Huillet-Straub

« Comme musicien, j’admire la justesse de conception des Straub (c’était dans les années 1960, et ils n’étaient pas musiciens), qui ont compris les qualités essentielles de la musique :

- L’exécution d’une musique sérieuse est avant tout destinée à être entendue et non vue. De là les plans fixes de longueur très inhabituelle, qui laissent l’attention se focaliser sur l’écoute. Aucune explication n’est nécessaire.

-Deuxièmement, ils ont exceptionnellement bien compris à quel point il était nécessaire d’enregistrer simultanément les images et les sons (cela n’a pas été une mince affaire !), de manière à transmettre la vérité de l’exécution musicale, qui advient ici et maintenant. Le play-back, fût-il réalisé par les mêmes musiciens, aurait altéré cette vérité.

-Enfin, j’apprécie la pureté historique qui se dégage de l’emploi exclusif, pour les textes parlés, de documents du XVIIIe siècle, et dus à Bach lui-même ou à ses contemporains.

-Lors du tournage, je ne me suis jamais senti ni acteur ni Bach. C’est donc tout ce que je peux dire. »


(Jacques Drillon, Sur Leonhardt, p. 119-120.)

La pop étant une musique de masse, le danger est, pour le compositeur, qu'elle n'amène au totalitarisme.

2 May 1963

Dear Mr. Straub,

First I want to congratulate you on the film I recently saw in Cologne. You yourself will know that you are following the difficult path. Therefore I am writing you so you will know that in this film you have done good work. In the realm of the spirit [ Geist ] it is not quantity that counts, but the truthfulness and the creative accomplishment.

The subject is taken from our time. It is true, precise and of general validity. Whoever censures exaggeration knows nothing of the artistic necessity of pushing an idea to the limit so that it really comes across. Give such grumblers Greek dramas or Shakespeare to read.

What interested me most in your film is the composition of time, which is—as it is to music—particular to film. You have achieved good proportions in the duration of scenes, between those which almost stand still—how astonishing is the courage to be still, to a slow tempo, in such a relatively short film!—and extremely fast events—brilliant, to choose for this the newspaper citations in all angles to the vertical of the screen.

Furthermore, the relative density of the changes in the varied tempos is good. Where one would have to work further would be on giving equal rights to the characters and locations: "main characters," "climaxes" (the speech at the laying of the cornerstone) would gradually have to disappear: Let each element have is own irreplaceable and indispensable moment; no decoration. "Everything is the main thing," said Webern in such cases (but each in its own time, one would have to add).

Also good is the openness, the continuation of thinking in the heads of the spectators, dispensing with any gesture of overture or finale.

There is much I could still add: the total lack of pedantics, do-gooding [ das Weltverbessernde ], illusion, symbolism, the false as-if: you didn't need it and chose facts instead; but not as flat reporting, but in that exaggeration, the uncanny sheet-lightning of the camera work, in the streets, in the hotel (very good is the empty wall of the hotel room that stands for a long time; one can't get away from its staleness), out the window. And in addition, this "unrealistic" condensation in time, without being rushed.

On this tightrope between truth, concentration and exaggeration (which burns itself into perception) one can go further. Nowhere else. For we know today that even the shredded illusion is an illusion.

You don't want to "change'' the world, but rather engrave in it the trace of your presence and thereby say that you have seen a part of this world, have unfolded it as it gives itself to you. That has pleased me.

All negative criticism must stand back behind these criteria. I look forward with anticipation to your work to come. Let in a little calmness, much stillness, much space and cheerfulness of heart—it broadens the scale.

(The letter from Stockhausen, published in Film 1, no. 2 (June/July 1963):52, and reprinted in Rother, "Das mühsame Geschäft," 69-70.)