Andrea von Ramm: Obituaries

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.



Ubi tunc vox inauditae melodiae? A tribute to Andrea von Ramm


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.

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