Mahler on a programme by Asko|Schönberg - the face of avant-garde atonality, is that possible? For regular guest conductor Etienne Siebens, this is no question: in his programmes, he likes to explore the boundaries between beloved classics and composers still alive. On Thursday 4 February he contrasts the ensemble version of Mahler's romantic-singing Fourth Symphony - the one with the sleigh bells and the sprightly song 'Himmlische Freuden' - with the deconstructivist stammering in Aria and Gaspra by Swiss-Austrian composer Beat Furrer. Some seem to revel in magnified emotions, while others take inspiration from something as prosaic as the composition of an asteroid.
Mahler (1860-1911) died just before the outbreak of World War I and stood with both feet in the nineteenth century. Yet he wholeheartedly supported the celestialist Arnold Schoenberg, who diligently sawed at the legs of the kind of music of which Mahler was the culmination. Unlike his older colleague, Schoenberg refused to use his compositions as vehicles for 'the very individual expression of the very individual emotion'. He strove for a more objective form of composition and made short work of the prevailing hierarchical tonal system. He overthrew the fundamental by giving equal rights to all twelve semitones of the octave. - Much the same way as in the 20th century, the omnipotence of the traditional royal houses was broken in favour of the common man/woman.
En passant, the Austrian did away with the recognisable rhythm, reduced the symphony orchestra bursting at the seams to pocket-size and replaced the emotional vibrato with businesslike Sprechgesang. Beat Furrer (Schaffhausen, 1954) goes one step further in the twenty-first century: notions of melody, harmony and rhythm no longer seem to be an issue at all. Yet he achieves intense emotional expressiveness with his fragmented sound universe. For example, in his 'drama of listening' Fama, which received high praise at the Holland Festival in 2007 and was performed again by Asko|Schönberg in 2015. As a follow-up, the ensemble now presents its Aria for soprano and ensemble and the all-instrumental Gaspra. Five questions for Beat Furrer.
The singer in 'Aria' stammering, stammering, producing stifled sounds and just not coming up with a coherent melody. How did you shape her part?
The singing voice moves from speaking to singing in the course of the piece. In doing so, I have assumed four basic levels of vocal sonority. First, there is speaking, both stylised and unstylised. Second is shouting. A third layer consists of whispering, in a continuous rhythmic transformation of consonants. The fourth layer consists of echoes, formed by instrumental reverberations. These four layers eventually culminate in an echoey sung dialogue between soprano and clarinet.
The sound of the spoken text is always integrated into the instrumental ensemble, giving resonance to the speaking voice. Not always the words can be understood, but from the fragments that can be understood, the meaning slowly emerges in the course of the piece. For instance, in Aria the emergence of melody, of vocal eloquence, as it blossoms from ensemble sound. It is by no means a parody of a bel canto aria, as some believe.
The instruments, too, seem especially jolting and bumping their way through. What is the reason for this?
Before I compose, I have a very precise idea of sound in my head. In this piece, I was concerned with the idea of filtering: a basic structure consisting of four, five lines in different tempi is repeated 11 times. These are models that form into complex structures. Because the repetitions are filtered differently each time, they are not recognisable as such. I use both rhythmic filters - which you turn on or off, as it were - and harmonic filters, which create harmonic distortions. This way, the musical material is always illuminated from a different angle, a bit like an old-fashioned disco ball with mirrors.
Your work often has a theatrical component, does the same apply to 'Aria'?
Certainly, because Aria laid the seeds for my opera Begehren. Günter Eich's short poem is about an abandoned woman calling after her fleeing lover. At the end of the piece, another acoustic space opens up and the clarinet and soprano diverge. They call out to each other over an abyss, while at that very moment the ensemble seems to be speaking, in highly consonant, percussive sounds. Finally, the clarinetist and singer leave the stage and the ensemble plays the final bars without them.
Your piece 'Gaspra' for instrumental ensemble is based on an exploding asteroid. What should we imagine it to be?
At Gaspra I have for the first time systematically divided sound into every conceivable characteristic. After all, sound consists of many components: think, for instance, of the way of striking, the different types of reverberation, regular sound versus noise sound and so on. I used a computer to translate all those elements into a grid of rhythmic impulses, which I chopped up and reassembled. By splitting the ensemble into smaller groups, each following its own strategies, a fabric of constantly shifting echo structures emerges.
Your music stands alongside Mahler's Fourth Symphony, in an arrangement for 12 instruments by Schoenberg pupil Erwin Stein. What do you think of it?
I love Mahler's music immensely. I find a lot in it that still concerns me too, such as the great wealth of narrative forms. In the last movement of his Fourth Symphony, the idea arises that what can no longer be said can perhaps be sung - therein, for me, lies the utopia of opera. And with Mahler, too, the space between text and music gives way at the end. This reveals another dream image: the words are almost too good to be true: they only become credible through the music.'
Asko|Schönberg, 4 February 2016, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Amsterdam:
'Heavenly', music by Mahler and Furrer.
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