RICHARD BARRETT'S NE SONGE PLUS A FUIR: Beckett in Musical Translation?

Catherine Laws

While critics, actors, and even the author himself have constantly referred to the musicality of Beckett's texts, nobody has really addressed the question of quite how or why such an effect is achieved. It could be argued that the musicality actually stems from Beckett's approach to the problems of linguistic expression and his negative attitude towards the referential aspect of words. It is possible to trace the development of this attitude right through to later texts, such as Worstward Ro, wherein the referential content is minimal and the construction is musical in its self-reflective expansion from the smallest units. In this sense, Beckett's work pushes language towards a state of music. Additionally, since the impossibility of abandoning the use of words is so central to Beckett's literary enterprise, the musicality is intimately bound up with his "aesthetics of failure". Not surprisingly, many composers have been attracted to Beckett's work. Traditionally, there have always been two alternatives for word• setting: either the composer aims to serve the words' own meaning and construction in the belief that the music may underline particular dimensions of the text, or else the composer asserts the right to create an entirely different work, recasting the textual rhythms in line with the new context and respecting the original solely from the point of view of its relevance to the composition. From either of these perspectives, however, the choice of a Beckett text seems strange; the increasing concentration of Beckett's work is such that no individual aspect of meaning or expression can be separated from another. To highlight a chosen dimension can only be detrimental to the piece as a whole, and the rhythmic precision is such that an additional layer of musical rhythm will destroy rather than enhance the text. Thus the first method is invalidated, and yet to choose a Beckett text for the second approach seems merely perverse: if the words are to be set in such a way as to create an entirely new work, then why choose a text that is already so complete? Despite these objections, there have been many attempts to set Beckett's words to music. More interestingly, however, certain composers have been drawn to Beckett's work, but have sought alternative ways of responding to it. Earl Kim and Roger Reynolds are both known for their use of Beckett texts, but the work of many other composers has passed relatively unnoticed. Bernard Rands' solo

289 trombone piece Memo 2, for example, is derived from the structure of Not I, but uses none of the words, while Roger Marsh's Bits and Scraps takes fragments from How It Is. More recently, Mark Anthony Turnage's orchestral piece Your Rockaby uses rhythmic elements from Rockaby, and Barry Guy's Fizzles respond in purely musical terms to the Beckett texts. This article will explore some of the aesthetic issues surrounding both the 'musicality' of Beckett's texts and musical responses to them by focusing on the work of the British composer, Richard Barrett, who has produced a whole series of compositions with quotations from Beckett texts written into the scores. No attempt has been made to set the words to music - indeed, it seems that such a concept would be anathema to Barrett - but the repeated references to Beckett strongly suggest that Barrett must see his compositional projects in relation to the preoccupations of the author. On examining the works, many aesthetic parallels begin to emerge (and, naturally, to raise questions about the relationship between the different media). Richard Barrett is a relatively young composer, currently based in Amsterdam. His works have attracted a high degree of interest, thanks mainly to his association with the so-called 'New Complexity' movement. However, while he undoubtedly shares some of the concerns of other composers of complex music (such as its prime exponent, Brian Ferneyhough, and others such as Michael Finnissy, James Dillon, and Chris Dench), Barrett's relationship to 'New Complexity' is qualified by the strength of his individual concerns. For Barrett, complexity is a necessary result of the disappearance of common practice in music-making of the twentieth century. The current plurality of musical styles is such that composers can no longer rely upon any tradition of performance practice. Instead, every detail must be included in the score, and the intricate notation is therefore a necessary result of accounting for the complexities of any performance situation. Beyond this, however, the difficulty of realising such notation cannot avoid highlighting the performer's struggle to play the music: the emphasis is upon the difficulty, even impossibility, of the situation in which the performer is placed. Faced with such incredibly detailed notation, the player will inevitably fail to give a wholly accurate performance, and it is this process of failure which seems to interest Barrett. In this way, the reason for Barrett's attraction to the works of Beckett starts to become apparent. Clearly, it has nothing to do with any perception of "musical" elements within the texts, but instead lies in a common need to question the expressive possibilities available.

290