Sean and Joachim, why did you say ‘yes’ when FC Bergman asked you to be part of Werken en dagen?
Joachim: Because their request was so appealing and challenging: to interpret a famous work for string orchestra with only two musicians while also having to remain mobile and walk around the stage.
Sean: It was also something new for FC Bergman: this was the first time that all of the music in a show of theirs would be performed live. So, it was a step into the unknown for both parties.
The starting point is The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. How did you approach that?
Joachim: Sean and I are jazz musicians, and not very familiar with this type of music. And honestly? In the beginning it seemed impossible to us. I didn’t know The Four Seasons all that well, and I actually thought it was pretty stale. So, we started out by listening intensively to this cycle of four violin concerts. Gradually, Sean and I discovered that it is fantastic music! But we still had no idea of how to go about it, because there only two of us, whereas this music was written for a string orchestra with 20 musicians or more. And our main instruments are clarinet and drums.
Sean: And because the nature of the show is that we are mobile and I couldn’t take a drum set around the stage with me, I was immediately looking to other types of instruments, not just percussive but also pitch instruments that I could carry. Not just for me, but also for Joachim, in addition to the clarinet and saxophone. Once that choice was made, we looked at which of those potential instruments would fit with which seasons. So, it was a lot of practicalities that ultimately inspired us. Then for each instrument we started looking at which pieces of Vivaldi’s music we could link it to.
How much is left of Vivaldi in your interpretation?
Joachim: Quite a lot, actually. Sometimes snatches, sometimes whole melodies. But to our surprise, most people don’t recognize them, perhaps because our instrumentation is so different and so far removed from the original string orchestration. We start the performance with our own sounds and music, but then Sean plays what is surely the most famous theme from the first concerto, ‘Spring’. He does this on two flutes, very slowly, as a kind of drone sound, so that is almost unrecognizable. Immediately after that, all of us fairly literately sing the melody from the second movement of ‘Spring’. In the ‘Summer’ scene, I play a clarinet solo that starts out being very close to Vivaldi and then evolves further away from it. From ‘Autumn’ onward, and certainly ‘Winter’, our interpretation becomes more abstract, although it still includes some literal quotes from Vivaldi.
The music feels very original and contemporary. How did you go about interpreting Vivaldi’s composition?
Joachim: In 2012, I made the album The jungle he told me. I was starting to perform solo concerts for the first time, and was faced with the challenge of creating a feeling of harmony while soloing with a melodic instrument. How can you play chords on a clarinet? I began to experiment with circular breathing – where you don’t have to stop take a breath and can create a fuller sound – and I added arpeggios, so-called broken chords where you play the tones after each other instead of simultaneously.
That’s what I also tried to do in my interpretation of The Four Seasons, particularly in my solo in the ‘Summer’ scene. So, how does one play a solo version of the orchestra? I explore the different lines of the orchestra through arpeggios, while simultaneously singing the high notes in my clarinet. I jump back and forth from the melody line to the orchestral harmony. From there I vary to other chords.
As the tour of Werken en dagen progresses, our interpretation also evolves, and Sean and I sometimes become even freer with the chords and additions of colour, but we also always go back to Vivaldi. The original music was and is still our reference point and guideline. Then when people do not hear that it is Vivaldi but think it’s our own music, that is really a gift. Because although it may sound simple, it’s not so easy to do. So, we’re very gratified by that.
How does the music relate to what is happening on stage?
Sean: We realized early on that there are two main ways that the music can attach itself to the scenes. One is to be very representative of the actions that are taking place – so that would be functional music. At first, we would be very much part of the community and a lot of the sounds you hear are acoustic sounds created on stage, both by the cast and us. Later in the show we begin to separate ourselves and amplify our music to create a larger score, which becomes more of an abstraction of the action on stage. As we move through the seasons our distance from the group becomes greater and greater until at the end we are really amplified and provide the scoring for a musical finale.
Joachim: I think our music adds an emotional layer to the performance. In Werken en dagen, the acting is atypical. The actors aren’t really acting but mostly carrying out actions, like workers in a field. The music imparts feeling to the different scenes and seasons.
What sort of instruments do you use in the show?
Sean: We wanted our instrumentation to follow the narrative line of the show, which starts with the birth of a community, goes through some evolutions and ends up in modern times. By way of analogy, we start with simple flutes to imitate bird sounds. Then we play on two flutes that we stuck together with tape, so that we can play chords and have the beginning of a harmony. We continue with bells, which are tuned and at the same time have a percussive character, which introduces rhythm. Next come the reed instruments: clarinets and saxophones. Then a stringed instrument: the table harp, by means of which we can create a richer harmony and a whole other world on stage. And not to be forgotten, the voice. When the steam engine is introduced in the performance, we play a harmonium – an instrument from the same period in the history of industrialization.
You mentioned flutes taped together. But there are also other self-made instruments in the show.
Sean: One instrument that we specifically made for this production consists of six Tibetan bells that we fused together into one instrument. The bells are usually played separately, so we had to come up with new techniques. I start out by playing it with a bow, to generate the effect of a string instrument and then transition to playing it with a mallet, which makes it sound kind of like gamelan music. The instrument has an otherworldly sound. We use it in the ‘Summer’ scene, when we step away from the group for the first time and begin to create a more atmospheric world.
Joachim: In the beginning of that same scene, I play my interpretation of Vivaldi’s ‘Summer’ on clarinet. I only play the melody, not the harmony, and improvise from there. We are walking around while the actors build the house. When Sean switches from the bow to the mallet to produce the gamelan sound, I remove the mouthpiece from my clarinet and play it sideways like a flute. The combination of that with the bells creates a dreamy atmosphere on stage.
Sean: Later on in the performance, Joachim creates the opposite effect. He uses only the mouthpiece of his bass clarinet, which he attaches to a piece of piping from a do-it-yourself store.
Joachim: Yes, it’s like a long rubber tube. This is in the scene where the steam engine is introduced. Now the sound becomes bigger and we are less visible. I am offstage; Sean is sitting to one side with the harmonium. At that point in the performance, we don’t have to walk around anymore, so it’s easier to be amplified. From the wings, I play my bass clarinet with the rubber tube. When I swing the tube around while blowing or singing into the mouthpiece, it creates a very strange, mermaid-like sound. Meanwhile, Sean is playing the harmonium, and he also has a small contact microphone in his mouth to amplify his voice. It sounds like whales. So, all these effects are created live. Our background as improvisers or jazz musicians also plays a role in this. Sean and I like to work with sound: besides the ‘regular’ sound of an instrument we try to see what else can be done with it. What other sounds can you get out of a symbol or a reed instrument? It’s fun and surprising to extend the vocabulary of an instrument.
Speaking of improvising, was there room for that? FC Bergman’s performances are always precisely timed and also technically planned in detail.
Joachim: There absolutely was room for that. The two of us created the music and we deliberately kept our composition organic and open, precisely because we like to make variations or improvise. For some scenes, a particular atmosphere or tone colour is all that we agreed upon beforehand. We know where we begin and end, and the rest we colour in, a little differently each time. It’s great to have that possibility in theatre, where everything is often predetermined. That’s what makes this liberating and fascinating to perform so many times.
Ellen Stynen
29 January 2025
