Samuel Beckett in Music.

Started by Mandryka, September 05, 2020, 01:51:36 AM

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Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Handelian

Many years ago I did the lighting to a play by Beckett. Called 'Play' which features three people in jars arguing. It was the biggest lighting nightmare I ever had. After the performance I had a young girl saying to her father, "But daddy, I didn't understand it," to which he replied, "Don't worry, dear, neither did anyone else!"

Mandryka

#42
Quote from: Handelian on November 10, 2020, 12:26:39 AM
Many years ago I did the lighting to a play by Beckett. Called 'Play' which features three people in jars arguing. It was the biggest lighting nightmare I ever had. After the performance I had a young girl saying to her father, "But daddy, I didn't understand it," to which he replied, "Don't worry, dear, neither did anyone else!"

He's always doing that sort of thing, Mahood is in a jar in The Unnameable.

The sound on the video of Play is almost music, it's almost set to music

https://www.youtube.com/v/JXbWWQPm_nA&ab_channel=GregKowalski

This is my favourite at the moment

https://www.youtube.com/v/16rSsThMDiU&ab_channel=AccePointtopoint
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Handelian

Quote from: Mandryka on November 10, 2020, 03:37:38 AM
He's always doing that sort of thing, Mahood is in a jar in The Unnameable.

The sound on the video of Play is almost music, it's almost set to music

https://www.youtube.com/v/JXbWWQPm_nA&ab_channel=GregKowalski

This is my favourite at the moment

https://www.youtube.com/v/16rSsThMDiU&ab_channel=AccePointtopoint

Frankly though at times like this I prefer something else to Beckett. Something like Dad's Army!  ;D

Mandryka

Quote from: Handelian on November 10, 2020, 11:16:45 AM
Frankly though at times like this I prefer something else to Beckett. Something like Dad's Army!  ;D

well much to my disappointment googling "dads army thomas beckett" comes up with nothing interesting at all.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

https://www.youtube.com/v/VNEpDw-Foq4

Philip Glass, Prelude for Endgame (there's a recording with Robert Black on the contrebass on Spotify.) It's presence here is not a sign of the quality of the music,
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#46
This is Samuel Beckett's text Ping



And this is Roger Reynold's Ping -- rather good if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. It makes me wonder if there's a sort of California Beckett sound, this and things like Feldman's For Samuel Beckett. Ideas much appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/v/UOtO_285XXc

And this is Reynold's letter to Beckett about it -- Page 2 is in the same archive.

https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb9660312s/zoom/0

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



Thomas Wenk succeeds in expanding the piano by the addition of an antiquated technical apparatus: the cassette recorder. The piece Recordame (1999) was inspired by Samuel Beckett's one-act play "Krapp's Last Tape." Just as the protagonist's monologue in Beckett is divided into two perspectives by the tape recording, so does the pianist in Recordame obtain a virtual dialogue partner, who at various times acts as supervisor, listener, and co-performer. Wenk treats the buttons of the recorder as an extension of the piano keyboard, by notating precise rhythms for them. Conversely, the clicks of the buttons find a sonic correspondence in certain prepared sounds in the piano. Along with tape noise, the recorder also contributes playback of previously played sounds, whereby the low-fidelity aspect becomes an increasingly prominent ingredient of the music; the clearly demarcated divide between live and recorded sound is thus ruptured.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

https://www.youtube.com/v/NusWK2K6LP0&ab_channel=Jean-Fran%C3%A7oisFarge

Clov and Hamm by Michaël Levinas. I guess that Clov is the trombone and Hamm is the tuba.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Samuel Beckett's Not I features a disembodied mouth

https://www.youtube.com/v/16rSsThMDiU&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=AccePointtopoint

Stefan Prins's Not I features a disembodied guitar. There is a sound processing desk between the guitar and the amp, which is controlled by a separate player

https://www.youtube.com/v/PKEglgpoI3I&ab_channel=YaronDeutsch
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#50
Sam Sfirri's Beckett pieces are all inspired by a year long reading of Malone, Malloy and The Unnamable. Recorded on Another Timbre, example of the sort of thing here

https://www.youtube.com/v/5BRIQZ3iNd0&ab_channel=Anothertimbre

http://www.anothertimbre.com/page148.html


Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#51
Michael Edward Parsons's Krapp Music is based in Krapp's Last Tape. As everyone knows, in the play an old geezer called Krapp listens to a tape recording which he made a long time before, and comments on it. In Krapp Music the pianist similarly makes comments in piano sounds on a tape of piano music he made before. 

On this CD

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

T. D.

Quote from: Mandryka on February 23, 2021, 01:08:06 PM
Michael Edward Parsons's Krapp Music is based in Krapp's Last Tape. As everyone knows, in the play an old geezer called Krapp listens to a tape recording which he made a long time before, and comments on it. In Krapp Music the pianist similarly makes comments in piano sounds on a tape of piano music he made before. 

On this CD



One of my favorite Beckett works. Would like to hear this, but the CD seems obscure and I don't see any clips or downloads available.

Mandryka

Quote from: T. D. on February 25, 2021, 06:17:11 PM
One of my favorite Beckett works. Would like to hear this, but the CD seems obscure and I don't see any clips or downloads available.

PM me of you want the files.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#54
John Tilbury's Beckett cycle

http://www.jtilbury.com/177-2/


I'm listening to Worstward Ho! now, very good deadpan narration and tasteful musical commentary, mostly piano. Catherine Laws paper on it here

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/156756/3/_18757405_Samuel_Beckett_Today_Aujourd_hui_Beckett_Music_Intermediality.pdf

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

mabuse

Nice topic... Thanks everyone for the contributions !   :D

...


For information, it's possible to listen this two short pieces by Stefano Gervasoni on his website :

Due poesie francesi di Beckett (1995)
https://www.stefanogervasoni.net/index.asp?page=catalogue&id=30

(from this album : https://www.discogs.com/fr/Stefano-Gervasoni-Ensemble-Contrechamps-Parola-Concerto-Pour-Alto-Due-Poesie-Francesi-DUngaretti-Due/release/14167580 )



Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

In a letter (April 6, 1960) to Donald McWhinnie of the BBC Radio Drama Company, Beckett explained his text How It Is as the product of a " 'man' lying panting in the mud and dark murmuring his 'life' as he hears it obscurely uttered by a voice inside him... The noise of his panting fills his ears and it is only when this abates that he can catch and murmur forth a fragment of what is being stated within... It is in the third part that occurs the so-called voice 'quaqua', its interiorisation and murmuring forth when the panting stops. That is to say the 'I' is from the outset in the third part and the first and second, though stated as heard in the present, already over."

This is the allusion of the title in Wieland Hoban's piece When the Panting Starts.


https://www.youtube.com/v/d2_Eca2UQiY&ab_channel=PavlosAntoniadis
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

https://www.youtube.com/v/JRbcnMjDLBo&ab_channel=ScoreFollowerScoreFollower

I have no idea what exactly the relation is between Beckett and Mesías Maiguashca in Reading Beckett, but I guess there is one. Seriously good music IMO. There's Hearing beckett too

https://www.youtube.com/v/MwMjlpQZBRo&ab_channel=MesiasMaiguashca

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Rebecca Saunder's Void is inspired by Texts for Nothing, especially the last.

https://www.youtube.com/v/mYdNaj4ldNs&ab_channel=VictorAlexander


QuoteWeaker still the weak old voice that tried in vain to make me, dying away as much as to say it's going from here to try elsewhere, or dying down, there's no telling, as much as to say it's going to cease, give up trying. No voice ever but it in my life, it says, if speaking of me one can speak of life, and it can, it still can, or if not of life, there it dies, if this, if that, if speaking of me, there it dies, but who can the greater can the less, once you've spoken of me you can speak of anything, up to the point where, up to the time when, there it dies, it can't go on, it's been its death, speaking of me, here or elsewhere, it says, it murmurs. Whose voice, no one's, there is no one, there's a voice without a mouth, and somewhere a kind of hearing, something compelled to hear, and somewhere a hand, it calls that a hand, it wants to make a hand, or if not a hand something somewhere that can leave a trace, of what is made, of what is said, you can't do with less, no, that's romancing, more romancing, there is nothing but a voice murmuring a trace. A trace, it wants to leave a trace, yes, like air leaves among the leaves, among the grass, among the sand, it's with that it would make a life, but soon it will be the end, it won't be long now, there won't be any life, there won't have been any life, there will be silence, the air quite still that trembled once an instant, the tiny flurry of dust quite settled. Air, dust, there is no air here, nor anything to make dust, and to speak of instants, to speak of once, is to speak of nothing, but there it is, those are the expressions it employs. It has always spoken, it will always speak, of things that don't exist, or only exist elsewhere, if you like, if you must, if that may be called existing. Unfortunately it is not a question of elsewhere, but of here, ah there are the words out at last, out again, that was the only chance, get out of here and go elsewhere, go where time passes and atoms assemble an instant, where the voice belongs perhaps, where it sometimes says it must have belonged, to be able to speak of such figments. Yes, out of here, but how when here is empty, not a speck of dust, not a breath, the voice's breath alone, it breathes in vain, nothing is made. If I were here, if it could have made me, how I would pity it, for having spoken so long in vain, no, that won't do, it wouldn't have spoken in vain if I were here, and I wouldn't pity it if it had made me, I'd curse it, or bless it, it would be in my mouth, cursing, blessing, whom, what, it wouldn't be able to say, in my mouth it wouldn't have much to say, that had so much to say in vain. But this pity, all the same, it wonders, this pity that is in the air, though no air here for pity, but it's the expression, it wonders should it stop and wonder what pity is doing here and if it's not hope gleaming, another expression, evilly among the imaginary ashes, the faint hope of a faint being after all, human in kind, tears in its eyes before they've had time to open, no, no more stopping and wondering, about that or anything else, nothing will stop it any more, in its fall, or in its rise, perhaps it will end on a castrato scream. True there was never much talk of the heart, literal or figurative, but that's no reason for hoping, what, that one day there will be one, to send up above to break in the galanty show, pity. But what more is it waiting for now, when there's no doubt left, no choice left, to stick a sock in its death-rattle, yet another locution. To have rounded off its cock-and-bullshit in a coda worthy of the rest? Last everlasting questions, infant languors in the end sheets, last images, end of dream, of being past, passing and to be, end of lie. Is it possible, is that the possible thing at last, the extinction of this black nothing and its impossible shades, the end of the farce of making and the silencing of silence, it wonders, that voice which is silence, or it's me, there's no telling, it's all the same dream, the same silence, it and me, it and him, him and me, and all our train, and all theirs, and all theirs, but whose, whose dream, whose silence, old questions, last questions, ours who are dream and silence, but it's ended, we're ended who never were, soon there will be nothing where there was never anything, last images. And whose the shame, at every mute micromillisyllable, and unslakable infinity of remorse delving deeper ever deeper in its bite, at having to hear, having to say, fainter than the faintest murmur, so many lies, so many times the same lie lyingly denied, whose the screaming silence of no's knife in yes's wound, it wonders. And wonders what has become of the wish to know, it is gone, the heart is gone, the head is gone, no one feels anything, asks anything, seeks anything, says anything, hears anything, there is only silence. It's not true, yes, it's true, it's true and it's not true, there is silence and there is not silence, there is no one and there is someone, nothing prevents anything. And were the voice to cease quite at last, the old ceasing voice, it would not be true, as it is not true that it speaks, it can't speak, it can't cease. And were there one day to be here, where there are no days, which is no place, born of the impossible voice the unmakable being, and a gleam of light, still all would be silent and empty and dark, as now, as soon now, when all will be ended, all said, it says, it murmurs.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen