DIVAS DESVIANTES are Anna Clementi (performer) and Laurie Schwartz (composer). They develop and present works of experimental music theater, often in collaboration with guest divas.

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29. September 2019. For this year’s art festival Ortstermin 19, ITINERANT INTERLUDE #33 presented 3 unique programs by 3 internationally renowned vocalists at 3 different church towers with repertoires directly inspired both by the festival theme – FATA MORGANA – as well as by the unique settings of the venues. From high atop the respective church towers – via megaphone – each performance cycle began with From the Inscrutable Incantations of Morgan le Fay (2019), a work specially composed for the occasion by Laurie Schwartz. As an illusion of a “call to prayer”, the piece in this case functions as a “call to performance”, the “inscrutable incantations” playing with allusions to ancient languages and chants, mutating between Norwegian herding calls, Gregorian chant and cowboy yodels: Morgan le Fay of the title is the shape-shifting fairy of Celtic and Arthurian legend, the source of the term fata morgana.

The itinerary began with soprano Sunniva Unsgård performing 2 works from the tower of the Kaiser Friedrich Gedächtniskirche: Rebecca Saunders’ O (2017) and Julius Eastman’s Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc (1981). The text of British composer Rebecca Saunders’ O is based on Molly Bloom’s monologue from the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The words flow between moments of absence and presence, with the voice switching back and forward between fragments of an inner and exterior monologue. As the composer notes: “for a moment, words surface and become visible, audible, comprehensible, like the emergence of an image or tale… and then submerge again into the flow of time.” The simple text of Julius Eastman’s Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc (1981) refers to the trial of Joan of Arc in 1431 and specifically, to the voices of the three saints who – as Joan relates – encouraged her to reply boldly to the questions of her interrogators:
Saint Michael said / Saint Margaret said / Saint Catherine said/ They said / She said / He said: Joan_____ Speak boldly.

The program presented by soprano Esther Kretzinger at the Heilandskirche was comprised of 3 works: Vivienne Olive’s Whispers of Heavenly Death (1992), Alleluia from Giacinto Scelsi’s Three Latin Prayers (1972), and Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Ma-am (“My Heart”) for voice and claves (1990). Vivienne Olive’s Whispers of Heavenly Death is based on text from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, while Giacinto Scelsi’s Alleluia is a clear reference to the unadorned simplicity of plainsong, one of the few in this enigmatic composer’s ouevre to use text as raw material. Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Ma-am, based on a verse by the Korean poet Jeong Cheol, was composed in memory of Luigi Nono and dedicated to his widow, Nuria. The composition is clearly inspired by traditional Korean music and reveals moments of passionate, spiritual introspection.

Countertenor Georg Bochow made use of widely different spaces in the tower of the Reformationskirche: His rendition of the Greek Orthodox chant composed by St. Nectarios of Aegina in the late 19th c. Agni parthene despina (O Pure Virgin), in “ancient Russian” and in a falsetto voice, lent a more abstract quality to the hymn, all the more since only his voice could be heard reverberating from the stairway as he traced his steps from high atop the bell tower into the first balcony. This was followed by a performance of No. 3 from Aribert Reimann’s 5 Lieder nach Gedichten von Paul Celan: Ein Ring, zum Bogen spannen, nachgeschickt einem Wortschwarm, der wegstürzt hinter die Welt, mit den Staren. Finally, in a nod to the festival’s theme, Bochow reinterpreted the role of Claudio Monteverdi’s Speranza from Orfeo as illusion itself, appearing and reappearing among seats in the choir loft.

To conclude Ortstermin 2019, the 3 vocalists came together for a performance (G3) summit at Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten to envelope the expanse of Galerie Nord with a contemporaneous mash-up of From the Inscrutable Incantations of Morgan le Fay and a sampling of works from their individual programs.

The 3-day Art Festival Ortstermin 19: FATA MORGANA was curated by Claudia Beelitz and Karen Scheper.

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John Cage’s Song Books (Solos For Voice 3 – 92) (1970) explores a wide variety of notation systems and may be performed in any combination by any number of singers, as song, theater, with or without electronics or props. The score of Solo For Voice #77 consists of a series of numbers, of different sizes and fonts. The actual performance score was constructed by Clementi according to a strict set of instructions whereby a list of freely chosen “nouns” and “verbs” are converted through a numerical table provided by the composer and then inserted into the score to determine the actual sequence of the fragments. An elaborate scheme to insure that everything is determined by chance, without intent. The result is uncanny, a musical composition every time.

The performance of an extracted solo vocal line from a 16th century choral composition encapsulates a more literal comment on the idea of the fragment and, in the process, tosses yet another cultural reference into the mélange of ideas, objects and gestures at play in FRAGMENTS FROM OUR BEAUTIFUL FUTURE. Carlo Gesualdo’s madrigals are considered the epitome of Italian Renaissance vocal composition, and a source of fascination to this day in particular because of their radical harmonic inventiveness. Clementi performed phrases from the alto part of Gesualdo’s 5-voice madrigal Asciugate I begli occhi (“Dry your beautiful eyes”) (Book 5, Number XIV): random fragments in search of resonance with an imaginary choir.

Whereas works by Cage and Gesualdo serve as conceptual counterpoints to the exhibition, Laurie Schwartz’s the fragments (2017) was directly inspired by the extraordinary wealth of references and ideas unleashed by the works of Rebecca Raue and Steve Sabella in dialogue with the precious objects of The Bumiller Collection. the fragments distills FRAGMENTS FROM OUR BEAUTIFUL FUTURE into radically condensed gestures of sound, text, and movement that have been appropriated, cut-up, and re-mixed in references both explicit and oblique – as in the confluence of isolated Arabic and English text fragments intersecting through the centuries in this space, or in allusions to the rules of chess in the movement of the body through the gallery. Amid the swirl of historical, cultural, and musical references, the fragments – as a time-based work, in its very nature ephemeral – insists “I am here”, locating the body in the NOW, if only for a fleeting moment.

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