BECKETT AND
FELDMAN AT THE QEH
Concert review by David Hackbridge Johnson
The brief meetings and subsequent correspondence
between Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman, form one of the more curious conjugations
of two great artists – curious in that it highlighted some similarities in
otherwise fairly disparate mediums, ones that might be characterised as
narrative drama and static process. Two
distinct styles can meet in the space carved out of negatives – Beckett's
stripped-bare plots with elements of repetitive ritual, Feldman's melodyless
sound objects turning about a still centre, the harsh anti-naturalist sets of
Beckett with bodily distress built in by means of dustbins, sand pits, or the
appalling reduction to the agonised mouth in Not I, Feldman with his see-saw chords locked, released, then
locked again, his revolving kaleidoscope of timbre and reduction of all
dynamics to pianississimo.
Drama and music of what remains when nearly everything's been left out.
This preconditioned emptying allows for a perception of form as in Ezra Pound's
words from his ‘San Trovaso Notebook' as not consisting of matter, but ‘of
space matter does or might fill'.[1]
This invites ideas of a spatialization of ritual and rhythm discernible in
Beckett and Feldman.
The concert entitled ‘Refracted Sound’ at the
Queen Elizabeth Hall last night (29.xi.2024) gave an opportunity to test the creative
level at which the acquaintance of Beckett and Feldman settled. Beckett's
Quad I and II were coupled with
Feldman's For Samuel Beckett. The excellent dancers in the Beckett were Kaya
Blumenthal-Rothschild, Sandy Hoi Shan Yip, Mary Sweetnam and Timea
Szalontayoya. The co-directors of Quads
were Jack Sheen and Rowland Hill, with Jack Sheen returning to conduct the
Feldman with the combined and superb forces of the Royal Academy of Music
Manson Ensemble and the London Sinfonietta. Remarkable and moving
performances. Beckett's pair of Quads
is one of his wordless dramas originally conceived for television. Four dancers process around and through a
square, their faces all but concealed, their arms pinioned under costumes, and
the manic reiteration of their footsteps providing dramatic propulsion. Only at the centre of the square, marked by a
spotlight, can the protagonists meet, or rather avoid each other. The whole engendered the feeling of a futile
quest, Sisyphean, a fugue-state of no respite. The quadruple loneliness
of the quest might trigger those of a similar nature in the minds of watchers:
desolate, frantic perambulations of an airing court in some remembered asylum,
or Rudolf Hess times four pacing his cell in Spandau Prison. The monastic
vestments (beautifully designed by Juliet Dodson) complete with face-obscuring
cowl, might suggest a religious journey along axes that, if only they could
achieve spiritual growth, might bring the penitents closer to God. But
the bright colours of the vestments chosen – white, turquoise,
lime green, and scarlet – suggested Roger Corman's film The Masque of the Red Death, or Arthur Bliss's ballet Checkmate with its similar straights,
diagonals, and obstacles to be negotiated by the brightly robed combatants.
No doubt if these fantastical extrapolations could be put to Beckett, he would
respond by means of a granitic silence.
Any such walked space can have a metric and the
dancers are compelled to synchronize to the following rhythm: six paces along
the straights of the square and then five along a diagonal to the centre, of
which the fifth is a sidestep to the left to avoid other dancers, and then five
more to complete the diagonal to the opposite corner of the square. The
feet of the dancers pound this 6+5+5 rhythm in a fast March tempo – a lopsided
military tattoo. Quad II repeats the
process at a markedly slower speed as if to suggest exhaustion if not release. In delineating the action within a square and
its intersecting diagonals, Beckett has created the enclosed territory for a
repetitive but nevertheless compulsive drama. As dancers enter or exit
the square by any of its corners, the sense of an athletic relay is created, as
if having completed the required number of circuits, a rest period is allowed.
As with so much Beckett, hope is a mirage and escape impossible – the continual
crossing of the dancers and their side-stepping of each other means there is no
possibility of contact, no community, no embrace – like figures on a mechanical
clock they are condemned to their designated track from which no deviation is
permitted. Thus Beckett creates a disquieting yet profound negativity by
which paradoxically, the work of art lives.
There aren't too many precedents for Morton
Feldman's mature style of chordal oscillations – ‘Farben’ from Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra is the most
obvious, but we might add certain nocturnal movements of Sorabji, who, like
Feldman, was influenced by Persian art, and the ‘Mantra of Bliss’ from Three Mantras from Avatara by John
Foulds. All these composers created their own forms of hypnosis. For Samuel Beckett was almost Feldman's
last work and compared with the gargantuan austerity of For Philip Guston, is an opulent work of about 50 minutes.
The piece begins with bars of five beats and this made a telling resonance with
part of the rhythm of Quad I and II. The rhythm is occasionally marked by chords on
the first beat of each bar, yet this soon becomes an illusion as chords drift
onto other beats. Groups of wind, brass and strings, usually operating as
discrete blocks, smear over each other in an ever-changing series of chords by
which paradoxically a unity is achieved. These shifting chords are anchored in space by
a kind of continuo of piano, harp and vibraphone that create an illuminated
over-arching halo – as if a subliminal tonic was in operation. The effect of the whole is like watching the rotations of a mobile under subdued lighting, or walking
slowly around a sculpture of Alexander Calder, or looking into a puddle where
petrol from a car engine has pooled. The
rhythmic pulse became stretched to a slower 3/4 pattern after about 20 minutes
and then a more complicated structure of a fast 3/4 and a much slower 2/4
emerged. These changes created the
impression of movements within the entire structure, not dramatically opposed
but created by subtle shifts in the periodicity of the chords. Despite
its seeming absence, can it be said that there is a resultant melody in For Samuel Beckett? Certainly
there is a serenity that is a far cry from the work of its dedicatee. If
Beckett draws equally on the dire inner landscapes of Kafka and a dark
absurdist world stemming from Jarry, Feldman is an artist of the sublime – he
revolves serenely in the vast space inhabited by the Schubert of the late
quartets and piano sonatas, and by the late works of Fauré, where
tonality has wandered into parsecs where its gravitational pull is negligible,
where the aural moment is unshackled and available for free bonding and
separation. So perhaps Beckett and Feldman aren't so kindred after all – the
distress of the former as against the calm radiance of the latter. And
yet, in their methods of subtraction, of denial, they somehow meet at the
centre of a square, where with courtly grace, they side-step each other.
©DHJ 2024