THE STORY
Writer HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN became world famous for his fairytales. His stories are meant for both adult readers as well as children. Everybody between 1 and 80 years of age (or even beyond!) will be able to enjoy his incredible fantasies, which always contain an underlaying lesson for everyday life.
THE NIGHTINGALE is a typical example of Andersen's way of telling such an imaginary story with a hidden moral lesson. The story is about a Chinese emperor, who finds in his gardens this incredibly wonderful singing bird (the nightingale). The beautiful sound of this bird makes him very happy.
The emperor is surrounded by ministers who are only waiting for the moment to take over his power. He himself is more enjoying being such a powerful emperor, than caring for his people.
It bothers the emperor that the bird is not always there, when he wants it to. The ministers convince him to get a mechanical nightingale, that could just be switched on or off whenever he wants it. Now he never has to wait for the real bird to pay him a visit anymore. But after a while the machinery of the mechanical nightingale gets rusty and stops altogether. The emperor falls seriously ill without his music.
By the time the emperor is about to die and his ministers are just waiting to take over power, the real nightingale returns. The bird offers to sing for the emperor again, but under one condition: from that moment on, the emperor should treat his people humane. The emperor agrees, and makes a miraculous recovery!
“The courtiers came in to see their dead Emperor but you should have seen them stare when the Emperor said:
'Good morning ' .”
Hans Christian Andersen Theo Loevendie Slamet Gundono
This story of THE NIGHTINGALE struck Dutch composer THEO LOEVENDIE. He composed a piece for ensemble and narrator based on this story, and a specially produced Indonesian version of his piece will be performed now in several Indonesian cities, starting in Jakarta.
To make Loevendie's piece suitable for an Indonesian audience, we asked a team of translators to make an Indonesian version of the text. This team consisted of Eko Endarmoko (a prominent linguist from Indonesia ) and Jaap Erkelens (the former director of KITLV-Jakarta from the Netherlands ), supported by Sitok Srengenge (a famous poet/writer as well as curator of Teater Utan Kayu in Jakarta ). We also brought Slamet Gundono , the famous dalang wayang kulit into the project.
THE IDEA OF CREATING AN INDONESIAN NIGHTINGALE/BULBUL
The original idea to make an Indonesian version of Theo Loevendie's “The Nightingale" came from Dutch trumpet player Raymond Vievermanns. About two years ago he told us he wanted to have “The Nightingale” dramatized by a dalang wayang kulit. We thought this was a great idea, which could create a very interesting cooperation between Indonesian and Dutch performers.
Raymond Vievermanns
Raymond Vievermanns, who is a member of Het Brabants Orkest in Eindhoven/the Netherlands , took care of the gathering of the musicians. They formed the Dutch Chamber Music Ensemble (DCME). The conductor is: Ruud van Eeten.
In Indonesia we quickly found SLAMET GUNDONO (master puppeteer/dalang from Surakarta ) ready to work on the dramatization, and SITOK SRENGENGE to accept the part of the narrator.
MORE MUSIC - MORE VISUALS
To complete the program of the evening, two composers were asked to create a new piece especially for this occasion: SLAMET ABDUL SJUKUR ( Indonesia ) and RODERIK DE MAN (The Netherlands ) making use of the line up of the DCME and (if they wanted to) also narrator Sitok Srengenge.
Sitok Srengenge Roderik de Man Baron von Münchhausen Slamet Sjukur
Slamet Abdul Sjukur made his choice for the instrumental ensemble (DCME) only.
His creation is called KUTANG . He asked us not to offer any specific notes on his composition but simply publish the text which is to be found in his score:
KUTANG
Do you remember Hamlet?
Ophelia looses her mind when her father, Polonius was killed by Shakespeare for the sake of drama.
*
Apa pendapat Anda tentang Shakespeare?
KUTANG tidak ada hubungannya dengan Ophelia
yang menjadi gila karena Polonius, ayahnya,
terbunuh tanpa sengaja oleh Hamlet, kekasihnya.
(What do you think of Shakespeare?
KUTANG has nothing to do with Ophelia
who lost her mind when Hamlet her lover
killed her father Polonius by accident.)
Slamet A. Sjukur
Jakarta , July 26. 2007
(This text can be found in the program book.)
RODERIK DE MAN choose to base his composition on text from THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BARON VON MÜNCHHAUSEN/PETUALANGAN-PETUALANGAN AJAIB BARON VON MÜNCHHAUSEN , to be accompanied by pictures created by Gustave Doré from the edition of the book published in 1862 to be projected on the screen which will be used by Slamet Gundono for his dramatization of The Nightingale.
The Baron von Münchhausen is a historical character from the 18th century. He must have been a bravura type of man, vaguely resembling the well- known Spanish Don Quichotte, but much more self conscious than his Spanish model.
His stories are about his heroic deeds and his fearless encounters with whatever incredible situation. One of his stories is about riding his horse through the night in a landscape covered with a lot of snow. When getting tired he tieshis horse to a stick somewhere sticking out the snowy landscape and he himself lies down on the snow to get some sleep. Waking up all the snow was gone! Looking for his horse he saw the horse up at the tower of a church, which the previous night was so much covered in snow that he wasn't aware of tying the horse to a church tower! So he got his gun and shot the leather belt holding the horse to the tower, in order to free it.
The Amazing Adventures of Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen (1720 – 1797) were brought together by Rudolf Erich Raspe and published for the first time in London in 1785. Dutch writer Godfried Bomans made a version, which has been translated into Bahasa Indonesia by Baniamin Joebhaar and Jaap Erkelens with the help of Eko Endarmoko and Sitok Srengenge .
More information about composers, compositions and performers, you will find in the program book.
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