EINE KURZE VORSCHAU (2)

As proofreading on the full score commences (in Australia! a multi-national effort!), I'm offering up another little morsel of the score: the middle of Elektra's entrance monologue, "Allein! Weh, ganz allein!"

CHOICE CUTS Part One: The issue of traditional abridgements in Elektra

Typically I provide complete, unabridged editions of the works I’m asked to reduce, leaving it up to the individual performing organization to make any cuts or other alterations at their discretion. But in preparing for a first performance of this reduced-orchestra version of Elektra, and with a mountain of note entry, proofreading, corrections, and the creation of individual instrumental parts and a final score, the challenge of tackling this complex and note-heavy score unabridged raises its head.

As a composer myself, and a great admirer of Strauss and especially Elektra, the question arises whether it’s ethical to issue this edition in anything other than unabridged form. This post will therefore examine the issue of cuts in opera generally, and in particular Strauss’ stage works, and the impact on this edition.

The view of a single work of “classical” music, operatic or otherwise, to be respected as a unified whole is a relatively new ideology (mid-19th century). For centuries, concerts were patchwork affairs: movements of symphonies broken up with a potpourri of interspersed arias, sonatas, solo turns, etc.  

This same holds true for opera, which from its inception possessed an inherent malleability necessitated by individual performance situations. The earliest operas, dating from an era when musical notation and printing were still evolving, existed either in vague manuscript editions or not at all: therefore there was rarely a standardized text to work with. As the genre expanded out of the sheltered exclusivity of courtly performances, the demands of the general public affected how and in what form a work was performed.

Also the idea of a standardized, respected operatic score was an unknown: it was taken for granted that a work would be molded and altered to suit the tastes of the local audience, particularly to showcase the talents of the singers who thought nothing of interpolating arias or songs by other composers with which they'd had previous success. This practice continued well into the 19th century: there’s the old chestnut of Rossini, when asked his opinion of a performance of one of his opera that involved several interpolations, responding “Charming: who wrote it?”

Apocryphal though it may be, it's symptomatic of the almost universal ideology amongst empresarios, conductors and singers that opera scores were not to be taken literally, but as a foundation which they should alter, add to or - more frequently - abridge as their tastes dictated. And in due fairness, most composers accepted such thinking as a fait accomplit (Gluck being a rare exception due to the inherent unity of his style). Not until Berlioz do you find a prominent voice protesting such liberties and advocating for works to be performed unaltered (though it should be pointed out that Berlioz himself capitulated to this ideology more often than not, authoring “adaptations” of von Weber and Mozart as well as seeing his own works truncated).

This ideology of altering operas continued even with the development away from the prevalent number/recitative structure towards the symphonically based through-composed forms epitomized by Wagner. Wagner himself, despite his insistence that his works were statements of imperative cultural and philosophical significance, accepted - albeit grudgingly - that they would face cuts when performed under the direction of someone other than himself, which turned out to be very much the case. In the 1890’s, when Mahler at the start of his tenure as principal conductor of the Vienna Court Opera insisted that he would perform Wagner’s operas complete, outcry arose in both the public and press against what was regarded as an impractical and onerous practice.

Strauss therefore entered the arena of operatic composition with two conflicting ideologies: the increasingly prevalent (especially in Germany) view of an opera score as a text to be respected, and the centuries-long tradition of operas being tailored and abridged to suit their individual performing circumstances. Given Strauss’ evolving into the operatic genre from his history of symphonic orchestral works, and his conception of opera as a symphonic architectonic structure both defined by and influencing the text, it’s no surprise that he took exception to the idea of cuts in his operas.  "Don’t ask me to authorise a cut," he reportedly told conductor Karl Böhm.  "If I had wanted to approve it, I would never have composed it."  (I have yet to find a verifiable attribution for this quote.)

Then there's the question of whether actually Elektra works unabridged?

Ask just about any vocal coach acquainted with Elektra  - or any singer contemplating the title role - and you will likely be told that singing the title role unabridged on stage is impossible. Even with the traditional cuts, which I will explore in one of my next posts, Elektra is widely considered the most taxing role in the dramatic soprano repertoire, both in terms of length, vocal demands across a range equaling Brünnhilde, and combatting the huge orchestra discussed in previous posts. This along with questions of dramatic structural pacing is one of the reasons frequently cited for said cuts.

Certainly the opera in its early days must have been performed unabridged, and its earliest performers - most notably Annie Krull, the role’s originator - were obviously able to tackle it, though how successfully isn’t recorded.  (Reviews of the premiere of this now legendarily complex work focussed considerably more on the opera’s score than on the performers.)

Putting aside the extraordinary vocal demands, I fall into the camp of Elektra fans who view its unabridged form skeptically. In at least two instances, Strauss miscalculates the effect of text scope in this otherwise magnificently conceived and paced masterpiece.  I’ll explore these case by case in my next post.

Schluβ

Double bar. Now to have the bazillion or so notes proofread, extract parts, format the score...

Stay tuned for more thoughts on the choices made for this edition and the work as a whole.

WAS FÜR EIN WERK

Without exception, these three pages from Klytämnestra’s nightmare scene have proven to be the most challenging in my entire career of orchestrating - my own work or anyone else’s. It’s harmonically complex, dense passages like these that justify Strauss’s huge, panopleic orchestral demands: the level of colors that can be applied to these complicated harmonies can only be achieved with the huge breadth of resources the original score requires. As the creative work on my reduced version nears its end, this is one passage I’ve been postponing due to its challenges. It’s now done, but I suspect will be adjusted once I hear it live.

A sneak peek to come in a few months...

EINE KURZE VORSCHAU (1)

As the interim since my last post on the Elektra-lite project may have indicated, I’ve been a bit off the grid on this project: partially due to the withdrawal of the original commissioning organization, but largely due to tackling other music projects in my own composing career.

Realizing that there are legions of people breathless with suspense over this project, I wanted to restart it with the news that an alternate organization has expressed interest in tackling this reduction of Elektra, potentially in 2017.  In the meantime, working on it has proven a tonic pastime in between and even during working on my own compositions, and I can state that note entry and allocation is about 90% complete.  Still to come are adding in the myriad dynamics, phrasings, lyrics and stage directions; finding someone to proofread the entire work; extracting the parts, and formatting those and the full score.

I'll continue to post updates on the progress of this edition, thoughts about the original work, my own choices about the instrumental allocations necessitated by the reduced forces.  I’ll also post the occasional sneak peek of the score as it progresses. Let’s start at the very beginning…

NB. these sneak peeks will typically very roughly formatted and will not represent the look of the final score.

ORGANUM SELECTIVUM

One of the reasons Elektra inevitably makes such an impact, even on the novice or first time hearer, is the almost pummeling auditory effect of the huge, brass-heavy orchestral forces. Combine that with the hurtling pace and harmonic richness of the score, and Elektra is inherently designed to pack a wallop to the solar plexus.

I've been pondering the loss of this gut impact created by the massive sonic weight of Strauss’s orchestra in my edition for lighter forces.  Does Elektra lose some of its effect without some kind of background sonic reinforcement or emphasis?

Then there’s the issue of my reduced instrumental palette, compared to the breadth of instrumental color Strauss has at his disposal. Our smaller group will have a much more limited aural spectrum and range of color. Some sort of compensation for that seems called for.

The issue has bothered me to the extent that I began contemplating following the musical theater route of utilizing one or two electronic keyboards programmed to provide wind, brass, and string reinforcement in block chords.  Not an ideal solution given the otherwise entirely acoustic nature of the orchestra.

But in one of those happy instances of cosmic serendipity, just as I was beginning to do some tests pages along these lines, Chris Fecteau – out of the blue and completely unsolicited – suggested the inclusion of a harmonium in the instrumental list.  Strauss himself initiates this very idea in his Ariadne auf Naxos, indicating in a preface note in the opera’s harmonium part - though oddly not in the full score – that he expects the instrument to cover for the smaller wind and horn sections than were his norm.

Good acoustic harmoniums are a rarity, and my own (admittedly) limited experience with the instrument has so far left me unimpressed: I find them generally thin and wheezy.  Still, following Strauss’s own example, why not add an organ component to the orchestra? Not a real organ – though depending on the performing space I wouldn’t necessarily rule this out, if coordination with the conductor and the rest of the orchestra in this particularly intricate work could be reliably worked out.  My intention is an electronic realization of an limited spectrum, pitch-defined organ role: no doublings, no extra registrations, no octave couplings, just the written, concert pitches.

DAW tests along these lines have been very successful.  The organ can provide not just the aforementioned extra sonic heft but also some of the lost palette diversity, especially standing in for the Wagner tubas who, when played by top players on quality instruments, provide an almost organ sound anyway.  And given the gruesome, macabre nature of Elektra, there’s a nightmare quality to this timbre that seems to suit many parts of this opera – as long as it isn’t over-indulged. Otherwise one risks the soundscape devolving into camp.

So with the addition of this organ component, the instrumentation of this reduced orchestra version of Elektra is complete. Now the real work begins.

STRING THEORY

With the rest of the orchestra determined, the last piece of the puzzle is the string section, which in the case of Elektra is both the most fascinating and the most challenging.

14 winds, brass and others leaves me 13 - 15 players for strings.... theoretically.  Which in almost any other opera reduction would be more than enough (and for musical theater would be huge). The challenge with Elektra is not just the numerical strength, but how Strauss uses them.

A traditional orchestral string section is broken down in to:

Violin 1

Violin 2

Viola

Cello

Double bass

This group is typically deployed as four parts, with the basses doubling the cellos at the octave.  A good deal of the classical era repertoire deploys them in three parts, with the violas doubling the cellos either in unison or an octave higher -- so basically Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola/Cello/Bass.  The amount of players per section would vary according to both the needs of the individual piece and the resources of the performing organization.

Even the habit of the French school towards the end of the nineteenth century to split each of these sections continuously in two doesn't alter the essentially four-fold division of the section. Strauss himself utilizes this layout in certain parts of Salome, and it may well have inspired his expanded division for Elektra, which regardless of its antecedents remains no less remarkable in requesting the following:

Violins 1, 2 and 3: 8 players each

Violas 1, 2 and 3: 6 players each

Cellis 1 and 2: 6 players each

Basses 1 and 2: 4 players each

Total: 62

Aside from Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto (which is written for solo strings), I know of no precedent for a tripartite division of an orchestral string section in this manner. Strauss surely had his prospective harmonic approach for the opera in mind when devising it.

Defining his orchestra was typically one of the earliest steps Strauss took in the compositional process -- his copy of Hofmannsthal’s play contains quantities of marginalia indicating instrumental thoughts from the outset.  And in mapping out this unique string section, Strauss was surely preparing to continue his exploration of polytonality taken to its then furthest extreme in Salome, devising an orchestral layout that would facilitate the juxtaposing of foreign triads against each other. Arguably the most representative example of this approach is the so-called “Elektra chord”: effectively a Db major chord contrasted against an E major chord:

Thus, he could expect to ground these harmonic explorations in the string section - always the foundation of his orchestra - by writing the three notes of one triad in his violins and juxtapose its counterpart in the violas. The cellos then add emphasis where necessary and the basses a complimentary or contrasting fundamental tone.

The resulting expanded number of violas plays up the opera's overall heavy, dark atmosphere, though it's interesting to find Strauss reverting to a lighter, treble-prominant sound in two sections in the second half of the opera - the Recognition scene and the final triumphal scene - by asking the First Violas to take up violins as the Fourth Violin section. This restores the traditional four-part division of the strings, though it poses a practical hazard involving as it does cold instruments that, having lain unused for well over an hour, are likely to be out of tune with the rest of the section, much less the rest of the orchestra.  Anecdotally, a cursory survey of a handful of the world’s leading opera houses indicates that this directive is rarely adhered to.

Ironically, the section Strauss outlines gives him one desk less of string players than that for Wagner’s Ring of 16 firsts, 16 seconds, 12 violas, 12 cellos and 8 basses, an interesting anomaly considering the much larger wind and brass sections against which the Elektra string section has to contend.

The breadth of timbral variety that Strauss extracts from his group ranges from an essentially three-fold division (all violins, all violas, all cellos/basses) to a division of nine independent parts and beyond, including frequent solo turns by the principle players of each section.

So how to translate this complex group for a reduced orchestra? In order to keep the numbers low and make the edition practical for as wide a spectrum of performers as possible while still maintaining some fidelity to Strauss’s originality, my first thought was to keep things small:

3 violins

2 violas

2 cellos

1 bass

But for all the intimate possibilities this group offers, it’s become quickly clear that without some sort of amplification it would be easily overwhelmed by the rest of the orchestra.  Amplification is a tricky road to take in the traditional opera arena and would at any rate require the use of a sound mixer, something for which the smaller opera companies interesting in undertaking this reduced version are likely to have little capacity.

My ideal would be:

Violins 1, 2 and 3: minimum 3 each

Violas 1, 2 and 3: minimum 2 each

Cellos 1 and 2: minimum 2 each

Minimum 2 doublebasses

For a total of 20.  This is the section for which the edition will be tailored, even though it exceeds the boundaries of the commissioning organization.  The split of the section can still work with slightly smaller numbers, such as those suggested by Chris Fecteau:

6 violins

3 violas

2 cellos

1 bass

My only thought is to retain two basses, even with these smaller numbers.  A reduced orchestra version of Elektra still needs the added depth and heft of a second bass. There are also several sections where two basses will permit what I feel is a necessary fidelity to the original score.

Which leaves a lot to recommend in Chris' proposal: Divide your section in to the first two desks of violins, third desk of violins and first viola, and the remaining two violas, and you have a viable 3-section division not including the cellos and bass that can cover a fair amount of the disposition of the original.

Where this smaller section becomes tricky are passages where the six violins are required to be divided as individual desks, or two players to a line, a notorious challenge in terms of intonation, and one that string players typically regard with unease.  Two violins playing unison poses noticeable intonation issues: add a third, and better yet a fourth, and the combined sound almost immediately solves those issues.  The fact that Strauss himself poses this challenge in the final scene of his Ariadne auf Naxos doesn’t mitigate the issue, though it does perhaps grant a bit of authorial permission.

What are your thoughts?  What would you suggest?