Essay on Shadow and Truth is the title given by Charlotte Seither to her work for large orchestra. The first part has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London, under the direction of André de Ridder. The complete orchestral work was premiered in April 2008 in Krefeld.
”At the beginning of a piece, the ‘inner space’ is always the first consideration for me,” says Charlotte Seither when asked about her new orchestral work Essay on Shadow and Truth. ”It’s not to do with the architectonic or the three-dimensional, but rather the idea that a note has another dimension which goes beyond pitch and duration – a kind of third place which one could call the emotional space or the depth of the note. This naturally brings with it the problem of notating it, because for me, the written representation is always just a code for a sound. And with this comes much more than that which I can encode in a note, simply the inner physiogonomy or pitch of a note, another kind of psychology.”
For Essay on Shadow and Truth, the whole Romantic orchestra was at her disposal, that is the highly-differentiated potential of this large organisation which is indeed the result of a long process of refinement of aural possibilities. ”The work with the orchestra could also produce completely different forms, for example, I would like to write a piece where vocal parts are integrated into each orchestral group, a choir which is equal to the functionality of the instruments, in which vocality and instrumentality enter a melding process together, only that the result in sound is half-instrumental, half-physical. Or an orchestra where a large group of violas is placed in the middle as a shadow group and acts as the inner shadow of a mezzo-soprano – a kind of orchestral song in which lingering effects are created with a kind of delay technique. I can imagine that orchestra is also quite differently defined. Despite this, every time I hear a Mahler symphony I am once again profoundly respectful of what an orchestra can achieve. For me personally, the orchestra suits me very well because you can synthesise sounds which cannot be explained. Someone said to me in London that in the new orchestral piece, there were moments where you thought you were hearing electronic sounds for quite a while (which don’t exist in the piece), because registers of instruments which are not otherwise compatible are merged with each other. What interests me is mixed sounds which are created from two, three or four components and which I couldn’t produce if I only had one sound colour available.”
Composed diffusion
In Essay on Shadow and Truth, Charlotte Seither increases an effect which the orchestra and large organisation already display, namely that of the diffuse. When large bodies of performers play together, there can never be absolute simultaneity or unanimity. In this extremely precise score, the effect of the diffuse is produced on various levels ranging to aleatoric ways of playing in which openness and modulation are raised to the level of principles.
A further device: the percussion is treated so that it plays in certain sonorities and is assigned to different orchestral groups. ”I have developed a rhetoric by which the percussion instruments are treated like vocal parts with horizontally-running lines, which can be shaped just as vocal parts can. For example, I almost never use the timpani in isolation in the vertical, rather flowing, in that I ask for an overturned bowl facing upwards to be laid on top of it; the bowl is turned in this process, and at the same time, the timpani skin is tuned into the intonation by pedalling. Thus the particular percussiveness of the timpani, which normally forms punctuation in conventional orchestral writing, is suspended. I have arrived at this technique, so that the timpani can be treated in the same way as the first violins. And so, many gradual inter-relationships between the groups develop. An important correspondence is generated, for example, by the wind machine, which is used to lengthen the sounds of the wind instruments, as well as toy sound hoses which are used as ’piccolos’ for the wind machine with their higher overtones. That is to say that I group together sound colours which lend themselves to being combined to produce gradual expansions and reductions, as in the combination of wind parts – wind sounds – wind machine – sound hoses. There are parallel combinations to the wind sounds in the strings.”
The structure of exhaling
This process brings particular formal consequences with it, which result directly from the production of sound, when, for example, the sound of the wind machine can only be produced by a process of slow crescendo. “In this piece I have freed myself from a conventional dramatic form, rather creating a flat structure, a structure of exhalation or decrescendo over a long course, which is then relieved by new impulses and energy. Thus, the piece comprises five waves which are all similar in their basic shape. These climaxes/waves are not dramatic even when they are loud and complex, for they are always countered/thwarted. Therefore with the waves I have worked so that on the level of the orchestration, rhythm, energy and many impulses have been set free, whereas in the harmonic sphere, these have been subverted. All in all, it has fascinated me to build a form lasting 30 minutes, in which no dualism, no dramaturgy of climax and no stark contrast between black and white emerges. The whole effect is almost static.”
What emerges is a natural organic whole of the highest density of occurrences, created by interpreters from a precisely calculated imprecision and playful openness, and with which Charlotte Seither strives to achieve her own kind of perception of time, which is simply not precise/goal-oriented. A manner of hearing in which the listener commences and finds himself within, without following a mandatory course of events. In the wealth of occurrences, the hearing process may produce a totally strange kind of tension and attentiveness. And the title Shadow and Truth – Schatten und Wahrheit? “An oblique contrast which juxtaposes various categories in a crooked angle.”
Marie Luise Maintz
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
(from: takte 1/2008)
Charlotte Seither
Essay on Shadow and Truth für Orchester (2007)
First performance: Krefeld 29.4.2008: Niederrheinische Sinfoniker, Graham Jackson
Orchestra: 3 (2. auch AFl, 3. auch Picc), 2, Eh, 2, BKlar, 2, Kfag – 4, 3, 3, 1 – Pk, Schlg (4) – Hfe – Str (12, 10, 8, 7, 5) / ca. 30'
Publisher: Bärenreiter (Pertformance )
Essay on Shadow and Truth (Chapter 1)
for orchestra (2007). BA 9723, Aufführungsmaterial leihweise
Besetzung: 3 (2. auch AFl, 3. auch Picc), 2, Eh, 2, BKlar, 2, Kfag - 4, 3, 3, 1 - Pk, Schlg (4) - Hfe - Str (mindestens 12, 10, 8, 7, 5) / ca. 13 Minuten
16. November 2007 in London: BBC Symphony Orchestra, Andre de Ridder