Andrea von Ramm: Obituaries
Ubi tunc vox inauditae melodiae?
[A personal tribute]
[E-Mail responses to the death of Andrea]
Picture by: Sterling Jones
We have to inform all of you who knew or were good friends of Andrea von
Ramm of some sad news. Andrea was stricken with what appears to have been a
severe brain hemmorage on November 29. She remained
unconscious until she died in the afternoon, November 30. 1999.
We were of
close friends and colleagues for almost 13 years and I will
painfully feel the great personal loss, as will so many of you who knew
her.
She recently seemed her great self having invited many friends
for a huge thanksgiving dinner with no indications of lost vitality. If she
had survived she more than likely would have been afflicted with
disablilities. This would have been an impossible disaster for her.
This
was, as she always wished. the best way to go, but it would have been nice
to have had her inspiring nature around for a bit longer.
Andrea has indeed has been one of the
most influencing and important persons in my life.
A few weeks ago we did our last performance with Andrea in Speyer and
just prepared the CD-recording of the "Wolfenbuetteler Marienklage".
Now this wonderful voice will sing no more!
On Monday the 6th of December 1999 we had the sad duty to say a last goodbye to her in Munich -
it was very moving and we can't believe that this really should be true.
Everything will be different now, especially for our ensemble.
The only consolation is, that the death came as she always wanted: Quick
and without any suffering.
We have recieved e-mails from all over the world which regret the great
loss and we will try to put obituaries in early music magazines.
The reason it is so hard to understand and accept the fact that Andrea is
no more there - is simply because she seemed to be there always. For all of
us who knew and worked with her very closely during the past thirteen years
she was a kind of institution in the background, a kind of »mother« who
always showed great interest in our activities and tried to help and give
advice where she could. That it is now no longer possible to visit Andrea
in her flat in Munich, not far from the railway station, to talk and
discuss a huge variety of topics at her famous kitchen table together with
Sterling Jones and Timothy, her beloved dog, or to get one of her
inimitable letters, is simply unbelievable.
The following is a very personal account of a relationship with a most
remarkable personality - and that's exactly what I would call the legacy of
Andrea: the courage to express one's personality and originality in music
and in daily life. That's what we talked about for hours over the years.
Although she had now reached the seventies she seemed to have the health
and power of a woman at least twenty or thirty years younger. We never
thought that she could die now and, for herself, she frequently expressed
in her characteristic sarcastic manner the fear of never dying.
Congratulations, Andrea, you even managed to make a surprise event out of
your death!
For me and for many others she was a legendary person, a kind of »monument«
from the first beginnings of the early music movement. Andrea of course
didn't like this designation, not at all. She always insisted on still
being a living person and musician. I grew up with the legendary recordings
of the »Studio« and always admired this remarkable voice with its noble,
almost aristocratic character. And she definitely had this nobility, not
only from birth but also in her whole appearance. Her height, her strong
will, her deep voice made up an impressive person whom you could hardly
resist or contradict (you should indeed have had good arguments to do that
nevertheless). I still remember when I dared to call her for the first time
thirteen years ago, and, after she picked up the receiver, with a trembling
voice I asked if I could talk to »his wife«!
The course which followed ended in a rather unpredicted way. Some of the
ensemble's members (which then consisted mostly of amateurs) simply
couldn't stand her very strong regiment over these days. And indeed she had
difficulties to work with people who where slower than her very fast and
brilliant brain and her even faster tongue. Patience was definitely not her
strength! She often remarked that she thought herself not to be a good
teacher. Nevertheless she was a teacher highly sought after right up to her
last days and many didn't want to omit in their vita that they in some way
had gone through Andrea's hands. For me it was the beginning of a very
close and beautiful friendship which soon developed into a musical
partnership. Although she could be my grandmother we became close friends
and she accepted me from the beginning - which was great luck, because she
judged people very quickly and hardly ever changed her opinion. She always
treated me as a colleague and, even though we always stuck to the german
»Sie«, this was totally natural for me in my relationship with such a
»grande dame«.
Although Andrea never would have accepted calling me a pupil, I would dare
to say, that she has been one of the most important and influential people
in my life. She accompanied my way in a most generous manner and always
tried to remind me and us all to think carefully about what we were doing.
Although she had retired from giving concerts for years she was interested
in what was going on and seemed always well informed, due to her many
friends all over the world. Her typewriter and later her computer were in
fact a message center from where she made up her network of connections in
a silent manner.
One should not conceal that she found almost everything in the early music
scene boring, especially things concerning medieval music. This could be
understood easily because she had experienced the days when with the
»Studio« almost every concert and recording had been a totally new
adventure. She consequently didn't listen to any new recordings or even
visit concerts of early music. She made devastating judgments of most
ensembles, resulting from her very high demands for quality. But she was
also so honest to confess that in her opinion she didn't see much future
for medieval music.
Two things she hated most: Imitation or lack of personality and pretending
to posses the truth, especially when claimed by musicologists. We
frequently talked about these issues and laughed together about new efforts
in the »scene« to declare this or that as the »newest scientific
achievement« or »authentic interpretation«. For good reasons she deeply
mistrusted musicology because of its danger to become l'art pour l'art, and
more than one time she admonished me, with the warning not to fall into the
deep fountain of musicology.
She has for the last years been interested, more than in early music, in
the possibilities provided by the computer for music making, combined with
biology, composing with great enthusiasm oratorios and operas, as »The Ant«
or the »Virus Cosmos«. She was eager to get e-mail and access to the
internet up to the last days before her death.
Doing rehearsals with her was always totally different, probably
fundamentally changing one's approach to rehearsing from what one knew and
experienced elsewhere. The visits in Munich were a kind of out-of-time,
days where Andrea reigned over all. She prepared a detailed plan including
rehearsing, talking, cooking and - last but not least - drinking! She
finally accepted that I could not drink much (especially her Grappa),
although this normally was a reason to fall into disgrace; and I remember
well that she even decided to make hot chocolate for me for breakfast,
which she of course didn't miss calling my »Milupa-trink« (a well known
drink for litt
le babies (!) in Germany).
The musical activities were thus embedded in great festivity; we lived
together for some days and frequently half of the ensemble stayed at her
most original flat over night. The most impressive thing was of course her
cooking; she always managed to create big meals for up to ten people in her
little kitchen and at the same time paid great attention to rules and
ceremonies: hors d'oeuvre and dessert were obligatory, as well as which
dishes or knives were to be used and where to put them on the table.
Unlucky those, who made a mistake! So working with Andrea was not so much
getting music lessons but being educated! One could easily imagine her
being a medieval abbess ruling her monastery.
She never tired of telling us not to repeat things already done by other
people. To be original, to express one's personality in music was one of
her most important points. We therefore were never allowed to hear her
former recordings (although we did, of course) and she expected us to
always have at least three different versions of a new piece at hand. For
concerts she refused to fix all details in advance, preferring to trust in
the inspiring moment of the concert itself. That was one of her theories
which she herself called highly dangerous - and I too, believe me! -
Knowing not too much about details avoided routine and tediousness, but
provided the possibility to be very bad - or very good! That was Andrea
live; as she always said, she loved and collected stress and catastrophes.
Admittedly being confronted with such thoughts for the first time (and she
always had new ones when you visited her the next time) frequently led one
to think that they were rather crazy. In some way they may have always been
exaggerated, but that was what she really wanted: to provoke. And sooner or
later you suddenly learned that there was much truth in them.
Being a singer and recitator by birth she got very angry about singers in
early music who neglected text and pronunciation. She often criticized that
she couldn't understand a word in recent recordings, especially when women
were singing.
Instrumentalists as directors of ensembles were highly
suspicious in her eyes, and she accused them of having introduced the »bum
bum« (e. g. drums) and the »doodle doodle« of dance tunes into the
interpretation of medieval music. She in contrast taught the beauty of the
poetry, the feeling for different languages and a sense for formal schemes.
For her each piece had to be a well prepared dialogue between singers and
instrumentalists, consequently the instrumentalists had to be as much
interested in the poetry as the singers. One of her rigid rules was, that
playing a drone is always a sign for lacking imagination.
For those who did not know Andrea close enough, theories like these may
have sounded rather strange or crazy. Due to her very strong personality
and her uncompromising convictions some people had great difficulty with
her. She was well aware of that fact and divided her »enemies« in her
typical manner into different classes: The worst cases were simply ignored,
the highest class - which was reserved for several directors - was to
prepare a voodoo-doll. All who knew Andrea for a longer time surely
realized that behind that sometimes very rough surface there was hidden a
highly vulnerable person. What may have seemed to others a difficult, in
some cases even offending manner was in reality a highly sophisticated
system of avoiding further vulnerability for herself. She liked to deal
out, but indeed had to pocket too. She always avoided creating too close
emotional ties and was prepared to retire from a role in favor of a younger
colleague at any time.
Dear Andrea, you wouldn't have liked to get many words on your death. I
remember well how ridiculous you found all the »in memoriam« ceremonies of
the recent years. But this is one of the rare chances where you won't have
the last word! You taught us the beauty of »our« medieval music, the beauty
of poetry, the beauty of singing. But what will be even more important for
our future way is your message that neither success nor career are really
important, but rather the pleasure and satisfaction in doing a project and
expressing oneself in music.
We are proud to have had the honor to work with you during these last years
and that you participated in our two last big projects: As Hildegard von
Bingen (which you didn't like very much, I know) in our staged performance
and recording of »Ordo virtutum« and a few weeks before your death as
Mother Mary in the staged performance of the »Wolfenbütteler Marienklage«
in the splendid crypt of Speyer cathedral. It was incredible how you
mastered the task of singing and reciting hundreds of verses, and we all
remember the ghostly silence of the audience which didn't dare even to move
after your most impressive performance, and the woman who came behind the
stage with tears in her eyes, so deeply moved by your singing and acting.
Ubi tunc vox inauditae melodiae? Who would ever dare to say that he or she
reached even a little bit of your moving power of expression, your
charisma? Of course many followed your paths, many imitated you, but in
fact you remained and will remain the mother of us all. You would have
surely liked to see the evolution in music and in sciences during the next
years, and we would have loved to have your inspiring personality for a few
more years. But now you have made the great journey before us all. I am
grateful that we able to talk on the telephone a few days before your
passing away about very personal things including new musical projects and
that my letter still reached you, where I was able to express my admiration
and my gratitude which I will owe you for the rest of my life.
Now it is time to end this last letter with the words you used so often
after a stay in Munich or a long telephone call, short and determinate but
full of warmth and affection: »Ciao, ciao, adios!«
Bye, bye, Andrea!
Dr. Stefan Morent
Ensemble »Ordo virtutum« for medieval music
University of Tuebingen/Germany
Further information on Andrea's last work can be found on this website.
Anyone wishing to contribute is welcome.
Please send an e-mail.
... it's our medieval world
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