The "Sensitive" Space of Musical Dramaturgy
Under the Direction of Héloïse Demoz, Giordano Ferrariet and Alejandro Reyna
Sept. 2018
ISBN : 978-2-343-15164-9 / EAN : 9782343151649
During the 19th century, opera composers began to realize that theatre could be conceived as an expressive space, one that could be integrated into musical writing in order to convey meaning. In the 20th century, this idea evolved further, enriched by encounters with avant-garde theatrical experiments, and contributed to transforming the very concept of the musical theatre stage—which increasingly became a multimedia space. The notion of a “sensitive” space thus opens up an original perspective for exploring the processes leading to today’s forms of musical theatre.
Pierre Jodlowski: DAY 54 - A Space for Perception – A Space for Interpretation
The radio opera Jour 54 constitutes a complex and matrix-like universe based on Georges Perec’s last unfinished novel. The peculiarity of this novel lies in the fact that only a part of it was written out, the rest consisting of notebooks and notes that the author left at his death and which were subsequently published. The libretto of the opera relies primarily on these notebooks and is therefore not based on a linear or narrative progression but rather on an arrangement, a recomposition of fragments. The unity of the piece ultimately rests more on an investigation into writing processes and their stakes than on a plot derived from the text; indeed, Perec’s notes are above all a testimony to his writing method and even his most intimate universe, where the use of constraints and principles intertwines with family history and, in particular here, echoes of the war (Perec lost his parents during the Second World War, his mother having been deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp).
The musical and sound treatment is thus constructed around this investigation, with words becoming rhythmic matrices, sensitive references around which the sound universe assembles. Here, one can certainly speak of a “sensitive” sound space or even a “semantic” sound space insofar as it defines emotional and referential fields allowing the material to articulate with the text.
One of the reference axes is constituted by the memory of the war. The novel’s plot takes place in an imaginary city under a state of emergency. The war metaphor quickly becomes heavy in the opening pages of the written part of the novel. In the notebooks, one detects how Perec creates links between his own story (as well as real historical facts) and the narrative framework, employing different methods of encryption, hidden echoes, and clues as if, on one hand, it were impossible to escape one’s own past and, on the other, this underlying war constituted a more general threat. In the radio opera, numerous sound elements transcribe this element. For example, at the end of the second part, one can hear a “Morse code” sound expressing the notion of coding, while simultaneously creating an off-screen effect, a sort of visual frame. This sound, like Perec’s references, has a dual usage: while capable of generating a sensitive space, it also carries its own structure, particularly rhythmic, which, by being repeated (through looping processes), eventually loses its referential character.
This strategy is implemented quite often in the project, where some sounds may initially be perceived as merely “evocative” but, through mixing and layering with other elements (text and music), become more abstract and regain a purely musical function. In the passage titled “The Disappearance,” while the text has become very strange (a simple list of seemingly unrelated things — though they actually have many connections —), the music stabilizes around two elements: a rhythmic and melodic synthetic texture and, occasionally, “rocket-like” sounds that violently interrupt the discourse. These sounds, once again, are not univocal in perception; while they trivially express the dangerous passage of a missile, they are not hyper-realistic. They are also synthetic sounds, and their intrinsic nature casts doubt: are they really missiles? And if so, might these missiles be futuristic devices rather than bombs from the Second World War? Ultimately, one grows accustomed in this passage to the recurrence of these sounds, which ultimately function as punctuation of the text, a way to energize it. These sounds, once more, progressively lose their evocative power in favor of a musical function, thus creating a dynamic perceptual process for the listener that renews itself.
Another field of investigation concerning space involves the treatment of recorded voices. Here, one can distinguish three types of spatial qualities for voices: a neutral space (voice recording reproduced without processing, simply with the proximity typical of radio speech), a space using filtering and various effects, and a space based on 5.1 surround recordings that restitute both the subject and their environment.
In the case of filtering and additional processing, one idea is to create a mise en abyme of the radio reference. Since this project was intended for radio broadcast, amplifying the “historically radio” character through filters generates the perception of a space within space. These voices take us back to an era of radio broadcasting, again to the past, the possible era of radio communications during the war. Moreover, these filtered voices also amplify the radiophonic phenomenon, projecting it into another temporal reality of their own space. The frequency confinement caused by this type of filtering also restricts the physical space, confining it to a minimal zone. In one part of the opera, the voice is so filtered that it becomes disembodied, leaving us facing the remnants of a distant and lost radiophonic space…
Finally, the use of 5.1 recordings for certain vocal sequences defines a rich work of spatial confrontation. Thanks to this kind of recording, the listener can be directly immersed in the space where the voice originates. This relates to a theatrical dynamic proper to multichannel sound writing, which does not merely produce, for example, dynamic spatial trajectories but, as here, restitutes a physical frame that can substitute for the visual. An illustration of this technique can be heard in the first interlude, where the actor Michael Lonsdale’s voice is captured in this way. When this voice appears, the emergence of spatial reality creates a strong contrast with the previous sequence (where the voice is recorded in close proximity and heavily compressed). Suddenly, a door opens onto a place, which could be Perec’s room where his notebooks were found. This immersion creates strong tension in the continuity of the work; one can even speak here of a succession of different spaces that form the basis of the project’s dramatic tension.
Finally, the work on the notion of sensitive space operates in the musical writing and the layering of very heterogeneous materials articulated through very precise mixing. In particular, the work on orchestral materials (also recorded in 5.1) approaches notions such as relief, distance (emotional or physical), reduction, or openness (both metaphorically and concretely). Orchestral sequences are rarely revealed alone or over long durations. On the contrary, the insert technique is widely used here. Coexisting with other materials rhythmically or harmonically, these orchestral elements are conceived as appearances that open or modify the overall mix density, changing its spatial depth. Furthermore, the orchestral writing does not focus on elaborate textures or materials. The orchestral suite composed for the project remains fairly classical in nature and “sounds” like what it is. Here, we obviously enter the realm of referentiality as well, and this orchestra, which attempts here and there to assert itself, ultimately blends entirely into the musical discourse in a mixing of materials that would be improbable outside a totally radiophonic situation like this one. In this fiction that is not really fiction (we quickly realize the texts take us far beyond a story), the instrumental materials gradually lose their function to merely evoke their spatial reality and the historical frames that define them.
Ultimately, the music composed here on these scraps of texts, sketches, notes, lists, and accumulations of numbers is nothing other than a constant juxtaposition of spaces, of sound places inhabited by ghosts, populated by ancient voices where the question of meaning gradually dissolves. We can only cling here to a few remaining frameworks, sometimes with humor, conscious of the dramas playing out outside — outside, yesterday and today — as much as inside the writer: the artist’s constantly disturbed inner world.
