Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Certain composers have suffered rather weird fates, from Lully's lethal foot infection--he jabbed it while beating time--to the accidental shooting of Anton Webern (or was it a murder conspiracy?). That fact is just one of the many seeds that have germinated into the fictional case (re)presented in Rosa: The Death of a Composer, the first in the ongoing series of collaborations between leading Dutch avant-garde composer Louis Andriessen and director-librettist Peter Greenaway. The result is a Chinese box-like dramaturgy, many-tiered, self-referential, and frankly too complex to summarize handily but which involves hippophilia, an abusive relationship, geometric obsessions, multiple nudity, old-fashioned Westerns, and art's slippery, illusory nature. Greenaway has in fact created a film from the original 1994 stage production--but even without its stylized bleed of visuals and streaming text, the bizarrely arresting quality of this one-of-a-kind opera comes across on Nonesuch's premiere recording. Andriessen's score is a fascinating melange of nervous minimalism--preempting the style's tendency toward predictability--fierce Stravinskian rhythmic displacements, frosty harmonies that gather like a miasma, and half-jazz, half high-opera vocalism. Most impressive of all is how Andriessen avoids the kind of standard-issue postmodern pastiche that's the usual payoff but instead actually creates a believable sound world for the story's unique mix of parody and menace. Longtime Andriessen interpreters Reinbert de Leeuw and the Schönberg Ensemble give the score a biting, disturbing edge, while Marie Angel surmounts the outrageous demands (not just vocal) made on her without faltering. The anti-romantic Andriessen is a seriously undervalued composer--he lacks the star power of Glass or Reich--but his intensely probing visions of music and its place in culture (as in De Materie) open labyrinths of discovery. --Thomas May

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It has been six years since Rosa was premiered by Netherlands Opera, during which time Louis Andriessen's musical language has continued to evolve and provoke, not least in his third stage work, Vermeer. Yet this recording is much more significant than merely by way of catching up, as the impact of the piece, and its significance in the composer's output, should not be underestimated.

Conceptually, Rosa starts from the opposite pole of Andriessen's earlier, full-length stage work, De Materie.... read more

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Tracks:

Overture
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5

Tracks:

Scene 6
Scene 7
Scene 8
Scene 9
Scene 10
Scene 11
Scene 12
The Index Singer (Fragment)

Amazon.com

Certain composers have suffered rather weird fates, from Lully's lethal foot infection--he jabbed it while beating time--to the accidental shooting of Anton Webern (or was it a murder conspiracy?). That fact is just one of the many seeds that have germinated into the fictional case (re)presented in Rosa: The Death of a Composer, the first in the ongoing series of collaborations between leading Dutch avant-garde composer Louis Andriessen and director-librettist Peter Greenaway. The result is a Chinese box-like dramaturgy, many-tiered, self-referential, and frankly too complex to summarize handily but which involves hippophilia, an abusive relationship, geometric obsessions, multiple nudity, old-fashioned Westerns, and art's slippery, illusory nature. Greenaway has in fact created a film from the original 1994 stage production--but even without its stylized bleed of visuals and streaming text, the bizarrely arresting quality of this one-of-a-kind opera comes across on Nonesuch's premiere recording. Andriessen's score is a fascinating melange of nervous minimalism--preempting the style's tendency toward predictability--fierce Stravinskian rhythmic displacements, frosty harmonies that gather like a miasma, and half-jazz, half high-opera vocalism. Most impressive of all is how Andriessen avoids the kind of standard-issue postmodern pastiche that's the usual payoff but instead actually creates a believable sound world for the story's unique mix of parody and menace. Longtime Andriessen interpreters Reinbert de Leeuw and the Schönberg Ensemble give the score a biting, disturbing edge, while Marie Angel surmounts the outrageous demands (not just vocal) made on her without faltering. The anti-romantic Andriessen is a seriously undervalued composer--he lacks the star power of Glass or Reich--but his intensely probing visions of music and its place in culture (as in De Materie) open labyrinths of discovery. --Thomas May

Customer Reviews:

Too much 'too much' spoils great music, libretto.......2001-01-12

I love Andriessen... and I love Greenaway. Put the two together and let them run wild with excess and the result is -- problematic.

Greenaway's postmodern existentialism and semiotic obsessiveness is ill-suited to Andriessen's understated brashness and ironic impassivity. This is the wrong libretto for Andriessen's music, lacking the detached elevation of the classic and modern Dutch texts culled from 'what-not' sources for the composer's overwhelmingly successful De Materie. The out-of-place elevation of the texts in De Materie created just the right irony implicit in Andriessen's quasi-minamalist style. He even managed to jerk tears in Part IV.

But Rosa seems thrashed by its own postmodernism. Granted, the libretto and music are great on their own -- there's just something amiss in the wedding. The drama is slow-moving, compounded by the monolithic nature of Andriessen's granite-wall music, effective elsewhere, but cumbersome here. There is no charm or quietude, no respite... everything is lost in Greenaway's web of semantics.

The singing is far too declamatory. A great cast of singers are hardly given the chance to prove their merits... on rare occasion, we're given a glimpse at their prowess, then jerked back into ponderous monomorphous shouting.

Basic touches that make a recording 'clean' are missed altogether: like coordinated cut-offs. It's 'each man for himself' from end to end. Even the orchestra playing is littered with subtle insecurities, which, although not altogether damaging to Andriessen's mighty score, could have been remedied. The trouble, it seems, is that a perfectly clean recording would take decades to produce, given the complexity of music and enormous demands on the singers... a plus and a minus here.

And why not have the complete Index Singer scene? Cutting it short is a true waste, and an insult to some of Greenaway's best writing... I wouldn't mind paying for a 3rd overtime CD; which might have been filled out with more music by Andriessen, no?

Praiseworthy is the subtle change in Andriessen's style, which seems now filled with more pastiche and cutesy parody than ever. It should be interesting to see if this element 'takes over' in his upcoming output.

In short, I give this CD 4 stars because lovers of Andriessen and Greenaway should not ignore it... but fault it the 5th star for the slightly sloppy production and issues of artistic incompatability noted above. Not recommended to the uninitiated; they'd do better to start with De Materie, Andriessen's masterwork!

Intoxicating, gripping, fantastic 'Horse Opera'!.......2000-06-24

A curious but engaging libretto/scenario from Peter Greenaway, featuring labyrinthine turns of reference and plot that encompass serial murders, contemporary composers, sexual obsession, equine fondness, and Hollywood cinema westerns, only seems to sharpen Louis Andriessen's musical skills. Urgent phrasing, minimalist throbbing, and swirling developing melodies, orchestrated to the composers' unique taste in wind, brass, electric guitars and voices, makes for an addictive, flourishing, score, which works very well on CD. Andriessen throws in wild flourishes of jazz influence and wide, ranging, Western film music pastiche, but never sounds anything like the true original he is. This is highly recommended; if anything more coherent and complete than his major 'music theater' piece "De Materie" (a collaboration with director Robert Wilson). Teaming up with English arthouse filmmaker Peter Greenaway ("The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover")works well, and more is promised is promised from the duo ("Waiting for Vermeer" being a cited title). Meanwhile this remains an exceptionally fresh and edgy piece, tolling, trumpeting and snarling into the contemporary conciousness.

Track Listings:

Track Listings

track listings

Track Listings

I [Import]

Messiaen: Livre du Saint Sacrement

Live Wire//Blues Power [Import] [Original recording remastered] [Live]

Dance Beyond the Color

Still Loving You [Import]

NonPilation

It's a Wonderful World [Box set]

Langevin: Europe & Liberty -- Hymne Europeen / Symphonie "Liberte" / Europa Sinfonia / Meditations Symphoniques, Suite pour Piano seul

Larrikins Louts & Layabouts [Import]

Magic Windows [Import]

Music and Mantra Companion CD for Kundalini Yoga