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Project 1: Robert van der Tol
Wall House Project - Robert van der Tol 23, 24, 25, 26 Aug. 2005
In a co-production with the Wall House, I realized a musical performance on location in the Wall House within the framework of the Noorderzon festival 2005. As a composer for the Dogtroep Theatre Company, among others, I am always fascinated by the spatial effects and visual influence of music and sound. At which moment, and in which context does music become theatrical? The fascinating aspect of theatre on location is the fact that every new location offers new challenges, new obstacles, and new rules. The attempt to respond to these, to overcome circumstances, produces the performance.The starting points in the Wall House were as follows: the performance would last half an hour so that there could be four performances an evening, between 20.00 and 22.00.There would be a maximum of 30 spectators at each performance, divided into three groups of 10, accompanied by a guide. In the studio adjoining the entrance, where 30 people could gather together and take refreshments, there were two valve radios, a tape recorder, and an oscilloscope on pedestals, laid out in a semi-circle, each piece of the equipment with its own sound, driven by two CD players from which a soundscape emitted. Then the group went through the corridor to the actual performance in the three different rooms.
The three groups of 10 spread out: one went to the bedroom, another to the living room, and one to the kitchen. Something that lasted approximately eight minutes happened in each of the three rooms, after which the groups moved to another room. This was repeated until everyone had been in all three rooms. On exiting, another soundscape could be heard, this time coming from the drain at the bottom of the spiral staircase. The group was led outside to make way for the next group that had already gathered in the studio.
It will be self-evident that the layout of the Wall House requires a sophisticated rotation scheme to enable 30 people to experience something in the three rooms within half an hour. An additional complicating factor was the fact that the only connection between the rooms was the rather narrow spiral staircase. Two groups were unable to pass one another, as any attempt would cause a jam. Allowing the spectators to wander through the building at random was not an option due to the musical structure of the performance and the chaos this freedom would produce. In view of the fact that two groups could be in the same room together for a short time, I opted for the relay system – the simplest and least risky system (and therefore the best).
Thus, Group 1 is in the bedroom, after the performance it goes up one floor to the kitchen where Group 2 is located. In the kitchen, the performance has just finished. Group 1 sits down and Group 2 goes up one level to the living room. Group 3 has just seen a performance there, Group 2 sits down, and Group 3 descends two levels to the bedroom . In this way, everyone comes into all three rooms and the groups do not have to pass one another on the stairs.
I tried to assign each room its own sound and atmosphere, although everything was based on one basic theme (actually nothing more than variations on the interval G – B flat). This turned out to be necessary because all the rooms have an open connection to the spiral staircase, so sound would always leak out. Of course it would be impossible to have all three performances run synchronously, and I was not particularly interested in that. It was much more interesting to observe that the given situation ensured that no performance was the same even thought the notes played did not essentially differ.
The musicians had to take into consideration the ‘leaking sound’ that consistently invaded their own performance at unpredictable moments. At the most harmonious moments this gave the impression that the whole Wall House was one large spatial composition.
Three rooms, thus three concerts. The division was as follows: in the bedroom there were a sound installation and a beamer, both connected to a DVD player. The beamer was set up at a height of two metres so that the projection could fall upon the bed. The DVD played a recording (one 8-minute shot, no editing) of a baby lying on that same bed, playing with a plastic magic wand. In the background there was an electronic soundscape, largely created by recording the theme backwards, played on a toy piano and kalimba, and again played backwards. There were two musicians in the kitchen. Their instruments were in the kitchen cupboards: eight instruments behind just as many doors. A relay of musical duets took place: each instrument was taken from the cupboard, played, and put back. Only the two acoustic guitars on which the concluding ballad was played were taken from the toilet. At the end of the concert, the kitchen was just as empty as at the beginning.The living room was the stage for a jazz combo: alt sax, double bass, and violin/guitar. It was a normal concert, with improvisation as if the musical themes were well-known evergreens on which free-from variations could be played.
Was there a narrative, a meaning, a message? No. Allowing the general public to experience the Wall House in a musical manner, that was my only aim. It would have been marvellous if I had succeeded in getting the general public to listen at a deeper level – that of music itself – by casting melodies in different arrangements and orchestration, sometimes in the foreground, occasionally hidden behind other themes or electronic sounds, sometimes simply unrecognizable because the instrument played was unreliable (such as the Egyptian rababa, for example, a kind of violin made of a half coconut, horsehair, goatskin, and a table leg), but I cannot cherish this illusion.
Nevertheless, this musical structure gave what I regarded as a necessary coherence to the entire project. And even if the musical finesses did not reach everyone, a feeling of coherence between the three rooms and the compositional effect of the music will nonetheless have been recognized by most visitors.
Robert van der Tol, April 2006
Participating musicians:
Tiedo Groeneveld (23, 24, 25 Aug.) / Robin van Vliet (26 Aug.) - kitchen
Robert van der Tol - kitchen
Don Hofstee (violin / guitar) - living room
Bert van Erk (double bass) - "
Hans Bosch (alt saxophone) - "