"I Wonder Sometimes Who I Am"

Created by Tom Duggan, Tom Lyall, & Mischa Twitchin 14-16 November 2008 & 7-31 Jan 2009, Studio 65, Shunt Lounge; the Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, 24-25 August 2009; and at the Rosemary Branch in the Suspense Festival, 2-4 November 2009. I Sometimes Wonder Who I am is unlike any work presented in a festival of puppetry that I have seen and is unforgettable. The animation lies in the sound (the music and speech of Schoenberg) but above all in the fluid, precise lighting of a small black playing space in which two beautiful male hands, their long fingers executing an equally fluid, precise choreography, subtly physicalise the music and the words. - Penny Francis (Vice-Chair, British UNIMA Centre, and Council Member UNIMA)

With one performer - whose hands alone are visible - and a specially prepared piece of furniture, "I wonder sometimes who I am" presents an intimate portrait of the music and voice of Arnold Schönberg. Juxtaposing a pre-recorded soundscape with live performance, the production alludes to the composer's ideas about 'sounds for the eyes', 'making music with the media of the stage', and 'making music with ideas'. Alongside his reflections on the technologies of film, the gramophone, and radio, it evokes the history of a modernism that is not yet past, overshadowed by the relation between art and politics. Most of the soundscape in the performance is composed of fragments, indeed of such 'examples' that Schönberg himself cites in his lectures (as in the evocatively entitled "How one becomes lonely" (1937)). At the heart of the performance, however, is the complete opus 34 - his "Music to Accompany a Silent Film" (1929-30). With its three scene titles - 'threatening danger', 'fear', and 'catastrophe' - the possibility of a film is read here through Giorgio Agamben's "Notes on Gesture"; while the 'catastrophe' is read through Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History".

Voice: Arnold Schönberg (rec. in Hollywood, 29.12.1936- 8.01.1937; and in Los Angeles, 29.11.1949 & during 1950).
Music by Arnold Schönberg:
Music to Accompany a Silent Film, op.34 (composed in Berlin, 1929-30; Dresden Staatskapelle, cond. Giuseppe Sinopoli, Dresden, May, 1998).
Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (composed Vienna, 1912; Erika Stiedry-Wagner, with ensemble cond. by Arnold Schönberg, Los Angeles, 24.09.1940).
String Quartet, n.3, op.30 (composed in Berlin, 1929; Kolisch Qt., with the composer present, Hollywood, 30.12.1936).
String Quartet, n.4, op.37 (composed in Los Angeles, 1936; Kolisch Qt., with the composer present, Hollywood, 08.01.1937).
Verklärte Nacht, op.4 (composed in Vienna, 1899; with ensemble cond. by Arnold Schönberg, Berlin, 1928).

Other sound sources:
Advertising record for gramophones, with Hans Mühlhofer (rec. ca. 1930).
J.S. Bach (arr. Schönberg): Prelude in Eb major, BWV552 (Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Erich Kleiber, Berlin, 07.05.1930).
J.S. Bach (arr. Schönberg): Chorale Prelude: Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Jascha Horenstein, Berlin, 1929).
Beethoven: Adagio from String Quartet, op.95 (played on the piano by Arnold Schönberg, Los Angeles, 1950).
Max von Schillings: Overture to Mona Lisa (Berlin Staatskapelle, cond. Max von Schillings, Berlin, 26.04.1929).
Richard Wagner: Prelude to act 1 of Tristan und Isolde (Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Richard Strauss, Berlin 1928).
German Radio reports of the torchlight parade of the SA before the Chancellory, in Berlin, 30.01.1933; of the burning of the books on the Opera Square, in Berlin, 10.05.1933: & speech by Joseph Goebbels, Music Days of the Reich, in Düsseldorf, 21.05.1939; and the voice of Emil Jannings from The Blue Angel, Berlin, UFA Studios, 1930.