Siddharta

'Play for the Expected One'

By Erling Kullberg



    Composed 1974-1979

    Opera-ballet in 3 acts (I Morning, II Noon, III Evening)

    Libretto by the composer in cooperation with Ole Sarvig

    First performance 18.3.1983 at the Opera, Kungliga Teatern, Stockholm

    Revised 1983 (the section called Darkness Falls)

    Length: 2 hours

 


Wood nymphs...

Siddharta was Per Nørgård's third opera after Labyrinten (1963) and Gilgamesh (1972). It was composed as part of a major project commissioned by the national operas in Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen, comprising four operas by four different Scandinavian composers. Each was to be performed for the first time at the national opera in the composer's native country, and would then tour the others.

After the success of Gilgamesh in Stockholm, much more interest was shown in Per Nørgård's new opera there than at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, and Nørgård sent his score to both theatres at the same time,


The first performance took place in Stockholm in March 1983. The first performance in Denmark was in 1984 - a concert performance by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation - and in 1987 the opera was produced at the Royal Theatre.

Per Nørgård had called Siddharta an 'opera-ballet', thereby underlining the balance he had striven to achieve between the music, the theatrical element and the choreography. Dance, acting and choral scenes play a major part in the work. Several of the main parts - such as Maya and Amra - are not played by singers, but by dancers.



Text and story
The text for Siddharta was written in cooperation with the poet, Ole Sarvig, whose poetry interested Nørgård a great deal in the middle of the 1970s. He made use of it in the choral works, Frostsalme (Frost Hymn) Vinterkantate (Winter Cantata) and Kredsløb (Circulation). This textual cooperation was unusual: Per Nørgård did not want to compose a 'writer's opera', putting music to an already completed libretto. He was looking for an integrated process, in which text and music influenced each other and grew interactively. Sometimes the music arose as an abstract harmonic vision before words were put to it; at other times, Nørgård wrote fragments of text himself, which Sarvig could elaborate on if he wanted to:

    In fact, Ole took a paternal interest in these baby cuckoos and breathed creatively on their feathers with his poetic muse, so that they fitted into his own contributions without attracting too much attention. One by-product of this cooperation, moreover, was that Ole insisted on only being credited for 'assistance'.

The opera is based on the 2,500 year-old legend about the childhood of the young Buddha, the son of the king at the palace of Kapilavastu - before he achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha.

After composing the opera Gilgamesh, the hero of which passes by way of loss to self-control and a love for his fellow beings, Per Nørgård was interested in following up this same idea, but at another psychological level.

Prince Siddharta was apparently born with special qualities, and it was foretold that the child would become the ruler of the world, though it was uncertain whether this would be at the secular or spiritual level. Siddharta's father strongly wished his son to be brought up as a secular ruler and did all that was in his power to prevent a spiritual awakening. The king created an artificial environment around Siddharta - a palace and garden of pleasure where the boy grew up surrounded by beauty, joy and happiness. All signs of transience, illness and imperfection were banished from his sight.

The young Siddharta threw himself into all these worldly pleasures with great enthusiasm, and he married the beautiful and intelligent Princess Yasodara, who bore him a son. But in the end, the deception was revealed. Siddharta was 'accidentally' initiated into the dark side of human existence, and with this awareness was forced to leave the palace and those who dwell there - all that had made up his life and happiness - in order to journey out alone into the world.

    The central point about the legend unfolded here is the complete and utter loneliness and despair which Siddharta experiences when the deception which his father and others around him had practised upon him - albeit in the best of intentions - becomes clear to him. And how he says 'No' to a manipulated existence based on a lie
    (Lars Runsten, opera director)


The music
Siddharta was composed at the time when Per Nørgård was most taken up with developing what is called 'hierarchical music', in which melody, rhythm and harmonics are derived from the same basic idea, and in which the many musical layers and gestalts are held together in a fundamental harmony by a basic structure (which cannot always be heard): the infinity series - the DNA of hierarchical music.

This compositional technique is perfectly suited to Act I of the opera, which portrays the old feudal society at the palace, Kapilavastu. The theatrical and musical elements contain many different gestalts and forms of expression: the formal, ceremonial palace music, the children's dancing songs, the ballad of the beggar singers and the 'Gospel choir' - each keeping to its own 'wavelength' of the infinity series (every 3rd, 15th , 45th or 75th note - see the article about hierarchies). All of this can co-exist in one, total picture.

On the other hand, it seem to have been more difficult for the composer to find a musical expression for the artificial, idyllic world of the pleasure garden in Act II. Here, the question of the authenticity of the music becomes really pressing. How is the music to express this illusion, which has to be so seductive and believable that the audience can accept Siddharta's inability to see through the veil of deception, while at the same time being aware (i.e., the audience) of the unreality of the whole construction?

In Act II Per Nørgård presents a sort of distorted version of hierarchical music: elements of the infinity series are turned about, harmonies are inverted. Nørgård refines the techniques of hierarchical music to the point where they become exaggerated - too good to be true!

    The tonal language in this act is among the strangest music ever written; one is familiar with all of it in advance, and yet not familiar. As it moves along there are associations to West Side Story, to romantic opera full of sentimental yearning, to 'rhythmic music', but never as quotation and never as a direct statement. The music seems sculptural, clear and attractive, and yet one loses one's bearings and cannot see what impulses drive it onwards. That break with reality, that violent intervention which is the precondition for Siddharta's idyllic life, is built into the music as a break or violent intervention in the tonal system itself.....and yet it all seems to be continuous. And just as Siddharta in the course of Act II can only wonder at what has happened, the tonal language is so constructed as to allow this element of surprised wonderment to be passed on to the audience.
    (Jørgen I. Jensen in: Per Nørgårds Musik, 1986)

One further musical problem is connected with the question as to how Siddharta is to express himself in a musically authentic manner when he has finally seen through the veil of deception. In the first place, Nørgård reasons that the style of expression used must be within the framework of hierarchical music - which is the only thing Siddharta knows. And indeed, the opera does end on this note.

However, between the completion of the score in 1979 and the Danish premiere in 1984, much had happened to turn Nørgård's compositional world view completely on its head. What had happened in the first place was his meeting with Adolf Wölfli's art, and the change of course this meant for his music - as may be seen from the article on Nørgård's stylistic periods. Between the world premiere in Stockholm and the Danish concert performance by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation - which took place after the composition and the first performance of the Wölfli opera, Det Guddommelige Tivoli - Per Nørgård felt the need to compose a section to be inserted into Act III. This was the so-called 'darkness falls aria', which in a much more satisfactory manner expresses Siddharta's disgust when confronted with the deception.

What Nørgård brought in here were his new experiences with contrast, division and catastrophe.

Siddharta marks not only an imposing conclusion to Per Nørgård's hierarchical period with its stress on harmony, but also the beginning of the Wölfli period with its focus on catastrophe and contrast - see the section on stylistic periods.

The plot of Act I, Morning

The plot of Act II, Noon

The plot of Act III, Evening