Lydia Jeschke in conversation with Iris ter Schiphorst and Uros Rojko
Thinking about making music
to the WP of JEDER for solo contrabass clarinet, large orchestra, video and audio accompaniments
LJ The composition EVERYONE has two authors - how did that come about?
ITS I invited Uros. I received a commission from Björn Gottstein after Theo Nabicht very much wanted me to write a double bass clarinet concerto. And I invited Uros - quite cheekily. Because I enjoy working with other composers from time to time, in the best-case scenario this results in a real bundling of forces.
LJ What does that actually look like? Do two composers sit over the same sheet of music, each with a pen and start writing somewhere?
ITS That was very special and exciting in this piece, and we complemented each other very well. The piece was based on sound and video recordings that we were able to make at the ZKM thanks to a grant from the Institute for Music and Acoustics. There we met with Theo Nabicht, Anton Kossjanenko made the sound recordings and Andreas Brehmer the video recordings. Theo improvised on our instructions and we tried to develop what seemed particularly interesting in more detail together. We also conducted a long interview with Theo there, which was also recorded. ... All these recordings formed the starting point for our composition.
LJ And then?
ITS First of all, it was a lot of work to sift through all the material, we recorded there for almost two whole days; Andreas Brehmer made many wonderful video recordings, and the interview that we then conducted with Theo was over an hour long, with many exciting topics. The question was: How could we mould all of this into a 25-minute piece? What form would we find? As a first step, we structured the interview and discussed what we actually needed from it. And then we both started working with the material independently of each other.
UR In this project, there were actually two different ways of working as a composer: There are composers who first need to know what they have to tell and why they are telling something at all before they think about how and with what to achieve this. The other way is to develop a piece of material because you find it exciting, and only when it's already been heavily worked on do you think about what you can do with it. I think I tend to favour this approach and Iris the other - and that's exactly how we complemented each other fantastically. Without stepping on each other's toes, we were able to start in parallel and independently of each other where our respective strengths lie. And then we met in the middle.
ITS The contrabass clarinet is a very special instrument. One that, in our opinion, at least at first glance, doesn't actually fit particularly well with a large orchestra, because it is a very quiet instrument with a very special sound characteristic. Accordingly, we were concerned with two central questions: How can we ensure that the contrabass clarinet really comes into its own as a solo instrument? And how do we interweave the double bass clarinet and orchestra in such a way that a common sound space is created?
Ultimately, we decided to work with spectral analysis in this piece, analyses of parts from Theo's improvisations. The young composer Otto Wanke helped us with this. We developed material from this and processed it further so that what the orchestra plays is very closely linked to the double bass clarinet, or more precisely: to Theo's double bass clarinet playing. It was an approach that we really enjoyed, so there were various tasks to solve and things to do in the course of the composition process - and little by little we developed the form that the piece now has.
UR At some point it was clear that all the material that wasn't directly related to Theo's improvisation had to be dropped. That was a bit painful (because there was already a lot of other material - ) but in the end it was quite clear. Because that was the only way we could make it compact and coherent.
LJ Theo Nabicht seems to be a third author of the whole thing in a way - is the piece also a research work on this particular instrument that he plays?
ITS We've both worked with Theo before. I once actually had a research assignment with Theo on behalf of the Berlin Senate; the result was a piece that is extremely difficult and explores the instrument to its limits. Theo later invited both of us and other composers to do further work. He simply has a great interest in discovering things that his instrument harbours, but which have perhaps not yet been explored. In this respect, Theo is not only the central figure of the piece as a soloist, but also the person who made sure that the commission for it came about in the first place.
Quite literally, everything that appears in the piece is generated from the playing of the double bass clarinet. But in processed form, of course. After all, spectral analysis is only one method of generating reasonably coherent material, but this material is initially still extremely raw and has to go through a 'proper' composition process before it can be used at all. Also, we could only use the smallest bits of Theo's improvisations - otherwise it would have been a piece that would have taken hours or days to perform.
LJ What is so special about Theo Nabicht's instrument? The few double bass clarinets that exist in the world are also very different again...
ITS It is a wooden instrument that is very rare. It was made available to him to play and research on. Because it is made of wood - most double bass clarinets are made of metal - it has a very characteristic sound, very delicate and soft. The same applies to all double bass clarinets: they have an unbelievable range of tones and many registers. Theo always says: "The instrument hasn't really been explored yet. There are always new, different blowing techniques that lead to new overtones or multiphonics and so on. The immense size alone - the instrument takes up about as much space as a standing man - means it has an infinite number of keys, and the mouthpiece is huge (you'll see this in our film). So you can imagine that a specialist like Theo can do a lot with it.
UR Or even without a mouthpiece! Key sounds and much more...
LJ In the score to EVERYONE, you can already guess how the clarinet expands into the orchestra. There's a passage in which the percussionists are supposed to imitate the key sounds of the clarinet with stuffed cowbells (!). Were you particularly fascinated by the instrument's sound possibilities?
UR Yes, yes. We tried to create a meta-contrabass clarinet in the orchestra. That is certainly utopian in the end, but we used all kinds of playing techniques to represent the contrabass clarinet in the orchestra. The idea was to create a unified sound space with coherent sounds from the solo and orchestral sections.
ITS What you find in the score also has to do with our connection to Theo. In the studio, during our recordings, we took certain things that he offered on his own initiative to the extreme. We pushed him to go a little further, following fairly precise plans. That's how a joint composition process came about - with a lot of fun; the crazier the better, we all thought.
LJ The musician probably also discovered new things?
ITS For example, there is a passage with overtones, which in itself is nothing unusual for such an instrument. However, we particularly liked the fourth position in the studio - a position that Theo says is actually the most difficult and rarest, it is totally fragile and difficult to produce. But we found the fragility particularly beautiful and used it prominently to the surprise of the soloist.
LJ Do air and breath play a special role in the piece? It begins with an "air improvisation" by the soloist.
ITS We found the air improvisations in particular to be typical of Theo in their expressiveness. As a composer, I feel a special expressiveness when I watch him do this - it's something that very much belongs to him as a musician. We then took this expressive breathing world into the orchestra, as a kind of basic expressivity, so to speak.
LJ So Theo Nabicht is someone who breathes particularly expressively?
UR The instrument certainly offers that. But Theo has it in a very differentiated way. The sounds he makes are linked to how you blow: with your mouth open, with your mouth closed, through your nose... combined with key noises and the positions of the hands. Sometimes he gradually removes the mouthpiece and blows through the mouthpiece and pipe at the same time, for example. Noise is not just noise - there are thousands of ways it can sound. We were able to work well with this, even in the orchestra.
ITS Exactly. The coupling between Theo and his instrument is the interesting thing. The result is a world that is far removed from a kind of arbitrary improvisation; there is a lot of research and knowledge behind it.
LJ Uros, you are a clarinettist yourself. Have you ever tried to play the contrabass clarinet? Is it very far removed from the "normal" clarinet?
UR (laughs) Unfortunately, I don't have such an instrument. And I haven't yet dared to ask Theo if I could play his. I'd like to give it a go one day, but I haven't dared yet. Theo used to play the bass clarinet and says himself that the contrabass clarinet is a completely different instrument.
LJ The set-up that awaits us in the concert offers us the soloist in a relatively classical way on the left in front of the orchestra, but then there are two screens on the right and at the back, which also show Theo Nabicht playing and speaking. Why this medial doubling of the soloist?
ITS The longer you work with Theo, the more you realise what a crazy combination it is: man and double bass clarinet. We were fascinated to see once again on a large scale what a physical task it is to play this instrument. With Andreas Brehmer, we had a congenial partner who, through the framing and the clear camera position without frills, put the focus on what it's all about: Theo and his instrument. Formally, there are sometimes canonical passages in which Theo plays a duet with Theo on stage in the film. And sometimes even with himself in a trio. In our opinion, the interview shows very well how he thinks about music and society, so we definitely wanted to integrate this level as well.
LJ So there is the speaking soloist, the soloist playing in the film and the soloist performing live on stage. How can the conductor coordinate this? You haven't specified a click track, i.e. a mechanically exact time structure.
ITS We deliberately avoided this, but set up the score in such a way that the interplay is possible. We wanted to maintain the tension of the live action. So the film sequences are also started live by an orchestral musician, Christoph Grund on the keyboard.
LJ The interview passages with Theo Nabicht, which are played to us via the rear screen, are about fundamental aspects of the creation of music. Do these statements consciously control the music, which perhaps responds to these considerations? Or is it more about a parallel world?
UR It's more of a parallel world, I think.
ITS For me, it's actually more like one big narrative: what Theo says and what is played belong together for me. In the end, we'll see whether this interplay works. In any case, both are closely interwoven in the creation process, the choice of lyrics and the choice of music. We cut out a lot of topics and aspects from the long interview and concentrated on very few statements. The hope is that it has become a big story about music or about how Theo thinks about music.
UR What I mean by the parallel worlds is that what Theo says has a more general meaning, it's little philosophical statements about what music is or can be in general. But what we hear is something very concrete. Nevertheless, the two are connected. I heard what Theo said umpteen times when we had to think about where to place something. It fascinated me every time: What he says and how he says it. He speaks with such warmth and love that you can't help but think: That's what's important.
LJ Is the play also an answer to the questions you asked Theo Nabicht? Questions like "Why am I doing this?" "Who hears this and how?" "What is my job as a musician?"
UR We hope that this will be expressed. We have to see if it works.
ITS The clarity with which Theo answered was astounding for us and, incidentally, also very contrary to the way music is usually discussed in Germany. Theo is someone who really lives the concept of music that he expresses. That was very touching for us as composers - and at the same time refreshing against the background of everything else that is theorised about music. We actually wanted to take the interview somewhere completely different, into the philosophical discourse on human equality and inequality. The starting point was Christoph Menke's statement that people are only equal in aesthetic terms, in the power of imagination. But then the conversation took a completely different course due to Theo's answers.
LJ But you obviously very much agree with what he says and what he's talking about. It seems to me that it has now also become a piece about making music.
UR Sure. Theo is sort of a role model for someone who makes or composes music.
ITS Absolutely. And he does it with all the seriousness and energy it requires.