Schwarz auf Weiss / Black on White

Based upon texts by Heiner Mueller, Edgar Allen Poe, Maurice Blanchot, Black On White has been performed more than 50 times, Berlin, Baden-Baden, Dresden, Hannover, Bochum, Paris, Mulhouse Barcelona, Sevilla, Wien, Lissabon, Edinburgh, London, Rimini, Adelaide, Brüssel, Amsterdam, New York, Lucerne, Taipeh…

Heiner Goebbels lives in Frankfurt and, for over a decade now, has been working together with Ensemble Modern, who have premiered several of his works. In 1996 the composer began work on the project Black on White in Frankfurt's Theater am Turm, developing his piece of music theatre during many months of rehearsals and collaborating with the young musicians of this famous ensemble who hail from around the world.

Follow up:

Black on White, one of the most important theatrical events of the year

"Black on White" is a piece without protagonists, for it is the ensemble itself which is the protagonist. The musicians take on the role of strolling players deployed in a mise-en-scene, and who not infrequently exchange their chosen instrument for other ones or devote themselves to producing extraneous sounds of significance. The artistic space of music theatre becomes merely an area where everyday life is acted out. Critics have referred to Black on White as one of the most important theatrical events of the year and saw it as a Requiem for Heiner Müller, whose presence is ensured by including a reading by him of Shadow, Edgar Allan Poe's parable of death: "Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows."

Heiner Goebbels had already made these recordings in 1991 whilst working on the German version for SWF of his sound play written in America Shadow/ Landscape with Argonauts. It was during rehearsals that he learnt of the death of Heiner Müller, prompting him to use the material for the music theatre project.

Amongst Heiner Goebbels' various sound plays, Black on White appears to be characterized by an extreme poverty of text, but at the same time it is his most literary work. Dealing with literature in only the literal sense, the piece treats the text in a manner freed from literary detail, without entering the realm of fiction. According to the composer: "For me, Black on White, and Poe's Shadow too, are parables about the act of writing. To put it more exactly, it is about an art form in which not only a single voice may be heard - that of the writer himself - but also something resembling a collective voice, a collective 'I', the voice of experience and recollection. Heiner Müller was also a representative of this style of writing, and that is why I return to his texts again and again."

A trembling hand begins to note down a text, one which deals with the irritating process of writing. It is the opening to Maurice Blanchot's novel L'attente I'oubli. The voice of the one who is writing formulates and repeats that which is created and sounded out against the 'writing desk: This micro-acoustic generated by written gestures is transformed into musical ideas and thence spatial events that lead out to acoustic points of reference which seek to define and mark out the aural parameters. But these spaces, which pulsate with life and are eminently accessible, arise out of the collective consciousness, whereas the texts taken from Blanchot, Eliot and Poe simply become part of the game, standing upright like erratic monuments as they are spoken aloud by members of the ensemble in their native tongues. The quoted passages have to do with the past, with the lonliness of writing, with a voice that takes wing and with an author who can suddenly vanish. During all of this, it is Heiner Müller's taped voice that returns time and again.

Heiner Goebbels points out that: "Thematically, the piece is a sort of farewell to Heiner Müller. But it is by no means a sad departure, as if it were some kind of Requiem. There are lighter moments in the piece where humour reigns. And there can be found a certain balance between the attraction arising from a live performance, and reflection. Of course, something such as this can only be achieved with the very best musicians, like those of Ensemble Modern, who not only remain the ultimate professionals, but also manage to interact, speak and sing, among many other things."
(Hans Burkhard Schlichting - Translation: Graham Lack)

Maurice Blanchot: L'attente de I'oubli -Here, at this very sentence, one which was perhaps also destined for him, he felt it necessary to call a halt. He had almost heard it speak as he began to commit pen to paper. As he wrote he could still hear her voice. He showed her what he had written. She did not wish to read. She read only a few words, and then only because he had bid her softly. "Who is that talking?" she said, "Who is that talking then?"
For she believed that there must be some mistake, which she just could not put her finger on...
Translation: Graham Lack