The truth about the number 12+1

Yeah I don't even dare to write that number, but I should openly, honestly tell you that that number terrifies me, and have had (negative) effects on me. There is even a name for the fear of number 12+1, and that is TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA. I suffer from it. I wanna write this entry after the correspondence with my pianist friend Henoch Kristianto whose CD of his interpretation of my Rapsodia Nusantara is just released and is the talk of the week at the moment, telling him that I was (and still not finished) writing both Rapsodia Nusantara no. 12 and no. 12A (I haven't made up my mind whether it will be numbered as such or 12+1). He wrote : 12A! Oh, come on, you believe that kind of stuffs? Hehe, why not even go with a horror theme for no 13? And I answered in my next email : About 12A, yes yes, I am very afraid of that number, 12+1 . And if Shakespeare, Arnold Schoenberg and even JESUS CHRIST fell upon it, why shouldn't I? ............................................................................................................................................ Well I'm gonna tell you the facts, the real facts of what happened with William Shakespeare & Arnold Schoenberg. I don't have to explain about Jesus Christ since we all know that that number originally came from him and his disciples, which made a total of 12+1, and one of them (Judas) betrayed him. With Shakespeare, suicide occurs an unlucky 13 times in his plays. If I still should give you some examples, the most famous ones occur in Romeo and Juliet where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide, and also in Julius Caesar where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia. And WS, I am sure, was very conscious about this unlucky number when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, which is a love story that ended in failure. Here we go: ............................................................................................................................................ Do you know how old (or better rephrase it: how young) was Juliet when she fell in love with Romeo, and then committed suicide just a few days later? As the story occurs, Juliet was approaching her fourteenth birthday. She was born on "Lammas Eve at night" (August 1), so Juliet's birthday is July 31. Her birthday is "a fortnight hence", putting the action of the play in mid-July. So, she was 13. And notice the inversion of that number with her birth date. Her name is JULIET CAPULET. Check how many letters does it have. And in order of appearance, Juliet was the thirteenth character to appear on stage (ok, ok, she comes out together on stage with her nurse, but still...). Romeo referred (or called her name) 14 times, and the last time he did was when he was dying. So you can count how many times it was before he killed himself. Now those facts I wrote just from memory, there are more things that involve this unlucky number. ............................................................................................................................................ And to top it all off, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre burnt down in 1613 after a cannon shot set fire to it during a performance of Henry VIII. OK, that year was perhaps just coincidental, but still .... ............................................................................................................................................ With the composer Arnold Schoenberg, it was more terrifying. He himself knew that that number would kill him. Indeed, he was born on September 13th 1874 and died on July 13th, 1951. His triskaidekaphobia possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten Op. 15. Moses und Aron was originally spelled Moses und Aaron, but when he realised this contained 13 letters, he changed it. According to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. He dreaded his 65th birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal. But in 1950, on his seventy-sixth birthday, his friend, mentor, and fellow composer and musician, Oskar Adler wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13. This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Yup, Friday the 13th, 76 years of age. Schoenberg stayed in bed — sick, anxious and depressed all day. In a letter to Schoenberg's sister Ottilie, dated 4 August 1951, his wife Gertrud reported, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end". Gertrud Schoenberg reported the next day in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie that Arnold died at 11:45 pm. I took all these data and some exact quotes from his biography by Hans Stuckenschmidt. ............................................................................................................................................ So now you have my reason of not writing my 13th Rapsodia Nusantara. In fact, I've been writing two Rapsies at the same time, and since I like to write a set of variations for my rapsies whose numbers are a multiple of 4, BOTH Rapsy 12 and 12A are a set of variations, and both are based on just 1 folktune, just like the 4th Rapsy is based on the song Buka Pintu, and the 8th on O Inani Keke. And I've been enjoying writing both rapsies very much, since all the pianistic ideas that can't be valid for 1 Rapsy can be applied to the other Rapsy. I planned to write both just 2 weekends ago, thinking that I would need a few days or a maximum of 1 week to finish them, but apparently I am still working on them. It's already 10 days now. But things are going well. And yeah, there have been some small misfortunes happening in this year that ends with the unlucky number, but overall, I am happy and productive. One of the happiest moments of this year is, of course the release of this CD by Henoch. Those Rapsies sound as I never imagined they could sound Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBKjNO2fm50 . And I am excited to give a solo piano concert again for the Jakarta public after almost 3 years not doing so. Jakarta public? Well, I heard from Chendra my manager that piano lovers from all around Indonesia are already booking tickets for it. Put the date in your agenda: Sunday, October 20th at 4.30 p.m. at Aula Simfonia Jakarta. Yup, when it's over, you go out of the hall and you still can watch the nice sunset. That's why I am playing my light n sweet Sunset pieces too, apart from 6 numbers of Rapsodia Nusantara. Which ones? I still dunno. It's still more than 2 weeks from now.

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 ....

Article by Erza Setyadharma

Got the email with the article by Erza Setyadharma (founder of Indonesian Opera Society) in the "Kabar" magazine of last February. He is a big fan of my vocal music, and is busy at the moment in mounting Menotti's "The Telephone" in Jakarta for next month. Here is the article , cut & pasted from that mag :


Ananda Sukarlan, The Spider and Silence
Erza Setyadharma meets two of the most talented people performing in Indonesia at present: pianist Ananda Sukarlan and dancer and choreographer Chendra E. Panatan.
Ananda Sukarlan returned to the stage this New Year with A Trilogy Concert, a series of performances that took him from Bandung to Bali and back to Jakarta, where I was fortunate to witness Indonesia’s premier pianist in action.
As with many of his previous concerts, simplicity was the key to both performance and staging.
Opening the concert in a lively fashion with the funky rhythms of Igor Stravinsky’s Tango & Piano Rag Music, Ananda followed this catchy piece with his own composition from last year, Kama, with Farman Purnama as the tenor soloist. Based on the poetry of Ilham Malayu, written while he was in Bangkok prison on drug charges, Kama is truly unique; not only the words but also the musical composition, which draws on gamelan influences.
Later, another Ilham Malayu poem was the inspiration for a world premiere of Ananda’s new work, Spider’s Ballad, again with Farman Purnama as the tenor soloist. This is a piece that brought a wide grin to my face; the song is about an imprisoned man who experiences a moment of joy while watching an industrious spider as he creates his web. Ananda injects brilliant comical tones into the ballad, with the evocative arpeggio increasing in volume and speed as the spider weaves and weaves…
The David Del Puerto composition Alio Modo was truly intense. A piano piece created by David Del Puerto and dedicated to the victims of the Bali bombing on October 12th 2002, the song was visualized by Chendra E. Panatan’s contemporary choreography with dancers from Sumber Cipta Ballet. It started in silence, with empty chairs on stage. Dancers rolled in, dancing in silence. Ananda and Farman Purnama were also part of this life installation. The dance captivated the audience absolutely until suddenly the silence was broken with the first note of the piece. The movement thus became assimilated with the music; a very powerful collaboration.
Freedom from fear was the overriding theme of this collaboration. “The dancing movement in Alio Modo is about how to be free from being scared and worried,” Chendra tells me the next day when I meet him and Ananda in suite 1809 at the Shangri-La. “The chairs have two functions; partly as stage décor for the second half, partly to represent and symbolise the place of human existence. I would also like to emphasise the emptiness of terror or fear caused by violence acts. Through my choreography, I want to evoke visually the ambience of the music itself.”
Chendra’s choreography uses silence as its core and this is what inspired Ananda to adapt it to his music compositions. Chendra finds that Ananda’s music has the same background as his choreography. “For us the idea and concept should come first, music will follow. That’s why I always work in silence. I believe that silence is the mother of sound.”
Ananda describes his own music as “eclectic.” “It will always have elements of rhythm and certain chords that reflect my musical characteristics. If you notice, my music and singing always separate in order to create a different texture. It’s like a mini opera where they have recitative, interlude, instruments and the aria. It’s different to usual songs where the lyrics and music are all together.” He has been writing his own compositions since 1991 when he wrote a piece for string quartet. Not until 1998 did he feel that he had become truly fluent with composing.
“For me, composition is what to write, not only how to write. The depth and content are very important, not only beautiful notes and melodies.”
Indonesia itself is an important influence on Ananda’s work. “As a composer, I want to be more Indonesian, whether it’s the music or my inspirations. I think it is important to have a national identity as a composer.” His next project will be an opera that relects contemporary Indonesian life. “I am trying to define Indonesian opera and that is why everything in my opera will be Indonesian: Indonesian musicians and bahasa Indonesia as the language.”
Ananda is also keen to change people’s misperceptions of contemporary music, which he says often gets confused with a rather less accessible genre, avant-garde music. The basis of avant-garde music is atonal, meaning literally “not tonal”, a genre introduced by Arnold Schoenberg around 1912. Atonal music is that in which the composer systematically avoids reference to tonal centers by avoiding harmonic and melodic formulas. Contemporary classical music, on the other hand, keeps changing and evolving through time. “The current perception of contemporary music is that it is hard to understand, but it is not. The tendency of contemporary music these days is to go back to what classical music used to be. People often get mixed up between avant-garde music and contemporary music.”
So apparently contemporary music and dance are not scary or difficult: they are enjoyable! Bravo to Ananda Sukarlan and friends, this was really a delightful start to the year.