IRMA : THE Score
The general score of IRMA comes from treated fragments of a Victorian novel, A Human Document, by W.H.Mallock. ln that I originally bought this book for threepence in 1966, IRMA is thus, authentically, a threepenny opera.
IRMA was composed in 1969, completed in fact on the day a man first walked on the moon. It was first published in a small French avant-garde review (QU; ed. Henri Chopin) in 1970. The score exists as an autonomous artwork and is in the Altmenn Museum in Vaduz, Leichtenstein. In a more recent screenprint version it has been internationally exhibited and will be featured in a forthcoming show, Art as Word and Music, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1989.
The score takes the form of a large sheet with prose directions (each a treated fragment of the novel) for the libretto, the mise en scene and the sound vocabulary of the piece, together with instructions, performance suggestions and a group of melodies. It is to be thought of as the surviving elements of a lost work whose performance tradition is unknown. Realisation of the opera involves the ordering and piecing together of these fragments to a performable work; as an archa!ologist might reconstruct a possible coherent pot from scattered shards.
IRMA: Performance History
The opera was first produced atthe Bordeaux Festival in 1970 as a concert work. It was first staged by the Ceolfrith Arts Association at the University of Newcastle in 1972. An ambitious second performance in 1973 was the result of a performance project for the postgraduate students of the music department at York University, where realisations of Irma and the mediaeval Play of Daniel (which poses many similar problems of interpretation) made up an imaginative double-bill under the direction of Richard Orton. Except for one recorded version and the odd performance by a student group the opera became a sleeper until its first London performance in 1983 when it formed part of Adrian Jack's enterprising MusiciCA series at the ICA: on that occasion it was presented as a double bill with itself in two contrasting versions, one a spare chamber performance by Jean Yves Bosseur and the French group Intervalles (in which I sang the part of the Narrator) and the other an augmented revival of the original York version, lavish and erotic, in which Elise Lorraine created the role of Irma. Thus two performers from wildly divergent productions come together in this present recording. Irma is now part of the repertory of Intervalles and of AMM and has thus been performed allover Europe. AMM gave a London performance atthe Serpentine Gallery in 1986. Phil Mouldycliff who assisted in the production of this recording (and who opened the batting at my 50th birthday cricket match) has also developed a performance which stresses the visual and scenic elements: this version was first staged at the Corner House in Manchester with Maurice Watson as narrator and with ingenious costume designs based on various paintings of mine, by the students of Blackburn College of Art, who performed the work.
IRMA: performances on Record
The opera's first appearance on record was in 1975 when the chorus 'Love is Help, Mate' as performed by the York group in 1973 was featured in Tom Phillips' WORDS/MUSIC, a disc produced by Hansjorg Mayer in the Selten Gehorte Musik series. A complete version was recorded for Brian Eno's Obscure Records label in 1977. The realisation here was by Gavin Bryars with a libretto, which, for all that it completely consisted of quotations from A Humument, claimed to be by Fred Orton. Although there are some haunting moments in the performance the music seems to have lost some of its character, smoothed out as it is to fit the Bryars aesthetic. The slightly patronising tone of the sleeve note and the fact that Bryars billed himself (in defiance of the normal practice in modern music performance) as 'the composer', did not help me to avoid the impression that this Irma, alone, was somehow 'inauthentic'. Since it followed the general rules of the score this recording (for all that I participated in it and despite its featuring musicians as distinguished as Howard Skempton) led me to the regretful. conclusion that, among the infinitude of feasible Irmas, versions might occur which were simultaneously correct and unfaithful. I was therefore doubly pleased to encourage (and to perform the role of narrator in) this recording by AMM, the pioneering interpreters of open-score ensemble music. If the score grew out of a tradition it was certainly that which I had explored via Cornelius Cardew and AMM, as well as the Scratch Orchestra of which both they and I were members. John Tilbury was the first musician to perform works of mine and his endorsement of my first visual prescriptions for music was crucial. One of the aspects of the Irma score is that it can be viewed as a predictive paraphrase, the account, so to speak, of an event that has not yet taken place. The verbal elements were much indebted to the example of Christian Wolff's Prose Pieces whose first edition I published, yet, despite the example of Wolff's lucidity, I seem to have made a piece whose constraints no more guaranteed appropriate and germane stage and musical behaviour than do those million-dotted classics of opera which are daily traduced by careless megalomaniacs.
This performance is in someway 'definitive', which does not of course mean that any other version should resemble it in the slightest: it is an instance of what Irma is like as opposed to not like. It is as if to point to a particular cat and say, this is a cat: you learn that it is not a dog butthis does not preclude the existence of a multitude of varieties of cat or individual cats. Any too close resemblance to this realisation of Irma would in fact contravene the very instructions of the score.
One element that has crept into recent performances (it appeared spontaneously in both the versions by In terva lIes and that of the Blackburn Group under Phil Mouldycliff) has been the use of Lesbia Waltz (Op. XV) as a dance interlude. It used to be obligatory for operas to have a ballet, and Irma should be no exception. I would like this now to bethought of as part of the available scored music, for use in part or whole or fragmented or dispersed as melodic units. Here it is used forthe central chorus section.
IRMA: The Critical Heritage
Very few people have had anything to say about Irma. , Performances have attracted negligible critical attention. Only H.W.K.Collam, who in recent years has become a sympathetic champion and exegete of my work has written at any length:
'If any work marks the end of the sixties it is Irma, composed as it was in the twilight months of that decade, and presaging as it did the world of deconstruction to come The sixties were the years of revolution.. there were often as many as thirty three per minute, some of which featured music. Although it is in the tradition of Romantic grand opera, Irma, with its distancing wit, somehow brings them all together in a potted Dammerung. Whereas Wagner had failed in his quest for the true Gesamtkunstwerk, in which the arts of music, poetry and visual spectacle are brought into balance in a single work, Phillips succeeds triumphantly. In a recording of course we forfeit the visual element, but close attention to the text will enable the listener to imagine the sumptuous scenic effects and opulent mise en scene. To quote A HUMUMENT; The Sound in my life enlarges my prison. . . '
IRMA:The Libretto
This particular version of the libretto was made in January 1988 specifically forthe present recording.
Having seen various versions of the opera and heard recordings of others, I had felt that the score, for all that it seems scanty, was not often mined quite thoroughly enough. This short version explores only one of the possible kinds of event and text, and strictly limits itself to material in the score itself. Because it is made for a recording it avoids any scenic possibilities and confines itself to a single encounter with a very small cast. No comic or buffo elements are exploited.
I don't at all intend this to be thought of as a standard version with any more authority than any other.
(before instrumental sounds) mp
GRENVILLE Irma
NARRATOR If I had …
GRENVILLE Irma
NARRATOR If I had your …
GRENVILLE NARRATOR I ……r ……m ……a
NARRATOR if I had your voice
IRMA …………………voice
pause
NARRATOR In another moment ……
(instrumental music starts)
GRENVILLE Irma. you will be mine
NARRATOR In another m ……
IRMA Love (is a) (foo — fool.
Robbed me
(of my) (of my) ordinary
cool.
GRENVILLE mine
(above section marked as 'rapid')
NARRATOR You will be
IRMA robbed
NARRATOR You will be
IRMA a fool
NARRATOR You will be
GRENVILLE ordinary
NARRATOR You WILL BE
IRMA cool.
(above section marked as: repeat. 1st time rapd second time spread out.)
(end of first vocal section)
NARRATOR Let us meet him. . . . clothed in a suit
of light. . . . . . . passing through. . . . . .
surrounded by. . . . . . the sinking lights of
....... his movements whispering....
smoke scrubbing smoke.
GRENVILLE The women. One after another. measured rise and returning. I could stand it no longer.
this woman. Irma. Irma.
her form. wonderful velvety insolent flesh.
one kiss.... one love-making above her soft form
gently. . . . . slowly.
I know the purple questions. . . . .
. . . . . . . pose tomorrow. . . . . ask her.
I forsee it all.... Irma you will be mine.
NARRATOR Let us meet Irma. . . . . above her flickering frock
a pale cloak of swan's down. . . . . her soft black
velvety flesh like a figure of startling smoke....
......shepassesthrough.... her red scent.... her
perverse shoes gilded... whispering across
the gravel.
IRMA I have forgotten. . surface longing. . . about men
the pain of one pain. . . I could stand it no longer.
Lastweek.. Jackson excited.. . I could see it in
the eyes... .I change to hardness... Love is a fool
I foresee it all. onekiss...thetable...
red in the glass... the trembling ... the dress
fast falling. . . . the brown requisite tube. . . . .
(end of section II)
CHORUS. Love is help mate. . . . .
emerging from the general music recognisable waltz strains and melody, initially fragmented, of LESBIA WALTZ.
all sing to any part of the melody n, any repeated fragment 'love is help mate', each singing their chosen fragment only.
continue until no recognisable part of the melody subsists in the instrumental parts and/or disappearance of waltz rhythm which all singing must maintain.
in the event of performances with interval or of recordings with break this section can both end and begin the respective halves.
in this case end with broken oft sentence. i.e.
Love is hel. .l ...
In the event of a performance having a danced sequence Lesbia Waltz should be used forth is, as in a ballroom scene for example, and another melody be substituted, either derived from the Irma score itself or from Last Notes from Endenich for example (the metamorphosed Schumann fragment).
NARRATOR In another moment.... in the splendid street.
Morning's murmur like butterflies, . . . . . birds sang.... building echoes.
IRMA creditable time. the moment. the feather
ceremony one false membrane after another
GRENVILLE creditable time. the first parasol sound. one
kiss after another after another.
IRMA ail lie. all flesh rave. all lips a trifle soon
GRENVILLE longing for life-sized love. ask the purple question.
IRMA .a mask of shaped iron. a mask of surface longing .
grenville a mask of arranged passion. a mask of soft black.
NARRATOR.. Love-making. the scattered tables. On the table
Her startled dress. The slightest undulation
imaginable measured rise and returning.
IRMA We start tomorrow an unbelievable dream. I forsee
it all. in the eyes. Quick... out with the hat of happiness.
GRENVILLE We start tomorrow an unbelievable dream. I forsee
it all. in the eyes. Quick… out with the hat of
happiness.
NARRATOR Then all was over. Low and high divisions
end of section .
NARRATOR Sinking lights... huge moons amongst the eastern
clouds.
IRMA mine m i n e m i n e
GRENVillE mine m i n e m i n e
NARRATOR paper mirrors image tissue. paper mirrors mirror paper.
IRMA the shuttered love long held
GRENVILLE …………………If I held your voice
NARRATOR leaves gently whispering the hiss of cheeks.
IRMA IRMA YOU Wlll BE M I N E MINE
GRENVILLE IRMA YOU Wlll BE MINE MINE
(instrumental music ending ……………)
NARRATOR constant silence: sysems mute.
(end)
BIBIOGRAPHY
Bosseur, Dominique and Jean-Yves, REVOLUTIONS MUSICALES: la musique contemporaine depuis 1945, le Sycomore, Paris 1979.
Bryars, Gavin, On composing Tom Phillips' lrma, MARGINS, magazine USA, 1976.
Collam, H.W.K.,AMATECHNOMUNDU (revised version 1973, Toronto).
Nyman, Michael, EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC: Cage and beyond, Studio Vista 1974.
Phillips, Tom. WORKSITEXTS to 1974, Edition Hansjorg Mayer, Stuttgart 1975.
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The following patrons made this recording possible: Robert Altmann Bill Hurrell Ann Parker Michael & June Anderson Jeremy Isaacs Eric Parry Alex Angelides Adrian Jack Anne Raufaste Robert Anthoine Jeremy King Marvin & Ruth Sackner Jake Auerbach H.W.K.Coliam Eileen Slarke Fay Ballard Michael Kustow Alfred Scheinberg James Buchanan Jane McAusland Sylvia Sumira Chris Corbin Fiona Maddocks Nick Tite John Craxton Hansjorg Mayer Massimo Valsecchi Emile Deletaille Henry Meyric-Hughes Maurice Watson Pella Erskine-Tulloch Richard Minsky Erdmute Wenzel-'I{hite Angela Flowers Gallery Adrian Mitchell Stefan & Yvette Wiener Franklin Antiques Nicholas Moore Patrick Wildgust Michael Henshaw Bernie Moxham Steve Xerri