Jenseits der Schatten
(Beyond the Shadow)
Multimedia opera
Scenary: Vladimir Tarnopolski after Plato and Pliny
Texts: Dante, Leonardo, Nietzsche. The compilation and additional fragments by Ralph Günther Mohnnau

The impulses for the creating of this scenario came from two ancient sources — the «Cave Allegory» by Plato and the story about the Origin of Painting from Shadow by Plinius the Elder. Both these stories are based on different interpretations of the phenomenon of Shadow. For Plato the shadow is a sign of the Eidos (the idée) and for Plinius the shadow is a prototype of the Painting. In my scenario I unite these two ideas and develop them in theirs interconnection in another form. Contrary to Plato in the scenario just the Art unbind the prisoner from the cave. And contrary to Plinius the shadow is something much more significant than only an optic phenomenon. The Shadow in the opera comes out of collision between Light and Dark.

The composition of the opera is based on parallel development of two blocks. The first block represents the Allegories of Arts. It is visualized by 3 sopranos and the female-dancer. The second block represents the Prisoners in the cave. It is vizualized by male trio and the male dancer. Only one of the Prisoners — the Dancer — finds the way to the Light at the end of the opera.

The fragments from the texts by Dante («Divine Comedy», male trio), Leonardo («The Disput of the Arts», female trio), Nietzsche («Jenseits von Gut und Bose») are used in the opera. The compilation of the texts as well as several additional fragments were set up by Ralph Günther Mohnnau.

МАЯТНИК ФУКО
для камерного оркестра (2004)


МАЯТНИК ФУКО написан в 2004 г. по заказу голландского Шенберг-ансамбля. Его премьера прошла в том же году в Concertgebouw под управлением Райнберта де Леу.

Я попытался построить свою пьесу на основе сопоставления двух различных типов музыки: музыки-дыхания и музыки-механизма и, соответственно, двух типов времени — континуального и механически дискретного. Для меня было особенно интересно исследовать звуковые процессы зарождения и становления каждого типа музыки, а также проследить этапы перетекания одного в другое. Меня увлекла также идея постепенной модуляции тембровых биений звука в ритмические структуры, трансформации краски в ритм.

Маятникообразное развитие музыкального материала пьесы (повторения с постепенными изменениями «траектории» движения), а также некоторые другие конструктивные принципы сочинения заставили меня вспомнить о знаменитом маятнике, построенном Жаком Фуко в 1851 г. для наглядной демонстрации факта вращения Земли. В названии пьесы есть также аллюзия на известный роман-мистификацию Умберто Эко «Маятник Фуко».

Владимир Тарнопольский

Feux follets for orchestra (2003)

Feux follets is a virtuoso concert etude for orchestra. Its name and its genre are inspired by Liszt's famous work, and has been conceived as one of four parts of a Concerto for Orchestra dedicated to the four elements: fire, air, water and earth. The idea of this piece arose while I was reading Gaston Bachelard's celebrated series of books which explore the deep links between the artist's creative imagination and the natural elements.

Fire is the most mysterious and incomprehensible phenomen, devoid of any substance of its own, yet fashioning all other material into new forms. The playful way in which it is transfigured, the unpredictable and impetuous movement with which it spreads, and the spontaneity with which it flares up is precisely what I have tried to find in the material of sound.

Vladimir Tarnopolski

ПРАВДИВАЯ ИСТОРИЯ О ЗОЛУШКЕ
Музыкальная сказка для взрослых в сопровождении детей. Для чтецов, детского хора, детского оркестра (любого состава) и камерного ансамбля на тексты Роальда Даля (2003)

Роальд Даль (1916-1990) — классик современной английской литературы, один из самых популярных детских писателей в англоязычных странах. Его Золушка — веселый и ироничный ремейк известной сказки, где все персонажи и основные сюжетные мотивы модернизированы и переосмыслены в гротесковом ключе с элементами эксцентрики и черного юмора. Это:
    – весьма меркантильная Золушка, которая предлагает Фее развернутый шопинг-лист на аксессуары, необходимые для того, чтобы охмурить на балу Принца;
    – несколько разочарованная в людях и своем профессиональном ремесле Фея;
    – необычный диско-бал во дворце, где звучат танго и рок-данс;
    – подмена коварными мужеподобными сестрами Золушкиной туфельки на грубый дурнопахнущий башмак;
    – странноватый и несколько психопатичный Принц-байкер, который гоняет на мотоциклах и кадилаках, увлекается рэпом и хип-хопом и казнит надоедливых злых сестер;
    – нетривиальный выбор Золушки, которая предпочитает агрессивному Принцу веселого Кондитера, варящего вкусный джем.

Одна из главных задач сочинения — через активное музицирование вовлечение детей в процесс создания веселого и динамичного представления. «Правдивая история о Золушке» предполагает разные версии реализации — от концертного исполнения до полноценного театрального спектакля и допускает различные варианты исполнительского состава — от минимального (в норвежской постановке участвовало около 50 человек включая хор) до максимального (в Барбикан-холле в Лондоне принимало участие 250 человек). В основе детского оркестра — струнные и по желанию любые духовые инструменты (flexiband). Профессиональный ансамбль ограничивается 16 инструменталистами.

CHEVENGUR for soprano and ensemble (2001)

By breaking grammatical rules and conventions with his idiosyncratic use of language, Andrey Platonov breaks the illusory reason and order of the world. His novel Chevengur is an anti-utopia in which the very real and cataclysmic collapse of Russia in the 1920s appears as an eternally existential state of being — naked man is shown on a naked earth, lost in the great emptiness of the scorched south-eastern steppe. In this endless space, consonants vibrate and explode as concrete sounds surrounding the world (as in the words "vzbugrenya" — "hillocking", "moshchnie" — powerful, "pochva" — soil). From these tones arises typical sounds of Russian accordion, as well as the miracle of industry — the steam engine (which for Platonov is like a living creature) and also the echoes of a doleful army song, like those sung on all of Russia's battlefronts, from the Civil War to Chechnya, whose very name was mystically "foretold" by Chevengur: "My comrade-in-arms,/march ahead and sing a song,/it's long been time for us to meet death — /after all, it's shameful to live and sad to die."


TEXT:

Day after day a man walked on into the depth of the south-eastern steppe of the Soviet Union. Space was a space of depth, not of thickness, and there were such powerful hillockings of soil everywhere that the world seemed dreary and stifling.
With peace it had become quiet again in the provinces and there were fewer people: some had died in the fighting, many were being treated for their wounds, forgetting the heavy work of the war in long sleep, while some were still making their way home, walking over thick unfamiliar grass which there had not been time to see before, or maybe it had just been trampled down and had not been growing then. They walked with faint, astonished hearts, recognising again the fields and villages along their path. Their souls had changed in the torment of war and they were on their way to live as if for the first time, dimly remembering themselves.
(tr. R. &E. Chandler and A. Livingstone, from "The River Potudan", published in Andrey Platonov, THE RETURN, Harvill, 1999)

Ride on, comrade, and sing a song;
Sing, comrade, and ride ahead. Our turn to die came long ago —
It's shame to live, it's sad being dead.

Comrade, comrade, don't lose heart!
Our mothers said life lay ahead —
But my mother told me: "First
Make sure your enemy's nice and dead
And then lie down on top…"

(tr. R. & E. Chandler, unpublished)

Wenn die Zeit uber die Ufer tritt
(When Time Overflows its Margins)
Opera in three scenes
Text: Ralf Günther Mohnnau after Anton Chekhov (2003)

My opera "When Time Overflows…" was written in 1999 as a commission for the the festival of contemporary music theater – Münchener Biennale. The opera is based on separate situations and motives of the well-known Chekhov pieces – "Three Sisters", "Seagull", "Uncle Vanya" and others. However, the libretto does not simply follow these pieces but creates a certain new METATEXT, like a commentary on Chekov. At the same time, the impulse for the development is not the plot, which would be typical for a so-called literary opera, but a principle of confrontation of the same party situation in the three scenes of the opera. In the first scene the action happens in a Russian province during the time of Chekhov (at the turn of the XX century); the second scene takes place in our times, in a certain cultural center at the turn of the millennium; and in the third one we find ourselves in an indefinite future, in a certain virtual space.

According to the three different times (past– present – future) and three different mentalities (a Russian province – a world capital – an "above-the-planetness"), the topics of the talks change: from love (1st scene) — to art (2^nd scene), and, finally— to death (3^rd scene). For all the external contrasts of the entourage it turns out that the existential problems of man appear to be the same in all times, namely — the impossibility of communication and of mutual understanding, the persistence of loneliness and the absence of a sense of meaning in life. These problems can never be solved, but are redoubled during the course of the development of our civilization.

This immutability is reflected in a particular aspect of the construction of the opera in which the three scenes represent three free variations with a recurring structure. At the beginning of each scene there is the same text.

"Today is Sunday" – an episode of the three sisters, who nostalgically dream about something. Then two male characters appear and introduce the major theme of the scene: love, art or death. Finally, after the ostinato culminations, two more characters – a bass and a counter-tenor – switch the "lofty" talks in a slightly parodic-grotesque context. Each scene finishes with an episode of the "clock", inexorably counting time, and the title cue of the opera "When Time Overflows its Margins". With this construction, I wanted to communicate one of the central existential ideas of Chekhov – that people do not change; only objects change. Such a construction, which is based on a principle of three, connects with a special understanding of a temporal phenomenon. Time is not a vector here (there is practically no action in the opera), but a kind of annual ring, each of which is a variant of a previous one.

Along with immutability, there also functions an opposite principle of progressive deconstruction in the opera, applying to the quality of sound texture.

Thus, as the opera progresses, the instruments more and more often use different "non-classical," "estranging" devices of sound producing: multiphony with the winds, half-sounds with the strings and many others. In the most obvious way this deconstruction is shown in the evolution of the only leitmotiv of the opera - the motive of time. Emerging from sudden rustles, it gains a bell-like character in the first scene, and then it loses its determinacy more and more, dissolving in glissandos and turning to gnashings and clusters. No less radically, the principle of deconstruction is shown in the evolution of the vocal line: if a complicated cantilena prevails in the first scene, then in the second one Sprechstimme, singing of consonants, and the fragmentation of the text play more important role.

Finally, in the third scene, the words themselves deconstruct into their separate sounds, which are distributed between the characters. A type of vocal line in some episodes is written graphically: a vibrato turns to a choking tone and other non-classical kinds of singing.

All the three scenes contain many quaint details from Chekhov's epoch, all of which are present and "active", though often also by detached and unexpected means, transgressing their classical functions: the usual shot-gun, well-known from Checkhov's stories, actually shoots here and even twice, the piano turns out to be a mechanical one, the clock with chimes, the striking of which marks the division between the scenes, suddenly indicates in a loud volume the real time in the real performance.

The individual descriptions of the characters, which still can be guessed in the first scene, are also under deconstruction later on: the characters gradually lose even their names (in the second scene they are marked only with the first letters of their names, and in the third one— with neutral numbers). The absence of true characters leads to the impossibility of including any solo arias in the structure of the opera; that's why the composition is the opera-ensemble. The principle of ensemble became a clue for me in my work: three sisters sing all together, they represent a certain triple-unity. In addition, number 3 is another important organizing moment of the opera. The three sisters are accompanied by the solo string trio. Three themes (love-art-death) determine the content of three scenes, which embody three times and three places. In the three culminations, Latin words sound three times when the characters scan the key words in each of the scenes.

That is, the idea of Latin I drew from fleeting details form Chekov's Masha (Three Sisters) who in anger at her husband conjugated the Latin verb 'to love' — amo. From this seed I tried to grow a tree determining the sense and construction of the entire opera. This example illustrates well my approach to Chekov's text. I am absolutely not attempting to approach the so-called "genuine", but in any case I don't think that this is possible in opera. On the contrary, I completely refuse the naive idea of setting to music the text of Chekov. I am convinced that the modalities and languages of art are non-translatable from one to another, and even the simplest dramatization of any play on the theatrical stage forces the director to qualitatively rethink and restructure all of the material. When we speak about an opera, howerer the composer is simply obliged to find a completely new code, a new construction and a new style to the material. In this way, the most important problem for me appeared to be the fusion of various types of stylistic elements, but not in the banal polystylisticism a la Schnittke which brings together in only essence the sum of stylisation and citation, but in depth, at the level of 'sound-genetics'. I have tried to find some kind of metastyle in the sonoric magma which one way or another would wash away any potential certainty by means of sonoric waves of harmony-timbre-noise. For myself. I characterise this as a new euphony (a new harmony) in which is counterposed consonance and dissonance, sound and noise, harmony and timbre, acoustic and electronic instruments. In the opera, I often returned to the scarcely perceptible stylistic allusions which change their contours like a chameleon. I "recalled" in music frozen moments of Glinka, cards of Tchaikovsky, chimes of Mussorgsky, endless cantilenas of Rachmaninov, and the shrill anguish of Lady Macbeth, although of course, the listener of these allusions will not be aware of this. In the first scene, I even cited a phrase of Liebestraum of Liszt, and at the culmination of the opera used elements of rap and minimalism. By way of development these idioms aquired a palpable critical accent and in the end destroyed themselves under the weight of their own characteristics. However I tried to articulate this whole stylistic spectrum not on the level of a superficial comparison but through a root system sprouting through the sound fabric.

Today, at the threshold of the 21st Century, there are no "good" and "bad" media. All depends on how the employed means address the given individual conceptions of a given concrete composition; on how interesting is the given individual idea. So with this opera, I tried, not breaking from the principle precepts of the opera genre to find more freedom in the creation of new ideas.

In the last scene, the librettist includes the death address to humankind communicated by the members of the suicidal religious sect "Temple of the Sun", who poisoned themselves en masse. This unexpected, and perhaps shocking idea in the context of Chekov, seems to be in my view a very organic one for the opera: the text of the address has deep and unexpected, almost literal deep parallels with some of the maxims of Chekhov's characters. It encloses the ring of the opera's plot and marks the "timeless" archetypical nature of the age-old problem of our short existence, as discovered by the genius of Chekhov.

Le vent des mots qu'il n'a pas dits
for cello and orchestra (1996)

The title of the piece refers to the fragment from Stephane Mallarme's Funeral Toast:

Vaste gouffre apporte l'amas de la brume
Par I'irascible vent des mots qu'il n'a pas dits

The piece is dedicated to the memory of the untimely deceased eminent violinist Oleg Kagan. This dedication is indicated in the piece by the specific selection of instruments, among which there are no violins. The solo instrument is cello — as a sign of common mourning with the widow, cellist Natalia Gutman. I tried to create here self-expanding textures and the self-developing form in which there are no caesuras between sections and in which no instrument plays a dominant role; in which only sounds are created and die away, forming one wave of the music.

Commissioned by the "Warsaw Autumn"

Landschalt nach der Schlacht
für ensemble und bass
nach Lekture der Duineser Elegien von R.M.Rilke (1995)

Das poetische Bild des Titels greift ein Motiv in der Kunst der letzten Zeit auf: die Idee des Nachworts, des Postscriptums. Indem das Werk Tarnopolskis die Reihe von Werken ahnlichen Charakters (ort-setzt, bildet es zugleich einen Ruckblick auf diese Idee: die Landschaft einer verwusteten, verlassenen Welt wird durch Rilkes poetische Bilder in ein erhabenes Panorama des Weltgeschehens verwandelt. Rilkes Duineser Elegien stellen eine Reaktion des Dichters auf die Ereignisse des Ersten Weltkriegs dar. Ihre schreckliche, monumentale und zugleich zitternd verschwommene, aus winzigen Details gewobene Welt gibt bizarre Kriegserfahrungen wieder. Ein uberwaltigendes Bild der Kosmogonie mit tragischen Kollissionen und Kataklismen des Seins entsteht. Der grosse Weltrhythmus erscheint im standigen Werden und Untergehen. Diese widerspruchlich-zerrissene Einheitlichkeit der Welt birgt den Begriff des Schonen in sich.

Die Idee des Ubergangs der Schonheit in ihren Gegensatz bildet den Hauptinhalt des Werkes von Tarnopolski, was in erster Linie durch klangfarblich-instrumentale Mittel wiedergegeben wird. Aufgrund einer detailliert durchgearbeiteten Skala der Tonschwebungen werden naturliche Klangfarben verfremdet, originale Tone mutiert und klangfarbliche Ubergange erreicht. Das Werk ist dem Ensemble Modern gewidmet.



Rainer Maria Rilke
«Duineser Elegien»
(1912-1922)

aus: «Die erste Elegie»

Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? /.../
ich verginge von seinem
starkeren Dasein. Denn das Schone ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundem es so, weil es gelassen verschmaht uns zu zerstoren. /…/

aus: «Die dritte Elegie»

Eines ist, die Geliebte zu singen. Ein anderes, wehe,
jenen verborgenen schuldigen Fluß-Gott des Bluts.
/…/
O des Blutes Neptun, o sein furchtbarer Dreizack.
O der dunkele Wind seiner Brust aus gewundener Muschel.
/…/

The Breath of the Exhausted Time
for large orchestra (1994/99)

For me breath is one of the most important primary images of music. Breath is the first sign of life as well as its final gesture.
In "The Breath of the Exhausted Time", relying on an endless wave-like rhythm of ascentions and declines, I tried to cross the boundary of the possibilities of a purely syntactical understanding of form and the idea of the breath became for me an alternative to Riemann's "tectonically-building" principles. At the basis of this composition lie not only structurally built musical material, but also the unceasingly forming sound matter itself. The appearance and evaporation of sounds, their merging into one another and condensation determine the flow of the form. In this piece I perceived musical time as "slow time". I perceived it to be a sounding metaphor of a gigantic Solaris (according to Stanislav Lemm and Andrei Tarkovsky).

Vladimir Tarnopolski

CASSANDRA
for large ensemble (1991)

The piece was written in 1991 on the commission of Ensemble Modern. The idea of the obstinate prophecy of Cassandra is realized in the piece by means of constant returning to the same brightly expressive chord complex. On this basis is built a set of episodic-variations, imperceptibly "flowed" from one to another. With that, different forms of sound materials — from vague, indistinct "rustles", from quasi-electronic, quasi-muzzy multiphonics — to hard polychordal constructions of homophonic type, — are built as the stages of one unbroken process. The main principle of material development is a kind of "incantation": its repetitions with gradual accumulation of little changes, which lead to formation of new textural-harmonic variants. This pulsation of the phases of merging and stratification of the sound-materials determine the rhythm and plastics of the whole form.

EINDRUCK-AUSDRUCK
Impression-Expression
(1989/96)

Материалом сочинения являются 12 разнородных элементов, представляющих собой звуковые проекции абстрактных элементов живописи Василия Кандинского — точки, линии, зигзаги, цветовые пятна и т.д., символизирующие своего рода «музыкальный зодиак». В процессе развития элементы начинают взаимодействовать друг с другом, то образуя, подобно калейдоскопу, различные узоры, то рассредоточиваясь в музыкальном пространстве, то концентрируясь в плотные звуковые сгустки. Появление каждого из них, поначалу регулируемое лишь вероятностными закономерностями, постепенно включается в строгую синтаксическую структуру. Некоторые элементы остаются неизменными на протяжении всего сочинения, другие подвергаются интенсивному развитию, окрашивая пьесу в драматические тона.

«В процессе работы самым главным для меня было вслушивание в спонтанные всплески бессознательного, обращение к чистой, еще „не отрефлектированной” экспрессии, фиксирование своего рода „музыкальной психограммы”. Спонтанные аморфные звуковые „протуберанцы”, достигая критической массы, сами образуют музыкально-синтаксические структуры, в соответствии с заданными параметрами. Так, равнопредставленность всех элементов в среднем разделе пьесы приводит к центробежной квазихаотической структуре, напоминающей в чем-то классические разработки; постепенное спиралеобразное развертывание элементов в начале пьесы отражает процесс становления объемного звукового пространства (первые два элемента — это самый высокий и самый низкий звуки фортепиано), которое постоянно требует появления все новых и новых элементов. Наконец, принципиальное отсутствие одного из главных звуковых элементов в последнем разделе пьесы создает эффект ожидания и усиливает центростремительное движение. Именно на основе этого отсутствовавшего элемента и строится кода сочинения».

ECHOES OF THE PASSING DAYS
for clarinet, cello and piano (1990)

The trio Echoes Of the Passing Day takes the form of a kind of musical equivalent of the Proustian-Joycean 'stream of consciousness'. A free stream of sound associations, themselves set in motion by the actual title of the work, is called upon to bring out not the directly linear logical connections between elements but rather their remote subconsciously associative connections. The style of the composition seems like the product of an 'after-culture', when such radically different phenomena as quotations from Beethoven and instrumental theatre are naturally able to exist side by side in a single context.

The work is dedicated to Elizabeth Wilson and interwoven within it are two emblems of her name: Beethoven Fur Elise and the American popular song Elizabeth. The process of musical development also takes in archetypal symbols of national differences (for the Germans the march-like 'rechts-links'; for the Russians the exasperated question 'Shto delat'?' — "What is to be done?' — …Chemyshesky …Lenin… Perestroika…).

The closing quotation of a line from Ulysses draws everything that has gone before as it were into the context of a Joycean novel.

BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Cantata for soprano, tenor and orchestra (or large ensemble) on the text by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1988)

The song cycle Brooklynsky Bridge for soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble, sets the texts by the great Russian poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930). The premiere took place in London on June 4, 1989, at an Almeida Festival concert, with the Bolshoi Theater Soloists Ensemble.

The idea of a bridge connecting two distant countries and cultures finds an original expression in this work, in the meshing of various aspects of Russian, Soviet and American life into a musically and poetically bilingual composition. At its root is the brilliant text by Mayakovsky, who wrote several poems about his visit to the United States in 1925 as well as the study, My Discovery of America.

1. Brooklynsky Bridge, the distinctive, festive opening movement, links and interweaves musical motives from both Russian and American national anthems.
2. Prohibition is a scene in an American bar in the 1920's and ironically evokes the Russian prohibition movement during Gorbachev's time.
3. The Hooting of Horns instead of the Ringing of Bells is an instrumental movement in which the contrasting everyday sounds of American and Russian landscapes of the 1920's are heard.
4. American Russians presents a dialogue characteristic of America's busy streets. The mixture of two languages into a distinctive Russian-Jewish-American slang is heard in the heterogeneous musical quotations and styles.

PSALMUS POENITENTIALIS
Concerto for choir, violin solo, organ and percussion (1986)

The elevated repentance as the epitome of Catholicism is embodied in Tarnopolsky's Choral Concerto with solo violin, Psalmus poenitentialis (Psalm of Repentance) set to the text of Psalm 31 (in Latin). The composer offers a fresh interpretation of the old-time genre, drawing on the canonical type of responsorio. Canons are extended onto different levels: from separate elements of musical texture to the entire form. The following three principal layers are identified in this psalm: the first one pertains to the recurrences in its movements (each next movement repeats the material from the previous one); the second layer involves the responsive development in two extended movements of the form (the first movement recurs as a response in the second movement), and the third, minor, layer presents the canons and imitations of the musical material as it were, based on the psalmody-like vocabulary.

In this case the pitch centred at the note E-flat serves as an element of culturological symbolism. Vladimir Tarnopolsky views it as a special symbol of St. Trinity (three flats).

This psalm was performed in London and Oxford in 1990 by the "Schola Cantorum of Oxford" Choir.