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Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm's Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alastair Williams
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Abstract

This article explores the theme of self and other in Wolfgang Rihm's music drama Die Eroberung von Mexico. After examining how the vocal distinctions between Montezuma and Cortez serve to dramatize the mutual cultural incomprehension of these two characters, it considers how each of them becomes mentally deranged. Finally, it traces how each figure subsequently searches for a means of communication in the last act. By analysing Rihm's understanding of music as a medium, and by deploying the critical resources offered by Tzvetan Todorov, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, this article argues that Die Eroberung makes a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms by which identities are enacted.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 129 , Issue 2 , 2004 , pp. 240 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association (2004)

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References

I wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a research fellowship that enabled me to conduct this research; the Music Department of the Humboldt University, Berlin, for hosting this fellowship; and Hermann Danuser for the hospitality and advice he offered. I also wish to thank the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basle, for allowing me access to the Sammlung Wolfgang Rihm, and to acknowledge the generous help given by Ulrich Mosch during my visit. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Foundation.Google Scholar

1 For references to Beethoven in both these chamber pieces, see Brinkmann, Reinhold, ‘Wirkungen Beethovens in der Kammermusik’, Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik: Symposium Bonn 1984, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Helmut Loos (Munich, 1987), 79–110 (pp. 81–4, 105–8).Google Scholar

2 For more on the group of Séraphin pieces, see Mosch, Ulrich, ‘Autonome Musikdramaturgie: Über Wolfgang Rihms Séraphin-Projekt’, Musiktheater heute: Internationales Symposion der Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel 2001, ed. Hermann Danuser (Mainz, 2003), 213–34.Google Scholar

3 Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan are discussed in my Constructing Musicology (Aldershot, 2001).Google Scholar

4 In a dialogue from 1995 Rihm refers to almost daily conversations with Peter Sloterdijk. Wolfgang Rihm, ‘Kunst entsteht aus Zweifel’, Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gespräche, ed. Ulrich Mosch, 2 vols. (Winterthur, 1997), ii, 232–48 (p. 244).Google Scholar

5 Rihm, ‘Musiktheater als Möglichkeitsform. Momentaufnahme November 1992’, ibid., 44–52 (p. 51). The same volume also contains an essay entitled ‘Musik – das innere Ausland’, 403–15.Google Scholar

6 For a general account of Lacan's ideas see Bowie, Malcolm, Lacan (London, 1991).Google Scholar

7 Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (New York and London, 1992), 133.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 58.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 39.Google Scholar

10 See Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Ideologies of Aztec Song’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48 (1995), 343–79, for discussion of the European ‘technology of the alphabet’ at work in these songs. He comments that ‘the transformation of spoken or sung Nahuatl into alphabetized words – performed utterance into fixed inscription – enforces various regimes of Western writing on the Nahuatl songs’ (p. 367). He also considers recent attempts to overcome the eurocentric categories once applied to Aztec literature, maintaining that Aztec singing has yet to be restored in this manner.Google Scholar

11 The sources for Die Eroberung are given in full in the liner notes accompanying the recording (CPO 999 185-2, 1992).Google Scholar

12 Rihm, ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, ii, 387–91 (p. 388). The English translation used is by Susan Marie Praeder and appears in the liner notes to the recording of Die Eroberung. Since the booklet is unpaginated, page numbers are given for the German version. While ‘Mexiko’ (as used in this article) is the normal German spelling, ‘Mexico’ is used in the score.Google Scholar

13 Rihm, ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’, 390.Google Scholar

14 ‘Notizen zur Tutuguri-Musik’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, ii, 326–7 (p. 327; my translation).Google Scholar

15 Rihm, ‘Improvisation über das Fixieren von Freiheit’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, i, 90–8 (p. 94; my translation). This quotation is also used by Mosch in an informative article on the influence of painting on Rihm. Ulrich Mosch, ‘“… das Dröhnen der Bild- und Farbflächen …”: Zum Verhältnis von Wolfgang Rihm und Kurt Kocherscheidt’, Brustrauschen: Zum Werkdialog von Kurt Kocherscheidt und Wolfgang Rihm, ed. Heinz Liesbrock (Ostfildern-Ruit, 2001), 70–87 (p. 73).Google Scholar

16 Rihm, ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’, 388.Google Scholar

17 Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’, Image – Music – Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London, 1977), 179–89. For more on Barthes in relation to the soundscape of Die Eroberung, see Ivanka Stoïanova, ‘Rauschen – Urklang – Urgrund. Wolfgang Rihm: Die Eroberung von Mexico’, Laß singen, Gesell, laß rauschen … : Zur Ästhetik und Anästhetik in der Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch (Vienna and Graz, 1997), 150–66.Google Scholar

18 Rihm, ‘Vorspiel auf dem Theaterzettel’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, ii, 401–2 (p. 401; my translation).Google Scholar

19 Rihm, ‘Ins eigene Fleisch … (Lose Blätter über Jungerkomponistsein)‘, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, i, 113–20 (p. 119; my translation).Google Scholar

20 ‘Wolfgang Rihm in Conversation with Josef Häusler’, trans. Stewart Spencer, interview in liner notes accompanying recording of Jagden und Formen (DG 471 558–2, 2002), 8–13 (p. 11).Google Scholar

21 Rihm, ‘Was “sagt” Musik? Eine Rede’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, i, 172–81 (p. 181; my translation). Also in Offene Enden, ed. Ulrich Mosch (Munich and Vienna, 2002), 170–82 (p. 182).Google Scholar

22 For more on the idea of music inviting subjectivity, see Kramer, Lawrence, ‘The Mysteries of Animation: History, Analysis and Musical Subjectivity’, Music Analysis, 20 (2001), 153–78 (p. 157).Google Scholar

23 Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London, 1997), 39.Google Scholar

24 For more on Samson et Dalila, see Locke, Ralph, ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 3 (1991), 261–302. Edward Said discusses Aida in his Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993).Google Scholar

25 For information on Artaud in Mexico, see Hayman, Ronald, Artaud and After (Oxford, 1977), chapter 7 (pp. 102–14).Google Scholar

26 Interestingly, these binaries are also explored in the Amazonian films of Werner Herzog, Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). Music is an explicit theme in the later film, as the character Fitzcarraldo attempts to build an opera house in the jungle. Moreover, both films feature stills accompanied by the ‘choir-organ’ of Popul Vuh, thereby creating sound images that serve to enhance the mythical quality of the jungle. I am grateful to Holly Rogers for sending me a pre-publication copy of ‘Fitzcarraldo's Search for Aguirre: Music and Text in the Amazonian Films of Werner Herzog’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 129 (2004), 77–99.Google Scholar

27 Rihm, Die Eroberung von Mexico, full score (Vienna, 1991), 1 (my translation).Google Scholar

28 Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1984). This book appears in the bibliography included in the score of Die Eroberung.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 66.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 97.Google Scholar

31 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London, 1972).Google Scholar

32 Michael Klügl briefly makes a comparable point in the unpaginated liner notes accompanying the recording of Die Eroberung.Google Scholar

33 Todorov, The Conquest of America, 3.Google Scholar

34 Rihm, ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’, 391.Google Scholar

35 In Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus (1983) the three main characters of the Orpheus myth are each represented in triplicate by masked singers, masked mime artists and puppets. In Karlheinz Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht (1980) the principal personae each appear as a mime artist, a singer and an on-stage instrumentalist.Google Scholar

36 This article is designed to be read without the score (see above, note 27), which is not currently commercially available; however, page and bar numbers are included for readers with access to the score.Google Scholar

37 In keeping with the composer's view of Montezuma, discussed later, I refer to him with the male pronoun, while accepting that use of the female pronoun could also be justified.Google Scholar

38 Rihm sketches very little, and even the sketches in existence for a score as complex as Die Eroberung are not substantial. The main notebook includes a pasted-in piece of typescript that shows the first passage from Artaud's Conquest, as sung by Montezuma, with the words evoking the landscape underlined. These words, without their former context, form the response by Cortez. The sketch for Montezuma starts well into the entry and shows clearly recognizable shapes and ideas that were later modified. The sketch for Cortez's entry demonstrates that the fragmented nature of Cortez's response to Montezuma's lyrical lines was important at an early stage.Google Scholar

39 Rihm, ‘Fremde Begegnung’, Ausgesprochen, ed. Mosch, ii, 392–6 (p. 392; my translation).Google Scholar

40 For more on Müller and Artaud, see Marc von Henning's Introduction to Theatremachine, ed. von Henning (London and Boston, 1995), vii–xvii (p. xii).Google Scholar

41 Martin Zenck is working on the topic of ‘doubles’ in Rihm. Paper given on 14 September 2002 at the conference ‘Komponistenportrait Wolfgang Rihm: Ausdruck, Zugriff, Differenzen’ in the Alte Oper, Frankfurt am Main.Google Scholar

42 Marc von Henning's translation from ‘The Hamletmachine’, Theatremachine, ed. von Henning, 85–94 (p. 94).Google Scholar

43 The screaming man also appears in Tutuguri, Rihm's previous Artaud setting.Google Scholar

44 Speaking of female characters, Carolyn Abbate argues that the voices of women in opera triumph over plots that turn against female characters. ‘Opera; or, the Envoicing of Women’, Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth Solie (Berkeley, 1993), 225–58.Google Scholar

45 There are two essays on Artaud (‘La parole soufflée’ and ‘The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation') in Writing and Difference, one of the three volumes published in 1967 (the other two are Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology) that established Derrida's international reputation. In Derrida's opinion, Of Grammatology can be inserted, chronologically, between the sixth and seventh essays of Writing and Difference; on this basis the latter volume can be seen as one in which the earlier essays try out ideas that are more comprehensively applied in the last five essays. (This information is taken from the translator's Introduction to Writing and Difference, London and Chicago, 1978, ix–xx (pp. x–xi).) This process can be seen in the two Artaud essays, which as chapters 5 and 8 lie at either side of this divide, with Derrida's intervening work on origin and supplement evident in the later chapter, ‘The Theater of Cruelty'. The position of these two chapters in his output suggests that Artaud was a stimulus to Derrida's most influential ideas. A later essay concerned with Artaud's drawings and paintings, ‘To Unsense the Subjectile’, appears in Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud, trans. Mary Ann Caws (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1998), 61–148. It takes up Derrida's recurrent theme of origin by addressing the subjectile (that which is subjected in the process of forming subjectivity).Google Scholar

46 Derrida, Writing and Difference, 249.Google Scholar

47 Rihm, ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’, 391.Google Scholar

48 The issue of whether Artaud ever intended to stage The Conquest of Mexico is raised by Barbara Zuber, ‘Von der Imagination zur Konkretion: Klangszenerie und komponierte Raum in Wolfgang Rihms Musik-Theater Die Eroberung von Mexico’, Inszenierungen: Theorie – Ästhetik – Medialität, ed. Christopher Balme and Jürgen Schläder (Stuttgart and Weimar, 2002), 55–70.Google Scholar

49 Quoted by Derrida, ‘La parole soufflée’, Writing and Difference, 169–95 (p. 193).Google Scholar

50 Ibid., 193.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 183.Google Scholar

52 These instructions are taken straight from the German translation of Artaud's text. The sketches include a copy of this text, marked up by Rihm, with the above instructions underlined, and the words ‘träumen’, ‘Leichenbegängnis’ and ‘Schlacht’ encircled on the same page. Rihm's underlining and encircling of various words suggests that he seized on particular ideas for dramatic and musical purposes.Google Scholar

53 Tomlinson makes this point in ‘Ideologies of Aztec Song’, 379.Google Scholar

54 Bach is, of course, a major presence in Rihm's Deus passus: Passions-Stücke nach Lukas (2000), commissioned by the International Bach Academy of Stuttgart. The final lines of ‘Verwüstung’ (‘Are you weary of your servants? Are you angry at your servants? You who give life?‘) have a certain resonance with the choral setting of a poem by Paul Celan asking God to pray to us that concludes Deus passus.Google Scholar

55 Rihm told Zech in an unpublished interview that he consulted Ernst Kurth's Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts: Einführung in Stil und Technik von Bachs melodischer Polyphonie (Berne, 1917); see Zech, Christina, Zum Geschlechterbild im zeitgenössischen Musiktheater am Beispiel von Adriana Hölszkys Bremer Freiheit und Wolfgang Rihms Die Eroberung von Mexico, Europäische Hochschulschriften, 36/183 (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 163, note 61. The scenes involving the use of, or reference to, traditional techniques are the most extensively sketched, particularly the ‘Verwüstung’ chorale, which is mapped in some detail. The final unaccompanied duet is also sketched, as is ‘das tempo wird zügiger’, the distanced Baroque section in which Cortez and Montezuma meet in person.Google Scholar

56 See Zech, Zum Geschlechterbild, esp. pp. 163–8.Google Scholar

57 This diagram is on the back of a postcard entitled: ‘Donaueschingen: Donauquelle & Schloss’ contained in an uncatalogued box of sketches. I am grateful to Richard McGregor for finding these additional Eroberung sketches.Google Scholar

58 Concluding a discussion of Primo Levi, Žižek comments: ‘Such a heroic acceptance of the nonexistence of the Other is, perhaps, the only thoroughly ethical stance today, in art as well as real life.‘ Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, Opera's Second Death (New York and London, 2002), 223.Google Scholar