Bill Noertker Takes On Samuel Beckett

Cover of the album being discussed

I first encountered the work of Samuel Beckett late in my high school days. Since that time I have lost count of the number of times I have seen his two-act play Waiting for Godot in a wide variety of settings, often with unexpected casting. (The version with Robin Williams and Steve Martin, directed by Mike Nichols, made it to Public Television.)

While I was aware that Beckett wrote more than plays, I was only vaguely aware of his prose fiction works. At best, I knew them by name but had not added any of them to my library. As a result, my interest in that side of Beckett’s efforts returned to my consciousness when I learned that bassist Bill Noertker had composed a four-part suite, whose full title is in flitters: 49 bits from B*ck*tt, with a recording that is now available through Bandcamp. Each of the suite movements has a title taken from the text of Beckett’s novel Watt, and each one verges on the microscopic. Since Watt is not in my library, it is hard for me to say whether or not the sequence of movement titles amounts to an abbreviated account of the entire novel.

Nevertheless, Nichols’ staging of Godot struck me as a useful lesson in how it is not a good idea to overthink Beckett. Better to just let the words flow and accept the fluidity for what it is, which amounts to traversing the border between syntax and semantics. Where in flitters is concerned, that amounts to accepting each of the “bits” for its musical qualities, which involve rhythmic structure, a bass line (performed by Noertker), and an “upper voice,” which tends to explore a variety of different approaches to incantation.

That “upper voice” is performed by Annelise Zamula, who alternates between clarinet and flute. Often, that “voice” interleaves with an upper-register “melody line,” performed on the piano by Brett Carson. When rhythm dominates, it is usually realized through the drum work of Jordan Glenn.

Listening to in flitters several times has left me hungry for reading Beckett’s novel. This is one of those cases in which procrastination was probably an asset, rather than a liability. I was aware of Watt as a paperback published by the Grove Press. However, according to the Wikipedia page for the novel, Beckett himself took issue with the publication, having identified “over eighty spelling and typographical errors” and the omission of an entire sentence. As a result, a more faithful account of the text only surfaced in 2009, when C. J. Ackerley edited the entire text for Faber and Faber. Presumably, Noertker’s manuscript pages have been treated with more respect!