cycle piano solo #1
JOHN TILBURY
à 20h30

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JOHN TILBURY piano

Qu’il interprète magistralement la musique des plus grands compositeurs de son temps ou qu’il improvise avec AMM… John Tilbury est une référence de la musique d’aujourd’hui. Mais il est d’abord un pianiste sensible usant d’un art somptueux de la suspension et de la fluidité. Il nous propose un programme fait de musique et de bande préenregistré, inspiré de l'oeuvre de Samuel Beckett "Cap au Pire".

sound design : ALEKS KOLKOWSKI
durée : 80 minutes

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John Tilbury, pianiste anglais né en 1936, est de formation classique, interprète réputé de Morton Feldman et grand connaisseur de l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett. L’influence de ce dernier sur les textures narratives pianistiques que le musicien  expérimente (soliloques de clavier) est incontestable et représentative de la manière dont l’œuvre d’un auteur continue à vivre sous d’autres formes et espèces.
Pierre Hemptinne

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notes explicatives de John Tilbury

Music for Worstward Ho is based on, and inspired by, Samuel Beckett’s novella of the same name. The French translation, Cap au Pire, is by Edith Fournier. He wrote it at the age of 75, one year younger than this evening’s performer. Even by Beckett’s own standards Worstward Ho is a remarkable text – a deconstruction, no less, of the grammar and syntax of the English language with an extreme economy of words (there are just 400), many of which are monosyllabic, and with an extreme use of ellipsis. Any notion of excess, of indulgence, is cut away. The work is compact and highly concentrated.
The text consists of 96 clearly demarcated phrases, each phrase consisting of between 1 and 150 words. I have made my own structural division of the whole into 11 sections (A-K) A particular section will feature particular words, such as ‘bones’, ‘mind’, ‘child’, ‘ooze’, ‘place’.
This is mirrored in the music where a section will include certain musical phrases, harmonic progressions, kinds of articulation, etc. (This also explains the stop-go nature of the musical composition) Moreover, a particular word may be assigned a musical image which represents it throughout the work – a kind of leit-motif. The relationship between word and music is subjective but not arbitrary. ‘Mind’ is a directionless, melodic sequence; ‘bone’ involves rattling;  ‘groan’ is expressed onomatopoeically; ‘stare’ has a piercing quality; ‘crippled hands’ is represented by ‘crippled’ sounds; ‘old man’ and child’ are differentiated primarily through register (low/high) ; child is expressed by a ‘threne’; ‘plod’ is represented by a plodding rhythm; and so forth.  On the other hand, parts of the body – head, legs, hands, pelvis, trunk, etc  – do suggest musical sounds to me, but there is no objective correlation. Some words/musical phrases do not appear until near the end of the work, serving as an unexpected and refreshing element. The ‘shades’, which occur throughout and are pre-recorded, are interpreted sometimes as a male/female/child trinity, but as other entities, too. In the penultimate paragraph they are reduced to three pins. The music also contains a number of quotations: from Morton Feldman, an English hymnal, and a Threne heard by Watt (from Beckett’s early novel Watt) ‘in ditch on way from station’. The setting of Worstward Ho is without dimensions, a place without ceiling and floor, without walls or windows. The ‘stage’ has been lit at the dimmest of light, so the colours are restricted to dim white, and dim black. Its source is a mystery. The ‘theme’ of Worstward Ho is the will, and the resistance, to existence. It has no history, although near the beginning it seems to suggest prior homo erectus: “It stands. What? Yes. Say it stands.
Had to up in the end and stand. Say bones. No bones but say bones. Say ground. No ground but say ground. So as to say pain.  No mind and pain?  Say yes that the ones may pain till no choice but stand. Somehow up and stand”. We observe that every word except one is monosyllabic.
What is the relationship between text and music? If the text is primary, the music is not secondary. In Worstward Ho , just as the flow of words runs parallel with the thoughts as they occur, and the reading time equals the narrative time, so the flow of the music runs parallel with the words of the text.
There are certain breaks in the style of Worstward Ho, such as the occasional bursts of emotion, as in “care”; “alas”; “pox”; “stooped as loving memory some old gravestones stoop” etc, but there is complete absence of reference to external time and place.
Early in his writing career, Beckett himself said that he started using French because he wished to write without style. By this he meant that the complex web of cultural and historical meanings and personal memories that was attached to the use of English hampered the precision of language as an artistic tool which he needed for the expression of self. In spite—and indeed also because—of its almost claustrophobic sense of closure, Worstward Ho (Cap au Pire)  invites a plurality of readings. Its insistent allusions, echoes, and connotations span the entire spectrum of human experience.

Beckett had a life-long obsession with language as an inadequate tool for description of the phenomenal world, and for the thought processes in the human mind. Yet as a writer he has only one means to bring his quest for ultimate silence to completion: words. His relationship with words is of necessity a love–hate relationship, for he is well aware that his attempt to escape from them will necessarily end in failure. For Beckett words formed the bars of the prison of the mind.

John Tilbury

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notes sur Cap au pire de Samuel Beckett

Écrit en anglais en 1982. Première publication : Worstward Ho, Londres, John Calder, 1983.

« Son précédent texte court, Mal vu mal dit, datait de 1980 et Samuel Beckett ne reviendra à cette forme d'expression qu'en 1987-88 avec son dernier ouvrage, Stirrings Still (Soubresauts). Mais tout en s'inscrivant dans cette continuité, Cap au pire est une œuvre à part, le cri d'une souffrance, d'une détresse inouïes. Ce cri, qui tend de façon plus ou moins explicite toute l'œuvre de Samuel Beckett, il ne pouvait le faire entendre à l'état pur qu'en torturant le langage de façon à le dépouiller, le réduire à l'extrême, le pousser aux limites du silence.
À l'époque où il écrivait Cap au pire, Samuel Beckett se consacrait, comme réalisateur, au tournage de ses pièces pour la télévision et particulièrement à Quad. Là, des personnages qui ne sont plus que des silhouettes suivent des itinéraires minutieusement tracés pour parcourir un espace dont ils évitent soigneusement le centre, chacun déviant sa course lorsqu'il approche du cœur du vide, domaine de tous les périls. Dans Cap au pire, Samuel Beckett se situe au contraire à ce point central où rien ne le protège plus, où il va devoir affronter une détresse absolue. Cette démarche fut pour lui une épreuve terrible. S'il a renoncé à l'époque à traduire lui-même Worstward Ho en français, c'est en grande partie parce qu'il redoutait d'avoir à affronter de nouveau une souffrance aussi intolérable ».

© Les Éditions de Minuit

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