Theatre and Music in March

“All life long the same questions, the same answers.”

Endgame by Samuel Beckett
American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA

  Endgame, or Fin de partie (Beckett wrote it in French and translated it into English), is a meditation on the human condition as only Beckett the bemused curmudgeon could have imagined it.

When the current ART production opened, one Boston reviewer recalled the consternation that resulted in 1984 when director JoAnne Akalaitis planned significant departures from Beckett’s stage directions. Among her suggestions were changing the set from a single room to a post-apocalyptic subway station and adding an overture by Philip Glass. In addition, she proposed casting black actors in the roles of Hamm (the main character) and Nagg (his father). Word reached Beckett’s publishers and a testy exchange followed. Ultimately, the production went on with programs containing this disclaimer from Beckett himself: “Any production of ‘Endgame’ which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me. The American Repertory Theatre production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Anybody who cares for the work couldn’t fail to be disgusted by this.”

No doubt, the encounter left everyone at the ART chastened. Beckett’s choice of the word “disgusted” implies a visceral repugnance, loathing, and aversion. That’s pretty strong stuff. But someone had to have asked the question: why bother to follow Beckett’s meticulous and hyper-focused stage directions in the rest of the play, but ignore his vision for the basic way the play looked on stage? Are there expendable elements to the stage directions?

Beckett’s publisher felt that Akalaitis’s interpretation skewed the play toward issues of the homelessness and miscegenation. The recent review revisits the story perhaps to imply that Beckett was intractable and possibly even a racist. Having been involved in theatre management, I can well imagine the stress of trying prepare an already difficult play and then facing the potential scandal of a production cancelled due to the playwright’s objections.

But there’s something else here worth addressing. In grad school, we talked a lot about authorial intentions. In literature and the performing arts, authorial intentions drive much of how we approach, interpret, enjoy, and discuss works of art. How closely should a conductor follow Beethoven’s metronome markings, given the instrument’s notorious inconsistency (and at the time its novelty). How does Henry James’s convoluted style and glacial pacing affect our reading of his novels? Was it really important to Samuel Beckett that the actors be in a plain room, that the main character's parents be housed in ashcans at the edge of the stage, and that all the actors be the same race?

This is the stuff of dissertations, but my opinion is that, yes, it does matter. Richard III works surprisingly well updated to the Third Reich, while Mimi in a leather jacket isn’t maybe the most successful reinterpretation of La Bohème. Would Shakespeare have protested? Would Puccini have threatened to shut down the opera house? Who knows, but in 1984, Beckett was still alive and exercised his right as a living artist to ascertain that his wishes were acknowledged and that his artistic vision was respected. The fact that Beckett specifies the actors’ movements down to the step in Endgame shows that he thought his authorial intentions were important—and that should tell us something whether or not the author is alive to enforce them.

It is also telling to read the letter from ART Director Gideon Lester in the program from the 2009 production. He refers to Akalaitis’s “bold production” as a “pivotal moment in the history of American contemporary theatre.” Diplomatically put. Lester goes on to write of the stamina, technique, and audacity required to stage Endgame. True enough. What comes next? “A theatre can only produce it with exactly the right cast.” A cast, it should be noted, that more closely corresponds to Beckett’s original wishes.

Written at a time of deep despair (when he wrote the play in 1955, Beckett had lost his father, mother, and brother), Endgame is tragically funny and hilariously dour. A blind invalid, Hamm occupies center stage, alternately master of and subject to his caretaker Clov. At the edge of the stage, Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, pop up from ashcans, crying for pap or reminiscing about rowing on Lake Como. Only Beckett could have an actor portraying a mother live in a rubbish can and utter the line “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.” Beckett’s facility with language also leads to dialogue that can trigger an instinctual laugh though the words are more than vaguely menacing:

Hamm: Why don't you kill me?
Clov: I don't know the combination of the cupboard.

It’s a fine brooding work, solemn and desolate. But Beckett clearly valued the human capacity for resilience and laughter. Physical humor—and there’s a lot of it in Endgame—alleviates the purgatorial feel of the stripped down stage where a man who cannot stand is dependent on another man who cannot sit. The term endgame, a chess reference, brings in many metaphors and symbols, and the names that Beckett has chosen all have interesting interpretations. Yet, one doesn’t require exigesis and dramaturgy to understand what going on here. If nothing else, there is an undeniable convergence, a need for fellowship, a motivation toward togetherness that draws attention to Beckett’s capacity for hope. Far from eager to distance himself from the human race, Beckett practiced a bracing kind of compassion. One that made few grand assurances other than an existential truth about the perennial nature of the human condition. The last words of the play—“You...  remain.”—confirm exactly this.

 

“The poor postman, he hates to come without a letter.”

Messe für zwei vierstimmige Chöre, Frank Martin
Oseh Shalom Bimromav, Michael Schachter
Songs of Love and War, Paul Moravec
Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University

Sanders Theatre, a glorious Gothic confection, looks like a church but was never used for that purpose. Rather it is a memorial to Harvard men who died in the Civil War. The marble plaques in the lobby attest to the heroism of these soldiers. No less than Oliver Wendell Holmes composed a hymn in their honor as he laid the building’s cornerstone in 1870, prophesying: “Rise from the sod ye far columns and arches!
Tell their bright deeds to the ages unborn.”

The Collegium Musicum’s Reverence and Reflection concert included bright deeds in music, highlighting the Sanders Theatre’s well-deserved reputation for fine acoustics. The choir itself, composed of male and female students, is only one of nine faculty directed choruses on the Harvard campus. That’s more than 500 students singing along with almost 60 student-led operatic and theatrical productions per year, in addition to many other vocal and instrumental groups. These are happy statistics in a world where music is in danger of becoming a disposable commodity.

The Frank Martin Mass for double choir is an intense work of deeply-felt faith. Martin (1890–1974, at right) completed the work in 1926, but felt it to be so personal an expression of faith that he did not allow it to be premiered until 1963: “I did not want it performed…I considered it… as being a matter between God and myself.”

I know the piece fairly well as the Maestro made a recording of it with two American choirs and it has moved to the top 10 of my favorite classical recordings. Expressive and lyrical, the mass combines seamlessly medieval and Renaissance modes with Ravel-like harmonies and textures. From the Credo to the Agnus Dei, it is a work of confidence in divine truth and beauty.

The program also included a lovely piece by Harvard student (and Collegium tenor) Michael Schachter. Oseh Shalom Bimromav uses text at the end of the Kaddish to remind us of the peace that comes from the consolation of obedience and the assurance of faith. Schachter has clearly absorbed the lush textures of the romantics to which he adds the rich Jewish cantorial tradition. He notes that the first section of the work uses a prelude to draw us in as individual listeners, establishing an empathy, and that the next section moves on to a fugue where the role of the collective of listeners and performers is emphasized. Schachter’s touch is sure, and his grasp of how to orchestrate voices makes me wonder what an instrumental piece of his might sound like.

Songs of Love and War by American composer Paul Moravec uses the texts of letters either to or from soldiers in four American wars. The setting employs chorus, a baritone soloist (the wonderful Sumner Thompson), trumpet, and strings. Moravec notes that the “the texts [appealed] to me on the strength of their simple dignity, compassion, and eloquence.” Rather than political statements, these letters reveal our all too human reactions in extreme circumstances. 

One of the most telling is the Vietnam veteran’s terse words: “Don’t ask questions/when I come home/If I feel like talking about it/I will, but otherwise—Don’t ask.” In 1918, Sol Segal wrote from the front to the mother of a fallen comrade, saying “Dear lady, the very thought that you are in grief tears my heart” and assured her that the Marines of the Twenty-third Company salute her. A Civil War soldier writes “Sarah, my love for you is deathless,/It seems to bind me with mighty cables…And yet my love of Country comes over me like a mighty wind/and draws me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.” How the attitudes toward war and duty and love have changed.

 

“Let all mortal flesh keep silent”

Canticum Calamitis Maritimae, Jaakko Mäntijärvi
Various Irish songs
From Passion Week, Op. 58, Alexandre Grechaninov
Messe pour double choeur, Frank Martin
Phoenix Chorale and Kansas City Chorale
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, New York

At the very top of my favorite recordings that the Maestro has made in recent years are ones that contain three pieces from this concert: Martin’s Mass for Double Choir, Mäntijärvi’s tribute to the victims of the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster, and the gorgeous Grechaninov Passion Week. The common denominator here is the performers, the Phoenix Chorale (formerly the Phoenix Bach Choir) and the Kansas City Chorale. (The Phoenix Chorale just won the 2009 Grammy for Best Small Ensemble with its Spotless Rose recording and has received several nominations this year and last year.)

You may be surprised to learn that the Troy Savings Bank is one of America’s greatest halls and also the site of a performing arts series that originated in 1918. I asked the Maestro what makes the acoustics so great, and the answer was...nothing exotic, just the right combination of wooden seats and floor and diffusion through two tiers of balconies. Credit also has to go to the city of Troy and its love of music, a sustained effort that has kept music alive in a town that is only a ghost of its former self.

The Mäntijärvi’s haunting beginning was augmented by a recording of the Estonia’s mayday signal. To me, this was a bit overdramatic, but it was so brief that it did not really detract from the music. The piece begins with a soprano in an elevated balcony singing a folk melody. On stage, the choir first exhales in one breath and then begins a set of whispered prayers. The text is composed of the words of Psalm 107:23–30 and the broadcast of the disaster in Latin on Finnish radio. 

Mäntijärvi’s web site reads “Nil significat nisi oscillat. Du vap. Du vap. Du vap.” While the Canticum doesn’t swing (and in fact has nothing of levity about it), the use of Latin is redolent with meaning. The composer is clearly conversant in what is usually referred to as a dead language. Yet his piece reminds us that at one time, millions of believers cherished their faith at its sound. Mäntijärvi returns to its elegaic nature, this time as a memorial of and a living testament to 852 lost souls.

The last work on the first half of this concert was five movements from the Passion Week, premiered in 1912. Grechaninov was one of the new Russian choral school, along with, among other composers, Rachmaninov. In fact, many critics feel that Grechaninov does not bear a comparison to Rachmaninov whose choral works are giants in the repertoire. It doesn’t take anything away from Rachmaninov to say that Grechaninov’s Passion Week is simply one of the finest works of Russian choral music ever written. Listening to it, one is certain that God is present.

Phoenix and Kansas City render this formidable work with loving care and immense musicianship. Their performance was quite literally spellbinding. The Maestro has related that some have described their singing as “more Russian than Russian.” A backhanded compliment it isn’t. This group has succeeded in understanding how not only to pronounce the mellifluous Russian, but also how to interpret the particularly Slavic spirituality that inspired it. Light and dark, richness and desolation, glorious music and eloquent silent—it’s all there in a monumental tribute to the Resurrection, the single event that makes Christianity possible.