Eraritjaritjaka - Théâtre Vidy Lausanne

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaSeason 2009-2010Press reviewCreation in April 2004EraritjaritjakaMusée des phrasesConception, music and directionHeiner Goebbels© Mario Del CurtoThéâtre Vidy-LausanneRené GonzalezDirecteurAvenue E.-J. Dalcroze 51007 LausanneSuisseDiffusionBarbara SuthoffDirectrice de la diffusionMail : b.suthoff@vidy.chElodie LoubensAssistante de diffusionMail : elodie@vidy.chTél.: +41 21 619 45 44Fax.: +41 21 619 45 10

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaFAZ22.04.2004Disordered memories in an atticDisordered memories in an atticDisordered memories in an atticA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-LausanneA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-LausanneA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-LausanneWhat is a composer? Etymologically,it is someone who composes, puts together.But what does he put together?For Adrian Leverkühn, in ThomasMann’s Doctor Faustus – and even inthe more conservative musiclovers donot see it this way – the world was stillin order. A composer composed his ownworks from the twelve notes of the temperedsystem. For John Cage this wasnot enough, as it was the complete universeof sounds that the composer, in hisopinion, had to make audible. But sinceLa Monte Young used a splinter of woodfrom a Bösendorfer to make a ‘piece forpiano’ nothing has been quite the samein the world of composers. Since then,Richard Wager and Mr. Bösendorferboth deserve the title of ‘composer’, theRing and a grand piano serving their vocationas total works of art. And perhapsthat is not so bad.What is a musical play? From an historicalpoint of view, it is a work destinedfor the stage in which people sing,speak, act and, occasionally, dance.For the inventor of musical theatre, itwas too much. Spoken dialogues? Theyexisted already in operettas, before theRevolution. Dance? An unnecessary addition,typical of the Latin mentality. Itwas time for a totally musical, theatricalwork. But the hierarchy inherited fromthe past was still all too present: the musicians,in the orchestra pit, played; thesingers, on stage, sang; the conductor,on his rostrum, took care that nothingwas heard that the composer had notintended to be heard. But that time ispast, since instrumental theatre and theanti-authoritarian movement took overthe universe of music. Henceforth, singersplay instruments, the orchestra ison the stage, the conductor takes part inthe action by humming. Not only do allhave the possibility, they also have theobligation to contribute to the composition.What is an artist? Let’s be clear aboutthis: he is not only the inventor of beautifulthings. Eclecticism and objet trouvé,serigraphy and play-back, quotationand theory of the open form have destabilizedthe notion of the value of the original.And is the artist perplexed, underthe dome of the XXIst century? He hasbecome ingenious.One might see Heiner Goebbels as acomposer of musical plays. And as anartist, giving full meaning to the term‘composer’ – author of musical theatre:he associates sounds and words, images,movements and lighting which do notnecessarily belong to him. He puts themtogether in a production which he initiates,but is not limited to him. He is themodern composer, par excellence. Andone of the most tonic, it has to be said.He has just written a new work for theThéâtre de Vidy-Lausanne (where twoof his musical plays had already beenpresented – Max Black and Hashirigaki)– Eraritjaritjaka, ‘a museum of phrases.Anyone who knows Heiner Goebbels’1work will have no difficulty recognizinghim here, even if the music is borrowedmainly from Chostakovitch and Ravel,Gavin Bryars and George Crumb, J-S.Bach, Ciacinto Scelsi and Alexeij Mossolove,even if the texts – including thetitle, a mysterious word from the Aboriginelanguage – are all taken fromthe works of Elias Canetti. For the artof transposing everything into gesture,with the help of the language virtuoso,his favourite actor André Wilms, the artof weaving links between global visionand acoustic signals, this can only belongto Heiner Goebbels. And makeshim a composer, in the literal sense ofthe word, assembling others’ materials.And this is what happens: the four musiciansof the Dutch Mondriaan Quartet,dressed in black, come on stage and startto play, as if this were a chamber musicconcert. Nothing suggests a musical playbut it looks as though the programme ofthe string quartet will continue. But becausewe are in a theatre and conditionedas playgoers, we start to observe themusicians’ movements. We notice howthe musical phrases are prolonged intothe arm movements, how the head movementof the first violin transmits themelodic theme to the second violin. Andsuddenly, in the harmonious rhythm ofthe four musicians, we also distinguishthe musical summum of the piece. Goebbelsuses the audience’s expectations tocommunicate something of the structureof the music and this reminds oneof John Cage’s iconoclastic concepts of

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaDisordered memories in an atticFAZ22.04.2004(Next)Disordered memories in an atticDisordered memories in an atticA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-LausanneA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-LausanneA museum of phrases: Eraritjaritjake,by Heiner Goebbels, based ontexts by Elias Canetti, at the ThéâtreVidy-Lausanneexibition: when, in a glass cabinet, aGreek vase with images of warriorsis placed next to Polynesian shrunkenheads, the object does not tell the samestories that it would if placed with a collectionof other ancient works of art.Suddenly the musicians stand up, taketheir chairs and go to the back of the stage.But the music that they were playingcontinues – on tape – increasingly interruptedby sounds, increasingly violent,as if paper or cloth were being torn. Aluminous line appears, like those that indicatethe safety issues on planes. As thenoise becomes louder, the line becomesbroader as if someone was laceratingthe black ground to transform it into asquare of white light. These interactionsbetween optic signs and acoustic signsare characteristic of the whole play.André Wims starts to say, and act, Canetti’stexts: texts drawn from his manyautobiographical works, from his novelAuto-da-fé and from his essay Massand Power; observations on human behaviour,Canettis’ ‘minima corporalia’,converted into images, simultaneouslygrotesque and utterly convincing. Whilehe is reciting the impressive passage onrelationships with animals, taken fromMan’s Territory, a little remote-controlledrobot crosses the stage, an ‘electricinsect’, which seems to have come directlyfrom a George Crumb composition,Black Angels: “Every time you observean animal attentively, you have thefeeling that a human is hidden inside andis laughing at you.”Heiner Goebbels, Klaus Grünberg, hislighting specialist, Florence von Gerkan,responsible for the costumes, and BrunoDeville, live video cameraman, do notoverdo the accessories or the signs. Buteach action echoes other moments of theperformance so that the totality is aspiredinto a vertiginous complexity. Halfwaythrough the play (one and a half hourswith no intermission, accompanied bythe string quartet only), André Wilmsput his coat on and leaves the theatre.The video camera follows him and filmshis departure through the foyer, his taxiride through Lausanne, the flat where helives, right up to the attic in disorder. Theimages are projected on to the façade ofa house, the backcloth. Imperceptibly,the play has become a film. But the actionsappears to be taking place in realtime, the television news is of that day(the Dutroux court case one evening,the enlargement of the European Communityanother…), the clock shows thetime that it really is in the theatre, Wilmstears the page for that day off a calendar.And then, on stage, the windows open,we see a flesh and blood André Wilmswriting on a typewriter, while the videosystem projects the same scene. Whereare we? In a theatre? At the cinema?Where is reality, where is fiction? Oursense of disorientation is consolidatedby Bach’s Art of the Fugue. Goebbelsis trying to decipher the secret of ourreality, without revealing it. He has succeeded.2Wolfgang Sandner

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaFAZ22.04.2004Eraritjaritjaka: a new production byHeiner Goebbels at the Théâtre Vidy-LausanneEraritjaritjaka: a new production byHeiner Goebbels at the Théâtre Vidy-LausanneEraritjaritjaka: a new production byHeiner Goebbels at the Théâtre Vidy-LausanneOne world view transformed into -percussive and poetic - musicOne world view transformed into -percussive and poetic - musicOne world view transformed into -percussive and poetic - musicBlack on black, an empty space: thestage. Four musicians dressed in black:a string quartet. They play the slowoverture of the quartet op 110 by DmitriChostakovitch, in which the first violinstarts to draw out an elegiac, nostalgicmelodic line. It is with this music - andnothing other than the music - that HeinerGoebbel’s new production opens.Goebbels started by studying sociologybefore taking up music and, after a‘Sponti’ period with the Socalled LeftradicalWind Orchestra, decided to presenthis own theatrical/musical/literary projectsthroughout the world, in particularHashirigaki and Landscape with distantrelations.Eraritjaritjaka is the third part of a trilogycreated by Heiner Goebbels withthe French actor, André Wilms. The twofirst parts were also based on notes andnotebooks: in Or the disastrous disembarkment(1993) he turned his gaze todistant colonies: in Max Black (1998),based on texts by Valéry, Lichtenberg,Wittgenstein and Max Black, the humanindividual faces himself; with Eraritjaritjaka,finally, Goebbels and Wilms takeus, with Canetti, to ‘man’s territory’ (thetitle given by Canetti to one of his anthologies):reflexions on man and hisrelationship to others, on his habits, onfashions, on music, language and manyother themes.of the world, sometimes in pitiless lightningflashes, sometimes poetic andplayful. There is a brilliant transitionfrom real action on the stage to a filmedexpedition into the urban existence ofthe writer (live videao Bruno Deville).But in this ‘longing for something lost’nothing is sentimental or nostalgic, it allremains contemporary and focused onthe present - like Chostakovitch’s music,which opens the production, and whosemelancholy accents envelope today’sdiscords as never before.Andras KlaeuiLonging for something lostAuthenticity and lifeAmplified by loud speakers, somewhatchaotic, the music seems to come fromafar. And when the four musicians attackit with energetic bows, its echo resoundsfor a while afterwards. Longing for somethingthat is lost, Heiner Goebbels’new production is entitled «Eriaritjaritjaka»- a beautiful word borrowed fromthe Aranda language, that of Australianaborigines, and which means precisely«possessed by longing for somethinglost». Goebbels found it in Elias Canetti’sworks. With texts taken from Canetti’sautobiographical writings, Goebbelshas built a ‘museum of phrases’. Theworld premiere took place this Tuesdayin the Thèâtre Vidy-Lausanne and thissummer it will go on tour.The musicians retire to the back of thestage, freeing space for a white square,a ‘carpet’ for André Wilms. Sometimesthe narrator appears paralysed on this rigidsurface, sometimes he strides acrossthe stage (stagecraft and the impressivelighting are by Klaus Grünberg); he directsthe musicians and is directed bythem, alternately violent or tender; andat all times, down to the tiniest gesture,his acting breathes authenticity and life.The Mondriaan Quartet from Amsterdaminterpret Chostakovitch with verveand intensity, but also Scelsi, Ravel,Bach and others, including Goebbelshimself. The music penetrates the percussivephrases of Canetti (subtitledin German) and a sort of musical view3

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaNZZ23.04.2004Russian doll system»Russian doll system»Russian doll system»A play by Heiner Goebbels in Lausanne,based on texts by CanettiA play by Heiner Goebbels in Lausanne,based on texts by CanettiA play by Heiner Goebbels in Lausanne,based on texts by CanettiEnigmas are sometimes enlightening,even if they cannot be resolved. Workingaround the secret involves placing,replacing and displacing verbal and musicalsigns until they reveal their energy.Discoveries are born of recomposed instants,not from a broad meaning that hasundergone no change. Heiner Goebbels’new musical play, created at the ThéâtreVidy-Lausanne, confirms this visionthrough its unpronounceable title: Erarjaritjaka.This is not a magic spell butan expression used by Australian Aborigineswhich, according to the definitiongiven by Elias Canetti himself inthe Necklace of Flies(1992) describesthe obsessional longing for somethingthat has been lost: a state of affliction ormelancholy – we are drawn into this atonce by the Chostakovitch string quartet,interpreted contemplatively by theMondriaan Quartet from Amsterdam.A dark-suited figure moves nearer on aleaf of white light – or is it the surface ofa mirror, on which steps, words, soundswill begin to reverberate? His shadowrevolves like a pendulum, vibrates withthe music, alternately with and againstthe rhythm. Light, body and voice harmonizeto the sound of the instruments.This production (scenecraft: KlausGrünberg) is striking in the strict geometryof lines, a rigorous topographyin which the choreography of contrastsalone gives birth to the movement: blackand white, positive and negative, up anddown: polarities borne by the long breathof the sound.This most recent collaboration with theAlsatian actor André Wilms may be fatalto what is known as modernity, to the orderwhich determines and penetrates allthings. While Wilms acts the orchestraconductor, the demagogue, the animaltamer, passages taken from Mass andPower by Canetti comment on these tyrannicallaws and scores, all of whichstem from ‘the Russian doll systemof the secret’. The musicians and thebeast – a robot born of the improbableunion between a cannon and a baboon– obey, but not for long. The Conductorof words soon finds himself alone facingempty chairs and imaginary sounds. Allthat remains are ‘those signs scratchedon yellowish paper’.It is at this point that the most surprisingpart of the play begins: Goebbels knocksdown the walls, removes his actor fromthe stage and projects him into a seriesof superimposed levels which echoeach other. Wilms takes his hat and coatand leaves the theatre. Change of perspective:a curtain opens and the house,until now present on the stage in miniature,becomes life-size. First as a twodimensionalback cloth onto which theaction is projected, and then as a giantAdvent calendar, with windows openinggradually, revealing the different roomsand the cameraman within (live video:Bruno Deville). His vision draws usbehind the façade.We enter a haunted house, a parallel universeimbibed with melancholy whichis, in fact, the apartment of a characterbased on the sinologist Kien, thebooklover from Canetti’s novel Autoda-fé.The camera wreaks havoc with4this daily life and all its minutely orchestratedmeanness, its banal acts andprivate movements, deforming it intosomething monstrous. On the desk, thepencils measure the small space theyare left, a typewriter stutters and, in thekitchen, the noise of the whisk and thepepper mill increase in volume. The solitarydiner devours his own tracks, withno appetite but down to the last crumb.Windows open and the scene splits, women’sand children’s voices haunt thehouse: we are at the heart of the film,surrounded by associations of imagesand words, dazed by collages of textand music organized in counterpoints.But where are we really? Have we beentransported to the hallucinated hell of aJean Cocteau, or is it the grotesque meticulousnessà la Jacques Tati which giveseach gesture its worrying distance?From stage to film, from film to stage:characters, voices and sounds changeplace and vector as if their initial aimwas to transgress limts. And it all takesplace so lightly with an almost somnambulisticvirtuosity, nothing is predictablebut, nevertheless, it is all entirelyconvincing. If the word ‘genius’ did nothave such a pompous connotations, itwould, with this production, be morethan ever appropriate.Sabine Haupt

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaThe Guardian20.08.2004Round peg in a square hole.Everything Heiner Goebbelstouches turns to music - words,pictures or sound. He tells AndrewClements about breakingthe rulesBrian McMaster’s benevolent reign asartistic director of the Edinburgh festivalmay not always feature contemporarymusic as prominently as it might orshould do, but it has made a regular featureof the works of Heiner Goebbels. Itwas at Edinburgh in 1997 that the firstGoebbels piece to make people sit upand take notice, Black on White, wasbrought to Britain by Ensemble Modern,and there have been more premieres insubsequent festivals - the theatrical Eislermaterialand Hashirigaki, as well asthe concert work Surrogate Cities. Nextweek, Goebbels’ latest work makes itsBritish debut at the festival - Eraritjaritjaka,first seen in April in Lausanne,Switzerland, completes a trilogy thatGoebbels has built around the Frenchactor André Wilms. Eraritjaritjaka (thetitle comes from the Australian Aboriginallanguage Aranda, describing a desirefor something that has been lost) is a typicalGoebbels achievement, bewitchingto look at, as compelling, mysteriousand intricately layered as everything heproduces, and just as hard to categorise.The text is made up of quotations fromthe notebooks of the Nobel prize-winningwriter Elias Canetti, creating whatGoebbels calls a «musée des phrases»,and he has compiled the score in thesame way, to create an equivalent «museum»of the string quartet. A live group(the Mondriaan Quartet of Amsterdam)plays music that surveys the whole historicalspan of the quartet repertoire:Shostakovich’s Eighth and the RavelQuartet feature most prominently, butthere are also shorter extracts from arange of composers from Bach to GavinBryars. Then there is the theatrical staging- directed as always by Goebbelshimself and making much use of realtimevideo - with Wilms delivering Ca-Round peg in a square hole.Everything Heiner Goebbelstouches turns to music - words,pictures or sound. He tells AndrewClements about breakingthe ruleswords as a monologue to a counterpointof mysterious encounters and everydayactivities. It all sounds contrived, but it’sa perfect example of Goebbels’ dramaticalchemy. He brings together materialfrom very different cultures and artisticgenres and makes them cohere in anextraordinarily powerful way, cuttingacross all the usual categories of theperforming arts in the process. In Blackon White, for instance, a recorded interviewwith the dramatist Heiner Müller(to whose memory the whole work isdedicated) is one starting point. A shortstory by Edgar Allen Poe is another; themusicians are required to sing, recite andmove around the stage while playingGoebbels’ score. Hashirigaki is wovenfrom a novel by Gertrude Stein and thebacking tracks to the Beach Boys albumPet Sounds, and draws in elements fromJapanese music as well. Goebbels sayshe only thinks of himself as a composer«from time to time», and pointsout that much of what he does (such aseverything in Eraritjaritjaka apart fromthe very end) does not involve his ownmusic at all. But everything about hispieces - the way in which the layersof image, text and sounds interact, theway the performers move and relate towhat is heard - is entirely musical, arrangedin a totally composerly way. Inany case, he has never felt constrainedby the usual stylistic pigeonholes thatmake it easier to deal with all contemporaryart forms, but music especially.Goebbels wouldn’t fit into them in anycase, and puts that down to his fundamentallyanti-authoritarian outlook, andto growing up in a family in which hecould encounter classical music and popon equal terms. Though he was born in1952 in south-west Germany, he hasbeen based in Frankfurt for more than5Round peg in a square hole.Everything Heiner Goebbelstouches turns to music - words,pictures or sound. He tells AndrewClements about breakingthe rules30 years. His home is a 10-minute walkfrom the city’s central station, a fewblocks from where, in the 1970s, whenhe was studying sociology at the university,he lived in a squat as part of whathe describes as an «undogmatic» groupof leftwing students that included DanielKohn Bendit and Joschka Fischer, nowthe German foreign minister. Despite allthe music in his upbringing, Goebbelsnever considered it as a possible career,expecting he would do something withmore social relevance, though he playedin jazz and rock bands in his spare time.What changed all that was his discoveryof Hanns Eisler - the pupil of Schoenbergand long-time collaborator of BertoltBrecht who fell foul of the Un-AmericanActivities Committee in the USAafter the second world war and returnedto the fledgling East Germany, wherehe became a leading intellectual figureand composed the country’s nationalanthem. Goebbels got to know Eisler’ssongs in the mid-1970s, and at the sametime discovered a book of interviewsin which Eisler laid out his belief thatmusic and politics could be reconciled.Goebbels abandoned his ideas of a careerin sociology in favour of studyingmusic, and putting into practice whathe had learned: «In a way,» he says,«Eisler changed my life.» More than 20years later, Goebbels acknowledged thatdebt in Eislermaterial, a spare, hauntingtribute to the composer incorporatingboth Eisler’s original songs and someof the music Goebbels had written inthe 1970s. Written again for EnsembleModern, the piece is minimally theatrical;the musicians sit around the edge ofthe stage, creating an empty space witha bust of Eisler at the centre: «My stagingof Eislermaterial is extremely shy,so that people have to come closer to the

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaThe Guardian20.08.2004(Next)Round peg in a square hole.Everything Heiner Goebbelstouches turns to music - words,pictures or sound. He tells AndrewClements about breakingthe rulesmusic rather than the music seeming tooupfront ... I don’t think such a settingwould work with any other 20th-centurycomposer.» Theatre has played an importantpart in his career from the outset. Inthe late 1970s Goebbels was the musicaldirector at the Schauspiel in Frankfurt,where he worked with directors such asRuth Berghaus and Hans Neuenfels, andit was there he met Müller, who was tobe the next major influence on his work.They worked together for a decade, producinga number of Horspielen piecesfor radio that reflected both Müller’sviews about the importance of wordsand how they should be delivered andGoebbels’ views on how text and hismusic should be combined. «My thinkingabout literature and my thinkingabout the relationship between wordsand music comes a lot from HeinerMüller,» he admits, and it’s no accidentthat his first international success, Blackon White, should have become a memorialto Müller, who died while it wasbeing composed. Yet Goebbels’ visionof theatre is very much his own. The trilogyof pieces conceived for Wilms - Orthe Hapless Landing (1993), Max Black(1998) and now Eraritjaritjaka - showshow vivid that imagination can be andhow every piece occupies its own utterlydistinct world. «Whenever I work withAndré Wilms I find I use texts that arenot dramatic, which are not written forthe stage, because those tend to concentrateon relationships and emotions ratherthan on the thoughts behind the words.That’s why I like to use notebooks -from Francis Ponge and Joseph Conradin Or the Hapless Landing, Valéry andWittgenstein in Max Black and now thenotebooks of Canetti for Eraritjaritjaka.I deliberately didn’t use Canetti’s playsor much from his only novel Auto daRound peg in a square hole.Everything Heiner Goebbelstouches turns to music - words,pictures or sound. He tells AndrewClements about breakingthe rulesFe; I’m looking for words or imagesor music that open up perspectives, notnarrow them; that’s why I favour thosetexts.» Yet the words are only one layerof Eraritjaritjaka; there is the music - «Ithink the string quartet is the field ofmusic that has been most explored. Almostevery 20th-century composer hascomposed for string quartet» - and thestaging, in which everything has a roleto play. «When I balance these differentelements they have to coexist, and forthat coexistence I work on all of them- the set and the lighting as well as themusic and the text - from the very firstday of rehearsals. The later a medium arrivesin the process, the more illustrativeits role becomes. But you only have thisfreedom [to alter things during rehearsals]when you don’t have to follow adramatic text, and when you don’t haveto do it in the last three days of rehearsal;by then it is too late.» But Goebbels’refusal to fit into pre-existing categoriesstill causes problems; the Germans, heobserves, invented pigeonholes. So lastyear he completed his first opera - orat least a theatre work, Landscape withDistant Relatives, that he described asan opera, and which was first staged inan opera house, in Geneva. But he admitsthe label was a trick, an attempt toget German music critics to see one ofhis pieces. When Black on White wasfirst performed in Frankfurt, in 1996,the premiere took place in a disusedtram shed and was more or less ignoredby the opera world, simply because thevenue was unfamiliar. «So I called thiswork an opera and all the German musiccritics came; they even went to Genevato see it, just because I had called it anopera.»Andrew Clements6

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaThe Scotsman22.08.2004A musical mystery TourTHE box office staff at the EdinburghInternational Festival are sure to behaving a laugh. That’s because anyonecalling for tickets for the new HeinerGoebbels show will have to make anattempt at pronouncing the title. Andexactly how are they supposed to pronounceEraritjaritjaka? t’s the first questionI put to Goebbels - the director andcomposer who works at the intersectionof classical music and theatre - but heleaves me none the wiser. «Just make itvery simple,» he says, rattling the titleout in a way that doesn’t sound simple atall. My rough interpretation is this: youshould put the stress on the two ‘it’ syllablesand deliver it with a groovy jazzrhythm. Otherwise just call up and askfor the Heiner Goebbels show. A pieceof music theatre that depends on a clevervisual surprise - I won’t ruin it for you- Eraritjaritjaka features Amsterdam’sMondriaan Quartet playing the musicof JS Bach, Gavin Bryars, Ravel, Shostakovichand others. They are joinedon stage by actor André Wilms recitingenigmatic texts by essayist Elias Canetti.During the multimedia performance,Wilms takes a journey into a housewhere all is not what it seems. Howdoes Goebbels describe it? «That’s onething I don’t have to do,» he says. «Withall my work I try to make this questiondifficult. What drives the attention ofan audience is the unforeseeable, andthe secrets and the mystery of a performance.That’s what I’m trying to workon. It starts like a string quartet concert,but you shouldn’t expect it to stay likethis.» He suggests it’s an opportunity toexperience the ideas of Elias Canetti, aBulgarian writer better known on thecontinent than in Britain, even thoughhe lived here as a refugee from Nazi-occupiedVienna from 1938 until his deathin 1994. A sometime lover of Iris Murdoch,Canetti published a study of massbehaviour and totalitarianism, Crowdsand Power; a novel, Auto-da-Fé whichwon the Nobel Prize for literature in1981; two autobiographies, a numberA musical mystery Tourof absurdist plays and several books ofaphorisms. It is these elliptical and unconnectedaphorisms that Goebbels usesin combination with «some of the mostbeautiful string quartet music of the 20thcentury». Audiences who saw Goebbels’previous shows at the EdinburghFestival, Black on White and the BeachBoys-inspired Hashirigaki, will knownot to expect the conventional. «A wonderfullady after the show said to me itwas like being in a picture of Magritte,»he says. «Nobody was ever able to describeso precisely what I intended todo.» THE PERFORMANCE is the thirdinstalment of a trilogy, though their relationshipis only thematic and it does notmatter that the first two parts, Ou Bienle Débarquement Désastreux and MaxBlack, have not been seen in Edinburgh.There are two factors that connect thethree parts. One is actor André Wilms,who starred in Deborah Warner’s ADoll’s House and Aki Kaurismäki’sJuha. The other is that each piece wasinspired by a writer’s informal notebooks:Ou Bien... combined writingsby Joseph Conrad with African music,while Max Black teamed notes by LudwigWittgenstein with electronic music.«It’s not very well known that Canettipublished five or six little notebooks ofobservations he made during the day, inthe newspaper, looking out of the window,looking into people’s eyes on thetram, on the subway,» says Goebbels.«He looked with his sharp, uncorruptedmind. I’ve been working only with theselittle notes, these aphorisms, on animals,the world, relationships, human beings,education, on a lot of subjects. What Ilove so much in this genre of non-dramaticliterature is that you can attend tosomebody’s thinking. I try to make it visibleor audible.» By «non-dramatic» hemeans there’s no narrative that holds thetext together. The language is non-linear.To create a show of this nature is a slowand steady process of workshopping andexperiment. After dwelling on the ideafor a couple of years, Goebbels spent a7A musical mystery Tourweek improvising with Wilms last October,at which point there was too muchtext and too much music. After furtherwhittling down and shaping, the showwas ready to premiere in April, the languageinspiring the selection of music.«I’m trying to find metaphorical reasonsfor the choice of music,» says Goebbels.«There are lines to be drawn through themusic of the piece. One could be musicthat has been dedicated to similar subjects,such as Shostakovich and Mossolov,who were always dealing withauthoritarian structures and politicalexperiences. «On the other hand, thereis a chronological line through the piecewhich starts with quite an early stringquartet from Shostakovich and goes upto an American string quartet from theend of the century.» In the notoriouslyconservative world of classical music,you’d expect Goebbels’ approach to becontroversial. The string quartets mightbe central to Eraritjaritjaka, but the musiciansare rarely positioned in the usualfaces-to-the-audience arrangement andare frequently upstaged by the visualeffects. Goebbels’ experience, however,is that audiences and players havea hunger for more imaginative staging,and it’s rare for the traditionalists to getindignant. «We have to be aware thatevery concert is a performance - anda performance in a visual sense,» saysGoebbels, who is a professor at the Institutefor Applied Theatre Studies in Giessenin Germany. «If we don’t reflect thatthen we are not moving the genre ahead.In the construction of the piece there’ssomething that gives a new perspectiveon what we thought we knew already.How can music be visible? That’s somethingI try in Eraritjaritjaka: not onlyhow the mind can be visible in a veryentertaining way but also how music canbe visible.» The simple act of putting astring quartet on a stage with theatre lightingis enough, he says, to change anaudience’s perspective. «The treasureof the string quartet repertoire is so richthat if you change a little bit about it,

season 2009-2010EraritjaritjakaThe Scotsman22.08.2004(Next)A musical mystery Tourit will immediately change your focus.«Even if you’ve been seeing string quartetsfor 20 years, you will suddenly discoverthe elegance of an arm; you willsee the communication between musicianswhen they have to play the fugueof Johann Sebastian Bach over a distanceof eight metres, because they aresitting in the corners of a square. It’s tinythings that can make the architecture ofmusic visible in a very pleasant way.» Inthis, Goebbels is less an iconoclast thana sensitive artist genuinely interested in- and often respectful of - the boundariesbetween the different art forms. «Thereare a lot of boundaries,» he says. «Butit is very interesting to cross them. «Itis very interesting to pretend, for example,that the whole night will be a stringquartet evening and to end up with a live,hand-held video which nobody wouldexpect at the beginning. There are a lotof different laws and preconceptions tobe respected, but it is very nice to goback and forth.»Mark Fisher8