commentary to opus 55a

The Last Flower - Ballet after an idea by James Thurber, op. 55a (1975)
Libretto: Klaus Meyer / Bertold Hummel

I. Movimento infernale and Pas de deux

Once again a dictator comes on the scene with his lackeys.
They demonstrate their brutality and begin the war.
The works of mankind are destroyed. And no-one wants to live any longer with the exception of a flower.
This flower awakes in the girl and the man in joy in living again.

II. Scherzo

Children are playing again.

III. Notturno

Young girls and boys dream again.

IV. Danza

People work
and rebuild their houses.

Inventors and scientists experiment again
and find new ways of splitting the atom.

VI. Mascherata

Jugglers entertain the people. People meet in the market-place.
The dictator appears with his lackeys and opposes the democrat.

VII. Finale

They showed how powerful they were.
And began the war.
This time everything was destroyed.
The last to die was the flower.

Instrumentation: 3.3.3.3 - 4.3.3.1 - Timp., Perc., Hrp., Strings

First Performance : May 4, 1975, Würzburg, Stadttheater
Städtisches Philharmonisches Orchester Würzburg / Max Kink
Ballettensemble des Würzburger Stadttheaters, Choreographie: Klaus Meyer

Poster of the first performance

Duration: 55 Minutes

Publisher: N. Simrock Hamburg-London (Boosey & Hawkes)

Video: Works by Hummel on youtube

Pictures of performances:

IV. Mascherata structure:

Plot description by the composer for the premiere in 1974

Ia
The dictator embodies power and violence. (Solo) His aides affirm him. (Pas de quatre) Rearmament and the military display of power lead inevitably to the use of power and finally to a murderous world war, which results in the almost complete destruction of man, animals and vegetation. The remaining, severely decimated humanity is without the will to live and completely apathetic. (Corps de ballet)

Ib
In a state of complete emptiness, a lonely flower blossoms and fully unfolds its beauty. (Solo) Since no one notices her, she tries to make herself noticed. She tries in vain to captivate the figures crouching on the ground as if petrified. Finally, she succeeds in catching the eye of a young girl. Touched by the beauty of the flower, the girl's senses awaken, her will to live is awakened and her initial amazement turns into joy and enthusiasm (dance: girl + flower ). Now she wants to share her discovery with other people. After several attempts, she succeeds in drawing a young man's attention to the flower. He too is touched by the beauty of the blossoming flower and feels a new lust for life. At the same time, love for the young girl awakens in him. In a large-scale pas de deux, this love comes to full fruition. (The flower appears repeatedly in the background as a source of new will to live).

II
Children dance naively and happily into a hopeful future. (Corps de ballet)

III
Young people experience the magic of a moonlit night. (Pas de quatre)

IV
Different estates optimistically build a new, peaceful world. (Corps de ballet with solos)

V
The scientist lives only for research and progress. (Solo)

VIa
The arts (minstrels, acrobats, jugglers) celebrate joyous reunions. (Solos, etc.)

VIb
A fair - the epitome of peaceful joie de vivre - unites all groups in cheerful celebration. (Tutti)
Two fairground barkers appear, who first advertise their wares. The people are interested in both of them. The opponents appear in ever new garb and change the nature of their offers. Finally, they appear as political party speakers - one as a liberalist, the other as a radical. The masses side with the radical politician, while his political opponent loses followers. Finally, the liberal is cut down and assassinated on the orders of the "dictator".

VII
The dictator enjoys his power (as at the beginning) and spreads violence.  Again there is a move towards armed confrontation. Murderous destruction, this time so complete that no chance of life remains for humans and animals. In the most unfavourable living conditions, the "last flower" tentatively blossoms once more, but finds no resonance and fades away.

Introduction to the work

In 1974 I was given a commission by the Municipal Theatre, Würzburg for ballet music to James Thurber’s parable in pictures, "The Last Flower". James Thurber (1894-1961) enjoys a reputation in the USA similar to that of, for example, Wilhelm Busch in our country. Kurt Kusenberg has aptly described the contents of the parable as follows.

"The Last Flower" is a melancholy parable of the meaninglessness of history. Destruction and construction alternate in an endless chain, and the reason why war is being waged is afterwards forgotten. The picture book begins with a catastrophe, it shows mankind, which "has once again escaped the worst", as miserable, naked, apathetic creatures, with no knowledge anymore of love, beauty and hope; it shows the reawakening of joy in life, the new beginning, building work - and it ends with the next, more far-reaching catastrophe. One could consider the parable to be the most profound pessimism, yet there is a seed of optimism hidden in it: the belief in something indestructible, the belief in the flower. The last human beings of yesterday are at the same time the first humans of tomorrow. The one flower which escapes total destruction becomes the ancestor of a whole new flora on Earth. In this story in pictures, Thurber, whether consciously or unconsciously, gives us a profession of faith: his faith in mankind is a tiny but decisive grain greater than his despair over its folly.

In my version, however, the faith in mankind has dwindled to a minimum and has given way to despair over its madness. It marks the end of the round dance and confronts us with a warning for our times, in which we are threatened as never before by atomic annihilation.

Bertold Hummel

About the music

Despite the large measure of stylistic unity guaranteed by the unmistakable signature of Bertold Hummel, the music for the ballet "The Last Flower", tied closely to the action on stage, contains strong contrasts. Stamping military marches - childlike games, mechanical, automatic precision - delicately flowering filigree sound textures, to mention here only the most striking contrasts, leave no room for misunderstanding. They have a clear relationship to the dance on the stage and are spontaneously recognised as symbols for characteristic archetypes of human behaviour. The principles of the composition are however much more complex and are in no way limited to such immediately obvious echoes of the events on stage. Seven movements - some complete and homogeneous in themselves, some subdivided into sections - follow the dramatic plan and connect its phases with purely musical means, resulting, despite the determinate nature of the stage action, in a high level of symphonic and concertante independence.

The first movement, Movimento infernale and Pas de deux is the exposition of the tensions of the subject matter means of a large-scale antagonism. After the opening mounting waves of sound, in which all twelve notes of the scale are heard simultaneously, the principal interval of the work, the tritone E - B-flat, is hammered out with biting penetration, which soon finds itself in the company of one of the two most frequently recurring themes.

This theme, characterised by tritone layers and military-like rhythms, appears whenever the action is centred on violence. Its first appearance marks the first entrance of the dictator, accompanied by fanfares in the brass, these sounding in successive layers of pure triads until the full range of chromatic notes has been reached and the sound becomes more and more densely discoloured in itself. Below all this, the identifying theme of the dictator continues to sound in different transformations.

After a few bars, the motifs of the dictator’s lackeys are added. Quasi-tonal fragments, such as dominant fifths, are woven into the strongly chromatically coloured material and always bring with them a certain tinge of triviality whenever empty officiousness and thoughtless convention are referred to.

After the presentation of power reaches a climax in this way, there starts - musically considered, almost the first development phase - a representation of a battle based on the already introduced motifs and sounds; the rhythmic and melodic details become frayed. There is an anticipation here of an effect which attains virtuoso levels in the sixth movement: as the feuding troops march into battle positions, several phrases of different periodicity are imposed on each other and form a very densely woven texture. In bizarre alienation, the tumult freezes after a climax and from behind the stage, from another world, so to speak, as a complete antithesis to all that has been up till now, the flower theme is heard.

The vibraphone answers from the orchestra and, in a dialogue with the flute, leads the almost transcendental vision into the real world. This is also the introduction to a Pas de deux, the gliding and increasingly animated dance of two lovers, a dance which - twice set in motion by the flower theme - neutralises the biting intervals of the main theme by re-ordering them as leading notes and creates a space to be filled with the brighter sound world of pure triads. This space grows and is transformed, although always remaining transparent in sound, in the following Scherzo. Here the melodic ideas have to do with dance and childlike naivety, characterised by thirds and perfect fifths, ending in major and thus creating an internal connection with the following movement. Pure triads dominate the Notturno, the third movement. Main theme and counter-theme are transformed with lyrical delicacy, are altered and interwoven with each other, taking role traditionally fulfilled by the slow movement in the organic relationships of a symphony. There is an abrupt transition from the idyllic complex of this movement to the Danza of the populace, a seemingly optimistic movement carried forward by trivial and banal melodic and rhythmic ideas, which go through further development in the collage of the sixth movement but at this moment cannot be linked to the main themes of the work. These themes are however very evident in the fifth movement, an Intermezzo meccanico. While the flower theme only appears once as a kind of fleeting vision with all the effect of a disturbing foreign body, the main theme appears constantly in characteristic transformations, the originally agogic idea receiving more and more a carefully calculated, coolly rational treatment. In accordance with its title, the Intermezzo makes particularly intensive of a compositional technique whose influence is not absent from the rest of the work - serial composition - in a deliberately mechanical way, making it a symbol of cold calculation. An effective contrast is provided by the Mascherata, in which the circle back to the first movement is closed. With increasing inevitability, one musical profile begins to emerge from the highly artificial superposition of different layers of sound, the profile of the dictator, which remains alone after all other themes have fallen silent. All other themes, whether quoted from earlier movements or newly added, the barrel-organ theme, the dance theme, the democratic theme which derives from the flower theme, everything that accompanies the main theme or takes up position against it, all fall back make room for the dictator, who in the Finale in a condensed reprise of the Movimento infernale continues his development of the power demonstrated at the beginning. Brief and resigned is the feeling of the reminiscence in the flute cadenza, before an atmospheric curtain of string sound descends with increasing weight on all that has happened and extinguishes it.

Klaus Hinrich Stahmer

One year of work

"The Last Flower" by James Thurber, a satirical story in pictures about the eternal recurrence of the same human stupidity, has interested ballet master Klaus Meyer for many years as the basis for a ballet. More than two years ago, a first attempt was made to have this material composed for the Würzburg ballet company. In May of last year, Prof. Bertold Hummel was won over for the work. In long meetings, ballet master and composer, together with the stage designer and the dramaturge, discussed the subject and its feasibility for the theatre.
The main question was whether we should make a grotesque out of this material in order to decoupage the madness of the constant repetition of wars with a liberating laugh. But the longer we talked about the problems that war means for people today, the more we came to the conclusion that a comic-grotesque solution would be too harmless. After this fundamental decision, a number of individual questions had to be resolved. Thurber's original was extraordinarily rich in characters and would have resulted in a ballet lasting two and a half hours. Since we planned to perform the ballet together with an opera, it should not last longer than 60 minutes at the most. So everything that seemed superfluous was left out, the story was reduced to its actual core. A reduction that suits the narration of a story through dance and movement very well. The consequence of all these changes to the original text was that our ballet ends with the total annihilation of life, instead of depicting the unchanged recurrence of the same thing over and over again.
Once the basics of the libretto were established, the composer and choreographer met many times and agreed on the details that had to be finalised before the music could be written.
Then, in the summer of 1974, most of the music was composed. Since about mid-October, the ballet troupe worked on the rehearsal, in addition to all the daily tasks that arise in opera and operetta.

(in: Blätter des Stadttheaters Würzburg, 1974/75 season - issue 19)

"The Last Flower" by James Thurber is the basis of the ballet. It is a satirical story in pictures which shows with penetrating clarity that mankind has not become wiser with experience and has learnt nothing from history. They have not succeeded in breaking out of the recurring cycle of war, new hope, rebuilding and the return of war. The workings of power with its dangerous tendency towards autonomy are demonstrated in this work. The next wave of destruction could be the last one.

Programme Preview 1983/84, Municipal Theatre, Augsburg

Press

Neue Presse Augsburg 4^th May, 1984

BERTOLD HUMMEL tells with the story of his ballet "The Last Flower" (from an idea by James Thurber) a compact, impressive and deeply unsettling story and shows thereby an uncommon talent for graphic and theatrically practicable conceptions - from the details of dramatic gestures of dance to the contrasting accents of the musical backgrounds in varied scenes.

Ballet director ERICH PAYER found here the ideal basis for his effective choreography, with which he gave an immediate and appropriate concrete expression to the favourable starting material.

A power-crazed dictator annihilates everything in a devastating war. "The Last Flower" rises again, delicate and fragile, her shy gracefulness giving two lovers courage. Children begin to play again. Houses are built. Boys and girls dream of happiness, the work of the inventors resumes. Artists warn in vain. One of the scientists, a woman, makes a discovery. Between the three letters "A-O-M" (symbol of far-eastern invocation of the divinity), she fits in the letter "T" and discovers the ATOM. Under a presentiment of its misuse, she drags the "T" away like a cross, but the dictator tears it away from her and uses it for his war of destruction, which this time no-one survives. Before the background of an atomic mushroom, the last flower dies - twisted and distorted. The Augsburg audience appreciated fully the outstanding performances of all concerned in this memorable evening. Thunderous applause and bravo calls conveyed their spontaneous thanks.

Süddeutsche Zeitung 15^th May,1984

"The Last Flower" turned into an exciting warning on a subject which is otherwise usually known for its platitudes.

Augsburger Allgemeine 1^st/2^nd May, 1984

Hummel’s music, totally in the service of the action on the stage, is colourful, full of effects, unambiguous and powerfully striking in the real sense of the word. Five percussionists are included in the orchestra, to give the required explosive quality to the annihilating attack on the human race (at the beginning) and to the atomic war (at the end). Electronic sounds are built into the score. When the subject is the monotony of work or hectic activity, he conveys this with serial technique.

Neat contrast effects are a feature of the "Scherzo", of the playing children who - a charming idea in the following "Notturno" - are at once changed into dreaming girls. Comical rather than terrifying is the battle of the woman scientist for her atom which the dictator man finally succeeds in tearing it away from her.

Mainecho 7^th May, 1975

"The Last Flower", furnished with Hummel’s extremely impressive music, was given a very lively reception by the audience.

Badische Neueste Nachrichten, Karlsruhe 12^th May,1975

Bertold Hummel’s composition is modern in the best sense of the word: it is not content to provide us with harmonies, it also shows the brokenness of the modern world within the framework of a rich palette of colours. This music is effective on stage, has a powerful message and has substance.

Nürnberger Abendzeitung 9^th May,1975

The readily comprehensible music proved, above all in the strongly illustrative dramatic scenes, to contain magnificently powerful colours.

Das Orchester 7/8 1975

... a success which is all the more remarkable because the audience is hardly accustomed to modern music. This is due in no small measure to the musical composition, which, without making any compromises in the choice of musical means, possesses a high degree of persuasive power. If one seeks to place Hummel’s musical style, definitions become difficult, for it follows several mutually exclusive directions. But it becomes clear, if one is prepared to think about the social relevance of the means employed, that there is a particular purpose connecting these. Thus, serial technique is employed in artistic perfection where the figure involved personifies cold-hearted and calculating, here one who has discovered a new wonder-weapon of total destruction. Trivial materialistic thinking is suggested by blatantly imposed tonic-dominant relationships and popularly appealing rhythms wherever the uncritical attitude and unfounded optimism of the masses is represented.

Pazifistische Rundschau München 3/75

This work, which succeeded convincingly and spontaneously at its première, - there was not a single spectator who remained untouched by the earnest message and the artistic charm of the performance - should now make its way across our stages to demonstrate its solidity. It certainly has everything needed to achieve this.

Literature Tip

The Last Flower - A parable in pictures by James Thurber