I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Thursday's dress rehearsal of Kaija Saariaho's new opera Adriana Mater at the Finnish National Opera; the official première was last night. Having followed Saariaho's music for the last thirteen years, and having attended three performances of her previous opera L'amour de loin, there was really no question as to whether I was going to like this piece or not. Saariaho's music is captivating, agonisingly beautiful, at times visceral and violent, and Adriana Mater is no exception. For those with Finnish, here is Helsingin Sanomat's review.
The intricacies and subtleties of the music and staging require too much thought to post about right now, but perhaps I'll return to this subject at a later opportunity. I'm compelled to post regarding a conversation I had last night with K, who had just come from the première. K is himself a formidable and experienced musician, whose opinions I don't take lightly. For me, this fact makes his assessment of the opera all the more alarming. I described the opera as "häkellyttävä" (astounding, astonishing), to which K replied that that would certainly be an appropriate term. After I said that I had expected nothing less from Saariaho, it turned out that his comment was meant sarcastically. "How so?" I asked. "Well, for a start, it's badly written, badly orchestrated, and the orchestra doesn't get to play any melodies," he replied. For a moment, these comments rendered me speechless. Of course, people can disagree on the merits of any given piece of music, and I love a good argument as much as anyone, but in this instance, K's argumentation is, in my opinion, so fundamentally flawed that it has driven me to afford it deeper consideration.
Admittedly, I haven't examined the score very closely but, having a knowledge Saariaho's previous music, I think it's fair to say that melody is not and has never been a defining feature of her aesthetic. According to K, the players find the piece "boring". Do they feel cheated because they don't get to play grand melodies, I wonder. Perhaps more than concert music, isn't opera all about the audience, about the experience of listening to an orchestra while being visually stimulated by what is happening on the stage? Boring or not for the musicians, Adriana Mater is a highly successful piece of music theatre precisely because it engages the audience, which for me is a more relevant criterion by which to judge the music than whether the musicians enjoy playing it or not.
When I asked K to give an example of how the piece is "badly orchestrated", he mentioned a section in the clarinet part which requires a high c#4. "How can a player be expected to produce this note night after night?" he asked. A quick look on Google reveals fingering charts for all the notes up to d4. Agreed, these pitches are at the upper reaches of the clarinet's altissimo register, but you can't call something badly written just because it's difficult. If you claim to play the clarinet, you play the whole clarinet, not just the easy bits.
Performers are notorious for taking the path of least resistance when it comes to new music. Too often one hears performers claim that certain techniques are "impossible", when what they mean is that they are difficult, outside the boundaries of standard technique (agreed), the implication being that these techniques actually involve some practice. At a new music workshop a few years ago, the cellist who played my piece came up to me later in the evening and told me that I shouldn't write microtones because they're very hard to produce. Well, cry me a river! I replied by explaining that, as a string player, I know exactly how difficult (or not) it is to produce microtones on a string instrument. To give a more extreme example: Brian Ferneyhough's music is "difficult", but if you decide to perform it you then take on the responsibility of learning it properly. That this is a revelation to some professional musicians is surprising to say the least.
This whole conversation – and writing this post – reminds me of the exchange between amputee pianist Paul Wittgenstein and Maurice Ravel regarding the latter's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (commissioned by the former). Wittgenstein wanted to rearrange some aspects of the piano part claiming famously that "performers must not be slaves!" Ravel's answer was simple and to the point: "Performers are slaves." The day composers allow performers' whims and, dare I say, in some cases, laziness to dictate what can and can't be done with their instruments will be the day all progress in the field of musical expression grinds to a halt.
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2 comments:
Love you, David! But you didn't mention my opinion on the greyness of the orchestral fabric nor that I found the music to be ill-sounding (stuffy and bass-heavy). But generally you interpreted my frustration on playing this piece well!
I, being just lowly orchestral player, can't but to remember the old story about emperor's new clothes...
BTW, *I* have a fingering table for clarinet which goes up to f4! But knowing the fingering does NOT quarantee the perfect production of those altissimo-notes, as you know. To be honest, the c#4 is just a passing note in the clarinet part, but there is very dangerous and exposed solo starting on c4. I wonder how the poor clar.player feel if she/he misses the note despite the perfect fingering supplied via Google. Who is to blame?
Nevertheless, all the best to you, K
Hello K!
Debate! Excellent! First of all, thanks for responding to my post. I'm glad you feel that, while disagreeing with them myself, I managed to do justice to your opinions :-)
The reason I didn't mention the "greyness of the orchestral fabric" or that the music is, in your opinion, "ill-sounding" is because these are your own subjective assessments of the music. As the old Finnish saying goes: one man's strawberry is another man's bilberry! (which sounds hilarious in English). If you think the music is grey and ill-sounding, that's up to you, because these are unquantifiable terms used to describe something for which there really is no right or wrong answer.
What I object to, however, is the assumption that composer's don't know how to write idiomatically for the various instruments of the orchestra (of course, some composers do this better than others, though, again, what is idiomatic and what is not are largely subjective categories) and that the high c#4 in the clarinet part is somehow an oversight on Saariaho's part, as if to say "she should have known better". Oh yes, and the idea that composing melodies is somehow a virtue in its own right...
You're right to point out that, with wind instruments, different makes and different levels of proficiency are important factors in producing certain extended techniques. This was pointed out to me by none other than Pierre-Yves Artaud, the pioneer of contemporary flute technique, when I asked him for advice regarding the production of certain multiphonics listed in his exhaustive book on the subject. However, excuses like this are a bit like suggesting that you should never write chords greater than an octave on the piano because not all pianists have hands big enough to play them. Why did nobody point this out to Rachmaninov?!
As for the question of proficiency, I think it's reasonable to assume that someone playing in the orchestra of the National Opera be proficient on their given instrument.
Let the debate continue!
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