After years of promising we were invited to Russia. Mischa and Yuri now had an actors’ school in Pushkin, about 30 Km from St Petersburg and each Summer they arranged a festival of performing arts. The theme of this year’s festival was “Babel”. We were offered two concerts, one of my own works and one with Swiss works to the theme Babel. I suggested bringing the brass group that Philip played in (Brasserie) and Fiona as soprano and a pianist, Dominik Blum and of course Brigitte was also invited. Suddenly I became an organiser, an impresario! I telephoned and faxed constantly with Russia, I put in an application to pro Helvetia for a grant (which was approved) for our travel expenses, I applied for visas for the whole troupe and even had to drive twice to Bern to the Russian Embassy in this connection. I also suggested that Michael Harlow should write texts and be invited. He wrote them and they invited him but he failed to get a travel grant from New Zealand. The only Swiss work I found on the theme was a work which Dominik knew from his once teacher: Urs Peter Schneider. It was called Babel and was an open form piece and therefore could be easily adapted to our group of instruments.
Michael’s idea for After Babel was the recreation of language, but how the texts actually showed this was not always clear. This, however, was no problem, I know his style so well and enjoy setting his texts and, as always, he made very concrete suggestions of musical ideas to them. One of his suggestions which I was able to realise, was the use of a tape as a frame before and after the piece in which one would hear a collage of voices dictating the alphabet in their own language and this Babel of alphabets would lead into the first (at the beginning) and the last (at the end) stanzas of the Divine Comedy. Among my students and friends I found French, German, English, Czech, Turkish and Italian. Our Italian-speaker neighbour also read the Dante texts which were heard and the beginning and end of the piece.
I was concerned that the piece should not sound like a concatination of songs and so suggested to Michael that we use my Abelian Form and that six of his texts be halved so that one would hear the second half of each song as a ‘reflection’ of its first half.
He agreed and told me where to cut.
Here is a recording of the complete work
Performed in Pushkin, near St Petersburg, Russia, in 1995, solo soprano: Fiona Powell, Piano: Dominik Blum, Ensemble: Brasserie
After Babel
Michael Harlow Texts 1 – 16
Alphabets
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita
𝚰𝜼, 𝚰𝜼, 𝚷𝛼ιηο𝛎, Ά𝛋ο𝛎ο𝛍𝛆𝛎
Hië, Hië, the song we hear…
Hië, Hië, the song we hear…
Like the air itself
words want wings
Who cannot fly, cannot imagine
cannot fly, cannot imagine.
Oh, put the world together
but not with your hands
every sentence is a sound
words want wings
Hurry up and slow down
This deep down darkness of wood
Hurry up and slow down
Having nowhere to go, nowhere
at all, we hurry to arrive there
on time, Hurry up and slow down
Trying to climb into our heaven on our
own
Korimako sings:
Gott kann mir sagen,
en archài o logos
inside the lining of a word
a word. . . a word. . . a word
(remember that half the lies
are true, and truer still,
the other half are, too)
You say the body is a book
And you would like to walk it
Round the world, that somewhere
You are being read, yes, someone
Is touching you with her eyes,
Such syllables of heart rippling
Down the line, just what you've
Had in mind when you say the body
Is a book, oh, T-Shirt Logogrammatikos,
Logo-grammatikos
Oh, this rousing darkness of wood
Hurry up and slow down
As if we would, as if we could
Hurry up and slow down
our heel-tapping shadow, out-step
our heel-tapping shadow, out-step
into the night
into the night
hurry up and slow down
the light comes stealing
Like the water itself
the silence is
the song we hear
like the water itself
chasing time
every sentence is a sound
Oh, put the world together
but not with your hands
Auge geht and Ego – ist
Mein eye goes on a walk to see
Itself in miniature, and yes
The world returns itself in small,
And all of this before the Fall,
Oh Microzoic Menuett, Microzoic Menuett;
And all of this before the Fall,
Oh, speechbearer of the dark
You would make luminous, let us
Peel with our hands cucumbers
And mad-apples, you declare
That we live in a time of too
Many words without wings—
Already there is heavy traffic
In the dark, the jargon-tumbrils
Heavy and dumb, sharpened
At all hours is the knife…
Sings Korimako:
Am Anfang war die Tat
One word, world-word
In the beginning the deep history
of a word … a word, world-word
into the night, into the night
the light comes stealing
Te ao hurihuri, Ahi . . .
(the evercircling light)
And so you see in Microzoic Menuett
That looking aus is looking in
Und Ego — ist out walking zu,
To Seele itself in miniature,
To Seele itself in kleinen so,
Oh, Microzoic Menuett, Ego — ist
Out walking zu, and all of this
Before the Fall …
Who cannot fly, cannot imagine
cannot fly, cannot imagine.
Oh, put the world together
but not with your hands
every sentence is a sound
Like the earth itself
Hië, Hië, the song we hear …
like the earth itself
every word was once a poem
At the House of Babel, someone
Has to be first, and since
You are the last, at the end
Is our beginning, at the end
Is our beginning, stepping out
Of an old story, you are stepping out
Of an old story, you remember
How it was, at the end is our beginning,
How it was the voices of our children
Not yet torn in the whirlwind of words,
Not yet dumb under the tongue,
The voices of our children
The lost noises of the sun . . .
Such wonder-wit of body-talk
Logo-grammatikos, of body-talk
In undulating signs, but once
In special at a Gipsy Fair in Whakatane
This T-shirt Logogram, inside
The lining of a word, just walking by
A philosophic owl, you read across
A body that is a book, I don't know
Why or how, or why it is, but oh,
You make my penis whistle—dear heart,
How like you this…?
Oh, speechbearer of the dark
I hear rising under your tongue
A small sound; this…this…this…
The running-water-fall
Of your words: let one word fly
To another with astonishing desire
I believe you when you say
You would like to appear, and right now
As a constellation in a northern sky,
You say, speechbearer of the dark,
You say, let us peel with our hands
Cucumbers and mad-apples for our
Simple dinner…
At the counting-house when you
Arrive, such dark birds against
The light, you remember how it was
You are shaking hands
With the front door, with the back door,
And you brush the window with your sleeve
This halo of light, and you peer
Inside, and you see: the dead are seated
In their chairs, small hills of salt
Beside them, in their hands an offering
Of stones, and rising on the air,
Their voices, one by one, you hear
Their voices, they are calling out
Their names, and the lost noises of the sun.
Words need to dream again
to dream again,
like the fire itself
words need to dream again
Who cannot fly, cannot imagine
every sentence is a sound
words need to dream again, dream again
every word was once a poem
every word was once a poem
Alphabeths
A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa:
ma già volgeva il mio disìo e ‘l velle,
si come rota ch' igualmente è mossa,
l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.