Emerging from Words and Music

The final essay is almost complete, the finishing line in sight. For the last eight months I have been studying ‘Words and Music’ at the Open University and a whole new world has opened up to me. I’ve discovered German lieder, had the opportunity to study the importance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and explored how John Milton used the biblical story of Samson and Delilah for his dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, which in turn was adapted by George Frideric Handel for his oratorio Samson.

Having both a literary and musical background, for me the joy of this course was its interdisciplinary nature, the opportunity to analyse how text and music work together and how they enhance or detract from each other. My favourite components of the course were those dealing with classical music, but the module covered everything from South Asian art songs to Broadway musicals. There were even short sections on The Beatles, rap artists (I can now recognise a couple of Eminem songs!) and Sicilian storytellers.

The course allowed me to look in more depth at some areas that I was already familiar with and discover others that were completely new to me. I reacquainted myself with literary theory, explored new ideas in musical theory, brushed up on reading texts critically and learnt how to listen more closely to music using a score. In short, I was reminded what a great intellectual stimulus academic study is and what a joy it is to be learning more about a topic that you’re passionate about.

So as I do my final checks before sending off my last essay, on Virginia Woolf’s short story The String Quartet and Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet, my mind is already wondering what to study next. A Masters in Music is one possibility. Decision time is mid-December, so I still have a few more weeks to think it over.

In the meantime, I hope to find more time to write about my “cultural excursions,” which have recently included a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the UK-based Cheek by Jowl theatre company - a world premiere in the Belgian town of Namur no less! - and a concert of New Orleans music by the Fondy Riverside Bullet Band. Macbeth has inspired composers to write music on the play’s subject, and the New Orleans music inspired a text about war, loss and celebration that was combined with the music for their recent performance: the links between words and music seem to be everywhere!

Gilbert and George come to Brussels

Gilbert and George are probably the most recognised artists in Britain, the interviewer suggests, pointing out that there wouldn’t be many a London cabbie who didn’t know who they were. “Very sweet, isn’t it,” says George deadpan, pausing for dramatic effect and then adding “For one reason or another”.

The gags and the lines just keep coming. Sometimes it’s one half of the duo doing the talking, sometimes they do a quick back and forth and sometimes they speak simultaneously and then burst out laughing. Listening to Gilbert and George talk about their art and their life is an absolute delight.

Smartly dressed in light brown suits and tan leather shoes (they are keen to point out that they don’t always dress the same, just similarly), the pair, now in their 60s, give an impression of formality and correctness. So when George embarks on a tale or two in his plummy English accent, and then rounds it off with coarse language or innuendo, the comic effect is brilliant.

The two work seamlessly together, the one almost merging into the other as they finish off each other’s sentences and constantly talk in the first person plural. On their work: “We don’t see it as work, we can say what we want, it’s an enormous freedom and privilege”. On their daily walks around London: “We walk all the time, you are feeling it non-stop, what is going on. We always go towards ideas that interest us.” On their evening ritual of eating the same dish at the same Turkish restaurant: “We don’t waste our brains reading menus”.

George, born in England, and Gilbert, born in Italy, met in 1967 at St. Martin’s School of Art where they were both studying sculpture. “We just drifted together,” George says. “We were alone”, too “freakish” to become art teachers, adds Gilbert. And so from their home in the East End of London, the duo began creating their “art for all”. And more than 40 years later, they still live in the East End and they are still creating.

A selection of their latest work, the Jack Freak Pictures, opens today (and runs until Oct. 31) at the Baronian Francey gallery in Brussels, one of seven European galleries showing different selections of the series. The entire collection, made up of 153 new artworks and created with the help of just one assistant (“he’s only allowed to scan!” Gilbert emphasises), will be exhibited at the Bozar in Brussels in the autumn of 2010.

Gilbert and George were interviewed by Michael Bracewell at a public event at the Bozar on Sept. 8 2009.

Knokke Biennale and Contemporary Art

I wrote in a recent article “If contemporary art is your scene, then the Knokke Biennale should be in your diary.” To be honest though, I’m not really sure that it’s my scene. Of course it depends on how you define contemporary art, but when I walked into Hoet Bekaert’s summer gallery in Knokke - grandly/ironically called the Knokke Biennale – my immediate reaction was “is this it?”

A replica of a matchbox, a donkey’s head that had been used as a stage prop, a photograph resting on two drums of cat food, pieces of carbon copy paper with phrases such as “This looks like something I’ve seen before” mounted on light boxes...you get the picture.

Once the ideas behind the works had been explained, I started to appreciate them more. There is definitely a part of me that seeks to understand and analyse, wanting context and background. And I like to think that I have a relatively open mind. But had I seen these works anywhere but in a gallery, would I really have given them a second glance?

As I was shown round the small garage-like space, I still had a lingering doubt that I was perhaps being taken in by one big joke. After all, the whole Knokke Biennale idea had been done tongue-in-cheek (and brilliantly so), so maybe this was just one more element.

But no, these were works by well-known names on the contemporary art circuit: the donkey’s head was by Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong, who has exhibited at London's Tate Modern; and the work using cat food drums was by Amanda Ross-Ho, with whom the Hoet Bekaert gallery will be going to London’s Frieze Art Fair this year.

Gallery co-founder Jan Hoet Junior was keen to dispel the assumption of many that contemporary art is something that anyone can do. For me though that wasn’t the source of my doubts. It was rather the fact that when I viewed the works, I didn’t feel anything (other than perhaps bewilderment). I want colours or shapes or textures to prompt some instinctive response, to have aesthetic appeal - is that too old-fashioned a thought? or am I just missing the point?

The Return of Ulysses: ballet, the absurd and dancing in flippers

The Royal Ballet of Flanders has gone on its summer holidays. But before they disappeared I caught the company’s final performance of the 2008-2009 season in Bruges, Belgium, and spoke to the ballet company’s artistic director Kathryn Bennetts.

The Return of Ulysses was the dance performance with which the Antwerp-based ballet company chose to round off their season and the one that it’s taking to the Edinburgh International Festival this August.

The choreography is a combination of classical and contemporary dance; the music switches between Henry Purcell and songs from the 1950s and 1960s such as those of Doris Day; and the costumes are all black for the protagonist Penelope and her many suitors, and a gold skirt suit for the goddess Athena and flippers, goggles and a tutu for Poseidon. It’s a performance of contrasts, one of “light and shade,” as Bennetts put it.

The story of the return of Ulysses is related from his wife Penelope’s perspective. It has been 20 years since Ulysses left to fight in the Trojan wars and in those intervening years of seemingly endless waiting Penelope has fought off many suitors – to various degrees of success, in the eyes of the choreographer Christian Spuck, it would seem. Penelope is subjected to a fair amount of aggressive male behaviour on stage but the suitors’ competitiveness and jealousy of each other means that Penelope is ultimately the one with her pride left intact.

Bennetts sums up the narrative as “an absurd story”, pointing to the absurdity of Penelope waiting for her husband for so many years and then not even recognising him once he finally does return home. The choreographer wants “to express the absurdity of things: the absurdity of the suitors' struggle for power, the absurdity of the gods who do not heed the laments of humans, the absurdity of Penelope endlessly waiting and the sardonic irony of her failing to recognize Ulysses,” as the Royal Ballet of Flanders says on its website. Unsurprisingly perhaps comparisons have been drawn with Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’.

Bennetts dedicated the performance in Bruges to Pina Bausch, the German choreographer who had died just a few days earlier.

To read more about this performance and another Flemish company going to the Edinburgh Festival, click here.

Which Famous Person Takes Your Fancy? Get a Plaster Cast Made in Brussels!

Tucked away in the corner of a courtyard in the Cinquantenaire park in Brussels is a workshop where a handful of volunteers are chiselling, smoothing and perfecting all sorts of plaster casts. Whether you want a bust of Beethoven, the head of Voltaire or your very own copy of Michelangelo’s David, you can put in an order.

The plaster-casting workshop, which belongs to the Royal Museums of Art and History, was set up during the 19th century and holds around 4,000 moulds of sculptures dating from prehistoric times to the 18th century. They were originally made during a time when it wasn’t as easy and affordable to travel as it is today, and so craftsmen went to see the famous artworks of other countries, made moulds based on the originals and then produced plaster casts that could be viewed by a wider public in Brussels.

The moulds are now piled on top of each other on shelves from floor to ceiling row after row. Some of the moulds are broken, as are many of the original plaster casts. One of the volunteers explained to me that the damage happened in the 1930s when the moulds and casts were moved by prisoners from the main exhibition space to their current location.

Admittedly the hours aren’t too convenient for a visit (9.30am-noon and 1.30pm to 4pm Tuesday-Friday), but if you’re in the area and have a spare half-hour or so, it’s definitely worth popping in. The entrance is filled with replica statues and busts, which lead through to the storage rooms and the actual workshop. There’s also a small room with catalogues of their moulds in case you’re tempted to place an order.

Bruocsella Orchestra Takes on Symphonic Works with a Twist

Liszt’s “symphonic poem” Les Préludes and Debussy’s “symphonic sketches” La Mer will be the two orchestral highlights of the Bruocsella Symphony Orchestra’s summer concert in Brussels this weekend (June 21).

If the prospect of an orchestra alone isn’t enough of a draw, then the two solo works on the programme should be. Alain Baudhuin is playing Weber’s clarinet concerto no. 1 and cellist Benjamin Glorieux is performing Respighi's Adagio con variazioni – they both studied at the music conservatory in Brussels and really are worth coming to hear.

You can read more about the concert in this article in Flanders Today and on the orchestra’s web site. Maybe see you on Sunday!

(Photo credit: Alexandre Istratov)

Judging the Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition

It goes without saying that the finalists in the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition had their work cut out, having to perform a concert comprising a sonata, a newly composed, unpublished work that they had just one week to study and then a concerto. And all that after the various, rigorous requirements of the semi-final, the first round and the qualifying rounds. 

But what about the jury’s task? I’m not sure that was much easier to be honest. For the finals, they listened to and judged 12 performances spread out over six consecutive evenings. How on earth the jury manages to first select the finalists and then rank them is beyond me, especially when so much about music and its interpretation is subjective. One finalist produces a seductive sonata, the next a show-stopping concerto and the only work that is truly comparable is the unpublished work (this year Agens by Cho Eun-Hwa).

Yet they did choose a winner: Ray Chen, the Taiwanese-born Australian who at 20 was this year’s youngest finalist and certainly the finalist with the cheekiest smile! That smile seemed to reflect how at ease he was, not only with his own solo part, but also with the orchestra accompanying him and performing in front of a packed Bozar hall.

Chen’s was unfortunately not one of the finals I was able to watch live, but I did listen to it via the competition’s video on demand service, where all the finals and semi-finals are available until September 15. The video may not replicate the atmosphere in the hall that evening, but it is wonderful to be able to hear and watch him. It’s a lesson in how to play in a relaxed manner, as he even manages to flash a smile the conductor’s way in the middle of his cadenza in the Tchaikovsky concerto!

In fact he seemed to enjoy the entire performance, which the audience greeted with a standing ovation. And his reward was 1st prize, 20,000 euros, numerous concerts, a CD recording and the loan of a Stradivarius violin for three years, in short what may turn out to be the key to launching a solo career. Second prize went to Belgium’s Lorenzo Gatto (whose final I was lucky enough to see live) and third place to Moldavia’s Ilian Garnet.