Camus

Is there an artistic team, apart from yourself, who will write the libretto and / or the adaption of Camus’ novel?

Yes. I work in collaboration with:
1) Annette Müller: dramaturge and theater director. She works in different theater productions in Germany.
2) Bart Brouns: He is an expert in the German language with knowledge of French literature. He is also a musician.

Working with Annette Müller:
The dramaturgy of this opera  follows the chronological storyline as in the novel (ex: the funeral, the beach, the prison, the trial). I don’t want to produce a new text based on Camus’ novel but I will use a solid selection of the existent text, which will be the basic structure for my new work.  

“On the surface, L’Étranger gives the appearance of being an extremely simple though carefully planned and written book. In reality, it is a dense and rich creation, full of undiscovered meanings and formal qualities.”

Carl Viggiani

It is my aim to follow the story in a linear way looking for richness, mainly in the emotional aspect, from a musical perspective. I want the audience to be able to follow the story linearly but not in a “word by word” way.
Subtitles are a good option, but not mandatory. Basic phrases can frame the scenes but subtitles won´t accompany the whole opera: I don’t want the audience to be reading all the time! Program notes could also be a good alternative, like in any traditional opera.
The text is minimal, but that doesn’t mean that it´s not important. Together with Annette Müller I want to create a substantial filter of the novel, selecting the phrases that, like pillars under a construction, hold the drama in a subtle but effective (and understandable) way.
Meursault, the main character, is carrying the narrative line from the beginning to the end (as in the novel). In my opera Meursault is a baritone, a voice range that, in my opinion, can clearly communicate text when necessary, both in sung and spoken text.
In addition, the ensemble (specially the woodwinds) will use spoken or sung texts together with their playing, using extended techniques. See the stage designs at the end of this document to have an idea of how the ensemble is used in the different scenes.

Working with Bart Brouns:
Bart Brouns, expert in German language with a deep knowledge of French literature,is also a musician. His collaboration in this project, is to select the original French texts from the novel that also can be understood by a German audience, creating a semantic link between the two languages. My question is: which words in the French novel can be understood by German speaking audiences?
I want to use the French language in my opera. The sound of the French language, beyond the meaning of the words, brings the opera into a “French existentialism mood”, that beyond the philosophy, creates a laconic atmosphere of senselessness and absurdity.

What could a possible production look like? How could a director use your musical material?

 

The text extracted from the novel and its original structure, is a clear guide for the drama. But the music score is the heart of this opera. I would make emphasis in the atmosphere again, that is the music + the scene
I have a lot of experience creating complete dramatic scenes by using sounds, objects, lights and movement, all of them organized in a music score. The opera follows the narrative line of Camus´ novel. But like in most operas, the text doesn’t need to be over-explained. The music and the dramaturgy will speak for themselves with the language of images and sounds. In my proposal, instruments and objects create complete audiovisual scenes, which, flow from one scene to the other, creating a sort of real time movie.

Some practical examples:

I made some sketches to show “how the stage of my opera could be” and the way I am linking the staging with my music and with the novel. These ideas are not meant to be taken literally. They are drafts to open an artistic dialogue between disciplines.
My proposal is based on a succession of scenes, solos, duos, trios and quartets which follow the storyline of the novel. In terms of musical texture, this opera is a “concerto for baritone and ensemble”, where the baritone (Meursault) is the leading voice.  All scenes are organized around him. The rest of the singers (three) and the musicians (twelve), play the role of a choir that comments the scenes (remember that the musicians are also singing and playing through the instruments). The drama is built from Meursault´s perspective. The choir represents the “outside”, or better said, “all that is not Meursault thoughts”.
Occasionally some of the characters have more prominence in the drama (Marie, the judge, the typist in the trial). But this brief presence vanishes rapidly into the anonymity of the choir, as a metaphor of the outside being inapprehensible by Meursault.

1. Funeral scene: solo of Meursault with the coffin of his mother (he doesn´t look at her).  A distant choir of the funeral participants comment on Meursault behavior.

Voulez-vous auparavant voir votre mère une dernière fois ? » J’ai ditnon/ Wollen Sie Ihre Mutter vorher noch ein letztes Mal sehen?» Ich verneinte

2. The beach. Singers and musicians play bowls with water OR sand, creating a “surround system” with simple means. The sound of the water OR sand + instruments, goes in crescendo, ending with the fatidic gun–shots. The stage possibilities for water are interesting. Glass containers full of water, with a proper light design, can create a very poetic scene. You can hear the sound of sand together with the musical instruments in my piece “The dearest dream” fragment  03.00 until 04.00 https://vimeo.com/296329584

“…tout s’arrêtait ici entre la mer, le sable et le soleil, le double silence de la flûte et de l’eau.” “…alleswurde unbeweglich zwischen Meer, Sand und Töne: das zwiefacheSchweigen von Flöte und Wasser”.

3. Meursault. Baritone solo. He is talking with himself in a mirror. The choir is more distant and softer than ever. He is busy with his own thoughts, untouched by the outside world.

Mais tout le monde sait que la vie ne vaut pas la peine d’être vécue. Aber jeder weiß, daß das Leben nicht lebenswert ist.

4. The jail. Singers and musicians play long metal bars against the floor. Sound and image come together.

C’est justement pour ça qu’on vous met enprison. On vous prive de la liberté. » Je n’avais jamais pensé à cela. Je l’ai approuvé : « C’est vrai, lui ai-je dit, où serait la punition ?«Das ist doch die Freiheit. Man nimmt euch die Freiheit.» Dieser Gedanke war mir noch gar nicht gekommen. Ich stimmte ihm zu: «Das ist richtig, sonst wäre es ja keine Strafe.

5. Meursault duo with Marie. The text says that Marie is one woman and also all the women that he met before. The choir formed by all the female players of the ensemble and the female singers are the musical echo of Marie (singer 2).

“Je ne pensais jamais à Marie particulièrement. Mais je pensais tellement à une femme, aux femmes, à toutes celles que j’avais connues” Ich dachte dabei nicht besonders an Maria. Aber ich dachte so sehr an eine Frau, an Frauen, an alle, die ich gekannt”

6. The trial is a polyphonic multilayered scene. A group of ventilators ison stage. The oscillating heads follow the trial as if they were the heads of the people in court. This scene is rich in meanings: the ventilators are related to the suffocating summer, but they also are a metaphor for members of society as robots.  Ventilators can be switched on and off from a distance following musical cues. A whole kinetic choreography can be organized on stage synchronizing singers, instruments and objects creating a “Grand Finale”. See “Musica invisible for flute and ventilators”, fragment from 0.14 until 0.40 https://vimeo.com/48767850

Other elements from the novel present in this scene are: the bell of the judge in counterpoint to the bells from outside; there is also a vibraphone solo emulating the typist, who annotates the events of the trial.  See “Esta tarde leo a Adorno”, fragment from the very beginning (vibraphone solo) https://vimeo.com/264749844

L’après-midi, les grands ventilateurs brassaient toujours l’air épaisde la salle et les petits éventails multicolores des jurés s’agitaienttous dans le même sens. Am Nachmittag wirbelten die großenVentilatoren die dicke Luft im Saal durcheinander, und die kleinen, bunten Fächer der Geschworenen bewegten sich alle im gleichenTakt.

Your concept recalls the musical and theatrical ideas of John Cage and combines abstract musical processes with humour and theatricality. Nevertheless, we would like to ask you for more and more precise information: You suggest that surtitles will be used in order to convey the story of Albert Camus’ »The Stranger«. How do situations and characters of that same novel inform the musical structure itself? To put it differently: Is there a way of understanding the main situations and moments of the story if you take away the surtitles?

 

Unlike Cage, philosopher of sounds, where the objects were a tool to break the academic establishment of his time, I am interested in the sounds coming from everyday objects but I consider them musical instruments. In my music chance operations are reduced. I expect precise results from the sound objects. The objects are written in the score in additional lines together with the lines of the ensemble, in a detailed “ala Lachenmann” style.
I like to write music for everyday life objects together with traditional musical instruments. Writing for a ventilator requires the same dedication (if not more!) than writing a solo for violin.  I like to think that by bringing instruments and objects together audiences can not only see the beauty of the established traditional instruments, but also of everyday life objects.
Concerning the structure, and its level of determinacy, it is my aim that the story is understood independently from the subtitles. Subtitles can help audience, specially not familiar with modern music, but text is not the pillar of this opera.

We don’t want to produce a new text based on Camus’ novel but to make selection of the existent text, sung in French with eventual subtitles in German translating but also commenting the actions in a sort of meta-text.

 The text in this opera works in different levels.

1. Informative clear text: Text that helps to follow the story (as minimal as possible) and to emphasize dramatic contain (see my musical moment “Je t’aime- je ne t’aime pas”, or “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte”. )
2. Text as texture: singers and ensemble sing and speak texts from the original novel (in French). The text has not to be fully understood; only some significant words stand out from the general texture. Singers and instruments on stage create an intelligible language of an emotional nature[1].

The text is minimal, but that doesn’t mean that it´s not important. Together with Annette Müller and Bart Broens we want to create a substantial filter of the novel, selecting the phrases that, like pillars under a construction, hold the drama in a subtle but effective (and understandable) way.
Bart Brouns, expert in German language with a deep knowledge of French literature, is also a musician. His collaboration in this project, is to select the original French texts from the novel that also can be understood by a German audience, creating a semantic link between the two languages. The question is: which words in the French novel can be understood by German speaking audiences?
We want to use French language in the opera. The sound of the French language, beyond the meaning of the words, brings the opera into a “French existentialism stimmung”.

1. Funeral scene: solo of Meursault with the coffin of his mother (he doesn´t look at her). A distant choir of the funeral participants comment on Meursault behavior. Voulez-vous auparavant voir votre mère une dernière fois ? » J’ai dit non/ Wollen Sie Ihre Mutter vorher noch ein letztes Mal sehen?» Ich verneinte.

 

  

2. The beach. Singers and musicians play bowls with water OR sand, creating a “surround system” with simple means. The sound of the water OR sand + instruments, goes in crescendo, ending with the fatidic gun-shots. The stage possibilities for water are interesting. Glass containers full of water, with a proper light design, can create a very poetic scene. “…tout s’arrêtait ici entre la mer, le sable et le soleil, le double silence de la flûte et de l’eau.” “…alles wurde unbeweglich zwischen Meer, Sand und Töne: das zwiefache Schweigen von Flöte und Wasser”. You can hear the sound of sand together with the musical instruments in my piece “The dearest dream” https://vimeo.com/296329584#t=180s (starts at minute 3:00)

 

3. Meursault. Baritone solo. He is talking with himself in a mirror. The choir is more distant and softer than ever. He is busy with his own thoughts, untouched by the outside world. Mais tout le monde sait que la vie ne vaut pas la peine d’être vécue. Aber jeder weiß, daß das Leben nicht lebenswert ist.

 

4. The jail. Singers and musicians play long metal bars against the floor. Sound and image come together. C’est justement pour ça qu’on vous met en prison. On vous prive de la liberté. » Je n’avais jamais pensé à cela. Je l’ai approuvé : « C’est vrai, lui ai-je dit, où serait la punition ? «Das ist doch die Freiheit. Man nimmt euch die Freiheit.» Dieser Gedanke war mir noch gar nicht gekommen. Ich stimmte ihm zu: «Das ist richtig, sonst wäre es ja keine Strafe.»

 

 

5. Meursault duo with Marie. The text says that Marie is one woman and also all the women that he met before. The choir formed by all the female players of the ensemble and the female singers are the musical echo of Marie (singer 2). “Je ne pensais jamais à Marie particulièrement. Mais je pensais tellement à une femme, aux femmes, à toutes celles que j’avais connues” Ich dachte dabei nicht besonders an Maria. Aber ich dachte so sehr an eine Frau, an Frauen, an alle, die ich gekannt”

 

 

6. The trial is a polyphonic multilayered scene. A group of ventilators is on stage. The oscillating heads follow the trial as if they were the heads of the people in court. This scene is rich in meanings: the ventilators are related to the suffocating summer, but they also are a metaphor for members of society as robots.

Ventilators can be switched on and off from a distance following musical cues. A whole kinetic choreography can be organized on stage synchronizing singers, instruments and objects creating a “Grand Finale”.

See “Musica invisible for flute and ventilators”, https://vimeo.com/48767850#t=14s (starts at 00:14)

Other elements from the novel present in this scene are: the bell of the judge in counterpoint to the bells from outside; there is also a vibraphone solo emulating the typist, who annotates the events of the trial.

See “Esta tarde leo a Adorno”, (vibraphone solo) https://vimeo.com/264749844

(starts at the very beginning)

L’après-midi, les grands ventilateurs brassaient toujours l’air épais de la salle et les petits éventails multicolores des jurés s’agitaient tous dans le même sens. Am Nachmittag wirbelten die großen Ventilatoren die dicke Luft im Saal durcheinander, und die kleinen, bunten Fächer der Geschworenen bewegten sich alle im gleichen Takt.

[1]   See “Tissue” (minute 11 in the video – bar 147 score) to see how instruments sing/speak and play simultaneously creating “text-textures”

 

Musical structure
concerning L’étranger, the opera, is shown organized in several scenes which follow the structure of the novel.
The soloist, Meursault -preferably a low voice- is in counterpoint with the ensemble. We want a clear straight forward plot, easy to follow in narrative terms, so the audience can concentrate in the subtleties of music and visual design appealing to the audience own emotions and imagination.
Each section of the opera establishes a different relationship with the main character and the others in the form of solo, duos, trios, and different choral scenes. Each scene, correspond to a different “stimmung” recomposing the atmosphere by means of music, text and stage design[1].

Written polyphony
Camus’ text, creates elaborated polyphonic structures using words. The text does not attempt to organize vertically the voices the way they would be seen in a musical score, but instead tells how they are layered one upon another following a musical logic. The polyphonic structures, although expressed through words, create in Camus´ complex scenes in relation to traditional musical forms: soloist and choir, coro spezzato (Venetian choir ala Gabrielli), spread choir (ala Stockhausen in Licht), etc. “Choir” in our proposal means the confluence of instruments/objects and voices.

• The burial (Meursault + choir in circle)
• The beach (Meursault + spread choir)
• The prison, scene of the visit: (Coro spezzato)
• The love-no love duo (Meursault and Marie)
• Solo with a mirror (Mais tout le monde sait que la vie ne vaut pas la peine d’être vécue. Aber jeder weiß, daß das Leben nicht lebenswert ist).
• The trial (Meursault + compact choir as a whole)

– Marie´s visit to Meursault in prison is a brilliant example of “coro spezzato”, two opposing groups which have polyphonic correspondences. The resolution of that great quasi operatic scene has also a clear musical resolution in the novel: the voices extinguish one by one, reducing the vocal density, in a sort of structural “perdendosi”.
– The scene in the beach, where the Arab man dies, starts with its characters randomly scattered in the landscape, and goes in crescendo with a musical culmination: five shots (one and four!) and “cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead”[2] pursuing a classical operatic climax.

 

Music style

• The main musical aspects of my musical perspective can be appreciated in “my musical moment”.
  The music is quite atmospheric in the sense that is based in the usage of textures and extended techniques, but at the same time, is built in detail using a precise music notation. Melodies and motives come back and forth from this “sound cloud” shaping the music with total precision.
• The melodic condition goes throughout the whole opera non-stop. Sometimes it is very clear (duo Marie-Meursault “Je t’aime- Je ne t’aime pas”), sometimes more vanished, but always present.
• The usage of dissonance in my music is related to the creation of textures, noise and beatments but not to a/tonal system. I appreciate both the pure singing voice, nerve and heart of the opera, and the textural techniques from noise to text. I aimed to illustrate these ideas in my musical moment.

 Usage of Leitmotifs:

The novel is full of recurrent sound effects like the flute of the Arabs, the bell of the judge, the typewriter machine, the electric fans, the cymbal in Meursault´s head, etc. They create structures and climaxes by the description of the sounds but also by the repetition of the same events attending the rhythm of the prose.

 One of the Arabs “. . . soufflait dans un petit roseau et répétait sans cesse . . . les trois notes qu’il obtenait de son instrument”  [was blowing through a little reed over and over again . . . repeating the only three notes he could get out of his instrument] [3]

 In my music, the usage leitmotivs have an extra meaning by bringing the objects themselves on stage, attending their sound evocation but also its eloquent presence: the fans are associated with the summer, the typewriter with the law, the flute with the mythical Algeria. I aimed to illustrate these ideas in my musical moment.

Singing and speaking

By “choir” I mean the confluence of instruments/objects and voices, both singing and speaking. Instruments sing, speak and play. Singers shine in a melodic arias to vanish into a textural spoken cloud. 

Objects as characters

I have always been interested in writing for sound objects in combination with traditional instruments and voices. It is a fundamental part of my musical language.

Sound objects, are, in this proposal, characters in themselves, representing persons, actions or abstract philosophical instances[4].

• The typist in the trial: this character is played by one of the percussionists whose vibraphone becomes a gigantic typewriter, typing what is happening on stage in real time[5].
• Bells: The judge bell (calling to “reality”), faraway bells (the outside world, the faraway otherness)
• Uses of a choir of ventilators for the scene of the trial[6]. The electric fans represent the suffocating summer but thanks to its oscillating heads symbolize as well the mechanical shaking heads of the jury unapproving Meursault’s behavior.  Some of these obejcts were included in “my musical moment”.

Collective sound effects:

The whole ensemble and singers play simple objects (paper, plastic) or performing group actions (footstep, soft murmuring) as a tutti. These actions have dramatic connotations apart from their interesting sound effect: the paper sound in the trial symbolized bureaucracy and the written laws; the undefined murmuring of voices symbolized “the others”, as a threatening and undefined whole, etc.

“The low voices of people murmuring in the prison creates a basso continuo”[7]

 

Music notation

Unlike Cage, philosopher of sounds, where the objects were a tool to break the academic establishment of his time, I am interested in the sounds coming from everyday objects but I consider them musical instruments. In my music chance operations are reduced. I expect precise results from the sound objects. The objects are written in the score in additional lines together with the lines of the ensemble, in a detailed “ala Lachenmann” style.

[1] See the diagrams describing the different scenes at the very end of this document.

[2] “Je ne sentais plus que les cymbales du soleil sur mon front” Albert Camus, L´étranger. Paris: Gallimard, 1942, 50.

[3] Ibid,14.

[4]   See my piece “The dearest dream”, anti-concerto for simple means

[5]   I wrote a piece “Heute Abend lese ich Adorno…” using this resource (available in my DVD/score at the very beginning of the piece)

[6]   See my piece “Musica invisible for flute and ventilators #2 (from minute 3 in the video, page 4 in the score)

[7] Deborah Weagel, Words and Music : Camus, Beckett, Cage, Gould. New York: Peter Lang, 2010, 40.

 

L’étranger, evidences the strangeness of Meursault within their social environment as a metaphor of the man in relationship with society. In a dialectical relationship with the world around, the opera faces a soloist against the ambiguous world around. In our work the outside world is represented by singers, instruments and objects.
As in the novel, in our opera, Meursault carries the action. The rest of the singers have exchangeable roles (each singer represents more than one character): Maria, Celeste, Salamano and his dog, Raimundo, the lawyer, the judge, the journalist, etc. This exchange-ability of roles also represents the indeterminacy and fuzziness of the world around Meursault.
Silence is also a very important aspect in L’étranger, as a metaphor of apathy and strangeness. Our soundscape swings back and forth from an austere speechless character to polyphonic crowded scenes referring to the multitude of voices around (and inside) Meursault´s head.

 

A careful reading of L’étranger shows that Camus experimented with certain structures and patterns that can be affiliated with music. L’étranger can be read as a musical score: concerning the form, the novel infers a musical logic in terms of structure and motivic development. It also contains innumerable sound-effect descriptions, which, apart from their direct sound references, provide a narrative rhythm which contribute to the creation of a deep psychological atmosphere close to the ones we find in traditional operas.
The awareness of the architecture of music is significant in relation to his own ability to create music-like structures in his writing […] in relation to Bach´s art of composing particularly the aspect that emphasize complex, multilayered contrapuntal relationships.
Opera, is a perfect media to transmit philosophical concepts, because it is an art that is not beyond words, not without them, but in between words. Following Camus´ existential journey through the human condition, this proposal is not willing to describe Camus´ philosophy of absurd, but to build a Stimmung where the audience can reflect on that concept, instead of into the explanation of it. An opera can create complex and psychological landscapes, which transmitting feelings rather than intellectual statements.
The narrative of L’étranger is quite simple and can be described in few lines, thing that we will gladly do. But what brings the attention in L’étranger is the philosophical aspect that emerges from this narrative line, that turns a novel into a treatise on existentialism.