A literary festival which is not only literary

It's been quite an inspiring half a week! The 2nd ASEAN Literary Festival was held in Jakarta, visited by literary figures from 20 countries. I am honoured to be invited to give a half-an-hour concert for the opening, which also include some poetry reading by Indonesian prominent poet Khrisna Pabichara and a speech by Dr. Ma Thida, a writer and human rights activist from Myanmar who spent many years in prison for "endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature." .............................................................................................................................................. The program director of this highly inspiring festival is Okky Madasari, the awardwinning writer famous for her novels about (the lack of) human rights. She designed this year's festival as a tribute to Sitor Situmorang, Indonesia's great poet who died less than 100 days ago. Since Sitor is one of my favorite poets, I have written a few songs based on his poems, but then I wrote a new one, (and a looong one by the way!) based on his masterpiece, La Ronde. It is one of the most erotic poems ever done in Indonesia literature, and written so subtly and exquisitely. It was in fact written for tenor and harp, since I felt that the harp represents more the sound that was triggered by the poem in my head, but unfortunately the young harpist partner of the tenor (Nikodemus Lukas, who sang so beautifully) had some examinations at those dates. Yeah, Jessica Sudarta the harpist is only 16, and her school makes her too busy. So I adapted the harp part for the piano and played it myself accompanying Niko. But they will record that work this year, so I am very much looking forward to it. Niko and I then perform my older songs based on poems by Sitor, and apparently many members of the audience made video recordings of them (yeah, it's so easy to do it nowadays!) and even uploaded them on youtube. This is one of them : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZBQs9YVaa0 .............................................................................................................................................. What made me happy about this is that at last the relationship between (classical) music and literature in Indonesia is now re-established. Since the death of composers such as Mochtar Embut and F.X. Sutopo (who wrote songs based on poems by W.S. Rendra etc) in the 1970s and 80s, these two artistic fields didn't meet anymore. I continued the tradition without even being aware that it was cut, since I live in Europe, where composers keep on composing based on existing poems or other literary forms since the 19th century (as you know, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann were the pioneers in doing this). You might ask, what do we, composers, contribute to those poems that are already so highly expressive? Well, music enhances words with emotional energy that speech alone cannot convey. But obviously, there is more to it than this! We in Indonesia have a beautiful term for this art: Tembang Puitik (Poetic Song, which differentiates it from other songs whose texts are written by the songwriter himself). Therefore it strives to be the perfect combination of music and literature, based on four elements: poet, composer, singer and accompanist. The composer uses the full resources of the art form to embellish the poet's text, sometimes even realizing potential interpretations that were not explicit in the poet's words. In a well-realized Poetic Song, the composer creates a duet between the accompanist and the vocalist, so an accompanist's job is not merely "accompanying" with nice rhythms and chords. That is, the poetic song paints for us a picture of what the poet might have envisioned. The performance of an poetic song literally breathes life into this picture through a complementary, coordinated partnership among the four significant elements. .............................................................................................................................................. Now I have written around 120 songs based on Indonesian poems, and another 60 or 70 on poems of Whitman, Browning and other foreign writers. In fact, I started to write those Indonesian songs in 2006 after having written many songs in English and Spanish, and now I feel really comfortable in composing on poems of my mother tongue. And I met new literary friends in this great festival, and I discovered the works by young writers such as Adimas Immanuel and Bernard Batubara so I am looking forward to write something based on their works. I also met long-time-no-see great poets Hasan Aspahani and Joko Pinurbo. .............................................................................................................................................. My latest poetic songs are included in my CD "An Essay on Love", sung by Widhawan Aryo Praditha, Theodora Amabel Beatrice and Niko as well. If you are interested in it, please tweet me at @anandasukarlan .

My 3rd day in home detention

So this is how it feels, staying completely at home, mostly lying down for 3 days. I even haven't gone out to my garden (these 2 last days were raining anyway). Honestly I feel rather .. ehm .. gloomy for not being able to do many things I want due to my broken left foot, but looking back to these 3 days I do feel that I have done many things which, in normal circumstances, I would be too indifferent to do.

I revised my emails & facebook messages of the last few months, answered many of them (I admit I am not a good responder of emails, sorry for many of the unanswered ones in the past!), and thrown away lots of rubbish in my inbox as well as archives in my laptop. Anyway, thank you SO much for those many nice messages of best wishes from you all, friends. It means a lot to me that you are there for me not only in health but also in sickness. I also listened to lots of music yet unknown to me; I found great music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Gustav Holst (both have been my favorites anyway) and even discovering the music of Victor Ullmann who died young in the Nazi concentration camp. But the one thing I am most grateful for is the Google Art Project; thanks to this accident I have the luxury of hours & hours of visiting so many galleries in my bed without having any guilty feeling! Isn't it ironic now that I can't walk, I can explore more museums than ever? There are just so much great music created on this planet that I haven't got to know, even only through listening once, and so many paintings I haven't seen even only through their photos on Google Art Project.

Nevertheless, the most important thing is that I looked through many of my old musical works, most of them small pieces, and finished and revised some of them. And this morning I talked with Chendra my manager to publish the 3rd volume of my vocal works. Without this accident, this wouldn't happen soon, since many (at least 7) of those songs were abandoned & unfinished. I also find some short chamber works, such as a string trio, a trio for flute, viola & harp which I originally wanted to write for a friend who had a trio and performed Debussy's Trio and others with this formation. I was stuck that time and decided to abandon it.
This was also triggered by the intention of Patrisna Widuri, the initiator and founder of the National Voice Competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" who wants to organize the competition's second edition next year. After compiling all my vocal works, I found 33 of them ready to be published. These include 4 songs on poems of Hasan Aspahani, 7 on Nanang Suryadi, 2 more of Sitor Situmorang and individual songs on those of Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sitok Srengenge, Abang Edwin, Sirikit Syah and the English ones by Browning, Whitman, Longfellow and even a Spanish one: retweeting @jlmejia , on short poems (and tweets) by Peruvian poet Jose Luis Mejia, etc. No duets will be in this book, and it will also highlight my preference to lower voices: baritone, bass and alto.

I have sent the file of those 33 songs to Chendra, and since he is a very fast-worker, I am sure that he will process its publishing soon, so I guess "Ananda Sukarlan's Vocal Works, Volume 3" will be released sometime in about 1 month time.

The sound of .... music?

These last few days am putting finishing touches to my work Stanza Suara for big choir, orchestra and angklung which I mentioned here in March. It's only about 8 minutes long, but it took much more time than usual for me to write, due to many things : my unfamiliarity with the angklung instruments and how to write for them and integrate it into my own language (it will be played by amateur players which always complicate the situation), my travellings and my musical intentions which also complicate my own life. The poem by Hasan Aspahani is a wonderful one but strangely enough it didn't immediately "sound" in my head --which turned out to be a good thing, since this long process matured the music in my head. This angklung business isn't easy stuff either, since it will be part of its presentation to the UNESCO (the UNESCO director is planned to come to its premiere in Bandung during the ITB International Choir Festival who commissioned the piece) to establish it as the Indonesian National Heritage. So I should show the world that it's not just children's toy, it's a musical instrument as serious as a french horn!

I want to emulate the evolution of sound since its creation throughout this 8-minute piece. It was too big an idea, I know ... and in fact I am toying the idea to extend the piece in the future, since there are lots of underdeveloped materials in the piece, although the underlying foundation is simple : from unpitched noise, through the most basic intervals (fifths, thirds to the most "recent" interval of tritone) reaches the triumphal tonality in the end. Basically the interval of perfect fifths appear as the motif throughout the piece. Inevitably the piece goes through a lot of styles, from the baroque polyphony up to ....ehm, Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams type of epic film music and even a touch of Shakira sexy rhythms. All those are served on one tray of "Western" orchestration mixed with bamboo instruments, my usual chords and dotted rhtyhms and even constructed with the fractal geometry principals in mind (by changing the word "space" into "time", and "size" into "duration") so hopefully one can find a unity of musical language throughout the whole piece. I mean, Palestrina, Schumann, John Williams and Javanese gamelan players all exploited the interval of fifths and major/minor thirds, right? Same intervals but different usage and different perceptions by different people & culture. That's the point I wanna say in the piece.
Anyway, I do learn a lot from writing Stanza Suara. One of them is that this is the first time I write music (I mean a structurally complex one, not a 3 minute song or piano piece) really from beginning to end! However, I couldn't break the habit of writing backwards during finishing the orchestration of the piece, so I sent it to the players (ITB Choir) starting from the last section. And for your information, I still read all books (especially fiction stories) jumping to the end after the first pages. And then finish the rest of it, obviously. Oh well, old habits never die. I wonder what psychologists would say about this.

As usual, I work on 2 pieces at the same time, so these days I am also working on my opera Pro Patria to be premiered around the same time of Stanza Suara (and coincidentally both have repeated letters for their initials!). Am gonna write about my opera in my next entry. When Stanza Suara is completely finished (hopefully in a few days), I'll need another piece to write together with my opera, and almost certainly it will be a new Rapsodia Nusantara.Part of it is already written. Its ending, of course, is already complete.

What makes music music ? (A break from composing "Stanza Suara")

That question can be easily answered usually on the first day of your theory class at a music conservatory, but perhaps it's not so clear for the laymen. So, I'll tell you now what we were taught : music is called music because it consists of these 5 elements : pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony and the instrument by which it is produced (which can be applied to human voice as well). Nowadays it is certain (through lots of researches) that music is something that belongs exclusively to human beings : animals, given any regular rhythms, cannot syncronize. And you don't call the singing of the birds or the whales "music", first because they cannot "make music together": synchronize the rhythm or melody of its companion or its human trainer, and second for the reason that I will tell you in the next paragraph. In any case, their "music" is a lower level communication, just like human beings using sign languages or words (yes, words are lower level communication! It is music that is the higher level, since music, as Victor Hugo had said, expresses those that cannot be expressed by words.)
"Good" music (this definition of "good" certainly differs in every humans) acts on the brain in increasing serotonin levels to produce endorphine hormones which gives you the feeling of pleasure. How it works is still a mystery, since music is something intangible. A tangible element that causes the same effect but through chemical process is chocolate. Yes, chocolate. Perhaps that explains those Mozart chocolates from Austria ... you listen to M's music or eat chocolate would make you feel like entering heaven he he ... And perhaps it also explains why Hitler so desperately needs Wagner's music : it must have given him a good feeling after killing all those Jews! So, now you understand why whales and birds don't make music, although you do feel peaceful when you listen to them, but it doesn't trigger your endorphine stuff inside you.
But is it true that music has to consist of those 5 elements above? I think our conservatory professors missed some points. For example, what about African drummings, which only consist of rhythms and instruments, no melodies let alone harmonies? And what about those Sundanese flutists from West Java and also Bali when they are improvising endless melodies without any clear rhythms? So as you can see, music can consist of only a few elements from those 5 mentioned. And this is the point that I wanna make when I am making my music "Stanza Suara", on poems of Hasan Aspahani for the opening of the ITB International Choir Festival next July that I wrote about here last month. I wanna start my music with only sounds, as stated in his poem. No music, just sounds. The problem is, once two singers or two instruments play together, they make a harmony. Once they play two notes consecutively, they make a melody (yes, 2 notes can make a good melody! Just listen to the opening of Beethoven's 5th!). So, how do you make any of those 5 elements inexistent in a piece of "music" ?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in my music. Now you just have to reconsider calling it music.

A beautiful mistake

Time and again, I am inspired by Hasan Aspahani's poem. But this time it's not what he wrote, but what he didn't write. To be precise, what I considered a mistake. A beautiful mistake, that is.

The poem starts with this phrase : "Pada mulanya ialah bunyi .." (In the beginning it was sound). Now ...really ? Yeah perhaps, but in the very beginning ... there was ...silence, right ? Now, how do you compose silence, without copying John Cage's 4'33" ? The answer, my friend, is blowing in Hasan Aspahani's poem. It is a mistake, but it poignantly rectifies itself. And it is the rectification which is so inspiring to me.

So, I have officially started my work on his poem, "Stanza Suara". This poem and my work on it are commissioned (for the third time for me) by the ITB Choir for the festive opening of their big International Choir Festival in Bandung next July (I know, I know, time is running out). Now, the words "festive" and also "monumental" (which they use to describe my yet inexisting piece) are very dangerous to me. My second cantata, LIBERTAS was supposed to be like that too, and see what came out of it ! Slow and brooding loooong melodies. Dead bodies, bones, loss, lamentation everywhere ...
For now, I just paste you Hasan Aspahani's breathtaking poem here. No more comments about it until I finish my music, with God's will. And with the travellings of this and next month, it will be quite some time ...

Stanza Suara

PADA mulanya ialah bunyi
kita memandang pada pecah
cahaya, terang yang seketika
terentang di semesta suara

Pada mulanya ialah bunyi
kita mendengar lagu jiwa
mempercaya pada pesona suara
menyebut diri, mengucap dunia

*

Sunyi melirih, O, sunyi bersih
menepi tangis sampai ke sepi
Sunyi menyisih O sunyi letih

Sunyi merintih, O, sunyi pedih
membawa mimpi sampai ke sepi
sunyi menyerpih, O, Sunyi perih

*

Pada mulanya ialah bunyi
di bumi raga, di angkasa sukma
kita meninggi pada harmoni
terbang di sayap-sayap suara

Para mulanya ialah bunyi
kita mengada karena suara
kita mendunia karena suara
kita mengangkasa karena suara

*

Dengar kata mendengar kita
menyimak bunyi bisik bumi

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
semesta kata, harmoni kita

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
sukma kata, jiwa suara kita

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
Mengepak tinggi sayap suara

Conversation with the poet of "Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu"

Sorry that this is only in Indonesian. Commemorating the 5th anniversary of the tsunami disaster in Sumatra (26 Dec 2004), I paste this article here. This article is important for my personal artistic reasons as well. It has been published in many newspapers in Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sumatra, and it's a conversation between me and the poet of "Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu", Hasan Aspahani. Here it is:

* Ananda Sukarlan Gubah Sajak Hasan Aspahani

Tajam, Pedih, dan Menggerakkan

Bagaimana dan apa jadinya jika sebuah sajak digubah menjadi sebuah komposisi musik klasik, dan dipadukan pula dengan sebuah tarian? Inilah yang akan terjadi pada tanggal 3 Januari 2010 nanti di Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM).

Ananda Sukarlan akan tampil dalam konser bertajuk Jakarta New Year Concert. Ia akan membawakan komposisi yang ia gubah dari sajak Hasan Aspahani "Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu". Chendra Panatan, koreografer bereputasi internasional, akan menghiasi konser itu dengan tafsir lain atas sajak itu lewat gerak tari.

"Bukan hanya judul sajak itu yang begitu menyentuh. Seluruh isi sajak itu tajam, pedih dan menggerakkan!" kata Ananda Sukarlan.

Kompisi "Bibirku" terdiri dari dua sesi: pertama, trio untuk piano, alto flute dan biola. Dan bagian kedua, untuk soprano dan piano. Masing-masing bisa dimainkan terpisah. Chenra tampil di bagian pertama.

"Kami tak menyebut tariannya sebagai balet. Karena memang bukan balet. Pokoknya, para penari tampil menyuguhkan gerakan yang kompleks dengan ratusan meter kain properti, yang dengan spektakuler mengesankan gerakan ombak. Ananda Sukarlan bermain dengan dukungan Inez Raharjo pada biola, Elizabeth Ashford pada alto flute, dan Aning Katamsi - penyanyi soprano.

Berikut ini petikan wawancara Hasan Aspahani (HAH) di Batam dengan Ananda Sukarlan (AS) yang menetap di Spanyol, ihwal kerjasama kreatif mereka tersebut.

HAH: Kenapa ya Anda tertarik dengan sajak itu? Saya ingat saya kirimi Anda buku "Orgasmaya.." Ada sajak "Bibirku... " di buku itu. Itukah pertama kali Anda membaca sajak tersebut?

AS: Wah, saya lupa dimana pertama kali baca-nya. Mungkin di buku itu, mungkin dari blog sejuta puisi. Yang saya ingat adalah "kortsleting" yang terjadi di badan saya saat saya membacanya. Kadang-kadang kortsleting itu hanya sebentar terus hilang, tapi dalam kasus "BBDB" itu "setruman"-nya cukup lama, bahkan saat saya sedang utak-atik untuk bikin musik, masih saja terasa.

HAH: Kelihatannya susah ya menafsirkan isi sajak itu ke komposisi musik. Apa saja tantangannya?

AS: Yang susah bukan menafsirkannya. Menafsirkannya itu gampang, bahkan saya bisa bilang bahwa proses ini otomatis, karena ada beberapa puisi yg "bunyi" begitu saya baca (puisi-puisi lain adalah seperti "Dalam Sakit"nya SDD, "The young dead soldiers"nya Archibald MacLeish dll). Ini tidak ada hubungannya dgn panjangnya puisi ataupun struktur dll ... ada puisi yang "bunyi" di dalam diri saya, ada yang tidak.

Yang sulit adalah saat menerjemahkan detail-detail bunyi yang saya dengar. Itu berhubungan dengan teknik komposisinya, bukan penafsiran atau inspirasinya.

Ada bunyi-bunyi yang kompleks, dan tugas seorang komponis adalah menuliskannya untuk "mentransfer"-nya ke para musikus yang nanti memainkan not-not balok itu. Nah, bagaimana supaya bunyi itu bisa direproduksi secara akurat, itu yang sulit. Ini berhubungan dengan progresi harmoni-harmoni yang masih jarang (bahkan belum pernah) saya dengar sebelumnya, dan juga warna dari bunyi itu kan harus ditentukan (oleh karena itu saya menggunakan instrumen alto flute, yang belum pernah dipakai di Indonesia. Mungkin ini adalah karya komponis Indonesia pertama yang menggunakan instrumen ini). Juga hal-hal teknis lain misalnya proses repetitif tapi transformatif dari kata "gelombang".

Itu sama seperti kalau sedang dibaca : diulang-ulang tapi tidak sama intonasinya, kan? Nah, intonasi itu diterjemahkan ke dalam progresi harmoni kalau di dalam musik.

HAH: Berapa lama menggarapnya sampai merasa selesai, beres, pokoknya sampai Anda merasa ada sesuatu dari komposisi itu.

AS: Ada dua proses : sketching, dan kemudian proses menuliskan detailnya. Sketching-nya cepet banget : 1-2 jam setelah (dan sambil) baca puisi itu sudah kelar.

Sebetulnya setelah saya sketch, baru saya bikin beneran beberapa bulan setelahnya, karena banyak hal yang tidak bisa saya tinggalkan. Dengan sketching inspirasi itu tertulis dan jadinya tidak akan terlupakan. Sejak permulaan saya merasa bahwa ini bukan karya yang kecil (bukan hanya dari segi durasi, tapi juga dari kedalaman & kompleksitas ekspresinya).

Saya selalu bawa kertas kemana-mana, karena inspirasi kadang-kadang terjadi pada saat yang tidak tepat, dan kalau tidak saya tulis (walaupun hanya secara garis besar) biasanya akan lupa. Nah, penulisan detailnya itu saya kerjakan on and off, di tengah kesibukan lain, dan juga karena faktor bahwa karya ini cukup panjang dan arah-arahnya cukup "unpredictable". Makanya saya menganggap karya ini penting dalam daftar karya-karya saya (yang sekarang Alhamdulilah jumlahnya ratusan, dan tidak semua sama "pentingnya" buat saya he he ...) karena ada konsep harmoni baru yang buat saya sendiri merupakan suatu "discovery". Ini penting buat saya sendiri dan perkembangan musik saya.

HAH: Bisa sebutkan beberapa contoh karya anda yang "penting" dan juga yang "tidak penting" bagi perkembangan artistik anda ?

AS: Yang penting adalah "Dalam Sakit" (dari puisi Sapardi Djoko Damono), The Young Dead Soldiers (dari puisi Archibald MacLeish) dan Requiescat (karya instrumental untuk english horn dan string quartet). Karya-karya tersebut buat saya adalah references, atau tonggak-tonggak yang menentukan jalannya nilai-nilai artistik saya selanjutnya. Yang tidak penting misalnya musik saya untuk film "Romeo & Juliet" : itu musik yang --walaupun sekarang menjadi cukup populer di antara banyak sekali pianis yang memainkannya karena melodinya "enak didengar"-- saya ciptakan semata-mata untuk menggambarkan emosi dan latar belakang suatu adegan saja. Juga beberapa lagu-lagu pendek yang saya ciptakan misalnya untuk kado ulang tahun teman-teman, dan sebagainya. Anehnya, seperti kasus film R & J itu, banyak musik saya yang tidak penting buat saya tapi justru yang paling populer ....

HAH: Ada juga tarian nanti ditampilkan bersamaan dengan komposisi itu. Kenapa ada kolaborasi begitu? Bagaimana bisa muncul ide memadukan tari dan musik itu?

AS: Saya bercerita tentang musiknya dan kemudian saya mainkan ke Chendra Panatan , koreografer yg saya paling kagumi di Indonesia dan sering bekerjasama dengan saya.

Sebetulnya proses dia sama saja dengan proses saya dgn sebuah puisi. Kalau saya "mendengar" musik dari puisi itu, dia "melihat goyangan" dari musik saya. Ada musik saya yang "menggoyangnya", ada yang tidak, dan kebetulan "Bibirku" secara visual juga sangat "menonjok". Koreografi itu memakai gesture-gesture dan gerakan yang sangat besar, sehingga tubuh penari butuh semacam "extensions", makanya dia akan memakai kain-kain, efek lampu dan lain-lain. Sampai saat ini sih saya belum melihat koreografinya dia (yang masih juga dalam proses, belum selesai), tapi saya yakin efeknya akan sangat luar biasa, bukan hanya sekedar mencengangkan, tapi juga secara emosional sangat dalam.***

(Not just) Another choral piece (for ITB Choir)

I spent a most memorable afternoon today at Saung Angklung Udjo in Bandung. It's a center for the making and learning the traditional instrument called angklung, made of bamboo. The reason I was there is because ITB Choir has commissioned me to write quite a big (they use the term "monumental"-- I hope I can realize it!) piece for choir and (western) orchestra and an ensemble of angklung, which will be the first piece in the world written for that formation. This piece is meant to mark the inauguration of their ITB International Choral Festival and Competition, where I am also honoured to be invited to serve as a jury member.

I left Saung Udjo with a strange feeling : a mix of enlightenment, happiness and peace (yeah, the place gave you that feeling, especially we watched the sunset in that wondrous, heavenly place) but also full of doubt of what piece would come out of my brain (which sometimes doesn't collaborate happily with me). One thing for sure is that I am not going to change my musical style, and as I always say, I write what I feel I should write. The inauguration will be televised, and attended by thousands of people from all over the (choral) world. Bandung will be the center of choral music during that week starting from end of July 2010. The concert of my piece itself will be on the 29th of July 2010.

I don't have to worry about it for now. I have another mammoth coming very shortly : in about 10 days my second cantata "LIBERTAS", this time reorchestrated and will be performed by more than 100 musicians will be the main course of the Jakarta New Year Concert on the 3rd of January 2010. Plus my new collaborative work with Chendra Panatan : a choreographic work on the tsunami, called "Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu". The music and the choreography turn out to be quite complex (no, not only a cascade of running notes depicting tsunami: it has a love theme, tsunami theme, and then a vocal part sung by Aning Katamsi, based on a poem of the same title by Hasan Aspahani). So, I'll concentrate on that for now. My great friends (and great artists!0 are joining me for this, and I also have the greatest luck to meet new friends with no less talents, such as the 15-year-young violinist prodigy Inez Raharjo and the singers of Paragita from Universitas Indonesia (yeah, they were the ones who commissioned me my "Choral Fantasy", if you remember, but this is the first time that I had the pleasure to work with them. They are F-A(U)-N-T-A-S-T-I-C !

Next week will be a week of basically rehearsing and rehearsing with different people, before we have all the musicians and dancers coming together for the general rehearsal the day before the concert. As you can imagine, New Year for me doesn't mean champagne and big lobsters, since 5 years ago when we did the Jakarta New Year Concert for the first time. Many rains has fallen since then, and it has now grown into a full-blown celebrational event and a trademark for the first Sunday of the year in Indonesia's capital city. Thanks to all of you who've supported us these 5 years!

Happy New Year, and Happy New Ears for Classical Music ! Now, who said that classical music is dying??

The power of your lips

The Jakarta New Year Concert (JNYC) is gonna be in about 45 days from now. Preparations are going well, tickets are selling, and the management team is focusing the publicity on my second cantata "LIBERTAS" as the main course of the program, not only because it is a colossal work, but also the whole management team were impressed when they saw it during its world premiere by its commissioner, Bimasena, last August. It contains famous heroic poems such as Chairil Anwar's "Krawang-Bekasi" and Archibald MacLeish's "The Young Dead Soldiers", and to hear them turned into music is quite a surprising revelation for those who know the poems well. It is quite normal that they hold on to a piece which they know and fascinated with, and firmly believe that it will give a big impact to the audience.

But there is another piece in the program which now I also consider important in my opus, and that is the dance-work "Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu". The free translation would be like "My lips bow (or surrender ?) to your lips", or that my lips are conquered by yours. I know, I know, it sounds strange in English, but it is very poetic in Indonesian. And it's not only the title that is so touching; the whole poem is so poignant and moving. It is by an Indonesian poet of about the same age of mine, Hasan Aspahani who I admire so much, have talked to so many times through the internet but still haven't got the pleasure to meet personally. He's told me that he will travel to Jakarta (he lives in Batam Island) to attend the concert (I also set another poem of his, "Palestina" as the second number of LIBERTAS).
"Bibirku" is a virtuosic work that consists of two sections : the first is a trio for piano, alto flute (doubling "normal" flute) and violin, and the second is for soprano & piano (where the poem is set to music). Each section can be performed separately. Chendra Panatan will choreograph the first section. We won't call it a ballet, because it is not. In fact, the dancers will work on complex movements with hundreds of meters of materials, which will spectacularly give the impression of the waves. The poem is about love and destruction and inspired by the great tsunami of Sumatra in 2004. The big form of "Bibirku" is quite straightforward, but the intricate details gave me a hard time in composing it, since I am employing complex harmonic progressions especially for the noisy "tsunami" middle section (what for, you ask? Ain't I missing the point of just making a big noise instead of worrying about the harmonies for it? Yes, but somehow my pretentious artistic intentions make my life even more complicated, he he ...). And those harmonies are in fact quite dissonant and adventurous (especially for such a festive concert like the JNYC !), although it begins and ends with a melodic, expressive and very tonal love music. But I am sure that the Indonesian classical music lovers are prepared for it; at least its visual and choreographic aspect will be quite amazing. You might think that you don't like strange, modern classical music of Bartok or Shostakovich, but then you unconsciously listened to it --and loved it, right?-- in films such as Harry Potter or Sleepy Hollow. And d'you know that Stanley Kubrick used that haunting, eerie and fascinating music of Gyorgy Ligeti in his films, such as 2001 Space Odyssey or Eyes Wide Shut ? Aren't they marvellous?

"Bibirku Bersujud di Bibirmu" will receive its world premiere at the Jakarta New Year concert, January 3rd 2010, by Inez Raharjo -violin, Elizabeth Ashford -alto flute, Aning Katamsi -soprano and myself on the piano

Rectifying Rossini's Record

Whew ! At last I finished my "pocket opera", IBU, a few days ago. Just sent the score to the musicians last nite. Now I gotta immediately start composing my second cantata, LIBERTAS.

I've broken my own record of the shortest time period in composing IBU. I did sketch its formal, harmonic & rhythmic structures last year right after I received the text of the monologue from Seno Gumira Ajidarma himself, but practically I started writing its actual notes on the plane carrying me back to Spain on the 10th of March this year. Then there was a one-week "black-out" period, plus some small travellings until at last I wrote its last note on the 11th of April. So, about 4 weeks of intense composing IBU. In between, some notes and sketches of LIBERTAS had also been done, even a number has been completed (I intended it to have 9 numbers, each based on a poem by a.o. Walt Whitman, Hasan Aspahani, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Ilham Malayu, WS Rendra).

Not that I wanted to break Rossini's record being the world's fastest scribbler ; I did it because of the scheduled World Premiere which will be on the 7th of June ! It will be programmed for the Jakarta Opera's Festival at the World Theatre of the British International School. And Aning Katamsi, the one and only singer of the opera, would certainly like to have it as early as possible. If I were her, I'd kill the composer for doing this to her ...

Now to LIBERTAS. My second cantata (my first was Ars Amatoria, which I will conduct again right 1 week before the premiere of IBU in Jakarta) will have approximately the same duration of IBU : a bit more than half an hour, but it will demand bigger forces : a baritone solo, a mixed choir (Joseph Kristanto will be the soloist together with the ITB Choir conducted by Indra Listiyanto) accompanied by 8 instruments. Commissioned by Bimasena, it is scheduled to be premiered in August this year for an audience which will include the president of Indonesia and some ministers.

But gimme a break ! Another big piece to write ? No way. I wanna have some days of "relax composing" as I always say, which means writing something completely different and unburdened (does that word exist? Anyway, I wanna say no deadlines, no commissions). I have started doodling on a new Rapsodia Nusantara no. 4 this morning. Am excited about it for 2 things : 1. It will be in variation form, a form which I never had explored & exploited thoroughly or explicitly. I will just write 1 variation a day, and put them in order after I decided that they should be enough (let's see .. perhaps 7 or 8 variations ?). 2. I have promised my friend Henoch Kristianto to dedicate it to him. He is a fine & brilliant pianist whose playing I admire so much (he studied & graduated in the US, but hey .. nobody's perfect). In fact, it was his playing of the Saint Saens 6th Etude which inspired me this morning to write a "light" variation. My Rapsodia won't sound like Saint-Saens, but sometimes my secret love to a certain composer come to the surface ...

By the way, d'you have something to do next weekend (24th of April) ? If not, you might like to have a date with your loved one to go to the cinema (if you live in Indonesia) and watch Romeo & Juliet. You won't regret it. I don't say it because I wrote the music for that film, I just think it's a very fresh & original look at the greatest love story of all time.

I, too, have a dream

Next week, a new CD of my works for voice(s) is gonna be released. I am so happy and honoured to have the soprano Bernadeta Astari "Deta" and the baritone Joseph Kristanto "Akis" record my vocal works. Apart from the fact that they are the two singers who have specialized in almost all my music involving the human voice and have worked with me intensely in performing them, they are magnificent musicians with impeccable techical abilities, sensitive artistry and profound musical understanding.

My interest in the human voice dated back in the 1980s when I heard Benjamin Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings during my student years. That was the first vocal work that has made me weep, literally weep, during its performance. Since then, I started my collection of all Peter Pears' recording of Britten's whole ouvres, so my first vocal works were just bad copies of Britten and justly enough they all ended up in my dustbin. In the 1990s, it was the poetry of Walt Whitman, William Blake and Longfellow that have helped me find my own path. Still, I was feeling uneasy for not being able to feel at home in setting words of my own language. Ilham Malayu's poems during his stay in Bangkok prison were the first poems in Indonesian that I set to music, but it wasn't until very recently that I had a huge crush with the poetry of Sapardi Djoko Damono. And then came along other great Indonesian poets : Goenawan Mohamad, Eka Budianta, Hasan Aspahani, Nirwan Dewanto, Ook Nugroho and so on. Ah, and that fascinating miniaturist lady, Medy Loekito. And with my inspirational singer friends around, my Indonesian songs just came along and took shape naturally. I feel that my best music ("best" is according to my, and only mine, not other people's standard) are written inspired by people or their artistry.

I have a dream (this is not because of Obama reminding the famous phrase of MLK), that one day Indonesia will have virtuosi of all instruments, so that they would and could inspire me to write concertos for each of them : a violin concerto, clarinet concerto, up to ... bassoon concerto, harp concerto, tuba concerto and --why not?-- a percussion concerto. And yeah, my next Concerto for piano and orchestra should not be written for myself. There are many, many highly talented young Indonesian pianists around. They will prevail. And very soon.