Iris ter Schiphorst
"Aus Liebe..." ("out of love...") (2014)
for the WP at Laurenz Church, Rotterdam, Doelen Quartet
On Coincdidences, Change, and Providences..
If it is true that composing consists of a chain of decisions - and thus gradual limitations and exclusions - then perhaps I am not a 'real' composer. For me, the process is almost the opposite. In the course of the work, more and more things accumulate that purport to belong to this work.
For me, starting a composition is therefore always like setting off on a long hike into unknown territory, where I only have a vague idea of the basic 'area'.
In this kind of 'being on the road', it is important to endure not having an overview or a method (from the Greek methodos: 'way through') at first..., not knowing the paths and yet trusting that something will gradually 'condense', 'emerge' at some point.
At the very beginning, as a kind of starting point for this piece, I met Hans Woudenberg, the cellist of the Doelen Quartet, my 'client'. There was a strange coincidence at our very first meeting. Hans had a book with him about church windows and stained glass that he wanted to show me. This excited me, as I have been fascinated by church windows since I was very young.
We quickly agreed that the play should somehow make reference to them. Our mutual fascination could not be a coincidence. We fantasised about possible similarities between bowing on the strings and the incidence of light on church windows... we agreed that different bowing techniques could bathe the musical material in a different light, etc. In short, we were both very interested in the piece. In short, we were both very inspired by this meeting and a first vague idea of the possibilities of the piece crystallised in me.
This idea was linked to a clear vision of a performance venue: a room with a large resonance/reverberation chamber, similar to that of a concert hall. a large echo chamber, similar to that of a church, in which the differentiated bow work of the strings would clearly 'resonate' - a room with beautiful coloured windows through which the light would shine in and illuminate the interior in different colours.
This inner image was very strong.
Around the same time, I was invited to a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle as conductor; the programme included the 'Mathäuspassion' by J. S. Bach in a production by Peter Sellers. Fascinating! - Including the aria of Mary Magdalene: 'Aus Liebe' with the grandiose prelude by the three woodwinds.
An extreme impression! The moment I heard it, I knew that this aria 'Aus Liebe' would somehow flow into my work, would in some way be able to form a link to the previous considerations, as a hinge between inside and outside, between my previous visions and my own ideas.between my previous visions and 'the world', (just as the coloured church windows represent a hinge between inside and outside), a bridge that would help me to delve deeper into the process of my composition.
I immediately began to analyse and edit the prelude and aria, creating crabs, reflections, etc., augmenting, diminishing, and so on. In other words, I applied all these procedures, all these methods that experience has shown to be able to pave a 'path', to provide an overview. But...that didn't get me anywhere at first. That wasn't it yet.
In the meantime, I had revealed my working title to Hans Woudenberg: "Aus Liebe (out of Love)" Oh dear - what a rash decision (which I regretted many a time later). Now I had to take these two words seriously as a field of reference for my work...
I continued to 'wander' and came across Webern's String Quartet, opus 28, which somehow seemed to belong to my project because of its reference to Bach.
In the meantime, however, a completely different circumstance kept interfering with my thoughts, namely that of writing for a Dutch quartet and having performances in Rotterdam and The Hague... That was something very special for me. Although I've lived in Germany for most of my life, I also have Dutch roots: my father and his whole family come from Holland, so I not only have a Dutch name, but also a Dutch passport. During this time, images from my childhood kept coming back to me, my grandparents in Wassenaar, the wide beach, but also my father's stories from his childhood and youth, first growing up in Germany and then fleeing to Holland with his mother and two siblings in 1939.
And suddenly the working title 'for love' took on a completely different undertone. I suddenly realised that I would and wanted to write the play for my father, who has been dead for several years. I would have loved to know much more about him. 'For Love' suddenly also had this undertone for me, the love for my Dutch roots, the love for my Dutch father.
Then - I was in Slovenia on business - I happened to see a report on television there about the Dutch hunger winter. The Dutch hunger winter? I had never heard of it before. I researched the term ... and suddenly the scales fell from my eyes, yes ... it must have been the winter that my father had told me stories about from time to time, which seemed extraordinary and adventurous to me as a child, for example the one about how he and his brother had dug in the ground at night for tulip bulbs, or looked for wood or anything useful ... And suddenly I saw these stories, which had seemed like an adventurous phase in my father's puberty, in a completely different light.
I was shocked by what I suddenly thought I was seeing, not the exciting adventure stories I had always thought these tales were, but something far more existential: a brutal adult story that was a matter of life and death. Why hadn't I known anything more about it until then, why hadn't I known the extent of these stories at all, why had I only remembered them as my father's anecdotes, somewhat embellished for us children, which I found exciting as a child and later unimportant... Dutch hunger winter.... .suddenly the piece darkened and I knew that this too would somehow have to be part of this project, it would also have to be included.
How was I going to manage that?
How was I supposed to translate all the condensations of all these impressions, all these experiences, all these coincidences or coincidences into signs, into music? An impossibility for which writing is too small. For which every sign is too small. Nothing but an irrevocable reduction. But without signs, the other also disappears. The process, the condensation. The space of simultaneity, the coincidences. The translation has to be achieved somehow. Signs have to be found. A sometimes unbearable compulsion. Because the signs are never 'right', are never complex enough. They mean exclusion. Or to put it another way: every sign is just a hint for everything that is not put into signs, for the unspeakable that stands behind it and yet is there. For everything that remains irrevocably hidden forever, that cannot be expressed.
All right: I had to sort, re-sort and sort out. I had to make a decision. To decide. The piece had to be finished.
I decided that this beautiful aria 'out of love' would continue to accompany me, but no longer in its real musical form; only a few echoes in the form of its cancer would remain, as a memory of an extremely strong impression that would be thrown back out of me in a transformed form into the space of the music. And a few numbers would remain: 7, for example. That's why there are 7 little solos for viola in my piece, entitled 'Das Weinen der M.M'.
And the text 'Aus Liebe' would also find its way into my work in a hidden way: transferred into Morse code, as a quasi-structural element that determines the rhythm in a certain passage.
What else? The 'darkening', i.e. the decision to tune the low C string of the cello down an octave. But also: placing the bowing at the centre here, in reference to the first conversation with Hans...
This is how the piece gradually developed into its current form... From an accumulation, from too much...
Is this 'too much', is this form of accumulation of experiences and circumstances, of coincidences and experiences random, aleatory? Is this way of working 'arbitrary'? I do not know.
It seems to me more as if my 'I' - or more precisely: my perceptual apparatus, my consciousness is like a window through which some light possibly falls into me by chance, from there it takes its course in me and only then, and probably only then, if the impression is 'strong' enough...Then it may be that something 'echoes' or 'resonates' in me. then it may be that something wants to be thrown back or out of me; why and why is possibly never really justifiable...
But even if it is random, it is still unique. My perception is unique, just like yours, just like that of every human being. Perception is the only thing that is truly individual, that which defines 'us', that which remains with us - at least until now. And even if perception is manipulated more and more, short-circuited with virtual worlds, there is still hope for a remnant that does not materialise. A remnant that is 'our own'. Showing this is perhaps also the task of art. (copyright 2014, Iris ter Schiphorst)