If you're in the San Francisco area, head on over to the The War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue in the
Civic Center to catch the US premier of The Little
Mermaid, by Hamburg Ballet Director and Chief Choreographer John
Neumeier. The ballet features an original commissioned score by renowned composer (and BAP blogger ) Lera Auerbach.
According to the SF Ballet program notes, Neumeier’s contemporary version of The
Little Mermaid "is a haunting tale of two divergent worlds: the
serenity and simplicity of underwater life and the complex, often
flamboyant lives of humans. The mermaid heroine travels through both
worlds, enduring torment because of her committed love for a prince—but
through her own strength in the end—transcends."
The National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. asked me to write program notes for one of the Kennedy Center's "Focus on Russia" programs this season. One of the works in the program was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4.
Tchaikovsky’s 4th symphony was written between 1877 and 1878, during the most turbulent year of Tchaikovsky’s life and is closely associated with two women – one whom he married that year and the other, whom he never met in person. In the tradition of the romantic excesses of his time, his wife cast a demonic shadow over his life, while the other woman remained an angelic presence.
In late March of 1877 Antonina Miliukhova wrote Tchaikovsky a letter, confessing her love for him. She was a former student whom he did not remember meeting twelve years earlier when she was 16. Tchaikovsky’s response to her letter was similar to that of Onegin to young Tatiana in Pushkin’s famous novel-in-prose. Tchaikovsky stated clearly that the feeling could not possibly be mutual and that their life together would be a domestic nightmare. To this, Antonina requested he grant her one meeting, just one meeting before she would end her life which would be impossible and meaningless without Pyotr Ilyich.
Shortly after receiving Antonina’s first letter, Tchaikovsky started his work on the opera “Eugene Onegin”. Tatiana’s famous letter to Onegin plays a central role in Pushkin’s novel and in the opera. Clearly, both Pushkin and Tchaikovsky sympathized with Tatiana. After receiving Antonina’s first letter Tchaikovsky was shocked by the parallel to Tatiana. “It seems to me as if the power of fate has drawn to me that girl”, Tchaikovsky wrote to Nadezhda von Meck – his patron, his muse, his best friend and confidant, someone he never met face to face, but with whom he exchanged over 1000 letters and to whom Symphony No.4 is dedicated.
There was one more reason for marrying. Shortly before Antonia’s letter, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, Modest, that he had made a decision to get married soon, although he did not yet know to whom. He felt he needed to acquire the status of a married man in order to stifle the scandalous rumors about his numerous homosexual encounters. Homosexuality was considered a dishonorable crime in the Tsarist Russia and was punished by arrest and exile to Siberia. Tchaikovsky hoped that by marrying Antonina, he would appear “normal” and all talk about his homosexuality would stop.
The wedding took place on July 6th and a few weeks later Tchaikovsky ran away to his sister’s estate in Ukraine, where he composed like a madman for six weeks. After returning to Moscow to his eager and bewildered wife, he suffered a panic attack and eleven days later attempted suicide by throwing himself into the river at night. He was hoping to catch pneumonia. He did not even catch a cold.
Divorce in Russia was possible to obtain only on the grounds of infidelity. Tchaikovsky was afraid that a trial in court could potentially expose his homosexuality. Besides, Antonina did not wish to get divorced from her famous husband and for the rest of his life blackmailed him for financial support which he diligently and generously supplied on the promise that she leave him alone. What happened to this real-life Tatiana? Antonina Miliukhova gave birth to three children from unknown fathers and abandoned all three, leaving them at an orphanage, where all three died. She spent the last twenty years of her life in a psychiatric asylum where she died in 1917, eight months before the Bolshevik Revolution, from which Rachmaninov and other numerous Russian artists fled to the West.
Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatol about that turbulent time of his marriage: “There is no doubt that for some months I was insane, and only now, when I am completely recovered, have I learned to relate objectively to everything which I did during my brief insanity. That man, who in May took it into his head to marry Antonina Ivanovna, who during June wrote a whole opera as though nothing had happened, who in July married, who in September fled from his wife, who in November railed at Rome and so on – that man wasn’t I, but another Pyotr Ilyich.”
The 4th Symphony is dedicated to “my best friend” – the other woman in Tchaikovsky’s life, his supporter, patron and commissioner – Nadezhda von Meck. She believed in Tchaikovsky’s talent and made it financially possible for him to resign from teaching, enabling him to dedicate himself fully to composing. She supported him from the time he was 38 years old to age 49. We all should be forever grateful to Nadezhda von Meck – without her, Tchaikovsky’s greatest works might not have been born.
At von Meck’s request Tchaikovsky wrote an explanation, something similar to program notes about the symphony, which greatly harmed the reception of the symphony. For generations, music critics argued over his words instead of listening to his music and understanding its scope and impact.
There is a monumental, larger-than-life breadth to this symphony. It is similar to an epic, where all essential questions of human existence are brought forth and examined with a life-or-death intensity.
The 1st movement, Andante sostenuto – Moderato assai, quasi Andante – Allegro vivo lasts as long as the remaining three movements together and draws a parallel to Beethoven’s 5th symphony, forming a musical dialogue between two great symphonists. The fanfare, representing Fate, creates a memorable terrifying opening. The emotional openness and daring intensity of this music are incredible. Music and emotion are inseparable, but only a few have dared to be so vulnerably open in their art. The form of the 1st movement is not typical – it is a curious blend of a formal structure with the freedom of a tone poem. Tchaikovsky had trouble with structural canons. His thematic material doesn’t lend itself naturally to development. He was a great melodist and his melodies are so complete and emotionally full within themselves that the only natural way to develop them is to repeat in different ways. This is why there are so many repeats and sequences in Tchaikovsky’s music instead of actual developmental material, as in the Germanic tradition.
The 2nd movement, Andantino in modo di canzona, is of a reflective, melancholic nature. Tchaikovsky recreates the feeling of a Russian landscape. The material he uses is original, but inspired by Russian folklore – a technique later adopted by Igor Stravinsky. The writing for solo woodwinds is vocal, almost operatic. Tchaikovsky admired Rossini and was influenced by Rossini’s vocal writing. Tchaikovsky’s music combines elegance and power with great attention to detail.
The 3rd movement is Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato – Allegro. It resembles a painting, an arabesque, a dance of shadows. In 1877, shortly before the creation of the 4th symphony, Tchaikovsky’s first ballet “Swan Lake” premiered. Imagine the world before “Sleeping Beauty” or “Nutcracker”. Tchaikovsky, with his creation of “Swan Lake”, brought ballet music to an entirely new level. He adored dancers and greatly enjoyed writing for the ballet. Much of his music lends itself naturally to dance.
The 3rd movement of the symphony shows an unprecedented 97-note-long pizzicatti passage for the string basses and one of the world’s shortest, but most nightmarish solos of exceptional difficulty for piccolo.
Finale – Allegro con fuoco – is full of excitement and intoxication with life – a rush of energy beyond control, suggesting that life is worth living in spite of all the struggle and tragedy. This music takes virtuosity to the edge of what is possible. Tchaikovsky uses a well-known Russian folk-tune, “In the Field Stood a Birch Tree”, as one of the themes. He also re-introduces the material of the 1st movement, although its appearance seems to be a calculated (or miscalculated) dramatic device rather than an organic development.
This music of great emotional contrasts, so essential for the Romantic era, is in striking contrast to all the known portraits of Tchaikovsky, in which he always appears looking like a clerk or a banker, someone who could hardly be suspected of harboring any passion at all, not to mention suffering the great turmoil of Tchaikovsky’s life. It is as if everything that he tried to conceal from prying eyes, he turned into music, where it flourished freely and burned with painful honesty.
Tchaikovsky conducted at the opening of Carnegie Hall. Although in his younger years he suffered from terrible stage fright, later in life he enjoyed success as a conductor of his music. Tchaikovsky’s symphonies are an important chain in symphonic development. He draws a bridge between Beethoven and Mahler. He dares not to turn away from any emotion, but instead magnifies it to symbolic and epic proportions. His music is so personal that it becomes universal.
I cannot finish this essay without mentioning Tchaikovsky’s death. For many years it was attributed to cholera. During Soviet times, all the materials relating to his last days were censored and concealed. Latest findings show that Tchaikovsky died nine days after the premiere of his 6th symphony by an enforced suicide – he was sentenced so by a “Court of Honor” which consisted of Tchaikovsky’s fellow alumni from the St. Petersburg Imperial School of Jurisprudence. If he failed to succeed with suicide, his homosexuality would be exposed to the tsar and to the Russian public along with the evidence they had gathered. If indeed true, and I believe it is, this is one of the most tragic deaths in the history of Western Music and one of the greatest losses for humanity as Tchaikovsky died at the very height of his artistic power. He was 53.
I have been fascinated by the myth of Icarus. As a child, I
lived in ancient Greece. The book of myths was my favorite and the world of
jealous gods and god-like humans was more real to me than the world outside of
my windows, full of bloody red flags (the red of the Soviet flag symbolized the
blood of the heroes of the Revolution) and the Soviet-trinity portraits of
Lenin-Marx-Engels with the occasional bushy eyebrows of Brezhnev looking at me
from the walls of the buildings. In some ways the two worlds blurred. The world
outside made much more sense through the perspective of the ancient Greek
myths, where it was quite common for a power-protective god to devour all his
children.
Icarus was one of my heroes (or antiheroes, depending on the
interpretation) – the winged boy who dared to fly too close to the sun.The wings were made by his father,
Daedelus, a skilled craftsman, who earlier in his life designed the famous
labyrinth in Crete that held the Minotaur. Deadalus was held prisoner in Crete
and the wings were his only way to escape.
Deadalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun or
too close to the ocean, but what teenager listens to his father? Exhilarated by
freedom, by his own youth, by the feeling of flight, Icarus soared higher and
higher until the wax on his wings melted and he fell into the ocean. Oh,
gravity! Sometimes I think it is the law of gravity that truly defines our
existence.
What makes this myth so touching is Icarus’s impatience of
the heart, his wish to reach the unreachable, the intensity of the ecstatic
brevity of his flight and inevitability of his fall. If Icarus were to fly
safely – there would be no myth. His tragic death is beautiful. It also poses a
question – from Deadalus’s point of view – how can one distinguish success from
failure? Deadalus’ greatest invention, the wings which allowed a man to fly,
was his greatest failure as they caused the death of his son. Deadalus was
brilliant, his wings were perfect, but he was also a blind father who did not
truly understand his child. If he did, he would realize that the road to
freedom leads to its ultimate form – death, which Icarus, with the
uncompromising daring of youth, achieves. The desire for freedom, taken to its
extreme, receives its absolute form– a closed circle in which success means failure and freedom means
death.
The desire to go beyond the boundaries into the ecstatic
visionary realm of soaring flight is essentially human. In some ways this
desire to transcend the everyday-ness is whatit means to be human. That is why this myth has resonated
for centuries. Icarus knows the danger of flying too high, but the risk is
justified in his eyes. He needs to fly as high as he can, beyond what is
possible – it is his nature.
Next week, on February 18, 19 and 20, the National Symphony in Washington D.C., conducted by James Gaffiganwill perform American
premiere of my symphonic poem, titled “Requiem for Icarus”. The title was given to this work after it was
written. All my music is abstract, but by giving evocative titles I invite the
listener to feel free to imagine, to access his own memories, associations.
“Requiem for Icarus” is what came to my mind, listening to this work at that
time. Each time I hear the piece – it is different. What is important to me is
that it connects to you, the listener, in the most individual and direct way,
that this music disturbs you, moves you, soars with you, stays with you. You
don’t need to understand how or why – just allow the music to take you wherever
it takes you. It is permissible to daydream while listening or to remember your
own past. It is fine not to have any images at all, but simply experience the
sound. These program notes are a door to your imagination. The music is your
guide. But it is up to you to take the step and cross the threshold.
Some days I find it very trying to collect myself, to find all the different parts and put them together in an orderly, functional way. I spend an hour just looking for glasses, going to the shower is too much effort, and then off to search for some wearable clothes, sorting through the mystery of never-matching socks, (they really should be selling three socks as a pair), and who is ever looking at your feet anyway?
Sometimes my eyes just refuse to open, they seem to have been glued as if to say to me, “Life is a cruel violation of sleep.” I couldn’t agree more. The morning headache is simulating a hangover, except I am not hanging-over from anything – only from my own refusal to greet today, to try it again, to start it all over.
I guilt myself upwards and wander aimlessly from one room to another, trying to recall what it was that I was looking for. (Wasn’t that supposed to be the privilege of the elderly? Maybe that’s why they say some souls are born old.) And how one decides what’s the next task to do – making coffee, staring into the empty freezer, avoiding the guilty look of my dog, then thinking – why is my dog acting guilty – and sniffing the air for some missed evidence?
Sometimes the different parts of my body just don’t stay together, they fall apart. To tie the sneakers – a wasted effort – I may as well just stay inside, I may as well go back to bed, my bed: the constant that’s always welcoming.
I fall asleep. I wake up again. It’s late afternoon. Now I feel ready to collect my thoughts. Feeling suspicious of all early-risers, I am secretly envious of their routines, their inner-clocks. My own clock was broken long ago, I live in a perpetual home-made jet-lag, in a twilight time just before the nervous breakdown.
(No, I don’t need stress to fuel my writing. Yes, I could certainly use some flow of cash.)
I finally finish my coffee around the time when most people are ready to go to sleep. My day now starts. The piano is beckoning with silence. It too feels untouched and craves caresses. I pet it passingly and close its lid – too late to play now, but I hear the music swelling up from its guts.
I imagine the sounds. A gigantic treble clef unlocks my troubles, pours them onto the page. I organize them by color: pain, unbearable, this way, please, you shall fit very nicely with these howling trombones; the deepest desire I shall save for a violin – its seductive tremolo is twisting my heart; the melancholy is draped in the velvet of the cello, its darkening purple blackens my soul.
Writing for the orchestra – I am again a child, with an army of coloring pencils in hand, a forest of wild harmonies growing from my ears and eyes. And all night I am coloring paper, the desk, the walls, the dark skies beyond. My own body is covered with black, round note-heads as if plagued by death.
When the sun hits the window I’m asleep at my desk, head on my elbows, hearing in my dream all of the music that I couldn’t capture last night; music free from my ink-covered fingers, free from my unmatched socks and clumsy attitudes, free from my learned limitations, headaches and fears, free from my memories, free from the sleeper, who smiles so blissfully as I never could.
One of my findings this week, while unearthing treasures buried deep in the oceans of my ignorance, was a short poem of John Ashbery.
This Room
The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.
It is a beautiful short poem that exists on polyphonic levels and floats freely between them. The beauty is in its simplicity – the domestication of a dream. Yet the poem takes the reader to that deliciously fragile place, where “something shimmers, something is hashed up.” Some of the most defining moments, when life reveals itself as is, can only shimmer on the edge of consciousness. One can only glance at it sidelong, but never directly. You can’t stare at the sun; you can only squint through your half-closed fingers. The first line connects to René Magritte’s thought provoking painting “La trahison des images” featuring a pipe with a sign “This is not a pipe”. The words only appear to contradict the image, but are, in fact, correct: the painting itself is not a pipe.
What is reality? What is an idea of reality? Where do dreams end?
All these feet on the sofa and the oval portrait of the artist as a young man, pardon me, as a dog, (my own life as a dog has been over-stimulated by the smell of that quail) – seduce the reader to smile inwardly.
Again this child-like unpretentious simplicity where time and generations melt. (Of course that portrait had to be oval! Don’t you just see it in its slightly ornate dark-wood frame? And the greenish old wallpaper on the wall on which it hangs?)
The passive voice in the line about the quail makes it sound like the quail gave permission to be served for lunch. The combination of the past tense and passive voice is a recipe for a disaster in the hands of a lesser writer, but Ashbery, with a mischievous smile, creates magic with it.
The most striking line is the last line of the poem. Just like the poet is missing from that dream of a room (yes, the dream goes on forever in some other realm, different from the one in which he is writing the poem), so is the reader, the “you” is missing from the reality-room-space of the poet. The ghost visit of a poet in this dream of a room is parallel to the ghost visit of a reader in the space of this poem. Yet both ghosts shimmer and can somehow sense each other’s presence (or absence). Similarly, the independent voices of a fugue can intervene and briefly cross each other’s horizontal paths while making perfect sense harmonically (thus vertically).
There are similar overtones in Mark Strand’s line from “Keeping Things Whole”.
Here is Strand: “Wherever I am I am what is missing”
Ashbery: “Why am I telling you this? You are not even here.”
Maybe only that which is missing can belong fully to us and cannot be lost? Only you - who is not here - can truly hear and one is never fully alone?
So many poets have killed themselves – they could form a city or a small country of their own. Somewhere in the gray islands of Nowhere, after getting drunk on the waters of the Styx, they can’t quite remember the reasons for self-slaughter. Surely there must have been something unthinkably unbearable, but what comes to mind is the messy kitchen, the stack of unopened bills, smells of decay, the yellowing pages of an old folded newspaper with a poem printed from the time when they still loved themselves – and it was mutual.
Why was it so unbearable to wake up every day to the same face in the mirror – was it really such a torture?
No, there is nothing romantic in suicide, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, like flossing out adjectives. Life is an act of courage, death – of cowardliness, a bastardized cry for attention – you, hear me, pity me, you, you all who didn’t see this coming, vomit your guilt on your freshly-ironed shirts. My death is your punishment.
Suicide is contagious. Follow the poet – life is simply too much. God gave you free will – so use it, dammit. The easiest answer is the shortest – no. Can’t deal with it – so kill yourself. Can’t bear it up close – just exit, slamming the door, giving the bird to Divine Providence.
Death is, by far, the best PR act. Don’t cringe as if you have never thought of it. Choreographed stage-exit. Turn on all the spot-lights! Bravi, bravissimo! Only no curtain calls nor applause in this show.
Where was your guardian angel when you shot yourself, drunk on boredom and despair? What was your last thought? Tired indifference? Belated remorse? Childish hope that you wouldn’t quite die, and when you woke up – all would be changed, so you would be spared the burden?
I have stared too long into the light; black circles float in the bullet-proof air. Is it true that depression is one of the mortal sins? Is it a physical sickness? A chemical cocktail of the body? Is suicide murder? Would the church condemn me? Is it contagious? Could it spread to my family?
Writing poems is a dangerous profession. Playing with the gods has its side-effects.
Two words remain in the ruins of the vocabulary, in the last note, scribbled hurriedly, while there is still time, on the closest piece of paper, some unpaid bill perhaps, written across the page in shaky dancing letters, two words, smashed between the inked lines, not answering ‘Why?’, not answering to ‘Why now’, two words, shaky thought, footsteps to Nowhere: forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, forgive...
This New Year, I am starting a notebook in which I will write my daily findings.
These could be a phrase from a conversation or a line from a poem or various Internet findings sent to me by friends or unearthed by accident while browsing the web during my daily procrastination sessions. This
notebook is different from a writer’s notebook, since the findings are not observations
that I plan to use in my work, but simply a collection of
impressions.
Here some of the treasures from this week, which are too
good not to pass along:
(The recording you will hear is by the English Chamber Orchestra
and Mitsuko Uchida). The result is stunning and timeless – you will not be able
to forget this any time soon.
Back to Kissin and Karajan – here is the video of a very young
Kissin and a very late Karajan in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. I
thought to include this in today's blog as well:
Five years ago, I received a commission from the Royal Danish Ballet to write a full-length ballet with the legendary choreographer John Neumeier, based on Andersen’s The Little Mermaid for the opening of the new opera theater in Copenhagen during the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. While working on this score I read almost all of Andersen’s creative output as well as numerous works about him. What is the secret behind Andersen’s fairy tales, so complex, with multi-levels of possible interpretations, with ambiguity under the mask of simplicity, designed for adults although internationally labeled as literature for children?
Andersen understood human nature. In his simple, poetic and metaphorical way, he could speak about the most complex, often tragic elements that are universal. We all have hopes and dreams, some realized, some broken; we all have childhood memories that are precious. We seek beauty in whichever form it may take, we all die. We dream at night and do not know where the dreams come from or if there is a message in them or even what makes us dream. We fall in love, yet we struggle to discover what love is; we may even lose our sense of identity as being in love means to rediscover and redefine ourselves. We are afraid of death as it is unknown, and of darkness as we lose certainty, and of loneliness as we search for understanding. All of this is in Andersen's tales, which remind me of Robert Schumann's piano pieces Kinderszenen – they can be appreciated by children but are intended for adults.
The Little Mermaid's story touches upon many more subjects than just unrealized love. The story of the Little Mermaid is about a being who doesn't belong. She doesn't belong to the Ocean nor to the Earth. She doesn't belong to the world of her Prince (although she may think she does), nor to the world of her father and sisters. She doesn't even belong to the humanly conceived after-death places such as heaven or hell since she doesn't have an immortal soul. Since she is no longer a regular mermaid she can't even turn into the sea-foam as do other dying mermaids, but becomes a creature of the air instead. She is constantly searching and questioning her identity. Her love is her strength as it allows her to transform.
The Mermaid’s transformation at the end of Andersen’s tale is most striking. Neither human nor mermaid, she becomes a sister of the air at last. She is like a Phoenix – dying and burning her past yet is capable through the extraordinary strength of her essence to be born anew. Her last state is neither a reward for courage nor a punishment (although she is assigned a task of purification), yet there is a sense that she may finally find peace as she is the air and she is everywhere. Only perhaps in this purifying nonexistence can she be content. Maybe this is the answer to the ambiguity that Andersen poses with his ending of the story (which is almost always changed in the later adaptations) – it is not a conclusion, but another form of time, where time becomes timeless, space – spaceless. She is nowhere yet everywhere, and her presence is a blessing of pure breath. She loses her desires, but with the loss of desire one loses identity. Thus, she dies (neither as human nor mermaid, but as herself) and transforms into another realm where she is ABOVE her love for the prince. She no longer wants him for herself, she just is, but by simply being in this state she brings goodness and light. In a way it becomes a journey from the darkness of the ocean’s depth – to the light of the air. Yet it is not a happy ending, because the Little Mermaid that we know and love is gone forever.
Almost all of Andersen’s short stories would make perfect theater productions: ballets or operas. I especially love his Snow Queen with its strikingly beautiful images, deep wisdom and complex games with time. Andersen suggests that the human inability to grasp the concept of eternity is man's blessing. In this story a little boy, kidnapped by the snow queen, slowly loses his humanity. Yet he can't solve a riddle with the answer of "eternity" and that is what saves him, as it allows time for the little girl, who is traveling the world in search of him, to stop his heart from becoming ice-cold by melting the ice with her tears. There is a striking, almost painful purity in Andersen's writings. The boy and the girl in this story at one moment realize that they are not little children any longer, that they are grown-ups, yet they remain children in their hearts. There is a certain vulnerable fragility in his writing as if his soul is bared, and one wants to put one’s arms around him to protect this pure sensitivity. And yet his characters are incredibly courageous and strong. Courage and loyalty are important features in most of his stories.
What identifies a nation is its poets. Yet, as with any great poet, Andersen became an international figure. I have read several biographies of his life and times, including his own novel "The Fairy Tale of My Life". What is curious is that throughout his life, Andersen was composing his own biography, creating a perfect fairy-tale of his life, often rather different from its tragic and, at times, cruel reality. His real self can be glimpsed through his tales: he IS the Little Mermaid who outgrows her surroundings and is misunderstood by those around, he IS a steadfast soldier who keeps his courage and doesn't give up, he IS a poor, dreaming girl with a box of matches, capable of a wondrous imagination that lulls her into the forever blissful sleep of death, away from cold and hunger.
One of the peculiar qualities of writing theater music is that you need to find a balance between achieving what you intend to create artistically and make it work organically together with the dramatic requirements of the theater. If music becomes a servant of the dance as has happened with many 19th century ballets then there is a big problem. The other difficulty is the length. With The Little Mermaid we have three full acts, and to sustain the best quality within the span of an almost three-hour-long production, where the overall architecture needs to hold the structure together, was my highest priority and a challenge.
Neither the music nor the choreography of the ballet suggests the Danish culture of Andersen's time as this would not only be false but it would artificially cage him into a time which he has outgrown. At the same time, it was very important for me, in order to understand Andersen, to gather as much information about Danish culture and his life as I could. John Neumeier and I even studied the score written for one of the Andersen plays called "Agnete og Havmanden" (Agnete und der Meermann) with the music of Neils Gade, which was staged (to complete fiasco) shortly before Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid.
In Andersen’s tale, Little Mermaid has a most beautiful voice. Of course in the ballet, I could not use a real singer. In the orchestration, I was searching for an instrument that could represent the voice of the Mermaid and would be close to a human voice, yet also have an other-worldliness, a transcendental haunting quality. I found the timbre I was searching for in the sound of the theremin, the very first electronic instrument, created in the 1920’s by Leo Theremin. The instrument is incredibly expressive - think of a mixture between cello and flute to have an idea of its sound. Also, there is something very mysterious in this instrument, as it is played by moving hands in the air, no strings attached, no keyboards. The instrument itself is an electromagnetic field, created by its antenna. There is something magical about creating the sounds from emptiness. The instrument also is an outsider of the standard orchestra just like Little Mermaid is an outsider of her surroundings, and to represent a creature who becomes a spirit of air the theremin seemed most appropriate. For Mermaid’s human nature I have chosen a solo violin. Thus, there is a duality between violin and theremin, representing the dual nature of this chimera. The ballet’s orchestration is for the full symphony orchestra and is highly multilayered, presenting different levels, similar to the ocean’s complex co-existence of different worlds.
The ballet “Little Mermaid’ will receive its American premiere by the San Francisco Ballet on March 20th, 2010. The last performance of the San Francisco Ballet on March 28th will mark the 70th performance of this ballet world-wide since its premiere at the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen in 2005.
Last night I dreamt of the film Crooked Mirror. “This film is by Kurosawa,” my nanny said, “you should watch it.” My nanny, in real life, most likely never saw any film, let alone a Kurosawa. She believed the cinema was the Antichrist’s creation, either that or the Bolsheviks must have invented it. She said (back to the dream) she liked how the film’s simple black-and-whiteness made her feel nostalgic for the times she was alive.
My nanny has been dead for 20 years now. As she lay dying, I was playing the piano in the next room preparing for an upcoming exam. I did not know she was dying. She was ill for a long time and the last few days were a mere nightmare. She didn’t recognize me and kept on screaming, screaming and screaming senseless words. I didn’t know she was really dying. Death seemed convincing in the books I was reading, but not in life, even though I had all the evidence of what was coming. I was fourteen and should have known better.
I chose the piece she always liked to hear – Chopin’s Mazurka in a-minor – her favorite. She always asked me to play it several times. Sometimes she quietly cried while listening. Chopin was Polish, so was she and proud of it - even though she could never visit Poland. As I was playing the mazurka I felt her touch my shoulder. At that moment I suddenly knew – she had just died.
“Don’t stop, keep on playing...” I heard her say gently. Her presence lingered next to my cheek, as if caressing. And then – she was gone.
I did not feel sadness. I kept playing, thinking of her and feeling a strange blissful peacefulness I had never felt before. I finished the mazurka. I went to her room. My father was sitting beside her bed. He had returned that day from a trip. He hadn’t known how ill she had become while he was gone. I was alone with my nanny during her last days. I was at that age when one is doubting everything.Yet, that moment in that musical turn, I knew for certain what had just happened. It was her goodbye. It was her blessing. It was beautiful and it did indeed happen.
My father saw me approaching the room. “Wait” he said; his face showed panic. He was not ready for this. “Don’t worry, I know she just died”, I answered. He looked at me, lost, his face distorted. I glimpsed into the room, but already knew: Marianna, my nanny, was no longer there. It was only her body, emptied, disfigured by her illness and age. I knew I was supposed to feel the sorrow. I was expected to cry, but strangely all I was feeling then was this peaceful gladness, a release of some weight, and comfort from knowledge: I knew she was peaceful, I knew she was fine. I knew she was free.
(The guardian of my childhood - keep watching over me...)
Last night I dreamt of her and of the film Crooked Mirror, which she advised me to watch.This morning I searched the Web and its counties – everywhere I could – there was never such a film made by Kurosawa nor by anyone else. What was she trying to tell me? What’s in that mirror? Why is it important? And why did I awake with my face wet from tears (she’s been gone for so many years), and could not stop crying for some time, even though I could not comprehend why I was crying, now, 20 years later, while the a-minor Mazurka keeps on repeating and repeating and repeating like a broken LP somewhere between my skull and my eyebrows? I will never be able to play it again in concert.
(Are you sure you are still watching over me?)
_____
Brain-teaser [Day 4] Answer: It's secret is to say what you see on each line and what you see becomes the next line. For full answer see below.
Line 1 is (1) Line 2 is "One one" (1 1) Line 3 is "Two ones" (2 1)
Line 4 then becomes "One two, and one one" (1 2 1 1)
Line 5 therefore is "One one, one two and two ones" (1 1 1 2 2 1)
Line 6 is "Three ones, two twos and one one" (3 1 2 2 1 1)
Line 7 is "One three, one one, two twos and two ones" (1 3 1 1 2 2 1 1)
Brain-teaser [Day 5] : What logic was used to develop this list of words?
Today was the first time I saw my New York apartment after the fire.
Black walls, windows covered by wood, no electricity... not a typical
sight for an Upper West Side high-rise. Everything that was in the
apartment has been removed, all the furniture thrown away, some of the
books and manuscripts went to the restoration company in the hope
that what can be restored will be saved. The Steinway D Concert Grand,
burned beyond repair, had to be carried by 12 men 10 floors down to its
forever grave.
It is the second time in my life when I lost everything I have owned.
The first time was voluntary, when I spontaneously decided not to go
back to Russia, then USSR, at the age of 17, but to stay in New York
instead, thus becoming one of the last artists and certainly one of the
youngest to defect from the Soviet Union during a concert tour. The
second time is now.
How ephemeral is all that we think of as solid! How life keeps on
reminding to let go of material attachments. It also reinstates that
one can’t lose one’s true possessions, mainly the memories. Photographs
and diaries can be burned, but not memories. We are alive as long as we
remember: our memories are what makes each one of us unique. Our
memories are our only true heritage. In
Greek mythology, if one drinks from Lethe, the river of oblivion, one
loses one’s identity. Thus memories are what identify us as humans.
The poison of memory is as sweet as the irrecoverableness
of loss. Poison is the best medicine. Medicine for insanity. For
unthinking. For the insanity of the unthinking that encircles us.
Encirclement (in the military sense). Encirclement – the jaws of a
trap.
Medicine is a cloying syrup. Not flight from, but finding
yourself in the labyrinths of memory. The work of an archeologist is to
see palaces in the rubble and to reconstruct the past on the basis of
paltry fragments, to make it the property of the present. To be such a
person at the very least must be exacting and complicated. It couldn’t
be otherwise. That is, of course, one could let the past be forgotten
and let the moss of non-existence grow. But that would spell poverty
and barbarism.
The poet’s path is to hear the strings of the primordial melody amidst the ruins.
In the beginning was the word. Music is speech. Speech that hasn’t yet named itself, unrealized and therefore not yet lost.
In
the beginning was music. The world was created with it. On the
sacrament of loss, a sacrament, for while we loose we do not deplete;
by losing we make whole and acquire. The world was born on the
sacrament of the primordial melody of losses. And there was loss before
birth. For birth is a loss. And the infinite tenderness of this loss,
this loss that gives, this giving loss, this abundant loss; it is
tenderness, the tenderness of a return is precisely the harmony of
power which holds the world together.
Our losses are the only thing we possess completely. Memory is the
river of losses, lost moments, days, years, that have forever sunk into
the all-embracing Past.
the
apartment has been removed, all the furniture thrown away, some of the
books and manuscripts went to the restoration company in the hope
that what can be restored will be saved. The Steinway D Concert Grand,
burned beyond repair, had to be carried by 12 men 10 floors down to its
forever grave.
