What Where

Four men dressed identically in grey with identical long grey hair are the protagonists of Beckett’s final stage play. This is augmented by a taped voice functioning as a sort of master of ceremonies, structuring the unfolding of the plot in four phases through announcements and interjections. Each of these four phases is connected with the rhythm of one of the passing seasons of the year, beginning with spring and ending with winter. In each phase, the men meet up in different constellations within which one of the individuals attempts to force one of the others through futile and unsuccessful interrogation and physical torture to say ‘it’: an absurd inflated ritual culminating with the words ‘Make sense who may’ directed at the audience.
Heinz Holliger exponentiates the dramatic principle of the interchangeability of the four protagonists by depicting them through four male voices in a low register instrumentally partnered by four trombones. He alters the staged structure by permitting all four protagonists to remain present musically throughout the work in contrast to Beckett, with the absent protagonists singing from offstage. Holliger’s music repeatedly culminates in tetrachords constructed in one of two extreme forms: either far apart in intervals of a fourth or condensed as closely as possible in semitones. These form the germ cells of the harmonic development and rhythmic modulations, combined in highly varied form displaying structural variations.