Mahler and the Pharaohs: Death and Immortality

He Hath Made Everything Beautiful in its time -- Ecclesiastes 3 : 11 .......................................................................................................................................... Indeed. Even if it takes days, months, years .. and now I see it can happen even in centuries! That is the essence of the book that inspired me so much to write the music I am doing now, as I mentioned briefly in several entries in this blog before. In fact, the inspiration is so powerful that I would let my work now as a "work in progress" for the rest of my life. For the time being, I just concentrate for its premiere and recording which will be just short excerpts of the whole book. .......................................................................................................................................... The book, and therefore my music, bears the title Erstwhile, A Communion of Time. The book is clear, what is not clear is my music. Is it a lyrical symphony, such as Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde"? Is it an opera? Is it a cantata? I might say, in the long run, it is an opera, but for now, let's call it a symphony. I mentioned Mahler's work since Erstwhile will also have that dubious hybrid of half song-cycle half symphony, and in fact in my case it is also an opera. And it deals with the same issues of Mahler's work: pain, loss, love, life, parting and salvation. But Erstwhile was written by Rio Haminoto, a 21st century writer who happens, like me, to be a Trekkie (Star Trek fan, if you still don't know that word) and so the story spans for 7 centuries, which doesn't differ much from Mahler's last few painful years of his life if you believe that time is just the 4th dimension of space. .......................................................................................................................................... But there is another conclusion I took from the book. You see, the whole human life and psychology is focused on two things: the fear of death as our primal terror, and the longing for immortality, a yearning to live forever. I have touched this issue briefly in my only work for piano and orchestra up till now, a 5-minute overture called Fons Juventatis, or The Fountain of Youth. I didn't write it just for fun. It was a happy piece, of course, depicting the spirit of eternal youth (besides the fact that it was written as a birthday present for my friend Erza S.T., the founder of Indonesia Opera Society), but it was also the thing I, and I'm sure we all, painfully yearn. From this yearning for forever, this hurtful sense of passing time, springs most of humanity's greatest achievements, in art, music, literature and architecture. Paradoxically, it is the very awareness that life is fleeting on the wings of time that directs human activity towards the creation of artistic products that possess the durability their creators lack, images in carved stones and marbles and later in paintings and photographs, words in literature, beauty woven in sounds, ideas captured in books and films. Most of civilization is a by-product of the quest of immortality. Mahler's 9 great symphonies and Shakespeare's dramas serve exactly the same purpose as the Pharaoh's pyramides of 5000 years ago. .......................................................................................................................................... But on the other hand, have you seen the film "Highlander" and its fantastic soundtrack by Queen, "Who wants to live forever"? The reason we fear death, as much as we yearn for immortality, is love. We fear the loss of our loved ones, there is no use being immortal if we couldn't share it with our loved ones. As the Vulcans always say, "Live long, and prosper". Just a long life is not enough. And that's the essence of "Erstwhile". Our soul, but not our body, is immortal ... just to find our loved ones. .......................................................................................................................................... Every note of Erstwhile embodies that concept, with motifs that appear "in different clothes" during the whole piece. Time is not the only issue in Erstwhile, places are also important, and so is the music that cultivated the culture of those places. Thanks to the internet, for the last two weeks I've learned and researched history more than the 3 years I learned about it in my highschool. I've therefore discovered that historical documentation of my country is pretty poor, especially the musical ones. So I had to invent many musical ideas based on my incomplete researches and pretend that they are "authentic" so to say. And yes, the composition has started, which means writing those millions of notes. .......................................................................................................................................... John Fowles, the writer of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" interestingly commented that after he'd got half way through the text, the characters started "telling him what to do", as if they wrote their own lines. Well, that's what happening with me now. As usual in big pieces, such as in my two cantatas Ars Amatoria and Libertas I planned carefully the structure before writing the first note, but then the notes themselves determined their structure. And I think I am old (and wise) enough to let them "go their own way" as we say. A good leader is not one who keeps on telling his staff what to do. His staff should know what they are doing. The composer's staff are those notes, they have a life of their own, and I just put them together. They will guide me to boldly go where I have never gone before.

My daughter's growing up, but I am not

This is the foreword to my new "Alicia's 3rd Piano Book", due to be published the end of this month January. The book contains more than 30 short pieces of mine of diverse technical difficulties. ============================================================================================================================================== Apparently my daughter Alicia Pirena isn't the only inspirer of my works in this book. In fact, she has now stopped playing the piano, and happily pursuing her other interests. Many pieces in this book serve as sketches of larger works I wrote during this period, mostly for the film "Hari Ini Pasti Menang" (Today We Shall Win) and "Air Mata Terakhir Bunda" (Mother's Last Drop of Tears), both of very different stories and atmospheres. There are also pieces written as a gift to my dear friends, such as the birthday present to Edith Widayani the brilliant young pianist, the wedding gift to my childhood friend who is now a prominent writer Laksmi Pamuntjak, a commemoration to the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Indonesian Classical Music Foundation to the 84-year-young piano pedagogue Mrs. Latifah Kodijat etc. All of them are inspired by the dedicatees, sometimes with a starting point as simple as using their name / initials as the motif. .......................................................................................................................................... One curious thing is my obsession, until now at my age, with the so-called "music box" effect. I did make my mom crazy with me repeatingly winding up the many music boxes that we had back when I was small. My favorite one was my mom's jewelry box that sounded the love theme from the film "Godfather" (which became my favorite film of my life later!) every time one opened it. My favorite activity was waking up at 5 a.m. on an alarm clock which sounded like a music box and listening to it for half an hour, half asleep winding it up numerous times, until I had to get out of bed at 5.30. Being half asleep brought that sound into territories in my brain that usually aren't readily open if I am awake. The sonic memories remain there until now, more than the other music that I have heard when I was small. And that, I think, explains the many music-box-effect in my music. Just in my pieces for this book, I could mention its existence in pieces such as We were once children, too, Mother's Love, He's Gone, ... and in Falling in Love (Alicia's 1st piano book) the whole second half of the piece is in fact imitating a music box, with its ending in need to be wound up! .............................................................................................................................................. If Alicia's 1st and 2nd Piano Book contain music only for the piano, I add a new element of joy in this book: playing with another instrument. Therefore there are pieces for piano together with a flute, an oboe (Echo's Whisper, a 4-minute piece that forms a diptych with my older piece for flute and piano based on the related mythological character, Narcissus Dying although each of them could be played separately), a double-bass (yes! It IS possible to make beautiful music with this instrument!), 3 pieces with violin and 1 piece for a trio of english horn, violin and piano (the latter 4 pieces are used in the film "Air Mata Terakhir Bunda") ............................................................................................................................................. I am grateful to the piano teachers at Marcia Music School, Surabaya, and their team leader Patrisna May Widuri for going through the pieces, determining and grading their difficulties.

New Works, New Ideas, New Friends

Today's the last day of my longest stay in Indonesia to date. It's been quite a productive stay, I must say. .................................................................................................................................. Musically speaking, I finished my music for two films. The first is Hari Ini Pasti Menang (Today We Must Win), a film about the intrigues and dark side of the world of soccer in Indonesia. I have never liked soccer in my whole life, and living the last 14 years in Spain doesn't help either. But since I read the script and learned that this film is about the "dark" world which has always attracted me, be it in sports, arts or politics, I accepted to do the music enthusiastically. The most strange element in that movie, I guess, will be the theme song which the producer also asked me to write. It was supposed to be a nationalistic pop song with a "classy(cal)" touch to be played and sung by a pop group, but when the production team heard what I wrote, they insisted that I should play the piano, together with some strings, to accompany the high rising popstar, Judika. I already told them that if I play myself, it will sound very strange, but they insisted anyway. The end result, the song "Indonesiaku" (My Indonesia) will sound like something nobody has heard before. ........................................................................................................................................... This film will inevitably provoke controversy, especially after the death of Diego Mendieta, the Paraguayian player, due to the indifference of the National Football Federation, and the rotten (dis)organization and corruption in the world of sports in Indonesia. Legendary film stars Ray Sahetapy and Mathias Muchus take major roles, together with father and son Hengky and Verdi Sulaiman, Tika Putri etc. It will be released on April 11 this year throughout Indonesia. .......................................................................................................................................... The second film is Air Mata Terakhir Bunda (Mother's Last Drop of Tears). The story is a melancholic family drama and unlike the film I mentioned before, this is not a big-budget one, but it is the location which is very special here: Sidoarjo (East Java), a place hit by the "unique" disaster, drown by mud from the inside of the earth due to the human error by the Lapindo company. Now if you google "Lapindo mud" you will get what I mean. This second film is more "me", I must say. As I have confessed to a reporter more than once, I have this strange hormone that makes me feel lonely all the time (even in the midst of a crowd), and therefore provokes a sense of melancholy. You might like to read this: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/10/26/ananda-sukarlan-%E2%80%98i-write-my-best-music-when-i-feel-horribly-lonely%E2%80%99.html . In the Indonesian language a word was invented a few years ago for this feeling: GALAU. But long before the word existed, I was already born with that hormone in my body. Every time I write music, this "atmosphere" is what naturally comes out. If my music sounds happy, funny or anything else than melancholic, it is only thanks to my compositional technique of transforming the material into different characters. So, writing for the latter film didn't give me this extra "work" except for very few spots. I use my favorite instruments to evoke the melancholic feeling, such as the english horn and violas. The film is full of shining starry names of the most beautiful actors in Indonesia right now, such as Vino G. Bastian, Marsha Timothy, Happy Salma and Rizky Hanggono, and due to be released around June. .......................................................................................................................................... Many sketches of the music for those 2 films above will be included in Alicia's Third Piano Book, which will be published the end of this month January. In fact, since I play the piano for the soundtrack, many pieces appear just as they sound on the films. .......................................................................................................................................... But I am always more excited with future projects. And my next project is a kind of Mahlerian orchestral work with singers. The theme is about --what else-- broken heart, but this is the one which has been broken for 6 centuries. So, I am trying to inject and implant medieval, renaissance up to 21st century music. It is based on the still unpublished book "Erstwhile - A Communion of Time" by Rio Haminoto who happens to have studied at the same highschool with me. The story is unbelievably touching and it directly stabbed my heart. I am sure that when it gets published it would become a best-seller. The word Erstwhile itself I find so poetic: it means something like "once upon a time in the past". I am going to invite the winners of the National Vocal Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" organized by Amadeus Performing Arts 2 years ago to sing it. It will be for full orchestra, and I have planned it to be in 10 movements or big sections, some of them are connected. It's too early to talk more about this, since it will involve some multimedia too, but I'll keep you informed !