If and Only If

Anri Sala

If and Only If (2018) based on Igor Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, charts the course of a journey, which becomes an integral part of its musical composition.
A snail, gradually travels the full length of a viola bow, innocuously moving across it, but minutely disrupting the exquisite balance on which the maestro’s playing instinctively relies. This traversing emulates a concealed dialogue between two voices that is subtly implied at the heart of the composition.

Though the work is performed as a monologue, it is in this allusion to dialogue in the form of the sound of two strings, that Sala renders Stravinsky’s Elegy as a tactile interaction between the renowned violist Gérard Caussé and a garden snail. The snail, its location and pace imposing itself on the performance, causes the viola player to simultaneously make adjustments for and thus compose with this evolving situation. The standard duration of Elegy is thus subverted through the interaction between the musician and the snail, revised to almost double its usual time. When the snail slows down, hesitating to move forward, Gérard Caussé adapts the Elegy to encourage the snail to carry on.

The music becomes an organic composition and a mutual effort, created by the performance of the violist and action of the snail, resulting in a soundtrack to the snail’s ‘epic voyage.’

Composed as a two-voices polyphony, this piece—of about 5 minutes—is shorter than the total duration of the film, which is 9 minutes and 47 seconds. Thus, while the musician found himself constrained to adapt his performance to cope with the presence of the gastropod, the artist was in turn forced to adapt the music itself to keep pace with the rythm of the movement and not to risk interrupting it until the ascent was complete; at times separating the two voices of the piece to lengthen its duration. One of the principal consequences is that the music is not illustrating or accompanying an action but is actually the consequence of the action played out in the film; which is also presented in cinemascope format, with the effect of accentuating the fictional appearance of an event that is, however, very real.