M.F.: Robert, the dutch public knows your work, because you had a quite big tour in the Netherlands in this year?
R.A:. In the fall of 1994.
M.F.: You played EL/AFICIONADO, a part of a big piece ELEANOR'S IDEA. This is a big opera. In total there are four parts.
R.A.: Four small opera's.
M.F. You begin with this opera in 1987. What is the basic idea of this opera?
R.A.: Well, can I give you a long answer? For the past
12 years I've been working, beause of the american
political situation which regard to music, I thought
it would be interesting to have opera for television,
designed for television. So for the past 12 of 15 years
I've been working on a television series without a
name. The first part of that series is a group of three
opera's, it's called ATALANTA (ACTS OF GOD), the second
part of that series is called PERFECT LIVES and the
third part of that series is called NOW ELEANOR'S IDEA.
Each of those parts is made of smaller opera's, that
can be done on stage. But if you take them apart by
the way they are constructed, you can broadcast a halve
an hour at a time. That's the way they are made. I've
been working on this form and now finally the whole
series is completed but it is not produced for television
yet. So far we had only produced PERFECT LIVES and
two examples of ATALANTA. We had been speaking to people
in French television, they had want to do NOW ELEANOR'S
IDEA. The dialogue has just begon and for one thing
it requires a european director for financial reasons
and so we are trying to negociate, who would be that
director and that kind of things. I hope, eventually
before I die, that I will have 36 half hour pieces,
that go from the beginning of ATALANTA to the end of
NOW ELEANOR'S IDEA. The idea of that series is that:
It is a kind of history of the change of consciousness
of being an American, especially for the european people,
who came to America. It is a kind of spritual travel.
ATALANTA (ACTS OF GOD) begins with the idea of arriving
mainly in the eastcoast.
M.F.: You meant the old idea, people from Atalanta came
to the United States?
R.A.: Yes, ATALANTA is the oldest european myth, it is the most mysterious, it is the creation of Europe, you know. PERFECT LIVES is in the middle and is about the middle of the United States, the consciousness of the middel of the United States. NOW ELEANOR'S IDEA is about the far West of the United States, where languages and religious ideas from all the different cultures of the United States can not melt together. The theme of those four parts from NOW ELEANOR'S IDEA are the four main religious ideas, that had certain melted together to make what we call american consciousness.
M.F.: Four religious ideas?
R.A.: 1. The history of the Jews from 1492, that's IMPROVEMENT.
2. FOREIGN EXPERIENCES is about very radical protestantism.
3. EL/ AFICIONADO is about the religion of business,
the religion of science and business and
4. NOW ELEANOR'S
IDEA is about the religion of catholicism. But I must
they, these are not in any way portraits of these religions.
What I interpret from my reading: the ideas of that
religions, that had been absorbed into the american
consciousness, so not like THE IMPROVEMENT is about
the american jew and FOUR EXPERIENCE is about an american
protestant, we all have these ideas. These ideas had
come to us and we share them under the heading of what
you have call, I guess, modernism.
M.F.: The idea opera for television, that is of course different like an opera on a stage. What is the difference?
R.A.: The main difference is, that opera on the stage, as we know it from 18.- 19. century Europe, moves at a much slower exposition of the ideas, because of the space of the operahouse and because the opera is built for that space. As you know 18.-19. century european operas have a kind, the visual theme is allways a kind of political, it is a landscape, that has political meaning. The characters move in and out of that landscape. I am talking about Tosca and Wagner. The landscape itself has a very strong political meaning. The landscape itself is fixed, it is like an imaginary political space. In opera for television you can change that landscape in a thirtiest of a second. Opera for television can be like news for television. The main difference for me and the main difference for the audience is that the ideas and the imagery in opera for television move at a much faster rate. They are much faster then I would make the opera happened on a stage.
M.F.: You get then a different creative problem with timing?
R.A.: Yes. These operas they are based on the timestructure of american english and they have no, there is nothing built into the structure of the opera, that has anything to do with changing the landscape. There is no scene changes, the scene changes happened in a thirtiest of a second.
M.F.: You use reduced or simple forms, because the picture is changing so quickly, otherwise it is getting too complex?
R.A.: Exactly, in other words in Puccini for instance, if you have two people who are talking and then you want to bring in a course, you have to make music to get the course on stage. And then the course, everything takes a certain amount of time, which is based on the size on the stage and everything like that. In television of course that is not necessary and the other thing is, that in television the voice itself is immediately in front of you. There is no architectural relationship between you and the voice. It is not like the difference between like La Scala and the Wagnerian opera. There is nothing of that, because in television the voice itself is right against the front of the television set.
M.F.: You get another sound and image language with television like what you had before?
R.A.: Exactly. So that means, that the speed of the language can be much greater and it means, that the pitchrange for the singers is much reduced, because the smallest inflexion is obvious. So it is an enormous technical difference which I think will become more and more important in America and in Europe as all of us come to recognize television as a good theater. It is a good theater for opera.
M.F.: At the other hand a lot of people get very tired, because you have so many channels, so many overdone information, communication, advertising going on, a lot of middle of the road pictures. Is that not, people getting tired of the television, getting back to oldfashioned forms like the oldfashioned opera, like the oldfashioned concert, they want to go back to the concerthal, to the Met, have a nice evening?
R.A.: That is certainly true. I don't mean in any way that my work should replace anything else. But I think, that the television set, the television studio is very rich in possibilities for what we would called opera and I think that has not been used. I think in the next century it will become more and more important.
M.F.: About the next century spoken. For example CD-Rom, Laurie Anderson makes now CD-Rom and also the beginning of Internet here in New York, I saw the project "The Thing". Is that not very interesting for you to go further with new media, CD-Rom and Internet?
R.A.: I must say, if CD-Rom had been availabel in 1980, when I did PERFECT LIVES, it would have been a perfect vehicel, because the idea of PERFECT LIVES technically was that: there would be seven independent visual tracks with sound and the idea was, that the director, whoever the director was, could be in Holland, in America, in Germany, whatever, he could take those seven channels of visual information; one guy playing the piano, one guy singing and he could make his own version of the opera.
M.F.: People can do that for example at home?
R.A.: Yes, but see in 1980 nobody knew about CD-Rom. I can't say, what the future of CD-Rom would be. I think it is not so interesting at the moment. I think it is not so interesting for the individual to make a different version of the piece. I think that individuals are still attracted to the skill of the television director, but the idea of CD-Rom, of having many possibilities of combinations is definitely in that direction.
M.F.: About your music. One important influence was the minimal music, anotherone, you are interested in harmonics, not in atonal music. Is that bluring in your head?
R.A.: No, I must say, that I continue to be very interested in the development in european music over the last thirty years which had been quite different from the development in american music. In other words, I continue to admire Stockhausen, I continue to admire Earl Brown, I continue to admire John Cage, I continue to admire those ideas and I think there is no conflict there. In my own personal taste the music is based on traditional harmonic practices, because that's the way I hear things. In other words I grew up with listenig to amerian popular music, I grew up listening to Jazz. My consciousness is to make the embellishments based on that kind of technique, I don't hear music the way, Stockhausen hears music. I just don't hear it that way. So I hear it in a very american way but I think, that those two are not contradictory at all. I think there are many elements in my music, that some listeners would hear as a dissonance, they would hear a tension of that dissonance in the same way, they would hear the tension of the dissonance in Earl Brown's music, but they don't understand exactly what that means at the moment. I think it takes a few more decades before those two things get a sort of married.
M.F.: If you begin with a piece. Do you begin with a music idea, with the melody or rhythm or you have something in the beginning, what is not directly connected with music for example a theme, an idea, poetry, reading a book?
R.A.: My music begins with my musical imagination of hearing the spoken language implified into a musical form. In other words, I begin hearing speaking as so it were an exaggerated form of speaking, which means exaggerated pitch intervals and exaggerated rhythmic situations. It that so you deconstruct the spoken language and then you apply those ingredients to a musical rule like serialism. You apply musical rules to that what is spoken and that is the way I hear things.
M.F.: It is interesting. In the eighties you had Hip
Hop and popmusic, where the text comes back, the speaking
of the text makes the rhythm.
That is in the popmusic now quite strong. If you listen
to the new pieces from Steve Reich, you also see, that
the text and the sampling of the text like in "Different
Trains" form the music.
You were one of the first working with text in that
fields?
R.A.: Yes, I think so, I don't mean to be critical of any composer, but I think that so far the idea of putting american english in a traditional opera language has not been very successful. We don't have great american opera's. It is just the fact of life that we don't. And it is because I think that somehow the composer has to hear his own language as music. Puccini has to hear Italian as music, Wagner has to hear German as music and then you get the music. What's happened in America in the last 20 of 30 years is that many composers like me, like Steve, like Phil, there are so many and a lot of young composers and of course the black music, have started to hear american english as a form of music. You start hearing your own language as music and then it starts happening. Because it takes a long time, it is very difficult and America is not very old.
M.F.: Perhaps now is the time that the americans find an own form, create an own operaform?
R.A.: Now we re looking for an american opera that doesn't sound bizar, doesn't sound wrong, it sounds like american english being sung as music. It is a very difficult question and many people are trying to work with it now. As you said, a lot of black musicians trying to do this, I know Steve, I heard "The Cave", is trying to do it and I know many composers.
M.F.: Thank you very much.
Gesprek van Michael Fahres en Robert Ashley over Video-opera.
Gesprek van Michael Fahres en Robert Ashley over muzikale
tradities.
Gesprek van Michael Fahres en Robert Ashley over Amerikaanse
opera.
Internet Links
Supplement 13 mei - Verdi 2000 (deel 2): Robert Ashley & Video-opera
Supplement