Heiligenstadt
Another World Inside
Heiligenstadt – Another World Inside is a multi-disciplinary performance and contemporary solo dance work that celebrated Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. The work drew inspiration from Beethoven’s The Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter that Beethoven penned to his two brothers in 1802, the topic being his despair at his increasing deafness.
"The music rages, deliberately discordant at times, with Spiteri’s flawless technique and an innate affinity for exalting contemporary sounds, revealing layers of beauty. The work as a whole, which is Spiteri’s composition, is pulsating and introspective at the same time. Spiteri is masterful in his craft and artistry, creating a work that is as powerful as what it is trying to convey."
Ramona Depares, www.ramonadepares.com
Beethoven’s The Hieligenstadt Testament acts as a framework for Beyond Sense, the music that I composed for the solo dance piece, Hieligenstadt - Another World Inside. It is a revealing testament, a first-hand experience by Beethoven, but it is also a reality that human beings go through even presently.
The music that is heard in one’s head is muted on the outside. A longing to reach to the outside transforms into despair, in the knowledge that, in most cases, this is a perpetual hinderance. The music is an expression of the tensions between an inner and outer self, a within and without. The experiential self is in a divide, where the within can hear the music, can feel what the inner world is all about and can negotiate with that reality. On the outside, the experience is of suffering, of loss and of fragility.
My music for this project conveys the emotions, the tensions and releases of a being in this state of loss, of isolation and desire. It’s very rhythmic and unsettling at times and there’s an element of aggression that comes as a result of the desire to release tensions that are building inside a person who is experiencing suffering, despair and loneliness.
I also used filtering processes as a reflection of the auditory frequencies that we start losing in different stages of our lives but which, naturally, are more aggressive in someone who is becoming deaf. The filtering of sounds at times leaves us with very muted sound textures and this is a concept that I sought to develop in two of the three tracks, ‘Within Without’ and ‘You Wrong Me’.
The major source of inspiration was the testament itself. Over the countless times that I read this letter, different layers, thoughts and inspirations emerged. Through a continuous level of engagement with the writing, I knew that I needed to commit myself to giving this writing a new life, a new perspective that although coming from the early 1800s, is relevant in this present age.
In my head, the letter started morphing into a score. And like a music score, the printed notes can only become alive through interpretation and performance. This is exactly how I felt about the Hieligenstadt Testament, sonically conveyed in the particular treatment and the sculpturing of words and phrases from the text as sound within an inner headspace.
The music is born out of these thought processes and is a journey of struggles and of disquiet until, at the end with ‘A Dark Sense’, the music conveys a reflection on the idea of surrender, of filtering emotional conflicts as a solution that would ‘free me from a state of endless suffering’.
Photos: Emma Tranter
Project type
Multi-disciplinary, contemporary dance
Created by
Music Composition, Production & Sound Design: Renzo Spiteri
Choreography and light design: Francesca Tranter
Dancer: Zoe Camilleri
Orchestral score and original concept: Michelle Castelletti
Voice: Antony Edridge
Filming: Jean-Paul Caruana, Emma Tranter
Acknowledgements
Premiere performance part of The Three Palaces Festival Malta, November 2020
