2. Sans.
7. 2 texts: Imagination Dead Imagination, Ping; 3 Late Poems (without music)
1. Rough for Radio no.1.
(Info & download coming soon)
2. SANS, a short text by Samuel Beckett
45 minutes. For ensemble. Recorded by Eglantine de Boissieu.
My realisation of Sans was recorded at St. Mery church by the ONCE orchestra in Paris on September 23, 2017.
Here is how I described performing the piece to the musicians:
I have chosen a short text by Samuel Beckett, Sans (in the original French), because I think Beckett’s intellectual and moral toughness will serve us well.
The text should be read with a quiet intensity, and with clarity – no dramatisation.
In this first part the text is primary and the music is not secondary. The text itself is not the sole source of meaning.
After each paragraph there will be a pause before the next paragraph ; the longer the paragraph the longer the following pause, but not too long. The continuity should be maintained.
In performance: after a player has completed her paragraph she will begin to play her instrument and will continue playing until the complete text has been ‘performed’, playing continually, but with breaks. So towards the end of the text there will be a lot of accompanying music. Please make sure, by playing softly, or not at all, that the text is clearly audible.
Re the music, I should like the text to be the determining factor. I would prefer the musician not to strive to ‘express’ the text, rather to respond to it, to ruminate on it: thoughtful, reflective, accompanimental, questioning, It is self-sustaining and private, of a ‘quiet intensity’.
The text, both French and English (‘Lessness’) versions, consists of 24 Paragraphs; a total of 120 sentences. Each sentence occurs twice, once in each half (there are 60 different sentences), e.g. the very first sentence is repeated in Paragraph 21.
The text itself promotes a sharing experience by virtue of the fact that each paragraph shares words and phrases with other paragraphs. You will have noticed that Beckett chooses each word, each phrase, with the utmost care and precision; I would like us to adopt the same approach with our choice of tones. The repetition of words and phrases enhances the cohesive nature of the text.
To this end I propose that each musician play only sustained individual tones of varying duration (short to long, but mainly long). The overall dynamic is ppp – mp. Occasionally, a loud tone may disturb the peace, but only if you can find such an indulgence in the text that can justify it.
When the last paragraph is read, the music will continue for around 3-5 minutes, and then silence.
End of part 1.
Part 2 begins with a ‘scrambled’ version of the recorded text: a collage of various juxtapositions and superimpositions. Musicians listen for a while and then join in. This is the nearest the music approaches to ‘free improvisation’. An elaboration of what you played in the first half, but avoid extended forte; loud sounds should be occasional or not at all. Try to bear in mind that you are all playing from the same ‘score’. Just as the individual paragraphs in Beckett’s text relate to each other and share each other’s material (the same words and phrases), try to reflect this in the way you relate to each other in this section; i.e. sharing the same material.
When the text collage finishes this is also your signal gradually to phase out your playing; a kind of disintegration, each dropping out a piacere, according to individual taste. A brief silence of a minute or two will ensue.
Do not feel obliged, in either section, to play continuously. Sometimes remain silent and listen.
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3. STIRRINGS STILL
40 minutes. Performed by John Tilbury, piano. Recorded in November 2016 by Mariano Nunez West.
This setting is dedicated to the memory of Tom Phillips.
Beckett was not happy about his prose texts being delivered publicly, although he granted permission, not without reservations, to one or two of his favourite interpreters. I do not belong to the latter category – nor did I ever meet Beckett. But I am encouraged by the fact that in general he liked musicians and enjoyed their company.
As a pianist, I feel more at home behind a keyboard than a lectern. The music is not meant to be invasive but when I ‘perform’ Stirrings Still and Worstward Ho I respond to the text as a musician and in a sense my attitude towards the piano, towards the musical tone, towards the sound of the piano, is reflected in the way I read Beckett’s text. I hope. My ‘accompaniment’ is really a soundtrack. I am a pianist, so the piano is featured. I am comfortable with it – no, not comfortable, I am familiar with the instrument. To the question, what are you? I answer, I am a musician.
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4. WHAT IS THE WORD 1
7 minutes
Beckett had a life-long obsession with language as an inadequate tool for description of the phenomenal world, and for the thought processes in the human mind. Yet as a writer he has only one means to bring his quest for ultimate silence to completion: words. His relationship with words is of necessity a love–hate relationship, for he is well aware that his attempt to escape from them will necessarily end in failure.
“What Is the Word”, written shortly before his death – and the last text published in his lifetime – is Beckett’s final admission of a failure to explore beyond what words may express. In this text he describes the futility of attempts to make sense of things that evade observation and experience. “It is folly”, says the poem, “seeing all this this here, for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there”
what—
what is the word—
what is the word
In my realisation the huge organ cluster at the beginning represents “all this”; the subsequent deconstruction and disintegration of the chord reflects the process of the poem as it is being read.
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5. WORSTWARD HO
90 minutes. Performed by John Tilbury, piano, with pre-recorded voice. May 16, 2016. Recorded by Aleks Kolkowski
Music for Worstward Ho is based on, and inspired by, Samuel Beckett’s novella of the same name. Even by Beckett’s own standards Worstward Ho is a remarkable text – a deconstruction, no less, of the grammar and syntax of the English language with an extreme economy of words, many of which are monosyllabic. Any notion of excess, of indulgence, is cut away. The work is compact and highly concentrated.
The text consists of 96 clearly demarcated phrases, each phrase consisting of between 1 and 150 words. I have made my own structural division of the whole into 11 sections (A-K)
A particular section will feature particular words, such as ‘bones’, ‘mind’, ‘child’, ‘ooze’, ‘place’. This is mirrored in the music where a section will include certain musical phrases, harmonic progressions, kinds of articulation, etc. (This also explains the stop-go nature of the musical composition) Moreover, a particular word may be assigned a musical image which represents it throughout the work – a kind of leit-motif. Some words/musical phrases do not appear until near the end of the work, serving as an unexpected and refreshing element.
The music also contains a number of quotations: from Feldman, Cardew, an English hymnal, and a Threne heard by Watt (from Beckett’s early novel Watt) ‘in ditch on way from station’.
The ‘theme’ of Worstward Ho is the will, and the resistance, to existence. It is prior homo erectus: “It stands. What? Yes. Say it stands. Had to up in the end and stand. Say bones. No bones but say bones. Say ground. No ground but say ground. So as to say pain. No mind and pain? Say yes that the bones may pain till no choice but stand. Somehow up and stand.” We note that every word except one is monosyllabic.
An old man, in more or less modern attire, and a child, represent humanity. Their movement through time and space is represented by the word ‘plod’ – a laborious, slow, but determined walk. What is real is the pain, the failure, and the desire to “Fail again. Fail better.
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6. 3 LATE POEMS by SAMUEL BECKETT: Tailpiece, Brief Dream, Go where never before.
6 mins. John Tilbury, voice and piano. Recorded at Goldsmiths Collegesometime in the late nineties by Sebastian Lexer.
Tailpiece
who may tell the tale
of the old man?
weigh absence in a scale?
mete want with a span?
the sum assess
of the world’s woes?
nothingness
in words enclose?
Brief Dream
go end there
one fine day
where never till then
till as much as to say
no matter where
no matter when
Go where never before
Go where never before
No sooner there than there always
No matter where never before
No sooner there than there always
For James Knowlson
The music is inspired by three poems by Samuel Beckett. It does not provide a setting. The music and the poems simply occupy the same temporal space. It is hoped that in some way they are mutually enhancing. The audience is invited to read silently or aloud (but not loud) while the music is being played on the piano. The repeated theme in Tailpiece is quoted at the end of Beckett’s novel, Watt, with the inscription: ‘Threne heard by Watt in ditch on way from station.’
The recording was made, I think, at Goldsmith’s College, probably during the nineties, but I’m not sure.
The order of the recorded poems with music is Tailpiece, Brief Dream, Go where never before.
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7. 2 TEXTS: IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINATION, PING
8 mins. John Tilbury, voice only. Recorded at Goldsmiths College sometime in the late nineties by Sebastian Lexer.
These two texts, together with the three late poems (without the music), were recorded at Goldsmith’s College, at the same session as the Three Late Poems. (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 only – the rest are repeats))
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8. MUSIC FOR SAMUEL BECKETT
30 minutes.
Music for Samuel Beckett was recorded at the LMC Festival, 2005 with John Tilbury piano and Sebastian Lexer electronics. It is an improvisation based on the music I had composed for Cascando.
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9. KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (Video)
48 mins. John Tilbury, voice only.. No music. A film by Jayne Parker, made in 2009.
I performed Krapp‘s Last Tape in the Drama Department of Goldsmiths College sometime during the nineties, I think.
Jayne Parker filmed the performance.
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10 …BUT THE CLOUDS…
15 mins. Performed by John Tilbury and Christina Jones. Speech only. A film by Jayne Parker.
Beckett’s play for television, …but the cloud… was first televised on BBC2 on 17 April 1977.
Beckett’s notations for the filming, which Jayne Parker follows to the letter, are profuse and precise: there are sixty camera shots and just two televisual techniques throughout – fade and dissolve. Her film was made in London.
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