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LISTENING INTERTEXTUALLY IN BEAT FURRER'S MUSIC THEATRE WORKS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2024

Lauren Redhead
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Abstract

This article focuses on three of Beat Furrer's works described as opera or music theatre: Begehren (2001), FAMA (2005) and Wüstenbuch (2010). Each of these pieces sets texts from Roman, contemporary and historical authors in exploration of the liminal spaces between life and death, and the possible transitions between them. In Wüstenbuch one such text is included from the Papyrus Berlin 3024, known as the source of the Ancient Egyptian philosophical text ‘The Dispute between a Man and his Ba’, a reflection on the meaning and value of life and the transition between life and death. Furrer's compositional style does not offer a linear narrative on such questions but rather multiple perspectives and tableaux, each of which calls the others and itself into question. In order to explore this and understand what the meeting and interchange of the different texts and authors offers within the context of Furrer's music, I outline a method of ‘listening intertextually’ in order to hear the liminal spaces not only within but between these compositions. I consider the hybrid and hypertexts that arise within the music, and the ways that they can be therefore considered – as in the subtitle often given to FAMA – a ‘drama of listening’.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 78 , Issue 307 , January 2024 , pp. 51 - 61
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 See, for example, this translation: University College London, Egyptian Literary Compositions of the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period (London: University College London, 2003), www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/midegsummaries.html#soul (accessed 28 June 2023).

2 Zabkar, Louis V., A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 161–2Google Scholar.

3 In the score for FAMA, Furrer uses the designation ‘Hörtheater’ (theatre of listening), whereas in Begehren and Wüstenbuch he uses ‘Musiktheater’.

4 Beat Furrer, Begehren liner notes, synopsis, tr. Martin Iddon. 2006, Kairos, 0012432KAI, p. 18, www.kairos-music.com/sites/default/files/downloads/0012432KAI.pdf (accessed 28 June 2023).

5 Ibid., libretto, pp. 12–17 (my translation).

6 Beat Furrer, FAMA liner notes, synopsis, tr. Martin Iddon. 2006, Kairos, 0012562KAI, p. 20, www.kairos-music.com/sites/default/files/downloads/0012562KAI.pdf (accessed 28 June 2023).

7 Daniel Ender, ‘Messages from Inside Sound: Traces of Beat Furrer's Compositional Hearing’, in Furrer, FAMA liner notes, p. 16.

8 This categorisation was given to the work in the London Sinfonietta's presentation of FAMA in 2016, https://londonsinfonietta.org.uk/whats-on/beat-furrer-fama (accessed 28 June 2023), and has also been used to evoke Furrer's entire oeuvre in Marie Luise Maintz's essay ‘The Drama of Listening: A Portrait of Beat Furrer’, tr. Elizabeth Robinson (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2016), www.baerenreiter.com/en/catalogue/20th21st-century-music/beat-furrer/more/essay/#content (accessed 28 June 2023).

9 Iddon, Martin, ‘Inside Fama's House: Listening, Intimacy, and the Noises of the Body’, in Noise in and as Music, eds Cassidy, Aaron and Einbond, Aaron (Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Press, 2013), p. 104Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 99.

11 Ibid., p. 102.

12 Furrer, Beat, FAMA: Hörtheater für großes Ensemble, acht Stimmen und Schauspielerin (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), score, p. 72Google Scholar.

13 Iddon, ‘Inside Fama's House’, p. 117.

14 These considerations of listening are found in Furrer's ideal staging of the work: the audience inside and the performers outside a box structure that has rotating sound-absorbent and sound-reflective panels. This has yet to be realised; stagings to date have placed the performers inside the box, only emphasising internalised listening.

15 Beat Furrer, quoted in Maerz Musik, Wüstenbuch programme note (Berlin: Berliner Festspieler, 2010) www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/berliner-festspiele/programm/bfs-gesamtprogramm/programmdetail_14342.html (accessed 28 June 2023).

16 Berliner Festspiele, Beat Furrer: Wüstenbuch (Berlin: Kultur Stiftung des Bundes, n.d.), www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/de/projekte/musik_und_klang/detail/beat_furrer_wuestenbuch.html (accessed 28 June 2023).

17 Beat Furrer, Wüstenbuch liner notes, libretto. 2014, Kairos, 0013312KAI, p.24, www.kairos-music.com/sites/default/files/downloads/0013312KAI.pdf (accessed 28 June 2023) (my translation).

18 Julia Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, in Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. L. S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 64–91 and in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) pp. 34–61; page numbers in this article refer to the latter edition.

19 Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, p. 37.

20 Barthes, Roland, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image-Music-Text, tr. Heath, Stephen (London: Fontana Press, 1977), p. 146Google Scholar.

21 Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Holquist, Michael, tr. Emmerson, Caryl and Holquist, Michael (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 271Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 273.

23 Ibid., p. 291.

24 Ibid., pp. 419–22.

25 Ibid., p. 421.

26 Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 36Google Scholar.

27 Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’, in Image-Music-Text (1977), pp. 179–189; p. 188.

28 Ibid., p. 189.

29 Kristeva, ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, p. 41.

30 Ibid., p. 56.

31 Beat Furrer, Begehren: Musiktheater nach texten von Cesare Pavese, Günther Eich, Ovid und Virgil (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), score, p. 107.

32 ‘klang immer aus dem atemgeräusch entstehen lassen und wieder als atemgeräusch enden lassen. immer als dal niente. quasi “chorish” atmen’. Ibid., p. 143 (my translation).

33 Furrer, Begehren liner notes, libretto, p. 14.

34 Furrer, FAMA, score, p. 166.

35 Furrer, FAMA liner notes, libretto, p. 14.

36 Furrer, Begehren liner notes, libretto, p. 16.