2024-03-14 18:20:24
Aribert Reimann was still able to celebrate his 88th birthday on March 4, 2024. And before that – on February 8th – he had accepted the Gema German Music Authors Prize for his life’s work. But that would be his last public appearance. On March 13th, this important, shy, but very determined German composer died.
“Lear” is worth it. Not really new knowledge. Shakespeare presented it well. Throughout his life, Verdi never dared to set it to music. But Aribert Reimann’s music theater for rulers, which premiered in Munich in 1978 and was celebrated from the start, has long since had more than 30 productions worldwide. It can currently be seen at the Hanover State Opera. It became Reimann’s most successful opera.
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The piece has a multitude of wonderful, catchy and, above all, evil roles – as we all know, they are always the more grateful ones on stage. The librettist Claus H. Henneberg has adapted the material in a way that is easy to understand, extremely practical and in clear language. But above all, the then 42-year-old Aribert Reimann gave the event and its protagonists a musical form that is still gripping today: loud, brutal, atavistic, tender, quiet, determined by deep compassion towards the protagonists, who were usually actually unsympathetic. Only the cynical fool who disappeared at some point (who is only a speaking part) and the stereotypically loving Cordelia are different.
It is a catchy, grateful, difficult, but manageable score of extremes – always closely linked to the dramatic content, but very special in the sophisticated instrumentation, especially in the language, which oscillates between pale whispers and exalted melismatics. The opera begins with an unaccompanied instruction from Lear. And it ends with him too. In silence. This music is of course inspired and fueled by Aribert Reimann’s long-classic sound fantasy. This allows the orchestra to croon loudly, a lonely alto flute to prelude or the concentrated power of the percussion to blast away. But it never gets too loud, too bright. It is a score of consciously set extremes, which of course knows how to manage its resources.
Aria of Cordelia from “Lear”
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Aribert Reimann, the outsider, but not lonely, because he was played, appreciated and also loved, proves to be the great continuator of a German, literary opera tradition from Strauss to Orff to Henze. His only eight operas (plus two ballets) are performed regularly – from “Traumspiel” after Strindberg from 1964 to “L’invisible”, which was composed in French Lyrical trilogy after Maurice Maeterlinck, premiered again in 2017 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; of course with “Lear” at the top. Even his colleague Wolfgang Rihm, who was also vocally skilled, enviously attested to Aribert Reimann that no one knows the human voice better and can therefore demand so much from it, but also something so sensual and meaningful.
Reimann, born in 1936, came from a family of musicians in Berlin. At a house concert he met the pianist Michael Raucheisen, who laid the foundation for his career as a song accompanist, which is not praised enough, and implanted a lifelong love for this art form. The young student later heard counterpoint from Ernst Pepping at the Berlin University. His composition teacher was Boris Blacher. Later, he never joined one of the mainstream schools that shaped the young Federal Republic, but always went his own way. The loner developed his own individuality, which, even if it was sometimes unwieldy and brittle, was heard. Just look through Reimann’s huge oeuvre of orchestral and instrumental works, songs and chamber music.
Operas as a work center
And he loved dealing with great literature – for him it was by no means a matter of simply setting notes, but rather a self-critical struggle with his own, constantly expanding, sublimated sound means on the basis of a foreign text: in the end there was a completely unique musical one Language as a reflection of its own historicity in the midst of a large artistic whole. Aribert Reimann, the harsh neo-tone, was always a traditionalist. Who strived for a timeless topicality, although he was no stranger to political participation.
The operas were his center of work. In it he told stories using vocal and instrumental means. Often of women as victims like in “Troades” (1985) or “Bernarda Alba’s House” (2000), but also as perpetrators like in “Melusine” (1970) and “Medea” (2009). The honest empathy and humanity of his musical theater approach always captivated the audience.
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Even in the darkest tragedy or in nightmare plays such as the “Ghost Sonata” (1983), the Kafka setting “The Castle” (1992) or the last Maeterlinck musical theater. “The isolation of man in total loneliness, exposed to the brutality and questionability of all life” was what interested him.
Absolute control of the material while striving for the greatest possible freedom is what characterized Aribert Reimann throughout his life. And an emphatic love of humanity, especially as a shy private person, lured him out of his shell. It’s a shame that he wasn’t able to complete his very last opera, which he had been working on for years.
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