House of Creations

Urgent questions, illuminating perspectives and at times robust discussions. But above all: lots of engagement, both in words and music! A photo report of the second debate evening in the run-up to Cassandra.

Anna Moody - The Librettist’s Process

#5 The editing process

The editing process for both the libretto and the music requires ongoing communication between Howard and I as we create the piece.

For the libretto, I will only show Howard what I’ve written when I have completed drafts of a whole scene or more. I have to resist the temptation to send anything as soon as I think I’ve finished, but instead to step back from it for a day or two and then re-read it and do my own editing first. I always find that looking back with fresh eyes reveals all kinds of loose ends that I might have missed in the heightened moment of creativity.

Howard will then flag up any superfluous words in the text that could disrupt a musical line and need cutting. He also has a sharp eye for words that won’t be clear enough when translated into another language or which are not accessible enough for people singing in their second or third language.

This is in fact another big challenge as a writer of a project such as Solar - that my use of the English language must be clear and direct enough to be readily translatable into both French and Flemish surtitles. The writing style that is required for this project is a generous one and a practical one. I cannot just write whatever I feel like or get carried away with turns of phrase! I’m always trying to find a middle ground between my own writing style and the practicalities of the commission.

When Howard plays me a scene that he’s set to music, my job is to spot places where the music has expanded a dramatic moment too much or let it pass by too quickly. The pace of the music and the time it takes to sing each section of the script completely defines the dramatic momentum of the action. Even just cutting a couple of bars, speeding up a transition between one section and another, or reducing the number of times that a sung phrase is repeated, can make all the difference to the drama.

This flow of communication as each scene takes shape is what enables the text and music to come together smoothly and become one unified piece. The great thing about working with Howard is that we just call each other up at any point or spontaneously sit down to listen to a scene and discuss it in detail. There is no need to organise official meetings or send endless emails. And it is this that has made it possible to write Solar so quickly.

DEBATE AROUND CASSANDRA

ARTISTS VS. ACTIVISTS: THE SAME FIGHT?
FEB 13 - 20:00 - La Monnaie

In the run-up to the creation of Cassandra, La Monnaie launches a series of debates dedicated to the urgency of the climate cause.

This second evening focuses on the relationship between artistic practice and ecological activism. In what ways can art and activism complement or reinforce each other? What is the role of artists in the fight against climate issues? And what if ecological efforts and creative freedom come face to face?

Intriguing questions that we want to put to "artivist" Chantal Latour, dramaturge and writer Martha Balthazar, choreographer Michiel Vandevelde, soprano Sandrine Mairesse (Youth for Climate), as well as activist Wouter Mouton and theatre-maker/writer Sébastien Hendrickx, both members of Extinction Rebellion.

And since we will be at La Monnaie, no better way to end the discussion than with music, and a performance by the Chœur Cassandra Koor.

Watch the whole performance of On purge bébé ! now via free streaming!

Howard Moody – The composer’s journal
 

#5 Production team meeting

The first group meeting with the management and creative team is always a vital moment in any big production such as Solar. There are so many practical and creative aspects to be discussed and in this project, it was wonderful to have this meeting before the first workshop/rehearsal started.

This was headed up by Bettina Giese (Director of Artistic Planning & Production) who had travelled to Strasbourg back in March to meet myself and Anna during performances of Les Rêveurs de la Lune (the opera that myself and Anna had written together for Opéra du Rhin). Bettina had been so supportive to us during the initial process of bringing our ideas for Solar into a reality. She was always completely transparent and clear-thinking about what was required of us and has built a wonderful creative team for this project.

Too often in these meetings, details of management are thrown into the room before there is an understanding of what it is that we are trying to create. However, this was not one of those meetings at all.

We began with Anna reading her entire libretto out loud to us and explaining her main dramatic ideas and influences for each scene as she went along. It was a special moment when, whilst Anna read the final scene, so many expert professionals sat together with tears in their eyes as the story and poetry drew them into her powerful re-working of the Icarus myth. For me, it was a real moment of unity whilst my role as composer and conductor started to merge. For Solar, there was immediately a feeling that we are all on the same voyage of intention, whatever the final outcome of everyone’s interpretations. The origins of the story are ancient, the re-working contemporary and profound.

Other discussions during the day included details of the schedule - always a complicated matter when a large chorus from a huge institution is involved, especially in a building that is booked up three years ahead. ‘The Planning’ is all!

It is our responsibility with Solar to create a piece that is manageable by other opera houses with a trained youth chorus. The dimensions of the Malibran studio were critical in this process. The size of the orchestra was established and decisions about positioning them behind the singers was discussed with the various specialist sound and stage management departments. The stage set design can be made to fit around the orchestra, now that all the different production departments have been alerted to the needs of the music. Everything suddenly becomes about space, ensemble and acoustics, which is especially tricky when there is no pit.

The rehearsals that followed were wonderful. The atmosphere was free and open in full knowledge that once the main stage rehearsals begin, everything will slow down whilst every detail is attended to. The purpose of the day was to capture the imagination of the participants. I returned home satisfied that everyone was “in”.

I returned back to the UK with the responsibility to compose the rest of the opera knowing the parameters of what will be possible in production. I hope that my awareness of these issues when writing the piece will make it suitable for future productions in other opera houses who have their own chorusses of young singers. It is time for the voice of the next generation to be put in the forefront of today’s theatres.

Bees at the opera

Bernard Foccroulle: "One of the first ideas put forward by Matthew [Jocelyn, the librettist], right at the beginning of our discussions of this opera, was to devise three moments (not very long ones) when one would only hear bees. There would be plenty of them in the first scene, around fifteen in the second and only a few would remain in the last one. It was a way to evoke nature and the work of these precious insects whose extinction we now fear. It was also a way to connect with the mythological era, when bees were already considered as essential, almost magical beings, linked to the worship of Apollo. To “compose” these bee scenes, I listened very carefully to the bees in my garden in Brittany."

"At the beginning of 2021, there was a very useful work session with the orchestra: under the direction of Ouri Bronchti, the strings of La Monnaie sight-read the three bee scenes. I also wanted to check the writing in the sixth-tone system, which would enable me to evoke these glissandi that are typical of these insects’ flight. I became aware of the need to space out the musicians’ parts to avoid the risk of cramp, given the speed of the tremolos. Here is a fragment of the first and last of these three scenes, recorded at this rehearsal at La Monnaie in January 2021. The strings are by themselves - they most often play at the bridge, to produce this typical bee sound."

Anna Moody - The Librettist’s Process

#4 Hearing the music for the first time

I think this is the hardest part of the process to explain. Nothing quite captures the feeling of hearing the music for the first time. But I’ll give it a go...

I count myself uniquely lucky to have grown up hearing Howard play his compositions to me. The familiar sight of him at his Steinway with various pencils and manuscript paper spread out in all directions, and hearing him playing and singing to capture an orchestra of some forty instruments as well as multiple choirs and soloists all at once, takes me back through every single year of my life. Those moments of hearing him express things that are so much bigger than any human words, really shaped my entire world-view and showed me what is possible when you give voice to your whole heart.

Now that we write pieces together, there is an incredibly deep connection, communication and understanding between the words that I write for his music and the music that he writes for my words.

In an opera, the music is what characterises every single moment of the drama: the emotional characteristics of each section, the pace of the action, the depth of the characters and the tensions in their relationships. The words - which must be alive and spacious enough to become music - can only point the composer in a particular direction. And so, once Howard has set off down a pathway that I’ve signposted, the world-building of the piece continues and expands.

For Solar, the first bit of music that I heard was the end of Scene 2, when the Apprentices and Icarus grieve the death of Talus. The words on the page are four distinct verses, which look like this:

By one hand, goodbye,
and all change,
losing ground, falling away as if in a dream.

One life goes cold, nothing remains,
but we carry on and on as if in a dream.

Will we trust again
when we’re left behind? Can we live as before when we long to rewind?

Beat our hearts, the rolling waves, day by day they flow.
We carry on, our tears fall,
it’s time to let you go.

Behind the text is a sea of feeling which the words alone merely a gesture towards. Howard has an incredible ability to exactly capture the character of that emotional sea - its colour and movement and the particular energy of its rising waves and tides. He sees straight through words, follows their rhythms and sounds the heart behind it.

In musical form, these particular words are expanded and layered in so many different vocal parts and harmonies. Howard has taken phrases and used them to build a web of interwoven melodies, that lead to sections of text being repeated and passed between different vocal groups (for example, “beat our hearts” and “as if in a dream”).

And so, it is only when I hear Howard’s music that I truly understand the full meaning of what I have written. Every time it knocks me sideways.

Howard always gives a disclaimer when he stops playing - that he alone can’t do justice to what it will sound like with an orchestra at full-pelt and all the singers giving it everything they’ve got. When I do hear that, and see all the different musicians playing and singing what he’s written, it is quite overwhelming. Just a few short lines of text take flight and become something that is breathing and physical and alive.