A CD on which a narrator reads a late text by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) for 65 minutes, alternating with new music for string quartet: that is obviously not a classical combination. Yet Stirrings Still, Beckett's last prose text, combined with the music of Trevor Bača (b. 1976), is much more than a literary text with a musical frame. The release demands of the listener above all a willingness not to constantly seek to reconcile language and music.
On the edge of consciousness
Beckett completed Stirrings Still in 1987, when he was eighty-one; the text appeared the following year. It is an extremely concentrated work in which there is hardly any question of a traditional action. A man sits at a table, observes, remembers, hears sounds, and at a certain moment even seems to observe himself from the outside. What actually happens remains constantly uncertain. The text moves somewhere between memory, imagination and consciousness, while death is not staged as a dramatic event but as a boundary that becomes increasingly palpable.
That Beckett comes close to music in this is not difficult to understand. His sentences have a strongly rhythmic character: words recur, formulations are taken up again, and a small shift can change the meaning of what preceded it. The text must therefore not only be read but also heard. ECM has taken precisely that auditory dimension as the starting point for this production, in which Trevor Bača has placed an independent composition alongside the words.
Sound alongside the word
The word alongside is important here. Whoever writes music for Beckett runs the risk of illustrating the text: a dark passage receives dark music, a memory becomes lyrical. Bača chooses a less obvious path. His music appears between the spoken passages and thereby repeatedly creates a new listening experience of what has just been said, without any sound precisely confirming what the words mean at that moment.
As soon as Griffiths speaks, the listener is given a concrete handhold: words, images, sentences. When the voice falls silent, the string quartet takes over. The instrumental sections are usually short, rarely more than a few minutes, and are heard more as separate moments than as a continuous development. The concrete points of reference of the text then disappear, and the music does not make the meaning clearer but once again elusive. When Griffiths begins again, we do not hear the words quite as before.
Resistance beneath the surface
Bača's music is remarkably uninterested in immediate effect, yet it is by no means constantly soft. The cello regularly provides a deep, sometimes almost bodily undertone, while the other strings also seek tension in sound, register, and the relationship between ensemble playing and individual movement. Sometimes the quartet seems to follow the words, sometimes it offers a counterweight, as if what is told is not confirmed but remains standing beside it. This makes the relationship between the two layers less predictable.
At the same time, Bača avoids grand dramatic gestures. A single tone, a short movement, a grinding harmony or a chord that lingers longer than expected can be enough to change the space. The music asks for attention to the smallest shifts, but then also puts that attention under pressure by deliberately making the sound uncomfortable.
This makes the first encounter not self-evident. Whoever in contemporary music primarily seeks development, contrast or a clear arc of tension will not immediately find a foothold here; the sparseness of the quartet may initially even create the impression that the music takes little risk. Whoever listens attentively, however, discovers beneath the controlled surface sounds that bring unrest, deepen, and sometimes emphatically resist the voice. Precisely because of this, the silence between the musical events also gains weight. The music does not simply follow the mood of the text but can contradict it, open it up, or keep it at a distance.
A voice as ritual
Paul Griffiths is more than a neutral reader. His delivery is sober and precise, without theatrical emphasis, fitting one of Beckett's most austere late texts, in which the familiar ironic and absurd-comic verbal acrobatics are largely absent and the register becomes rather restrained, almost liturgical. Griffiths recites the text almost as a priest would, now incantatory, then withdrawn and quiet, letting it speak without psychologically coloring it. A sentence may be spoken almost casually and then, through the silence that follows, suddenly weigh much more heavily.
Yet there is also something to be said for a less restrained delivery, with more emphasis on the repetitions and small shifts in the text. Griffiths deliberately does not choose this. His approach makes Stirrings Still not a dramatic monologue but rather a restrained stream of memories, observations and thoughts that slowly unfolds.
One sound body
The JACK Quartet proves especially suited to this assignment. The American ensemble's experience with contemporary and experimental chamber music is heard here not in the form of virtuosic display, but in the naturalness with which the four musicians realize extremely small differences in sound and timing.
Ook het cellospel van Jay Campbell en de bijdragen van Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman en John Pickford Richards functioneren niet als afzonderlijke solistische stemmen. Het kwartet klinkt als een voortdurend veranderend klanklichaam waarin individuele instrumenten soms scherp afgetekend klinken en zich dan weer naar de achtergrond terugtrekken. Vooral de cello geeft het geheel geregeld een donkere diepte, terwijl de andere strijkers de klank kunnen uitdunnen, aanscherpen of laten kantelen.
Das Verschwinden des Klangs
Einer der stärksten Aspekte der Aufnahme ist die Transparenz. Manfred Eicher, der die Produktion für ECM betreute, lässt Stimme und Streicher jeweils ihren eigenen akustischen Raum behalten. Das Ergebnis ist nicht immer leicht zugänglich. Es gibt Momente, in denen die Zurückhaltung der Musik die Aufmerksamkeit erlahmen lassen kann – die Komposition verlangt eine Konzentration, die nicht jeder Hörer spontan aufbringen wird, zumal der Text selbst ebenfalls keine konventionelle Handlung bietet. Doch gerade die Momente, in denen das Quartett mehr Spannung entwickelt, verhindern, dass die Musik in einer allzu gleichmäßigen kontemplativen Stimmung verharrt.
Auch der Schluss ist vielsagend. Beckett endet nicht mit einer dramatischen Auflösung; der Text zieht sich eher langsam zurück. Bača folgt diesen letzten Worten, woraufhin sich auch die Musik immer weiter zurückzieht, bis das Verschwinden des Klangs selbst beinahe zu einem letzten Ereignis wird, in Richtung von Becketts Schlussworten: ‘to all to end’.
Damit berührt diese CD etwas Wesentliches am späten Beckett: die Weigerung, eine Erfahrung säuberlich abzurunden. Die Aufnahme liefert keinen Schlüssel, mit dem Stirrings Still erschlossen werden kann, sondern macht den Text erneut fremd. Es ist keine CD, die sich nach einem einzigen Hördurchgang vollständig erschließt, und vielleicht liegt genau darin ihre Stärke. Griffiths, Bača und das JACK Quartet versuchen Beckett nicht zu erklären, sondern machen ihn wieder hörbar: die Stimme gibt uns Worte, das Quartett lässt hören, wie viel zwischen diesen Worten liegen kann.
