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arvio: Wienistä Pariisiin – Terhi Paldaniuksen ja Emil Holmströmin matka romantiikan maailmaan ti 28.9.2021

Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Institutum Catholicum voi olla tuttu paikka Kruununhaassa jos on vaikkapa tarvinnut jotain harvinaisempaa vanhempaa kirjaa. Mutta se on avannut ovensa myös musiikille, sillä pianisti Emil Holmström säilyttää siellä aarrettaan, v. 1882 valmistettua Bösendorfer-flyygeliä. Se on täysin korjattu ja nyt sillä soitetaan konserttisarjoja. Musiikki syntyy soittimista, niiden soinnillisista mahdollisuuksista, sanoi jo André Schaeffner klassisessa teoksessaan L’origine des instruments de la musique. Kieltämättä Bösendorferin sointi on jotain aivan muuta kuin Steinway tai Yamaha, se ei ole niin terävä, artikuloitu, vaan sulauttaa helposti äänet niiden yhteiseen huminaan etenkin fortepaikoissa. Samalla äänessä on jotain hentoa ja sensiibeliä muistuttaen ranskalaisia Pleyeliä ja Erardia. Se soveltuu erinomaisesti juuri salonkityyppiseen akustiseen miljööseen ja siis kamarimusiikkiin. Bösendorferin ote toi mieleen sen wieniläisen salongin, jonka emäntä otti vastaan kuuluisan pianistin. ”Soitanko Beethovenin sonaatin a-molli vai c-molli”, hän kysyi? ”Soittakaa ihan niin monta kertaa kuin tahdotte”, vastasi rouva. Hän nimittäin puhui Wienin murretta ja kuuli a-mollin kuin se olisi ollut einmal ja c-mollin kuin zehnmal.

Illan ohjelma oli kiehtovasti rakennettu jännitteelle saksalaisen ja ranskalaisen kulttuurin välille. Sen avasi Lili Boulangerin romanttis-impressionistinen Nocturne 1911. Eikö vaan, ei sekään tullut toimeen ilman sitaattia Debussyn Faunin iltapäivästä.

Beethovenin c-mollisonaattia soitetaan varmaan harvemmin kuin muita. Ensiosa perustuu kysymys-vastaus-aiheelle dramaattisine taukoineen. Adagio rakentuu jännitteiselle appoggiatura-soinnulle, jossa ollaan jo matkalla kohti Tristania. Yllättävin on oikullinen scherzo, josta on vaikea ilman nuotteja erottaa, mikä on tahdin iskullinen vahva osa.

Illan huipentuma oli Camille Saint-Saënsin sonaatti d-molli op. 75 vuodelta 1885, harvinaisuus. Tällä sonaatilla on sikäli aivan erityinen literääri tausta, että luultavasti sen ensiosan sivuaihe, joka toistuu monta kertaa, oli Marcel Proustin Vinteuilin sonaatin kuulun le petit phrasén mallina. Tämä ei ole pelkkää arvailua, sillä Proust itse kirjoitti seuraavasti: ”Muistoni sonaatista ovat tarkempia (hän puhui edellä Combraysta). Tietyssä määrin todellisuus on toiminut esikuvana, joskin heikkona, tämän sonaatin pikkuteemalle, mutta en ole koskaan kertonut tätä kellekään. Saint-Euverten illanvietossa oli tuo viehättävä, mutta lopultakin keskinkertainen säe Saint-Saënsin sonaatista viululle ja pianolle, tuon muusikon, josta en pidä.” (Essais et articles, 1972, s. 565) Asiaan vaikutti, että sonaatin soitti tuolloin triumfaalisesti Jacques Thibaud. Sitten Proust jatkaa ja luettelee muita pikku teeman lähtökohtia, Pitkäperjantaimusiikin Parsifalista, Franckin sonaatin, edelleen Lohengrinin tremolot ja lopulta Schubertin. Joka tapauksessa hän mainitsi Saint-Saënsin ensimmäisenä! Vaikkei hän tuolla hetkellä kenties pitänyt tästä säveltäjästä, kirjoitti hän toisaalla tästä kokonaisen esseen. Siinä Saint-Saéns sai kunnian edustaa Proustin mielestä korkeinta muusikkouden kategoriaa ”le grand écrivain musical”, sillä kukaan ei ollut toteuttanut yhtä hienosti lausumaa: ”Kaikki älylliset kauneudet, joita kohtaamme kauniissa tyylissä, kaikki ne suhteet joista ne koostuvat, ovat pikemmminkin totuuksia…kenties arvokkaampia kuin ne jotka voivat muodostaa puheen perustan.” (Proust op. cit. 385).

Oli miten oli, sonaatti alkoi demoonisessa d-mollissa, mutta pääsi huipentumaan vasta alkaen tyypillisesti ranskalaisen mediterraanisesta scherzosta ja erityisesti kohoten finaalissa kerta kaikkisen vangitsevaan toccatamaiseen kliimaksiin. Siinä oli viittauksia Pariisissa muotiin tulleeseen venäläiseen musiikkiin ja jopa Stravinskyyn. Siinä oli tuota admiration créatricea, luovaa haltioitumista, voisi sanoa. Tuon sävyn tavoittivat illan muusikot vakuttavasti.

Duo Paldanius-Holmström soitti alusta alkaen tiiviissä yhteisymmärryksessä. Molemmilla on draaman tajua ja myös Saint- Saënsin erityisesti vaatimaa virtuositeettia. Holmström totesikin johdannossaan tyytyväisenä, että kerrankin myös viulistilla on paljon nuotteja eikä vain pianistilla. Joka tapauksessa ilta oli merkki jälleen orastavasta musiikkielämästä pääkaupungissa. Tämä oli alkusoitto useamman konserti sarjalle tässä erittäin viehättävässä miljöössä.

– Eero Tarasti

review: Three recent performances of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten, or Imagined Ethnomusicology

Philip Glass

Philip Glass

I hardened my heart against these sounds for I loved him,
for all his madness, and perhaps I loved him the more because of it,
for his madness was more beautiful than the wisdom of other men.
Sinuhe (Waltari, 1945/1949 p. 303)

Akhnaten was a human being like most of us. He “seems to have been a good friend, as he was a stern enemy” (Weigall, 1910/1922, p. 192). Still, unlike any of us, Akhnaten served as Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and through his sole god he would have seen himself as ruler of the entire world. Such a powerful man might be compared to the status hold by the President of the United States of America, Richard Nixon for instance – such comparison, I should say, is a musicological one.

John Richardson (1995, 1999), whose thesis for the Jyväskylän yliopisto was later turned into a book and is now displayed at Philip Glass’ (2019) official website. In that work, Richardson (1995, 1999) observed that Glass’ Akhnaten should be called a post-minimalist work. According to Gann, Potter, and ap Siôn (2013), in post-minimalism “the [minimalist] style moved back into, and infiltrated, a more traditional performance paradigm” (p. 10). Therefore, a post-minimalist opera should portray a clash between canons of musical composition and new techniques, such as repetition, the additive process, and some unusual elements. And then there was this opera by John Adams (1987), Nixon in China, which was heavily influenced by Glass’ (Richardson, 1995) and Steve Reich’s works (Gann, Potter & ap Siôn, 2013). Furthermore, it should be observed that Akhnaten is the third opera from a trilogy. Each section from the trilogy pays tribute to what Freud (1939) called “great men” (p. 172). For Glass, each great man is associated with a specific topic: “Einstein as scientist, Gandhi as statesman and Akhnaten as theologian” (Griffiths, 1985, p. 338).

As Tarasti (1994) has pointed out “[minimalist] composers quote structural forms from an earlier style period not as a specifically historical allusion” (p. 281). And indeed this point of view is quite in accordance with Glass’ own: “my idea of opera … doesn’t recognise a grandfather [male, patriarchal] of tradition” (in Gagne & Caras, 1982, p. 217). Still, although Tarasti (1994) observed that “No music is more anti­historical than Minimalism” (p. 281), in Akhnaten, Glass aimed at “negotiating a reconciliation of sorts with this [Western] tradition” (Richardson, 1995, p. 63). I am of opinion that not only Glass was seriously occupied with traditional canons of composition when creating his Akhnaten. As Griffiths (1985) noted: “the nature of Akhnaten is that of liturgy, not drama. It is presentation, not representation” (p. 339). Therefore, I’d like to think about the spiritual dimension of Akhnaten as related to Richard Wagner’s work. The latter wrote: “A real presentation could only become possible to them in the event of their possessing the power of simultaneously addressing the whole range of man’s artistic sensations” (1913, p. 213). And in this sense, operas, such as Parsifal and Akhnaten, are not to serve “as a mere diversion” (Wagner in Kerr, 1912, p. 263). Further, they are not to be acknowledged as mere parodies, as-if­ signs (Tarasti, 2012) or as “arts [that] merely indicate” (Wagner, 1913), but musical rituals. And even though one is not to believe that Akhnaten himself is present on stage – he is not, his spiritual revolution is.

It is worth noticing that Akhnaten’s religious revolution could be symbolized by the clash between minimalism (new order) and post-minimalism (new order with old ideas). But this point seems to have been missed by Richardson (1995, 1999), who nonetheless deeply explored the harmonic treatment that Glass consciously have done in his representation of the old order (polytheism) and the new order (monotheism) established by Akhnaten, who is mainly associated with minor chords, whereas the old order is related to major ones. But this should be a simplistic explanation, and of course, Akhnaten also sings in A major: “the change of mode from minor to major denotes the protagonist’s spiritual breakthrough” (Richardson, 1995, p. 213).

Furthermore, when Glass created the first opera with hieroglyphic writing, he was both animating an ancient cultural heritage, and, if not the first, one of the first written languages. It is true, however, that “Egyptological” operas appeared long before Glass. We know that Jean-Philippe Rameau (1747) composed an entrée for Osiris in his Les fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les dieux d’Egypte. And, as Rehding (2014) have noticed, Rameau was concerned about how music sounded in Ancient Civilizations. But there was a problem for Rameau. There are, as of today no extant sources of notated music. Truth is, we do not even know if the Egyptians had some form of musical notation. Herodotus (Histories 2.48.2) observed that the Egyptians played the flute and sang, his ethnographic account being made long before Béla Bartók or the establishment of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv by Carl Stumpf. Still, when Glass uses drones in Akhnaten, he is certainly employing what once could have been familiar for Egyptian musicians (cf. Richardson, 1995; Rehding, 2014).

After Athanasius Kircher and Rameau worked on what I would like to call as “imagined ethnomusicology,” the great revolution in Egyptology came with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. And then came Rossini’s (1818) Mosè in Egitto, Verdi’s (1870) Aïda, among other operas. Aïda ”was first performed … two years after the opening of the Suez Canal … a grave found during Mariette’s excavations seemed to him to be that of a military commander buried alive for betraying his country” (Fagan, 1977, p. 55). And if Verdi worked with the legendary Egyptologist, Glass, along with Shalom Goldman, created Seminars with reading lists and traveled to Egypt to visit the sites of Thebes and Akhetaten (now called Tell el-Amarna; Glass, 1987), both being depicted at the post-minimalist opera.

If you asked a Danish Egyptologist (Frandsen, 1993) what book he would recommend concerning the so-called Amarna period, he would not go first into those from Sir Flinders Petrie, Sir Wallis Budge, Norman Davies, Arthur Weigall, James Breasted, or Sigmund Freud. With a critical tone towards Glass’ work, he wrote: “Akhnaten does not, I think, offer us much insight into the ‘reality’ of ancient Egypt, as does a work like Sinuhe, the Egyptian” (p. 263). His curious musicological paper published by The Musical Quarterly was heavily criticized by Richardson (1995), and, from my point of view, it could have offered more Egyptological insights than it does, which is almost none. We are left with almost no commentary about the libretto which includes many passages from original Egyptian sources. Take for instance the fact that Frandsen (1993) wrote only a brief footnote in regard to the original source from Act III, Scene 3 (Ruin nº 1): “The text is allegedly taken from the tomb of Aye, but surely this must be a misunderstanding” (p. 266). In his own footnote, Richardson (1995) observed that “The libretto indicates that it was found in the tomb of Aye … but this appears to be a mistake: see Frandsen (1993, 266)” (p. 245). It took me no great effort to locate this section from the libretto in Breasted’s The Dawn of Conscience (1933, p. 307), and that Albright, (1937, p. 200) published a commentary on the same verses at the prestigious Journal of Egyptian Archeology. Further, I have noticed that the text derives from an ostrocon written in hieratic tagged as 5656a at the British Museum (2021). The renowned Egyptologist Adolf Erman (1905) offered a translation and an adaptation of the original source into hieroglyphs. Indeed, Erman (1905) observed that this passage was related to Akhnaten’s iniquities, which makes Glass’ choice to portray this specific Hymn to Amon after the fall of Akhnaten an outstanding one. I wish I would have seen a background scene in which the composer is greeted by the Egyptologist for his excellent choice of words. It should have been unusual, but minimalist and much appropriated, nevertheless.

The Finnish audiences who recently watched the streamed performance from the Aleksanterin Teatteri, in Helsinki, might be well familiar with Waltari’s Sinuhe. And indeed so was Philip Glass, who read everything he found on the subject of Akhnaten, including Velicowsky’s (1960) Oedipus and Akhnaten and Freud’s (1939) Moses and the Monotheism. According to Richardson, Philip Glass “came across a copy of it [Sinuhe, the Egyptian] in what we call a yard sale … I was working on Akhnaten at the time and it was a sheer coincidence” (1993/1995, p. 62). It was the law of Karma, perhaps. Furthermore, the Finnish might also be acquainted with the minimalist work of Juhani Nuorvala, who interviewed Philip Glass. On the occasion, Glass commented that one of his compositions for Glassworks (1981 – another example of post-minimalism) was inspired by Jean SibeliusFifth Symphony (Nuorvala, 1986).

Then, of course, the Finnish might as well be aware that a text from Glass’s Akhnaten, namely the Hymn to the Aten (Act II, Scene 4) was already employed by Erik Bergman. The latter’s “Aton … [was] first performed by the Helsinki Philharmonic on 29 April 1960 in Sweden” (Richardson, 1995, p. 202). Still, Bergman’s choice of a baritone for the title role falls distant from Glass’ option for a countertenor, an attempt to echo the castrato voice of Alessandro Moreschi. For the Finnish performance of Akhnaten, Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen translated the Hymn to the Aten that appears on Glass’ libretto in English, and now the Finnish audiences may enjoy a Finnish translation. Still, I have learned that the text from the libretto is not the original one (cf. Bouriant, Legrain & Jequier, 1903, p. 30-32; Davies, 1908, p. 29-31). Indeed, Glass took advantage of an abridged English version by R. J. Williams (1958/1961, see pages 145-148) published in a volume edited by D. W. Thomas. Williams’ version, I must say, excludes the entire first column of text in hieroglyphs, among other passages (for instance the mention of Akhenaten’s wife, at the end). Moreover, Glass uses less than a fourth of William’s translation, which is of course a choice that prevents the scene from being too long. In any case, it should be noticed that this passage could have been sung in Egyptian, as it is done in Act I (Scenes 1, 2, 3) and Act II (Scenes 1 and 2). Furthermore, it should be noticed that the recent French performance at Opéra Nice Côte d’Azur does not employ a version of the Hymn to the Aten in French.

Upon my analysis of the Helsinki performance of Akhnaten, I have noticed that the choreographer Laura Humppila portrayed the dancers at the Prelude employing the hieroglyph (A28, from Gardiner’s list, 1957), which, as an ideogram, stands for “exult, make merry” (Budge, 1920, p. xcvii), or “mourn” (Gardiner, 1957, p. 445). The highly repetitive music of the Prelude could be seen as a symbol of “the gentle ripples of the Nile dancing under the rays of sun” (Richardson, 1995, p. 104), which I also think that the Helsinki production tackles quite well with their luminous and watery scenario. It is only a pity that the Clarinets, which should foster a “more legato, undulating feel” (ibid.), were rather played in some sort of staccato. I hope that this will be amended for the forthcoming performance next September.

Speaking of choreography, in all three Acts of Akhenaten staged in New York, we can see a juggling performance by Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala, which echoes a depiction of three jugglers at a Middle Kingdom cemetery complex (Park, 2021). Therefore, it seems that both the Helsinki and the New York performances (and also the English National Opera along with the LA Opera) were concerned with Egyptological issues beyond those of the libretto and the imagined ethno-composition of Philip Glass. Moreover, the NY MET opera also employs hieroglyphs at the Prelude, but perhaps in a more evident way (starting with an artistic variation of , O40, “stairway”, or “terrace” from Gardiner’s list, 1957, p. 497).

In comparison, the Opéra Nice performance is much more “minimalistic,” so to say. The main point for this argument is that Lucinda Child, who collaborated with Philip Glass in Einstein on the Beach (1976), employs less dynamical elements in her choreography. Except for her majestic depiction of The City (Act II, Scene 3), all the theatrical elements employed by Child are reduced to a minimum of slow and calculated movements. Furthermore, the Opéra Nice version excluded the Epilogue (Act III, Scene 4) from the performance. In Helsinki, the audience is greeted by an ironic travel guide and archeologists doing fieldwork. In New York, one can notice physicians examining a mummy and perhaps a scholar (or a serious travel guide?) explaining the text to the audience with the aid of a slide show. This last scene is probably the one that is most related to the minimalist, unusual and revolutionary works of La Monte Young (cf. Mertens, 1980/1988).

I would like to think that the use of is somehow related to the praise towards the new pharaoh. But Laura Humppila could have been thinking more of alternate meaning of the hieroglyph, which could be related to Amenophis III, whose burial is depicted in the Funeral Scene (Act I, Scene 1). Or maybe it was the work of the Unconscious. The minimalist music employed in the Prelude appears once again at the Funeral, but one cannot miss the signs of the classical canons of composition here, especially those related to Funeral marches such as the percussion and the dotted figures employed by Beethoven and Chopin (Rosen, 2002). I would like to think that the Funeral Scene is symbolically related to both the Temple Scene (Act II, Scene 1) and the Amarna Letters that appear in Act III (Scenes 1 and 2). Richardson (1999) observed that when Akhnaten was made the sole pharaoh of Egypt he ordered that the name of the god Amun was to be erased wherever it appeared – including in his father’s name. With this in mind, Richardson (1999) called attention to what is called (since Lacan) as the Name-of-the-Father (cf. Röhe, 2021). In a sense, the murder of the father (by means of erasing his name) implies, at least, that Akhnaten was not accepting the (religious) law established by his father.

In the Temple Scene, Akhnaten is not only burying his father. There, the new pharaoh and his followers attacked the temple of Amun. Through this act, Akhnaten kills the father, although he was already buried. And this is a short story only. Indeed, the Atenists “penetrated into the tombs of the dead to erase it from the texts… they entered private houses to rub it from small utensils where it chanced to be inscribed” (Weigall, 1910/1912, p. 169). Akhnaten even forced the living ones to change their names if they bore that of Amun (Weigall, 1910/1912). Nonetheless, Akhnaten’s intolerance was not satisfied by these deeds. As a neurotic aiming to surpass the father in order to obtain the love of the mother, Akhnaten endured his efforts towards the adoration of a single god. In Act III (Scenes 1 and 2), we hear these so-called Tell el-Amarna letters. Sources on them are many. But we know that some of them were written to the pharaoh by his allies and minor kings of yore. They ask for the pharaoh to send troops, but he was not worried about war. Not a troop was sent to his allies, and the threats posed by the Amarna Letters were realized – the pharaoh was now losing his lands.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, the threat of castration imposed by the father was now turning real. Akhnaten erasure of the Name-of-the-Father was proving to have no substantial results for him – his god abandoned him (geworfen). And how did Akhnaten reacted? “In a frenzy of zeal in the adoration of the Aton, [he] now gave orders that the name of all other gods should suffer the same fate as that of Amon” (ibid. p. 219). Although this order was never fully realized, it is undoubtedly a neurotic sign which represents Akhnaten’s incestuous wishes towards his mother Queen Tye. Richardson (1995) well noticed that Akhnaten, in his trio with Nefertiti and Queen Tye (Window of Appearances, Act II, Scene 3) “remains on a steady c2 … which perhaps signifies his gendered, or bliss body … Tye moves from the fifth of the chord (e2) … to its root (a1) …, thus surrounding him musically” (p. 162). If one is to find the psychological reason for Akhnaten’s attempts to murder (symbolically) his father, it is depicted in the Window of Appearances.

One more scene is worthy of notice, namely the love duet of Akhnaten and Nefertiti. The latter was perhaps the most beautiful woman in the history of Ancient Egypt – perhaps only matched by Cleopatra VII, represented by Jules Massenet in 1914 and by Händel (1724) in his Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Nefertiti recently appeared on Nature due to a discovery of a secret chamber in Tutankhamun tomb: “it could be the biggest archaeological discovery ever” (Reeves in Marchant, 2020), but it is not yet certain if her tomb was found. But why is this important? – the reader might be asking. Well, it is known that Nefertiti was not only beautiful – her bust which is now on display at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung (ÄM 21300) could be considered as the finest work of art in all Ancient Egypt history. Still, this beautiful woman who gave birth to many daughters seemed not to be always in good relationship terms with her husband “Shortly after this twelfth year [of Akhnaten’s reign] came the heaviest blow of all. His wife Nefertete, unless we have misinterpreted the evidence, deserted him” (Pett, 1930, p. 113). It seems that with the arrival of Queen Tye at Amarna he became intensely involved with his mother. He was even represented holding hands with her (see cf. Windows of Appearances, Act II, Scene 3; Davies, 1905, p. 7-8 [list of plates]), and that would make Nefertiti feel jealous. And thus she left her husband, her coffin never to be found (until now?). Truth is that the love duet between Akhnaten and Nefertiti was representative of a period that predates any marital issues they had.

Still, for Richardson (1999), the love duet is rather a trio: “The truth is, the love duet of Akhnaten and Nefertiti is not a duet at all, but a trio: a trio for counter tenor, contralto, and trumpet – that is for Akhnaten, Nefernefru-aten [Nefertiti], and the Aten itself” (p. 190). The trumpet “combines motific elements from both voices, and serves as the binding agent that transforms Akhnaten and Nefertiti’s counterpoint into harmony” (p. 193). At the Helsinki performance, Akhnaten (Zoltán Darago) and Nefertiti (Essi Luttinen) are mirrored by a pair of dancers which offers to the public a unique mixture of synchronized movement and theatrical representations that are a possible allusion to the marital issues of “Akhnaten and Nefertiti [who] are among the earliest, if not the earliest romantic couple in recorded history, predating Antony and Cleopatra by many hundreds of years” (Glass, 1987, p. 151).

According to Lawrence Kramer (2016): “The realization that hieroglyphic writing is phonetic as well as pictorial had the effect of turning scores and hieroglyphs into potential mirror images of each other” (p. 29). With that in mind, Kramer noticed that the audience is not always aware of the hieroglyphic sub-text of a composition. He mentioned Schumann’s (1834-1835) Carnaval, opus 9, 8b “Sphinxes,” and that “the double whole notes are both conventional and exotic, and they are also both arbitrary code and pictographic symbols of an enigmatic creature” (p. 31). It seems then, at least in this case, that the meaning attributed to the composition can only be achieved by means of a complete study of the work. Notwithstanding, Glass’ Akhnaten differs from Schumann’s because it doesn’t rely on the metaphoric association between the score and an idea, the score being a hieroglyph, or more precisely, an ideogram. What Glass’ offers is an opera deeply connected with original and exact Egyptological data. And it is by animating a soundless text with traditional canons of musical composition with a minimalistic rereading that he brought back to life those ancient texts. As far as I am concerned, Glass’ is the first and only opera which employs Egyptian texts as they would have sound if someone reads them today. Furthermore, it seems that recent productions are taking a step ahead towards the imagined portrayal of Egypt in operas.

–Daniel Röhe

Relevant Resources:
https://www.aleksanterinteatteri.fi/akhnaten
https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/2019-20-season/akhnaten-live-in-hd/
https://www.opera-nice.org/fr/news/2020-12-08/video-akhnaten-en-integralite

References
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• British Museum. (2021).Ostracon. Retrieved in April 19, 2021 from https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA29559.
• Budge, E. A. W. (1920). An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Volume 1. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street.
• Erman, A. (1905). Zur ägyptischen Religion. Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 42, 106-127.
• Fagan, B. M. (1977). Auguste Mariette and Verdi’s Aïda. Antiquity, 55.
• Frandsen, P. J. (1993). Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Musical Quarterly, 77(2), 241-267.
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• Kerr, C. (1912). The Story of Bayreuth as Told in the Bayreuth Letters of Richard Wagner. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company.
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• Mertens, W. (1988). American Minimal Music. La Monte Young. Terry Riley. Steve Reich. Philip Glass (J. Hautckict, Trans.). London: Kahn & Averill.
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• Park, E. (2021). Music in the Air. Retrieved April 16, 2021 from https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/articles/music-in-the-air/
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• Philip Glass. (2019). Akhnaten. Retrieved April 16, 2021 from https://philipglass.com/recordings/akhnaten/
• Rehding, A. (2014). Music-Historical Egyptomania, 1650–1950. Journal of the History of Ideas, 75(4): 545–580jhi.2014.0037.

• Richardson, J. (1995). Refractions of Masculinity: Ambivalence and Androgyny in Philip Glass’s Opera ‘Akhnaten’ and Selected Recent Works (Jyväskylä Studies in the Arts, 49). Jyväskylä: Jyvaskyla University Printing House and Sisäsuomi Oy, Jyväskylä.
• Richardson, J. (1999). Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. In G. Lipsitz, S. McClary and R. Walser (Eds.), Wesleyan University Press. Music/Culture (pp. i-310). Hanover: University Press of New England.
• Rosen, C. (2002). Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Röhe, D. (2021). Oedipus Returns to the Opera: The Repressed in Psychoanalysis and Musicology. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2021.1905180
• Tarasti, E. (1994). A Theory of Musical Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

• Tarasti, E. (2012). Existential Semiotics and Cultural Psychology. In: J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology (pp. 316-343). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396430.013.0016
• Velicowsky, I. (1960). Oedipus and Akhnaten. Myth and History. London: Sidgwick and Jackson Limited.

• Wagner, Richard. (1913). Opera and Drama. Vol. 1 (E. Evand, Trans.). London: WM Reeves.
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essee: Hyvästi duuri ja molli — 100 vuotta 12-säveljärjestelmää

Schönberghotelli copy

Traunkirchen on hyvin tavallinen itävaltalainen kaupunki pienen Traunseen rannalla. Asutus myötäilee tiiviisti rantaviivaa ja kirkko hallitsee kaupunkikuvaa. Kyseessä on lomakaupunki, jossa mm. Hugo Wolf vietti kesäisin pitkiä aikoja. Ennen häntä Traunkirchenissä piti hoviaan ruhtinatar Pantschoulidze ja vieraana nähtiin usein Anton Rubinstein. 1900-luvun puolella kaupungissa lomaili kaksi itävaltalaista säveltäjää, jotka vaikuttivat musiikinhistoriaan käänteentekevällä tavalla. He olivat Josef Matthias Hauer (1883–1959) ja Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951). Nämä miehet hylkäsivät perinteisen duuri-molli-tradition ja kehittivät omat, sävellajeista poikkeavat järjestelmänsä.

Sävellajikäsitteen mureneminen ei tapahtunut aivan äkkiarvamatta. Siitä oli merkkejä 1800-luvun lopun teoksissa. Vanha Franz Liszt teki selvän johtopäätöksen. Hän muutti neljännen Mefisto-valssinsa nimeksi Bagatelle ohne Tonart (Bagatelli ilman sävellajia). Lisztiä innoitti Mefisto-valsseihinsa Lenaun Faust-näytelmän kapakkakohtaus. Lenaulla oli Lisztin tavoin saksalaiset sukujuuret, mutta syntymäpaikkojensa perusteella heidät on molemmat ikäänkuin assimiloitu unkarilaisiksi. Kyseisessä kohtauksessa Mefisto soittaa viulua kiihkeää kiihkeämmin ja Faust tanssittaa tyttöään ulos kapakasta kauas metsään. Satakielen laulua ei tässä musiikissa ole enää kuultavissa.

Näyte 1. Liszt: Bagatelle ohne Tonart. Petri Sariola, piano, radionauhoitus 1968.

Keskusteltaessa siitä, kuka ensimmäisenä otti ratkaisevan askeleen kohti sävellajien sivuuttamista törmätään ongelmiin. Venäjällä kehittivät sellaiset miehet kuin Stantshinski, Roslavets, Lourie, Golysev ja Protopopov omat systeeminsä. Heidän tuotantonsa ei kuitenkaan edustanut ns. sosialistista realismia ja jäi vuosikymmeniksi unohduksiin. Samaan tapaan 1900-luvun alkuvuosikymmenien uudenaikainen venäläinen maalaustaide katosi museoitten kellareihin ja yksityiskotien nurkkiin. Kaikissa itäblokin maissa 12-säveljärjestelmän käyttö oli käytännössä kielletty. Venäläisistä modernisteista kuuluisimmaksi ja siten myös vaikutusvaltaisimmkasi nousi 1914 kuollut Aleksander Skrjabin, joskin etenkin Neuvostoliitossa vain perinteisemmän alkutuotantonsa ansiosta. Kuuluisa pianisti Alexander Brailowsky sanoi Suomessa käydessään, ettei enää esitä Skrjabinin myöhempää musiikkia, koska siinä harmonia pysyy aina samana. Kvarteille perustuva rakentelu ei kuitenkaan mitenkään pienentänyt Skrjabinin musiikin ilmaisuvoimaa. 1914 häneltä jäi kesken Esinäytökseksi kutsuttu orkesteriteos, jossa esiintyy kahdentoista sävelen sointuja. Ilmeisesti Skrjabin käytti viimeisissä pianosävellyksissään tämän musiikin materiaalia.

Näyte 2. Skrjabin: 5 preludia op. 74. Petri Sariola, piano, radionauhoitus 1969

Arnold Schönbergiä pidetään yleisesti 12-säveltekniikan keksijänä ja kehittäjänä, Wienissä hänellä oli kuitenkin varteenotettava kilpailija, Josef Matthias Hauer. Tältä oli jo 1912 esitetty Wienissä teos Nomos in sieben Teilen. Hauer kehitti sävellajit täysin sivuuttaen ns. trooppi-opin. Hän puhui ”meelisen” ja ”rytmisen” elementin vastakohtaisuudesta ja jakoi musiikin 44 kaksiosaiseen trooppiin. Tekniikkansa avulla hän pystyi luomaan suuren määrän musiikkia, joka oli ikäänkuin irroitettu inhimillisistä tuntemuksista. 1937 hän kehui zwölftonmusiikkinsa olevan:

…die einzige, unveränderliche Schritt und Sprache des Universums… ist Offenbarung der Weltordnung, der Harmonie der Sphären… bietet dem Menschen einen festen Halt für sein Denken und Empfinden… Zwölftonmusik ist Wahrheit, geistige Wirklichkeit, Natur des Weltalls, Kunst in absoluter Vollendung, Mass und Mitte aller Wissenschaften, Gipfel der Erkenntnis, Weg, Ziel, Sinn, Erfüllung jeder Kulturäone; sie ist unbedingt und notwendig so, wie sie erst- und einmalig geschrieben hat Josef Matthias Hauer.

Kaikkea Hauerin musiikkia ei ole selvästikään tarkoitettu esitettäväksi, se vain kirkastuneessa rauhassaan heijastaisi kosmista järjestystä. Mutta Hauerillakin oli omat kehityskautensa. Nuorempana hän sävelsi sellaisenkin pianokappaleen kuin Morgenländisches Märchen (Itämainen taru) ja omisti sen rakkaalle vaimolleen. Tarkkaan kuunnellen siinä kyllä on muutama itämainen käänne.

Näyte 3. Hauer: Morgenländisches Märchen op. 9 t. 1-37.  Petri Sariola, piano, yksityinen soittonäyte

Schönbergin ja Hauerin henkilökohtaiset välit olivat periaatteessa hyvät. He totesivat löytäneensä saman timantin mutta katselivat sitä eri puolilta. Kesällä 1921 Schönberg sävelsi Traunkirchenissä pianokappaleensa op. 23. Hän tajusi keksineensä jotakin kokonaan uutta ja kertoi siitä oppilaalleen Erwin Steinille. Hän kehoitti tätä kuitenkin pitämään asian toistaiseksi salassa. Schönberg kertoi asiasta myös toiselle oppilaalleen Josef Ruferille sanoen, että keksintö takaisi saksalaiselle musiikille johtoaseman sadaksi vuodeksi.

Schönbergin perehdyttyä Hauerin uusiin kirjoituksiin ja otaksuttavasti kuultuaan tämän musiikkia hän katsoi, ettei voinut enää pitää omaa menetelmäänsä salassa. Häntä olisi voitu pitää Hauerin jäljittelijänä. Schönberg piti kotonaan Mödlingissä sarjan luentoja, joissa kertoi keksimästään 12-säveltekniikasta. Milloin tarkalleen luennot pidettiin ja keitä oli milloinkin läsnä on jäänyt hiukan epäselväksi, mutta tieto ei ole kovin oleellinen. Ratkaisevaa on, että sävellykset op. 23 syntyivät kesällä 1921 Traunkirchenissä, täsmälleen sata vuotta sitten.

Schönberg-Haus Wienin Mödlingissä

Schönberg-Haus Wienin Mödlingissä

Jonkin verran hämmästystä on herättänyt se, että Schönberg opuksissa 23 ja 25 käytti sävellysten otsikkoina vanhoja tanssinimikkeitä kuten musette ja menuetti. Musiikilla ei kuitenkaan ole juuri mitään tekemistä tanssillisuuden kanssa. Selitystä on ehkä haettava pitemmältä, Schönbergin tuonaikaisista henkilökohtaisista elämäntunnoista. Schönbergin pianoteoksista kirjan laatinut Georg Krieger pitää pianokappaleita op. 23 kriisin päiväkirjana. Ne ovat pateettisessa mielessä Schönbergin ”Heiligenstadtin testamentti”. Vanhat tanssinimikkeet ovat vain peitetarina samaan tapaan kuin Alban Bergin viulukonsertto on yleisessä tietoisuudessa erehdyttävästi kytketty Manon Gropiuksen kuolemaan.

Lomaillessaan ennen 1. maailmansotaa Traunkirchenissä oli Schönberg tutustunut nuoreen taidemaalariin Richard Gerstliin. He keskustelivat taiteesta, heillä oli jossain vaiheessa yhteinen studio ja Gerstli tutustui myös Schönbergin oppilaisiin. Schönbergin vaimo Matilde ihastui Gerstliin, karkasi hänen luokseen ja palattuaan kotiin jatkoi vierailujaan tämän luona. Tilanne oli Gerstlille kuitenkin liian vaikea, sillä erään Schönbergin oppilaitten konsertin jälkeen hän päätyi itsemurhaan.

yhteiskuva copy

Schönbergin ja hänen vaimonsa välit näyttävät vakiintuneen vaimon kuolemaan asti 1923. Schönbergille tilanne ei aluksi ollut kovin helppo. Hän laati testamenttiaan silmällä pitäen luonnoksen, joka selventää sitä tapaa jolla yritti selviytyä tilanteesta. Schönberg ei siinä kiellä sitä, että vaimon uskottomuus teki hänet kovin onnettomaksi. Hän itki ja oli itsemurhan partaalla. Sitten Schönberg ikään kuin katsoi olevansa jotenkin irrallaan vaimostaan: ”Olin kaukana hänestä. Emme koskaan tavanneet toisiamme. Enkä minä edes tiedä miltä hän näyttää…”

Schönbergin sisäiset tuntemukset eivät näkyneet paperilla, ne kuuluivat hänen musiikissaan, jossa oli uusia, traagisia sävyjä. Monodraama Erwartung heijastelee vakavaa sisäistä kriisiä. Oratorio Jabobsleiter jäi kesken. Palvelu sotaväessä vei oman aikansa. Niissä pianokappaleissa, joita Schönberg sommitteli kesällä 1921 oli säveltäjällä edessään ongelma, miten järjestää riitasointuiset ideansa loogisesti. Sävellajiperiaatteella se ei enää onnistunut. Ratkaisun tarjosi 12-säveljärjestelmä.

Selvimmillään ja puhtaimmillaan ratkaisu ilmenee valssissa op. 23/5. Heijastuksia perinteisestä wieniläisvalssista tai wieniläisestä gemütlichkeitista on hyvin vaikea löytää. Musiikkia ohjaa sisäinen logiikka, jonka vain nuotit analysoiva teoreetikko voi löytää. Kuulijalle avautuu kokonaan uusi, ikäänkuin ennalta-aavistamaton sävelkaskadi. Valssin sävellettyään totesi Schönberg wieniläisten musiikinystävien tapaan: ”Der Himmel hängt wieder ein mal voller Geigen.”

Schönberg oli ilman muuta tyytyväinen löytämäänsä sävellystekniseen ratkaisuun. Minkä kriisin päiväkirjana tämän opuksen sävellykset sitten olivat on vaikeammin selitettävissä. Juuri tuona kesänä oli Schönberg kesken kesälomansa muuttanut rauhalliseen Traunkircheniin edellisessä kaupungissa kokemansa antisemistisen ilmapiirin takia.

Kaikki Schönbergin pianoteokset pianokonserttoa myöten kantaesitti Eduard Steuermann. Hänen temponsa tässä levytyksessä on nopeamman puoleinen, mutta kritiikkiä ei voi esittää. Hän tunsi säveltäjän varsin hyvin henkilökohtaisesti.

Näyte 4. Schönberg: Valssi op. 23/5. Eduard Steuermann, piano (Columbia LP: ML 5216)

Schönbergin oppilaista 12-säveljärjestelmää kehitti pisimmälle Anton Webern. Nimenomaan hänestä tuli esikuva kun toisen maailmansodan jälkeen ns. läpisarjallisuus tuli uudeksi rakenteluperiaatteeksi. Itseasiassa Webern askarteli rivitekniikan parissa samanaikaisesti Schönbergin kanssa vaikka ei tuonutkaan ajatuksiaan julkisuuteen. Schönberg muisteli 1940 Webernin reaktiota uuteen tekniikkaan:

Curiously when I had shown the four basic forms, Webern confessed that he had written also something in twelve tones (probably suggested by the Scherzo of my Symphony of 1915), and he said: ‘I never know what to do after the twelve tones’ meaning that the three inversions now could follow and the transpositions.

Felix Greissle muisteli samaa tapausta:

There was one person, who resisted – who resisted more by being silent and not saying anything, and that was Anton Webern. He was one who resisted most. At one point, when Schönberg said, ‘There I used the row transposition and transposed it into tritone,’ so Webern said, ‘Why?’ Schönberg looked at him and said, ‘I don’t know,’ and then Webern burst out, ‘Ah,ah!,’ because Webern was waiting for some intuitive sign in the whole matter and this was it, you see.

Aivan elämänsä viime vaiheessa kommentoidessaan käsitettä Klangfarbenmelodie Schönberg kirjoitti:

One thing is certain: even had it been Webern’s idea, he would not have told it to me. He kept secret everything ’new’ he had tried in his compositions. I, on the other hand, immediately and exhaustively explained to him each on my new ideas (with the exception of the method of composition with twelve tones – that I long kept secret, because, as I said to Erwin Stein, Webern immediately uses everything I do, plan or say…)

Anton Webernin hauta

Webernin sävellysten äärimmäinen pelkistyneisyys on johtanut ajattelemaan, että säveltäjä olisi etenkin myöhemmässä tuotannossaan irtaantunut täysin inhimillisistä tunteista. Theodor Adorno käyttää määritelmää ”totale Versachlichung”. Ernst Krenek puhuu akateemisesta askeesista sellaisissa soitinsävellyksissä kuten Sinfonia op. 21. Hän sanoo Webernin välttävän inhimillisiä tunteita ja rajoittuneen abstraktien muotojen kylmään, itseriittoiseen maailmaan opuksissa 21 ja 24 sekä etenkin Variaatioissa pianolle op. 27.

Yleisö ja arvostelijat saattoivat olla samaa mieltä. Kun Variaatiot op. 27 oli 1937 esitetty Wienissä kirjoitti Neue Pressen arvostelija, että teoksessa oli ratkaistu paljon puhuttu ongelma atomin särkemisestä.

Tällaisiin päätelmiin saattoi johtaa nuottikuvan pelkistyneisyys. Webern opetti pianisti Peter Stadlenia kantaesitystä silmällä pitäen ja tämä kertoi yli kaksikymmentä vuotta myöhemmin asiasta.

For weeks on end he had spent countless hours trying to convey to me every nuance of performance down to the finest detail. As he sang and shouted, waved his arms and stamped his feet in an attempt to bring out what he called the meaning of the music I was amazed to see him treat those few scrappy notes as if they were cascades of sound. He kept on referring to the melody which he said, must be as telling as a spoken sentence. This melody would sometimes appear in the top notes of the right hand and then for some bars be divided between both left and right. It was shaped by an enormous amount of constant rubato and by a most unpredictable distribution on accents. But there were also definite changes of tempo every few bars to mark the beginning of “a new sentence”.

Tällaiset ohjeet asettavat nykypäivän pianistit vaikean tehtävän eteen. Tulkintojen emotionaalinen puoli on laskettava ikäänkuin erillisenä harsona kaikkien temponmuutosten ja pisteillä varustettujen staccatojen päälle. Mahdollisuudet persoonallisiin ratkaisuihin ovat olemassa.

Suomalaisiin konserttiohjelmiin Webernin teokset ilmaantuivat hitaasti. Tämän kirjoittaja esitti Variaatiot op. 27 Sibelius-Akatemian oppilaskonsertissa 1961. Vähän myöhemmin teos oli mukana pianotutkinnossa. Tutkinnon jälkeen käveli rehtori Taneli Kuusisto takahuoneeseen ja sanoi, että nyt hän ymmärtää Weberniä. Parempaa kiitosta on vaikea kuvitella.

Näyte 5. Webern: Variationen für Klavier op. 27, osa 3. Petri Sariola, piano, yksityinen tallenne.

Petri Sariola (teksti ja kuvat)

 

interview: A psychoanalytical interview with a composer: a discussion about Kharálampos Goyós’ Anthony’s Death

Introduction

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), designed by the architect Renzo Piano and inaugurated in 2016 might not be open to the public due the covid-19 pandemic. The SNFCC houses the Greek National Opera and, like many opera houses in the world, offers a service of streaming (the Greek National Opera TV: https://tv.nationalopera.gr/). In its 2021 schedule, which is otherwise dedicated to the bicentennial of the Greek Independence War, online audiences saw throughout mid-May and June the performance of Anthony’s Death, a chamber opera by the Greek composer Kharálampos Goyós1.

The opera tackles issues concerning love relationships and how social classes and their respective morality affects them. This is mostly evident in the dialogues between Sergius (Vassilis Kavayas) and Paulus (Georgios Iatrou) – The work of costume designer Ioanna Tsami is also relevant on this issue: Sergius is depicted more as an adventurer with his leather jacket whilst Paulus is depicted more as a British nobleman using haute couture costumes (Figure 1). The couple aims to achieve social recognition and becoming rich by means of a successful hunting, or else, by giving name to what is nameless, the affective dimension of their Desire – hence their failure.

Figure 1 – Sergius (left) and Paulus (right) singing a love duet. Photo Andreas Simopoulos/Greek National Opera

Figure 1 – Sergius (left) and Paulus (right) singing a love duet. Photo Andreas Simopoulos/Greek National Opera

Sergius and Paulus are a solid depiction of an hesitant couple that fails to kiss but are ironically successful at shooting each other – and not the fox/vixen that they are hunting, or at least are trying to attribute a name: “Martha, Xenia, Pighí, … Lucia… Red” (Filias & Goyós, 2006, n.p.), all stands as possibilities for the nameless object of their masculine desire that consummates the hunting, a red fox, a woman dressed in red (The Red One: Marissia Papalexiou), their impossible desire which takes places at the dissociated relationship between the thing and its name (cf. Stavrakakis, 2021) hence their death, which also emulates Anthony’s death, the character from the 1970’s manga, namely Candy Candy, that reached great popularity in the 1980’s when the anime for the TV reached the Greek audience. Sergius and Paulus can only die, for they are deeply identified with the androgynous character of Anthony, who dies in the anime, thus failing to be the romantic partner of Candy.

The ambiguity of Sergius and Paulus takes place in a setting described by the composer as a clearing – like Heidegger’s ([1950] 2002) Lichtung: Thanks to this clearing, beings are unconcealed in certain and changing degrees” (p. 30). In the words of Eero Tarasti (1995), that “which gives place to both presence and absence” (p. 37). In psychoanalytic terms, Sergius and Paulus are affective and erotically consumed by ambivalence which is ”characteristic of certain phases of libidinal development in which love and destructive tendencies towards the object are to be found alongside each other” (Laplanche & Pontalis, [1967] 1973, p. 27). Therefore, the evolution of their performance depicts a regression whilst aiming at a progression. What does the couple want? To be famous, rich and respected. And that is why they hunt… Still, they can’t afford to truly love each other, they can’t work as couple – there is a lack of support, and indeed, they hurt more than they care for each other.

They want, both of them, to be famous like Anthony. Both of them want to give a title to a play that Sergius is writing. But they fail to give a name to it and to the… fox/vixen, which works as a metaphor for their incapability of coming out of the closet: they are miles away from it, but fail to name that place which they have stemmed from. Their being is heavily maculated by social practices, thus preventing them from actually enjoying themselves in a bodily level.

In a musicological sense, the music oscillates between a symmetrical accompaniment to the voice at the chords which is by an asymmetrical ostinato at the harpsichord (this aspect is commented in Goyós [2017]). There is a “shooting motive” presented right at the beginning of the opera (after the first hunting motive), which is depicted below in Figure 2:

Figure 2 - Shooting Motive from Goyós’ Anthony's Death

Figure 2 – Shooting Motive from Goyós’ Anthony’s Death

This shooting motive might be interpreted as the departure from the conflict between the sung parts and their accompaniments. This musical motive could be seen as an epithet to the title of the play that Sergius is writing: the reader should not be acquainted with its meaning at the beginning, but rather to understand as it appears throughout the opera: it appears when Paulus realizes that others are hunting, and that they are better organized, thus creating a phobic episode in him. It also appears when the couple attempts to give a name to their ineffable desire: “Fuchs, renard, Red One” (Filias & Goyós, 2006, n.p). And it also appears when the couple is arguing about the name of the play that Sergius is writing. Then, when Sergius steals the role of Anthony from Paulus, the same motive appears again, when Paulus is ascribed to the role of a woman – the one that might have killed Anthony, them, or their desire.

At the end of the opera, The Red One plays with the idea of shooting at the conductor (Kharálampos Goyós), reenacting an attempt from Paulus who earlier aimed at the string ensemble, which is found at the front-centre-left in the middle of the stage (in a chamber). The ensemble indeed plays a part in the acting, when they, before playing music, walk around the flowers which are displayed in a way that resembles a clearing in the middle of a forest. The set design by Artemis Flessa allows for curious interactions between musicians and actors. Nonetheless, the most memorable moment of the acting conceived by Dimitris Karantzas is when Paulus and Sergius ride in their carousel horses (Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Sergius (left) and Paulus (right) ride their horses towards their death. Photo Andreas Simopoulos/Greek National Opera

Figure 3 – Sergius (left) and Paulus (right) ride their horses towards their death. Photo Andreas Simopoulos/Greek National Opera

In the following section there is a reproduction of a short interview with the composer Kharálampos Goyós, who speaks of his ideas concerning his opera Anthony’s Death.


Interview

Daniel Röhe, question 1: Dear Mr. Goyós, in 2017 I had the pleasure to attend to a performance of your Twilight of the Debts for the Greek National Opera’s Alternative Stage at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. And in 2021, May 23, I’ve enjoyed the première of your new opera on the same alternative stage – Anthony’s Death (which I of course saw from home).

These alternative works make me remember of the Holland Festival (2019), which fosters the “renewal of art [that] can also change something in the audience” (p. 10)”. One of its past contributors, namely Philip Glass, composed a neo-baroque Harpsichord Concerto (2006), and to me, it seems that you’ve followed a similar path in your Anthony’s Death. At this point, I would like “to open that can of worms” (Goyós, 2017, p. 247) which you’ve mentioned at your paper published at the International Journal of Žižek Studies. You might be contrasting the attempt of modern people that aretrying his/her darnedest to keep up with the, almost impossible, task of intellectual mastery over a multiform, contingent world that attacks him/her mercilessly from all directions” (ibid. p. 239) with the “traditional, humanistic attempts at meaning-making” (ibid. p. 241). How do you relate the ideological and reactionary qualities of the Baroque in your opera to a contemporary world-view and how contemporary operas deal with the subject whilst changing the audience?

Kharálampos Goyós: I grew up in the 80s and 90s, in a post-Reagan, post-Thatcher, completely marketised society, in which (especially after the fall of the ideological bogeyman of the Soviet Union and the practical outlawing of all “grand narratives”, with the notion of “progress” as figurehead) the artist’s relationship to tradition is no longer antagonistic, but rather symbiotic. In this context, the revival of baroque music, with its more and more recherché repertoire and “gourmet” performing practices, imposes itself as the ultimate late capitalist best-seller, a veritable entrepreneur’s wet dream, given its endless possibilities of hydra-like renewal through forced resuscitation of (justly) forgotten works and star-making turns for “iconoclastic” performers. Markedly absent from all this is the old-fashioned, universalist category of truth, conspicuously replaced by a thoroughgoing aestheticisation of individual experience—a total(itarian) experiential marketplace, evidenced by the ubiquity of the pressing injunction to enjoy, enjoy, no matter what. As the dimension of truth subsides, the neo-Baroque rises with its concept of a society “built on the concept of art” (Saisselin, 1992, p. 6) and its “blurring of the distinction between illusion and reality” (ibid, p. 46). I do believe that the Baroque revival is a real symptom of a universal ideological regression of our times towards the values of the pre-Enlightenment.

As you realise, I don’t really like the neo-Baroque revival, and the harpsichord’s role in Anthony’s Death is, in its way, also parodic, a painful scratching of an unpleasant societal toe itch. Its main role, however, is not the cultural reference to the Baroque but my way of embodying one of the main musical obsessions of the work, namely the contradiction (in the old-fashioned, Maoist sense) between symmetry and asymmetry, control and freedom, rigorous invention and stereotypical fancy. In Anthony’s Death, the vocal lines have primacy; they were written first and their material is essentially free and language-based—until the finale, at least, the vocal melodies are more or less contingent. But the strings and electric guitar accompaniment “traps” them in determinism: recursive scales (with no beginning or end), symmetrical chords and dyadic relationships enmesh the lines of the two men in a game of vertical (and progressively horizontal) mirroring, in which every note conjures its spectral double—as if the very sky were metaphorically (fore)closed. In this context, the harpsichord, which tries (not always successfully) to accompany the vocal lines “humanistically”, with recourse to its traditional, asymmetrical diatonic and triadic language, provides the only line of flight from the suffocating symmetry of the rest of the orchestral material (with the possible exception of the “clean” electric guitar solo shortly before the ending, inspired by Froberger’s Méditation sur ma mort future ([1660] 2015)—another nod to the neo-Baroque).

I was also interested in the “documentary” use of the harpsichordist, namely using the player themself as “found” material, whose personality and freedom might give another opening to a somewhat stifling work. Nevertheless, the ultimate tragedy of this configuration is that the harpsichordist possesses no other language with which to break the aforementioned symmetries except the safe, historicised stereotypes of continuo playing; not having any other tools with which to open up the contingent givens of reality, they can only fall back on the well-known, prefabricated musical codes. (In this context, maybe it is worth noting that, in my country, my arrangements—such as Twilight of the Debts—have received far more critical attention than my original work. This is, I think, understandable: in our cultural moment, as can be seen in almost every field, most people prefer the safety of the known. Let me be clear, however, that this is not a moralistic judgement on my part—there is a genuine enjoyment to be found in the familiar.) When finally, in the “cathartic” ending, the harpsichord falls silent (after the two men have died and the monstrous woman enters), everything is finally trapped in the symmetry—this finale is not a “beyond”.

Changing the audience is, I think, a favourite fantasy of the artist. However, in our increasingly atomised situation (and I’m thinking here of someone like Houellebecq), this is, in my opinion, impossible—at least without wider, decisive societal change. Nowadays, I fear, the grim conclusion of Weill and Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny ([1929] 2005) is more valid than ever: “Können uns und euch und niemand helfen.” (“We cannot help ourselves nor you nor anyone.”)

Nevertheless, I still believe that art can influence at least the way the audience dreams—which is, in itself, a big responsibility.

Question 2: The audience might notice that not only the harpsichord echoes a tradition from the erudite repertoire. Also the hunting topics, in the way Raymond Monelle (2006) wrote of it, is a prominent feature in Anthony’s Death. Haydn made extensive use of it, for instance. One might also recall the visit of Count von Sporck to the court of Louis XIV, and there the Count learned about the trompe de chasse and then a school of horn players was founded in Bohemia (Monelle, 2006). And then Leoš Janáček (1924) composed his Příhody lišky Bystroušky, which depicts not the αλεπού (alepou), the renard, the Fuchs or the лисиця (lysytsya), but rather the liška (who is called Bystrouška), who ends up dead, contrarily to what happens to the fox/vixen that Anthony was hunting. Further, Monelle (2006) recalled that hunting involved an erotic dimension – the quarry was presented as a gift to a lady after his return from the distant environment of the hunting. Would you like to comment on this issue and how you’ve explored the hunting topic on seven different moments of your opera?

KG: In Anthony’s Death, the hunting topic is rather overdetermined. As you noticed, there is of course a reference to the time-honoured musical hunting conventions. In addition, there are the issues raised by the interesting phallic connotations of the horn found in the literature (cf., for example, Wagner’s Siegfried ([1876] 1983)), which here betray also the latent erotic charge between the two men. The hunting topic in my work interestingly goes back to my very first opera, Little Red Riding Hood and the (Good) Wolf (2008), which ends with the brutal, arrogantly masculine hunter breaking in, killing the feminised, sensitive Wolf and taking off with Little Red Riding Hood. There, I think the theme was inspired by Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin ([1823] 1960) and its surprisingly modern questioning of masculinity. (Coincidentally [?], my grandfather, whose name was Αντώνης [Anthony], used to be a fanatical hunter until a surprising late-life conversion!) In Anthony’s Death, however, I believe that my unconscious model was Verdi’s Don Carlos ([1867] 1980), both main versions of which—the original five-act as well as the revised four-act version—begin with unaccompanied horns. (Don Carlos happened to be the first full-length opera I saw and loved as a child, and Anthony’s Death borrows from it several important thematic elements, such as the explicit neuroticism, the charged, homosocial tenor-baritone bond, the formal—and probably sexual—significance of the gunshot and the extended, virtuosic female aria in the last act.)

Incidentally, my favourite joke in Anthony’s Death is the inexplicable substitution of the hunting horns by trumpets in the last appearance of the fanfare. There, at some level at least, I think I had in mind the Mahlerian schönen Trompeten ([1905] 2012) and the transcendental promise of his ever-present/absent offstage bands, as well as the apocalyptic connotations of “the last trump” ushering in the “woman dressed in purple and scarlet” of the Book of Revelation.

From a purely musical perspective, the horns and trumpets are the endpoint of the stratified spectrum of responses to the vocal lines in Anthony’s Death. As stated before, in addition to the symmetrical writing for the strings and guitar, there is the asymmetrical, tonal writing for the harpsichord, which offers a first “line of flight” from the rigorous controls of the rest of the music. Both of these accompaniments, however, presuppose the traditional—symmetrical—equal temperament in order to work (both individually and in tandem). The natural horns and trumpets, on the other hand, written in strictly natural intonation, introduce a discreet dialectisisation of tuning, representing the only real (though inaccessible) “beyond” of the work—alongside, perhaps, the “pure” sound created by the escalating distortion effects of the electric guitar and the vulgar amplification of the finale. My favourite parts of the opera are the sections in which a kind of macro-counterpoint between all three levels is being played out.

Question 3: Perhaps your main inspiration for the opera was not the myth of Artemis, but rather a Japanese anime derived from a homonymous manga from the 1970s. Was it your intention to bring opera to the attention of the Otaku community, or were you aiming at bringing mangas and animes to the attention of opera audiences? Moreover, you have chosen a kind of anime that contrasts with the heroic and masculine imagery of hunting, namely the kind of anime which tells of love-stories. Do you have a personal relation with animes and mangas? Would you like to mention other animes and mangas that have influenced you? And finally, how do you understand the gender issues that are related to animes and mangas (stories for boys and stories for girls) and how have you applied your own view on the issue upon the conception of your opera?

KG: Actually (and despite the pastel-coloured, anime-like ambience conjured by our stage designer, another Artemis!), I have no personal relation whatsoever with neither animes nor mangas. My interest in Candy Candy (the anime from which the opera takes off) was purely cultural, and involved the impact the series had on my generation of young spectators when the trauma of Anthony’s fictional death hit our TV screens in the mid-80s. That was a time of rapid political transition in Greece: ten years had passed since the collapse of the military dictatorship and a self-styled “socialist” party—PASOK—was in government for the first time, engendering major societal and economic changes. The anxieties of the era were further intensified by the invisible, apocalyptic spectres of Chernobyl (and its very literal foreclosure of the sky) and AIDS. I had no conscious interest in “bridging” disparate audiences—and in any case I think the opera makes rather perverse and ironic use of a venerable IP (“intellectual property”, as the franchise-besotted fashion of our age is wont to call it). Although you could rightly claim that the opera can be inscribed in a populist vein present in my work since the beginning; it certainly betrays a low-brow, communicative desire/ambition.

Regarding the gender issues, I think that we all felt them very acutely in Greece in the 80s! Confessing that we watched (let alone cried over) a “girly” anime such as Candy Candy was practically verboten for Greek boys at the time—though we probably all did. Mixing this with the pale, blond, Björn Andrésen-like male beauty of the figure of Anthony (a style known in anime culture as bishōnen, as I recently learned) results in a distinctly “queer” (and, dare I say, baroque!) sensibility, a kind of gender confusion that certainly informs the work.

Question 4: In my final question, I should turn the attention to psychoanalysis. And not only because I have been a psychotherapist enlightened by psychoanalysis since my undergraduate studies, but rather because you have consciously made use of a text from Žižek in your libretto with Mr. Filias. Apart from an opera based in Freud’s Dora Case (2021), I believe that your composition is the only one which incorporates a psychoanalytic text into an opera libretto. Now, this is interesting because we know of many psychoanalytic texts that studies librettos and scores from operas (cf. Välimaki, 2005; Röhe et al., 2020; Röhe, 2021), whether such texts were written from practicing or not practicing psychoanalysts. I would like you to tell us about your previous experience with psychoanalysis beyond that which you have commented in your paper at the International Journal of Žižek Studies (namely, the parallel you make between Žižek and Immanuel Kant)?

KG: Interesting that psychoanalysis is being narrativised in the “unnatural” medium of opera in this particular historical juncture! For me, the very process of composition is psychoanalytical. My work is intimately tied with language, and I find myself almost constitutionally unable to compose anything other than sung theatre. When writing, I consistently struggle against my obsessional compulsion to control everything through giving in to the contingency of what language and singers bring to the table. By applying my “totalising” efforts to singers and language, I know that I’m practically setting myself up for failure—which inadvertently opens up the dimension of true universality! The composition of Anthony’s Death was particularly taxing for me, taking years of struggle and engendering several weird symptoms—even physical ones, such as an insistent (literal, this time) toe itch, which tormented me for several years only to disappear instantly the moment I finished exporting the double bass part of the opera. It also encompassed two important life events: my entering analysis in a consistent way in 2016, and my father’s death in 2019. Both events were instrumental, I think, in the completion of the work.

I find composing inherently psychoanalytical also in the sense that I try to trust my murky impulses, even when I don’t understand them. Regarding the setting of the Žižek text which weirdly forms the basis for the woman’s aria at the end, I must say that I never attempted to use it as clarifying commentary, as interpretation of what came before. Rather, and in keeping with the “exotic” nature and tradition of the genre of opera as a whole (highlighted also by Mladen Dolar and Žižek himself [2002, pp. viii-ix]), I attempted to “re-mystify” Žižek himself, immerse him in hearty, obscene, quasi-Joycean (and we know how Žižek hates Joyce!) enjoyment of wordplay and free association, and even render him unfashionably “obscurantist” (which also brings up my earlier comparison with Kant). And this, also, may be an act of parricide on my part—what poor Don Carlos never managed to do.


References

• Dora, the Opera. (2021). Dora, the Opera. Composed by Melissa Shiflett with Libretto by Nancy Fales Garrett. Retrieved from http://dora-the-opera.com/the-case/.
• 
Filias, Y., & Goyós, K. (2006). Anthony’s Death, libretto, unpublished.
• 
Froberger, J. J. (2015). Méditation sur ma mort future. [CD: Toccatas and Partitas / Meditation / Lamentation on the Death of Ferdinand III]. Hong Kong: Naxos. (Original work published 1660)

• Glass, Philip. (2006). Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra [CD: The Concerto Project Vol. II]. East Hampton: Orange Mountain Music
• 
Goyós, K. (2008). Η Κοκκινοσκουφίτσα και ο (καλός) λύκος [Little Red Riding Hood and the (Good) Wolf] [CD]. Athens: Orchestra of Colours.

• Goyós, K. (2017). Anthony’s Death: Opera under the Condition of Žižek. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 11(3), 229-247.
• 
Heidegger, M. (2002). The Origin of the work of art. In J. Young & K. Haynes (Eds.), Off the Beaten Track (pp. 1-56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1950)
• 
Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J. B. (1973). The Language of Psychoanalysis. London: The International Psychoanalytical Library, Hogarth & Institute of Psychoanalysis. (Original work published 1967)

• Lekkerkerker, A.; Valknburg, A. (2019). HF19. In V. Kouters, E. Theys and M. de Zeeuw (Eds.), Holland Festival (pp. 10-13). Hardinxveld-Giessendam: Tuijtel.
• 
Janáček, L. (1924). Příhody lišky Bystroušky. Vienna: Universal Edition.
• 
Mahler, G. (2012). Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen. In Ten Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Mineola: Dover Publications (Original work published 1905)

• Monelle, R. (2006) The Musical Topic. Hunt, Military and Pastoral. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• 
Röhe, D.; Martins, F.; Conceição, M. (2020). Oedipus goes to the opera. Psychoanalytic inquiry in Enescu’s Œdipe and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 29(1), 27-38. DOI: 10.1080/0803706X.2018.1562219
• 
Röhe, D. (2021, in press). Oedipus Returns to the Opera: The Repressed in Psychoanalysis and Musicology. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 1-15.
• 
Saisselin, R. G. (1992). The Enlightenment Against the Baroque: Economics and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 
Schubert, F. (1960). Die schöne Müllerin. In M. Friedlander (Ed.), Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit Klavierbegleitung (pp. 4–53). Leipzig: Edition Peters. (Original work published 1824)

• Stavrakakis, G. (2021). Η όπερα ως αναζήτηση, η αναζήτηση ως ματαίωση; Θριαμβευτικά! [Opera as search, search as frustration? Triumphantly!]. In K. Goyós (Εd.), Ο θάνατος του Άντονυ [Anthony’s Death] pp. 30-36). Athens: Greek National Opera
• 
Tarasti, E. (1995). Musical Signification: Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• 
Välimäki, S. (2005). Subject strategies in music. A psychoanalytical approach to musical signification. Imatra: International Semiotics Institute; Helsinki: Semiotics Society of Finland
• 
Verdi, G. (1980). Don Carlos. U. Günther and L. Petazzoni (Eds.). Milan: Ricordi. (Original work published 1867)

• Wagner, R. (1983). Siegfried. Mineola: Dover Publications (Original work published 1876)
• Weill, K. (2005). Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Vienna: Universal Edition. (Original work published 1929)
• Žižek, S., & Dolar, M. (2002). Opera’s Second Death. New York: Routledge.

1 Then, The Greek National Opera extended the streaming of Anthony’s Death until July, 5.

– Daniel Röhe

Daniel Röhe, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist with private practice in Brazil. He is author and co-author of works about opera and psychoanalysis published in English and in Portuguese. He is the International Communication Advisor for the Academy of Cultural Heritages (special area Latin America).

arvio: Avantgarde elää Suomessa

John Cage

John Cage

Tulkinnanvaraista-foorumin  ja Tampere Biennalen – tänä vuonna Jennah Vainion presidoiman – konsertti Juho Laitisen johdolla Balderin salissa Helsingissä tiistaina 14.9.2021

On varmasti aivan niin kuin Jennah Vainio sanoo konsertin esittelyssä, että ’Teokset elävät esityksistä!’ Aivan saman totesi kerran amerikkalainen Charles Rosen bussissa matkalla Ainolaan: esittäjät ratkaisevat lopulta, mitä musiikkia kuullaan.

Konsertti? Itseasiassa tämä tapahtuma koetteli ja kokeili itse konsertin käsitteen rajoja, sillä alkupuolisko, vajaan tunnin performanssi, oli eräänlaista absurdia musiikkiteatteria, joka oli pantu kokoon neljästä John Cagen ’teoksesta’: Aria (1958), Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958), Song Books (1970), WBAI (1960) ja Winter Music (1957). Kun ohjelmanumeron kesto oli näin pitkä, oli varmasti aito cagelainen idea, että yleisön reaktio siihen alkoi muodostua osaksi tätä kappaletta. Nyt toteutuksesta vastasi UMUU-yhtye, jonka muodostavat Darren Acosta, Hanna Kinnunen, Jana Unmüssig, Janne Kivistö, Jarmo Metsälä, Joona Mäkelä, Juho Laitinen. Keiko Shichijo, Sirkka Lamminen ja Tarja Metsälä.

Käytännössä esiintyjät oli siroteltu salin kaikille laidoille, tuuban puhaltaja oikealle eteen, huilisti diagonaalisesti vastapäätä, sopraano takanurkkaan, kuvitteellinen kapellimestari hidastettuine eleineen vasemmalle ja lavalle kaksi atleettia, nainen ja mies, rekkitangon ääreen. Ja oikealla laidalla Juho Laitinen ’soitti’ vanhaa kirjoituskonetta sekä lausui toistaen mieletöntä tekstin pätkää. Siinä missä järjestyksessä mikin elementti oli ’foregrounded’ ei tuntunut olevan mitään erityistä logiikkaa, välillä esiintyjät syöksyivät sisään ja ulos, sopraano astui yleisön joukkoon juttelemaan Ainomaija Pennasen kanssa, mitä tämä piti esityksestä. Koko ajan videofilmaaja kiersi salia kuvaten kaikkea, myös yleisöä.

Mistä ilmiössä John Cage on oikeastaan kysymys? Olen aina suositellut kaikille luettavaksi dialogikirjaa For the Birds (Pour les Oiseaux, 1976), jossa ystäväni, musiikkitieteilijä Daniel Charles keskustelee John Cagen kanssa tämän filosofiasta. Sillä Cagehan on ennen kaikkea esteettisfilosofinen tapaus. Cagen oppi on sekoitus amerikkalaista avantgardea alkaen transsendentalisteista kuten Henry Thoreausta, Hawthornesta ja Charles Ivesista, zenbuddismista, taolaisuudesta, intialaisesta filosofiasta, ja yhdysvaltalaisista modernisteista kaikissa taiteissa. Tyypillistä Cagea ovat seuraavat ajatukset (op. cit. s. 87):

Minusta tuntuu, ettei musiikki pakota mihinkään. Se voi ratkaisevasti muuttaa tapaamme nähdä, saaden meidät katsomaan kaikkea ympärillämme taiteena. Mutta se ei ole päämäärä. Sävelillä, äänillä (sounds) ei ole päämäärää! Ne ovat ja siinä kaikki. Ne elävät. Musiikki on äänten elämää, tämä äänten osallistuminen elämään saattaa muodostua – mutta ei ehdoin tahdoin – elämän osallistumiseksi äänissä. Sinänsä musiikki ei velvoita meitä mihinkään….Yritän välttää sen valitsemista mikä sopii konserttiin, mikä kuulijakunta, paikka… .Laajennan musiikkini esityksen ehtoja maksimaalisesti….” Daniel Charles sanoi tähän: ”Kuinka teillä voi olla oppilaita, jollette annan heille mitään päämääriä?” John Cage: ”Monet ovat tulleet opiskelemaan johdollani. Jokaiselle pyrin löytämään kuka hän oli ja mitä voisi tehdä. Tuloksena se olenkin minä joka on oppilas”.

Cagen ajattelu edustaa siis radikaalia vapautumista kaikista rajoista ja rajoituksista. Kirjoitin kerran itse, että hänen musiikkinsa edustaa eräänlaista non-vouloiria, ei-tahtomista. Cage ei hyväksy melodiaa. Säveltäjä ei saa pakottaa kuulijaa mihinkään.

Balderin salin esiintyjät eivät siis ehkä oikeastaan esittäneetkään mitään vaan olivat esittävinään! Voimistelijat eivät oikeasti ryhtyneet voimistelemaan. Kapellimestari ohjasi olematonta aikaa jne. jne. Filsofiassa tämä tuo mieleen Vaihingerin kuulun als ob -opin, ’ikään kuin jos’ -ajattelun.

Performanssin lopulla alkoi ilmaan sekoittua herkullista tuoreen pullan tuoksua, joka pani jo ajattelemaan väliaikaa. Mutta ehkä tuoksutkin kuuluivat tähän yhteistaideteokseen vähän niin kuin Skrjabinilla hänen acte préalablessaan, joka piti esittää Intiassa?

***

Väliajan jälkeen kuultiin näyttö kaikkein uusinta suomalaista avantgardea Kamus-kvartetin hienoina ja herkkävireisinä tulkintoina. Siinä soittavat: Terhi Paldanius, viulu, Jukka Untamala, viulu, Jussi Tuhkanen, altto ja Petja Kainulainen, sello. Kaikkiaan oli valittu neljä hyvin erilaista säveltäjää, mutta yllättävää soivat lopputulokset eivät olleet kovin kaukana toisistaan. Perttu Haapasen teos ”…ja yltyvään vehreyteen” (2018) oli soinniltaan ohut, tuoden mieleen Helmut Lachenmannin, usein pitkien korkeiden ja ’taivaallisten’ äänten vastapainona oli pizzicatoja, sointi kyllä muuttui sitten täyteläisemmäksi ja päätyi rytmiseen ostinatoon.

Toinen teos oli Ari Vakkilaisen 5. jousikvarteton kantaesitys. Se yllätti minut täydellisesti, sillä muistin hänet opiskeluajoilta Sibelius-Akatemiassa lempimeltä ’legendaarinen Vakkilainen’, olut- ja lätäkkö-oopperan säveltäjänä, radikaalina anarkistina, Cagen hengenheimolaisena ehdottomasti. Mutta mitä kuultiin? Laulavasti soivaa cantilenaa, tiiviin polyfonista tekstuuria, eräänlaista lineaarista kontrapunktia, kauttaaltaan hyvin soivaa, (yhdessä paikassa jopa viittausta Sibeliuksen 7. sinfonian ’sade’- kohtaukseen); musiikissa tapahtui koko ajan growthia eli kasvua, lopussa oli päättävästi aksentoituja nuotteja. Sangen professionellia musiikkia.

Johanna Eränkö oli tuonut forumiin tuoreen teoksensa Fragments from the Shore (2020), jota tiettävästi on jo esitetty Kokkolassa. Hän kertoi väliajalla kahvipöydässä, että teos oli syntynyt Islannin matkan tuloksena ja se kuvasi tuon saaren luonnon eroosiota. Tuli ihan mieleen Villa-Lobosin Erosão, näin otsakkeen tasolla. Eränkö harrastaa urkupisteestä keheytyviä muotoja, yhden sävelen estetiikkaa à la Scelsi. Kohoavia melodisia eleitä käyrätorvella. Välillä elegisiä melodisia elementtejä, koraalimaista satsia; kontemplaatiota. jonka katkaisee scherzo, dissonanssit tuntuvat purkautuvan toonikalle, mennään lähelle groteskia; mutta kvarteton sointi kehystää koko ajan käyrätorvea erinomaisen soivasti ja ilmeikkäästi.

Illan viimeinen teos oli Aki Yli-Salomäeltä, jonka nykymusiikkia tarjoavia radio-ohjelmia on ollut ilo kuulla. Olkoon vain, että tausta on rock-musiikissa kuten Jennah Vaino sanoi, mutta säveltäjä oli jättänyt sen maailman tullessaan Helsingin yliopiston musiikkitieteen laitokselle ja kohdattuaan siellä Harri Vuoren. Nämä osat jousikvartetosta olivat hiljaisuutta musiikkina, on harvoja yhtä hiljaisia säveltäjiä nykymusiikin kentällä – Liettuassa tietenkin monesti palkittu Ramūnas Motiekaitis, joka on maansa johtavia avantgardisteja. Ylisalomäki harrastaa äätimmäisen hitaita eleitä, staattisuutta, elegisyyttä hieman Arvo Pärtin tapaan, jokaisen osan esitysohjeena voisi miltei olla noch langsamer!

Näiden neljän nuorehkon säveltäjän yhteinen nimittäjä on siis elegisyys, musiikin tapahtumisen hitaus ja rauhallisuus, mietiskely, vakavuus, mitään huumoriin vivahtavaa ei kuultu. Onko tässä taustalla korona-ajan ahdinkoa vai ylipäätään nuoren ihmisen angstia ja maailmankuvaa? Joka tapauksessa musiikki on musiikkia; missä määrin se on autobiografista on melkoinen pulma ratkaistavaksi.

– Eero Tarasti