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Pynchon Cycle
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In the summer of 1998 I felt a double need: firstly, I wanted to work on two entirely contrasting work cycles in order to expand the range of my music and to be able to probe its extremes. One of these cycles would be dedicated to the composer György Kurtág. Secondly, I wanted to dedicate a homage to one of my favorite writers, Thomas Pynchon. I realized immediately that if I was to respond with a Hommage à Thomas Pynchon, it would have to be every bit as exceptional and eccentric as Pynchon’s work and particular circumstances, such as the fact that we have no knowledge about the author, most obviously not even his appearance.
I thus had to thoroughly modify my manner of composition – in its material, its techniques, its sound world and its ultimate performative character in concert – at least for this purpose. It would have been too simply merely to invent a music whose character suited Pynchon’s semantics, a semantics that posits significatory relations on all sides while simultaneously contravening them.
My approach would have to be fundamental. It first of all required a sound world capable of giving expression to the destructivity of today’s society, especially that of the mega-metropolises. This was only possible with musical electronics, so I turned to the EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR (Freiburg) in order to learn the necessary skills. Then I required a hypertrophic form. I decided on a poly-work consisting of several works that served different functions within the overall form.
The Pynchon Cycle consists, in addition to the composite piece Hommage à Thomas Pynchon (2003–2005), of the following:
1. the ensemble piece The Tristero System, whose instrumentation of two pianos, two percussionists, two bass clarinets, three trombones and four piccolos offers sufficiently repellent post-urban sonic material;
2. the solo cello piece The Courier’s Tragedy, which literally depicts, musically and above all performatively, the tragedy of the soloist who fails in the attempt to control, in fact to defeat an inhuman machinery.
3. the harmonically ugly tape piece D.E.A.T.H. (8-track), which literally presents the final decomposed state of the material resources employed (D.E.A.T.H. is an acronym by Pynchon: “Dont’t ever antagonize the horn”);
4. finally the piece W.A.S.T.E. for oboe and live electronics, which is not actually heard during Hommage à Thomas Pynchon, yet whose sound material slumbers in the computer’s memory as an unconscious layer, occasionally taking effect in a shifted state (W.A.S.T.E. has a partner piece – W.A.S.T.E. 2 – for oboe and 8-track tape) (W.A.S.T.E. is an acronym by Pynchon: “We await silent Tristero’s empire”).
The form of this poly-work had to be conceived as a shattered one from the outset. I decided to take this to its extreme and make the work infinitely long – a music without any temporal end, one that made the greatest possible demands on the art industry, a permanent threat: an untreatable paranoia, as it were.
Strictly speaking, the spatial dimension would also have to be extended into the infinite. It should sound not only in a single performance location, but virtually the whole city, the whole region, the whole world. For pragmatic reasons, which can unfortunately not correspond to artistic ones, the duration is limited, and the space even more so. One will inevitably have to organize a “concert,” an event with a fixed time and a predefined location.
The four works listed above can be performed independently. Hommage à Thomas Pynchon incorporates the first three works. The work is simultaneously ensemble music, musical theater and a music installation, and this combination is therefore innovative in so far as it makes use of the newest technology to do something that would previously have been impossible, simply because these resources had not been sufficiently developed: the initiation of a real-time computer-assisted compositional process that sounds like composed, not algorithmic music, which latter composers in that field were previously forced to content themselves with.
I was not concerned with presenting the latest craze in live electronics, quite the opposite: it was only through the fact that that live electronics now possessed a sufficient capacity for complexity and differentiation – and that also means: the possibility of polyphony – that I was able to become creative in this genre.
I did not simply take narrative threads from Pynchon’s body of work – in this case I was using the novel The Crying of Lot 49 – and translate them into music. The dramaturgy of the cello piece in particular is identical to that of the systematic murder of all the protagonists in that novel’s “Jacobean Revenge Play” between Faggio and Squamuglia.
I attempted to incorporate as many connections as possible at an abstract, and therefore musically absurd level: I scanned the entire text of the novel and converted it into hundreds of thousands of numbers, which, turned into algorithms, determined the sonic and musical flow of Hommage à Thomas Pynchon with its parallel identities. Admittedly, I had to push the absurdity of this abstract material application to such an extreme that it would take shape and – paradoxically – could almost become as meaningful as Pynchon’s novels, which, read in the right manner – i.e. repeatedly – enable us to read and thus experience the world, this so damned dichotomous world of ours, like some great Borges-esque library.
Hommage à Thomas Pynchon is of an extremely performative character. At the start, the 18-minute ensemble piece The Tristero System is played in the main performance space (the “concert hall”) as if one were attending a normal concert. At the same time, the Pynchon architecture with its computer program is started. It creates an “automatic writing” based on the material sounding on stage.
The sound technician fades in – in an improvisatory fashion – this electronically-altered music via the hall’s loudspeaker system. As the instruments of the ensemble form its initial sound material, the two layers mingle well, avoiding any interruption once The Tristero System is finished and the musicians leave the stage unapplauded. Now the central concern is the deliberate simulation of a continuation of this ensemble music with other means.
After a while, the cello soloist appears and attempts to counteract and ultimately defeat the electronics with his piece The Courier’s Tragedy (in five acts with a prelude and a postlude). He fails, and must fail, because the cello piece follows precisely the same dramaturgy. He may be able to manipulate the sonic events, but is ultimately “killed” by them. He too leaves the stage, exhausted.
After an hour the situation changes: the hall doors are opened, and from a distance the 28 loudspeakers in the four acoustic spaces announce to the audience that the music is also playing elsewhere. At the same time the continuation of The Tristero System, i.e., the sound-processed material of the “automatic writing,” is turned off (it is now heard in all four acoustic spaces), and D.E.A.T.H. is played instead in the concert hall and looped indefinitely.
Because of the specific performative character of Hommage à Thomas Pynchon, which is heard in five (or several) separate acoustic spaces, a CD documentation is not possible.
The performance of my works makes great demands on the performers. I would therefore like to extend my special thanks to the soloists Peter Veale and Franklin Cox, for whom the solo pieces were written; the EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR, where I was able to work over the course of several years, its then director André Richard and the music computing specialist Joachim Haas; and finally Ensemble SurPlus, together with its director James Avery, for decades of support.
Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf
Translation: Wieland Hoban
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ARTISTS
Peter Veale (oboe); Franklin Cox (violoncello) |
TRACKS
[01] The Tristero System (2002) for ensemble 18:04
Ensemble SurPlus
James Avery, conductor
Eun Ju Kim and Sven Thomas Kiebler, piano
Pascal Pons and Olaf Tzschoppe, percussion
Erich Wagner and Nicola Miorada, bass clarinet
Thomas Wagner, Patrick Crossland, and Andreas Roth, trombone
Martina Roth, Liz Hirst, Beatrix Wagner, and Gianluigi Durando, piccolo
[02] The Courier’s Tragedy (2001) for violoncello solo 19:02
Franklin Cox, violoncello
[03] W.A.S.T.E. (2001/2002) for oboe and live electronics 18:04
Peter Veale, oboe
EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR
Joachim Haas and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, sound direction
[04] D.E.A.T.H. (2001/2002) for eight-track tape 11:48
EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR, realisation
total time: 67:27
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