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Hans Tutschku in conversation about his new piece Die Süße unserer traurigen Kindheit The questions were posed by Andrea Scheufler and Olaf Bargheer (FNM) Forum Mr. Tutschku, can you describe briefly how you came to cooperate with the Forum Neues Musiktheater and about your experiences in the sound studio in the work completed thus far? Tutschku I met Andreas Breitscheid at the end of the 1990s in France. We met at IRCAM in Paris, where he told me about the latest developments in technology and music. The working methods of the Forum Neues Musiktheater and its possibilities interested me, because the project Die Süße unserer traurigen Kindheit (The sweetness of our sad childhood) cannot be performed in a normal Italian theater, where there is a clear separation between the stage and the auditorium. From the start I wanted to avoid having the audience as external observers looking at the actors. I imagined a space that could be perceived equally well by everyone, and in which the audience became one of the actors to a certain extent. Everyone would be caught up in the same situation. Forum You have already engaged with the work of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl in several of your pieces. How did this interest come about? Tutschku When I was young I read a lot of prose and poetry and discovered some authors who triggered emotional states that were most lasting than others. One of these was Trakl. Another factor was Franz Fühmann’s book Vor Feuerschlünden, in which he describes his experiences with Trakl’s poetry while a prisoner of war in Russia. But I think that everyone has to find his or her own way of reading Trakl. For about ten years I lived in France, and there I read poetry in French as well, and compared the various translations. That was yet another way of feeling my way around the texts and mixing a variety of perspectives on his oeuvre. It reinforced my feeling that for me there was no definitive interpretation of a text in a particular form. In Süße unserer traurigen Kindheit I attempt to shed light from a variety of directions on a small selection of poems and excerpts from letters. Forum Without giving away too much of the work’s subject matter, can you describe briefly how you approached turning Trakl’s texts and biography into elements for musical theater? Tutschku Approaching Trakl on the stage naturally raises many questions. The constellation and relationships between the people—that is, between the two singers and the dancer—will not be unambiguous. The question who plays what, who is which character, is resolved in this work. The players play various relationships to someone else. The two singers try to build up a certain degree of trust, so that communication becomes possible. They try to approach each other, to take up contact with the dancer, to communicate important moments and feelings, which at times succeeds, but in the end cannot last. Forum What criteria did you use to select the texts? Tutschku I chose texts for the piece that revolve around the theme of childhood in one way or another. And in two respects: first, poems and fragments of letters that were directly related to Trakl’s biography, his youth, his close relationship to his sister; and second, texts that spoke to me in particular because they reminded me of my own childhood. When you do a project like this you are often asked what you wanted to express. I don’t think that I have a simple answer to that. I hope that my approach to an opening reading will, as it were, give the audience the ingredients for a promising recipe. I am not inviting them to a French restaurant and serving them a five-course set meal. I am showing them how I would prepare it, but they have to cook it themselves. Forum What is going on in the current phase of work in the sound studio? Do you have all the ingredients together? Tutschku At the moment we are developing all the live electronics, which were naturally part of the concept from the beginning. To that end we have recorded sound material and composed instrumental and vocal sequences. This phase of the work also serves as musical rehearsal for the voices. Forum In addition to acoustic live electronics you will also use video sequences produced beforehand. How was this material prepared, and how does it make Trakl’s landscapes more accessible? Tutschku The stage set consists in part of materials that are borrowed from Trakl’s visual world, from this visual world in nature with unusual colors and moods. I have reduced them to individual elements like water, stones, leaves, and branches, which are not only an optical element but are also employed as sound, and then ultimately find their way into the video projections as well. I filmed natural materials such as water, stones, plants in all kinds of combinations. These elements provide us with a window to the outside. My idea is that we are all enclosed in this room, that we all experience the same momentary experience, and that our gaze outward is made possible by the projections. Only some of the video sequences are produced beforehand, and they too are reprocessed in real time, just like the sounds of voices and instruments. They are influenced by the musicians, the singers, and the dancer, and they reveal their figurative character when the video is projected on the bodies. Forum When did you first begin work on the project? Tutschku I have been working on the piece just under two years. During this time strange and beautiful coincidences have occurred that contributed new ideas for the piece. I was traveling in Japan and was fascinated by the way in which water is used in temples as both a functional and an aesthetic element. And, without know exactly how I would use them, I may many video recordings of water, stones, and leaves there. In reflecting on this project the photographs I made fit together well with the other aspects. Forum What does the Forum Neues Musiktheater’s approach mean to you? Tutschku For me it was crucial that from the outset I had an idea of the performance space. The spatial conception was there from the beginning, and the score was written accordingly. Over the past three weeks I have had time to experiment with the musicians, the singers, the dancer, and with the video projection. The score was finished in spring, so it was about how to realize it as music, about the live electronics, and about solutions for the staging. Until the phase of final rehearsals in September I was still able to refine and work out details of the projection and the live electronics. In early September we then brought all the elements together. Hence from the beginning it was foreseen that we would have several separated blocks of rehearsals in order to try out details and work our way to the next phase of rehearsals. And that isn’t possible in a normal theater. Such possibilities are really only offered by the Forum. The project was realized with the kind support of the Akademie Schloss Solitude. » DIE SÜSSE UNSERER TRAURIGEN KINDHEIT |
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