On approaching the music theatre of Beat Furrer

Alexis Porfiriadis
Department of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
alexisporfiriadis@gmail.com

Swiss composer Beat Furrer is one of the major figures in the field of contemporary music theatre at the
moment. At the age of 54 he has produced some of the most important works in the genre, such as Die
Blinden, Narcissus,, Stimme allein, BEGEHREN, Invocation, FAMA. Furrer’s reflections on contemporary
music have influenced a great number of young composers (partly thanks to his academic position in Graz
University of Music in Austria), his ideas on contemporary music theatre aesthetics have opened new paths
for the genre itself and his compositional processes are already a subject of musicological research .The
current paper will summarize the basic features of Furrer’s aforementioned music theatre works,
highlighting the major concepts and issues which are of interest to the composer, his compositional
processes and aesthetic stance in relation to music theatre and contemporary music in general; his use of
language, texts and voice; his employment of theatrical space and his views on staging as applied to singers
and instrumentalists alike.

“Your loneliness doubles my loneliness” is a quote from the libretto of the opera Begehren (Desire).
People’s inability to communicate, isolation, loneliness, the inability to find love as well as desire and
longing constitute the central thematic core of Beat Furrer’s music theatre pieces. Beat Furrer was born in
1954 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. In 1975 his family moved to Vienna where he studied composition
alongside Roman Haubenstock-Ramati and conducting alongside Otmar Suitner. In 1985 he founded the
Klangforum Wien ensemble which is currently considered one of Europe’s most significant contemporary
music ensembles; since 1991 Furrer has been teaching composition in the Graz University of Music and
Performing Arts in Austria. Beat Furrer presented his first music theatre piece, Die Blinden (The Blind) in
1989, followed by the operas Narcissus (1994) and Begehren (Desire, 2001), Invocation (2003) and Fama
(2005) which established his reputation as one of the most important voices in contemporary music theatre.
One of the first issues that a composer has to deal with when composing for music theatre is the
libretto. The composer is called upon to choose the text materials that will be used and the way in which
they will be combined so as to avoid making trivial choices and repeating the all-too-familiar techniques of
traditional opera. Music theatre pieces whose literary content relates to contemporary events will rarely
avoid the pitfalls of banality and trivialisation. Therefore, the choice of historically remote texts by the
younger generations of contemporary European composers might reflect the fact that opera audiences today
– unlike their Baroque and Classical counterparts – comprise numerous social classes with entirely
different experiences, knowledge backgrounds and aesthetic assumptions. In this context, new points of
contact are sought (Matthias Pintscher’s use of Rimbaud, G.F.Haas’ use of Hölderlin and Thomas Ades’
use of Shakespeare are examples of such an effort). Also, a libretto that combines many different texts and
is not derived from a singular source, thus illuminating its subject from multiple standpoints, should be
considered in the same context. The aforementioned technique becomes apparent to anyone who has
watched Furrer’s music theatre pieces performed, since this method of combining texts from several
different languages, eras and genres is one of the staples of his work. Furrer has consistently employed this
method, since Die Blinden (1989), his first music theatre work, in order to intentionally create a wide
reactive field wherein the different texts present through different angles his focal subjects. In Die Blinden,
he uses texts by Maurice Maeterlinck, Plato, Hölderlin and Rimbaud, in Narcissus (1994) he uses extracts
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the original language and in German translation, in Begehren (2001) he
uses texts by Cesare Pavese, Günther Eich, Hermann Broch, Ovid and Virgil, in invocation (2003) a text
based on Marguerite Duras’ Moderato cantabile, extracts from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (in which we have
the first appearance of the Fama myth), Cesare Pavese’s and Juan de la Cruz’s poems and finally in Fama
(2005) he uses texts from Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
In an interview with Patrick Mueller, while discussing Invocation, Furrer comments on the
different languages that he uses in his works: “Every language has its own sound – not only in terms of
spoken language, which would be trivial, but in song as well. In Italian I would never write in the same
fashion as with Spanish. Yet I did not use Juan de la Cruz’s texts for the soprano voice because the specific
language is more suitable for singing – that would be silly – but because this language requires a specific
compositional approach. In Invocation the segments in German are used exclusively for the spoken parts,
while the chorus sings in Italian, Ancient Greek and Latin. I would never use the latter for direct speech as
it is characterized, one would say, by an abstract and rather rough accent and an abundance of vowels”.1
Each language has a certain “sound” which demands different compositional processes and that is precisely
what Furrer is interested in. The articulation of the text in these music theatre pieces is miles away from the
rationale of classical opera conventions. The narrators and singers do not address the audience, quite the
opposite. The audience should be aware of the text’s content, otherwise it will not be able to experience the
totality of the play since, in operas such as Narcissus and Begehren, the uttered words are broken down to
letters, syllables and unfinished phrases which through the application of extremely precise rhythmical
arrangements become part of the ensemble sound. A very attentive listening is required for one to discern
the variety of main motifs and echo motifs created by Furrer. Reflections dominate the setting: The
narrators overlap, reply in echo-like fashion or complement each other with quick replies in the style of the
medieval hoquetus, while all of the above are reflected in the instrumental ensemble. All this activity
naturally renders comprehension of the text very difficult, which is beside the point anyway, since the
“drama” is transferred to a different plane beyond dialogue. In his first three operas Furrer uses
mythological material: Oedipus in Die Blinden, Narcissus in Narcissus, Orpheus and Eurydice in Begehren.
The myth offers a basic story-line, while the juxtaposition of texts from different writters and historical
eras, aim at opening up the main plot. The different textual layers, according to the composer, should

1
Patrick Müller, “Mögliche Orte einer Handlung. Gespräch mit Beat Furrer zu seiner neuen Oper
‘Invocation’” Dissonanz 81 (2003a), http://www.dissonanz.ch/CH-Komponisten/Furrer.html (last accessed
December 21, 2008)
always have the ability to overlap with one another. Thus these layers are constantly in motion,
interchangeably occupying the foreground, rendering possible the constant shift of perspective between the
public and the intimate, the external and the internal which is amongst Furrer’s central concerns.
The next question raised is what type of plot can one create with the texts at his/her disposal. Will
the composer narrate a story or will he/she treat the material in an abstract fashion? Will he/she distribute
theatrical roles to the protagonists or will he/she attempt to express the fundamental the psychological
charge inherent in the music and the charachters without the use of explanatory dialogue? The techniques
of collage, on the macroscopic level of the overall structure of the text, alongside the “disarticulation” of
words and language in general, on the microstructure, opened up the discourse regarding the diegetic
character of the plays. There has been a debate on whether contemporary music theatre can (still) be used
as a storytelling medium or whether it will become completely absorbed in abstraction. The subjects that
composers of new music are interested in could no longer be presented through the old forms of traditional
music theatre as it relies heavily on dramatisation through the use of dialogue. A major issue of our times is
people’s inability to communicate. Furrer puts that issue at the centre of his work and devises new
“narrative” forms and strategies. In his operas, nothing “happens” as far as the audience is concerned in
terms of decipherable plot development. Direct dialogue between the on-stage figures is absent and the
composer channels the drama into his protagonists’ interior world. Furrer does not describe what has
already been adequately described in the original myth for example. On the contrary, when he uses myth as
the basis, he searches for “its basic ingredient, its existential point of problematisation, using the means of a
contemporary music theatre”.2 Moving on from the myths that Furrer used as the thematic core of his first
three musico-theatrical pieces, in the two ensuing pieces he employs a more contemporary literary source
for his central theme, while on both occasions events are presented from the view-point of a single figure:
The cases in point are Marguerite Duras’ Moderato cantabile in Invocation (2003) and Arthur Schnitzler
Fräulein Else in Fama (2005). In both of these works the composer channels once again the drama in the
internal world of his characters. Else’s monologue in Schnitzler novel is an early and very consistent
example of the technique that illustrates irregular emotional states through a character’s continuous
narration. Moderato cantabile is a narrative model essentially liberated from the binary structure of
argument/counterargument that Furrer and Ilma Rakusa transformed using Schnitzler’s technique. The plot
in Duras’ original is already far from linear, but the adaptation for Invocation becomes even less
descriptive. “Duras’ syntactical brevity and density, the tendency towards elliptical expression and finally
the fragmentary character of the text seems to be of interest for Furrer; such a language is not only very
close to his compositional process but also the gaps between the sentences allow him the space for the texts
of Ovid, Juan de la Cruz, Cesare Pavese as well as an orphic hymn”.3 These texts, as already suggested, are

2
Raul Mörchen, “Wie die Stimme der Nymphe umherirrt“, Berliner Zeitung, (1998),
http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/1998/0113/none/0004/index.html (last
accessed December 21, 2008)
3
Patrick Müller “Formen von Musiktheater“: Dissonanz 82, (2003b),
http://www.dissonanz.ch/Archiv/Nr82/FurrerLang.html (last accessed December 21, 2008)
intended as interruptions of the plot-development from Duras’ novel, providing different perspectives on
that plot. The tangible tension between the internal world of the speaking character and the fragmented
reflection of the external world in her speech is indicative. “The listener becomes aware of an event in the
character’s past but in a fragmented way, through the character’s own subjective perception. In this fashion
Invocation’s protagonist speaks using different ‘voices’. Between the different layers of speech of the
actress, the singer, and the flutist, all of which embody the character of Anne Desbaresdes, ultimately there
is no dialogue. Through that event Anne’s loneliness becomes tangible”.4 In similar fashion, the text for
Begehren written by Furrer, Christine Huber and Wolfgang Hofer does not contain a plotline; one could
even argue that not even the subject of the play is concretely described. The texts of Ovid, Virgil, Hermann
Broch, Cesare Pavese and Günter Eich merely allude to a relationship between a man and a woman
(mentioned on the score as “he” and “she”) and to the wasted opportunities and unfulfilled desires.
Therefore we are dealing with a music theatre that utilises texts drawn from different sources and
which often overlap; there is no plot-line, in the traditional sense, and the “drama” is internalised by the
characters. The utilisation of the spoken word, song, as well as processes which connect the two, are also
salient characteristics. The voice takes primacy in Furrer’s music theatre but in a completely different
fashion to traditional opera. Furrer’s encounter with the musical language of Salvatore Sciarrino, whose
works he often conducts, led him to return to the original source of the speaking voice, to start composing
the vocal parts utilizing language’s inherent attributes and to investigate the terrain between song and
spoken language. He says: “My experience with Sciarrino’s operas offered me a great deal: a close
connection with language, the creation of the vocal part through language itself and not through the
application of an imposing abstract harmonic, rhythmic or system of any kind. For me it was a very
significant encounter because it prompted me to return to the spoken language. I have used spoken
language before, in Die Blinden for example, but in a different fashion. Now I seek above all the
transitional points between between speach and song“.5 This phrase is Furrer’s credo regarding the human
voice. In all his music theatre compositions since Die Blinden his treatment of the human voice revolves
around the issue of transition. Beyond the importance that spoken language holds for every work’s
characterisation, it also constitutes the starting point for the musical material. As early as his opera
Narcissus (1994) the “fragmentation” of language constituted the core of the dramatic molding of the
instrumental part of the work. This technique is rendered effective through the detachment, continuous
development and respective overlap between musical particles, a process directly analogous to the
fragmentation of language. But more crucially the speaking voice is an extremely effective means of
expression, as for example in Anne’s and Else’s restless monologues in Invocation and Fama respectively.
In Furrer’s music theatre work the sung part, too, “is no longer an operatic convention”6, but a
medium that serves to distinguish between the interior and the exterior through the interplay of spoken

4
Julia Cloot, “Vielschichtiges erzählen. Innenwelt und Außenwelt in Beat Furrers Musiktheater”, Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik, 2 (2008): 58
5
Müller 2003a
6
Müller 2003b
voice and song. For example, the alienation between Orpheus and Eurydice – referred to in Furrer’s score
as “Er” (He) and “Sie” (She) – and is the central idea behind Begehren (2001), is externalized in the
difference between the expressive means employed by each; “He” speaks when “She” sings, and vice
versa. At the same time there are fluctuations between speech and song that considerably extend the range
of Schoenbergian “Sprechgesang“. “The fact that, in opera”, says Furrer, “one can sing texts that could
simply be recited simply does not suffice for me. What I am interested in is the process of moving from
speech to song”.7 His aim is to restore a sense of familiarity to the voice, even within a burdened genre
such as opera and music theatre. The voice becomes a vehicle of real expression, removed from the
artificiality of the human voice in traditional opera. Song, according to Furrer should possess that embodied
quality that renders even everyday speech attractive: the ability to convey an abundance of information on
someone, solely through the sound of his or her voice. This, in his opinion, should be the focal point of
song. He thus begins with the speaking voice in its formless and non-stylized guise and subsequently
presents diverse types of development through rhythmic allusions or sonic “filters” gradually arriving at
song. Hence, song is no longer an operatic convention but gives way to a rich spectrum of gradations
between itself and speech.
The fact that human isolation is thematically at the forefront of these music theatre works finds its
analogy in the mode of employment of the musical material. In the works’ openings the material is exposed
and developed not so much in block structures as in microstructures. “A vast rhythmic energy propels the
work forward, with tightly aligned pitches and great economy in dynamics, thus generating the paradox of
a structural method. Furrer himself in the program notes for Narcissus uses the term “procedural form”
(prozessuale(n) Figur), i.e. a form that comprises its own method to assist in music development”.8 Furrer
is especially interested in the superimposition of musical gestures and particularly musical layers that
unfold in tandem. One of the fundamental principles of his compositions is the combination of sonic layers,
and the transformation of one layer into another; the latter is effected through various processes of
“filtering” his material with the “target” layer’s features. “In the past few years”, Furrer says, “I have
worked very intensely on those thoughts and on the question of how this entire process can be developed
from a repetitive microcosm”.9 Furrer’s music eschews graphic representation of events; By contrast, the
composer is more interested in determining the way in which concrete meaning pervades sound. “Music in
these operas seems to obey its own laws. One only rarely finds points to speak of ‘setting the text to music’;
Contrarily, it becomes obvious that the text’s structures, the emotions it elicits, the protagonists’ characters
are all ‘mirrored’ in the musical processes but are not musically ‘duplicated’ in a traditional sense”.10

7
Thomas Meyer, “Was die Fama so singt“ Die Zeit, Sptember 29, 2005, http://www.zeit.de/2005/40/K-
Beat_Furrer (last accessed December 21, 2008)
8
Cloot 2008, 60
9
Müller 2003a
10
Peter Hagmann, “Trennungsdramen, geflüstert. Uraufführung von Beat Furrers «Begehren» in Graz”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung January 11, 2003, http://www.nzz.ch/2003/01/11/fe/article8M6RB.html (last
accessed December 21, 2008)
 In the opera Invocation, for example, at the center of both Marguerite Duras’ Moderato cantabile
and of the opera is a vocal announcement: a howl. It is a scream, that Anne Desbaresdes, the protagonist
and the wife of a factory owner hears, coming from outside the room where her child is taking piano
lessons. In a nearby tavern a man has stabbed a woman, at her own request, as it is rumored. Anne goes to
the tavern and keeps coming back in the following days, becomes friendly with the people there and talks
with a stranger about how the murder took place. During this process, the boundaries between the fate of
the young murdered girl and herself gradually become blurred. She seems to want her relationship with the
stranger to emulate the relationship between the victim and the killer. In Invocation the basic sonic material
is the scream; the basic concept is transgression. Anne, in her intoxicated erotic desire, destroys the
structures at the center of petty bourgeois existence, the world of the cultivated narrow-minded citizen; it
was that element that appealed to Furrer. “In Duras’ novel” he says “I liked the clarity with which the howl
as an external signifier of the transgression of the bourgeois worldview is juxtaposed with a rendering of a
Diabelli Sonatine in the during Anne’s son is having his piano lesson”.11 But the howl becomes a recurring
theme in many different ways and becomes a morphological challenge for the composer. “I did not want
merely a screaming voice”, says Furrer “but instead had to find a form signifying that clash and allow it to
develop”.12 The howl in Furrer’s composition is expressed through high-pitched, thin sounds and subtle
gestures, which slowly develop an orchestral sound resembling a scream. One could argue that in the first
scene, which is musically identical with the fifth, we have the musical illustration of the howl, which is
later submitted to different compositional techniques, without ever approximating a naturalistic scream. In
Furrer’s own words, “in scene 1, whose music returns unchanged in scene 5, I composed a long
development for a big accelerando, a whirlpool, one would say, that ultimately ‘flows out’ into a loud
sound. What mattered to me was not merely the scream itself, but the dynamics that would lead to it, as
well. The scream, however, becomes thematic in other ways, too; these include the held crescendo notes in
the beginning of scene 3, or in the end, when the voice sings pianissimo, no longer supported by the
instruments. At these points one senses the danger that the voice might ‘break’ and thus, the voice is
presented through its quintessential inwardness”.13 In Narcissus, sounds of long durations fill the space,
eliminating any conventional sense of time. Even in scene 6, where the mezzo-soprano presents a long
epilogue, designations of any kind of target are carefully avoided. At some point the music becomes muted.
There could be no better way to denote an impasse: “the hopeless quest became a musical gesture”, Furrer
wrote in his brief introductory performance note.
Whenever voice and music are that dominant, the “scene” becomes problematic. In instances like
this, when the music is that dominant and complete in its treatment of the subject matter, thus becoming
hermetically sealed to any kind of external influence, the question of mise-en-scene is very difficult to
address: The music is the complete drama. However, Furrer’s work is clearly intended for the stage. This
leads naturally to the subversion of the traditional mise-en-scene and the implementation of new staging

11
Müller 2003a
12
Müller 2003a
13
Müller 2003a
methods, such as the “Box” where Fama’s audience is invited to take its seats, and is also the central
(sonic) idea of the play. Fama, as already mentioned, utilizes contemporary source literary material and is
presented through the subjective perspective of a solitary character. That character is Miss Else that Furrer
borrows from Arthur Schnitzler’s novel and combined with Ovid’s texts. As it becomes clear from the
opera’s title, the opera is named after the roman goddess of “fame” (meaning rumor) and of “listening”.
Already in the fourth scene of Invocation, Fama’s house, as described in the twelfth book of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, makes its first appearance. The house of the goddess is located in the same distance from
all the places in the world – land, sea and sky – and from there one can hear everything. The house is made
of a material that resonates and repeats perpetually every sound that reaches it. That image affected Furrer
profoundly; he included it in Invocation and used it as the central concept in Fama, his next opera. That
image was so significant in its own right that he made minimal use of Ovid’s text because, as he says, “that
idea, that image in itself was more important for me than its potential duplication through the use of text.
Ovid describes that place with striking sensuousness”.14 Fama’s house perpetually resonates, but as Furrer
says “it is not a scream, but a low murmur, similar to the sound of the sea from afar, or the final din at the
end of the thunder. That is exactly what I tried to achieve in Fama: to compose the resonance of events that
occur in the distance and are then (sonically) transported to us”.15
The creative process behind Fama begun with the concept of “resonance” and “with the idea that
every sound has a specific space, that a sound moves in space and may be modified through a gesture, or
due to a gesture”. Furrer’s intensive work with sonic movement in space had already begun with the
composition of Apoklisis for two bass clarinets (2004), which also constituted the basic material for the
fifth scene of Fama. In this work, Furrer wanted to explore “what happens when the two clarinets play an
oscillation and the musicians simultaneously begin to move away from each other, step-by-step. This
produces an entirely new quality of sound.16 Thus, in Fama the music is not played on a stage but, rather,
on the inside and outside of the Box, a specially designed construction, which also hosts the audience. The
Box is situated in a larger space that serves as its soundbox. The construction is little more than an
instrument, through which Furrer wishes to achieve the state of “resonance” – the principle idea of the
goddess Fama’s house. In Furrer’s own words “[The Box’s] resonance initially has an operation similar to
that of a brass instrument’s mouthpiece, or of a string instrument’s sound box. It is a single, large amplifier
of sound, a resonating medium, a meta-instrument. The Box, a central device in the composition of Fama
and a host to its audience, consists of slates that can open and close like the correspondent parts of a church
organ, as well as revolving up to 180 degrees. The two sides of each slate are coated with different
materials. One side is covered by a metallic sheet – like the mineral in “Fama’s house” – which reflects
sound directly. The other is covered with a special synthetic material that makes sound present, but dry.

14
Daniel Ender “Der Raum spielt immer mit. Beat Furrer im Gespräch mit Daniel Ender”
,Südwestrundfunk (2005) http://www.swr.de/swr2/donaueschingen/programme/2005/-
/id=2136710/nid=2136710/did=3459844/hujb3b/index.html
15
Ender 2005
16
Ender 2005
Generally, the important thing for me was the presence, and plasticity of sound”.17 With the musicians thus
playing inside and outside the Box, many listeners will be confronted with a new kind of listening, where
space and its employment hold an important role in the processes of sound production, and sound
reception. Depending on the space that is available around Fama’s box, sound texture will also vary, since
the Box’s “sound box” is modified.
In conclusion, Furrer has managed to create a personal musical language and a particular style in
the domain of contemporary music theatre. The way in which he handles his texts is highly distinctive, and
so is his treatment of the human voice. The fluctuations between non-stylised speech and song that one
encounters in his music theatre are unique, and imbue his works with a particular intricacy, as well as
granting them a unique energy and dynamism. This is equally true of the music, which, thanks to the
layering and continuous transformation of sounds, the vast rhythmic energy the ceaselessly propels the
works forward and the non-pictorial representation of events acquires a particularly. Finally, the acoustic
experiment effected in Fama enriched the domain of music theatre with a special kind of spatial perception,
transforming the performance space into a large meta-instrument. Quite beyond the purely musical
parameters of music theatre, however, one could also examine the social facet of the work. How does the
composer conceive of his position in relation to the canon of European operas? Does he consider his
participation in the gigantic financial game of staged opera and theatre as something inevitable? What is his
perspective vis-a-vis the listener, who only has to sit and admire the finished and absolute work of art,
having paid an appropriately expensive ticket in reflection of his socioeconomic status? Furrer shows little
preoccupation with such issues. The sociopolitical aspects of music seem to be absent from his work;
rather, the composer seems more focused on musico-philosophical issues. What is more, he does not seem
particularly troubled by the issue of a “spectacle industry” (also understood here the industry that supports
the production of “serious” music). While his creative end-products are undoubtedly highly refined in their
aesthetics, they are still performed in venues whose owners will put on aesthetically dubious productions
the very next day, in order to secure the necessary income. Even the commissions he has received from
renowned new music festivals could be specifically criticized for their rather unilateral relationship with the
community, and their social and political value, considering that the sheer cost of a production like
Βegehren, with sets designed by the famous architect Zaha Hadid, or Fama, with an ephemeral
construction made specifically for the performance. The case in point, therefore, is a composer who has
managed to highly refined artworks, and who has imparted a recognizable and distinct texture to his music,
but who has remained absent (as indeed the majority of equally distinguished composers) from political
activity, and from the problems that afflict contemporary society.

17
Ender 2005
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