jwilzewske: Rilling, Bach, and Authorial Absence: Am Abend da es kühle war

Helmut Rilling, Carnegie Hall, 13-JAN-2007

CMT: The performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at Carnegie Hall last Saturday was crystalline in its unity. Helmuth Rilling said in an interview that it’s important to “know where the piece is dramatic and where it is meditative.” What a master of understatement!

DSM: It was wonderfully balanced, too—the choir, 77 voices strong, and the 39-member orchestra.

CMT: James Taylor, as the Evangelist, sang with the conviction of a major prophet, I think you could say—but with an exquisitely controlled tone that imparted an unexpected, ‘wisened’ quality to the role. Klaus Häger, a wonderful bass, evoked a dramatic, self-possessed, “impressario” Jesus—a striking contrast to the resigned and vulnerable qualities normally conveyed. Michael Nagy, who sang the bass arias and the role of Pilate, was similarly theatrical. This led me to think about what Bach may have intended, so different was this from the stereotypical solemn postures that are associated with the Passion.

DSM: Rilling’s comments during the workshop and during the interview were inspiring. The enthusiasm and innovation he is capable of are remarkable. He’s by nature an introspective character, clearly. That probably contributes to the affinity he has had with Bach’s works. But the practice of reflecting upon one’s own art is probably as old as composing and conducting and performing.

CMT: And nowadays the custom of reflection and self-critiquing has taken on a new significance, since we consider any musical text to be an open work with ever-expanding borders, including those heterogeneous practices that adorn and accompany the published text: titles, epigrams, dedications, notes, inscriptions, etc. The interactions between text, composer and performer and audience, the producer of the text/recording and its users, its owner and its presenter, and the reciprocal nature of “literary” experience were amply demonstrated in the St. Matthew Passion under Rilling’s baton.

DSM: There is in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion text something of the self-consciousness that we see today in composers’ epitexts and peritexts, such as interviews and prefaces and afterwords and lectures at clinics and residencies. And Bach’s writing contains hints of authorial criticism or self-doubt. Bach’s self-commentary strikes me as self-censorship or moral and poetic justification. There are also hints that seem reportorial, almost (auto-)biographical, and not at all mystical. The rhetorical texture is very different from the B minor Mass, in which Bach is “authorially absent” and the motives flow as if from a shaman in a trance, transcendant.

CMT: Musical biography typically develops in a way similar to a realistic novel—wouldn’t you say?—a coherent, unified voice claims to present the truth about a life, while omniscient narration, repeating themes and symbols, and a linear chronological presentation of events provide the audience with the illusion of totality and closure. The cause-and-effect linearity implied by the chronological plot of the Passion is a reliable way of ordering things. Bach-as-author is our trustworthy narrator who understands the relationship between the private self and the public world . . .

DSM: But there are these upheavals in the humanities in recent decades that have made scholars critical about the traditional assumptions of biography. Critics argue that the coherence of life as presented in a traditional biography is illusory—papering over the cracks, concealing the unknown, and making narrative connections that stem from the mind of the biographer rather than from the subject. Not only do lives not have the neat trajectory that the biographer typically aspires to achieve, but the personalities—“selves”—of the subjects are fragmented and shifting rather than unitary and coherent, defying any biographical aspiration to identify the “real” person. Somehow, Rilling re-interprets Bach in a way that encourages us to be creative, innovative minds along with him. This is much like the collective, ‘unitive’ state of mind that Stockhausen has spoken of, for audiences as well as composers and performers. Rilling moves us to a novel, intuitive core—revealing new dimensions of Bach’s meaning that hadn’t been apparent before, and challenging preconceptions we’ve been carrying with us. Saturday night would have been rewarding enough on the merits of the performance, but these extra surprises and assumption-jarring provocations were a welcome bonus.

CMT: When your assumptions and previous understandings have just been unhinged like that, your applause takes on a considerably different meaning than usual, doesn’t it!

A t the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if Michael, Eve and Lucifer were historical figures of the past, and I answered that they exist now—for example Lucifer in New York. In my work, I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. Lucifer uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He does not know love. After further questions about 9/11 in America, I said that such a plan appeared to be Lucifer’s greatest work of art. Of course I used the designation ‘work of art’ to mean the work of destruction personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal. … I just write music as it comes intuitively into my mind, and I expect the musicians will begin to grasp that making music is a spiritual activity. The rest is secondary because it is the technical aspect of the process. The main thing is that we create sounds so pure that they are a vessel for the cosmic forces—let’s say the cosmic force that runs through everything.”
— Karheinz Stockhausen, 1928—.

jwilzewske

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Rilling, Bach, and Authorial Absence: Am Abend da es kühle war

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