Three questions to Manfred Trojahn

The “Dentelles de Montmirail” is a mountain range near Mont Ventoux, which René Char took as the theme in the third to last poem in his cycle Quitter. Of the eight poems, four have already been set to music and premiered. With this poem, the most extensive section now follows – both in terms of scoring and length. Is this the high point of your cycle Quitter?

Manfred Trojahn: I am very careful with labels such as “high point”. They’re very easily confused with a specific expression in music which listeners then expect. Les dentelles de Montmirail is an extensive text which does not follow a focussed theme in its many parts, as do the other parts of the poetry cycle Quitter. I think that Char recorded thoughts, as they develop in someone who constantly processes new impressions without any intellectual aim in a particular situation of departure, and who, without planning any form, notates his aphorisms like a journal.

The wide variety of images which result from this can be related to the exceptionally diverse landscape and contrasts of the Dentelles de Montmirail. And I attempt to put the musical element somewhat to the side, which is perhaps a parallel, but perhaps also tries to bring a musical order in the conjunction of words and thoughts. For the sake of this musical order, now and again I transpose movements and thus form a separate, musically determined dramaturgy.


René Char saw poetry as an existential activity. Is that also a theme of your composing?

The toughness, also the monumental, which is a mark of the landscape which Char refers to and which I follow from him is always in contrast to the utmost tenderness of moods and reflections. Musical dramaturgy is also built out of these opposites, and from there, the artistic beginnings are alluded to. Naturally, composing is something to which you dedicate yourself exclusively, and should be thought of in pure terms, without its relevance, existentially, like writing poetry.


How is that reflected in your composition “Dentelles”?

Composition must always follow the most personal decisions, the individual need. But it is not always just an existential depth which follows from that. The light-hearted, intoxicated with beauty can also be absolutely essential. The most difficult thing is always describing music in specific terms, as an answer to your question must try to do. Music naturally contains ideas like those also found in poetic language. But in the way that poetic language differs from the language in which we conduct our daily communication – it refers much less specifically to facts – music differs from poetic language.  And there are another few turns in the direction of an abstract concreteness – it is not to be fixed in its meaning and above all, is to be created for the sake of its beauty, with which the most terrible things can also be expressed ... The combination of both, as they are aspired to in this piece, results in poetic “thinking spaces” – that, at least, is the aim: spaces in which you can lose yourself ...

Questions by Marie Luise Maintz
(from [t]akte 1/2017)