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Women Composers
Women Composers For centuries, classical music was mostly composed and performed by men. Luckily, this imbalance has changed in the past decades; an increasing number of women play important roles in classical music. In our new eBook, we are introducing some of the active composers of our publishing group with in-depth articles and interviews. The articles were first published in a blog series between 2015 and 2016.
Index p. 4
Liza Lim
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Younghi Pagh-Paan
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Annette SchlĂźnz
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Francesca Verunelli
p. 24
Olga Neuwirth
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Violeta Dinescu
p. 40
Silvia Colasanti
photo: Š Ricordi Berlin
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Liza Lim
a portrait by Tim Rutherford-Johnson (2015) Born in 1966 to Chinese parents, educated in Brunei and Australia, and embraced in Europe and Australia as one of the leading composers of her generation, Liza Lim is an artist of the contemporary globalized era. Her mixed cultural background has enabled her to step back from cultural allegiances and traditions, and write from an ‘in-between place’ of her own. As such her music draws on an exceptionally wide range of influences, from modern architectural theory to Australian Aboriginal knowledge systems. The components of Lim’s style, as well as her skill and ambition, were established early, with her first opera The Oresteia (1991–3), completed when she was still 27. Ancient texts and stories – from China, Tibet, Persia and elsewhere – continue to feature in her work. The Oresteia is also an early example of the collaborative spirit that has defined her career. The text was adapted from Aeschylus with the director Barrie Kosky, and the music was written for the ELISION Ensemble, Australia’s leading new music ensemble, with whom Lim has had close musical and personal ties since the late 1980s. At the same time, Lim began an abiding interest in musical traditions beyond the Western orchestra. Koto (1993) and Burning House (1995) both look to Japan – in the latter case with Lim writing the score in traditional Japanese notation. Perhaps inevitably, the study of Asian music led her to
her own emigrant Chinese identity in the ‘ritual street opera’ Yuè Lìng Jié (Moon Spirit Feasting, 1997–9). Later works, including her third opera, The Navigator (2008), have expanded her attention to pre-classical Western instruments such as the Baroque harp and viola d’amore. However, nowhere does Lim use her instruments as exotic colour. Instead she studies their performance practice and history in detail, using architectural or biological metaphors to synthesise their language with her own.
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At first Lim’s interests can seem eclectic. Yet there are recurring themes. One is that of shamanic possession or the fluidity of states of living between the human and the animal, the mundane and the unearthly, the present and the eternal. It is a tense combination of ritual and ecstasy – two words often used in descriptions of Lim’s work – and is articulated in her music’s blend of rigour and abandon. Using the full range of techniques available to a composer in the early 21st century, she transforms her players into channellers of these wild forces. Vocalists use whacky whistles in their mouths to change into animal or insectoid voices (The Navigator); players become absorbed in lengthy, meditative communion with their instruments (Bardo’i-thos-grol, a seven-day installation created with the artist Domenico de Clario 1994–5); the sensations of playing become the door to private knowledge systems (Invisibility for solo cello, 2009). Shamanism has allowed Lim to connect the points of her own heritage, from China to Australia to Europe, all places
with ancient stories of animal-human transmutation. A fulcrum of these different backgrounds is The Quickening (2005), one of the first works Lim wrote after becoming a parent. Its title refers to the mother first feeling her baby moving in the womb. Motherhood may be its theme, but the work is a typical complex of ideas. It is composed for the quintessentially Lim-like pairing of soprano and qin, the most revered of Chinese instruments; the text, by the poet Yang Lian, speaks of “cicadas in the body” and “a ceremony for childbirth”. In the score’s preface Lim also refers to the shamanic practices of Aboriginal healers, the “ecstatic Central Desert art of Aboriginal Australia” and the kinaesthetic performance practice of the qin. The Navigator (2007–8) represents another, still greater coming together. Its libretto is by the Australian poet Patricia Sykes, with whom Lim had previously worked on Mother Tongue for soprano and ensemble (2005). The partnership with Kosky was also renewed for the work’s first productions at the Brisbane Festival and Melbourne International Festival of the Arts. And the music was again composed for the musicians of ELISION, several of whom gained new solo and ensemble works extracted from the piece (Wild Winged-One for trumpet, Weaver of Fictions for alto Ganassi recorder, and Sensorium for countertenor, Baroque harp, viola d’amore and harpsichord). The Navigator also introduces a new element, Wagner: Lim has said that hearing the Tristan prelude in 2004 helped her “fall in love with music again”, and the story (and disguised moments of the music) feed into her own opera. Since The Navigator, Lim
has widened her circles of collaboration further still, working with members of musikFabrik on solo works such as Axis Mundi (2012–13) for bassoon and The Green Lion Eats the Sun (2014) for double-bell euphonium, as well as a major setting of the Sufi poet Hafez, Tongue of the Invisible (2010–11), which uses systems of improvisation devised in close cooperation with the players.
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Music involves people on three levels. The physical relation between the performer and their instrument; the bonds of friendship and collaboration between different performers in an ensemble (and between composer and those performers); and the connection between music and external groups of people, whether the audience in the concert hall or segments of the wider society. Profoundly humanistic, Lim’s music is a conduit between all three, in which the actions of a performer’s finger on a string or lips on a mouthpiece open up reflection on entire cultural systems and ways of being.
photos: © Claudia Schiffner © Astrid Ackermann
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Liza Lim introduces Younghi Pagh-Paan’s NIM I first heard Younghi Pagh-Paan’s large orchestral work NIM (1986/87) in the late 1980s on a cassette. In Australia, in the days before the easy access provided by internet radio or youtube uploads, one relied on friends in Europe to make recordings of premieres from the radio: a cassette arriving in the post after Donaueschingen or Metz or some other festival was an incredibly precious thing when one was hungry to hear the latest contemporary music. What I heard on that cassette was music of immense visceral expressivity bringing together an incredibly confident sense of large-scale temporal order with a raw sonic energy. Knowing Pagh-Paan’s cultural background I could make a connection between NIM and the grandeur of Korean court music with its slowly unfolding pace. NIM has a really strong sense of lamentation with brass and wind instruments crying out in groups, combined with percussion strokes that give the music this inexorable, relentless quality. There is a combination of wildness and contemplation - listen to the ending of NIM where the piccolo and strings with percussion open up a sense of vastness after the preceding turmoil. There is a paradoxical ‘wild serenity’ in this music that was really inspiring to me and which
I also look for in my own work. Yet Younghi’s music doesn’t just stand for ‘Korean-ness’ – her music opens doorways between NorthEast-Asian and Germanic-European concepts of time, of relations between surface and depth and the articulation of individuated elements against a communal drive. That intercultural element is so important as a model for how an artist can propose ways of thinking about cultural ‘place’ and questions of identity and belonging in a globalised world. Artists are nomads travelling along and across many streams of cultural influences and so in one sense carry ‘home’ with them even as they move in search of connections, resources (let’s be honest!) and resonances in the world. What’s interesting is when the project of ‘leaving home’ is also an inner homecoming, when journeying leads one closer to oneself. Because a nomad cannot carry much baggage, to travel in this sense is to clarify what is really essential.
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I also appreciate the way Younghi has made a amark as an artist who is a woman. Sometimes one can feel a bit lonely when it seems that there is little progress in the same old struggles for women’s voices to gain a foothold in the contemporary music landscape and so fellow travellers give strength. I hope we’ll hear much more of Younghi’s music as she approaches her 70th birthday next year – we need to celebrate our mother-figures as much as father-figures in art and who better to speak of complexity of being and a project of authenticity in music than Younghi Pagh-Paan.
NIM (1986/87) for large orchestra 4 (2 picc, afl). 2. eh. 3. bcl. 4 (cfg). / 4. 3. 3. 1. / timp. 3 perc / str. World Premiere: Donaueschingen, 16.10.1987 Duration: 17’
photo: © M. Creutziger
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Annette SchlĂźnz an interview (2015)
Even as a 12-year-old, you attended a composing workshop for children in Halle. When did you first feel that you wanted to become a composer? I wrote musical notes before I wrote letters. I was about 5 years old at that time and this was a way to express myself. The composing workshop enabled me to develop my composing skills and to conceive composition not only just as an inner need, but also as a profession. When I was 16, Hans J. Wenzel, the teacher of the workshop, and Dietrich Boekle, a guest lecturer from Darmstadt, encouraged me to study composition. I guess that one does not become a composer, one simply is. Why are there still so many more male than female composers and conductors? I think there are just as many girls who want to compose and conduct (I can see this in my composing classes in France and Germany), but there are many prejudices in society. To truly become a professional, one needs encouragement, perseverance, and role models to imitate. Fortunately, their number is rising. When did you experience this injustice in your own life as a female composer?
I can feel it when I look at concert programmes or publishers’ catalogues. I didn’t used to pay attention to it. Later, when I worked as a dramaturge at Dresdner Festival, I deliberately promoted interesting female artists. As a teacher I support male and female composers, but I do particularly encourage women. Today it annoys me when I see festival programmes that consist almost exclusively of male colleagues; or when derogatory comments are made to female composers. Unfortunately, this is still a problem. I argue that being a composer is a matter of course.
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Is there a difference between music composed by a man and a woman? You could also ask: is there a difference between music composed by an Englishman and a French man? Between homosexuals and heterosexuals? Between the old and the young? Thankfully, people are different – and so are composers, who also change throughout their own lives. So is there an explicit male or female way of composing? No! You teach composition and you are a jury member for various international composing competitions. Would you say that the number of young women who want to become a composer is growing? Maybe the number is not growing, because there always have been many who wanted to become composers, but didn’t do it for a variety of reasons. In the generation of 10
to 20 year-olds, there is an approximate balance between boys and girls, but I notice that there is a vast majority of male contestants in competitions. To gain recognition as a female composer after university, to develop endurance, to build a network, to promote yourself and to be accepted by artistic directors is a completely different story. Nevertheless, the musicians’ and orchestras’ acceptance is increasing, and that’s a good sign. Recently, your orchestral work Flammenschrift – Welch Licht, kein Schatten had its premiere in Dessau. Please tell us more about that! On November 5th and 6th the piece was premiered at Impuls-Festival by Anhaltische Philharmonie with Jan Pieter Fuhr as a speaker, conducted by three young conductors of the Dirigierwerkstatt (teacher: James Ross): Samy Moussa, Taepyeong Kwak and Felix Mildenberger. Festival director Hans Rotman commissioned it, just like he did in 2009 in the case of Weithin (in mögliche mitten), which was performed first by Anhaltinische Philharmonie, too. There is, lately, a positive response from the orchestra concerning contemporary music, and a commitment to the construction of new percussion instruments. For me it’s important to work together with orchestras that do not specialize in contemporary music, because it makes me ask questions about technical feasibility and mediation. In Dessau, the answers have been very positive. Furthermore, there will be two more performances conducted by Daniel Carlberg at “Staging on the Bauhaus” in December.
photo: © Jean Radel
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Francesca Verunelli an interview (2016)
Francesca Verunelli was born in Italy in a little town near Florence. She began her studies in Florence and Rome later completing the advanced course in composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. In 2008 she moved to Paris where she has since worked as a busy composer and researcher at IRCAM. Never losing her Italian roots, in 2010 she won the Leone d’argento in the Venice Biennale with her piece En Mouvement (Espace Double) which was performed by the Mitteleuropa Orchestra under the direction of Andrea Pestalozza. The following year, she received a commission from IRCAM for a string quartet with electronics, Unfolding, which was performed by the Arditti Quartet at the 2012 Biennale Musiques en scène in Lyon and later at other venues, as well as a joint commission from the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Venice Biennale for a music theatre work (Serial Sevens). She has composed various pieces for solo instrument and electronics and others for ensemble (Cinemaolio, Déshabillage impossible, Five Songs are some of her more recent works). As winner of the 2012 Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne Award she received a commission for the orchestral piece Graduale, Disambiguation to be performed by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester (LSO).
In 2013 Radio France commissioned Ms. Verunelli to write The Narrow Corner for its radio programme ‘Alla breve’ which was recorded by the Orchestre Philharmonique under the direction of Susanna Mälkki, and broadcast in February 2015. She has received other important commissions from the ensemble Court-Circuit, the chamber choir Accentus, the Gmem in Marseilles (where she was composer in residence in the 2014-2015 season), the CIRM in Nice, the Cité de la Musique, and ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble New York). Currently, she is composer in residence at the Casa de Velasquez (Académie de France in Madrid).
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Who (if any) are your artistic forebears? Who do you feel closest to? I was brought up on the more or less recent “classics” of traditional, Western notated music, and a lot of this music – let’s say from Monteverdi to Grisey – continues to fascinate and challenge me. However, I listen to anything and everything, and in fact whatever happens in music interests me – non-written music, other traditions, and other ‘styles’ so to speak. The experience of listening is at the origin of musical thought and I believe that all the sound that surrounds us offers us composers an inexhaustible source of reflection on listening. Do you prefer writing for small or large orchestras, and, if you have a preference, why?
There are a number of compositional problems that I have been working on for years and I would say that every piece is a sort of concrete “declination” or “manifestation” that comes about as a result of the intersection of these longterm lines of research with a given instrumental world be it a small ensemble or large orchestra. So in reality every instrumental make-up offers a specific sonic universe with which one compares and evaluates certain more general ideas, and vice versa. Some ideas can appear in a certain way because they have been compared with one instrumental world rather than with another. So every instrumental make-up is an interesting challenge from this point of view. But it’s also true that there are periods in which one make-up suits us better, or the ideas that we’re interested in are better suited to one make-up rather than another. At the present time I would love to write more for large orchestra. How important is it for you to experiment and how important is it to communicate? I don’t seek to experiment just for the sake of experimenting nor to communicate just for the sake of communicating. I think about music through and in music. There are compositional and musical “problems” that appear to be very urgent to me and which live constantly in my thoughts. And I seek responses to these questions without placing limits in regard to the compositional “means” that I’ll need to confront them. I don’t place limits on myself in regard to performance difficulty or accessibility a priori, nor do I seek
out difficulty for its own sake. I am convinced that it is only by being absolutely respectful in our own listening that we can hope to provoke in others an experience of interesting listening. In the end we only have our own ear with which to evaluate and understand, and we can’t rely on anything other than that.
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On 22 January in Munich, as part of the Musica Viva season, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of Susanna Mälkki will perform the world premiere of The Narrow Corner. Can you tell us something about this piece, about its poetics? The Radio asked me for a piece divided into five radiophonic “episodes” each one with two minutes of music. And I wanted to find a way to approach these two-minute segments in a way that turned out to be unitary, albeit with the temporal interruptions. The result was five moments that are like five paradoxical perspectives on a single sonic world. The narration that results is elliptical and the elements are contextualised, decontextualised and recontextualised according to the glimpse that the particular point of view that each occasion offers of them. This is the sense of five brief moments, which are not movements but are “in movement”. Five times the image of the whole of which the point of view – “the narrow corner” in fact – prevents a single interpretation can be completed differently. With the result that the overall form is not linear but “in depth”, a sort of permanence of a place through various temporal perspectives.
photo: © Harald Hoffmann
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Olga Neuwirth
in dialogue with Stefan Drees (2015) I feel there’s an imbalance in our society between the genders, and funding and quotas for women aren’t doing much to change the situation. How do you feel about this? Pressured by unrealistic expectations it’s easier for many women today just to perpetuate the male system of meaning. Some women have, on the other hand, discovered that it’s time for them to focus on women’s issues. But where were these women – mostly of my generation – 25 years ago, when I was already questioning how this hegemonic system of language and power operated in our field? In the 1980s and 1990s you could already read significant women theorists on the topic, which I had been doing since the age of fifteen. Or just to take Austria as an example: it was possible to engage in the work of Valie Export and Elfriede Jelinek or many other unflinching, independent-minded, courageous women artists who were creating a wide range of diverse works. It was all there. Why didn’t these women who are interested in gender issues today speak out then? Are they doing so now only because it has in the interim become socially acceptable in our part of the world, and especially because the topic has finally made its way to our conservative field of art? Or maybe because they think that the involvement in women’s issues gives them personal gratification and power? History shows that the crucial question is at what point in time you are critical and when
you first identify a problem. And you don’t just wait until everyone is already shouting it from the rooftops and you can no longer be attacked for speaking out. I addressed the problem of equality over 25 years ago, when nobody else in our music world in stuffy old Austria was doing so. In the late 1980s, when I arrived as a female composer on this (male) scene, I was a lone voice in the wilderness. With my statements I put my neck on the line for many women, especially women composers. As I said, we are in the world of classical music, which is still white, male and patriarchal, in other words, still rooted in a hegemonial system. And generally speaking all linguistic systems are still male, because no female “counter language” has yet been found. That is not to say that at times women are not allowed to initiate things. But for the most part, a confrontational woman who consistently rejects false images and embellished tales of life and art is not taken seriously but treated with contempt. In any case, the history of my life as a composer is also the story of the constant questioning of a woman’s ability to compose. And that’s demoralizing.
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From your perspective, how has the discrepancy in the treatment of men and women changed in the contemporary music world since the early 1990s? I think it has become nastier. A more “elegant” chauvinism prevails. No longer can you refer to problems directly, or be as obvious as it was possible during the “leaden time” of the late 1980s. When a woman calls attention to injustices
today, often the following happens: her objections are dismissed as hysteria and then “the empire strikes back”. She is kicked out and declared an adversary without further explanation or discussion. Although I’ve often been robbed of my self-esteem and the belief in my ability, I’m continually required as a freelance composer to motivate myself. Furthermore, as a freelance, peripatetic composer, I’m completely dependent on the good will of decision-makers. And I’ve often been referred to as “That impudent brat!” You’re impudent when you’ve no claim to power. But does anyone call a (young) man “impudent”? Instead he’s “That gutsy fellow” and “gutsy” in this context means he commands respect and attention. From a hierarchical point of view, a person is considered “impudent” only from the bottom up. And so if someone wants to get rid of an “impudent” woman, it’s best if she is rudely disposed of by the “gutsy fellows.” After thirteen years it’s still unbelievable to me that my opera commission with a wonderful libretto by Elfriede Jelinek was cancelled. This was not a commission that we begged for, this commission was freely given. Although it had been publicly announced several times, nobody in the music business took our side when the commission was withdrawn for no good reason. This incident was swept under the rug as if it had never happened. And with regard to my opera Lost Highway, with Valie Export as stage designer, and Elfriede Jelinek as librettist, the dramaturge sent me an e-mail, which I have kept: “Three women are just too much.”
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So the male-dominated system reacts this way because it feels threatened?
Yes, exactly. No matter what, power feels threatened by art, and apparently especially threatened by a little woman in a male domain. Twenty-five years ago, discrimination against women composers took even more forms. For instance, it sometimes came from the wives of fellow composers, who would say to my face, from woman to woman, so to speak: “Your works are only being played because you’re a woman.” All the things I’ve had to listen to over the past three decades! And from all possible sides! It’s really incredible and depressing. The gentlemen in this field were evidently shocked that a young “impudent brat” would dare to whittle away at their privileges, not to mention, think for herself, have ideas of her own and gain recognition. All this was regarded as a transgression, as presumptuous. At least there were forums in the 1990s, such as the festival “Frau Musica Nova!” organized by Gisela Gronemeyer in Cologne, or the series “Komponistinnen und ihr Werk” organized by Christel Nies in Kassel … I was in Kassel once, when I was about twenty and in search of role models. But it is disillusioning if over so many years neither the structures, nor the mechanisms of how decisions are made have changed. For example some proudly broadcast: “Now we’re presenting an all-women festival,” or “Now we’re focusing exclusively on women conductors,” and yet if their inner attitude is, “Now we’ve done our part
and may continue on as before,” nothing changes. Ultimately, what this means is – and this applies to all minorities who have ever stood up for their rights – that different people should come together with more openness, understanding and kindness, and not with arrogance, and that opposites and different ways of living and expressing may interact without anyone continually having to point this out. Nothing has changed when it comes to the supremacy or dominance of institutions or power. But I would rather like to experience something new, something that triggers new emotions and thoughts in me. Then again, to a certain extent, there are consolations, for instance, grants and composition awards specially conceived for women composers… Which is necessary. At the beginning of a composer’s development grants are important. But something must change structurally – and I hope one day this will actually happen – because if it doesn’t then all these years I’ve just been talking until I’m blue in the face to no effect. It will have all been for naught if the other side isn’t willing to react in any way, as then such grants and awards are only token gestures. I don’t think they change the system. The important thing would be to create an awareness of the fact that things actually need to change. I mean, where in the world are all the women composers who are being performed internationally on a large scale?
I have the impression that in the generation after you, a higher proportion of women composers is active and known to the public.
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Yes, and that’s a good thing. But you shouldn’t forget that we were pioneers – in all sorts of ways. That women of my generation had to break through substantial gender barriers and so there’s one thing that makes me sad: I yelled out “into the dark forest,” also with regard to the need for an acceptance of contemporary composing per se, and tried to raise awareness in society for the conditions of so-called “contemporary composers” and to give them a voice. But to speak out politically as a female composer in the early 1990s was strongly disapproved of and dismissed by my male colleagues as distracting from the “real” concerns of composing. They were (and many still are) aloof, condescending, and distrustful. Apparently, back then my topics and music were too “popular” and as a person I was too unconventional to be taken seriously. Today, in contrast, many members of the younger generation often speak out politically but they seem to exhibit a high degree of superficiality, because they only have a limited interest in historical contexts. I can see this as a counter reaction, but in general I believe that we should be aware of the fact that there is something at our disposal which has already been established. This is something that can also be traced back to social political contexts. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a number of laws
were changed, because until then, at least in Austria, the law had stated, among other things: “It is the wife’s duty to obey her husband.” Under Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, the first Minister for Women’s Affairs Johanna Dohnal worked towards altering this and many other laws for the benefit of the following generations. That is to say, there were people who had made it possible for us women to deal more freely with our lives and work. If someone was blessed with the good fortune of being born later, when suddenly more was possible – that’s great for them! But I feel it’s cynical to want to blank out those who fought for these things in the first place. But to get back to our field of music: as a woman composer, you’re still discriminated against, though it’s true, now it’s done more cunningly. You can get a bad reputation really quickly, that is, if you don’t do as demanded by the different parties and behave as expected. But who wants to live with a bad reputation? It’s no fun. There are consequences, as I’ve experienced several times. I believe many just aren’t willing to go through this. That is, unless “being critical” becomes “in” – then people are pleased to have such a label attached to them. People usually cultivate a bad boy image only if it doesn’t actually harm them, which brings us back to language: “bad boy”, that’s that “gutsy fellow” again who commands respect. But does a bad girl image even exist? If it ever existed then it was in the punk scene. And that’s
where I come from. When I was fifteen it was what interested and influenced me. But such an image was permitted only on the fringes, as a subculture, so to speak. But the higher you get in so-called elite and exclusive circles, the more patriarchal and segregative the structures become.
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Because I wanted as a composer to make a statement about the present, I collaborated for a great many years with Elfriede Jelinek, that superb, headstrong writer. For me the way some opera-house directors have behaved is an absolute sign of how a standardized male system prevails in my field. Especially in our case, when as two women (I mean, how many collaborations were there in the 1990s between a woman composer and a woman writer?) – one of whom was quite well known and the other very famous – we were summoned and patronizingly told: “You may now create an opera together.” So the writer, in her enthusiasm, writes an amazing, biting text. But then with the arrogance of the music industry, and here’s where their presumptuousness comes in, they state: “She’s not capable of writing a text.” I have this in writing! And three months later, this very same writer is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature! In contrast, who would have disinvited an already invited male composer and male Nobel Prize laureate? Instead, when it comes to one of my male colleagues, to make the work even more important people are continually stressing that his male librettist is a Nobel Prize contender. But I collaborated with a real Nobel Prize laureate and we were
axed. This says it all, there’s no need to add anything more about how women are treated in the classical music world. And this story didn’t happen 25 years ago, but began in 2001 and ended in 2005. Besides the topics you have addressed here, doesn’t outward appearance or rather the enactment of femininity also play a certain role in the acceptance of women? Recently, when people saw the cover of the program brochure for the performance of my work Le Encantadas in Paris, many of them said to me: “Oh, you’re pretty, too!” Of course, why not? I can be pretty too. But do I constantly have to be “identical with myself?” I find this absurd, and it has never been something I’ve wanted – that as a woman you should achieve your goal or success by making “detours” with sex or being cute. Why not just focus on the work? Of course, as I realize, this was and still is naïve of me. I could have always made it easier for myself. I have the feeling that this topic has also played a role in your work. For instance, the short film Die Schöpfung, which you created together with Elfriede Jelinek in 2010, would probably not have been made if you hadn’t had all these negative experiences. Yes, but that’s a different topic. For me it has always also been about an ironic refraction, as in Thomas Bernhard’s statement about Zwangswitze (“forced jokes”), which you need in order to cope with a hopeless situation. A paradox
full of absurdity and melancholy, despair and defiance. In effect what I’ve always tried to do in my pieces is to elude categorization, because I don’t want to be pigeonholed. Which in turn has, for me at least, meant that I could not in fact be categorized, and so now people say: “With her you never know what you’re going to get.” As if multifacetedness lacked quality. However, with my male colleagues it’s exactly this that gets hyped as great and masterful.
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In fact, there’s no fixed concept of gender, rather you can always transform yourself performatively, and this has for me had an impact on the very language of my music – it’s what I play with, I’m always playing with different facets of this. Of course, this differentiation has also affected your male characters, e.g., Jeremy in Bählamms Fest, as well as displayed itself in your years of exploring Klaus Nomi, who in his very person ideally embodies performativity. Luckily, it also protects works, such as Bählamms Fest, from being interpreted exclusively from a feminist perspective, since the main characters – both outsiders in society – are too complex and contradictory. That’s true, it just wouldn’t work and would be too one dimensional. You have to – and here’s where it all starts – grant the other side the same right of existence as your own side. If I demand something, then there has to be the possibility for the other side to demand something too. Thus
complex issues have to be made recognizable and understandable for many observers, that’s really important. But then I need, at least in a music theater work, to let things collide like in a lab experiment. As is the case with David Lynch: “The stage as catastrophe.” But from the critics there has never been the attempt to examine this aspect of my work in any depth. And so the female composer disappears behind her male colleagues with regard to the reception of her works, especially her big works. Perhaps something positive in conclusion? It’s important that things become fairer for males and females and all others. I’m really interested in other people, which means that for me every situation that I observe, learn and deal with contributes to “the adventure of composing”.
Abridged version of an interview conducted on November 30, 2015, first published in VAN magazine. Translated into English by Catherine Kerkhoff-Saxon in collaboration with Katherine Michaelsen and Olga Neuwirth.
photo: archive
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Violeta Dinescu’s Der 35. Mai by Annette Thoma (2016)
Violeta Dinescu’s Der 35. Mai is one the most successful and most performed children’s operas published by Ricordi. Since its premiere in 1986 in Mannheim, it has been produced by some of the leading opera companies in Germany and Austria including Hamburgische Staatsoper, Staatsoper Wien, and Staatsoper Stuttgart. “There is a lack of good German authors! So I need you to write a children’s book”, Without this demand from publisher Edith Jakobsohn, Erich Kästner may never have written Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee. With Ms. Jakobsohn’s support, the book was published in 1932. Almost 55 years later, in 1986, the Romanian composer Violeta Dinescu received a commission for a children’s opera by Nationaltheater Mannheim, one of the largest theatres in Germany. After some research she discovered Kästner’s book by chance. Der 35. Mai was to become Dinescu’s first children’s opera. Luckily she had worked with children before, and she had also collected and transcribed Romanian children’s songs. “During the various productions of Der 35. Mai I repeatedly noted that children’s songs have such a universal dimension – a miracle of communication”, says Violeta Dinescu.
The folkloristic sounds of her children’s opera are characterized by rich colors and rhythmic variety. Violeta Dinescu’s goal was to captivate and inspire her young audience, so she composed from the perspective of children. “The composer needs to find a system of sounds that can be understood by children, even if this system is not simple. Children cannot understand an abstract system such as twelve-tone technique. There needs to be hierarchy of colorful sounds and which is tangible (rhythms, melodies) – this is comprehensible for children. But this does not need to happen in the major-minor-system entirely.”
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The storyline of the opera is similar to Kästner’s book: Konrad needs to write a school essay about the South Sea, so he travels there together with his uncle, the pharmacist Ringelhuth, and the roller-skating circus horse Negro Kaballo. Through a cupboard they enter a fantasy world in which many strange things happen. They travel through different countries, and they meet interesting people on their way, including Charlemagne who has become the goalkeeper of the “castle of the great past”. They also encounter Napoleon, with whom Ringelhuth gets into an argument. They finally reach the South Sea by crossing the equator which consists of a long band of steel. When they arrive, the three protagonists meet a girl called Parsley who shows them her peculiar world. Flying dogs, golden peacocks, and white squirrels cross their way. They finally meet Chief Rabenaas, who is also called “The fast courier”. He helps them to get back home by a magic trick: he brings Onkel
Ringelhuth’s cupboard to the South Sea, and through this they can return to their world. And just in time for Ringelhuth to start his shift at the pharmacy and for Konrad to write the school essay. Der 35. Mai is more than a fantasy story for children. Kästner quite openly expressed social criticism and addressed the problems of the late Weimar Republic. The various locations of their journey can be interpreted as symbols. For instance, the Schlaraffenland (the land of milk and honey) is a symbol of laziness, in the “castle of the great past” expresses Kästner’s critique of militarism, and the city of Elektropolis shows the danger of total technocracy – all of these are topics that remain relevant today.
Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee Children’s opera in seven pictures for children’s choir and orchestra 1.1.1.1 – 1.1.1.0 – 2perc.pno.org.hrp – str Libretto: Florian Zwipf, Ulrike Wendt; after Erich Kästner World premiere: 1986, Nationaltheater Mannheim; Duration: full evening For children from 8 years onwards
photo: archive
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Silvia Colasanti an interview (2016)
In your music the dramaturgic component is always very much at the fore. Would you agree with this observation? Yes, it’s true, this is a characteristic of my music that has often been pointed out. I believe that it’s important, now that we operate within a denser and more complex language, to make sure that the direction of one’s progress on a formal plane is always clear and vital, to recount a story with sound. Some of my works for orchestra manifest all this right from the title: Cede pietati, dolor, for example, calls up the figure of Medea and puts into music an “interior dramaturgy” of her contradictions and afflictions. The Canto di Atropo, for violin and orchestra, deals with the idea of death through another mythological figure, one of the three Fates, Atropos, the one who severs the thread of life. Still on the subject of dramaturgy, in Florence in 2012 the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino presented your first opera La metamorfosi. Could you tell us a little about that experience? La metamorfosi allowed me for the first time to confront lyric opera proper, with all the opportunities and challenges that that entails. It has often been claimed that in the second half of the 20th century this genre has not been approached in a direct way, that composers, rather than
write a true opera, have very often written things that move “around it”. I myself was determined instead to confront in an authentic manner the genre of the “melodrama”, bringing fully to light what remains its central component, the theatre. Naturally, since what’s involved is a product of our time, it has to draw not just on attainments deriving from our roots but also on those of our more recent past. In the case you refer to I found it very stimulating working with the director Pier’Alli. His dramaturgic and scenic perspective corresponded perfectly with my musical project, and the pairing of our views produced a cohesive and coherent work.
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Il sole, di chi è?, a mini-opera for five actor-singers and ensemble on a libretto by Piumini and dedicated to young audiences, toured widely in Italy, enjoying huge success. Did writing for an as yet not fully-trained audience change the way you wrote? I love writing for young audiences very much and this certainly influenced how I wrote Sole, as always happens. I believe it’s right for a composer to be concerned about his/ her addressee, the end-user of his/her music, not to relinquish his/her own nature and ideas, but to communicate them in a clearer way. In the case of children this absolutely does not mean making “easier” aesthetic choices. On the contrary, it’s perhaps precisely the very young that are more well-disposed towards the language of the present which they live simply as the language of their own time.
You’ve written quite a few orchestral pieces dedicated to important soloists, both Italian and foreign (Massimo Quarta, David Geringas, Yuri Bashmet, Salvatore Accardo, Enrico Dindo, Enrico Bronzi). Have the personalities of these musicians influenced your writing in any way? Without a doubt. I love writing for great interpreters, and perhaps not so much for the so-called “specialists” of contemporary music. The great musician is always great and he/she is always able to confront different epochs, albeit maintaining, like everybody, his/her own predilections. He/ she greatly enriches both the writing phase and the performance phase. While composing my pieces I have often reflected on the peculiarities of the artist that would play them and this has influenced my writing - for the better, obviously. I have had to seek solutions that simultaneously took account of my compositional needs and the particular abilities of the “dedicatees” of the work, with results that I would not otherwise have achieved. Your works are often performed abroad. Burning, for example, commissioned by the New European Ensemble and performed widely, or the performances in China of Rumbling Gears. Yes, it often happens that I hear my music abroad. In France, for instance, which I’ve visited a number of times lately, my melologue Orfeo was performed on tour about twenty times by the Paris Mozart Orchestra with Claire Gibault and a
great artist like Natalie Dessay, culminating in a wonderful concert at the Philharmonie in Paris; then, over the last year I have received two commissions from the festivals of Bordeaux and Toulouse. I find that it’s always enriching to be able to experience situations different from our own. Even if we are now in the era of globalisation, I continue to believe not just in a personal but also in a national identity, in which certain traditions and a certain memory always re-emerge in the composer, more or less unconsciously, and in the public too, I believe.
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