"Carmen Through the Looking Glass" & Reimagining Music of the Past - Blog by Composer Christopher Goddard

One of my favourite pieces in the piano repertoire is Johannes Brahms’s
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24, better known as the Handel
Variations. In his writings, Brahms describes the importance of strictly following
Handel’s bass line to his compositional process: “On the given bass, I invent something
actually new, I discover new melodies in it, I create.” Whereas a work such as
Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations looks squarely into the future, Brahms fashions
something new out of music from the past, even reviving antiquated dance forms to give
the piece an air of Baroque authenticity. The result is a rich synthesis of styles that is
every bit as innovative. From our vantage point in 2022, it’s almost hard to believe that
128 years separates Brahms’s 1861 score from the 1733 keyboard suite that inspired it.

Much as I admire the bracing modernism of Beethoven’s variations, I admit that I
am temperamentally more inclined towards Brahms’s approach. It’s probably my
performing roots, but I’ve always viewed the concert repertoire as a living and breathing
body of work rather than as a rigid set of conventions. For composers like me, it can
also represent a vast reservoir of ideas to be mined. By rediscovering older works, we
can engage in historical thinking while showcasing their value to the present, “bright as
on the earliest day”, as Mahler would say. I’ve found that over time my attitude towards
music has become less existential and more playful; and the canon offers up many
wonderful playgrounds indeed.

When I received my first Esprit commission back in 2017 I was at something of acreative crossroads. At the time I was codifying the compositional method I’d beencultivating in recent years for my doctoral dissertation, which had a somewhat stultifyingeffect on my art. With some doubts about whether that method had enough “juice” in itto produce an orchestral work worthy of the orchestra commissioning it, I started toponder a sharp turn; not necessarily a start from scratch, but something that couldjumpstart the path I was currently on. For years I had been enthralled with thespellbinding aria Les tringles des sistres tintaient from Bizet’s Carmen, in particular theinterpretation by Julia Migenes in Francisco Rosi’s 1984 film adaption of the opera.

Les tringles des sistres tintaient, Julia Migenes, 1984.

The song drew me in not just by its expressive power but also by a tantalizing sense thatthings were happening beneath the surface that I couldn’t quite grasp. I nursed astrange intuition that, at the right moment, probing those mysteries might catalyzesomething of my own that took me to exciting and unexpected places.They were heady days, then, when I decided to leap into the project with bothfeet and began to figure out what shape it would take. With no initial vision for the piece, I went looking for answers in Bizet’s score. I sat in it, contemplated it, examined each ofits tiniest contours…what a joy it was to live inside that sound world! I knew from thestart that I didn’t want to do a postmodern pastiche that crudely rehashed Carmenthrough a contemporary lens. Like Brahms, I sought a degree of continuity – I wanted tomeet the music where it was. It quickly became clear to me that tempo and timbrewould be the cornerstones my reimaginative effort. Tempo, because so much of theoriginal aria is wound up in its escalating character, and timbre, because that specialsound world (alluded to in the title itself) seemed to naturally invite a deeper exploration.

Variations technique is predicated on one musical domain being held constant so that others can be made more salient through development. In the Handel Variations, that fixed role is played by the bass line (and by extension the phrase structure). I wanted to write something more through-composed, that eschewed the genre’s traditional episodic form. For my Les tringles des sistres tintaient, this required somebold choices. Despite a few harmonic detours and embellishments, the pitch material isbasically carried over from Bizet. The piece also sustains a 3/4 meter throughout its entire duration(!) Where the invention comes in is at the level of perception. A sort of timbral alchemy is achieved through unusual instrumental combinations, and there is relentless flux in the rate at which musical events unfold.

This is Carmen “through thelooking glass”, where things are subjected to all manner of topsy-turvy distortions,through which their essence is not obscured, but amplified.

The Carmen premiere that shocked its first Parisian audience took place 147years ago in 1875. We tend to view the intervening years as a period of unprecedentedchange in music, but it could plausibly be argued that the 128 years between 1733 and1861 were equally if not more revolutionary. Brahms bridges that gap by profoundlycogitating his model and projecting his own musical personality onto it. I took on asimilar task in Les tringles des sistres tintaient, to “discover new melodies” in my ownobject of study. I recall feeling a lot of anxiety (more than usual, that is!) leading up tothe premiere in January 2019, uncertain about how Alex and the orchestra would reactto this bizarre project I’d undertaken. Of course, their total commitment andprofessionalism shone through, and the performance was among the most memorableof my life. Heading into their 40th season, Esprit is sounding better than ever, so I hopeyou’ll join us for a mind-blowing evening of music on October 27!