Compositions

Concerto for an African Cellist for solo cello, orchestra and African instruments combines Western and African instruments and merges European and African musical elements through an exploration of musical encounters of different cultures and of discovering the unknown. Heleen’s own story forms part of its dramaturgy and the performance and recording became a metaphorical enactment thereof.

The concerto deals directly with identity as a relational quality that acknowledges the abundance of differences in a multicultural context. It is a metaphor or mechanism for establishing mutually relational identities and a call for the deliberate and necessary engagement of building bridges, negotiating conditions for true encounters and nurturing the integrity of our identity by investing it in meaningful and enriching transactions. In a quest to reconcile the here and there and the self and other, the outcome of the Cello for Africa project and musical journey embedded in the musical score, is revealed in the words sung by the orchestra in the concluding passage of Huyssen’s concerto:

The four-movement work takes on an explorative journey from the known to the unknown, the ‘Western’ to the ‘African’. It explores different idioms and styles on the way, and finally reconciles these to form a unified whole. The soloist represents the curiosity-driven explorer, who, though inevitably burdened with excessive Western baggage (in this case a convention-laden Western symphony orchestra) is adamant in the desire to discover something new. The notion that the baggage of preconceptions and the aptitude for discovering something new do not go together, and that the one will sooner or later demand the sacrifice of the other, forms the formal dramaturgy of the composition.

Huyssen’s extensive research into African music is evident in terms of the extensive use of orchestral effects, polyrhythms and percussion. He succeeded in creating orchestral colours through the wide range of instruments from many cultures, including mbira, marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel, hosho, double bell, shakers, a variety of drums, congas, tom toms, tam tam, woodblocks, temple blocks, cymbals, flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, French horn, and strings. The virtuoso cello part gives the soloist opportunities to be expressive within soaring melodic lines, dynamic tone-colour spectrums and, by using the cello’s capacity in all registers, to sing, to be powerful, intimate, soulful, dramatic and groovy.

The movement’s titles, Partida, Passacamino, Mahororo, and Mapfachapfacha muMhembero, proceeding from Spanish to Shona (Zimbabwean language), reflect a musical journey and transition from the European to the African. The curiosity-driven explorer departs from a familiar, well-defined point to the arrival of discovering something new, magically in a work that begins in Europe and ends in Africa.

In the course of the work the soloist encounters a wide variety of different musical elements, and challenged to respond and engage with. As these influences increase, the soloist is gradually freed from the dominance of Western musical conventions as embodied by the orchestral forces. When the opportunity arises she ‘elopes’ with the mbira, crosses a cultural threshold and from that moment on allows a different set of musical parameters to determine the outcome of the journey. In the end all forces come together and materialize as a huge festivity.

The word ‘Partida’ is a Spanish term that implies a departure, an excursion, search or a party undertaking a journey. It also means, a consignment, an item to be accounted for, or part of something else, thus relating to the nature of this explorative part of the concerto. It also refers to parting, as in leaving.

The first movement is about the seeking of identity, of being ‘Western’ but at the same time ‘African‘. The music is therefore motivic, fragmented, melodious, tonal, dramatic and dense. The cello starts with a lengthy solo with parts played “sul ponticello” or close to the bridge, resulting in a mysterious, creaky sound in tense anticipation of what lies ahead. There is a kind of internal dialogue taking place with interruptions from within. The solo cello gradually meets with other familiar and exotic instruments and intertwines with more elements. Huyssen explains, “The cello-explorer is clamped down by the very conventions it wants to escape from, the first tutti-entrance of the orchestra almost suffocating the solo cello, which constantly struggles to take everything along or get rid of it all.”

In the style of a “Passacaglia”, which means ‘strolling through a street’, the explorer-cellist starts with an ostinato pattern in a Baroque style. But because the journey passes in this context through the bush with rapidly changing ever more unfamiliar environment, it is called “Passacamino” instead. In the words of Huyssen “the western musical devices are still in place and the expedition in full swing, bulldozing its way through the jungle!”

The movement comes to an abrupt halt with imitations of bird calls played by the piccolo and answered by the cello in an improvisational way. With motifs in a high register and flageolets the cellist is literally entering unknown territory! The themes are in reality based on and inspired by a bird call, which the composer encountered in the Bushveld. It developed into a long conversation when he imitated the bird by whistling back. Responding to the call is a decisive moment and turning point in the piece. It opens a dialogue, deliberately entering into a relationship between the self and the other. Here we leave the secure territory of Western forms and prepare for the 3rd movement where the mbira player plays and sings a song called Mahororo.

Immediately relating to and associating the work with colours, the atmosphere, and images from home, I decided to record it as part of my project. It is an attractive, charming piece with lovely singing melodic lines, showing off a range of sonorities and registers of the cello. Although extended, there is a strong sense of tonality, which makes it appealing to a broad audience.

The Allegro moderato opens with a broad declamatory statement. Melodic singing phrases in the cello interact with playful motives of the piano. The ending of this movement reminds of rustic African landscapes and the typical colours of dawn and dusk.

My favourite part, Andante tranquillo, with its asymmetrical meter, opens with a tender theme concealed in the piano chords, then emerging lyrically in the cello part. For me this movement exemplifies parting – a manifestation of loss and longing. After a dramatic cello cadenza, the theme returns after a kind of a question, a wish, a sigh, … but this time only resembling a distant memory.

The contrasting exhilarating Vivace is a Scherzo and has an African feel to it. In a meter of 2/4 + 6/8, the principal theme alternates between the piano and the cello in a typically African call-and–response dialogue. While changing into various different figures, it always retains the same character.

The Adagio opens with a strong, contemplative cello solo. Tensions develop in the rhythmic patterns of the piano, later dissipated in the lightly double-dotted patterns of the following passages and faster energetic runs in the cello. There is a final reference to the opening statement before the finale moves to a triumphant conclusion. (Because I wanted it changed from the original, Klatzow called it “Heleen’s ending”, hopefully referring merely to the context of the composition!

In combination with reflective research methods associated with autoethnography and other methods associated with practice-based research, the body of artistic work in the form of the CD is combined with reflections that frame the work in the special context in which the project took place, where it originated from, what inspired it, and what artistic processes were followed until its successful completion. The critical reflection provides a philosophical and psychological explanation about matters such as artistic intuition, feeling, and the connection between the self, the other, and the world in a wider sense.

In an additional three-year investigation, the entire project became the subject of an autoethnographic investigation of my doctoral thesis based on the themes of music and identity, a sense of – and a connection to – place and intercultural connection. I was then required to also answer additional political related questions that surfaced as a result of that the investigation, including questions around South Africa’s history, power relations, appropriation, my Africanness, and political reconciliation.

In my next project, Cellists Aotearoa, I expanded this notion and that of multiple belonging, by exploring, in a multimedia theatre production, the combination of landscape photography, legends about Aotearoa and music by New Zealand composers. The completion of this project is the exemplification of how people are able to fulfil their lives and create what and who they are, wherever they are. Connectedness and rootedness can cover infinite distances. My project addressed the question of who we are in relation to where we are. The answers in this project lay in the space where people connect, and where their identities come into proximity and overlap – where they discover that the ‘other’ is a resemblance of the ‘self’. In a quest to reconcile the ‘here’ and ‘there’ and the ‘self’ and ‘other’, the outcome of the project and musical journey is revealed in the words sung by the orchestra in the concluding passage of Huyssen’s concerto: