Been thinking about  the comments on lack of drama, and the criticism about finding it hard to empathize with any of the characters and I think I've figured out what my overall problem with the story and Hilary is. Throughout the play she spends almost every second of the time arguing with everyone about something that she supposedly passionately believes in, but from the performance I don't actually FEEL her passion, don't feel the the conviction.  It always sounds calculating and clinical.  Perhaps that's necessary in order to relate to the scientists and skeptics, but her belief in God stems from her overwhelming need to know her daughter, her overall goal through most of the play is to pray in hopes of someday finding out what happened to Cathy, and then once she finds her - nothing!  We see her frantically searching the papers and making the discovery.  This is such a monumental moment, what should be the climax of the play, but it cuts to the next scene where all we get is that she wrote Krohl a letter, and quit her job.  And she doesn't even tell her daughter.  There's no emotion.  You'd expect some sort of reunion, tears, hugs, or something.  But Hilary is just as calculating and clinical about her daughter as she is in all her arguments. THAT is what I found lacking. 

I am aware this is taking the topic off at a tangent, but it seems to be where we've discussed the use of Bach the most (apart from the trailer topic) and I just stumbled across this!

Of course it was Bach.

Even at the time of his death, Bach’s music was held up as a defense against the threat of philosophical Materialism, especially in response to the provocations of Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’homme machine of 1748. La Mettrie had fled France and been given refuge by Frederick the Great in Potsdam soon after Bach had astonished the music-loving monarch there with the powers of his extemporizing mind activating ten fingers he loaded up with as many as six contrapuntal parts.

Writing in 1754, the theologian Johann Michael Schmidt adduced themusical reflections  made by Bach on his deathbed on a chorale melody whose text describes the appearance of the subject before Gods’ throne as proof not just of the existence of the soul, but of its immortality. Although Bach’s intricate, ever-changing combination of motives had a computational logic, Schmidt argued that the effect was, like the composer’s spirit, literally transcendent. There was no more eloquent a rebuttal of increasingly popular claims that machines could be devised to write music, then perform it in a way indistinguishable from the results achieved by feeling humans.

Closer to our own time and sensibilities, Bach’s music has more often been deployed to symbolize demonic possession (cf. Captain Nemo  and the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) or cold-blooded, sociopathic genius (cf. Hannibal Lecter’s fondness for the Goldberg Variations ).

In Hytner’s staging of The Hard Problem we get a succession of Bach’s preludes—and, by my count, a single fugue—from the Well-Tempered Clavier. As these are heard the brain above the stage blinks, computes, cogitates. The permutational demonstrations of the fugues would have seemed the more obvious choice with which to confront the play’s paradoxes. The fugues are, after all, more overtly “mathematical,” yet also so moving and unfathomable. But these orations take too long to unfold: this is a play, and one without intermission to boot. The story and its arguments need to move along briskly. As was said of Bach, Stoppard favors a fast tempo.

The job the music is charged with by Hytner in The Hard Problem is to bridge the scene-change and do so with a thought-provoking product of the human mind. What is needed is something short or, if not short enough, something modular that can be handily truncated.

A fugue cannot easily be chopped down to serviceable duration, a prelude can be. In the National Theatre production these splices are generally grammatical in harmonic terms, though less-so according scansion. But they are disconcerting, especially in the most well-known of the preludes, the iconic C major that begins and ends the play.

Even after given this the procrustean treatment, the preludes amaze through their sheer variety and unpredictability. The not-so-subtle alterations of them only stoke the contradictions celebrated by Stoppard in the play—as if Bach, that very human superhuman, is being fed through a machine that makes radically different “decisions” about how to move through musical time and emotion.

These abridgements were not done by a computer, however, but by a professor of music at Southampton University named Matthew Scott. He introduces himself this way on his website: “I teach Commercial Composition, which is a third-year undergraduate course. The structure of the course aims to equip the student to compose at will rather than waiting for inspiration to strike.”

This sounds rather like something a character in Stoppard’s play would say, an attempt to get composers to be me more like machines.

I almost always dislike having to listen to canned music at live theater. Oh, for the days of a full orchestra and works like Beethoven’s Egmont Overture setting the stage for Goethe’s great tragedy. Nowadays it’s a bit of blaring world music for a play about India, or some rock ‘n roll to vault us back to the 50s, or some Bach to get us thinking about the ineffability of human artistic invention, elaboration, and emotion. TheHard Problem mini-preludes were recorded by young pianist Benjamin Powell, a specialist in music of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His absence from the theater provides still more fodder for the play’s quandaries, since what we hear is the ghost in the machine.

Even as automatic reproductions disfigured by the commercial composer’s surgery, Bach’s preludes miraculously prove that the blinking mechanical brain hovering above the stage coupled with all the world’s computers could and would never make such a series of discoveries of decisions.

 

source

Thanks so much for sharing that domino!  An interesting read and I had no idea something had been written about the use of Bach!  (In fact this article made more sense of the light structure to me too!)  I don't think it is off topic since the article is about the play as a whole.

But I'm going to be a tad off topic, by leaving this little bit of Bach here if it's OK?

She did say she felt like all those years she'd been carrying her own weather and now it was like spring...

but what I'm saying is the fact that Stoppard wrote it that way made it difficult for me to connect with Hilary.  The impetus for her beliefs and actions was this child. The resolution at the end lacked the depth of human feeling. The play felt flat. As we've all said, a play about concepts rather than characters.  I think if Cathy hadn't been a plot device, if there had been a stronger connection at the end, we would have empathised more with a couple characters. It could have been one way make this a much better piece of theatre. 

I did want to mention that all this discussion isn't a complaint. I enjoyed the play very much. The debate was interesting and the wit entertaining. And I liked Spike overall.  

Will have domino & littleimpulse shun me for this, but I did not care for the music at all. I know intellectually there are all those reasons to use those pieces, but it felt jarring and out of place. *opens up a can of worms* And the impact of the light show wasn't as strong in the NTLive recording as I suspect it was in person. I think they zoomed in too much, I knew it should have been morphing and changing as they play progressed, but sometimes they just looked like bars of static light.

To answer your question littleimpulse, I've only seen two Damo plays. (I don't think you know, I'm in America)  I saw The Body of an American last year in person 3 times, and The Hard Problem recorded twice.  Putting aside all the personal stuff surrounding my experience of watching TBOAA, and just comparing the meat of the two plays - THP was entertaining; TBOAA transportive.  It was an incredible piece of theatre and I wish it had had a bigger exposure as the production I saw. (It's been staged a few other times in the US and Wales with other actors,  but they changed it to a more traditional stage/audience configuration.) But being inside a small enclosure with only 60 other people, 2 chairs, 2 actors. Watching Damien transform into 20+ characters right before my eyes, literally an arms length away, the switching of charactets and accents interweaving seamlessly for 90 min of unceasing dialogue, the depth of despair of the two main characters, the horrors of war underpinning it all, but sprinkled with wit and compassion... I don't think even if I had gotten to see THP in person it still would not have lit a candle to TBOAAA.

 Talk about going off on tangents... 

A question I ponder reading your posts: Do you think Tom Stoppard put his beliefs into Hilary rather than completely creating a separate character: Hilary?  We can never know something like this I know.  I suppose the fact that I am curious about it says good rather than bad things about the play...

Whimsyfox & RPLovesIpswich, you make me envious that I didn't see (or even know of!) The Body of an American!  But I am happy you found it so wonderful and transportative!  I'll have to peruse it's forum some time to read about it!  I did know of the play Damien did at the Royal Court and had really wanted to see that but was unable to afford to get to London at the time.  I very much enjoyed this play but in acting terms would love to see Damien on stage give a performance that'd completely floor me as I said above and while Damien was great, I didn't feel the style of this play enabled that personally.  I am sure one day it'll be so though (well, I hope!)  Impressive you came all the way from America to watch Damien on stage whimsyfox!  Whereabouts are you from?  Maybe Damien will do a play over there some day?  

whimsyfox wrote:

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Will have domino & littleimpulse shun me for this, but I did not care for the music at all. I know intellectually there are all those reasons to use those pieces, but it felt jarring and out of place. *opens up a can of worms* And the impact of the light show wasn't as strong in the NTLive recording as I suspect it was in person. I think they zoomed in too much, I knew it should have been morphing and changing as they play progressed, but sometimes they just looked like bars of static light.

Bear in mind I haven't seen the NT Live recording so you may already know this, but the light-device only did anything when the music was playing.  It was lit up, but static and blending into the background while the play went on.  It just lit up to follow the music while the music was playing during scene changes... (since I guess that was when you were supposed to look at it rather than people and scenery in the dark moving on and off stage!  The only time I rebelled was following that "prayer" scene that was mentioned.  And also since I think it was supposed to represent the brain's response to listening to Bach's mathematically [to some degree] based music.)  

Debate is always most interesting if we disagree though so I am glad you have a different opinion and I think I did mention before that if an audience member knew nothing of Bach they'd surely not feel how I did about this.  At the same time, even if you did already know something of Bach you don't necessarily feel anything.  But personally I did and completely loved this aspect of the play and it really was the thing that took the play beyond interesting intellectual debate into something that I felt.  Maybe not the most ideal that the musical interludes provided the main feeling rather than the characters, yet still, as I said before - it expressed something beyond words for me.  

 

 

-- Edited by littleimpulse on Sunday 31st of May 2015 11:35:32 PM

whimsyfox wrote:

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Will have domino & littleimpulse shun me for this, but I did not care for the music at all. I know intellectually there are all those reasons to use those pieces, but it felt jarring and out of place. *opens up a can of worms* And the impact of the light show wasn't as strong in the NTLive recording as I suspect it was in person. I think they zoomed in too much, I knew it should have been morphing and changing as they play progressed, but sometimes they just looked like bars of static light.

 

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 No shunning here whimsy! I love the use of Bach for its connection with the themes.. but can see how it's  not as confortable as other pieces of music. maybe because it is music of the head not heart... maybe that was the point of the choice too... who knows! would love to know!  

What i am loving about this discussion is that it shows we all had an array of different experiences. That's good art isn't it?

I'd love a behind the scenes insight into both Rosie!

As someone who knows little about classical music other than do I like how it sounds and how does it make me feel, I was responding to the music used quite instinctively. I agree fifi, the lighting was definitely more impressive seen in 'real life'. I just thought it looked beautiful regardless of any deeper, scientific or intellectual meaning! But then I'm a bit of a magpie and easily distracted by shiny things! ;)

All this talk of Bach and brainwaves has led to me listening to classical music on the radio this evening while studying rather than having the TV on in the background in the hopes that it will boost my intellectual capacities!

domino wrote:

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 I love the use of Bach for its connection with the themes.. but can see how it's  not as confortable as other pieces of music. maybe because it is music of the head not heart... maybe that was the point of the choice too... 

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It was the point as I saw/felt it .  Although not so extreme as some later composer's attempts to literally map equations into music, Bach's music wasn't written to express his own emotional world, to bare his soul... or even really as an "artist" so much.  It was architecturally (How do you spell that word? *blushes*), structurally, or sometimes specifical-number-ly (wow, I am so eloquent.. not!) constructed.  It was written, more as a job and it is more scientific than just the sense in which all music is mathematical since for example consonant chords have mathematically simple ratios and so on.  To be a musician in the era of Bach wasn't even the same thing it would come to be in later years.  If between scenes the play had played Chopin for example, it'd be no surprise you'd be moved.  The point of Bach is that this music wasn't written to move you.  Yet is it without soul?  Is it without artistic beauty?  Is it without something more?  Clearly not (to me anyway!)  In a similar way, maybe this is what the play gets at.  I side with Spike in terms of science and even if consciousness isn't totally scientifically explicable now (I can't pretend I understand it all fully!) I am pretty sure it could all be explained by science... if not by ourselves then by some imaginary non-human being who was able to view us abstractly...?  But still, would that make us mere flesh-and-blood machines?  Surely not.  I think the Bach helps the play get at some indefinable *other*... and I don't know if there truly is even such a thing... but I don't know that any human can truly not feel there is something...?

fifi, though I loved the music and light installation, your post made me imagine if they could have hooked someone up and had them listen to the pianist's Bach and properly recorded activity in the brain and had like a brain showing the response to it... but then it wouldn't have changed/danced with the music, so...

I'm not entirely sure what my point is here.......but 'art' often touchs us 'spiritually'........ and the lines between science, maths, art, nature and the immaterial are all decidedly blurred.

I love this, fifi.  And it is true.  Funny how we've come so far and understand so much now, yet long ago different disciplines such as this would have been naturally seen by people as inherently linked, before much was even understood... I don't know where I'm going with that so I'll just stop!

Okay, I'll play. I've given some of these things some thought already.

1. What three words would you use to describe Spike?

carnal, ambitious, conflicted

2. What would Spike's theme song be?

I'll have to come back to that later.

3. Spike vs Hilary, where do you stand?

I agree with Hillary, that a supreme being is just as reasonable an explanation as happenstance. More reasonable, when you consider the enormous chain of coincidences that would have to occur for evolution to be the only force behind creation in its abundance and weirdness. I wonder, though, how much she believes and how much she simply needs it to be true.

4. The best thing about Spike is

a) His underwear

   I do love a man in black.

b) His point of view

 Not so much.

c) His wit

 This was my favorite part of him, as long as it held.

d) His attitude

 This was my least favorite part when he turned into an amoral twat.

5. The worst thing about Spike is

a) His underwear

 The fact that it was there at all was a slight disappointment.

b) His point of view

 His point of view wasn't the issue so much as his adamant refusal to consider anything else.

c) his chatting up technique

 I'm sure he's smooth as silk when he's not drunk off his ass.

d) His behaviour towards Hilary

 He was relentless in his insistence that his beliefs were the only valid ones. This is his worst feature.

6. How do you feel about Spike by the end of the play?

 I pitied him. I think Spike, at some point, privately acknowledged that evolution wasn't the definitive answer. I think he looked at the excuses buttressed by flimsy research that claimed to prove man's innate selfishness, and he saw it was false. I think he felt within himself the desire to be something different and better than the product of Darwinian development, that Hillary may have stirred the longing within him to see himself as something more than a mass of cells and a bunch of synapses. I think he felt the pull of that unquantifiable part of himself, and he chose to deny it. He chose to stand by the belief that defined his profession, that paid for his rent and booze and condoms. He chose carnal man over spiritual man, and he devolved as a human being because of it. 

7. Rank Spike's likeability on a scale of 1 - 10

(1 being 'I don't like him at all', 10 being 'I love everything about him')

I liked him about a 6 to 7 at the beginning. By the end I just wanted to take him to intellectual detox and get the poison out of his brain.

8. Complete this sentence:

Damien's portrayal of Spike is...... exactly what it should be. Damien was brilliant as the personification of carnal man. As soon as I heard his character's name, I knew what he would be. Spike--hard, sharp, ready to pound into his target. A phallic symbol. He had to be physically fit, he had to be nearly flawless in his physicality. He had to be relentless in his insistence on his own correctness in the debate. He had to claim his position at the top of the food chain. 

But because this is Stoppard, and nothing is simple, he had to be conflicted in his belief. He had to hint that all was not well in his domain, he had to show a touch of weakness and of need. Confident enough to wear a lace dressing gown, but awkward when he tried to compliment his lover, as he believed she had complimented him. Unsure of himself in moments of intimacy. Rigid in his belief when challenged, but hesitant when there were no witnesses. Demanding his right to be right, and then wavering when presented with tears.

I loved Spike when he was least like the self he thought he needed to be. Damien's performance was perfect.

 

Awesome to read you here TJ.. and of all the Questionnaires so far, yours is the closest to my own point of view, but I could never express it so well.
"His point of view wasn't the issue so much as his adamant refusal to consider anything else."-THIS!
" I think Spike, at some point, privately acknowledged that evolution wasn't the definitive answer. I think he looked at the excuses buttressed by flimsy research that claimed to prove man's innate selfishness, and he saw it was false. I think he felt within himself the desire to be something different and better than the product of Darwinian development, that Hillary may have stirred the longing within him to see himself as something more than a mass of cells and a bunch of synapses. I think he felt the pull of that unquantifiable part of himself, and he chose to deny it. He chose to stand by the belief that defined his profession, that paid for his rent and booze and condoms. He chose carnal man over spiritual man, and he devolved as a human being because of it. " - THIS!

and that is why the private 'was it a prayer or not' moment I brought up is so important ....

The play, to me, was allowing the possibility for both points of view, but that neither one alone was the 'answer', nor was the answer so dualistic. Said this somewhere else but I was left feeling if there was any over riding philosophy coming from the playwright it was that there is no definitive answer, but it is larger than the sum of the play's ' parts'.

Yeah...very interesting point on Spike's physicality I had not consciously thought it, but you are so right!