Description

“Black on white” is black on white

One of the questions on the famous but long-since discontinued questionnaire in the magazine der Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was “Which military achievement do you admire most?”. In the FAZ magazine of January 28, 1994, the answer was “The invention of the radio play”, formulated by the composer Heiner Goebbels. Perhaps not an immediately catchy answer, after all, the beginnings of the radio play around 1924 have little in common with the martial hustle and bustle of soldiering, and Goebbels was probably not thinking of a listening congregation fascinated by the cries and noises of the machinery of war, Goebbels was probably not thinking of an eavesdropping congregation listening with fascination to the sounds and noises of war machinery,although – and this should not be forgotten – the Futurist Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) based his 1913 typology of sounds, his manifesto L’arte dei rumori , on the acoustic basis of machine gun salvos and creaking tank tracks. For the first time, an author sought to systematize the technical sounds of civilization, including those of horror, and to fix them as an audible situation. However, the English stocking manufacturer, dilettante musician and music writer William Gardiner (1770-1853) from Leicester did something similar with regard to natural sounds in the 19th century. In 1832, the London publishing house Longman,Rees,Orme,Brown,Green,and Longman and the publishing house Thomas Combe and Son,and Albert Cockshaw from Leicester published a curiosity under the original English title: The Music of Nature; or an attempt to prove that what is passionate and pleasing in the art of singing, speaking and playing on musical instruments is derived from the sounds of the living world. “The author” – writes Gardiner in the preface to The Music of Nature – “has long been in the habit of listening to sounds of every kind, and with particular attention.” The author of these lines has this in common with the Italian Futurist Russolo, with John Cage, who referred to the Futurists by name at the beginning of his career, and with many other well-known and rather nameless people.music has always demanded an attentive audience that devotes itself to its structures and sounds, deciphering and analyzing them.The radio play, however, together with its close relatives, wants to direct the listener’s attention to something that tends to go unnoticed: the acoustics of the environment. Far removed from scores, the concert hall and traditional musical practice, the forms of the radio play – even if it sticks closely to the traditional dramaturgy of the theater – search intensively for noises and sounds of everyday life (including natural sounds) and the most diverse listening states, ear situations. This is a position that the artistic avant-garde introduced into the cultural development of the West a good hundred years ago – in other words, art as military history – and which therefore, to paraphrase a bon mot by Mauricio Kagel, has its first genetic traces in program music as a direct precursor of radio drama.

Black on white as Heiner Goebbels calls his music theater for ensemble, light and stage, which premiered in Frankfurt am Main in 1996, is also an audio piece, i.e. “an acoustic genre of indeterminate content”, to once again invoke the lexical and definitional verbal art of Mauricio Kagel. A radio play that Goebbels adapted with the Ensemble Modern for the radio play department of Südwestrundfunk Baden-Baden after its stage premiere in 1996. There is therefore a live version of the piece and a fixed media version in which certain acoustic aspects of the space are made clearer, more distinct or even disappear, the realization of which is only barely possible or not possible at all in real time. Not to mention the light, the real space, the costumes and the liveliness of the action. As Hans Burkhard Schlichting, the editor responsible for the radio production, once aptly noted, the cross-musical composition is “a piece without protagonists, in which the ensemble itself is the protagonist. The musicians become moving audio players who, in scenic actions, often exchange their familiar instruments for other instruments or significant sound sources. The artistic space of music theater becomes the playing space of everyday life.” In addition, Schwarz auf Weiß is about special soundscapes, such as that of writing, when a pen (a pencil, a ballpoint pen, a fountain pen) hits the paper, creating writing sounds – authentic and alienated. This is the case three times in this piece: in movements No. 8, No. 21 and No. 22, called “Writings.” In any case, the 24 movement names of Schwarz auf Weiß can certainly provide a dramaturgical orientation aid when listening with the eyes, which is why they should be mentioned: 1. “Qui parle?” – 2.The Concert (Zither) – 3.Text Machine (Games) – 4.Readings I (Ye who read) – 5. “Du der Lesende” – 6. In the Basement – 7.Readings II (Over some flasks) – 8. Writings I (Games) – 9. Harrypatari – 10. Unisono – 11.Readings III (A dead weight – un poids mortel) – 12.Chaconne/Kantorloops – 13.Marseille, September 22, 91 (Pegelton) – 14.Readings IV (Cependant nous poussions nos rires) – 15.Letter Brass – 16.Brass in 5/4 – 17.The Bazen Doorway – 18. “Wir saßen nachts” – 19.The Corpse – 20.Toccata for Teapot & Piccolo – 21. Writings II (Tutti) – 22. Writings III (Strings und Sampler) – 23. Koto Machine – 24. “Doch allmählich hörten unsere Lieder auf”

Back to writing, to the context and the attitude of the writer, an actor who – jumping back to Kleist’s year 1805 – ponders the gradual production of thoughts when speaking (or writing), practises the same.In Heiner Goebbels’ oeuvre, and certainly not only in his, the situation, the image, the action of the writer plays a major role. However, as many a clever critic has assumed, Goebbels does not thematize himself, not the writing artist as a lonely, isolated, brooding person, but rather presents a process with the writing (table) situation, namely that of the writer sitting down, a still life more or less showing itself on the outside, but in reality an imposing, sometimes rumbling radio play on the inside, an acoustic-acrobatic head piece, an inner ear composition, thus an actual physical activity with a wide range of “desk resonances”. This too is black on white : a piece that folds inner processes outwards, showing the outside of the inside, making them resound. At the same time, Schwarz auf Weiß is, according to Heiner Goebbels, “a kind of farewell to Heiner Müller. But it is not a farewell in the form of a sad requiem. It certainly gives the play lightness and humor. And there is also a balance between the charm of a live event and reflection. Something like this is only possible with outstanding musicians like those of the Ensemble Modern, who not only practice their actual profession, but also act, speak, sing, etc.”

The (East) Berlin writer Heiner Müller (1929-1995) and the members of the Ensemble Modern – in the aesthetic thinking and work of Heiner Goebbels they form two important strands; Goebbels repeatedly set Müller’s literature to music, played around it, made it his own and also allowed Heiner Müller’s distinctive voice to become sound in his acoustic forms of performance; Goebbels repeatedly launched his musical concepts with the Ensemble Modern, wrote the party to suit the committed musicians, sometimes developing it together with them.

In Black on White , Heiner Müller’s voice can be heard reading the text by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Shadows , a parable about death, about reading, about writing. In addition to this, Goebbels uses two other texts: the beginning of the novel L’attende l’oubli ( Waiting, Forgetting ) by the French literary theorist and writer Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and verses by the English playwright John Webster (c. 1580-1625), which the Nobel Prize winner Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) quotes in his poem The Waste Land and which Heiner Müller translated into German.

So Schwarz auf Weiß is about writing; it is a work with audible letters and the sounds around them, a composition with voices, acoustic literature & art, music theater, sound scene, radio play, is a sound-shadow play on black on white.

“I AM FANTASY-FREE”
Stefan Fricke in a telephone conversation with Heiner Goebbels

Telephoning, as you noted in the questionnaire of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1994 is your favorite pastime. Is that still the case?
That has changed (laughs). I actually like talking on the phone because I like it when sound and image don’t come together, when you can look through the window, for example, and that can also stimulate a conversation, but at the moment I have a lot to do and voluntary phone calls have to suffer as a result.

Is the separation of image and sound also important for your composing?
When I work for music theater, it’s actually a privilege to be able to design both at the same time and not have to hand over one side to someone else; here I also keep the scene in mind when composing and the spatial category plays a major role. For example, I like to position instruments that play together at a great distance from each other so that the audience – as in my “Eislermaterial” – can observe the musicians’ communication and participate in it directly. The communication between the musicians is therefore sometimes deliberately made more difficult so that it becomes public; musicians always like to sit close together and have the most intensive and direct contact possible, which is also of great benefit for the music and for a pure concert. But for the audience of a scenic work, this closeness on stage excludes their closeness to the action, which is why I tend to focus on distance.

But the telephone provides important impulses for writing radio plays or radiophonic pieces?
Yes, of course, that has to do with the old Bob Wilson dictum: “In silent film, the acoustic space is infinite. In a radio play, the visual space is infinite.” I always find the lack of congruence between sonic richness and visual richness very stimulating. I hope that I can develop this further in the music theater pieces and pass it on to the audience.

You said in the aforementioned F.A.Z. -questionnaire, your motto is “Have at least four reasons for everything in my work”. Is that still the case?
That hasn’t changed (laughs).

Can you explain this in more detailusing your music theater Schwarz auf Weiss , which you wrote for the Ensemble Modern?
There were actually several reasons for Schwarz auf Weiss . Firstly, I wanted to create a piece in which the ensemble is the collective protagonist; in addition, with Heiner Müller’s death, I decided to have his voice appear again and again in this work. She reads a story by Edgar Allen Poe: The Shadow , which can be read as the narrative level of the evening. At the same time, however, it is also a piece about absence: it is no coincidence that musicians usually turn their backs on us and Poe conjures up the voices of the deceased in his fable.

What you have just outlined could be assigned to the broad and equally open field of “instrumental theater”
Perhaps it is simply music theater in the literal sense. Theater made of music. The musicians don’t play any other roles or theatrical figures, they are and remain musicians here

and in our understanding of new music, that would certainly be something intrinsically musical. Now you say of yourself that your work is always based on an extra-musical occasion.
That is true. But rather for my opera Landscape with Distant Relatives , in which the musicians of the Ensemble Modern, in a kind of costume orgy, create images that arise from very distant, historical or cultural contexts. The main motifs here come from the visual arts, and with opera it is obvious that there is an extra-musical occasion. This is also the case with most of my colleagues, but what you are alluding to is of course the question: where does the extra-musical occasion for purely orchestral music (such as Industry and Idleness ) or for a piece of chamber music (such as Herakles 2 ) come from and why do you need it there? I believe that music, like all the arts, can only benefit from being open to impulses from neighboring arts. For example, if the rhythm of a musical structure is not chosen from a musical impulse, but from a textual form. Or when you take inspiration for the architecture of a musical movement from the profession of film, or (as in Surrogate Cities ) when you make the occasion, in this case the composition commission for the 1200th anniversary of Frankfurt, the theme itself. Eisler once said “Those who only understand music don’t understand anything about it”. Perhaps in my case it is also an attempt to resist a certain kind of technical idiocy and infatuation with sound, or to resist dwelling exclusively on my own material.

But you don’t see yourself in danger of falling into the realm of program music, a term that is almost a verbal jargon these days?
First of all, I wouldn’t see program music as just a dirty word; it depends on the relationship between subject matter and musical realization; if there is a direct, illustrative relationship between the two, one can justifiably speak of program music. If there is sufficient tension between theme and realization, if one avoids or omits all obvious associations for the time being and takes a lot of time to do just that, then the danger is still obvious, but it is precisely a creative challenge; perhaps that is precisely the sting that is missing from an inner-musical preoccupation.

You just mentioned Hanns Eisler, about whom you also wrote your sociological thesis in 1975. What significance do Eisler and his oeuvre have for your self-image as an artist and your development as a composer?
You can’t really assess that yourself. I don’t believe that there are direct role models for my work, as master students sometimes have in their teachers. And as far as Eisler’s work is concerned, it was initially just a few songs that captivated me in the 1970s because I sensed something in their musical material that seemed to me to express his agile relationship between music and politics; and that in a great simplicity.What interested me even more about Eisler were his conversations with Hans Bunge, which I read at the time.His compositional attitude seemed to me to be so imbued with his political aspirations that it was no longer possible to speak of two ultimately irreconcilable categories, as was the case with many other political artists.In Eisler’s case, the two really came together in a way that could almost be called physical.Heiner Müller once said, “With politics and art, it’s like putting a horse in front of a car. Either the horse is dead or the car is no longer running.” If you treat art and politics as separate categories, you will always notice this in the work, and the intention then weighs heavily on the musical work. But this is something you rarely find in Eisler’s work. With Eisler, this attitude underlying the composition itself becomes perceptible in the occasion for which he writes something; it becomes perceptible in his responsibility for everything, also in the fact that he also allows his own melancholy in the work, in other words: because he excludes nothing. This is his great quality, that he was able to endure all of this and not suppress it and – despite all his partiality – not just take one side without contradiction. It is a highly dialectical process to be able to translate this into his music.

Is this an attitude that is also decisive for your work?
It’s an incentive not to ignore anything and not to take sides too quickly because it’s easier to walk on one side.You can also discuss this musically.If you are interested in pop or rock music, for example, and grew up with it, come from this musical context like me and you are writing something for ensemble for the first time in a new music context, then of course you run the risk very quickly of pandering to the jargon that is supposedly in vogue there. And that is a problem that not only Frank Zappa fell victim to when he wrote for Pierre Boulez for the first time. Ultimately, when composing, you have to decide bar by bar where you betray your favorite aesthetic principles and where not.

May I now invite you to venture a definition of what music is for you?
No, you can’t do that (laughs). It’s difficult for me because I can’t separate anything when I listen. I also put the cries of the crows that I see flying past the window of my apartment into a harmonious relationship with the sound of the bus engine humming past on the street below. Everything that I perceive acoustically can be music for me, and my aim is not to make an exclusive distinction between the sound materials, to compose a balance between text as musical sound, noise and what is commonly referred to as music.

Does this also include the visual?
No, first of all I separate the two spheres. This does not exclude the possibility that there are great congruencies, which must always be addressed in music theater work if you want to link image with sound at all, and of course the relationship must, as Adorno would say, “snap into place”. Nevertheless, the areas of perception are very independent, and the ear often has a harder time than the others. This is one argument why I consider many productions of contemporary operas to be far too opulent and too expressive, because they so fixate the eye and leave too little room for the ear.

When the writer Rainald Goetz was still quite unknown, you wrote your composition Befreiung based on one of his texts. Are there any other younger authors you are particularly interested in at the moment?
Not at the moment; the writer I’m most interested in at the moment stages his works himself in such a way that they already seem musical. I’m referring to René Pollesch, who I also greatly appreciate as a theater maker and who rhythmizes his texts through a certain formalization of conversational choreography and thus already transforms them into music.

Your music is very successful, both in the narrower new music scene and beyond. How do you explain this?
I try not to exclude anyone and I don’t have a pedagogical relationship with my audience. I’m not someone who complains about his audience and says “people have no idea” and wants to intimidate or impress the audience with a high degree of complexity.I think the audience that comes to my work is made up of people with very different interests, for example from literature or the visual arts or from very different music scenes, even from one that usually has problems with new music, or from a theater scene that prefers to go to the cinema, etc.

Would you like to expand on your latent criticism of the new music scene?
There is a certain gravity of musical jargon, especially in Central Europe, which is measured above all by technical complexity and not by the underlying musical attitude. You notice this not only in concerts, but also when you sit on the juries for composition prizes.

Do you have any ideas on how the gap between the audience and new music could be narrowed?
No, I don’t. I am, and that has always made my life easier, fantasy-free. I don’t have visions and I don’t bother anyone with them. I tend to react, even in my work. For example, to an occasion, to a commission, to a sound, to a material, to a text. A lot has already been done within the narrow boundaries of the various music scenes, not always with aesthetic success, because the mixing of everything and everyone that you often hear today has to go hand in hand with a heightened awareness of criteria. However, I miss the fact that music theory and criticism, for example, have a developed sense of the extent to which music that breaks genre boundaries is well constructed according to its own laws. Although the diversity of the materials is usually described, there is no examination of why it works – despite this. But these are precisely the questions that interest me as a composer: why, for example, does a noise function as a musical element in a musical context? What does it have to do with possibly very conventional musical categories or with content-related prerequisites? The fact of divergent materials alone is no reason for joy.

Are there any of the younger composers that you recommend discovering?
Above all, there is still one boundary that needs to be torn down, and that lies in classical academic music education. It would certainly be beneficial for everyone to open up composition classes to talents with a different musical culture. Many of the best performers and colleagues I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last twenty years may not even be able to read music (I’m not allowed to name names now), but their view of music seems much more creative than much of what comes out of the classical workshops.

You’ve lived in Frankfurt since 1972
Yes, it’s a wonderful place – despite the hustle and bustle of the city, you’re not disturbed while working because you’re not celebrated as an artist. The city has always inspired and challenged me in its ignorance of culture. I believe that whatever is created here must somehow be able to measure up to the actual balance of power, which is only an advantage for your own work

Shadow – A Parable (Edgar Allan Poe)

Yea! Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow (Psalm of David) Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known,and many centuries shall pass away,ere these memorials be seen of men. And,when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year has been a year of terror,and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad.To those,nevertheless,cunning the stars,it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when,at the entrance of Aries,the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls,imaginations,and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship,was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets – but the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account – things material and spiritual – heaviness in the atmosphere – a sense of suffocation – anxiety – and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant.

A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs – upon the household furniture – upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby – all things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illuminated our revel.Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions.Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way – which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon – which are madness; and drank deeply – although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead, and at full lenght he lay, enshrouded; – the genius and the demon of the scene.Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth,save that his countenance,distorted with the plague,and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence,seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die.But also I,Oinos,felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and, gazing down steadily into depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios.But gradually my songs they ceased,and their echoes,rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber,became weak,and undistinguishable, and so faded away.And lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow – a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven,might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass.But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God – neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright,over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded.But we,the seven there assembled,having seen the shadow as it come from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony.And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words,demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation.And the shadow answered,I am SHADOW,and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais,and hard by those dim plains of Helusian which border upon the foul Charonian canal.And then did we,the seven,start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling,and shuddering,and aghast,for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not tones of any being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.

Shadows – A Parable (Edgar Allan Poe)

Verily, though I walk through the valley of the shadow (Psalm of David)

You, the reader, are still among the living; but I, the writer, have long since made my way into the realm of the shadows. For this is certain, strange things will happen and secret things will be revealed, and many centuries will pass before these records come before the eyes of men. And among those who see them there will be some unbelievers and some doubters and yet a few who will be given much to ponder by the characters I am digging here with a steel stylus.

The year had been a year of horror and of sensations even stronger than the horrors for which there is no name on earth. For many signs and wonders had occurred, and far and near, over sea and land, the black wings of the plague had spread.

But for those who knew how to read the stars, it was obvious that the heavens presented an evil sight, and I, the Greek Oinos, realized like others that the turn of the seven hundred and ninety-fourth year had now come, when the planet Jupiter is intersected by the red ring of the terrible Saturn at the entry of Aries. If I am not mistaken, the strange spirit of the stars expressed itself not only in the physical course of the earth, but also in the soul, the world of imagination and thought of mankind.

We sat at night, our seven, with a few bottles of red wine in a noble hall of the gloomy city of Ptolemais. And the room had no other entrance than through a high, ornate gate; and the artist Corinnos had built the gate, it was an artistic piece that was closed from the inside. Thus black curtains kept out of the gloomy chamber the sight of the moon, the pale stars and deserted streets – but the premonition and the memory of the misfortune could not be shut out in this way. There were also things around us of which I cannot give a clear account – material and spiritual things – a denseness of the air – a feeling of suffocation – an anxiety – and above all the terrible state which nervous people pass through when the senses are keen and alert, but the power of thought lies banished. A dead weight pressed down on us. It weighed on our limbs – on the objects in the room – on the cups from which we drank, and all things became heavy and oppressed by it – all things except the flames of the seven lamps of ore that illuminated our feast. Stretching up into tall, slender strips of light, they burned pale and motionless, and in the mirror that their glow cast on the round ebony table at which we sat, each of us saw the pallor of his own face and the uneasy flicker in the lowered gazes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our own way – which was hysterical, and sang the songs of Anacreon – which was madness, and drank deep draughts – although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was another guest in our chamber in the shape of young Zoilus. There he lay, dead and in his entire length, coffined – the ghost and demon of the scene. Alas! He took no part in our pleasure, except that his face, distorted by the pestilence, and his eyes, in which death had only half extinguished the embers of the plague, seemed to take a certain interest in our merriment, as the dead may have in the merriment of those who are yet to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed rested on me, I forced myself to ignore the bitterness of their expression and, peering steadfastly into the depths of the ebony mirror, I sang the songs of the singer from Teos in a loud and sonorous voice. But gradually my songs stopped, and their echo, which was lost far back in the black hangings of the room, became faint and indistinct and died away. And alas! out of the black hangings, in which the notes of the song died away, came a dark and indefinable shadow – a shadow such as the moon, when it is low in the sky, may form from the figure of a man; but it was neither the shadow of a man nor the shadow of a god or of any familiar thing. It shivered through the curtains in the room for a while and finally came to rest on the surface of the ore gate in full view. But the shadow was fleeting and formless and indeterminate and was the shadow of no man and of no god – not of a god of the Greeks, nor of a god of the Chaldeans, nor of any Egyptian god. And the shadow rested on the bronze gate and under the arch of the doorway and did not move, did not speak a word, but settled there and remained there. And the gate on which the shadow rested was, if I remember correctly, exactly opposite the feet of the coffined young Zoilus. But we, the seven of us gathered there, who had seen the shadow as it emerged from the curtains, did not dare to look at it, but lowered our eyes and kept peering into the depths of the ebony mirror. And finally I, Oinos, dared to say a few quiet words and asked the shadow about its origin and its name. And the shadow replied: “I am SHADOW and I dwell near the catacombs of Ptolemais and close to the gloomy fields of Helusion, bordering the murky waters of Charon.” And then the seven of us jumped from our seats in fright and stood trembling and shuddering with horror: for the sounds in the Shadow’s voice were not the sounds of any being, and changing sounds from syllable to syllable, they came darkly to our ears in the unforgettable, familiar tone of many thousands of departed friends.

That Corpse from: The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot / John Webster)

That Corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence,that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

by John Webster,as used in T.S.Eliot: The Waste Land ,1 – The Burial of the Dead

The corpse you planted last year,
Will it germinate? Will it flower this year?
Or has the frost disfigured his bed?
Keep away the dog that is man’s friend,
Lest he dig him up with his nails!

Translation: Heiner Müller (except line 3)

Ce cadavre que tu plantas l’année dernière dans ton jardin
A-t-il déjà levé? Va-t-il pas fleurir cette année?
Ou si la gelée blanche a dérangé sa couche?
Ou! écarte le chien, car cet ami de l’homme
Fouillerait de ses griffes et le déterrerait!

Traduction: Pierre Leyris; copyright L’École des lettres,Le Seuil, Paris ,1995

from: L’attende l’oubli (Maurice Blanchot)

Ici,et sur phrase qui lui était peut-être aussi destinée,il fit contraint de s’arrêter. It was almost by listening that he had written these notes. Il entendait encore sa voix en écrivant. Il les lui montra. Elle ne voulait pas lire. She only read a few passages and because he demanded them twice. “Who speaks?” she said. “Who speaks then?” She had the feeling of an emotion that she could not resist

extrait de: Maurice Blanchot, L’attende l’oubli

Here, at this sentence, which was perhaps also meant for him, he felt compelled to pause. He had almost heard her speak when he began the notes. He could still hear her voice as he wrote. He showed her what he had written. She didn’t want to read. She only read a few passages, and only because he gently asked her to. “Who’s talking here?” she said, “Who’s talking here?” She thought there was a mistake, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it

Translation: Johannes Hübner

Here, at this very sentence, one which was perhaps also destined for him, he felt it necessary to call a halt. He had almost heard it speak as he began to commit pen to paper. As he wrote he could still hear her voice. He showed her what he had written. She did not wish to read. She read only a few words, and then only because he had bid her softly. “Who is that talking?” she said, “Who is that talking then?” For she believed that there must be some mistake, which she just could not put her finger on…

Translation: Graham Lack

Program musica viva (01 July 2006)