A tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Yesterday I lost, we lost, one of the greatest inspirational figure in classical music. The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died at 86 (he was born in 1925). He wasn't a great operatic figure, since his forte lies in the art of German lieder, but it was exactly that facet which inspired me a lot. His recording with Gerard Moore of Schubert's songcycle Winterreise must have been the best recording of that masterpiece, and he had recorded it with other pianists (including Alfred Brendel) several times. Ah, those good old times when we could make countless recordings and could be appreciated by music lovers. Now it's all the downloading culture in the internet. --------- The baritone voice used to be considered as "the tenor voice who couldn't hit high notes", and then Fischer-Dieskau came to rescue its reputation. I am not going to post his biography, since one can easily find it now by googling him. I just wanna write about his impact on me, mostly when I was still studying in my early 20s. The first recording of his I heard was Gustav Mahler's Lieder eine Fahrende Gesellen, with Leonard Bernstein, taking the three movements usually sung by a mezzo-soprano and making them very much his own. But after several other recordings of his I listened to, two of them made a special impact on me. The first one was Britten's War Requiem, whose baritone part was written inspired by and especially for him. It became one of the landmark pieces of my life, not only musically but also an eye-opener to the real meaning of war, and therefore life. Oh and of course Britten wrote his Songs and Proverbs of William Blake for Fischer-Dieskau, a beautiful songcycle for baritone and piano which I still dream of performing one day. -------------- The other one was Sir Michael Tippett's The Vision of St. Augustine, a work for baritone solo, choir & orchestra. Sir Michael in that work attempts the "reach to exceed humanity's grasp" with the baritone solo, the metaphor for the present that follows Augustine's account of the vision combined with the chorus, the symbol of the past and future with its commentary on Augustine's narrative. Out of these disparate and conflictive forces, transcendence erupts. Tippett shows us that with effort, humanity has the potential to reach transcendence through music, and Fischer-Dieskau realized his aspirations. Sir Michael avoided any reference to the tradition of the Music of the Spheres in the Vision of St. Augustine so as not espouse transcendence as attainable through manipulation of patterns and numerology. Instead he turned to the music of the angels, those messengers of God whose language discloses the music of transcendence, and consequently, the connection to the Divinity. Tippett's principal vocal technique is glossolalia, those vocalizations or excited repetitions of vowels to depict the character of angelic singing. Glossolalia, a term from the Greek, are the wordless sounds and shouts accompanying ecstasy. Glossolalia is most prevalent in the vision of eternity, particularly in extension of the final syllables of "alleluia." Unison singing beginning with the lowest male voices extending through the ranges of the highest female voices creating vast arches, using short note values and antiphonal singing complete the angelic vocalizations, and require virtuoso singing from the chorus. It was this piece hanging in the back of my mind when I wrote my own (much lesser in scale and artistic quality, unfortunately) second cantata LIBERTAS which has the same (again, less quantity of instruments) formation. You can download the whole cantata if you have an iPad, iPod touch or even in your iPhone by just searching my name on appStore. By the way, in that app called "Ananda Sukarlan - Premium" you can also listen to many of my songs for baritone, sung by Joseph Kristanto. Some of those songs owe their existence to Fischer-Dieskau's inspirational voice, I must say. And now heaven is so lucky to have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He is singing now for the angels. Requiescat in Pace, Maestro. You deserve to leave this world by saying that you left it better than when you found it. At least a humble Indonesian boy who dreamt to be a musician & composer could realize it, thanks to you. And you've made him love music more, and made it a big part of his life.

Are they really outdated?

Music, as everything else nowadays, is changing so fast, and it just feels so strange that the most "radical" composers who wanted to boldly write what no man has written before during the 20th century becomes now outdated and their music become "expired" and in their worst case, obsolete. But are they really ? Would you say that the generation starting with Schoenberg and his 12-tone method and ends with ... --err, is it ended already?-- ...produced completely useless music ?

Well, not really, at least for me. Up till the 1960s, or even 70s, there was this catchy phrase popular among the composers : "Tonality is dead. Music should now be atonal" (This phrase was originally uttered by Arnold Schoenberg in 1920s ; you see how much he was so ahead of his time?). Now, 50 years later I look around and tonal music is everywhere ! In fact, there is ONLY tonal music everywhere. But sure, people say that academic composers in the US still writes atonal music, even using a "more advanced" serial method of Schoenberg and Babbitt. Needless to say, they are only heard (better said: analyzed) inside universities by the nerds. And I guess in some developing countries it is considered a novelty to start writing 12-tone or atonal music, eh ? Well, I remember that the Indonesian composer Trisutji Kamal (b.1936) wrote 3 short pieces for piano in 12-tone method back in the 1960s. But then they were the first and her last piece in atonal style. I guess she opened a door ... but didn't enter it herself. I wonder if there were some idiots afterwards that would enter that open door ...

I started my compositional career writing with that 12-tone method, and I did learn quite a bit from there. I still keep some atonal music of mine which I consider not sooo bad. Who knows that I'll write an opera about a haunted house or something, and they will be quite useful there he he ...
One thing I learn about twelve-tone method is that I have to win this battle between my own music and my willingness ; I mean, sometimes I want my music to sound one way, but the method insisted that I go another way. Now, in my Rapsodia Nusantara series those methods of retrograding, inverting and all the cutting and pasting motifs proved to be useful. And I can proof to myself that that method can be applied to tonal music. I couldn't believe it myself when I completely inverted a folk-tune backwards ... and it worked! I also used that method a lot in my cantata LIBERTAS : you might have noticed the most obvious one that "Requiescat"'s tune is turned upside down and become the solo baritone that opened "Krawang Bekasi". And I do find turning melodies upside down quite erotic ...

I haven't blogged for a few weeks since I was busy with the Jakarta New Year Concert and then some travelling, among others to Makassar (Sulawesi Island) for the first time (yeah it was memorable! And I loooove the food! And everyone's great too). Now I am back at my appartment listening to all the music I have performed during these days, while trying to figure out whither my music is going. I have some big pieces ahead of me to write, and honestly, I have no idea about anything. I remember that my sister who is a doctor once was so confused that she bought a book "What to do if there is no doctor around" .. well, I feel the same at the moment. Perhaps the most scary thing is my next opera, commissioned by the same institution, Bimasena, who commissioned "LIBERTAS". I'll write about it in my blog when I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Again and again, with all the compositional techniques that one has under his sleeves one cannot be sure what to write. One might know HOW to write, but WHAT to write remains always an unsolved mystery, even to the composer himself ....

(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

Neither English, nor a horn

You might think that my favorite instrument is the piano, but that's not completely true. I love it, of course, but it's always a drag for me writing for piano. As a pianist, I ought to write something PIANISTIC, right ? So I have to sit down on the piano and put my poor fingers on it everytime I write for this instrument. While for other instruments, I write my music anywhere else : from my desk at home to the seat of the airplane (with the TV screen off, unfortunately ...).
Well, I tell you who my true love is. It's the English Horn, which is in fact neither English, nor a horn (but it does make me horny listening to its sound, he he...) . The term came from its German name, engellisches Horn, meaning angelic horn. But engellisch also meant English, and so the English claimed themselves to be angels (or was it the other way around?). And then it acquired a French term, cor anglé, (angled or bent), but then mistakenly written as cor anglais (which means English, and now it's better that I don't make jokes about this). And about the horn, well, it's quite obvious that it has nothing to do with it, so I really don't know why it bears the "horn"....

Both my cantata "Ars Amatoria" and "Libertas", have English horns, whose players do NOT double the oboe. And both have an interlude that features the instrument quite boldly. Libertas even has an interlude for E.h and string quartet called Requiescat, which can be played separately. And both, intuitively written, deal with the tonality of D major and B-flat major.

I always perceive some tonalities in my head as associated with particular things, and I am always sure that I am not alone in this. A major, for instance, always give the impression of everything worldly, or earthly. Remember that Mendelssohn's Spring Song of the Lieder Ohne Worte is in A major, and also the last movement of the Franck Violin Sonata ... it's so beautiful and so down to earth ! And that's why Libertas starts with a boisterous A major, "Bentangkan Sayapmu, Indonesia" (Spread your wings, Indonesia), and the a cappella chorus, "Kita Ciptakan Kemerdekaan" (We create Freedom) is also in that happy tonality.

But then it's the tonality of B-flat major which is the real "nirvana" for me. The real truth, purity, perfection, divine. Listen to Schubert, that impromptu ... and the last sonata ! That's why the main core of Libertas, where the singers sing "For the poet, death is victory" is in glorious B-flat major. Glorious but in pianissimo. Festive but profound. Declamatory but so introverted. Only B-flat major can afford that.

And D major ? That brings me pain and sadness. "Requiescat", for english horn & strings (from Libertas) is all in that tonality. And the last song of Libertas, "Krawang Bekasi" starts with a lament of the dead heroes ... but then there is a transition from those cries of desperation to the other world ... which is in B-flat major. And that's where it ends, where they all cry "Remember us" .... from heaven. That is so different from another song "The Young Dead Soldiers do not speak" (poem by Archibald MacLeish), where it also ends with "Remember Us" ... but still from this world : in D major. The same words, "Remember Us" ... and yet with different meaning. You see how powerful music is to express feelings ? Even more powerful than words, eh?

And I can go on and on with talking about how tonalities work in my head ... but hey I don't want to bore you to death with it. The main point is that I almost always perceive my music in a certain tonality, and it always hurts me if one sings / plays my music by transposing it.
Anyway, it's weekend now, and you know what ? Weekend muses always make me write music for young people, because my daughter Alicia is always home (she won't be in a few years : she'll be in her BOYFRIEND's house ... aaaargh !!) and I just realized today that most of the pieces in "Alicia's First Piano Book" were written on weekends! So, my muse is pulling my shirt now and asking me to write something for her ... before I leave next Monday for a whole week. Hey, the Queen is coming to my concert, and I'll convince her to sign up on Facebook, ok ?

Mourning becomes Indonesia

Just a couple of hours ago I landed at the Jakarta airport, picked up by Chendra. His first words were :"Rendra just passed away". WS Rendra was one of Indonesia's greatest poets, and a personal friend of mine. I have set a poem of him, "Tidurlah Intan" which you can listen to Aning Katamsi singing it at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrT3CCdbYo .

In 5 days, Joseph Kristanto will be the soloist together with ITB Choir and a small ensemble, all conducted by Indra Listiyanto in my newest work, my second cantata "LIBERTAS". It is now that I realize and understand the meaning and existence of this work.

When I was commissioned to write a piece to celebrate this year's Indonesian Independence day, I knew that I should have written a joyful, optimistic and celebrational work. After all, the occasion demands it, with the presence of Indonesia's president, vice president and many of our cabinet ministers. Instead, the piece turned out to be a cantata glorifying death. I was about to change the title into "Requiem" if it were not for my consideration that I didn't have any more time left to write the commissioned piece, a real "LIBERTAS". Apart from the poems which were specifically written for the occasion and included in Libertas (by Sapardi Djoko Damono & Ilham Malayu), all the poems I chose for LIBERTAS are about death. Death of all the fallen heroes, and one of them is by WS Rendra, "Ia Telah Pergi" (He has gone). But that was not the real coincidence. Another poem is "A Un Poeta Muerto" (To a dead poet) by Spanish writer Luis Cernuda, written as a requiem to the death of Federico Garcia Lorca. And this is the point I wanna make : The most crucial point in LIBERTAS doesn't lie in the most exuberant fortissimo or exciting moment in the piece. It lies in this number, where a pianissimo, etherial B-flat major chord starts the phrase "Para el poeta, la muerte es la victoria" (For the poet, death is the victory), after a long section of dark atonal utterances. I remember exactly that LIBERTAS in fact started when I read those lines by Cernuda. They trigger those chords in my head, from which LIBERTAS was born.

I certainly wasn't thinking of Rendra when I wrote LIBERTAS. In fact, the 3 big works this year (the other two are the opera "IBU--yang anaknya diculik itu" and a dance piece to be choreographed by Chendra next year which I will write about it in a few weeks in this blog) all deal profoundly, and exclusively with death. You can also check an entry I wrote here when I was deeply immersed in this definitely-not-my-favorite-at-all subject.

I can't help but dedicating LIBERTAS, in its entirity, to the memory of WS Rendra. LIBERTAS is so him. So Rendra. Sadly, it turned out that way, as I am assimilating it while I am writing these very lines.

And now, fellow Indonesians, you can shout your favorite word "Victory!" to Rendra. Because for the dead poet, death is victory.

Requiescat et libertas, WS Rendra. Your art will live forever.