Prom 43: Kurtág - 'Endgame' ('Fin de partie'), BBC SSO, Thurs. 17 Aug. 2023

[RichardB]

rebalancing Beckett towards Nell and Nagg

It seems to me that if a composer wants to do something different from what Beckett wrote then they should write something different, and make it clear that it's something different, and call it something different. I would really love someone's musical setting of Beckett to be convincing, whether it's a composer whose work I'm generally in sympathy with or not, but it hasn't happened yet.

[Bryn]

It seems to me that if a composer wants to do something different from what Beckett wrote then they should write something different, and make it clear that it's something different, and call it something different. I would really love someone's musical setting of Beckett to be convincing, whether it's a composer whose work I'm generally in sympathy with or not, but it hasn't happened yet.

So neither[sic] Feldman nor Tilbury do it for you, eh?

[RichardB]

So neither[sic] Feldman nor Tilbury do it for you, eh?

Feldman does not really do it in Neither - it's a beautiful piece but the consistently high tessitura means that you can't really make out the words most of the time. When I said I hadn't yet been convinced, what I had in mind is compositions that set Beckett's words to music, which John T hasn't done, as opposed to creating music that accompanies a spoken text, or realising works written for radio like Cascando in which music is indicated as a "character" in the drama.

[Master Jacques]

It seems to me that if a composer wants to do something different from what Beckett wrote then they should write something different, and make it clear that it's something different, and call it something different. I would really love someone's musical setting of Beckett to be convincing, whether it's a composer whose work I'm generally in sympathy with or not, but it hasn't happened yet.

Like it or not, as most operas since time began have been based on pre-existent literary sources, there's no particular reason why Beckett should be considered unsuitable fodder for music theatre. I may find what Verdi does with Othello regrettable, viewed from the perspective of the original text, but that's hardly a useful way of looking at it.

No composer is ever going to be able to do justice to Beckett's verbal content, which is complete in itself. In this case, that a composer in his 90s (working with his wife, now dead) saw possibilities in Nagg and Nell that the original writer didn't utilise, is neither surprising, nor (I think) regrettable. He took what he could utilise, and refashioned it. (Kurtág's earlier Beckett works - especially perhaps What is the Word - show that he's not engaged in some sort of vandalism).

[Mandryka]

Seeing these responses I wonder whether this is the same piece I heard. To me it seems like a travesty of Beckett's work, but perhaps that wouldn't matter so much if it weren't so musically uninteresting.

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. But I’ve come across many people who say the opposite (like on this thread.) In fact, apart from you, I don’t think I’ve met another dissenter.


I think Beckett himself wrote the best music for his plays. 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 - I think it’s music but I’m weird

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

[Mandryka]

Like it or not, as most operas since time began have been based on pre-existent literary sources, there's no particular reason why Beckett should be considered unsuitable fodder for music theatre. I may find what Verdi does with Othello regrettable, viewed from the perspective of the original text, but that's hardly a useful way of looking at it.

No composer is ever going to be able to do justice to Beckett's verbal content, which is complete in itself. In this case, that a composer in his 90s (working with his wife, now dead) saw possibilities in Nagg and Nell that the original writer didn't utilise, is neither surprising, nor (I think) regrettable. He took what he could utilise, and refashioned it. (Kurtág's earlier Beckett works - especially perhaps What is the Word - show that he's not engaged in some sort of vandalism).

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.

[RichardB]

My own view is that the Kurtag setting is less musical than Beckett's text spoken by real actors and with silences.

Exactly. Every account of Beckett's working methods indicates that he paid the most painstaking attention to precise timing. Now of course it could be said that setting a play to music is going to involve some kind of transformation, but here it seems to be more a question of (as you imply) substituting a different music from that which Beckett already put there, and if you're going to do that why not start afresh, that would seem to me a more creative and meaningful thing to do.

[Bryn]

I was fortunate enough to find this DVD set at a knock-down price in a W H Smith Windsor branch sale a decade or so ago. Beckett's own music comes across beautifully in most of the performances therein:



Long overdue that I backed the discs up with DVD shrink.

[Ein Heldenleben]

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.

It’s pretty much impossible to do . I think Peter Pears said that setting A Midsummer’s Nights Dream to music without cuts would have produced an Opera rivalling the Ring in length. Much more interesting for me is the use of music within Drama - something that Shakespeare was a master at. I don’t know enough about Beckett’ s performance history to know how he employed music. I keep thinking he used electronic atmospheres but that could simply be through hearing R3 productions.
On Fin de Partie - there is an easily searchable French libretto on the web. On the opera I’m in the unconvinced camp . The constant gaps in the music don’t sound like Beckett. Whereas Verdi (and Britten ) settings do sound like Shakespeare . I can’t put my finger on why in the case of Verdi as Italian isn’t chock full of iambic pentameters.It might simply be the parallel between soliloquies and arias.

[Pulcinella]

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.

Previn's Streetcar?

Wiki says:

Other reviews have criticized the lengthy libretto (reportedly the Williams estate required a close following of the play)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Stre..._Desire_(opera)

[Master Jacques]

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.

Riders to the Sea.

Berg's operas cut the original plays heavily. (Though of course Buchner's Woyzeck is an unstable text anyway, edited by others after his death, so we don't know what he would have included, and what he'd have added or cut).

[Master Jacques]

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. But I’ve come across many people who say the opposite (like on this thread.) In fact, apart from you, I don’t think I’ve met another dissenter.

I don't see how - in any important sense - opera could be more "unnatural" than a Beckett play! Although of course I agree with you, that Kurtág is doing something radically different from Beckett's incomparable spoken original. But if we don't object to an orchestral tone poem called Hamlet or The Tempest, I don't see how we can object to an opera inspired by Endgame, just because it doesn't set the whole play, or allow the singers to pause when they feel the need. And "hate" seems a very strong word to use of such an exquisite, aesthetic experience.

"Universality" is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. I certainly agree that Kurtág's opera comes from that unfashionable stable of "high art", which we have to work hard at as listeners. It's never been for everyone, especially in today's populist climate. However, I should add that the sense of absorbed attention in the RAH was palpable, and that very few people left the hall before the end (about ten or so, I'd guess). All of which made the experience a pleasant change from the usual sort of spoon-feeding to which we're accustomed.

[Joseph K]

Speaking of 'high art' and off topic, but where is the celebration of Ferneyhough's 80th at this year's Proms?

[Master Jacques]

On Fin de Partie - there is an easily searchable French libretto on the web. On the opera I’m in the unconvinced camp . The constant gaps in the music don’t sound like Beckett. Whereas Verdi (and Britten ) settings do sound like Shakespeare . I can’t put my finger on why in the case of Verdi as Italian isn’t chock full of iambic pentameters.It might simply be the parallel between soliloquies and arias.

There was always some action or movement going on during those silences, which were not noticeable for those of us lucky enough to be getting the experience hot. It didn't sound like Beckett, but the composer wasn't trying to do that. Hearing it in French did make me think, though, how very different in effect Beckett's original text is from his later English version, with which we're all so familiar. And for Kurtág's generation, Beckett is primarily a French writer.

On Verdi I am in a small minority, in much preferring the honest, cheesy rambunctiousness of Macbeth to Boito's legerdemain with Otello (which removes the shock of Shakespeare's light comedic tone souring into tragedy) and Falstaff (which turns him into slick Goldoni farce).

[RichardB]

I wouldn't say that it's a question of "naturalness", whatever that means. It's just that I feel very strongly about the writing of Samuel Beckett, and about the various issues around setting words to music, and not just in a theatrical context. As for setting Endgame to music specifically, even before the question of pulling the precisely balanced text apart, the idea of doing so with an orchestral apparatus seems to me highly suspicious to begin with. Why not just use an out of tune piano and a broken accordion, and find subtlety and sophistication in that, as Beckett does with his pared down vocabulary (in either language)? Or write your own text, or collaborate with a playwright.

Great plays set to music without alteration: the three Greek tragedies (two in Hölderlin's German translation) by Carl Orff. Berg's restructuring of Wedekind's and Büchner's materials is extensive - but Büchner's play was in any case incomplete and fragmentary, and Lulu conflates two plays to begin with, let alone all the other ways in which the text is remoulded, but, significantly, Berg's title isn't that of either of the source plays.