The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 173

11 THE ACE SATURDAY 9 OCTOBER 1993 ARTS PKIura: GtRARO UFERAS I'' i Soliloquy USHMMMMMI. 1 Ik I liJJtL Ode to the Melbourne Theatre Company Barry Humphries Back in the early fifties in the Age of Brick Veneer The theatre in Melbourne had an olde worlde atmosphere: The lights of Exhibition Street twinkled their cosy welcome And matinees all smelt like church of hats and gloves and talcum. Here flocked the fans of Glad and Max. Madge Elliott and Cyril. And chorus boys sang lustily pretending to be virile.

Special occasions lured us therefrom school or home or nursery: A birthday celebration or a wedding anniversary. A gardenia, a hired car, a meal at Mario. And then that big night of the year a flesh-and-blood live show! With a yard ofHilliers on your lap and your programme you 'd be certain Of lots of things to drop and flap from overture to curtain. Maid Of The Mountains. White Horse Inn.

perhaps The Desert Song. Brave artistes sacrificed before that rustling gobbling throng. But also down at Middle Park, if your mind was not too narrow. You could see the wicked Mr. Thring at a theatre called The Arrow.

Mostly in black and polo-necked (no patron had a suit on) The foyer walls were all bedecked with snaps by Helmut Newton. Here were performed the latest works of playwrights brave and brittle Though many preferred a family show at The National or The Little. From such a cultural ferment it's not surprising I suppose That another Melbourne theatre unobtrusively arose: The Union Rep came into being yet no one could foresee It would become that troupe today we call the MTC. You would have been dismissed as an absurd, if harmless loonie If you'd predicted fame for that small theatre at the Vni Quite early in its history I was importuned to join The illustrious ranks of Lawler, Galliff, Marcella Burgoyne. For us, and others great and small, the public paid its shillings, George Pravda, Sheila Florance, Peter Batey, Malcolm Billings The names of those who launched her shows can never be forgot: Zoe Caldwell, Carmel Dunn, Brian Edwards, Alex Scott.

Those long hours on the Twelfth Night bus, Ray Lawler's pregnant air Both he and I were hatching "dolls" but mine had purple hair. The recollections all flood back and are there memories merrier To be compared to laughter shared with Dick Pratt or Noel Ferrier? What thespian thrills we since have had! To what first nights been privy! But Sumner's stern and thoughtful brow gleams still above his skivvy. My story is but sketchy, his is thicker than the phone book! For plays to help us think and feel he scoured the whole world over, The same old flair, the same old zeal perhaps the same pullover! John Sumner's Memoirs tell the tale far better than my own book Karlheinz Stockliauaen: his mind is like that of a manic-depressive that is always in the exalted phase. fT ARLHEINZ Stockhausen I sits at his custom-made I mixing console in the I middle of the auditorium I of the Opernhaus. Leipzig, bX in what was East Germany, staring into a brilliant blue void.

He is 65 years old and guru-like: bald on top, with longish hair at the back, dressed all in white, with a startled yet inward look in his eyes as if he has just received a divine revelation. The void into which he stares is the stage on which 'Dicnstag' (Tuesday), the latest section of his cosmological opera entitled 'Licht' (Light), is being rehearsed. A huge bird with outstretched wings is suspended from the ceiling. The composer is listening to the sound emanating from eight loudspeakers four on the ceiling and four around the floor. 'Dienstag' is the fourth opera in Stock-hausen's seven-part cycle, one for each day of the week.

It has taken him 16 years to write four operas 'Donner-stag' (Thursday), 'Samstag' (Saturday), 'Montag' (Monday), 'Dienstag' and part of a fifth, 'Freitag' (Friday). At this rate, he will not be finished until the early part of the next century. Since 1977, when the initial inspiration for the cycle came to him while meditating in a Japanese temple garden, Stockhausen has devoted his creative energies to nothing else. To complete the cycle, he has entered a phase of his working life as severely isolated as it is productive. Perhaps it is best, for those who consider Stockhausen's music the most important this century, to see 'Licht' as the biggest risk, the most daring and provocative gesture of all, in a career that has been dedicated to reinventing music.

Otherwise, we risk seeing 'Licht' as a turning away into a Teutonic twilight, significant only to the maestro himself in his autumn years. This is the problem Stockhausen now confronts us with: is he involved in the great masterpiece of his career, or has he disappeared into his own mystical world, his greatest compositions, and the historical moment in which they mattered, behind him? This is the first time that one of Stockhausen's operas has been produced on German soil, and it has only happened as a consequence of unification. Each day, in the week leading up to 'Dien-stag's premiere on 28 May, television reporters asked: "How does it feel to be producing 'Licht' in Germany?" And each day, he gave a thorough, courteous answer he is very pleased, and very grateful to Udo Zimmcrmann, director of the Leipzig Opera (which is celebrating its 300th anniversary) who invited him here. He politely declines to mention that in his native western Germany, a country with about 120 opera houses (the largest number in Europe) and an educated, prosperous population of music lovers, not a single company has staged a production of 'Licht' since he began the cycle. It is an irony that fills him with bitterness.

Although he has been dedicated to creating a new music for the postwar era, freed from the burdensome tra ditions of the past, he has always thought of himself as a German composer, identifying above all with Beethoven. Yet, Stockhausen must see his operas produced piecemeal, here and there across Europe, and himself as a prophet, spumed in his own land. "It is because they are ashamed in' Germany of the old German tradition of cosmic music that comes from India," he' says. "They are nervous about it because of the Third Reich, and they don't want it associated with the new German tradition." pher Michael Kurtz that "John Lennon often used to phone Through his teaching, in particular, he introduced fundamental ideas about what music was and could be, and they formed the idiom of contemporary art music, the use of noise, the emphasis on timbre, the use of electroncis and tape, and the development of techniques of intuitive music. By the end of the decade, Stockhausen felt himself rejected by America.

Instead of his music, Americans wanted "easy popart in painting and minimalism in music. Stockhausen's work was too difficult, too uncompromising. Although 'Licht' was begun in 1977, the germ for the introspective phase of Stockhausen's life was sown during the New York premiere of 'Hymnen', a work for tape and orchestra. After the performance, a prophet-like figure named Johannes approached Stockhausen and gave him a book. He represented the Urantia Foundation, a theosophical sect formed around the Urantia Book, a 2100-page account, written anonymously in Chicago in the '30s, of angelic beings and life on other planets in an elaborate, benign, multiple universe.

It is from this book that Stockhausen has derived many of the ideas for 'Licht'. The mind of Stockhausen is like the mind of a manic-depressive that is always in the exalted, manic phase of the cycle. Stockhausen never gets depressed because, he says, "I experienced enough during the first 16 years of my life for a whole lifetime. I don't give too much importance to the ups and downs of the human psyche." His ideas have an extraordinary resemblance to the delusions of a manic patient: the firm belief in a divine mission and in an elaborate, home-made cosmology and, in particular, the ceaseless creative activity that would drain the energy of a normal person. Imagery of flying is a dominant motif in his thinking: he believes human beings used to be able to fly at some time in pre-history.

Stockhausen depends on family members and long-term musical disciples to perform his music, rather than conventional orchestras. He feels "disgust and decades of disappointment with the whole orchestral system, its star conductors and its His performers comprise a kind of solar system with the composer at the centre and an inner circle orbiting around him: his long-time companion, Suzanne Stephens, a clarinettist, a younger favorite, Kathinka Pasveer, who plays the flute, his sons, Markus and Simon, and his daughter, Majella. Although 'Licht' seems a final, grandiose gesture in Stockhausen's extraordinary career, he has ideas for further cycles. As 'Licht's predecessor, 'Sinus', was an opera about the course of the year, 'Lich t' about the seven days of the week, so he wants 'Licht' to be followed by operas about the 24 hours of the day, about the minutes of the hour and, finally, about seconds. Among the burdens a genius must bear are the distractions of an imperfect world.

Stockhausen lives in an unusual house that he built himself 29 years ago, a cluster of hexagonal rooms, in a wooded landscape outside Cologne, in a village called Kurten. He describes with animated exasperation the numerous interruptions that interfere with his work. One day, for example, an American turned up at the house. "He had come on a cheap flight to the airport near where I live," Stockhausen recalls, "just to see me. Well, they cannot just come like that, why don't they write? I always say to Suzi: 'Close the gate after the mailman, close the The Independent Karlheinz Stockhausen's seven-part opera cycle is ambitious and provocative.

But is it a masterpiece, or the work of a madman? EDWARD FOX talks to the maestro about his 16-year obsession. reached this level of metaphysical attainment, the operas seem to be performed in a strange, incomprehensible language. Staging 'Licht' is complicated by the fact that it contains scenes that can never be realised because they rely on technology that does not exist. At one point, for example, performers are required to fly around the theatre, with music emanating from their bodies from invisible sources. Another problem is that the very idea of expansion of consciousness has slipped off our cultural agenda unlike the '60s, when Stockhausen was very much at the centre of things.

He was living in New York and California, engaged in a tempestuous love afair (though still married at the time to his first wife, Doris) with an artist named Mary Mauermeistcr. and knew all the leading contemporary painters and composers, including John Cage. Leonard Bemstein and Morton Feldman. He listened to rock music, which he came to detest, and used expressions like "It really blows my He told his biogra to create some of the fundamental ideas and approach of contemporary art music. Though his work often inspires dread in a conservative musical establishment, no one would dispute his stature as one of the century's most important composers.

IF YOU ask Stockhausen what 'Dienstag' is about, he refers you to a 100-page synopsis in German. It seems to dramatise a conflict between the Archangel Michael (whom Stockhausen credits with the creation of the world) and Lucifer, first in contest for the soul of man, then in a battle of heavenly armies made up of bizarrely dressed musicians carrying brass instruments, as well as amplifiers and electronic samplers culminating in the triumph of neither, in fare. Fully staged, it is a masterpiece of imagination. In Stockhausen's view. 'Licht' is an opera for unborn future generations of spiritually advanced beings, for whom metaphysical conflict is a natural subject.

Because most of us have not Stockhausen was born in 1928 and grew up under the Third Reich. His father, a village schoolmaster, was obliged to collect funds for the Nazi party. His mother suffered from depression, was hospitalised and finally put to death under a Nazi program of eliminating the mentally ill. His father died in the war. Stockhausen attended a regimented state boarding school, where and where religious observance was forbidden.

Out of this bleak history came mission to create art that made a complete break with the past, that never cited tradition, and that created a new approach to music with every new work. The formative phase of his career was the period he spent, from 1951, at the newly established electronically treated sounds. It was more like a scientific laboratory than a musical conservatory: there, he conducted research into electronic music. It was the futuristic, technological utopianism of the pbst-war period applied to music. In the decades that followed, the same rigorous, questing spirit led Stockhausen When told how old this company was, I scarcely could believe it.

For it only seems like yesterday that I was asked to leave it. I couldn't learn my lines you see, which wouldn't do at all. So I was driven to a raffish life in the sordid music hall. Since those far days the wound has healed, I've learned to weigh all factors; Although I but a comic be, I don't envy real actors. Of bitter dregs I've drunk enough; of fame I've sipped the cup.

They still have lines to learn by heart, I have to make mine up. Since '53 our town has changed but Progress can appall. The worst fate to befall a street is to become a Mall Yet, sometimes back in Melbourne town my thoughts return again To that lost age upon the stage not far from tramstop 10 How far away the past can be but tonight it's just a step So raise your glasses MTC and toast the Union Rep! Barry Humphries recited his Ode (1980, revised October 1993) at the MTCs 40th anniversary ball last Wednesday. Footnote: During the 1955 tour of 'Twelfth Night', Ray Lawler was conceiving 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll' and BH began his first Edna improvisation. POTTERY CLA88E9 Victorian College of the Arts THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE KEW GALLERY FASHION ILLUSTRATION ClaiMtTitwM Ex Teacher, Technisearch RMIT will tie holding small day and evening classes in fashion illustration lor those wishing io improve then portfolKK tot college interviews.

Tutorials lor professional illustrators and fashion designers are avaiaible. Beginners and Advanced Classes dally 10 arn-1 pm or evening 6-9 pm. Teaching use ot potters wheel or hardbullding. Potters wheel available to students at all times. Class commencing Monday 18 October Phone 147 MM CARLTON ARTS CENTRE 227 NIcholMn Stmt, Carltaa Established 1I7S An exhibition of recent paintings by LEONARD LONG OAM will commence tomorrow at 2 pm, on view today 10 am-5 pm.

LESS 25 NEW UQUITEX HIGH G10SS VARNISH AVAILABLE NOW MELBOURNE ARTISTS' SUPPLIES lOi HEPEAN HIGHWAY. MOORABBIH TELEPHONE (03) S53 3643 OPPOSITE M00RA1IIN TOWN HAll WM 21 Mil BALMORAL ART GALLERIES School of Dance Lecturer in Classical Dance, Level Full Time (Pot 011) Trtnrpr in Placcirnl Tlanrp. Hours Monday-Saturday 10 am-5 pm, Sunday 2 pm-5 pm. Level 0.5 Fractional Time (Poe 012) aT -1 Fynatford, via GMlong. Vic.

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HEARD, Director "New Directions" Watercolours by Bob Smith and "Ceramics" by Ray Pearce Exhibition current 51093 to 241093 xi A 659 MAIN 3095 OPEI DULY io ra 1 1 FROM UTUIMY 7 ST 0CT0IEI TOE ANNUAL EXNIIITtOII OF 14TN OCTOIEI THE PASTEL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA WILL BE HELD III THE ATRIUM OF THE WAVEILEY CIVIC CENTRE, OFFICIAL OPEHINC 293 SPRINCVALE ROAD, 4 PM SATURDAY CLEM WAVERLEY TN OCTOIER University of Tasmania Lecturer in Moaern Dance, Level OS Fractional Time (Poa 013) (All positions Fixed Term 1 year, 1994) The Victorian College ot tKe Arts specialises in training artists for professional careers in fine art, music, drama, dance and film and television. Applications ere invited School of Anders PHONE: 439 17 programmes ma focus r. Hours: 11-5 pm Sun. MaiMVaT i W. and Public Holidays 1- I -5 pm.

on stuaio practice with courses I 1993 lJTLtt 'Bachelor of num sunaory quamtsa persons lur ine eoove poenions in -the School of Dance. The primary duties of the positions will be to teach classical andor modern dance to tertiary andor secondary students and to contribute to the School's performance program by participating In the rehearsal rmeAils COUNTRY WEDDING EXHIBITION II Itie BARN: Srttorn Dromana Momcllt North, Victoria tWwiyi 12 0.11 Exhibitions every weekend during October. Live entertainment 10-5 pm Sit Sunday. Prune 10591 89 7482 for details HANNS CREEK WINERY: Open every day 11-5 pm Kentucky Rd. Morrickt Nth.

3931 Mel ret 191 HI Phono (OS) I9 7M4 LUNCH ON SUNOAVS WUIRAWEE HOMESTEAD: Guest House Restaurant Open Sal Sun 12 WorrawM bbvorrlng, 39M Wei ret 193 AS Phono: (059)131789 MUSIC AT THE MOST INTERESTING PIECES AT A MOST INTERESTING FAIR Some of the finest Victorian jewellery you'll ever see will be on our stand at Ihe 35lh Antique Dealers Association Fair at the Malvern Town Hall from October Sh-lOth. BLACKBURN una HIGH inFmeArts MAX MIDDLETON Retrospective 1943 1993 You art cordially invited to thil chibitkn which highRght tht significant dtvtlopmanti of Max Middlcton'i career spanning Mtyytan. Thil it a unique opportunity to viaw and acquini 04 paintngi, watarooloura, monolyptt, and drawing! many of which am from tha artiift private collaction. OptrJng Ipm Wad It Octobsr CAULFIELD ARTS COMPLEX crrOten EmtHmthom R. CeullelrJ Soutll Opan Men 10 5 Tuasdiy 10-7Wtd-Fri 10-5 Sat A Sunt -5 Enquiries 888 6687.

Closes Sun 31 October SCHOOL liVs! Graduate Diploma SCHLAGER ANTIQUE JEWELLERY Artists and choreographic process. Applicants should be able to demonstrate extensive experience and training In the classical andor modem dance area. Previous teaching experience, particularly at tertiary level would be highly regarded. Please note: Consideration may be given to offering the fractional time positions (012 and 013) In combination as a full time contract to applicants who can fulfil the selection criteria of both positions. Applicants interested In such an arrangement should indicate this.

Salary: $41 ,000 to $48,688 p.a. Academic Level (full time) $20,500 to 24,344 p.a. Academic Level (0.5 fractional time) A position description and a list of selection criteria are available from the Personnel Manager on (03) 685 9300 and further information from the Dean, Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Taylor on (03) 685 9374.

Written applications quoting the position number, marked JOS LT.COLLINS ST. CNR. ROYAL ARCADE. TEL. 6(0 4591 rrtuowo MELBOURNE FINE ART GALLERY gjQlH iff in fl mi patent mil! tvtfn speculisttiDiti CERAMICS JEWELLERY and METALSMITHIXG PRINTMEDIA (Prinlmiking ind Photngnphi) PAINTING TEXTILES SCIIPTIRE HEALESVILLE SANCTUARY EIGHTH ANNUAL WILDLIFE ART EXHIBITION 3 Octotow to 17 Octobw IMSOaHy 11.004.30 ANNUAL SENIOR CONCERT featuring SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STRING ORCHESTRA CHAMBER GROUPS SYMPHONIC BAND SENIOR SINGERS STAGE BAND Sunday, October 17th 2.00 pm Pre-Concert Entertainment.

Junior String Orchestra and Singers. Includes Primary Schools Junior Music Program Students. Robert Blackwood Hall Monash University Adults: $10 Concession: $5 Family: $25 (2 adults, 2 children) Ticket inqurics: 878 4477 Stop struggling and start painting! Australia's best selling full colour magazine for artists shows you step-by-step instnictional demonsirations and secret techniques on how professional artists create their work. forfiterinfornamring (003)243 601 Interview The Tasmanian School of Art at Launceslon The University of Tasmania xSy P.O. Box 1214, Launctslon, Tas.

7250 fuiiiKjoiiiicu iiniuuiiiy mo iiannra anu auwonoi 01 three professional referees should reach the Personnel Manager, Victorian College of the Arts, 234 St KJda Mefcoume 3004 by 29 October 1993. The VCA has an Affirmative Action Policy and both men 32 and women are invited to apply. Australian Artist Magazine STEVE HARRIS 7-17 October Cnr Flinders Market Sts, Melbourne Phone (03) 629 6853 Open Tuesday-Friday 10-6, Saturday Sunday I -5 Featuring (he wort of nw than 20 notable artists, including Gerard Mutsaer. Chve Bidga Atkinson and Steve Morvell Includes landscapes, aboriginal art and sculpture. Heaknvil Sanctuary, Badger Creek Road, HaaleiviKa Phont: (059) 62 4032 ever)' mown at newsagents.

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