Thursday, December 24, 2015

November 15, 2009: The bitterness of exile

During the First World War many artists sought exile in Switzerland.  This provided refuge from the madness of combat;  but, with the rest of Europe in turmoil, times in Switzerland were physically safe but economically hard.  For artists life in exile was a far cry from "business as usual."

Two of those artists were the composer Igor Stravinsky and the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz.  In the spirit of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney,  the two decided that they might be able to scrape up money by "putting on a show" that would be easy to take on tour, keeping the number of people involved to an absolute minimum.  Ramuz conceived The Soldier's Tale as a retelling of the Faustian legend reflecting the tenor of the times:  A soldier fortunate enough to avoid becoming cannon fodder is on the road for a short leave at home.  He is tempted by a capitalist Devil, succumbs, recognizes the value he has lost, briefly prevails over the Devil, but is eventually marched down to Hell.  With its capitalist overtones the script was an early form of agitprop, making it one of the venerable ancestors of the productions that our San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts here every summer (also by taking a small number of people on tour around the Bay Area).

Stravinsky complemented Ramuz' sardonic text with incidental music as scornful of stylistic traditions as Ramuz had been of socioeconomic conditions.  Only seven musicians were required, not counting the conductor:  a violinist (who serves almost as a concerto soloists), a clarinetist, a bassoonist, a trumpeter, a trombonist, a bass player (the only other stringed instrument), and a percussionist in charge of a modestly equipped battery.  The sound was raw, playing up the sharp distinctions among the instruments, rather than going for any kind of blend.  The structures were frequently repetitive, with little, if any, variation, often pushing the patience of the listener.  Traditional forms of dance, march, and chorale were warped almost beyond the point of recognition.  The finished product was first performed on September 28, 1918.

Today the music is best known through concert performance of a nine-movement suite that Stravinsky extracted.  However, last night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the BluePrint Project collaborated with the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) to present a staged version of the English version of Ramuz' text by Michael Flanders and Kitty Black.  The venue was the Recital Hall, rather than the Concert Hall, which was far more conducive to the spare resources required for production and provided better opportunities for the imaginative use of space.  Staging was conceived by Giles Havergal of A.C.T. with choreography by the Conservatory's Michael Mohammed.  As in all BluePrint events, music direction was by Nicole Paiement.

The result was about as true to the spirit of the original project as one could hope to get.  Dramatically the agitprop spirit was honored without being overplayed.  One nice bit of irony is that the Devil's instrument of temptation is a red book that makes one rich and mighty, precisely the color that would get under the skin of any die-hard Maoists!  Musically, this is a score that demands the utmost precision and clarity.  Stravinsky was rarely big on letting performers apply too much of their own expressive interpretation.  Paiement brought her musicians up to the task of satisfying Stravinsky's demands for a real gem of a performance.  With the madness of war once again part of our daily life, there was much to be gained from this jaundiced view of circumstances from almost a hundred years ago.

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