The city as a symphony
1.1. ADAGIO
SLOW INTRODUCTION
This story begins seven years ago in Antwerp. Theatre maker and visual artist Thomas Verstraeten is walking along the Meir, hears his favourite guitarist playing and stops to listen. Suddenly he notices them: a distant siren, in perfect harmony with the street musician’s song. Slightly closer by, a dog starts barking. A jackhammer lays down a bass line. ‘It was as if the universe was talking’, Verstraeten recalls of this particular moment. It reminded him of an iconic performance he had just read about: in 1922, in Baku, Arseny Avraamov conducted his Symphony of Sirens, a megalomaniacal composition for ship horns, factory engines, cannons and all sorts of other instruments, alongside a choir of 5000 people. The coincidence of circumstances gives Verstraeten an idea. He searches for a photograph of a symphony orchestra and makes a collage with it. He covers all the instruments with urban alternatives. Where cellos were once visible, there are now bicycles and motorbikes; timpani became excavators; violinists turned into street musicians. It is a striking image. ‘I thought: what if we push Avraamov’s experiment to the extreme, and bring the city into the concert hall?’
The question lands with Hendrik Storme, director of DE SINGEL, who is immediately enthusiastic. ‘He put me in touch with composer Heleen Van Haegenborgh’, Verstraeten explains. The result of that encounter is the brand-new Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light.
1.2. ALLEGRO
CECI N’EST PAS UNE SYMPHONIE
This experiment is tailor-made for both makers. Alongside his work with the company FC Bergman, Thomas Verstraeten regularly creates projects in collaboration with (often large groups of) city residents. Familiestraat (2021), for example, was a six-hour performance with 250 inhabitants from his own street in the Seefhoek district. And for De parade van mannen, vrouwen en diegenen die vanuit de verte op vliegen lijken (2017), he filmed a procession of 1000 Antwerp residents, divided into 50 fictional categories. It was an ode to urban diversity as well as a commentary on the sometimes restrictive concepts that colour our language and thinking about public space. The city symphony is a logical continuation of this thought experiment, says Verstraeten. ‘Where the different social groups in De parade still remained neatly separated, here they enter each other’s waters. Their sounds must come together in order for the symphony to do its work.’
For her part, Heleen Van Haegenborgh has always been fascinated by the interaction between music and concrete sounds. It is no coincidence that she graduated as a pianist with work by John Cage, the 20th-century composer who broadened the definition of music until every form of sound and (relative) silence could fit within it. As a composer, she combines expressive impact with a boundless curiosity for sound. Her early work for ship horns situated itself at the crossroads between music and environmental sound. And in Squaring the Circle (2022), a work for percussion, she used timbre and rhythm as the main structural principles. She could probably not have imagined how quickly that approach would become useful again – until Hendrik Storme showed her the collage for Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light.
From the very beginning it was clear that this new production would become a symphony. The genre is known as the icon of the instrumental repertoire and bourgeois musical culture. It acquired its classical form in the hands of Mozart, Haydn and their contemporaries, and ventured into increasingly adventurous territory with Beethoven, Brahms and many descendants. Van Haegenborgh challenged herself to embrace the classical silhouette as a foundation. ‘I wanted to remain faithful to the four-movement symphony, with its play of contrasts and repetitions. So I wrote the first movement in the typical sonata form, with two contrasting themes that are introduced, developed and reprised.’
2. ADAGIO
A CONSONANCE OF COLOURS
The word ‘symphony’ has roots in the Greek ‘sún’ (‘together, at the same time’) and ‘phōné’ (sound, noise). What forms can this consonance take when the orchestra does not consist of strings, winds and percussion, but of cars, machines and a construction site? ‘Classical tonal harmony is naturally not at stake here’, Van Haegenborgh explains, ‘because the only traditional instruments in our orchestra are those of the street musicians. But I could apply the principle to timbre. So I searched for mixed colours, where completely different sounds together form a new, unique sound. In addition, I play with colour modulations.’ The second movement, for example, is an atmospheric timelapse from dusk to dawn, with rain in a leading role. Van Haegenborgh modulates its colour by letting the drops fall on constantly changing surfaces.
The colour palette of the city symphony gradually came into being. For months, the director and the composer walked through the streets, sending each other photographs, videos and field recordings. Their mission: to get to know as many people and their sounds as possible. The orchestra list reads like a logbook of dozens of encounters, with road workers, hip-hoppers, construction workers, motorcyclists, fairground operators, cleaners, painters, fitness enthusiasts, students and countless other citizens. ‘I consider it a privilege to come into contact with worlds that are not mine’, says Verstraeten. Van Haegenborgh shares that feeling. ‘Every new acquaintance, every new story filled in a piece of the puzzle in my imagination.’
For all participants, the composer wrote a tailor-made part that reveals the full richness of their familiar instrument. That too was a starting point of this project: the players do not perform in a theatrical sense, but carry out their daily activities with the virtuosity that is intrinsic to them. ‘Each of these people stands on the same level for us as, say, a violinist who has studied for years’, says Verstraeten. ‘A road worker too has patiently mastered the skill of filling a hole in the asphalt as efficiently as possible. I find it moving to see people doing what they enjoy and what they are good at.’
Behind the scenes too, Herculean feats took place. All the staff members of DE SINGEL and Toneelhuis involved moved mountains (sometimes almost literally) to bring the scenography of this production to life. ‘That was one of the nicest aspects of the working process’, says Van Haegenborgh, describing a typical meeting: ‘We are sitting around the table with a huge team, and the discussion is about a glass container. Thomas asks what colour it will have. I ask what material it will be made of and how it will sound. And the technical production manager asks: “Can that thing be taken apart, so we can get it inside?” That is how we joined forces, each from our own expertise.’
3. SCHERZO
BETWEEN LIFE AND ART
Between makers and performers a circular dynamic emerged. The composer mapped out a trajectory for each participant, with clear guidelines. Conversely, the musical material was determined by the instruments, actions and possibilities of the players. The score therefore navigates between restriction and freedom, between order and chaos – ‘organised chaos’, Van Haegenborgh says with a wink. According to Verstraeten, a city itself constantly oscillates between those two poles. ‘On the one hand, in the urban fabric you have to obey a great many rules. Social rules, traffic rules, you name it. On the other hand, total chaos also reigns in the city. So many people cross each other’s paths, each with their own plans and interests. On an average morning, in the street you encounter both wandering ravers and people in suits on their way to the office.’ One and the same space is inhabited by different individuals and communities – sometimes simultaneously, then again alternately.
Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light unfolds like a human relay in continuous transformation. At one moment the composition zooms in on one or several instrument groups, at another all players come together in collective tutti passages. Some rhythms and phrases are meticulously notated; at other moments there is room for free actions or improvisations. The third movement of the symphony – traditionally rhythmic and dance-like – is an exhilarating trip in which everyday actions are joyfully layered upon an underlying, shimmering pulse.
And so this work balances on the boundary between art and reality – the intriguing twilight zone where Thomas Verstraeten feels so at home. ‘You depart from life, unfolding before your eyes in all its spontaneity and messiness. You turn that into theatre by abstracting it and pouring it into a certain form. In this case: an orchestral score. But real life will inevitably break back into the formalised setting of the concert, the décor, the audience. I actually even hope that will happen.’ Heleen Van Haegenborgh is also curious about that other grey zone: ‘How abstract will the concrete feel, and how concrete the abstract? Will we perceive the movements of street sweepers and pétanque players as music? Will we hear a musical construction or the realistic soundscape of a city?’
4. FINALE – UNITY IN DIVERSITY
The soundscape: it is a second tradition with which this production resonates. From Clément Janequin’s Renaissance chanson Les Cris de Paris to György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre with its starring role for 12 car horns: concrete reality has always seeped into music. Sometimes that reality itself becomes music, for example as the raw material of musique concrète, in the work of John Cage, in the soundwalks of Hildegard Westerkamp or in the deep listening scores of Pauline Oliveros.
Today the soundscape seems more present than ever, as a musical genre and as the object of ecological, social and medical reflection. By listening to the landscape we can increasingly determine how deafening the loss of biodiversity sounds. Another example: if you talk with your neighbours about the sounds in your district, you discover that listening attitudes are not universal, but coloured by everyone’s personal history. The siren of a police car does not carry the same connotation for every citizen. The impact of noise pollution on our health is also being studied today. But even that is not an unambiguous story. Where the noise of a motorway drives one person to despair, another is calmed by it. The soundscape can be an invitation to reflect on our place within the environment we share with people, animals, plants, machines and other creatures.
According to conductor Tom De Cock, Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light is a musical and democratic experiment, with the orchestra as a social scale model. How do 100 people who do not know each other make music together? How will the conservatory students, who help guide everything in the right direction, relate to the other performers? How do you ensure that all participants are deployed equally, and that they can be maximally themselves? How do you preserve the balance between order and spontaneity? ‘It will be a well-organised anthill’, De Cock laughs.
Each of the musicians is an indispensable link in the machinery. This is especially tangible in the fourth movement, which pays tribute to the collective. ‘In my eyes every participant is both leading actor and extra’, says Van Haegenborgh. Individual and community make each other possible. ‘That is the beautiful thing about the microcosm of an orchestra’, Verstraeten adds. ‘Nobody cares which of the second violins plays the most beautifully. That is humbling, and that is what this is about for me as well: how can you come together today – now that solidarity has become a dirty word – and make music together? There is nothing more beautiful than forming a consonance with others.’
CODA
EXPERIMENT FOR A SUITABLE MOMENT
You walk through the city and wait at a traffic light to cross the street. What do you hear?
Katherina Lindekens
— by Katherina Lindekens