatest names of the second half of the century wrote some of
their best scores for ensembles, including these UMPC works:
• Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Omnia tempus habent (1957)
• Giacinto Scelsi: Tre Canti Sacri (1958)
• Sylvano Bussotti: “mit einem gewissen sprechenden Ausdruck”
(1961-63)
• Friedrich Cerha: Phantasma ‘63 (1963)
• Iannis Xenakis: Nuits (1967), Anaktoria (1969), Phlegra (1975)
• Ivo Malec: Dodecameron (1970)
• Bruno Maderna: Juilliard Serenade (1971)
• Gérard Grisey: Partiels (1975)
• György Kurtág: Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova (1980), … quasi
una fantasia … (1988), and Double concerto for piano, cello and two
chamber ensembles dispersed in space (1990)
• Franco Donatoni: Tema (1981)
• Younghi Pagh-Paan: MADI (1981)
• Salvatore Sciarrino: Introduzione all’oscuro (1981)
• Pascal Dusapin: Fist (1982)
• Luigi Nono: Guai ai gelidi mostri (1983)
• Marco Stroppa: Étude pour pulsazioni (1985-89)
• Péter Eötvös: Chinese Opera (1986)
• Luca Francesconi: Plot in fiction (1986)
• Emmanuel Nunes: Musik der Frühe (1986)
• Klaus Huber: La Terre des Hommes (1987-89)
• Niccolò Castiglioni: Risognanze (1989)
• Gerhard Stäbler: Den Müllfahrern von San Francisco (1989-90)
These are but a few high points of a widely-circulated group of
works which now form part of the regular repertoire of the majority of
the ensembles mentioned previously.
Although these works grew from a context of intense aesthetic and
technological research (culminating in the project and creation of
Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Ircam) - a
centre for musical research - at the beginning of the 1970s), favor-
ing explorations into vocabulary and syntax, they all display dazzling
expertise placing them on a par with the great pre-Second World War
works which, up to that time had defined this repertoire. To complete
this panorama, we must add the knock-on effect of the dual phe-
nomena of the birth and then the rapid and fertile development of a
repertoire for ensembles based this time not upon the model of the
symphonic orchestra but upon certain groups of instruments from an
orchestra, as well as the increasing orientation of some established
chamber music ensembles like the Nash Ensemble (created in 1964) or
the Scharoun Ensemble (1983) towards contemporary music.
Taking advantage of a rich fabric of performers with ever-increasing
skills, and of institutions with solid financial and administrative
. . .oF course i compose diFFerenTly For The klAnG-
Forum wien ThAn For The ensemble modern. This is
very imporTAnT And iT is A source oF inspirATion.
—Enno Poppe
9
Ensemble
Intercontemporain,
Paris
10
foundations, it is natural that the “heirs” of the generations who were
born before 1945 should appropriate these tools with gusto: even if
we cannot yet easily describe such works as “patrimonial” (in the sense
that they have not had the time to be accepted universally as “modern
classics”), the selection of notable works listed below are nonetheless
authentic artistic accomplishments which, it can be said without doubt,
will become staples of the repertoire for future generations:
• Liza Lim (Voodoo Child, 1989)
• Philippe Schoeller (Feuillages, 1991)
• Luca Francesconi (Plot II, 1993)
• Philippe Manoury (Passacaille pour Tokyo, 1994)
• Martin Matalon (Metropolis, 1995-2011)
• Stefano Gervasoni (Concerto pour alto, 1995)
• Heiner Goebbels (Schwarz auf Weiss, 1996)
• Guo Wenjing (Inscriptions on Bone, 1996)
• Pascal Dusapin (Quad, 1996)
• Olga Neuwirth (Hooloomooloo, 1997)
• Marco Stroppa (Hommage à Gy.K., 1997)
• Fausto Romitelli (Professor Bad Trip, 1998-2000)
• Gérard Grisey (Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, 1998)
• Yan Maresz (Eclipse, 1999)
• Georges Aperghis (Petrrohl, 2001)
• Salvatore Sciarrino (Quaderno di Strada, 2003)
• Enno Poppe (Salz, 2005)
• Emmanuel Nunes (Lichtung I-III, 1988-2007)
• Mauro Lanza (Vesperbild, 2007)
• Sergej Newski (Alles, 2008)
• Oscar Bianchi (Vishuddha Concerto, 2009)
• Dai Fujikura (ICE, 2009)
• Hèctor Parra (Caressant l’horizon, 2011)
• Alberto Posadas (La lumière du noir, 2011)
• László Tihanyi (Imaginary Dialogues, 2012)
Ensemble Ex Novo
11
Perspectives: beyond concert
It would appear that the emerging generation of composers unques-
tioningly accept the ensemble as being a standard means of expres-
sion. Following on from Pierre Boulez, who had an essential role after
the birth of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and Friedrich Cerha, Beat
Furrer, Oliver Knussen and George Benjamin for the creation and/or
the development of Die Reihe, Klangforum and the London Sinfonietta,
many young creators invent their own tools or integrate themselves
into existing ensembles. A review of the programming of a “festival
within a festival,” like Strasbourg’s Musica, dedicated to what is on
offer in Europe today, revealed that half of the works presented (inter-
preted by almost a dozen ensembles) were by composers under the
age of 45: truly a body of young artists in the making. This season,
the well-established Ensemble Intercontemporain has given a score of
young composers the opportunity to create or reprise pieces equiva-
lent to a third of their overall programming (in the vocal world, the pro-
portion dedicated to young composers is approximately the same as
in the larger established instrumental ensembles), while the Ensemble
Modern dedicates some of its subscription concerts in the prestigious
Alte Oper of Frankfurt for the exploration of as-yet-unknown territo-
rial universes, proof, if needed, of a “cross-fertilization” between artists
and institutions which might be searching for an equivalent explora-
tion in the symphonic or lyrical worlds.
Relationships between art forms, being a major interest in our mod-
ern times, will no doubt confirm the central position of the ensemble,
a sturdy implement that can combine the advantages of “chamber
music” (flexible scheduling and economic practicality, the increased
awareness of personal responsibility by the performers, the atten-
tion to detail) and the “philharmonic world” (mass effects produced
by symphonic compositional techniques and/or the use of amplifica-
tion, the variety of timbres enabling the larger forms of music to be
presented) to the realization of innovative projects. In this regard, the
words of Hervé Boutry of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, about the
nomination of Matthias Pintscher (a composer-conductor in the tradi-
tion of Boulez and Eötvös) as artistic director of the group are a strong
signal: “Matthias Pintscher has convinced us: of his interest in inno-
vation in classical instrumental tradition, of his wish to re-invent the
concert form, [and] of his curiosity and desire to include artists from
other disciplines in our activity.” To be measured against this declara-
tion is the potential for “the ensemble” to go beyond traditional con-
cert hall presentations and the imitation of the customs of Romantic
era and its large-sized concert halls. There is little doubt that it is this
potential that frequently spurs on artists such as Oscar Bianchi, Luca
Francesconi, Philippe Manoury, Samy Moussa, Olga Neuwirth, Fabio
Nieder, Hèctor Parra, and Enno Poppe, and many others from the col-
lections of Universal Music Publishing Classical, to work interactively
with other artists and art forms on works which will enrich the ensem-
ble repertoire.
Translation: Christopher Brown
Part of this article has been published under the title “Petite cartogra-
phie des ensembles européens” in the general brochure of Musica Festival
2012 in Strasbourg, France.
The following composers and ensembles have influenced each
other greatly over the years and formed a relationship which led to
commissions, world premieres and regional premieres. Here is a small
selection:
• Guo Wenjing and Nieuw Ensemble (Sound from Tibet, Inscriptions
on Bone, She Huo, Concertino for cello and ensemble)
• Liza Lim and musikFabrik (The tongue of the invisible) and ELISION
(The Navigator)
• Luca Francesconi and musikFabrik (Unexptected End of Formula)
and Neue Vocalsolisten (Herzstueck)
• Emmanuele Casale and Ensemble Intercontemporain (2)
• Jonathan Cole and London Contemporary Orchestra (Penumbra)
• Dai Fujikura and ICE (Abandoned Time) and London Sinfonietta
(Double Bass Concerto)
• Ian Wilson and Argento Ensemble (Cassini Void)
• György Kurtág and UMZE Ensemble (Four Akhmatova-poems) and
Ensemble Contrechamp (Brefs messages)
• Balázs Horváth and Concerto Budapest (Borrowed Ideas, Faust
Groteske)
• Fabien Lévy and Ensemble 2e2m (Querwüchsig, Après tout)
• Olga Neuwirth and Klangforum Wien (Hommage á Klaus Nomi)
• Sergej Newski and Vocaallab Nederland (Autland)
• Samir Odeh-Tamimi and Neue Vocalsolisten (Garten der Erkenntnis)
• Enno Poppe and Ensemble Modern (Knochen) and Klangforum
Wien (Öl, IQ)
• Michel Roth and Ensemble Phoenix (molasse vivante)
• Fabio Nieder and ensemble recherche (Der Schuh auf dem Weg zum
Saturnio, Sogno 10 lùnedi gennaio 1892)
12
13
PHO
TO: C
OPy
rIg
HT
by E
mb
Gray locks, cut in a Beatles-style bob. Swarthy skin.
Behind thin-rimmed spectacles, darting narrow eyes;
below, thin lips that readily spread in a smile. A strange
mixture of a Chinese sage and a mischievous little boy
gazes at us from the photo of László Tihanyi.
The 56-year-old Hungarian composer can be said to
be at the zenith of his career. Every year, persistently
and continuously, he adds two or three new composi-
tions to his œuvre, which presently numbers almost
sixty works. He receives commissions both in Hungary
and from abroad; he has composed for the Contrechamps
Ensemble, for the Bath Festival, the Cologne musikFabrik
and a whole series of Hungarian performers; the première
of the opera commissioned from him by the French state
took place in the Bordeaux opera house. But he does not
mind composing just to please himself, since he knows that
Hungarian and foreign artists are glad to perform new pieces
by him. Or they may be introduced by his own chamber
group, Intermoduláció, which has been performing for more
than a quarter of a century. It is no accident that musicians
willingly play Tihanyi’s music, because what he writes always
sounds good and gives the performers satisfying material
– even if not in the traditional sense – to play. As he himself
says, it is not enough for the composition as a whole to be well
formed, every individual part must in itself meet certain aes-
thetic criteria. And for Tihanyi, these criteria are primarily clarity
and balance. It is almost thirty years now since
Tihanyi found the most appropriate direction for
his creative work, and since then, on this solid
foundation, he has built and extended his rep-
ertoire of techniques. At the same time, Tihanyi’s
path is rather unusual in the field of Hungarian
composition, which to an outsider’s ear is gener-
ally easily recognisable.
To the extent that 20th-century Hungarian com-
position has an independent history, the pre-eminent figure in it is
obviously Bartók. Because of the power of his personality, the uni-
versal significance of his music and his characteristically Hungarian
style, decades after his death he remains an inescapable point of
reference for his compatriots. While, after Bartók, the members of the
following generation (including György Kurtág and to a certain extent
György Ligeti as well) spent a lifetime defining their relationship with
Bartók, the younger ones (like Tihanyi) were in the fortunate position
lászló Tihanyi and his music
by péTer hAlász
i fEEl prEtty much alonE in this.
14
that for them Bartók was not a direct challenge but rather a matter of
music history.
After receiving the traditional training (that is, the kind that followed
the Bartók-Kodály artistic concept) at the Budapest Music Academy , at
the beginning of the 1980s, with the aid of several visits to Darmstadt
and Warsaw, Tihanyi was able to see out beyond Hungary’s provincial
musical life, shut in behind the Iron Curtain. Strangely, in Darmstadt it
was not so much the works composed by the local avant-garde that
held his attention, but the works of the Itinéraire group working there
as guests, especially those of Tristan Murail, Gérard Grisey and Hugues
Dufourt. Although electronic music and the combining of it with nor-
mal instrumental music has not since then aroused Tihanyi’s interest,
the sounds achievable in accordance with special harmonic principles
from an ensemble of acoustic instruments, owing to the nature of har-
monics, certainly fascinated him. And it was at least equally impor-
tant that he came under the influence of the formal purity of French
musical thinking and its hedonism, concentrating on the emotional
components of sound. And as he researched further back in time, he
recognised that many of his French contemporaries’ predecessors like
Boulez, Messiaen , Debussy and even Berlioz composed in accordance
with similar principles. His choice of the French path meant diverging
from the Hungarian and Central European mainstream, which followed
the cult of German musical thinking, the priority of motifs and organi-
cally developing form. (A hundred years ago, Kodály too, with only tem-
porary success, recommended following French examples in Hungarian
composition, which then was under German dominance.) Although
Tihanyi never denies that he is a Hungarian composer, he senses that
among his Hungarian colleagues his situation is unique. “I feel pretty
much alone in this,” he says, but he does not regret having persistently
defied not only the local expressionist fashions but also the imported,
tempting trends of minimalism and neo-Romanticism.
Tihanyi likes best to express the duality of clarity and complexity
in various kinds of works written for chamber ensembles that vary in
make-up from work to work. In his hands this apparatus, which sets in
motion a multitude of different tones and timbres, enabling soloistic
chamber music, homophonic or polyphonic effects to be produced,
functions as an extremely flexible and multi-coloured tool. The sound
created by the ensemble, however, is never an end in itself, but always
a means of conveying a thought-provoking idea. Tihanyi does not
deny – and in the titles of his works frequently points out to his listen-
ers – that his works are mostly inspired by impressions from music or
from outside the realm of music, and more than once by deeply hid-
den connections in music history, which at times engage him through
several compositions. Examples of such linked groups of works are
his series reflecting on Schubert’s Winterreise cycle (Winterszenen,
Nachtzene, Irrlichtspiel, 1991); his Enodios (1986) and Pylaios (1988)
based on aspects of the Hermes myth; and his “Neptune series” (Triton,
Nereida, The Passing of Neptune, 1995-96), which deals with astrologi-
cal aspects. If the sources
of the underlying ideas or
the numerical proportions
expressed in the resulting
sound, rhythms and formal
construction might sug-
gest a mystical atmosphere,
all these remain the com-
poser’s private business,
protecting the genesis and
development of the works,
since nothing is more alien to
Tihanyi than any hazy, unclear mode of expression. Looking back over
his earlier years, it is, in fact, his excessive obviousness, what he calls
his “mania for order” that he considers to be his main fault. But the
listener cannot blame him for it, because it is precisely this that makes
Tihanyi’s music so comfortable, so easily inhabitable and comprehen-
sible. What is more, it is just these wide, well-lit musical spaces that
can conceal secret crannies like the breathtakingly moving moments
that occur in virtually every work, filled with characteristic cadenzas,
when musical time is suspended.
What is very typical of the consistent nature of Tihanyi’s art is his
reworking, re-interpretation and acoustic or compositional re-clothing
of earlier creations. In every case, these reworkings tend from smaller
apparatuses towards larger, more complex ensembles, enriching,
expanding and rendering more complex the chamber music sound
characteristic of the original works. Thus sometimes unusual “concert
. . . iT is noT enouGh For The composiTion As A
whole To be well Formed, every individuAl pArT
musT in iTselF meeT cerTAin Aes TheTic criTeriA.
—László Tihanyi
15
works” come into being, which of course have little in common with
traditional concertos since, in singling out one or two instruments
from the chamber music ensemble and giving them the role of soloists
accompanied by the rest of the ensemble, he is merely picking out and
reinforcing individual strands from the earlier composition, to weave
around them a richer texture. This was how individual movements of
the clarinet-cello-piano trio Schattenspiel (1997) gave rise to the ver-
sion entitled Atte (1999) with solo clarinet and cello accompanied by
a chamber group; from the four-hands piano piece Matrix (1998) came
Matrix/Kosmos (2002), and from the harp piece entitled Linos (2002)
came the “mini-concerto” for harp Arnis (2010). At the same time,
these transformations reveal a lot about Tihanyi’s way of thinking and
his ideas about sound. Here ear-caressing sound is at the same time
a background to the strongly-defined musical ideas that come to the
fore and is, in itself, an independent actor, which appears in the various
forms of a work in many different lights.
Although Tihanyi feels himself to be primarily an instrumental com-
poser, his only opera so far, Genetrix (2001-2007), based on the novella
by François Mauriac, is one of the outstanding musical dramas of the
past decade. More than twenty years after an abortive attempt in his
student days, he set about giving new expression to a subject that fas-
cinated him; in addition to achieving extremely original French diction,
he created an astounding theatrical effect, especially by incorporat-
ing choral passages, hymns sung in Latin, that overarch the chamber
drama, and make it reminiscent of the mystery plays. In connection
with Genitrix, Tihanyi refers to its prototypes Pelléas ét Mélisande
and Bluebeard’s Castle, but the dramaturgy of his opera, which frag-
ments time and is full of references backwards and forwards, is very
far removed from those examples from a hundred years earlier. At the
same time Genitrix – like the operas of Berg – contains many instru-
mental forms, and from these evolved the “viola concerto” entitled
Passacaglie (2010), written for Kim Kashkashian, which is Tihanyi’s
most complex score so far for full orchestra.
A good example of his search for and discovery of external inspira-
tion is his Two Imaginary Dialogues, which was written at the request
of the Studio for New Music’s Moscow ensemble, and first heard in
February 2012 at the festival called “Russia through the Eyes of
Europeans.” Tihanyi chose two film directors who are important to
him, so that reflecting on some aspects of their art he might sketch his
own picture of a part of Russian culture. As he notes, in a passage in
Lutosławski’s Livre pour orchestra, he recognised that orchestral sound
can have film-like features and through sound enable near and dis-
tant views to be seen. For the chamber ensemble he created a sort of
inverted rhapsody: in the first part of the work, he evokes the atmo-
sphere of Sergei Eisenstein’s monumental battle scenes with tumul-
tuous, swirling torrents of sound which are repeatedly interrupted by
typical Tihanyi moments, like film stills. But in the second movement
he translates into his own musical language the quietly tense world
of Andrei Tarkovsky, imbued with metaphysics. In this chamber scene,
three dream pictures frame an instrumental dialogue and monologue.
Characteristically, Tihanyi expresses the contrast between the person-
alities of the two film directors in the form not of portraits but of dia-
logues, through which he incorporates himself and his own world of
ideas, distinct from both of theirs.
In 2012, at the request of the Kempten Chamber Music Festival, he
composed Rundherum for piano quintet. This apparatus is unusually
traditional for Tihanyi, and partly for this reason he took care to divide
up the ensemble and re-interpret it in an original way. As the title of
the work (= Round about) indicates, in certain sections of the work the
two violinists and the viola player circle round the cellist and pianist,
who are fixed at their instruments. When one after another all three
reach the music stands behind the piano, they step out, as it were, from
the framework of the proper piano quintet genre and we hear them
from a sort of dream world. Their separateness is underlined by their
playing mouth organs and percussion instruments at the rear desks,
and their music sounds at a different tempo from each other and from
that of the two musicians playing in the foreground; in the most com-
plex section of the work as many as three separate levels are opposed
to the cello-piano duo.
The avantgarde-minded French director of Genitrix, Christine
Dormoy, once said : “Mauriac is classical, and so is Tihanyi’s style of
writing”. Hearing Tihanyi’s music, this summary judgment may seem
strange, but we have to admit she is right – if, by “classical” in the tradi-
tional sense, we mean artistic creation on a human scale, transmitting
human standards. Translation: Lorna Dunbar
16
originality and
charactErmaverick composers giving an essenTial
new impeTus To musical life: an excursion Through The caTalogs of ricordi munich
by michAel zwenzner
17
“Born in Karlsruhe in 1938. Emigrated to
Australia in 1960. Part-time jobs, shift work in
steel-processing industries which led to first
encounters with sounds of a ‘metallic kind’.
Experiments with so-called ‘hard and soft edges
of reverberating metal,’ intense investigation of
the unpredictable, non-lyrical but also poetic
aspects of sonically ‘at random’ events. Credo:
‘Poetry in noise.’ Studies at the Savitsky Actors’
School in Melbourne, 1961-63. Joined a travel-
ling theatre group. Studied guitar with Antonio
Losada and music theory with Don Andrews in
Sydney, 1966-70. Returned to Europe in 1971….”
This is just a short excerpt from the unusual bio-
graphy of composer Volker Heyn, who lives these
days in Karlsruhe, and whose works are published
by Ricordi Munich.
Within the innovative music of the past hundred
years, such unusual careers seem to be more the rule
than the exception. Many significant 20th-century
composers who long created in obscurity, or whose
works initially experienced rejection, turned out later
in their careers to be precisely those trail-blazing
artists whose music has left the most profound historical traces, and
enjoyed the most lasting success. Giacinto Scelsi, Iannis Xenakis,
György Kurtág and Salvatore Sciarrino (all substantially represented
in Universal Music Publishing Classical (UMPC)) catalogues are
among those composers who for decades worked in obscurity,
until suddenly their significance was widely appreciated, and they
could gain the laurels that their outstanding artistic achievements
deserved. In some tragic cases (one thinks of people like Gérard
Grisey and Fausto Romitelli), this enormous success only came after
the composer’s death. In the light of an ever-more-interconnected
information society, it is astonishing that the 20th century was still
an era of spectacular ‘belated discoveries’ of great artists. But it is
just such cases that reveal the great importance of their supporters
and advocates, who are also concerned to ensure that initial success
is lasting, that their music remains available, and that knowledge
of it goes out into the world. In the more than two-hundred-year
tradition of Giovanni Ricordi (1785-1853), the publishers in the
UMPC group have set themselves the same task, always keeping in
mind the goal of helping artists to enjoy the most durable impact
possible, on both present-day listeners and future ones.
Volker Heyn
18
i could sAy ThAT i compose becAuse i wAnT To GeT To
undersTAnd how The world FuncTions. when i mAke music,
i hAve To Give concreTe Form To ‘world siTuATions’ in
Terms oF sonic cATeGories. composiTionAl wAys oF
proceedinG, especiAlly FormAl And ‘sonosomATic’ processes Are probes providinG insiGhT
inTo world siTuATions, or Their recoGniTion.
—Rolf Riehm
19
So, for many years, Ricordi Munich has been working with some of
the most original and distinctive composers of the older generation,
including the ones whose current projects are briefly presented
below: the German and Swiss composers Nikolaus Brass (b. 1949),
Volker Heyn (b. 1938), Rudolf Kelterborn (b.1931), Thomas Lauck
(b. 1943), Rolf Riehm (b. 1937), Ernstalbrecht Stiebler (b. 1934) and
Hans Wüthrich (b. 1937). Common to them all is the combination
of single-mindedness and persistence with which they tread their
unconventional paths, their rich imagination, and their inexhaustible
inventiveness. They all display a certain scepticism regarding the
often artistically dubious “express route” to success, and reject
compliance with the widespread trend to easy accessibility. So their
initial successes occur away from major halls and stages, but their
reach consistently expands from organic growth. What arises here is
a music lying beyond artificial excitement and short-lived hype. So
it is no accident that in their works they constantly make reference
to significant contemporary thinkers, for example, Nikolaus Brass to
the cultural critic and philosopher Georg Steiner, and Volker Heyn to
Jean Ziegler, a sociologist critical of globalization.
Ziegler’s book “The Empire of Shame” provides the starting point
for one of Volker Heyn’s most recent compositions. The roughly
half-hour eclipse of reason (2008-10) for female voice, ensemble
and playbacks will be premiered on April 21, 2013 as part of
Deutschlandfunk’s New Music Forum in Cologne, with Salome
Kammer as soloist, and Ensemble Aventure conducted by Alexander
Ott. It’s not a matter of conventional text setting; as Heyn says: “It
wouldn’t have been of interest for this musical work to quote the
original texts from Jean Ziegler’s accounts and reports; for this pur-
pose we have the book to refer to. What proved inspiring (if such
a word is permissible), was a particular scenario in his work, which
describes the state of affairs that prevails around and inside the
sky-rocketing garbage dumps at the outskirts of the town of Brasilia.
The scenario, the setting: every day about one thousand children
and youths are allowed to rummage upon these hills in search of
From left to right:
Rolf Riehm
Nikolaus Brass
Thomas Lauck
20
food and whatever usable objects they can salvage from these bac-
teria–infected dumps. All this under observation from sadistic secu-
rity guards and over–ambitious, zealous supervisors.”
Someone whose composing is founded on such impressions is
scarcely likely to furnish blissful melodies or sweet harmonies:
that much one can hear from the recently-released portrait
CD on the Berlin edition RZ label. On the contrary, in eclipse of
reason, for example, makes use of two pianos tuned a quarter-
tone apart, electric guitar, electric bass and playback of concrete
sounds. Journalist Oliver Alt wrote this about Heyn: “Part of what
is fascinating about Heyn is that he doesn’t shrink from the world’s
dirt. Refined aestheticizing is not what he’s about. On the contrary,
this man’s music always arises as a reaction to the most repugnant
social and political situations. (…) Despite its rough surface –
conventionally produced sounds are more the exception than the
rule – Heyn’s music glitters with a wealth of nuance that is just
astonishing.”
Astonishment is also aroused time after time by the music of
Rolf Riehm who, following the great success of his opera Das
Schweigen der Sirenen in Stuttgart in 1994, is currently composing a
second full-length music theatre work – this time for the Frankfurt
Opera, where the work will be premiered in September 2014.
Siren Samples: Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Images of
Desire and Destruction) is the title of the present score, already
largely completed, for which the composer also wrote the libretto.
Meanwhile his music is attracting increasing international attention,
as witness performances of his large-scale piano concerto Wer
sind diese Kinder at the Ostrava New Music Days, and HAWKING
for ensemble in Prague and Los Angeles. Concerning the latter
performance, on March 29, 2011, Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles
Times: “This, in the end, is spiritual music not in a mystical sense but
in a disorienting one. And with shocking sonic surety, Riehm reveals
a universe with a mind of its own.” In one of the long-renowned
Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, on April 29, 2013, there
nikolAus brAss’ music hAs A rAdicAl individuAl expressiviTy. his pieces deAl
wiTh pAin And insecuriTy. This is AusTere music, yeT All iTs micro- And overTone
oscillATions mAke iT viscerAl And hApTic. —Gerhard R. Koch
21
will be not only the first American performance of Lenz in Moskau
for ensemble, but also the premiere of a new work lasting about
25 minutes: according to the composer, Pasolini in Ostia (2012) is a
kind of micro-oratorio for soprano, piano, percussion, cello and text
projections based on a radio report about the last days of Pasolini’s
life, and Pasolini’s film using Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The singer
Alice Teyssier will perform the demanding solo part. Riehm’s sub-
stantial discography will also be expanded in 2013: WERGO is issu-
ing a CD with Wer sind diese Kinder for piano and orchestra and the
large-scale piano solo HAMAMUTH – Stadt der Engel. Nicolas Hodges
is the soloist in both works. A further CD including Lenz in Moskau is
in preparation for the Cybele label.
In 2013, on the occasion of Thomas Lauck’s 70th birthday, a
substantial edition of four CDs will be released on the Telos label.
This will draw emphatic attention to a composer who has devoted
his life almost exclusively to the composition of pieces for small
chamber ensembles, and has thus always been rather in the
shadows of the music industry. All the same, over the course of
the years Lauck has gathered around himself a steadily increasing
number of first-rate musicians who have made studio recordings
of a total of 22 of his compositions. These include internationally
successful musicians such as the percussionist Isao Nakamura,
the soprano Petra Hoffmann, the pianist and conductor Jürg
Henneberger, and the trombonist Dirk Amrein, as well as emerging
talents like the cellist Isabel Gehweiler and the double bass player
Aleksander Gabrys. Thomas Lauck – born in Strasbourg in Alsace –
studied composition with Klaus Huber, and later pursued a double
career as a composer and ophthalmologist. He hones his works
with the utmost care. The conductor Bernhard Wulff once wrote:
“He works out the materials for his compositions the way a vintner
selects his berries in late autumn: very careful choice of details,
after a long process of personally listening to the individual sounds,
their individual lives and eventual extinction. In this, visual artists
and literary texts too act as virtual dialogue partners. Evaluation of
the single note and its resonance – this sonic tragedy of a sound’s
extinction – is one of his central compositional challenges.”
For many years, Nikolaus Brass, whose most important teachers
were Morton Feldman and Helmut Lachenmann, also pursued
a double career as composer and doctor. For some ten years, he
has built a reputation in Germany, with numerous premieres of
orchestral, vocal and chamber music works. In the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, the German music critic Gerhard R. Koch drew
“attention to a composer who goes his own way, at a certain
22
distance from the established music industry, and comprehensively
so. That is, Brass is a doctor: he doesn’t have to live from composing,
nor does he want to. As a sort of part-time composer, Brass enjoys
excellent company: Mahler and Ives.” Accordingly, Brass was often
in a position to compose works without external commissions, but
driven instead by inner necessity. This also applies to his first opera
Sommertag (A Summer’s Day), based on the play of the same name
by Jon Fosse (Ein sommars dag, 1999), which he is composing at
the moment. Fosse’s texts, says Brass, have an innate musicality
that makes them very suitable for music drama. This musicality
is underlined “by the dramatic principle of superimposing the
temporal levels in his dialogues. The characters move into other
times, though at first the viewer doesn’t notice this. And in doing
so, Fosse unfurls a central ‘musico-dramatic’ factor, if one takes the
view that formed music works with memory: more than any other
art, music is able to bring the past into the present, and more than
any other art it shows what it means to be asked to experience what
Hans Wüthrich
23
is present as what has passed.” Preoccupation with the themes of
time and transience is also reflected in Brass’s concert music, such
as Von wachsender Gegenwart for 19 solo strings or Zeit im Grund
for two clarinets and eleven strings, both of which will available in
2013 on a CD issued on the NEOS label.
The inner necessity of a composer’s actions also stands abso-
lutely at the forefront for Hans Wüthrich, born 1937 in Aeschi,
Switzerland. He is only interested in a commission if the idea for
a new piece that he wants to realize is already present. And since
ideas that can stand up to his critical scrutiny are rare bits of luck,
Wüthrich’s output to date has remained pretty small. The most
recent piece, from 2010, was for two percussionists and live elec-
tronics with the title Peripherie und Mitte, premiered in 2011 as
part of a concert celebrating the award of the Marguerite Staehelin
Composition Prize to the composer, who has also been a member
of the Berlin Akademie der Künste since 2009. In conversation with
Thomas Meyer in the journal Dissonance, Wüthrich says “With every
piece I write, I start more or less from zero. Naturally I refer back
to previous experiences, but I don’t believe that I have a personal
musical language. I’m always considering afresh how to realize an
idea. And this constantly results in new arrangements of material,
and new ways of proceeding. I have this ambition, that anyone hear-
ing a piece of mine gets an experience that he can only have with
this piece, and nowhere else.” What will come next? Wüthrich has
disclosed this much: for 2013 he is planning a piece for four strings
and live electronics.
Rudolf Kelterborn, born in Basle in 1931, is another outstand-
ing Swiss composer who single-mindedly goes his own way, and
is always likely to surprise. In the journal Dissonance, Christoph
Neidhöfer writes “Kelterborn’s musical gestures are mainly distin-
guished by clearly contoured energy processes, not unlike those
that can be observed in, for example, verbal and emotional, human
expressive forms. This is where the immediacy of Kelterborn’s music
lies: for the most part, it speaks in an emotionally direct way, and
wiTh every piece i wriTe, i sTArT more or less From zero. nATurAlly i reFer bAck To previous experiences, buT i don’T believe ThAT i hAve A personAl musicAl lAnGuAGe. —Hans Wüthrich
24
its chosen musical material constantly has a vivid, transparent
effect, even in its most transfigurative moments.” Good examples
of the direct emotional effect of Kelterborn’s music are provided by
works like the Oboe Quartet for Heinz Holliger, given its first perfor-
mance at the Lucerne Festivalin 2009, and the Nachtstück for the
TaG ensemble, premiered in 2012 in Winterthur. On April 14, 2013
the Basle City Casino will be the site for the first performance of
Kelterborn’s Sinfonie 5 in einem Satz („La notte“) (2011-12), a work
commissioned by the Basle Music Academy, whose orchestra will
give the premiere under the direction of Christoph-Mathias Mueller.
We end our little excursion with the composer Ernstalbrecht
Stiebler, born in Berlin in 1934, whose connection to America’s
tradition of experimental ”maverick” composers is particularly evi-
dent. As a radio producer, he was especially keen to ensure that
composers like John Cage and Morton Feldman had an important
forum in Germany. Ricordi Munich’s acquisition of Edition Modern
Wewerka a few years ago means that they now have all of Stiebler’s
works published since 1958 in one house. Stiebler is one of the
first German composers to have built his compositions on the
reductive principles of minimalism, as early as in Extension I for
string trio, from 1963. Neither complex nor repetitive, Stiebler’s
music unfolds in a temporal and sonic space whose dimensions it
seeks to explore in all directions: the utopia of a ‘pure’ music as
an answer to the overly dominant musical ‘narratives’ of earlier
centuries. Be aware of the place beneath your feet – this Zen phrase
indicates the direction Stiebler’s music goes in: attention to the
present moment, being inside the sound, animating the sonic
space through constant repetition, and the high art of the long
wave: composing as an act of listening, as existential necessity, as
a survival strategy. No wonder that Giacinto Scelsi was also one of
Stiebler’s most important inspirations.
On January 31, 2013, as part of TransMediale Berlin Stiebler will
have a portrait concert including two premieres: …mit der Zeit… for dou-
ble bass and keyboard, and three in one 2 for bass flute, percussion and
kelTerborn’s musicAl GesTures Are mAinly disTinGuished by cleArly conToured enerGy
processes, noT unlike Those ThAT cAn be observed in, For exAmple, verbAl And
emoTionAl, humAn expressive Forms. This is where The immediAcy oF kelTerborn’s music lies
—Christoph Neidhöfer
Rudolf Kelterborn
25
piano. Following up on Unisono diviso (1999), for spring 2014 Stiebler
is working on his second orchestral work, composed on commission
from Hessian Radio, and to be premiered by the Symphony Orchestra
in Frankfurt.
The Berlin-Scene label m=minimal has embarked on a multiple
CD and LP edition of Stiebler’s music. The second CD/LP, with the
compositions ton in ton, composed for Ensemble Modern, and the
organ pieces Torsi and Betonungen, will be released early in 2013.
Of ton in ton, Stiebler writes, it was “composed relying on a tradi-
tion that reaches from the distant sounds of someone like Antonio
de Cabezon to the soft filigree poetry of Morton Feldman, so as to
penetrate barriers which are not just the Walls of Jericho; it’s more
a matter of getting beyond our inner barriers, so as to have equal
access to both far and near, and memory and dream, in an imaginary
and real sonic space.”
Translation: Richard Toop
26
PHO
TO: b
Ern
d u
HlI
g
The golden age of opera produced many innovative and daring
productions, however, this appears to have suffered a steady decline
during recent decades in many opera houses. An important exception
to this is the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, which has been program-
ming contemporary works through several generations of directors,
and Peter de Caluwe and his team successfully continue this tradition.
Awarded “Opera House of the year” by Opernwelt in 2011, this presti-
gious institution in Brussels proves season after season that opera can
be as modern as any other less intimidating artistic field. This is clearly
evidenced by the 2012-2013 season programming, which includes
Sasha Waltz’s production of Pascal Dusapin’s Passion (for the opening
of the season) and Benoît Mernier’s world premiere of La Dispute (on
March 5, 2013), both published by the French office of Universal Music
Publishing Classical. This is what Peter de Caluwe explained to us when
we interviewed him before the season’s opening:
Opera is about community
“For me commissioning and producing contemporary opera is
a political, as well as a social and artistic statement; it proves that
opera is an art form of today. Everything we do at Théâtre Royal de
opEra: an art form of today
27
la Monnaie needs to have a contemporary edge, it needs to have the
feeling that we are making something which belongs not only to our
house, but which is clearly a way of communicating between an artist
and an audience of today. We have to allow artists to create, whether
it is recreating old pieces from the opera repertoire or adding new
pieces to the repertoire, and we have to find the audience interested
in seeing those creations. This interaction is a very Greek way of
thinking about theatre: it is talking about a community, and also talk-
ing about a process of bringing artists into society. In both cases it is
about innovation, be it a new interpretation of La Traviata or a pre-
miere by Pascal Dusapin, Benoît Mernier or Philippe Boesmans. Both
give me enormous excitement.”
An art form with a European touch
“I am a very European-thinking person, so opera as a European art
form is incredibly important to me. Brussels is not only an admin-
istrative and economic capital but also a cultural one; here we can
influence the people and the decision makers if we play our role
properly, as Munich or Amsterdam or some other houses also do.
As you know La Monnaie was already a producing house as early as
the 1900’s; a lot of premieres that did not happen in Paris occurred
here. Our house was always attractive to composers. I see it also
as a kind of statement from our country towards Europe. Like
Belgium, which has two different communities, Europe is a con-
glomerate of different nations and regions; so our commitment
to opera, singularly contemporary opera, can be interpreted as a
pro-European political statement.”
Audiences are curious
“People are curious and not only about staging. You have to
take them on an adventure and help them discover territories
they don’t know. If they are in territories they already know, they
may already have made a judgment. Offer them Les Huguenots
by Meyerbeer (as we did in 2011 in the new critical edition by
Ricordi Munich) and they are completely open, they have no
judgments in advance. Offer them a world premiere and there
is yet a different kind of curiosity. This is exactly what we are
doing with Benoît Mernier’s new piece La Dispute. We have
engaged a lot of patrons who are already committed to the
piece: they contributed to the commission, they had read-
ings of the libretto, met the stage directors, the librettist
and the composer, the young singers, a whole making-of
process which makes them understand what it is about.”Peter de Caluwe
an inTerview wiTh peTer de caluweby eric denuT
28
The 2013 season, from Pascal Dusapin’s Passion to Benoît Mernier’s
La Dispute“The two contemporary pieces we programed this season are both
closely related to the passion: the passion between two people which
starts with a relationship and the dispute that ends it. I have tried to
connect the whole season to this topic: there are references between
Marivaux’ La Dispute (which surprisingly had never been used as
a libretto, or at least as a basis for a libretto) and Mozart’s Cosi fan
tutte; the passion is also linked to Manon Lescaut, La Traviata, Lulu,
all related in some particular way to this whole discussion between
Lei and Lui which is so fantastic in Pascal Dusapin’s score – a piece
in which we are looking from Eurydice’s point of view, why she does
not want to return.
“Looking for common themes make us very creative – such as find-
ing a way to work on Marivaux – who always was one of my favorite
writers. I am convinced the 18th century is much closer to our contem-
porary soul than the 19th - the free spirit, the individuality, people who
dared doing things beyond the border of bourgeois life. So Marivaux
is a kind of contemporary writer, who happens not to live in our time!
Benoît Mernier, sharing this vision, came up with a project based on
La Dispute and after a lot of research together with Joël Lauwers and
Ursel Hermann we ended up with a libretto based on several theatre
plays, including La Dispute, of course, but also La Double Inconstance,
for example. As we also wanted to work with the fabulous singers
Stéphanie d’Oustrac and Stéphane Degout and give them a bigger role,
we specifically looked for and found beautiful passages in Marivaux’s
body of work.”
Musicians and contemporary opera
“Our orchestral musicians are asking for premieres and contem-
porary pieces. It makes them much more individually responsible,
because most modern compositions are, like Pascal Dusapin’s Passion,
very soloistic. We do not like thinking about “specialist singers” in
modern art music. An artist able to sing Verdi should also be able to
sing contemporary musical writing! Why should someone so fabulous
as Barbara Hannigan be portrayed as a 21st century music star? As you
know she is equally at home singing Baroque motets as well as Ligeti’s
Grand Macabre or Dusapin.”
i cAll iT A sine quA non condiTion. we need To creATe The riGhT compAny
FeelinG From The very beGinninG, wiTh everyone involved – when This
hAppens, iT is The mosT exciTinG ThinG you cAn experience!
—Peter de Caluwe
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Recipe for success
“The most important thing is to have all the ingredients from the
beginning: a real team involving the conductor as well as the stage direc-
tor. You have to know what kind of direction of development you are
heading into. I call it a sine qua non condition. We need to create the
right company feeling from the very beginning, with everyone involved
– when this happens, it is the most exciting thing you can experience! I
mean, Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, even Wagner in some way (with himself!)
shared this point of view. If this is not the case, I will feel something is
not working well, even if you have the best singers in the cast. That’s
one of the reasons why we sometimes have had “holes” in our creative
rhythm: suddenly you may have the feeling “Oh, there is something not
really OK here.” Either this is going to be too late, or the composer is not
really inspired, or it doesn’t work between him and the stage director –
anything can happen. Or, I can have the feeling the composer is writing
the piece because we asked him, not because he needs to. Someone like
Pascal Dusapin coming to us with an idea he had when he was 18 years
old for his next project in a future season - this is fantastic. If someone
comes with this kind of idea, you know you have started well!”
Passion, music & libretto by Pascal Dusapin
Premiered on June 29, 2008 at Aix-en-Provence.
Belgian premiere on August 30, 2012 at the Théâtre de la
Monnaie with a choreography by Sasha Waltz & guests with
the Orchestre de Chambre de la Monnaie and the Vocalconsort
Berlin conducted by Franck Ollu.
La Dispute, music by Benoît Mernier, libretto by Joël Lauwers
and Ursel Hermann after Marivaux
World première on March 5, 2013 at the Brussels Théâtre
de la Monnaie - in co-production with Opéra National de
Montpellier.
Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie conducted by Patrick
Davin
Stage direction, Karl-Ernst and Ursel Hermann with the col-
laboration of Joël Lauwers
30
Klezmer ensemble and string orchestra - bearers of different tra-
ditions, different cultures. In the past decade, the Budapest Klezmer
Band and the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra have proved in their
joint concerts that the melodic world of the instrumental music of
the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe as brought to life by an en-
semble consisting of clarinet, piano, accordion, trombone, violin,
double bass and percussion can be successfully combined with the
sound of the classical orchestra. Ferenc Jávori’s Klezmer Suite has
become part of the repertoire of both ensembles, and has scored
notable successes both in Hungary and abroad. The score appeared
in print not long ago, thus becoming available to other ensembles
as well. The composer talks about the background to the creation of
the work:
At some time in the 1970’s, you moved from Munkács, Ukraine
(then part of the Soviet Union) to settle in Hungary. When was that,
and what was your reason for moving?
In 1972, my younger sister married a Hungarian Jewish boy and set-
tled here, and, in accordance with my parents’ wish, the whole family
followed her. I was 28 years old at the time.
Munkács traditionally had a sizeable Jewish community.
Presumably you too grew up in that community. From the seventies
onwards there was a continuous exodus of Jews from the Soviet
Union. Was your migration part of that process?
If at that time, in 1972, we had not followed my sister, some time
later we would almost certainly have emigrated to America or Israel,
as the rest of the family did. We saw clearly that we had to leave the
Soviet Union, but our motives for leaving were economic rather than
political. In the seventies, there were more than four thousand Jewish
families living in Munkács. I went there last year, and heard that there
are just two hundred and seventy-two Jews left. Jews have virtually
disappeared from Sub-Carpathia.
What languages did you speak at home?
Yiddish and Hungarian.
How religious was your family?
We did not maintain a kosher diet, but my father was religious, and
we observed the holidays and festivals. Ours was a big family, there
were lots of relatives, and on these occasions we always got together.
On some feast days there were twenty to thirty people sitting round
the table. As a child I thoroughly enjoyed these occasions; we were
a very loving family. Today we are scattered, fate has planted us in
thE fortunatE
of two
31
convErgEncEmusical worlds
an inTerview wiTh ferenc Jávori, leader of The budapesT klezmer bandby lászló Gyori
32
different continents, but we are a very close-knit family.
How did you begin to study music?
When I was six, my mother took me to see old Mr. Spitzer, head of
the local music school, and had me enrolled. I would have liked to play
the piano, but Mr. Spitzer told my parents – the war and the Holocaust
were still a recent experience – that a person can flee with a violin,
but not with a piano, so my parents decided for me: the violin became
my main instrument, and the piano my second instrument, but, in the
Soviet Union, it too was taken very seriously, and in my final exam I
played a Mozart piano concerto.
In Munkács, to what extent was there a living tradition of Jewish
instrumental music?
In the Soviet period there was no longer a living tradition. Jewish
songs, however, were still sung by the community. From my mother
and from uncles and aunts I heard a lot of Yiddish songs; my grandpa
talked about the pre-World-War I klezmer musicians, who played
together with gypsy musicians; in fact it was from him I heard that a
real klezmer band played at the wedding of the daughter of Spira, the
miracle-working Munkács rabbi. The way I became acquainted with
klezmer was that in the town there was a wonderful leading violinist
called Galambosi, who played in the Csillag restaurant. When I was at
secondary school I used to go with my parents to the Csillag restau-
rant garden, where Jewish melodies were sometimes included in the
program. I spoke with Galambosi, who told me what sorts of tunes he
had learned from his father, who had played with klezmer musicians
before World War I. At that time in the Soviet Union, no Jewish culture
or Jewish music officially existed; the older members of the commu-
nities still knew songs, but nothing escaped the attention of the cen-
sor. Programs – for example, even those performed in restaurants by
gypsy musicians – had to be approved by a party committee. It was
not advisable to advertise that one intended to play Jewish music.
Meanwhile, I went to Ungvár to the conservatory, then to university in
Drohobics, but I frequently visited Galambosi, who showed me melo-
dies which I transcribed. I found this musical world interesting and
exciting, and I sensed it would be important to me, so I eagerly col-
lected material. Most of my collection I owe to Galambosi, but I also
sought out elderly gypsy musicians in Nagyszőllős, Raho, Técső and
elsewhere, and transcribed a lot of music; meanwhile I completed my
university studies, obtained my diploma as a violin teacher, and got a
job in Nagyszőllős teaching violin.
Did your klezmer music-making in fact begin after you moved to
Hungary?
In the first period after I moved here, I had to look for work. Luckily CO
Pyr
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Sfor me, the Budapest Operetta Theatre advertised auditions for a vio-
linist, so I found a job. But at that time, it did not even occur to me to
dig out my collection of Jewish music.
As far as I remember, in the ‘70s, Jewish music did not enjoy great
popularity in Hungary either. Although two Hungarian music historians,
Judit Frigyesi and Péter Laki, collected liturgical music, there was no
great fashion for Jewish instrumental music at a time when in Hungary
the dance-house movement was flourishing.
What is more, the Jews in Hungary related very differently to their
Jewish roots from those living in Sub-Carpathia. With only slight exag-
geration, I could say that Jewish culture did not exist either. The major-
ity concealed their origin; only after 1990 did a lot of people whom I
had gotten to know in the ’80s admit to being Jewish. As assimilated
Jews, they did not feel it to be an important element of their identity;
in their eyes I was a curiosity. Until the ’90’s, it would not have occurred
to me to do anything with my collection of Jewish music.
It was only some time during the 1980’s that klezmer music became
popular again. When did you first encounter klezmer ensembles?
The genre’s renaissance started at the beginning of the ’80s. It was in
1988 that I first encountered it, when I was travelling in America, and
in a New York record shop I saw a lot of klezmer recordings and sheet
music. I bought two records, listened to them at home, and was aston-
ished to discover that half of the tunes were familiar to me.
Listening to klezmer music, the layman has the impression that as
in jazz, here too there is ample scope for improvisation. Is there re-
ally? Is it a case of reconstruction? Perhaps re-creation? How much
freedom does the performer have?
Originally, the dilemmas were very similar to those experienced
in folk music. How authentic does the sound have to be? Should this
music be performed as it was a hundred years ago or, moving with the
times, should other elements also be incorporated in it? In America, at
first authentic sound was the aim, which in the home of jazz proved
untenable. As time went on, realizing this, the klezmer musicians
tended increasingly to incorporate improvisation in their music.
What is the “compulsory” composition of a klezmer band? Clearly,
in the various groups different instruments can be heard. Is there
some kind of compulsory minimum?
To begin with I adopted the composition of the 13 member American
Klezmer Conservatory Band. Later I came to realise that a seven-mem-
ber group – accordion, clarinet, violin, trombone, double bass, drums
and piano – better expresses my ideas.
The Klezmer Suite was the fruit of a collaboration with the Ferenc
Liszt Chamber Orchestra. What is the history of the piece?
To me, the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra had always floated at
some unattainable height; I had heard them in countless concerts,
with Jean-Pierre Rampal, with Isaac Stern and others, and I had the
utmost respect for them. I would not have dared to think that one
day we would be partners, that we would make music together, and
indeed that one day they would play notes written down by me.
Then once, at one of our concerts, I discovered János Rolla, the con-
certmaster and artistic leader of the orchestra, sitting among the
audience. At the end of the concert. he came over and warmly con-
gratulated us. He liked the music and also our playing. He made a
point of going over to our accordionist, Anna Nagy, and told her that
up until that evening, he had always hated the accordion, but Anna
had convinced him of the instrument’s virtues. A few years after that
evening, János Rolla phoned me, we met and he asked me if I would
write something for the orchestra, because after so many Baroque
and classical works they would like to play something different. All
this happened around 1998, when that kind of “fusion” music had
not yet come into fashion. At that time, I was still a beginner as a
composer; I had written a few pieces for my band, and klezmer music
for two ballets, but I had never written anything for a classical cham-
ber orchestra. The occasion was at hand. We were already regular
participants in the Jewish Summer Festival and the festival director,
Vera Vadas, asked us to produce a special program this time, so I sug-
gested that on this occasion we should give a joint concert with the
Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra. From then on, there was no turn-
ing back, the program was advertised, and I began composing. In the
first half of the evening, they performed a classical program, then we
played half an hour of klezmer, and finally together we played the
movement I had composed for this occasion. There was a full house
at the Dohány utca Synagogue in Budapest; we played to an audi-
ence of four thousand. Great expectations had preceded this con-
cert, thanks to the reputation of the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra
and the unusual pairing. It was such a huge success that afterwards
they refused to let us leave the platform. We had to repeat part of
the movement. This success boosted my confidence enormously, so I
composed the whole suite, which we subsequently have played in a
lot of concerts, a recording has been made of it, and the Győr Ballet
Company has choreographed it.
As a matter of fact, to what genre does this piece belong? A work of
serious music on Jewish themes? Crossover? What would you call it?
I am unable to decide, but perhaps it is not important. It is the fortu-
nate convergence of two musical worlds, which is an experience not only
for us performers, but also for our audiences. Translation: Lorna DunbarFerenc Jávori
34
umpc nEw signings
in 2012
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francesca verunelliBorn in 1979, Francesca Verunelli studied composition with Rosario
Mirigliano at Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence where she
obtained her diploma summa cum laude.
In 2005, she was admitted to the Master’s Course in Compostion at
the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where she studied
with Azio Corghi.
In 2008, she participated in the Ensemble Aleph’s International
Forum, which performed her work RSVP in Paris. The same year, she
was accepted into the Cursus for composition and music technology at
Ircam, where two new pieces were produced: Interno rosso con figure
for accordion and electronics (2009, Anthony Millet, accordion) and
Play for ensemble and electronics (2010, Ensemble Intercontemporain
directed by Susanna Mälkki).
Her piece Neon (2008) was performed in Domaine Forget (Québec)
by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, under the direction of Lorraine
Vaillancourt. She also received a French State Commission from the
Nomos ensemble for whom she wrote Syllabaire (2009) and other com-
missioned ensemble works for the KDM and Accroche Note
ensembles.
In 2010, her orchestra piece En mouvement (Espace
Double) was played by the Mitteleuropa Orchestra under
the direction of Andrea Pestalozza at the Venice Biennale,
where she was awarded the “Leone d’Argento”.
The same year she received: an Ircam commission for
a string quartet Unfolding, which was premiered by the
Arditti Quartet in March 2012 at the Biennale ‘Musiques
en Scène’ in Lyon; a joint commission from the Neue
Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Venice Biennale for a
chamber opera Serial Sevens to be performed in July
in Stuttgart and in October at Venice Biennale 2012; a
commission from the Italian ensemble RepertorioZero
for #3987 Magic Mauve (a work for percussion and
electronic), premiered during Milano Musica 2012.
Other recent commissions include: The narrow corner,
an orchestra piece for Radio France to be performed in
2013; Cinemaolio, an ensemble work, for Court-Circuit
(Commande d’État 2011) and The dark day for cappella choir (commis-
sioned by the French renowned choir Accentus) to be premiered in 2014.
Moreover, winner of the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Award
2012, the Lucerne Orchestra will premiere in 2014 a piece commis-
sioned for the occasion.
Francesca Verunelli
36
ThAnk you, AdAm, For demonsTrATinG conTemporAry music cAn brinG
emoTion And hAppiness—audience member in Nancy, France, after a performance of La Luna Azul
37
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samy moussaSamy Moussa (born in 1984) studied composition in Munich with
Matthias Pintscher and Pascal Dusapin at the Hochschule für Musik und
Theater and graduated last year. Durand is proud to have published his
very first String Quartet premiered by the well-known Arditti Quartet
during the famous Internationale Ferienkurse of the Musikinstitut
Darmstadt under the aegis of Thomas Schaefer. Also a conductor, Samy
Moussa is becoming a major personality in Germany, conducting and
being performed by orchestras and ensembles such as BR, the MDR
Sinfonieorchester and Ensemble Modern. In Canada, his home country,
he is also a regular guest at the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal
where Maestro Kent Nagano premiered two symphonic pieces.
adam schoenbergAdam Schoenberg is Universal Music Publishing Classical’s most
recent American composer, and he has already proven himself to be
one of the finest emerging talents on the international music scene.
His orchestra work Finding Rothko is being played throughout the
nation, a piece that “races through aural representations of four Rothko
canvases, conveying the exhilaration of being drawn into his bright
blocks of color and the more reflective mood brought on by subtler
shades.” (Grand Rapids Symphony)
This season Adam began his tenure as the first-ever composer-
in-residence of the Kansas City Symphony, which will premiere in
February 2013 his very own rendering of “Pictures of an Exhibition,”
his Picture Studies, based on modern artwork from the collections
of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Just as in Mussorgsky/
Ravel tradition, he first composed highly virtuosic piano studies which
he then orchestrated. He has also established a young composer’s
workshop, where he teaches composition to high school students and
which will culminate in a performance of their works by the Kansas City
Symphony in May.
Currently, Adam is working on a new orchestra work, Bounce, which
is a co-commission by the Aspen School and Music Festival and the Los
Angeles Philharmonic.
His American Symphony, inspired by the 2008 U.S. Presidential
election and written for the Kansas City Symphony and Michael
Stern, has still as much relevance today in its expression of hope
and optimism as when it was conceived, and will be revived by many
orchestras around the U.S. over the next two seasons.
La Luna Azul, his most expressive and emotional work, inspired
by his love for his wife, who he met while being a fellow at the
McDowell Foundation, is based on a piano trio Luna y Mar, just one
of many chamber music works that round out his substantial body of
accomplished compositions to date.
Left: Samy
Moussa
Right: Adam
Schoenberg
38
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Marco Stroppa
by mArilenA lATerzA
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To appreciate the vital role that opera plays in today’s music, we
might well compare it to copper. Just like copper among the metals,
opera is in fact the musical genre that has remained in use the longest;
moreover, it possesses flexibility, malleability, a high level of conduc-
tivity, good resistance to corrosion, capacity to form alloys, variable
coloring depending on whether it is pure or blended with other ele-
ments, and even a series of different synonyms to define it. The only
property that opera and copper do not share is ease of workability, a
characteristic which in the former is practically absent, given that its
twofold character – both profoundly rooted in history and at the same
time, thanks to its ante litteram hyper-textual nature, surprisingly up
with the times – demands of any composer that aspires to measure
himself/herself against it a marriage of awareness, intuition and crafts-
manship that constitutes a constant challenge.
In offering a brief account of the most recent achievements in the
field of opera, we could start with Marco Stroppa. Although many
of his works contain in their title an extra-musical reference and are
characterized internally by a marked sonorous dramaturgy, Stroppa
has always avoided any music theatre project made up of bodies
singing and acting within a scene. That is, until he came upon a fairy
tale in verse by Arrigo Boito set in an imaginary and timeless uni-
verse with rich dramaturgical potential; appropriately adapted, this
gave rise to the creation of his first opera, produced in 2012 at the
Opéra Comique. A ”musical legend” for four singers, four actors, eleven
instrumentalists, voice, invisible sounds, spaciality and acoustic totem,
Re Orso is an anti-fairy tale: the king is a monster, the heroine loses her
head and the final triumph is reserved for a worm. In short, it is a fierce
criticism of the sinister workings of power, the dramaturgical evolution
of which is well-suited to the compositional processes favored by (or
embraced by) Stroppa, who, in place of the use of acoustic instruments
in the licentious banquet scene in the first act, substitutes the almost-
exclusive intervention of electronics in the second, thereby represent-
ing the deformation of the multiple spaces and times that live together
on the stage.
Of an altogether different character is the work of Giorgio Battistelli.
Brought up within an opera environment, with a childhood spent in
the front row of his grandmother’s provincial theatre “watching people
tell stories and produce pure variety entertainment,” Battistelli is a
well-travelled opera composer. His career began with the sounds of
everyday work transformed into music (Experimentum mundi, 1981)
and went on with monodramas, scenic concerts, melologues and other
forms of music theatre including literary, theatrical and cinemato-
graphic references – from Shakespeare to Fellini – all invested with a
vivid sonorous dramaturgy and its artifices. In Sconcerto, ‘music the-
atre’ (2010), Battistelli brings on stage an orchestra and its conductor;
the conductor, alas, is incapable of conducting the orchestra because
he is absorbed in trying to give order to his own confused ideas. The
speech, difficult and in Sprechstimme form, preserves and exalts the
a nEw wavE in italian opEra
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rhythmic-musical components inherent to it, at times sustained by the
music, at times contradicted, if not denied, in such a way that in the
end only sounds manage to express what a verbal discourse, now in
crisis, is no longer able to disclose.
As he had already done in Big Bang Circus, Il Canto della pelle and
Giudizio universale, in Il killer di parole – the final panel in a tetralogy
composed between 1996 and 2010 – Claudio Ambrosini tells a com-
plex, problematic story, the solution of which, though, is left to the
audience to reflect on after the curtain has fallen. A ‘ludodrama’ (drama
game) in two acts on a subject by Daniel Pennac and the composer
himself, Il killer di parole, produced at the Fenice in Venice, tells of a
poet, a hero destined to defeat, at grips with the deletion of terms from
the vocabulary and the extinction of linguistic specificities in favor of
a “definitive” language. The multiple levels of the literary text – which
oscillate between complete words and preverbal lumps of vowels and
consonants – are reflected in the musical choices Ambrosini makes: he
resorts to both the vocal repertory of the avant-garde and to a bel
canto approach, supported by the predominating tonal qualities of
the instruments, which delineate the evolution of characters and situ-
ations by way of distinctive sonorities in a play of reflections between
text and music.
Two Heads and a Girl, Isidora Žebeljan’s most recent opera (2012),
testifies to a persistent predilection on the part of the Serbian com-
poser for a fable-like, symbolic and imaginative music theatre already
demonstrated in her international debut with Zora D. (2003) and sub-
sequently confirmed with Eine Marathon Familie (2008) and Simon der
Erwählte (2009). Inspired by an Indian myth about an exchange of heads
and reinterpreted by the composer in the light of her own perception
of the events, a tight dramaturgical narrative unfolds. Underpinned by
a powerful spiritual force, the narrative maintains a point of contact
with the present while the music itself is an active player in the events,
making available folk music traditions of Balkan origins, luxuriant
orchestration, exuberant melodic invention and enthralling rhythmic
sequences – all peculiarities of Žebeljan – provoking in the spectator
an incandescent psychological and emotive impact.
The huge music theatre project that Fabio Nieder is currently bring-
ing to completion - starting out from an original text written for him by
Claudio Magris - is, by contrast, introspective and other-worldly. The
scenes of this dramaturgical and sonorous polyptych (the overall title
of which will be Thümmel, ovvero la perdita delle parole) are modeled
on the last drawings of the Trieste painter Vito von Thümmel, realized
in the mental asylum where he spent the last years of his life. ‘Dreams’,
as von Thümmel himself called these visions, transcribed onto paper,
of complicated labyrinths, contorted
streets, canals and horizontal projec-
tions, furnish an ‹‹optical link›› with
the Middle-European orientation of
Nieder’s music, a crossroad between
Italian, German and Slavic culture.
The sobriety of the materials used,
the exploration of the individual
sounds transfigured and the opal-
escent expressionism that travels
on the boundaries between con-
sciousness and dreams confer
a special instrumental voice to
every image; as a result the opera
gradually assumes the semblance
of a house on the point of wak-
ing, the windows of which emit
a faint light.
Just as original and distinc-
tive is the creative develop-
ment of Fabio Vacchi, distin-
guished from the beginning
(Girotondo, 1982) by operas that he has never hesitated to define as
such. These are operas that mirror the evolution of his poetic and sty-
listic identity over time and are underpinned by a constant fundamen-
tal trait: the impelling need to express an idea and to reawaken those
perceptive experiences that allow it to take root in the consciousness
of listeners. Following an epic work like Teneke (Teatro alla Scala,
2007), in his most recent opera, Lo stesso mare (2011), Fabio Vacchi
takes up the challenge of Amos Oz’s like-named novel (The Same Sea)
and – in the context of a structure based on the preordained forms of
traditional melodrama – draws from it an experimental score, halfway
between poetry and prose, lyricism and recitation, in which his distinc-
tive compositional idiom takes shape around the intimate identities of
the characters. The interweaving of psychological events finds spirit
and coherence in the music, and the personal collection of these indi-
vidual stories, each rendered akin to the other by a common desire to
bridge a distance, concrete or supernatural, from the object of one’s
affection, becomes the bearer – as always in Vacchi’s operas – of a
universal message.
Fascinated by the visionary narratives of the Hindu religion,
Riccardo Nova in Nineteen Mantras (2012) deepens his exploration
of a genre of performance art built around the interaction between
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music, dance and theatrical gesticulation. In a daring process of musi-
cal and cultural synthesis, Nova juxtaposes the most experimental
outcomes of sophisticated Western music and the re-elaboration of
sonorities of Indian origins, utilizing the instruments of these two
musical traditions together with electronics. The contribution of the
director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti and the dancer and choreographer
Shantala Shivalingappa present a captivating dramaturgy but without
any sung text as traditionally understood. Instead, the gestures of the
body and the arborescent joining of rhythms and mixed sonorities
generate a cyclic plot that tells of genesis, desires, seductions and
archetypal rivalries.
Finally, for Luca Francesconi, opera is not a preordained genre but a
potential one: a locus capable of hosting the reciprocal fermentation
of different languages, each a generator of its own meanings. What is
involved is a poetics that is recognizable in the stylistic syncretism of
his first work for music theatre, Ballata (1996-99), but which finds its
fullest expression in the multidimensionality of Quartett. An opera in
thirteen scenes on a theatrical subject by Heiner Müller drawn from
Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses, the work was premiered at La Scala,
Milan in 2011. The two protagonists’ enervating game of exchanging
and losing identity is rendered musically by way of a double orches-
tra, which gives voice both to the private impulses of the characters
and to a collective and social dimension. This is supported by an elec-
tronic elaboration of sonorous spaces and movements, which func-
tions as an amplifier of what is happening on stage. In addition, the
virtuosic vocal writing – with recourse to a broad spectrum of styles,
techniques, registers, inflections and timbres – and the computer
treatment that synthesizes, deforms and multiplies the voices, con-
tribute to producing that powerful sensorial and intellectual impact
that makes Quartett a borderland between nature and culture, body
and techne, beauty and complexity.
Translation: Nicholas Crotty
Left to right:
Claudio Ambrosini
Isidora Žebeljan
Riccardo Nova
Fabio Nieder
42
PHO
TO b
y l
uC
A P
IVA
opEras for young audiEncEs
43
Anyone who thinks that opera and children are two worlds that
never meet could not be more wrong! At the present time, children’s
opera is going through a boom in popularity: one clear sign is the
growing number of initiatives that, in the spirit of the most up-to-
date music education practices, are aiming to familiarize children
and adolescents with the world of opera. And leading the field in
this regard is Associazione Lirica e Concertistica (As.Li.Co), which,
with its program Opera Education, has for many years been offering
a series of artistic-educational activities focusing on the experience
of young children (Opera Kids), older children (Opera Domani) and
adolescents (Opera.it) when exposed to opera.
We asked Barbara Minghetti (President of As.Li.Co) what the
strengths of these projects were.
The principal strength lies in opera itself, a genre which is proving
more and more appealing to young people. Its language cuts across
genres - there are no barriers - and it offers the opportunity to work at
school on a wide range of themes including issues of vital interest in
the present day. In addition, Opera Education gives us the opportunity
to work with young professionals and to have a place in an interna-
tional network that allows us to get to know different countries’ opera
scenes, different ways of thinking and different ways of working that
enrich us year after year. Working with young people, in fact, offers us
the opportunity to be always up with the times and innovative.
You mentioned an international network. What does this consist of?
We take part in Reseo and Opera Europa, where we enjoy accredita-
tion as a body that carries out opera education at the highest level. For
us, it’s vitally important to be involved in these networks in order to be
able to exchange professional know-how, ideas and artists as well as to
co-produce certain projects, as is happening this year in the context of
the celebrations for the anniversary of Wagner’s birth.by FrAncesco rocco rossi
Il sole, di chi è? by
Silvia Colasanti
44
PHO
TO: r
Am
EllA
&g
IAn
nES
E, T
EATr
O r
EgIO
,Tu
rIn
Young audiences are attracted not just by traditional opera reper-
tory but also by musical productions of an ad hoc character such as
those of four talented young composers - Carlo Boccadoro, Raffaele
Sargenti, Silvia Colasanti and Matteo Franceschini - whose wide-
ranging compositional interests also encompass works for children.
In fact, it is educationally-rich activity of this kind that creates the
adult audiences of the future. Not that one can overlook the inherent
artistic quality of these composers’ works, which is very high, but
what does composing for children really mean? We put this ques-
tion to Carlo Boccadoro who has composed three operas for chil-
dren - La nave a tre piani (The ship with three decks), Robinson and
Cappuccetto rosso (Litte Red Riding Hood).
Writing for a young audience is a huge challenge; you can’t hood-
wink children with concert programmes written in “avant-gardese” or
with vague aesthetic declarations. At the same time, for a composer
it’s also a very stimulating experience because very young children,
not yet being conditioned by ideologies and listening habits (so
they’re an ideal audience), immediately make it known whether or
not you have captured their attention.
Your three operas are very different from one another. La nave a tre piani is ‘an opera on opera’ in which the typical situations
of traditional melodrama are realised musically by way of vari-
ous expressive languages (jazz, song, parody, etc.) whereas
Robinson, based on the novel by Defoe, echoes a classical style.
Cappuccetto rosso, on the other hand, is an opera about moder-
nity; the protagonist demonstrates adolescent attitudes repre-
sented figuratively by way of a very distinctive use of instruments
that give life to sonorities typical of videogames. Is there a common
denominator in all of these?
In all these works I’ve used an extreme synthesis of languages, unit-
ing as much as possible different forms of musical and libretto-writing
tradition so as to constantly attract the attention of young people. I’ve
tried to weave together strands of musical worlds that are apparently
very different from each other so as to extract an essential “juice” with
which to make a range of musical cocktails that are as fresh, colourful
and tasty as possible.
In the finale of Cappuccetto rosso, as we all know, “the big, bad
wolf” (that’s how he’s defined in the libretto) is killed. But not all
wolves are bad and in fact this is the idea that is forcefully proclaimed
in Lupus in fabula (The wolf in fables) the opera with which Raffaele
Sargenti won the 2009 competition “Opera Junior” conducted by
As.Li.Co (together with the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Opéra Royal
de Wallonie–Liège). The libretto (there are also versions in French
and Spanish) carries a message of tolerance, opposition to stereo-
types and acceptance of differences. We asked Sargenti whether
these themes also impacted on the musical choices that he made.
Because this opera is a journey through different musical worlds,
I created a network of references to different musical contexts: the
wolf expresses himself in “howling blues” and is helped by a moon of
“ghostly” origins to get himself accepted into a family that feeds on
a musical language of a “cultured” Russian and Viennese stamp. The
children in the audience become protagonists in a twofold process of
“musical integration:” they sing for reconciliation between two hos-
tile people who produce a blend of their respective music, and at the
same time they celebrate the musical integration of the wolf’s howling
with the surrounding musical environment. In this way the children are
attracted by and drawn into musical experiences that were probably
unknown to them before seeing the opera.
Your opera is one of the most successful products of the interna-
tional co-operation that Barbara Minghetti mentioned. Can you tell
us something about this?
45
PHO
TO: b
EnO
îT A
uTI
SSIE
r
The writer of the libretto (Andrea
Avantaggiato) and I worked very
closely with a Belgian director and
a Spanish conductor, both under 30
years old. It was a very stimulating
experience because we were able to
compare our experiences both on an
educational and artistic front, each of
us contributing what we had learnt in
the music and education institutions of
our various countries of origin.
Silvia Colasanti also composes mu-
sic theatre works and does so on vari-
ous fronts. Her catalogue in fact also
includes an opera for children: Il sole, di chi è (Where does the sun come from)?
We asked her how much of her non-children’s and non-opera work is
present in this work.
A huge amount! Naturally, I always kept the intended audience – i.e.
children – to the forefront of my mind, trying to give voice to a musical
dramaturgy that took account of their listening needs. For example, I
reduced the musical material to the essential so as to help the chil-
dren to recognise all the passages and their dramaturgical function.
This adjustment, however, did not in any way distort my compositional
procedures or my style, both of which remained unchanged.
In your works you are very interested in experimenting with differ-
ent sonorous mechanisms. How did you operate with Il sole, di chi è?
First of all, I made use of different vocal styles; from recitation to
actual singing, almost like in a singspiel. But above all I experimented
with and in a certain sense manipulated the sounds (vocal and instru-
mental) to obtain special dramaturgical effects. All that forms part of
my language, as does the constant search for new sonorous solutions
dictated by expressive demands that are very well-defined and dic-
tated, as in this case, by theatrical requirements.
Matteo Franceschini has composed two operas for young people: Les Époux (The couple) and Zazie dans le Métro (Zazie in the underground).
We asked him how the idea of composing for children came to him.
When IRCAM in Paris commissioned me to write a piece of music in
2009, I decided to tackle an opera because I wanted to work together
with an opera team (a libretto writer, a director, a stage designer). I
wasn’t actually thinking about a children’s audience until at a certain
point a marvellous book of photographs on scarecrows took hold of
my inclination towards the visionary and gave me the idea for my
new work: Les Époux, the protagonist of which is in fact a scarecrow.
Although composed for children, this work did not cause me to modify
my style in any way. All I did was simplify the writing, limiting myself to
basic musical gestures, even though children, equipped with an open-
ness and attention that goes well beyond the normal, have shown that
they appreciate complex writing as well.
What is there that’s special about each opera? And what do they
have in common?
They are two very different works: Les Époux – a small-scale work
and aimed at children between four and six – has a fairly simple struc-
ture. Zazie, on the other hand, has a more complex instrumental make-
up and is conceived for an audience of adolescents that are able to
enter inside the structure of a text that plays with the phonic preroga-
tives of the French language. What they have in common, on the other
hand, has to do with the compositional process which, as I said before,
emerges out of the continual interaction between libretto writer, direc-
tor and stage designer. What’s emerged, though, in both cases, are ope-
ras that can be interpreted at different levels and are, for that reason,
also suitable for adult audiences.
The most up-to-date music education ideas combined with avant-
garde languages, and a great deal of attention towards theatrical
dramaturgy, are the key ingredients of both of these works, ingredi-
ents enriched by the intense enthusiasm that the composers invariably
seek to transmit to their audiences (young or otherwise). All of which
does untold good for the future of opera! Translation: Nicholas Crotty
Left: La nave a tre piani by Boccadoro.
Right: Les Epoux by
Franceschini.
46
47
vision, innovation & challEngE
an inTerview wiTh souThbank cenTre’s gillian moore by elAine miTchener
Gillian Moore is Head of Classical Music at Southbank Centre (SBC),
before which she was the Artistic Director of the London Sinfonietta.
She is a Fellow and council member of the Royal College of Music, a
council member of the Royal Philharmonic Society and an Honorary
Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. She was awarded the Sir
Charles Groves Award in 1991 for services to British music; an MBE in
1994 for services to music and education, and an Association of British
Orchestras Award in 1998.
During her distinguished career, Gillian has collaborated with many
of the great musical and artistic figures of our age, from Luciano Berio
to Radiohead, from Harrison Birtwistle to Squarepusher, from Steve
Reich to Akram Khan. She has commissioned many significant new
works as well as creating opportunities for artists to reach the widest
possible audiences with their work.
For On the Page, Gillian Moore discusses the essential and ground-
breaking role the Southbank Centre plays in cultural life of London.
You have recently been appointed to Head of Classical Music at
the SBC where your previous position was Head of Contemporary
Culture. Could you explain why your previous post focused on con-
temporary culture in general and not music?
When Jude Kelly came as Artistic Director in 2006, she was really
keen to develop the idea of cross-arts festivals. I was commissioning
Gillian Moore
PHO
TO: T
rIC
IA d
E C
Ou
rC
y
48
events that brought together music and film, such as 2001: A Space
Odyssey with live orchestral accompaniment, Heiner Goebbels doing a
work for the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall including music and
text, and works for children like Icarus at the Edge of Time by Philip
Glass. I was also doing cross-arts festivals, like The Ether Festival of
Innovation and Technology in Music, in which I am still very much in-
volved. Over the last few years, we really developed the concept be-
hind this festival: Ether currently includes a wide program, from John
Cage to Jonathan Harvey, Varèse, John Cale, and Anna Meredith’s new
band. I was involved in the early days of programming the Imagine
Childrens Festival. In addition to this, since it’s my passion and my
specialty, I devised and programmed straight contemporary music fes-
tivals: the Xenakis weekend, the Stockhausen festival, the Messiaen
festival, a weekend of the complete works of Varèse, a Nono festival.
My role as Head of Contemporary Culture highlighted the wide scope
of the program I was dealing with.
What role does contemporary music/culture play for you now that
you are Head of Classical Music?
My background is as a musician trained in a very traditional way. I
love all great music and I listen as much to Wagner as to Stockhausen
and Nono. I hope in the future contemporary music will be integrated
in classical music programming as much as possible. The main theme
of the whole Southbank Centre classical music program next year is
The Rest is Noise festival, which is indeed an exploration of the music
of the 20th century.
In your experience, are there two different audiences for classical
and contemporary or are they largely comprised of the same people?
It’s undeniable that a lot of people go to classical music concerts for
a particular reason: to see music that they know about and that they
feel comfortable with. There is also a large audience that’s interested
in contemporary arts in general and this audience would certainly
come to contemporary classical music concerts, if these are presented
in the right way. All my life, I have believed that we can make all sorts
of music more accessible and approachable for people by providing
different ways in and by talking about it in clear, unfussy ways. And
of course, ultimately, the most important thing of all is just presenting
and performing the music to the highest possible standards, because
this is when it communicates.
What is your secret to attracting large audiences and what part do
groundbreaking festivals such as Meltdown, Ether and the forthcom-
ing series The Rest Is Noise, play in drawing, maintaining and build-
ing these audiences?
I think people like big ideas. My experience is that audiences are
responsive to ideas that are bold and don’t apologize. I also feel that
it’s quite easy to program music already having an idea of who’s going
to come, but it’s much harder to think: who should be there, who
needs to hear this music?
That is very important for
me, though, ultimately, the
most important thing for
someone who is program-
ming music is to do it with
authentic passion.
What are your priorities
when you program a sea-
son: specific composers,
an anniversary, an over-
arching theme, the artists
(orchestra/conductors/
soloists)? How impor-
tant are publishers to
you in your research?
There has got to be a feeling that a certain idea is right for an audi-
ence at a certain time and that you can make the most of it; that you
can do more than just put it in front of people who actually already
know that they like that specific content.
As for publishers, I have always worked with them. They are very
creative people, with whom I often have artistic discussions. The best
publisher is someone who suggests things that actually have a chance
to really be working in a specific context.
The British arts scene is renowned for being extremely resource-
ful. In these straightened times of budget and government support
cuts, how does the SBC face these challenges without compromising
on quality?
Southbank Centre is extremely fortunate to have enormous sup-
port from the Arts Council. We have a great fundraising team and
some very important supporters: MasterCard for summer festi-
vals, Shell for our Classic International Series, and major trusts and
foundations like The Paul Hamlyn Foundation and many generous
iT’s been very sATisFyinG To see The proGress oF
A composer such As FujikurA, From his very
FirsT AppeArAnces As A younG composer,
sTill A sTudenT, To be An inTernATionAlly-
commissioned FiGure. —Gillian Moore
49
individuals who support our work from 50 cents in our donation box
right up to our Patrons’ Groups. The support they all give enables
us to face challenging times while still presenting the highest pos-
sible standard of programming. Also, we work very much in partner-
ship with our resident orchestras (London Philharmonic Orchestra,
Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and
London Sinfonietta) and other important partners. For example the
PRS for Music Foundation worked with us on the New Music 20x12
weekend, which was a surprising and very successful way of present-
ing new music.
2012 is certainly an exceptional year for Britain and London in
particular, with the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics and Cultural
Olympiad. Do you see any long term (positive) effect from these
events for the SBC and the cultural life of London in general?
The Olympics have been the most stupendous time for this coun-
try and for London in particular. As a Glaswegian, I felt very proud of
being a Londoner. As far as culture is concerned, I think it has drawn
attention to the many riches that we have and to the boldness of
British culture, from the presentation of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus
Licht in Birmingham to Southbank Centre’s celebration of George
Benjamin: Jubilation, to the New Music 20x12 weekend. Talking of
this project in specific, we presented 20 brand-new short works by a
whole range of British composers. Because the weekend happened
in the context of the Olympics, the vast majority of the events in the
weekend were free, attracting an audience that you wouldn’t neces-
sarily see at contemporary music concerts. This special time allowed
us to do this. The other extraordinary moment has been the Unlimited
festival, associated with the Paralympics, which has allowed artists
across all disciplines to come together to present the highest qual-
ity of works. This showcased artists who may not have had major
platforms before due to their disability, and allowed them to have
the opportunity of presenting their works in association with the
Paralympics. I think I have learned key things this summer in terms
of my own activity, such as the richness of the scene around the
artists with disability, for example, or thinking of lighter touches to
present contemporary music, in addition to our in-depth projects
presenting contemporary composers. Just looking around the coun-
try, I have seen that having ambition pays back: we can put on a
Stockhausen weekend and involve the local community in it, just like
the Birmingham Opera Company did; many young people in London
and Stirling can get involved with the Simon Bolívar Orchestra, and
there is a variety of young people presenting music at the BBC Proms.
You are an avid advocate for music education for children.
Following the recent success of Icarus at the Edge of Time to music
by Philip Glass (European premiere), do you hope to commission
more large-scale works for younger audiences? Is there enough
repertoire and resources out there to fulfill this mission?
This is actually an interest of mine. With Peter and the Wolf by
Prokofiev and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Britten,
we already have two masterpieces in the repertoire. Pieces that have
stayed in the repertoire are really rare. We have to keep commission-
ing new work for children from the best possible composers. I actu-
ally have a scheme to commission composers: Icarus at the Edge of
Time by Glass and Matt Rodgers with The Trial of Dennis the Menace
as part of the Imagine festival, for example. This festival is focused
on high-quality work written for children, as well as an exploration
of issues such as children’s right to culture and looking at the world
from a child’s point of view. This is a rich vein that we are pursuing as
much as possible.
How can Universal Music with its international roster of compos-
ers help an organization like yours to pursue the common goal to
make contemporary classical music heard?
I think continuing to support the greatest composers is important,
but also working in collaboration with arts organizations to make sure
that as much material about music as possible is available online. And,
of course, it’s important to present ideas to programmers that are suit-
able for a specific context.
In the past you have commissioned and programmed our compos-
ers Luciano Berio, Luca Francesconi, Dai Fujikura, Heiner Goebbels,
Olivier Messiaen, Luigi Nono, Salvatore Sciarrino, Iannis Xenakis… Is
there anything that stands out in your memory?
It’s been very satisfying to see the progress of a composer such
as Fujikura, from his very first appearances as a young composer, still
a student, to be an internationally-commissioned figure. I will never
forget the Xenakis weekend, with the place packed to the rafters with
a very hip crowd. It was also a great privilege to get to know Luciano
Berio and to work with him on two festivals of his music. Planning a
festival with him, which sadly he didn’t live to see, but towards which
he gave all his energy, has been one of the highlights of my career.
50
Samuel Beckett was very fond of music; he himself was a good
pianist, and he listened to a lot of music: Schubert, Haydn, Webern;
in his final years he once came out with the involuntary confession
that “What remains is music.” He was not happy, however, to have his
works set to music, although for the most part – often only after a work
had been composed – he did consent to some of his texts being used
in musical works. But even about his friend Marcel Mihalovici’s work
based on Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett said he did not like it, because that
play was not suitable for an opera, since “Krapp does not sing, you
know.” To Morton Feldman, who asked him for an opera libretto, he
declared plainly that “I don’t like opera...I don’t like my words being set
to music.” In the end, however, he did write a libretto for Feldman after
all. The reason for his reluctance in all probability was that he felt his
words to be complete in themselves, together with their phonetic char-
acter and intonation, and the setting of them to music, obeying its laws,
ruins them, falsifies them. At least as important to him, however, was
the way in which his texts were edited musically: either by adaptation
of the musical forms or their use as a structural element of passages in
a known composition, in fact as an “actor,” or by means of the already-
composed tempo and rhythm of the text. According to actors’ recollec-
tions, if Beckett himself directed a piece, the tempo, the rhythm and
the length of rests were very important to him: he meticulously marked
them (the last-mentioned in seconds), and virtually every punctuation
mark had a definite meaning for him; at rehearsals he tapped out the
required rhythm on the desk. The anecdote related about his meeting
with Stravinsky is very telling: he asked the composer – who was very
enthusiastic about the handling of time in Godot – how it would be
possible to set down in a score this musical layer of what he envisaged
as the ideal performance. Perhaps his reservations were also due to his
feeling that any musical arrangement is too closely tied to the period
in which it is written; we know that he took care to remove topical ref-
erences from his own texts.
At the same time Beckett’s intentions, apart from the texts of his
works, are faithfully preserved in his director’s copies and theatrical
notebooks, and importantly by the sound and video recordings of the
performances he directed, although with changing theatrical practice
and taste they require more and more explanation. So many stipula-
tions and documents might well dampen composers’ enthusiasm,
yet Beckett’s texts remain attractive. Certainly their brevity and strict
editing represent a challenge to musical adaptation – though Beckett
excluded the use of incidental music or illustrative musical accompani-
ment, saying “[N]o music, for pity’s sake; it’s my last gasp.”
In view of all this, György Kurtág’s attachment to Samuel Beckett’s
texts deserves special attention; more than two decades of important
works bear witness to his continuing interest in them. As one of his
composer friends said about two emblematic works of his, it was as if
he had travelled backwards, that is, from Beckett he had come to Kafka;
and in fact his career was determined by his attachment to Beckett’s
œuvre, a relationship which was given added depth and emphasis by
one of his most important works, his Kafka-Fragments, op. 24. During
his study trip to Paris in 1957-58 he saw the first rehearsals of Fin de
partie, and although he immediately realised its importance for him,
according to his own admission he did not understand it at all. Yet
this experience prompted him to study Beckett constantly, to compre-
hend his works, and, not least, to make several abortive attempts to
set Beckett texts to music. In the case of the uncompleted works, it is
difficult to detect the reason for failure – we can only surmise that it
was the armor-like structure of the chosen original works that made it
impossible to set them to music; it would have been almost impossible
to find a valid solution in place of the rigidly formalized structure of the
text and the stage movements.
The breakthrough came with a peculiarly occasional composition.
The text that served as the basis for it was Samuel Beckett’s last writ-
ing – originally written in French, but Beckett made an English transla-
tion as well. Kurtág, although he had never before set a translation to
music, on this occasion first made use of the Hungarian adaptation by
István Siklós, but when he came to write the second version of it, he
worked the English translation also into his composition. Beckett’s text
is a late ars poetica: the struggle for expression, for expressiveness, for
utterance, and the constant falling back to the beginning; not just the
search for the right word, but the struggle for the appropriate expres-
sion, to find the truly appropriate word for the known meaning. It is
not the futility of verbal expression that the text proclaims, but the
virtual impossibility of a successful outcome to the search. The gen-
esis of Kurtág’s work, Comment dire/What is the Word, would have been
unimaginable without Ildikó Monyók’s acting skills. The actress lost the
power of speech as a result of a car accident, and only at the cost of
unbelievable efforts, and with enormous willpower, regained it after
seven years of dumbness. At one stage in the work of rehabilitation she
could not yet speak, but was able to sing – among others, she learned
two songs by Kurtág. Kurtág heard these songs and, in the moving qual-
ity of Monyók’s performance, her struggle to express herself in words,
he saw a parallel with the subject of Beckett’s text.
The first version of the composition (Samuel Beckett Sends Word
Through Ildikó Monyók in the Translation of István Siklós: Mi is a szó, op.
30/a) was written in 1990, for voice and upright piano. Throughout the
51
piece the piano accompanies, in the strictest sense of the word; it plays
exactly the same notes as the singer sings, at the same pitch. More
precisely, the vocal part requires a kind of sound production between
singing and recitation, with concrete pitches that can be recognised and
followed (not as in Schoenberg’s Sprachgesang parts), but not sung but
spoken, shouted and screeched or whispered. The vocal and the piano
parts are like each other’s shadow, but it is impossible, or scarcely pos-
sible, to tell which leads and which follows the other. The drama of the
text unfolds in the vocal part, but its framework, form and direction are
perceived and understood in the musical action; basic elements line up
side by side, as if repeating in music the question posed at the beginning
of the text: “What is the word?” What is music? And perhaps the great-
est paradox and miracle of the way the music is formed is that even the
most fragile musical material, motifs following one another in an order
that is at first imperceptible, musical “word-fragments”, scraps of sen-
tences, link-words and suffixes can
become arranged into a musical
process – preserving and eliminat-
ing the great paradox of Beckett’s
late texts; after the final reduc-
tion, eventually the text itself also
appears as music in the mind of
the listener and reader.
Kurtág’s music is not a “set-
ting to music” of Beckett’s text
in the traditional sense of
the term; rather a particular
reading or interpretation of
it in the different medium of
another art, music. For this
reason, it is also possible
that among Kurtág’s “basic
elements” direct quotation
found a place: for the most
painful, most direct sen-
tence in it, he used notes
from the slow movement
of Bartók’s violin concerto;
which raises the question,
is it a quotation in music,
the art of time, if only
the notes of a melody
are quoted, and not its
rhythms, its beat? And of course, because Bartók’s melody lives in
our memory together with its rhythm, we expect to hear the notes in
the original rhythm – and since here they do not follow each other in
that way, in this quotation we can perceive what is perhaps the most
important formative principle of Kurtág’s art: the creation of continuity
with measurable, countable, calculable time.
The orchestral version of the work (What is the Word, op. 30/b, 1991)
includes the performance space also among the basic elements of the
composition; from 1987 onwards it is a frequent feature of Kurtág’s
orchestral works that various groups of performers are positioned at
different points in the hall. In this piece, however, spatiality produces
györgy kurTág and samuel beckeTTby András wilheim
what rEmains is music
52
CO
Pyr
IgH
T by
An
dr
EA F
ElV
égI
truly unusual acoustic ideas: not just the distant nature of the
individual groups is important, and the direction from which
the sounds reach us, but rather the fact that we are hearing
unison notes, and thus every sound defines a different spatial
position. If we regard these sounds – to borrow Cage’s termi-
nology – as prepared sounds, then here space itself is one
factor in the preparation. But for this acoustic experience to
be able to manifest itself fully, we have to imagine such an
ideal performance in such an ideal space that perhaps falls
out of the bounds of possibility.
In the orchestral version, the language of the recitation is
still Hungarian – but the English text is recited by an eight-
member ensemble, commenting, supplementing, acting
out, or at times anticipating what happens in the leading
part. Not only does the music’s dimension alter in space,
the proportions of the musical material are also trans-
formed in comparison with the original version while the backbone
of the work remains the combination of the recitation and the piano.
This composition warns the listener that it is possible to give
Beckett’s poem a musical reading that breaks through the structure of
the text and creates an independent musical drama situation, in which
text composition also seems to find a place, and in two layers: in the
Hungarian translation and in the original, added to it more or less like
a commentary. This, however, does not mean an arbitrary re-interpreta-
tion of Beckett’s work; rather it reveals a special inner similarity in the
thinking of the writer and the composer.
The nature of this apparently unfathomable, spiritual similarity
is suggested by a brief Kurtág composition that he perhaps did not
expect to be performed. This game is deadly serious, as is the title:
Pillantás a túlvilágra (A Glimpse of the Next World): the work was writ-
ten in January 1992, the product of who knows what moment of crisis.
It consists of three inhumanly difficult vocal gestures.
The first is a sudden, terror-stricken exhalation; with ever-growing
force the air is expelled from the increasingly helpless lungs or –
depending on the performer’s choice – an inhalation like a desperate
struggle for life-giving air; as the composer’s instruction, with its own
enigmatic redundancy, says: “Suck the air backwards”. Whichever direc-
tion is chosen, the first gesture is followed by a long pause – not with
the breath held, but with no breath taken at all. This is to be unbear-
ably, insufferably long. Then comes the second gesture, a gentle sigh,
the first part of which is still active, but the longer, ever fainter, weak-
ening part is increasingly resigned and passive. Again a pause, but a
shorter one: this is the silence of the moment immediately preceding
the passing over to the next world. And the third gesture is a composed
motif, the vocal realization of which is a task that demands the impossi-
ble. With a single melodic line that arcs upwards, then plummets down
and, from its lowest point, again swoops upwards, the singer has to
express wonder or, since we cannot really be sure what awaits us in the
beyond, in that sound perhaps rapture should also be expressed. Does
this represent the achievement of certainty regarding the end with
resigned – and therefore rapturous – clear vision; or amazement that
there really is a next world and glimpsing it is an ecstatic moment? Is it
perhaps self-deception even in the last manifestation of life? Anyway,
afterwards, there is a long, very long pause – a silence that denotes the
end of something, once and for all, and still continues.
The work is notated in a five-line system, with the modulation of the
various motifs, their pitch relative to each other, the vowel sounds to
be sung and of course the dynamics all precisely specified – meticu-
lously indicating the temporal disposition of the motifs, their propor-
tions and relative weight.
Drama evolves in the sounds and with the sounds, but it is by no
means a scene interpreted through extrinsic stage properties, and
even less any kind of “fooling around.” I could say that it is a Beckett-
style drama and, what is more, it is in Beckett’s most ascetic genre, the
radio play. Or since we are talking about drawing breath, in his short-
est stage play, entitled Breath, where the faintly-lit stage, strewn with
all sorts of rubbish, in a single arc grows a little brighter then darkens
again: at the beginning and end of this process we hear twice the same
quiet, stifled cry and together with the play of light an amplified inhala-
tion and exhalation, with a five-second pause between them – all this
„ … pas à pas –
nulle part …”
No. 26 “Lasciate
ogni speranza...”
György Kurtág
53
in less than thirty-five seconds
What else is this but a form of music?
If a composer wants to give a similar musical form
to a Beckett text, obviously he can resort to solutions
that to the writer may seem arbitrary. Kurtág’s major
Beckett cycle, his … pas à pas … nulle part (... step by step
… nowhere), op. 36, for baritone voice, string trio and per-
cussion instruments, which is a selection from Beckett’s
the Mirlitonnades verse cycle, supplemented by an earlier
verse, plus the original text of the Chamfort aphorisms and
Beckett’s English translations (Long after Chamfort), is on
the one hand a text composition that is faithful to Beckett,
but it diverges widely from the original intention. He con-
structs a drama that lurks as a possibility among the texts,
but this is much more Kurtág’s own: it finds its place in the
context of his musical world. It is a dramatic happening, but
with no stage; there is no action behind it.
The pseudo-drama of What is the Word and … pas à pas …,
its virtual space, to which the music gives reality, can clearly
achieve completeness when it submits itself to the test
of a proper Beckett drama. Though Beckett did not like any
dramatic text of his to be part of a musical work, he did not
exclude the possibility that a composer might try to express
in music the same dramatic situation that he put on the stage.
Perhaps he showed a degree of naivety in this, or perhaps rather
that his ideas about music were bound up with the period of
his literary awakening and its prevalent musical idioms. Today,
he would almost certainly be more tolerant towards an operatic
experiment using one of his dramas for a perhaps anachronistic
undertaking. Is any musical language of our time valid, or capable
of being validated, if it seeks to present characters and situations
without playing a frivolous stylistic game with fragments of the
musical past?
It is not really proper to say any more about what is truly a work-
in-progress – even if Beckett, too, analysed an aspect of what was
at that time Joyce’s still opaque and therefore unappraisable work.
A contemporary, however, has the special opportunity and right of
observation and tense expectation: the right to follow with inter-
est how a composer wrestles with the task that Beckett defined
for himself when once while he was directing Fin de partie, he had
reached such a degree of simplification and denudation of the play
that he was able to say somewhat playfully: “Now I am going to fill my
silences with sounds.” Translation: Lorna Dunbar
54
giovanni simonE mayr:historical-critical Edition of thE complEtE works
250Th birThday in 2013(1763-1845)
55
Johann Simon (Giovanni Simone) Mayr was born June 14, 1763 in
Mendorf, near Ingolstadt (Bavaria). His father Joseph taught at the
school in Mendorf, and was also the church organist. It is from him that
Simon received his first keyboard and organ lessons, and he also sang
in the church choir; in 1769, he began taking lessons in Weltenburg.
His talent did not go unnoticed: an unnamed admirer offered to make
it possible for young Mayr to study in Vienna. However, Mayr’s parents
turned the offer down. In 1772, most likely on account of his musical
talent, Mayr received a scholarship to the Jesuit College in Ingolstadt,
where he studied grammar, rhetoric, logic, physics and theology until
1777, when he enrolled at the university in Ingolstadt.
Not surprisingly, he devoted himself less to his studies of theology,
law, rhetoric, logic and medicine, than to playing “quasi tutti gli stro-
menti d’arco e da fiato” (almost all the string and wind instruments”), as
he himself reports is his autobiographical notes (Cenni autobiografici).
As a student, Mayr earned a living by playing the organ in churches in
Ingolstadt.
It was at this time that Mayr also became acquainted with Baron
Thomas (Tommaso Francesco Maria) von Bassus (1742-1815), a member
of the Graubünden branch of the Bassus family, and a professor at
Ingolstadt University who, in 1780, inherited the title and property
(including Schloss Sandersdorf) of the Bavarian family line. Bassus was
a member of the Order of the Illuminati, and maintained a printing
press in Poschiavo; from there he distributed enlightenment literature
in northern Italy. When the Order of the Illuminati was finally banned
in 1787, Bassus returned to Graubünden, taking the twenty-four-year-
old Mayr with him. (To what degree Mayr himself was actually involved
in the Order is not known. There is, of course, nothing about this in his
Cenni, which in any case, reveals very little about his youth. But one
can assume that it is no coincidence that in 1815, the year in which
Thomas Bassus died, Mayr wrote the cantata Annibale – Hannibal was
Bassus’s name within the Order).
Most likely, the art lover Bassus already had Mayr involved in domes-
tic music in Sandersdorf. In Cantone, Bassus’s property near Poschiavo,
Mayr (whose Lieder am Klavier zu singen were published in Regensburg
in 1786) only catered to his Maecenas’s lightweight needs – a task that
he may not have found entirely satisfying, or so one might conclude
from a remark in his Cenni: “ogni composizione studiata d’intreccio e
giovanni simonE mayr:historical-critical Edition of thE complEtE works
Giovanni Simone Mayr
The composers oF our Time should sTudy mAyr’s operAs. They would Find There every-ThinG whAT They Are lookinG For And whAT would be useFul For Them. —Gioachino Rossini
by oliver jAcob
56
d’imitazione, di fughe era quasi bandita”
(“Every composition with an interweav-
ing, an imitation or a fugue was almost
banned”). But it must have been through
Bassus that Mayr made contacts that ulti-
mately allowed him to study with Carlo
Lenzi, the Kappellmeister at Santa Maria
Maggiore in Bergamo. Mayr’s first stay in
Bergamo lasted just a few months: Mayr,
as he writes in the Cenni, was dissatis-
fied, “che non poteva ottenere di essere
istrutto ne’ primi principi dell’ arte di
contrappunto” (complaining “that I
did not get an instructor who taught
me the art of counterpoint”). Lenzi’s
teaching was obviously not what
Mayr was hoping for, since the lat-
ter still hadn’t received any basic
instruction in composition; moreover, as he wrote earlier, in Ingolstadt
he had only been able to hear a few operettas by Hiller and a single
concert in Munich. If we take this account of things in the Cenni seri-
ously, this means that up to the age of 26, Mayr was self-taught. In frus-
tration, Mayr had decided to leave Bergamo and return to Bavaria when
a new Maecenas came into view: Conte Canonico Vincenzo Pesenti.
Pesenti sent Mayr to Venice around 1789-90 to take lessons from
Ferdinando Bertoni at the Conservatorio di Mendicanti, albeit with the
condition that he was to devote himself exclusively to church music.
But it soon turned out that Mayr, who wrote of himself in the Cenni
that at this time he was still a beginner, whereas his peers Paër and
Nasolini were already getting to see their operas staged in Venice, did
not get what he wanted from Bertoni either. Bertoni gave some formal
hints, but didn’t give him any basic instruction. So once again, Mayr
turned to teaching himself; and after Pesenti’s death in 1793, he had
to give harpsichord lessons to earn a living.
In Venice Mayr became acquainted with Piccinni and Peter von
Winter, both of whom encouraged him to compose for the stage. On
February 17, 1794, the premiere of Mayr’s first opera Saffo took place
at the Teatro La Fenice. Previously he had already made a name for © b
y b
IblI
OTE
CA
CIV
ICA
An
gEl
O m
AI E
Ar
CH
IVI S
TOr
ICI,
bEr
gA
mO
57
himself in Venice with his oratorios Iacob a
Labano fugiens (1791), Sisara (1793) and Tobiae
Matrimonium (1794). From 1794 to 1815 Mayr
wrote at least two operas each year, without ever
turning his back on church music.
In fact, Carlo Lenzi had not forgotten his former
pupil, and proposed him as his successor. On May
6, 1802, Mayr was named Maestro di Cappella at
Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, a position he
maintained to the end of his life.
Though Mayr was not granted the happiness
of finding the right teacher himself, it was for just
this reason that he became very engaged with the
training of young people. In 1805, Mayr’s music
school Le Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica was founded
in Bergamo; alongside his work as Kappellmeister,
he was the school’s director and also responsible for
teaching theory. For his pupils, Mayr wrote works like
solfeggios, songs and arias, as well as a series of stage works, including
Il piccolo compositore di musica. The title role of this two-act Scherzo
musicale was written for Gaetano Donizetti, who began studying at
Mayr’s school in 1806.
Concurrently with his activities in Bergamo, Mayr was writing operas
for most of the leading opera houses across Italy, as well as fulfill-
ing requests to contribute sacred and secular works. His music was
played throughout Europe. The degree of fame Mayr had achieved
at this point in his career is proven by the numerous offers made to
him beginning in 1803. Among others, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Lisbon,
London, Dresden and Milan competed to bring him to their opera
houses. But Mayr did not take up any of these options; he rejected
the offer to become Maestro di Cappella at St. Peters in Rome, as he
did Napoleon’s offer to make him Directeur du Théâtre et des Concerts
with an annual salary of 20,000 francs. Officially, Mayr justified his
refusal saying he didn’t want to ask his wife to live in a foreign country
(in 1804 he had married Lucrezia Venturali, the sister of his first wife
Angiola, who died in 1803).
Mayr formed a warm friendship with his star pupil Donizetti. Once
Donizetti left the Lezioni in Bergamo, the two men engaged in a lively
exchange of letters and references. In 1824, Mayr asked Donizetti for a
contribution to his St. Cecilia festival in Bergamo. From Naples, Donizetti
sent him a Credo in which he clearly alludes to Mayr’s Credo di Novara
(1815). Mayr in turn used parts of Donizetti’s Credo in his Messa a quattro
(1826) written for the Einsiedeln monastery. Following the premiere of
Anna Bolena (1830), Mayr addressed his former pupil as Maestro.
Mayr’s last opera was Demetrio, premiered in Turin in December
1823. For the rest of his life, alongside works for his Lezioni, and a
few commissioned cantatas, Mayr mainly composed church music.
Why Mayr completely turned his back on the stage remains a mystery.
Equally hard to understand is Mayr’s outright refusal to let his church
music be published; in a letter written to Giovanni Ricordi in 1840 he
explained: “e fu costante mio sistema di non dar fuori musica di chiesa”
(“it has constantly been my intention not to publish church music”).
Mayr died December, 2, 1845 in Bergamo. An eye ailment that led to
near-blindness had made writing almost impossible for him. In his final
years, he occupied himself by copying out some older sacred composi-
tions on paper with widely-ruled staves. Translation: Richard Toop
Left: Autograph
from “Credo
detto di Novara”
Right: Giovanni
Simone Mayr
everyone bows when They heAr mAyr’s nAme.—Gaetano Donizetti in a letter to Mayr
58
PHO
TOS:
dr
(PA
SAd
AS)
/ C
ITE
dE
lA m
uSI
qu
E (P
Ar
rA
)
spanish contEm-porary music surgEs ahEad by jose luis besAdA
Left: Alberto
Posadas
Right: Hèctor Parra
59
Spanish contemporary music has developed remarkably over the
last few decades. More and more Spanish music is performed in the
great European festivals, as highlighted by the CDs produced by record
companies like KAIROS, Col Legno and NEOS. Two main socio-cultural
elements can explain this emergence: firstly, the support for the devel-
opment of culture in democratic Spain as opposed to the intervention-
ism of Franco’s regime, and, secondly, the improvement of the means
of communication on an international level. Noteworthy among the
composers who lived through the regime change during their youth
are Francisco Guerrero (Linares, 1951 – Madrid, 1997), sometimes
seen as the “Xenakis español” (“Spanish Xenakis”), José Manuel López
López (born Madrid, 1956), who represents the second spectral gen-
eration, the Galician composer Enrique X. Macías (born 1958 and died
1995 in Vigo), and Mauricio Sotelo (Madrid, 1961), a late disciple of
Nono and deeply linked to the flamenco musical tradition.
In the generation that followed – those who were born between
1965 and 1980 – two authors are particularly valued in the French-
speaking countries and more and more in the German-speaking
area: Alberto Posadas (born Valladolid, 1967) and Hèctor Parra (born
Barcelona, 1976). The work of Posadas, a disciple of Guerrero, is akin to
the musical thinking of Varèse and Xenakis. In some pas-
sages, it is also close to Scelsi’s style and to the French
spectral music genre. The metaphor with several mod-
els external to music is a permanent feature in his work.
The mathematical inspiration spreads widely through-
out his catalogue: the most significant examples are
most probably his cycle of string quartets Liturgia
Fractal (2003-2007) – written for the Quatuor Diotima
– and his ballet Glossopoeia (2009). He also favors
the transfer of ideas from other artistic genres in his
work. Thus, his quintet Nebmaat (2003) was inspired
by the pyramid-shaped architecture in Egypt and
Cuatro escenas negras (2009) and La Lumière du noir
(2010) by works of painters like Francisco de Goya
and Pierre Soulages. As his next creative projects,
Alberto Posadas will complete his new cycle enti-
tled Sombras for the Quatuor Diotima - adding a
soprano and a clarinet - to be performed at the
Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival,
and his opera will be premiered in the Teatro Real of Madrid. He is also
working on a concert for three soloists and orchestra commissioned
by the Donausechinger Musiktage, and on the creation of Tenebrae
with Exaudi, the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Ircam for the
ManiFeste Festival Biennale of vocal art.
The influence of science and fine arts is also evident in Parra’s work,
but the musical thinking of the Catalan composer is more linked to
the works of composers like Ferneyhough. Scenic music is recurrent
in his catalogue, as shown in Zangezi (2007) based on a text of the
futurist Russian Velimir Khlebnikov, and in Hypermusic Prologue (2009),
with the participation of the famous theoretical physicist Lisa Randall
in the writing of the libretto. Parra is currently working with writer
Marie NDiaye on the creation of new scenic projects: a production of
the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, of the Ircam, and of the Ensemble
Intercontemporain, and another premiere for the Münchener Biennale.
He is also collaborating with Händl Klaus on a major opera for the
Schwetzinger Festspiele. As for the instrumental music, Parra’s style
combines a use of densities and phrasing akin to romantic music but in
a fully current sound context, as shown in his pieces Caressant l’horizon
(2011) and Early Life (2010). Caressant l’horizon is mainly inspired by
the astrophysics of black holes, and Early Life - a work commissioned by
the Ernst von Siemens Foundation after he received the Composition
prize - from theories of Cairns-Smith prebiotic evolution.
Nevertheless, Posadas and Parra are not isolated cases in the
Spanish creative panorama. An entire generation of new composers
is getting remarkable recognition at both national and international
level. It is also true of Jesús Torres (born Zaragoza, 1965) with his
notable neoclassical touch, of Ramon Lazkano (born San Sebastián,
1968), one of the most skillful Spanish orchestrators born in the 20th
century, José María Sánchez-Verdú (born Algeciras, 1968), able to
associate the Lachenmannian style with the Arab-Andalusian influ-
ence, and Elena Mendoza (born Sevilla, 1973), who specializes in
musical theater works.
In short, and despite the consequences of the economic crisis in
Spain and its big impact on cultural institutions, it seems that at least
the creative continuity of this generation has established itself in
Europe and will continue to play a substantial part in international cre-
ative life for many years to come.
Editions Durand Salabert Eschig, partners of the 2012 Oviedo
Concorso with Orquesta Filarmonía de Oviedo and Maestro Marzio
Conti, are happy to publish the First National Young Composers
Prize, Guillermo Martinez’ Rapsodia para violin y orquesta.
60
Orchestras merging in Germany,
dramatic cuts in public subsidies
in Spain and Italy, cultural budgets
based on compensation for “private
copying” endangered throughout
Europe with France and Austria at
the forefront: the economic crisis
is now having a strong impact on
contemporary music and is steadily
reconfiguring the balance between
public funding and private initia-
tives, protected repertoire and the
public domain, and, in general, the
entire value chain of our profession.
Although the decision makers and
the general public are usually only
aware of the surface reactions, com-
posers who are involved in their art
for the long term often know how to
enrich the profession with their per-
spective and “political” (in a broad
sense) talents. France is a beacon
for “cultural exception” which it has
defended in international commer-
cial negotiations for two decades.
The central figure in the front line
of that effort is Laurent Petitgirard,
a composer published in the Durand
collection, who, in parallel with his
musical creations (his Concerto for
saxophone is due to be premièred
next March) and his artistic directorship of the Colonne Orchestra in
Paris, is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the French Society of
Authors, Composers and Publishers (SACEM). Along with composers
like Wolfgang Rihm in Germany, few creators could better describe
the arsenal which a European authors’ rights society like SACEM (the
“armed wing” of “French cultural exception”), uses to help contem-
porary music to defend itself in the best possible way during this
period of economic turbulence. Laurent Petitgirard spoke with Eric
Denut about the current situation and his vision of the future:
Composers must be committed
“I’ve noticed that a change
of activity is as good as a rest
from the previous one. If I had
to compose for fourteen hours
a day I think that my head
might explode; on the other
hand if I had to work on copy-
right for fourteen hours a day,
I’d probably not be here any-
more. Alternating between
one and the other requires a few presuppositions and constraints
but I find it regenerative. As an artist living in France, a country of
“tags,” the principal difficulty resides in not allowing oneself to be
reduced to one’s most visible activity, or to a “stereotype.”
To be confined in this way can play tricks even with artists of
the calibre of a Leonard Bernstein or an André Previn (who,
for example, is rarely invited to our country).
Copyright is getting harder and harder to manage and
requires knowledge of a growing number of parameters.
Can creative people claim to be able to master such a con-
stantly growing volume of knowledge? Probably not. In order
to be efficient on the board of a company like SACEM, the
Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungsrechte (GEMA), etc.,
you must have reached the point where you can understand
many of the things that you will be called upon to deal with
and also can envisage things that you will not be able to deal with.
Only once you have enough knowledge to estimate the extent of
your own ignorance can you delegate intelligently. The composers,
authors and editors comprising a Board like that of SACEM must
share ideas of a specific ethic, of a specific vision, of a specific com-
mitment to precision in redistribution (this is one element, among Enco
rE:
composers commiTTed To The defence of auThors’ righTs: an inTerview wiTh composer laurenT peTiTgirard
Concerto pour saxophone alto
et orchestre
World premiere on March 12,
2013 in Douai (France), with the
Orchestre de Douai conducted
by Laurent Petitgirard and
Michel Supéra on the saxophone
61
PH
OTO
: Jea
n-B
aPT
isTe
Mil
lOT
others, of the European cultural exception and accordingly costs
a little more in management fees).It follows, then, that, facing the
complexity of the stakes connected with the evolution of copyright
and technology, creative people need the support of a general man-
ager who can and must have his own vision, modulated by the Board
who watches over its fair implementation.
Once this framework is drawn out it seems to me that, for a com-
poser who feels in a position to do so, it is a duty to commit oneself
to a society like SACEM, even if it is only for a short time. Otherwise it
means that the keys to the management of authors’ rights and those
authors’ societies who exist to defend and to give it life
are left to pure technicians. You can see where this has
led in some cases....”
The incarnation of the “cultural exception:” SACEM’s
arsenal for the defence of contemporary art music
“There is a consensus of opinion within the Board
about solidarity between musical styles: contemporary
pop music, film scores, to cite just a few examples,
support the more demanding musical styles. For tele-
vision, the multiplying factors, upon which are based
the subsequent distribution, are ten times greater
for contemporary music than for background music.
Certain authors’ societies throughout the world do
not do this. This solidarity needs to be preserved at
all cost. But it remains fragile: for example, this year, I am the sole
composer representative of contemporary music on the Board – it
is also interesting to note that I am its chairman, but surely this
should not hide a certain structural fragility in the representation
of modern music.
Cultural budget of the SACEM is the other essential flank in the
defensive line for this music. Of the 18 million (Euros) of funds, which
originate in part (€3 million) from a free allocation from the Board and
for the greater part (the remaining €15 million) from the “cultural 25
percent” levied on “private copying”, 30 percent is devoted to sup-
porting contemporary art music, without any relation to income levels.
The current crisis, which also affects contemporary popular music, of
course, makes greater demands for support from their representatives
and artists; so this substantial share is very likely to be reduced even if
we want it to remain significant.”
The immediate threat
“The most immediate threat comes from the fact that an objec-
tion raised by Austria (where 50 percent of the sums levied under
the “private copying” legislation are designated to support “cultural
initiatives”) could lead to the sums levied for “private copying” being
put into question by the European Court of Justice. If the decision of
the Court were unfavourable, it would have dramatic consequences for
contemporary music in a country like France and elsewhere. I can’t see
the European states compensating this loss in any way with the state
of public finances today.
This means that in this dossier, as Chairman of the SACEM, I have to
lobby national and European politicians; of course, being a musician
from a background of classical music gives me access to these people
in a different way than if I were a musician from a more “commercial”
background. The fact that no one suspects me of having a large income
with my activity as a composer of art music puts me in a better position
to make people understand and accept that I am defending principles
rather than my own interests.”
Contemporary music and the political elite
“It would be a mistake to underestimate the difficulty of defending
our music before our political elite. One sign among many others: our
ex-Président de la République Jacques Chirac confessed to listening to
Le Marteau sans Maître by Pierre Boulez. We all know this is probably
only partly true, but it was well received in our profession: there was in
this confession, be it true or not, the determination for a requirement
for culture, of a kind of curiosity. I do not wish to be cruel but should
we perhaps talk about the playlists of our two last candidates to the
presidency? There weren’t even any attempts to include repertoire
works by Debussy or Ravel....”
Authors’ Rights Societies as laboratories for the future
“SACEM is a place where creative people and revenues from very dif-
ferent worlds cohabit: one world that must be profitable and another
world that is mostly subsidized. Just like other authors’ societies
throughout Europe it is at the heart of the problem music is encoun-
tering today and so it can observe the workings, the common ground
and the differences between these two worlds which meet where
patronage and other private support is involved. In the world of con-
temporary music, the subsidized part has taken on such importance
that the crisis is perceived only when subsidy is threatened and not
when audiences are undermined. In the general context of narrow-
ing subsidies, SACEM and other authors’ societies experience of the
“commerce” (in the noble sense of the word) of the musical world will
rapidly become precious to contemporary music, for example in the
domain of the application of music to image (where practices remain
frequently rather archaic in orchestral and lyrical institutions). I hope
that the “subsidised world” will rapidly come to a greater awareness of
the changing conditions.”
Laurent Petitgirard
62
JANUARY
18
Vinko Globokar
L’Éxil No. 1
for soprano and
ensemble, Hannover
21
Fabien Lévy
Après tout for
vocal ensemble and
instruments, Berlin
26
Azio Corghi, Preludio
‘ad una stella’,
for voice and five
instruments, Busseto
27
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Der Glanz des Lichtes.
Double Concerto
Berlin
FEBRUARY
2
Adam Schoenberg
Picture Etudes
for orchestra,
Kansas City
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Vasco da Gama
(L’Africaine) (opera),
Chemnitz
3
Matteo Franceschini
Voce (cello concerto),
Paris
14
Michel Decoust
12 orchestrations of
Satie’s piano works,
Mondeville
Samir Odeh-Tamimi,
String Quartet,
Oldenburg
Matteo Franceschini
Divertimento
(I Quartetto) for
string quartet, Rome
17
Fabio Nieder
Schlafendes
Papierfrauenobjekt
auf Augenhoehe,
Hannover
MARCH
2
Giuseppe Verdi
Un giorno di regno
(critical edition),
Sarasota
3
Ian Wilson
Minsk (chamber
opera), Heilbronn
5
Benoit Mernier
La Dispute (opera),
Brussels
8
Pascal Dusapin
Aufgang (violin
concerto), Cologne
Dai Fujikura
my butterflies for
wind orchestra,
Chicago
9
Vinko Globokar,
Kaleidoskop im Nebel
for ensemble, Bergen
Laurent Petitgirard
Saxophone Concerto,
Douai
22
Philippe Manoury
Melencolia (String
Quartet No. 3),
Monte Carlo
28
Giampaolo Testoni
Terza Sinfonia,
Ljubljana
APRIL
13
Azio Corghi
Elena for choir,
Biella
Silvia Colasanti
Chichino e Cicotta
(opera for children)
Milan
14
Rudolf Kelterborn
Sinfonie No. 5 “La
Notte”, Basel
21
Volker Heyn
eclipse of reason for
voice, ensemble and
fixed media, Cologne
27
Fabien Levy
Towards the Door
We Never Opened for
saxophone quartet,
Witten
28
Alberto Colla
Symphonie des
Prodiges, Paris
(selecTion)
29
Rolf Riehm
Pasolini in Ostia
for ensemble,
Los Angeles
63
JUNE
1
Gérard Zinstag Seul,
l’écho for voice
and ensemble,
Copenhagen
11
Alexandre Desplat
Poème symphonique
after Pelléas &
Mélisande, Nantes
Alberto Posadas
new work for vocal
and chamber
ensemble, Paris
7
Philippe Schoeller
Songs from Esstal for
soprano and large
orchestra, Paris
8
Mauro Lanza
Ludus de morte regis
for choir, Paris
25
Eric Tanguy
Organ Concerto,
Caen
JULY
23
Carlo Boccadoro
Antigone (ballet),
Bozen
AUGUST
1
Guo Wenjing
Three Scenes of
Chinese opera, Sion
24
Dai Fujikura
New work for
soprano and string
quartet, Salzburg
26
Olga Neuwirth
New work for soprano
and ensemble, Salzburg
SEPTEMBER
20
Fabio Vacchi
Triple Concerto for
two flutes, harp and
orchestra, Bari
Georges Aperghis
Wild romance
for soprano and
orchestra, Oslo
Marc Monnet Violin
Concerto, Strasbourg
OCTOBER
1
Fabio Vacchi
Veronica Franco for
soprano, actor and
orchestra, Milan
4
Georges Aperghis
Four etudes for
orchestra, Cologne
19
Luca Francesconi
Piano Concerto,
Porto
Philippe Manoury
new work for ensem-
ble and orchestra,
Donaueschingen
Alberto Posadas
Concerto for three
woodwinds and
orchestra,
Donaueschingen
20
Georges Aperghis:
Situations. Soirée
musicale for
large ensemble,
Donaueschingen
20
Enno Poppe
Speicher I-VI for
large ensemble,
Donaueschingen
25
Zoltán Jeney: new
work for flute and
orchestra, Budapest
NOVEMBER
Posadas and
Fujikura,
Huddersfield
DECEMBER
9
Marc Monnet
Trio n° 3, Paris
10
Philippe Hersant
Vêpres à la Vierge
(cantata), Paris
six composers
Out at Sea (chamber
opera), Budapest
Francesca Verunelli
The narrow corner for
orchestra, Paris
13
Philippe Manoury
Concerto for two
pianos and
orchestra, Munich
MAY
1
Robert HP Platz
Branenwelten 1 + 5 +
6 for pf, perc, strgs,
electronics, Cologne
Michel Roth, MOI for
ensemble, Cologne
5
Sergej Newski
new work for two
sopranos and
ensemble, Bodø
7
Enno Poppe
Koffer (Suite from
“IQ”), Cologne
11
Giacinto Scelsi
Kamakala for
orchestra, Florence
29
Michel Tabachnik
Lumières fossiles for
orchestra, Paris
64
Please contact our promotion team for any
questions, perusal scores or recordings:
Casa Ricordi, Milan
Annamaria Macchi
Editions Durand – Salabert – Eschig, Paris
Eric Denut
G Ricordi & Co., Munich
Michael Zwenzner
Michael Lochar
G Ricordi & Co., London
Elaine Mitchener
Editio Musica Budapest
TÜnde Szitha
Universal Music Publishing Classical
Silke Hilger
Santa Monica, California
© Universal Music Publishing Classical, 2013
Printed in France on Chromomat,
a Forest Stewardship Council certified paper.
Design: Anna Tunick (www.atunick.com)
Editor: Silke Hilger
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