Brummelliana

Program Notes

Brummelliana takes its name from an 1828 essay about Beau Brummell, a regency era celebrity and fashion icon. The upper class followed what he wore and would gather to watch him get ready to go out to a show or event; as if the dressing were a show unto itself. He was said to have tied and untied his cravat over and over for hours until it came to look like it was put together with what he described as “the perfect amount of carelessness”. According to Brummell, to dress oneself was an art, and that like art, it had to appear effortless at the point of interaction with the observer.

One might observe this as seeming to be a strange outlook when coupled with his obsessive work behind the scenes. The question asked by this observation, and by this piece, is this:

Are those things in tension? Is an art form better or worse off when the labor required to assemble it is hidden from the observer? Brummelliana is not a piece about fashion, it is a piece about our effort to shield our performances from traces of the rehearsal process. This concealing of the process is universally understood as the correct approach, but it’s not obvious to me that it should be. 

Brummelliana is packed with a high degree of rhythmic and melodic complexity, while still fitting into a standard form and structure. It is something that seems familiar and casual, which disguises the detail that makes that familiarity possible at all. Subtlety is at work here on the part of the performers, subtlety that is intended to go unnoticed.

A performance of this piece feels easy and natural, and necessarily betrays the work that it has needed in order to appear as if none has been needed at all.