Death and laughter in Le Grand Macabre
Ligeti’s opera in the light of Bakhtin´s, Bergson´s and Bataille´s writings
Arwieke Glas 0069388
Tutor: Prof. Rokus de Groot
Second reader: Dr. Joost de Bloois
University of Amsterdam
MA Cultural Analysis
Master thesis
15 January 2009
2
Index
Introduction
3
Chapter 1. Laughter and the carnivalesque
11
I.
Introduction: the carnivalesque
13
II.
Inversion
18
III.
Concepts of the individual and the body
29
IV.
The grotesque
32
V.
Conclusion
41
Chapter 2. Bergson on laughter and the mechanic
43
I.
Bergson’s Le rire
44
II.
Art and life
48
III.
The mechanical in Ligeti’s music
50
IV.
Mechanical elements in Le Grand Macabre
52
V.
Conclusion
67
Chapter 3: Death, laughter and eroticism: Le Grand Macabre and Georges Bataille
68
I.
Bataille on eroticism, death and laughter
69
II.
Bataille and Le Grand Macabre
76
III.
Conclusion
88
Chapter 4: Conclusion
90
Appendix: Summary of the opera
103
Notes
108
Works Cited:
114
3
Introduction
This thesis focuses on the themes of death and laughter in the opera Le Grand Macabre (1977,
revised 1996) by György Ligeti (1923-2006). My attention was drawn to this subject by a sudden
occupation with the topic of death, which could be due to the phase of life that I am in (perhaps
finally really – if ever - finishing childhood) but also because I searched for a topic that concerns
everyone’s daily life. Death is such a topic: it is nowhere, and it is everywhere. It is a theme that
can show the relevance of a relatively autonomous section of the arts – western classical operafor what we can say about our world: a kind of ‘engagement’ with issues of daily life.
I soon found out that ‘death studies’ is a broad and interdisciplinary area encompassing
many different disciplines. There is vast amount of literature encompassing disciplines such as art,
gender, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and literature, which are brought into contact with
the theme of death.
In philosophy, the main concern is to define death and to think about the meaning of
death. Heidegger seems one of the central figures: he regards death as the ‘constitutive’ force in
the creation of subjectivity, it is the continuously present and inescapable possibility of one’s own
impossibility, while it is at the same time a pure nothingness. In death one ultimately is alone,
although one at the same time cannot experience one’s own death. The non-being of death
intervenes in life in for example the possibilities that are not realized (Strauss 90, 97, 98).
In anthropology and sociology, there is extensive literature about how rituals around
death are performed in various cultures, and how mourning and grief are regulated. In texts
about contemporary culture, death is generally considered as a taboo, although recently some
scholars have remarked that this taboo is disappearing. In his The culture of death (2005) Benjamin
Noys gives an overview of the various readings of the interplay regarding the omnipresence of
death in contemporary culture on the one hand and its invisibility on the other hand (See: Noys).
An important role concerning the focus on studies relating to death in the last sixty years is
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played of course by the industrialized, anonymous and statistic death of the genocide of especially
WO I & II, which invokes notions of the absurd and meaninglessness. The last question
addressed is the role of the concept of immortality, both inside and outside religion.
Death and music seem inextricably related. In funerals, music seems to be the artistic mode par
excellence to express feelings of grief, and it is curious therefore to see how the discipline of
musicology is largely absent within this realm of death studies as sketched above. The few books
that deal with both death and music can be roughly divided into three categories. The first
consists of books that address topics such as the use of music in burying rituals, the second
category discusses the subject of death in relation to opera. The third category consists of texts
that draw a relation between silence and noise on the one hand and death on the other hand,
especially in texts about pop- and electronic music. They argue that technology, (which is more
abundantly present in pop music than in classical music,) creates ‘phantoms’ (voices without
body); moreover, it creates the possibility to preserve the voices of the dead (on tape) and of
hearing secret messages of the dead in noise; lastly, the genre of electronic music can be regarded
as the death of the musician (See for example: Kahn; Enns).
In some oeuvres the subject of death is more latently present, as in that of opera critic
Carolyn Abbate, who highlights many notions with a more or less obvious relationship with
death, such as immortality, presence and absence, the material and the immaterial, especially in
her work In search of opera (2003), however without really addressing the subject of death as such
(Abbate).
Looking around in the classical department of my CD-shop, I suddenly noticed how many
musical genres have death as their direct of indirect topic: passions, requiems and most of the
operas. In the twentieth century, this line continues in an even more varied way, perhaps starting
most famously with the Sacre du Printemps (1913) by Igor Stravinsky, a piece that has the sacrifice
5
of a girl as its topic. The oeuvre of this composer contains many other works related to the
theme of death, amongst others: Epitaphium (1959); Abraham and Isaac (1962-63) (about the
offering of Isaac); In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954); Elegy for J.F.K. (1964) and Requiem Canticles
(1965-66) which is the second last composition he wrote.
In the second half of the twentieth century, compositions unsurprisingly seem to focus
much more on the role of death within society. The first example of a composer upon which the
Second World War had a profound influence is Olivier Messiaen: this influence can be witnessed
in works like Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940-41) written in a prisoners camp, and Et exspecto
resurrectionem mortuorum (1964), in which the gruesome experiences of the war are combined with
the resurrection of Christ. Addressing the subject of death from a slightly different angle, Francis
Poulenc composed Dialogue des Carmelites (1957), which is about martyrdom.
More recently, the role of society in death can be examined in the oeuvre of Steve Reich,
in works such as It’s Gonna Rain (1965, about the threat of an atomic war); Come Out (1966, about
violence and race issues); Different Trains (1988, about the holocaust), and in Three Tales (2002, on
the Hindenburg and the atomic bomb). His American colleague John Adams wrote The Wound
Dresser (1988, based on Walt Whitman’s poem with the same title, that was written after a visit to
soldiers in the Civil War); On the Transmigration of the Souls (2002, an In Memoriam for the victims
of 9/11) and Doctor Atomic (2004-5, about the first test explosion of an atomic bomb in New
Mexico, 1945). A very different oeuvre, that of György Kurtág, has many references to death as
well: the Messages of the late R.V. Troussova (1976-80) is an In Memoriam and the Sayings of Peter
Bornemisza (1963-68) has a third part which is called “death”. Lastly, the Dutch composer Louis
Andriessen, seems occupied with the apocalypse in his recent works, Trilogy of The Last Day (199697) and La Commedia (2008). This sketchy overview shows just the tip of the iceberg.
However, it is the oeuvre of György Ligeti in particular that is determined by an ongoing
occupation with the subject of death. This is already suggested by the titles of his compositions–
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think for instance of Lux Aeterna (1966), Requiem (1963-1965), and his early works Funérailles sur
mer (1943) and Cantata et circa horam nonam (1944). Ligeti confirms that his Atmospheres (1960) could
be regarded as a “crypto requiem” and that he attempted twice to start a requiem in his
Hungarian period (Sabbe 17). More generally speaking, Ligeti’s music is often referred to with the
expression ‘clocks and clouds’ which is also the title of a work from 1973, a title which suggests
both time (as in ticking sounds) and timelessness (as in large clouds of sounds). Time and
timelessness indeed seem important issues in Ligeti’s work and have an indirect but obvious
relation to death: time of course in the sense of time passing by and timeliness looking towards
the ‘end of time’.
However, it is particularly Ligeti’s largest work and his only opera Le Grand Macabre in
which Death is both a character and a central theme. This is the reason why I took Le Grand
Macabre as the object of my studies.
What struck me from the beginning in this opera is that it lacked the serious nature of most
works of art and writings that deal with the subject of death. Le Grand Macabre is funny,
sometimes even in an exaggerated, perhaps tasteless way. Nothing is taken seriously throughout
this opera and least of all the subject of death. Therefore the opera forms a sharp contrast to the
theories I found within the realm of ‘death studies’. These theories are about serious issues such
as mourning, grief, finitude and nothingness. It is for example often presupposed that art is a
therapy for death, a ‘rehearsal’ that will make it easier to deal with our finitude. An example of
this approach can be found in Linda and Michael Hutcheon’s book on opera, Opera: the art of dying
(2004), in which the authors suggest that opera teaches people about death and what it is like to
die, and that therefore watching an opera can be regarded as sort of a ‘rehearsal’ for death
(Hutcheon).
This therapeutic, catharsis-like approach seems very far from the atmosphere felt in Le
Grand Macabre, in which death is laughed at and ridiculed, if not merely ignored. As György Ligeti
7
said in an interview: “anyone who has been through horrifying experiences is not likely to create
terrifying works of art in all seriousness” (Várnai 21). In ‘death studies’, the main question seems
to be what people do to come to terms with death. This is not the atmosphere that transpires
from the opera: death is never a problem that can be resolved or a fact that can be accepted and
therefore the position towards it remains ambivalent throughout the opera.
This comical and ridiculing ‘approach’ to death in the opera made me look for theories on
laughter and the comical rather than theories on death as an approach to the subject. Surprisingly,
three of the theories I found on the issue of laughter, all of them ultimately connected laughter to
death – a connection that does not seem so very obvious at first sight, since death is supposed to
be something serious: typically, one does not laugh at a funeral.
Moreover, with these three theories it was possible to examine many different aspects of
the opera and their relation to death. The concept of the carnivalesque as designed by Michael
Bakhtin in his book Rabelais and his world seemed to be appropriate to describe the chaotic,
drunken, Rabelaisian atmosphere that prevails throughout the opera. One of the constitutive
texts on laughter is Le Rire by Henry Bergson. With this theory the static, repetitive, or
mechanical aspects of Ligeti’s music could be better understood, in their relationship to both
laughter and death. One aspect of the opera that could not be taken care of with one of these
theories was the (comic) eroticism in the piece. For that I used L’erotisme and other texts by
Georges Bataille, who in addition, also wrote extensively about laughter.
The question I would like to answer is:
What is the relation between death and laughter in Le Grand Macabre, and in what ways do
pertinent aspects of the opera, like its carnivalesque atmosphere, its mechanic aspects,
eroticism and the music composed relate themselves to this central subject?
8
I will do this in a fairly simple way. In every chapter one of the three theories is discussed in
relation to the opera. In the last chapter, I will combine and juxtapose all three theories in as far
as they are useful for an interpretation of Le Grand Macabre and draw some conclusions.
What do I exactly mean when I say that the object of this study is Le Grand Macabre? Is it the
sound, the live performance, the score, the staging? Although heated debate has been aroused by
such questions, for me the answer is rather practical: since live performances of this piece and
visual recordings in the form of DVD’s of the opera are very rare, it was difficult for me to
include the visual aspects of the opera in this study. The only materiality that this work has for
me is the score, the libretto and an audio recording (in the form of a CD). The object of this
study is the music as can be found in the score and in the libretto. I used Esa-Pekka Salonens
CD-recording as an audio source (Ligeti Le Grand Macabre).
Another reason to leave the various stagings of the opera outside of the discussion is the
fact that György Ligeti often did not approve of them (and the few scenes that I saw via media
like YouTube were indeed not very convincing). This is not necessarily problematic for an
analysis; yet, it imposes many extra questions for any interpretation of a work, questions that are
too far-reaching to be answered within the limited space of a master-thesis. I use, however, the
stage-descriptions as can be found in the score, which provided together with the music in both
score and CD provides more than enough material to develop a reading of the opera. To include
(controversial) stagings could be a next step of research.
A synopsis of the opera can be found in Appendix I. The full libretto plus analysis is to
be found in the series L’avant-scène (Meschke). The score of the opera is published by Schott,
(Ligeti Le Grand Macabre, Opera in Four Scenes (1974-77)). An analysis of the music that I
made some use of is to be found in (Seherr-Thoss).
9
Lastly, it should be noted that the interpretation developed in this thesis is my personal
interpretation, which is not based on empirical research, but on my reading of the object, making
use of theories of my choice. There are some extensive difficulties in writing about an esthetic
product, especially when one attempts to write in a sort of scholarly, logical and coherent style
while dealing with such not very logically understandable subjects like laughter and death. It is, in
fact, almost impossible. I am aware of the danger of writing in a certain deliberately serious style
about a subject like laughter: the latter may be altogether killed by the analysis. Next to that, to
juxtapose a philosophical text to an art product has the danger that this artwork is subsequently
seen as a work of philosophy as well.
Nevertheless, I proceed as following: by writing as coherently as possible about a
subject/object that is perhaps quite hard to rationalise. I simply trust that logic and
comprehensible writing about art is possible, also if the style of writing does not resemble the
style of the artwork examined. I try to not only review certain ‘ideas’ revealed by the text of the
opera or by interviews given by the composer, but to get involved into the musical aspects of the
work as well, as much as possible. Yet I am aware of the limitations of this approach, which are
the limitations of any writing about art. Such writing may reveal aspects that otherwise would
remain obscure, while obscuring other, possibly even unspeakable aspects of the work.
That an object has certain aspects that are very difficult or even impossible to speak
about should not prevent one from speaking altogether. Likewise, these philosophical problems
of method have the tendency to absorb so much time and paper when properly addressed, that
we will never get to the point of saying anything about the object of art at all. That would be the
summit of obscurity. So it is perhaps better to begin without further dilemma.
The only thing that rests before is to thank a few people: Prof. Rokus de Groot for being
patient while at the same time providing strict deadlines, and of course for all his good
commentaries and advises; my father for his commentaries on both language and content of this
10
thesis and Ruth for helping me with the language. And of course Marco for all his support and
his great role in my well-being, in the broadest sense of the word.
11
Chapter 1. Laughter and the carnivalesque
Le Grand Macabre is often associated with the category of the ‘carnival’. A Grotesque Carnival of Sex
and Death is how composer and musicologist Richard Steinitz calls the opera in his book György
Ligeti, Music of the Imagination. Another Ligeti specialist, Maria Kostakeva, states about the opera:
“Bei solch einem karnevalistischen System von Masken und Maskenspiegelungen verliert die
Realität ihre wahrnehmbaren Dimensionen” (192).
However, this notion of the carnival(esque) in these descriptions never develops into
something more than merely a rather vague idea. In this chapter I want to take a closer look at
the concept of the carnival and see how it interacts with Ligeti’s opera. On a slightly more
profound level, the carnivalesque is an area where laughter and death are inextricably connected,
and that is the main reason why the carnival becomes relevant for the subject of this thesis.
The concept of the ‘carnivalesque’ is principally connected to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (18951975), who writes extensively on this topic in his book Rabelais and his world (1977). 1 Bakhtin felt
greatly attracted to Renaissance literature in general and Rabelais as its summit in particular, since
he saw in it an age similar to his own in its revolutionary aspects: the rapid decay of one world
and the emergence of the next (Bakhtin XV). Rabelais and his world was written between 19301947 and can be read concurrently with the (revolutionary) background of Stalinism (Bakhtin
XV). However, it appeared in the west only in 1968 - a decade before Ligeti’s Grand Macabre was
premiered – and became instantly famous: its revolutionary ‘topsy-turvy’ message is likely to have
had a strong appeal to the masses involved in the ’68 revolutions.
Therefore it is plausible that also Ligeti was familiar with Bakhtin’s writings, as also Peter
von Seherr-Thoss argues in his dissertation on Ligeti: he writes in a footnote that Ligeti told him
in an interview that he was very much involved with Rabelais and Bakhtin while working on Le
Grand Macabre (Seherr-Thoss 115 fn 59). Moreover, Ligeti was an Eastern-European who lived
12
under communism until 1954 in Eastern Europe, which might have enhanced his interest in
Eastern-European intellectuals such as Bakhtin. Ligeti started thinking about writing his opera as
early as 1968, the year Rabelais and his world was published in Western-Europe, although until 1972
he intended to write an opera based on the myth of Oedipus: only after 1972 did he consider to
use Michel de Ghelderodes La Balade du Grand Macabre (1934) as a point of departure (Samuel
114-115, a.o.). De Ghelderodes play is, in fact, called “Rabelaisian” by amongst others Ligeti
himself (Samuel 117). For all these reasons, it does not seem too far-fetched to relate Bakhtin’s
reading of Rabelais to Le Grand Macabre.
Although the subject of death has an important role in both Bakhtin’s book and Ligeti’s opera,
both stand somewhat outside the ‘canon’ of literature about death. Reasons for this could be that
both Bakhtin and Ligeti seem to have a concern with either greater masses of people or with
caricatures, and seem to eschew from notions of individuality. Bakhtin repeatedly shows his
contempt for the bourgeois, individual body, and speaks about the aesthetics of the marketplace.
In Ligeti’s opera, the ‘people’ play a large role in the story (Ligeti even goes as far as involving the
audience in the performance, since he places the choir in between them); and the characters are
caricatures rather than real life personages.
Death, as a result, seems not so much a personal, rather more a mass-death, as in the
apocalypse of Ligeti, or death as part of the somewhat impersonal natural circle of life, in the
general process of change and renewal in the case of Bakhtin. 2 Literature about death, however,
is more often than not about personal death. This is perhaps due to the influence of Heidegger,
who saw death as constitutive of the subject, since “death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s
ownmost possibility – nonrelational” (Sein und Zeit 303, quoted from Strauss 97). ‘Nonrelational’:
nobody can represent the other when he is facing death, nobody can accomplish more then to
die alone, everyone ultimately is alone (Strauss 97). Many books are more or less following this
notion of personal death, as does for example Philippe Ariès in his famous standard L’homme
13
devant la mort (1977) in which he studies the cultural aspects of death, however always having in
mind the death of the individual, rather than for example the mass murders of WO II (Ariès).
Therefore, the special attention for masses and caricatures also in relation to death is one
more reason that Bakhtin’s theory seems apt to interpret Le Grand Macabre.
In this chapter, I will review Le Grand Macabre through the concept of the carnivalesque as used
by Bakhtin. First of all, a general introduction on the carnivalesque will be given and the
concept’s position towards the axis of life and death will be examined; then it will be connected
to Le Grand Macabre. This analysis is further divided into three topics. First of all the notion of
inversion will be considered; secondly, concepts of the individual and the body will be reviewed;
thirdly, I look at Bakhtin’s idea of the ‘grotesque’ in both its Renaissance and Romantic version.
I.
Introduction: The Carnivalesque
In Rabelais and his world, Bakhtin situates Rabelais outside of the official literary tradition and
within folk culture, which is characterized by carnival, parody and the abusive language of the
market place. However, the ritual spectacle is its primordial form; that of carnival and comic
shows, which divided the world in two different times, one for the official ceremony and one for
the “different, nonofficial, extraecclesiastical and extrapolitical aspect of the world” (Bakhtin 6).
Bakhtin states that of all folk festivities the carnival is best preserved down the centuries;
however, it is just one element in a broader range of popular-festive activities in the Renaissance
that have now vanished. According to Bakhtin: “Carnival discloses these traits as the best
preserved fragments of an immense, infinitely rich world. This permits us to use precisely the
epithet ‘carnivalesque’ in that broad sense of the word” (218). The term ‘carnivalesque’ will be
used here as well to refer to this broader phenomenon of contrasting the official world.
This idea of a period in which hierarchies are interrupted seems older than the
Renaissance: anthropologists think its origins are in the ‘Saturnalia’, a Roman feast that had the
14
inversion in rank as its central theme: a festival lasting a few days in which the “laughter of
disorder” takes over (Hyman 9). 3 According to Bakhtin, in the carnival the static, unchanging
world of official, hierarchical society was turned around, since the latter is always related to time,
to the circle of life: it was linked to “moments of crisis, of breaking points (…) moments of death
and revival, of change and renewal” (Bakhtin 9). The rich idiom of carnival is “opposed to all that
was ready-made and completed, to all pretense at immutability, (…) it demanded ever changing,
playful undefined forms”, that have a “sense of the gay relativity of prevailing truths and
authorities” (11).
According to Bakhtin, the guiding principle within the carnival is the ‘festive laughter’,
which is not above life (as is satire), but in the midst of it; and which is ambivalent and directed at
all and everyone (11). Although laughter later in history is removed from the field of serious
matters in general and serious art in particular, in the Renaissance laughter still had a
philosophical and serious aspect. “The feast had always an essential, meaningful philosophical
content”, Bakhtin states (Bakhtin 8). According to Bakhtin, Rabelais’ contemporaries could still
“consider these questions [of life and death] on the gay level, the level of laughter” (66). One of
the reasons for this was that Renaissance laughter provided the possibility to see the world as
anew, maybe in a more profound way than when seen from a serious standpoint. Moreover,
Bakhtin states that there are aspects of the world that are accessible only by laughter (66). Art
historian Timothy Hyman carries this idea even further:
Perhaps we can say that every truly carnivalesque art is fuelled by an absence and a need;
and it may be precisely where laughter is most forbidden that the carnivalesque becomes
most meaningful (Hyman 15).
Another connection between (Renaissance) laughter and death is that laughter provides a victory
over death, in the Renaissance point of view (as read by Bakhtin, of course). Laughter provides a
15
victory over the mystic terror of God, forces of nature, oppression and guilt related to the
forbidden; it provides the defeat of power, commandments and prohibitions, death and
punishment after death. This is expressed by comic images of death, by the symbols of power
and violence turned inside out (Bakhtin 91). Laughter contains something revolutionary; it
liberates from the past and opens to the future (97). In this sense, Renaissance laughter
overcomes fear; a subject to which we will return in the last paragraph.
In summary, the concept of the carnivalesque involves two important notions: first of all, the
inversion of the static world of hierarchies: political and ecclesiastical hierarchies, but also the
hierarchy of life and death, which is replaced by the cycle of death and renewal.
In the carnival, death becomes part of the festivity of life: it is not opposed to the realm
of life and laughter but rather takes part in it. Death, life and laughter all take part side-to-side in
the “imaginary system” of carnival. 4 Secondly, the concept of the carnivalesque also entails the
idea that the laughter is in the midst of (festive) life and that it is capable of shedding new light on
issues of life and death. Thirdly, reference to the carnivalesque also implies that laughter has the
power to overcome fear of death.
Does Le Grand Macabre take part in the carnivalesque imagery? And if so, does it address this
question of a festive approach to life and death? Perhaps the most obvious carnivalesque aspect
is the separation of time in a time into a time for festivity and a time for serious matters, which
resembles the distinction that can be made between opera, which is a festivity that takes place in a
domain with strict boundaries (the theatre), and the rest of reality.
Moreover, Ligeti does not take fixed conventions (meaning fixed ideas about what is
tasteful, fixed musical genres, musical conventions) and themes like death seriously, while at the
same time being deadly serious himself in his laughter.
16
First, Ligeti does not take the conventions for what is tasteful seriously. Commentators
that have a more serious disposition have accused the humour in Le Grand Macabre of being
tasteless (see for example Holloway 61-62). However, in a Bakhtinian reading of the opera, this
tastelessness has a certain philosophical value: it is precisely that which makes Ligeti’s opera
carnivalesque. It frustrates too rigid ideas of what is correct in terms of taste and does not even
try to participate in that scheme. According to Bakhtin, carnivalesque images are “ugly,
monstrous, hideous from the point of view of (…) the aesthetics of the ready-made and the
completed” (Bakhtin 25). In a carnivalesque reading of the opera, it is precisely this tastelessness
that has a distinct role and function.
In addition to this, the rigid idea of the genre is not taken seriously. The opera is an
amalgam of different styles, quotations and allusions, and sometimes mocks conventions. In this
aspect as well it is opposed to the fixed world of hierarchies.
Lastly, the opera mocks the serious language about death. In Michel de Ghelderode’s play
on which the opera is based, Nekrotzar is called Nekrozotar – which has zot in it, while the final
name has tzar in it - Nekrotzar is either a tzar or a zot (the Nekro-part obviously refers to death)
(Seherr-Thoss 149). Death shrivels until a nothing at the end of the opera, after Piet de Pot and
others have ridiculed him frequently.
Yet, at the same time, Ligeti takes laughter seriously. “Das Ernste ist humoristisch, das
Komische ist todernst”, he states in an introduction to one of the performances of his opera. 5 As
we will argue in the continuation of this thesis, the laughter, which for Holloway “fails to amuse”,
is precisely in that aspect a carnivalesque laughter, and addresses as a result serious issues.
Finally, for our analysis of the opera, it is important to notice Bakhtin’s use of the notions of
spectacle and carnival. Bakhtin argues that although carnival has aspects that resemble the
spectacle, like its sensuous character and its element of play, it does not belong to the sphere of
17
art, but to the “borderline between art and life”. In fact, he argues, carnival is life itself, shaped
according to a certain pattern, that of the play (Bakhtin 7).
What would be the status of the opera in a system like this? It will become clear that the
opera makes use of carnivalesque imaginary, but could it be argued that the opera is a carnival
itself? By nature an opera is a spectacle, which divides the people that are present in an audience
and performers. However, in this opera, there has been made some effort to integrate the
spectacle and the ‘life’: the choir in Le Grand Macabre is seated in the public, in normal
concertgoers outfit and reveal their true nature only in the third scene:
Die Chormitglieder sollten möglichst im Publikum verteilt sein (sowohl im Parkett als in
den Logen), und so gekleidet, dass sie nicht vom Publikum unterschieden werden können
(Ligeti Le Grand Macabre, Opera in Four Scenes (1974-77)).
Furthermore, at the highpoint of the opera, Nekrotzar comes to the front of the stage and
threatens the audience (246/550). 6 Musicians play on balconies, off-stage and on-stage. It seems
that Ligeti has made some effort to engage the audience in the experience of the opera. This
seems to fit this idea of an all-encompassing carnival, the idea of a spectacle in which everybody
participates.
There are some signs that the opera tends to participation by the public, to an attempt to erase
the border between art and life. However, Ligeti himself insists on a clear distinction between art
and life and therefore his opera obviously stays on the side of the spectacle. Ligeti attaches great
value to the distance between scenery and audience, which became important for him at least
since the beginning of the seventies, when the oil-crisis made the hippie-style mingling of life and
art less significant (Várnai 75).
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You see, I want, if I am the audience, to see a perfect music, or a perfect painting. I don't
want to take part in it. I don't want that this fence between the piece and the audience be
abolished. I don't want to be involved. It's the feeling of distance. (…) For me, a work of
art is a finished and defined thing. It has nothing to do with everyday life. Indirectly it has
to do with life, but it does on a different level (Ligeti "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack").
I will get back to the artificial nature of art in the second chapter on Bergson. For now, it can be
concluded that there are two contrasting forces in the opera, one that strives for the participation
of the public in an all-encompassing carnival, and another one in which the strict artificiality of
art is maintained.
II.
Inversion
Most of the aspects of the carnivalesque can be roughly summarized with the term ‘inversion’.
Bakhtin:
We find here the logic of the ‘inside out’, of the ‘turnabout’, of a continual shifting from
top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations,
profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings (Bakhtin 11).
Of all these types of inversion mentioned above, some will be discussed here in connection with
Le Grand Macabre: the inversion of hierarchies (“crowning and uncrowning”); parody (amongst
which profanations) and travesty. However, we should start with the most important ‘turnabout’,
that of death itself.
Further onwards we will see that this inversion never erases that which is inverted; rather
it enhances the ambivalence of it. Carnival is only a temporary festival and after it is finished, the
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old order is established; for example, the carnivalesque offers an image in which death and life
are closely entwined: however, after the carnival, death regains its powerful position.
The inversion of death
The relation between death and inversion could shed light on the importance of the topic of
inversion for this opera. As many writers notice, death cannot be represented unless converted
into something else. Philosopher Simon Critchley writes for example that “death is radically
resistant to the order of representation”, since it is a pure nothing, pure negativity, the end of
experience (Critchley 26). Death is not a state of being, or to put it in a different way, death ‘is’
not: an idea which, according to Jonathan Strauss is asserted with enough success to “become a
generally accepted cultural attitude” (Strauss 90). Therefore, in order to be able to represent death
in some sort of way, inversion of ‘nothing’ to ‘something’ is unavoidable.
This is exactly what Ligeti does in this opera: he gives death a body in the form of
Nekrotzar. Doing this, he is standing in a series of traditional images that represent death as
heaving a body, like that of the ‘Danse macabre’ or ‘Totentanz’, or in the classical representation
of ‘Death and the maiden’.
The inversion of something dead in something alive and vice versa is exactly what the
final scenes of Le Grand Macabre are all about. As soon as death has a living body, it has the ability
to die, as well. This is exactly what happens to Nekrotzar after having had the time to conclude
that the end of the world was a failure. After this, for him disappointing conclusion, Nekrotzar
“begins to shrivel up, collapses, becoming smaller and smaller, (…) and finally disappears,
becoming one with the earth” (288/663-669).
What happens if Death is dead? Either, life continues and the figure of death is
considered a charlatan. However, another option for Ligeti himself is to conclude that in the end
of the opera, the characters “pass into a state of eternal life (…) they have lived through the Last
Judgment without realizing it” (Samuel 117). The end of the opera could be interpreted as a
20
celebration (a “feast” or “carnival” if you like) of inversions. After Nekrotzar ‘performed’ the end
of the world, the characters are not singing anymore: what remains is a static sound field of
instrumental music – a nothing. After a while though, all characters start to wonder whether or
not they are really dead:
Piet: Ghost Astradamors, are you dead?
Astradamors: Yes.
Piet: Am I dead too?
Astradamors: Yes, Ghost Piet (270-271/615-616).
After which Mescalina, supposedly dead, arises suddenly (as with Nekrotzar, we will never know
if she was really dead). She starts to quarrel with three soldiers, who than set about massacring
Mescalina, the two ministers and Prince Go-Go. Only Nekrotzar is overlooked: he remains
motionless. “The massacre is over very quickly, (…) like slapstick ‘Chinese Theatre’!” (287/660).
Moreover, the effect of the massacre is over very quickly, too, since only one bar later “Piet and
Astradamors walk on unsuspectingly, Prince Go-Go jumps up comically and is suddenly alive”
(287/662). The whole scene, (which last a few seconds, but is perhaps the real apocalypse), is an
inversion of the tradition of the apocalypse, which is supposed to turn the entire world upside
down in a grand scale event.
The last inversion happens when lovers Amanda and Amando, being the personifications
of pure and ecstatic love, arise from the grave in which they sought a place to make love in the
very beginning of the opera. As the only ones not affected by the (semi-) apocalypse, they seem
to present pure and innocent life, which is only possible because they were hidden in the grave
(292-302/675-694).
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Next to this set of inversions, the end of the opera shows the capacity of music for inversion.
After having returned from the grave, Amando and Amanda sing a message of “here and now”,
“let’s come what may”, “for life grants most to those who give / and who gives love shall loving
live” (296-302/684-694). Regarding the relation between text and music in the end, Ligeti says:
Donc, c’est le triomphe de l’Eros : nous vivons, nous buvons, nous faisons l’amour, mais
tout ça en désordre, comme dans la vie réelle. C’est un Eros assez sordide, pas gentil du
tout. Nous vivons mais la vie n’est pas tellement belle. Donc, cette fin est très proche
quand même de la conception de Ghelderode. Il ne s’agit pas d’un hédonisme véritable, il
ne s’agit pas de félicité. C’est triste plutôt, très triste. Dans ma version, c’est très ironisé
par la musique – le texte n’est pas tellement ironique, mais la musique l’est d’autant plus,
la musique finale cette passacaille, très consonante, très belle, très claire, avec des sixtes
seulement, majeures et mineures (Sabbe 20).
The “literal” message of the piece is ‘carpe diem’, however, indeed, the music offers a double
meaning; the last inversion if you like, but an inversion maintaining an element of ambivalence,
like the ambivalence that keeps existing around the question whether or not the apocalypse took
place. In this sense, Ligeti provides a carnivalesque experience:
This experience, opposed to all that was ready made and completed, to all pretense at
immutability, sought a dynamic expression; it demanded ever changing, playful, undefined
forms (…) with the sense of the gay relativity of prevailing truths and authorities (Bakhtin
11).
In the end, indeed, it is not possible to distract a new and static truth or message from the opera;
it maintains its carnivalesque ambivalence. It is interesting to note that this inversion is not
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brought about by ‘opposite’ (inverted) music, but by very consonant music that seems to confirm
the sweet message until it becomes so exaggerated that it becomes ridiculous.
In summary, the inversions are: Death has a body; Death is dying; after the apocalypse, the dead
people are speaking; Mescalina, who was dead, starts to walk; the grand apocalypse is turned into
a slapstick of 5 seconds; after this massacre, everybody rises from the dead; the lovers walk from
the grave; inversion of the message through music.
In all its ambivalence, the end of Le Grand Macabre is an inversion of the categories of
death and life as such, which is truly ‘carnivalesque’ in itself: according to Bakhtin, death is “not a
negation of life seen as the great body of all the people but part of life as a whole: its
indispensable component, the condition of its constant renewal and rejuvenation” (Bakhtin 50).
This cycle of life and death is confirmed by the use of the passacaglia - a repetitive bass pattern –
for example when Nekrotzar arrives on stage in the third scene, we hear the repetitive bassrhythm from the finale of Beethoven’s Eroica. Another passacaglia introduces the last scene of
the opera, in which the idea of cyclic time is expressed in a rather plain way (201/452, 291/674).
It is by these inversions that the idea of death being both an end to and a break with life
is obscured.
The inversion of hierarchies: crownings and uncrownings
Another important inversion in the carnivalesque is that of hierarchies. Literary theorist Renate
Lachmann writes about the relation between death’s power and political power in the
carnivalesque:
This is the crux of Bakhtin's approach: he formulates a myth of ambivalence that denies
the ‘end’ by sublimating death in and through laughter. Thus by ridiculing death and
finiteness, folk culture, which is the bearer of this revelation, embodies the refusal to
23
acknowledge the authority of those official institutions which, by taking death and the
end into their calculations, seek to exert and extend their hegemony. Only by denying
official power and its hierarchical rigor through the enactment of militantly ludistic
carnival rituals can folk culture successfully ‘stage’ this myth (Lachmann, Eshelman and
Davis 124).
In the experience of both Ligeti and Bakhtin, 20th century powers such as Nazism and
communism were examples of official institutions exerting their power through massacre. Both
lived during a regime of communism, under which ‘folk culture’ was repressed and where the
Kremlin determined how to live. Lachmann for example argues that the rigid separation between
high and low that Bakhtin perceives in Renaissance society (high church versus low folk culture)
can be transposed to Soviet reality as well (Lachmann 117). We may conclude that politics in the
20th century is quite inextricably related to mass-death, and that therefore the inversion of ranks
could be associated with the inversion of death.
In Le Grand Macabre, perhaps one of the most literally carnivalesque inversions lies in the fact that
the opera starts with a quote of the requiem: ‘dies irae, dies illa’, thus introducing the genuinely
Biblical theme of the apocalypse; a theme which is inverted already after a few bars in an orgy of
drunkenness. The dominance of religion on the theme of the apocalypse is inverted for as long as
the opera lasts: Ligeti made a ‘secular’ apocalypse, that, however, preserves other features of the
apocalypse like fear of death and the representation of terrifying matters (Várnai 19).
This inversion of religious hierarchies seems however to be overshadowed by Ligeti’s
more explicit political inversions. A very astute example of this is the figure of the Chief of the
Gepopo, of which the name already makes clear whose rank is inverted: his name is a
combination of Gestapo, the Russian GPU (later known as KGB) which together becomes
Geheime Politische Polizei (Steinitz 226). The Chief of the Gepopo represents two of the most
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powerful instances in history: however, the Gepopo, in his disguise as a “sinister bird of prey”,
entering on roller skates, and later as a huge spider, being panic-stricken and unable even to speak
from his first entrance onwards, thus making a very powerless impression from the outset
(159/339; 178/389). The Gepopo is the one fearing the coming Apocalypse most. He is the
sarcastic representation of all those instances that made people of the twentieth century fearful
and denied them the ability to speak out: he is transformed into the most anxious, powerless and
ridiculous figure on stage.
Another powerless clown-king is Prince Go-Go, the official monarch of Breughelland, a
role that should be sung by a “plump boy with a soprano voice”. This ‘spineless’ character is
primarily concerned with food and drinks and lets himself be advised by the Black and the White
Minister, who are from two different parties yet deliver the same message.
The inversion of power is most clearly visible, though, in the relation between Piet and the only
real ‘tzar’ in the opera, Nekrotzar. Piet is the archetypical medieval fool, always drunk and not
very smart, “a corpulent, constantly inebriated citizen of Breughelland” (3/2). Nevertheless he is
the only one that never accepts the power of Nekrotzar and continues fooling him, for example
in the ‘Gnadenrecitativ’: “Have mercy, Your Skinniness! /Have mercy, Your Ugliness!” (31/46).
As an answer to the rather grim declaration of Nekrotzar that “all men on earth must perish!”
Piet starts “laughing aloud suddenly”, in sprechgesang, “any fool knows that” (40/58). Later on, as
an answer to the phrase “at midnight thou shalt die”, he screams: “Bullshit!” (43/64). And
although Nekrotzar humiliates him when he uses Piet as a horse, right until the end Piet is the
only one that believes Nekrotzar is a charlatan. For example, just before the end, Piet says “our
Nekro is no Tsar! He’s just an old wet fart! (…) Hey, Nekrotzar you arsehole!”, singing
coloraturas on “fallerilala, falalalalala” as an expression of excessive joy (227-228/512-515).
As a matter of fact, Piets strategy works. He is the one that gives Nekrotzar so much wine
that the latter forgets to actually destroy the world (224-252/506-564).
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Umberto Eco has offered cogent criticism on the ‘revolutionary’ potential of Bakhtin’s concept
of the carnivalesque. He relates carnival to the comic, which is about violating rules that are not
spelled out but presupposed. If the rule is either spelled out or not familiar to the audience, the
comic situation fails (Eco 2). Although carnival provides an inversion of the existing order of
rules, this inversion cannot exist without that order, since, if otherwise, there would be nothing to
inverse. “Without a valid law to break, carnival is impossible,” Eco states (4). The law must be
“so pervasively and profoundly introjected as to be overwhelmingly present at the moment of its
violation” (6). Next to that, carnival only works if it lasts for a very short moment: “an everlasting
carnival does not work” (6). Therefore, carnival is not a real transgression, but a reinforcement of
the law. After the period of carnival is over, normal hierarchy takes over.
Perhaps the ‘revolutionary’ potential that Eco criticized is more a criticism of the
interpretation that the revolutionary avant-garde of 1968 had of the book: Bakhtin as well seems
to speak just of a temporary suspension of hierarchies, in the carnival, or of a suspension in a
strictly separated domain, that of folk culture.
The concept of the carnivalesque will always be determined by the power of death, as it is
in Ligeti’s work: of course, the power of death is mocked at, but only to reinforce its inescapable
power in human life. It is made ridiculous in the temporary theatre (or, carnival) of the opera,
inverting the normal rules of normal life, in which every person dies: outside of the theatre, the
rules continue working. This idea is confirmed by the fact that the opera insists on the ‘here end
now’ at the end: anarchy lasts, for as long as it still carnival. It is, therefore, not so strange that
Ligeti speaks about a sad ending. Only a “myth” of ambivalence, of an eternal here and now, can
deny that the end is the end, to quote Lachmans citation above. It is revealing therefore that in Le
Grand Macabre, the ending is enlarged and stretched out by a long “farewell” by almost al the
characters; indeed, in the end of life there is a farewell.
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Also in relation to the real-life politics outside of the opera, Ligeti does not claim to make
any difference through his art. As a reaction to the politicization of art in the 1968, Ligeti wrote a
short article, On Music and Politics, in which he states that although music can be a political tool,
there is nothing inherently political in music. Music “is not progressive nor is it regressive (…). It
is of a region which lies elsewhere” (Ligeti "On Music and Politics" 22). Like the carnival, an
opera is not a tool, an instrument for change, but still can very much relate itself to the outside
world, perhaps not in an instrumental relation but conceivably in a carnivalesque one.
Parody and inversion
The genre of parody literature, permitted on feast days, is one of the main expressions of the
carnivalesque. This parody was not particularly concerned with the negative, with imperfections,
but was directed to the whole world: “everything without exception was comic” (Bakhtin 84).
Although Bakhtin classifies the parody under the category of ‘topsy-turvy’ or ‘inside-out’,
it is not necessarily by inversion that parody is reached. Although the effect of parody is inversion
(of hierarchies), the means by which this is reached is most often exaggeration or distortion of a
specific quality of the object of the parody. Thus, the above mentioned “here and now” scene
with which the opera ends, could be seen as a parody, exaggerated through the music, to such an
extend that it turns the message into its contrary.
One of the most frequently employed forms of parody in Renaissance literature are those
in which the entire bible is ‘travestied’ (‘venite adoremus’ becomes ‘venite, apotemus’, come and
have a drink). Obviously, this form of parody is another example of inversing hierarchies: the
official text of a bible or something else is ludicrously paraphrased. At the same time, this sort of
parody is just recognized by the regular users of those bible texts – and exists thus not outside of
religion, but as a part of it.
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This type of biblical / latin parody is also present in the opera. When Piet and
Astradamors see that Mescalina is dying: “Liberatus, liberata, liberatum sum, esse, fui! / Ex
Profundo/In profundum/and punctum!” (122-123/235-238). 7
Also the language of ‘officials’ is parodied. Characteristic of the ‘real’ conduct of the
secret police, the Gepopo speaks about codes and passwords, although in distorted form, as in
“Cocococo!/Cococ!/Cocoding Zero!” (160/343), “Password: Gogogogolas” (168/365); or in
ironic remarks like “One more thing/ bear in mind:/ silence is golden” (171/365). Such as a real
secret police would perhaps have, he gives useless orders and keeps everybody busy (189190/423-426).
The Black and the White Minister are a parody on fake-democracy; they are from two
different parties yet share the same ‘political’ message.
The opera as a whole seems to be a parody on the genre of the apocalypse; starting with the “dies
illa” (a reference which returns later 119/441) but degenerating into a drinking feast; there is
extensive use of (off-stage) brass, representing the apocalyptic trumpets (cf. 65/99, 109/206,
201/447). The first announcement of death by Nekrotzar is a distorted quotation from
Revelations 6:8 (starting at 40/59). Furthermore, the horse, that plays a large role in apocalyptic
imagery in general, is in the opera degraded into a rocking horse, for example in the third scene,
in which the two ministers put Prince Go-Go on a rocking horse as a sign of humiliation.
Traditionally, however, it is Death who sits on a horse but in this case, he uses Piet to be his
horse (63/96); when Nekrotzar realizes that it is midnight, he asks for his horse and is finally
carried onto the rocking horse (257/587), only to fall drunkenly from it again. Where the horse
originally is used to enhance the nobility of death, Death now is not even capable of mounting it.
Parody also exists in the music, for example in the scene where Nekrotzar marches on to the
stage. In the ostinato in the bass one hears the finale of Beethovens Eroica, transformed into
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twelve-tone music (music that uses a row consisting of all twelve notes that exist): however there
are thirteen notes, and not twelve: a parody on the (dominant, most official) genre of serialism
(Várnai 69).
The claxons heard at the beginning of the first act, are a parody on the typical
introduction used in Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607).
The question remains, though, if every distorted quotation is in fact a real distortion and
thus a parody. It can also be read as an amalgamation of different styles and quotes, a subject on
which we will return in the next paragraph.
Another type of parody is through music on the action or the genre that is performed.
For example, in the scene where Nekrotzar performs a violent love-scene with Mescalina,a string
quartet plays a sort of pastiche Haydn, a ‘bourrée perpetuelle’ performed, piano (soft), “grazioso”.
The characters have to sing their violent words sotto voce, with a soft voice. This seems to take the
strong words and actions of Nekrotzar and Mescalina less seriously, who together perform a
variation on the theme of ‘death and the maiden’ (118/229). This type of parody of the action
through the music has a distancing effect; it alienates the audience from the immediate impact of
the action.
Travesty
The last type of inversion summed up in the quote of Bakhtin that started the paragraph, is
travesty. For Bakhtin, travesty meant a renewal of clothes and of the social image (81).
Travesty is somewhat present in Le Grand Macabre, especially in the choice of voices.
Amando, the lover of Amanda, is a mezzo-soprano. Moreover, the Chief of the Gepopo is a
Coloratura Soprano. (Prince Go-Go is a soprano but should preferably be sung by a young boy).
Astradamors has a bass voice and is wearing man’s trousers: however, he is also wearing
“women’s clothes on top. He is possibly wearing women’s underwear: brassiere, lace panties etc.
29
On his head is a lace bonnet” (76/120), and is thus mirroring Amando’s ‘hose-rolle’ in the first
act.
Another, related form of travesty is the use of the voice in an unexpected way.
Astradamors, a bass sings falsetto in several places (98/177), as does Nekrotzar, which is very
strange for a character representing death: death is commonly associated with low, dark voices
(see 116/225; 124/244; 137/272). This is an example of travesty as renewal of social image.
III.
Concepts of the individual and the body
It is by the concept of the carnivalesque that two aspects of the use of characters and of the body
can be illustrated. First of all the carnivalesque describes a body that is not self-contained but
open to outer society. Secondly, the carnivalesque body finds its source of life in what Bakhtin
calls the “lower stratum”.
For Bakhtin, this concept of the body that he calls the ‘open body’ is very much Rabelais-like,
and opposed to the bourgeois perception of the body. The bourgeois body is individualized,
atomized, private, “the petty, inert ‘material principle’ of class society” and looses according to
Bakhtin its fruitfulness in its inertness (Bakhtin 23-4). This bourgeois body is separated from the
outer world, quite unlike Bakhtin’s grotesque body, which is connected to the outside world
through an emphasis on the openings, where world and body are mingled. This emphasis causes
a special attention on moments that the body is exceeding its own limits, such as in pregnancy
(26). “The carnivalesque idea of the body has a cosmic and all-people’s character”, and thus is
constantly growing and renewing: it is “grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable” (18-19). This idea
is related to the carnivalesque concept of life, which is not private life, but an all-people, a public
life, which cannot be escaped. Bakhtin defines death as an escape of the soul from the body, into
the great body of the world, underlining the “open character” of the body (359).
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If “the work” Le Grand Macabre is defined as a kind of musical “body”, it becomes clear
that Ligeti’s music, which is full of quotations and references, also can be seen as an open body,
related to the world outside. 8 Moreover, many of the quotations are semi-quotations, mere
allusions, already not “private bodies” themselves, since they are already so much altered. In this
sense Le Grand Macabre resembles the works of Rabelais, since these also contain many
“allusions”, are “encyclopedic, and containing many new words” (Bakhtin 110). Ligeti himself
speaks about ‘objets trouvés’: “you take a piece of foie gras, you drop it on the carpet and you
trample it in until it disappears – that is how I utilize the history of music and especially the
history of opera” (Samuel 119). Asked why he did this, he responds that he aimed at a certain
degree of anarchistic confusion; an anarchy very similar to the carnival (119). We see here once
more that the use of a quotation does not necessarily mean a use of parody; it can also be seen as
a taking part in a universal carnival.
According to Bakhtin, in the ‘classical canon’, the body is sharply defined from the
outside world, where the ‘grotesque canon’ of the Renaissance is perceived as hideous and
formless from the point of view of the classical canon (Bakhtin 29). 9 In the same manner, the
different quoted works from the past, from the classical canon of music in Le Grand Macabre,
which in Bakhtin’s reading would be static and rigid because they are already closed off and
confined to the classic canon, are opened up as well through changing, and start to take part in
the ‘festivity’ of a new work.
The body and the “lower stratum”
Speaking about the body, Bakhtin places a huge emphasis on the material aspect of it. He
mentions four aspects of this “material bodily principle”: eating, drinking, defecation and sexual
life. According to Bakhtin, the material body is crucial for the aesthetic category of “grotesque
realism” (to which we will return in the next paragraph) (Bakhtin 18). The essential principle of
grotesque realism is degradation, a transfer to the material level, downward towards both the
31
earth and the “lower stratum of the body” (genitals), where earth and body meet. This body
furthermore “represents the entire material bodily world in all its elements” (27).
It is especially the laughter that performs this degradation, according to Bakhtin:
“laughter degrades and materializes” (20). However, this degradation is not considered as
something negative, as it would have been in more ‘modern’ times, because in the Renaissance
this degradation always produces a sense of revival of life which is of course related to fertility,
growth and abundance (Bakhtin 27-28).
Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative
aspect, but also a regenerating one. To degrade an object does not imply merely hurling it
into the void of nonexistence, into absolute destruction, but to hurl it down to the
reproductive lower stratum, the zone in which conception and a new birth take place (21).
Two aspects of the before mentioned four aspects of the lower stratum are especially present in
Le Grand Macabre: drinking and the “lower stratum”, especially cursing.
Concerning drinking, Bakhtin states that the Rabelaisian “banquet images” should be
sharply distinguished from private drunkenness in early bourgeois literature, in which only the
contentment of the selfish individual is expressed. The Rabelaisian drunkenness, however,
expresses the “triumph of the people as a whole” (Bakhtin 301-302), which differs from a
modern perception in which drunkenness can be related to alcoholism, to illness and therefore to
death. In the carnivalesque world, drunkenness is connected with life and abundance. Food and
drink are not consumed by individuals, but are shared, in an “aspiration to abundance and to a
universal spirit” (278).
In Le Grand Macabre, drunkenness plays an important role. Piet starts his role being drunk
and hiccupping; ultimately, death is defeated in a collective drunkenness, which indeed gives live.
32
In between, in the second act, also Astradamors and Mescalina are drunk, until Mescalina falls
asleep after having danced drunkenly (105/195).
The “lower stratum” plays a role in curses and for example also in the dance between
Astradamors and Mescalina, when Astradamors kisses Mescalina’s “backside” (97/175), after
which Mescalina pulls off Astradamors skirt and the rest of his women’s clothing (99/179).
Further on, “Mescalina sits on a stool with splayed legs” (100/182) after which she asks Venus
for a man “well hung” (115/223).
Ligeti uses in general a lot of curses in his work, for example in the alphabet of curses
performed by the two ministers in the prelude to the third scene, “Arselicker, arsecrawler,
blackmailer, bloodsucker” etc, up until the end of the alphabet (starting 140/278) other examples
are “shitthole” in 95/171, “pisspot” in 96/172, “swagpot” 25/38, and so on. When asked about
the nature of those curses, Ligeti says that it belongs not so much to the tradition of the opera,
but to that of the fairground theater, which is much older (Samuel 118). Like Bakhtin, Ligeti
relates these curses to ‘life’: “It’s a living piece of theatre, and life also means obscenity,
excrement, love-making in unorthodox positions” (118). This connectedness of cursing with life
is quite remarkable, since cursing is usually wishing death or diseases for the other: it is a sin,
which ultimately leads to death, forbidden either by God or by etiquette.
IV.
The grotesque
As said before the concept of the grotesque plays an important role in Rabelais and his world. In his
theory, Bakhtin pays quite a lot of attention to the idea of laughter being constitutive for nothing
less than life itself, via the concept of the grotesque. “The essence of the grotesque is precisely to
present the contradictory and double-faced fullness of life,” Bakhtin states (62). The essential
principle of this category of ‘grotesque realism’ is degradation, the returning back to earth of
everything that is high, spiritual, ideal and abstract. Literary theorist Renate Lachmann points out
33
that the term ‘grotesque realism’ seems to be chosen to oppose the aesthetic ideal of the ‘socialist
realism’ that prevailed under Stalin (when Bakhtin wrote the initial version of his book); it seems
designed to oppose the ideal of an ascetic, functional body dressed in uniform, a body whose
corporeal and sexual side was moreover forbidden to be represented in art (Lachmann, Eshelman
and Davis 118-19).
However, Bakhtin distinguishes between the folk grotesque (that can be found in
Rabelais) and the Romantic grotesque, which appeared in the 19th century. 10 The Romantic
grotesque is subjective where the Renaissance version has an all-people character (Bakhtin 36).
Another difference between the two is that 19th century laughter, unlike its Renaissance
counterpart, has lost its regenerating power: it was “cut down to cold humor, irony, sarcasm” (38).
For the scope of this thesis, however, the most important difference between the
Romantic and the Renaissance grotesque is their relation to terror and fear. In the Renaissance
grotesque, terror took the form of comic monsters, in order to be defeated by laughter: “terror
was turned into something gay and comic” (39). Most interestingly, it seems to have represented
more often than not a terror for the official powers of the world, that could be defeated by the
laughter that existed outside this official sphere of high ideology and literature, in which it was
forbidden. Laughter “bestowed exceptional privileges of license and lawlessness” (71) and had an
“indissoluble and essential relation to freedom” (89):
The serious aspects of class culture are official and authoritarian; they are combined with
violence, prohibitions, limitations and always contain an element of fear and of
intimidation. (…) Laughter, on the contrary, overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions,
no limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority (…). It was the victory of
laughter over fear that most impressed medieval man (Bakhtin 90).
34
For his ideas on the Romantic grotesque Bakhtin based himself on Wolfgang Kayser, who is the
preeminent theorist of the Grotesque and is the author of Das Groteske in Malerei und Dichtung
(1957). Since Rabelais and his world was published only in 1968, Bakhtin had the opportunity to
include a commentary on Kayser’s book in the final version. He criticizes Kayser for only taking
note of the Romantic and modernist forms of the grotesque while ignoring the Renaissance
forms from which it is derived, according to Bakhtin (46-47).
Kayser defines the grotesque by gloominess, fear, the hostile, alien and inhuman.
According to Kayser the grotesque expresses what he calls the ‘id’, an “alien inhuman power,
governing the world, men, their life and behavior”. According to Bakhtin, Kayser reduces many
aspects of the grotesque to this power of the ‘id’, for example in the theme of madness; in the
Romantic grotesque, the madman has always something alien in himself, “as if some inhuman
spirit of irony had entered his soul” (49). In a world ruled by an alien ‘id’, one cannot be free,
according to Bakhtin, and it is exactly this freedom that characterizes the carnivalesque laughter
of the Renaissance. The madness of the Romantic is somber and tragic; Renaissance madness is a
gay parody of official reason (39); the Romantic grotesque expresses fear but the folk culture of
the Renaissance is fearless.
Le Grand Macabre can be interpreted as a mix of both types of grotesque. There is the aspect of
laughter that overcomes fear: however, that does not mean that an aspect of fear is not present in
the opera. Dutch non-specialist commentator Marjoleine de Vos states in a column in the
newspaper about the arias of the Gepopo used in a documentary on Ligeti: “One could truly feel
the fear, stylised like this in the excessive, high notes”. 11 Already in this quote the stylization of
the notes is pointed at to explain the feeling of fear. This stylization could also be called
alienation.
Most emotional gestures in the piece (the erotic desire of Amando and Amanda, the
aggressiveness of Mescalina) are so exaggerated that they get a cartoon-like quality. Ligeti himself
35
speaks about the figure of the “superexpressive” in this sense, an expressive gesture or mood that
is exaggerated in such a way that it alienates, that it turns into an emotional cool which prevents
identification of the audience (Seherr Thoss 188; Várnai 15, 19). Ligeti himself sees the alienation
as a tool to overcome fear. His Requiem (1963-1965) already included the subtitle: “Aufhebung
der Angst durch Verfremdung”. Ligeti relates this fascination to his personal history and to the
world around him.
Fear and overcoming fear by distancing yourself from it. Look at fear from the wrong
side of the telescope. (…) The comic elements, fear, buffa and seria are not only
inextricably mixed up in it, they merge and become one and the same thing. What is
serious is at the same time comical and the comical is terrifying. (Várnai, 81)
At the same time, though, fear is very real for Ligeti:
La peur liée à la mort, liée surtout, plus spécifiquement, à la situation actuelle : à chaque
minute, à chaque seconde, notre monde peut périr. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de la bombe
atomique, ce serait une terrible simplification. Mais nous avons constamment ce
sentiment en nous, qu’à chaque moment nous pouvons mourir, pas seulement
individuellement, mais toute notre civilisation (…) Dans ma vie personnelle, bien sûr, j’ai
vécu l’époque nazie en Hongrie et puis la dictature staliniste, très méchante. Des millions
de gens sont morts, ont souffert (Sabbe 23).
Where Marjoleine de Vos points at the alienation or stylization for her feeling of fear, Ligeti
himself points at the same alienation as a tool to overcoming this fear. In my opinion it can do
both: alienation can arouse fear and also, through the created distance, diminish fear through
laughter.
36
The final scene of the opera confirms a reading of Le Grand Macabre as being a mix of
both expressing and overcoming fear. As we saw before, it is both a fearless ‘carpe diem’ and the
irony of it. In this case, the music helps to enforce a certain ambivalence.
This is also the case in the many coloraturas in the score of Le Grand Macabre. Coloraturas
have by their nature an alienating effect, since they interrupt the storyline and the text, thus
creating a certain time of music without any ‘content’ as such. These alienating moments can be
both unsettling and comical, both (slightly) frightening and laughter-invoking.
An example of a coloratura that combines laughter and fear is in the first scene, when
Piet meets Nekrotzar. Piet sings ‘Breughell-a-a-a-nd’ while changing mood almost every bar
(“emotiona / secretive / frightened / gentle / lightly / fantastically” and from there via “mildly
crazy” to “completely mad”) (33-34/49-50). This final madness seems to express both a
carnivalesque laughter of the character as well as an (anticipating) fear for what is coming. At the
same time, for an audience, the extended coloratura is both comical and unsettling.
In general coloraturas in this opera (and perhaps even in general) with many (nonsense)
syllables imitate laughter, since this is the only human sound which uses repeated syllables as hihi-hi or ha-ha-ha (and variations of that) as opposed to wordless screaming for example, which
consists of one longer syllable. 12 Thus, many of this coloraturas show similarity to laughter, but
very little of them are of pure happiness. There is a laughing scene in the third scene, in which
the White and Black Minister make fun of Prince Go-Go. They put him on a rocking horse
(147/294), and when Prince Go-Go protests, the ministers proceed by singing a laughing duet
(151/300-304). It is a fearless laughter that accompanies an act of inverting the power of the
monarch, and in that sense it is carnivalesque. Nevertheless, the laughter of the Black and White
Ministers is called “wicked” and “mechanical” in the score. In that sense it seems to have more in
common with the Romantic grotesque laughter (as in Bakhtin’s interpretation of Kayser) in
which laughter is cynic, satanic and bitter, in which humor is “destructive” rather than life-giving,
opposed to the gay, liberating and regenerating laughter of the carnivalesque (Bakhtin 51).
37
Another example of ‘Romantic laughter’ is the laugh of Prince Go-Go, who laughs with
“malicious joy” when the two ministers see the crowd arriving at the palace and are in doubt
what to do (173/372-374).
Perhaps the most fearful character is that of the Chief of the Gepopo. He is rapidly changing
between “insane” and “panicking” in his/her solo on nonsense syllables when expecting the
arrival of Nekrotzar in the palace (starting 188/419). His panic is varying from “completely
insanely”, to a “paroxysm of excitement, confusion and panic” until finally reaching a climax in
which the Chief is so completely beside himself that he can just repeat “Da” on the note c’
(193/431) in which he is supposed to “increase the intensity as far as possible – until unbearable”.
In this panic the inability to speak is found, the inability to put this emotion into words: the
wordless singing is a direct example of the fear within the character.
It is difficult to perceive this passage as having an element of the carnivalesque in it: more
easily it could be read as an expression Romantic madness: the Chief of the Gepopo seems to
have a somewhat alien force in himself, since his cry of panic takes very long and exceed the
limits of the bearable (and is technically very difficult; the singer almost needs an alien force to
succeed). As said before, the Chief lacks the freedom that characterizes the carnivalesque
grotesque. This is another inversion; where the Secret Police outside of the opera has an
unlimited freedom to limit the freedom of others, this Chief is the most restrained figure in the
entire opera, and is himself possessed by an alien force.
Thus, as a figure, limited instead of limiting, he has some aspect of the carnivalesque,
which is enhanced by his carnivalesque change of disguises. His singing though, could only be
interpreted as ‘Romantic’ madness.
If the madness of the Gepopo is an example of Romantic madness, Piet’s reaction to the
coming apocalypse could be said to be the only truly carnivalesque one in the piece, the only one
that truly overcomes fear through laughter. Until the end, he refuses to take Nekrotzar serious:
38
even when the apocalypse finally has arrived, Piet still sings “fallerilala, falalalala” (224/506),
“with complete abandon”, “with exaggerated jollity” (226/510). He truly “uncrowns” the alien
force, typified by Nekrotzar, transforming it into a “funny monster” (Bakhtin 49), since he is the
one that gives Nekrotzar so much wine that the latter forgets to actually destroy the world (224252/506-564).
Laughter and coloratura offers an area for an ambivalent play between fear and overcoming fear.
First of all, we can discern its form and its function: laughter can have as a function to soften the
fear of the character himself while being very alienating in for example the extended coloratura
that it is. Next to that, there is an interplay between the laughter and fears of the public and of
the characters. The interplay between fear and laughter can also take place in the interaction
between the opera (characters) and the public. The manic coloraturas of the Chief of the Gepopo
can have the role of expressing his fear within the story, while invoking an amused reaction from
the public. Likewise, the coloraturas of Piet de Pot (as in Breughelland) have as function in the
story to express the way he defeats fear through laughter, while having an alienating effect on the
audience.
A last grotesque element that cannot be ignored is that of the mask. 13 Seherr-Thoss relates genres
like the parody to the in the carnivalesque very important theme of the mask: “Let us point out
that such manifestations as parodies, caricatures, grimaces, eccentric postures, and comic gestures
are per se derived from the mask” (40). He associates the mask with lifelessness, with mechanical
music, with ‘erstarrung’ (Seherr-Thoss 114) .
According to Bakhtin though, the carnivalesque mask of the Renaissance is “connected
with the joy of change and reincarnation, with gay relativity and with the merry negation of
uniformity and similarity. (…) The mask is related to transition, metamorphoses, the violation of
natural boundaries” (Bakhtin 39-40). It is playful, based on the exchange between reality and
39
image. The Romantic mask, on the contrary, is also secretive and deceiving: it hides a terrible
vacuum. Critchley connects this vacuum behind the mask with death:
The paradox at the heart of the representation of death is best conveyed by the figure of
prosopopeia, the trope by which an absent or imaginary person is presented as speaking or
acting, a form which indicates the failure of presence, a face which withdraws behind the
form which presents it. The representation of death is always a mask – a memento mori –
behind which nothing stands (Critchley 26).
Le Grand Macabre is such a representation, and it is therefore not very strange that István Balázs
sees the very genre of opera as a mask:
Ligeti utilise le genre de l’opéra lui-même comme un masque! L’aspect subversif se trouve
donc surtout dans la structure musico-dramatique. Tout l’opéra est conçu ‘à l’abri des
hardiesses légitimées par le carnaval (Balázs 87).
Kostakeva associates the many allusions in the music with the mask: Nekrotzar and Piet are an
echo of Don Quijote and Sancho Panchez or of Don Giovanni and Leporello (Kostakeva 176).
In the work itself it is mainly the Chief of the Gepopo who wears masks, as a form of
disguise. It can be interpreted in two ways: either a way of violating the natural boundaries of
seriousness that are around a Chief of the Secret Police, or as an expression of a ‘terrible
vaccuum’ behind that mask.
Le Grand Macabre seems to have thus elements of both types of the grotesque, as Seherr-Thoss
concludes in his dissertation on Le Grand Macabre. He does not take notice of Bakhtin’s use of the
word grotesque, but juxtaposes the concept of the carnivalesque (Bakhtin) and the grotesque
40
(Kayser), ignoring the discussion of Kayser by Bakhtin as well. According to Seherr-Thoss, the
carnivalesque element in Ligeti is quasi the opposite of the [Romantic] grotesque which is
connected to the thematic of death (115). In the end Seherr-Toss concludes that Kaysers
grotesque and Bakhtin’s carnivalesque both have the ability to destroy fear by laughter (117).
In my opinion, in this way the opposition grotesque – carnivalesque is too easily
identified as an opposition of ‘occupied with death’ to ‘occupied with life’. Next to that, as was
argued before, in Le Grand Macabre both genres are often intertwined. Moreover, one may
question the idea that the ‘Romantic grotesque’ overcomes fear with laughter. It is a matter of
discussion to what extent it is the goal of Le Grand Macabre to free the audience from fear and to
what extent it aims to express fear in the many coloraturas. In the end the fear is not necessarily
dissolved; death ultimately remains a sovereign power.
Lastly it should be noted that Bakhtin identifies a third line of the grotesque in which laughter in
Le Grand Macabre could be placed, and that is the 20th century form. Bakhtin identifies the
grotesque in two different 20th century traditions. First of all the modernist form represented by
Alfred Jarry, which is connected with the Romantic tradition and influenced by existentialism;
secondly the form which Bakhtin calls “realist grotesque” that can be found in the works of
Thomas Mann, Berthold Brecht and Pablo Neruda (Bakhtin 46). It would be most obvious to
place Ligeti in the first tradition, since he expressed his admiration for Alfred Jarry, for example
when he first met Michael Meschke: he explained than that he wanted something “cruel and
frightening based on the pictures of Brueghel and Bosch and writers like Jarry, Kafka and Boris
Vian” (Steinitz 220). He chose as a basis for the libretto a play of de Ghelderode, who greatly
admired Jarry as well (221). Pantomime, puppet theatre and surrealism are the keywords to
describe works by Jarry (223-224). 14
Kostakeva analyzes several functions of the laugh in the theatre of the absurd, (Jarry,
Ionesco). First, it is a reaction on the massacres of the 20th century that are so huge that a serious
41
story is not possible anymore. This function could be read in Le Grand Macabre as well,
considering its authors experiences in these wars. Secondly, laughter gives new strength to bear
existence; moreover it is a revolution against the serious society, a reaction to a lack of freedom
and unhappiness, an attempt to subvert an immovable world (Kostakeva 94). In this function we
can recognize the imaginary of the carnivalesque.
V.
Conclusion
The concept of the carnivalesque creates a separation between the hierarchical, static world and
the life-giving ambivalent time of carnival. The concept seems apt for a reading of Le Grand
Macabre, since Ligeti strives for a Rabalaisian atmosphere and it was precisely a book about
Rabelais that Bakhtin designed the concept for. Moreover, the concept is fruitful in its use the
concepts of both laughter and death.
I examined the aspect of inversion that seems to be paramount for the carnivalesque: first
of all, the inversions of death (a sine qua non for its representation) that occurs especially in the
end of the opera resulting in the conclusion ‘death is a character Æ death can die, too’. In all its
ambivalence, the end of Le Grand Macabre is an inversion of the categories of death and life as
such, which is truly ‘carnivalesque’ in itself: according to Bakhtin, death is the indispensable
component of life, the condition of its constant renewal and rejuvenation. The related inversion
is the inversion (and therefore, according to Lachmann, the denial) of hierarchical powers, which
are the source of death for powers-sake.
Bakhtin’s concept of the open body proved to be a well chosen metaphor to describe the
interplay between the opera and the various sources it alludes to, quotes from and imitates. This
openness of the body is for Bakhtin life-giving: it is not a static whole, but is always ambivalent
and transforming. Next to that, Bakhtin’s idea of the body and its ‘lower’ aspects being life-giving
offered a way of relating the omnipresent cursing and drinking in the opera to issues of life and
death.
42
Bakhtin’s distinction between the folk grotesque and the Romantic grotesque and the
introduction of the grotesque alienation, enabled us to examine the role of the musical
“superexpressive” and its relation to both laughter and fear.
43
Chapter 2. Bergson on laughter and the mechanic
In Le Rire (1900), translated as Laughter, Henri Bergson (1859-1941) analyses that which invokes
laughter, more than the laughter itself that is suggested by the title. He calls this subject either
“the comic”, or that which is “laughable”. Bergson searches to find the essence of all those forms
of comedy and the laughable, and although this objective to find the essence of all forms of the
comic is somewhat ambitious and questionable, his conclusions are certainly of interest for our
topic.
Bergson central thesis is that something is comic when a mechanic, automatic element
occurs in the midst of vital, elastic life. 15 This mechanic element is a threat to pure life and must
for that reason be ‘punished’ by laughter. Laughter therefore always has a humiliating aspect.
The mechanical, the rigid or the automatic is always something opposite to life (and thus
lifeless). Although Bergson does not mention death in his book, for the sake of this thesis this
lifelessness will be roughly equated with death. The difference between both could be that death
is something lifeless that has been alive before: however, since Bergson sees his mechanics as
something that actually threatens life, as something that has the power to end life, it seems just to
equal it with death, since death is the pure negation of life and therefore the only ultimate threat
to it.
This clarifies why Bergson is relevant for an analysis of Le Grand Macabre: he places
laughter on the axis of death and life: he combines the aspect of a threatening lifelessness with
comedy and it is precisely this combination of laughter and death that characterizes Le Grand
Macabre. Furthermore, Bergson’s theory offers the possibility to focus on the mechanic
movements and changes that Ligeti so frequently employs in his opera and to relate them to what
we defined as its main subject, death.
44
This chapter will consist of an exposition of Bergson’s ideas about the comic. In the
second part of the chapter, Bergson’s ideas about laughter and the mechanic will be related to Le
Grand Macabre.
I.
Bergson’s Le rire
Bergson’s aim is not to give a definition of the comic – he sees definitions as opposite to the ‘élan
vital’, which is a central notion in his philosophy, which he developed in L’evolution creatrice (1907).
This ‘élan vital’ is according to Bergson the motor behind the evolution, instead of blind
mutation: he therefore also calls it somewhat mystically a ‘life drive’ (Prusak 377). The concept of
the ‘élan vital’ is meant to replace a purely mechanistic understanding of life, which would
preclude all possibility of change and creativity (Lawlor). Laughter is, according to Bergson, also
subject to this ‘élan vital’: it is a “living thing”, which passes by “imperceptible gradations”, which
grows and expands and is in continuing change and therefore cannot be defined (Bergson 72).
It is to this ‘élan vital’ that the rigidity of the mechanical is a threat: the contrast between
the mechanic and the vital therefore plays a large role in Bergson’s magnum opus Le rire.
According to Bergson, what makes us laugh is the automatic, rigid, artificial or mechanistic within
life. The mechanic an sich does not make us laugh, since the comic does not exist outside the
strictly human: a landscape is never laughable, unless one detects a human expression in it
(Bergson 62). 16 This explains why, obviously, death in its pure form does not make us laugh, as
philosopher Bernard Prusak observes: in that case the corpse must be the most comical thing in
the world, which it is not, although “by contrast, a person that somehow acts like a corpse -a
person who is somehow ‘dead’ to the world- may be laughable since he or she gives the
appearance of being at once living and dead” (Prusak 379).
The laughable starts when something mechanical enters into the pure life, when the
“mechanical inelasticity” appears “just where one would expect to find the wide-awake
adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being” (Bergson 67).
45
The rigid, the ready-made, the mechanical, in contrast with the supple, the ever-changing
and the living, absentmindedness in contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in
contrast with free activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain
correct (Bergson 145).
With this notion, Bergson surpasses other explanations of laughter, which usually point at a
sudden transformation or a sudden incongruity as the universal cause of laughter (Prusak 378).
Laughter thus can be perceived as a type of punishment for the corruption of life. “Tension and
elasticity are two forces, mutually complementary, which life brings into play”, in the body, in the
mind as well as in the character, Bergson argues (72). According to Bergson, the lack of tension
and elasticity in a human being leads to a society at risk, because it is a “possible sign of a
slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies (…) in short because it is
the sign of an eccentricity” (73).
Society has to react to this eccentricity and will do this in laughter. Laughter, therefore, is
not just about esthetics, it “pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement”, it is a means of
correction, and is in that aspect distinguishable from art (73). Bergson’s laughter is a mocking at
those who do not have the suppleness to adapt. “Always rather humiliating for the one against
whom it is directed, laughter is, really and truly, a kind of social ‘ragging’,” Bergson claims
(Bergson 148). In its negative task of punishing and correcting, Bergson’s laughter is opposed to
Bakhtin’s positive laughter, as Bakhtin himself noticed:
For the Renaissance the characteristic trait of laughter was precisely the recognition of its
positive, regenerating, creative meaning. This clearly distinguishes it from the later
46
theories of the philosophy of laughter, including Bergson’s conception, which brings out
mostly its negative functions” (Bakhtin 71).
If this line of thought is followed, laughter has a very peculiar relation to death. On the one hand,
its aim is to correct the dead, rigid elements within life. On the other hand, it does so by means
of humiliation, that is, by a symbolic ‘killing’ of those elements or characters. The comic sees the
other as a ‘lifeless’ phenomenon, which perhaps is all the more possible since it requires a certain
distance to this other: “Laughter (…) is evidently disposed to look upon another’s personality as
a marionette of which he pulls the strings” (189), Bergson says, and he adds: “the comic can only
begin at the point where our neighbor’s personality ceases to affect us” (Bergson 147).
Yet, Bergson’s and Bakhtin’s laughter have in common that they ultimately aim at the
regeneration of society. Bergson’s laughter is also al life-giving phenomenon like it is in Bakhtin’s
approach: however, it is so in a ‘negative’ way, by punishing and humiliating bad elements. As
Bergson concludes: “here as elsewhere, nature has utilized evil with a view to good” (189).
Bergson divides his subject into three categories: the comic in situations, in words and in
character. Concerning the comic in situations, Bergson distinguishes repetition, inversion and
interference as the main methods of light comedy (118). All of these methods oppose the
evolution in time of a ‘self-contained system’ which is, according to Bergson, quintessential to life:
in a living world, reversal in time is impossible and a living being is always a ‘self-contained
system’. Thus, the counterpart of evolution in time is repetition; the opposite of linearity in time
is inversion; the opposite of a self-contained system is the reciprocal interference of series.
Interference happens when a situation belongs “simultaneously to two altogether independent
series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same
time” (123).
47
An example of a social situation in which life is stiffened, is the genre of the disguise.
Everyone in disguise is comic, because it is a masquerade, a “mechanical tampering with life” (88).
Social disguise is thus also laughable. Social masquerade takes place when something inert,
stereotyped, or ready-made is involved, when the focus is on the surface, that is, on the
ceremonial side of living society (89). 17
The second category of comic is the comic in language: “the comic meaning is invariably
obtained when an absurd idea is fitted into a well-established phrase-form”: that is, for example,
when a cliché or expression is slightly altered (133). In this case, the established phrase is the
mechanic that causes laughter. Bergson mentions inversion and interference (a sentence has a
double meaning: the comic is explained by absentmindedness, a lapse of attention), but he
considers transposition as more far-reaching (139). Transposition means putting a certain
sentence in a different discourse (Bergson uses the word “key”), for example from the solemn
into the familiar: this will result in parody (140). This transposition can be either a degradation or
an exaggeration of the initial “key”.
In character, the comic can be explained from the unsociable, unaccommodating aspect
of the one that is laughed at and from his absentmindedness. Not the personality of a person is
the object for the laughable, but a certain vice that is present in this person: the focus on this vice
turns the person in a character or even a caricature (70-71). This explains the difference between
drama and comedy: in drama the focus is on actions whereas in comedy the gestures are far more
important, since this is what is automatic in characters, what happens unconsciously. Comedy is
centered around a type of person; that is, around the ready-made element in the person (70). It is
fascinated by the surface, since the life is inside, and the surface is the label (159). Bergson: “The
essential difference between tragedy and comedy, the former being concerned with individuals
and the latter with classes (…)” (167).
48
In summary, Bergson’s laughter is a punishment of that which threatens vital and elastic
life. It appears in situations: in repetition, inversion and interference; in words: in inversion,
interference and transposition; and in character: in absentmindedness and vices.
II.
Art and life
Before examining in greater detail the mechanical in Ligeti’s music, another aspect of the
relationship between the artificial (mechanical) and the living should be noted and that is the
relationship between art and life in Ligeti’s perception. Art itself is, according to Ligeti, essentially
artificial. The success of the Fluxus movement in the sixties forced Ligeti to speak out about the
difference between art and life:
I will tell you exactly what is between me and these happening people. They believe that
life is art and art is life. I appreciate very much Cage and many people, but my artistic
credo is that art – every art – is not life. It is something artificial (Ligeti "Ligeti Talks to
Adrian Jack" 30).
In another interview, Ligeti mentions the negative aspects of combining art and life:
I was not impressed with him [Cage]. (…) I had come from a communist dictatorship in
Hungary. For me there was no unity between life and art” (Zsonay 99).
Moreover:
For me, a work of art is a finished and defined thing. It has nothing to do with everyday
life. Indirectly it has to do with life, but it does on a different level (Ligeti "Ligeti Talks to
Adrian Jack").
49
Bergson speaks about art and life as well, although he does so of course from a completely
different point of view. He sees the comic as different from both life and art. The distinction
between art and comedy is based on the fact that comedy only flourishes within society, although
it is as the same time only effective when one keeps society at a distance.
The task of art is to reveal true life: in normal life, this truth is hindered by processes of
selection, based on what is useful in everyday situations, or by labeling, of which words are the
most pronounced example (Bergson 158-160). Art has as a goal to “brush aside” the utilitarian,
the conventional and the general that is necessary to keep society together and wants to be almost
more lifelike than life itself (161-63). In that sense, Bergson has a different and even contrasting
view on art compared to Ligeti.
However, according to Bergson, comedy works with opposite tactics: it makes us aware
of the generalities and similarities around us, revealing their comic side and humiliating them
through laughter. Comedy accepts social life as a natural environment, and in this respect turns
its back upon art, which is based on a break rupture from society in a return to pure nature in
view of finding its truth (171). The comic thus has a social meaning, since it laughs at faults in the
realm of the social rather than the moral (150). However, it functions precisely by its callousness
to social life, its detachment from the object of laughter, a lack of identification with the object of
laughter (146-47, 150). Therefore, the theatre is the place for comedy, since it is a social
environment while at the same time keeping distance. In this description of comedy, we can find
a similarity with Ligeti’s strict separation of life and art. Comedy only works by means of
detachment and by having as its subject the artificial and the ready-made.
From Bergson’s statement it is clear that comedy relates to society precisely through its rupture
from it. This may shed light on Ligeti’s separation between life and art. As we saw before, Ligeti
acknowledges that art has something to do with life “on a different level”. Ligeti strictly wants to
50
separate (his) art from the reality of frightening regimes: the interference of higher, destructive
and even mechanical powers should not affect it. By doing so, a new space is created, perhaps
even for real life. This ‘second’ space is an intentionally artificial space, however one that perhaps
by its artificiality can offer more freedom, because it is not subject to the laws of that other world.
In this sense, a more ambivalent model seems to replace once more the strict opposition between
life and artificiality (or, death). Life is sometimes more artificial than art, while art, perhaps
because of its artificiality, allows for possibilities that even more lively and dynamic than those
that may be encountered in real life.
Applied to the theme of laugher and the mechanic, this means that the mechanical nature
of the artificial world of Le Grand Macabre, may be considered as a means to relate to the
mechanical in the outside world, especially in view of the laughter it arouses. Like Bergson says,
precisely the rupture with society establishes also the relation to society: creating a detachment
from society makes it possible to examine society’s mechanical elements to the full. We will
return to this point in the next paragraphs.
III.
The mechanical in Ligeti’s music
The category of the mechanical is of great importance to György Ligeti. There is even one type
of musical texture that he gave the name meccanico, an expression that appears in Le Grand Macabre
as well. What are the features of this meccanico music? In general it has always something to do
with a machine-like quality, with mechanical sounds or technical mechanisms: it is related to the
‘clocks’ from the term “clocks and clouds” that is often used to define Ligeti’s music, in which
the ‘clocks’ refer to ticking, short sounds and the ‘clouds’ to large masses of sounds (Clendinning
192-94). 18 These clocks and clouds in general seem to refer to respectively time (clocks, ticking),
and timelessness (in the clouds, that form a mass without any reference development and linear
time).
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As an example of the meccanico style, Ligeti mentions his Poème Symphonique (1962), in
which 100 metronomes are running, in different speeds but at the same time. They form one
thick, form- and timeless mass of sound, gradually dying out. When the last metronome stops
running, the piece has finished. 19 This composition is a good example of how Ligeti employs the
themes of time and timelessness: the metronomes create a thick, form- and timeless mass of
sound, but are themselves a symbol for time running (out). A metronome is an instrument for
measuring (linear) time, however, in the piece, linear time becomes a mass in which the ticking of
one instrument cannot be discerned from that of another: this timelessness in its static refusal to
develop that can be read as an absence of liveliness, and it ultimately alludes to death. Poème
Symphonique ends when the 100 metronomes ‘die’, when they finish by themselves. 20
Time and timelessness can also be found in the story of Gyula Krudy (1878-1933), to
which Ligeti time and again refers when explaining the source of his fascination for the mechanic.
The story is about a widow living alone and isolated in a house situated on a dune, a house full of
clocks. Ligeti has read the story as a child and it fascinated him ever since: “the meccanico-type
music really originates from reading that story as a five-year-old, on a hot summer afternoon”
(Várnai 17). This story of Gyula Krudy confirms an interpretation of the meccanico as the symbol
for the absence of life: the main character of the story is a widow – her husband died and she is
alone, living a static life in which every moment in time is the same. The mechanic seems to
symbolize the absence of suppleness, of vitality, as it does in Bergson’s conception. In the story,
the ticking of the clock clearly refers to time. However, the entire image of the story seems a
static one, nothing really happens, a widow is living on an isolated dune, and therefore it has a
timeless aspect as well.
Ligeti mentions traces of the meccanico style dating further back than Poème Symphonique, for
example in his first string quartet (1953-54; “machine-like ornaments”), and later, in the section
‘horloges démoniaques’ of Nouvelles Aventures (1962-65), in the fifth movement of the second
string quartet and in Continuum for harpsichord (both 1968) (Várnai 16). Other pieces that Ligeti
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has called meccanico are the organ piece Coulée (1969) and the Ten Pieces for Wind Quartet (1968)
(Clendinning 194).
Although Ligeti obviously is attracted to mechanic movements, he is also very fascinated by
disruptions of that movement.
Other everyday experiences came to be added to the memory of the house full of ticking
clocks [of the story of Gyula Krudy]; images of buttons we push and a machine would
start working or not, as the case may be, lifts that sometimes work and sometimes do not,
or stop at the wrong floor; the Chaplin film, Modern Times, one of the great movie
experiences of my childhood. Recalcitrant machinery, unmanageable automata have
always fascinated me (Varnai 17).
Ligeti has a clear fascination with the defect in the machine, with the slight irregularity in it (cf.
Seherr-Thoss 189-90). This would suggest a ‘carnivalesque’ treatment of the mechanics because
machines indeed are related to rigidity: however, in Ligeti’s music he often plays with disruptions
of this fixedness.
IV.
Mechanical elements in Le Grand Macabre
Ligeti’s art has many of the qualifications Bergson gives to the comic: it is involved with inversion,
transposition, repetition and disguise as well as with degradation and exaggeration, as will be
explained in this paragraph.
We will start from the other end of the argument, though, by examining not that what is
comical and tracing it back to its mechanical reason, but by first tracing exactly that which is
mechanical in the opera. It should be noted that although there is in all these mechanic elements
an opposition to life and thus a connection with death, (explicit or implicit,) not all these
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mechanical elements in the piece are comical. This could be due to the double character of the
opera as explained in the first chapter: on the one hand, it deals with death and fear, which is not
comical, however could be straightly related to the mechanical; on the other hand, there are
elements of lifelessness that are comical. The latter could be explained from the perspective of
Bergson’s theory, from an insertion of the mechanical within a lively surrounding. Laugher can
be seen as humiliation of the mechanical in order to prevent it – yet, death cannot be prevented,
and therefore there is a mechanical element in the piece that is not comical since it is not to be
overcome, as death ultimately is not to be overcome (regardless of what one thinks about an
afterlife, clearly one has to die first). Lastly, elements will be examined that can be interpreted
both in a comical and a non-comical, perhaps even fearful or tragic way, depending on the
perception of the listener.
This will be the main point in this paragraph, in which the mechanic elements in Le Grand
Macabre are examined. First, the textures and forms in the music will be analyzed. Consequently,
the instrumentation of certain passages will be considered; further on, we will focus on the role
of the cliché, or, in Bergson’s words, on the ‘ready-made’ element in the music. Lastly, some
‘Bergsonian’ characteristics of the mechanic in social situations, character and language will be
observed.
The mechanic in musical structure.
There are several types of meccanico textures in Ligeti’s music:
A. One of them is the category of the ‘overexpressive’ (see chapter 1), which Ligeti sometimes
identifies with his ‘meccanico’ style, for example in the laughter of the ministers which should be
executed meccanico according to the score (173/373). It is an emotional gesture that is exaggerated
to such an extent and in such a mechanical way that a comic effect is reached. Its mechanic
aspect consolidates an ‘overexpressive’ quality that is “emotionally cool” and alienating and thus
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frightening or comic. Alienation has a negative side: it can work in a distancing, and perhaps
frightening way, although the same distance can invoke laughter, as Bergson said.
The ‘overexpressive’ is reached most frequently through a frantic repetition of small
elements in the music. This is also in accordance with Bergson’s view: he mentioned repetition as
one of the features of the mechanical that may invoke laughter.
This ‘overexpressive’ repetition happens for example in the erotic sighing of “perish” by
Amanda and Amando (11-13/18-19). In this scene the alienation is mainly comic, since this
coloratura is an artificial interruption of the ‘organic’ sentence they are singing, it is thus a
mechanical intervention within a ‘lively’ atmosphere.
When Piet sings “Breughelland” in the first act, he does so in an exaggerated extended
way (34/50). The main reason for the mechanical quality of the passage is its great focus on
technical difficulty (trills, other ornaments, falsetto singing). The focus on this element seems to
make every other aspect disappear, including a ‘lively’ musical performance (both for the listener
and performer). The action of the drama stops for a moment, a timeless moment is created –
time standing still, could refer to death in this opera. Moreover, the living performer suddenly
acts as a machine. It is comical therefore, for the same reasons as mentioned above: something
lively is transformed into something mechanical.
Another example of a mechanical performance of something that would otherwise be
lively are the cries of pain by Astradamors, who is about to be hit by a spit by his wife Mescalina.
He sings a - e - i - o - u – ue - oe - the vowels of the alphabet in the right order (the score
comments: “but the pain is unreal: stylized, artificial sighing”) (84/145). This is a very conscious
artificiality which certainly also falls into the ‘comic’ category of Bergson.
Repetition is the keyword in the three aria’s of the Chief of the Gepopo as well, of which
the last section consists of the repetitive singing of “Call the guard!”, that dies out until only “da!”
(190-195/426-433). This passage was in Chapter one an example of Romantic madness; reading it
through Bergson’s theory, this madness gets a comic quality. This passage, and perhaps even
55
more the beginning of this aria, in which the Gepopo sings trills and tremoli without text, have
the same technical difficulties as the passages of Piet de Pot discussed above, which enhances
their mechanic quality. Because of its alienating effect this passage is both frightening and
comical. We can add an extra layer of meaning to this when taking into account Carolyn Abbate’s
interpretation of the coloratura: in the coloratura, the voice becomes speechless, and thus
becomes an instrument: a channel through which another ‘soul’ expresses himself, something
mechanical and lifeless, therefore (Abbate 94).
The same happens when his wife scares Astradamors with a spider after which
Astradamors sings a very mechanical atonal coloratura on the word “spider”, later on just
repeating one note (90/161-163). It is perhaps comical although equally expressing fear; it is just
not such a serious fear due to the very stylized nature of the expression.
Another example is the passage where the choir of the people sings “our great leader”
and repeat this for several minutes, getting faster and louder (starting 173/378). This is once
more an example of the combination of fear and comedy, since the overwhelming nature of this
choir is rather frightening, however, the acceleration is an unnatural aspect that exaggerates the
mechanical in such a way that it is comical at the same time.
The last example of the ‘overexpressive’ would be the mechanical laughter of the White
and Black Minister at the beginning of the second scene. They are laughing at Prince Go-Go who
claims that they cannot make their resignation, basing himself on the constitution. The White and
Black Minister laugh at pitches that are repetitive in pitch, rhythm and vowel (hahahaha/hee-heehee/ho-ho-ho etc.) (151/300-302). Here the object that is comical through its stylisation of
something that would otherwise not be stylised, is a laughter itself. The laughter is transformed in
a comedy.
We can conclude from this that the alienation reached through this mechanical ‘overexpressive’
can go both ways: it always has an aspect of comedy, since it is always something lively that is
56
transformed or interrupted by a mechanical form of repetition; however, this comedy sometimes
also has an aspect of fear in itself, due to the ‘alienating’ effect.
B. The other type of meccanico structure is not marked by this emotionally cool expressiveness, but
by an extensive repetition of smaller motives or even of one note. The difference with the
examples mentioned under A. would be, that here it almost always concerns instrumental
passages. These passages are thus already less lively in themselves (they do not involve characters,
or actions), and therefore as we will see the mechanical aspect is often not as comical as it was in
the previous examples. The mechanical more often has a reference to the military and to the rigid
in itself, thus referring to death in a more direct way.
The only instance in which “meccanico” is indicated in the score is in the third act, just
after the people shouting the name of Prince Go-Go. All wind instruments and piano play
irregular repetitive patterns of eight notes, often repeating pitch as well, preluding the beginning
of the third aria of the Gepopo (177/387). This cannot be called comical, since the lively aspects,
in which the mechanical should be embedded in order to be comical, are absent.
Another example is the section in which Nekrotzar announces for the first time his plans
to destroy the world, in which the entire orchestra plays 8-notes on the beat and Nekrotzar sings
his messages on a repetitive, irregular c’ (40-42/59-63). However, this pattern is made irregular by
an independent metronome which is running throughout the section. This is an example of the
irregularity within the system or machine. However, the metronome can also be interpreted as
‘time’, going on no matter what, regardless its surroundings
Another particular example occurs towards the end of the second scene (“finale”), when
Nekrotzar is announcing the end of the world once more. Nekrotzar, and the duo
Piet/Astradamors sing in steady triplets that always repeat the same pitch at least three times,
accompanied by a tambourine piccolo amongst others (starting 126/250). The percussion gives it
a war-like flavour, and is thus explicitly linked to the mechanical, which threatens society.
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Another passage that has the sound of militarism is the first entrance of Prince Go-Go, especially
through the use of a military drum just after(147/294). A moment in which this type of
militarism is combined with references to the apocalypse, in the use of brass after Nekrotzar
arrives in the third scene (213-215/474-480). In its use of triad like motives it refers to militarism;
in its choice of instrument to both war and the apocalypse.
A last scene where this type of repetition is used, is towards the end of the piece, when
Piet and Astradamors are trying to make Nekrotzar drunk. “Nekrotzar continues drinking, his
mind elsewhere, mechanically”. This mechanics are in the music as well, where groups of
instruments give sharp fortississimo accents, which form a stumbling and angular irregular rhythm
that resembles a hampering machine. Piet/Astradamors and Nekrotzar are shouting, “Drink”
(Piet and Astradamors) and “Up!” (Nekrotzar), in a regular, but slowly shifting pattern. “The
filling and draining of the glass becomes more and more mechanical – the whole scene becomes
steadily more orgiastic” (232-238/523-533). This passage contains a combination of the ‘orgiastic’
carnivalesque as discussed in the previous chapter, and the comical and death-like mechanics. 21
C. A rather different texture but with the same type of mechanic atmosphere (‘bizarro”) is to be
found expressly in the second scene. This type of music is characterized by larges intervals,
staccatissimo playing and a complementary rhythmic structure existing of sixteenth and eight notes
only. Because of its interruptive nature it is slightly comical. Examples can be found throughout
the second scene (76/120-83/136).
D. Another mechanic element in the musical texture is to be found not in the textures themselves,
but in the abrupt changing between them, which makes an artificial and comical impression. For
example: the “orgiastic” drinking scene breaks of “suddenly, without accent” (with ffffff),
immediately followed by a string section playing Mozart-like music, “andantino con moto,
grazioso, cantabile” (238-239/533-534). 22
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A different example of this is the passage of Piets statement “have now and then
hallucination”, where the second of the “hallucinations” ends very high and repetitive intervals of
a major third, followed by a silence of the voice and two music boxes playing (30/44). The
changes are very abrupt and illogical, because of the surprise it is comical.
E. The last type of texture that should be discussed is a texture that I will call ‘frozen’. It consists
typically of static, high piercing sound clusters, that differ in their static quality from the so-called
‘cloud’ sounds, which always have a lot of movement in the different voices. This static texture
could be read as something ‘mechanic’, since it is motionless: it defies all sense of elasticity. It is
especially connected to the parts in the opera that have something to do with the universe: for
example in the second act, where Venus starts to appear. Very high clustered notes accompany
her (100/184), notes that return whenever the light of the comet returns, the comet that is, in the
tradition of the apocalypse, expected to destroy the earth (for example 124/243). 23
This texture seems moreover connected with the notion of timelessness, and death,
therefore. These sounds for example appeared for a moment in an earlier scene at the end of the
first act, after the last word “dead” (of: “loving and loved till we are dead”, sung by Amando and
Amanda in the first act) (75-118); another moment in which it is used is when Amando and
Amanda disappear in the grave to make love (24/37). This type of texture is also used when
Nekrotzar sings, “Doom now draws near, for the world will disappear! (…) No living thing
remains” on which an off-stage choir answers: “Ever more silence reigns” (136-138/269-273).
These sounds return most piercingly however after the so-called destruction, when after midnight
Nekrotzar says: “Time stands still… for what now reigns is eternity, nothingness and the great,
all-pervading, all-embracing void!” (258-260/591-595).
Clearly this texture has to do with death, with destruction, immobility, timelessness and
silence on the one hand, and with the universe on the other hand. From these instances, it is clear
59
that Ligeti aims at connecting several topics through this music, particularly death and the
immobile universe, where time stands still.
This could be an explanation why the universe (that is also, Venus, Astradamors and the
comet) play such a large role in the piece: it is a reference to death. Moreover, Ligeti himself
states that during the creation of Le Grand Macabre, he was very conscious about this
‘spatialization’ of time, through the repetition of the same emotional gesture. As he states in an
interview:
Le temps chronologique coule naturellement, mais la musique crée l’idée que le temps
n’existe plus, est devenu espace. Cela est un aspect qui a été très conscient chez moi, tout
au long de la composition du Grand Macabre. J’en ai même introduit l’idée, qui n’existe
pas explicitement chez Ghelderode, dans le texte au moment où, minuit sonnant,
Nekrotzar annonce son intention de détruire le monde entier. J’ai fait un montage de
fragments de l’Apocalypse de Saint-Jean et du Faust de Goethe, notamment, au moment
où Faust meurt ‘die Zeit steht still’, le temps s’arrête, les aiguilles de l’horloge tombent
(Sabbe 21).
The universe is an appropriate metaphor for this spatialized time. 24 Again, there is not much
comical about this connection: the static, read as something mechanic is here especially very
frightening and life threatening.
The use of instruments with a mechanical aspect
From the onset of the piece, the mechanical plays an important role in the instrumentation. The
opera starts with a ‘prelude’ produced by twelve car horns of different pitch, played by four
instrumentalists (1/a). Between the first and the second scene, this procedure is repeated in a
slightly different way (75/119). As a slight variation, the third scene has a prelude in which six
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electric doorbells are played by three percussionists (140/277). According to Seherr-Thoss, these
preludes are a parody on a musical convention, that of a prelude played by wind instruments in
the style of Monteverdis Orfeo (Seherr-Thoss 228). Moreover, not only the musical texture is
imitated: also, the signaling function of the trumpets is replaced by the signaling function of car
horns and doorbells. Ligeti sees the preludes as an image of brass “gone all wrong, symbolizing
the general atmosphere of dilapidation and ruin”, in which he combines the comic with
destruction (Várnai 69). The very use of car horns is poignant by itself, because these are
mechanical instruments. This mechanical parody can be seen as an instance of Bergson’s theory
of the concept of the parody or transposition as an element of the comic.
Another example of a particular mechanic instrument used in Le Grand Macabre is the
harpsichord. One of Ligeti’s archetypical mechanic pieces, Continuum (1968), was written for this
instrument. About the concept of this piece Ligeti said:
It had never occurred to me to write for the harpsichord, but (…) it suddenly came to me
that a harpsichord was really like some strange machine (…) I thought to myself, what
about composing a piece that would be a paradoxically continuous sound, something like
Atmosphères, but that would have to consist of innumerable thin slices of salami? (Várnai
22).
Continuum is this kind of piece that combines rapid succession of moments with continuity, time
with timelessness, as does for example Poeme Symphonique. Moreover, as we can see from the
citation above, the harpsichord is for Ligeti clearly a ‘machine’, perhaps more so than other
instruments and thus belongs to the category of the mechanical. In Le Grand Macabre, the
harpsichord is used for example when Nekrotzar announces the end of the world for the first
time (40/59), and seems to enhance, through its mechanic quality, the deadly atmosphere.
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Another mechanical instrument that is used in the opera is the electric organ, which
obviously only produces a very mechanical sound.
The metronome appears in Le Grand Macabre as well, in the scene where Nekrotzar
announces for the first time that he will destroy the earth. The first moment the metronome is
used, the regal (organ) is playing at a speed of quarter note = 80 and the metronome at quarter
note = 66 (starting in the sentence “your time runs out” (39/57). A bit later in the same section
the orchestra is playing eight notes on the beat in 4/4 bar (quarter note = 52) and the metronome
is still in quarter note = 66. According to Seherr-Thoss, the metronome is the symbol of the
finitude of existence (Seherr-Thoss 245), which is confirmed by the text that is sung in the
passages where the metronome is used: the metronome should be started on the word “hour” in
“but no one knows the hour” (40-42/59-62). Interpreted in this way, the mechanical is
frightening: however, in its appearance as a ready-made object in the middle of the opera, it is
comical.
An interesting connection between mechanics and time is the cuckoo’s call, (followed by
a duck quack,) which in the third scene announces in a comic manner that it is midnight and that
the time has come for Nekrotzar to destroy the earth (156/329, 256/581). The cuckoo’s call is
comic for three reasons: first of all because of its own mechanic nature (a fake bird popping out
of a clock); secondly, since the cuckoo interrupts a very dramatic and heavily orchestrated
apotheosis; lastly because it uses Bergson’s concept of transposition, because it announces
something very solemn in a very familiar way. Like Bergson said: “transpose the solemn into the
familiar and the result is parody” (Bergson 41).
Music boxes that “continue playing if the roll is not finished” are musical instruments
similarly in their mechanic qualities to the metronome and the cuckoo’s call (30/44). Moreover, it
is a mechanic that should not be controlled by humans, which can run until it is finished, by its
own laws. In its character of a ready-made object it clearly has a comical aspect.
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The role of the cliché
A cliché is itself a fixed, stable expression or situation, an exaggerated convention, one could say.
In this sense it belongs to the category of the mechanic. The cliché seems to be an important
element in the opera. Small clichés are:
•
The play with the traditional roles of the voices. Ligeti frequently employs low voices in
low registers to bring bad tidings: “your time runs out / so hear the bitter words of these
my tidings: that all, all men on earth must perish” is sung on a melody that goes
chromatically until the low F (39/57). On the other hand, some voices break with the
cliché, like the coloratura soprano that sings the role of the Gepopo. Both types have a
certain comical notion, either through the static use of a recipe or a cliché or through
inversion.
•
The metronome is used to design ‘time’ (starting on the word “hour”) when Nekrotzar
announces the end of the earth (40/59): as mentioned before, it is both frightening and
comical, the latter since it is a strange object in an opera.
•
The use of the regal with death together is another convention that is used for example in
Monteverdi’s Orfeo in the scenes with Charon, the ferryman of Hades. Ligeti uses this
convention in (39/57); its conventional aspect has a comic side.
•
The use of the lamento bass being a conventional mode for expressing sadness, in this
case the sadness of Mescalina, which is not very believable.
Those clichés are all the more artificial since they are ‘ready-made’ objects inserted in the texture
of the opera: the regal, the metronome and the lamento bass are all elements that do not belong
to the standard instruments in (20th century) opera.
A different use of the cliché in this opera is the way Ligeti turns musical styles into clichés
themselves, by artificially juxtaposing them or suddenly introducing them.
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Examples are brass instruments performing textures mainly consisting of triads (215/479);
sudden instances of classicism, as in the drinking scene in the third act (239/534) and at the dawn
of the new day at the end of the opera (288/633); and lastly in quotations of Ligeti’s own ‘clocks’
and ‘clouds’ textures, clouds for example at the end of the opera (607/266), (irregular) clocks, to
name one example out of many, in the drinking scene (starting 231/522).
Another element that could have the same impact is that of the quotation. It however
does not so in this opera, since quotations are often not literal, and therefore more belonging to
the idea of the open body as discussed in Chapter 1.
A last type of cliché is the mannerist style of playing, as indicated in the score for example in the
duet of Amanda and Amando (5/10). The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mannerism as:
“exaggerated or affected adherence to a particular style or manner: artificiality, preciosity”. 25 This
mannerism thus is another layer of artificiality within the ‘vital’ web of musical texture: here the
performer should not play in a natural way, but in an artificial way, which could be very comical.
The mechanic in social situations and characters
Concerning social situations in and around the opera, a difference should be made between the
laughter of the public (which confirms Bergson’s observation that laughter always is a social
activity, that it is amplified in a group situation) and the laughter that is performed on stage.
That second type of laughter is often a rather lonely, private laughter instead of a social
one. It is often not clear why somebody laughs (or sings laughing-like coloraturas), at what he
laughs, and with whom. This enlarges the mechanic aspect within laughter as discussed in the
paragraphs about texture. Ultimately, this performed laughter is in itself a comic situation,
because it is so mechanic. We will continue this argument in the conclusion.
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The characters in Le Grand Macabre are more characters than individual personages. They
exemplify Bergson’s argument that in comedy the character is centered around a vice and a
gesture, rather than around action. Piet = drunk, Mescalina = sadistic, Amando and Amanda =
pure love, etcetera. The characters have a marionette-like quality. As Bergson says, the comic only
works when it stays outside of the realm of emotions. As soon as a situation arouses emotions, it
looses its comic quality. It should not aim at sharing the emotions expressed, but aim at the
“artificial sympathy” of the spectators. The comic must prevent the audience from identifying
themselves with the inner emotions of the personages. This is done by introducing a certain
(puppet-like) rigidity into the personages; by the isolation of an emotion from the soul of the
character; by automatism, or by concentration on gestures rather than action. The difference
between the gesture and the action is that in the latter the entire being is involved, while in the
former just an isolated part takes part, Bergson says (150-55).
This type of characters can be found in a number of sources of inspirations that György
Ligeti named for his undertaking. He said he was influenced by comic books of Saul Steinberg:
comic books likewise do not look for a ‘realist’ psychology, they look for caricature (Ligeti "Zur
Entstehung Der Oper Le Grand Macabre"). Another influence was that of puppet theatre: Michel
Meschke, the librettist of Le Grand Macabre, was the director of a marionette theater; the play Le
Grand Macabre by Michel de Ghelderode is based on an old popular Flamish marionette play, and
influenced by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, which “brought puppet theatre to the centerstage of western
theatre”, and which was, to close the circle, also staged by Meschke in 1958 (Bell 29-30; Michel
97). Ligeti himself compares puppet theatre with fairground theatre, which is more his source of
inspiration than traditional opera (Samuel 118). Ligeti also admired Jarry, and even considered
Ubu Roi as a subject for his opera, but he said he could not use it because Penderecki just had
been writing an opera on this (Ligeti "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack").
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There are several aspects of the mechanic in character in Le Grand Macabre. The ministers can be
played by actors on concealed stilts or in buskins, or be represented by giant puppets operated
from the inside by a mime. Marionettes and puppets can be seen as dead personages, without
flesh and blood. The marionette also is marked by ambivalence: it is playing a human, played by a
human, yet all of this in a mechanized way (Kostakeva 167).
As noticed before, the elements of disguise and masquerade that Bergson finds a
characteristic of the comical in social situations is present especially in the person of the Chief of
the Gepopo, who is disguised as a bird, a hideous polyp and as a spider later onwards: however,
does this create a comical situation? It is difficult to say from the score of the opera, perhaps it is
more alienating or absurd.
Umberto Eco sees this “animalization of the comic hero” as functional within society,
making it possible to laugh about ourselves. “Our tension for the tragedy is mitigated by the
ridiculization of the majesty of sorrow through the ridiculization of the zoomorphic little man.
They are the mask through which we can pass over in laughter the difficulty of living” (Eco 2).
Furthermore, this ‘animalization’ is necessary for a hero to be comic, since the essence of the
comic is, according to Eco, the violation of a rule. The public needs the comic hero not to be
lifelike, in order to enjoy the crimes they are partaking in when violating the rule.
Bergson’s aspect of interference (when a situation belongs “simultaneously to two altogether
independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different
meanings at the same time” (Bergson 123), is found mainly in the personage of Prince Go-Go,
who thinks that he is all-powerful, whereas the public knows that he is a marionette of the White
and Black Minister.
Interference can also take place through the music: the situation is one of fear while the
music is without any worries, as is the case in the last phase of Nekrotzars drunken determination
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to erase the world, that is accompanied by lucid classical string music (240/538). It is not easy to
say in which ‘key’ we are.
Bergson emphasizes that the ceremonial side of society turns comical very quickly since it
deals with rigid forms and with gesture rather than action. This ceremonial side can be found in
Le Grand Macabre in the use of brass (on stage) to announce a certain character (perhaps as an
echo of the signal of the car horns in the beginning). Another example is when the Chief of the
Gepopo gives unnecessary orders and repeats “stern measures” (183/401), acting within the
system of secret police being very organized and tough.
In various instances in the opera the characters perform stylized, “gestural” dances at
moments which appear very inappropriate for it. Examples are the dance of Astradamors and
Mescalina in the middle of a scene (94/169); the “choreography” that the White and Black
Minister perform at the beginning of the third scene (140/278); and the dance of all characters at
the end of the opera (291/674). In the case of the White and Black Minister the choreography
perhaps refers to the stylized, artificial chess playing in politics; the other dances function as a
mechanical interruption of the natural flow of actions. As such they are perhaps comical in an
absurdist way.
The mechanic in words
Concerning words, there are several different instances of the mechanic:
•
The use of alphabetic ordering, as for example in the curse-alphabet of the Black and
White Minister in the beginning of the second scene. (We have to note, though, that also
this system hampers around the letters I and J).
•
The use of ready-made formulas, often in Latin, which is again, slightly corrupted. For
example, Astradamors: “Liberatus, liberate, liberatum sum, esse fui! /Ex profundo, in
profundum. And punctum!” (122-123/235-237).
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•
Other types of series of single words, such as in the case where the White Minister sings
“Planet/Illusion!/Planetoid?/Asteroid?/Satellite?/Hallucination”,
while
the
Black
Minister sings “Illusion/Abstraction/Imagination/Hallucination” (185/406-407).
•
Repetition of words runs parallel more often than not with the above discussed repetition
in the musical texture, and therefore will not be discussed in further detail.
V.
Conclusion
As said above, the mechanical textures are only in certain cases comical. These cases prove how
the comical nature of the opera exist due to the mechanical, and thus, to death. In other cases,
though, the mechanical does not have a comical impact.
Moments in the music were discussed in which the mechanical has a frightening impact,
where it seems to remind the listener directly to death, without taking the detour of the laughter.
The reason for this can be, according to Bergson, that the mechanical is not inserted in
something alive. The mechanical could sound militaristic, referring to war, or static, referring to
timeliness. Ultimately we examined passages that are both frightening and comical, depending on
how one looks at it.
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Chapter 3: death, laughter and eroticism: Le Grand Macabre and Georges Bataille
In this analysis of Le Grand Macabre, thus far the two love couples were neglected, although they
dominate large parts of the libretto: Amando and Amanda in the first and third act, and
Mescalina and Astradamors in the second act.
Amando and Amanda both start and end the opera and therefore their presence forms
the framework in which the story develops. Ligeti liked the couple to have a “Boticelli like”
quality (4/8), he wanted them to be the representation of pure erotic love, musically accompanied
by strings playing long, melting lines.
This in contrast to the other couple, that of Mescalina and Astradamors who occupy the
second act. Their relation is dominated by sadomasochistic violence and is accompanied by
fragmented, angular music (see chapter 2).
The affiliation between both forms of eroticism and the subject of death are overly clear
in Le Grand Macabre. Amando and Amanda’s love literally leads to the grave: they hide in the
grave to have privacy for their love, and stay there until after the failed ending of the world – an
almost literal reference to the tradition of the Liebestod. 26 Astradamors and Mescalina are so
violent they almost kill each other. Moreover, Mescalina is almost murdered by Nekrotzar
himself, while thinking that he is her dreamed-of lover.
In theoretical writing, the prime figure who theorized the relation between eroticism and death is
George Bataille (1897 – 1962), a French writer who wrote philosophical texts as well as fiction
and is therefore difficult to classify. His texts most often do not express a logically solid theory,
precisely since Bataille tries to go beyond those conscious and logical aspects of human existence.
His subject is mysticism, that which escapes the conscious mind, that which “cannot be
organized or appropriated into a discursive system of understanding” (Richman 76). Bataille
himself states that his writings cannot be classified as science, since science searches for
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specialized topics, while he attempts to find a coherence between separate things (G. Bataille
Oeuvres Complètes X 12). 27
Within the scope of this thesis two aspects of Bataille’s philosophy are important: firstly,
the relationship between eroticism and death; secondly, the role of laughter in his thoughts. In
the first paragraph the thinking of Bataille on these two issues will be examined, in the second
paragraph a relation between Bataille’s thinking and Le Grand Macabre will be outlined.
I.
Bataille on eroticism, death and laughter
Eroticism and death
In L’erotisme (1957), Bataille develops an argumentation about the relation between eroticism and
death that is based on the contrast between continuity and discontinuity. Procreation is practiced
by discontinuous beings. Discontinuous, since subjects can be distinguished as separate entities:
every subject is born alone and dies alone, there is an abyss [abîme] between two beings and this
abyss is “in a certain sense” death itself. Life presents itself in the form of discontinuous beings:
death is, thus, rather surprisingly, not the exemplification of discontinuity, but of the cancellation
of that discontinuity and thus of the continuity of being. Death is precisely the abyss that
separates yet at the same time forms the connection between two discontinuous beings.
Reproduction (sexuality, eroticism) produces discontinue beings, that is, life, but also “puts into
play” [met en jeu] their continuity, ultimately linking it to death (X 18, 19).
This continuity of death is easier to understand in the reproduction of asexual one-cell
beings (like amoebas). One cell is split into two and at the very moment it reproduces itself, it
dies, because the initial being ceases to exist. At the same time, in the moment that one cell
becomes two, there is a moment of continuity, similar to the moment of dying. Similarly, in
sexual reproduction, two separate cells are united: however, at the same time that they stop to
exist separately, they are a continuity of each other (19-20). During his life, man has an obsession
with the continuity that existed before life started, that links us to ‘being’ in general, a nostalgic
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feeling, which forms the basis of eroticism (21). Both death and eroticism threaten the
discontinuity (that is, life), which we desperately try to pertain (22). Eroticism is, thus, in its
essence a rape, which in its violence towards the discontinuity of being resembles death,
according to Bataille.
Another aspect in Batailles thinking which is important for our overall topic is the
opposition he creates between death and eroticism on the one hand and the orderly world of
work on the other hand. According to Bataille, man distinguishes himself from animals through
the concept of labour, which makes it possible to organize societies and work towards goals that
are not immediate. For this idea, Bataille bases himself on Hegel, who, in Bataille’s reading, says
that humanness comes into being through humanity’s deathlike power to negate what exists, via
consciousness (the power of abstraction) and labor. This world is called a “restricted economy”:
it is a closed system.
However, every restricted economy produces more than it can account for and is
subsequently fractured by its own unacknowledged excess: in seeking to maintain itself it will,
against its own logic, desire expenditure and loss. Both death and eroticism can be seen as such
an excess that is inherent to the system yet at the same time threatens this orderly world of work
(X 45-47). Labor makes it possible to strive for goals that are not immediate; both death and
eroticism, though, strive for the moment, and not for a goal, and are therefore threatening this
working ethic.
Another moment of resemblance is the ‘waste of energy’ that seems to characterize both
death and eroticism. In the moment of creating life a huge waste (excess) of energy takes place (in
what Richman calls “the abundance of sperm beyond what is biologically mandated for survival”),
and also in this sense life already bears death in itself (X 62, Richman 78). According to Bataille,
both eroticism and death are therefore responsible for the same type of excess or waste of the
energy of life. In this sense, he states, one cannot make a difference between the two topics (X
64).
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According to Bataille this waste of energy and the tendency to strive for the moment that
threaten the “restricted economy” form an explanation why violence (or death) and eroticism are
the subjects of the two most fundamental prohibitions in humanity. The taboo on violence and
on eroticism are the eldest of prohibitions, established in the same time of prehistory; all cultures
involve some prohibitions regarding both the field of eroticism and that of death or violence.
Eroticism and death are thus by nature in one way or another related to the realm of the
forbidden, according to Bataille. At the same time, the forbidden only gets its fulfillment in the
transgression of the rule: the imposition of a law arouses a desire to transgress that law. This
transgression, however, does not erase the rule. In French: “[Le transgression] lève l’interdit sans
le supprimer”. The transgression violates the rule, without suppressing it: Bataille’s interpretation
of Hegel’s Aufheben. Yet, when these rules are transgressed, one experiences anxiety [angouisse].
The prohibition involves both the anxiety for the transgression as the desire to do so (X 42).
In its attention for the transgression of the rule, Bataille’s model seems similar to
Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. In the carnival as well, the rule is transgressed, but is still in existence.
The difference seems to be that in Bataille’s model everything happens at the same time, while
Bakhtin schedules separate time periods in which the rule is either kept or transgressed.
According to Bataille, both eroticism and death evoke similar feelings of disgust,
embarrassment and lust. The disgust for dead bodies resembles the disgust for excretion and the
obscenity of the sexual organs, which is a culturally learned disgust, since there is no objective
danger that motivates the anxiety that underlies this disgust (X 60). According to Bataille, these
feelings of disgust form the essence of the feelings of lust. It is precisely the horror, the
repugnance that is the principal factor in desire: like one at the same time desires and fears to
surpass a rule. Next to that, both evoke a feeling of embarrassment, “since ‘violence’ overwhelms
us strangely in each case [in both violence and eroticism]: each time, what happens is foreign to the
received order of things” (X 585). At the same time that man experiences disgust in relation to
eroticism and death, he also desires that situation of being isolated and annihilated, according to
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Bataille: “Nous voulons au fond la condition inadmissible qui en résulte, celle de l’etre isolé,
promis à la douleur et à l’horreur de l’anéantissement” (X 63).
Bataille says that the two most important prohibitions are dealing with opposite areas –
death and life as made through eroticism. Life condemns death, hence the nausea for the dead
body, its decomposition, its corruption. However, Bataille emphasizes at the same time that from
Aristoteles on there is a tradition that says that in this rot the beginnings of life form again: “la
decomposition dont jaillit la vie profuse”, this is where the life is moving, “l’aspect luxueux de la
mort” – mulch is necessary for fertile ground (58, 62).
A returning image that seems to explain Bataille’s thinking in a particular way, are the
prehistoric paintings found in the cave of Lascaux in France, which Bataille calls “the first enigma
posed by humans”. It depicts a man with the head of a bird and an erection who is, according to
Bataille, dead, next to the bison that he killed with a spear, that has blood dripping from his belly
(X 587). Bataille calls it the first of many images in which death and eroticism are connected:
what adds to the “enigma” is the fact that it was made, “buried”, according to Bataille, in the
most inaccessible part of the cave, a holy place (X 588-589).
Laughter and death
The concept of laughter, and this in connection with death plays a rather vague but important
role in Bataille’s writings, and has its origin in Bataille’s reading of Bergson’s Le Rire. Bataille
states in several places that through that book he had discovered the possibility of reflecting
philosophically on aspects of everyday life. He read Bergson for the first time when he was still
young and had to meet him at a dinner whereby he was embarrassed not to have had any
knowledge of Bergson’s books; however, later in his life Bataille remarks that he finds Bergson’s
theories “one of the deepest to have been developed”. However, at the same time, Bataille
criticized Bergson for making the problem of laughter too small: for Bataille, laughter was “the
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central given, the first given, and perhaps even the final given of philosophy” (G. Bataille, and
Michelson, A. 92, 93).
Bataille himself states in different spots of his work that laughter, eroticism and death are
linked: “C’est que l’érotisme et la mort sont liés. Qu’en même temps, le rire et la mort, le rire et
l’érotisme sont liés…” (X 595).
As an example he recalls the image of the cave of Lascaux just mentioned, in which the
dead figure with his sex erect has a bird’s head, which according to Bataille is so childish that a
“laughable aspect emerges”:
Il n’est sans doute pas au monde d’autre image aussi lourde d’horreur comique ; au
surplus, en principe, inintelligible. Il s’agit d’une énigme désespérante, avec une risible
cruauté, se posant à l’aurore des temps (Bataille X 596).
According to Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Bataille once considered to give his Théorie de la religion the
title “die of laughter and laugh at dying” (Borch-Jacobsen 741).
It is easy to see what provokes laughter or to construe effects that produce laughter. However,
knowing how to provoke laughter does not mean that laughter is really understood: Bataille even
states that the domain of laughter is closed, that it is unknown and unknowable (G. Bataille, and
Michelson, A. 89). Laughter remains a sudden “invasion” of the human being by this unknowable,
as amongst others becomes apparent in the uncontrollable “explosive sounds in the larynx” (90).
Bataille states that even Bergson avoids the problem by explaining the nature of the comic
instead of that of laughter.
Bataille proposes therefore a “last theory”. This theory holds its basis precisely in this fact
that previous theories did not succeed in describing what it is that makes us laugh. According to
Bataille, it is the unknown and the unknowable that makes us laugh, and therefore, “the unknown
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nature of the laughable would be not accidental, but essential” (G. Bataille, and Michelson, A. 90).
We laugh at the unexpected, in the moment when the known order is interrupted, when the
unforeseeable arrives. Thus, within us and in the world, something is revealed that was not given
in knowledge, and whose site is definable only as unattainable by knowledge. “It is I believe, at
this that we laugh,” Bataille says (91). He who laughs does not abandon his knowledge, but he
refuses to accept it, “he allows himself to be overcome by the impulse to laughter, so that what
he knows is destroyed, but he retains, deep within, the conviction that it is not, after all,
destroyed” (97).
It is in this opposition to the orderly world of the knowable, that laughter is closely connected to
both death and eroticism in Bataille’s thinking. All three have in common 1) the aspect of the loss
of the self; 2) their disturbing nature; 3) the sovereign moment-like quality that exists for itself,
without being oriented towards a goal; 4) nothingness.
Ad 1. According to Borch-Jacobsen, Bataille would not agree with the common analysis
that laughter is a tool used to diminish our anguish for death, a play of being superior to it. “To
laugh at oneself, to laugh at the relativity of this ‘whole’ which is the self, implies going beyond
ourselves, in the most impossible excess of ourselves” (Borch-Jacobsen 739). According to
Borch-Jacobsen, it is therefore always the tragic of the other that makes us laugh. At the same time
however, Bataille sees laughter as having a contagious nature, of always being a moment of
communication, which is located precisely in this movement of going beyond ourselves: “it
implies (…) that we lose ourselves in another, and, with him, in this great panic laughter which
gathers us together around our own loss, our own death” (742). The loosing of oneself implies
the death of the individual, at the same time that it laughs at the (symbolized) death of the other.
Ad 2. Both laughter and tears, both death and eroticism have in common their violent
nature, which interrupts the regular order of things, the usual course of events (X 585).
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Ad 3. Why does one laugh at what is tragic, painful, deathly? What is the goal of this
laughter? This is precisely that it does not have a goal, that it is sovereign. The sovereign is for
Bataille not necessarily the superior, but the one that is not subordinated, which can be the pariah
without striving for a goal and thus independent from the “restricted economy” (Borch-Jacobsen
745). “Being is sovereignty, but sovereignty is laughter, which makes a mockery of everything”
(748), since “supreme joy, cannot but be in fact, by its very definition, total” (746).
Ad 4. When laughing one loses one’s serious self and participates in the fall, in the
slipping into nullity of the other, since this fall is the only thing that is ‘without a why’, the only
truly sovereign instance. In this sovereignty being serves ‘nothing’ - but even ‘nothing’ is
something outside of itself, therefore the sovereign being is not able to be truly sovereign – he is
ridiculous in the same way as all other beings are. At the same time that it is acknowledged that
the ‘sovereign being’ serves ‘nothing’ it is presupposed that he is finite. Laughter bursts forth on
this conclusion that sovereignty is finite and vice versa (Borch-Jacobsen 753-754).
Bataille thus seems to relate laughter to this nothing, which replaces religion. The
experience of laughter, of un-knowing, became for him a knowledge which leads to this nothing,
which for him replaced all the dogmas of religion that he was actively applying in his life thus far.
“The tide of laughter which swept over me, made of my faith a game (…) which was transcended,
nonetheless, by the dynamics of the game which was given me in laughter” (G. Bataille, and
Michelson, A. 94). He states that in his experience of “plunging into this nonknowledge” he
keeps all the “impulses of religious experience, mingling them with the experience of laughter
without feeling that religious experience to be in any way impoverished” (95). On the contrary,
the new experience deepens the religious aspect, since in its newness it parts from the common
experience of fear (for eternal death), which is according to Bataille always inherent to
mainstream religion (95):
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Mais, en moi, la mort définitive a le sens d’une étrange victoire. Elle me baigne de sa lueur,
elle ouvre en moi le rire infiniment joyeux : celui de la disparition !… (X 607)
II.
Bataille and Le Grand Macabre
Several aspects of Bataille’s thinking could shed light on Le Grand Macabre. It should be noted,
though, that Bataille’s theory defies straightforward application, more so than the theories of
Bergson and Bakhtin. As said in the introduction to this chapter, Bataille aimed at finding an
overall theory, at connecting separate elements, rather than at investigating separate phenomena.
The general atmosphere and relations that are set in Bataille’s writings have some similarities to
the atmosphere and themes in the opera: however, it would be unjust to Bataille’s spirit to
separate one element of the opera and theorize upon it. His theories make clear how laughter in
general may be considered as related to death: it would be inappropriate to ‘apply’ this theory on
too specific instances of laughter in the opera. Bataille speaks so clearly about an overwhelming,
all encompassing laughter that we have to be careful not to overinterpret Le Grand Macabre. That
is why, in my opinion, the most convincing ‘Bataillian moments’ are to be found in the music
rather than in the story, perhaps also since (post-tonal) music is in its essence ‘sovereign’: not
striving for any goal, where a story always seems to develop.
However, as said before, Bataille’s work can be used to take a closer look at the until now
unexamined aspect of eroticism in the opera, in particular in its relation to death. I will now
discuss the way the two love couples are dealt with in the opera, having in mind the two aspects
of Bataille’s view on eroticism: continuity versus discontinuity and waste versus production.
Amando and Amanda
In Le Grand Macabre, two love-couples are brought into play. The first one consists of Amanda
and Amando, sung by a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, the latter a “Hose-rolle” for Amando.
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Amando and Amanda are characterized as “young, very beautiful lovers, as in a Botticelli painting,
and enter stage entwined in each other’s arms” (4/8). 28
The texture of their music is very much opposed to that in the rest of the opera. It is
often rather consonant and melodic, with strings playing very soft and long lines, with a fluent
but homophonic rhythm that creates a ‘melting’ atmosphere, where in the rest of the opera
dissonant and discontinued, disrupted lines are more pertinent. This is enhancing the cliché-like
role of the couple, of pure romantic love, moreover since celesta and woodwinds are added to
the sound.
This instrumentation adds to a sense of continuity that is very present in the scenes with
Amanda and Amando: a continuity that could be interpreted in a Bataillian way. Amando and
Amanda sing most sentences homophonic in major and minor thirds, as if they are not able to be
individuals anymore in this sense. The theme of continuity is also present in their very similar
names. Musically it is expressed moreover in the fact that four out of their five duets in the first
act start on a unison, which makes both voices undistinguishable for a couple of seconds
(amongst others in 4/9; 6/12). 29 Of course this continuity is in line with the erotic unity that
Amando and Amanda explicitly represent.
However, in the opera, this erotic continuity is brought in relation to death as well. This
theme is overtly present in Amando and Amanda’s roles, in both text and music. “Let us yield to
ardent rapture” (6-7/12), they start, immediately emphasizing the violent aspect of their love
making which is, in fact, sweeter than sweet. At least, in most of the cases, since even Amando
and Amanda fall sometimes very abruptly out of their role of sweet lover and start to curse and
scream. For example, Amando sings to Piet “Miserable scoundrel / That for the worm” (1920/31), and later on “Devil pay you, I shall slay you! / Prowling wizard slit your gizzard! / Stop
your rot pissing pot!” (47/74). In these cases, they share in the other discourse of death that is
going on, the (musically) fragmented and angular one of Nekrotzar.
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A very pertinent moment in which eroticism and death are combined is the sentence “so
let us in our bliss together perish”: the couple perishes (dies) in their erotic unity (9-13/17-19).
Moreover, they sing the word ‘perish’ (in a German version it would even be ‘sterben’) in a
sighing way, which gives it an erotic association. The coloratura stretches out to such extent, that
the word ‘perish’ does what it promises: it is not audible anymore as a word; the bearer of
‘meaning’ disappears. In the end of the scene the music and the text literally perish in a
“morendo” diminuendo. To make the connection between death and eroticism even more clear,
Ligeti introduces the personage of Nekrotzar precisely in this first moment of ecstasy of Amando
and Amanda, during the word ‘perish’.
“Where is a secret place where our sighing will not be heard”, Amando and Amanda sing
(23-24/36-37): only to hide themselves in the tomb where Nekrotzar came from (48-49/75-77).
This is probably the image in the opera that connects eroticism and death in the most direct way:
Amando and Amanda hide in the tomb to have privacy to make love. Only in the end of the first
act they sing once more from the grave, associating love with eternal rest: “melting snow is thy
breast/ close entwined rest oh rest” (72-73/110-111); and in the last sentence of the first act:
“loving and loved, till we are dead” (75/117). The couple sings these last words on a descending
scale, ending as low as f-sharp (small octave), followed by a “lunga” chord of the strings,
“morendo al niente”. All these rather explicit musical gestures seem to represent the last word the
couple sings: dead.
Ironically, Amando and Amanda do not take part in the supposed apocalypse because
they are already in the grave. After sunrise, they emerge again from the grave, “closely entwined”,
“graceful”, “half-dreaming” (290/627). Their erotic death made them escape the supposed death
of the apocalypse; yet in their ‘entwinedness’ they still are emblems of the erotic continuity that,
for Bataille, resembles death.
In the final passacaglia they sing that the others where very anxious when their world
collapsed, yet, “for us too the world ceased to be and yet how ecstatic were we!” (293-294/679).
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Note that this passage is sung upon a passacaglia, a repetitive bass pattern that seems to (literally)
underline the continuity of Amando’s and Amanda’s ‘ceasing world’. It is curious, though, how
on the other hand Amanda and Amando are not singing homophonic anymore; they are not as
melted as before. This could be explained as a survival of the continuity of death, Amando and
Amanda now being separate members of the larger ensemble. On the other hand, in the
repetitive bass we still hear a reminiscence of that continuity.
Mescalina and Astradamors
In the second act Amando and Amanda are hidden in the grave. Another couple appears,
consisting of Mescalina and Astradamors. The latter is an astrologist: his name contains both
words ‘amor’ and ‘mors’, while the entirety of the name reminds one of Nostradamus, who is
known for his prediction of the end of times (Samuel 116). Mescalina is named after Mescaline,
which is a psychedelic recreational drug that causes a hallucinating intensification of experience
and which is famously described by Aldous Huxley in his essay the doors of perception (1954).
Their relationship is rather sadomasochistic, in a very cliché way, including a whip, leather
clothes for Mescalina and sighs of enjoyment (“Ow! Fh, more” (78/124)). Ligeti clearly indicates
that he wants everything to have a marionette-like, comical atmosphere, in the manner of a
“Punch and Judy show” (84/141). This comedy is for example present in the scene where
Mescalina hits Astradamors until he is lying on the floor, after which she starts to ask herself who
will do the household if he is death, until she tries to find out if he is really dead by holding a
spider above his face, which makes Astradamors scream and jump around (85-91/146/165).
Further on, the couple performs a “grotesque shameless dance” (94/169), in which Ligeti uses a
distorted citation from Jacques Offenbach’s opera Orphée aux enfers (96/172, trumpets and first
clarinets) (Seherr-Thoss 266). This perhaps places the eroticism of the couple in a comical helllike atmosphere: however, during this citation, they are busy lamenting on the boring recurrence
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of the days of the week. This regularity (or, to put it in Bataillian words, continuity) ultimately
signifies hell for them, the citation of Orphée seems to say.
The least that we can conclude is that the scenes with Mescalina and Astradamors
combine the Bataillian elements of laughter, eroticism and violence. However, where for Bataille
these three aspects perform more or less the same movement of transgression, in the opera they
seem to contradict each other. The violence never gets very violent because of the laughter it
arouses and the eroticism never gets very erotic because it is so comical. This can perhaps be
explained from the nature of the laughter: the scenes not so much perform laughter as that they
arouse the laughter of the public. They are comical, not expressing laughter themselves. The
scenes arouse a laughter that defies fear for the expressed violence rather than incorporating that
fear, where for Bataille laughter and eroticism always bear a certain anxiety within themselves.
However, for the listener these absurd scenes could have a certain alienating effect, they could
invoke a sense of confused loneliness. The listeners are probably the ones invaded by something
very ‘strange’.
Perhaps in one moment the combination of elements gets the serious quality that Bataille
gives it: when Astradamors sings: “My sweetheart! My dearheart (…) Adorations deepest chasm”
(chasm being translated as “abgrund” in the German translation) (81/129-131). On “chasm”,
Astradamors goes down to a low D, one of the lowest notes sung in the piece. Here the
destructive love between the couple seems to be more serious and reminds us of Bataille’s abyss,
which forms the continuity between two separate individuals (although in Ligeti’s sentence,
Mescalina herself is the ‘chasm’).
For all the rest, there could be no greater contrast between some characters in the opera
and Bataille’s idea of transgression of the borders of the individual. Although their violence
seems to destroy everything, the only goal of these destructions seems precisely to stay in control
over ones own individuality. Significant in this sense are the ultimate bars of the second act:
following a very dark proclamation of the end of the world by Nekrotzar and the supposed death
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of his wife, Astradamors destroys everything he had but proclaims: “At last I am master in my
own house” (139/276). In the midst of all destruction, finally he has mastered the situation: he
finally defined his own ‘discontinuous being’ independently from Mescalina. This is the opposite
of Bataille’s philosophy, in which destruction is born from a nostalgic longing for a lost
‘continuity’, a unity with other beings.
That these words “at last I am master in my own house” are no coincidence is clear when
Prince Go-Go repeats them in the third act when his two ministers flee for what they expect to
happen. In the light of upcoming destruction, Go-Go as well sings “Now I am master in my own
house” (186/411).
Another ‘love-couple’ in the second act, which most literally combines death and eroticism, is
that of Mescalina and Nekrotzar. Mescalina starts to drink and in her sleep afterwards asks Venus
for an aphrodisiacum or a man, “well hung”, after which Nekrotzar presents himself as such
(117/226), creating space for a classic ‘death and the maiden’ change in the plot. Mescalina and
Nekrotzar perform a “stylized love-scene”, during which Mescalina sings: “still her desire / make
love to me /(…) squeeze out my breath/ into a pit of loving hurl me / drill through me / plough
through me / ransack me / punch holes in me” (118-120/228-232). Ligeti describes the scene
very precisely: all characters should sing sotto voce, to make a contrast between action and music.
Piet and Astradamors “watch the love-scene cynically, as if were a sporting event” and the
instruments play a ‘bourée perpetuelle’ in a Haydn-like style (118/229). The scene ends with
Nekrotzar who “embraces Mescalina brutally and bites her throat” (121/233). Piet and
Astradamors take Mescalina and bury her in the cellar door, which in the first act was the door of
the tomb. 30
Again, this scene is combining all kinds of Bataillian elements of violence and a
combination of eroticism and death. However, because of the stylized quality of it, the excessive
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atmosphere that Bataille seems to describe is highly subdued. Once more, it is the audience that is
invaded by strangeness.
To conclude: in the violent couple Astradamors/Mescalina as well as the innocent one
(Amando/Amanda), an overtly clear connection between death and eroticism is reached. This
connection is even strengthened in the love scene between Mescalina and Nekrotzar. Moreover,
in the scenes with Amando and Amanda the music seems to cooperate with a Bataillian emphasis
on unity and continuity. However, as we noticed before, in the scenes with Mescalina and
Astradamors the music seems to have a comical effect, that diminishes the anxiety for both
violence and eroticism, rather than make it belong to it, as it would do in a Bataillian imagery.
The comedy is so absurd that it could overwhelm the audience with its strangeness.
Sovereignty versus functional society
The opposition of sovereign eroticism/death/laughter versus the orderly world of labor – the
second element in Bataille’s theory of eroticism - may also be recognized in Le Grand Macabre.
Piet is perhaps the personage in which this opposition is the clearest. He could be called
sovereign in the way Bataille used that word. Since in his focus on the pleasures of the moment,
Nekrotzar is not able to affect him, and in some moments is even influenced by him, in both
acts and music. An example of this influence can be found in the first act, when Piet disturbs his
line of thought with a very long and very high coloratura on ‘Breughelland’ of which the style is
immediately taken over by Nekrotzar in his next sentence “And rejoice to be alive” (34-35/5051). Therefore, Piet is the personage that expresses the sovereignty of Bataille best. He is not
striving for any goal, nobody can affect him, and in this he differs from the others: Mescalina
wants a better man, Astradamors looks out to his stars, Prince Go-Go and the ministers want
power: Piet, though, seems to wander around in Brueghelland like a “sovereign pariah”.
Amando and Amanda as a couple are also sovereign (as individuals, they have a goal: each
other). Together they strive for nothing, also literally: their wish is to perish, which they do
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symbolically in their love and literally in the grave. Piet is sovereign through his laughter,
Amando and Amanda through their eroticism.
This striving for the moment and not for the goal is very present in the ultimate (though ironic)
message of the opera. Others can care about judgment day, Amando and Amanda sing, “for us
there’s only here and now / just here and now” (295-296/683). The last lines of the opera
continue:
For life grants most to those who give
And who gives love shall loving live
When one does this, then time and tide stand still
Now and for ever more (296-302/684-694).
Amanda, Amando, Go-Go, Mescalina, Piet, The White and Black Minister and Astradamors
sing this homophonically. This final call for love and not fear seems to be serious and ironic at
the same time, at least from the composers point of view: Ligeti himself calls this music ‘bitter’,
since it consists of consonant intervals, which however are put together in a strange way and
therefore for him get a dark undertone. “A life without fear, a life without lust is in fact deeply
sad”, he says in an interview, confirming the irony in the message (Seherr-Thoss 341). (Notice
the combination of lust and fear in this quotation, a combination that could be brought into
direct relation with Bataille – although he is probably not the only one that ever noticed this
connection.) At the same time though, the long chords of the strings add to the feeling of time
standing still, the absence of an orientation towards any goal, to a Bataillian moment-like quality.
To be sure, there are definitively Bataillan themes in the way Amanda and Amando strive
for the joyful moment in which time and tide stand still and in their call to give (up) oneself, and
to lose themselves in excess. These themes appear here in a popular version. To say that these
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are truly Bataillian moments in the opera would not do justice to the complexity of both
Bataille’s writings and the opera. The crux here is, according to me, the nature of the double
meaning the opera seems to offer. These double meanings and complexities have a different
nature than in Bataille’s theories, that offer certainly a lot of space for ambivalence and
complexity as well. However, the ambivalences in Bataille’s theory are based on the Hegelian
notion of ‘Aufhebung’ (as noted before): the opposed forces ultimately come together and
enforce one another. For example, anxiety enforces lust and eroticism, while it is at the same
time opposed to it; the rule is violated but this violation strengthens the rule.
In this opera though, the ambivalences do not follow this rule of ‘Aufhebung’: the two
poles of an opposition ultimately do not come together. For example, the irony of the music
seems to weaken the message of the text; they do not tolerate each other: the message can be
interpreted as either ironic or sincere, not as both. In this type of ambiguity, it is either/or; they
cannot exist at the same moment, while in Bataille’s ambiguity two opposites can exist at the
same time.
Excess
As philosopher Frank vande Veire notices in his reading of Bataille, absurd art is a form that by
definition does not strive for any goals, has no reason and no future. In its absurd nature it
withdraws from functionalist society and reaches to the divine (Vande Veire 189-99). Continuing
this line of thought, absurd art is the ultimate waste of energy, the ultimate excess of life, and
thus death itself.
Ligeti’s art belongs to this category of absurd art. For example, Robin Holloway states
that the opera “seems like a precocious schoolboy lark”. He continues:
The trouble for an English clientele is the native disposition to mickey-taking, silly voices,
dislocated logic, homemade dada, deadpan irony, implicit in the culture and its linguistic
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habits (…). The result is a waste of onomatopoeia, funny noises, freaky characters,
exaggerated situations, that wholly fails to amuse (Holloway 61-62).
In this citation the opera is literally characterized as a “waste”, and that is perhaps the ultimate
Bataillan characteristic of the opera. Le Grand Macabre is an excess in itself. This excess is
ultimately not as much an excess of certain moral rules (at least not for average listeners in 2008),
as it is an excess of the rules of good taste, and a transgression of certain rules about how an
opera should be construed, about how to create perhaps a coherent storyline. Moreover, the
opera is excessive in its music, which often lasts slightly long (in coloraturas) or is slightly over
the top (as in the arias of the Gepopo).
This reading has two consequences. First, if the opera has an aspect of ‘waste’ in it, it also
contains an aspect of death in itself. In the opera, death gets a ‘presence’: not only through the
role of Nekrotzar, who is the living death, but also through this more abstract theme of waste.
Where the presentation of death in a character is a failure (death can not be present as such), it is
still very present in the music - which makes some sense because music seems always to be less
‘present’ - and in abstract notions.
Secondly, excess is always in conflict with the “orderly world of labor” that surrounds it
and is so in Le Grand Macabre as well. In its ‘excessive’ quality, the opera can be read as a protest
against the order that also characterized the great wars of the 20th century that influenced Ligeti’s
life so much. About the 20th century, Bataille says that although there was an increase in violence,
which originally threatened order, in this case it was measured, it was disciplined, a mechanized
war, even to the point that “even in war, work becomes the guiding principle” (G. Bataille The
Tears of Eros 143). The waste of the opera is a contrast with and a protest to this orderly war,
which is characterized in the opera by the schematic Black and White Minister and the Chief of
the Gepopo, fleeing into pre-war Breughelian images of eroticism and laughter.
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The form of the opera is an excess, so is the eroticism in it. Bataille sees in eroticism a
kind of opposition to war, an alternative outlet. Bataille:
Mais sans le calcul des diverses possibilités de consommation opposées à la guerre, et
dont la jouissance érotique – la consommation de l’énergie dans l’instant – est le type,
nous ne saurions découvrir une issue que fonderait la raison (X 621).
Finally, this resistance towards the orderly world is present in the music as well. There are two
instances where several musical lines ‘free’ themselves from the regular beat as indicated by the
conductor. In the third scene Mescalina is (supposedly) dead and Astradamors celebrates this
(“liberatus, liberata, liberatum sum, esse fui!”), and together with Piet follows Nekrotzar, trying to
make him drunk in the end (122-123/235). The electric organ and the harpsichord literally
liberate themselves from the conductor, by gradually accelerating in tempo, independent from the
conductor and from each other. The same happens at the entrance of Nekrotzar in the last scene:
all instruments play their own line, independently from each other (201/452).
Laughter
Bataille’s reading of laughter offers one more view on the ambivalence that we also perceived in
the first two chapters, that of anxiety and laughter. For Bataille, one laughs from the unknown
and when laughing, one is inhabited by the unknown. It is precisely this unknown which is also
‘death’, and which at the same time invokes fear.
The unknown has a large role in Le Grand Macabre as well: the theme of the apocalypse
alludes to the general fear of sudden and total destruction, to fear for the future, a fear that
always has been present in human existence. At the same time, Bataille offers an explanation of
what laughter has in common with death: while laughing in the face of death (or the unknown)
one is always laughing because of death, because one is inhabited by death and loses oneself in
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laughter. The permeation of death in our existence comes to surface in the interruptions of
laughter. This forms one more explanation why the combination of laughter and death in Le
Grand Macabre is not inappropriate but in fact rather apt. This brings us to our next paragraph in
which I will discuss the relation between the unknowable and the concepts of
continuity/discontinuity.
Continuity, discontinuity and the unknowable
As we saw, the theme of continuity versus discontinuity is important in Bataille’s thought. In Le
Grand Macabre, discontinuity is present in the music and in the libretto, in the sudden
interruptions between different styles and actions (see chapter 2). The aspect of continuity is
more present in the music than in the narrative. In the long, melting lines of Amanda and
Amando the distinction between them disappears. In the same way, in the musical texture the
distinction between the separate instruments often disappears. Like with waste, we could read
this again as a moment of musical ‘presence’ of death.
The type of sound that is Ligeti’s trademark is that of micro-polyphonic sound fields, as
he used for the first time in Atmospheres (1961). The main feature of this kind of sound is that it
is static, without or with only a slow progression, one mass of sound. Yet, within this sound
mass, everything is changing, there is a lot of individual life, since all instruments play a different
line. Closely connected with this micro-polyphony is the structure of the cluster, in which the
separate voices are not recognizable as well. For me, this structure reminds of Bataille’s idea of
the decaying death body, which is passive, yet full of life; his idea of the transition of
discontinuous life into the whole of the continued universe.
Next to that, as was argued in the second chapter (footnote 24), in the ears of a listener
this specific sound image is specially related to Kubricks movie 2001: a space Odyssey (1968). This
movie starts with Atmospheres to express the chaos just after the initial Big Bang, the moment in
which the discontinuity of individuality did not exist yet, the moment when the continuity where
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we long back for, according to Bataille, still existed (Patterson 449). Moreover, according to
Patterson, “texture itself becomes a symbol for the perception of the universe as chaos” in that
music (456).
[It] is easily read as a musical translation of the notion of an elemental state of
undifferentiation, while the subsequent sound masses that decay, expand or congeal
disclose the fluctuant potential and power that infuses this primordial void. It is, as it
were, the audible expression of musica mundane, or ‘music of the spheres’ (449).
In Le Grand Macabre as well, this type of ‘continuous’ textures sound in moments of death and
‘nothingness’. The most typical example is in the passage after the so real or fake ‘end of the
world’, in “intermezzo: the terrible, imaginary Last Judgement” (262/603), and continues to
accompany Piet and Astradamors “floating in the air”. Here the musical texture is clearly
connected with the ambiguity of death and life as both do not know if they are death or alive.
Afterwards, in the conclusion of the opera we hear a passacaglia, a repetitive bass pattern,
which also is in line with continuity: since it does not have a natural ending, it could go on
forever. At the same time, it repeats always the same moment of eight bars or so, and like this
combines the momentary with the continuous.
III.
Conclusion
Le Grand Macabre touches many of the themes that Bataille discusses in his books, themes like
eroticism, death and laughter. From the perspective of a congenial reading of Bataille it became
even more clear how death and eroticism are related in the opera and how laughter and the
concept of death are perhaps contrasting but in many aspects also rather similar notions. We saw
how abstract concepts like waste and continuity in the opera, via Bataillian reading, underscore
the central theme of the opera: the ‘presence’ of death.
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At the same time, we should be careful with too ready an ‘application’ of Bataille’s
theories on the opera, since sometimes that makes the complexities in both the theory and the
object appear poorer rather than richer.
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Chapter 4: conclusion
In the introduction the central question was posed as follows:
What is the relation between death and laughter in Le Grand Macabre, and in what ways do
pertinent aspects of the opera, like its carnivalesque atmosphere, its mechanic aspects,
eroticism and the music composed relate themselves to this central subject?
In the previous chapters, I argued that even aspects that seem remote from the subject of death,
ultimately relate to it. I have concentrated my analysis on the three themes mentioned in the
second half of the research question: the carnivalesque, the mechanic and eroticism, always in
their relation to laughter. To each of these three, I devoted a chapter in which the point of view
of one author - Bakhtin, Bergson, and Bataille, respectively – was developed and related to the
opera.
In the concept of the carnivalesque in Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his world, the static world of
hierarchies is inverted by the cycle of death and renewal that characterize the carnival. In the
carnivalesque, death thus becomes part of the festivity of life: it is not opposed to the realm of
life and laughter but rather takes part in it. Moreover, in the carnivalesque, laughter provides a
victory over death, and the punishments that could take place after death: it defeats power and
commandments. This is expressed by comic images of death, by the symbols of power and
violence turned inside out. As was argued in chapter 1, Le Grand Macabre has a carnivalesque
atmosphere, featuring elements including drunkenness, obscenity, vulgarity, travesty and the
inversion of power hierarchies, thus celebrating life and renewal, a system in which death has its
place (without death no renewal) while it is denied at the same time (in the end carnival is “lifegiving”). In chapter 1 we discussed moreover how the laughter in the opera could be read as
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being carnivalesque, thus providing a victory over death (as will be shown in the remainder of
this chapter this is just one side of the coin). We examined the Romantic grotesque as presented
by Bakhtin and saw how the alienating elements in the opera could enhance laughter but also
arouse or express fear.
In chapter 2, Bergson’s ideas concerning the mechanic and laughter were connected to
the notion of death, by means of which it could be made clear how the mechanic aspects that are
so omnipresent in especially the music of Le Grand Macabre relate to death. We found mechanics
that aroused laughter (Bergson sees laughter as a mechanism of protection from the mechanic)
and mechanics that did not: a sign that laughter ultimately does not defeat all aspects of death.
The static sounds in the opera are a particularly present aspect of the mechanic, a facet that was
used to relate the theme of the universe (as is very present in the scenes concerning figures like
Venus and Astradamors) to death.
Bataille’s work made it possible, in chapter 3, to relate the eroticism in the work to death.
He perceives the origin of life (and therefore also eroticism) as an excess, a waste of energy, a
waste of life and thus as being inhabited by death. Both eroticism and death are in themselves a
waste of energy, which threatens the regulated world of work; both belong to the realm of the
forbidden and the fundamental prohibitions; both arouse disgust in one way or another. Both are
sovereign, striving for the moment instead of a far away goal, and this theme we traced back in
the opera as well. Moreover, we could perceive how the laughter in the opera is directed towards
the nothingness of death, while being at the same time inhabited by that same nothingness. In
addition, we examined continuous and discontinuous musical textures in the light of Bataille’s
theory and made a comparison between the continuous sounds of Ligeti’s ‘cloud’ music and
Bataille’s continuity of death. Lastly, aspects of excess of waste were related to the nature of the
opera.
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This is the first important conclusion of this thesis: even small details in the opera could be
brought in relation to the subject of death. This conclusion, though, seems, at least slightly, in
contradiction to the nature of the opera. It seems to oppose the rather vivid chaotic
amalgamation of elements that characterizes the opera: the different aspects of Le Grand Macabre
seem to challenge each other, rather than forming a rigid system. At the end of the opera, the
problem is not solved – there is no ‘solution’ for death and violence. Ambivalence remains: death
is laughed at, although never overcome.
Le Grand Macabre is a very strange opera. Its main theme is death, the destruction of a
society – a rather serious and relevant subject, especially in the end of the seventies, thirty years
after World War II and in the middle of the Cold War and the Atom Era. At the same time, it
treats this subject in an almost inappropriately laughable, absurd way. This ambivalence is what
will be examined in this chapter. It is the ambivalence that a combination of laughter and death
naturally brings along, and the ambivalence of (signs of) death and life that constantly interfere
with each other.
Taking some specific examples, and examining their form and function, I would like to
show how the different theories reveal these ambivalences also within specific moments in the
opera. In most of the cases, we will see that in these specific scenes there is a difference between
the meaning of the (musical) form and the function of the scene within the story. In the next
pages I will discuss five of these ambiguities – opposing tendencies that presuppose one another
but without the promise of a resolution of tension.
Much can be said about the differences between all three theories: however, taking into
consideration the scope of this thesis I will discuss them only as far as those differences are
relevant to reveal the ambiguities in the opera itself.
Ambiguity 1: The mechanic disturbs life and the life disturbs the mechanic
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Although Bakhtin, Bergson and Bataille deal with different subjects, respectively the
carnivalesque, the nature of the comical, and the subject of transgression, there is one striking
similarity. In all theories, a ‘normal’ situation is established: subsequently, that normal situation is
interrupted and it is this interruption that is at stake in the three theories.
In the case of Bakhtin, the ‘normal’ situation is the rigid hierarchical structure, norms and
laws of everyday society, that are inverted by the carnival; in Bergson’s case, the vital suppleness
of life is interrupted by a mechanism that arouses laughter; in Bataille, the regular society that is
needed for working is interrupted by the waste of eroticism and death.
What is contrasting in the three theories, though, is what is considered as normal and
what as interruption. Bakhtin sees the carnival (the site of laughter) as an anarchistic element
within the rigid system of the church. In Bataille as well, an anarchistic moment disturbs regular
society. Bergson’s comical, on the other hand, is a situation in which life is invaded by a
mechanical structure, and thus describes roughly the opposite situation: the mechanical is the
interruption instead of being that what is interrupted.
In Le Grand Macabre, and most part of Ligeti’s oeuvre, we can find both types of movement: the
disturbance of regular structures through anarchistic chaos and inversion, and the disturbance of
a natural, vital whole by mechanical interruptions. On the one hand the opera is carnivalesque in
its inversion and chaotism, both having the meaning (within this system of images) of being “life
giving”. On the other hand, in the opera, musical conventions and clichés are exposed in all their
rigidity, interrupting the ‘vital’ flow that often is strived for in a musical work.
On the one hand is the constant interruption of rigidities, a sabotage of death in a
carnivalesque reading and a show of ‘discontinuity’ of living individuality in a Bataillian reading;
on the other hand is the interruption of a lively scene by the mechanical, that is, the life
threatening in Bergson’s opinion, a mechanic that is only occasionally punished by laughter.
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Notions of life and death intertwine constantly in more than one way: this conclusion we will
carry further later on.
An example of the former is the chaotic entrance of Nekrotzar in the third act, where five
instruments perform five different styles of music, in an unsynchronized way (starting 201/452).
In this case, the ambivalence is already clear within this example: on the one hand, the chaos
brings a lively element, transgressing orderly musical time; on the other hand, this lively chaos is
used to introduce the personification of death. The form (chaotic, anarchistic) brings life; the
function of this scene within the opera is the accompaniment of death.
Examples of the latter were examined in chapter 2. If we single out one example, it would
be the (rigid) musical element of the twelve-tone row, that Ligeti uses in the piece, but that
actually contains thirteen tones. It is a fixed musical procedure, which Ligeti inserts in the musical
texture that is for all the rest not composed in this style. However, the fixed procedure of the
twelve-tone row itself is again invaded by chaos: this suggests a ‘carnivalesque’ treatment of the
mechanics. In Ligeti’s music it is often about disturbing this fixed form, at the moment that this
fixed form itself is inserted in a mechanical way (as a ‘ready made’) into the opera.
Clear is, though, that one of the keywords describing this opera are interruption and
disruption, in whatever way, through the mechanic or through the inversed chaos. This
interrupting nature brings along a pattern of live and death mutually entwined.
Ambiguity 2: Laughter and death
The theories as described in the previous chapters suggest that different types of laughter can be
distinguished, and from our discussions of those types of laughter it can be concluded that in Le
Grand Macabre as well, there is a certain complexity of different types of laughter.
For a discussion of the ambivalent roles and natures of laughter in the opera it is
necessary to discern its various aspects. One can distinguish the laughter of the characters in the
opera, that which I will call the ‘performed’ laughter on the one hand, and the laughter of the
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public watching the performance (the ‘aroused’ laughter) on the other hand. Although it is going
too far to determine what the exact nature of this laughter of the public is within the scope of
this thesis, (it would perhaps involve the attendance of different performances by the researcher,)
it is valid to ask what it exactly is in the opera that makes the audience laugh. First I discuss the
‘performed’ laughter, than what it is that makes audiences laugh.
Concerning the performed laughter: from the comparison of the different theories of laughter,
we ultimately can conclude that, in the opera, there is a gap between function and form of
laughter. As an example I would like to take the laughter of Piet de Pot at Nekrotzar in various
instances. Piet never takes Nekrotzar serious, he starts singing coloraturas when being threatened
by death and starts a drinking scene at the moment the world is about to be destroyed, and
through this action he prevents that end of the world. His laughter is a laughter which mocks
death, ultimately overcoming it; it is an inversion of hierarchies and therefore, in its function, this
laughter is carnivalesque. Bakhtin’s Renaissance laughter overcomes fear by comic images of
death, it is the centre of the festivity of renewal, and the opera reflects these aspects. Piet de Pot’s
laughter moreover reminds one of Bataille: the laughter that appears at the moment when the
known order is interrupted, when the unknowable, that is, death, appears.
In its form, though, this mocking laughter embodies death. First of all, it is often a
mechanical laughter, a laughter invaded by artificial, lifeless elements, as was argued in chapter 2.
This laughter is ‘invaded’ by so much technical difficulty, for example in the coloraturas of Piet
de Pot, that the personage seems to disappear, it seems to loose itself, seems to perform a
pointless action, invaded by something else. From Bataille, we could learn that all laughter (not
only the one in the opera) has in common with death its opposition to the orderly world of
labour. In both laughter and death one looses oneself; both disturb the regular course of life;
both are sovereign as in not striving for a goal; both deal with nothingness, are without content.
This idea of loosing oneself and disruption of the regular course is clearly present in the extended
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coloraturas (of laughter) that are performed in the opera. Here, laughter itself is a sign of death,
of the unknown breaking in into our existence. The character disappears and becomes an
instrument for an unknown soul as we could learn from Carolyn Abbate. She states for example
about coloraturas in Verdi’s La Traviata, that the coloratura creates “a vocal presence that has
little to do with Violetta and much to do with the perfomer’s virtuosity and autonomy” (Abbate
45). In other words, the character is absent for a while, taken over by the technical powers of the
performer.
The function of the laughter in the opera is that it overcomes death. However, death
seems to return in its form. Where the story of the opera is about a ‘failed’ apocalypse, a failed
destruction, its form in these instances is about a failed laughter, a failed defeat of death. The
laughter in Le Grand Macabre is often isolated, technical and mechanical in its form, embodying
death while resisting death.
Our second question was what is it in the opera that makes an audience laugh? I would like to
argue that the opera has elements of the carnivalesque (Bakhtin); it has elements of the comical
of Bergson; and it is an excess (Bataille).
The opera has carnivalesque elements, as we saw in the introduction. The carnival,
though, does not arouse laughter, since it does not have spectators: all aspects of society
participate in it. Only to a certain extent is this true for Le Grand Macabre: the opera is a spectacle,
based on a clear distinction between audience and artists. However, there are some attempts to
make the audience participate, since for two thirds of the opera, the singers are pretending to be
normal audience, only to reveal in the third scene that they are singers; the audience is included
when brass is surrounding it. This does not arouse laughter, instead, at least to a certain extent the
audience takes part in the festivity of death and renewal, a festival of laughter that carnival is.
On the other hand, the situation is that of a comedy as defined by Bergson. It is an
artificial construct, based on an alienation between the audience and the object of laughter. It is
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only through this alienation that laughter can take place. The caricature-like characters, the
disguises and the general absurd atmosphere enlarge this aspect of alienation. There are many
slapstick, banana-peel moments in the piece that are typical examples of Bergson’s intervention
of the mechanic in the vital.
The third aspect, of excess, is that a lot of the atmosphere of Le Grand Macabre is rather
corny. It is nonsense. If we recall the citation of composer/scholar Robin Holloway before
mentioned:
The result is a waste of onomatopoeia, funny noises, freaky characters, exaggerated
situations, that wholly fails to amuse (Holloway 61-62).
In this citation, Holloway describes the very aspect of tastelessness as being a waste. It serves
nothing, it has no goal, it is pointless. However, in this waste we can read the excess of Bataille,
the excess that is a waste of energy, similar to death. Corny humour is what conquers death in the
opera; at the same time though it incorporates death, according to Bataille; like death, it is a waste
of energy disturbing of society, it is a nothing, a sovereign moment. Read in this way, ultimately,
this waste performed through tastelessness has its own distinct place in the network of meanings
in Le Grand Macabre.
The laughter of the public could be ambivalent as well: it is a participating, live-giving,
carnivalesque laughter; it is a ‘punishment’ for the mechanic aspects within life; and it is a
laughter at the waste that the opera is, that ultimately resembles death.
Ambiguity 3: laughter and fear
As discussed in chapter 2, the mechanical can arouse both laughter and fear, and sometimes
arouses both. In chapter 1, a similar mixture of laughter and fear was perceived: it was argued
that the opera is a mixture of Romantic and Renaissance forms of the grotesque, the former
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expressing fear while the latter mocks it through laughter. Both seem a result of the process of
alienation, and therefore there is also only a gradual distinction between them. Bergson argued
that comedy needs a certain distance and lack of emotions, and that therefore this distance is
used to ‘defeat’ the mechanical through laughter. However, in the “alien world, terrifying for
men” as represented in the Romantic grotesque, the alienation arouses fear.
In the same way, for Bataille the unknown is what causes laughter, while at the same time
this unknown can be the source of fear. While laughing in the face of death (or the unknown)
one is always laughing because of death, because one is inhabited by death and loses oneself in
laughter. In Bataille, therefore, laughter and fear seem to be happening at the same time. For all
three writers, laughter and fear ultimately are not so separated as they initially seem to be. In the
opera as well, laughter can be alienating and thus frightening.
Ambiguity 4: the relation between death and life in the opera.
Death and life are in strict opposition in much of philosophy: death is defined as the end of life.
In Le Grand Macabre, however, both seem entwined, as was discussed in the first ambiguity, that
of the mixture of anarchy and mechanics that characterize Le Grand Macabre.
The three theories seem to confirm this reading of death and life being entwined in the
opera, each in its own distinct way. Bergson’s mechanical invokes the comical: in Le Grand
Macabre, not all the mechanical is ‘punished’, ‘humiliated’ by a reaction of laughter, as Bergson
perceived it. In that sense as well do rigidity and death remain powerful, while they are at the
same time defeated by humor.
Bakhtin’s image of a carnival in which death is necessary for a new life to start, in which
death and life both have to participate in a process of “becoming”, as Bakhtin calls it. Another
element in Bakhtin’s relation to death is that the life-giving carnival is restricted to one timeslot
per year. Outside of that, the rigid binary structures of life and death prevail.
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Bataille called our attention to the elements of death and waste in the same moment of
eroticism in which new life is created. For him, life is the continuity of being, which can only
happen through death.
Ultimately, both death and life seem to stand next to each other or get involved in each other. In
the opera as well, no matter how many anarchistic protest there is against death, ultimately death
functions as a backlash from within that protest.
This ambivalence of life and death is most clear from the finale of the opera: the
apocalypse is performed (after which certain personages are killed once more by the three
soldiers, only to rise from this death immediately), however, everybody except Nekrotzar is able
to sing in the end. Are they dead or alive? It is not clear: death ultimately does not survive himself;
either that, or the apocalypse actually took place but the afterlife is no different from life itself.
Death ultimately is defeated (in one way of reading the ambivalent ending of the opera):
on the other hand, the ‘message’ of the end is: here and now, until eternity.
For life grants most to those who give
and who gives love shall loving live
When one does this, then time and tide stand still
now and forever more
A here and now is a static situation, an effect enlarged while this text is sung on a passacaglia, a
repetitive bass, that seems to underline the static moment-like quality of the conclusion.
This all in sharp contrast with Bakhtin’s notion of ‘becoming’: time and tide stand still, and this
static is exactly what for Ligeti actually represents death. According to Bataille, it is this very
moment-like continuity that is opened up by death. We see the same pattern as before: the
message is a message of life, while in the music, and parts of the text, death reappears.
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This deadly ‘here and now’ seems to be presented in the absurdity of the opera as well. It
has a plot – one that is not properly played out, and with an ambivalent outcome, and large
sections of the opera are having nothing to do with that plot. The goal-oriented quality that
defines life - in whatever way one thinks about this subject, it can at least be said that the final
goal of this life is death, an individual life on earth has a beginning and an end - this goal oriented
quality is absent in the opera. In its momentary quality (reminding us of Bataille), the opera works
like death works: without a goal, pointless, a here and now, while being at the same time a stylistic
mockery at death.
Before we already examined the example of the anarchistic music that is played on the
entrance of Nekrotzar in the third scene, seems to represent the vivacity of life, however is used
to introduce death.
A last example showing the entwinedness of death and life is in the drinking scene that
ultimately prevents Nekrotzar from performing the apocalypse in a decent way, is on the one
hand the ultimate example of the carnival, since drunkenness defies death: Nekrotzar forgets
what he has to do. On the other hand, precisely this drinking scene is what is one of the longest
mechanical scenes in the opera, in first instance in the mechanical “up!” “up!” that accompanies
the act of drinking; in second instance through the artificiality of the classical snippet of music
that is inserted. It bears death while defying death. This combination of the carnivalesque and the
mechanic also becomes clear from the indications in the score, where it says: “the filling and
draining of the glass becomes more and more mechanical – the whole scene becomes steadily
more orgiastic”.
It is curious to see how in this mixture of life and death, music often has the function of
reintroducing death, while the storyline is about defying death. Death as a personage shows to be
a harmless puppet, however, in the music many elements can be found that can be read as
embodying ‘death’. Music is often the mechanical force: in the second chapter, we found many
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mechanical musical textures and motives, as well as the mechanic transitions between textures as
examples of the mechanical that are not comical. Moreover, the music enforces “here and now” –
like patterns, static or repetitive in form. Lastly, in music, we find the continuous sounds that
were related to the continuity of death of Bataille in chapter 3.
Perhaps this is all not so very strange. Where a living and present representation of death
is per definition already a contradiction in terms, music, which is invisible, as a matter of fact
absent in a bodily sense, is a far more apt medium than that of a character to represent these
highly subtle and ambiguous notions of death.
Ambiguity 5: Laughter and the world outside
What is the relation between Le Grand Macabre and the world that surrounds it? Choosing the
apocalypse as his theme, Ligeti plays with the memory of past destruction as in WW II and under
communism, and with a fear for coming destruction in the Cold War. There are references in the
opera to a political reality: the Gepopo, the powerless king, and the fake democracy of two
parties that seem opposite but always agree with each other. About this relationship we saw in the
first chapter that there is always a certain inversion and mocking at stake: the Gepopo is scared
and powerless instead of being the powerful institute that invokes anxiety that it is in the reality,
the king is powerless too and the opposition between the Black and White Minister is
exaggerated to the extreme.
However, Le Grand Macabre is not a political opera. Yet, it is also not apolitical. Ultimately,
it incorporates (contemporary) political problems within the larger problem of death in general,
and ambivalence characterizes the opera’s relation towards those issues. It does not offer a
solution for problems in the outside world, whether these problems concern personal death, or
mass-death organized by dictators and politicians. Le Grand Macabre is not meant as a catharsis,
nor as a ‘rehearsal’ for death nor as therapy. We could say that in this sense, the opera bears the
results of the outside world: the atrocities that happen there cannot be answered by logical
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theories and solutions, but rather with confusion, ambivalence and perhaps, laughter, but a
laughter ‘in the face of death’, inhibited by death already itself.
In the previous chapter, we characterized the opera as a carnival, a comedy or a waste,
each with its own distinctive relation to the surrounding world. The piece is partly a carnival – as
such a ‘live-giving system’ - partly a comedy: it plays with an ambivalence of participation of the
audience on the one hand, alienation and distance on the other hand.
This alienation is reached through artificiality – and in this artificiality, the opera is
opposed to life, we argued. However, it is perhaps through its artificial character, ultimately, that
the opera can create an alternative space to exist in, where the ‘real’ world, in which death is so
omnipresent, can be faced in a way that allows for aesthetic variation and play with possibilities.
The opera can only relate to this outside world through a certain detachment from it, by being
fundamentally different.
Next to that, the opera is an excess, a waste of energy. As such it bears death. However,
in its character of being a waste the opera opposes the rigid machineries (of death) that form the
‘real’ background against which the opera is posed.
Also in its understanding with the surrounding world, the opera is ambivalent in its
playing with genres of life and death. In this position, the opera is not apolitical and not political:
rather it searches a position in which the ambivalences of life and death are done justice.
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Appendix: Summary of the opera
(1-24/a-37) The opera starts with an overture of twelve car horns. As the overture ends, Piet the
Pot, "by trade wine taster" in the country of Breughelland, appears on stage to deliver a drunken
lament, interrupted by hiccups. The focus switches to two lovers, Amanda and Amando, both
sung by a soprano voice (although Amando should represent a man). Their duets are often
accompanied by strings. Nekrotzar hears the lovers from inside his tomb and joins their duet for
a short while. The lovers, confused by that intervention, discover Piet and become enraged,
believing he is spying on them. The lovers hide in the tomb to make love.
(25-75/38-119) Nekrotzar emerges, very tall, giving the impression of being larger than life,
exclaiming "away, you swagpot! Lick the floor, you dog! Squeek out your dying wish, you pig!"
Piet responds similarly, with confused drunken statements, until Nekrotzar at last tells him to
"Shut up”. As Nekrotzar's threats grow more and more violent, Piet accepts them with amused
servility, until he is told his throat will be "wracked with thirst". He objects, because his master
had "spoke of death, not punishment!" Nekrotzar claims he will destroy the earth with a comet
which God will send to him at midnight, accompanied by solemn music, which is confused by a
metronome, whose regular tempo ignores that of the rest of the orchestra. As Nekrotzar explains
his mission, an off-stage choir joins in, singing "take warning now, at midnight thou shalt die".
Piet should take Nekrotzar’s instruments, a scythe, trumpet and a cloak from the grave, where he
disturbs Amando and Amanda. Piet slowly starts to realize that Nekrotzar will destroy the earth,
and when Nekrotzar wants to go to the city, Piet has to be his horse. While Nekrotzar blows his
trumpet, an offstage choir and an off-stage tromba bassa are heard and they ride off on their quest.
After a instrumental interlude with fast chromatic figures (in the dark), the lovers emerge and
sing another duet, vowing to love each other until death. The first scene finishes with high,
piercing sounds.
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(76-139/120-276) Scene two starts with a second car horn prelude, which announces a scene
change to the household of the court astronomer, Astradamors, and his sadistic wife, Mescalina.
"One! Two! Three! Five!" exclaims Mescalina, beating her husband with a whip to the rhythm of
shifting, chromatic chords. Astramadors, dressed in women’s clothes, unenthusiastically begs for
more. She forces him to lift his skirt, and strikes him with a spit. Convinced she has killed him,
she begins to mourn, then wonders if he is really dead. She summons a spider, apparently her pet,
accompanied by a duo for harpsichord and organ-regal stops. Astradamors rises, protesting that
"spiders always give [him] nausea." As punishment for attempting to fake death, she forces him
to take part in a rhythmic dance termed ‘the Gallopade’. This ends with the astronomer kissing
her behind. Mescalina orders her husband to his telescope. “Observe the stars, left, right. What
do you see up there? By the way, can you see the planets? Are they all still there, in the right
order?" She addresses Venus with a plea for a better man, accompanied by an oboe d'amore. As
she falls asleep, Astradamors quietly claims he would "plunge the whole universe into damnation,
if only to be rid of her!" Right on cue, Nekrotzar arrives, announced by his trombone. Venus
informs Mescalina that she has sent two men. In all her singing Venus is assisted by an "echo”,
an off-stage women’s choir. Nekrotzar steps forward, claiming to be the "well-hung" man
Mescalina requested. They perform a stylized lovemaking, as Venus watches and Piet and
Astradamors add their commentary. Nekrotzar suddenly bites Mescalina's neck, killing her, and
insists that Piet and his new servant "move this thing [her corpse] out of the way." Triplets
launch into the trio's humorous singing, "fire and death I bring, burning and shriveling."
Nekrotzar orders his brigade to prepare as they will set off for the royal palace of Prince Go-Go.
Before doing so, Astradamors destroys everything in his home, proclaiming: "at last, I am master
in my own house."
(140-158/227-335) The prelude to the third scene is similar to the overture, with electric
doorbells instead of the car horns. The curtain opens to the throne room, where the White and
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Black Minister, two politicians, dance a waltz and exchange insults in alphabetical order. Prince
Go-Go arrives and begs them to put "the interests of the nation" over selfishness. They
subsequently fall into each others arms, singing “appeasement” and force Go-Go to mount a
giant rocking horse for his "riding lesson". The snare drum leads variations of military march-like
music. They suggest there is going to be a war. Go-Go, who usually refers to himself in the (royal)
plural, says "We surrender!", and falls off his horse, after which the Black Minister says "thus do
dynasties fall." The prince recalls that war is forbidden in the constitution, but the very word
constitution arouses a ‘mechanic’ laughter from the politicians who tear apart the paper with the
constitution. They move on to "posture exercises: how to wear a crown, with dignity". Go-Go
refuses to take the crown, but the ministers forcibly place it on his head. Than the politicians
order him to memorize a speech and sign their respective decrees (which are white with a black
letter and black with a white letter but both have the same objective: to raises taxes with 100%).
Each time the prince objects, they harmoniously threaten to resign, a possibility that terrifies
Prince Go-Go. Ultimately, the prince is so hungry that he says in a moment of bravery: "we will
accept your resignations".
(159-176/339-387) The Chief of the Gepopo (possibly sung by the soprano who performed
Venus), shows up with an army of attendants: she is disguised as a “sinister bird of prey”, on
roller skates. Her aria, sung in panic, consists of "code language": repetitive sounds and stuttering
words. When she finishes, the politicians go out on the balcony to try to calm down the great
uproar that can be heard off-stage, each in the way of the other. Go-Go laughs at them as the
crowds throw tomatoes and the like to them. He appears on the balcony and the people (still offstage) are shouting "Our great leader! Our great leader! Go Go Go Go!". Their chant is gradually
accelerated and increases in volume.
(177-201/387-450) After this, the Gepopo enters the stage again to warn Go-Go with more code
language (at first, he is not even able to speak). He says that a comet is drawing closer and at the
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end of his aria comes down from his stilts and changes his disguise into a “hideous polyp”. GoGo wakes up the ministers who flee when they hear about the comet. Go-Go proclaims that he is
"master in [his] own house". For the first time, a mixed chorus sings off-stage: “Hear us, dead
and fright do sear us / great our alarm / yet fear no harm / if thou be ever near us.” Gepopo
warns the prince to call a guard (in her usual codified style), and than flees in panic, but than,
when everybody expects disaster, it is Astradamors who enters the stage: “Hurray My wife is dead,
hurray!”, ignoring the choir that sits in between the audience, indistinguishable, and cries for help.
A siren is heard and a bass trombone announces danger. Go-Go is ordered to go "under the bed,
quick!"
(201-238/451-533) Nekrotzar wordlessly rides in on the back of Piet with a procession behind
him containing bizarre giants and other grotesque figures as well as violins, a bassoon, a piccolo
clarinet and a piccolo, all playing their melody independent from each other. In the orchestra pit
timpani and celli play a pattern that is rhythmically equal to the ostinato of the finale of
Beethoven’s Eroica. After a while, the orchestra joins in for a long instrumental section. When
Nekrotzar arrives in the middle of the stage, all stand motionless, as if time stands still. "Woe!"
exclaims Nekrotzar from the balcony. "Woe! Woe!" respond the terrified people (in the stalls).
He presents death prophecies. The bass trombone has been joined on the balcony by a little brass
ensemble, which punctuates him with two new motifs. The choir in the stalls are joined by an
off-stage chorus. Piet and Astradamors however, seduce Nekrotzar to eat and moreover drink
with them. They are unafraid of Nekrotzar, and playfully insult him (“brother Nekro”) until he
finally starts drinking too. The three start a rhythmic scanting of “up”, “your”, “drink”, “cheers”
etc, the orchestra hammering fortississimo off-beats.
(239-262/534-602) This section starts piano, creating a great contrast with the section before. A
Haydn-like string-quartet is heard that reminds of the music that was played when Mescalina was
killed. Nekrotzar tells about his achievements demolishing the great kings of the world: ultimately
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he is so drunk that he falls on the table, and Prince Go-Go emerges from under the table and the
four perform a game. A sudden explosion and lighting effects and a lot of noise are coming from
off-stage. Nekrotzar wonders what time it is when a cuckoo announces midnight. After a silence,
Nekrotzar asks for his attributes and mounts the rocking horse, declaring: "in the name of the
Almighty, I smite the world to pieces”, After which we hear piercing high sounds from strings
and winds. The curtain falls and there is complete darkness.
(262-269/603-614) An Intermezzo with long chords and later flageolet broken chords of all
instruments, joined by Chromonika’s.
(269/615) Piet and Astradamors, float away into the sky, believing they are ghosts, wondering if
they are dead. Go-Go emerges and believes he is the only person left alive, but three soldiers
emerge. They order Go-Go to a halt, refusing to believe that he is a prince. Nekrotzar emerges,
confused, until Mescalina emerges from the tomb, who starts to pursue Nekrotzar looking for
revenge. One soldiers grasps her, though, and another one appears with the Black and White
Minister, tied up with a long rope. They proclaim their innocence, but Mescalina accuses them of
all kinds of atrocities, and they accuse her as well. Than the three soldiers massacre all, only
Nekrotzar is overlooked. When the massacre is over, Piet and Astradamors appear suddenly and
Prince Go-Go jump up comically, suddenly alive. Go-Go invites them for a drink of wine. "We
have a thirst, so we are living!" they realize as they sink back to earth. Nekrotzar is defeated; they
have all survived. In the following "mirror canon" featuring unpredictable tonal chords for
strings, Nekrotzar shrinks until he disappears. The lovers emerge from the tomb, closely
entwined. They start to dance with Go-Go, Piet and Astradamors, when Mescalina and the two
ministers and the soldiers have risen op and join the dance. The entire cast encourages the
audience: "Fear not to die, good people all/No-one knows when his hour will fall/Farewell in
cheerfulness, farewell!"
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Notes:
1
Bakhtin uses the word ‘carnivalesque’ to point at all the carnival-like experiences that exist
outside of the carnival.
2
For Ligeti the mass-destruction of World War II was ever-present, since he worked himself for
two years in a concentration camp in Szeged and later in Nagyvárad, and lost almost all his family
in the war (he was Jewish): his father died in Bergen-Belsen from typhus, his brother in
Mauthausen and his aunt and uncle in Auschwitz; only his mother survived. During the offensive
by Russia in 1944 he was imprisoned four times but escaped four times in the general confusion.
After the war, he lived under the communist regime in Hungary which he fled from in 1956
(Richard Steinitz, "Alice in Breughelland: A Grotesque Carnival of Sex and Death," György Ligeti
Music of the Imagination (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2003) 20.) Ligeti himself connects
the theme of the apocalypse in Le Grand Macabre with the possibility of the destruction of society.
“The thought of the threat of collective death is always present,” he says in an interview (Claude
Samuel, "Ligeti - Claude Samuel," trans. Terence Kilmartin, György Ligeti in Conversation with
Péter Várnai, Josef Hausler, Claude Samuel and Himself, ed. Peter Várnai (London: Eulenburg
Books, 1983) 118.)
3
Of course, it can be questioned if everybody really was equal during carnival; we will come back
later on that.
4
Bakhtin uses the word system (at least, in the translation) in a rather unsystematical way for the
‘canon’ of grotesque images created by the folk culture of the Renaissance (Bakhtin 31). He uses
the word canon not in a narrow, strict sense, but to distinguish between two manners, the
grotesque (carnivalesque) and the classic (regular) (31). However, there is just one large style that
belongs to the “culture of folk carnival humor” (4).
109
5
Ligeti, Das Komische ist todernst, in Programmheft der Hamburger Staatsoper, p., 50, quoted from
Kostakeva 194.
6
All references to the score of Le Grand Macabre are followed by two numbers
“pagenumber/rehearsalmark”.
7
For more examples see Seherr-Thoss, p. 155-160
8
In his analysis of the opera, Pierre Michel mentions amongst others the following quotations:
the choir of the spirits resembles J.S. Bach choral from Passion of St. John: Erkennne mich, mein Huter
(64/97); the regal-accompaniment for Nekrotzar resembles the scenes with Caron (as ferryman
to Hades- obviously connected to death as well) in the third act of L’orfeo of Monteverdi (39/57);
in the passage in which Mescalina ‘laments’ the supposed death of Astradamors, she uses a
chromatic descending line which comes close to various Lamenti by Monteverdi (88/153); during
the grotesque dance of Astradamors and Mescalina, we hear a quotation of the Grand Galop
Chromatique by Liszt (95/170); and finally a bit further the famous Cancan of Orphee dans l’enfers by
Offenbach (96/172). (Pierre Michel, "Mon Opéra Est Une Sorte De Farce Noire, Entretien Avec
Gyorgy Ligeti," Le Grand Macabre, Opéra En Quatre Tableux, ed. Michel Meschke, vol. 180,
L’avant-Scène Opéra (Paris: Éditions Premières Loges 1997) 16, 18, 24, 26.)
9
In Ligeti’s work, the ‘classical’ idea of a ‘canon’ is both acknowledged and discredited. Ligeti
places himself in a tradition, but at the same time distorts this tradition. This is also clear from his
attitude towards the genre of opera. He refers to Le Grand Macabre as an “anti-anti opera” (a
perfect example of inversion as well), referring to Kagel’s ‘anti-opera’ Staatstheater while
juxtaposing it (Samuel 111). Staatstheater is an anti-opera, according to Ligeti, since it inverts
elements of opera: the soloists are singing in chorus, the members of the chorus are singing soli,
the ballet is not dancing, everybody who cannot dance is dancing, the swan of Lohengrin is
coming without Lohengrin (György Ligeti, "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack," Music and Musicians
22.263 (1974). Ligeti: “Boulez declared that opera-houses should be blown up, that opera was
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dead. I agreed with him, and I still do” Samuel, "Ligeti - Claude Samuel," 112-13. Nevertheless,
Ligeti himself defines Le Grand Macabre, as an anti-anti opera: a term that suggests a certain return
to the genre of the opera, contaminated with the knowledge of the ‘anti-opera’, and surely there
are very operatic elements in the piece, like the arias of the Chief of the Gepopo. At the same
time though, these arias are a parody on that type of aria: if the Gepopo is a diva, it is one that
completely lost his/her mind. A pattern appears of at the same time confirming and denying the
genre: ambivalence prevails.
10
The idea of grotesque disappeared altogether in the 17th and 18th century, according to Bakhtin.
In the 17th and 18th century, laughter lost its universal, philosophical quality, it referred to
individual phenomena of life: the sphere of the comic became narrower and separated from that
which is important and essential (67). Rationalism and classicism became the new official culture,
defined by Bakhtin as bourgeois. Festivity became parade, or a private matter, carnival a mere
holiday-mood.
11
“De angst werd werkelijk voelbaar, zo gestileerd in deze hevige hoge noten” Marjoleine de Vos,
"Een Gillende Sopraan Is Ontroerend," NRC Handelsblad 10th of March 2008.
12
Musicologist Carolyn Abbate theorizes about the coloratura in many of her books and articles
on opera, often connecting it to the inhibition of an alien force, referring to the absence of text
or personality in these passages. For example, she claims that the many coloraturas of Orfeo in
his aria ‘Possente spiritu’ in Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi point toward a “transcendent object”
(Carolyn Abbate, In Search of Opera, Princeton Studies in Opera (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003) 22.
13
When speaking about the mask I never mean the musical genre but always the mask that is
used in disguises.
14
It could be argued that Ligeti’s vocabulary has some similarities with for example the
‘verfremdung’ that Berthold Brecht found very pertinent in his theater. However, secondary
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sources do not provide much documents about these connections and Ligeti never mentions
Brecht in interviews. His figure of the ‘overexpressive’ though, could be read as an exaggerated
Romantic grotesque which creates an alienating effect, thus combining both types of twentieth
century grotesque.
15
Although certainly differences can be found between the notions of the mechanic, the
automatic, the rigid, the ready-made and, to a lesser extent, the artificial, Bergson uses these
concepts referring to more or less the same phenomenon: that which threatens life or the ‘elán
vital’. I will use the word ‘mechanical’ as a notion that includes all those variations.
16
Philosopher Bernard Prusak criticizes this opinion. He says that laughter is always a human
thing since only humans have the ability to find something laughable – however, an object can be
laughable even if it does not have anything human in it, as long as it transgresses certain norms
(Prusak 383-384).
17
This conception of the disguise is opposed to Bakhtin’s, since for Bakhtin the disguise is
related to change and renewal, where for Bergson it is something fixed.
18
Ligeti was fascinated by the music of Conlon Nancarrow, who obviously composed the most
mechanical music ever. He composed rhythmic complexities that were not performable by
humans, that was why it was created for player pianos: Ligeti called his music “the best of any
composer living today” (David T Bruce, "The Manic Mechanic," The Musical Times 138.1850
(1997).
19
The partiture of the piece consists of written text only and can be found in Eric Drott, "Ligeti
in Fluxus," The Journal of Musicology 21.2 (2004): 237.
20
Fascinating and moving in this sense is the anecdote that Ligeti’s lifelong friend, the composer
György Kurtag, tells in an In Memoriam about Ligeti’s own death:
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“The last minutes. Vera and Lukas [his wife and son] are by his side.
His breathing slows, halts, starts again, becomes even slower.
Lukas: ‘Like the end of the metronome piece.’
... the breathing slows even more and then... - stops.
***
On the afternoon concert on the day of the funeral service the ‘Poème symphonique.’
Astounding, tragic, Beckett-like.”
(source: www.signandsight.com/features/1580.html)
21
Another type of repetition that should be mentioned is the musical form with a repetitive
nature, mainly the passacaglia, which appears twice in the opera, as an accompaniment to the last
scene and when Nekrotzar arrives on stage in the third scene (201/447). This has not so much
to do with the comical, though.
22
Although not an aspect of musical texture, it should be also noticed at this spot that in the
libretto there are abrupt changes: all three different scenes start with a completely different story,
only later to follow the general line of the plot.
23
Cf. Seherr-Thoss 316.
24
From a listeners point of view it is virtually impossible not to think of empty yet
claustrophobic universe of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) when listening to the
high sound clusters in the opera. Kubrick used music from Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres
for his film. Although it is a well-known fact that Ligeti did not know at the release of that
movie that Kubrick used his music, later on they mutually admired each other and Kubrick used
Ligeti’s music more two times for his films, so perhaps Ligeti consciously made use of this very
probable association with Kubrick’s lonely universe (Robin Holloway, "Ligeti's Half-Century,"
The Musical Times 145.1889 (2004): 60.) (It could be a coincidence, but both the first act of
113
both the movie and the opera end on a high and piercing sound, (cf. Patterson 457)). In
Kubrick’s movie as well, the theme of the universe connects with that of death and destruction,
since computer Hall kills four people when being in space.
25
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mannerism).
26
Liebestod is a theme from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, and although the idea is ‘dying of
love’ knows a long tradition, it is perhaps most famously expressed in this opera.
27
In the remainder of this chapter this source will be referred to as “X”. Page numbers lower as
100 refer to the separate work L’erotisme; page numbers higher than 500 refer to the separate
work Larmes d’Eros.
28
Originally, Ligeti called them Clitoria and Spermando and wanted them to be vulgar, changing
them only later in two sopranos being lyrical, naïve and sweet (Seherr-Thoss 236).
29
This is a cliché operation in opera to express (sexual) unity, since also Mozart employs it in the
aria La ci darem la mano in his opera Don Giovanni, in which Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina. The
music goes from heterophonic dialogue to homophonic singing, representing the process
seduction until the final result of (sexual) unity.
30
“The door of the burial chamber (from Scene I) is now the door to the cellar” (76).
114
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