Bernd Alois Zimmerman, "The Soldiers, Vocal Symphony for 6 Soloists & Orchestra"
From Bestellnummer DMR 1007-09 (Zeitgenˆssische Music in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 3):
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), Die Soldaten (1959), Vokalsinfonie f¸r 6 Solisten und Orchester: Side 1, Side 2
Preludio, Introduzione, 3rd scene (Ricercari I), 5th scene (Nocturno I) from the First Act; Intermezzo and 2nd scene (Capriccio, Corale e Ciaconna II) from the Second Act.
Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Kˆln, conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi. Live recording from the Royal Albert Hall, London, October 15, 1978. A recording of the Westdeutschen Rundfunks.
Today Bernd Alois Zimmermann, along with Gyˆrgy Ligeti and Wilhelm Killmayer, is considered to be a leading personage by numerous young composers, a delayed, but therefore all the more unreserved acknowledgement of a composer who in his lifetime (if one excludes his opera, "Die Soldaten", which is generally held to be his major work) never attained real success. If one tracks down the reasons for this posthumous recognition, elements are revealed which, on the one hand, have become more relevant for composition today and which, on the other, offer information about Zimmermann's personality and work, his stylistic openness and the pluralistic range of what he composed, the expressivity which is always interwoven with constructive thought, the uncompromising intellectual and technical demands made by Zimmermann's music.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a well-educated musician and had equally strong ties with literature and graphic art as with the most diverse genres of music. Michael Gielen once attested that he was the last composer who could do everything. He composed for films, the stage, radio plays, concerts, and ballet. He did not shy away from including popular music in his work. The greatest portion of his works, his actual domain, are orchestral works and solo concertos. In addition, there are cantatas, piano music, solo sonatas (for violin, viola, cello, flute), electronic compositions, the "Requiem fur einen jungen Dichter" (1967-69), and his opera, "Die Soldaten", which he worked on for seven years, 1958 to 1965, before completing the final version.
This kind of wide-open approach to composition made the categories of style obsolete. "The stylistic range of music for radio plays", Zimmermann wrote once, "extends from Gregorian chant to serial music, from >primitive< music to electronic music, from the tomtom to >musique concrete<." It's not a flower pot for stylistic purists! Elsewhere he writes: "We should have the courage to admit that, given the musical reality, style is an anachronism . . ." The rejection of the concept of style as an aesthetic anachronism manifests itself in Zimmermann's thoughts on pluralism. His concept of "pluralism", a type of philosophy of music, realized in composition, is to be understood as an answer to the multifariousness of musical reality, experience, and imagination. The phenomenon of time was central in Zimmermann's thinking; the reflection that the objectively irreversible passing of cosmic time is confronted by a subjective, inner time of experience, in which chronologically separate events may coincide. The "spherical form of time" was Zimmermann's emblem. Zimmermann attempted to realize this world of ideas, among other ways, with musical quotations and collages; isolated fragments of the most diverse historical and stylistic origin; interspersed in contemporary music, or the piling up of many quotations on top of one another became for him a reflection of pluralistic chronological simultaneity. (His eight movement "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu" from 1966, which consists solely of quotations from music ranging from Gregorian chant to that of today, represents the highpoint of this practice of quotation.)
It is questionable, however, whether this framework stemming from a philosophy of music which sustains and embraces all of Zimmermann's works, reveals the essentials. Expressivity (it is not without cause that Zimmermann has at times been called the last expressionist) is namely the innermost quality of his music, a desire to express which remains evident even in those cases where he consciously restrains himself. Zimmermann, who characterized himself as being a hybrid between a "monk and Dionysos", was old-fashioned, baroque in character; his natural talent in composition led towards voluptuousness, color, and solemn development of all means at his disposal. His "Requiem" might be an example of this. On the other hand he could come to terms with the most limiting of restraints and with intimacy; his solo sonatas, with their compositional abstraction and intensification, are evidence of this. Zimmermann's music ranges between these poles of display and asceticism, between emphasis and simplicity. Its expressivity, however, is always restrained and controlled by discipline in construction. There is no work whose directness could not be traced back to its principles of construction, and vice versa, no work whose moving expressivity was not obtained from its strict structure.
Getting to know Zimmermann's music means that one has to accept the challenge placed by its technical (most of his works conceal staggering difficulties) and especially its intellectual demands. Because of these difficulties some works (such as the "Ekklesiastische Aktion" from 1970) still await decoding. Zimmermann never swerved from his belief that spiritual and technical demands were more important than the practical conditions of performance, as most obviously demonstrated by the first version of "Die Soldaten" which was considered impossible to perform. Aesthetics were more important than the technical means. The search for that which was musically "new" did not become a fetish for him, he was opposed to compositional and technical dogmas. The concept of a work of art was inviolable to him throughout his life, one which he did not want to surrender or see corroded by any sort of aleatoric process. This music, determined by all of these factors of Zimmermann's musical and intellectual altitude, embodies, as Caria Henius put it so aptly, the "magistral work" which "has no other purpose other than simply >being there<". Perhaps this is where its real attraction lies today.
Zimmermann's opera "Die Soldaten" remains his principal work - a fact which does not in any way diminish the importance of a work such as the "Requiem fiir einen jungen Dichter" ("Requiem for a young poet"); nevertheless, in the composer's career which certainly was not lacking in disappointments and setbacks, it was a child of sorrow. As early as 1957 - after considering many other operatic subjects - he was already contemplating the idea of writing an opera on Jakob Reinhold Michael Lenz's play "Die Soldaten". In commissioning the opera, the City of Cologne provided the initial financial support. The first performance was scheduled to take place in connection with the ISCM Festival in Cologne in 1960. But things were to turn out differently: the first two acts were completed by the autumn of 1959; thereupon both Cologne's Intendant in office, Oscar Fritz Schuh and Musical Director Wolfgang Sawallisch declared that the work was impossible to perform - the publishers discontinued the production of the parts and Zimmermann stopped working on the third act (at the time the opera was divided into three acts; the present division into four acts was undertaken by Zimmermann later). Having stigmatized the torso of the opera as being impossible to perform, the Cologne Opera nevertheless prevented other, smaller theatres from making the attempt. In view of this situation Zimmermann was able to persuade the publishers to produce an abridged concert version - the Vokalsinfonie - as an indication of its performability. These considerations were prompted by the three fragments from "Wozzeck" with which Eridi Kleiber had anticipated the opera in Berlin and also the "Lulu"-Symphony. The West German Radio put on a performance of this "Vokalsinfonie", which included six parts of the opera - three vocal and three instrumental - on 20th May 1963 at a public concert with Jan Krenz conducting and with the soloists Joan Carroll (Marie), Hans-Ulrich Mielsch (Desportes) and Gunter Reich (Stolzius). The title "Vokalsinfonie" was chosen by the composer, who originally planned to compile, in addition to these scenes, a purely instrumental symphony from the Introduction and the Intermezzi - but this plan never came to fruition. The Cologne performance of the 'Vokalsinfonie' fulfilled its purpose: the Cologne Theatre, and in particular the new Intendant Arno Assmann, declared their willingness to stage the work; and so the opera was given for the first time on 15th February 1965 - after Zimmermann had devoted his second stay at the Villa Massimo (1963/64) to completing the third act which is now divided into two. Up to now (March 1982) the opera has been performed at eight theatres (Cologne, Dusseldorf, Munich, Kassel, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Boston); further productions are at the planning stage - the stigma of 'unperformability' has been triumphantly invalidated.
The aspect of Lenz's drama which fascinated Zimmermann particularly has been often stated by him - here in an introductory note to the "Vokalsinfonie": "That which drew me above all to the 'Soldaten' is the circumstance that - as Lenz wrote in this piece in 1774/75, - people such as we may encounter at any time, in an exemplary situation which affects all those taking part, are victims of events which they cannot escape - not so much through fate - the blind Moera - as through the fatal constellation of classes, relationships and characters, just as they are: guiltless rather, than guilty".
Neither the period-piece nor the class warfare, nor the social aspect, nor the perennial criticism of the soldier's status were questions of immediate moment. This was opera as such. What possibilities does this form, so old and so often declared dead, afford in reference to what has been said? In his ëAnmerkungen ¸bers Theaterí (observations on the theatre) Lenz does not only offer a dramaturgy of "Sturm und Drang" but expounds a conception which still retains its significance and indeed seems to be taking full effect only now. The unity of the inward action: this is to a certain extent the geometrical point, the nucleus out of which evolve all phases and stages of the action, of the characters and of the entire theatrical phenomenon.
This is the point of departure in Lenz's conception: the derivation of the multitude of phenomena from one unity which can be unfolded, developed and expressed successively and simultaneously. The three classical unities of time, place and action are systematically denied and several 'actions' are superimposed on one another-in anticipation of Joyce's simultaneous Dance of the Hours. Zimmermann rendered this simultaneity which he saw in the libretto by means of compositional pluralism. Pluralism means in this connection the simultaneousness and equal importance not only of different levels of action but also of different musical elements whose historical range is partly illustrated by the principle of collage. But Zimmermann is much more than a mere musical mechanic: he magnifies the inended simultaneity by means of his concept of layers of time of the simultaneousness of varied musical metres. Carl Dahlhaus has characterized this pluralism as follows:
Zimmermann, whose musical thought is permeated with mystical, serial, and theatrical elements was constantly in search of a formula which would combine mutually repelling elements and would do justice to all tendencies: the mystical experience of an inward simultaneity of events parted 'in timeí; the inclination for serial proportioning of time, in detail as in general; and equally so the delight of the man of the theatre - oft the genuine opera composer - in an untrammelled plurality of musical styles and means whose legitimation lies in the dramaturgical functions which they fulfil"
Zimmermann answers the challenge posed by the 'unity of the inward action' with an all-interval twelve-note row (a row in which all intervals from the minor second to the major seventh occur once). The entire work in its harmonic and melodic structure is built on this row and its derivations. This row possesses certain intervallic symmetries which - if one derives from each note of the original row a new row for each scene - produces certain affinities which - without being intended to be audible are dramaturgically exploited. Not only the pitch but also the duration, dynamics and density are serially preformed, without, however, this preformation being dogmatically insisted on; Zimmermann even derived the tempo relationships from the relationships of the intervals in the original row.
The "Vokalsinfonie" contains six of the twenty-four parts of the complete opera, which may be combined into three scenes. The composer explains his selection in the introductory text as follows:
"Three scenes are to be heard whose selection was determined by three factors. Firstly that of practical performance. (What parts of a work conceived for the stage, can be performed at a concert; what is the maximum number of soloists that can be employed for this.) Secondly by the vocal aspect. (Scenes in which the 'cantabile' is predominant ó as opposed to speech which is treated in many nuances from whispering to screaming, from the spoken to the sung word.) Thirdly from the point of view of the action. (Hence the main characters of the opera are presented: Marie, Desportes, Stolzius, Marie's father and the mothers of Stolzius and of Marie's father, whereby Marie's destiny is the most important aspect.)
But what are three scenes compared with the entire diversity of an opera lasting a whole evening?"
The "Vokalsinfonie" begins with the "Preludio". In this prelude Zimmermann reveals the entire complexity of the opera but also its consistency. In the strictest of all forms - in a canon of up to thirty-six voices - are included all the structures that are of importance for the opera, it is a kind of compositional catalogue - or, as Zimmermann quotes Joyce's saying, it puts "all space in a nutshell". The transition to the first scene is formed by the brief, rhythmical introduction to the first act, which is then followed by the third scene of the first act (named by Zimmermann "Ricercar I"). The action: Desportes, an aristocratic officer of the Militia, is courting Marie, the daughter of Wesener, a fancy-goods merchant from Lille. She is engaged to Stolzius, a cloth merchant from Armentieres. Strings, high wood-wind, harp and harpsichord are the background of this extravagantly elated scene until the duet between the coloratura soprano and tenor becomes a trio by the addition of the bass, Wesener. Wesener, who is a mixture of bourgeois prudence and mercenary obsequiousness, refuses Desportes' request to take Marie to the theatre and explains to his sulking daughter that she need not expect any good to come of such aristocratic suitors.
The fifth scene of the first act which follows is described by Zimmermann as "Notturno" - a spectral and stormy night- piece; it is concerned almost entirely with Marie who, bewildered by her father's promises of a glorious future, is no longer able to cope with the affairs of her modest life and, more with resignation than self-assurance, lets things take their course.
The simultaneity of the musical time-strata is clearest in the Intermezzo of Act 2, in which Zimmermann dispenses largely with the wood-wind and strings and superimposes brass, percussion, piano and organ in two metrically independent strata: just as, at the beginning, the xylophone, marimbaphone, and piano are independent of the 'tutti', so, in the second part, are the side-drum and trumpets written in the 'baroque' style. The conclusion of the "Vokalsinfonie" is the second scene of the 2nd act and is entitled "Capriccio", "Corale e Ciacona II": here the simultaneity is transferred to the action. While on one level Desportes secudes [sic] Marie, Wesener's aged mother sings the song of the Rose of Hennegau on a second, and on a third, in Armentieres Stolzius's mother remonstrates with him because, in spite of the farewell letter that Desportes has dictated to Marie, he still loves the girl, and Stolzius swears vengeance on the aristocratic seducer. In this scene Zimmermann's concept of the "spherical form of time" in which yesterday, today and tomorrow are present at the same time is perhaps most striking and reveals itself as a summary of history with the significant inclusion of the Bach Chorale "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit". The anticipation - on a more lyric and intimate plane - of the tragic and hopeless end of the opera.
Wulf Konold (Translation: John Bell) The characters of the action: Marie (dramatic coloratura soprano), Desportes (high tenor), Stolzius (juvenile, high baritone), Wesener (bass), Wesener's mother (contralto), Stolzius's mother (dramatic contralto).
Instruments of the Orchestra: 2 Flutes, 3 Oboes, 4 Clarinets, Alto Saxophon, 3 Bassoons - 5 Horns, 4 Trumpets, 4 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion, Carillon, Xylophone, Marimbaphone, Vibraphone, Guitar, Harp, Celesta, Harpsichord, Piano, Organ-Strings.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), Die Soldaten (1959), Vokalsinfonie f¸r 6 Solisten und Orchester: Side 1, Side 2
Preludio, Introduzione, 3rd scene (Ricercari I), 5th scene (Nocturno I) from the First Act; Intermezzo and 2nd scene (Capriccio, Corale e Ciaconna II) from the Second Act.
Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester Kˆln, conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi. Live recording from the Royal Albert Hall, London, October 15, 1978. A recording of the Westdeutschen Rundfunks.
Today Bernd Alois Zimmermann, along with Gyˆrgy Ligeti and Wilhelm Killmayer, is considered to be a leading personage by numerous young composers, a delayed, but therefore all the more unreserved acknowledgement of a composer who in his lifetime (if one excludes his opera, "Die Soldaten", which is generally held to be his major work) never attained real success. If one tracks down the reasons for this posthumous recognition, elements are revealed which, on the one hand, have become more relevant for composition today and which, on the other, offer information about Zimmermann's personality and work, his stylistic openness and the pluralistic range of what he composed, the expressivity which is always interwoven with constructive thought, the uncompromising intellectual and technical demands made by Zimmermann's music.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a well-educated musician and had equally strong ties with literature and graphic art as with the most diverse genres of music. Michael Gielen once attested that he was the last composer who could do everything. He composed for films, the stage, radio plays, concerts, and ballet. He did not shy away from including popular music in his work. The greatest portion of his works, his actual domain, are orchestral works and solo concertos. In addition, there are cantatas, piano music, solo sonatas (for violin, viola, cello, flute), electronic compositions, the "Requiem fur einen jungen Dichter" (1967-69), and his opera, "Die Soldaten", which he worked on for seven years, 1958 to 1965, before completing the final version.
This kind of wide-open approach to composition made the categories of style obsolete. "The stylistic range of music for radio plays", Zimmermann wrote once, "extends from Gregorian chant to serial music, from >primitive< music to electronic music, from the tomtom to >musique concrete<." It's not a flower pot for stylistic purists! Elsewhere he writes: "We should have the courage to admit that, given the musical reality, style is an anachronism . . ." The rejection of the concept of style as an aesthetic anachronism manifests itself in Zimmermann's thoughts on pluralism. His concept of "pluralism", a type of philosophy of music, realized in composition, is to be understood as an answer to the multifariousness of musical reality, experience, and imagination. The phenomenon of time was central in Zimmermann's thinking; the reflection that the objectively irreversible passing of cosmic time is confronted by a subjective, inner time of experience, in which chronologically separate events may coincide. The "spherical form of time" was Zimmermann's emblem. Zimmermann attempted to realize this world of ideas, among other ways, with musical quotations and collages; isolated fragments of the most diverse historical and stylistic origin; interspersed in contemporary music, or the piling up of many quotations on top of one another became for him a reflection of pluralistic chronological simultaneity. (His eight movement "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu" from 1966, which consists solely of quotations from music ranging from Gregorian chant to that of today, represents the highpoint of this practice of quotation.)
It is questionable, however, whether this framework stemming from a philosophy of music which sustains and embraces all of Zimmermann's works, reveals the essentials. Expressivity (it is not without cause that Zimmermann has at times been called the last expressionist) is namely the innermost quality of his music, a desire to express which remains evident even in those cases where he consciously restrains himself. Zimmermann, who characterized himself as being a hybrid between a "monk and Dionysos", was old-fashioned, baroque in character; his natural talent in composition led towards voluptuousness, color, and solemn development of all means at his disposal. His "Requiem" might be an example of this. On the other hand he could come to terms with the most limiting of restraints and with intimacy; his solo sonatas, with their compositional abstraction and intensification, are evidence of this. Zimmermann's music ranges between these poles of display and asceticism, between emphasis and simplicity. Its expressivity, however, is always restrained and controlled by discipline in construction. There is no work whose directness could not be traced back to its principles of construction, and vice versa, no work whose moving expressivity was not obtained from its strict structure.
Getting to know Zimmermann's music means that one has to accept the challenge placed by its technical (most of his works conceal staggering difficulties) and especially its intellectual demands. Because of these difficulties some works (such as the "Ekklesiastische Aktion" from 1970) still await decoding. Zimmermann never swerved from his belief that spiritual and technical demands were more important than the practical conditions of performance, as most obviously demonstrated by the first version of "Die Soldaten" which was considered impossible to perform. Aesthetics were more important than the technical means. The search for that which was musically "new" did not become a fetish for him, he was opposed to compositional and technical dogmas. The concept of a work of art was inviolable to him throughout his life, one which he did not want to surrender or see corroded by any sort of aleatoric process. This music, determined by all of these factors of Zimmermann's musical and intellectual altitude, embodies, as Caria Henius put it so aptly, the "magistral work" which "has no other purpose other than simply >being there<". Perhaps this is where its real attraction lies today.
Zimmermann's opera "Die Soldaten" remains his principal work - a fact which does not in any way diminish the importance of a work such as the "Requiem fiir einen jungen Dichter" ("Requiem for a young poet"); nevertheless, in the composer's career which certainly was not lacking in disappointments and setbacks, it was a child of sorrow. As early as 1957 - after considering many other operatic subjects - he was already contemplating the idea of writing an opera on Jakob Reinhold Michael Lenz's play "Die Soldaten". In commissioning the opera, the City of Cologne provided the initial financial support. The first performance was scheduled to take place in connection with the ISCM Festival in Cologne in 1960. But things were to turn out differently: the first two acts were completed by the autumn of 1959; thereupon both Cologne's Intendant in office, Oscar Fritz Schuh and Musical Director Wolfgang Sawallisch declared that the work was impossible to perform - the publishers discontinued the production of the parts and Zimmermann stopped working on the third act (at the time the opera was divided into three acts; the present division into four acts was undertaken by Zimmermann later). Having stigmatized the torso of the opera as being impossible to perform, the Cologne Opera nevertheless prevented other, smaller theatres from making the attempt. In view of this situation Zimmermann was able to persuade the publishers to produce an abridged concert version - the Vokalsinfonie - as an indication of its performability. These considerations were prompted by the three fragments from "Wozzeck" with which Eridi Kleiber had anticipated the opera in Berlin and also the "Lulu"-Symphony. The West German Radio put on a performance of this "Vokalsinfonie", which included six parts of the opera - three vocal and three instrumental - on 20th May 1963 at a public concert with Jan Krenz conducting and with the soloists Joan Carroll (Marie), Hans-Ulrich Mielsch (Desportes) and Gunter Reich (Stolzius). The title "Vokalsinfonie" was chosen by the composer, who originally planned to compile, in addition to these scenes, a purely instrumental symphony from the Introduction and the Intermezzi - but this plan never came to fruition. The Cologne performance of the 'Vokalsinfonie' fulfilled its purpose: the Cologne Theatre, and in particular the new Intendant Arno Assmann, declared their willingness to stage the work; and so the opera was given for the first time on 15th February 1965 - after Zimmermann had devoted his second stay at the Villa Massimo (1963/64) to completing the third act which is now divided into two. Up to now (March 1982) the opera has been performed at eight theatres (Cologne, Dusseldorf, Munich, Kassel, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Boston); further productions are at the planning stage - the stigma of 'unperformability' has been triumphantly invalidated.
The aspect of Lenz's drama which fascinated Zimmermann particularly has been often stated by him - here in an introductory note to the "Vokalsinfonie": "That which drew me above all to the 'Soldaten' is the circumstance that - as Lenz wrote in this piece in 1774/75, - people such as we may encounter at any time, in an exemplary situation which affects all those taking part, are victims of events which they cannot escape - not so much through fate - the blind Moera - as through the fatal constellation of classes, relationships and characters, just as they are: guiltless rather, than guilty".
Neither the period-piece nor the class warfare, nor the social aspect, nor the perennial criticism of the soldier's status were questions of immediate moment. This was opera as such. What possibilities does this form, so old and so often declared dead, afford in reference to what has been said? In his ëAnmerkungen ¸bers Theaterí (observations on the theatre) Lenz does not only offer a dramaturgy of "Sturm und Drang" but expounds a conception which still retains its significance and indeed seems to be taking full effect only now. The unity of the inward action: this is to a certain extent the geometrical point, the nucleus out of which evolve all phases and stages of the action, of the characters and of the entire theatrical phenomenon.
This is the point of departure in Lenz's conception: the derivation of the multitude of phenomena from one unity which can be unfolded, developed and expressed successively and simultaneously. The three classical unities of time, place and action are systematically denied and several 'actions' are superimposed on one another-in anticipation of Joyce's simultaneous Dance of the Hours. Zimmermann rendered this simultaneity which he saw in the libretto by means of compositional pluralism. Pluralism means in this connection the simultaneousness and equal importance not only of different levels of action but also of different musical elements whose historical range is partly illustrated by the principle of collage. But Zimmermann is much more than a mere musical mechanic: he magnifies the inended simultaneity by means of his concept of layers of time of the simultaneousness of varied musical metres. Carl Dahlhaus has characterized this pluralism as follows:
Zimmermann, whose musical thought is permeated with mystical, serial, and theatrical elements was constantly in search of a formula which would combine mutually repelling elements and would do justice to all tendencies: the mystical experience of an inward simultaneity of events parted 'in timeí; the inclination for serial proportioning of time, in detail as in general; and equally so the delight of the man of the theatre - oft the genuine opera composer - in an untrammelled plurality of musical styles and means whose legitimation lies in the dramaturgical functions which they fulfil"
Zimmermann answers the challenge posed by the 'unity of the inward action' with an all-interval twelve-note row (a row in which all intervals from the minor second to the major seventh occur once). The entire work in its harmonic and melodic structure is built on this row and its derivations. This row possesses certain intervallic symmetries which - if one derives from each note of the original row a new row for each scene - produces certain affinities which - without being intended to be audible are dramaturgically exploited. Not only the pitch but also the duration, dynamics and density are serially preformed, without, however, this preformation being dogmatically insisted on; Zimmermann even derived the tempo relationships from the relationships of the intervals in the original row.
The "Vokalsinfonie" contains six of the twenty-four parts of the complete opera, which may be combined into three scenes. The composer explains his selection in the introductory text as follows:
"Three scenes are to be heard whose selection was determined by three factors. Firstly that of practical performance. (What parts of a work conceived for the stage, can be performed at a concert; what is the maximum number of soloists that can be employed for this.) Secondly by the vocal aspect. (Scenes in which the 'cantabile' is predominant ó as opposed to speech which is treated in many nuances from whispering to screaming, from the spoken to the sung word.) Thirdly from the point of view of the action. (Hence the main characters of the opera are presented: Marie, Desportes, Stolzius, Marie's father and the mothers of Stolzius and of Marie's father, whereby Marie's destiny is the most important aspect.)
But what are three scenes compared with the entire diversity of an opera lasting a whole evening?"
The "Vokalsinfonie" begins with the "Preludio". In this prelude Zimmermann reveals the entire complexity of the opera but also its consistency. In the strictest of all forms - in a canon of up to thirty-six voices - are included all the structures that are of importance for the opera, it is a kind of compositional catalogue - or, as Zimmermann quotes Joyce's saying, it puts "all space in a nutshell". The transition to the first scene is formed by the brief, rhythmical introduction to the first act, which is then followed by the third scene of the first act (named by Zimmermann "Ricercar I"). The action: Desportes, an aristocratic officer of the Militia, is courting Marie, the daughter of Wesener, a fancy-goods merchant from Lille. She is engaged to Stolzius, a cloth merchant from Armentieres. Strings, high wood-wind, harp and harpsichord are the background of this extravagantly elated scene until the duet between the coloratura soprano and tenor becomes a trio by the addition of the bass, Wesener. Wesener, who is a mixture of bourgeois prudence and mercenary obsequiousness, refuses Desportes' request to take Marie to the theatre and explains to his sulking daughter that she need not expect any good to come of such aristocratic suitors.
The fifth scene of the first act which follows is described by Zimmermann as "Notturno" - a spectral and stormy night- piece; it is concerned almost entirely with Marie who, bewildered by her father's promises of a glorious future, is no longer able to cope with the affairs of her modest life and, more with resignation than self-assurance, lets things take their course.
The simultaneity of the musical time-strata is clearest in the Intermezzo of Act 2, in which Zimmermann dispenses largely with the wood-wind and strings and superimposes brass, percussion, piano and organ in two metrically independent strata: just as, at the beginning, the xylophone, marimbaphone, and piano are independent of the 'tutti', so, in the second part, are the side-drum and trumpets written in the 'baroque' style. The conclusion of the "Vokalsinfonie" is the second scene of the 2nd act and is entitled "Capriccio", "Corale e Ciacona II": here the simultaneity is transferred to the action. While on one level Desportes secudes [sic] Marie, Wesener's aged mother sings the song of the Rose of Hennegau on a second, and on a third, in Armentieres Stolzius's mother remonstrates with him because, in spite of the farewell letter that Desportes has dictated to Marie, he still loves the girl, and Stolzius swears vengeance on the aristocratic seducer. In this scene Zimmermann's concept of the "spherical form of time" in which yesterday, today and tomorrow are present at the same time is perhaps most striking and reveals itself as a summary of history with the significant inclusion of the Bach Chorale "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich hiermit". The anticipation - on a more lyric and intimate plane - of the tragic and hopeless end of the opera.
Wulf Konold (Translation: John Bell) The characters of the action: Marie (dramatic coloratura soprano), Desportes (high tenor), Stolzius (juvenile, high baritone), Wesener (bass), Wesener's mother (contralto), Stolzius's mother (dramatic contralto).
Instruments of the Orchestra: 2 Flutes, 3 Oboes, 4 Clarinets, Alto Saxophon, 3 Bassoons - 5 Horns, 4 Trumpets, 4 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion, Carillon, Xylophone, Marimbaphone, Vibraphone, Guitar, Harp, Celesta, Harpsichord, Piano, Organ-Strings.
-- from Avant Garde Project
Labels: Bernd Alois Zimmerman, Die Soldaten, jodru
posted by jodru at 19:21
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