View transcript: The Law of Ruins in Music

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Before his death, and after his production of Tristan in Bayreuth, playwright Heiner Müller wrote several drafts (libretti) for an opera by Pierre Boulez / Müller borrows from Japanese bunraku theater and tries to break down the operatic forms into their individual components / Pierre Boulez starts with the idea of innovation, too / Destruction, error, and damaged music included - -

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The law of ruins in music / Conversations with Pierre Boulez about Heiner Müller’s drafts

Alexander Kluge

There is a directive that Hitler issued in 1943: the so-called “Reichsruinengesetz.” It demanded that materials used to build memorials of National Socialism should not be chosen based on their cost, but so that they would still look impressive after 6,000 years. That’s the “Reichsruinengesetz.” It’s like this: a really good composition is indestructible. Even under difficult conditions, where you hear something over VHF at the front or far away in Siberia, it can still be good music. You said once: You need to be able to kill, you need to be able to bite, you can’t stir up the water with your saber …

Pierre Boulez

No, that’s true. You should use the saber very differently.

Kluge

That means, modernity is also an aggression?

Boulez

A gun, of course! An aggression. Not without reason, it’s not an aggression just for the sake of aggression: it’s simply because that’s what life is like. So if you have an egg, then …

Kluge

…like the chicken squirming out of the shell …

Boulez

Exactly. It has to … the birds all have to get out. This brutality!

Kluge

…snakes have to shed their skin …

Boulez

I mean, we aren’t just born into such a – how do you say – a caring environment, first we have to fight for our individuality.

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Twilight of the Gods, in Vienna (1945)

Kluge

Here’s an example: During the siege of Vienna 1945, Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach decided that the Third Reich should say farewell to Vienna with a last performance of Twilight of the Gods. The night before the dress rehearsal the opera house burned down – now the singers and the orchestra members were spread out over 14 different basements, and they communicated and held the last rehearsals over Wehrmacht cable reel phones. Of course that’s not proper concert quality.

Boulez

No, certainly not. But it was a division of space, for the first time …

Kluge

A real twilight of the gods, artillery fire, detonating bombs, and the remains of the music.

Boulez

Yes, it was really …

Kluge

…split up in different orchestra perspectives.

Boulez

Yes. That’s interesting. Not as an experiment, I don’t think you’d want to do this experiment very often, but what’s interesting about good orchestration – and I have said before that Wagner’s orchestration is very, very good – is that the different orchestra groups can be listened to separately, because even though they are part of a bigger ensemble, of course, they also make sense as a separate group. And that’s why, I mean, I once experienced that myself. Not in Vienna, not in ‘45, but the first time I was in Bayreuth, between 1966 and ‘70, I conducted “Parzival” and Karl Böhm conducted “The Ring.” And because Wilhelm Wagner asked me to take “The Ring” into account, I wanted to see “The Ring” from the auditorium, but I also really wanted to see Böhm conduct, how he worked with the orchestra, because it’s very different from what I do, for example, etc. I ended up sitting next to the timbales, behind the trombone, at the very end of the orchestra. And what I heard was such a – how do you say – completely deformed …

Kluge

…mush…

Boulez

Not mush. I heard the trombones very loudly when they were playing, the violin barely, the voice really only when the orchestra didn’t play too loudly or played very quietly. It was a completely wrong perspective, and that’s why sometimes I ask myself …

Kluge

But did that also have its own appeal?

Boulez

Well, it was really funny, strange, but also funny, because the score was … you see … imagine, for example, that you could see the Sistine Chapel with the ear of one single musician. It wouldn’t be representative of the entire Capella Sistina, but you could see, for example, how Michelangelo painted that piece, what technique he used etc. And that’s why, that was the same kind of perspective. I heard, okay, so he writes that kind of music for the brass instruments, especially the deep brass instruments, or for the timbales, and of course I heard the orchestra vaguely as a background noise. That’s why you wonder sometimes, as a conductor: how does this even work if everyone has such a narrow field of vision in their respective corner … and they can’t hear any further, because there is a rampart of brass instruments, for instance, or a rampart of drummers, a wall, I mean. And that’s why, for me it’s so … you were talking about ruins – the orchestra is a reconstructed ruin, a permanent …

Kluge

Heiner Müller said that he promised you a libretto for an opera. When did you talk to him about this?

Boulez

I talked to him for the first time four years ago, when I was in Salzburg. He put on “Tristan” in Bayreuth, and he came to Salzburg with Daniel Barenboim. I was in Salzburg too, and we talked for the first time, but only about random stuff. About things like how you can even write an opera today, how is that possible, isn’t that completely outdated, or how can you restore the concept, etc. Very general topics. And then … See, long before Heiner Müller, I talked to Jean Genet, because he was a friend of mine and I knew him pretty well, I think. As well as anyone could know him anyway. And I developed an idea together with Genet about the relationship between theater, straight theater, and music: How to conceive of this relationship, how important is the drama, so to speak, what kind of medium can you use, for instance puppets, masks; the music too, electronic music, the organization of space etc. Or about time, how can you use time, very short scenes contrasted with very long, drawn-out scenes, etc. And also the relationship between the stage design, if there is still a stage, and the music; because I was very impressed at the time when I saw the walls, at the end of the first part, back when it premiered: there were the Algerians who showed their anger against the French, just through drawings; they did …

Kluge

…graffiti…

Boulez

Graffiti. And by the end of this part, the wall was full of graffiti, eventually fully replacing the dialogue by showing the words instead. That left a deep impression with me, because I think you could do the same thing with music: You show a situation, and the music remains but not the situation. Something like that. We even corresponded with each other, when he … he wasn’t in France very often, and sometimes I wasn’t much in France either: that’s how we connected, mostly through letters.

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Heiner Müller, playwright

Boulez

The last time I met him, that was at the opera, with Bander, the manager. He was talking about the Atridae, he wanted to completely remake it, not do a proper tragedy, but really modernize it, while the myth would still be there underneath. That was the last I heard from him.

Kluge

Let me tell you what he wants to show: He takes six statements about Tantalus, the presumptuous man who insults the gods and is tortured in return, the man who greedily wants to drink the water that escapes him and eat the apples that escape him. His son was Pelops. He wanted the daughter of the king of the Peloponnesus, but her father defended his daughter like Turandot defended himself … The suitor has to compete against the king, the father of this young woman, in a race as charioteer; and he is defeated and dies. That’s how the father protects his daughter. Reminds me of Wotan …

Boulez

Yes. Yes.

Kluge

… and now Pelops bribes the king’s charioteer and asks him to put wax into the linchpins. In return, he is promised the first night with the woman and a few other things. It’s like with the giants. And after the king is dead, Pelops betrays the charioteer. And that’s where the curse stems from, because in the moment of his death, the charioteer curses the entire house. And that’s how Agamemnon happens, who rolls in on the red carpet and is killed that same night, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra, Iphigenia …

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Agamemnon is killed in the bath

Boulez

Yes. Yes.

Kluge

… and he wanted … it wasn’t supposed to last longer than 10 minutes. 20 versions, in a different order, each with a different emphasis, several variations, and he wanted …

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18 fates in 10 minutes (“tragedy in fast-forward”)

Kluge

…an ostinato that basically weaves a kind of net through repetitioni, in which the recitative changes every time, so that you never get the same story twice …

Boulez

That became a dream …

Kluge

But isn’t that a possibility? I mean, the texts exist, after all. He wrote them …

Boulez

Yes, they are written down. But if I need a reminder, for example, he’s not around anymore.

Kluge

Yes, you can still consult him. He left letters of authorization ….

Boulez

Oh, okay…

Kluge

… and he also imagined something similar to bunraku theater …

Boulez

We talked about bunraku, especially puppets.

Kluge

… and there are the soffits, the puppeteers: they speak and sing …

Boulez

Okay …

Kluge

… and the puppets are mechanical. So it’s very easy to film …

Boulez

Yes, because I told him – exactly – I talked to him about puppets. I said, not the French kind, not the European puppets, but the bunraku puppets, they are like a sort of theater for me, and it left such a deep impression on me when I saw it in Japan.

Kluge

And that’s how this incredible acceleration would be made possible So that you can tell 1,000 years of myth in 10 minutes, it’s like in fast forward …

Boulez

Yes, I understand …

Kluge

And then add the music …

Boulez

Add the music … you see, the problem is that the music prolongs everything. You see, for example if you … I’ve made that experience myself, of course. There’s a poem with four lines, six lines. To read or to recite it takes 30 seconds; with music, it’s at least three or four minutes long. So the proportion is one to ten, because the music, in my opinion, especially in theater, the music sometimes needs time to develop. But you were talking about TV commercials. It’s really strange, because I told Genet: You see, compressed time, or the opposite, time that’s stretched out – and I explained it to him, and he was … he thought the idea was very … how do you say …

Kluge

…he liked it?

Boulez

… he was very interested, yes. I said: Time is extremely compressed in TV commercials, in advertisements, a commercial is 30 seconds long …

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The Requirement of Extreme Brevity / Autonomous Length

Boulez

And I think, if you come up with such a project for music, it has to … you see, in the beginning, I was very impressed by Bob Wilson. When he stretched out a dramatic scene for so long that you could barely stand it anymore. And you need that kind of contrast. You see, even in the opera that I conducted. all the scenes basically follow the same model, the same mold, about fifteen, twenty minutes long, very rarely more than that. But in Wagner’s works there’s the extreme sense between Mime and Alberich in “Siegfried,” and then the ending of “Siegfried”, the scene between Brynhildr and Siegfried that lasts about 40 minutes.

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Longest scene in the history of opera: 40 minutes (Siegfried and Brynhildr)

Boulez

But that’s really an extreme. If you look at the entire history of opera, only the finale in Mozart is longer, but of course, that’s an aria, they are practically designed to have the same length. And what I want is quite the opposite, that’s … there are so many contrasts. Sometimes very, very short, brief, you barely have time to see; sometimes the opposite: it’s almost unbearable to watch. And that’s why I want to use music to work with this material. The concept of time is really interesting, practically in itself.

Kluge

Now, when you … the whole time we have been talking about form …

Boulez

Yes, yes, definitely …

Kluge

Give us a form, and we’ll find the material.

Boulez

Yes. Yes.

Kluge

That is true for any era. And Mozart is a genius when it comes to inventing forms …

Boulez

He definitely is, I mean …

Kluge

… the material is pathetic, during his century I mean, the material that the century provides him with is rather simple.

Boulez

Yes. Yes.

Kluge

… he creates master works from relatively poor material!

Boulez

“Figaro,” for instance, is very impressive in that sense …

Kluge

Not because of the material, but because of the incredible variety he created from what little material … jumps of fourth, thirds …

Boulez

Yes, that’s certainly, yes …

Kluge

Relatively little material …

Boulez

Yes, little …

Kluge

… and an immense … world of forms.

Boulez

Yes, that’s true.

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Palestrina as “half time” / What will be left of music in the next century?

Kluge

We both have an interest in making sure that there will be something left of music in the coming century. And you know the famous scene at the council of Trident …

Boulez

Yes, unfortunately I’ve never read the play.

Kluge

Yes, but the one by Palestrina, not by Pfitzner. It describes how Palestrina is allowed to compose one more mass, and he fills it with every tradition that can possibly be carried on. He makes the masses with 80 choruses possible once more. And that is basically our responsibility now, to do these kinds of things …

Boulez

Yes, sure …

Kluge

… and if you imagine, there is a small fly in a piece of amber, and its stomach contains a piece of dinosaur. This way, something could be preserved after all. And if you composed it – I mean, only the little bit of dinosaur … a single cell. It would mean that 30 seconds of Boulez would appear in the middle of an MTV program with good images, with non-images …

Boulez

Yes. No, sure … you can … in the beginning, at the Centre Pompidou, we had people who were interested. And we really wanted to work on it, but never got around to it. And one guy did something like that and the result was rather terrible, I have to say.

Kluge

Napoleon debarks in Egypt right before New Year’s Eve 1800 and leads his people astray in the desert.

Boulez

Yes.

Kluge

Later he arrives at the pyramids and says: This is 4,000 years. But first the march through the desert …

Boulez

Yes, like Moses …

Kluge

…yes, like Moses. And I think if we had creative forms – developed by Müller, Genet, you, etc. – that could feed us on this march through the desert …

Boulez

No, I’m still – how do you say – thinking about this fusion, my personal fusion of different sources, I would say. And it’s not easy.

Kluge

Going back to Müller: At some point after he got sick he bought a book for 500 dollars that he found really delightful. It was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a British edition, in verses and rhymes, and he asks: Could you compose the fall of Troy?

Boulez

No, you have to …

Kluge

Or one moment, one facet, one second …

Boulez

Yes, you need to find a transposition. I think, everything – that’s my opinion – everything that has … how do you say in English … too many “connotations” …

Kluge

Yes, that doesn’t work.

Boulez

That doesn’t work for me …

Kluge

But what if, without “connotations” … he wants you to tie three moments together. Aeneas carries his father Anchises on his back, the Greek plunder and rape, a city and a culture are burning. The second scene is Aeneas’ encounter with Dido and his betrayal. After that he founds Rome, and then, 400 years later, Corinth is burned to the ground. That means, the Romans are Troy’s revenge for the Greeks. And Müller thinks that East Germany is similarly going to pass down through the annexation what has happened to them.

Boulez

But, you see …

Kluge

Could you translate that?

Boulez

I don’t even know … I cannot answer this right here on the spot.

Kluge

The operas exist: the siege of Corinth, Lord Byron, Rossini …

Boulez

Yes, yes …

Kluge

Troy was done at least five times … Berlioz, the Trojans, in “Idomeneo” the prisoners arrive …

Boulez

Yes, sure, but you have just as many memories as I do and that’s why I’m so …

Kluge

…and those we need to forget.

Boulez

We need to forget. And you see, for example, you were talking about Genet. And that’s why when he wrote “The Screens” … Okay, that one is about Algeria and the situation in Algeria, but it wasn’t just about the current situation in Algeria, it went much further than that! When he wrote “The Blacks,” for instance, that was also about the race issue and not just about the French “beurs” and the Whites. That had a much broader … broader scope. And that’s why I … For example Heiner Müller with the “Quartett” – of course that’s … the source is Choderlos de Laclos, but it also goes further than Choderlos de Laclos, it’s not only …

Kluge

That’s what Müller wants from you, you see. He has … Ovid didn’t come to him in Latin either, but in English, so to speak.

Boulez

But the names you would have to …

Kluge

…erase …

Boulez

… That would be much easier. If you take … take for example a book by Levi-Strauss about the mythology of Latin America or something. If you choose a random name, you can really fantasize about it. If you say Helen of Troy, you can’t make up things anymore, because you are already thinking of so many things. That’s why I’d rather, if there was a similar situation in the mythology of Latin America or Central Africa, I’d rather …

Kluge

I’ll send you an entire list of suggestions, but really you should make a clean sweep with a concrete idea of Müller’s.

Boulez

You bet!

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The law of ruins in music / Conversations with Pierre Boulez about Heiner Müller’s drafts