Tipping Points/The New Four Seasons

Nick Drake on Tipping Points

One dictionary definition reads: ‘a time during an activity or process when an important deci- sion has to be made, or when a situation changes completely’. Historically, the phrase was first used in the 1950s in the United States to refer to the movement of ‘white flight’ out of neigh- bourhoods as they became racially and ethnically diverse... In science it means ‘a threshold in a system which, when reached, rapidly changes its state’. Current and recent meanings of ‘Tipping Points’ most commonly refer to the ‘critical thresholds which, when crossed, lead to significant, exponential and irreversible changes in the Earth’s climate and ecological systems’.

A vivid red thread runs through all of these definitions; tipping points are points of no return.

Which brings us to the heart of the story behind this work. The weather is becoming ever more alarmingly extreme. ‘Record-breaking’ heatwaves and bleached coral. Tornadoes, hurricanes and unbreathable air. Landslides, deforestation and desertification. Ocean levels rising, ex- treme storms and flooding. There is more flux, unpredictability and elemental violence in the great systems of Nature. And at the heart of this disruption lies a profound sense of loss.

From the start, Rachel Portman, Niklas Liepe and I imagined this project as a response to the climate emergency – we hoped to acknowledge its alarming, heart-breaking realities, but also to seek a way, with the powers of poetry and music, through this dark matter towards a sense of not just hope, but imaginative agency.

We began by thinking about something apparently different: the so-called classical elements as defined by Aristotle: Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Many cultures, from Ancient Greece, Babylonia,

Persia, Japan, China and India, and others, explain the nature, complexity and interconnect- edness of the universe by referencing the four elements as its most fundamental forms. These are not fixed but perpetually metamorphose into each other; energetic change and transforma- tion are written through them. It’s as if the fifth element is time itself – the dramatic medium of change. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the most famous poem on this subject. It begins (in Allen Mandelbaum’s English translation):

‘My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes...

At the heart of the elemental scheme is a constant struggle to restore balance and harmony out of chaos, and to make sense of the processes and stories of change. But it also applies, metaphorically, at the lived, intimate, emotional level of the inner worlds of each one of us. For surely we have all experienced tipping points in our own lives. This is where we hope Tip- ping Points connects the ancient with the very modern, and the epic with the very personal.

The accelerating changes, transformations and transmutations of the climate emergency, caused by the exponential concentration of industrially-produced polluting greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, are wreaking havoc on ecosystems, the biosphere, the oceans, the polar regions, and vulnerable societies all around the world. Many, above all indigenous peoples, have already lived for decades in a changed world from the one they were born into.

Climates of fear and apocalyptic anxieties are of course, a recurrent anxiety in human culture and the human imagination. But at this point in the 21st century, we have a unique relationship to this planetary crisis, through realistic, scientifically-accurate scenarios that tell us clearly,

and undeniably, how the crisis will likely play out on a planetary scale. We are hyper-aware of the imminent hazards and dangers of irreversible change, we know we are at multiple tipping points – and yet that knowledge is interwoven with an alarming, sometimes disabling, sense of powerlessness. It can feel overwhelming.

How can we respond? When things feel as if they’ve become catastrophically disconnected, how can we reconnect? How do we use the gift of our agency, singly and collectively? How do we come to terms with the unknown world of the future? How might we re-enchant nature, and what would that look like? How might we harness our imaginations – surely the human super- power we each possess – to make change happen?

Tipping Points was made out of such questions. We feel the loss and grief in our hearts. But we absolutely did not want to create a climate Jeremiad. We wanted to acknowledge and map out those painful, difficult things, but above all to recall and celebrate the powers and beauties of the natural world and the life-giving wonders of the elements. The spacious beauty of the music holds the darker matter of the poems in its harmonic world. The two have a necessary, symbiotic relationship. Ultimately, we hope the whole work embodies and inspires a sense of wonder, creative hope and imaginative agency in the listener.

The poems offer juxtapositions and possible balances; between grief and agency, fear and wonder, destruction and beauty, collapse and regeneration, what’s lost and what might yet be saved. I hope the listener experiences these emotionally, as a call to consider how we might all do whatever we can to make change happen.

The elements are in constant metamorphosis, an endless flux of dynamic change. Nothing is certain. Let’s remember, ‘tipping points’ can also be transformative in positive, creative ways. Change is the perpetual driver of life. Which is why ‘Invocation’, the first poem be-

gins: ‘things change’ and why ‘Epilogue’, the final poem, ends with the simple inversion: ‘change things’.

‘Air’ is about the wonders of that element, from the first essential of our own breathing, to the atmosphere that holds us all. It’s also about the pollution of that wonder. ‘Water’ considers the absolute necessity of the element to all growth – and the massive water problems the world is experiencing as the climate heats and becomes more and more extreme. ‘Fire’ commemorates the devastation of the Australian bush fires of 2019–20. But it could equally refer to the vast Canadian bush fires which turned the skies over NYC orange. Or the deliberate burning of irre- placeable rainforests around the world. ‘Earth’ takes in the catastrophic destructions wreaked by agribusiness exploitation but also celebrates the mysterious enchantments of nature.

We hope Tipping Points – with the violin as the guiding ‘voice’ at the heart of the music – takes the listener on an emotional, imaginative journey, offering something each for the heart, the spirit, the body and the mind – our four human elements.

Wolf Kerschek on The New Four Seasons

When Niklas Liepe, whose work I have greatly appreciated for years, commissioned me to reis- sue Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, I was initially skeptical, because in my opinion Vivaldi had already done it so well that I didn’t immediately feel compelled to change anything. But his idea was to create a version for symphony orchestra that was more compact and larger in keeping with the times, which I thought was a plausible undertaking.

So I set about writing a “cinematic” version of this work, based on the sonnets Vivaldi had chosen as the basis for his programme music, which describe the changing seasons in his homeland in his time, without bending or “trying to modernize” his original musical ideas.

But we have all heard a lot of different music in our lives, with complex harmonies, popular genres or music from different cultures, with which we also associate seasonal phenomena of nature. So the color palette of emotional expression has grown continuously since Vivaldi’s time, which we can use today to create images in our minds without compromising the essence of Vivaldi’s composition. As I grew up in northern Germany, I couldn’t resist incorporating my childhood memories of the seasons there.
We find the following scene descriptions in Vivaldi’s score:

SPRING
The ice melts,
Spring is here
(The dark time ends, life returns...)

Birds sing
(Vivaldi imitated the birds of his homeland, a few of my homeland were added...) Thunderstorm
(Perhaps a little more dramatic...)
The shepherd’s dream with barking dog
(I was quite impressed by Vivaldi’s sometimes almost anarchistic humor...) Dances with nymphs and bagpipes
(if you dance too wildly, you can sometimes stumble...)

SUMMER
Unbearable heat
(We are in a post-apocalyptic desert)
Birds fighting
(You could go raving again instead...)
Summer thunderstorm
(On the big screen...)
The shepherd’s fear for his flock
(A full-blown thunderstorm can be very threatening...) Flies and mosquitoes
(Swarming around us...)
Another thunderstorm
(Which leads us back to the club...)

AUTUMN
Harvest festival
(Things are boisterous in the countryside...) And wine
(...too much wine, slurring, falling and swing dancing) Sweet sleep
(Dreaming unconsciousness...)
The hunt

(On horseback, with hunting horns and enthusiasm) Shots
(Not to be overheard...)
The animal flees in fear,

Is hit and dies
(Vivaldi was on the side of the hunters, I took the side of the poor animal)

WINTER
Everything is frozen
(How everything glitters...)
Chilly winds
(Very cold...)
Teeth chattering and pounding from the cold
(With heavy winter boots...)
Inside by the fire while it rains outside
(Violins dripping...)
Careful steps on the ice
(It’s slippery slippery...)
And falling again and again
(...falling heavily...)
Winter is dark but we know spring will come again....