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Fabrizio Cassol in conversation with Hildegard De Vuyst

The score for pitié! took shape in close consultation with Alain Platel. Our previous collective projects had already strengthened our mutual understanding and trust, which enabled me to anticipate what he would do. This was not the case in vsprs, where the music was created in parallel with the dance. I was already hard at work on pitié! while on tour with vsprs in Africa, India and China. It is important to me that this music does not sound entirely Western or – as far as Bach is concerned – not exclusively Protestant. In this context it has to be more universal. My long conversations with Alain were about every detail one could imagine, but always with the intention of giving emotion free rein. In this respect I hugely appreciate his instinctive understanding of what one or other sound expresses. He often provided me with instinctive keys to the music. To give one example, the overture to the Matthew Passion was something I dared not tamper with, but thanks to him I found a reason to do it after all. Or to use O Mensch!, although I myself had not paid much attention to its importance in the dramatic development. You might say that his intuitions are expressed through this adaptation, and that in a certain sense this music is his. The essence of the production is founded on Alain’s powerful humanism; he has a great capacity for compassion. So I was curious from the very beginning to see how he would approach this sort of subject.


Triangle
When you tackle the Matthew Passion, one of the first questions you ask yourself is whether to deal with the narrative or not. In this case it was immediately clear that Alain wanted to preserve the story in some way. The next question is what do we do with Christ? And who is to play the part? A possibility presented itself to me when Jan Goossens, the artistic director of the KVS, and the soprano Laura Claycomb introduced me to Serge Kakudji in Kinshasa. They had met Serge through Dinozord, a production by the Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula. At the time he was 17 years old and self-taught. Laura saw his potential and sought confirmation in various ways. It was also through her that Serge started training in Belgium. I had to solemnly promise her that I would not write one note too many so as not to compromise his development as a singer in any way. Serge was balanced between his African culture and that of the West which he had appropriated. It was precisely this in-between state that attracted Alain’s interest. To make his role of ‘Christ’ easier, I duplicated it. In so doing I used a certain esoteric vision which states that Christ has two souls: a male and a female soul. Opposite Christ I placed a mother figure. I’m not really sure where this came from. The mother does not appear in Bach’s Passion. I see two starting points for this triangle. One of them is rather anecdotal. On tour with vsprs I happened to see a film in a hotel room, one I definitely never intended to see: Mel Gibson’s The Passion. In the crucifixion scene Mary and Mary Magdalene are dominant figures. This is probably something I remembered. Another point is the triangle in vsprs, between the soprano and two dancers in the Nigra Sum. I always saw it as a mother with two children, sister souls.

My starting point therefore was creating a plan that left me with three figures, obviously in dialogue with Alain. The sister souls gradually developed into a ‘Jesus’ and a ‘Mary Magdalene’. But the one does not exclude the other; in love too you are blessed if you find a sister soul.


Recordings
The moment the triangle of singing roles was in the pipeline I was able to start work. This was definitely something I needed to do in order not to lose myself in the thousands of possibilities and choices that present themselves. The initial construction allowed me to progress without pinning down Alain too much. In vsprs the adaptation of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary took place during the dance rehearsals; music and dance developed simultaneously. This was not possible here. The elements were of such a complex nature that Alain needed the musical proposals at the start of the rehearsals with the dancers. In any case, Monteverdi’s music allows you greater freedom; for example you can easily change the sequence. Bach requires a more delicate approach because he is emotionally more precise. To make it workable I made recordings for Alain and the dancers that were not a reaction to combined action or combined singing – we were simply not ready for this. The recordings were forged together from recordings of separate instruments and voices. Each time this took hours and hours of puzzling in the studio. But it gave one an idea of what it could become live.


Erbarme dich
Generally speaking, there are three ways to approach Bach’s music. One can create a new baroque version of it. To do this you need to be someone like Nicolas Harnoncourt, but this is out of the question as far as I am concerned. Or you emphasise the ‘rational’ side of the music and extend the cerebral line to contemporary music. Or you add something to it: a range of African instruments for example. However Alain and I were interested in doing something else. We wanted to create a contemporary musical context within which Bach’s music can be placed, just as the word of Christ once arrived in a context in which it was strange, in which it sounded new. I first adapted Erbarme dich. It perfectly represents the mystery of the Passion and, besides, Alain had already used it at the end of Iets op Bach. If I could produce a satisfying result with Erbarme dich then the rest would work out well too. I did change some melodies, but I could not do this with Erbarme dich. My basic idea was that each of the three roles had to ask for pity and that it had to be for three voices. Apart from this I created an African context with influences from Mali and other musical traditions which had played a decisive role in my musical approach. By ‘another context’ I mean first and foremost a cultural context that is different from the Christian Protestant background that produced Bach. Rather than from starting out from Bach, I wanted us to end up with him. That he enters at some point. And that this would also happen at the end. Which of course meant that we would be playing Bach, but in an arrangement in which we transposed the original polyphony to our seven melodic instruments. The choices for certain excerpts from the Passion are based on the words. With three roles at the back of my mind we looked for a way to encompass the story within them. I started working with the texts without paying any attention to who said what in the original libretto. But also without clinging too much to which words could be spoken by which character; I didn’t want to make the characters too rigid. This gave me fourteen scenes which on the one hand supported the story and on the other were both sufficiently poetic and free. Of the fourteen only one was not used, namely that of the Last Supper, a perfect example of anti-dance. However, the Last Supper is present in other ways in the performance: in the table, or in the form of the last words of those condemned to death, which the dancers whisper into the microphones. As far as I was concerned the key to the whole adaptation was connecting Alain and Bach.


Song and Singers
The cast, with Serge Kakudji and three voices for two female roles, comprises a wide range of styles and traditions. I did not want a homogenous cast of baroque voices for the vocal ensemble. I wanted voices that could vibrate, which is not in the baroque tradition. I wanted various qualities which could be mixed: opera, baroque, African and contemporary. This means that the singers are very different from one another and that although they are all ‘characters’ they allow themselves to be mixed. Alain is also sensitive to this, even though he cannot immediately describe it in musical terms. Nor should one forget the singer Magik Malik. He is truly a modern spirit in whom everything is united: written music and unwritten traditions, both Western and African, mysterious and natural. He is able to approach things from different angles and yet make it a whole. I see the singing of the dancers and the orchestra, as in the chorale O haupt or the gospel in O süsses Kreuz, as the intervening voices of the common people. This is linked to the celebration of mass, which of course is what the Passion is. Which places it just one step away from collective singing.


Orchestra
Aka Moon, Magik Malik and Serge Kakudji are the fixed components of the orchestra – and this creates stability. The rest revolves. They too have various colours, such as a female trumpet, which in my view represents ‘intuition’. All the musicians are experienced in improvisation. Even though there is little improvisation, its relationship with written music is different. Here too the characters are important. You see this in the solos. Erbarme dich, which feels like a sort of fulfilment, cannot be followed by the sound of a full orchestra. You need emptiness. But the solo here does not indicate loneliness; it is as rich as a full orchestra.


Recitatives
I find recitatives quite fascinating. The way Bach deals with the announcements in them is incredible. In the beginning Alain had little affinity with this – he preferred the big arias, which is understandable because in the arias you find yourself in a state of ecstasy. In the recitatives you are engaged in a discourse. But I made a few simple suggestions. Sometimes I approached a recitative as a song. Here and there I took bits of text from various recitatives and put them together without their necessarily responding to one another. But I did this because I needed it for the narrative, even if it was sometimes just one sentence. From Erbarme dich onwards, Bach’s musical world is left further and further behind but we could not do this with the words. One way or another, these recitatives, and especially in a dance performance, force you to think about language.

I see pitié! as a version of the Passion. Even if you were to take the music away, it remains a version of the Passion. The dance tells the story on its own. The singers are on stage throughout the performance, with the dancers. We come very close to opera. Which for Alain makes it far more complex than vsprs. It is an amazing challenge.


© Hildegard De Vuyst August 2008
With thanks to Les Ballets C. de la B. for permission to use this interview.

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Sadler's Wells Theatre

5 - 7 Feb 2009