On Rzewski's The Triumph of Death : Coping with the Holocaust in the 1980s
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/07494467.2010.619748
ISSN1477-2256
Autores Tópico(s)Diversity and Impact of Dance
ResumoAbstract After the Second World War, the artistic consciousness of Europe began to address the horrific reality surrounding genocide under fascism. This article relates Rzewski's oratorio-like work The Triumph of Death (1988) for string quartet, voices and conductor, to the specific mode of coping with the extermination of the European Jews prevalent in the 1980s. In the context of this phase of dealing with the Holocaust, the musical means employed in the composition adopt specific meaning. Drawing on the increased interest in psychologization among intellectuals which emerged in the 1960s and 70s, the elements of instrumental theatre stimulate the quasi-psychoanalytical technique of association; the juxtaposition of styles—folk, social dance and postminimalist-contemporary music—complies with the grotesque dance-of-death-like atmosphere created in the libretto. The musical stream specific of the postminimalist style responds to the increasing tendency toward universalizing and 'eternalizing' of the Holocaust, which was typical of the 1980s. Keywords: HolocaustPeter WeissClaude LanzmannString QuartetAuschwitzPostminimalismInstrumental Theatre Notes Adorno, 1951, 34. See Joy H. Calico in the introduction to her article on the cantata Die Jüdische Chronik (A Jewish Chronicle) (1961, premiered in 1966): 'Does mediation through art diminish the significance of those experiences or the magnitude of the crimes? Does an artistic rendering reduce the event to fiction, therefore blunting its historical reality? Does art help us to gain understanding of the event? Does anyone except a survivor or her descendants have the right to make such decisions? In short, what is the artist's responsibility in the work of commemoration?'(Calico, 2005 Calico, J. H. 2005. Jüdische Chronik: The third space of commemoration between East and West Germany. 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Weiss' drama is designed according to the principle of escalation. Rzewski adapted Weiss' play without any changes, except for unavoidable cuts because the singing of rhythmicized language needs more time than spoken text. Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 83–86. Similarly, the pole of a length of one meter with which the violist is asked to beat on the floor in scene N° 4, 'The song of the possibility of survival', does not appear as a percussionist instrument that serves to produce noises, but as a weapon (Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 57). Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 49. Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. 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Rzewski suggests the instrumentalists to use 'some kind of pick or spectrum, like a banjo' completed by possibly a real banjo or 'electronics' that create a 'metallic sound' (Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 299). The pentatonic scale occurs as two pitch class sets—'material A'and 'material B'. Material B is the transposition of material A. Material A, related to A flat major, consists of the pitches A flat, B flat, C, E flat, F and, additionally, D flat which operates as an appoggiatura of C, and 'material B', related to the D major and a tritone above material A, entails the pitches D, E, F sharp, A, B and, additionally, G operating as appoggiatura of F sharp. Like a children's song, it consists of no more than five pitches in each of the phrases of irregular length. 'He always liked to shoot the legs first' (Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 131). Additionally, Rzewski mentions in the programme note that 'fragments of "Die Fledermaus" appear in the "Song of the Black Wall." The "Song of the Bunker" contains echoes of the ballad "I'am goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad"' (Rzewski, 1988b, 500). Rzewski, 1988a Rzewski, F. 1988a. The Triumph of Death (score). Available at: http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php [Google Scholar], 299. Cf. the discussion of the terms 'grotesque', 'absurd' and 'carnivalesque' in Schlüter, 2007 Schlüter, S. 2007. Das Groteske in einer absurden Welt: Weltwahrnehmung und Gesellschaftskritik, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. [Google Scholar]. Thomsen, 1974 Thomsen, C. 1974. Das Groteske im englischen Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. [Google Scholar], 12. Heidsieck, 1969 Heidsieck, Arnold. 1969. Das Groteske und das Absurde im modernen Drama, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. [Google Scholar], 18. The use of black humour to narrate the Holocaust has become an established technique that, however, is considered to be a privilege of Jewish writers, i.e. those individuals who were victims of the Holocaust, or whose fate is closely connected with its victims (cf. for instance, Stenberg, 1982 Stenberg, P. 1982. Memories of the Holocaust. Edgar Hilsenrath and the fiction of Genocide. Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 2 [Google Scholar], 282). Stemming from Polish Jews who left Europe in the early twentieth century, before the seizure of power by the Nazis, Rzewski is certainly legitimized to effect a grotesque presentation of the Holocaust. Examples for this stylistic approach to the Holocaust in literature can be found, first and foremost, in the theatre plays of Tabori and Hilsenrath's novels 'Nacht' of 1962 and 'Der Nazi & der Frisör' of 1971, but also Tadeusz Borowski, Jakov Lind (short story 'Eine Seele aus Holz' of 1962), Romain Gary (novel La Danse de Gengis Cohn of 1967), Yoram Kaniuk, and Art Spiegelman (Maus. A Survivor's Tale) (cf. Kuhn, 2008 Kuhn, K. 2008. Der Holocaust und seine Folgen in satirischer Darstellung, No place: Grin. [Google Scholar], 7; and Lamping, 2003 Lamping, D. 2003. Identität und Gedächtnis in der jüdischen Literatur nach 1945, Berlin: Erich Schmidt. [Google Scholar], 173). Thomson, 1972 Thomson, P. 1972. The Grotesque, London: Methuen. [Google Scholar], 4. Additionally, Rzewski could draw on the modes of critique, as they had been developed in the context of the student and protest movements of the 1960s and 70s: the playful performance of critical action as pleasurable event. Other Holocaust narratives such as the children's book Clara Asscher-Pinkhof's Sterrekinderen (1961) are marked by the same increase of violence. Starting in 1973, Rzewski uses increasingly often precomposed material (cf. Nicholls, 1998 Nicholls, D. 1998. Cambridge history of American music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 554). Furthermore, since, in the course of the protest song movement, Die Moorsoldaten became internationally popular among leftist intellectuals—it was performed by singers such as Hannes Wader and Pete Seeger—it also epitomizes an element of Rzewski's personal musical, socio-cultural environment of the 1960s and 70s. Cf., for instance, Nyman, 2000 Nyman, M. 2000. Experimental music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], and Bauer, 2006 Bauer, C. 2006. Postminimalismus, Regensburg: Roderer. [Google Scholar]. Meier 1987 Meier, C. 1987. "Eröffnungsrede zur 36. Versammlung deutscher Historiker in Trier, 8. Oktober 1986". In Historikerstreit, 204–214. Munich: Piper. (no Eds.) [Google Scholar], 204. The information and instruction of the North Americans about the Holocaust was carried out by presenting the actually tragic and depressing historical facts in a manner that complied with the US-American uplifting spirit, i.e. in these presentations, the final phase of the Holocaust is not murder, but emigration to Israel or the USA (cf. Rosenfeld 1997 Rosenfeld, A. H. 1997. Thinking about the Holocaust: After half a century, Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], 125). In the 1980s, Walter Benjamin's ninth thesis on history became extremely popular among culturally pessimist intellectuals. In this thesis, Benjamin stated: 'There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm' (Benjamin 1940, 269). I quote the translation of Dennis Redmond, URL: http://www.efn.org/∼dredmond/Theses_on_History.html. The wider context of this quotations is: 'We the living must bear the consequences of the actions of preceding generations, and must act in such a way as to repair the damage done to the world in which we now live, not only by those who committed the crimes under investigation, but also by those who attempted, and still attempt to cover them up. But the wounds inflicted upon humanity will never be completely healed. Our knowledge of history will never be perfect. It will always be flawed, full of holes, and tainted by the awareness that this history is written by the survivors, not the victims […] For Weiss the drama described (not acted) on the stage is part of a larger, ongoing drama of which the players and the spectators are both a part. The sinking feeling which most people must have as they come away from this play must proceed from the realization that this story is not over' (Rzewski 1992 Rzewski, F. 1992. History as mythology (reply to Aaron Anish) unpublished, quoted with permission of Frederic Rzewski [Google Scholar], 2).
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