A new thread because I have an intuition that it's a big and unexplored area -- I personally expect to contribute to it only intermittently, as new ideas crop up.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71d3CcPr3+L._SS500_.jpg)
This is hard to find but widely available. You have to type into the search engine Holliger: Come And Go - What Where -- and then it shows up on amazon, spotify and qobuz. First impression is that anyone who liked Scardanelli will want to hear it.
Come and Go looks good
https://www.youtube.com/v/VZP2_sROsYA
And What Where looks similar
https://www.youtube.com/v/cOMg3b-y-Bg
(https://brill.com/cover/covers/9789401210270.jpg)
There's a book on the subject which so far I've managed to resist -- too expensive. But amazingly I've just managed to find the research which led to the book
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/27d2/7150bcf06b150865cf2b847fadc821276c59.pdf
The cynic in me has wondered if composers like Dusapin and Saunders have tied their works to Beckett in recent years not just because they like the author, but because claiming this connection automatically lends some additional prestige to what they're doing. Were that the case, it would be rather parasitical on Beckett's reputation. Sort of what a number of mid-century avant-gardists did with Finnegans Wake.
(I had the same uncomfortable feeling about a recentish piece by Michael Hersh that the composer claimed is based on Robert Lowell's poetry, but in an interview Hersch revealed that he didn't actually know much about Lowell's work and couldn't really point to any firm connections between what he wrote and the poems.)
Quote from: CRCulver on September 05, 2020, 05:19:44 AM
The cynic in me has wondered if composers like Dusapin and Saunders have tied their works to Beckett in recent years not just because they like the author, but because claiming this connection automatically lends some additional prestige to what they're doing. Were that the case, it would be rather parasitical on Beckett's reputation. Sort of what a number of mid-century avant-gardists did with Finnegans Wake.
(I had the same uncomfortable feeling about a recentish piece by Michael Hersh that the composer claimed is based on Robert Lowell's poetry, but in an interview Hersch revealed that he didn't actually know much about Lowell's work and couldn't really point to any firm connections between what he wrote and the poems.)
I have the same feeling about various composers and Paul Celan. Honestly (granted I'm a bit of a cynic) by now I groan whenever I encounter a new avant-garde composition based on / claiming inspiration from either Beckett or Celan. It's gotten to be practically an avant-garde cliche.
On a more constructive note, Feldman's
Neither,
Words and Music and
For Samuel Beckett come to mind, but the OP is surely aware of them.
Quote from: T. D. on September 05, 2020, 05:27:45 AM
I have the same feeling about various composers and Paul Celan. Honestly (granted I'm a bit of a cynic) by now I groan whenever I encounter a new avant-garde composition based on / claiming inspiration from either Beckett or Celan. It's gotten to be practically an avant-garde cliche.
On a more constructive note, Feldman's Neither, Words and Music and For Samuel Beckett come to mind, but the OP is surely aware of them.
Quote from: CRCulver on September 05, 2020, 05:19:44 AM
The cynic in me has wondered if composers like Dusapin and Saunders have tied their works to Beckett in recent years not just because they like the author, but because claiming this connection automatically lends some additional prestige to what they're doing. Were that the case, it would be rather parasitical on Beckett's reputation. Sort of what a number of mid-century avant-gardists did with Finnegans Wake.
(I had the same uncomfortable feeling about a recentish piece by Michael Hersh that the composer claimed is based on Robert Lowell's poetry, but in an interview Hersch revealed that he didn't actually know much about Lowell's work and couldn't really point to any firm connections between what he wrote and the poems.)
https://www.youtube.com/v/14njUwJUg1I
The first that comes to mind is For Samuel Beckett by Morton Feldman.
My own cynicism is directed almost entirely at cynics.
Lots of artists have been fascinated by the works of other artists. Musicians and painters and poets and such do often hang out with each other and spur each other on. The only ones I know of first hand are all of them people who are genuinely fascinated and inspired by the works of other artists.* And most of the ones I know of second or third hand are equally genuine.
That is, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions, I'd argue, and not the rule.
*For example, a composer I know has turned a novel of mine into an opera, has commissioned several libretti from me, and has performed in several text pieces of mine. He cannot have done any of this in order to cash in on any fame of mine. I don't have any fame. He just likes my stuff is all. Indeed, what little fame I have is almost entirely owing to him. (He likes Beckett, too, by the way, but he really admires Stein.)
(https://i.postimg.cc/VvcVv4d2/MMNA.jpg)
György Kurtág's Fin de partie was premiered to great acclaim at La Scala in Milan in 2018 (IIRC, our fellow GMGers GioCar and king ubu attended one of the performances).
And then, of course, there were the rumours of Pierre Boulez setting En attendant Godot as an opera (also for La Scala). But that, alas, was not to be....
Quote from: some guy on September 05, 2020, 10:28:53 AM
My own cynicism is directed almost entirely at cynics.
Lots of artists have been fascinated by the works of other artists. Musicians and painters and poets and such do often hang out with each other and spur each other on. The only ones I know of first hand are all of them people who are genuinely fascinated and inspired by the works of other artists.* And most of the ones I know of second or third hand are equally genuine.
That is, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions, I'd argue, and not the rule.
*For example, a composer I know has turned a novel of mine into an opera, has commissioned several libretti from me, and has performed in several text pieces of mine. He cannot have done any of this in order to cash in on any fame of mine. I don't have any fame. He just likes my stuff is all. Indeed, what little fame I have is almost entirely owing to him. (He likes Beckett, too, by the way, but he really admires Stein.)
I think the personal anecdote you've shared has nothing to do with the idea that composers are cashing in on Beckett's achievements, for obvious reasons; ie. that you're not Beckett.
Having gotten that out of the way, I've had similar thoughts about contemporary composers being drawn to Beckett for "avant-garde street-cred", though I suspect it's probably not true.
Quote from: vers la flamme on September 05, 2020, 02:51:37 PM
Having gotten that out of the way, I've had similar thoughts about contemporary composers being drawn to Beckett for "avant-garde street-cred", though I suspect it's probably not true.
It's a bit like saying that Schubert set Goethe for street cred, or De Rore set Petrarch to look cool. I mean it may be true, I can imagine the doctorate about the idea, but without the doctorate it's just uninteresting speculation at best, or a justification for a smug and lazy dismissal of the "Beckett phenomenon" at worst.
And then there's Luciano Berio's use of excerpts from The Unnameable in the famous third movement, "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung", of his Sinfonia.
Quote from: ritter on September 07, 2020, 01:00:25 AM
And then there's Luciano Berio's use of excerpts from The Unnameable in the famous third movement, "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung", of his Sinfonia.
Paper on this here
https://www.naun.org/multimedia/NAUN/ijmmas/20-711.pdf
Catherine Laws lecture here, focussing on contemporary responses in music to Beckett.
https://www.youtube.com/v/Wi23g9lxH28&ab_channel=SchAdvStudy
https://www.youtube.com/v/cqheSUY5TNQ
A little trombone concerto by Dusapin, the score contains a quote from Beckett's novel Watt
QuoteFor Watt now found himself in the midst of things which, had they consented to be named, did so as it were with reluctance. And the state in which Watt found himself resisted formulation in a way no state had ever done, in which Watt had ever found himself; and Watt had found himself in a great many states, in his day
Make of it what you can.
The music goes all cosmic half way through, about 8 minutes in, a sort of central slow movement - worth hearing. Not sure about the outer movements!
https://www.youtube.com/v/ep9k_lsVRLs
György Kurtág: Opera "Fin de partie (Endgame)" (2010-2017)
Samuel Beckett: Endgame. Scenes and monologues. Opera in one act (2010-2017)
Nagg: Leonardo Cortellazzi (tenor buffo)
Nell: Hilary Summers (mezzo-soprano)
Hamm: Frode Olsen (bass-baritone)
Clov: Leigh Melrose (baritone)
Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, conducted by Markus Stenz
recording of the first performance (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, November 15, 2018)
Quote from: Old San Antone on October 19, 2020, 07:45:39 AM
https://www.youtube.com/v/ep9k_lsVRLs
György Kurtág: Opera "Fin de partie (Endgame)" (2010-2017)
Samuel Beckett: Endgame. Scenes and monologues. Opera in one act (2010-2017)
Nagg: Leonardo Cortellazzi (tenor buffo)
Nell: Hilary Summers (mezzo-soprano)
Hamm: Frode Olsen (bass-baritone)
Clov: Leigh Melrose (baritone)
Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, conducted by Markus Stenz
recording of the first performance (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, November 15, 2018)
I just cannot listen to it, I know the play well enough and normally I like Kurtag well enough but somehow making this of all plays into an opera has got my back up!
Quote from: Mandryka on October 19, 2020, 07:47:37 AM
I just cannot listen to it, I know the play well enough and normally I like Kurtag well enough but somehow making this of all plays into an opera has got my back up!
Oh, I found the work to be very listenable. ;)
Apparently, Boulez wanted to adapt En attendant Godot into an opera, but never got around to it. Is it just me, or does this seem like a huge mismatch of styles and themes? I can't picture that working out in the slightest. Actually, I can't picture any Beckett working as opera. Perhaps I am being closed-minded.
Quote from: Mandryka on October 19, 2020, 07:47:37 AM
I just cannot listen to it, I know the play well enough and normally I like Kurtag well enough but somehow making this of all plays into an opera has got my back up!
I'm easily confused, but I don't believe Beckett would have approved of this, or even allowed it to happen. Didn't he react harshly (including court action) to productions of his plays that disregarded written staging directions?
Quote from: T. D. on October 20, 2020, 05:26:28 AM
I'm easily confused, but I don't believe Beckett would have approved of this, or even allowed it to happen. Didn't he react harshly (including court action) to productions of his plays that disregarded written staging directions?
They may have been following the stage direction -- this is the production
https://www.youtube.com/v/ALFiOCXQUek&t=1640s&ab_channel=Gygovich
My own view is that the Kurtag setting is less musical than Backett's text spoken by real actors and with silences. I also think that the unnaturalness of opera undermines the naturalness of the dialogue spoken, and that makes it into a less universal piece. I hate it.
Has there ever been a really important, great, play set to music without radical alteration? Nothing's coming to mind. I don't know how Berg's settings relate to the originals.
Quote from: Mandryka on October 20, 2020, 07:34:52 AM
They may have been following the stage direction -- this is the production
https://www.youtube.com/v/ALFiOCXQUek&t=1640s&ab_channel=Gygovich
My own view is that the Kurtag setting is less musical than Backett's text spoken by real actors and with silences. I also think that the unnaturalness of opera undermines the naturalness of the dialogue spoken, and that makes it into a less universal piece. I hate it.
Has there ever been a really important, great, play set to music without radical alteration? Nothing's coming to mind. I don't know how Berg's settings relate to the originals.
Of the sections he used, I don't think Debussy altered very much the text of Maurice Maeterlinck's play,
Pelléas and Mélisande. I guess since I don't know Beckett's play, I focus solely on the music of Kurtag's opera. But that is how I listen to all opera, only having a vague idea of the plot.
Quote from: Old San Antone on October 20, 2020, 08:42:39 AM
Of the sections he used, I don't think Debussy altered very much the text of Maurice Maeterlinck's play, Pelléas and Mélisande. I guess since I don't know Beckett's play, I focus solely on the music of Kurtag's opera. But that is how I listen to all opera, only having a vague idea of the plot.
I think it's the only time I've come to an opera play first -- apart maybe for Otello and MacBeth and Falstaff, but Boito and whoever it was wrote the Macbeth libretto clearly deviated radically from the Shakespeare to make it work as opera. I just happen to be exploring Beckett a bit right now, hence this thread. I'm not sure I recommend it, it may be more satisfying to just forget about the play, but I can't do that.
Quote from: T. D. on October 20, 2020, 05:26:28 AM
I'm easily confused, but I don't believe Beckett would have approved of this, or even allowed it to happen. Didn't he react harshly (including court action) to productions of his plays that disregarded written staging directions?
I have a friend who is a Beckett scholar, I asked him about court action and he replied by email as follows
QuoteThere's a complicated ongoing history of Beckett (and then the Beckett Estate) not agreeing to certain productions because they went against his intentions as a playwright. I believe there may have been a court case, though I don't recall the details - more likely involving the Estate rather than the man himself.
The Morton Feldman opera,
Neither, is based on a short Beckett poem.
QuoteComposer and librettist had met in Berlin two years earlier with plans for a collaboration for Rome Opera, but in their encounter Beckett had told Feldman that he himself did not like opera, and Feldman had echoed Beckett's sentiment, so that the work emerged in Rome as a setting for soprano soloist only, accompanied by orchestra. It could theoretically be termed a "monodrama," but given the creators' disdain for opera, the label "anti-opera" fits better.
If Beckett did not like opera, it is hard to believe he would approve of Kurtag's work. But, it appears to have been produced at least once. And I like the music Kurtag wrote.
It seems to me that Beckett, and now his estate, should understand that once his work is "out in the public" so to say, it takes on an independent life, and any adaptation to opera or film (or any other medium) is a different work than the original. If the author or his heirs do not wish the work to be adapted, copyright laws will protect them. Once the work is in the public domain (which I suppose is not yet the case with Beckett), there's actually very little they can do to prevent adaptations. In any case, I would imagine Kúrtag got the rights to convert Fin de partie into an opera.
Reminds me of the bizarre case some 5 years ago of a Paris Court banning the distribution of a DVD of Poulenc's Le dialogues des Cermélites in a staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov, because the heirs of Georges Bernanos (on whose novel the opera is based) objected, saying that it "denaturalised" the piece. The ruling was later overturned by a higher court, and the DVD is available. Georges Bernanos died in 1948!
I'll just mention in passing a problem I'm having appreciating Beckett the author. I seem not to have an eschatology gene. All these characters suffering because life's so pointless, and I'm thinking, just shut up and have a party.
Quote from: ritter on October 21, 2020, 09:35:04 AM
It seems to me that Beckett, and now his estate, should understand that once his work is "out in the public" so to say, it takes on an independent life, and any adaptation to opera or film (or any other medium) is a different work than the original. If the author or his heirs do not wish the work to be adapted, copyright laws will protect them. Once the work is in the public domain (which I suppose is not yet the case with Beckett), there's actually very little they can do to prevent adaptations. In any case, I would imagine Kúrtag got the rights to convert Fin de partie into an opera.
Reminds me of the bizarre case some 5 years ago of a Paris Court banning the distribution of a DVD of Poulenc's Le dialogues des Cermélites in a staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov, because the heirs of Georges Bernanos (on whose novel the opera is based) objected, saying that it "denaturalised" the piece. The ruling was later overturned by a higher court, and the DVD is available. Georges Bernanos died in 1948!
Interesting post, thank you.
Quote from: ritter on October 21, 2020, 09:35:04 AM
It seems to me that Beckett, and now his estate, should understand that once his work is "out in the public" so to say, it takes on an independent life, and any adaptation to opera or film (or any other medium) is a different work than the original. If the author or his heirs do not wish the work to be adapted, copyright laws will protect them. Once the work is in the public domain (which I suppose is not yet the case with Beckett), there's actually very little they can do to prevent adaptations. In any case, I would imagine Kúrtag got the rights to convert Fin de partie into an opera.
Reminds me of the bizarre case some 5 years ago of a Paris Court banning the distribution of a DVD of Poulenc's Le dialogues des Cermélites in a staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov, because the heirs of Georges Bernanos (on whose novel the opera is based) objected, saying that it "denaturalised" the piece. The ruling was later overturned by a higher court, and the DVD is available. Georges Bernanos died in 1948!
Even if a work has been published, as a play in this case, there would still need to be approval by the Estate for an adaptation of the play as an opera. I must assume the Estate granted this approval, since otherwise it is highly unlikely that Kurtag would have gone forward with writing the work and La Scala would never have mounted a production of it.
Quote from: Mandryka on October 21, 2020, 09:59:38 AM
I'll just mention in passing a problem I'm having appreciating Beckett the author. I seem not to have an eschatology gene. All these characters suffering because life's so pointless, and I'm thinking, just shut up and have a party.
I don't remember who said that for Beckett there was absolutely no difference whatsoever between a leaf falling and a bomb falling.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Quote from: Florestan on October 21, 2020, 11:44:44 AM
I don't remember who said that for Beckett there was absolutely no difference whatsoever between a leaf falling and a bomb falling.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Actually, that was Beckett describing what James Joyce thought.
Quote from: Old San Antone on October 21, 2020, 11:54:15 AM
Actually, that was Beckett describing what James Joyce thought.
Irish solidarity? ;D
Quote from: Florestan on October 21, 2020, 12:01:53 PM
Irish solidarity? ;D
A Rumanian born philosopher E. M. Cioran recalled the following conversation with Beckett: the subject was Jonathan Swift and satire and he quoted Beckett as saying, "Joyce had no inclination for satire, he never rebelled, he was detached, he accepted everything. For him, there was absolutely no difference between a bomb falling and a leaf falling."
Quote from: Old San Antone on October 21, 2020, 12:07:19 PM
A Rumanian born philosopher E. M. Cioran recalled the following conversation with Beckett: the subject was Jonathan Swift and satire and he quoted Beckett as saying, "Joyce had no inclination for satire, he never rebelled, he was detached, he accepted everything. For him, there was absolutely no difference between a bomb falling and a leaf falling."
The funny thing is, now that I think of it, I must have read it in one of Cioran's works (I have them all, I read them all), but I could have bet it was Beckett who was referred to, not Joyce. :D
Anyway, neither belong to my favorite writers, so there.
Quote from: Florestan on October 21, 2020, 12:13:23 PM
The funny thing is, now that I think of it, I must have read it in one of Cioran's works (I have them all, I read them all), but I could have bet it was Beckett who was referred to, not Joyce. :D
Anyway, neither belong to my favorite writers, so there.
Here's the link to the article that quotes the passage - the full text is behind a paywall, it's the best I can do.
Jstor (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25781913?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents)
Quote from: Old San Antone on October 21, 2020, 12:36:38 PM
Here's the link to the article that quotes the passage - the full text is behind a paywall, it's the best I can do.
Jstor (https://www.jstor.org/stable/25781913?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents)
Oh, I trust you completely! I was joking on
my memory, not yours!
Quote from: Florestan on October 21, 2020, 11:44:44 AM
I don't remember who said that for Beckett there was absolutely no difference whatsoever between a leaf falling and a bomb falling.
Thanks, but no thanks.
It's nonsense. Beckett joined the French resistance, he narrowly avoided the gestapo.
I confused Beckett with Joyce. I've read that Cioran piece long ago and misremembered. Sorry.
Didn't Joyce work to help some Jews escape from Nazis in Paris? He was political to this extent: he was anti Nazi. But I think it's probably not quite correct to say that the death of a Jew was, for him, no more important than the fall of a leaf.
And of course he didn't much like the church. I'm not sure what his involvement was in Irish politics.
https://www.youtube.com/v/2MMoO2l9tlU&ab_channel=WilliamOsborne
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!"
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
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
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.
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,
This is Samuel Beckett's text Ping
(https://i.ibb.co/6WjYX7F/Ping.jpg)
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
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51M%2BRz5teLL._AC_SX355_.jpg)
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.
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.
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
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
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
(https://img.discogs.com/BMu1WIFsKDhyE5Ee5r_tDsDe9zY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4476321-1365955625-8278.jpeg.jpg)
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
(https://img.discogs.com/BMu1WIFsKDhyE5Ee5r_tDsDe9zY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4476321-1365955625-8278.jpeg.jpg)
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.
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.
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
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 (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 )
(https://i.discogs.com/R-14167580-1569109967-5197.jpeg?bucket=discogs-images&fit=contain&format=auto&height=600&quality=90&width=600&signature=YWRIpwwNKZV5TQa2L%2FJd5gg0vB2dDT5VR1Z4kOtXAAw%3D)
https://www.youtube.com/v/qIZzy68aeX8
Philip Glass's second string quartet is inspired by Beckett's Company
http://timothyquigley.net/vcs/beckett-company.pdf
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
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
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.