Hide to Show The opening of the annual Transit festival in Leuven is by German composer Michael Beil. The Nadar Ensemble explores internet culture through live video, isolation, and the boundaries of hyperreality. A conversation with the composer about the grey area between music and theater and what remains of our understanding of reality. Plus: he's more into hyperpop than classical music.
Michael Beil: "I want to stay with the concert setup, but push as far as possible toward the theatrical setup, so working with instrumentalists, no actors or singers. That gives the piece charm, but there's also a sense of loss because the audience, based on the staging, would expect actors and singers, but they're not there. So some people find that strange, but that's what I'm going for with this piece."
In 2021 we were very well prepared. We had long rehearsals. We met three times, twice for five days and once for three days. This cycle resulted in a form of co-composition with the musicians. I didn't even have to write down most of the adjustments. I could work with the musicians that way. We could come up with solutions along the way. And that was a dream come true. That was a wonderful experience. After that, we created five performances in Essen at a festival for game-related art. All kinds of digital and video stuff, and that was a great experience with a young audience—not the typical contemporary music audience, but very open-minded people."
Do you compose differently to reach young people?
“Hide to Show It's like a musical, so not a long piece. I don't follow the dramaturgy of a classical composer, but that of an entertainment composer. I write short pieces. Maybe this way of working isn't as valued in the classical world. But I wanted to go for it because it's very related to the internet and social media. Everything that passes by there is short, and young people aren't used to listening to long things anymore. Sometimes they can listen for a long time to drone music with some fog beforehand, but actually they prefer little pieces of music that are 3 minutes long. Although this project was a bit risky, I think I ultimately pulled it off."
Does the rehearsal process play an important role in your compositional process?
"In my field you have to do much more than just play notes. This can be very awkward for classical musicians because many of them don't know how to walk or move. Then they feel embarrassed, and that's uncomfortable for the audience too. The musicians make a lot of movements on stage—entering, leaving, sitting, standing, moving with their instruments. Musicians naturally make lots of gestures when they talk about music. Everybody dances and sings. Really, I'm only doing things that musicians would normally do at home or on stage. I focus on movements that musicians make on stage, nothing more. They can do it, but it's difficult for them because they feel a bit lost when they're not holding their instruments. So there's always half that I need to encourage and the other half that I need to hold back. But in this case, it's mainly about privacy. It's about what people do at home, filming themselves and then showing it to the audience. But when the audience sees that, they no longer see them as real people, but as a representation, just like on the internet, like on TikTok."
© Wynold Verweij
Does the piece depict hyperreality or is it itself hyperreality?
"I'd say both. The piece demonstrates the process of hyperreality. There are six sections and each section consists of 6 small pieces, and in each part there's the same piece with a different aspect. Each section has a dance, but these are six dances with different aspects of the same piece. And there's one story that runs through the piece in six small parts. It's about the folk song Ievan Polka, seen through the lens of the Japanese internet sensation Hatsune Miku, a virtual person. The concert situation is hyperreality. Because it exists only virtually on the internet, but it becomes real when lots of actual people in the concert hall enjoy a concert. And it's a very special kind of reality because you have both—you still have the virtuality on stage because Miku isn't there. It's just holographic action. But the band is real and the dancers in the band are also real. In the audience, everything is real, only the performer isn't real. This is" "a very clear example of how a kind of reality can take place in music."
Musicians usually sit separated in their booths, isolated. How can ensemble playing be rehearsed then?
"You can't imagine how strange the situation is for them when you're stuck in such a box. They really play in their box and they can't see or hear what the others are doing. The audience gets the impression that they're all connected, but they can't be. It's naturally difficult for rhythm and intonation. So during rehearsals they come out of the boxes and practice playing together, maintaining the intonation, and then they go back in their boxes. That's what we always do. But from a thematic standpoint, it's very important to me that during the performance I show that being together is the exception and being alone is the norm, just as it is in our world today."
In some scenes you use technology to achieve perfection. Doesn't that strip the musician's personality away?
"I'm a controlling person. And when I started with" Hide to show, "I told myself this would be the first piece where I would completely avoid control, but it ended up with a lot of control. That was a miss on my part. The only control I actually have is what you have in every concert: the right pitch at the right time. But I also add the gestures—the gestures have to be in time because they're recorded and played back later and they have to match the music in other sections."
"I'll give you an example. There's a section where they're all in the boxes and they sing without sound, they open their mouths, dance a little, and nothing is sung in that section. But there's other music. And the mouth movements match that song perfectly. And that's one of the most intense experiences of all the performances for me. In that other section, people struggle to see whether it's projection or real, because the projectors are really good and you sometimes have to really concentrate. But then they realize the boxes are closed. It's live video and they're singing the song, but: how is that possible? Technology helps me bring surprise into the piece."
What does creativity mean to you?
"I see the process of creativity as a process of filtering. We're constantly receiving more information from all over the world. The most important task of a composer is to filter this stream in a certain way. Which way? That's a decision, a creative decision. And what a composer has to do is transform. So there's a transformation process of things people already know." "I'd say the old way of making art is seeing or hearing something big and unknown that you've never experienced before. Nowadays we see art more as something transformed from the real world, like Duchamp putting a urinal in the museum. And then it's no longer a urinal. But it raises a lot of questions and people are very surprised to see why that's in the museum. And that's what I try to do with music: filter, transform, and then, if I do good work as a composer," "surprise people with new connotations for things they already know."
What kind of compositions are typical for Michael Beil?
"My specialty is the use of live video, specifically live video in this complicated setup. I'm the only one who can do that right now. Because I have a lot of experience with it, I use this form of live video. I do it to play with musical form—it's always related to music. It's always about showing something with music or the musicians, and with the video I try to put people on a track so they can wonder what's going on. So to give people something at the beginning of a piece until a certain point comes where they think, OK, I get it, it's boring. And then something happens that's really surprising. So if people are left astonished after hearing and seeing my piece, then I've succeeded. My music is music that questions things."
Will you ever write an opera?
"No. All my pieces are in a sense already operas. And if I had to do an opera, I'd do an ironic non-opera without singers. Yes, because honestly, I'm not a fan of classical music. I really love pop. Right now I'm listening a lot to Hyperpop, for example by the British producer/singer/DJ Sophie."
"By the way, it's not possible to find new ways to play the violin these days. No matter what you do with it, it's still a violin. And there's currently also a stagnation in the development of electronic instruments. Controllers aren't inventing anything new. Most young composers are now mainly occupied with synthesizers and modules. That's a strange situation. I let them get on with it. I'm not interested in that. I'm very interested in what comes after this."
What comes after the violin and electronic instruments?
"We could use implants, for example, putting something in our throat so we can sing like Hatsune Miku. Just kidding: I put an implant in my arm and then I can play piano perfectly. Still, I think that's the future. The future is virtual glasses and implants, but classical instruments will always be there and we'll need orchestras, maybe a bit like we need old paintings in museums. It's nice. We all want that. We go to the Louvre and see the old art and we go to the concert hall and listen to Beethoven."
All your works are freely available in open source. Why are you so generous?
"It's a sign to show that my work isn't a miracle that comes from a divine artist. I'm just a normal person who decided to specialize in music. On my website you can download every score, all the tapes. Other composers can use my tapes and sample them and use them in their own pieces. And they already have. That's how we work. You see something, we like it, and then we use it. And together with other things we transform it too and we're a community. Why would I do it differently?"
WHAT: Hide to show by Michael Beil
WHO: Nadar Ensemble
WHERE: STUK, Leuven
DATE: October 20, 2023
TICKETS: festival2021.be
