T he 23-year-old poet [Rainer Maria Rilke] encountered a phantom self in the Cornet—Rilke’s ancestor whose life was full of wide-eyed courage, action and discovery, but cut short. Rilke’s book was written feverishly, supposedly in just one night. Perhaps Rilke, suddenly aware of his own mortality, was also already aware that—although many of us continue living into more reflective, circumspect years—in a sense all of us die young, because the innocence of our young selves cannot survive the awarenesses that are the inevitable result of prolonged engagement with a troubled world.”
— Lisa Bielawa, program notes, The Lay of the Love and Death [of Cornet Christoph Rilke].
A t daybreak a horseman is there, and then a second, then four, ten. Armored-up, most of them. Then a thousand more behind them: the Army. One must separate oneself.
‘Get home in one piece, Marquis...’
‘Mary protects you, Squire.’
But they cannot bring themselves to part yet. They are friends of a sudden, like brothers. They have more to confide in each other, for they already know so much each one of the other. They linger. Awkwardly. There’s haste and hoofbeat about them. Then the Marquis takes off his right glove. He fetches out the little rose, takes a petal from it ... takes it as one would take and break the host, the communion wafer.
‘That will safeguard you. Farewell.’
Von Langenau is taken aback. He gazes long after the Frenchman. Then he shoves the ad hoc petal into his shirtpocket. It rises and falls on the waves of his breath.
Bugle-call. He rides to join his regiment, Junker does.
He smiles sadly: a woman he does not know is protecting him.
[Einmal, am Morgen, ist ein Reiter da, und dann ein zweiter, vier, zehn. Ganz in Eisen, groß. Dann tausend dahinter: Das Heer.
Man muß sich trennen.
»Kehrt glücklich heim, Herr Marquis...«
»Die Maria schützt Euch, Herr Junker.«
Und sie können nicht voneinander. Sie sind Freunde auf einmal, Brüder. Haben einander mehr zu vertrauen; denn sie wissen schon so viel Einer vom Andern. Sie zögern. Und ist Hast und Hufschlag um sie. Da streift der Marquis den großen rechten Handschuh ab. Er holt die kleine Rose hervor, nimmt ihr ein Blatt. Als ob man eine Hostie bricht.
»Das wird Euch beschirmen. Lebt wohl.«
Der von Langenau staunt. Lange schaut er dem Franzosen nach. Dann schiebt er das fremde Blatt unter den Waffenrock. Und es treibt auf und ab auf den Wellen seines Herzens.
Hornruf. Er reitet zum Heer, der Junker.
Er lächelt traurig: ihn schützt eine fremde Frau.]”
— Rainer-Maria Rilke, De Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke
You really should try to avail yourself of the opportunity to hear composer Lisa Bielawa’s new works in upcoming performances in Boston and New York (see links below). Bielawa has written a number of acclaimed chamber music compositions. She regularly writes choral and symphonic works that are also highly regarded.
Bielawa’s conceptions of chamber music and musical intimacy are admittedly broader than most. Her scoring and novel orchestrations are wondrous. Bielawa’s nominally ‘symphonic’ works, such as ‘The Trojan Women’ (2002), entails a large orchestra performing virtuosically, but sans conductor. For the world premiere of her symphonic piece ‘The Right Weather’ (2004), orchestra members were spatially dispersed in and around Zankel Hall, at Carnegie, again performing without a conductor. As such, Bielawa’s symphonic compositions involve the emergent, multi-player intimacy that is characteristic of chamber music. The pieces just happen to involve conductorless ensembles that are the size of full orchestras, playing in halls whose ambient acoustics are larger and more reverberous than is usual for chamber music venues.
C oncert-hall venues impose social conventions upon classical music. I love orchestras. But I have a problem with the fact that it costs $65 to hear them, and somebody is waving a stick and s/he’s in charge.”
— Lisa Bielawa.
Her conductorless pieces are fascinating to listen to and, I imagine, fascinating too to perform, as a member of such a peculiarly deployed ensemble. When done this way, the sense of acoustic depth can be cavernous—far larger than when the same number of performers are under the baton of a strong conductor. The communicative gestures that one uses to stay in-sync with others—or to encourage others nearby to sync-up with you—are complex and unfamiliar. And each performer’s maneuvers to recover or accommodate rhythmic and harmonic contingencies that arise are totally different from those that are routine in small ensembles. Creatively speaking, it’s like being placed in a wilderness survival situation. So much is uncertain. The inter-personal distances and vulnerability seem so great. So much, beyond what’s written on the page of music, can happen.
You become acutely aware of the extreme fragility, the tenuousness of the social fabric that defines the cooperation of the ensemble members. There are people here who, no matter how many years you’ve collaborated with them, you don’t really know very well, and who do not, when it comes down to it, know you. Nor do [some of them] care tremendously deeply about you as an individual. These things are hidden when there is a conductor…
In other words, you become acutely aware of the feral, borg-like ‘organism’ that the ensemble really is, and it is a very different kind of organism than, say, a string quartet. It is an alternate reality; there is no ‘spoon’, not really. (Not, anyhow, if you intend to bend the thing, pitting your will as a performer/ensemble-member against the psychokinetic wills of other fellow musicians.)
Lisa’s forthcoming CD, ‘The Lay of the Love and Death’, is also a meditation on the tensions between individual and collective action; between individual destiny and collective/societal destiny. It is due to be released next May by Premiere Commission Recordings, a new record label based in New York. The Lay was written for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg and based on an epic poem by Rainer-Maria Rilke (‘Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke’), and was premièred at Alice Tully Hall in March 2006.
B ielawa’s music explores the ritual and phenomenological nature of music-making and listening, employing [emergent] instrumental forces in ways that are both dramatic and intimate in their use of time and space.”
— Premier Commission Recordings jewel-case blurb.
Lisa Bielawa’s choice of this Rilke text leverages her degree in literature and literary criticism. Rainer-Maria Rilke’s confabulation based on the death of his ancestor in battle is a dark tale—a study in the limits of human trust; the foolishness (but inevitability) of anticipation; the spontaneity (but random happenstantiality) of genuine friendships; the innateness (but immutability) of our character and personality. It is at once an affirmation of our moral duty to live thoughtfully and responsibly among other people, and at the same time an acknowledgment that the human condition is trouble, no guarantees. Create good and beauty in the face of the void because it is the right thing to do; do not do it in expectation of any reward, in this world or in any hereafter. There is emergent quality to the text, plus the timeless ‘thrownness’ of war. There is an emergent quality to Lisa’s compositional methods that lends a distinctive openness to her writing.
Bielawa is currently composer-in-residence for the
Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The present work, ‘The Trojan Women’, paints portraits of three grieving women—Hecuba, Cassandra and Andromache—who lost their husbands in the gruesome
Trojan War. The three movements differ from each other in emotional content, tempi, harmonic textures, and modes of expression. But each conveys a distinc kind of mourning. Beautifully written.
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