BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
Keaton Henson: Six Lethargies with the Opera Australia Orchestra
Vivid LIVE
Sydney Opera House, 31 May
Ah, Vivid. World’s largest festival of light, music and ideas that attracts 2.33 million people every year. It’s that time of the year when everybody braves the cold and often the rain to enjoy all things colourful and artsy and experimental.
The weekend was my turn to experience it, albeit a little differently – without the lights and installations, but with a multisensory musical performance. I meandered through waves of people at the various art installations, had an al fresco dinner bought from one of the food trucks, and wove my way through the people attending concerts at other halls and theatre at the Sydney Opera House to finally make it to the Joan Sutherland Theatre.
It was refreshing to sit down and see an audience that was mostly millennials. This, unfortunately, was in stark contrast to the audience that would normally be watching the Opera Australia Orchestra. It was also refreshing to see the orchestra on stage, rather than down in the pit. It was even more refreshing to see singer-songwriter Keaton Henson present the first orchestral piece he’d ever composed.
Six Lethargies is a composition for large string orchestra (four double basses, woo!) that sent the audience through a narrative of mental illness and empathy. The piece is divided into six parts that each represent different stages of trauma as Keaton experienced it, from the initial feeling that something foreboding and imminent will happen, to the experience of anxiety itself, and finally the feelings of relief and hope. It was composed over three years with “at least a decade’s worth of lingering thoughts and feelings”, as explained in a story about the artist published by the Sydney Opera House before the event. Keaton is known for his strong aversion to be seen in public. It’s more than just ‘being shy’, it’s social anxiety. And while it’s something he has experienced in his whole career, he wanted to capture it in the music. But the question is, how?
After almost an hour and a half of Six Lethargies, I nodded to myself that he somehow did it. “When words fail, music speaks,” said Hans Christian Andersen, and this performance certainly confirmed that statement. Not only that: it sent me on an emotional rollercoaster.
The very first note started with double bass tremolos and long sustained up-bowed notes on other instruments, with a crescendo before an abrupt pause. As if this wasn’t already enough to lean my head forward and sit a little closer to the edge of my seat, the silences between each long note and the next one were long. And by long, I meant excruciatingly long silences that made you hold your breath. Anxiety-provokingly long.
Then the whole first movement was full of beautiful melodies on each instrument – think seconds and major sixths, which alternated with long sustained notes. But what made me feel so uneasy was that these repeated melodies were unpredictable, so you would be there with your head leaning even further forward and wondering when they would come next. The result? A feeling that the uneasiness was forever.
The second movement was similar in spirit. And it created discomfort. While one part was held, another instrument would be moving. The result was dissonance, dissonance, and more dissonance, but that wasn’t the word I was thinking at the time. I thought: “I can’t describe it as ‘dissonance’, because these are long-held notes and beautiful melodies. Dissonance is more for atonal music, which this isn’t.” My unease was intensified by fast string crossings on all parts, a gradual crescendo, and an abrupt finish.
It was sometime through the third movement that I began feeling a tug in my heart. I have no words to describe how it happened or how it felt, but I assumed this was what “anxiety” felt like, as intended by the composer. By this point, there was also a red light shining on the audience, and that probably didn’t help. This tension continued to be exacerbated by fast upper-string passages and tremolo-like bass.
The last three movements were ‘easier’ on the ear and the brain, as they were meant to represent the after-effects of anxiety. They featured lots of solo violin from the concertmaster with beautiful melodies; at least at first, before dissonant double stops suddenly emerged. In the fourth movement, there was a white light on the audience and lots of smoke on, but to be honest, I was confused by these features. It felt like they had been added only to create a “multisensory” experience, but while it initially felt out of character with the rest of the performance, the effect gradually made sense as it fitted the quiet atmosphere and ascending/descending melodies of the fifth movement.
In the final movement, a blue light was shone on the audience, and the music was reminiscent of the sounds that came before. Every movement in this piece had introduced something new, so to see repeated musical material probably lessened my anxiety and emotional overload. The piece finished with the light slowly dimming and the orchestra dropping out; a sense of resolution, finally.
The audience was able to hear a live interview with Keaton, but because of his own experience with anxiety, the interview was conducted backstage and mic’d up for us to hear. It didn’t distract me; if anything, it made me appreciate his experience a little more and the courage it must’ve taken to compose a piece like this.
Listening to the interview, I felt the evening came together and started to make sense. For example, while Keaton listened to a lot of atonal music in preparation to compose this piece, he wanted it to remain tonal so “it’s still something people would want to listen to” (no offence Ligeti – I’d still listen to you occasionally). The lights, he explained, were biometric feedback from the audience at Six Lethargies’ previous premiere, using software to translate audience anxiety into light. Keaton also mentioned his third movement was the only one deliberately composed to make us feel anxious, while the others were just about how he felt. To that end, the tug in my heart during that movement was definitely a testament to his compositional success.
Over all, I would’ve liked more from the multisensory experience other than just sound and sight (and lots of heart tugging, which I guess could almost be tactile?). But I thoroughly enjoyed Six Lethargies for the emotional rollercoaster. It made me realise the inextricable link between music and emotions, and allowed me to feel my emotions more closely and strongly for the first time in a very long time. When words fail, music speaks, and Six Lethargies surely confirmed that.
Images supplied. Credit: Prudence Upton.
