Darkness & Ecstasy with Karlsson & von Hausswolff

Grand Guignol is based on a type of theatre that was born at the Théâtre du Grand Guignol in the Pigalle district of Paris in the 19th century. The primary function of these innovative and popular plays was to make the audience sensuously awaken from the mundaneness of everyday life and experience shocking, frightening, seductive, carnal and hypnotic stories that were not accepted in the high culture of the time.

Anna von Hausswolff and Mikael Karlsson have composed a piece for the Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Radio Choir that celebrates the uplifting powers of darkness and that, in the Grand Guignol tradition, embraces stories and sounds that call us to places we reflexively flee from. There, in the borderland between physical, ritual music and the tickling allure of the darkest stories, we encounter Grand Guignol.

The piece uses pulsating intensity and alternating waves of calm and aggression to create a space through text, music, and electronics in surround where great emotions and sensual liberation are at the center and where the terrible and the beautiful are embraced on equal terms – an aesthetic that characterizes both composers’ previous music.

Claude Debussy chose a title for his triptych that is at first glance misleading. Nocturnes is not a quiet evening music, but a title taken from a series of paintings by the American artist James McNeill Whistler. Whistler’s most famous work is a full-length portrait of his mother sitting in profile, but these paintings were more impressionistic, with softly blurred environments as motifs. Debussy explained how he was inspired to compose music from “the impressions and special light phenomena that the word nocturne itself implies”. The result was three tone paintings with the titles Nuages ​​(Clouds), Fêtes (Festivals) and Sirènes (Sirens).

Nuages ​​illustrates a cloudy day on the Seine, where clarinets and bassoons symbolize the slow movements of the clouds. A mist whistle is heard through the fog and penetrates this “study in gray”, as Debussy himself put it. Fêtes is also a picture of Paris, now with spinning carousels and dancing couples in the Parc de la Bologne. In the middle of everything we hear the National Guard brass band marching in, before the rhythms swirl on again. In the dreamlike motif of the third movement we encounter the sirens and their alluring song that can be heard over the waves in the moonlight. An enchanting undulation arises between the orchestra and the vocalizing female choir in this ocean panorama.

For his orchestral work Poème de l’extase, Alexander Scriabin wrote a poem of over 300 lines. The text is difficult to penetrate, packed with mystical ambitions and sensual imagery. Scriabin was by this time deeply immersed in theosophy and ideas about a higher state, which he tried to reach through his music. In Poème de l’extase, sexual union is a metaphor for a spiritual union with the divine, both of which lead to ecstasy. The poem culminates in a joyful exclamation: “I AM!”, a variation of “I am God” that he had previously filled notebooks with. Scriabin himself sometimes had such notions and is said to have tried both levitating and walking on water.

In the midst of all this mysticism, he composes an absorbing piece of music that is impossible to resist. The intensity in Poème de l’extase moves back and forth in an arousing shift between ebb and flow. The longing and tension build with a delicate sensuality, and the full strength of the orchestra is constantly held back. Until a long crescendo emerges and culminates in a final, massive C major chord. The ecstasy is complete.