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Einstein on the Beach quickly established itself as an essential work of contemporary music. It quickly entered the repertoire, has been staged several times over the decades in the version directed by Bob Wilson, and recorded three times (1979 and 1993 discs, DVD captured in 2014 at the Théâtre du Châtelet).
Jean-Luc Plouvier, pianist and artistic director of Ictus, tells us ...
What prompted Ictus to tackle such a monument in 2018, more than forty years after its creation?
The record came out in 1979, that's right, and I was 16 - does that answer the question?
How did you go about choosing the collaborations for your version, which don't seem obvious at first glance: Suzanne Vega as the main interpreter of the texts (a singer identified as pop/folk), Collegium Vocale Gent (a choir originally specializing in early music) and visual artist Germaine Kruip (identified more as a visual artist than a director)?
It was an after-show evening at the Kaaitheater in Brussels. The venue's director, Guy Gypens - who had been the director of Rosas and had always supported us -, the Collegium's manager, Bert Schreurs, and I took the oath of the brave: OK, we'll do it, whatever the cost! We were 16 at the time, of course... The Collegium? You might be surprised to discover what a Collegium chorister is today. Not one of the 14 singers who volunteered for the adventure is a stranger to pop music. Many have their own little home studio and fiddle with their computer. Such is the world.
As for Suzanne Vega - the idea came from Bert - she meets the criteria of true literary temperament and impeccable diction. What's more, she possesses an authentic, soft New York accent, with a familiar, unemphasized strangeness - an instrument we didn't want to do without. The kind of modernism that unfolds here finds its source in Gertrude Stein; it's a matter of moving elegantly through a libretto that's highly edited, very choppy, all repetition and parataxis, and polyphonic in texture: we entrusted Suzanne with all the texts, all the voices. In this video, you'll see her paying tribute to writer Carson McCullers, wearing little glasses, so very much a pop-star, during a poetry marathon. We stumbled across it and our decision was made!
The "visual installation" stems from a more elusive quest, from a utopia still at work. It's undoubtedly a question of acknowledging a slight falsity in the presentation of contemporary music, when it claims to fit a little too neatly into the classical concert setting - and I'm not picking on anyone here, I'm including Ictus in the general symptom. Occasionally, they exude a kind of insincerity, an indefinable impression of artistic cowardice or of a plane without a pilot. On the other hand, to simply flank the concert with a video projection - well, that's cheating.
We had some experience of the very long concert, too long, which presents itself as an unstoppable flow giving rise to different listenings, different adjustments of attention or distraction on the part of the listener. It's not uninteresting to include the wandering of listening in the listening device itself. I'm not sure we're going to persevere with this "I propose, you dispose" approach, but for a time it did produce a certain euphoria, on both sides of the stage.
The first request we made to Germaine Kruip was precisely to blur this edge a little, to suggest an erasure of the frontal space and make it circular.
Einstein, it spins, it doesn't stop spinning
The other, more decisive request was that she help us, through the scenography (which was quite simple after all, but we had to find a way) to make the musical work itself the central theatrical theme. This show is an apology for the pure concert! The aim was to highlight the veins, the different diagonal lines of force captured in this repetitive, polyrhythmic machinery, where everyone listens to each other on the verge of vertigo. No conductor in the middle, for example, but a rhythmicist in the garden who gives the pulse, and another in the courtyard who helps us count the innumerable interlocking repetitions and repeats. Then there are musicians in the center who reposition the lighting; others who stand up to give a signal to the sound engineer or trigger a light switch, turn the page for a soloist, things like that. There was a very materialistic project, inspired by contemporary dance - and in particular by our friends at Rosas - to dispense with backstage, to value all gestures, the graceful and the utilitarian, and to treat them with equal dignity.
Your version is very singular from a musical point of view, and there are even certain sequences where it's hard to recognize the score, notably because of the sounds used by the two synthesizers. I've heard passages that are almost techno, and moments where the pop aspect is clearly asserted. You told me that nothing had been changed in the score. So what makes you sound so different from the original versions?
Every score needs its own treatment... Not only what the relationships between the notes say, not only the notations and didascalies, but also the spirit that blows through its writing, its presentation and its gaps. If it comes as a surprise, I must reveal this: there is no such thing as a unified score ofEinstein on the Beach, finished and meticulous in every detail. Nowhere, for example, can you find a summary of the nomenclature (of personnel), nor the ideal number of chorus members, you don't know whether the singers in the solo parts are to be chosen from among the chorus or hired separately, you don't understand why three flutes are needed for only a few minutes and not all the way through, whether an alto or tenor sax is required, and so on.
You understand that you need two electric organs ("organ1", "organ2", says the score), but there's no indication of registration. Nor is there any indication of tempo or dynamics.
In short, the score in some ways resembles a beautifully hand-written 17th-century score - the Olivetti-typed title, however, leaves a clue as to its era. The texts are delivered separately in a small pamphlet, but how to connect text and music is only vaguely hinted at. We therefore had to carry out a veritable reconstruction based on the record sleeves (two versions), venue programs available online and, of course, listening to the recordings themselves. The story of the opera's creative process is not unimportant either. The story is told in fragments, and the score I described bears the imprint of this process itself: collective work in turmoil, trials and failures, the emergence of meaning and form through editing and re-editing, signs of reworking scribbled here and there at the last minute to bring durations into line with stage requirements, and so on. All this may be a little discouraging in the first phase of the work, but turns into a very exciting challenge later on. You understand that the collective work must go on, in short, that it remains open-ended, and you promise yourself that you won't be satisfied with a kind of musicological archaeology. The work distracts you from this approach; it is still vibrant with potential to be explored.
The "pop" episode you mentioned, Building, is the most open of the entire score. Formally, it has the status of anintermezzo. A complex combination of rhythmic arpeggios for the two organs, in diminution or augmentation (as usual, I dare say), seems to be colored by wind and voice harmonies, to which the composer laconically gives the pentatonic mode to use (and you're on your own). On the two discs available, this texture also supports a saxophone solo: rather "free" in the 79 version, and an appalling "FM jazz" solo in the 93 version.
We then came up with the idea of pre-recording the organ parts in MIDI in the spirit of dance music (sequenced, mechanical, very fast, filtering the high frequencies, with a good big resonator in the bass), and entrusting the solo to our flutist Michael Schmid. At the time, he was embarking on a study of Sciarrino's complete works for flute. I made him a model by mixing the synth sequences with Brian Ferneyhough's Unity Capsule drowned in echo, and he immediately understood the idea of the improvisation to be made, which was in the box. I don't want to pile on the anecdotes, but I'm trying to convey a little of the spirit that reigned during the preparatory work. And I'll say it again: that spirit is nothing more than the wind that picks up when you open the score. We were not driven by any idea of profanation, but artistic fidelity also implies, as all performers know, being able to go through transgressive moments. A furious audience member took me to task about Building after a concert. He felt cheated; he didn't believe me; he couldn't accept that there could be a fracture between the writing and the sound image.
It takes great stamina and extreme concentration to play this work, from Philip Glass's "cow period", as you announce on the Ictus website. You yourself spend a lot of time at the keyboard on stage. How should you approach this performance as a performer? How do you come out of it?
I must admit, I'm a sucker for this cow period. The little permutations over five notes, the unpredictable, high-speed additive and subtractive rhythms, all of this is unashamedly given in its pure mechanicity, and yet it shakes, it never stops shaking, memory and perception are constantly thrown into disarray. We hear additional voices, the famous psycho-acoustic sub-products of repetition theorized by Steve Reich.
This trembling of the simple object is the true pulp of minimalism.
It calls for a very particular state of play on the part of the performer, at once inflexible and gentle, welcoming accidents (there are always some) and resolving them like a seamstress resolves a snag in the thread of the hand. No, it's not so exhausting to play. I'm sad when it stops after three and a half hours, I don't feel like going to the bar, I'd like an encore. Interpretive tension, the kind that animates the solar plexus, is here directed neither towards force nor towards the grand phrase nor towards prowess, but towards a kind of madness of moderation. Add nothing, follow this necklace of tens of thousands of pearls, thread its way through the polyrhythms like a lizard, and go on like this(andante even when it goes very fast) to the end of the tunnel.
Giorgio Agamben has some remarkable words to say about the power of restraint. He quotes Dante: " Whoever has the use of art has a trembling hand ". And he adds: " Who lacks taste never manages to refrain from doing something, lack of taste is always a ne-pas-pouvoir-ne-pas-faire ". The later Philip Glass, I lose him. In my opinion, it stops shaking.
Interview by Guillaume Kosmicki
