Netzwerk

The opening of the approximately two-hour play—Cerha’s first to be brought to the stage—uses theatrical gestures: A speaker tears down the curtain and begins a monologue that no one can understand. Still, the way he is speaking seems strangely intimate, as if he is announcing ideas that go beyond words. His speech is followed by images from primeval eras: Orbiting planets, blurred flickering shapes, darkness. A human voice rings out from nowhere, godlike. The symbols Cerha uses reveal what Netzwerk is really about: It is a draft for modern world theatre.

Außenansicht

Cerha finished the score for Exercisesin 1967, bringing years of work to an end. However, the composer initially had no idea what role the piece would play in the cultural scene. „What will people do with it?”Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 84” asked Cerha after finishing the composition, knowing full well that Exercises was created Exercises “without regard to the requirements of the apparatus”.Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 84
Although the play premiered the next year and was soon followed by many other performances, the story of Exercises did not conclude for a long time. In 1967, a note by Cerha announced something that wouldn’t come to pass until the early 1980s: The adaptation of the piece for the theatre:

Scene photos of Netzwerk, Vienna 1981, AdZ, 000F0078

Brücke

Innenansicht

Inspired by Ashby’s homeostat and Wiener’s discussion of brain waves as existing in a perpetual state of equilibrium, Cerha’s Netzwerk makes stability the focal point of the musical and plot progression. Cerha was already artistically exploring such topics in the orchestral work Fasce, though that work remained embedded in a unified and uniform musical language. Netzwerk, however, dispenses with this allegiance to a specific style; dissimilarity dominates the various levels of mutual influence in the piece.
As in Exercises, two layers in particular can be distinguished: main movements and what Cerha termed “regresses”. In the main movements, Cerha usually presents a largely stable order, which, must prove itself again and again against hostile forces that stem from the intervening regresses. The “regress” layers most closely symbolise what cybernetic theory would term the “environment”: a sphere that exists in contrast to a regulating system and can have a disruptive effect on it. Cerha similarly embraces the opposing forces in Netzwerk:

“Order” and “systems of order”: These terms are found in Cerha’s descriptions of Netzwerk again and again. Regarded from a socio-political perspective, they conceal domination and oppression. The cybernetic reading is that systems need regulation in order to reach goals. It is typical of Cerha’s approach to look for the system’s true strength in the constant disruption of order, in the questioning of stability. Significant aspects of this approach can be traced back to Ashby. Flipping one of the external switches on the homeostat initiates a balancing act. The wires on the four blocks, connected to magnets, begin to move uncontrollably, and electromagnetic rotary selectors inside the blocks search for new positions. Stillness does not return until these new positions are identified. Once a new equilibrium is established, the four wires finally come to rest in a central position. What seems to be a technical feature of the homeostat actually has great significance: The ability to cope with new and unpredictable situations is a key survival skill. The homeostat behaves like an organism, surviving and overcoming crisis. Ashby termed this “ultrastability”. The extent to which Cerha used this concept as a jumping-off point becomes clear when one compares the systems of Exercises and Netzwerk with “multistable systems in the field of biology“.Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 63

The changing levels in Netzwerk’s theatrical concept are part of the idea of multi-stability. Constant changes in musical and visual types of expression permit the flexibility necessary to realign classification systems. Stylised figures in the theatrical scenario make orientation possible: Representatives of power are, for example, the baritone (in different roles) and anonymous enforcers of order. They are contrasted by a naked female figure who appears in various scenes and is treated almost like an inanimate object, and by five speaking roles, which are assigned to different (yet not precisely defined) cultural areas through their specific patterns of speech. A large, floating sphere becomes a symbol of world events.

Programme booklet Netzwerk, Wiener Festwochenl 1981, AdZ, KRIT003/11

The various stations of Netzwerk—44 in all—can only to a limited extent be seen as examples. Every section contains changes, and the constantly interweaving relationships of the levels mean that no one order can return a second time. Nonetheless, individual features of earlier orders are sometimes retained over long periods, given a fresh appearance within each new context. Over the span of the work, Cerha’s poetry transforms the musical arrangements of the main movements, adapting to the circumstances so fully that they are eventually changed entirely. These organisational changes can be understood by looking at a few selected examples of the stages of development.
The first movement represents fertile soil for the gradual establishment of order. After nebulous events in two expositions, structures gradually develop on stage. Starting with a dark lighting ambiance and a barren environment, people in uniform gradually bring life to the stage. In line with Cerha’s vision, they act as a kind of “nation of insects“,Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 236 drawing from a metaphor for social structures that has been used for human societies since antiquity. Symbolic of the formation of order, radiant green web structures repeatedly appear in the background of the stage sets. The music also follows these developments from amorphous and vague to sometimes recognisable shapes. Initially shrouded in dark, impenetrable soundscapes, there are flashes of increasingly accentuated and often sharp fragments of sound as the music unfurls. Gradually, the dense network of sounds begins to loosen. A certain stasis, however, is also characteristic of the music. The sound gesture slowly feels its way forward, unchanging, and the music carefully progresses through various mini-sections, separated from one another by pauses. There are changes in the details between them, but Cerha consistently sticks to the same soundscape organisational system. Something essential emerges from the movement’s broad and leisurely unfolding: The music for Netzwerk is not actually stage music, is not primarily dramatic and visual, as in Cerha’s operas. The main movements in particular use an abstract tonal language that is part of the highly experimental zeitgeist of the 1960s.

The regress that follows the first movement abruptly tosses the existing system of musical order overboard. No longer does Cerha arrange the tonal material of these suddenly erupting miniatures using delicate soundscapes, but instead in swarms of fast, dry, overlapping semiquavers. This superimposition makes the individual figures difficult to filter out—instead, the listener experiences higher-level tonal movements. These begin in the lower register, mainly with the bass instruments of the first movement, and gradually move up, ending with a skeletal cacophony of piano, marimba, and vibraphone. The illustrious hustle and bustle of the music is joined on stage as an array of recognisable characters populate the room: The virtual camera lens that in the first movement focusses on society from afar here zooms in to allow a view from closer up.

The strength with which the regresses and movements react to each other on systemic levels becomes clear in the second movement. The link between the music and its raw “original state” is clear—yet reacts to the disruptions with noticeable irritation, especially in the beginning. The fragile soundscapes are pushed almost entirely into the background, with unevenness dominating. Short notes, sharp accents, uncomfortable sound effects (the wind instruments often making use of the flutter tongue technique, for example), and enigmatic lines overlap crudely, unpleasantly. Following the cybernetic concept of regulation, planar sounds gradually return, though hasty figures repeatedly prevent them from complete restoration. The communicated potential for conflict is increased by the activity on the stage. From the beginning, the crowd stands in opposition to the ruling figure, the baritone, with the stage space divided into two clear sections that separate the people from those in power. Increasingly, however, the people are assured of their ability to change and eventually cross the dividing line—a disruption that symbolically leads to the establishment of a new order.

Cerha’s arrangement of regresses in the sequence of movements causes a gradual change in the musical order. At the end of the first part of Netzwerk is another important movement. In it, a system of order emerges that is paradigmatic for Cerha: a reference to the first of the seven parts of Spiegel, for large orchestra. The structural principles of both pieces are identical and easy to understand: Starting with isolated orchestral beats, a process of unravelling begins, soon leading to brash and almost impenetrable tonal fields. In both pieces, Cerha divides the orchestra into two sound groups, almost like a type of double canon. The competition between the two orchestral groups corresponds to the way the crowd onstage is divided into two groups. At the centre: the ruler’s throne, familiar from the second movement, a symbol of power and disempowerment. The first group of people chooses a naked man as their master, before the second group robs him of this role and—as in the beginning—hangs him from a long rope, from which he dangles until the end of the number. Seen from the musical bird’s-eye view, the replacement of the dominant deep and harsh timbres in the first part of Netzwerk with high, ethereal tones is symptomatic of the allegorical stage play. These higher tones are what remain at the end of the second orchestral section’s unravelling. A chirping tonal mixture of harp, glockenspiel, and antique cymbals in an otherwise quiet room seals the end of this particular system of order.

The closer one gets to the centre of Cerha’s Netzwerk, the more the musical systems move away from the anarchic, impulsively proliferating breeding ground in the first movement and towards the sound ideal of artificially comprehensive organisation. This principle becomes recognisable in the sixth movement, which assumes the function of a central axis. The tonal language is characterized by gestures that are astonishingly similar to Cerha’s serial composition phase. Fields of internally differentiated and complex rhythmic cells come together in blocks, or are separated, as in the first movements, by pauses of approximately the same length—causing sections of a completely different nature to arise again. On stage, an unnerving turmoil is visible around an illuminated globe, within which the allegorical naked girl re-emerges, only to be shot by a suspicious character. A dancing pair of lovers emerges from the dark scenery (Regress H)—another perspective on humanity’s “vital animalistic foundation”.Schriften: ein Netzwerk, Vienna 2001, p. 84 The music: lyrical, velvety, and carried by broad melodic arcs. Now, the regression arrives at the vocals, completely opposite from the earlier punctuated sound groupings. Influences from the layered abstract orders of the main movements are immediately recognisable; the next movement develops one of Netzwerk’s two arias, although it might be more appropriate to call it a distortion of an aria. The baritone stands like a priest on a kind of pulpit, beneath him fluttering the urban bustle of various people. This stylised emotional image, which arises from the artificial language that Cerha invented for Netzwerk, is sharpened by graceful, almost wafer-thin and crystalline chord sequences. These can be viewed as remnants of the isolated beats that characterize the beginning of Movement IV B, but here they fit into an entirely new context that no longer has much in common with the originally natural unravelling. Here, the system of order has reached a manneristic point of elaborate tonal embellishment—a point from which development must, and does, proceed in other directions. Allusions to earlier systems of order become more noticeable in the following sections, sound states that had been left behind return in modified form. In a certain respect, these reflect the impossibility of complete control—the cybernetic vision of perfect regulation is revealed to be just an illusion.

Schatztruhe