At an inception level, Mark Rodrieg pushes the boundaries of how we engage with and perceive operatic-type works. While opera was conceived as a combined art form, the libretto (sung text and staging) is overwhelming narrative and most often dominates the combined work even though the musical elements are usually the vastly stronger component. In his video works, as Rodrieg is also a classical music performing artist, he makes a concerted attempt to rebalance the foregoing limitations by having the visual elements flow directly from both the theoretical and imaginative elements of the score (either his own compositions or those by other composers he performs) while also avoiding the trap of excessive narration.
For the performance elements of his videos, Rodrieg’s intent is to bring a score to the height of experiential existence by combining technical execution with interpretive nuance by applying the concept of “imagining the non-present,” i.e. relating to abstract scores via dreamed or fantasized occurrences that are not directly accessible in our immediate surroundings, either spatially or temporally. He then applies this approach to storyboard development such that his videos could be described as dreamlike interpretations of the score/s which are recorded by his ensemble and guest artists, all leading figures in the performing arts.
We can discern the foregoing elements in several of Rodrieg’s video works. In Jihad And Other Broken Dreams, for example, the three most prominent elements of the storyboard include fragments of the 9/11 attacks and their distant progenitor, the 12th century Holy Wars, juxtaposed against the love affair between Jerusalem’s Christian defender, Balian d’Ibelin, and Sibylla, the Queen of Jerusalem when it fell to Saladin in 1187. As these elements unfold, we also see the Egyptian singer Najat (soloist in the soundtrack) writing a personal letter in Arabic and two rather cryptic text overlays of letter exchanges between Robert Schumann (a major 19th-century composer) and Clara Wieck (the first major female concert pianist).
While the brief Schumann/Wieck letter exchange initially appears to be tangential, further analysis reveals them as the motivic kernel or a core concept in Rodrieg’s video Jihad. The Schumann/Wieck letters were about their love affair and its relationship to Schumann’s Fantasie in C (1838-39), a solo piano work which would become part of the classical cannon. In the Fantasie a very subtle process of thematic and motivic interrelationship is in play. Whereas such a process normally begins from a leitmotiv or musical kernel which is subsequently transformed, the shock of Schumann’s achievement lies in his reversal of this process. In effect, the thematic kernel, rather than being at the beginning, is found in the two-bar phrase which begins the ‘Adagio’ section at the very end. This phrase is a quotation of the last song in Beethoven’s song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), where it sets the words “So take them, these songs [which I sing to you]” as both a coded message to Clara and the core concept of the Fantasie. The penultimate text overlay in Jihad is from Schumann’s March 1838 letter to Clara, when she was literally his ‘distant beloved’ due to a forced separation by Clara’s father – “I have besides finished a Fantasie . . . I think it is more impassioned than anything I have ever written . . . a deep lament for you.” Fourteen months later, in May 1839, Clara sang Schumann’s song back to him – “Yesterday, I received your wonderful Fantasie. Today I am still half-ill with rapture.”
In the video Jihad, Rodrieg pays homage to Schumann’s shattering achievement as the first work with inverted harmonic development while also attempting related theoretical developments in both the video’s soundtrack and storyboard.
The soundtrack contains two of Rodrieg’s compositions – Overture To Jihad (2022) and Jihad (2011). In the Overture, Rodrieg substantially re-arranges Vivaldi’s famous Nisi Dominus with: (i) an electronic pulse derived from a looped cello stroke; (ii) a sequenced, proprietary distortion algorithm based on a density analysis of the Nisi Dominus; and (iii) an entirely new flute/piano trio interlude, which merges with the Nisi Dominus in the final section. In the second part of the soundtrack (Jihad) the musical core is based on a traditional Arabic love song, which has its own Eastern harmonic system, and to which Rodrieg is able to successfully combine several Western elements. The first such element is a seemingly unrelated introduction, borrowed from Debussy’s Syrinx for Solo Flute (performed by Rodrieg), which bypasses any harmonic conflicts due to the absence of harmonic development in the Syrinx (a landmark work about color and ambiance rather than harmony), so it serves as a perfect bridging device. Rodrieg then effectively applies disjunction with structurally spaced, looped political speeches, which also allude to miscommunication and tension between East and West as the Arabic love sung continues to beautifully unfurl against the strident political speech about war in the middle East.
As alluded to in the Schumann/Wieck letter exchange, in both the Jihad storyboard and its underlying scores, similar to his other works, Rodrieg effectively deploys intricately developed and inter-related theoretical elements.
Whether manipulating found footage to uncover hidden meanings, composing theoretically driven scores that may evoke specific states of being, or challenging traditional chamber performance, Rodrieg’s goal is to create immersive environments that invite the audience to actively engage in the unfolding soundscapes and fragmented stories and find their own meaning within the work.
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It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English.
Mark Rodrieg is a video artist, composer, and flutist living and working in Paris, France and Houston, Texas.
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