Reflections on the opera La Deuxième Aventure (céleste) de Monsieur Antipyrine IOAN POP Faculty of Theory Academy of Music Gheorghe Dima 25 Ion I. C.Brătianu street, Cluj-Napoca, jud. Cluj, 400079 ROMANIA popionica@yahoo.com, http://amgd.ro Abstract: Dadaism is a concept based on the rejection of all the classical, social and intellectual rules of conventional wisdom. Music is by contrast a highly structured discipline. How then to reconcile Dadaism with music? In particular how to write an opera based on a Dadaist play? The author has done so, and he argues that the solution is to retain a Dadaist substrate but to overlay the rigours of musical composition, and finally in the Dadaist spirit, to allow liberties to the conductor and performers. The result can be a liberating experience for the composer. Keywords: Dada, Dadaism, Tristan Tzara, Monsieur Antipyrine, avant-garde, opera In a time of synthesis, when the phenomenon of Dadaism seems to be, in musical terms, merely a shadow of the past, it may seem a daring move to write an opera based on the play by Tristan Tzara (Samyro / Samuel Rosenstock) La Deuxième Aventure (celeste) de Monsieur Antipyrine. If the phenomenon of Dadaism is more or less wellknown in literature because of artists like Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco and later Andre Breton, Luis Aragon, Picabia and others, the question is whether in music we can speak of a pure Dadaist phenomenon. Hence, another question: how can one proceed to the writing of an opera on a Dadaist text? What kind of musical techniques and means may a composer adopt in the face of such a provocation? Making a summary of the musical techniques through which we approach the Dadaist concept, we can mention in the first instance aleatoricism: the creation of art by chance. Although the Dada Manifesto of 1918 proclaims: Tout produit du dégoût susceptible de devenir une négation de la famille, est dada; proteste aux poings de tout son être en action destructive: dada; connaissance de tous les moyens rejetés jusqu à présent par le sexe pudique du compromis commode et de la politesse: dada; abolition de la logique, danse de impuissants de la création: dada abolition de la mémoire: dada; abolition de l archéologie: dada hurlement des couleurs crispées, entrelacement des contraires et de toutes les contradictions, de grotesques, des inconséquences: LA VIE. "Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family, is Dada; protest with fists with all one s being in destructive action: Dada; knowledge of all the means hitherto rejected by modest sex, by convenient compromise and by politeness: Dada; abolition of logic, dance of the powerless of creation: Dada... abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: dada... howling of clenched colours, interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE." - excerpt from the Dada manifesto. [4] (Tzara, 1918) We propose to reverse and to ignore all traditional academic precepts. Though even in the original play, there slip some poetic images which foretell how the poet s creation will later become perceived as classic: je connais un chifre à genoux qui n est pas un poème brosse jouant aux bouches des coquillages mais l adresse d un artist français et une composition de staccato noir de balcon végétal métronome sur un clin d oeil médicament pour les vagues pulmonaires dans un sac "I know a cipher on his knees which is not a brush poem playing in the mouths of shells but the address of a French artist and a composition of black staccato of metronome plant balcony on a wink medicine for the pulmonary waves in a bag " ISSN: 1790-5095 155 ISBN: 978-960-474-192-2
(the first reply of Madame Antipyrine). Dadaism is spoken of as a cosmopolitan phenomenon, forgetting, advisedly or not, the fact that Dadaism can firstly be considered to be of Romanian origin: The first avant-garde manifestation of Dadaism, marked by a programmatic desolemnised lyricism, in a language which challenged word order / syntactic standards, made its appearance in Romania from 1912 to 1915, as the fruit of the ludic collaboration between the young poets, Ion Vinea (Giurgiu, Romania, 17 April 1895 6 July 1964, Bucharest, Romania) and Tristan Tzara (Moineşti, Romania, 16 April 1896 24 December 1963, Paris, France). [2] (Tatomirescu, 2009) Much has been said about the avant-garde. From the beginning, the representatives of Dadaism expressed their aversion to Cubism, to Italian Futurism and to German Expressionism, which prepared the ground for avant-gardism. Thus Dadaism may basically be regarded as a reaction against an avantgarde which already existed but no longer corresponded to the moment: The birth of avant-garde - or at least one of its key moments - is achieved, not incidentally, in a country free from war, in Zurich (1916-1918). Here there gather refugees of every kind, deserters, the lost, plotters, anarchists and nihilists, bohemians, pacifists, from all over Europe. They are people who have refused to fight in the trenches and have found shelter here. They belong to several traditions, cultures, radically different schools. [3] (Tănase, 2008) The reason that the art, poetry, music, theatrical performance of the avant-garde are often so difficult to understand is not necessarily the intrinsic hermetism of the work, but the fact that it ignores or attacks the rules that prevailed within the artistic percepńion of those accustomed to contemplate and try to understand art. [1] (Grigorescu, 2003) Although we can understand that Dadaism proclaimed absolute freedom, the atmosphere which emanates from this piece of Tristan Tzara is one of psychic constriction and closure. In comparison with Tzara s previous piece (La premiere adventure de Monsieur Antipyrine), which was more comic and airy, it seems to be headed towards nothingness and strangeness. In this sense, the end of the work uses a Romanian folkloric song which speaks of the fact that the only hope in the face of death is love. The song is named Nu-i lumină nicări (There is no light anywhere). (Fig.1) The author started in the Dadaist sense with the end of the work, because this song at the end collects like an Amazonian river all the preceding musical ideas. The musical ideas in the work are inspired in part by children s songs. (Fig.2) and likewise by unorthodox Romanian carols such as Vine hulpe de la munte (The fox comes from the mountains). (Fig.3) To this we may add a continued opposition between stasis and change. Dominant is the rhythmic element, which was for the author most precisely apposite to reflect the valency of the text. In the spirit of Dadaism, the composer of the opera gives the liberty to the conductor and the stage director of free orchestral moments in which the musicians can freely choose any element from the score. The opera can stay in the form in which it was written, like the rolling of a snowball, to the horizon of hope. In this sense the composer, although inspired by the pessimism and the apparent absence of sense of the text, imagines the end as a liberation from existential anguish. (Fig.4) We have already mentioned aleatoricism. Although the text has a Dadaist substrate, the musical construction is relatively rigorous, at least in its melodic and rhythmic aspect. The aleatoric moments of the score are reserved for the points of climax. (Fig.5) The score is not without dialogue between the soloists and the orchestra. The rhythmic and timbral ostinatos as well as the timbral melody, together with the sprechsgesang, are often present. One distinctive moment is the reply of Mademoiselle Pause which, musically speaking, is the only moment of the opera in which melisma appears. (Fig.6) We remark likewise the presence of recitations approaching the classical style, (Fig.7) as well as moments of solo tutti, (Fig.8) ISSN: 1790-5095 156 ISBN: 978-960-474-192-2
or canon. (Fig.9) It is not possible to encapsulate an opera in a paper such as this. But the provocation of Dadaism brought to the author a breath of fresh air in his way of seeing life and the world. At the same time, the creation of this opera put him face to face with some of the vital problems which an artist must confront: sense, trajectory, limits, adventure, the roots of language and meaning. To find a concluding remark: the author opened the score at random and discovered the serendipitous phrase On allume car je suis toujours possible. Perhaps we may translate this as one enlightens for I am still possible. (Fig.10). Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 ISSN: 1790-5095 157 ISBN: 978-960-474-192-2
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Fig. 9 Fig. 10 References: [1] Grigorescu, Dan, 2003, DicŃionarul Avangardelor, Editura Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, p. IX [2] Tatomirescu, Ion Pachia, 2009, Întâiul Dadaism - Le premier Dadaïsme - The first Dadaism, Editura Aethicus, Timişoara, p. 80 [3] Tănase, Stelian, 2008, (îngrijită şi prefańată), Avangarda Românească în arhivele siguranńei, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, p.15 [4] Tzara, Tristan, Dada manifesto, 1918 [5] Tristan Tzara, La Deuxième Aventure (céleste) de Monsieur Antipyrine, 1938 [6] Tzara, Tristan, La Premiere Aventure (céleste) de Monsieur Antipyrine, 1916 ISSN: 1790-5095 160 ISBN: 978-960-474-192-2