Luigi Nono - Prometeo. Tragedia dell'ascolto - Isola Prima (2/11)

Prometeo. Tragedia dell'ascolto [1981/1985]

for singers, speakers, chorus, solo strings, solo winds, glasses, orchestral groups, and live electronics
Arrangement of texts by Massimo Cacciari

Col Legno 2003, live in Freiburg

soprano: Petra Hoffmann, Monika Bair-Ivenz,
alto: Susanne Otto, Noa Frenkel,
tenor: Hubert Mayer,
speakers: Sigrun Schell, Gregor Dalal

Freiburg Soloists’ Choir,
ensemble recherche,
Soloists’ Ensembles of the Freiburg Philharmonic and SWR Symphony Orchestras,
Experimentalstudio Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung of the SWR Freiburg
director: André Richard
1st conductor: Peter Hirsch - 2nd conductor: Kwamé Ryan

[francoisbugaud]

On pourrait croire que ces oeuvres, qui ont déferlé si j’ose dire, durant les années 65-90 avec John Cage, Boulez, Berio, Nono, Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Zimmerman, Pierre Henry, Schnittke, Lachemann, Louis Andriessen etc auraient pris un sacré coup de vieux… à réentendre ici Prometeo, après l’avoir entendu à Paris en 2015, et en CD, tout semble briller dans une étonnante clarté. Quelle formidable audace ! J’eus aimé l’entendre dans la scénographie de Renzo Piano à Milan en 85 ! Bravo et merci pour cette belle interprétation.

[angusmcrandy]

The work is divided into nine parts, each of which employs a different staff.

Prologue. The solo voices recite passages of Hesiod's Cosmogony, while other solo voices and the choir sing prose passages from Benjamin, which serve as a comment to Hesiod, as a medieval trope.
2. 'First Island'. Dialogue between the arch trio and the orchestral groups: the text is made up of Prometheus 'narration of his own deeds and Hephaestus' account of the punishment inflicted on Prometheus by Zeus.
3. 'Second island'. This part is divided in turn into three distinct moments: 'I-Prometheus', superimposition of words of Io, daughter of Inachos, and of Prometheus, who prophesies the future sufferings of Io; 'Hölderlin', fragment of the German poet's famous Schicksalslied, sung by the choir; the 'Stasimo primo', a succession of musical fragments of a few bars, which continuously vary in a dynamic and agogic sense.
4. First Interlude. Although very short, it is the culminating moment of the work. On the text of the Maestro of the game of Cacciari, solo voices and instruments draw an arabesque always "at the limits of audibility or inaudibility".
5. 'Three voices'. It provides for the superposition of three sound levels, consisting of the first of three solo voices, the second of euphonium, bass flute, bass clarinet and glasses, the third of an imperceptible sound background of the strings; the text still includes fragments from the game master.
6. 'Third, fourth and fifth islands'. The materials of the three 'islands', each characterized by a different vocal and instrumental staff, undergo crushing processes; the choir performs a 'distant echo'.
7. 'Three voices'. The choir, here a cappella, intones fragments of texts by Benjamin, while fragments of previous 'islands' resurface.
8. Second Interlude. It is an orchestral piece that combines the low sounds with those electronically treated of the glass bells: eight different agogic indications are present.
9. Stasimo secondo. This last part presents the subtitle “A sonar e a cantar”, which refers to the Venetian tradition of the 'flying choirs', which was practiced by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli in the sixteenth century. The verse text of Cacciari indicates the opening of "multiple ways" and "multiple silences"; a piece of profound lyricism, which involves the entire vocal and orchestral staff.

There are no actors in Prometeo, nor are there scenes, at least in any traditional sense. The traditional operatic spectacle is banished in the work in favor of an all-involving discourse of surround sound and image. Though Prometeo incorporates a large corpus of text based around the story of Prometheus, that text is heard often only in fragments, or it is distorted and delayed by the electronics, or it is heard simultaneously with other portions of text. In the most common derivation, the articulation of the text is drawn out to such an extent that the words become meaningless successions of vowel sounds. Nono believed the text should not be heard but felt through the experience of the music (he even writes out portions of the text on the instrumental scores as would normally be written more conventional expressive directions). This liberation of music from the denotative sign leads to a fresh experience of sound as a pure phenomenon.