The Last Days of Immanuel Kant (2025)
Thomas De Quincey’s The Last Days of Immanuel Kant has been in my mind for more than half my life, even before I first articulated my interest in it as a possible opera. After the final performance of my first opera Medea in 1984 at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, the conductor Richard Bernas asked me whether I would like to write more operas, and I gave him a list of three possible subjects. One was Jules Verne’s Doctor Ox’s Experiment, and the others were Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, and De Quincey's The Last Days of Immanuel Kant and I drafted operatic treatments of the last two. I even went to Munich in 1986 to discuss the Kant project with Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, who had made the astonishing film of Parsifal in its centenary year, and I planned to compose the last act for an Arts Council tour, though the character tenors I wanted to feature were not available, and so I set Jules Verne as my second opera. . It was to feature a character tenor, and there were two tenors who interested me. One was Heinz Zednik, who sang Loge and Mime in the Patrice Chéreau Bayreuth production of The Ring Cycle. The other was the American tenor, Kenneth Riegel, who I had seen in Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg (“The Birthday of the Infanta”), at the Royal Opera House. Although both were interested it turned out that neither was available for the period of the Arts Council tour.
A further opportunity presented itself with my third opera when the director of the Mainz Opera wanted to commission an opera for the opening of the theatre after rebuilding. I was asked to suggest a subject and I proposed The Last Days of Immanuel Kant. He found it interesting but felt that it was a bit too bleak and austere to serve as a celebration for the reopening of an opera house. So instead I wrote an opera (“G”), on Gutenberg the 600th anniversary of whose birth coincided with the reopening.
Apart from G, I have written “satellite works” in advance of each new opera. Allegrasco and an instrumental Prolegomenon preceded Medea. And with Doctor Ox I wrote an extended Epilogue for the Arts Councill Tour, which I condensed down to 7 minutes for the opera itself, as well as By the Vaar, a jazz bass concerto for Charlie Haden, which eventually formed a kind of obligato beneath a love duet. And though I reconciled myself to the likelihood that, in spite of my efforts, the opera might never happen I have written equivalent “satellites” for the non-existent Kant opera over the years. Now, having decided to make it an extended quasi-narrative choral piece, these find there ways into parts of this new work, though seldom by direct quotation. These are:
An instrumental piece The Old Tower of Löbenicht (1986) for my ensemble. This relates to a passage where Kant is disturbed by growing trees that have obscured the view of a distant tower, and the owner of the trees, learning of Kant’s distress, has them cropped.
A choral work And So Ended Kant’s Travelling in this World (1997) for the voices of the Hilliard Summer School. The original text describes Kant's last journey, a futile and inconclusive visit to a friend in the country. Part VII of this work only uses the first and last sentences of this piece while adding several other textual references to Kant’s attempts at travel - and the final musical cadence…
String Sextet (2023) subtitled “The Bridges of Königsberg.” The reference is to a mathematical problem (which is insoluble) that asks whether all the seven bridges over the river Preger can be traversed sequentially in a single trip without doubling back. The sextet alludes to this by various strategic movements between instruments and, here, informs some of the harmonic language of part VIII
The Text
De Quincy was one of the great 19th- century writers of prose, but his work is also admired by those who perceive links with other levels of writing, especially through his choices of subject matter. For example, although De Quincy’s text purports to be a translation of an account of Kant’s last years by a companion, Wasianski, his frequent ironic footnotes almost give it the character of a Duchampian “assisted readymade.” And at the same time, the way in which De Quincy seems to take pleasure in the absurdity of many of Kant’s habits has the flavour of, say, a theatre work by Samuel Beckett. This connection was asserted forcibly in Philippe Colliin’s remarkable film based on De Quincy’s text in which Kant is played by the great Beckett actor David Warrilow, who I had met when he performed Krapp’s Last Tape at Leicester Haymarket Theatre when I worked there.
Kant was born and died in Leap Years and had a certain obsession with the month of February. He lived his entire life in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, where he established unerringly repetitive daily routines, so much so that people would set their clocks when he passed by… and De Quincy emphasises this, almost to excess.
I have made severe edits of the text to create a libretto, just as I did with the two previous works for The Crossing – The Fifth Century (Thomas Traherne) and A Native Hill (Wendell Berry). The work falls into 9 sections, plus an interlude between parts 5 and 6 which I added after the work was completed. They are:
I Motto
The two important things that fill the mind: “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within”
II Prologue
De Quincy’s astonishing assumption: “I take it for granted that every person of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant…”
III Dinner
“Lord Chesterfield’s rule”, that a dinner party, himself included, should not fall below the number of the Graces (3)—nor exceed that of the Muses (9).
IV Conversation
Kant tolerated no calms or periods when its animation languished
V The Old Tower
Kant’s is unable to pursue his twilight meditations when increasingly tall poplars obscure the distant old tower of Löbenicht
(Interlude: Lament)
A 12th century Italian lauda “Oi me lasso”
VI Four Decays
I Memory – Kant writes a syllabus for each day’s conversation
2. Theorising – the increasing weakness of his ability to theorise
3. Coffee – He loses all measure of time
4. Night – Darkness becomes a terror to him and silence an oppression
VII Kant’s Last Travelling
Returning from a futile journey, he sleeps in peace “and so ended Kant’s travelling in this world”
VIII February
An old song “Oh, happy February! In which man has least to bear”
From February 3rd to 12th; he dies as the clock struck eleven
IX Postlude February 28th
Kant’s funeral – “Peace to his Dust, and Everlasting Honour!”
The Last Days of Immanuel Kant is dedicated to Tony Creamer, Donald Nally and The Crossing. In Memoriam Fred Orton (1945-2025) my old friend and Duchamp adventurer who died in February.
The Interlude, for solo alto and 6 solo tenors, has an additional dedication to Maren Montalbano, whose unique voice has given me so much pleasure and inspiration, and whose own “last days” with The Crossing end with the premiere of this work.