Mass as a vision for all to see

From The Register-Guard
By Bob Keefer

Years ago, a young experimental filmmaker named Bastian Clevé decided he'd like to put the cart before the horse. Instead of making a film and then scoring it with music, he wanted to start with the music - and then make the film.

"Let's go with music that is already composed," he said, "instead of doing a film and later on hiring a musician."

He listened to a lot of music. One piece in particular caught his attention.

"Once I heard the beginning of the Mass in B Minor - the Kyrie - that was it," Clevé said. "That was the piece I had been looking for."

But getting from inspiration to a completed film proved daunting for a young director. The legal complications of getting permission to use an orchestral recording in one of his films seemed especially overwhelming, and he put the project aside.

"When you copy from a record, somebody owns some rights," Clevé said by phone from his home in Stuttgart, Germany. "I didn't have the funds and all of that. So I took a notebook and wrote down ideas for all of this in the notebook. I still have it.

"But I couldn't really go ahead. This would be the perfect piece of music. Then it took 25 years until I had the opportunity to go into this project on a professional level."

Fast forward a couple of decades. No longer a student, Clevé had become an accomplished filmmaker. He had worked in Hollywood and had done prize-winning films in Germany. He had just completed a feature film he shot in Russia, and he was exhausted from the difficulties of working on a big, elaborate film project involving scores of people.

Bach's Mass in B Minor started calling out to him, again.

He began work in earnest, writing a script for the movie based on a 1999 recording of the Mass with Oregon Bach Festival Artistic director Helmuth Rilling conducting.

Then, with considerable trepidation, he called Rilling, who also lives in Stuttgart, and eventually got an appointment. He was stunned by the conductor's enthusiastic response.

"Helmuth looked at me for an hour, smoking his cigar," Clevé said. "He didn't say much. He hadn't seen any of my previous work. He hadn't read the script. He just judged from who was sitting in front of him. He said, `Well, let's go and do it together.' "

Clevé set to work, setting aside his trusted Bolex film cameras and using digital technology for the first time - a move that was essential to be able to time the movie with enough precision to coordinate it with an orchestra.

His completed film, which will be shown Sunday at the Oregon Bach Festival, is not by any means a conventional Hollywood movie. It has no narrative. It doesn't even directly illustrate the Mass.

Instead, it's a quiet reflection, in 27 parts, on the response that Bach's music evokes, the film director said.

"What this music does to me is, it almost gets me floating," he said. "Like I am above the Earth. That is why you have many of these angels coming down from heaven to the Earth."

The film had its world premiere in Stuttgart last year with a live performance of the Mass, with Rilling conducting. It was a challenging performance, the conductor said, because the conductor, orchestra, chorus and soloists had to keep time to the movie.

Clevé acknowledged that having musicians play in time to the movie is difficult.

"That will be very tricky," he said. "To screen the film and have the music live with it is the most impossible task you could face. We thought we could slow down and speed up the tape a little bit. But of course, a live performance will never be in sync like it is on the film. If Helmuth achieves that in Oregon it must be the air you are breathing."

Rilling says Clevé's film will bring new energy this year to the Bach Festival.

"We have done the B Minor so often in Eugene," he said. "Now we have a new version of the piece, which is that film.

"We thought we should offer this to our audiences in Eugene. I think this is a very interesting version."

Not everyone has entirely loved it. The performance in Stuttgart drew mixed responses from Bach purists. About 15 percent of the crowd hated the movie, Clevé said.

"When you have the old Bach fans they just in principal cannot imagine that Bach needs any imagery at all. Can anyone dare visualize mucic, and on top of that, Bach?"

"You get many contrasting answers," Rilling agreed. "You get answers that say, `We don't need that!' We also get the very positive answers. It's wonderful to have this new media idea together with Bach's music."

For his part, Rilling might be called an open-minded purist.

"I am a musician," he said. "I think the music, of course, does not need that. For me the music is so deep and has such profound meaning and message that I think you can hear it. So usually, of course, all over the world I do that piece, and its message by listening is enough."

The conductor paused a moment.

"I am trying to be totally open to other possibilities."