Songs of Wars I Have Seen is a mesmerising musical theatre piece by Heiner Goebbels for Baroque and conventional players, spoken voices and electronics. Commissioned for the reopening of the Southbank Centre in 2007, it was performed here by ten female members of the Dunedin Consort and nine RSNO players. Text was taken from Gertrude Stein, an American Jew living in Vichy France in the Second World War, her words spoken through the music by several Dunedin players, mostly singly, but occasionally as a choric ensemble.
It is a piece of layers, the Baroque players at the front inhabiting a homely setting with table and standard lamps casting a welcome glow. The RSNO behind provided brass, percussion, woodwind, harp and a digital sampler lurking in the shadows. All of Goebbels’ works use amplification. Ian Dearden on the sound desk in the auditorium was integral to the performance, not just mixing and balancing the instruments and voices but creating and tastefully integrating a soundscape incorporating some of Goebbels’ collected noises.
Musically, snatches of ancient pieces by Matthew Locke kept the work grounded between Stein’s strangely sparse words and Goebbels’ playful music which was a mixture of styles, surprisingly jazzy harmonies to a slow lazy beat, all interspersed with sounds which were sometimes rhythmic samples. Goebbels was attracted to Stein’s text because she jumps between the banal and more profound, telling us like it is every war day, but not how she feels which is where the music fills the gaps.
Conducting the ensemble, Ellie Slorach oversaw a very fine performance from her players, switching between the smorgasbord of styles with artful panache, lighting changes delineating the scenes. Percussion fused with the soundtrack, Katy Bircher swapped different flutes to reflect moods, memorably intertwining with Rebecca Whitener’s luminous clarinet. Christine Stricher’s period double bass did sombre Locke duty then became a slow blues anchor with lively percussive slaps as intensity grew and Jan Waterfield deftly jumped between piano, harpsichord and reading text.
Stein describes everyday things, like the switch to honey as sugar became unobtainable, the distortion of time as war's years and months seem endless, yet weeks can telescope inwards. I enjoyed her amusing characterisation of nations by how they introduced radio news bulletins, her tale of dogs and chickens and her love of the poetry of US State names. More serious topics were the danger of living, the despair, the gossip and endless rumours and sometimes the beauty, like the unreported lunar eclipse in 1943. Finally, she says, everyone just wants it all to end – the cloying honey tastes too sweet and peace will mean sugar again.
With no more words to be said, after the Dunedin’s final exquisite solemn Locke, each player slowly put down their instrument and picked up a singing temple bowl, the multi-pitch humming an astonishing backdrop to a brilliant final trumpet solo from Christopher Hart, making the written notes sound improvised, emerging out of the ether and given a touch of otherworldly reverberation. It was quite something, and I am sure I heard cowbells deep in the mix, as if hearing a distant Alpine herd.
Songs of Wars I Have Seen is a piece calling out for a steeply raked intimate studio space which would have acted like a crucible to intensify the work. Despite an excellent performance, and a welcome after-show discussion with the composer, conductor and artistic advisor Gillian Moore, it felt a little lost in a traditional concert hall. Even set against today’s turbulent times, it was a memorable and intriguing experience rather than an overwhelming one.
