Those 120 beats per minute are a Techno frequency that might seem like an invitation to dance, which seems a bit odd, given the occasion.Was that your intention? I conceived this at my desk—the implementation of the sound is in the hands of my three colleagues and is somewhat coincidental. In the first performances, though, I did find it strange that some people suddenly started clapping along at another juncture of the piece, where we have created a collage of various old hymns. I thought to myself: are you serious? But that is also the result of a certain ambiguity that runs through the entire piece. Which you obviously enjoy? Yes, we also enjoy it. Did you worry that LAMENT might be too “beautiful”, too “aesthetic”? Is a performance about war permitted to be this entertaining? What I absolutely did not want was the sound of war, battle noises, all those big bangs. During the preparatory phase, when I didn’t know how to go on, I dreamed of T om Waits, whom I met twice in my life. In my dream I asked him whether he would help me. The next morning, an American artist friend came to see me, and I told him about my difficulties with this commissioned work. Of all people, he quoted Tom Waits: “You have to make the horrible look beautiful.” I don’t believe it, I thought, that’s how dreams work. And I stuck to this piece of advice: to make the horrible look beautiful. Are these performances at the Pierre Boulez Saal truly going to be the last three performances of LAMENT? The piece was written for this commemorative cycle that began in 2014 and now ends naturally in 2018, exactly 100 years after the end of the war. But it’s a stage work—theoretically it can be performed again and again.
Interview: Rainer Schmidt Translation: Alexa Nieschlag
Interview 11
