Unlike many other New Music festivals, Eclat has so far resisted the temptation to build the festival programmes around central themes. The Eclat festival is one of the major annual gatherings of the German and international scene for contemporary music, taking place in Stuttgart and organised by ‘Musik der Jahrhunderte’ (Christine Fischer) in collaboration with the SWR (Lydia Jeschke). The lack of a central theme doesn't indicate a pragmatic or vague approach to curation, but the festival organisers’ aim to assemble a selection of artists, ensembles and pieces that are either directly asking or indirectly raising questions considered relevant and at the forefront of the scene's discourse at the time of the event.
In this regard, it can already be stated, this year's issue of Eclat was a success. The programme in general was extremely diverse, covering a vast palette of genres and pieces from a large variety of different, in many cases opposing, aesthetical positions. Not least, and particularly relevant following significant discussions at the Darmstadt summer courses of 2016, one major decision was to programme, during the first two days of the four-day festival, almost exclusively pieces written by women. About time.
By bringing together artists working on a multitude of ‘construction sites’ of New Music, the festival could not only serve as a cross section of the scene but achieve something even more impressive: while respectfully giving room to all the different positions, styles and perspectives – intentional or not – the festival programme simultaneously created a space for questioning them.
While many of us are currently busy asking ourselves what New Music can or should be in the twenty-first century, whether or not the very notion of music is sustainable for what we do, whether it should be extended, left behind, or dissolved into a more general notion of ‘art’, how on the other hand the ‘New’ in ‘New Music’ could possibly be redefined and charged with significant meaning – for many composers, these questions don't seem to have much of an impact on their day to day production routine, which is of course not at all surprising in itself – and admittedly not necessarily regrettable either. It was fascinating to see how some of the pieces that did not claim to deal with the aforementioned set of topics at all, by being performed in the same programme, seemed to deal with those questions anyway, or in some cases seemed to comment on those pieces that explicitly did.
To some degree, there appears to be a confusion between a) finding a form for bringing an issue to the stage and b) working ‘about’ it. Framing can undoubtedly be regarded as a form of processing by itself, if the frame and the issue being framed are definite and sharp. Instead of a desire to be sharp though, there seems to be a widespread need to come across as extreme and intense. But intensity, at least in my experience, is achieved by precision, focus and honesty. When the general tone gets louder and louder, an appropriate reaction could be to work on precision, to concentrate on whatever matter the current work is supposed to be about and to leave everything nonessential behind.
In this regard, there was a lot to be learned at this year's festival, in particular from the older generations of composers. Of course, being mature doesn't necessarily prevent the production of hot air. For example, a cut-up of fictitious pieces, as one well-established composer described her piece in its programme note, is in fact nothing but a permutation of self-invented musical material. Why not simply be honest about it?
It was quite striking that only very few composers, and most of them middle aged and older, presented pieces that were streamlined and focused on point. Even though some of those pieces might have come across as a bit outdated in respect to their means of expression, and despite some at times rather awkward echoes of the 1980s, the music still seemed very fresh, resulting in an opening up of the ears.
Those pieces that actually questioned the identity and role of the composer and the notion of music the most (whether by directly challenging them or indirectly raising those questions), had surprisingly not been written by composers of the younger generations. All in all, approaches persevering in the relinquishing of unnecessary decoration, attitudes seeking to take means of expression seriously, seem – in my personal view regrettably – to have gone a bit out of fashion.
The performers on this year's programme were superb. With such a vast variety of challenges within the pieces, it was a delight to see so many performers fully immerse themselves in their respective roles. Instrumentalists and singers in all the represented ensembles showed altogether stunning qualities, not only in the performance of some very difficult repertoire, but also in moments when asked to go out of their comfort zones, to lay aside their instruments or to take up more theatrical roles. Although it has been demonstrated that actors are the better actors, with more and more composers demanding abilities that are not necessarily to be found in a singer's or instrumentalist's primary set of skills, it was a pleasure to see so many performers of the highest ranks happily and brilliantly implementing even the most challenging of parts.
