"KURTAG'S ENDGAME" AT THE OPERA GARNIER

A highly anticipated event tonight in Paris – the final opera of György Kurtág.

However, mixed impressions…

I’ll start with the advantages, which can be summed up in one location and one word: the orchestra.

A master of brief forms, with a vast musical knowledge, steeped in recognition and respect for his predecessors, Kurtág creates an entire inner world within the orchestra, where each impact, sparingly distributed, becomes a precious object in itself.

The orchestral discourse is constantly fragmented: sometimes a monodic motif (but orchestrated differently at each "level"), sometimes a solo (exploring the extreme registers, where one feels Kurtág’s mastery over the weight of each note on each instrument during transitions, like the moving solitude of the bassoon in the high and extreme high registers), most often chords made of consonant or dissonant clusters, sculpted in such a way that they create sensations of varied spaces. There are unprecedented depths in the orchestral combinations, serving Kurtág’s unique harmonic language, and one gets the feeling of a perpetual chamber music: almost no tutti, except for the final epilogue, while the means employed are grand, enriched by two accordions – 5 flutes (including piccolo and bass flute), other woodwinds in groups of three, a quarter-grand piano, pianoforte, celesta, five percussionists scattered throughout the pit, a plethora of strings (six double basses...) The brass, very prominent in the ear, are more limited – only two horns (two trumpets, one a bugle, two trombones, tuba).

A unique Hungarian signature – the presence of the cymbalum, which Kurtág skillfully marries with the pizzicati of strings, the harp, and the plucked strings of the piano, strangely amplifying its sound.

The downside of this Webern-like atmosphere with discrete and endlessly varied punctuations: the silence is taut, and every sneeze, cough, or chair squeak in the hall is perceived as part of the sound palette, causing some muffled laughter...

Additionally, the orchestra is steeped in many musical references, with fleeting allusions: Ravel (“The Child and the Spells”), Stravinsky (“The Rite of Spring,” “The Rake’s Progress”), Monteverdi (“Orfeo”), fragments from various operas, and even milliseconds of Schumann or Schubert – just a touch, almost like an internal reference for the composer himself. Also, there is a sense of self-irony, with subtle self-quotations. For example, when Hamm tells a story he has repeated many times, at the line “I tell it badly,” one hears the two accordions reproduce the finest discovery from “Stele,” Kurtág’s sole orchestral work: that extraordinary chord orchestrated with multiple rebounds.

The orchestra is constantly inventive, but far more interesting than the vocal part.

I’ll develop two points which, in my opinion, are problematic in “Endgame.”

The first sensitive point: the choice of the libretto. Kurtág was fascinated by Beckett, having already written two works based on the texts of the Irish author living in Paris and writing in French: “What is the Word” for voice and orchestra in 1991, and “…pas à pas – nulle part…” for voice (baritone) and orchestra in 1998.

It is well known that Beckett resolutely opposed the musical adaptation of his works, as evidenced by a letter to a composer who had asked: Beckett said he was very interested in translating the drama of his plays into instrumental music, but not his words: “… it is a speech whose function is not so much to have meaning as to fight against silence and send it back. I thus see it as hardly part of a sound world” (Letter to a Composer, 1954). An opera libretto, as we know, necessarily stretches the time of a play. Yet, Beckett’s finely crafted work lies in the limbo of immobility, which he skillfully maintains through repetition and cross-references, advancing the narrative with imperceptible and interdependent steps, despite the chosen enclosure and immobility from the outset. Altering any element of this structure risks toppling it. By retaining Beckett’s precise text but having to cut it by 40%, Kurtág disrupts the narrative, losing the delicate fabric that allowed Beckett’s work to endure. The varied repetition, Beckett’s main method, fades in places, the narrative tension drops, some of Hamm’s monologues detach from the rest, and the narrative thread, instead of tightening, becomes disconnected. For instance, in Beckett’s play, Hamm asks Clov, his servant, at the beginning and systematically, if it’s time for his sedative. In Kurtág’s version, this question only arises at the last instance, when Clov reveals that there are no more sedatives. What was a line of tension in Beckett becomes just new information and a surprise in Kurtág. The dimension of culmination before the empty box of sedatives is blurred. There are dozens of comparable examples. One gets bored, especially in the second third of the work, despite the central and perhaps most successful part, the dialogue between Nagg and Nell, where the interaction between voice and orchestra, as well as between characters, restores some dynamism, creating a form of movement with breath.

But the static time catches up with us. The time stretches, and it must be negotiated. This, for me, is the main flaw of “Endgame” – Kurtág does not feel the totality of time. Perhaps Kurtág’s own universe, dedicated to short forms, intimate dimensions, and the writing duration (8 years), causes him to lose the sense of the global arc of time, along with the composer’s advanced age (90 years old when completed). To feel the totality of long time, the weight of the parts, is a divine gift above all others, and it is the Wagner of Parsifal (and Strauss’s Salome) who possesses it to an unparalleled degree.

The result is that Nagg’s monologues, the main character, become interminable, and one faces an obvious truth seemingly shared by the entire audience: one hears someone telling long stories that are uninteresting. And this works against the overall perception of the work: while each sound object is a marvel in itself, sometimes with truly novel discoveries, the entire piece, over time, gives the impression of a lack of color! Like a multitude of colored patches passing before our eyes, creating the long-lasting sensation of a general grayness.

A very curious effect, detrimental to the narrative dimension.

The second point: the vocal writing. When observing late 20th-century and 21st-century composers, very few have innovated in vocal writing, and in “Endgame,” Kurtág sadly makes no exception. While his orchestra belongs to him, the vocal writing often remains conventional, an heir to a certain German tradition with its post-Schoenbergian speech-song. Perhaps I have too conventional representations myself, but the challenge of opera is, above all, the union of sound and meaning, the song in as broad a sense as we wish – yet this is where most composers stumble against an obstacle, as the means of Western expression are exhausted to a certain degree, in this domain more than others. It’s a challenge to renew it – a challenge Kurtág does not attempt. Beethoven admired The Magic Flute because he found all musical forms gathered there. And the great opera composers, even when limiting the number of their characters, tried to make full use of the available means. Indeed, one must find these means to make characters dialogue, to create duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets... These are not simply demonstrations of power – they are also a way to renew listening. In Kurtág’s opera, three of the four characters are immobile: Hamm (baritone-bass) in his wheelchair, and his parents Nagg (“buffo tenor,” as the composer specifies) and Nell (mezzo-soprano), frozen in a trash can each. It’s a lot for two hours. There are a few dialogues, a very brief duet at the end (between Clov and Hamm)... But mostly, there are monologues. One could say that for Kurtág this is a choice, but it is not a convincing one. I quote a spectator’s remark: “If they just recited the text with orchestral accompaniment, it would be the same.”

Two hours of immobility, in a uniform color, without affect, with some promises of narrative tension... one must negotiate that. One must take into account the perceptual capacity of the listener, who is also frozen in his chair for two hours. One must account for natural fatigue, for sensory capacities – even Mozart was perfectly aware and attentive not to tire the spectator, taking their fatigue into account when composing finales, for example, which should be “quick and short.” This was a constant concern for Gérard Grisey: to consider the reality of perception, especially perception in time.

Kurtág pays absolutely no attention to this, and it’s a shame. He is an immense composer, but his opera, presented as “one of the greatest masterpieces of the 21st-century operatic repertoire,” gives the opposite impression, that of a work that does not meet the enormous expectations it had generated. It is a long recitative, spoken-sung, but is it really opera? A work that endlessly amplifies the idea of confinement and infinite time after time halting – the endless motion of the end – so be it. But opera?

More generally, Kurtág’s work may signify a certain exhaustion of the means of Western music. It is remarkable to see, while the very foundations of European civilization are excessively challenged, how opera – the quintessential genre that is meant to renew itself – remains reliant on a finishing past, an endgame, a world without energy, without renewal, exhausted in meaning, and approaching the limits of its expression.

Yet, another future for opera is possible.