Poet and translator Jan Rot said years ago with a smile that he already knew what would be written on his tombstone: ‘Here rot Jan’. In his requiem Last Words – written just before his death – Rot contemplates dying. “Someone’s voice as a message left behind,” Rot called this text when he sent it to the composer Aart Strootman the day before his life ended.
On Wednesday evening, lines of poetry and music had their premiere in the annual Bosch Requiem, the traditional opening of the November Music festival in the church that forms the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center. A place that acoustically proved to be a curse for the intelligibility that Jan Rot valued so much. A textbook not much bigger than a hand, correspondingly small letters and a rather dim lighting plan also made reading impossible. A typical case of shame, Kees van Kooten would say.
So listening became mainly about floating along on Strootman’s stream of fascinating sounds and rhythms – no punishment either. He had once again unleashed his inventive spirit on the instruments: the classic Cello Octet Amsterdam and Fred Jacobsson’s bass guitar were firmly anchored in the earth, where specially made aluminum tubular bells, small shakers and other percussion instruments from the Mallet Collective invite visitors into a mysterious, indeterminate universe. led, liltingly supplemented by Strootman’s self-built electric baroque guitar.
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The piece begins with grains locked in a kind of flat drum that slide over a sheet and are reminiscent of the rustling of trees in the wind. Above, the first words are heard: “If you hear this, I am already dead.” Rot was inspired by A German Requiem by Brahms, a piece that he admired and translated into Dutch Requiem. It also has nine movements, plus an encore ‘Visiting Hour in Heaven’, “Because I remain a pop boy,” writes Rot. And in his ‘mass’ people do not pray – as church tradition would have it – for the salvation of the souls of the deceased, but the music serves to comfort the relatives. In fact, the only time Strootman’s music exudes cynicism and aggression is when he exclaims “What do you mean, the salvation of souls?”
In a sense it is Last Words a collision of the mainly earthly Rot with the spiritual Strootman. The beauty of his music lies in the way he uses the two female voices, contrasts or merges rhythm and melody, plays with the heartbeat of small shakers, and makes the aluminum tubes change color – with wooden hammers they sound like church bells , where timpani sticks elicit soft endless echoes. The listener finds himself in a no man’s land between heaven and earth. It feels like flying above a cloudscape that you know you’re falling through, but that looks like you could be walking on it.
Just as Rot’s text is a strange and loving mixture of philosophy and irony, of gratitude and mockery. The most beautiful verse ends with a Biblical adage: “No, it has not yet been proven/ That you are also mortal/ But my first hypothesis:/ At the end of my rope/ Is ‘Today I, and tomorrow you.’
Strootman and Rot made of Last Words a requiem that you will definitely want to live in more often.