Commentary
"Prayer to the Unknown Gods of the People Without Rights" (2002/05)
for ensemble with an improvising soloist
to Peter Brötzmann
cl, bcl, alto sax, bar sax, bsn/cbsn, 2 trp, 2 trb, 4 perc, piano, 2 vln, vla, vcl, db, 30’
A
completely composed piece for ensemble is confronted with a soloist who
completely improvises his part. This concept becomes particularly gripping
if the soloist is a musical personality like Peter Brötzmann, one
of the most consequent and powerful expressive musicians of our epoch.
A composition which ‘features’ such a soloist requires an ensemble
part which would not refrain from density and high demands, to create an equal
counterweight to Brötzmann, in my own language of course, without ever imitating
his.
The work process may remotely remind of Duke Ellington’s way to compose
and arrange his music especially for his soloists, although there are no ‘themes’ in Prayer... for
the soloist to improvise about. I consider the composition as musical material
and structures which the soloist is completely free to include or comment in
his improvisation or not, and which may put a new, perhaps unexpected, complexion
on his personal style. At no time it is determined if or how Brötzmann should
react and play. The composition provides a musical scope, sometimes provocative,
in which he can act freely. The challenge is to create an actual dialogue between
predetermined and instantaneous music.
If this piece will be performed more than once an intensifying alteration, perhaps
maturing, of the interpretation of the composed ensemble music could also be
assumed. It may be as adventurous for conductor and ensemble players to have
their interpretation of a complex score be confronted with an always unknown
solo part at each performance.
The term ‘people without rights’ is quoted from Noam Chomsky’s
book A New Generation Draws the Line on the NATO invasion in Kosovo,
led by Germany and the USA in 1999, and the state terror and genocide in East
Timor which has been financed and supported by the USA since 1975, both quite
effective expressions of ‘humanitarian interventions’ and ‘moral
values’, as the new vocabulary for violent enforcement of economic interest
and obedience towards the ‘world police’ reads since the end of the
20 th century.
More people without rights are Cubans, practically all South Americans, black
Africans, Kurds, Afghanis, Palestinians, Iraqis, Persians, to name but a few.
The western ‘democratic’ powers have deprived the majority of this
world’s population of any basic rights, and the list of directly threatened
cultures keeps growing continuously while globally a forced monoculture is being
installed.
In such circumstances, music, as well as any artistic manifestation, must be
considered an invocation of whatsoever beyond ideology and greed, be it the enlightened,
humanist spirit which is bound to proceed into the irrational to maintain and
renew its independency.
Prayer to the Unknown Gods of the People Without Rights is the third
ensemble composition of a trilogy composed under the direct influence of the
political situation of the last decade. The first two pieces are my piano concerto Entre
deux guerres (1996-98), and Verdichtung (2001-02) which was written
for Ensemble Modern, commissioned by the festival MaerzMusik, Berlin
2002.
The first version of Prayer... was commissioned by the festival Die
3.Art, Wuppertal 2002, and performed with Peter Brötzmann and the chamber
orchestra of Musikhochschule Wuppertal, conducted by Werner Dickel. The revised
version of 2005 was commissioned by Ensemble Modern.
Dietrich Eichmann, November 2005