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- Oscar Strasnoy
Hochzeitsvorbereitungen (mit B und K) (2000)
- Le Chant Du Monde (World)
Commissioned by Fondation d'entreprise Groupe Banque Populaire
- 1.1.1.0/0.0.0.0/perc/pf+cel+hpd/str(1.0.1.1.1)
- Countertenor, Soprano
- 55 min
- Franz Kawka and anonymous
- Arabic
Programme Note
A curious homage to Bach by Oscar Strasnoy, taking as a starting point texts of Franz Kafka to give to one of the Cantor's marriage cantatas a small unusual sister. At the origin of the project, was an invitation of Professor Konrad Stahl of the Foundation Herrenhaus- Edenkoben during the Bach 2000 festivities. The work of reference, cantata BWV 202 - Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten: You, sad shades dissipate -, discovered through a copy of 1730 but undoubtedly dating from the period of Cöthen, between 1718 and 1723. If, in the first version, the writing of Bach and Strasnoy rub elbows more than they meet, they contribute, in the second, in the development of a complex and strange puzzle, where each one of them preserves its own moments, but takes part in the unity of the whole thanks to a subtle overlapping of the texts, in the same orchestration, and to zones of passage (bridges) allowing stylistically natural transitions. "No quotations, but the spirit of Bach flies over the ensemble. And in order to ensure the balance of two materials, the cantata of Bach, usually interpreted by a soprano solo, will be, like my piece, interpreted, by a soprano and countertenor in alternation "
Although he avoids imitating the style of the German Master, Oscar Strasnoy takes for models certain more or less abstract principles, polyphonic textures or harmonic screens, figures which are transformed deep down, and backgrounds which are transformed into figures. "I accept the possibility of hierarchical elements, like a melody against an accompaniment, ornamentation, I keep the hierarchical idea of the form, with narrating recitatives and poetic airs. I add pure theatrical moments, but always inside a series of alternate numbers. Thus - and that also comes from my observation of Bach -, I introduce for the first time musical material thought out from a melodic organization, not modal, but closed, like scales, here expansive, exponential, nonsymmetrical and exceeding the octave."
On one side, the optimism and the freshness of an ode to marital happiness and its many images, the retreat of the shadows and the rebirth of spring to wish the young couple " a thousand days bright with prosperity"; on the other, a desperate vision of love and marriage, essential to Kafka in order to free himself from his own father and to become a father in turn, but also to destroy any creative activity which, according to Letters' to Felice (1912-1917), seemed to him incompatible with his literary activities. Why Kafka? Simply because he offers to the musician a marvelous negative of the cantata of Bach, allows an unexpected counterpoint with Bach quite astonishing, "nonreligious, carnivorous, confronted with a Kafka almost more mystical than Bach himself, deploying his art on a text of an almost worrying commonness and naivety. It is like Boulez on the words of "bésame mucho"... That appears to me very exciting. Would this be ironic? Perhaps a Bach even more ironic than Kafka, even more Jewish than Kafka or than myself... Why not... "
Although he recognizes the interest of Kurtag's experiments in Fragments, and he appreciates certain cinematographic borrowings such as that by Welles, in the Process, Oscar Strasnoy regards the writer as not easily adaptable: "It is pure literature, good, and that is enough. It is the first and last time that I will set it to music." What remains then, in the meeting of the centuries, a look on man and his desires, on society and its rules: "Each human element reflects the whole human. Marriage is a fundamental social figure, whose symbolism is common to many cultures. This is in no way criticism (neither of Bach, of Kafka, nor of the church or Judaism). Not criticism. Almost the opposite. I take the symbolic figure of marriage (and thus also of stable love) as a distinct element to observe the evolution of the world through the ages and their mores. If one can unearth a vase and, by studying it, rebuild a civilization, one can all the more describe the evolution of the world by unearthing the ritual of marriage. I then take two equidistant literary times of ours: the first half of 18th century and the pre-war period of the 20th. There is thus a pre-revolutionist Christian vision and a pre-holocaust Jewish vision in addition to mine, Jewish agnostic post-historic, post-industrial, post- mortem-of art, post-it, whatever one wants. With this cocktail, the music of B, the anonymous or almost anonymous text serving as an excuse, the texts of K and my music, one gets an idea, arbitrary, reduced, perhaps a little confused, of a certain becoming of history through the idea of the marriage. Thus the shadow of the title plays perhaps the role of time, under which everything passes, changes, grows rancid, perishes, and reappears.
I find the confrontation of visions of the 18th, 20th and 21e centuries interesting, and even draw a rather paradoxical conclusion. I remember one day when, moving a grand piano to my house, the movers carried it on their shoulders up the six floors. I was amused to observe that in the 21st century one can leave for Jupiter in a space ship, but one always carries a piano up on one's shoulders. With marriage, it is much the same. We have the right to run around the world with all our body and soul between the ages of 15-30, and all that just to finish ourselves off at the town hall or church, in a suit and tie and white dress, just like in the 18th century. Let us read Casanova, and see how we are a thousand times more limited, more bitter, conservative, moralist, more politically correct today than at that time."
Remarks collected by François-Gildas Tual
Although he avoids imitating the style of the German Master, Oscar Strasnoy takes for models certain more or less abstract principles, polyphonic textures or harmonic screens, figures which are transformed deep down, and backgrounds which are transformed into figures. "I accept the possibility of hierarchical elements, like a melody against an accompaniment, ornamentation, I keep the hierarchical idea of the form, with narrating recitatives and poetic airs. I add pure theatrical moments, but always inside a series of alternate numbers. Thus - and that also comes from my observation of Bach -, I introduce for the first time musical material thought out from a melodic organization, not modal, but closed, like scales, here expansive, exponential, nonsymmetrical and exceeding the octave."
On one side, the optimism and the freshness of an ode to marital happiness and its many images, the retreat of the shadows and the rebirth of spring to wish the young couple " a thousand days bright with prosperity"; on the other, a desperate vision of love and marriage, essential to Kafka in order to free himself from his own father and to become a father in turn, but also to destroy any creative activity which, according to Letters' to Felice (1912-1917), seemed to him incompatible with his literary activities. Why Kafka? Simply because he offers to the musician a marvelous negative of the cantata of Bach, allows an unexpected counterpoint with Bach quite astonishing, "nonreligious, carnivorous, confronted with a Kafka almost more mystical than Bach himself, deploying his art on a text of an almost worrying commonness and naivety. It is like Boulez on the words of "bésame mucho"... That appears to me very exciting. Would this be ironic? Perhaps a Bach even more ironic than Kafka, even more Jewish than Kafka or than myself... Why not... "
Although he recognizes the interest of Kurtag's experiments in Fragments, and he appreciates certain cinematographic borrowings such as that by Welles, in the Process, Oscar Strasnoy regards the writer as not easily adaptable: "It is pure literature, good, and that is enough. It is the first and last time that I will set it to music." What remains then, in the meeting of the centuries, a look on man and his desires, on society and its rules: "Each human element reflects the whole human. Marriage is a fundamental social figure, whose symbolism is common to many cultures. This is in no way criticism (neither of Bach, of Kafka, nor of the church or Judaism). Not criticism. Almost the opposite. I take the symbolic figure of marriage (and thus also of stable love) as a distinct element to observe the evolution of the world through the ages and their mores. If one can unearth a vase and, by studying it, rebuild a civilization, one can all the more describe the evolution of the world by unearthing the ritual of marriage. I then take two equidistant literary times of ours: the first half of 18th century and the pre-war period of the 20th. There is thus a pre-revolutionist Christian vision and a pre-holocaust Jewish vision in addition to mine, Jewish agnostic post-historic, post-industrial, post- mortem-of art, post-it, whatever one wants. With this cocktail, the music of B, the anonymous or almost anonymous text serving as an excuse, the texts of K and my music, one gets an idea, arbitrary, reduced, perhaps a little confused, of a certain becoming of history through the idea of the marriage. Thus the shadow of the title plays perhaps the role of time, under which everything passes, changes, grows rancid, perishes, and reappears.
I find the confrontation of visions of the 18th, 20th and 21e centuries interesting, and even draw a rather paradoxical conclusion. I remember one day when, moving a grand piano to my house, the movers carried it on their shoulders up the six floors. I was amused to observe that in the 21st century one can leave for Jupiter in a space ship, but one always carries a piano up on one's shoulders. With marriage, it is much the same. We have the right to run around the world with all our body and soul between the ages of 15-30, and all that just to finish ourselves off at the town hall or church, in a suit and tie and white dress, just like in the 18th century. Let us read Casanova, and see how we are a thousand times more limited, more bitter, conservative, moralist, more politically correct today than at that time."
Remarks collected by François-Gildas Tual