Framework to Build my Performance
In addition to the principle of searching beyond the traditional concert format, in my approach to Obukhov’s solo piano works in performance, I will use a complementary curational principle associated with post-dramatic theater aesthetics, which composer and artistic director Heiner Goebbels describes, and which perfectly relates to Obukhov’s holistic vision of performance:
And theatre as a “thing in itself,” not as a representation or a medium to make statements about reality, is exactly what I try to offer. […] This is a drama of perception, a drama of one's senses, as in those quite powerful confrontations of all the elements - stage, light, music, words - in which the actor has to survive, not to act. So the drama of the “media” is actually a double drama here: a drama for the actor as well as a drama for the perception of the audience.1
Using a dramatic approach to performance, creating a drama of the senses both for the performers and for spectators,can help to create a “lived” and shared experience of a different temporality and space. I will assume then that my creative process will be more focused on findings related to my way of staging the performance, rather than with modes or interpretative choices concerning the pieces themselves, or any other pianistic and specifically music-related issues.
I will shape my own performative approach by not only going back to some principles that derive from my previous aesthetic analysis - engaging with interdisciplinary elements, the venue setting, the concert format itself, the function of the performer, the experience of the audience— but that also dive further into the underlying philosophical ideas of Obukhov’s specific musical language by analyzing certain characteristics of his compositional techniques and annotations in the score. Throughout this process I discover performative tools with which those philosophical concepts can be symbolized and applied in a practical manner, and like building a puzzle, I hope that in the end of the process I have a completed artistic vision of my performance.
Creating a Space of Transcendence – Concert Format
After all the previous reflections and analysis of this exposition, and being in contact with such interesting ideas, one starts to look at things in a different way. Coming back to solutions that bring a sense of collectivity between performer and audience, attributing a creative responsibility upon the audience, and approximating them more closely to the role of the performer, can be an effective choice. In Music as Context: a Method for Curating Music Performance, Imogen Eve presents a few ideas for interaction and participation techniques in content creation for members of the audience that can be applied in this context. Considering my intent to dissolve classical concert formalities, I see my performance of Obukhov’s solo piano works as taking place in the format of a combination of sound and performance installation (based on the creation of a semi-permanent self-contained space transformed by sound effects, rather than in the time-based event such as the concert format) and promenade theatre (where the audience moves through the space).2
Since Obukhov’s solo piano works are constructed of similar musical material, and because the performance of the totality of these works lasts for approximately 1 hour, performing them all in one event would result in a continuous and homogeneous production of sound. There would be no program printed, only a list of the titles of the pieces, available outside the room. I would begin to play before the audience comes into the venue, symbolizing one of the most fundamental ideas that shaped Russian symbolist aesthetic: that music preceded the phenomenal world, it was “there before” - music as an embodiment of Dionysian forces, representing the unity of existence. Having music playing already when the audience enters provides a more immersive and intimate contact with music itself, the latter of which in this installation is independent of the presence of the audience. Besides, dissolving the contrast between silence and sound in the traditional concert format can possibly take some of the pressure of performance out of the situation, thereby bringing more freedom to the performer to connect to the music and the moment itself.
By presenting Obukhov’s music in the fluid format of a live installation, and by designating it to happen within a given time span, the entrance and duration of each audience member's presence within that space would be entirely up to them, the decision to enter into an experience of the “music time” itself. In confluence with Russian symbolist aesthetics, abolishing the stage seems to me in this context be indispensable. I imagine the spatial setting as a kind of black box venue, with minimal light, to enhance the immersive experience, with the piano occupying the center of the room, and audience members sitting freely around the space.
Resonance is to be Experienced - Working with the Acoustic Phenomenon
The musical discourse of Russian Symbolism also revolved around the ideal of an artistic genius, a composer, who would carry the orphic mission, through their art, of bringing to life the transformative power of music. It is not surprising then to find in Obukhov a strong idealism about the impact of his own musical language.
His essay L’Emotion dans la musique, published in La Revue Musicale in 1927, remains one of the few written sources by an author where there is an overt attempt to justify metaphysically his musical language. It was Obukhov’s diagnosis that his epoch needed a rebirth that would restore the lost balance between spiritual and material forces.3 For its optimum effect, music should embody in its own inner structure - this true equilibrium between spirit and mind.
Obukhov explains that if romantic music had achieved a point of saturation of emotion, then, in response, in their pursuit of reinventing musical language, modernist currents had also reached a tipping point of rationality overpowering sensitivity. For Obukhov, it is through the harmonic features of music that it would be possible to restore the complexity of human existence, and its inner balance: “The (musical) harmony being at the base of the music, to which it gives all its character and its life, it is to it, mainly, that this task falls.”4
At the same time, it was evermore clear that the dichotomy of tonality, between major and minor, was not resourceful enough to grasp the complexity of human emotions. Only by broadening the catalogue of harmonic sound combinations within the chromatic scale, (where each tone bears an equal importance, symbolizing the balance between forces), and creating large twelve-tone harmonic complexes, would it be possible to restore the lost balance - to restore the true lost balance between the opposing core elements of nature.
It is clear from the outset that the old partitions forming the ‘tonalities’, ‘major’ or ’minor’ of music are doomed to disappear, almost completely, because they correspond only to simple emotions, delimited and free of any mixture, which are found so rarely in present day psychology.5
For Obukhov, his dodecaphonic compositional method L’Harmonie Absolue (Absolute Harmony) was the embodiment of this ideal of balance of nature, and thus, would bear the purpose, the mission, of salvaging humanity from its decadence.
Obukhov also demonstrated a lot of interest in the timbre and color quality of sound:
A diligent work of eleven consecutive years has allowed me to form a harmony comprising all 12 sounds of our chromatic scale without repetitions […] I found the bases of it during my research of combination of these 12 sounds, allowing to obtain a harmony characterized by a clarity and a sharpness that nobody, until now, could contest me. […] the most insignificant modification, made to this system of mutual and reciprocal concord, immediately introduces a perceptible disturbance in the transparency of the whole.6
His ideal of harmonic sound color, “clarity”, and “sharpness”, is in fact something that can be immediately noticed when playing or listening to Obukhov’s works for piano, and especially his piano music of the early 1920s. This is possible by forming the sounds in each chord according to their natural resonance (Scriabin and other proto-spectralists, such as Liszt, Debussy, and Messiaen, also employed this method).7 The sonoric result provokes a feeling of balance, evoking perfection. This method is not a rigorous rule in Obukhov; his Absolute Harmony is only a principle and not a strict dodecaphonic method, and therefore his music retains some spontaneity and flexibility. Nevertheless, the core principle and characteristic of his piano music remains, as Obukhov himself used to qualify his Absolute Harmony, “résonante” (resonant).8 This aspect of his music is an example of the true embodiment of metaphysical meaning in purely musical material.
In the dimension of interpretation, for the pianist, there are some obvious aspects of Obukhov's Absolute Harmony that can be taken in consideration, such as: the search for the right touch, balance, color, and pedaling. But encountering the idealism behind these musical features, can also affect the performance of piano works far beyond purely pianistic considerations.
To enhance this intrinsic characteristic of Obukhov’s music, the concept of Absolute Resonance, the performer can think beyond their role, their individualized musical action, and redirect the conceptualization of this principle into the staging of the concert itself. Resonance implies an experience of space. The desired acoustic for the solo piano works of Obukhov should be reverberant; in the context of this performance, it could be in a black box, with amplification and spatialization used in order to shape the desired sonic result. Furthermore, coming back to the vision of the ideal spatial context for the performance of Le Livre de Vie, providing the venue with a surround sound system would resemble once again the layout in the circular temple by Goncharova, where sound would be enveloping the audience, and coming from above - the celestial sphere.
The transformative power of music resides in the acoustic phenomenon, which in this performance is detached from the physical circumstances of the space and the disposition of the instrument (which is in the center), thus enhancing even more the non-materiality of music, and putting focus on the audience's senses again.
Losing Individuality – Presence of the Performer
Besides the harmonic structures, annotations in the score and the titles of the pieces also play a big part in understanding Obukhov’s aesthetic, because they bear a symbolic and extramusical meaning - particularly for the performer.
Like Scriabin, Obukhov’s performance indications in the score are in French as are the titles. In solo piano pieces such as Six tableaux psychologiques, Révélation, and Reflet sinistre one finds markings like: “avec un parfum inconnu," "avec splendeur divine," "avec un éclat inouï et sublime," "avec clairvoyance," "avec un délire énigmatique", “avec détresse déchirante” and so on. These recall extra-musical connotations and psychological and emotional states. Although at a first glance this might conjure Debussy, in Russian Symbolism there was “maximalized religious ecstasy” that had no parallel in France.9 Sitsky describes these expressive indications as “wildly extravagant and sensuous, suggesting an almost sexual surrender to the divine forces that the composer felt he was tapping into.”10
In these indications there is again the invocation of Dionysian forces. Associated with a state of “drunkenness”, embodying these forces implies a state of intoxication, representing the liberation of instinct and the dissolution of boundaries, and also a sense of inevitability - a fallen state of the individual. This relates to the idea that music was not mere representation, something to contemplate, but rather through its contact one is absorbed in the Will itself. There is temporary experience of liberation, being beyond one’s individuality, beyond the prison of one’s desires.
This loss of individuality and embracing the Dionysian state is also an idea that is subliminal in Obukhov conceptions about the performer’s roles in his vocal parts. In his article L’Emotion dans la musique Obukhov has also left some insight into his expectation of the performers of his music.
The performance of my vocal parts is only made possible at the cost of conscientious and prolonged efforts on the part of the performers. It may even ask them for a certain discipline, going as far as dedication, to help them assimilate the meaning and the dynamics which are all internal.11
Looking even further, we understand that there is also an expectation here not only for mere execution, or representation, but again also for understanding the meaning of the music, the symbolism, and embodying it in the performance.
Also, in the distribution of characters and musical material in the voices, there is a principle of refusing personal traces, of intrinsic natural features of voice, as boundaries for expressivity. In Le Livre de Vie the singers are often forced to detach from their natural range, and to switch between falsetto and chest voices within one single sentence, several times, expressing multiplicity in one character. Reciprocally, Obukhov also unites different voices into one character expressing the same dichotomy, a metamorphosis towards unity. Some roles/characters are played by several singers, such as the character of God, which is sung by four voices: bass, baritone, tenor and soprano.12
This implied loss of individuality was also present in the composer as well, who assumed the role of Orpheus - a state of surrender to higher, powerful chaotic forces. Indeed, the title of Le Livre de Vie starts with: “Book of Life, opened by Nicolas in ecstasy”.13 The usage of the term “opened” implies that the work already existed, but the composer was the only one able to “show”, or reveal it, through a state of ecstasy. This state is designated more precisely with the Russian term “izstouplenié, the ecstasy of the Russian mystics”: "a state of disorderly passion, orgiasm, violence, tension of the whole being, effort, pain and joy; it is a state which approaches the intoxication of Dionysus, the ecstasy of the Bacchantes."14
For the performer, this act of surrender can be a useful tool for developing imagination and a true understanding of the symbolic meaning of the music and for achieving a deeper connection with the character of the music, and most importantly with the moment of performance itself. Encountering the right state of immersion into the musical performance moment can be a way of experiencing transcendence - experiencing a different temporality. This provides an opportunity again for the performer to reflect upon their own perception and the reality of their own individuality in performance.
In his lecture Aesthetics of Absence, Heiner Goebbels says that: “theatre and opera are still widely based on the classic concept of the artistic experience in terms of direct presence and personal intensity, a centralized focus on expressive protagonists (actors, singers, dances, and instrumentalist): secure soloists – secure in their roles, figures, and bodies.”15 Although this sentence refers to the practice of theatre and opera, it can be as well understood in the context of instrumental classical music performance, where the physical presence of the soloist in the central illuminated stage of a classical music concert has the total focus of attention. The emphasis on this individuality translates also into the performer being the one who carries the responsibility of transmitting the composer’s works under an elevated degree of expectations, and in the way he presents himself on stage. The freedom to emancipate oneself from this “secure” role, and to lose one's own individuality, rests again with the performer when assuming the role of curator as well.
As Goebbels suggests that “Absence can be understood as the disappearance of the actor/performer from the center of attention (or even the stage altogether)”. In the performance Rasch11: Loving Barthes, the pianist Paulo Assis uses light as a way of enacting this “disappearance". Instead of using light to enhance the presence of the body of the solo pianist as a focal point of attention, the physical components dissolve into a dark background instead, from the black clothes of the pianist to the grand piano itself. This can symbolize the loss of individuality. The “absence” of the performer is mostly symbolic. It does not mean necessarily a non-interventive mode of playing but is rather more about the way the performer relates to the physical space he is in, and how this can enhance a deeper connection with the music and negate a dependence on physical and visual representation.
In my performance, I envision the light slowly diminishing throughout the concert, until there is only light in the keys, the minimal necessary light for the pianist to be able to play, symbolizing the dematerialization of the body. At some point in time, the pianist leaves the stage to join the audience, and the music (previously recorded) continues to play by itself through the speakers. The presence of the performer is then simply carried through the sound, the acoustic phenomena. Symbolically there is a dissolution of boundaries between the bodies of the performers and of the spectators, in the dark room. The performer leaves his position to perceive the installation from the perspective of the audience and to confront himself with his own absence, in favor of a final union between roles and communal experience.
Heiner Goebbels describes the impact of this absence of presence upon the audience as a final act of liberation:
When nobody is on stage to assume the responsibility of presenting and representing, when nothing is being shown, then the spectators must discover things themselves. The audience’s sense of discovery is finally enabled by the absence of the performers, who usually do the art of demonstrating and binding the audience’s vision to them by attracting total attention. Only their absence creates the void in which this freedom and pleasure are possible.16