Musicatreize sings at thirteen to the dozen during art summit

By Slamet A. Sjukur

JAKARTA (JP): The Second Art Summit: Indonesia 1998 has convinced the public that contemporary music can be as exciting as a soccer match, especially when the players make such efforts to kick the ball into their own goal instead of their opponents'.

Ensemble Musicatreize from France was so unbelievably crazy that the audience at Graha Bhakti Budaya, at the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center, Central Jakarta, fell into convulsions of laughter.

A normal chorus of soprano, alto, tenor and bass -- three singers of each voice -- and a conductor make up the ensemble Musicatreize, meaning Music of 13 musicians. Nothing special in that. What is not usual is their sound and behavior on stage.

Jocularly the musicians entered the scene one by one, the conductor Roland Heyrabedian came in last, appeared to be ignorant and took his place among the singers since the place for the leader was occupied by another singer.

They sang six pieces by six composers. The lyrics were either laughable or ludicrous, of course, but most of the audience did not understand as they were in French, Italian, or even twittery bird song, such as Annette Schlunz's Ornithopoesie.

Music, which is regarded as an abstract language is in fact close to nature, that is it penetrates our feelings directly without needing other means of comprehension, in the same way that thunder or the sound of running water in a stream. So words, which add nothing to music, do not hinder the audience's appreciation. It is, on the contrary, music which fills the voids that the word cannot.

Cries of London by Luciano Berio is realistic but at the same time strange even for European concertgoers. In Indonesia we are familiar with the vendors in the streets who each has his or her own way to attract people, sometimes by shouting random words which have nothing to do with the object being sold, such as "ar- gu-men" for pillows, "re-for-ma-si" for dress hangers. The realism in the piece by Berio met the general inclination to expect entertainment in a concert.

It was different from Pierre Henry's Porte et Soupir (Door and Breath), a "musique concrete" now called electro-acoustical music which uses day-to-day items (a door and the sound of breathing) as sources of music to attract and thus stimulate the listeners' imagination.

In Dodecameron by Ivo Malec, some parts had to be improvised, or the improvisation was an inseparable part of the whole plan. The weaving voices twist the harmony endlessly or more properly the color which is in fact more important than the individual melodic lines.

Malec sensually sculpts his music at different paces and with different atmospheres. Dodecameron was well defined not only by the extraordinary quality of the singers but also by the not negligible sense of precise timing of the conductor Heyrabedian. And obviously the audience lapped it up.

Supported by texts and mostly sound, Musicatreize floated and we enjoyed Nonsense by Goffredo Petrassi, Luigi Dallapiccola's Due Cori Di Michelangelo Buonorotti II Giovane, Marek Kopelent's Syllabes Movements and the birdy Ornithopoesie of Annette Schlunz.

Music 'Humoristique' presented in Indonesia was just some of Musicatreize's enormous repertoire, extending from ancient, baroque and classical to 20th century; there are also sacred music, music and poesy, music of love, Spanish-influenced music, a cappella or with instrumental accompaniment.

The artistic director/conductor Hayrabedian was surprised when he received the invitation to the Art Summit and insisted on a program of humorous music. He did not know that Indonesians love jokes, sometimes too much, purposely or not, such as in a disastrous political situation.

On the other hand, the committee which was responsible for the choice, was worried whether such a program would not be too abstract for a Jakarta audience.

Musicatreize's success at the festival was due in part to Montanaro who whispered to me one day about the existence of Ensemble Musicatreize. Montanaro is a very sympathetic French composer who came to Indonesia to collaborate with famous Indonesian musician Sapto Raharjo.

Another man behind the scenes worth mentioning is the Indonesian sound engineer Totom Kodrat. It was he who appeased Heyrabedian, the conductor, when he was so anxious because of the hall's acoustics.

Visually, Graha Bhakti Budaya is attractive but its acoustics are poor. The spatial proportions and the materials used for the surface of the walls, ceiling and floor ignore the acoustic requirements of a concert hall. Consequently there is a frightful absence of resonance. The quick solution to the problem was artificial.

Pleasantly Totom said that acoustics were a science of lying, more about how to satisfy auditory perceptions than the reality of sound itself. However, with his trick of putting two large wooden panels as reflectors at the back of the stage, four ambient microphones on the floor of the front stage and a certain "delay", Heyrabedian found finally that the sound quality was not bad at all.

In the hands of a sound expert, loudspeaker are there not just to pump the decibels but to make us forget the old saying of nature and culture.

Hopefully. the presence of Musicatreize at the Art Summit could banish the misconceived image of contemporary music.

Still there was something abnormal in the ensemble. Among the three bass voice singers, two were extremely different in height. And we cannot compare it with the theory of strings, namely the longer the string, the deeper the sound.

Their voices were simply wonderful. And the audience thought the singers amused themselves by tapping tuning forks against their heads.

The writer is chairman of the Indonesian Composers' Association.