Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives

Contemporary Music Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives

Edited by Max Paddison and Irène Deliège

Contemporary Music

This book is dedicated to the memory of CÉLESTIN DELIÈGE, musicologist and music theorist, born 29 October 1922, died 18 April 2010

Contemporary Music

Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives

Edited by Max Paddison University of Durham, UK and Irène Deliège University of Liège, Belgium

© Max Paddison, Irène Deliège and contributors 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Max Paddison and Irène Deliège have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Contemporary music: theoretical and philosophical perspectives. 1. Music – 21st century – Philosophy and aesthetics. 2. Avant-garde (Music) I. Paddison, Max. II. Deliège, Irène. 780.9’05–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Contemporary music: theoretical and philosophical perspectives / [edited by] Max Paddison and Irène Deliège. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-7546-0497-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4094-0416-3 (ebook) 1. Music – 20th century – History and criticism. 2. Music – 20th century – Philosophy and aesthetics. 3. Music – 21st century – History and criticism. 4. Music – 21st century – Philosophy and aesthetics. I. Paddison, Max. II. Deliège, Irène. ML197.C75126 2009 780.9’04–dc22 2009050043 This is a revised and expanded English edition of Musique contemporaine: perspectives théoriques et philosophiques, edited by Irène Deliège and Max Paddison (Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga éditeur, 2001). Translators involved in this project were Mark Berry, Anne Giannini, Christopher Johns, Sebastiaan Kokelaar, Matthew Lavy, Dave Meredith, and Max Paddison. Translations editor: Max Paddison. This book has been published with the support of the Wernaers Foundation and under the auspices of ESCOM, the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. ISBN 9780754604976 (hbk) ISBN 9781409404163 (ebk) III Bach musicological font developed by © Yo Tomita.

Contents List of Music Examples   List of Figures and Tables   Contributors  

ix xi xiii

Preface   Irène Deliège and Max Paddison

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Introduction Contemporary Music: Theory, Aesthetics, Critical Theory   Max Paddison

1

PART I: Theoretical Perspectives and Retrospectives 1 The Principles of Music and the Rationalization of Theory   Hugues Dufourt

19

2

Atonal Harmony: From Set to Scale   Célestin Deliège

51

3

In Search of Lost Harmony   Rudolf Frisius

77

4 Against a Theory of Musical (New) Complexity   Richard Toop

89

5

Heterogeneity: Or, On the Choice of Being Omnivorous   Pascal Decroupet

99

6

Varèse, Serialism and the Acoustic Metaphor   Pascal Decroupet

117

7

‘I Open and Close’?   Richard Toop

133

8 A Period of Confrontation: The Post-Webern Years   Célestin Deliège

143

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PART II: Philosophical Critiques and Speculations After Adorno 9 A Philosophy of Totality   Herman Sabbe

175

10

183

Possibilities for a Work-Immanent Contemporary Musical Logic  François Nicolas

11 Postmodernism and the Survival of the Avant-garde   Max Paddison

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12 Material Constraints: Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt   Anne Boissière

229

13

249

Towards an Aesthetics of Risk   Marc Jimenez

14 Music and Social Relations: Towards a Theory of Mediation   Max Paddison

259

PART III: Creative Orientations 15 Music, Ambiguity, Buddhism: A Composer’s Perspective   Jonathan Harvey 16 Artistic Orientations, Aesthetic Concepts, and the Limits of Explanation: An Interview with Pierre Boulez   David Walters 17

279

305

Failed Time, Successful Time, Shadowtime: An Interview with Brian Ferneyhough   Lois Fitch and John Hails

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Sound Structures, Transformations, and Broken Magic: An Interview with Helmut Lachenmann   Abigail Heathcote

331

19

Hunting and Forms: An Interview with Wolfgang Rihm   Richard McGregor

18

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Contents

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Postlude: Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition   Alastair Williams

361

Index of Names  

371

Index of Subjects  

379

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List of Music Examples 2.1. Metric series founded on harmonics 1 to 6 2.2. Harmonics 1 to 32, divided according to octaves 2.3. Reading of the 4th 2.4. Atonal type triad 2.5. Linked triads within twelve-tone aggregate 2.6. Schoenberg, Klavierstück op. 33a, harmonic matrix 2.7. Webern, Concerto op. 24: (a) harmonic matrix; (b) reading conforming to the present hypothesis 2.8. Boulez, Répons: (a) harmonic matrix; (b) chords in fundamental position; (c) figuring of chords 2.9. Berio, serial mode of La Vera Storia: (a) figuring of the fundamentals; (b) (Fêtes), figuring of fundamentals and chords 2.10. Stockhausen, Klavierstück III: (a) notation of basic pentachord (following Harvey); (b) basic chords in fundamental position 0 2.11. Stockhausen, Klavierstück III (after the original edition, Universal UE 12251) 6.1. Boulez, Structure 1a: graphs (a) and (b) 6.2. Varèse, Octandre: graphs (a), (b) and (c) 6.3. Webern, Cantata No. 2 op. 31: graphs (a) and (b) 6.4. Varèse, Hyperprism: graph 6.5. Varèse, Intégrales: graph 6.6. Varèse, Déserts: graphs (a) and (b) 15.1. Beethoven Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 2 15.2. Harvey, Wheel of Emptiness (opening) 15.3. Harvey, Wheel of Emptiness (p. 27) 15.4. Harvey, String Quartet No. 4 15.5. Harvey, One Evening, movement 1 (opening) 15.6. Harvey, One Evening, movement 2 15.7. Harvey, One Evening, movement 4: rhythm 15.8. Harvey, One Evening, movement 4 (pp. 134–5)

55 57 59 63 63 66 67 69 70 71 73 121 123 124 127 128 130 284 291 292 295 297 298 299 301

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List of Figures and Tables Figures 10.1. Penrose tiling   14.1. Work-immanent mediation of music   14.2. Social mediation of music   14.3. Historical mediation of musical material  

193 268 271 272

Tables 2.1. Scale of harmonics conceived as a mode 2.2. Harmonic intervals: model ratios 2.3. Chromatic scale of frequencies: comparison between systems 2.4. Figuring of the chromatic scale, band 16…32 2.5. Transcription of pitch classes in relation to the scale of harmonics 10.1. Three logical principles: classical/dialectical 10.2. Three dialectical categories (Kierkegaard) 10.3. The 3 (1+2) dimensions of logic in music

59 60 60 61 62 196 199 203

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Contributors Anne Boissière is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Centre d’Étude des Arts Contemporains at the University of Lille 3. She has written extensively on Adorno and critical theory, and is the author of Adorno, la vérité de la musique moderne (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999) and La pensée musicale de T.W. Adorno: l’épique et le temps (Paris: Beauchesne, 2010). Pierre Boulez is one of the most important and influential French composers of our time. He is also equally renowned as a conductor, having worked with all the great orchestras of the world, and was founder and first director of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. He has won many honours and awards, and received the Ernst von Siemens Prize in 1979. From 1976 to 1995 he held the Chair of Invention, Technique et Langage en Musique at the Collège de France, and his writings on the theory and aesthetics of contemporary music remain an important contribution to the debates on music today. His publications include Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), Par volonté et par hasard: Entretiens avec Célestin Deliège (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), and Points de repère I, II and III (3 vols) (Paris: Bourgois, 1995 and 2005). Pascal Decroupet is Professor of Musicology at the Sophia Antipolis University of Nice. He has written extensively on twentieth-century and contemporary music, and in particular on Stockhausen, Boulez and Pousseur. He has selected and edited a range of Pousseur’s writings in Écrits théoriques 1954–1967 (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2004), and Série et harmonie généralisées: Écrits (1968–1998) (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2009). Célestin Deliège was Professor of Music Analysis at the Liège Conservatoire. He is regarded as one of the most significant and perceptive writers on music today, and is credited with introducing Schenkerian analytical theory to the francophone world in his book Les fondements de la musique tonale (Paris: Éditions JC Lattès, 1984). His reflections on modernism and the predicament of contemporary music since 1945 have produced many important publications, culminating in his monumental and definitive study of the period, Cinquante ans de modernité musicale: de Darmstadt à l’IRCAM (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2003). He died in April 2010 as this book was going to press. Irène Deliège is founding Director of the European Society for the Cognitive Study of Music (ESCOM), Liège, and founding editor of the journal Musicae

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Scientiae. Her research is on the cognitive psychology of music, and she has published widely in this field, including The Perception and Cognition of Music, jointly edited with J. Sloboda (London: Taylor & Francis, 1997). Hugues Dufourt is a distinguished French composer associated with Spectralism (a term he coined in 1979 to describe his own music and that of Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey). He is also Professor of Philosophy and Director of Research at CNRS Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), was a founding member of the Ensemble Itinéraire, the Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore (CRISS), and the Centre d’Information et de Documentation / Recherche Musicale (CID-RM). As well his prolific compositional output – which includes large-scale works often inspired by painting, such as La maison du sourd and Le déluge d’après Poussin – he has also written widely on issues in contemporary music. His main writings have been published under the title Musique, pouvoir, écriture (Paris: Bourgois, 1991). Brian Ferneyhough is a highly influential and internationally acclaimed British composer, strongly associated with the European avant-garde and with the ‘New Complexity’. Currently Professor of Music at Stanford University, he has regularly taught at the Darmstädter Ferienkursen für Neue Musik, and was for many years Professor of Composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. His works range from the early Cassandra’s Dream Song, through the Études transcendantales from the 1980s to his largest work yet, the opera Shadowtime (1999–2004). He was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Prize in 2007. He has written extensively on his own and other composers’ music, and most of his earlier articles, essays and interviews are included in his Collected Writings, ed. Richard Toop and James Boros (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995). Lois Fitch is Senior Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Durham was on the music of Brian Ferneyhough. Rudolf Frisius was Professor of Musicology at the Pädagogische Hochschule, Karlsruhe. He has published and broadcast extensively on issues in contemporary music, and has written on Cage, Pousseur, Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Rihm and many other important post-war composers. Since 1998 he has been President of the Institut für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung in Darmstadt. John Hails lectures in Music at Napier University, Edinburgh, and has a particular interest in the music of Ferneyhough. He is also a composer (he did his doctorate at the University of Durham) and is a winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Composition.

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Jonathan Harvey is a distinguished British composer of international importance. His music is sensuous and contemplative, and for some time has been influenced by his experience of Buddhism, notably in works such as One Evening and Wheel of Emptiness. He was for many years Professor of Music at Sussex University, where he remains an Honorary Professor, and he is also Visiting Professor at Oxford. In the early 1980s he was invited by Boulez to work at IRCAM. He is author of The Music of Stockhausen: An Introduction (London: Faber, 1975), and his subsequent writings include Music and Inspiration (London: Faber, 1999), and In Quest of Spirit: Thoughts on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Abigail Heathcote is doing research on Jean-François Lyotard at the University of Paris VIII. Her research at the University of Durham was on the music and writings of Helmut Lachenmann. Marc Jimenez is a philosopher and translator, and is Professor of Aesthetics and Art History at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Director of the Centre de Recherche en Esthétique. He is the author of many books on Adorno, aesthetics and history of art, including Adorno: art, idéologie et théorie de l’art (Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1973); Adorno et la modernité: vers une esthétique négative (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1983); La critique: Crise de l’art ou consensus culturel? (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995); and Qu’est-ce que l’esthétique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1997). He is also the translator into French of Adorno’s Ästhetische Theorie. Helmut Lachenmann is a distinguished and highly original German composer whose distinctive approach to composition he has himself described as musique concrète instrumentale. Some of his most celebrated works are Schwankungen am Rand, Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied, Staub and the music-theatre piece Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. He is a regular teacher at the Darmstädter Ferienkursen für Neue Musik, and was formerly Professor of Composition at the Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik. He was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Prize in 1997, and is currently Fromm Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He has written many articles and essays, published in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996). Richard McGregor is Professor of Music at the University of Cumbria. He has published on the music of Peter Maxwell Davies, James MacMillan and Wolfgang Rihm, and is editor of Perspectives on Peter Maxwell Davies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). François Nicolas is a composer and writer on music. He is Associate Professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and joint founder of the journal Entretemps. He has published numerous books and articles on twentieth-century

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and contemporary music, and has edited the IRCAM dossier La singularité Schoenberg (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997). Max Paddison is Professor of Music Aesthetics and Associate Director of the Centre for Contemporary Performing Arts (CCPA) at the University of Durham. He has published extensively on Adorno, aesthetics, critical theory, and the concept of modernism, and is author of Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996). Wolfgang Rihm is one of the most impressive German composers of the postwar generation. His music, which was initially regarded as representative of the ‘New Simplicity’ and ‘New Romanticism’, is anti-systematic and open to many stylistic influences. Rihm is extremely prolific, and has written important works in all genres, as well as many that defy categorization; he regards pieces as ‘works in progress’, like Jagden und Formen, and often continues to produce different versions over long periods. He was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Prize in 2003, and is Professor of Composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. He has published several volumes of his writings, including Ausgesprochen. Schriften und Gespräche, ed. Ulrich Mosch, 2 vols (Zurich: Amadeus, 1997), and Offene Enden (Munich and Vienna: Hauser, 2002). Herman Sabbe is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Ghent, and was also Professor of Musicology at the Free University of Brussels. He has written widely on all aspects of twentieth-century and contemporary music, and is author or co-author of over 20 books, including György Ligeti: Studien zur kompositorischen Phänomenologie (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1987), and All that Music! Een Antropologie van de Westerse Muziekcultuur (Leuven: Acco, 1996). Richard Toop is Reader in Music and Chair of the Musicology Unit at the Sydney Conservatorium, University of Sydney. He has written extensively on contemporary music and the post-war avant-garde, especially Stockhausen. Ligeti and Ferneyhough. He is author of György Ligeti (London: Phaidon Press, 1999), and is joint editor (with James Boros) of Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995). David Walters teaches Musicology at Marmara University of Istanbul. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Durham was on Boulez’s aesthetics of music. Alastair Williams is Reader in Music at Keele University. He writes widely on issues in contemporary music, and is currently working on new music in Germany since 1968, and especially Lachenmann and Rihm. He is the author of New Music

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and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), and Constructing Musicology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

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Preface Irène Deliège and Max Paddison

Theories and philosophies of contemporary music: why bring them together in a colloquium of which the present work is the result? Composers such as Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio have been of the opinion that in our day the idea came first and then led directly to style. The idea has been, in the first instance, the fruit of prescriptive theories; in engendering style it has also been the starting point for aesthetic developments. However, after the initial shock of creation, the judgement of the observer intervenes and creates a space of confrontation and collaboration in which other theoreticians and philosophers encounter each other; their work exercises its influence a posteriori. They too, in their turn, bear witness to this level. Amongst the philosophers, the figure of Theodor Adorno stands out. He has set in motion a train of thought that is still alive and seems far from being exhausted. His critical aesthetic theory permeates the philosophical contents of this book, whereas the theoretical sections tend more towards logical positivism. Together they constitute a thought-provoking ensemble put forward by ESCOM, the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, at the turning point between two centuries. The project on which the book is based went through several distinct stages. The original colloquium, entitled Musique contemporaine: théories et philosophie, was organized by ESCOM and led by Irène Deliège, and took place in Brussels at La Monnaie, The Royal Opera, on 18 and 19 March 2000 in connection with the Ars Musica Festival of that year and with the collaboration of the Centre de Recherches Musicales de Wallonie. There were invited papers from Célestin Deliège, Hugues Dufourt, Richard Toop, Rudolf Frisius, Pascal Decroupet, Herman Sabbe, François Nicolas, Anne Boissière, Marc Jimenez and Max Paddison, and each of the two days’ contributions were framed by commentary from Jean Molino and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, who also chaired sessions. From the start the participants had been asked to take part in the colloquium with the intention that their papers would later be expanded and developed to become essays in a substantial book. As a stage in this process, a small French/English volume of ‘Working Papers’ (textes d’étude) was also published to coincide with the colloquium, containing short versions of the papers to be delivered. Following the success of the colloquium itself, the contributors were accordingly asked to  Irène Deliège (ed.), Contemporary Music: Theories and Philosophy. Working Papers / Musique contemporaine: théories et philosophie. Textes d’Étude (Liège: ESCOM Publications, 2000).

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revise and develop their papers into full-length essays, and also in some cases to provide a second related essay for the volume if they wished. The resulting book of fourteen essays and an Introduction, edited by Irène Deliège and Max Paddison, was published in French in 2001 (a publication not to be confused with the French/English ‘Working Papers’ volume mentioned above, which shares a very similar title). Work then began on an English version of the book, involving much translation and in some cases further revision of the original conception. What also became apparent during this process was the need to embrace a wider range of music and to give more voice to composers themselves. In view of this, we have added a third part to this edition in the form of five theoretical and philosophical perspectives of a different kind from those which dominate the essays in Parts I and II. These are statements from five contemporary composers who have each made highly significant and very different contributions to debates around music today, both through their compositions and through their writings on music: Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Helmut Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm. Finally, Alastair Williams was invited to contribute a Postlude to the book, drawing strands together and giving an important emphasis to Lachenmann and Rihm lacking in the original French edition. The editors are indebted to the French publisher Pierre Mardaga and the Director of the Collection Musique et Musicologie, Malou Haine, for their permission to publish translations of material that had originally appeared in French. They would also like to thank all the original contributors to this volume for their help and support, and in particular for their great patience in view of the time it has taken to get their work to press in English. Gratitude is also due to the composers in Part III, who have granted permission for the interviews with them to be included here – Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm – and also to those who interviewed them – David Walters, Lois Fitch, John Hails, Abigail Heathcote and Richard McGregor – as well as to Jonathan Harvey for his essay and to Alastair Williams for his concluding chapter. We are also very appreciative of the work done by Joris De Henau in resetting the music examples and tables for this edition, Kelcey Swain for his computer enhancements, and for a grant from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Research Committee of the University of Durham to pay for this work. Finally, we are grateful for the initial draft translation work done on this project by Mark Berry, Anne Giannini, Christopher Johns, Sebastiaan Kokelaar, Matthew Lavy and Dave Meredith. Further extensive and detailed translation work, both of a technical and of a stylistic nature, was essential to the final shape of the project, and Max Paddison has acted as overall translator as well as translations editor.

 Irène Deliège and Max Paddison (eds), Musique contemporaine: Perspectives théoriques et philosophiques (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2001).

Introduction

Contemporary Music: Theory, Aesthetics, Critical Theory Max Paddison

‘Very frequently no one knows that contemporary music is or could be art. He simply thinks it is irritating. Irritating one way or another, that is to say keeping us from ossifying …’ (John Cage, Silence)

I You might reasonably say that contemporary music is simply what is going on now, music that reflects its time, where multiplicity rules and music fits in, one way or another. Or you could argue that contemporary music also has a history of being ‘contemporary’, where in many respects it has never really fitted in, and has become self-reflexive and critical in ways that relate not only to its own time but also to its own history. If you take this view – which, broadly speaking, is the view of the chapters in this book – then the contemporary music in question becomes that of the avant-garde and the experimental, particularly since 1945, with all the difficulties to which this has always given rise. If such music continues to have irritation value, in John Cage’s sense of ‘keeping us from ossifying’, then the discourses that surround it are also likely to prove provocative. The idea of a music that is truly contemporary, in the sense of relating to its time, is one which has always had its problems. To discuss contemporary music today – at least, in the way in which it is intended here – could even be regarded as to be out of step with what appears as current, relevant and widely accepted, particularly if it is assumed that the essential debates have already happened and that the matter is now closed. We argue here that the case very much remains open, and that the debates continue, if for no other reason than that what could be called ‘advanced’ contemporary music itself continues to change and to go into unexpected and unforeseen places. The end of history has not happened – at least not in music. In fact, especially in music, the need for discussion has never been 

John Cage, Silence (London: Marion Boyars, 1968), p. 44. Ibid., p. 44.  Taking his cue from Hegel’s philosophy of history, where the motor of history is driven by conflict and contradictions, Francis Fukuyama had famously argued that perhaps 



Contemporary Music

greater, with the general demise of heroic modernism, the decline of the New, the turn away from experimentation, and the celebration of diversity, all of which were features at one stage seen as marking the shift to the postmodern – a concept which itself now shows distinct signs of ageing. Indeed, this has been the case ever since the concept was employed to identify stylistic changes in contemporary architecture by Charles Jencks and more fundamental social, technological and epistemological changes by Jean-François Lyotard in the 1970s and 1980s. It was also partly the result of the critique of postmodernism by Jürgen Habermas and others on the grounds of the (neo)conservative implications of the critique of subjectivity and of rationality to be encountered in the writings of Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari. At the same time, the social situation of art music in general and of advanced music in particular remains distinctly contradictory, stark in its contrasts, and confused in the face of conflicting demands. The kind of cultural democracy created to a large extent since the 1980s by new and accessible technology is matched by the increasing bureaucratization and managerial control of culture by the new politics which also emerged in Europe in the 1980s, with its insistence on accountability, participation, value for money, and entertainment. (You could see this as a market updating of what in the late 1970s had been known somewhat confusingly by the Arts Council in the UK as the ‘democratization of culture’ under its slogan at that time, ‘Arts for All’, amid accusations of levelling the end of history had occurred in 1989, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the triumph of Western capitalism and the emergence of the United States as the world’s only super-power (see Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18). The falseness of Fukuyama’s argument was evident at the time, and has certainly been revealed to be so by subsequent world events. Nevertheless, 1989 was a significant date, but more so as the beginning of a new age of uncertainty. Alastair Williams argues for the importance of 1989 as a turning point in contemporary music in Germany (see Alastair Williams, ‘Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German tradition’, this volume). Contemporary music in the rest of Europe and in North America appears to have been slower in its response (see Max Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture, London: Kahn & Averill, 2004, pp. 132–3).  In his What is Post-Modernism? (London/New York: Academy Editions/St Martin’s Press, 1986), p. 3, Charles Jencks traces the term ‘postmodern’ back to the Spanish writer Federico De Onis in his Antologia de la poesía española e hispanoamericana of 1934 and to Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History of 1938. What I’m referring to here is the emergence of the term ‘postmodernism’ as a widely employed label both for a style and for a historical period dating from the late 1960s / early 1970s up to the early twenty-first century, with the 1980s as the most intensive period in the modernism/postmodernism debate, especially that between Habermas and Lyotard.  See Richard Rorty, ‘Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity’, in Richard J. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 161–75. See also Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985). Trans. as: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).

Introduction



down on the one side and elitism on the other.) Situated in a vortex of impossible demands, contemporary music cannot be identified as one thing, consistent and recognized by all. Artists tend to do what they do, in spite of political and social pressures to make art ‘useful’ or ‘relevant’ in some way, in order to justify supporting it with public funding. Instead, you could say that the real situation faced by contemporary music is that all we have are widely differing and often sharply contrasting responses to a common dilemma within a cultural context characterized by fragmentation, a situation which compels advanced music towards reflexion. Put crudely, the role of a theory of music today is to identify and explicate those responses, and the role of a philosophy of music is to problematize them in relation to the common dilemma in a fragmented world of special-interest groups and niche marketing. This collection of essays places itself precisely there, taking stock, seeking new patterns in the already-familiar, and casting a critical eye over the assumptions that surround the idea of an advanced music today. The emphasis is largely music-theoretical in the first part of the book, philosophical in the second, with a combination of the two in relation to the composers in the third part. Strict lines of demarcation cannot easily be sustained between theory, philosophy and creative practice, however, and the fact that they inevitably and most profitably interact is evident throughout. But how are we to understand such a tired term as ‘contemporary music’, given its capacity to refer to all and everything and nothing in particular? Strictly speaking, ‘contemporary’ should mean ‘now’, right up to date, the music of our contemporaries in the twenty-first century. The problem, however, is that ‘contemporary music’ has become a label just like those it has tried to replace in a fast-moving culture – labels like ‘modern’ (from modo, meaning ‘now’, but displaced interestingly by ‘postmodern’), the ‘New’ (so often recycled, so many old ‘New Musics’), and the ‘avant-garde’ (which originally had a more specialized meaning to do with pushing boundaries, but is now regarded in some circles as distinctly old fashioned). In view of such difficulties regarding the question ‘what is contemporary?’, and recognizing my already evident bias towards the idea of an ‘advanced’ music, we can only be pragmatic, and say that in the context of these essays the term can be seen in two ways. The first, and relatively simple answer is that the use of terms such as ‘contemporary’ and ‘advanced’ refers here  An interesting perspective on this now largely forgotten debate between the proponents of ‘cultural democracy’ and those of the ‘democratization of culture’ is that of community arts in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Britain, in particular as seen in the exchange between the community artist Owen Kelly and the then Secretary-General of the Arts Council, Sir Roy Shaw. See especially Owen Kelly, Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels (London: Comedia, 1984). The French version of this debate concerned animation socioculturelle versus mainstream gallery, museum and concert hall culture, and was taken up in Germany as soziokulturelle Animation. It is probably safe to say that both community arts and animation socioculturelle have now become thoroughly institutionalized.



Contemporary Music

also to the legacy of very different but radical musics which can be traced back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century. This is a legacy which persists, in spite of all, and through it we continue to engage with problems of musical material, form and structure in ways that can best be described as critical and self-reflexive, in musical terms at least. (It has to be said that, while the politics of music strongly underpins the debates represented in this book, especially in Parts II and III, the question of directly politically engaged contemporary music is not a focus.) The obvious examples of a ‘legacy’ that spring to mind are best seen as taking their orientation from the music of composers such as Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Varèse, Cage and Carter, through Feldman, Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Pousseur, Kagel, Xenakis and Ligeti to Birtwistle, Ferneyhough, Finnissy, Lachenmann and Rihm, to name but a few. (Debussy, for example, remains a strong influence on many composers of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including the Spectralists, as well as the French-orientated English composer Jonathan Harvey, and the German neoromantic composer Wolfgang Rihm, and therefore must also be acknowledged as a continuing presence). But the problem with such lists is that the attempt to trace a legacy or a characteristic line of historical development quickly begins to look like the construction of a tradition, and even a canon, and would therefore appear to come into conflict with the idea of a critical and self-reflexive music, of resistance and the search for the new and the unknown. The second, and more difficult, answer to the question ‘what is contemporary music?’ involves complex issues around the different forms taken by such musical self-reflexion, the relation to rapid developments in technology and to the dominant commodity culture, and the tension between what is often seen as the most extreme autonomy and consistency of such music and the heterogeneity and diversity of society at large, given the power of the culture industry and the mass media. Aspects of rock music are also discussed, at times in abrupt juxtapositions around issues of heterogeneity and reflexivity. Frank Zappa therefore also features, not because he wrote some ‘art music’ that happened to be taken up by Boulez and IRCAM in Paris, but particularly because his rock music appears as radically critical today as it did in 1966 and because it cuts across such boundaries. By way of introduction I offer a thematic overview of the book before going on to take up some of the issues raised. First of all, however, there are some important theoretical issues that need to be addressed. II It is hardly surprising that a common point of reference in many of these essays is critical theory, and in particular that of Theodor Adorno. In the 1920s and 1930s Adorno was already engaged on a critique of the music of the period and its social

Introduction



situation. By the late 1940s, with Philosophy of New Music (1949) Adorno could be said to have intervened directly in the course of what was then contemporary music, in effect hastening the decline of neo-classicism and the emergence of postWebernian serialism. Further interventions were his critique of total serialism at Darmstadt in 1954, and then his call for une musique informelle in 1960. In his essay ‘Vers une musique informelle’ Adorno put forward the idea of a music which resists the impulse towards total rationalization and presents to us again something of the exploration of the unknown and the unforeseen which goes back to decisive moments of pre- and early modernism: the spirit of Baudelaire’s seminal writings from the 1840s and 1850s, the French Symbolism of the 1880s and 1890s, and the freedom of the Second Viennese School Expressionism of the years 1908–1914. Indeed, the concept of musique informelle has turned out to be an intriguing, enigmatic and influential ideal, and, as it is often invoked in the essays and interviews in this volume, it is worth spending a moment to consider its implications in a little more detail here.10 The origins of Adorno’s use of the term musique informelle are currently of considerable interest and a range of unlikely theories is being put forward to explain where Adorno got it from. To attempt to put the matter straight, I would suggest that it is quite clear that Adorno took the concept from existing usage in painting, as anyone with a knowledge of the art informel movement in Europe following the Second World War and the influence of American Abstract Expressionism from which it in part derived will immediately recognize – indeed, Gianmario Borio has traced many of these connections in detail in his book Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960.11 Adorno was certainly aware of the use of the concept of the informel in painting in Germany

 Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949). Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975). A new translation, as Philosophy of New Music, trans., ed. and with and introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), supersedes the earlier Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973).  Originally given as a paper in 1954, ‘Das Altern der neuen Musik’ was published in Der Monat in May 1955, an expanded version appearing the following year in the collection of essays on music, Dissonanzen (1956), Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973, 1980), pp. 143–67.  Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Vers une musique informelle’ (1960), Quasi una Fantasia (1963). Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 269–322. 10 I am grateful to Joris De Henau for providing me with the occasion to revisit Adorno’s concept of musique informelle. Our discussions encouraged me to elaborate my thinking on the subject. 11 Gianmario Borio, Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960: Entwurf einer Theorie der informellen Musik (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1993).

Contemporary Music



in the 1950s as informelle Kunst, or informelle Malerei,12 represented by action painting and also by Tachist artists such as the German painter Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) and, in particular perhaps, the painter of informelle Bilder with a confusingly similar name, Bernhard Schultze.13 In its turn this German usage derives from a French use of the term, as art informel (‘art with no form’) from the School of Paris in the immediate post-war years of the 1940s and early 1950s, a use further legitimated by an exhibition under the title ‘Signifiants de l’Informel’ put on in Paris in 1952 by Michel Tapié.14 Given this developing history, Adorno needed only to take it over into music as musique informelle to designate a kind of new music that did not yet exist, but which would be in ‘no form’, in that it would refuse to accept pre-given solutions, including those emerging from Darmstadt (informelle Kunst does not, of course, mean ‘formless art’, given that, in order to exist at all, everything has a ‘form’, even if it goes directly against all previously known and familiar forms). All this, I think, is pretty convincing, and in demonstrating clearly that the notion of the informel had already been a motivating factor in the visual arts for fifteen years prior to Adorno appropriating it, it also shows the extent to which Adorno was attempting to drag the attention of an increasingly self-obsessed and insular musical avant-garde towards larger horizons already being explored in the visual arts. At the same time it demonstrates Adorno’s firm conviction that it is the task of a critical theory to attempt the impossible, and to prompt practice to move from where it is and yet again to move on in order ‘to find something new’.15 What Adorno focuses so acutely in his theoretical and philosophical writings, and what makes them so relevant to the situation today, is the dilemma of theory (both philosophical and musical) and its relation to art itself. That is to say, there 12

See Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 7 ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), p. 329, where Adorno uses the term ‘informal painting’ (informelle Malerei) in conjunction with action painting and aleatoric music. 13 The brief mention in passing of the contemporary painter of ‘informelle Bilder’ [Bernhard] Schultze in ‘Vers une musique informelle’ (Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 16, p. 526) shows that Adorno was familiar with the idea of informelle Malerei, introduced by Schultze, K.O. Götz and Wols to Germany in the very early 1950s. Gianmario Borio cites evidence where Schultze himself reports that Adorno was present at an exhibition of Schultze’s work in Düsseldorf in 1957; Borio also suggests that Adorno had visited the Quadriga Exhibition of ‘informal painting’ in Frankfurt in 1952. He is also firmly of the view that Adorno derived his concept of ‘informelle Kunst’ from painting: see Borio, Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960, p. 90, note 45. The fact that Adorno uses the French form of the term, however, suggests that he was also aware of its origins in Paris in the mid1940s, and that the German painters had got it from there. 14 Gianmario Borio also shows much evidence for this link, as well as for connections with Italian artists of the period: see Borio, Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960, p. 129. 15 Adorno often quoted the final line from Baudelaire’s poem ‘Le Voyage’ from Les fleurs du mal, ‘Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!’.

Introduction



is the imperative, on the one hand, for theory to describe, explain and interpret, while, on the other hand, there is the need for theory to recognize its failure to explain that which in the work of art resists interpretation – what Pierre Boulez has insisted, citing André Breton, is an ‘indestructible kernel of darkness’16 at the heart of the creative process. And this tension within theory and philosophy as resistance to interpretation is present, of course, both within the creative process and within the work of art itself. The shared premise of all these essays, discussions and interviews is that musical works are themselves highly structured and thus constitute a mode of cognition, albeit – and importantly, in case we mistake music for language or philosophy in any literal sense – non-conceptual.17 However apparently unorthodox they might at first appear, musical works are systematic in their structure and constitute relationships between parts and whole which have a coherence and logic of their own and which can be analysed, theorized and philosophically interpreted. Indeed, it could be said, taking up Adorno’s important insight, that the experience of art works, and musical works in particular, demands continuation in thought. This is not least of all because the systematicity of art is frequently troubling and provocative, turning out to be antisystematic in relation to prevailing systems outside art – Adorno’s suggestion (following Karl Kraus) that ‘in society as a whole it is art that should introduce chaos into order rather than the reverse’.18 At the same time, musical structures, however necessarily autonomous they appear, share their materials, their elements and even their systematicity with society as a whole, especially when attempting to shake themselves free from it. An important task of both theory and philosophy of music is to identify these points of intersection, but without succumbing to the delusion that everything is thereby explained. Other important theoretical and philosophical strands in these essays have very different trajectories: analytic philosophy, cognitive psychology, and positivism. That points of contact are made between Adorno and these traditions is clearly 16 ‘… un “noyau infracassable de nuit”’, André Breton, cited in Pierre Boulez, ‘Nécessité d’une orientation esthétique’, Points de repère I: Imagine (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1985), p. 552. Trans. as: ‘Putting the Phantoms to Flight’, Orientations, trans. Martin Cooper (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), p. 83. 17 In Aesthetic Theory Adorno talks of art in general (and music in particular) as a form of begriffslose Erkenntnis (‘conceptless cognition’); he also talks of music as having a ‘language-character’ (Sprachcharakter), arguing that it is ‘language like’ but is not a language. See my essay ‘The Language-Character of Music: Some Motifs in Adorno’, in Richard Klein and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds), Mit den Ohren denken. Adornos Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), pp. 71–91, where I consider this position in detail. 18 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997), p. 93. See original German: ‘Mehrfach ist, zuerst wohl von Karl Kraus, ausgesprochen worden, daß, in der totalen Gesellschaft, Kunst eher Chaos in die Ordnung zu bringen habe als das Gegenteil.’ Ästhetische Theorie. Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 7, p. 144.



Contemporary Music

evident in a number of contributions, even where the emphases are quite distinct and critical. At the same time there is no sense that Adorno has in some way become an orthodoxy for the areas of contemporary music discussed here – far from it, as the criticisms from the composers represented in Part III clearly signify: Jonathan Harvey, for instance, finds Adorno’s interpretation of Wagner through the concepts of phantasmagoria and commodity fetishism runs counter to his own understanding of the composer, and is disturbed by Adorno’s essentially Marxian analysis. Even Adorno’s idea of une musique informelle, increasingly speculated upon by theorists and composers alike, and described by Lachenmann as ‘a beautiful idea’, is not a prescription for composers to try to put into practice (that would be ‘dead on arrival!’, says Ferneyhough), but is really what I would call a ‘prismatic concept’ – that is to say, a multi-faceted concept that enables us to see things from different and unusual angles and in a new and unfamiliar light. In other words, it alienates or estranges our thinking about form. Even though Adorno had undoubtedly diagnosed something, and had tried to reveal different facets of it, making an effort to think beyond the immediate problem and to provide new perspectives, he could not jump over his own shadow, his Austro-German legacy from the nineteenth century, nor could he predict how things would actually turn out in the future. Lachenmann’s observation in his interview in this volume is telling, if two-edged: ‘I have a great deal of respect for Adorno, but … he was [a] fossil from the nineteenth century.’ But he then goes on: ‘From that perspective he had a very precise diagnostic eye for what happens today.’ Adorno undoubtedly stood somewhat apart from the avant-garde of his time, but his perception was probably all the more acute for that, and the problems he saw were real ones. Solutions, however, were for composers to find. Critical reactions and responses to Darmstadt orthodoxies of multiple serialism led, as it turned out, to remarkably creative solutions – one thinks of Kagel, Ligeti, Nono and, later, Lachenmann, Rihm, Birtwistle, Ferneyhough, Murail and Grisey – and even if Adorno could not have predicted them, they could also, in very different respects, be seen to display facets of a possible musique informelle. III While different, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical or philosophical perspectives characterize the chapters in this book, what is also striking is the extent to which certain concerns are seen as central. One of these is the acknowledgement of the significance of the new musical developments that took place in the period from the late 1940s up to the early 1960s, and which particularly involved innovations from Messiaen and Cage taken up by, among others, Boulez and Stockhausen. Célestin Deliège, chronicler of the avant-garde, music analyst and author of one of the first books in French on Schenker, puts forward an uncompromising case for the enduring historical significance of these developments, centred largely on Darmstadt, in his essay ‘A period of

Introduction



confrontation: the post-Webern years’; at the same time, however, his critical assessment of the successes and also the failures of these years is equally uncompromising. Another important concern has to do with the way in which the technical development of music is closely tied to the technological development of society itself. This is the central theme of Hugues Dufourt’s chapter ‘The principles of music and the rationalization of theory’ – an exhaustive historical survey of the relation of music to technology, with a view to situating the importance of French Spectralism in contemporary composition (as well as being a philosopher, Hugues Dufourt is also himself a composer and a founding member of the original group of French Spectralists, together with Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey). Underlying Dufourt’s theme is the explanatory power of the sociologist Max Weber’s concept of rationalization, particularly as he himself had applied it to music in his pioneering study Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (1921) (The Rational and Social Foundations of Music).19 A further theme is the discussion of musical material. A range of emphases is evident. The concern with the systematicity and logicality of musical structures, and the need to relate to handed-down materials, is fundamental both to Célestin Deliège on the rationalization of atonal harmony and François Nicolas on musical logic. In his chapter, ‘Atonal harmony: from set to scale’, Célestin Deliège puts forward here a completely original alternative to set theory for the analysis of atonal harmony which takes account of fundamental tones, resonance and timbre, and through this is able to make a meaningful connection with the Spectralist composers. François Nicolas, in contrast, from his research work at IRCAM, carries out a philosophical analysis of the necessary conditions of a musical logic, focusing in turn on notation and consistency, the dialectical relationship to other works, and the possibility of an autonomous, strategic musical logic, not determined by external factors. The focus in both these contributions is therefore decisively on the autonomy of musical structures and their immanent consistency, something which throws into relief the repressed social ‘other’ of autonomous musical structures. This can be seen in different ways in Pascal Decroupet’s contribution ‘Heterogeneity: or, on the choice of being omnivorous’, and Rudolf Frisius’s ‘In search of lost harmony’. Indeed, Frisius suggests that Ives and Cage have shown us ‘that music may also renew itself harmonically when the composer opens the windows to let the exterior world penetrate into his work’. Decroupet ostensibly focuses on ‘ways in which stylistically diverse materials are incorporated in a range of different types of music’. He explores the crossing of boundaries, quotation, montage, attempted syntheses, and cross-over, discussing a range of musics including Cage, Schaeffer, Pousseur, musique concrète, Zimmermann, rock music, jazz and ‘world music’, in relation to emerging technologies, sampling and scratching. The contributions 19

Max Weber, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik, with an Introduction by Theodor Kroyer (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1921). Trans. as: The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958).

10

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of both Frisius and Decroupet throw into relief yet again the issue of musical material. And any discussion of musical material, whatever its origins, is clearly also a discussion of form, of the interaction of material and structure, of history, historical movement, musical ‘meaning’, and of social mediation. This is the substance of Anne Boissière’s ‘Material constraints: Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt’, where she discusses the pre-formation of material in relation to the notion of ‘inner necessity’ and interrogates directly the status of the concept of form that grants the material its poetic value, as well as seeking to counter the accusation sometimes levelled at Adorno, that he was an ‘anti-avant-gardist’. Boissière’s approach is an original one, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concept of storytelling and Hannah Arendt’s dual concept of work as both process and as object to emphasize the idea of historical transmission of materials as a living tradition. The focus of my own chapter on the mediation of music and society, ‘Music and social relations: towards a theory of mediation’, offers a discussion of the concept of musical material in Adorno in relation to dialectical levels or modalities of music’s mediation. But the historical process of increasing control over material, according to Adorno, leads not only to the crisis of total rationalization – Max Weber’s ‘iron cage of rationality’ – but also to a crisis of material itself. The idea of a coherent and ‘appropriate’ musical material falls into fragments and collapses as the actual available material, however apparently diverse in its origins, becomes ever more homogeneous and standardized through its appropriation by the music industry in an age of mass culture. The tendency of art to take extreme rationalization into the inner world of its form, to become what Valéry had called ‘a closed world’, creating its own individual context of meaning with each new work, had long been noticed as a characteristic of the avant-garde. One result of this has been complexity taken to its extreme, as seen, for example, in Brian Ferneyhough’s music, where the work itself sets up, quite literally, a resistance to interpretation, discussed by Richard Toop in his essay ‘Against a theory of musical (new) complexity’. The other extreme, already suggested by both Frisius and Decroupet, and touched on by Herman Sabbe in ‘A philosophy of totality’, is the omnivorous acceptance of everything as material, as seen in the case of John Cage. I take this further in my own essay ‘Postmodernism and the survival of the avant-garde’ through contrasting the omnivorous example of Frank Zappa with the complexity and selfreferentiality of Brian Ferneyhough, relating both to a concept of the absurd. The double focus of these essays – theoretical and philosophical perspectives – means, on the one hand, a focus on the details of musical syntax and material and on details of particular compositional issues (Decroupet’s discussion of Varèse, Toop on Ferneyhough, Deliège on post-Webernian music, in particular Stockhausen and Boulez). On the other hand, it also means an emphasis on critique – in effect a metacritique of theory itself. The debates that arose over the last three decades of the twentieth century concerning the legitimacy of modernist art and of the avantgarde with the ascendancy of the ‘condition of postmodernity’ led to a crisis within theory itself as well (and by this I don’t mean theory simply in the specialized sense of ‘music theory’, but theoretical discourse in the larger sense, including

Introduction

11

philosophy). Indeed, Marc Jimenez goes so far as to suggest that there may be a correlation between two crises: ‘one of an institutionalized, complaisant and promotional criticism, which thus is no longer functional, and one of a confused art, victim of a loss of legitimacy’. To that extent, he argues, theory – in this case aesthetics – must be prepared to take risks. IV But creativity involves living with risk, uncertainty and ambiguity, and developing strategies to encompass and articulate these through giving them form – however informel that might actually turn out to be. The composers represented in Part III of this book have themselves also all written extensively about music in both theoretical and aesthetic terms, and here speak directly of their ideas and concerns. Indeed, the big issues are those that have increasingly come to occupy composers for well over a century now – how to deal with the essential arbitrariness of musical materials in the absence of any overarching and generally accepted system for organizing them, and the evident need with each new work to build a new structural context within which such initially arbitrary and, in a sense, meaningless materials, in spite of their shared ‘commonality’ and handed-down historical meanings, can be organized and become again meaningful in a new context. Inseparable from these concerns in music, oscillating constantly between intuition and the urge to systematize, are questions of freedom in relation to control, chance in relation to determinacy, and time and temporality in relation to space and spatialization – time as structure, time as experience, and time as things in perpetual transition, a sense of the transitoriness of things, of objects in space. In view of such all-pervading instability and uncertainty it might seem all the more remarkable that composers should be concerned at all with ideas of ‘truth’ in relation to their music; in fact some kind of ‘truth concept’ emerges directly or indirectly as an issue in most of the composers represented in Part III, alongside the ever-present problem of meaning. For Jonathan Harvey, in his chapter ‘Music, Ambiguity, Buddhism’, truth in music – ‘axioms that are true for all music’, as he puts it – is what he calls ‘a kind of … Uncertainty Principle’, and there is a sense in which he has recourse to Buddhism as a way of framing and structuring the potentially disturbing ambiguity and transitoriness of the world, a world which, as a composer, he articulates through music. The transcendent and mystical character of Harvey’s form of Spectralism also points, perhaps inevitably, beyond music itself in a search for meaning, using music as a model for understanding the relationship between illusion and reality. Faced likewise with the dilemmas of choice and the unforeseen in his work, Pierre Boulez is a Cartesian, casting all into doubt in the pursuit of immanent-musical truth, and starting again from basic principles. As he puts it in his interview with David Walters, ‘You have to put what you want to decide into doubt – that is already in the writings of Descartes – doubt is fundamental; ‘… as long as you don’t doubt, you cannot find the truth, or the temporary truth.’ The life’s work of

12

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the artist is the necessity of ‘building an instrument’ – that is to say, ‘an instrument that is totally adapted to his own thinking … “Original,” as in the sense that it goes to the origin of himself.’ Here, the instrument is the music – or, perhaps more accurately, the unique and systematic instrument which becomes a new ‘second nature’ through which the music emerges. While it’s difficult to imagine a composer more different to Pierre Boulez than Helmut Lachenmann, there is a striking convergence on the need to create a unique context of meaning through the act of composing. While with Lachenmann it is Cage rather than Mallarmé who is the dominant influence, in his interview with Abigail Heathcote he says: ‘In my music there’s no such thing as chance. … That’s what I mean when I sometimes say, “composing means building an instrument”. Composing means discovering and revealing a new, invented imaginary instrument. In my case the problem is that such an imaginary instrument doesn’t exist before I develop it by composing the piece. So my composing is full of helpful “mistakes”.’ There is a fundamental sense in which this applies to all art today – the context itself must also be built, as a special world within which each gesture can become meaningful, where the arbitrary is eliminated and chance is embraced by the total context of the work, and a kind of consistency is achieved as ‘truth’ to the dominating idea of the work, its ‘scheme’. When, at one point in his interview with Lois Fitch and John Hails, Brian Ferneyhough states: ‘If music is not true, it can’t be beautiful’, he perhaps had something along these lines in mind – that the dominating idea that animates a work permeates every detail at every level, and the beauty of the work is this consistency of idea and work, in a very Schoenbergian sense. Indeed, it’s also precisely this thought that Boulez derives from Mallarmé, that ‘the Idea is reflected in everything’. In Ferneyhough’s opera Shadowtime, which arises out of a longstanding engagement with the work of Walter Benjamin, it is the concept of time itself that is central – or rather, several different concepts of time, as life time, historical time, dramatic time, and what he calls ‘failed time’ – and which systematically structures the work. On the other hand, fundamental to Wolfgang Rihm’s approach to composition is a rejection of any overt systematization, and what comes through clearly in his conversation with Richard McGregor is the value he lays on intuition and his admiration for those composers who most strongly exemplify the sense of freedom of the music of the period around 1910 – Debussy, Mahler and the pre-serial Schoenberg, and in this respect, although this is not raised as such in the interview, Rihm could be understood as having much in common with Adorno’s notion of une musique informelle, to return once again to that seminal ideal. Speaking of his early experience of taking part in a performance of Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien Rihm says: ‘There was a music which only consists of itself, self-sufficient. The music was not something a teacher talks about with words … the music was a living creature, and singing within this living creature opened me.’

Introduction

13

V The importance of Rihm and Lachenmann in contemporary music in Germany as figures who have emerged since 1968, and therefore after the first wave of the post-1945 avant-garde, cannot be overemphasized. The original French edition of this book in 2001 had little to say on either composer, and it gives cause for some satisfaction that this omission has now been addressed. As a postlude to this English edition of the book Alastair Williams was invited to provide a commentary on the significance of these two very different composers who could be said to encompass the extremes of contemporary music in Germany today. His chapter, ‘Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German tradition’, brings together a number of important strands also highlighted elsewhere in the book and links developments in contemporary music in Germany to a larger European and American context.20 As Williams argues, we probably need to rethink the significance of what has happened in advanced music since the mid-twentieth century. The pivotal date may no longer be 1945, but 1968, with the recognition at last that the revolution of the late 1960s was significant after all, together with the enormous political and cultural significance of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. What is more, the key role played by Germany in contemporary music may need to be revisited and recognized for a second time. It is not only German composers as such – although the importance of Stockhausen, Henze, Huber, Lachenmann and Rihm is now probably clear enough – but also developments in contemporary music in Germany, of composers from elsewhere – such as Nono, Kagel, Ligeti, Ferneyhough – who had chosen to work in the country either permanently or for extended periods of their lives, as well as the opposite: German composers who have chosen to live outside Germany, like Henze in Italy. As Alastair Williams suggests, all this challenges us to rethink the musical historiography of the later twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, and compels us to experience again the relationship of subjectivity to objectivity and of modernity to tradition. In their very different ways Lachenmann and Rihm in particular have developed new critical musical ‘languages’ which, in Williams’s words, ‘contribute to the larger cultural project of bringing the more abstract procedures of modernity into contact with heightened, self-reflexive forms of perception’. Finally, it needs to be re-emphasized that this book does not claim in any way to be all-inclusive, nor does it set out to offer a historical survey of current and past tendencies in the whole range of music available today or, for that matter, since the mid-twentieth century,21 although the historical context of ideas is certainly important. It is the theoretical and philosophical questions arising 20

See also Alastair Williams, ‘Ageing of the New: The Museum of Musical Modernism’, in Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (eds), The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 506–38. 21 For a book that does precisely that, see Célestin Deliège, Cinquante ans de modernité musicale: De Darmstadt à l’IRCAM (Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga, 2003).

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from the situation of particular areas of advanced contemporary music seen also in the context of key developments in earlier twentieth-century music that the contributions seek to address – difficulties, problems and dilemmas at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In many respects the book is likely to prove provocative, as much by what it includes as by what it leaves out, and by the kinds of theoretical and philosophical approaches taken. All this is completely in line with a publication that has its origins in a symposium of invited theorists, philosophers and composers22 – that is to say, it is speculative, sometimes difficult, often contentious, and hopefully thought-provoking. As Carl Dahlhaus said at another symposium on contemporary music held at Darmstadt in 1966, and which included Adorno, Ligeti, Kagel, Haubenstock-Ramati and Earle Brown: ‘But difficulties are provocations, or at least they should be.’23 Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949). Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975). Trans. as: Philosophy of New Music, trans., ed. and with and introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) ——,  ‘Das Altern der Neuen Musik’ (1956 version), Dissonanzen (1956), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973, 1980), pp. 143–67 ——,  ‘Vers une musique informelle’ (1960), Quasi una Fantasia (1963) Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 269–322 ——,  Ästhetische Theorie. Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7 ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970). Trans. as: Aesthetic Theory, trans. with introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997) 22

The original colloquium of invited papers at La Monnaie, Brussels, in 2000, and the original French edition of the resulting book – Irène Deliège and Max Paddison (eds), Musique contemporaine: Perspectives théoriques et philosophiques (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2001) – have been greatly expanded for the present English edition. See Preface for details. 23 ‘Schwierigkeiten aber sind Provokationen oder sollten es sein.’ Carl Dahlhaus, Form in der Neuen Musik: Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik X, ed. Ernst Thomas (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1966), p. 49 (my trans.). For an English version of Dahlhaus’s introductory paper to this symposium, see the chapter ‘Form’ (trans. Stephen Hinton), in Carl Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 248–64.

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Borio, Gianmario, Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960: Entwurf einer Theorie der informellen Musik (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1993) Boulez, Pierre, ‘Nécessité d’une orientation esthétique’, Points de repère I: Imagine (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1985). Trans. as ‘Putting the Phantoms to Flight’, Orientations, trans. Martin Cooper (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), pp. 63–83 Cage, John, Silence (London: Marion Boyars, 1968; 1980) Dahlhaus, Carl, Form in der Neuen Musik: Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik X, ed. Ernst Thomas (Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne, 1966) ——,  Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Deliège, Célestin, Cinquante ans de modernité musicale: De Darmstadt à l’IRCAM (Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga, 2003) Fukuyama, Francis, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18 Habermas, Jürgen, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985). Trans. as: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) Jencks, Charles, What is Post-Modernism? (London/New York: Academy Editions/ St Martin’s Press, 1986) Kelly, Owen, Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels (London: Comedia, 1984) Lyotard, Jean-François, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979). Trans. as: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, Foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) Paddison, Max, ‘The Language-Character of Music: Some Motifs in Adorno’, in Richard Klein and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds), Mit den Ohren denken. Adornos Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), pp. 71–91 ——,  Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996, 2004) Rorty, Richard, ‘Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity’, in Richard J. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 161–75 Weber, Max, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik, with an Introduction by Theodor Kroyer (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1921). Trans. as: The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958) Williams, Alastair, ‘Ageing of the New: The Museum of Musical Modernism’, in Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (eds), The Cambridge History of TwentiethCentury Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 506–38

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PART I Theoretical Perspectives and Retrospectives

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Chapter 1

The Principles of Music and the Rationalization of Theory 

Hugues Dufourt

Introduction In this chapter I set out to formulate the conditions for a possible theory of music today, while in the process providing a historical sketch of categories of music theory (with specific focus on the study of acoustics) since the seventeenth century. My approach draws on recent studies in the history and philosophy of the science of music and also on present research into computer music and the cognitive psychology of music. After the pioneering studies of Crombie, Walker, Palisca and Drake, researchers such as H.F. Cohen, Paolo Gozza and Antonio Serravezza have made important contributions to the history of the science of music. The aims of this field of research are now clearly defined and its problems have been identified and categorized. Its historiographical models may be seen as a counterpart to research into computer music and the cognitive psychology of music. What I seek to do here is to join these two approaches. In the first section, ‘Clock, ruler and balance’, I argue that the principles of music change when they become a part of the physics of inertia. In the seventeenth century music ceased to belong to the field of cosmology and became a part of the study of mechanics. The revolution in this field led to a new way of using concepts and to new ways of thinking about music. The mechanistic theory of music reached its high point in the nineteenth century with Helmholtz. The first part of this chapter is therefore devoted to a necessarily brief historical account of the mechanistic  In the French edition of this book this essay is entitled ‘Les principes de la musique’. In that version the first part is considerably longer. For the English edition it was felt that much of the earlier historical material on the development of the science of acoustics was already available elsewhere for English-speaking readers in relatively popular sources, notably J. Jeans, Science and Music (New York: Dover Publications, 1968, originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1937), and H. Lowery, A Guide to Musical Acoustics (New York: Dover Publications, 1966; originally published by Dennis Dobson in 1956). What has been emphasized in this English version of the essay are the connections between the two parts, most notably in terms of Max Weber’s concept of the historical and social process of rationalization in relation to music theory and the acoustics of music [trans. ed. MP].

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principles of music, which is also at the same time a history of the process of musical rationalization, in the sense in which Max Weber used the term in his pioneering sociological study The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. In the second part, entitled ‘The fundamentals of spectral music’, I discuss what I see as the logical conflict upon which the new science of sound was constructed in the twentieth century. The technology of the production and control of sound and of electroacoustics and digital processing mean the establishment of new standards for understanding our sound world. Because our musical culture – which is both scientific and artistic – devises perceptual stratagems and then uses them as its basis, its defining characteristic could now be said to be the search for sonic illusion. Clock, ruler and balance As with all forms of technical activity, music today is part of industrial society. Whether popular or art music, it is the expression of a form of civilization which has given pride of place to automation and speed within the hierarchy that governs its life-style and aesthetic values. A civilization based on quick reflexes copies the structures of automation in all decisions of everyday life and rejects the slow reactions of traditional society. I would call a society industrial when it offers a general explanation of all psychic functions on the basis of reflexes – that is, when it tends to apply automation to relations in all aspects of life. The theory of music which developed during the twentieth century is characterized by a high level of analytical abstraction. It substitutes sensory receptors for receptor endings. To our physiological organs it adds tools, then machines that can transform movement, machines that create and control movement, and, finally, machines that process information. Music, nowadays, is neither created nor played without machines, computers, and systems for analysis and measurement. Solutions to historical problems concerning the origins and limitations of physiological functions, particularly those affecting sensory-motor coordination, are sought through laboratory experimentation. The theory of music was born in the seventeenth century and founded on the doctrines of mechanistic reflexology. As a result it has retained certain basic determining factors from its original context. Musical instruments, musical notation, and, specifically, thinking about music are regarded merely as technical devices. Music is a construction made by machines that can change movement into something sensorial. The manufacture of musical instruments, particularly after Vaucanson, eliminated the difference between organization and manufacture. Making music always comes down to constructing an automaton; that is to say, 

See Max Weber, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (Munich: Drei-Masken-Verlag, 1921). Translated into English as: The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958).

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something that provides intelligible and functional substitutes for activities which formerly, in the musical traditions since Aristotle, were the domain of instrument manufacture and of physiological techniques developed by performers. In their very design, their use and their function, musical instruments in traditional civilizations required an implicit reference to some similarity between nature and art, between life and technical means. The musical instrument in industrial society is a reductionistic object that merely simulates functions and establishes well-tempered relations between structures. While traditional instruments were the result of a compromise between mechanics and human physiology, modern instruments aim at modes of compatibility and forms of coexistence between patterns of representation, operational models and structural laws. The traditional instrument was a regulatory device based on the model of an organism. The internal organization of its mechanical system revealed the integration of parts and whole and reproduced their internal and reciprocal relations. In brief, it implied the use of technology to copy life. Thus the traditional instrument mimicked physiological behaviour and incorporated its functional activities. The contemporary musical instrument is very different. It is a theoretical and experimental construct that requires a thorough analysis of the conditions in which sound is produced as well as a strict determination of the conditions of its variation. The musical instrument of our time is the result of purely rational invention for which adaptation and regulatory criteria have become problems to solve. We know, for instance, that regulatory devices were added to the model of the clock after Descartes’ death. Christian Huygens (1639–1695) used the pendulum with isochronal oscillations (1657) for clocks, as well as the coil spring for watches (1675). By applying the principle of inertia to the representation of circular uniform movement, Huygens was able, in 1659, to express centrifugal force quantitatively. As Pierre Costabel has argued, Huygens was the first scientist who imagined the relations between mathematical theory and experimentation as being interdependent and as forming a whole. Huygens was the first to study the oscillations of the composite pendulum, which he considered to be formed of a large number of simple pendulums, each one of which corresponding to a small part of the mass of the composite pendulum. Huygens’s theory defines the value of the moment of inertia of a solid in relation to an axis; this makes it possible to establish the identity of the average of durations relative to all simple pendulums, and the duration of one oscillation. With the invention of the coiled pendulum oscillator, the balance (le fléau; that is, the beam of the weighing scales) was given an alternating movement that has its own period. The spiral spring embodies the idea of the isochronicity of the oscillations of a mechanical system, the structure of which is maintained by a  S. Bachelard, ‘L’influence de Huygens aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles’, in Huygens et la France (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 243–50.  Pierre Costabel, ‘Huygens et la mécanique’, in Huygens et la France (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 139–52.

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continuous use of energy. The use of the spiral pendulum oscillator for watches turns a complex mechanism of wheels, cams and levers into a theorem of rational mechanics. The first clock to work with a pendulum was built in 1657 by Salomon Coster according to Christian Huygens’s instructions. It can be considered as the prototype of future musical instruments. The new instrument, whether electromagnetic, electroacoustic or computer, is in fact the result of a combination of theoretical and experimental – and therefore artificial – procedures. The musical instrument no longer belongs to the realm of conventional instrument building (that is, organology), but rather to that of technology. Mechanical invention is no longer a part of the universal organization of matter by life. It has become one of the applications of knowledge which tends to simplify its models, to make its organizational standards homogeneous and the design of its parts uniform, and to unify its metrical and qualitative characteristics, so as to ensure the greatest precision in the manufacture and standardization of the product. Modern mechanics, which based the science of movement on inertia, has introduced indifference and disequilibrium into the regulatory system of traditional musical instruments. The construction of servo-mechanisms or electronic automata must compensate today for the loss of the kind of functional standards that applied before to the musical instrument as a part of the world of general organology. The technological phase seems to have changed the very organization of musical instruments; the technical standards of regularity and predictability in their construction cannot be equated with mere technique. The musical instrument of today is an automaton that receives, transmits, computes, interprets or synthesizes information. Sensors, transducers and analysers have replaced the physiological functions of our own sensory receptors. To produce a synthetic sound is to manufacture the components of an excitory mechanism; physicists and psychoacousticians can digitize the characteristic multiplicity of its vibrations. In the Renaissance, and above all in the seventeenth century, instrument making became a real science. Physicists, musicians and instrument makers all worked together. Sebastian Virdung in 1511, Martin Agricola in 1528, Michael Praetorius in 1614 and 1620, and Marin Mersenne in 1636 and 1637 laid the foundations of musical-instrument technology. Technique and technology – the revelation of the rules of an art – became in the eighteenth century the description of the arts themselves and their practitioners. The concept is due to Leibniz, who defined its main aspects at the end of the Nouveaus Essais (1705). This science of art and its products is in fact a science of the labours of the human hand. It is linked to another aspect of technology: the science of the concrete application of an abstract principle. It is one thing to explain and develop the theory of an art – that is, to consider the purely theoretical side of knowledge implicitly contained in applied work. It is another thing to infer all the potential for invention from the resources of applied science, which is no longer fundamental science and is not yet technical application. Huygens, Boyle and Hooke belong to the cohort of new inventors who were to base instrument making on a body of theoretical physics and on exact

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knowledge. When, in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, music theorists (who were also musicians and acousticians) such as Zarlino, Mersenne, Werckmeister, Sauveur, Rameau or Tartini, wrote their treatises, instrument making had already benefited from the progress that had taken place in mechanics, making it much more accurate. But the modern technology of musical instruments really progressed thanks to the first dynamic study of elasticity, a study of string vibration. At the same time, progress in the understanding of acoustics, elasticity and friction improved the precision of scientific measuring devices and industrial manufacturing methods. The development of instrument making and instrumental practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was based on the first scientific revolution that took place in the seventeenth century and made the development of mechanical construction models possible. A resonator with a given periodicity was considered to be a simple pendulum, and its isochronal oscillations led to the generalization of the concept of resonance in the nineteenth century. Resonance is, of course, at the very foundation of all sound reproduction devices such as the record player or the telephone. Two other basic properties of sound production – interference and the Doppler effect – as well as the study of the visible spectrum also played an essential part in the development of electroacoustics in the nineteenth century. If we accept, as Bacon and Leibniz did, that the work of technicians and mechanical engineers can lead to new theories, we can also consider that research and the knowledge of theoretical principles can lead to a rational change in modes of production. Up to the nineteenth century, mechanics, as a universal science, held sway over most of the other sciences. The nineteenth century, with the production of energy and the development of the new means of communication that ensued, discovered new theoretical orientations. Ampère’s electromagnetism and Faraday’s induction led to the understanding of the common characteristics of electromagnetic induction and light. The musical instrument of the twentieth century, based on sound synthesis, is a distant continuation of the knowledge which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, with the study of the mutual relationship of mechanical, light and electromagnetic phenomena. The development of musical instruments therefore belongs to different domains. It shows that scientific explanations can be sanctioned by practice, as in the case of temperament. And, contrariwise, it shows that industry can be guided by theory, by the application of rules that stem from general principles, as in the case of synthesis techniques. Paolo Rossi writes: Mersenne and Gassendi both rejected as dogmatic Descartes’ effort to base physics on universal principles; they were much more aware than he was of the fact that ‘real physics’ is closely tied to the gentilles inventions of engineers and technicians. For Mersenne, the descriptive knowledge of the phenomena and

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Until recently, the theory of music owed its development to that of mathematical and physical acoustics. From the very start, which traditionally goes back to Pythagoras, the theory of music was born of the refusal to search for the secret of experience in the study of its data alone. The theory of music is a speculative effort to understand, explain, organize and unify the complex multiplicity of phenomena. This emphasis on the ordering of phenomena places music at the very roots of the natural sciences. Music cannot be contemplated in a totally random world, nor in one where each particular element remains fixed in its essence. The Eleatic philosophers’ critique of Becoming (devenir) and of movement, which resists all efforts to organize Being (l’Être) and to include within it differentiation and multiplicity, raises from the very beginning a fundamental question of music theory. To regard space and time as absolutes, and to include movement within this, risks depriving movement of all rational justification and could plunge the sensory world into a phantasmagoric unreality. Thus, one could say that the question raised by the existence of music is intrinsically linked to the very possibility of the world’s existence. Man can only conceive of one world and not the pure multiplicity of chaos. The existence of music in the world is, as is the world itself, both the multiplicity and the One of Platonism. It is a unified multiplicity where the presence of the One explains order as well as the architectonic and hierarchical nature of the multiplicity, with its determining factors and its structure: an organization of parts that form a whole. In its origins the theory of music was a method of analysing the world and its phenomena. It is at the same time also a theory of mind that invents the science of the phenomenal world. Any theory of music is both speculation on the world and the world reflecting the mind. In Ancient Greece it provides simultaneously the first outline of a positive science and the first elaborated representation of our interior world. The theory of music is part of the tradition of numbers and forms which, applied to the mathematics of heavenly bodies and of sound, brought together the science of astronomy and the science of harmony. This ‘science of reason’, which harks back to the school of Pythagoras in the fifth century BC, will remain almost unchanged from Plato and Aristotle all the way to Kepler, Mersenne and Descartes. Thomas S. Kuhn writes: Kepler, Mersenne, and Descartes, all wrote on harmonics; Galileo, Huyghens, and Newton displayed interest in it; Euler’s Tentamen novae theoriae musicae is in a longstanding tradition. After its publication in 1739, harmonics ceased to figure for its own sake in the research of major scientists, but an initially related field had already taken its place: the study, both theoretical and experimental, of  Paolo Rossi, Les philosophes et les machines 1400–1700, trans. Patrick Vighetti (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996; original Italian ed. 1962), p. 114.

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vibrating strings, oscillating air columns, and acoustics in general. The career of Joseph Sauveur (1653–1716) clearly illustrates the transition from harmonics as music to harmonics as acoustics.

When Joseph Fourier considered all waves as additions of sine waves, he was fulfilling the spirit and logic of Descartes’s Regulae; he dealt with physics as a continuation of mathematics. The logical process, hierarchy of calculation, the theory governing the use of symbols, all is mathematically determined in music. Today, a parameter, an acoustic index, a salient event for perception, indicate the velocity of variation of a variable. Fourier, along with Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli, defined the mathematical concept of harmonicity. Through harmonic analysis, a periodic function can be divided into an infinite number of harmonic functions. Fourier included all the elements of harmonicity in a single functional complex, expressed mathematically. The essential characteristics of the modern idea of harmony are based on the commensurability of harmonic functions. If two straight sine waves have periods that are linked by an inconsistent ratio, sounds will be said to be inharmonic. If the two waves have periods such that they are part of a same harmonic series, the ratio between the two is commensurate. Sounds are then said to be harmonic. Periodic but non-sinusoidal vibrations of most musical instruments can thus be represented by the sum of sinusoidal vibrations that form a harmonic series. If all periodic phenomena are expressed by a sinusoidal function, the musical phenomenon can be considered as one entity and its general theory can be formulated. Thus, thanks to Fourier, musical theory can attain a fully functional and formal status, since it can represent sound and music by a ratio of time, space and number. Descartes, who based the theory of music on the model of the science of motion, made it possible, later on, for Fourier, then Helmholtz, to approach gradually the physics of sound waves, the mathematics of continuous functions, and music based on the spectrum. The new concepts that transformed acoustics and the theory of music were developed through phases that can be considered as turning points in history. Among them we have frequency, beats, resonance, elasticity and distortion. The nineteenth century added other concepts, such as torsional oscillation, the Doppler effect, interference and diffraction. Until 1880, theory reverted to physical mathematics. The development of acoustics from Galileo to Fourier or Simon Ohm ran parallel with the progress towards mathematical mechanics that reached its peak with the work of Helmholtz. Around 1880 the opposite idea was broached: to restore mechanics to the field of electrodynamics. The mechanics of malleable bodies could yield no more paradigms to science, so these had to be found in the theory of electrical and magnetic phenomena. Mechanics – the synthesis of physics that only  Thomas S. Kuhn, ‘Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science’, in The Essential Tension, Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 40 n.

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uses the concepts of substance and extension, of figure and of movement – found its accomplishment in acoustics and in Helmholtz’s theory of music. Heir to the theories of the eighteenth century, he was still striving to construct a mechanical image of the magnetic field, particularly by his theory of cycles. Around 1900 it was felt that it was impossible to include electrodynamics in mechanics. A new era then began for acoustics. The discoveries of the science of mechanics had led to the idea that all natural phenomena could be described in terms of simple forces exercising pressure on solids. Today, the fact that we no longer think in these terms makes it difficult, once again, to understand the history of the beginnings of acoustics. Helmholtz’s work seems central: it sums up and assembles, in terms of mechanical thought, the acoustic knowledge built up since the seventeenth century. His mechanistic philosophy, explicitly connected to the tradition of Galileo, was challenged at the end of the nineteenth century by analyses of magnetism, electricity and light. But the history of music is not simply the substitution of one paradigm for another. Furthermore, the mathematical physics of the seventeenth century was ahead of its time. It put forward the idea of the rational synchronicity of law and causal determination. This cannot be validated by an idea of knowledge that projects the forms of human language on to the formulae of science. On the contrary, the history of acoustics and of the theory of music show a gradual mathematization of mechanics upon which no logical, linguistic and even less philosophical formalism can shed light. The fundamentals of spectral music In the age of industry art music renewed both its concept and its aesthetics. Combining the logic of technology with economic interests, it has now become a new kind of cultural reality: a combination of science and art serving to create the basic conditions for music itself. Taking a broad view of progressive music since the 1950s, one sees a totality with all its parts interconnected. Signal processing, the cognitive psychology of music, computer-aided composition, and room acoustics are now the factors that organize the production of music. Music gets its procedures, its allure, its experimental style and its unifying objectives from science. From science it takes the language of precision. The ultra-miniaturization of switching procedures, scale gains in computing speed, the ever-increasing storage capacity for data, these all provide the practice of music with new standards and norms of representation, new structural requirements and new criteria of accuracy. The technology of sound production replaces instrument making, logical machines guide thought, and programming seems to be the dominating concept of musical composition. The science and technology that are associated with it have given the music of the second half of the century its cultural flavour. It is considered to be a form of knowledge where symbolic algorithms determine, from the very start, a logical configuration and a network of technical connections. Music is developing today as science does, and is threatening to explode under pressure of continuously

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changing knowledge, something which constantly threatens its equilibrium. Like science, music is swept on by developments in other fields such as technology and the communication needs of society. Musical research adjusts to the structure of the subject matter it studies. It adopts the programmatic function of the concepts and languages with which it defines its objectives. Art music during this period owes its particular character to the progress of technology within the overall forces of production. Economic interests, technical activities, the legal and institutional framework of society, all define an operational mode that is far from autonomous. All these conditions taken together can be reduced to what was called by Adorno in 1949 ‘the historical tendency of musical material’. Since the 1950s, music has acquired an ‘experimental’ form. It is considered to be an artificial experiment undertaken in the new environment of the laboratory. Even its own logic is developed on the model of a particular number of intellectual operations governed by the rigorous control of conditions. Musical creation has become a kind of spontaneous experiment, different from musical research only in its freedom to choose its ends. Art music in the second half of the twentieth century developed in a world of abstract calculations and the artifice of the mass media. It situated itself at the intersection of multiple disciplines, and this led to boundary conflicts. Since there was relative incompatibility between norms belonging to different fields, musical production in recent decades has experimented with partial synthesis. Its new theoretical status derives, therefore, from a problem that is not its own: that of scientific objectivity in its relation to the historicity of knowledge. Musical research bears that name because it is halfway between logic and experience. Abandoning all claims of totality, musical rationality henceforth pursues its aims towards systematization in the rethinking of formal schemas, in the resolution of formal conflicts and the constraints of notation and transcription. These are different aspects of the definition of the subject-matter which connect, overlap, supplement each other, and thus reciprocally define each other. Music lives in a world of adjacent and related forms that do not achieve the level of ideality of logic or pure mathematics. Its structures are simultaneously coded procedures, tools and models. Physical acoustics, musical acoustics, room acoustics, psycho-acoustics and cognitive psychology use the techniques of coded information and its computerized processing. These scientific disciplines converge and progessively divide their subject-matter into the domains defined by their interconnections. Traditional music theory is replaced by a general epistemology, the unity of which is characterized by an interdisciplinary criss-crossing without any common core or historical precedent. However, this addition of disciplines is 

See T.W. Adorno, Philosophie der Neuen Musik, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975; original ed. 1949), especially pp. 38–42. See also the English translation: Philosophy of New Music, trans., ed. and with an introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), pp. 31–4.

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no mere juxtaposition. The refurbishment of these theories is largely due to the need to overcome their pluralism. They do not simply add one on top of the other, but rather they overlap. The digital science of sound has solved the problems raised by mechanical acoustics by changing the scale of the fields studied and the methods of approaching sound. Just as chemistry became a science of non-existent bodies, as Auguste Laurent said in 1854, electroacoustics has now become a science and a technique of non-existent sounds. In 1860 Marcellin Berthelot said that chemistry created its own object. A century later, a sound synthesis program, such as Max Matthews’s Music V, computerizes sound production by defining its algorithm. An algorithm for synthesis is a program that has production capacity. To look at sounds objectively, define them, modify them and actually create them are one and the same thing in synthesized music. It differs from ‘instrumental’ music because it is not dependent on human gesture. It is also different in its precision, reproducibility and stability. To instrumental music, electronic music adds machinery – computers, and detection and measurement devices – as well as experimental techniques. After Max Matthews, Jean-Claude Risset developed a new experimental technique at the end of the 1960s: analysis by synthesis. Computer music requires complete specification of the physical structure of sound, and this will only be relevant if all details are included. A program for synthesis needs a thorough analytical study of sounds. A program of this kind is not an electroacoustical stereotype. Pierre Schaeffer’s experimental empiricism is very different from the experimental rationalism of Matthews, Pierce and Risset. Observations and experiments are of the order of the millisecond. The capture of the infinitesimal components of sound requires a new way of looking at sound. When you change the level of observation, you also change the level of objectivity of the phenomena that you observe. Finding new techniques to examine and study, and refining them, led to entirely different acoustical studies. Traditional acoustics was replaced by micro-acoustics, which includes timbre synthesis in the production of definite pitch and duration. For synthesis acoustics, musical sound is defined not only by its pitch and dynamics, but also by its timbre. Timbre, as part of the definition of a sound, is the most important theoretical development in the use of computers. To produce or reproduce a sound, it is not enough to convert a series of numbers that represent simple waves into sound. Matthews and Risset showed that the frequency spectrum cannot alone explain the specific shape of the constituents of timbre. Timbre depends on the evolution of the frequency spectrum, on attack and decay, and on the respective and mutual development of the different harmonics or partials of the sound. The method of analysis by synthesis developed by Risset has triggered great progress in the understanding of musical timbre by including numerous details for the envelope of each component of a frequency. Computers were used to reconstruct instrumental sound, to create entirely new sounds, to study auditory illusions and paradoxes and to process sound digitally. According to Risset, a study of the structural stability and functional constants of a sound cannot alone suffice

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to capture, understand or characterize the properties of musical sound. Dynamic considerations are also necessary. Computerized sound synthesis has shown that a purely technological approach to music is inadequate. From analogue electroacoustics to computer music there is all the difference between technology – even if it is revolutionary – and theory. Theory is born of the failures of technology. And the theory of sound synthesis has defined and formulated the valid conditions in which a sound is deemed to be musical. On one hand, perception does not hear vibrations or their numerical characteristics; on the other hand, the subjects of observation and experimentation in psycho-acoustics use the scale of a phenomenon that classical acoustics could not measure, observe nor even imagine. Thus the history of music in the second half of the twentieth century is influenced much more by the structure of acoustical theory than one generally thinks. In this period, the historicity of musical structures has been dependent on the conditions of their objectivity. These conditions are defined by science, and not by technology. However, they are both theoretical and experimental. Today, the theory of music has become a program. It has the progressive and problematic nature of a program. Theory is only valid if it is worded in technical terms that can adequately characterize relationships between observable objects. These terms must also be capable of relating fields of objects even if their components cannot be observed. Theory has become a standard for the organization of experiments, and attenuates their discrepancies. It creates relations within comprehensive operational systems for which it ensures formal consistency from the very start. The theory of music becomes consistent thanks to the conformity of formalized structures, operational models and symbolic connections. Music theory today can no longer be content with a speculative system of explanation. It cannot be restricted to a unified view of its interpretation. Such a unity would merely ensure comprehension, and theory must also be able to create new objects. It must create structures. It is a form of organization that must allow for different applications. The theory of music is the power of form. Its power of formulation makes it akin to the functions of language. Its organization can be compared to technical specifications. Its ability to create and differentiate objects, and to structure experience gives it the symbolic and operational status of positive knowledge. Instructions combine determinations, not qualities. A theory is only worthy of that name if it can find new forms of intellectual speculation and not just forms of rational connections. A theory does not simply suggest ways of operating. It is not just an updating of an organized set of operations. It reveals a new framework for classification. Computerized sound synthesis has made it possible to identify and understand the properties of musical sound which had never been clarified nor even sensed. Without method, observation and research lead nowhere. Digital sound synthesis has led to new criteria for discrimination in the search for the constituent relations of sound. Its main contribution is the discovery of new ways of defining sound. It creates real links between different phenomena. A program for synthesis is in itself the production of sound, an applied theorem and a machine

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for demonstrating. One program can do all this at the same time. It is at once a quantitative prescription, a technical determinism, a conceptual model and a method of research. In computer music, the validity of a symbolic algorithm means accuracy of pattern, efficiency of a rule of generation, and intrinsic transparency of a set of relationships. To become an explanatory principle, a theory of music must comply with three conditions that are interconnected. First of all, it must achieve the status of explicit formulation. Theory is actually analysis, because it looks for the reasons why a given property can be expressed in an overall and intrinsic fashion. Formulating a question therefore means separating and connecting the elements of a situation, identifying those relations that can form a consistent whole, selecting and organizing directions and methods of research. The explanatory value of a theory hinges largely on its ability to turn the phenomenon it is studying into a system of simultaneous determinations. To explain is thus to express the interdependence of factors and to specify the laws of the connection and alternation of the premisses. A second condition is that a theory must propose an operational technique. Derivation becomes both a divided and cohesive activity. The logic of operations must therefore be redefined at all times. A theory reorganizes its principles and arranges them within an axiomatic system. It reorganizes the operational chain of causal links and rearranges the order of conditions. It verifies and enlarges the use of its operational models. For theory, to define conditions means to use a subterfuge, an intermediary. Defining conditions means to consider the aim that is sought and the functional idea of the mechanism. It is a series of acts, a composition of consequences. It is more and more specialized. A synthesis algorithm today is the rational equivalent of the technical organization of action. The operational rule leads to a chain of different states. It means to discriminate and control the field of possibilities. In so far as it organizes a new way of thinking, theory defines the invariants of transformation and determines univocal procedures. Its method of construction is also the expression of functional necessity. Finally, a theory must create links of objective validity. It must specify its object, define the particulars of its schemes and turn these into models. By giving its objects a specific identity, theory has therefore the ability to differentiate between them. The value of a theory resides in its ability to articulate its aims, identify the pertinent indices, and bring out individual characteristics in their reciprocal relations. The music of the second half of the twentieth century is said to be experimental when it is considered capable of creating its own control system. It is said to be formal when it seeks a general mode of operation. In both cases, musical creation is above all linked to a theoretical function of extrapolation, of well thoughtout extension. Whether you emphasize the artificial nature of technique or the autonomous development of a functional law, in both cases the general properties of a system are used to define and understand the precise way in which a work of art operates. Chance, combinatorics, statistics, entropy, code, all these terms being used more or less loosely and metaphorically, convey the will to compare a work of art to the universal nature of theoretical mediation. The music of the last

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half-century is defined as a structuring process, inspired by a logico-mechanistic myth and expressly based on the technological model of automation. Basically, it is seen as the generalization of digital synthesis. According to its exponents, twentieth-century music is both theory and realization. To revisit a distinction already identified, it could be called ‘experimental’ when it searches for its principles, or formal when its operations are deduced from a law of series. ‘Formal’ music explains what is concrete and can be perceived through abstract relations, forecasting or computing, or again through the operation of hidden mechanisms. Whatever its type or modality, it is always a question of configuration, assembly, devices. Twentieth-century music strives to differentiate its structures while thematizing operational generalities. A difficult problem of aesthetics arises here – and, indeed, of the history of civilization. The twentieth century is characterized by a way of considering the relation of a totality and its parts that starts from the parts and proceeds to work its way to the totality. The analytical method and the possibility of conceiving of discontinuity seem to be the starting point. The music of the twentieth century is linked to structures that are constantly branching out and that express a theoretical ambivalence regarding global and analytical processes. Thus the greater part of musical production in the second half of the twentieth century seems to be the illustration of a philosophical theory of music. It is no longer really a work of art, but the result of an operation, a strategem. The liberal ideology, the prestige of science, technological philosophy – all these can be called on to explain the spirit of anti-physics that has reigned in music since 1945, just so long as we add the caveat, however, that this ‘mechanistic’ view of music is still aimed at combatting the concepts of the anti-mechanistic and counter-revolutionary biology of the Nazis, which it has always rejected. Ironically, the development of musical research has, in the long run, jeopardized the position of modern music. Research requires of creation a kind of novelty that has no longer anything in common with art. Considered as a rational ploy, modern music is reduced to a kind of formal experiment and must submit to the imperialism of knowledge. If technology and modelling can give musical creation a chance for renewed confrontation, they also demand that music accept the fits and starts, as well as the frenzy, of perpetual urgency – something which does not readily accommodate the requirements of a well thought-out concept. The music of our time is thus obliged to readjust ideas and procedures constantly, because the latest fashions in technique keep unadjusting them. Musical creation linked to research then appears to be doomed to production conditions as sterile as they are contrived. In this extraneous situation, modern music is reduced to the condition of an experiment in knowledge. The revolution in the science of musical sound is irreversible. The theoretical distinction between information mechanisms and energy mechanisms creates a clear split in the second half of the twentieth century between electronic technology and synthesis acoustics. Shannon led the way. Matthews defined aims and a method. Risset founded the discipline, not just by using Shepard’s

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first discoveries, but above all by adding the mathematics of quality, alteration and change to the digital representation of sound. In his presentation of analysis through synthesis, Risset was clearly aware of the fact that he was suggesting a new method and thus a new experience of the world of sound. This new type of experiment brings about a revolution in ideas because it shows that the way in which the world of sound was approached in the past is inadequate. New views are therefore formulated, and this requires a change in perspective, a new approach. The fact that sound is considered to be a program for synthesis is also a revolution in thought. The infinitesimal scale on which sound is created is not just the result of a change in proportions or an exercise in mental microscopy. The need to describe and theorize the structure of sound on a microscopic level leads to a complete revision of methods of examination and to new questions. Separating energy from information results in the fact that sound is no longer seen as the pure space-time continuity of energy. Of course, Risset accepts that the life of a sound depends on coordination, energy and relations. But he notes that the representation of a sinusoidal sound by sinusoidal pressure leaves out an essential aspect of the sound phenomenon. On the contrary, information theory, born of the study of the productivity of information channels, requires that we understand what governs the amount of information contained within a given structure. The answer cannot be found in a mechanical or even energetic application of the laws governing inert matter. This alone could not explain the existence of musical sound to which Fourier’s analysis only gives an idealistic answer. Analysis by synthesis as propounded by Risset implies a theory based on the need for organization and on the analytical study of the order of integration on an observation scale. According to this method, organization expresses the quality of a given physical quantity as well as the fact that this quality can be measured by the amount of information contained in that structure. The human ear is not a universal receiver. It interacts, as a hunter does with his prey. Sound is made to facilitate survival and has a very elaborate and specific level of complexity. The nervous impulses sent by the ear to the brain reproduce the form of the modulations that the ear received. Information travels through the chain of receivers, the relays. The code – that is the correspondence between the message received and the message emitted – the mathematics of quality, alteration and change depends entirely upon the structure and organization of these relays. Risset’s basic idea is that the human ear is extremely selective. It can capture certain aspects of sound with the greatest precision, but must be content with acceptable approximations of others. The quality of sound at the highest level of organization is relatively autonomous in its form of organization. A balance of matter and energy – required by the law of conservation of both matter and energy – cannot alone explain the organization that is characteristic of musical sound. Risset’s guiding thought is that those structures that give acoustical energy their real configuration can only be grasped as a function of real time. Time is no longer a geometrical dimension, but a real variable that suggests succession, evolution and direction. The organization of sounds is partly considered independently from

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their physical support. With organized sound it is therefore necessary to draw a distinction between the flow of energy and matter, the permanent structures through which the impulses pass, and the dynamic characteristics that affect these structures. The life of a sound is due to the variations in its architecture. The boundary conditions maintain a structure’s identity. But the ear disregards the conditions of this identity. The useful information is precisely contained in the evanescent elements, in the slightest alterations, in the disruptions or the neutralization of variations. The concept of information, which can be represented quantitatively, does not only measure the level of structural organization, but also the ability of these structures to create ever more organization or, on the contrary, to lose more and more of it. Sound is self-regulation, always threatened, always at risk, always reconstructed. It is a distribution of matter and energy in time and space. But the structures thus formed are not stable; they move from a greater or lesser degree of organization. Equilibrium requires effort. Self-regulation does not only mean a balance of corrected discrepancies. It also ensures a state of equilibrium between different tendencies. Thus sounds can be classified according to the respective positions of their components. A sound will be deemed to belong to a single category when its parts are related by a continuous curve; it will be said to change categories when there is discontinuity, or a hiatus, in its elements. Sound is a dynamic and unstable system, and the physics of macroscopic objects cannot suffice to explain it. Thus the qualitative determinations that are characteristic of musical timbre are not just the products of stable components that are connected in a state of equilibrium. Quality is the expression of certain quantitative relations where each phenomenon is a function of the others. Musical sound should be seen as a multiplicity of series that are coordinated in time. Before computers were used, electroacoustic music was controlled by voltage switches, which were generally oscillators that only had very few waveforms. Voltage was used as a control signal, and the way of changing it was usually the same as the one used for audio-frequency signals. Control voltage is produced, recorded and changed by oscillators, amplifiers and filters. The analogue synthesizer is based on transducer technology, in other words on the transformation of one form of energy into another. Analogue synthesis produces an electric signal similar to the one that is characteristic of the variations of sound in atmospheric pressure. This is possible because of modulation that makes the characteristic magnitude of oscillations vary in proportion to the characteristic magnitudes of the modulating signal. In transduction, the information transfer is not divorced from the mechanism that generates energy. Analogue electronic technology creates an artificial unity of harmonic frequencies that are separate at the start. The electric oscillations reconstruct the mechanical phenomenon of resonance. If a Fourier analysis can divide a complex signal mathematically into a sum of sine waves of different amplitude and phase, electronic oscillators can only produce periodic signals of determined amplitude and frequency. Therefore, electronic technology must artificially restore the unity of the interdependent elements of the different

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frequencies that are characteristic of a spectrum by mathematical and experimental methods. Fourier’s analysis was conceived at the start as a way of solving problems of heat conduction. It also applies to the study of sound waves and is theoretically important for understanding all undulatory phenomena such as sound, the surface waves of a liquid, and electromagnetic oscillations. In physics, the idea of the division of a periodic oscillation into sinusoidal oscillations is extremely fruitful. The representation of functions as series or integers of circular functions can help with the understanding of complex mechanical vibrations. Wave trains can be superimposed, can penetrate each other, can combine and yet can ignore each other. Contrary to traditional mechanical instruments, the generators of electrical oscillations do not produce harmonic complexes. Timbre synthesis, which is easy with electroacoustic techniques, is carried out by emitting simultaneously a certain number of simple harmonic sounds that are all electrically sustained and that each have given dynamics. The modular toolbox of analogue music is a mere extension of the principle of an electroacoustic generator with adjustable timbre. It combines oscillators, filters, envelope generators, white noise generators, ring modulators, sequencers, harmonizers and systems for reverberation, delay or echo. Fundamentals, partials or frequency bands can thus be added, subtracted or emphasized according to needs. The first general-purpose software for the synthesis of musical sound developed by Max Matthews in 1958 made the computer calculate the values of every point of a sound wave. The resulting numbers, called samples, are changed into electric impulses by a digital to analogue converter. The discrete electric impulses that the converter produces by modifying the samples are then smoothed by a filter to make a continuous wave. The electrical signal is then amplified and broadcast over a system of loudspeakers. The computer is essential for the study of musical timbre. It makes it possible to work separately but jointly with the different elements of the sound; that is, the fundamental frequency, the distribution of partials and of energy throughout the spectrum, and the time envelopes as well as the micro-variations in amplitude and frequency, whether random or regular modulations. Smith observes that: ‘Historically, additive synthesis produces a spectrum that is a series of discrete sine waves.’ He goes on to point out that the earliest example of analytical additive synthesis in music was the analysis and resynthesis of a trumpet sound achieved by Jean-Claude Risset in 1964, using Music V. It was also Risset who carried out what has now become the classic experiment, the first reduction of the amplitude envelopes of harmonics to linear segments. As Risset argued: The ear follows the evolution of a sound. Therefore additive synthesis must include a time factor. For instance this can be done by adding sine waves with  

J.O. Smith, ‘La synthèse sonore’, Les cahiers de l’Ircam 2 (1993), p. 88. Ibid.

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amplitude and frequency modulation by using ‘envelopes’ that are a function of time and can be specified in great detail.10

Additive synthesis, according to Risset, is a method similar to a ‘progressive Fourier analysis’.11 It is probably the greatest contribution to our ideas concerning the world of sound. Risset looked for – and found – a more general and abstract representation of acoustical phenomena than that of Helmholtz, who had remained attached to a mechanistic view of nature. Risset’s work is a distant continuation of electrotechnical studies. These were an essential technical novelty in the nineteenth century, for electrotechnology is not one of the old crafts; it brought about a terrifying change in the use of the forces of nature. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as knowledge of acoustics, hydraulics, elasticity and friction developed – and all these fields were a part of mechanics – a new world of sound transmission appeared, using electrical waves. Risset’s references and standards are no longer mainly a part of rational mechanics but rather of studies on the relations between matter, light, electricity and magnetism. For instance, spectroscopic methods based on a Doppler–Fizeau effect create a bridge between theoretical optics and acoustics. They employ tools and experiments on interference which apply measurement and numbers to the study of waves. Resonance phenomena are the basis of many instruments used for the measurement of oscillation frequency. Risset writes: Computerized sound synthesis releases you from instrumental causality. When you calculate a sound it does not necessarily behave like a mechanical phenomenon. The computer has neither mass, connections, knocks, friction nor breath. To specify a timbre, it is no longer enough to identify its source; a single computer, just as a single loud-speaker, can produce sounds of very different nature.12

The words ‘progressive Fourier analysis’ show this radical change in perspective and illustrate the conflict in physics between the sciences of mechanics and energy. Risset helped to develop a science that has progressed so far as to change the geometrical and mechanical bases of the representation of acoustical phenomena. This new science shows that the analysis of the conditions of the observation of waveforms has not progressed enough yet, and that concepts of timbre born of Helmholtz’s resonators are only valid for experimental approximation. The conventional study of the spectrum of a waveform produces, in a way, a synoptic instantaneous intuition of the vibrations of the different rays of a spectrum. With its 10 Risset, Jean-Claude, ‘Synthèse et matériau musical’, Les cahiers de l’Ircam 2 (1993), p. 49. 11 Risset, Jean-Claude, ‘Musique, calcul secret?’, Revue critique 359 (1977), p. 424. 12 Risset, Jean-Claude, ‘Acoustique et musique: mutation vers le son numérique’, Encyclopedia universalis (Paris: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1990).

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limited means, electronic technology cannot reproduce the inharmonic complexes of brass or percussion. The precision of voltage oscillators cannot measure the acoustic properties of instrumental timbre and thus is not sufficient. Musical timbre has no explanatory elements. The precise knowledge of a musical timbre deals with combinations of relations. The understanding of functional relationships that are characteristic of a musical timbre is only possible on the microscopic level. Electronic technology alone cannot analyse musical sound on a rational basis. To explain the relations between the characteristic variables of musical timbre, be they simultaneous or successive, you need extremely precise and complex electronic devices that can perform a detailed observation, make appropriate conjectures and explain an acoustic phenomenon in mathematical terms. Only the computer can supply the procedures and methods that are needed to approach the inner structure of what is perceived. Digital synthesis was the only possible experimental method for sound. The computer made acoustics really mathematical. It played an essential role in establishing, interpreting, measuring and producing acoustic properties. It makes it possible to enter the very texture of sound, the details of its inner structure. With its limits, electronic technology was not accurate enough to identify the variables that make up the spectrum. To reconstitute a complex electric signal, which truly expresses pseudo-periodic phenomena, as are most orchestral sounds, the study of the problem of quantification has to start from scratch and must consider it in a general framework. With digital synthesis, software can be used to simulate an oscillator. Digital synthesis is the artificial production of a waveform in time, using a computing algorithm that gives the different values of amplitude at close intervals. Music IV (1963) and Music V (1968), developed by Matthews, are based on the principle of modular organization whereby a series of spectral determinations are assembled in a single waveform. Additive synthesis thus controls the amplitude and frequency of a number of sinusoidal oscillators that are added so as to produce an output signal. The spectral analysis of sound, carried out by dividing the periodic phenomenon into its pure sine components, makes synthesis possible. Signal processing, which has become a field of science in its own right, describes the physical basis of data on representations of frequency through time that make a developing spectral analysis meaningful. Contrary to the case of stationary waves, where a Fourier transform is the normal tool, there was no specific system to describe most of the non-stationary signals that you find in practice. The study of the internal changes in sound signals necessitates a way of representing a signal and making it discrete with the twofold function of time and frequency. Sampling a signal and its spectrum will therefore depend on the nature of the variable used. If it is time, the description of the signal will be temporal. If the variable is frequency, the signal description will be frequential. The loudness of a signal, its energy and self-correlation are represented in the time domain, just as any characteristic that develops in time. But the study of sound signals in the spectral field – ray distribution, dynamic spectrum, distortion – is carried out in the frequency domain. The separation between time and frequency domains in

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the analysis of discrete sound signals is partly founded on psycho-acoustics and thus has a natural basis. But a time and frequency analysis takes into account a kind of two-dimensional aspect that can be compared to the duality of waveform and corpuscle. To use a simple analogy, the analysis of the time and frequency development of a sound signal sometimes suggests, because of its ambiguity, an electron spin for which a new mathematical concept is needed. It is not really a vector, since its intensity is directed along several axes and does not increase by continuous variations. Jean-Claude Risset introduced the method of analysis– synthesis and approached the crucial problem of time–frequency representation by assessing the spectral characteristics of musical sound and analysing its evolution. Time–frequency methods take account, explicitly, of non-stationary and stationary signals. They have to deal with the intermediate characteristics in the case of musical sound. Instead of considering the stationary situation where spectral analysis can represent the instantaneous properties of regularity, additive synthesis strives to describe the development of magnitudes with time, as this can yield useful information on the complexity of musical sound. Digital additive synthesis leads us to consider the antinomy between frequency and time in the identification of the characteristic structures of musical timbre. Risset’s analysis–synthesis method stems from the relative failure of the methods born of harmonic analysis. These cannot devise discriminating criteria for the real variables of musical signals. Nevertheless, additive synthesis is far from neglecting harmonic analyses: it is used to devise procedures that can highlight acoustical indices of musical sound and identify them. Musical sound is a specific signal and the organization of the information concerning it requires several levels of abstraction, particularly if the aim is to understand the sound as a whole as well as its details. The organization of acoustic information is akin to mathematical microscopy, where processes must be considered in the framework of duration. Risset’s ‘analysis through synthesis’, carried out for the first time on a trumpet sound to reconstruct it through additive synthesis, shows that the louder the sound, the more high frequencies appear in its spectrum. The ‘analysis through synthesis’ of a violin sound by Matthews also shows that a conventional view of instrumental timbre is not satisfactory because it is restricted to the spectral characteristics. The words ‘spectral music’ describe the antinomy of the mind that is unable to imagine time and frequency simultaneously and must therefore constantly make the analysis of the one by the other more complex and comprehensive. A model with a constant spectrum is not up to the task of accounting for the identity of a musical timbre. Risset writes: We need to take into account the variations of parameters in time, their random variations but, above all, their systematic variations according to register, characteristic modulations, ‘accidents’ or idiosyncrasies of the production of sound, that help to identify its mode of production … Generally speaking, timbre, which shows the differences in the origin of sound vibrations, is based

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not on the assessment of a single spectrum, but on spectral and time signatures that are more elaborate and resist distortion.13

Two contradictory and complementary representations are thus linked in signal analysis. The first belongs to what we may call a spectral method that considers the frequency and energy contents. The second, which Risset calls ‘developing’, concerns the evolution in time of the frequency contents of the signal. A signal’s energy is distributed simultaneously over time and frequency. All representations of energy in time and frequency, therefore, are organized around a basic symmetry. Frequency analysis provides an instantaneous definition of the spectrum of the waveform. It therefore belongs to the timeless history of abstraction and sees matter as being almost unaffected by time divisions. Frequency analysis considers implicitly that time is not a part of matter, and that the behaviour of matter can only be observed during a fraction of time. This is also the classical view of physical vibration that considers it to be a succession of instant configurations of matter or energy. On the contrary, time analysis includes change and transition in terms of energy and information theory. Permanence is no longer sought in changing conditions, but rather intrinsic properties, signatures. While frequency analysis tends to stabilize configuration, time analysis deals with developing situations. Time and frequency analyses are alternate modes of abstraction that can only be expressed by each other, in an oblique or refracted fashion, as they are at the same time contradictory and complementary. The representation of a vibration can only be a compromise between its time resolution and its spectral resolution. In the seventeenth century, thanks to Daniel Bernoulli and Joseph Fourier, the solution of the equation of the waves of a vibrating string led to harmonic analysis. In the twentieth century, the ‘developing Fourier analysis’, as Jean-Claude Risset termed it, studies the ingredients and the patterns obtained by extrapolation at the limit of the relaxation of acoustic energy. Time analysis, except for the typical case, studies movement beyond the finite duration of an observation and beyond typical values. It reintroduces irregularity and fluctuations in the definition of the identity of a sound. While music theory, from Pythagoras to Fourier, dealt with the development of an abstract morphology, the organization of the information that is characteristic of the spectra of waveforms led to the formation, in the twentieth century, of concrete morphology. For the philosophy of additive synthesis, the concept of instantaneous action is an illusion. The computing of the ratio of energy to frequency can only partly explain sound, which is restricted to instantaneous observation, and can only express the constraints of regularity. On the contrary, the theory of musical sound, according to computerized acoustics, underlines the connection of time and space in observation techniques as well as in the interpretation of acoustic phenomena. The measurements and the theoretical constructs of computer music are dependent 13

Ibid.

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on the limiting conditions of time. Risset considers that you cannot understand a form without studying the process of its formation. He adds to the classical study of acoustic forms considered as instantaneous modes of coordination – and in physical acoustics, as superimposed groups of waves – the search for patterns that are both form and potentiality. There is no general theory of musical sound. Aesthetics is a science of disruption, of slight differences. Additive synthesis was used to reinterpret facts already known and to forecast facts as yet unknown, such as auditory illusion and paradoxical sound. To explain the formation of a sound that moves simultaneously up and down, the concept of high and low had to be divided into two different attributes: the tonal component and the spectral component. Formal structure can generate objects. To understand the properties of musical sound, something different must be added to the systems and laws of invariance. A sound is, in principle, subordinate to the pressure that affects it, and this, according to Risset’s epistemology, means that the category of reciprocal determination is added, as with Kant, to that of causality. The links that Risset emphasizes in additive synthesis are dependent on different forms of dynamic solidarity. The categories of digital acoustics are numbers, time, relations, and continuous alteration and fluctuation. Sound is organized according to a purely qualitative typology, where the different parts overlap, interact and are included in each other. They are, so to speak, made out of ambiguity, tiny characteristics and crossed functional relations that are responsible for the birth, differentiation and structuring of the results of perception. Risset points out that the main traits, the specific features of a sound, can be studied on an overall general level as well as in the details. The pertinent indices, the physical predicates that are meaningful for perception, are found in a general transformation as well as in essential details. Thus Risset seems to be wary of – indeed averse to – the exclusively algorithmic concepts of sound. In their present form they cannot always grasp the transcendental characteristics of an organized sound structure. The geometrical habits of science are gradually being pushed into the background. A sound is not something inert; it is not contained in a structureless space and doomed to vibrations on one tone alone. The time dimension, which Risset has included in the world of sound, and space coordinates are not interchangeable. The dynamic comprehension of a form cannot be restricted to the broad structure of its phases. In sound there are abnormalities, peculiarities, aberrant moments; the rule of inference cannot explain them. After Schaeffer, Risset advocated a concrete view of sound. A concept of this kind implies a reference to time, and therefore cannot be limited to subdivisions nor to a complete process. Outside the field of mechanics, matter is no longer a passive support for quality. In 1927 Alfred North Whitehead wrote: The fashionable idea is that new physics has restricted all laws of physics to geometrical relations. This is completely ridiculous. It has done just the opposite. It has replaced the Aristotelian concept of a procession of forms by the concept

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Sound has a periodic activity, and spectral analysis can bring out the characteristics of its appearance. But the inner structure of sound is not restricted to this form of organization. Digital acoustics deals with differences, the tiny modifications that disrupt a causal sequence. It studies bends, characteristic articulations and, above all, alterations. The refusal to restrict the understanding of acoustical form to the differentiation of the details of extended form does not mean a rejection of mathematics. Sound synthesis requires that patterns of magnitudes be made objective, for they are laws of local connections and cannot become a part of a system; they are also the emerging and discontinuous aspects that make explanations incomplete and only partially systematic. But computer music is an extremely formalized field. Synthetic sound is entirely determined by purely mathematical characters. Many characteristics of sound, discovered thanks to additive synthesis, were only observed because of the precision of modern instruments for detection, recording and measurement. Even more than this, it is to the development of the kind of mathematics that is needed for computers that we owe a precise knowledge of most of a sound’s properties. The study of the mathematical laws that enable us to formulate our knowledge of the phenomenon of sound shows clearly that the formulae of the older mechanics are only approximate. Digital synthesis looks for tiny mistakes in the explanations of simple laws. A sound is a transformation process, not a finished form. If Fourier’s harmonic analysis can only yield a first approximation of the phenomenon of sound, this does not invalidate it. Digital technology adds infinitesimal corrections to the explanation given by mechanical models. It also supplies the experimental means that can translate and verify the properties ascribed to microscopic elements or functions. The concepts that synthesis acoustics have added to our knowledge of sound were built up little by little on the ruins of classical mechanical acoustics. Nothing remains of the old concepts of dynamics, pitch or timbre; this is why no theory of music in the traditional sense has appeared during the twentieth century. The only theoretical problems that are worth considering today are the lack of a theory of music in our times and the recessive nature of the history of musical theory. This theoretical silence could lead us to doubt the need for work in this field. But it only makes musical production – which seems to have withdrawn into itself – even more opaque. There are many obstacles to real, demanding theoretical work: interdependent and more and more closely coordinated techniques; musical thought engrossed in the problems of adapting its operations to quality; and finally, the certainty – not so new but more and more widely shared – that art is nothing but culture and that it is up to the social reformers to lay down its rules. 14 A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926).

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Since the 1990s, particularly in France, the ideology of the market on the right and the ideology of the libertarians on the left have together created a kind of logical and political monster. Its only watchword is that the end justifies the means. If discredit has been visited on all that is theoretical, it is because of this smug view of music as a battlefield where rivalry reigns, an arena where violent statements are made, outlandish exhibitions of incompatible views which must of necessity engage in battle and eliminate each other. ‘Leave it alone – nature will manage!’ seems to be the motto of the culture crowd. For them, the principle of free competition and some Malthusian left-overs of the theory of evolution seem to suffice to give a secure, firm and lasting basis to their doctrine. The trademark ‘in music, anything goes’ puts culture on the stock market, puts beauty up for elections, sets art critics to checking labels, and banishes aesthetics to a free-forall striptease. The media, as a latter-day Minotaur, demand their fill of young composers every evening. The Ogre is insatiable and commands the artist to feed the public with that ‘dangerous little something’ that is supposed to satisfy its narcissism. Doomed to be inscrutable, art is only allowed a few allusions within the carefully weighed synthesis of the intimate and the global. The hordes of deranged researchers are politely requested to crank out their daily batch of cogitation while concert organizers fight over the first half of the month (the press doesn’t cover the second half). The philosophical debate on music has greatly helped to disgrace all theoretical efforts by making them seem unfounded. Since it was always a discourse on legitimacy, its results had to be deconstructed, its theses subverted, its premisses negated. This allowed certain philosophers to indulge in eclectic prognostications that posed as efforts to destabilize all signifiers. The most important theoretical initiative came from the musicians themselves, particularly those of the Darmstadt School. However, their methods were inevitably inadequate, considering the extent of the problems. If total serialism was a real stylistic breakthrough at the middle of the twentieth century, the largely metaphorical use of mathematical, physical or psycho-acoustic terminology led to a lack of precision is its theoretical constructions that could make it seem to be vague in its principles. Under the influence of mathematical logic the serial composers tried once and for all to systematize the technical aspects of music, to propose a form of logic, and to organize their thinking by analysing concepts. Giving a deductive form to creative activities, musicians – just as logicians – drew a distinction between analysis and inference. This has perhaps not been thoroughly understood. It is precisely the distinction between inference and conceptualization that allows for the use of research in music – something which, up to now, has not succeeded in defining its theoretical status. The precise exposition of a problem requires that clear concepts be defined, and that practical intentions be converted into cognitive intentions. It is, of course, difficult to define the contemporary theoretical work of the neo-serialists. It would be tempting simply to state that systematic work on very different problems is enough to stimulate the ideas that this work leads to. But neo-serialism seems,

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fundamentally, to seek its inspiration elsewhere. Its basic idea is that organization modifies the standards of musical thought even more than it clarifies it. The doctrinal link that neo-serialism asserts between necessity and generality is, for these composers, the driving force of their intellectual work and the hallmark of their way of thinking. The clarification of the distinction between all aspects of musical composition is linked, for serialism, to the use of codes that apply to the very technique of composition. The change in structural organization must, of necessity, go hand in hand with a revision of the categories used to think it through. This dichotomy between concept and method leads to an indispensable tension that marks an all-embracing method of creation and gives it its characteristic image. From the very start the Western musical tradition gave a high priority to pitch relations and neglected the other parameters of sound: duration, timbre and dynamics. This led to a hierarchy in constraints that first applies to pitches, then to rhythm, metre and orchestration. But intrinsic to all hierarchies is subordination. Hierarchical thinking is very far from combinatorial thinking. By proclaiming the equality of the parameters of musical discourse, serialism has done away with hierarchy and replaced it by parametrical complexes. The decisive change is due to Messiaen. In Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, his now famous piano piece from 1949, he gives equal importance to the parameters of pitch, duration and dynamics. By applying the series to all aspects of sound, neo-serialism was striving to generalize a compositional technique. This does not just concern direct application. Serial tables and figures give every piece characteristic relationships that create specific links between the different components of music. Serial organization becomes a stylistic principle and also a method of generation. It is supposed to subject the whole work as well as its details to the imperative of structure and to the principle of discursive precision. The qualitative relations between the whole and the parts comprise a formal system that makes it possible to deal with them in a methodologically systematic fashion, copied from mathematics. One wonders, however, whether it is really possible to ensure congruence between the rules of construction and images born of intuition. Neo-serialism, as a general theory of music, strives precisely to fill the gap that keeps cropping up between the pattern and the corresponding image. Though musical theory and practice have common structural requirements, these are not necessarily identical nor are they in agreement. Is musical theory just a comment on musical practice, or can it have an influence – and if so, how much? Neo-serialism has claimed a novel theoretical approach, but it has never accepted to be reduced to a mere collection of tricks. It considers that the recognition of the need for organization is, in itself, a basis for theory. This is a genuine conceptual revolution. Quality was based on hierarchy in the music of the past. Now, quality is found in organization. The basic aspects of structure are pitch, duration, timbre, attack, register and dynamics. These concepts define the properties of music. These properties link together levels of expression that are different, and have their own individuality. Nevertheless, the constituents of serial

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music are not unrelated. A further constituent, in fact, is the way in which relations of coexistence are organized. For instance, the profile of an attack and that of the decay of a sound are fundamental parameters of timbre. This finding of musical acoustics also applies to orchestration. The connection between pitch and sound envelope plays an essential part in the relation between harmony and timbre. Serial composition is on the borderline between these two fields and explores the conditions in which stabilization is possible or impossible. This intermediate area, the threshold between timbre and harmony, is texture. Texture defines the inner constitution of a compound sound at the moment when it prepares to decompose and divide into a harmonic relation of pitches. Texture indicates the conditions of continuity and discontinuity that occur when two systems compete. Traditional music separates pitch from timbre, thus making them incompatible. In serial music, they are competitors. Half way between two stabilized regimes of sound, texture is a combination. The understanding of this kind of intermediary situation makes it possible to join the two fields of harmony and timbre, separate in the past but connected today, by specific forms of interaction. Before systematically organizing this field, thanks to musical acoustics born of the computer, serial music and theory controlled the separate evolution of amplitude and frequency. Thus orchestral timbre was determined by the profiles of attack and decay transients of orchestral sound rather that by the relative amplitude of stable pitch. Structure, the smallest significant unit of morphology for serial theory, is based on systems of interference between the properties of sound. Neo-serialism, which is today the laboratory of music, dismantled the so-called ‘natural’ givens of art and organized them on the basis of more general and fundamental operative concepts. Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti were then able to interpolate different orchestral timbres by controlling their gradual metamorphosis. Just as chemists do, serial musicians look at structure as an expanded formula. Structure is involved with the elements that it includes in a set of relations, and with that set of relations itself. Pitch, timbre, dynamics and attack are mutually determined, and they combine in specific ways. The law of coexistence and agreement between the different parameters makes it possible to manipulate sound. Musical material is no longer fragmented. Multiplicity is not just multiplicity; it is unity. Thus the different aspects of music – harmony, polyphony, rhythm, metre, general tempo and orchestration – are mutually organized, their multiplicity unified as if they were the multiple parts of one orchestral totality. The theory of the generalized series includes pitch, dynamics, register, duration and timbre in one initial group: the sound figure. It is intuitively validated, for it has relations of similarity and difference between diverse determinants. For instance, it creates relations between the rhythms of accent, dynamics, duration and pitch. All these components are controlled by one same chain of proportions that distributes them along a discontinuous path. The way in which pitch and profile of attack, duration and timbre, register and dynamics are articulated is based on new categories and defines new objects. The concept of harmony is replaced by that of blocks of sound with variable density. Metre is replaced by organized

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streams of rhythmic blocks, or by their combination. Dynamics and timbre have their own logic which, because of recurrence, avoids the clichés of orchestration. Polyphony breaks free from the constraints of linearity and from the inertia of preestablished horizontal structures. On the other hand, each sound figure has its own characteristics of instrumentation that make it relatively stable. The serial system deals with modes of coexistence of the different parameters and constructs its objects like organized totalities, complexes that are determined by the reciprocal location of their characteristics. To produce diversity is to determine the type of relation between the parts and the whole. But the concept of totality is no longer realistically cogent. Totality is defined as the organization of quality and as the mutual relationship of interdependent variables. The grouping of a sound figure justifies the systematic processing of its structure, according to the theoretician of serial music. It allows for the formal development of its organizational properties, as it is based on the formation of an operative representation, if not on the choice of an algorithm. Harmony, counterpoint and figuration are replaced by representational sets that control the vertical, horizontal and diagonal dimensions of music according to the categories of series, classification and magnitude. So the serial system restores the point, the line and volume as axes that generate the structure. Thus functional homogeneity is ensured. Irrational rhythms liberate polyphony from tonal hegemony by avoiding the attraction of the material. Serialism invalidates musical idioms because it dissolves the standards of their creation into the immanence of a rational project. Expressive elements – in a sense precompositional – are rejected out of hand, as they refer to a typology, to an ontology of organizational types. The morphological constituents of serialism must therefore lose their identity and become absorbed into their function. Musical composition then becomes a gradual complication of structures, then of families of structures with functions that become more specialized and differentiated as they become more coordinated. And it is here that serialism encounters the question of aesthetics. Its theory of creation is a theory of levels of complexity and their specific properties. Serialism accepts that creation is always, to some degree, a synthetic activity and that it refers to a causality that is not circular, an organization that is not a closed loop. It introduces a functional principle at all levels of musical composition and considers that the mutual genesis of forms suffices to explain the production of diversity. Musical composition is not an assembly, a ‘putting together’. The composer is not an arranger. Musical composition is authentically a synthesis. In a synthesis, the parts are mutually interdependent without calling for the necessity to invoke the finality of the whole. Musical creation is not the result of the combination of parts, but a product that unites the parts. The creation process can therefore be explained from a strictly functional point of view. The basic elements of the organization are the same, but the networks of interaction differ. Quality is the result of integration. So musical composition is not the technology of a certain class of operations, but a technique of the mind, a technique for thinking, a form of cognition. The science of music is the science of a class of structures, not of a class of objects.

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The functional theory of art proposed by serialism is underpinned by a cognitivist theory of the function of art. If creation means awareness of the conditions under which musical thought operates in order to achieve new levels of organization, then it consists in making the different registers of representation cooperate with ever-increasing effectiveness. The theory of art as theory of functional integrity is correlated with a theory of the function of art as a conquest of degrees of freedom. Serial aesthetics is the aesthetics of the mobilization of cognition and the celebration of functionality. It is an immanent theory and rejects all consideration of ‘meaning’ other than that which derives from the intensification of the material. Functional aesthetics is connected with a philosophy of history that derives from Max Weber rather than Adorno. Its starting point is the idea that in the West music is a counterpart of mechanics. Seen from this point of view, the function of Western music is to restore a qualitatively dynamic experience that mechanics represses in favour of quantitative considerations. From the very end of the Middle Ages, reality has been grasped musically through series of intervals and formal laws of iteration. The development of instrument making, the progress of music notation and the spread of polyphony reveal a cultural construct modelled on the process of social mechanization. Engaged in a process of subjective rationalization as an effect of capitalism, mankind provides itself with the means of subjective expression as part of the process of its own alienation. The expressive power of music is due to its ability to present non-objective themes endowed with implicit energy. Over and above processes of growth and evolution, Western music is capable of expressing and activating release, motivation, goal-direction, recollection and anticipation. The only intellectual schema it has available to account for sensormotor dynamics and cognitive integration is developing variation. Movement and arrest, tension and release, ascent and descent are not thematized but transcribed in musical notation in the form of equilibrium disrupted then restored between consonance and dissonance, between the fertility of rhythmic accentuation and the strictness of metrical divisions. Rather than disappear, the Greek theory of proportions – of continuous fractions – is generalized, so as to give Medieval and Renaissance musics their operational and intellectual basis. The functional theory of music thus finds its origins in a distant past from which it reproduces the general design and from which it retains in its structure the memory of its intellectual schemata. The main work to reflect on the nature, meaning and scope of music theory is Max Weber’s essay on the sociology of music published in 1921 (it actually dates from 1911). His title, ‘The Rational and Social Foundations of Music’, clearly indicates its main thrust. Max Weber asks whether the history of music is really history. For him, the history of music is the history of the systems that define eras of knowledge and modes of production. Every period of musical production is enclosed in specific modes of thought, with their specific technology, tools

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and categories.15 Each cultural construct is sufficient unto itself because of its inner consistency. This is true of the spread of Pythagoras’s thought in ancient Europe and of the development of technology and machines in the Middle Ages, manifested in the invention of staff notation, of polyphony, and the progress of instrument making. A new scientific movement appeared in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which laid the grounds for the process of rationalization of sound in the seventeenth century, even though the two periods cannot be linked by an uninterrupted continuity in historical development. A harmonic conception of intervals was established in the seventeenth century and conditioned the further elaboration of the system of staff notation, the experiments with systems of tuning which led to the establishment of equal temperament, and the sudden appearance and spread of the generalized monophonic style in the eighteenth century. Because of this rationalization, the psycho-physiological elements of the art of music became detached from its physical and numerical elements, and acquired a specific form. They became part of a new type, a new genre of knowledge. The philosophy of serial music, supported by long historical experience, sees the musical situation as a dialectic of the determining conditions of music. This means that music as art can only conceive of one order, one mode of organization. The contribution of serialism to musical thought is due just as much to a radical change in perspective as to a reversal of terms. The theory of serial music emphasizes, in effect, the recurrent character of musical organization. A structure is a clear and articulated totality that has systems of relations that can be unfolded. It is also a formal entity that can adjust to the conditions and implications of discursive thought. As a rational product, a musical composition goes beyond the stage of mere prototype or concrete exemplar to become part of the plot of formal reason. The new philosophical idea contributed by serialism is that the ‘making’ of art, the act of creation, is born of reason. Musical creation, according to serialism, can only accomplish its specific way of working by means of the kinds of thematic integration, differentiation and determination of invariants that underlie each one of its operative chains. This is not formalism. Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Berio, Nono, Carter all state, on the basis of very different ways of thinking, that music is created through a constant compromise between aspects that are partly irreconcilable, and that concern musical perception, cognition, technique and logic, to the extent that every new decision implies both a change in organizational patterns and a corresponding change in outlook. The foremost idea of serialism is that the very use of rules changes their meaning. If musical composition can be compared with a series of experiments, then the work owes its form to the broadening and in-depth improvement of these experiments, in the specific conditions of its establishment as art. Its substance – its content – becomes more specific at each phase of its accomplishment, 15 See Don Martindale and Johannes Riedel, Introduction: ‘Max Weber’s Sociology of Music’ to the English translation, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, pp. ix–lii, for a helpful account of Weber’s concept of rationalization in relation to music.

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and thus acquires new meaning. Serialism has developed through the perpetual confrontation between formalism and abstraction. Abstraction means to discover the law that combines interdependent relations. It requires clarification of ideas at each step; in other words, it requires an analysis of concepts. Serialism is unthinkable without an analysis of this kind. Furthermore, it can only claim to be a radical reform of musical theory because it considers that it has understood the fruitfulness of the semantics of formalized theories for music. Music, as an original and creative form of activity, can be seen as an art of pure transposition and transformation. A theory of music, in order to succeed, has therefore no choice but to take the form of a critique of transformation. For after identifying the invariants used for transformation, musical thought must then renew them. This means that it always escapes the rule of congruence to arrive at the operational properties of symmetrical relations. Musical thought is active in its own sphere, the domain of correspondences and proportions. It converts the static equivalence of congruence into the dynamics of intervallic organization. Musical logic is based on the power of differentiation, dependent on the acceptance of asymmetry in the establishment of structural formulae: orientation, polarization, pressure and corrosion. Musical thought has a strong power of distortion and reproduces the human experience of movement that Kant, in his Opus posthumum considered to be the only possible forms, which is to say attraction and repulsion.16 Science of music has renewed itself under the impulse of cognitive psychology. It uses its problems, methods, categories and, more generally, its forms of reflexion. But this appropriation of tools, concepts and models does not substantially modify the ‘intellectualistic’ premises that dominated the musical aesthetics of the twentieth century and shaped its theory of art. Even when it includes practice, the cognitive aesthetics of music (the implicit aesthetics of the theory of the serial system as well as the practice of computer music) assigns the most fundamental properties of signifying forms to the determination of categories that are themselves susceptible to being converted into a formalism of representation, and to which they themselves can also be reduced. From this point of view, artistic forms can do little other than exhibit the qualities of a purely theoretical construction. The advanced music of the second half of the twentieth century has always claimed an elective affinity with the higher forms of intelligence, and considered itself as the stylized manifestation of the power of discursive integration. By claiming to be the mere symbolization of the power of differentiation and of accommodation to categories, artistic creation became a sublimated version of the psycho-technical synthesis of high-level software. If you call intellectualism the doctrine that includes all mental functions in the definition of intelligence, you can claim that the doctrine of music – of musicians – which dominated in the twentieth century is an intellectualistic 16 See Immanuel Kant, ‘Towards the elementary system of the moving forces of matter’, Opus posthumum (1790–1801), trans. Eckhart Förster and Michael Rosen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 23.

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doctrine. Despite the efforts of cognitivism, which aims at the irreducibility of art to science, musical thought proper insists in passing itself off as a science and, as a form of research, claims the theoretical and institutional status of a science. The music of our time has not left its cognitive frame of reference. Its philosophy remains one of representation. In this respect it can therefore be considered as an ideology. Information theory as applied to music, which is based today on the cognitive psychology of music, touches up the décor rather than changing it. We must accept, however, that by applying itself to the dimensions of timbre and dynamics information theory and computer music have not just explored a domain that is traditionally neglected. They have brought it to the fore by changing its position. Professional musicians have lost their traditional field of competence. This is now within the domain of theory. Important as it might be, the essential tension resulting from the annexation by theory of a domain traditionally devolved to the professional musician cannot alone account for all those aspects of music for which a study of the symbolization of its impulses has yet to be carried out. A new theory of music, if it were to be established, would need to look at the situation of music in its essential negativity and, for a musician, this remains something largely inconceivable. If it were done, the history of the categories of musical thought would need to be articulated as a dialectic which would no longer limit itself to a purely cognitive examination of its determining conditions, but would need to recognize that it is itself formed by the convergence of the historical conditions themselves. In his Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel states that ‘form is itself the intrinsic becoming of concrete contents’.17 Thus, a real theory of music cannot be satisfied with understanding the relations between concept and reality, or between concept and phenomenon. Musical production must be considered in its entirety, as a process of self-creation that does not solely depend on what knowledge can give in isolation. The cognitive project of a theory of music must, under these conditions, be included in a thematization of praxis: in other words, the theory of music must also incorporate a social history of music. Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Philosophie der Neuen Musik, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975; original ed. 1949). English translation: Philosophy of New Music, trans., ed. and with and introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) Alain, O., L’harmonie, series Que-sais-je? (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965) 17 G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 55 (‘… weil die Form das einheimische Werden des konkreten Inhalts selbst ist’).

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Bachelard, S., ‘L’influence de Huygens aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles’, in Huygens et la France (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 240–58 Barbereau, A., Études sur l’origine du système musical (Paris: Bachelier, 1852) Blay, M., Les raisons de l’infini: Du monde clos à l’univers mathématique (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) ——,  La naissance de la science classique au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Nathan, 1999) Bouligand, G. and Desbats, J., La mathématique et son unité. Introduction aux éléments de l’analyse et à la philosophie des sciences déductives (Paris: Payot, 1947) Brunschvig, L., Les étapes de la philosophie mathématique (1912), new edition with Preface by Jean-Toussaint Desanti (Paris: Blanchard, 1993) Clavelin, M., La philosophie naturelle de Galilée (Paris: A. Colin, 1968) Costabel, P., ‘Huygens et la mécanique’, in Huygens et la France (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 139–52 Crombie, A.C., Augustine to Galileo, the History of Science AD 400–1650 (London: The Falcon Press, 1952; second ed. London: Heinemann, 1957) Descartes, R., Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l’esprit en la recherche de la vérité, trans. with conceptual annotation by Jean-Luc Marion with mathematical examples by Pierre Costabel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977) Durutte, C., Technie, ou lois générales du système harmonique (Paris: MalletBachelier, 1855) Einstein, A. and Infeld, L., The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938) Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni mathematiche intorno a due nuove scienze, Opere Galileo Galilei in 20 vols (Florence: A. Favaro, 1890– 1909/1970) Hegel, G.W.F., Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970) Kant, I., ‘Towards the elementary system of the moving forces of matter’, Opus postumum (1790–1801), trans. Eckhart Förster and Michael Rosen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Kuhn, Thomas S., ‘Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science’, in The Essential Tension, Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 31–65 Mach, Ernst, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch dargestellt (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1883) Orcalli, A., Stanze inesplorate dell’ armonia: Sull’ estetica musicale di Camille Durutte (Milan: Angelo Guarini e Ass., 1996) Risset, Jean-Claude, ‘Musique, calcul secret?’, Revue critique 359 (1977), pp. 414–29

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——,  Entry: ‘Acoustique et musique: mutation vers le son numérique’, Encyclopedia universalis (Paris: Supplément 1990 et nouvelle édition, 1990), pp. 522–34 ——,  ‘Synthèse et matériau musical’, Les cahiers de l’Ircam 2 (1993), pp. 43– 65 Rossi, P. Les philosophes et les machines 1400–1700, trans. Patrick Vighetti (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996; original Italian ed. 1962) Smith, J.O., ‘La synthèse sonore’, Les cahiers de l’Ircam No.2 (1993), pp. 83–96 Stewart, I., Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1989; 2nd rev. ed. 2002) Weber, Max, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (Munich: Drei-Masken-Verlag, 1921). English translation: The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1911), trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958) Whitehead, A.N., Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926) Wronski, H., Messianisme, ou réforme absolue du savoir humain, nommément: réforme des mathématiques comme prototype de l’accomplissement final des sciences et réforme de la philosophie comme base de l’accomplissement final de la religion (Paris: Firmin-Didot frères, 1847), 3 vols.

Chapter 2

Atonal Harmony: From Set to Scale Célestin Deliège

Introduction 1. ‘It would be a mistake to believe that rules of composition can be derived from such phenomena as the harmonic series’, Carl Dahlhaus has argued. He was undoubtedly correct in objecting to Hindemith’s theory of harmony, as put forward in Unterweisung im Tonsatz, a theory which is anyway probably objectively impossible. However, the fact that rules of grammar are prior to rules of composition, and that these are intrinsic to language, seems to me to remove the obstacle. Acoustic resonance is probably the most authentic universal principle utilized by music, whatever its mode of existence. Even someone who is completely unaware of this fact cannot avoid it. 2. The series was created to establish an atonal order. From the very beginning it was considered, quite explicitly, to be a unifying principle, leading to a synthesis which gives each pitch equal status and, as it was said at the time, it abolishes concepts of consonance and dissonance. This very quickly led to a situation where no form of hierarchy prevailed any longer, and harmony was, as Webern had suggested, in a state of non-gravity. 3. When composers wish to restore some kind of hierarchy, they must now of necessity create it through their own procedures. A great deal has been said about composers creating their own material. This has led to very thorough analyses of the genesis of works (see Piencikowski, Kobliakov, Decroupet) of a kind which usually requires a careful study of composers’ sketches. 4. Could one therefore not say that what is true of tonality is also true of atonality, and that its fate could well be the one assigned by Riemann to tonal harmony? The sound spectrum may seem to suggest today that, instead of abolishing consonance and dissonance, tonal harmony may embrace them both. This is what Pousseur thought in the 1970s – but then, he was aiming at a prospective and retrospective inclusion of his own work in the history of harmony. That is not my aim. What I am proposing here is a theory  Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Plaidoyer pour une théorie actuelle de la musique’, in Tod Machover (ed.), Quoi? Quand? Comment? La recherche musicale (Paris: Bourgois-Ircam, 1985), p. 76.

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to ‘riemannize’ chromatic atonal harmony – in other words, to bestow a fundamental on any aggregate in atonal music, and thus to propose a figured harmony, just as was done for the basso continuo in the past. Riemann’s theory of harmony was a new dawn in relation to that of Schenker. May the one put forward in this chapter likewise one day turn out to be a new dawn! Basic outline I. Some historical givens 1. First hypothesis (a) Tonality derives from the logic behind medieval modality. (b) Atonality is a logical step in the evolution of polyphony, based on extreme tonal chromaticism. (c) Observation of many recent compositional techniques (such as those of Boulez, Berio, Ligeti, Lindberg, Saariaho, Dufourt and Harvey, among others) suggests that atonal harmony may be rationalized in a way that implies a new type of modality. This new modality restores the hierarchy of intervals that had been temporarily overshadowed by the (somewhat arbitrary) pitch series. The atonal modal scale will turn out to be none other than that of the acoustic spectrum. 2. The aim of this chapter is to show that atonal and serial structures contain this hierarchy, and that it is possible to demonstrate as much while retaining all the power of atonal harmony. I argue that it is necessary to restore the inherent fundamentals for this type of harmony just as is (or can be) done in – and for – every other historical period. This can give us a perspective on composition if the composer wishes to create polarized processes while maintaining harmonic structure in an atonal chromaticism. The tendency to do so has been in evidence since the end of the 1970s, or indeed earlier in certain specific cases. In essence, my proposal amounts to creating a chromatic modality that allows modulations or, perhaps better put, ‘mutations’. 3. In the classical period chords were treated as an aspect of counterpoint. Contemporary treatises show that harmony was calculated with respect to the interval; this is particularly clear in the work of Kirnberger. Rameau, of course, demonstrated the acoustic basis of chords; but, whether his work was accepted or not, it had no effect whatsoever on composition. It was not until Riemann and the applications of his work by d’Indy, Schenker and  J.P. Kirnberger, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1771–1776), trans. David Beach and Jürgen Thym (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1982).

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Schoenberg (a diverse group indeed) that a rational analysis of the tonal system was achieved, with a figuring of fundamentals which even today receives only partial recognition. 4. When dodecaphony and serialism were first posited, the great diversity they afforded was a cause of much delight: it was calculated that it was possible to construct some 479,001,600 permutations within the scale of twelve notes. The system, then, was far from defunct, and the initiator’s prophecy of an era of practical possibilities seemed true. However, Milton Babbitt’s hexachordal theory showed that, by dividing the series into complementary groups, Schoenberg himself had from the outset reduced the supposed huge diversity available into certain combinatorial ‘orders’. These orders anticipated the models of Webern, which have been readily attributed to the asceticism of his style. Nevertheless, speculation on certain transpositions and permutations continued, although barely survived the general lack of interest. When Forte’s table of pitch class sets finally appeared, it became clear that the large numbers that had initially caused such joy could be reduced to 208 items in groups of three to nine notes; these items could be multiplied by two at most, according to whether one read them from left to right, or reversed them and read from right to left. 5. And what about Spectralism? Up until now this has also been striking for its display of plurality, but it is patently obvious that it lacks a grand theory. It is always possible to speculate on non-harmonic intervals and on the fusion of harmony and timbre, but the number of potential solutions would be enormous. Thus, without going back to a medieval modal pluralism (itself sometimes reducible to just three hexachords), we can now recognize three main grammatical techniques since Bach. Of these, two date from the twentieth century. As a result, we may now limit ourselves to those pitch theories that have finally become the most influential in the West. This development has been one single historical process, with its beginnings in the empirical pluralism of practice and subsequently reduced to a theoretical rationalization inspired by recourse to logical principles.  George Perle, Twelve-tone Tonality (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1977), p. 5.  M. Babbitt, ‘Some Aspects of Twelve Tone Composition’, The Score XII (1955), 53–61; ‘Set Structure as a Compositional Determinate’, Journal of Music Theory 5/1 (1961), pp. 72–94, reprinted in B. Boretz and E. Cone (eds), Perspectives in Contemporary Music (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 129–14; Words about Music, ef. S. Dembski and J. Straus (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1987).  Alan Forte, Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 179–81.

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However, we don’t need to limit our attention to these established facts. After all, just as we include under the heading ‘tonal’ the whole corpus of music from Bach to Wagner (indeed, one can argue that tonality is already to be found in Monteverdi), so also it may be conjectured that future generations could be tempted to include the contribution of the twentieth-century Second Viennese School and its derivatives under the single heading of ‘atonal music’. In this event, these well-informed successors of ours might also be tempted to include other musico-historical adventurers, seeing continuity where we see only splits and ruptures. II. Principles and premisses 1. In summary, the course of history runs through the grammatical developments mentioned above and leads, at each period of composition, from empirical pluralism, which is itself able to bear on such theories a priori, to rational unity, something which emerges a posteriori by a process of progressive reductions. It also turns out that this historical process works much as a demystification process – and this despite the inaccuracies that have inevitably been handed down to the theoretical systems themselves. This process could help us reevaluate the procedural practices that arose through the creation of musical works, but which an essentially neutral level analysis (as Nattiez and Molino would call it) might treat as superfluous. Such procedures have not been lacking in the twentieth century. Indeed each composer, whether a direct or indirect heir of Second Viennese School dodecaphony, proposed his own. The examination of sketches has become for more unrelenting musicologists a sort of detective work which seeks to unravel the secrets buried deep in the works of these composers. Since I am focusing more on finding common traits than on individual aspects of composition (at least as far as grammars are concerned), I recently decided that the time had come to find the rationale behind atonal harmony, or at least to attempt to find it by considering it in the field of acoustics, even though rumour has it that Schoenberg instituted a system that cannot be considered this way. Tonal music is built on the opposition between consonance and dissonance; but dodecaphonism and serialism apparently did away with them both. This has long perplexed me, and I have finally classified it as an accepted but inapplicable fantasy. Certainly we may lay waste to nature, but we cannot escape it. 2. Eminent predecessors have opened up the path: Paul Hindemith, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Godfried Michael Koenig, Claude Ballif, Henri Pousseur, George Perle, set theory, Spectralism.

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2.1. Hindemith worked on tonal chromaticism. The scope of his own examination was limited by his use of a theory of acoustic resonance that bears on two series of exploited harmonics: the first (which is the more interesting, acting like a gravitational system) reaches the 16th harmonic; the second (which is more analytical) is limited to the 6th harmonic. I myself have discussed and given a critique of this theory. I would add that I regret Hindemith had neither the charisma of Schoenberg nor the means to develop his theory by extending it towards a generalized chromaticism. A more perspicacious Hindemith could maybe have prevented some of the setbacks suffered by music in this century. 2.2. Stockhausen also developed his famous theory of time by means of the acoustic spectrum, linking pitch and duration together: a lesson in taperecording (une leçon du magnétophone), as François-Bernard Mâche called it. His criticism may be valid, but the theory allowed new meaning to be given to serial theory, with a conception of a spectral system of hierarchized groups based on fundamental durations. This system gave a referential frame to Stockhausen’s invention. Godfried Michael Koenig drew directly on this theory in his 1960 article ‘Musik und Zahl’, and is notable for proposing metric durations which he develops as far as the 6th harmonic, and which allow a rational diversification of the metric groups according to these proportions.10 It is my conviction that, by modulating the fundamental duration infinitesimally, this theory can be taken up and extended to the entire spectrum of sound. However, this is not my present subject of concern; I shall limit myself to giving a very simple example drawn from Koenig’s proposition (Example 2.1). Example 2.1. Metric series founded on harmonics 1 to 6

 Paul Hindemith, Unterweisung im Tonsatz (Mainz: Schott, 1937); The Craft of Musical Composition (London: Schott, 1945).  Célestin Deliège, ‘Nature <--> Culture : choix de parcours, de la théorie de Hindemith aux fondements présumés de l’harmonie atonale’, Ostinato-Rigore 6–7 (1996), pp. 59–99.  Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’, Die Reihe 3 (1957), in Texte 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), pp. 99–139.  François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature ou les dauphins d’Arion (Paris: Klincksieck, 1983). 10 Gottfried-Michael Koenig, ‘Musik und Zahl’ (1960), Musik Konzept 66 (1989), pp. 13–24.

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2.3. Without referring to scientific precepts, Claude Ballif11 presented a theory that he called ‘metatonal’, which clearly expresses the necessity of polarizing atonal harmony. He proposed a modulation system that made use of the tritone, working on a chromatic scale with 11 notes. It was regarded as utopian. We may agree. But what was the motivation that inspired this utopia, and what were its origins? 2.4. Last but not least, Henri Pousseur,12 paying homage to Rameau, formed the basis of his ‘network’ theory (théorie des réseaux) by restoring the consonant and dissonant values of chromatic harmony. Similarly George Perle13 proposed a combinatorial system which was close to that of Pousseur but influenced by Babbitt. It may be added that when he practised consonance, he did not greatly distinguish it from dissonance. Set theories had the merit of reducing the size of the large numbers, but confined us within the abstract logic of the set. It was serialism that led set theories in this direction, but sonority – and hence real pitch – has no place here. It seems to me that, without abandoning these theories (which retain an epistemological interest inasmuch as serialism has, from the time of Schoenberg, been related to the set rather than the scale), it must be possible to perfect them by considering atonality through using the same logic as for the scale; it was this logic which originally allowed the development of polyphony. 3. In this era of the search for universals, acoustics provides us with the most indisputable universal – that of spectral resonance. This return to the physical world allows us to recover the harmony of an atonal universe rationally. This is exactly what generations of so-called ‘spectral’ composers have realized. But in their works we see these composers themselves dealing with a pluralism provoked by recourse to enharmonics through synthesized sound and frequency modulation, fields which the present theory does not does not aim to cover. That said, nothing need prevent us from referring to these when we have recourse to concepts such as the micro-interval. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that, since the octave of the sound-band 16…32 is founded on a scale of harmonics, a series is thereby introduced.

11

C. Ballif, Introduction à la métatonalité (Paris: Masse, 1956). Henri Pousseur, ‘L’Apothéose de Rameau’, Revue d’esthétique, musique nouvelle (1968), pp. 105–117. 13 Perle, Twelve-tone Tonality. 12

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III. Atonal hemitonic chromaticism 1. General 1.1. Postulate: Atonal harmony is the descendant of all previous Western polyphony. Its harmonic morphology, then, responds to the universal laws of resonance controlled by acoustics. 1.2. This postulate implies that each note can be labelled according to the position it occupies in the aggregate and in the register. As a result of this we may abandon the theory of sets used by dodecaphony, serialism and set theory, and turn instead to the chromatic scale. 1.3. If we consider A 27.5 Hz (diapason 440 Hz) as note 1 then A 3520 Hz is note 128. This will be the territory examined by means of our hypothesis. 1.4. Each fundamental of an aggregate is assigned as a harmonic of one of the octaves 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, according to the register which it occupies on the general scale (see Example 2.2, harmonics 1 to 32). Example 2.2. Harmonics 1 to 32, divided according to octaves

1.5. The first aim of this theory is to provide each aggregate with a fundamental. By doing this, we will be in a position to control, firstly, the degree of chromaticism or diatonicism of the linear sequence of fundamentals as well as the atonal density of each aggregate; secondly, the internal hierarchy of each aggregate; and, thirdly, a figuring which gives the equivalent of continuo figured bass. 1.6. Five octaves (1…32) are needed to generate the useful harmonics of the hemitonic chromatic scale. Octave 1…2 is empty. Octave 2…4 contains the ratios 3:2 and 4:3 (a fifth and a fourth), a subdivision which we will need to remember when calculating the ratios of intervals in the subsequent octaves if we wish to

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avoid the appearance of unwanted secondary fundamentals. The third octave 4…8 is the first octave for us to work with. 2. Identification of the fundamental 2.1. In principle, the attribution of a fundamental to an aggregate is independent of the musical context. However, it cannot be assigned arbitrarily: so the context can be important. At least three notes are needed to identify a fundamental. Without particular occurrences in context, for example the presence of an ordered spectrum, it is difficult to attribute a fundamental to an aggregate of twelve notes; otherwise what transpires is merely ‘noise’. 2.2. The very structure of the spectrum justifies the attribution of a fundamental, since it is ordered in relation to the modalities of application to the aggregate. The fifth (2:3), or the cycle of fifths, is the first point of reference. In the rare cases where the fifth is absent, the preferred interval is the major third (4:5) or, failing that, the major second (8:9). The nature of certain morphologies may lead to ambiguities in interpretation. In these instances, there are two possible options, which is to the advantage of the user. But care is needed when subdividing the octave (3:2, 4:3). The fifth which is ‘furthest to the left’ of a cycle is the fundamental. In all instances, the implications of context must prevail. 2.3. An ordered spectrum is read in the order of the harmonics present in the aggregate. The figuring of the aggregate must conform to the mobility of the registers. 2.4. Whenever it is possible to fix a linear order for the sequence of fundamentals in a given process, we suggest that it may be helpful to label these from 0 to 11 in order to be consistent with pitch classes as in set theory. In the examples given in the present work, 0 is arbitrarily assigned to A. 2.5. Unless implied by context, the 21st harmonic should not appear in the aggregate. It gives the fourth of the fundamental, and therefore this note automatically becomes fundamental to a low fifth (as already noted by Helmholtz). The inverse of a higher fourth gives a lower fifth. Let us take a structure with three notes 16:20:21 (C–E–F); in this same register, the 16th harmonic must substitute for the 21st and the structure in question becomes 12:15:16. The placing of the notes remains the same but their control has changed (Example 2.3). For this reason it is only possible to order a spectrum of 12 notes arbitrarily. 2.6. When considering the scale of harmonics as a mode, we must bear in mind its configuration and content in consecutive intervals (Table 2.1).

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Example 2.3. Reading of the 4th

Table 2.1. Scale of harmonics conceived as a mode Space 1…2 2…4 4…7 7–8…11 11…16…20

Intervals octave fifth–fourth major third–two minor thirds 4 major seconds 9 minor seconds

Relations 2:1 (2) 3:2 (1.5)–4:3 (1.33) 5:4 (1.25)–6:5 (1.2)–7:6 (1.16) From 8:7 (1.14) to 11:10 (1.1) From 12:11 (1.09) to 20:19 (1.052)

Above 20, the series of micro-intervals begins

3. Establishing the figuring 3.1. Like our predecessors, we dislike the harmonics which bear the prime numbers 7, 11, 13, 19 and so on; they have a beautiful sonority when correctly restored (for example Stockhausen, Stimmung), but they are noticeably different from the tempered scale. This incompatibility can be partially overcome by conforming to the model ratio of each interval; that is, by keeping constant ratios for any given class of intervals, whatever its position within the scale (fictive theory). These model ratios are given by those harmonics that are not represented by a prime number. There are necessary exceptions, for the minor second and the tritone. Atonal harmony must often substitute the semitone 17:16 for the minor second 16:15. The tritone evokes the ratios 7:5 or 24:17. The best tritone is the one whose square gives the number closest to two (the octave). It goes without saying that these prescriptions are the consequence of the compromise with equal temperament (or with well temperament). They are automatically unnecessary when applied to synthesized instruments if the temperament does not need to be preserved (see the list of model ratios, Table 2.2). The use of model ratios necessitates the use of decimal numbers. 3.2. The present theory uses either pure harmonics or the model interval according to the domain of application, in order to stabilize the figuring of the aggregate. Equal temperament can only produce a stable figuring that may be transposed chromatically. A figuring based on harmonics alone may be sufficient for any theoretical work; but compromise is necessary in figuring for any application to a tempered work. This latter solution, which is more useful although more laborious to produce, is necessary if we wish to remain as close as possible to a tempered

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application. It means that certain model ratios must be changed (see the entries Table 2.3 comparing: (i) the frequencies given by equal temperament in the band of frequencies 440–880; (ii) the 16th…30th harmonics in the same register; and (iii) the model ratios). Table 2.2. minor second major second minor third major third fourth tritone with prime numbers

Table 2.3.

Harmonic intervals: model ratios 16:15=1.066… 17:16=1.0625 major seventh 9:8=1.125 10:9=1.11… minor seventh 6:5=1.2 major sixth 5:4=1.25 minor sixth 4:3=1.33 fifth 7:5=1.4 17:12=1.416

15:8=1.875 16:9=1.77… 9:5=1.8 5:3=1.66… 8:5=1.6 3:2=1.5

Chromatic scale of frequencies: comparison between systems

Equal temperament A 440 B 466.16 B 493.88 C 523.25 C 554.37 D 587.33 D 622.75

Harmonics 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

440 467.5 495 522.5 550 577.5 605

E F F G

659.26 698.46 739.99 783.99

24 26 27 28

660 715 742 770

G

830.61

30

835

Model ratios 16 17 18 19.2 20 21.33… 22.4=7:5 22.6=17:12 24 25.6 26.66… 28.44=16:9 28.8=9:5 30

440 467.5 495 528 550 586.66 616 623.33… 660 704 733.33 782.22 792 835

3.3. Resorting to the model interval, therefore, does not completely resolve the question of compromise. When we use the ratios in the band 16…32, we notate them by substituting the decimal numbers 19.2–21.3–22.6–25.6–26.6–28.4 for the real harmonics. This keeps the original whole numbers for the harmonics in place. Inasmuch as this theory uses harmonics to answer the rational objectives of modalization and polarization, rather than being purely academic, is it not preferable to disregard the numerical discrepancies which cannot be totally corrected by the use of decimal numbers anyway? For example, the ratio 20:19.2 is a very short minor second, 1.041. It is possible to be flexible on this matter. I fully understand, therefore, the opinion of anyone who refuses to use decimal

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numbers and holds exclusively with pure harmonics; for this person will obtain a figuring that is totally valid but is also simpler, and which therefore has the advantage that it is more easily memorized by any performer playing continuo. Nevertheless, a happy medium has been sought by examining the 13th harmonic, which is found between the minor and major sixths of harmonic 8 (which bears the fundamental). One practical solution would be to attribute the 13th harmonic to the minor sixth and to transfer the major sixth to the 27th harmonic; another would be to attribute it to the major sixth, in which case the minor sixth would be transferred to the 25th harmonic. The use of model ratios simplifies this problem: a minor sixth = 8 times 8:5 = 12.8, and a minor sixth = 8 times 5:3 = 13.3. For those who dislike decimals, we may even suggest the figuring 13− for the minor sixth and 13+ for the major sixth. At any rate, establishing the figuring by reference to register will in the end require decimals. Due to these considerations and those of Table 2.3, I shall use the whole numbers properly belonging to the harmonics, with ‘−’ and ‘+’ for the 13th harmonic, in the tables in this study. In the musical examples, I shall use a figuring of the chromatic scale that preserves the whole numbers of the harmonics, while at the same time adjusting them with decimals towards equal temperament. The numbers appearing in octave 16…32 will be divided or multiplied by 2, 4 or 8, according to the register occupied by the pitch that needs figuring (see Table 2.4: only the minor sixth has been reduced from 25.6 to 25.4 to bring it closer to equal temperament). Table 2.4. 0 16

1 17

Figuring of the chromatic scale, band 16…32 2 18

3 19

4 20

5 21.3

6 22.6

7 24

8 25.4

9 27

10 28.4

11 30

Upper row: pitch classes Bottom row: compromise figuring with equal temperament

Before we look at any examples, we give a table demonstrating the progressive generation of harmonics and of pitch classes. The two systems are ordered. This table does not take into account the compromise towards equal temperament that is taken up in the figuring of the examples. Thus, the major and minor sixths generated by the 8th harmonic are grouped under the figuring 13. The most noticeable absence is the 21st harmonic (a blurred cell, blotting out the figure 5). If it were replaced this would immediately cause the cycle of lower fifths to be reconstituted, as already mentioned in section 2.5.

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Table 2.5. Transcription of pitch classes in relation to the scale of harmonics Ordered pitch classes

Ordered spectrum

0

7

23 235

0

4

7

0

4

7

10

2357

0

4

7

10

23579

0

4

6

7

10

2 3 5 7 9 11

0

4

6

7

8

9

10

2 3 5 7 9 11 13

0

4

6

7

8

9

10

11

2 3 5 7 9 11 13 15

4

6

7

8

9

10

11

2 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17

4

6

7

8

9

10

11

2 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19

0

1

2

0

1

2

3

IV. Applications 1. Abstract models When applying this model, it is necessary to establish a clear relation between the transcription of pitch classes and sonic transcription. This is because of the initial division of the octave into two regions, 3:2 and 4:3. Thus, no aggregate defined by the interval of the fourth can be transcribed by the pitch classes 0…5 (which would determine a transposition, as we have seen, 5 substituting for 0), but rather by 7…0 or, if one prefers, 7…12 (0 = 12 modulo 12). To start with, we need to go back to the scale type of the harmonic spectrum of sounds from 1 to 32 over 5 octaves, 27.5 to 880 Hz (see Example 2.2). For the moment, let us work on the structures of each of the three types of generation independently of register, while remembering that cases (b) and (c) are rare in structures of medium density or else are the result of a specific decision following from the context. If we use the traditional (but unfortunate) terminology, we may say that these cases generate defective scales: (a) generation 2:3 (fifth); (b) generation 4:5 (major third, when the aggregate had neither fourth nor fifth); and (c) generation 8:9 (major second, when there is neither major third, fourth nor fifth). (a) Type 1 generation (2:3), Fifth The following selected examples illustrate this type: 1. The atonal triad. Maybe this should be called the atonal ‘perfect chord’. Its pitch classes are notated {0,1,7}, and its acoustic translation in compacted position: 8:12:17 (Example 2.4). When extended four times, this triad gives

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the twelve tones, and since the twelfth note is in the place of the 21st harmonic, the cycle can be infinitely rotated (Example 2.5). This example also serves to familiarise the reader with figuring by register. Example 2.4. Atonal type triad

Example 2.5. Linked triads within twelve-tone aggregate

2. The chromatic hexachord. If it is agreed that each fundamental carries pitch class 0, and since we know that class 5, virtually carrier of the 21st harmonic, cannot appear (see Table 2.5), the chromatic hexachord cannot be written {0,1,2,3,4,5}; rather, it belongs to the second region of the octave and is thus written {7,8,9,10,11,0}. It may legitimately be given the following sonic translation:14 12 13 – 13 + 7 8 9 octave 8…16

14 10

15 11

16 0

That said, in the framework of this theory where each note is figured according to its register, this would imply that the hexachord belongs to the band 330 to 440 Hz. We need a more general notation that will preserve the spectral order. Thus the following transcription is used, conforming to the ordered spectrum: 2 3 5 7 0 7 10 fundamental position

9

11

13 – 8

13 + 9

15 11

17

19

All hexachords are of Type 1 generation, with the exception of the wholetone scale which does not impose any polarization other than its tonic. 14

In all diagrams, harmonics are noted in italics.

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3. Aggregates giving an option for fundamentals. Many hexachords – and a fortiori the denser aggregates – offer a choice of fundamentals. This allows the composer more than one way of polarising a single aggregate. For example: {0,1,2,3,6,7}; {0,1,2,3,7,8} 2 3 5 7 9 11 13 13 15 0 7 2 6 6 1 0 2 3 mutation of fundamentals between classes 0 and 6

17 1 7

19 3

2 3 5 7 9 11 13 13 15 0 7 2 8 1 8 3 7 0 2 mutation of fundamentals between classes 0 and 1

17 1

19 3

The fundamentals in these two examples were displaced towards 6 and 1 in order to demonstrate the derivation in relation to the original structure. These aggregates should not be seen as an inversion since they reproduce an ordered spectrum. This is thus an internal mutation. A simple transposition would have reproduced the spectral succession of the first line. In this example {0,1,2,3,6,7}, pitch classes 0 and 6 may be alternately or simultaneously exploited as fundamentals. Lines 2 and 3 of the diagram, under the harmonics (line 1), demonstrate the generation of the same pitch classes, which occupy different places in the spectral scale. Although classes 7 and 2 also form the interval of a fifth (modulo 12), 7 cannot generate the same series without making the 21st harmonic appear on pitch class 0. These internal mutations clearly demonstrate that the ordered spectrum can be worked with like a mode in atonal harmony. (b) Type 2 generation (4:5), major third and no fifth This is most usually found with aggregates stemming from the whole-tone scale, complete or fragmentary. However, we also find the hexachord {0,2,3,4,6} which only escapes the tone scale by chromaticization of one degree. We have here an aggregate that can combine two fundamentals; the second combination may perhaps seem preferable since it is more compact: 4 5 7 9 11 13 13 15 17 0 4 2 6 2 6 0 4 3 mutation of fundamentals between classes 0 and 2

19 3

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(c) Type 3 generation (8:9), major second, no major third or fifth In principle, these only affect the trichord {0,1,2} or the tetrachord {0,1,2,3}: 8 0 0

9 2 2

17 1 1

19 3

A mutation of the tetrachord could be suggested between 0 and 1, but this would be unsatisfying because it would not express the limit of the minor third of the aggregate. For the classes {1,3,0,2}, the succession of harmonics 8:9:15:17 would be structurally inadequate. In every case where the mutation of a fundamental is possible, the first condition for the composer is to make it perceptible; if not, there would be ambiguity, or the aggregate would be perceived as an inversion or in a state of suspension. 2. Examples I shall now give some concrete examples. Nevertheless, the methodological character of the theory must be borne in mind; it is more a suggestion for the composer than an analytical method as such. The analyses which will be proposed below are given for contexts which were not written with this method in mind. It will certainly not be difficult to give the aggregates the appropriate figuring, but the linear relations between fundamentals have not been deliberately conceived as such. A high degree of chromaticism is nevertheless to be observed in these sequences.15 I propose to illustrate the above discussion by examining five harmonic matrices: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Schoenberg, Klavierstück op. 33a; Webern, Concerto op. 24; Boulez, Répons; Berio, La Vera Storia; and Stockhausen, Klavierstück III.

1. Schoenberg: harmonic matrix of Klavierstück op. 33a Six chords of four notes are found, as in Example 2.6a. Of these, the latter three are the transposed and inverted retrograde of the former three. In Example 2.6b, they are notated in fundamental position. The roman numerals underneath are arbitrarily established on the basis 0=A. This then follows: I–IX–X–II–III–IV 15 In the following examples, the figuring demonstrates the proposed compromise with equal temperament.

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Example 2.6. Schoenberg, Klavierstück op. 33a, harmonic matrix

or, in other words, two disjunct intervals and three semitones, in consecutive relations. This structure, reduced to its harmonic spectrum, would be notated thus in pitch classes: {7,8,11,0,1,2} that is, the ordered spectrum: 2 0

3 7

9 2

13 – 8

15 11

17 1

harmonics pitch classes

Thus we have a sequence with strong chromatic density comprising three minor seconds and two tritones; in other circumstances, this scale could be said to constitute the basic mode for the work. In Example 2.6c, the figuring of the chords conforms to the position of the notes in each register. In principle, a pianist who only has the designated notes as fundamentals should be able to play the written notes on the basis of this figuring. This is why one can speak of a new model for figured bass; this is purely hypothetical here, but convincing and well defined in the frame of the present theory. It should not be very difficult to memorize the fixed numbers corresponding to the different harmonics, which need only be multiplied or divided. 2. Webern: harmonic matrix of Concerto op. 24 This example was chosen because it demonstrates the absolute priority of context. It is to some extent a counter-example to our hypothesis. Here, the use of the 21st

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Example 2.7. Webern, Concerto op. 24: (a) harmonic matrix; (b) reading conforming to the present hypothesis (a)

(b)

harmonic is justified. The reason for this is that the serial harmony is based on the chromatic superposition of two whole-tone scales (Example 2.7a). In the lower range, we see four trichords making up the series. The pitch classes which give the harmonic perspective emerge in two groups: the first and third give {0,4,1}, the second and fourth give {0,4,3}. These are the original trichord and its inversion. When these trichords are regrouped as two hexachords we notice that exchanging one note in each trichord with that of its neighbour produces a superposition of two augmented fifth chords (the harmonic type characteristic of the whole-tone scale), and that if one reads these horizontal hexachords diagonally they produce the scale in question. The pitch classes of the hexachords, parallel at the distance of a tritone, allow us to reduce what follows to {0,1,4,5,8,9} where the presence of the interval of a fourth {0,5} immediately designates the 21st harmonic. The sequence of fundamentals, arbitrarily figured as in the previous example and linked to the spectral content independent of register, demonstrates very clearly the high atonal density that we see in Webern’s work. In fundamental position, we can notate them as follows:

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I–VII VI–0 I–VII

(8:10:17) (8:10:19) (8:10:13:17:21:27)

or, linearly, the tritones are crossed between fundamentals in trichords and where the relation between hexachords is also a tritone. As for the harmonics, each triad bears a chromatic relation of a major seventh or minor ninth, and the hexachord bears three minor ninths. This last result of our analysis can by confirmed by other methods of observation; the aim here is not to corroborate these. It needs to be reiterated that this example was chosen to demonstrate the priority of context over any other theoretical hypothesis. However, the more correct figuring of the hexachords as found in Example 2.7b should be borne in mind. But if this satisfies the theoretical requirements, how can it be made perceptible? This problem is common in spectral composition, where the bass and the fundamental are often confused as far as perception is concerned. This is exactly why the hypothesis presented here is aimed more at the composer and the improviser than at the analyst. Polarizing atonal harmony means that fundamentals may be perceived, and this can be achieved almost entirely through metre, which must be slow enough, and timbre, which must be sufficiently clear and dense. 3. Boulez: harmonic matrix of Répons The chordal block (Example 2.8a) which is played for two seconds at the beginning of the work particularly struck me because of the importance of the consequences to which it gives rise in the score. I had discussed this with musicology students at Montreal University as early as 1982, and I returned to the idea in the form of an imaginary genetic analysis in Inharmonique 4,16 always with the same idea of a prolific deduction and of an expanding universe – ideas dear to the composer – proposing that one cell of the matrix in question was an original element of a ‘big bang’. Today, I am in a position to produce an objective analysis that is totally separate from any poietic or genetic project, thanks to the theoretical hypothesis proposed here, and which is based purely on the harmonic spectrum. The five aggregates of seven notes (Example 2.8a) can be reduced to three aggregates of eight notes. (The third is called ‘virtual’ because the fundamental E – a note belonging to the series but absent from the matrix – is not found: Example 2.8b). Aggregates 1 and 2, 3 and 4 give similar pairs. For aggregates 1 and 2, there is an exchange between the A and the G, which does not give any change in fundamental. On the other hand, for aggregates 3 and 4 there is an exchange between the A and the F; this deprives chord 3 of its fundamental A, and it becomes E (Example 2.8c). It is only possible to figure what is written when this 16 Celestin Deliège, ‘Moment de Pierre Boulez, sur l’introduction orchestrale de Répons’, Inharmoniques 4 (1988), pp. 181–202.

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Example 2.8. Boulez, Répons: (a) harmonic matrix; (b) chords in fundamental position; (c) figuring of chords (a)

(b)

(c)

figuring arises from the register. In the same way, aggregate 5 could not be figured on the basis of the virtual aggregate in Example 2.8b. Examination of the harmonic matrix of Répons, where all the intervals are equal (unlike in Webernian harmony), nevertheless demonstrates a true atonal composition; the sequence of the three fundamentals is I–0–VI (where the virtual fundamental is taken into account) or I–0–I (in the other case). These are true chromatic sequences. 4. Berio: harmonic matrix of  La Vera Storia We refer here to an analysis of the harmonic bases of Luciano Berio’s opera La Vera Storia as discussed by David Osmond-Smith.17 Osmond-Smith observes that the composer uses what he calls a ‘code’ expressed from the first bar of the work. This is based on the following harmonic matrix, based on F4: C–C–E–F–G–A–B–B David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 103–5. 17

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From the point of view of our hypothesis, we are looking at the position of a serial mode based on its possible secondary fundamental (III). The fundamental mode (0) which groups the largest cycle of fifths (and thus contains the best acoustic properties) is established on A (Example 2.9a). Example 2.9. Berio, serial mode of La Vera Storia: (a) figuring of the fundamentals; (b) (Fêtes), figuring of fundamentals and chords (a)

(b)

The roman numerals give the fundamentals as eventually determined, independently of whether or not they can occur. They may be analysed as follows: A 0 C III B II E VII F IX G X B I C IV

tonic of the mode; reference fundamental secondary fundamental can only appear where there is no E can only appear where there is no A can only appear where there is no B can only appear where there is no C no possible occurrences no possible occurrences

Let us now set down the acoustic configuration of the mode by placing the pitch classes in relation to the harmonics: 2 0

3 7

5 4

7 10

9 2

13+ 9

17 1

19 3

harmonics pitch classes

Osmond-Smith next demonstrates how Berio uses this group, which we have called a mode, both melodically and harmonically. Here is the harmonic matrix

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as used in the two scenes of Fêtes. The labelling of the fundamentals and the figuring of the chords with four notes are, of course, our own (Example 2.9b). The first point of note is that we have not made any arbitrary decisions here. The composer himself, through Osmond-Smith, has given us the basis for our work. Naturally, it could not be said that Berio was thinking of the fundamentals we have identified, nor even that he had a spectral perspective on his harmonics. But whether he intended it or not, this harmonic matrix is derived from a fixed group of eight notes which may be identified as a modal chromatic scale comprising, as Osmond-Smith remarks, two well-distinguished parts: a compact chromatic group of a major third A–C and a second, more open, disjunct group of a fifth C–G (the C and the C are found in both groups). This example confirms how much Berio had moved since the 1970s towards the polarization of chromatic harmony – the present case is an important example, due to the duration of the spread of the aggregates. Analysis of the harmonic field comes down to four fundamentals grouped in two chromatic pairs, separated by a major third (IX–X, II–III) or by a tritone (II–III, IX–X), depending on your perspective. As in the previous examples, the chromatic density prevails over the diatonic (which indicates atonality). The two former chords are of Type 2 generation (4:5), and the others have the fifth. The individual figuring of the chords also confirms this. 5. Stockhausen: harmonic matrix of  Klavierstück III I shall now examine David Lewin’s analysis of Stockhausen’s Klavierstück III,18 a most elegant piece of work which makes use of set theory. It should be remarked that this analysis is one of very few that attempts to use this method on any work later than the Second Viennese School. Jonathan Harvey indicated that this piece is built on a pentachord, for which he gave a prototype (Example 2.10a: this is a standard notation for the first pentachord of the score).19 Example 2.10.

Stockhausen, Klavierstück III: (a) notation of basic pentachord (following Harvey); (b) basic chords in fundamental position 0

(a) (b)

18 David Lewin, Musical Form and Transformation: Four Analytical Essays (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 16–67. 19 Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen: An Introduction (London: Faber, 1975), p. 24.

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Strengthened by this information, Lewin took up the pursuit of these pentachords throughout the piece, and found them from the first to the last note. His discovery might have surprised Stockhausen, who had carefully disguised them. Lewin used a retrospective method. In other words, by constantly going back to areas he had already covered, he could re-discover omitted possibilities. It is possible that this level analysis, which makes great use of the ‘poietic’ level (to use Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s term), strictly speaking coincides with the genesis of the work; certainly reconstruction does seem highly plausible. Table 2.6. Reading of pentachords. Reading of harmony.

Bars 1 2 f to 3 a 3 a to 5 b 5 e to 7 a 5 b to 7 f 8 f to 10 e 8 f to 10 b 9 e to 11 a

Initial ‘P’ harmonics in close fundamental position 4 – 6 – 11 – 13− – 13+ Rank 1 2 3 4 5 Nomenclature Notation of the C=0, B=11 inversions from low to high 9B28A 1–2–3–4–5 53248 4–3–5–1–2 7654A 2–5–1–3–4 42358 3–2–4–5–1 A2B98 2–5–1–4–3 5674A 5–4–1–3–2 5678B 4–2–3–5–1 3BA09 5–1–3–2–4

Beginning of 9 to 11 e AB014 4–1–5–3–2 11 g to 12 g 7856B 2–5–3–4–1 13 a to 15 g A8197 4–2–3–5–1 Inverted ‘I’ harmonics in close fundamental position 4 – 6 – 11 – 13 – 13+ Rank 1 2 3 4 5 1 b to2 f A98B5 5–2–1–4–3 2 from b B5324 1–2–3–5–4 2 d to 5 f 27865 3–1–2–5–4 5 e to 7 f 423B5 2–3–4–1–5 5 b to7 AB985 4–5–1–2–3 8 and 9 14567 5–3–1–4–2 11 accd to 12 f 41756 3–1–2–4–5 11 f to 12 e 536B4 1–5–4–3–2 12 e to 13 432A1 1–5–4–2–3 13 a to16 A170B 1–3–2–5–4

Fundamental notes V XI I XI V I II VI VII II IV

I VII X VII I IX IX VII VI III

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Table 2.6 follows Lewin’s divisions20 in the two left-hand columns. The first column allows us to find our place easily in the score reproduced above; the second translates the notes into pitch classes in the order of their succession. The third column gives the rank interversions in the spectral scale, and the fourth indicates the fundamentals on the base A = 0. We will return to this shortly. Example 2.11. Stockhausen, Klavierstück III (after the original edition, Universal UE 12251)

The basic pentachord is the same as that noted by Harvey, and is accompanied by its inversion. We notate the two ordered sets, reduced to 0, as follows: {0,1,2,3,6} {3,2,1,0,9} The numbers in bold characters indicate the axis of symmetry used by Lewin to decide on the parallelism between the two structures. His position is correct, but it is contested by some who see instead the two structures in relation to a minor third or major sixth. Addition of each of the terms in the two sets = 3. Their alternative reading is to see the non-transposed parallelism as follows:21 20

Lewin, Musical Form and Transformation, p. 19. Due to the constraints of spacing, class 10 is replaced by the letter A and class 11 by the letter B, in both text and Table 2.6. 21

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{0,1,2,3,6} {0,B,A,9,6} Adding each of the terms here gives = 0. The acoustic perspective which concerns us here is not decisive on this issue. The only way of writing the pitch classes is as follows: 1. set in its original P form 2 3 11 13− 13+ 0 7 6 8 9 2. inverted set form i 2 3 7 15 17 0 7 10 11 1

harmonics pitch classes harmonics pitch classes

The main difference between this transcription and that of the set theorists is that it is not significant with regard to transposition. It is the translation of an ordered acoustic spectrum transcribed into pitch classes, no more and no less. In other words, set theory can grasp the essentially logical facts of music, but not that which is their strictly musical essence. A simpler example may help us to understand this: set theory notates the major triad 0,4,7 and its inversion 7,3,0, giving the minor triad. Yet, from a strictly musical point of view, it is out of the question to consider a minor triad as the inversion of the major triad, while from a strictly logical point of view this comparison is perfectly valid. Following the ordered spectral scale, we now transcribe the two basic pentachords of Klavierstück III in musical notation, on the basis of the fundamental 0 = A (Example 2.10b), even though this fundamental is absent from the piece. We can now move on to examine the third and fourth columns of Table 2.6 with reference to the score. The third column gives the inversion of the aggregates. We could say that those for which rank 1 is furthest to the left are in fundamental position, just as in tonal music; similarly, when one of the other ranks (2 to 5) is further to the left this is the result of a possible inversion from first to fourth. This nomenclature is not in the least problematic if it is only in atonal harmony that the most significant is given by the interversions. It must be reiterated that the hierarchy can only be pertinent if the composer wishes to establish his harmony on a scalar basis. This certainly was not the case with Stockhausen in 1952. The fourth column – giving the linear perspective of the fundamentals – is the most interesting: we see here an agreement in the intervals between the notation of the fundamentals and Lewin’s figuring of the transpositions. Only the numbers themselves differ, since they are not used for the same purpose. The division of the piece into two sections is also different, since Lewin places the break at the end of bar 7, which is certainly pertinent for section P of the table, but for section i it is preferable to place the break at the rests at the end of bar 8. These fundamentals

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translate a split at these central points where the symmetries are broken. In section i, it seems that the repetition of the fundamental IX demands that its first occurrence has to be isolated. Let us compare these fundamentals while eliminating the reiterations. Bars 1 to 7 Position P

V–XI–I–XI–V

Position i

I–VII–X–VII–I

Position P

I–II–VI–VII–II–IV

Position i

(IX) –IX–VII–VI–III

symmetry of the outer tritones and of circularity central dissymmetry: major second, minor third Bars 8 to 16 intersecting symmetry: central for the minor seconds, exterior for the major seconds, contingent for the major thirds II–VI, III–VII, outer tritone ratios

The difficulties we have encountered in these examples demonstrate that the works in question were conceived without referral to our suggested method. They obviously do not break away from acoustic resonance, but they certainly do not contribute to it. Indeed, they were often conceived without the least reference to the pitch spectrum. We have examined what are predominantly recent examples. So-called ‘spectralist’ composers, and the move from the analogue to the digital, have introduced new representations which restore to harmony the status which it was about to lose. The propositions put forward here have no other purpose than to demonstrate, through a return to a scalar perspective, the value of completing the logical principles established by set theory. By themselves, these principles are unable to address the living substance of music itself: sound. Bibliography Babbitt, M., ‘Some Aspects of Twelve Tone Composition’, The Score 12 (1955), pp. 53–61 ——, ‘Set Structure as a Compositional Determinate’, Journal of Music Theory 5/1 (1961), pp. 72–94, reprinted in B. Boretz and E. Cone (eds), Perspectives in Contemporary Music (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 129–47 ——, Words about Music, ed. S. Dembski and J. Straus (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1987) Ballif, C., Introduction à la métatonalité (Paris: Masse, 1956)

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Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘Plaidoyer pour une théorie actuelle de la musique’, in Tod Machover (ed.), Quoi? Quand? Comment? La recherche musicale (Paris: Bourgois-Ircam, 1985), pp. 73–86 Deliège, Célestin, ‘Moment de Pierre Boulez, sur l’introduction orchestrale de Répons’, Inharmoniques 4 (1988), pp. 181–202 ——, ‘Nature <--> Culture: choix de parcours, de la théorie de Hindemith aux fondements présumés de l’harmonie atonal’, Ostinato-Rigore 6–7 (1996), pp. 59–99 Forte, Alan, The Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973) Harvey, Jonathan, The Music of Stockhausen: An Introduction (London: Faber, 1975) Hindemith, Paul, Unterweisung im Tonsatz (Mainz: Schott, 1937) ——, The Craft of Musical Composition (London: Schott, 1945) Kirnberger, J.P., Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1771–1776), trans. David Beach and Jürgen Thym (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1982) Koenig, G.-M., ‘Musik und Zahl’ (1960), Musik Konzept 66 (1989), pp. 13–24 Lewin, David, ‘Making and Using PC Set Network in Stockhausen Klavierstück III’ in Musical Form and Transformation: Four Analytical Essays (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 16–67 Mâche, F.-B., Musique, mythe, nature ou les dauphins d’Arion (Paris: Klincksieck, 1983) Osmond-Smith, David, Berio (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) Perle, George, Twelve-tone Tonality (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1977) Pousseur, Henri, ‘L’apothéose de Rameau’, Revue d’esthétique, musique nouvelle (1968), pp. 105–117 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’, Die Reihe 3 (1957), in Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), pp. 99–139

Chapter 3

In Search of Lost Harmony



Rudolf Frisius

I The twentieth century was characterized by the search for alternatives to tonality, and by a specific conception of harmony. New harmonic functions and structures were developed, new systems of pitch organization, new possibilities for integration between pitch structures and timbral structures. The generalization of traditional harmonic thinking (that is to say, imagined in terms of determined pitches) had consequences both at the macroscopic level of sonic material (for example, the integration of noise) and at the detailed microscopic level of the individual sound (with a view to the integration of the microscopic and the macroscopic). Far-reaching changes in the development of twentieth-century music and musical thought are nowhere more apparent than in the realm of harmony. This encompasses the development of new chord functions, chord structures and chord transformations within a given tonal system; the development of new systems and corresponding new harmonic structures; and the development of new possibilities of integration between chord structure and timbre. It also includes the generalization of traditional harmonic thinking tied to a fixed, unequivocal pitch. This can be understood both in a vertical sense (relating to the sound material) through the integration of complex pitch determinations (for example, the emancipation of noise), and in a horizontal sense (relating to form or the formal development of sounds) through the integration of variable determinations (for example, generalized vibrato, or the micro- and macroscopic integration of the smallest formal units through to larger formal contexts). It is harmony understood in this larger context that provides the focus for this chapter. II In music, the word harmony, in its proper sense and in a broader (historical and systematic) sense, refers to the theory of ordered relationships between pitches. The development of polyphony in the West, and in particular the modern development of major/minor tonality, have led to a narrow concept of harmony which is based  This is an abridged translation of the essay which appeared in the original French edition of this book.

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on simultaneous (or at least representable as simultaneous) ordered relationships between pitches. In the development of music in the twentieth century this limitation has been questioned because the complementarity, or heterogeneity, of successive and simultaneous relationships between pitches developed in previous centuries, and with it the previously valid distinction between harmony and melody (that is to say, successive ordered relationships between pitches), have also become subject to doubt. Furthermore this has also extended to the determination of rhythm and the temporal order in relation to melody and harmony. In the context of the development of music in the twentieth century, the concept of harmony, if it is to retain its universal validity (for the twenty-first century, as well as outside the context of Western music), needs to be generalized beyond the realm of unequivocally determined pitch: that is to say, as vertical development (concerned with momentary pitch determination at a given point in time, which is to include mixed tones and noise); or as horizontal development (concerned with the determination of pitch during any given segment of time). In these larger contexts we can determine whether and to what extent the conceptual framework and methods of description of the traditional theory of harmony can be retained or developed. This is particularly relevant in the case of the chord sequence, which describes chords as ordered sonorities, the structure of which can be described on the one hand as a codified system of fundamental chords, and on the other hand as codified systems for constructing derivational chords. Inasmuch as this ordering of pitches relates to a fixed, unequivocal pitch, the relationships between pitches in the traditional theory of harmony are derived: 1. from the sound structure of a number of given intervals (generally the series of natural tones); 2. from the interval structure of an ordered progression of intervals (for example, progressions of thirds); or 3. from a sequence of given pitches (a scale). These different principles of the construction of fundamental chords were as a rule not isolated, but were used in combinations. In the development of music in the twentieth century the problems inherent in these deductive procedures, which were already of limited use in the description of traditional harmonic orderings (whether in isolation or in combinations), have now become clearly apparent. I shall briefly expand on each of the above three categories. Sound structure Reference to the harmonic series alone does not suffice to distinguish, for example, the sound structure of music based on a major/minor tonality, or the sound structure of spectral music, while – as has already been shown in physics by Helmholtz and in the development towards atonality by Schoenberg – in the continuum of harmonics there are no boundaries that allow for an unequivocal

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demarcation of consonances and dissonances, so that such oppositions may be historically relativized. Intervallic structure Reference to a hierarchy of intervals proves to be problematic when it comes up against certain fundamental principles. On the one hand, there is the intervallic structural principle of the equivalence of octaves (of particular importance to the rules of harmonic derivation), according to which no more than twelve notes may be superimposed in intervals of a third and aggregates of thirds consisting of fewer notes are not to be regarded as autonomous chords, starting with chords of three major or four minor thirds. On the other hand, there is the intervallic structural limitation of fundamental chords which include a perfect 5th (that is, in major or minor chords; in traditional harmonic theory diminished or augmented chords are not recognized as fundamental chords, although, for example, in the case of a diminished chord the harmonic proportion of 5:6:7 has sometimes been retained, which includes the harmonic at the seventh traditionally avoided in the tonal system, and although, in the tempered system at least, the augmented chord consists exclusively of consonances). Scales Reference to scales is limited in traditional theory by the fact that their general use resolves the difference between melodic and harmonic structure, which is fundamental to music based on a major/minor tonality. This limitation does not exist in non-tonal music. III The concept of harmony refers to ‘that which goes together’, to parts of a whole that relate to one another in a ‘fitting’ way within a particular context. What is meant by ‘fitting’ and ‘harmonic’ can be described by means of concepts such as ‘perfect order’, ‘proportion’, ‘coincidence’ and ‘harmonic coexistence’. These parts, arranged into a whole that provides the general context, have been defined in different ways according to the context in which the notion of ‘harmony’ appeared. In mythological constellations based on integration, ‘harmony’ signifies something quite different to the subtle differentiations used in art (which includes aesthetic reflection) and science (mathematical structuring in particular and the description of natural phenomena based upon it, as, for example, in astronomy). In the realm of music the general aspects of the concept of harmony come into play when it is considered from the larger perspective of aesthetics; in this respect the music and music theory of the twentieth century does not differ from those of preceding centuries. The musical and extra-musical aspects of harmony combine

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in an evolution which is rooted in Greek antiquity and can be followed through to the twentieth century. Here one thinks, for example, of the architectural and musical conceptions of Le Corbusier and Xenakis, or the attempts, in practice or in theory, to integrate sound and colour, as in the works of Arnold Schoenberg and Olivier Messiaen. In the context of the evolution of music and its theory, the concept of harmony is habitually defined in a more precise way, and refers not only to articulated oppositions within sound events but, even more accurately, to contrasts within a certain structural level: between oppositions of articulated pitch or pitch relations. This way of narrowing down the idea of harmony to that of pitch caused problems in the twentieth century: modern developments and attempts at theoretical synthesis have undermined the efforts to limit harmony exclusively to pitch relations. This is because even in the context of fixed pitch relations, the harmonic criteria of the preceding centuries had to a large extent broken down. Current musical evolution throws a new light on problems that already in the past posed difficulties for the concept of harmony. Today, as much as in the past, it is difficult to define precisely the harmonic relations between sounds: which intervals or constellations of intervals can be defined as ‘harmonic’ and which cannot. And how is one to conceive of them in a concrete way: as an abstract reservoir of sounds, or in the context of a temporal configuration of sounds (simultaneous or successive) that are more precisely discernable? The oldest attempt to establish a theoretical definition of harmonic relations consisted in measuring the proportions of intervals. To link the concrete perception of intervals to numerical proportions generally goes hand in hand with the attempt to postulate a hierarchy of intervals, based on a hierarchy of proportions which correspond to them (the theories of antiquity measure these by means of strings, and in modern times, according to the harmonic theory of acoustics, by means of frequencies; this latter approach has in the twentieth century produced entirely synthesized and qualified frequency structures, an example of which is Stockhausen’s Studie I of 1953). In the harmonic theory based on the opposition between major and minor, this hierarchy is presupposed, so that in serial music, for example, it has to be justified every time (for example, Studie I distinguished itself by means of its intervallic proportions from Webern’s Concerto op. 24, which functions as a model for the construction of intervals), and appears to be the result of a structuring by means of notation. (In Stockhausen’s vocal sextet Stimmung, written in 1968, the radical nature of a serial project aiming to derive all structure from a compositional idea which has been determined a priori is limited by the fact that this structuring is applied to an extract from the natural harmonic series; thus the link to nature is not replaced by the serial principle, but is expressly accepted, and its consequences are followed through.) Within the context of conceptions which refer to the traditional harmonic systems of antiquity, the hierarchy of harmonic intervals is at first represented in an extra-temporal abstraction – that is to say, independently of its concrete sonic realization (for example, as either successive or simultaneous intervals). This harmonic conception based on structures outside

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time is as important in ancient as it is in more recent theory; the general idea which underlies it (for example, the idea that the formation of sonic systems and scales is not a condition to be determined externally, but one that has to be integrated into a conception of harmony grounded in theory) is found in Greek antiquity as well as in the work of Xenakis and his mathematical theory of scales, based on the theory of ‘screens’ (which Xenakis, taking the degree of abstraction of ancient theories even further, bases on principles which allow the derivation not only of pitch structures, but also of durations, thus resolving in a dialectical manner the opposition between the temporal and the extra-temporal, between the successive and the simultaneous.) In the course of the evolution of musical theory this structuring of pitch relations ‘outside time’ has been justified in different ways, depending on whether, for example, it constitutes a point of departure or the goal aimed for. The first approach, the significance of which was without doubt fundamental to ancient and medieval theory and was still influential in the twentieth century, concentrates on the construction of hierarchies of numerical proportions, and consequently stresses the importance of the mathematical foundation over the concrete appearance. This pre-eminence of abstraction appears together with the integration of that which the ear perceives into structures which doubtlessly also operate in other realms of sense experience (in particular the realm of visual experience), but which, even within the realm of music, are considered to be further removed from sense experience (by reducing complex sonic events to fixed constellations of pitch), without producing for example an exact differentiation between the horizontal and the vertical. The second approach is not the result of a presupposed abstraction, but of an evolution the ramifications of which have subtly spread into separate realms over the centuries. Here abstraction offers the possibility of integrating apparently irreconcilable aspects (for example by attempting to enlarge the conceptions of serial music or music formalized beyond the realm of what can be perceived by the ear). The question of delimitation of that which is harmonic – of that which goes together, of that which stands in a relationship – is not only problematic when one compares music to other realms of sense experience, but is also problematic within music itself. This is particularly evident where a musical theory has been developed not a priori but on the basis of concrete experiences of sound and with reference to a specific state of musical evolution. A particularly telling indication of abstraction in a theory based on rational interval proportions is the fact that it proceeds from the harmonic relationship, from the interval, not from the individual pitch that is combined with one or more other pitches. When one relates this approach to the reality of the music one hears, one realizes that this starting point corresponds to an act of listening not orientated according to isolated pitches (as is the case with people who have absolute pitch), but to sonic relationships. A musical ear formed by this theory orientates itself, not only in the case of isolated pitches but also in the case of combinations of pitches, not by means of their real register, but by means of global or relative

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determinations. This way of abstracting the exact delimitation of the register may also be described as follows: one posits a principle of neutral transposition, according to which groups of pitches essentially do not change their character if one transposes them to another level. If this hypothesis is exact, it has to be supposed that melodic or harmonic intervals, successions or aggregates of sounds can be transposed to any interval without being modified. This hypothesis is posed particularly in a theory that concentrates on the relationships between pitches and says nothing precise about sounds themselves. It becomes obvious that this is not entirely convincing when one examines its ultimate consequences. The principle of transposition is on the evidence limited by the sonic space itself and the modified conditions of the act of listening in the extremely high and extremely low registers. It appears to be problematic to presuppose, in the case of a transposition in the extreme of a succession of sounds or a chord, that they are not affected, and that which is evident in the case of the transposition of large intervals also applies, when one listens attentively, to the smaller ones. Musical thought that follows the traditional paths abstracts all of this by considering isolated notes to be indifferently transposable and the transposed position of part of a scale or a chord to be entirely equivalent to its point of origin. This kind of approach has come increasingly unstuck in the light of certain crucial aspects of the evolution of music in the twentieth century. (In traditional classical music, these aspects only appeared very rarely, such as in the rules for the notation of small intervals –thirds, for example – in the lower registers, or in the music of Berlioz, where different timpani sounds are superimposed, producing in the lower register and in narrow intervals a complex sonic picture which the notes written down in the score and their traditional harmonic classification fails to reflect.) In the twentieth century, the limits of musical thought of this nature became apparent in musical practices that adopted its procedures. Thus, the difficulty of transposing sonic gestures into other registers without losing their identity is felt above all when pitch is not clearly definable; in other words, when it concerns noise. Luigi Russolo tried to overcome this difficulty in his noise music by constructing instruments which allowed for the transposition of noise (on a scale of quarter tones). He based this on the questionable principle that even within complex noises a predominant pitch remains discernable, and that it was possible to make it out even after transposition. However, this conception was not able to meet the demands of the new noise compositions (in that it remained attached to the fiction of a noise keyboard, and therefore to traditional musical thought, even though it was able to prefigure more modern technical variants, such as tape recorders with variable play-back speed or samplers). These futurist attempts at composition with noise, developed in the second decade of the century, furnished, from the moment of their conception, the material for many controversies. Even composers engaged in coherent research were forced to find other approaches, occupying themselves less with instrumental

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innovation than with attempts effectively and profoundly to modify compositional thought, at the price of holding on to traditional instruments. Edgard Varèse, whose experimental works were inspired by the theories of Ferruccio Busoni, most often (with the exception of Ionisation) stuck to the instruments of the traditional orchestra, and, in spite of a number of significant contributions to the emancipation of noise, never renounced fixed pitch. Nevertheless, he came up with important solutions to the development of continuous music (for example by writing down glissandi of sirens or heavily differentiated spectra for sounds and sustained noises), by freeing himself from established scales; these propositions were further developed by Xenakis in his structures of glissandi produced technically or instrumentally. This music demands (even when it still works with clearly fixed pitch, as in the string glissandi in Metastasis, and, even more clearly, the complex electronic glissandi of Diamorphoses) a generalization of harmonic thought, which is able to depart from structures of scales and fixed intervals (even in micro-intervals), or which presupposes fixed vertical structures only in limited instances, for example in very short temporal sections, at the start, at the end or at turning points in a continuous evolution. One encounters efforts of this kind to shed classical thinking on pitch in the 1930s and 1940s in the compositions and theoretical reflections of John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer. Cage radicalized that which was already featured in the works of Varèse (for example in Ionisation), namely a kind of composition with sounds which do not have a fixed pitch. For percussion instruments or sources of experimental sounds (including electroacoustics) the compositional determination of sound material comes down to the indication of the source of the sound, to which eventually are added more precise indications of modes of performance, dynamics or degrees of intensity (sometimes with a more or less vague indication of register); the indication of the unfolding of sound, of duration and, if necessary, of dynamics (of the sound spectrum). This leads to the conception of a work which is characterized above all by a precise temporal organization, but with sonorities which are indeterminate to a greater or lesser degree. This was developed first of all in the instrumental realm, then later by means of technical sources used in live performance (Imaginary Landscape No. 1, Credo in Us, Imaginary Landscape No. 4), and was finally transferred to tape (Imaginary Landscape No. 5, Williams Mix). This musical evolution brings out the need for a theory of harmony based on indeterminate degrees and relationships; a theory which questions traditional thought even more radically than the ‘anarchic harmony’ developed by Cage in his later works, in which, as far as the unfolding of sound is concerned, variability and indeterminacy are essentially confined to the temporal structure (by means of ‘time brackets’); as far as sound material is concerned, he falls back on traditional categories, by creating an antithesis between fixed and indeterminate pitch (the first category is fixed exactly, by means of systems which hark back to serial music or its microtonal derivatives, whereas the second category is only given an approximate value).

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The output for prepared piano is a special case in the musical thought of John Cage. It is above all this link with a traditional instrument, dependent entirely on fixed pitch, which shows the doubt cast on the relationship between notation and spatial realization inherited from the tradition – and, at the same time, the possibility of a standardized theoretical description, particularly of the structure of intervals, of melody and of harmony. In this kind of score, written in the traditional way, only the rhythmic values can still be deciphered by reference to a traditional representation of sounds; the notes written down are entirely or to a large extent fictional, as the corresponding strings have been masked by noise as a result of the preparation; the structure of the keyboard thus no longer guarantees an ordered scale of determined notes. When several keys are struck at the same time, the resulting complex sounds can be of such a different character that they are no longer perceived as different degrees of the same scale, but as individual and heterogeneous sound objects, The invention, sonic realization and musical act of listening are thus placed in a new framework, which plays an important role in live music, and particularly in electroacoustic music produced in the studio. As early as 1948, the year which saw the birth of the musique concrète invented by him, Pierre Schaeffer remarked that the majority of sounds produced artificially do not fit into scales, according to traditional compositional and theoretical classifications, and that it is impossible to transpose them at will, or transform their timbre, without losing their sonic identity. Together with Pierre Henry, he opted for a solution to the problem of indeterminate sounds (according to classical categories) which differed from that of Cage: it is not by means of a score, which allows a margin with regard to sounds in live performances, but by means of studio productions that the composer himself, without the intervention of an interpreter, can determine all the details of the sound (including the spectral definition, the dynamics and the spatial diffusion). This perspective allows a light to be thrown on new aspects, resulting not from the relationship between composition and interpretation, which preserves the traditional division of labour between composer and interpreter (and listener), but from a confrontation with the phenomenology of perceived sounds, which have been captured and transformed by technology. This approach brings to the fore another crucial problem of a generalized theory of harmony, namely the question of harmonic objects or sonic objects which are harmonically linked. Here one has recourse, in order to generalize the traditional distinction between a successive and a simultaneous relationship of sounds, to the opposition between cutting (Schnitt) and pasting (Montage). This generalizes the traditional transformation techniques, for example of motives or chords and their groupings, by attempting to systematize electroacoustic techniques of transformation. To replace the constraints of pre-established rules with individual relationships, resulting on each occasion from the compositional context (which plays an equally important role in twentieth-century experiments with fixed pitch and with pitch constructions obtained by means of generalization), is to take this

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even further in a radical spirit: music of traditional sounds is transformed into autonomous sound art. The evolution of musical thought, of invention and sonic realization in the twentieth century may be described by means of a polarization between, on the one hand, the radicalization of thought within abstract structures (be it by reference to natural harmonics, or tempered harmonics, or both), which generalizes an abstract conception of pitch in order to arrive at a way of thinking about parameters which is abstract and multidimensional, and, on the other hand, a focus on concrete sound, understood as real. This gesture of abstracting real sound, particularly in the realm of harmony, for the first time becomes discernable in the Baroque period, where composers figure the bass by abstracting the register and the intervallic structure of a chord, and, in the case of the doubling of the octave, the number of sounds which it contains, its vertical density, in order to offer the interpreter a degree of freedom, close to improvisation, in the final realization. Once this conception of music based on the figured bass had been abandoned, the details of the realization of a chord (from intervallic structure to instrumentation) came to be controlled with a greater degree of precision, and as a consequence the freedom left to the interpreter was greatly reduced. A theory of music which takes into account this evolution would have to have taken a closer interest in the construction of chords (and perhaps even in the way they are linked together) and would have to have concerned itself with the concrete harmonic characteristics which are perceived. Instead of this, however, an evolution in the exact opposite direction took place, towards the end of the nineteenth century, with Gottfried Weber’s theory of degrees and Hugo Riemann’s theory of functions: an abstraction is made of the sounds and sonic relationships which are genuinely perceived and these are reduced to simple schemes of chords based on the principle of the equivalence of octaves, thus neglecting the individual and concrete particularities in favour of rudimentary harmonic constructions. With this theory, perceptible aggregates are explained either by reference to fundamental chords and variants derived from them (variants in terms of register, actual intervallic structure, doublings and omitted notes), or as derivational chords, which can only be understood in a larger formal context. These two explanations become problematic as soon as one begins to question the traditional harmonic hierarchy, either as a result of the dissolution of conventional linking schemes, or as a result of the emancipation of dissonant chords. Composition as the original realization of pre-existing linking schemes is replaced by composition conceived of as individual invention of sound, which establishes complex and autonomous harmonic polarities. The listener will only perceive them perfectly when they are translated clearly, not just within an abstract harmonic scheme, but also by means of the concrete construction of intervals and instrumentation. This condition is fulfilled when one uses, with a greater degree of precaution, the traditional procedures for a realization in different octaves, thus succeeding in drawing a clear picture for the ear itself of the new harmonic aggregates (there are illustrative examples of this in the works of Ives, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern).

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When this does not happen, a considerable gap opens between the harmonic structure and the coherence of harmonic laws postulated (rightly or wrongly) by traditional theory – for example, when a harmony is conceived of primarily as an aggregate of sounds deriving from several classes of pitch, or as a group of abstract sounds which one cannot really locate in time (not only those in vertical succession, but also their permutations), such as isolated segments (or segments obtained by a process of multiplication) of a series, as found in the works of Pierre Boulez. This radicalization of instrumental thought (which was inherited from the principle of figured bass, but survived into microtonal music) arrives at its limits when one conceives of it as music produced by technical means, which does not allow for the adequate technical realization of the procedures of classical composition on staves. This explains why, even in music which has been constructed a priori, such as electroacoustic serial music (and even ‘new’ instrumental music inspired by it), one may discern a new interest in real sound which has not been alienated by abstract schemes. In the works of Stockhausen, for example, we find this in the mixtures of sound in the first two electroacoustic studies, and later in the perfectly articulated sonic polarities – instrumental, vocal or electronic – the modern equivalents of the fundamental chords of the past, which can be combined, horizontally as well as vertically, with added events, outside function, such as variations of glissando, modifications of pitch or dynamics, and the addition of noise. All this makes it possible, for example in Hymnen, to integrate in a new way known (or possibly reworked) and unknown sounds. A later example of this is found in the polyphonic layers of the Licht cycle, where these sonorities are established within continuous formal processes, for example as glissandi of the different notes in the series. The musical evolution of Stockhausen has always been characterized by new conceptions and the parallel integration of known theoretical elements; it possibly also illustrates the attempt to arrive at a kind of harmony to the second degree, which allows for an equilibrium not just between different and on the face of it incompatible musical materials, but even between different schools of musical thought. The search for lost harmony, which started in the music of the twentieth century when traditional tonality was dissolved, consisted in an attempt to develop antitheses opposed to the tradition, an attempt to extend and integrate, and sometimes (in repetitive or spectral music) to generalize a single aspect. In the realm of harmony one is confronted with a great number of new points of departure, situated between the extremes of an extension (or of a reduction) of traditional tonality and a new universal sound art, which offers alternatives to ancient theoretical conceptions which were quasi-grammatical or -syntactical in nature. The search for lost harmony can in this context perhaps be compared to other phenomena that allow for a re-evaluation of elements which appear to belong to the past. Ives and, after him, John Cage, have shown that music can also renew itself harmonically when the composer opens the windows to let the outside world

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penetrate into his work – for example, by including ragtime at the same time as atonal chords in the strings (as in Central Park in the Dark). But there are other ways, opened up by the unfettered inventiveness of the composer – attempts to find sounds and sound structures which are completely new and which emancipate themselves from what is already there. Bibliography Albersmeier, F.-J. (ed.), Texte zur Theorie des Films (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1979) Boulez, Pierre, Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Geneva: Gonthier, 1963) ——, Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois, 1985) Busoni, Feruccio, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974) Frisius, Rudolf, Untersuchungen über den Akkordbegriff (Göttingen: doctoral dissertation, 1970) ——, ‘Aufgeklärte Musik: Über Theorie und Praxis der seriellen und konkreten Musik’, in Rudolf Stephan (ed.), Musik und Theorie (Mainz: Schott, 1987) ——, Entries: ‘musique concrète’, ‘Radiokunst’, ‘Serielle Musik’, in Musik in Gesellschaft und Gegenwart 2, vols 6 and 8 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996, 1998) —— and de la Motte-Haber, Helga (eds), Musik und Technik (Mainz: Schott, 1996) Hába, Alois, Neue Harmonielehre des diatonischen, chromatischen, Viertel-, Drittel-,Sechstel-, und Zwölftel-Tonsystems (1927), Preface by Rudolf Frisius (Vienna: Universal, 1978) Helmholtz, H. von, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (Braunschweig: Viehweg & Sohn, 1913) Kostelanetz, Richard, John Cage (New York: Praeger, 1970) Russolo, Luigi, L’art des bruits (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1975) Schaeffer, Pierre, À la recherche d’une musique concrète (Paris: Seuil, 1952) ——, Traité des objets musicaux (Paris: Seuil, 1952) Schenker, Heinrich, Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1906) Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963)

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Chapter 4

Against a Theory of Musical (New) Complexity 

Richard Toop

For most of its history, Western art music has fostered notions of complexity, in one form or another – the extravagant alleluias of plainchant and thirteenthcentury Parisian organum offer two early examples. Though it seems reasonable to suggest that any musical work which repeatedly fascinates listeners is, in one way or another, ‘complex’, there have been certain periods (such as the so-called ‘ars subtilior’ of the fourteenth century) where there has been a conscious pursuit of intricacy, particularly in relation to rhythm. Moreover, the various spectacular historical ‘retreats’ from complexity, whether by the Florentine Camerata or by exponents of the style galante, have always led to a gradual restoration of complexity in other guises. The twentieth century has had no shortage of investigations which aimed radically to expand the technical resources available to composers; in terms of rhythm one can cite Ives, Stravinsky and Nancarrow (noting also the role of mechanical instruments), and in terms of pitch not only the Second Viennese School but equally the microtonal explorations of Alois Hába. It follows from this that the emergence since the late 1980s of a group of composers particularly associated, even if only at a journalistic level, with the notion of ‘new complexity’ is, of itself, unremarkable. The term ‘new complexity’ seems to have been coined around 1980 by the English composer Nigel Osborne, in introducing a concert of works by James Dillon and Chris Dench. Presumably, the term was intended ironically, as a counterpoint to the already prevalent catchcry of ‘new simplicity’. Slowly, it caught on, and, whatever its limitations, I would defend it on the same basis that Adorno defended ‘isms’. It didn’t define anything precise, but perhaps it was helpful in locating a certain way of thinking which conceived itself not only in terms of creative strategies, but also as resistance. To this extent, it seems problematic for one to formulate a ‘theory’ which accounts for this music in the same sort of way as the serial music that preceded it. Some attention will be given here to considering why this might be the case.



For Claudine P. and Jules F. Verbal communication from James Dillon.  T.W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997), pp.24ff. 

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One can make the following distinction: serialism can be defined primarily in terms of its technical compositional processes – at any rate, that’s how it was presented in the 1950s, and that remains the case for Stockhausen today. To that extent, one draws on technical criteria to decide whether or not a work can be described meaningfully as ‘serial’. In contrast, ‘complexity’ (including ‘new complexity’) is more profitably assessed in terms of the musical outcome – whether auditive or notational – though a composer’s verbal statements of intent may also provide pointers. The two approaches are not, of themselves, mutually exclusive: many of the algorithms used by ‘complex’ composers have their roots in serialism, and in some instances (such as some aspects of Ferneyhough’s pitch structures) are indistinguishable from them. And there can be covert homages too; although, in terms of aesthetic models, Ferneyhough refers more readily to Schoenberg’s String Quartet No.2 than to any of the twelve-tone works, the series of Moses und Aron does operate as a ‘hidden filter’ in parts of the Carceri d’Invenzione cycle. Nevertheless, to the extent that musical ‘complexity’, new or not, is more a matter of conception and perception than of algorithms that might potentially be fitted into one big system, it might be that any meaningful theory of musical complexity would have an aesthetic or perceptual orientation, rather than a technical one. Pursuing this a little further, serialism implies both a theoretical underlay and an ideology of unification. Back in the 1920s there were already ‘theories of twelvetone music’. Just after the Second World War, René Leibowitz could write a book entitled La musique de douze sons, whose very title assumed, however informally, that all the works he described and analysed revealed aspects of a latently disclosable whole. The theoretical writings of Milton Babbitt, from the mid-1950s onwards, sought to give this ‘whole’ a concrete presence by emphasizing parallels with mathematical theory (primarily that of groups, taking composition as an application of modulo 12 arithmetic). Each new combinatorial or permutational discovery, as revealed and expounded in subsequent decades of articles in journals such as the Journal of Music Theory, was presented as an addition to existing ‘knowledge’. Nothing was recanted or superseded (a consideration which, if one applies Popper’s falsifiability criterion, leads to doubts as to whether such a theory could be regarded as ‘scientific’, in the sense claimed by some of its adherents). In comparison, the theories expounded by Stockhausen in articles such as ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’ or ‘Die Einheit der musikalischen Zeit‘ are informal, and undisguisedly speculative. Instead of building on previous statements, they criticise or refute them. Nevertheless, they clearly have an integrative ideology, even though it arises as much from practice as theory. But there was an early point at 

Brian Ferneyhough’s Collected Writings, ed. J. Boros and R. Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995) include seven references to the Second Quartet, and not more than two to any serial work.  Karlheinz Stockhausen, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), pp. 99–139.  Ibid., pp. 211–21.

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which these too came to an end. With Stockhausen’s ‘Erfindung und Entdeckung’ of 1961, the emphasis has already moved towards practice: instead of charts and tables, and there are excerpts from scores. In fact, from this period onwards, there are no theoretical or even analytical articles for a couple of decades – that is, until Stockhausen became immersed in the Licht cycle, and was convinced, like Schoenberg before him, that his ‘formula’ procedures represented a potentially ‘universal’ method of composition. As far as the ‘new complexity’ is concerned, there are no equivalents, and, almost by definition, there cannot be. I would say that complexity does not accumulate, it proliferates. There are articles by Ferneyhough which say, in effect, ‘this is how I composed such-and-such a work’. There are others, such as ‘The Tactility of Time’, which certainly embrace theoretical perspectives, in the sense that they conceive and debate material in abstract terms, and often indicate potentially fruitful paths of further investigation. There are yet others – perhaps the most important ones – which one could place in the domain of aesthetic theory. But none of them say, or even dream of saying ‘this is the method, the technique of composition one should use in order to compose properly’; nor do the articles by any other composers whom one might be inclined to link with the notion of ‘complexity’. In any case, the historical context of this ‘new complexity’ is different. It has no missionary zeal: it does not seek to ‘ensure the supremacy of German [or any other] music for the next hundred years’ (Schoenberg), or to effect a tabula rasa, to return musical writing to a degree zero (Boulez). In many respects, it is historically rooted: the early works of Ferneyhough have their origins in early Boulez, and to some degree early Stockhausen. That is, they are conceived as the continuation and even resuscitation of an intransigent, purist ‘tradition’ which, though recent, is already being displaced by 1960s pluralism. Going further back, Finnissy and Dench cite Ives as a primary influence, but as practice (and to some degree aesthetics), not as theory. Rather than the utopian optimism of post-war serialism, one senses in the New Complexity an ethos of containable crisis: there are no easy solutions, and the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ are nakedly, perhaps even narcissistically exposed. One can, perhaps, detect a certain fatalistic tendency in this conception of complexity. In terms of both performance and perception, it is well aware that its voyages begin at the limits of possibility, and that its hope of transcendence is fragile. ‘Das Unzulängliche, hier wird’s Ereignis’: well, we’ll see – at least, one has to try.10 ‘Das Unbeschreibliche, hier wird es getan’: same thing.11 Here, Goethe’s lines represent 

Ibid., pp. 222–58. Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, pp. 42–50.  See Richard Toop, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’, in Contact 32 (1988), pp. 5ff. 10 ‘The insufficient is here made to happen’. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 2, Act V, closing lines of the ‘Chorus mysticus’. 11 ‘The indescribable is here accomplished’. Ibid. 

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not so much an aspiration as a wall that one bangs one’s head against until, as one has anticipated, one has to draw back, a little concussed, and start planning the next assault. No wonder that Ferneyhough invokes Walter Benjamin,12 and Barrett uses quotations from Beckett, Celan and Cioran in his scores. The ‘praise of failure’ which was such a prominent feature of early exegeses13 may have receded somewhat during the 1990s, but it remains implicit. In Ferneyhough’s works, one finds reflections of this at every technical level from microscopic detail to the large form, but also in the metaphysical conceptions underlying individual works. The phrase ‘mise-en-abîme’ occurs more than once in his writings:14 a typical formal strategy is to begin with a proposition that seems reasonable, and then to force it into situations of ‘impossibility’, where coherence is not lost, but constantly walks a tightrope over the abyss (the notion of the salto mortale15 is also dear to Ferneyhough). One example of this is the frequent conflict between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ materials: in the first part of Carceri d’Invenzione I, for instance, the tutti interventions threaten to overwhelm the linear cycles which form the ‘principal discourse’. And in the much more recent String Trio, four different types of ‘intervention’ (now labelled as such in the score), which at first appear to be mere punctuations, finish by occupying the formal foreground. It is reasonable to enquire to what extent, and at what stage, if ever, composers associated with ‘new complexity’ were conscious of complexity as an intended facet of their creative work, and whether they attached particular significance to it. With Ferneyhough, certainly, evidence of a consciousness not only of complexity, but also of a ‘complexity ethic’, can already be found in relatively early essays. In 1978, he writes: ‘it seems to me that one of the characteristics of an authentic work consists exactly in this: to recognize the endless continuum of complexity uniting all things.’16 But even earlier evidence is to be found in the prefaces to the scores. In Cassandra’s Dream Song (1970), for example, we find: ‘The choice of notation in this instance was primarily dictated by a desire to define the quality of the final sound by relating it consciously to the degree of complexity present in the score.’ But what holds good for Ferneyhough – whom I am inclined to regard as sui generis, rather than symptomatic of anything – does not necessarily hold for other composers. And it may well be that their view of the concept, or at least of the word, was modified, in a frankly defensive manner, once the phrase ‘new complexity’ became a pervasive journalistic label in the mid-1980s. For example, Finnissy, in 1986, said: ‘It horrifies me that people say [my] music is complex. It isn’t, except in a very superficial detailed kind of way. It’s complex if you accept 12

See Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 246. See ibid., pp. 266ff. (in relation to Lemma-Icon-Epigram). 14 See ibid., p. 296. 15 Ibid., p. 290. 16 Ibid., p. 2. 13

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that human beings are complex, and that all art is complex.’17 And around the same time, Dench said ‘Funnily enough, the notion of complexity came about through much older pieces that were much more skin-deep – pieces that had the flashy surface and nothing underneath’.18 The notational factor can’t be ignored here: if one looks at scores such as those of Ferneyhough, Dench, Dillon and others, it is not surprising if the word ‘complex’ comes to mind. But the score is indeed only a surface, and not a sounding one. Any composer who, gazing proudly at pages swarming with several levels of irrational rhythms, labyrinths of microtonal pitches, and timbre inflections changing each millisecond, prides himself on being ‘where it’s at’, and on ensuring his ‘complexity’, is kidding himself. This doesn’t mean, however, that the outcome of naïve emulation (whose exploration would be a fascinating topic in itself) is always disastrous. I don’t share the view of Heinz-Klaus Metzger, who says that if he were to teach composition, he would make his students spend two years contemplating the commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath’ (Exodus 20:4).19 It’s a nice concetto, but it bears no relation to how musical creativity actually works. The strategy of a transcendental aesthetic is essentially threefold: first one emulates, then one outdoes, and then one tries to outdo oneself. But if the first of these may also involve notation, the second and third involve substance. One notes the reluctance of most of those composers associated with this notion of ‘complexity’ to engage with ‘pure’ forms of electroacoustic music, either avoiding the field altogether, or restricting its use to live processing of instrumental sounds. At first sight this might seem curious, since computer music offers such complete control in the temporal domain, which is perhaps the most obviously problematic aspect of their instrumental scores. But this, perhaps, is to misunderstand an essential aspect of much of their work, namely its physicality. Naturally, there is often an abstractly conceived scheme that determines or at least influences the precise points in time at which events occur or are initiated. But the score does not exist to convey the outcome of the system, as might be the case with some serialist schools, but rather to initiate what Rudolf Frisius refers to as ‘real sound’.20 And it is their conviction, at this point in time, that not only instruments, but above all instrumentalists, are crucial to the production of this real sound. This is not just the product of a sentimental humanitarian creed, expressing horror at mechanization, or of accommodation to current practice. It reflects real experience. The scores prescribe physical actions that often interact with, contradict, rub against one another, and this, just as much as any schematics, is the source of perceived complexity. It is, if you like, the Heroclitean element: both the 17

Richard Toop, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’, p. 5. Ibid. 19 Heinz-Klaus Metzger, ‘Cologne Manifesto 1991’, Eonta 2/2 (1994), p. 22. 20 Rudolf Frisius, ‘In Search of Lost Harmony’, this volume. 18

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compositional ‘force-fields’ (to use Ferneyhough’s phrase) and the sound itself are in constant flux. It would be hard to think of any other group of composers – even the Spectralists – for whom the complexity of sound itself, and the production of sound, was a more central issue The fact that ‘complexity’ has been the source of so much discussion in recent years in fields other than music, notably in economic modelling, but also in various scientific domains, invites one to enquire about possible connections. At this stage, I think the conclusions to be drawn are limited. It is clear that nearly all of these composers have a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity that extends way beyond the arts. It is also clear that many of them use computers not just for notation (Barrett rightly prefers his own exquisite calligraphy) or sound synthesis, but for the modelling of compositional processes. Moreover, to the extent that they seek to develop or extend these resources rather than just using what is available, one could say, at least in an informal sense, that they are involved in the development of complex systems. Let’s take the following fairly standard definition of complex systems as ‘any system which involves a number of elements, arranged in structure(s) which can exist on many scales. These go through processes of change that are not describable by a single rule nor are reducible to only one level of explanation; their levels often include features whose emergence cannot be predicted from their current specifications’. I certainly wouldn’t have any difficulty in applying this definition fairly literally to Ferneyhough’s composition process, and not just in the recent pieces produced at IRCAM using Patchwork, but in the handwritten sketches for pieces written in the late 1980s, long before ‘complexity’ had become a buzzword. However, for all that Ferneyhough sometimes refers to ‘random funneling’,21 scientific and mathematical models do not seem to play any significant role in the public discourse of these composers as they did with the serialists, and do even today with composers such as Ligeti and did, albeit with increasing reticence, in the case of Xenakis. I don’t hear them habitually talking (as some composers do) about chaos theory, fractals and cellular automata. They may well see parallels with their own practice, but they don’t seek to make this into a form of legitimation. For them, those elements which one might be inclined to ascribe to ‘science’, loosely defined, are a matter of pragmatics, not thematics. I’m reminded here of a comment that Mallarmé is supposed to have made to a fellow poet who complained that he couldn’t find the ideas to complete his sonnet. Mallarmé’s unsympathetic reply was (and I paraphrase): ‘Sonnets are made with words, not ideas’. The computer programs, the software development: these are not the goals of the compositions, but tools – perhaps artificially intelligent ones. If one looks at the avowed extra-musical influences on the works of these composers, which are in fact considerable, one finds not only that they come mainly from the other arts, but from many different eras: roughly, from Lucretius to the present day, but without the indifference to almost everything in between that one notes in Xenakis. Though visual artists play a role – Dürer, Brueghel and Piranesi Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 407.

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for Ferneyhough, and Matta for both Ferneyhough and Barrett – philosophy and above all literature form a principal focus: Hölderlin and Rilke for Dillon, Beckett and more recently Celan for Barrett. With Ferneyhough, perhaps predictably, the range is wider, but also somewhat different in character. In no case are we talking about ‘illustration’, unless one takes the whirling clarinet solo at the beginning of Ferneyhough’s Chute d’Icare as a gently ironic depiction of the would-be astronaut’s untimely descent. But whereas with Dillon and Barrett one assumes a close identification with the writers’ Weltanschauung, and an empathic search for epiphanies (a notion which may be the key word in dealing with these composers), with Ferneyhough, outwardly at least, the point at issue is investigation rather than inspiration. This is most evident in the Time and Motion Study series from the 1970s, but is also invoked explicitly elsewhere, whether in relation to alchemy (in Transit), to the emblema of Alciati (in Lemma-Icon-Epigram), or certain geological metaphors for creativity in a poem by A.R. Ammons (Terrain). But the composer’s external, objective statements of intent, while real, also suggest the Cartesian notion of ‘advancing masked’. And behind the mask, perhaps, is not so much the supposed ‘rationality’ of Descartes as the introspective anguish of Walter Benjamin, who may only surface as the explicit reference point for one work by Ferneyhough (Kurze Schatten II), but who seems to me to be the ghost stalking through the whole of what I would call a subterranean epiphany-machine. It may be observed, of course, that virtually all the influences cited above are also, in their own way, complex, whether this is a matter of language, of structure, of multiple points of reference, or of sheer diversity of elements. Perhaps the essential factor to grasp in establishing at least an aesthetics of complexity, if not a theory, would be the relationship between organicity and diversity. The technical basis of this is not, of itself, important: it could be an outgrowth of serial thinking, or of stochastics à la Xenakis, or Ives, or something quite different, such as models from the natural sciences. What is important is the composer’s relationship to musical material, and to notions of process that are evolutionary and dialectical rather than juxtapositional. The case I have sought to make here, however briefly, is that musical complexity is, perhaps, resistant to meaningful theoretical formulation, at least in terms of a global theory of musical materials, and that this may be no bad thing. It follows logically from this to enquire whether the same might not apply to all attempts to establish more or less systematic, inclusive theories in relation to musical procedures which are still a part of current artistic practice. I have no definitive answer to give here, but I incline to a negative view, on pragmatic grounds. That is, I look in vain for twentieth-century instances where such theories seem to indicate anything more than procedural ossification. It seems to me that Unterweisung im Tonsatz was a disaster for Hindemith’s development as a composer. It could be argued, of course, that the disaster had already occurred, and that Unterweisung im Tonsatz simply documents it. But, either way, I would be inclined to postulate a consistent decline in melodic and harmonic invention from the mid-1930s onwards which can be persuasively linked to the restrictive criteria proposed in the book.

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It’s the same thing with Boulez’s Penser la musique aujourd’hui, or, rather, with the largely unstated theoretical considerations that lie beneath the opaque surface. And it’s the same thing, overwhelmingly, with Peter Schat’s ‘tone-clock’, which in my opinion produced one nice piece – Canto general – and then, nothing of more than parochial interest. One could argue a more favourable case for Messiaen’s Technique de mon langage musical; but is that in any real sense a theory, rather than an account of current practice and future possibilities? And is it any coincidence that the aspect that Messiaen covers most systematically, namely pitch modes, is precisely the one that Messiaen was to regard as exhausted just a few years later? This does not imply an aversion on my part to all theoretical utterances concerning music! But it seems to me that, in comparison to scientific theories, contemporary musical theories incline towards closure. For that reason, they seem to me most valuable as a guide to the principles underlying composition in former eras, and would be even more so if they could also highlight what constitutes ‘best practice’. For me, one of the disappointments of most theories relating to older music is that they take ‘best practice’ for granted, relying on examples drawn from the works of ‘masters’. But apart from identifying banal apprentice errors, they don’t distinguish between competence and excellence, except through the relative prestige implicitly conferred by inclusion or omission. In fact, one of the broad problems of music theories is that, on account of their aspirations to universality, they have to be seen to confer legitimacy on methods of composition which mainly produce bad results. (At least, I think this would be true in relation to music produced from the seventeenth century onwards; and even sixty years after Jeppesen’s Palestrina model, there are very few attempts to produce theories of pre-Baroque composition – it’s a great pity.) One has to ask: how plausible is a theory that can only demonstrate that Haydn and Beethoven are superior to Wagenseil and Lanner by absolutely refusing to discuss the latter? Returning to a more contemporary situation: Gottfried Michael Koenig’s dictum, ‘Given the rules, find the music’22 seems appropriate enough to the experimental context in which he uttered it, but I would be reluctant to see it generalized to all compositional practice. Here I would like to pick up on a comment that Célestin Deliège makes.23 He notes that the early serial composers greatly exaggerated the real diversity of materials afforded by the 12 possible 12note series, and I agree with him entirely. But as Morton Feldman once said, where would we be without our illusions?24 When Stockhausen, as a young man, learned from Herbert Eimert about the existence of all-interval series, only a handful of them had been found. So Stockhausen, so he told me, would sit up night after night, trying to find more, just by trial and error. It was very difficult! In fact, 22 G. Koenig, ‘Composition Processes’, cited from J. Tabor (ed.), Otto Laske: Navigating New Musical Horizons (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 25. 23 Célestin Deliège, ‘Atonal Harmony: From Set to Scale’, this volume. 24 ‘Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Heinz-Klaus Metzger in Discussion’, Music before Revolution, 4 LPs (EMI Electrola, IC 16528954/957).

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though he desperately wanted to find such a series for the Nr. 4 Klavierstücke – the sketches clearly document this search – he didn’t manage it, so he had to resort to an all-interval hexachord for the first pieces. Eventually he found one, and it became the basis for Gruppen (as well as a reconceived Klavierstück VII). It is in this light, I think, that one should understand ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’: not really as theory, for all its attempts at a theoretical edifice, but a reflection of the excitement, the speculation, and the practice following a discovery. Perhaps the real death-blow to serialism in its narrow, 12-tone definition, was the systematic exposition of its total resources. Suddenly, everything was there;25 you could no longer discover, only select. The late Franco Evangelisti once described notation as ‘the gravestone of the musical thoughts themselves’.26 I would be inclined to describe theory as the gravestone of musical invention, and since I don’t want to see the music I love, complex or not, buried prematurely, I would invite its creators to beware of theory. But I don’t think I really need to say this to them: they know it already. Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949). Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975). Trans. as: Philosophy of New Music, trans., ed. and with and introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) ——, Ästhetische Theorie (1970). Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970). Trans. as: Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997) Cage, John and Knowles, Alison (eds), Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969) Eimert, Herbert, Grundlagen der musikalischen Reihentechnik (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1964) Ferneyhough, Brian, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998) Metzger, Heinz-Klaus, ‘Cologne Manifesto’, Eonta 2/2 (1994) Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963) Tabor, Jerry (ed.), Otto Laske: Navigating New Musical Horizons (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999) Toop, Richard, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’, Contact 32 (Spring 1988), pp. 4–8 25 See, for example, the tables of all-interval series in Herbert Eimert, Grundlagen der musikalischen Reihentechnik (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1964) pp. 72ff. 26 In John Cage and Alison Knowles (eds), Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969), unpaginated.

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Chapter 5

Heterogeneity: Or, On the Choice of Being Omnivorous Pascal Decroupet

Heterogeneity in music has many aspects. My focus here is on ways in which stylistically diverse materials are incorporated in a range of different types of music. The span of composers and genres discussed here is wide, and includes The Beatles, John Cage, Pierre Henry, Henri Pousseur, Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bernd Alois Zimmerman, progressive rock and ‘world music’. The chapter ends with a consideration of the concept of sampling by comparing Schaeffer’s approach to more recent developments. It is evident that heterogeneity in music has very diverse aspects, the entirety of which cannot be contained in too narrow a framework. Thus it is possible to understand the concept in such a broad way that all significant differences between materials can lead to an analysis of their heterogeneity. Such a view is based on an organicist model which has in fact been of considerable importance for the development of Classical and Romantic music up to the Second Viennese School and the first ventures into serial music. Nevertheless, there is no reason to consider such a model as absolute and immutable, given that other eras and other cultures have developed differing conceptions, where the position of unity is not as preponderant as in what Carl Dahlhaus called – not without irony – ‘proper music’. For, if one sets up this organicist model as a prime example, even a work such as Le Marteau sans maître, with its multiple systems of derivation, each leading to a clearly distinct acoustic result, would have doubt cast upon its suitability, doubt which would fit into the line of development of Berg’s Lulu, where the fundamental power of the basic series dissolves in its different derivations. The same is true for other pieces by Boulez, a composer whom I cite here in recognition of a certain deductive rigour in his recourse to materials previously prepared and already exploited in other works (all these relationships have been recorded in the catalogue of the Boulez archive which Robert Piencikowski has established at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel). Indeed, the collage (let’s not shy away from the term) of material of different origins in the Improvisations sur Mallarmé, for example, is clear testimony to the change of perspective which took place at the end of the 1950s: a series of deductions is, after all, no longer sufficient authorization for a simple correspondence between the structure of the material and the formal structure of the work as a whole. The concept of unity is severely biased, despite the surface not revealing clues of this to the listener. Moreover, in extending

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Boulez’s reflections on noise, as recorded in Penser la musique aujourd’hui, would it not be necessary to enquire about the matter of whether the integration of certain noises within the context of musical instruments (whether by means of percussion instruments or of technological tools of some description) does not also constitute a rupture of the homogeneity of the universe of sound, largely dominated by the organization of pitches, a common denominator which noises do not share? If all these perspectives serve to lead to interesting observations, then the point of view adopted here can be seen less as merely novel, and instead as being rooted in the tradition of reflection on the stylistic heterogeneity at the very heart of original composition itself. I Even if musical reference and musical reverence have always existed side by side, an appreciable change nevertheless occurred from the beginning of the nineteenth century with what Walter Benjamin called the ‘reproducibility of the work of art’, something which also extended to the domain of sound. Perspectives were enhanced, and with them the possibilities for opening musical language to new materials, indeed to new influences, and consequently for devising original musical forms which are more a function of the new means of production than of the sacrosanct tradition. For a long time different keywords had been attached to the notion of heterogeneity, notably the terms ‘quotation’, ‘montage’ and ‘collage’. The form in which music is quoted, when one quotes in music (Adorno’s concept of ‘music about music’ could not be more explicit), self-evident as it may at first seem, is perhaps no less false (or at least not necessarily true) if we attempt to adapt it in the current context of musical production – namely, its more or less synthetic realization in a studio. If, then, in a repertoire piece such as Berio’s Sinfonia, that which is quoted necessarily belongs to the restricted domain of music, it is other musical trends, as much in the experimental sphere as in popular music in the broader sense, which have taken leave of the norms of sound which for most still govern musical perception.



Pierre Boulez, Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Geneva: Gonthier, 1964), pp. 44–5. Walter Benjamin, ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, Gesammelte Schriften, Werkausgabe 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980), pp. 707–739.  See for example Elmar Budde, ‘Zitat, Collage, Montage’, Die Musik der sechziger Jahre (Mainz: Schott, 1972), pp. 26–38; or also Clemens Kühn, Das Zitat in der Musik der Gegemwart – mit Ausblicken auf bildende Kunst und Literatur (Hamburg: K.D. Wagner, 1972), pp. 10–20.  Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976), pp. 166–9. 

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Let us briefly return to some differentiating elements at the heart of ‘sound’ in its most general sense such as proposed by Henri Pousseur a number of decades ago, which have not lost their pertinence, particularly if it is a question of offering a nuanced perception of the boundary between ‘sound’ and ‘noise’. If the respective acoustic definitions distinguish unequivocally between sound and noise according to the degree of periodicity contained in the vibratory wave of the phenomenon in question, the qualitative difference has been subject to a process of historical evolution. Thus, until the beginning of the twentieth century, percussion instruments – with the exception of pitched instruments or those which suggested a specific local colour – were largely excluded from the symphony orchestra. It was with Stravinsky and Varèse that these ‘noise generators’ entered the musical scene in force, thus experiencing a shift from noise (the non-musical) to sound (that which is musically exploitable). With the advent of radiotelephony and equipment suitable for recording and reproducing music, background sound, generally considered to be a disturbance or even acoustic pollution, could suddenly be subjected to creative manipulation, and be integrated into a composition: the sound of a train rumbling became a sound with which the composer could work as with any other recorded sound, vocal or instrumental. Is it necessary to insist upon the differences in what is considered musical between people, and more particularly between social classes and generations? The accordion waltz, ethnic music, contemporary music, techno, and so on – to the listener all these domains are either accepted as music or rejected, and those which are rejected are disqualified as noise. Pousseur thus distinguishes a double intention in every sound phenomenon, combining the action at its source and the strictly sonorous intention of this action. ‘Music’, from this perspective, is the result of a double intention: of the productive action and of the sonorous intention. Mechanical phenomena, for their part, combine an intentional action (for example, moving) and a sound production, which makes greater use of the makeshift (footsteps, motors, etc.). Natural phenomena, finally, are the consequence of a non-intentional action and the sonorous result. (In a combinatory system of these two intentions, it remains to envisage a fourth case, certainly a little paradoxical from the traditional perspective, as it consists of the voluntary production of sound, which, at that moment when the sound is perceptible, depends nonetheless on an involuntary action, thus of the order of a natural phenomenon. The artistic form which matches this constellation is that of sculptures and sound installations in an at least apparently natural situation, the sonorous intention being articulated at the time of the construction of the object, whereas the production of the sound itself actually depends on the intervention of natural phenomena such as wind and rain.) 

Henri Pousseur, Musique, sémantique, société (Tournai: Castermann, 1972), pp. 8–9. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Musicologie générale et sémiologie (Paris: Bourgois, 1987), pp. 71–5. English trans.: Music and Discourse: Towards a Semiology of Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 48–54. 

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Changes in the domain of sound in the course of the second half of the twentieth century shattered the criteria of what constitutes music to such a great extent, and so much more than in all previous periods, that only recourse to a distinction between sound phenomena based on their intentions will suffice as a tool to guide our reflections. If Janequin used voices to evoke the noises of battle and Beethoven instruments for a pastoral atmosphere, a qualitative leap occurs in the twentieth century, for example, between the symphonic poem Pacific 231 by Arthur Honegger and the Étude aux chemins de fer by Pierre Schaeffer: sound simulation on the one hand, integration of concrete, recorded sounds on the other. And for all that concrete music, like electronic music shortly afterwards, was largely decried at its outset, fifty years on we are forced to acknowledge that what Schaeffer initiated (and independently of the aesthetic quarrels which were soon to divide Paris and Cologne) is today alive and kicking, a ‘third era’ of music alongside the vocal and the instrumental according to Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt’s formulation. To treat the question of heterogeneity for the second half of the twentieth century in an original way, whilst learning the lessons of the work of Jean-Paul Olive on the beginning of the century but without following the path opened by Béatrice Ramaut-Chevassus, a degree of focus is necessary that may appear excessive. It is, however, the result of a greater concentration on electronic music as the most legitimate axis of musical invention in the second half of the twentieth century, justified as much by the topicality of the means of production as by that of the contents conveyed. In order to structure my treatment of heterogeneity I should like to distinguish between two levels: on the one hand, there are the means of integrating materials of diverse origins; on the other hand, there is the nature of the elements being integrated. In spite of the use of recording by composers from the end of the 1920s, such as Weill (the radio in Lindbergflug or indeed Angèle’s tango played on a gramophone in Der Zar läßt sich photographieren), Hindemith (compositions presented on record at the festival of contemporary music in Berlin in 1930) or Honegger (Roi David), it is more the instrumental palette that provokes a certain extra-territoriality: the sirens in Varèse, the revolver and the typewriter in Parade by Satie, the black music evoked by means of the percussion ensemble in the Ballet mécanique by Antheil, or the kitchen utensils, newspapers and other domestic implements needed to realize a very elaborate rhythmic part in Cage’s Living Room Music. This extension is most certainly linked to the interest, from the end of the nineteenth century, in oriental music, presented at various world 

Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, ‘Die dritte Epoche. Bemerkungen zur Ästhetik der Elektronenmusik’, Die Reihe 1 (1955), pp. 17–19.  Jean-Paul Olive, Musique et montage. Essai sur le matériau musical au début du XXe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998).  Béatrice Ramaut-Chevassus, Musique et postmodernité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998).

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fairs at the turn of the century,10 as well as the infatuation with all sorts of different percussion instruments which ensued. Recording serves first of all as a means of documentation, and, from this point of view, appreciably modifies musical consciousness and memory, for, by detaching the production and perception of sound both temporally and spatially, it makes the music move into an ‘imaginary museum’ (Malraux),11 in the sense that the physical presence at a given moment in a given place is no longer a prerequisite for the perception of a piece of music, at least at the level of the sound. It was only with the invention of musique concrète by Schaeffer, the first music to make use, at the level of production, of technical and aesthetic tools already proven in the cinema industry, that a real reversal occurred. This move to a productive use of means of recording constitutes one of the most important changes of paradigm in the evolution of twentieth-century music, if not the most important, for it permits interpretative readings of this evolution beyond aesthetic limitations. Moving on to the nature of the elements being integrated, it is this that renders the musical classifications inherited from the nineteenth century most fragile. The kind of musical reverence practised for centuries aims to integrate, generally speaking, older pieces of music of the same genre as the piece of music into which they are being integrated: in Tombeaus and Hommages, pieces written in an old style or reworkings of older texts by composers professing to be members of a ‘neo’ movement, even in most of the musical collages of the 1960s, the stylistic break is above all a historical break, or, more precisely, a break recognized by the listeners’ educated historical awareness. The situation changes fundamentally as soon as the sounds being integrated come from a domain which did not previously fall under the narrow definition of music. Here again we must be careful to make distinctions: while recourse to certain exotic or ‘extra-symphonic’ instruments may serve the purpose of illustration (gongs to sound oriental, the ‘Almglocken’ in Mahler’s symphonies, the typewriter in Parade mentioned above, etc.), no such intention may be found in Cage’s use of variable-speed turntables playing recordings at changing speeds in Imaginary Landscape No. 1, or indeed of other electrical sounds in the following pieces in the cycle, including the gramophone playing pre-existing pieces of music in Credo in us, or in Schaeffer collecting everyday sounds for the purpose of his noise concerts. The source of the sound in its own right is of lesser importance than the sound considered in its different acoustic dimensions, and it is even Schaeffer’s intention that the associations attached to recorded sounds should be forgotten. In his first production, the Étude aux chemins de fer, the origin of the sounds can be easily determined; to break the immediate association, and thereby pass from the sonorous to the musical, Schaeffer uses the technique of looping. If the repetitions thus generated appear to correspond to 10 Jonathan Bellman (ed.), The Exotic in Western Music (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1998). 11 See André Malraux, La psychologie de l’art, Vol. 1, La musée imaginaire (Paris: Albert Skira, 1947–50).

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certain phenomena of a moving train (the wheels on the track produce a regular and repetitive rhythm), these are essentially unrelated to the other sounds chosen, like a door being closed by a gust of wind. Between the mechanical phenomenon and the natural ‘agent’ there develops by means of the same principle of looping a dialectic which makes evident the distance separating the artist’s hand from the sound phenomenon captured in its raw form. If the broadening of what is considered musical by means of percussion instruments and recordings is testimony to a certain musical searching, then the integration of jazz and rock into contemporary music, as well as the reverse situation (i.e. the symphonic side of jazz, and collaboration between rock groups and symphony orchestras or ethnic musicians or jazz improvisers), is synonymous with the transgression of established genres, perhaps creating a new one, which has been given the fashionable name of ‘cross-over’. II At the end of the 1950s, Bernd Alois Zimmermann based his idea of musical pluralism – which at the surface level is manifested in a stylistic plurality of materials – on a new concept of musical reality.12 The predominant aspect of the latter is, more precisely, a new reality of musical perception, disconnected from the time and place of the sound performance. In the same way as the radio (then still the central medium) superimposes different fluxes of reality on its different waves, the listener, by his action towards the radio set, makes the diversity of these realities merge into one single unit: the receiver becomes, in the fullest sense of the term, the instrument of the receiver. The particularity of this model experience of the new reality of music rests in juxtaposition; even just a small amount of radio interference superimposed on the whole suggests a continuity, indeed a reality at several levels. When Zimmermann passes from the observation about the social conditions of musical perception to its own creation, the art of music – the art of writing in its polyphonic aspect – comes into its own again: it thus combines the stylistic diversity of the radiophonic experience with the superimposition of the different narrative threads in James Joyce’s ‘stream of consciousness’.13 Thus, with the exception of the Musique pour les soupers du roi Ubu – where it is precisely the abrupt conjunction of the quoted fragments, and therefore the sudden cuts that give rise to the force of the discourse – borrowing from other compositions or musical styles generally takes place against a background which prolongs the situation stated just previously in the course of the work, indeed by the simultaneous accumulation of quotations, in such a way that the incursion of 12 Bernd Alois Zimmermann, ‘Vom Handwerk des Komponisten’, Intervall und Zeit (Mainz: Schott, 1974), p. 35. 13 Bernd Alois Zimmermann, ‘J.M.R. Lenz und neue Aspekte der Oper: Libretto, Vorwand oder Anlass’, Theater und Zeit 8 (1961), p. 153.

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connoted realities does not result in a black hole of musical energy (the innocuous pleasure of recognition suspending momentarily our attention directed towards the treatment). Zimmermann does not attempt to establish a univocal message to the listener; on the contrary, he endeavours to create, by means of disturbances in perception (symbolized by the superimposition of different situations), a situation that gives rise to active and interrogative perception. One of the most significant examples in this respect is the second scene of act II of the opera Die Soldaten, composed in different stages between 1958 and 1964. This scene, which dates from the first large stage of the composition of the work, interrupted by the cancellation of the performance planned for 1960, is the first of many ‘simultaneous scenes’ (Simultanszenen), the dramatic form which also characterizes the two big scenes in act IV. The simultaneous presence on stage of many fragments of the story leads, in the momentary perception, to a certain vagueness of time on stage, a vagueness which is more the result of overdetermination (several scenes with precise timings combine in the perception of the listener) than of any lack of importance of these scenes to the discursive logic. In the above-mentioned scene in act II, Zimmermann has scene iii, act II played at the same time as scene ii, act III of Lenz’s original piece, of which it is the logical consequence, and which therefore follows it chronologically (the letter written in the first scene in Lille is received and read at Armentières in the second); moreover, it anticipates (independently of the suppression of the end of the main action, in which Marie, the female protagonist, and Desportes, the officer trying to seduce her, are joined by other characters) the unique intervention of Marie’s grandmother, who, in Lenz’s version concludes act II with a little threeverse song. Zimmermann therefore accentuates the causal links between the threads of the story, and notably the relationship between the present scene, and two different points in the future, these being the reading of the letter and the sight of the grandmother against the background of the amorous banter; the latter was preceded by the writing of the letter (which has therefore not yet been sent), and it also signifies – a connection explicit in the text sung by the grandmother – the beginning of Marie’s fall. The force of logical cohesion causes any discomfort at the rupturing of the temporal unit to disappear. Zimmermann clarifies the interpretation of the situation in terms of temporal relationships by the superimposition of dodecaphonic language, which has characterized the work until this point, and a Bach chorale harmonization, prepared by a number of melodic turns inducing the tonality. And the poem sung by the grandmother becomes more and more removed from the spatio-temporal reality of the action, as it slides towards the domain of eternal truths, such as contained in fables and tales. And when the future fall of Marie and the tears which from now on will roll down her cheeks are in question, Zimmermann signifies the perpetual return of such situations by quoting the choral Ich bins, ich sollte büßen from the St Matthew Passion. The function of heterogeneity in this case is therefore twofold: on the one hand, at the level of content, the quotation functions as a parable, by referring via another

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story of suffering (the Passion of Christ) to a more general grief (use of this chorale in funeral services); on the other hand, by removing the grandmother from the here and now of the seduction scene, the quotation clarifies the different temporal levels in play: two levels of experienced reality, but superimposed because of the primacy of the causal relations over the chronological development, the third an atemporal reality in the sense of a presence without limits – the eternity to which the music quoted also alludes, the religious connotations of which are evident even to the listener unable to identify the harmonization or the original text. At the beginning of the 1960s, Henri Pousseur undertook, together with Michel Butor, the conception and realization of the ‘variable fantasia in operatic style’, Votre Faust, the production of which has up until now been attempted three times, none of them very convincing (Milan 1969; Gelsenkirchen 1982; Bonn 1999). Responding to the appeal made by Butor in his article ‘La musique, l’art realiste’,14 Pousseur let his conception of the series develop towards a ‘universal matrix’ (Herman Sabbe),15 able to accommodate the most diverse of musical languages by linking them with more or less systematic principles of transformation. Without Pousseur ever having explicitly stated this relationship, there is a surprising parallel with technology developed at the Siemens studio in Munich at the beginning of the 1960s, where Pousseur worked for an extended period of time, by means of which a certain series of commands recorded on perforated tape could drive different combinations of electronic musical instruments or identical ensembles differently parametrized by another command sent by the perforated tape reader.16 It was Pousseur’s ambition to bring together idioms hitherto considered to be irreconcilable: it was clearly a case of breaking with the taboos practised during the formative years of serial music by the very generation to which Pousseur himself belonged, and of which he had been one of the foremost figures. The result was a multitude of alternative references to existing languages or works, this diversity being distributed throughout the work according to criteria which were both serial and dramatic, the variable fantasia being well and truly intended for the stage. If, in the ‘Prologue dans le ciel’, the elements of cross-reference are somehow concealed (on two levels, in fact, both for the constructed, nonmotivic, dodecaphonic series and for a longer-term content, on to which harmonic transformations resulting in an interaction between dissonance and consonance

14

Reprinted in Michel Butor, Répertoire II (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1964), pp. 27–41. See, for example, Herman Sabbe, ‘A logic of coherence and an aesthetic of contingency: European versus American “open structure” music’, Journal of New Music Research 16/3 (1987), pp. 177–86. 16 Helmut Klein, ‘Einrichtungen des Siemens-Studios für elektronische Musik’, Bayerischer Rundfunk. Konzerte mit Neuer Musik 13/50 (1962), pp. 26–45; abridged in Siemens Kultur Programm (ed.), Siemens-Studio für elektronsiche Musik (Munich: Siemens, 1994), pp. 19–25. 15

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are grafted and come into play),17 the fairground scenes, with their different stalls, have recourse to recognizable fragments of existing music. This chosen solution is distinctive in the puppet shows in the second act, where whole (or abridged) scenes from operas provide the musical basis – dramatically it is the musical accompaniment to the show being watched by the protagonists at one of the stalls. Since Votre Faust was conceived from the perspective of a work in mobile form, the trajectory of the protagonists in the course of the first act can lead them towards four different shows:18 two backgrounds of ‘real’ opera, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Gluck’s Orpheus, and two more artificial backgrounds, of which the first is a ‘fantastic cavalcade’ through German Romantic music from Mozart to dodecaphony, and the second an English cantata, alternating with a version à la Weill (in a similar way to that in which Brecht’s references to John Gay’s Beggars’ Opera give rise to musical echoes in the score of The Threepenny Opera). However, the journey of the protagonists does not determine only the choice of scene, but also the interpretation of the background music, namely whether this is transmitted through loudspeakers (the orchestration respecting the symphonic orchestration of the originals) or played in ‘ruined’ versions (en ruine) by some of the on-stage musicians. This difference of medium is crucial, for the sound and the action are appropriate to each other: the audience either sees a handful of largely inactive musicians while listening to symphonic music, and can easily imagine that it is a recording, or thinks that the richness of the symphonic texture has been reduced in order to be performable by this ‘salon orchestra’. In addition to this understanding of the adaptation of the body of sound present on the stage there is the understanding that this ‘corrosion’ of the text goes beyond the mere reduction of the instrumental texture, leading to an alteration of the quoted motives, without these ever losing their referential power. Thus the relationship between the original text and the mode of presentation reveals simultaneously the dramatic function and the heterogeneity of the sound material employed. Indeed, the punctuation of the stages of the Passion of Christ which are superimposed on to each puppet show (Faust can only ever be a descent into hell) are always performed on instruments usually absent from classical opera, namely percussion instruments and piano (in the role of keyboard percussion). This separation of media thus reinforces a certain individuality of the components of the mosaic. In the case of Stockhausen, such a clarification of levels marks the development from Prozession to Kurzwellen. Whereas, in the former, the existing music upon 17 Henri Pousseur, ‘L’apothéose de Rameau. Essai sur la question harmonique’, Musiques Nouvelles. Revue d’esthétique 21 (1968), p. 140; Pascal Decroupet, ‘A la recherche de l’harmonie perdue. Regards analytiques sur le “Prologue dans le ciel” de Votre Faust de Henri Pousseur’, Revue belge de musicologie 43 (1989), pp. 87–100. 18 In the reduced version that Pousseur had recorded on vinyl in 1970, the choice is limited to two shows, and it is to be expected among the tragic consequences that this reduction, initially the result of the number of 33rpm sides available, led to a ‘revision’ of the staged work, and that today the author knows only of this truncated version.

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which the artists are called to work by means of systematic transformations are all works by Stockhausen, of which one might recognize some specific trait or other without ever really knowing whether what one is hearing is a quoted fragment or a more or less elaborate transformation, in Kurzwellen, the ‘real’ elements are heard coming from a short-wave receiver, and the transformations are the result of the activity of the instrumentalists present on stage. To bring these two worlds closer together, the interventions of the musicians are amplified and transformed by filters. In Telemusik, a recorded work produced in 1966 while Stockhausen was staying in Japan, such an illumination is not possible, because everything comes from loudspeakers. Nevertheless the metaphor of the short-wave receiver is evident at the sound level, being itself a metaphor of an imaginary journey around the planet with different landings or approaches, which cause musical fragments, identifiable as different from the environment in which they evolve, to emerge from the background of sound (a high-pitched crackling at around 12,000 Hz), even if, because of the different ‘musical culture’ to which they appeal, they are not ‘recognizable’ in the same way as the opera themes in Votre Faust. Stockhausen’s selection, as far as the original pieces with which he chooses to work are concerned, is not an illustration of all the different kinds of music in this world, even if a ‘music of the world’ slant is evident, because the music most strongly implied, such as the classical and romantic repertoire, jazz and commercial pop music, is not included. In Hymnen, this choice is again biased: both the familiarity of the objects present and the opposition between the original sources (often symphonies or chorales) and the electronic work are enhanced. III At the beginning of the 1980s, Pousseur revised Votre Faust in order to derive a supplementary satellite work: La Passion selon Guignol (The Passion according to Punch), based on one of the puppet-show scenes lost in the ‘revision’ of the score. Shortly before, with the Seconde apothéose de Rameau, he had returned to his research of the 1960s by giving his original theoretical formulation, which gave rise to Votre Faust and Couleurs croisées, precisely the ‘Apothéose de Rameau’, a musical counterpart. Whereas, in this Seconde apothéose, the Parnassus of composers quoted is very clearly orientated towards ‘serious’ music, the Passion selon Guignol extends a path opened by the Iles déchaînées, realized in 1980 in collaboration with his son Denis, in which the marriage of conflict between a symphony orchestra, a jazz group and an experimental music ensemble (using, notably, commercial synthesizers) is taken as the theme. The Passion draws on the tradition of the English Punch and Judy puppet show, Elizabethan song and church anthems, and their ruination à la Threepenny Opera; in its composition Pousseur collaborated with the young Brazilian composer Paulo Chagas. To structure the show, Pousseur accentuates the kaleidoscopic side by brief appearances of the beginnings of the other puppet shows; on the one hand, this division demonstrates, albeit in just a few

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fragments, the complementary nature of the four shows in the original score; on the other hand, it sets up more pronounced fissures through which new material can come to be integrated. The direction of these additions extends the axis traced by the two versions of the original show, namely the rereading of Baroque or Classical material through an ‘ethnic’ perspective, while this is also, at the second degree, more of the type of Weill’s forays into jazz, recalling more the models popularized by dance orchestras of the kind that are found in metropolitan bars rather than authentic Afro-American practice. The very principle of the expansion of a musical world by increasingly large concentric circles is the explicit basis of the development of Pousseur’s work from the beginning of the 1960s.19 Thus – and in this respect the collaboration with Chagas is certainly not without importance – the colours of funk and reggae become ever more precise, and culminate in the repetition of a quotation from a song by Bob Marley. Technical processes intervene in a relatively discreet fashion in this composition, even if the vocal quartet, apart from the indispensable amplification, is at times clearly modulated, and if certain instruments characteristic of rock groups are present. The separation of these spheres is achieved by the distribution of the forces on stage, the orchestra, arranged in a horseshoe shape, surrounding the instrumentalists of the rock group, who form a homogeneous whole situated immediately in front of the conductor. What sense can be made of this broadening of perspective? One answer comes from more general considerations regarding an era in which attempts were made to bring the domains of ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ closer together. This happened at the same time that jazz, after an experimental period of emancipation with regard to its roots, rejuvenated itself by means of new dialogues with ethnic musicians, dialogues between cultures in which musicians from the electronic sphere also participated. Fraternization, reconciliation across the generation barrier, an attempt to make different sorts of music accessible to new audiences? With the benefit of hindsight it must be concluded that this was a failure: a failure which nevertheless had an interesting parallel, but in the opposite direction, so to speak.20 The desire to reduce the gulf between creators and audience led a number of artists to incorporate a compartmentalization of musical practices into their artistic endeavours. This was 19

Pousseur, ‘L’apothéose de Rameau’, pp. 144–5. I shall not dwell here on the recurrent phenomenon of classical music ‘adapted for the general public’ (in recent years notably by the tenor Helmut Lotti or the ‘king of the waltz’, André Rieu) or the numerous concerts bringing together stars from the classical stage, singers, indeed whole ensembles with currently popular soloists or groups – to name but a few: Pavarotti and Bono (U2) in Miss Sarajevo, the Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic for the opening of the EXPO in Hanover, or indeed Metallica’s last album, S&M, remarkably watered down by virtue of the group’s association with a symphony orchestra. The formula is common in film music, which is, according to Michel Chion, the privileged intermediary between the general public and the symphony orchestra (Musiques, Médias, Technologies (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), pp. 55–7), or indeed in the productions for the Eurovision Song Contest. 20

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not only the case with so-called serious musicians, but was also true in the same period of rock musicians, who, driven by their concern to break down the frontiers between the music that their middle-class parents listened to and that which they themselves listened to with their friends, attempted to forge links and to fuse different musical genres.21 This earned them almost immediate isolation in the rock world, their music being judged ‘head-music’, whereas the popular tradition of the genre demanded a greater connection to a restrictive conception of ‘dance music’. At the same time, however, certain serious composers were finding reasons to sympathize with this qualified movement within progressive rock, of which one of the paths, called symphonic rock, had classical musicians (ranging from a few instruments to a whole symphony orchestra) perform in rock numbers. One of the origins of this concern to bring the genres of high and low music (French: élevé vs. vulgaire; German: E- vs. U-Musik) closer together dates back to the albums produced by the Beatles after their touring period. With Yellow Submarine and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – their first real studio productions, in the sense that they significantly took advantage of the new possibilities of multi-track recording – musically the Beatles went beyond what was, with the means available at the time, possible in real time; that is to say, in a live concert. Suddenly there appeared a panoply of unusual sounds in the framework of rock and pop, ranging from a quartet of classical Indian instruments (sitar and tablas in ‘Within You, Without You’, by George Harrison, who had been working with Ravi Shankar, whose first records were inundating the Western market at the time), to the hunted animals’ cries at the end of Good Morning.22 It was not long before a tidal wave of rock music appeared systematically looking for new sounds, often in association with classical or jazz musicians. Pink Floyd in their albums of the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, such as Atom Heart Mother, were resolutely committed to this course. The first adaptations of pieces of classical music by rock groups were also born, such as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. At Woodstock Jimi Hendrix reinterpreted the American national anthem by making it ‘suffer’ a distortion which can hold its own against the cutting-up of the German national anthem by Stockhausen. Soft Machine built bridges towards jazz, a tradition to which a certain John Zorn was also to belong, and the list just goes on getting longer.23 In return, the London Symphony Orchestra launched the series ‘Classic Rock’, in which, as a reversal of the situation described above, it was the masterpieces of the rock repertoire which were presented in a classicoromantic transmutation, with distinct touches of Hollywood. 21

Edward Macam, Rocking the Classics. English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (London: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 13. 22 The genesis of this album has been illustrated with the help of the original volumes in the documentary made by Alan Benson, In My Life (Buena Vista International, Inc., 1998). 23 See also the impressive documentation of Patrick Landolt and Ruedi Wyss (eds), Die lachenden Außenseiter. Musiker und Musikerinnen zwischen Jazz, Rock und neuer Musik. Die 80er und 90er Jahre (Zurich: Rotpunktverlag, 1993).

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Serious composers, for their part, tried to cross boundaries by soaking up jazz – a tendency that extended, for example, an older interest in ragtime and LatinAmerican dance music. While it was the Beatles’ decision to have Stockhausen on the sleeve of the Sergeant Pepper album, Zimmermann has an extract from ‘Hey Jude’ alongside passages of jazz played live by one of the groups of free-jazz musicians then active in Cologne in his Requiem für einen jungen Dichter, the whole being mixed with a symphony orchestra (with lower strings only), electronic sounds recorded on tape, and a multitude of vocal material ranging from readings of the constitution to recordings of demonstrations or public declarations. In Zimmermann’s work of the 1960s, elements of jazz became a kind of signature in his music: from Dialogue (where jazz percussion runs alongside quotations from Mozart and Debussy) to Stille und Umkehr and Ekklesiastische Aktion ‘Ich wandte mich um und sah alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne’, Zimmermann sought to guarantee the authenticity of the sonorous result by explicitly indicating the individual jazz musicians who were to play the passages in question. More generally, it must nevertheless be noted that this was a case of what turned out to be a temporary rapprochement of two movements both marginal in the same way, something which can hardly be said to have entailed a massive shift of audience either way between the classical and the popular. IV In ‘world music’, sampling existing recordings has replaced meetings between musicians of different origins simultaneously present in the flesh on stage or in the studio. As everywhere else, the best and the worse also rubbed shoulders here. Indeed, some were more preoccupied with quasi-ethnomusicological concerns than they were with the musical production of the people they were recording. On the other hand, certain producers or groups practised sampling with a purely commercial aim, genuinely exploiting ethnic musicians under the pretence of universal fraternization. If, in the 1960s, the call for peoples to come together could be interpreted against the background of a nascent euphoria of global awareness, current globalization, with its political and economic intrigues, makes decidedly less romantic reading. Symbolic of this fraternization are the omnipresent slogans inviting universal participation in ‘one world’ – part of the motto of both the EXPO in Hanover and of the Love Parade in Berlin, Mecca of the adherents of the techno world. The relationship between sample and heterogeneity poses a fundamental question: that of the ‘recognizability’ of the sample – or, in other words, what it is that makes a quotation a quotation.24 Length is an essential factor for 24 In her theory of quotation in music, Sofia Lissa insisted, from the 1960s onwards, upon the fact that that which is identifiable as foreign cannot function as a quotation (‘Ästhetische Funktionen des musikalischen Zitats’, Die Musikforschung 4 (1966), pp. 364–78).

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determining whether a sample functions as an atomistic irreducible unit (and is thus by definition not recognizable, as it does not refer to its source) or as a genuine quotation. Just as the distinction between noise and sound can, outside the domain of acoustics, change its definition with time, the idea of the sample necessitates historical precision. Let us return to the heroic age of the first works of Schaeffer. The overwhelming verdict pronounced at the time was based on the problem of the anecdote (i.e. the immediate reference to the source of production). Now, when one rereads the pages – practical and theoretical – of the musique concrète log which Schaeffer kept when he was first getting going at the beginning of the year 1948, his fear of anecdote is omnipresent.25 Whether it be the first experiments with noise waves or listening to recordings made at the Gare des Batignolles, where different locomotives served as the sound source, Schaeffer’s conclusion is the same: a way of extracting sounds from reality is urgently needed, in order to annihilate the anecdotal through the purely musical processing carried out on the recorded sounds. The anecdote, according to Schaeffer, is anti-musical, and any incapacity to reduce it renders the whole concrete project absurd. This risk, given particular attention at the time of the preliminary experiments, led Schaeffer to formulate the two fundamental laws of his approach. Firstly, it is through his intervention in the recorded sound, and notably through the choice of a sample, that the composer makes his mark on the sound object, which becomes a musical object more by virtue of the treatment it undergoes than by the choice, aesthetically orientated, of the sound production. Secondly, however, since even a sample (considered in its temporal dimensions in the era of records and closed grooves and not in terms of frequencies of sampling in the digital environment) is not a completely virgin representation of its source, Schaeffer emphasizes identical repetition, something never used by nature, and, what is more, repetition according to an ordered series: the joining of the succession of samples lends the work an autonomous sense beyond the realistic evocation of the recorded sounds. Thus, the Étude aux chemins de fer becomes a study in rhythm, this being heard both at the microscopic level of the articulation internal to a sample, and at the macroscopic level of the grouping of the samples at different levels: the groups of samples, the groups of groups (for example, in the Étude aux chemins de fer, the different perspectives of the train’s interior, presented in a predetermined order, with specific repetition factors), the signals at the level of the overall form, and so on. The position adopted by Schaeffer at the end of the 1940s has many times been re-evaluated at the very heart of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Thus, when Schaeffer wrote his études at the end of the 1950s, the abstraction is appreciably more advanced than it had been ten years previously. The orientation towards more traditional instrumental sources (even if they were primarily 25 Pierre Schaeffer, A la recherche d’une musique concrète (Paris: Seuil, 1952), pp. 11–28.

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percussion sounds) puts the composer in a different context, and removes the temptation, indeed the danger, of curiosity on the part of the listener concerning the original source of the sound. The concentration at the level of articulation that Schaeffer had already tried to bring to the fore in 1948 was instantly more successful. A decade later, in a much reviewed aesthetic and political context, Luc Ferrari developed his concept of ‘anecdotal music’, where the recognition of the source is part of the essence of the approach. This antagonism is has led to a certain terminological confusion concerning that which has, since the 1970s, increasingly been called acousmatic music. In the two serial études Pierre Henry composed in 1951–1952, we find, alongside variable palettes of recorded sounds, a completely remarkable use of certain flaws and particularities inherent in the technique of production itself; he continually oscillates between abstraction and accentuation of the sound source, as even the titles indicate. However, the exceptional route that he chose in 1951–1952 when faced with the kind of realizations that sought to be technically ever more perfect, is a persistent feature of his work. Flaws in performance are like the fingerprint of the performer, the artist’s signature, if one will, and it is not just a matter of chance, for one consistent facet of Henry’s work is the level of continual variation of his pieces in the concert situation. Far removed from the mania of Boulezian revision, Henry in this way incorporates a certain open perspective of form in his work, which is integrally based on the support of the acoustic fixation of the sound. Some of the later versions, which have been preserved on gramophone record (without this in any way implying a definitive performance), therefore breathe the air of different eras. Thus it goes from the integration of beat-boxes and basses to explicit connotations of techno in the newly cut version of the Tenth Symphony. In Psyché Rock, Henry first juxtaposes and then superimposes the electronic world of the end of the 1960s and a rock rhythm section, augmented by interjections from the brass. Whereas in Schaeffer’s Bilude for piano and tape it is the rhythmic dimension that assumes the role of common denominator between a Bach prelude and the different recorded sounds (from prepared piano, to scissors, to liquid being poured into a glass) which come to replace the parts of the original text, in Psyché Rock the electronic sonorities only rarely conform to the rhythmic framework imposed by the rock section. Since a lack of technical ability in the performance can be excluded, a different explanation becomes evident, namely that common to all contemporary music: the lack of relationship between one structure and another, not only with regard to the order of their succession (a problem made topical by research into vagueness in Europe from the mid-1950s) but also with regard to their superimposition. These structures as well as the perception of sound relations became open to unprecedented and unforeseen combinations, and therefore became partly unnecessary, in the sense that other combinations would be equally valid, both from the point of view of the theory of underlying forms and from that of the resultant sound. It is certain that the acceptance of this new and irrefutable fact was partly facilitated by the position adopted by Cage at the beginning of the 1950s: to be precise, at the point at which he opted for a form of

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spatial notation to record the rhythm of his instrumental compositions, reflecting the nascent practice in the work of editing magnetic tape, where the note-values are determined by the length of the tape (in Music of Changes in centimetres/ inches on the stave). Thus polyphony was reconstrued with a different meaning and this original function was found at the antipodes of one of the main points of its previous definition, namely the ability to monitor simultaneously the horizontal and the vertical. At present, polyphony consists of structures simultaneously participating in independent processes of evolution, linked (or not) at a higher level of organization which orders the structures into a hierarchy (which can just as easily be rejected at a fundamental level). The existence at an absolute level of such oppositions of process does not, however, mean in return that anything is possible at any time: the universe in which a composition or a musical practice evolves is always the consequence of a choice, whatever the detailed nature of the criteria presiding over it. Since the beginning of the 1980s an analogous approach has characterized DJs who have abandoned the subordinate role of record-plugger to become genuine composers in real time. Thus we witness – first of all in clubs, thereafter by means of commercial support – the superimposition of, on the one hand, pulsations coming from a beat box and guaranteeing the appearance of dance music, and, on the other hand, everything from ambient tracks of greater or lesser length and a huge variety of recordings documenting non-Western musical practices, to samples directly lifted by scratching, so that sounds from all these sources could undergo transformations by filtering, movement in space, and any other modifications technically available to the mixer. As heterogeneity of material is the basis of this process, it is not surprising that the notion of fusion has become central to any discussion of this music. Two attitudes confront each other in this domain, being distinguished more at the level of their proponents than, generally speaking, that of the resultant sound: on the one hand, musicians of diverse origins living in the West incorporate within their musical practice the traditions linking them to their origins; on the other hand, in parallel with the massive development of tourism, exoticism must be continually varied in order to avoid the rapid erosion of its attractions. And the problem of exoticism is chasing world music in the same way that the reproach of the anecdotal and the associative for a long time closed our ears when faced with the profound innovations of musique concrète. Escaping exoticism nevertheless means that the borrowings not only refer to the sound substrate, but also to a whole complex reality in which music is integrated within its original context. It is this that has been described as a quasi-ethnological approach, and it is precisely an attitude of this kind that prevailed at all the initial world music enterprises in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, it was not long afterwards that, once this first wave of world music had forced its way through the various currents of pop and underground, the disappearance of signification in world music was celebrated in one of the most influential magazines in the field, Melody

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Maker, as major progress in the new tendency towards fusion.26 This analysis strongly resembles the verdict of ‘head music’ passed on certain progressive rock bands that had moved in the direction of ‘concert music’ in the 1970s, while at the same time the first punk bands were making their presence felt in the clubs. The concept of fusion, insofar as the ‘synthesis’ is considered to have succeeded, still implies the disappearance of the strong identities of the primary material, and is therefore a long way from the initial preoccupations of world music. But playing with these materials without a sufficiently precise definition of its identity causes the ‘other’ to decompose into a diffuse mass of exotic touches. In return, globalization brings with it an ever greater fragmentation of the world. Whereas in the 1960s, where the general consciousness was distinguished by a fundamental anti-imperialism, the heterogeneity of the materials included in a given composition served to enhance the respective contributions – peaceful coexistence and so many meetings accentuating the richness of a developing universal consciousness – today the impression of bathing in an ocean of sounds where all sonorities are valid and can be interchanged without causing surprise or disapprobation precludes even the possibility of creating such an enhancement. Letting oneself be carried along by the current is never anything other than a question of choice, just as resistance is also a choice. If there has to be a choice, therefore, it is as well to opt for an existence rich in diverse experiences and to seek actively to prevent the world of ‘anything goes’ levelling our perceptions for lack of critical reflection. In this way one could hope to save the heterogeneity of one of the elements essential to its very definition: difference. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., Philosophie der neuen Musik, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976) Bellman, Jonathan (ed.), The Exotic in Western Music (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1998) Benjamin, Walter, ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, Gesammelte Schriften, Werkausgabe 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980), pp. 707–39 Boulez, Pierre, Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Geneva: Gonthier, 1964) Budde, Elmar, ‘Zitat, Collage, Montage’, in Die Musik der sechsziger Jahre (Mainz: Schott, 1972), pp. 26–38 Butor, Michel, Répertoire II (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1964) Chion, Michel, Musiques, Médias, Technologies (Paris: Flammarion, 1994) 26

After David Hesmondhalgh, ‘International Times: Fusions, Exoticism, and Antiracism in Electronic Dance Music’, in Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and its Others. Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 284.

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Decroupet, Pascal, ‘A la recherche de l’harmonie perdue. Regards analytiques sur le “Prologue dans le ciel” de Votre Faust de Henri Pousseur’, Revue Belge de Musicologie 43 (1989), pp. 87–100 Hesmondhalgh, David, ‘International Times: Fusions, Exoticism, and Antiracism in Electronic Dance Music’, in Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000) Klein, Helmut, ‘Einrichtungen des Siemens-Studios für elektronische Musik’, Bayerischer Rundfunk. Konzerte mit Neuer Musik 13/50 (1962), pp. 26–45; abridged in Siemens Kultur Programm (ed.), Siemens-Studio für elektronsiche Musik (Munich: Siemens, 1994), pp. 19–25 Kühn, Clemens, Das Zitat in der Musik der Gegenwart – mit Ausblicken auf bildende Kunst und Literatur (Hamburg: K.D. Wagner, 1972) Landolt, Patrick, and Wyss, Ruedi (eds), Die lachenden Außenseiter. Musiker und Musikerinnen zwischen Jazz, Rock und neuer Musik. Die 80er und 90er Jahre (Zurich: Rotpunktverlag, 1993) Lissa, Sofia, ‘Ästhetische Funktionen des musikalischen Zitats’, Die Musikforschung 4 (1966), pp. 364–78 Macam, Edward, Rocking the Classics. English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (London: Oxford University Press, 1997) Malraux, André, La psychologie de l’art, Vol. 1, La musée imaginaire (Paris: Albert Skira, 1947–50) Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, Musicologie générale et semiology (Paris: Bourgois, 1987). Trans. as: Music and Discourse: Towards a Semiology of Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) Olive, Jean-Paul, Musique et montage. Essai sur le matériau musical au début du XXe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998) Pousseur, Henri, ‘L’apothéose de Rameau. Essai sur la question harmonique’, Musiques Nouvelles. Revue d’esthétique 21 (1968), pp. 105–72. ——, Musique, sémantique, société (Tournai: Castermann, 1972) Ramaut-Chevassus, Béatrice, Musique et postmodernité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998) Sabbe, Herman, ‘A logic of coherence and an aesthetic of contingency: European versus American “open structure” music’, Journal of New Music Research 16/3 (1987), pp. 177–86 Schaeffer, Pierre, A la recherche d’une musique concrète (Paris: Seuil, 1952) Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz, ‘Die dritte Epoche. Bemerkungen zur Ästhetik der Elektronenmusik’, Die Reihe 1 (1955), pp. 17–19 Zimmermann, Bernd Alois, ‘J.M.R. Lenz und neue Aspekte der Oper: Libretto, Vorwand oder Anlass’, Theater und Zeit 8 (1961), pp. 152–5 ——, ‘Vom Handwerk des Komponisten’, in Intervall und Zeit (Mainz: Schott, 1974)

Chapter 6

Varèse, Serialism and the Acoustic Metaphor Pascal Decroupet

The following analysis of certain aspects of the music of Varèse draws on a number approaches, principal among them the notion of ‘sonic evidence’ (évidence sonore) developed by Boulez at the time when he was formulating the bases of his serial language, and a comparison of certain acoustic observations made by Helmholtz, together with various ideas taken from Varèse’s own writings. The notion of ‘sonic evidence’ is illustrated by examples taken from Webern’s opp. 21 and 31 and then applied to passages from Octandre, Intégrales and Déserts; the transcriptions of acoustic phenomena in the instrumental music of Varèse by selective consideration of parts of Hyperprism, Intégrales and Ecuatorial. Just as Varèse works by means of a constant superimposition of several systems, so my responses to his music will be simultaneously partial and multiple. I For decades now it has been good practice for a young composer to claim to draw his inspiration from Varèse, notably because his music repeatedly provides practical proof that at the heart of a sound complex, acoustic dimensions are inseparable. It shows the consequences for the global phenomenon of modifications effected at the level of an isolated component. At the end of the 1940s in Europe, at a time when composers were becoming aware of the different dimensions – or parameters – of the sound phenomenon as distinct variables to be subjected to serial organization, their artificial separation was, conversely, the precondition for a form of composition aiming to attain a new, vectorial resultant of these liberated factors. Comparing the approach to the parameter of pitch in pieces like Cage’s Music of Changes and Boulez’s Structures I, conclusions can be drawn from two distinct aspects of the understanding of the notion of sonority: Cage is at first more interested in the sound object – complex, one, and indivisible – whereas Boulez tends towards structured sonorities, spread out in time, resulting from an arrangement of pitches and rhythmic organization, each independent of the other. As far as composed sonority is concerned, the exposition of Webern’s Symphony op. 21 is a textbook example: the fixed registration enables a virtuosic polyphonic

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treatment (double canon in contrary motion), and guarantees homogeneity in a centrifugal sound universe. The only note to appear in two different registers is the E: it is the outcome of an initial chain of fourths of low to medium range, and the starting point, an octave lower, of a new chain of fourths which then symmetrically textures the material for the medium-high register (Example 6.1a). The respective occurrences of these Es are emphasized by the simultaneous appearance of A3 – first note of the composition, axis of symmetry of the composite sonority, and the only note not to have been generated by the chains of fourths (unless it could be regarded as being ‘reflected back’ to the centre of the sonority in its capacity as a second common factor of the two chains, of which it is the seventh element respectively). Whereas the simultaneous attacks of several sounds are generally characterized by a difference of timbre or mode of articulation (e.g. in the case where instruments of the same family play), the pairs A3–E4 and E3–A3 are characterized by a homogeneous timbre (the harp). In the rhythmic plan, the progression of the motives is closely linked to the definition of musical space: • •

•

•

•

bar 1: sigh – minim on the horn – sigh; bar 2: minim on the first beat in the horn – minim on the second beat in the harp – crotchet on the fourth beat in the horn; resultant rhythm: short–long– short (this motive is repeated constantly until bar 10, precisely the place where the harp finishes playing its second block of E–A); bars 3–6: pairs of semibreves on the same instrument superimpose themselves on this basic motive, underlining the two-bar divisions; the first horn replies symmetrically in mid-register to the second horn in the lower register; the pairs of notes are G–A and B–B; bars 7–10: the bass clarinet replies to the clarinet (homogeneity of instrumental colour, but reversal of register and grouping of sounds in relation to the horns); since the semibreves are already familiar, there is room for a new event: simultaneous notes on the harp, also stated in a symmetrical, rhythmic fashion, and in an additional dimension – the sound space (l’espace sonore); from bar 11, a first development at the very heart of the exposition appeals to a new resultant rhythmic motive: short–short–long; the combination of the two ‘composite’ motives gives rise to the densest motive of this exposition, namely a sonic event per beat.

This arrangement of phrases moreover corroborates the dodecaphonic organization: the first note of bar 11 is – by virtue of being the common cell – the first note of the second serial form in the first voice of the canon, and therefore the beginning of a new section.  René Leibowitz, Introduction à la musique de douze sons (Paris: L’Arche, 1949), p. 234; Schoenberg and his School (New York: Da Capo Press, orig. 1949; reprint 1979), p. 212.  Pierre Boulez, Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 223.

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In subsequent works, Boulez takes over the concept of sonic object, underlining in his writing more the role played in this line of thought by Cage than that played by Schaeffer, for whom the idea also occupied a central position from the very first attempts to theorize the research he carried out in 1948. Cage, for his part, also includes sonorities spreading out over time. The initial difference between the two points of view is nevertheless made clear through the divergent ways in which these two composers interpret Varèse’s Ionisation. With his concern for ‘liberating sound’, Cage takes his place among the direct descendants of Varèse, whereas Boulez, in 1948, in search of an analogous treatment of pitch-structures and rhythmic-structures, sees in Ionisation only a testimony to Varèse’s weakness, since he ‘evades the problem by evading the whole problem of the technique [l’écriture] itself [read: the organization of pitch] only to devote himself to the rhythm. It is a solution of convenience that solves nothing’. As part of the enterprise of liberating the most diverse range of sounds, and with the aim of appreciably broadening the repertoire of musically useable sounds, the role of pieces for percussion ensemble written in the United States in the 1930s was crucial. This remains the case even if Cage later came to interpret them as being transitional works between music primarily conceived for the piano (signifying a hegemony of pitch determined by equal temperament), and moving towards a music of the future which would accommodate all possible and imaginable sonorities. This broadening of the concept of ‘music’ had repercussions on the respective sound worlds of Varèse and Cage, to be seen in the expressions ‘son organisé’ and ‘organisation of sound’. In the works that followed these compositions for percussion ensemble, Cage turned sometimes to prepared piano, sometimes to electronic instruments – firstly the record-player and radio-receiver, later the tape recorder. Cage devotes himself to pushing to its limit the Varèsian idea of integrating all sounds in a musical composition. Under the impetus of his philosophical convictions, he concludes that mediation between the generalized availability of sound phenomena and their integration in a particular musical composition is impossible: this leads to his renunciation of any concept of combination or ordering of these materials, in other words, of any kind of musical syntax. The sounds he creates with Music of Changes in mind (several reproductions of sketches accompany Schädler’s article of 1990) belong to three distinct families. As Cage puts it: ‘The sounds themselves are single, aggregates (cf. the accord sometimes obtained on a prepared piano when only one key is depressed), or complex situations (constellations) in time (cf. the Chinese characters made with 

Ibid., p. 74. John Cage, Silence (London: Marion Boyars, 1989), p. 5.  Edgard Varèse, Écrits, ed. Louise Hirbour (Paris: Bourgois, 1983), p. 108.  Cage, Silence, p. 3.  Stefan Schädler, ‘Transformationen des Zeitbegriffs in John Cage’s Music of Changes’, Musik-Konzepte Sonderband John Cage II (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1990), pp. 213–36. 

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several strokes)’. According to Cage, these sonorities – he also calls them ‘dense sounds’ – bear no relation to harmony, and are not endowed with directionality of any kind: each entry in the preparatory charts is therefore a piece of musical data without any implication. Despite the similarity of work ‘on the chessboard’, the difference between the tables for Music of Changes and those for Structures I is manifest; later, Cage was to say that Boulez’s concern could be summarized as ‘putting numbers in charts’.10 The most appropriate reading today of Structure Ia, to which Cage alludes here, is that initiated by Robert Piencikowski (1985), moving the emphasis from considerations limited strictly to polyphony towards an interpretation of the harmony resulting from serial operations. Such a perspective extends the explanation given by Boulez of the construction of his serial tables: the ordering of serial forms according to the hierarchy contained in the series itself, rather than the chromatic transpositions used by Schoenberg and which Boulez rejects as mechanical.11 Thus, the end-point of Boulez’s research is likewise sound, understood not as isolated phenomenon but as a polyphonic resultant, which, moreover, reveals certain characteristics of the initial series: ‘under current perspectives, in which the discovery of the series has been the object of attention, the most general object available to a composer’s imagination, the sound figure, transcends the traditional opposition of the notions of vertical and horizontal’.12 On the first page of Structure Ia, only two intervals break through the chromatic veil: towards the beginning of the sequence, a fifth, and at its very end the tritone concluding the series. Now, it is precisely on these two interval classes that Boulez focuses his harmonic attention, in two particular sequences of the movement. Piencikowski has provided the key to such an interpretation on the basis of the first sequence of the second part of the movement (bars 65–72): the characteristics of the series and the organization of the serial forms lead to the tritone on E4 (a ‘polar’ pitch, which appears in the mid-range at the end of the first part – bar 64) becoming evident through the meeting of two rhythmic voices in each of the two pianos on the fifth durational value respectively; thereafter the tritone appears melodically in interrelationships crossing between the two pianos. The fourths in bars 8–10 accumulate around the same E4, and Boulez reveals this harmonic property of the serial givens at the surface in his choice of the number of simultaneous serial forms and their registration in the zone of intersection around E4 (Example 6.1b).



Cage Silence, p. 58. See John Cage in Richard Kostelanetz, John Cage im Gespräch. Zu Musik, Kunst und geistigen Fragen unserer Zeit (Cologne: DuMont, 1989) p. 61. 10 Ibid., 61; cf. Joan Peyser Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (New York: Schirmer, 1976), p. 70. 11 See Pierre Boulez, ‘Eventuellement …’, in Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), pp. 153–4. 12 Ibid., p. 154. 

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Example 6.1. Boulez, Structure 1a: graphs (a) and (b) (a)

(b)

With the years, and parallel to his own development, Boulez’s stance on Varèse has changed, and, in 1959, Varèse acceded to the Boulezian Parnassus in a commentary accompanying the recordings of Hyperprism, Octandre and Intégrales in the series of records edited under the label of the Domaine musical. This new stage is seen in the adoption into this framework of a vocabulary that Boulez had in the course of the 1950s reserved for the most innovative aspects of Webern and Debussy: thus it was a matter of ‘projection of complexes of timbres and registers’, ‘differentiation and immediate ordering into a hierarchy of relations [in aggregates of two to four pitches]: acoustic EVIDENCE’ and ‘“thinking form”, according to the lesson of the late Debussy’.13 The ‘acoustic evidence’ (évidence acoustique) that Boulez finds in Varèse corresponds to what he had called ‘sonic evidence’ (évidence sonore) around 1951–1952 in his description of the works of Webern and of his own poetics: the ‘generation of the structure on the basis of the material’,14 or an instrumentation that is not accidental but essential – in other words, something that reveals at the surface the underlying structure.15 In ‘Tendances de la musique récente’ (written in 1953, published in 1957), Boulez revisits this second meaning, and concludes by linking it directly to the problem of serial function: ‘orchestration no longer has a solely decorative function, but is itself part of the structure; it is a particularly efficient medium of relationship between and synthesis of pitches, note-values, and volume.’16 Such a comment 13

Pierre Boulez, Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois, 1985), p. 380. Pierre Boulez, ‘Schoenberg est mort’, in Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 271. 15 Boulez, ‘Eventuellement … ’, p. 173. 16 Boulez, Relevés d’apprenti, p. 228. 14

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refers explicitly to those places where, in the works of Varèse, sound objects with different instrumentations and registers are juxtaposed in an abrupt fashion: for these sound objects, which he also calls ‘compact blocks’, Boulez underlines (in contrast to Cage’s objects) the harmonic use, implying ‘conflicts’ by virtue of ‘the use of the relationships in the chromatic scale with the most tension’.17 In bars 19–24 of the first movement of Octandre two elements confront each other: the first consists of a repeated brass chord with an interpolated chord in which the woodwinds predominate; the second is composed of two largely identical sound blocks (only the flute adds two notes, at the minor ninth of the two horn notes respectively), which are testimony to an internal mobility surrounding a fixed chord, on which a melodic motive on the trumpet is superposed. A reduction of this passage to the mere pitch classes (Example 6.2a) shows, on the one hand, differentiation through recourse to register change and, on the other hand, the chromatic composition of the complexes. The acoustic evidence in the case of Varèse shows through in the identical register of the notes A–B–B in bar 20 and in the second aggregate of bar 22: this acoustic identity of the notes common to both blocks – real in the resultant sound – is the sign of an identical function, namely that of a chord in second position at the heart of a structure functioning by means of the balance between two distinct objects. The immobile sound of bar 23 is distinct not only because of rhythmic differences, but also in its instrumentation. It is precisely the two instruments that Varèse leaves out in bar 22 which play an essential role here: the trumpet with its melodic motive, and the trombone with a C4 around which the whole sound is articulated in a symmetrical manner. This symmetry is perfect only if the sound is reduced to pitch classes (Example 6.2b); on the other hand, if we take register into account – that is, the absolute values of the components of the sonority (Example 6.2c), one of the segments contains a permutation which warps the symmetry, without however affecting the general symmetrical framework, given by the extremities of the sound. The other notes of the trumpet part (G5 and F5), on the one hand broaden the chromatic segment in terms of pitch classes, and, on the other hand, return in the following bar (which is the counterpart of the first mobile sonority) in the form of sustained notes. For bars 49–64 of the second movement of Octandre (Example 6.2b), a similar course of reasoning can be followed, with one additional particularity. On the one hand, the two sonorities share four notes (of which three form a chromatic segment) in identical registers. On the other hand, the arrangement of the components reflects this idea of the permutation of notes at two distinct levels: firstly, a division into groups according to the values 6–(3)–1–(2) for sonority A and (1)–3–(2)–6 for sonority B; and, secondly, an articulation of the chromatic segment of six pitches from the first sonority according to the notes common to the second, leading to partial blocks also of 1, 3 and 2 sounds respectively, blocks which are treated separately, in a homogeneous manner, by means of registration. Boulez, Points de repère, p. 380.

17

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Example 6.2. Varèse, Octandre: graphs (a), (b) and (c) (a)

(b)

(c)

Such a clarification of the chromatic structure by means of register can be coupled with evidence in the realm of timbre, either by treatment in homogeneous strata, as in Intégrales (bar 78), or according to rhythmic groupings, as in Hyperprism (bars 45–48). The notion of permutation has acquired particular significance in the work of Stockhausen since 1953, when he spoke of Klangpermutation, the origin of his conception of an integral and therefore electronic serial work, namely Studie I. His general aesthetic intention is to show an unchanging universe in an ever-changing light.18 It is from this a priori starting point that he analyses the Concerto op. 24 by Webern;19 and when, at the end of 1954, he turned to Debussy, he emphasized, by way of a bridge towards Webern, the importance of sound blocks in the first movement of the Second Cantata op. 31 (this essential passage contained in the radio version was omitted from the printed version).20 There Webern limits the 18 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I’, in Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), p. 70. 19 Stockhausen, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, pp. 24–31. 20 See also Boulez, Relevés d’apprenti, p. 197.

Example 6.3. Webern, Cantata No. 2 op. 31: graphs (a) and (b) (a)

(b)

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choice of serial forms to a series and its inversion, beginning with the same starting note; these two forms can further be read backwards in the melodic parts; in the orchestral parts, with few exceptions, only the six-note chords are heard, derived respectively from the four half-forms, pairs of which differ only by a single note: thus, the exchange in one sonority of the notes B and C implies a change of serial form (Example 6.3). At the formal level, the symmetrical distribution of the serial forms in the melodic part is unsettled by a counter-movement in several waves at the level of the spatial projection of the sonorities: the major strategies can be identified as (a) similarity of register between the blocks taken from different halfforms; (b) change of register by chromatic complementarity; and (c) progressively overstepping the range of the blocks. It is by these means that Webern concretely illustrates, on the sound plane, the last phrase sung by the bass soloist: ‘tritt das Bewegende im Klang hervor’ (‘the internal movement is revealed in the sound’). II The techniques of the articulation of sound described above correspond for the greater part to the common strategies of the first half of the twentieth century: concern for complementarity, chromatic harmony, symmetrical distribution and structural instrumentation. What distinguishes Varèse most clearly from his contemporaries is his interest in acoustics and in new instruments. Varèse’s expectations concerning new instruments were as much visions based, explicitly or otherwise, on his reading of the major work of Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen. Thus, for example, he wrote in his article ‘Nouveaux instruments et nouvelle musique’: the new musical device that I envisage will be capable of producing sounds at any frequency, and will extend the limits of both the highest and the lowest registers, which in turn will give rise to new organizations of vertical resultants: chords, their construction, their voicing – in other words their oxygenation. Not only will the harmonic possibilities be revealed in all their splendour, but the use of certain interferences created by the partials will be a considerable contribution. We can expect to be able to use the radical imaginings of lower resultants and differential and additional sounds. An entirely new extravaganza of sounds!21

These ideas correspond closely to points touched upon by Helmholtz in the second part of his treatise: there, under the title ‘Störungen des Zusammenklangs’ (‘Interferences in consonance’), he groups certain phenomena which would have attracted Varèse’s interest, for these are precisely combination sounds, interferences, or even low sounds or the lowest sounds of all. Varèse knew that, in order to exploit such enrichments of timbre, he would need specific equipment, Varèse, Écrits, p. 92.

21

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just as Helmholtz would have had to construct himself an ad hoc instrument, combining different polyphonic sirens, in order to see his research through. This was, for Varèse, the first obstacle – one of a purely material order. The second obstacle, of a more aesthetic order, lay in the very nature of the phenomena described by Helmholtz. Thus, for differential sounds, for example, he comes to the conclusion that: ‘The series [of differential sounds] are interrupted as soon as the last order fails to produce any new notes. As a general rule, this leads to the generation of the complete harmonic series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. right down to the generating fundamentals.’22 If one attempts to make these phenomena audible by means of instrumental writing, nothing but an increase in the density of the same chord in the bass register would be obtained. Varèse, a composer fascinated by older composers such as Debussy, Busoni and Richard Strauss, and at a time when the latter was considered, even more than Schoenberg, to be the modern composer par excellence, probably saw no gain in such a thickening of triadic structures. It must therefore be asked whether Varèse’s knowledge of Helmholtz served to provide a screen on to which he projected a somewhat negative image. Would he not rather, in pursuing his aim of writing resolutely modern, and therefore atonal, music, have attempted to apply certain fundamental ideas of Helmholtz to a foreign context? The absence of the indispensable means of production led him to imagine a form of concrete metaphoric composition; namely, an instrumental transcription of acoustic phenomena, considered in a rigorous, stylistic light. The principles of distortion which follow open up a network of stylistic conditions and compositional choices. At the beginning of Hyperprism (Example 6.4), the tenor trombone and the horns alternate with a repeated C4, varied by dynamic changes, glissandi or flutter-tonguing. Beyond the great variety of percussion instruments, only one other phenomenon appears: a D2 in the bass trombone shortly after the first glissando F4–C4 in the tenor trombone. The first order differential note of the interval F4–C4, considered as a natural major third, is a C2: the stylistic intervention thus consists of a chromatic alteration of the differential note with respect to the generating interval, as well as in its relatively independent rhythmic treatment. If, however, we take the notation chosen by Varèse strictly at face value – and if, therefore, F4–C4 is not an enharmonic major third, but simply an interval of four semitones in equal temperament – the differential sound changes, coming significantly closer to the D2 written by Varèse (in Hertz: 349.23 – 277.18 = 72.05, which is closest to the value 72.36 which corresponds to an eighth of a tone below D2, which has a frequency of 73.42). Any doubt is from this point onwards permitted! But whatever the right solution may be, there has been, in one way or another, creative intervention on the scientific information given by Helmholtz: the first leaves the acoustic foundation intact, but leads the composer to correct the result with a view to making his musical language stylistically appropriate; the second alters the very foundations of the acoustic theory, while adopting its 22 Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfin­dungen (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1913, 6th edition), p. 257 [trans. MP].

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principles of deduction, which are nonetheless a function of the resonance, and therefore of the natural harmonic series. In the transition to the following passage, in bar 12, a C6 is heard in the flute (with a doubling by means of a transitory low attack – C4 in the trombone) alongside the C transposed up an octave and played by the trumpet (i.e. C5). This C6 sounds for the first time after an ascending motive A3–C4, which can be identified without difficulty as the inversion of the figure F4–C4. Because of the logarithmic nature of our perception of the scale of pitches, such an inversion does not lead, in terms of combination sounds, to a symmetrical counterpart. The musical space created by the three sounds D2–C4–C6 seems to indicate that Varèse was more keen to take advantage of symmetrical distribution than to remain captive to a single acoustic metaphor. There is, however, another explanation for the C6, precisely in terms of combination sounds: the additional sound that A3 and C4 generate is a B4 too low by a quarter tone; since Varèse, with the exception of a D2 a quarter tone lower in the penultimate section of the work (bars 68–74), maintains a notation tempered by semitone, we assimilate this additional sound to a B4, which, in combination with the C5 in the trumpet, gives as a final additional sound, the C6 in the flute. This C6 is like a belated consequence of the other trombone glissando (bar 3: B3–C4), chronologically first in relation to the F4–C4, with which it subsequently regularly alternates. When it first occurred, the glissando B3–C4 immediately set off the siren; in the following occurrences, the siren is either delayed or absent, but keeps its rendezvous for the attack of the C6 in bar 12. Example 6.4. Varèse, Hyperprism: graph

At the beginning of Intégrales (Example 6.5), the calculation of the combination sounds on the basis of the complex formed by the three notes played by the clarinet (D5–A5 in short notes, a long note on B5) indicates, as much for the ‘differential’ sounds as for the ‘additional’ ones, the respective registers of the two sound blocks, in the woodwinds and trombones respectively. A double calculation of this kind, of both the sums and the differences, corresponds to the result provided by a ring-modulator in the electronic medium. It is true that certain adjustments are necessary to make the musical text fit the acoustic idea; since, however, all these ‘corrections’ result in a web of complex yet coherent relations, it is difficult to reject the principle itself as pure speculation. In the lower register, the range A2–F4 is shrunk symmetrically to C3–C4, whereas, in the high register, F6–A6 is extended to E6–B6. The A5, which is not taken into account here,

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assumes essentially a function of chromatic friction in the sonority with respect to the held note in the clarinet (B5); on the other hand, the woodwinds’ block is a transposition up a semitone of the ensemble of the initial figure, the chromatic complementarity of the passage as a whole (the nine notes of the segment A–E) assure it additional coherence of another order. These tranformations generate a vertical chain of minor ninths, linking the two sound objects and the initial figure: C3–C4–D5–E6. The significance of such relations of minor ninths is, at the end of this section, in bars 25–28, underlined in the extremes of register, in the flutes and trombones respectively. Moreover, the highest note in the piccolo, G7, is in a chromatically ascending relationship with the lowest sound in the double bass trombone, A1. The extreme registers thus form a metaphorical continuum (a transfer of the idea of chromatic modulus to real sound space), an idea close to that which Wyschnegradsky called the ‘cyclicity’ of sound space.23 Example 6.5. Varèse, Intégrales: graph

The second acoustic phenomenon in which Varèse shows deep interest is that of interferences and beats. In Helmholtz we read: ‘As soon as the relationships defined by consonance are no longer respected, beats occur, that is to say that entire sonorities, or isolated components, or indeed combination sounds of these sonorities either mutually reinforce each other, or cancel each other out. The sonorities do not, therefore, continue simultaneously without interference in the perception, but rather check their respective regular development.’24 Thus, the beats give rise to dynamic variations at the heart of a sonority, and their origin can be found in less than perfect intonation. In the orchestral introduction to Ecuatorial, Varèse gives this phenomenon two different readings: in bars 28–29, the ondes martenot oscillates sound F7 against F7, two notes whose dynamic evolution is completely independent; in bars 15–18, one component (metaphorically speaking, a partial) of a four-note chord played by the trumpets and ondes Martenot, and whose dynamic evolution is a decrescendo, comes out of this global envelope by means of a new increase in intensity, before the whole sonority disappears into silence. The composition of this sonority in terms of pitch classes provides an explanation of this state of affairs: of the notes A–B–B–F, 23 Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ‘Ultrachromatisme et espaces non octaviants’, La revue musicale (1972), p. 101. 24 Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfin­dungen, p. 335 [trans. MP].

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it is precisely the last that does not belong to the chromatic set: this ‘foreign body’ is recognizable by its autonomous dynamic. Another acoustic metaphor facilitates an interpretation of the role of the resonant percussion at the beginning of Intégrales. The high-pitched instruments reinforce the last three entries of the block of woodwinds; the gong twice reinforces the block of brass; the tam-tam and chinese cymbal reinforce the entries of the trumpet when it takes up the solo part; tam-tam and gong prepare for the low-pitched complexes. The complex sounds of the percussion instruments are therefore assimilated to the sound complexes in the instrumental groups, a similar procedure to that which Boulez25 – from whom this terminology is borrowed – hoped for in 1953, by constructing, in his article ‘Tendances de la musique récente’, the historical lineage ‘percussion instruments – prepared piano – frequency multiplication (multiplication sonore)’ (i.e. Varèse–Cage–Boulez), and of which he gave a sonic illustration of stunning clarity on the final page of Le Marteau sans maître. In bars 174–190 of the final movement, Boulez alternates – in terms of the serial organization – cells taken from the basic series grouped according to variable densities, and blocks obtained by frequency multiplication. The boundaries between these different kinds of structures are indicated by changes of pedal point at the fermatas above bar-lines (the last over a silence). Now, Boulez had devised frequency multiplication in order to create the material for sound complexes: their assimilation to complex sounds is revealed by the presence of tam-tams and low gongs in the bars where the flute spells out, according to the different characteristic variants of the cycle ‘L’artisanat furieux’, such sound blocks. The flute, and later the resonant percussion, interrupt, once each, the course of the finale; on the occasions after that when they return, before the concluding page, the percussion accompanies the arabesques in the flute without interruption. At the end of the work, they ‘analyse’ the serial structure, in the same way as the sound complexes analyse metaphorically the complex sounds. Let us conclude by observing some ‘composed’ sonorities in the work of Varèse: their progressive ‘temporal’ constitution allows us to look inside their ‘extra-temporal’ structure. The most obvious examples are to be found in Déserts, where the graphic presentation, particularly of bars 41–45 and 85–93, with their subdivision into quavers, has certainly contributed to their popularity with the exegetes; moreover, the dynamics there are uncommonly differentiated. If we reduce these respective passages to their ‘composed’ sonorities, the parts of which are successively revealed at the surface, we obtain two dodecaphonic chords of symmetrical structure. In bars 41–45, the chord is made up of two vertical chains of minor ninths a tritone apart; one of the extreme notes of each such chain is reflected symmetrically within the range C2–C7 (Example 6.6a). If the same passage is then approached according to the order of appearance of the components 25 Pierre Boulez and John Cage, Correspondance, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Paris: Bourgois, 1991), p. 47; Eng. trans.: The Boulez–Cage Correspondence, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, trans. and ed. Robert Samuels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 30.

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of the sonority, whilst taking the two predominant harmonic factors into account – minor ninth and tritone – the beginning is surprising: although the framework interval of the triads in the extremes of the high and low registers is a minor ninth, the first interval to sound in each register is the fourth resulting from the reflection of the notes outside the tessitura. Thus, the only interval outside the framework is exposed in a particular manner by negative acoustic clarification. In bars 85–93, two sonorities of four notes each successively appear (bars 85–91 and 91–93). These sonorities are the result of a symmetrical projection with respect to the axis drawn in bars 41–45, namely F4–G4. Their instrumentation is different, accentuated, for the second sonority, by retreating attacks on the piano. In the mid-range, these sonorities are linked by a chain of major sevenths, variants of the minor ninths more common in Varèsian harmony (Example 6.6b). Example 6.6. Varèse, Déserts: graphs (a) and (b) (a)

(b)

Since Ecuatorial, minor ninths and the tritone have been given meaning as alterations of the octave and the fifth. It is on the basis of this tension that the non-octave structures in Varèse’s sonorities must be understood: at the entry of the choir in Ecuatorial, the open fifths repeated octave after octave even make one understand this negative reality which is the basis of the most radical of Varèse’s explorations into the new universe of sound, namely the metaphorical liquidation of dodecaphonic temperament and the octave as an identifying factor. Bibliography Boulez, Pierre, Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966) ——, Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois, 1985) —— and Cage, John, Correspondance, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Paris: Bourgois, 1991); Eng. trans.: The Boulez–Cage Correspondence, ed. Jean-Jacques

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Nattiez, trans. and ed. Robert Samuels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) Cage, John, Silence (London: Marion Boyars, 1989) Helmholtz, Hermann von, Die Lehre von den Tonempfin­dungen (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1913, 6th edition) Kostelanetz, Richard, John Cage (Cologne: DuMont, 1973) ——, John Cage im Gespräch. Zu Musik, Kunst und geistigen Fragen unserer Zeit (Cologne: DuMont, 1989) Leibowitz, René, Introduction à la musique de douze sons (Paris: L’Arche, 1949) ——, Schoenberg and his School (New York: Da Capo Press, reprint 1979; orig. 1949) Peyser, Joan, Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (New York: Schirmer, 1976) Piencikowski, Robert, ‘Nature morte avec guitare’, in Josef Häusler (ed.), Pierre Boulez. Eine Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag am 26. März 1985 (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1985), pp. 82–98 Schädler, Stefan, ‘Transformationen des Zeitbegriffs in John Cage’s Music of Changes’, Musik-Konzepte Sonderband John Cage II (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1990), pp. 185–236 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963) Varèse, Edgard, Écrits, ed. Louise Hirbour (Paris: Bourgois, 1983) Wyschnegradsky, Ivan, ‘Ultrachromatisme et espaces non octaviants’, La revue musicale 290–291 (1972), pp. 71–141

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Chapter 7

‘I Open and Close’?



Richard Toop

It is clear that, for many composers in the second half of the twentieth century, the nature and function of beginnings and endings became a great deal less selfevident than was formerly the case, and nowhere more so than in the works of Brian Ferneyhough. In his music, increasingly, the standard strategies for setting a work in motion are not so much revoked as problematized and expanded: the very idea of beginning a work (as every composer must) is placed under particular, idiosyncratic scrutiny, and potentially becomes an intentionality-related ‘theme’ in its own right. Similarly, though perhaps to a lesser degree, the nature, function and even possibility of ‘endings’ is put in question. To begin with beginnings, and to summarize conventional wisdom: an opening may be tentative (exploratory), hortatory, expository, or it may suddenly open the door on a process already in full flow. However fleetingly, it defines a territory, which might be durable (as witness the Baroque principle of affects), or relative – a thesis in search of (or at least implying) an antithesis, as in much Romantic practice. In the course of the twentieth century, and particularly in the second half of the century where notions of a possible ‘lingua franca’ become increasingly illusory and ultimately absurd, the territory defined by an opening also becomes an emphatic assertion of aesthetic choice: a wilful decision to pursue a particular stylistic path in preference to a multiplicity of other available options. Yet in the mid-1960s, at the time Ferneyhough began his career as a composer, much attention was being given by leading members of the European avant-garde to ‘open’ or ‘variable’ forms, many of which reduced the whole notion of ‘openings’ and ‘endings’ to a near-arbitrary matter of choice. This is a notion to which Ferneyhough never subscribed – or at least, not in such an overtly gratuitous manner. While some works from 1970–1974 included aleatory elements, openings and endings were always ‘protected species’, immune from any significant variation. In Ferneyhough’s earlier pieces there are already various speculations at work which naturally affect the way that works open, but not necessarily in a sense that invites or obliges the listener to perceive them in a special light. In part, they simply reflect a young composer working inexorably but slowly towards a personal vision, via models from previous generations. Thus the Sonatas for String Quartet open with evocations of the Webern Bagatelles of nearly 50 years earlier, even if  The title is that of a text by Samuel Beckett, Cascando, and a string quartet by Richard Barrett; only the question-mark is mine.

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such allusions are ultimately contradicted (or rather, problematized) by an overall duration that greatly exceeds Webern’s entire output for this genre. Similarly, while the athematicism that inaugurates the wind sextet Prometheus, and the compositional process that underlies it, may in fact reflect the young Ferneyhough’s fascination with such Heraclitean dicta as ‘One never steps twice in the same river’, at a more prosaic, purely aural level it might be sufficient to conclude that he had been impressed by Stockhausen’s Zeitmaße (as was also the case). These earlier works tend either to ‘drift into existence’ (as with Epicycle or Transit), or begin with dramatic/rhetorical assertions, as does Firecycle Beta – logically enough, in terms of its cosmological subject matter – or, at a more modest level, Sieben Sterne (1971) and Cassandra’s Dreamsong (1970). The opening of Transit is a classic exemplar of ‘becoming’: the neutral, ‘stateless’ initial chord for the six vocalists is gradually given ‘form’ by their own implementation of rhythmic models, and the still somewhat inchoate outcome is given further profile (one might say legitimation) by the more structured interpolations of three spatially distant timpani players. In concert, where the ensemble is laid out in concentric rings (by analogy with the pseudo-Renaissance alchemical woodcut which is one of the work’s inspirations), one is aware of a paradox here: the perceived (and increasing) coherence of the nearby voices seems to arise as a quasi-arbitrary byproduct of the action of remote forces. In the course of the 1970s, the status of the ‘opening’ becomes a more obvious subject of introspection in parallel with a more obviously ‘investigative’ approach to composition embodied in the Time and Motion Study series. The ‘problematic’ edge given to the opening of Transit by the spatial layout of forces is intensified in some respects in Time and Motion Study II for solo cello and electronics (1976). Here the soloist is not only placed in the midst of the electronic equipment, but is connected to it, almost as a laboratory subject of an experiment which is already under way before his first utterance (the two tape recorders which will gather some of these on loops having been started ten seconds earlier). Not unnaturally, the start of his part is marked: ‘extremely nervous’. The composer writes: ‘The opening section is composed of a lengthy passage in which interlocking fragments of the main and secondary material categories are “analyzed‑out” by recourse to two tape loop delay systems.’ Two things follow from this. The first is that, unlike many post-war modernists, Ferneyhough is very much attached to the traditional dualities of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ materials (in his case, typically more a matter of ‘texture types’ than of motives per se). The second, more directly relevant to the subject of this essay, is that in the context of a piece which Ferneyhough describes as dealing ‘with the manner in which memory sieves, colors and re‑orders while processing information’, the initial material is already the object of compositional analysis, albeit, for a  Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 109.  Ibid., p. 107.

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few seconds, inaudibly so (since the tape playback only becomes audible after 9 or 14 seconds). Resorting reluctantly to overused jargon, one might describe it as ‘double-coded’: it operates both as ‘utterance’ and as data for processing, and while one might argue that this latently true of any opening, its presentation as such here is disconcertingly overt. An extreme example of the expectations invested in even a single sonic event is provided by Ferneyhough’s comments on the opening of Unity Capsule: The first interval is a microtonal glissando, which thus immediately pinpoints the largely non‑tempered pitch material of the piece (the A ¾‑flat is, at one and the same time, part of a glissando which, by implication, sweeps through all microtonal intervals within the specified step, and a gesture produced by embouchure modification precluding exactly tempered pitch definition). This initial figure is, therefore, paradigmatic for the articulative ambitus of the whole.

In addition, considerable symbolic importance is attached (as with Time and Motion Study II) to a preparatory event that precedes the sounding piece itself: ‘A further consideration immediately underlining the complex relationship conjoining pitch, noise and action is the opening, highly demonstrative de‑tuning of the instrument which takes place before a sound is heard, so that the written pitches at that point in no rationally determinable way correspond to those encountered later, and which were, in fact, generated by the same system.’ One might doubt whether single visual or acoustic gestures, however arresting, can bear quite the weight of intention imposed on them here; at least, not from anyone’s view except the composer’s. However, in subsequent works, perhaps beginning with the String Quartet No. 2 (1980), Ferneyhough is at particular pains to arrive at opening ‘statements’ which both open up a distinctive acoustic field, and immediately suggest movements within it. One can see a move towards this aspiration in the second ‘version’ of Funérailles (1977–1980) for seven strings and harp. Here, however, there are particular complications to consider. Funérailles consists of two parts, the first of which is a 1977 completion of material dating back to 1970 (and thus to ‘early Ferneyhough’); the second part is a radically elaborated rereading of the first. In calling the two parts ‘versions’, the composer’s clear intention is to problematize the whole notion of the ‘work’. These two versions, he writes in the preface to the score, ‘can neither be considered as two movements of the same work, nor as two distinct works’. Neither may be played without the other, but nor may they be played directly after one another. This has little impact on one’s perception of the opening of Funérailles I, which one assumes would always be played first, not because the composer insists on it (the score is not entirely specific on this point),  

Ibid., pp. 104ff (emphasis added). Ibid.

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but because it seems aesthetically unproductive to do otherwise. Funérailles II, on the other hand, is heard not so much as a ‘variation’ (or, in Renaissance terms, a ‘parody’) as an enormously enriched ‘other’, allied to its predecessor through the memory that Funérailles I began with a simple held note and crescendo, which in Funérailles II acquires an extraordinary intensity and subtlety that redefines (rightly) one’s expectations of the music to follow. In the case of the String Quartet No. 2, the genre itself appears to have played a decisive role: ‘In contrast to many works of the last decade, in which I undertook an “aesthetic investigation” of several areas of musico‑cultural interaction, the medium of the string quartet has imposed its own rules of play, forcing me to reorientate myself entirely within the boundaries of what might (platitudinously) be termed the “purely musical”.’ The ‘rules’ of the quartet genre are, in part, discursive, and this discourse rests, traditionally, on ‘figures’. Around 1980, Ferneyhough comes to adopts a very particular view of the musical ‘figure’, not as theme or motive (though that possibility is not ruled out), but as ‘a gesture whose component defining features – timbre, pitch contour, dynamic level etc. – display a tendency towards escaping from that specific context in order to become independently signifying radicals, free to recombine, to “solidify” into further gestural forms’. At one level, Ferneyhough is giving a more precise orientation to his old obsession with Heraclitean flux; at another, he is defining a space for musical ‘transformations’. The opening bars of the String Quartet No. 2 not only exemplify this approach, but also embody what becomes a characteristically ‘dialectical’ opening strategy, in which paradox plays no small role. Initially only the first violin is involved, alternating sharply etched ‘figures’ (and subsequently a more mellifluous ‘secondary material’) with bars of ‘silence’. The silence, however, is relative; the figures themselves are so intense that one needs the pause to absorb them, and perhaps imagine their continuation – to that extent the sound projects on into the silence. And while, at the outset, this is not a ‘quartet’, it rapidly and purposefully becomes one, through a process of ‘cell division’: a new instrument enters imperceptibly, momentarily turning its predecessor into a ‘super-instrument’ with eight strings, then detaches bit by bit to gain a separate identity. A comparably equivocal opening is that of the solo piano piece Lemma-IconEpigram (1981). It opens with what might call an ‘Urmotiv’: a four-note motive which, despite its extreme speed of emission, is so ‘generic’ (it belongs to what one might call an expanded family of B–A–C–H motives) that it immediately chisels itself into the listener’s memory. Curiously, Ferneyhough’s attitude to this prima materia is almost dismissive: ‘The piece has to start with some material, but it could have started with others; I simply wrote down a set of notes without thinking about them at all, and said, I will work with these’. I have to say that I 

Ibid, pp. 117ff. Ibid.  Ibid. 

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rather take issue with that statement – the sketches (and the intervallic structure of the motive) don’t suggest that the selection of pitches was at all arbitrary. But in this context, that is a secondary issue. The motive is followed by a rapid sequence of equally brief transformations, each of which takes the motive in a different direction, and the cumulative effect of these (it should be borne in mind that one is only talking here about the first 30 seconds or so of the work), is intentionally dizzying: ‘the whole thing is in a whirlwind of dissolution even before it has been created’. So the opening figure has to operate as the template not so much for a conventional development, in which derived figures constantly reinforce one’s memory of the starting point, as for what Ferneyhough calls ‘a sort of non‑discursive argumentation’. It has to leave an almost ineradicable trace, such that, however radical the subsequent departures may be, it is still invoked in its absence: ‘we are already showing possible parametric expansional techniques, but at the same time, we are demonstrating the actual construction of the original. So at the same time as freeing itself from this space, it is reminding us what the original space was.’ 10 Nevertheless, Ferneyhough’s view of his initial material (if one can take his comments at face value) is still more concerned with its functionality than its innate ‘presence’. If so, this too changes. In 1983 he commented: ‘it is important that the initial sounds of a piece will give the listener that sense of aura, that sense of magnetism, that sense of presence, indefinable in another way, which only a particular sort of aural sensation can achieve. And therefore the beginnings of most of my works have that … or I try to make them have a very clear image.’11 This approach is exemplified in the first two parts of the Carceri d’Invenzione cycle (1981–1986): Superscriptio (1981) for solo piccolo, and Carceri d’Invenzione I (1982) for 16 players. Clearly, the idea of beginning a 100-minute cycle involving about 40 performers with a 4½-minute piccolo solo requires some special pleading. In the influential article Form-Figure-Style (1982), Ferneyhough ends by advocating ‘a species of expressive vitality which, like the architectural fantasies of Piranesi,12 does not content itself with remaining industriously imprisoned within the limits of the individual work.’13 The reference here, naturally, is to the series of engravings that gives the Carceri cycle its name (though with a double meaning: as ‘imaginary dungeons’, but also as ‘dungeons of invention’), and elsewhere, Ferneyhough expresses his admiration for ‘their quality of being capable of throwing their perspectival trajectories across the edge of the page into the world outside’.14 It is this aspect that conditions the opening of Superscriptio 

Ibid., p. 264. Ibid., p. 288. 11 Ibid., p. 273. 12 Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione engravings were shortly to provide the inspiration for a major cycle of works; cf. Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, pp. 186, 408. 13 Ibid., p. 28. 14 Ibid., p. 243. 10

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and, by implication, the series as a whole. In his preface to the score, Ferneyhough comments that ‘the sound of any extremely high or low instrument tends, at least for me, to evoke associations with borders, boundaries and with whatever lies beyond’.15 Here, the piece begins with the innately high instrument already in its highest range, but urging insistently upwards – constantly banging its head against an uncrossable barrier, an ‘unbreakable’ ceiling, seeking to sketch, however transitorily, ‘a trace with no dimensions, representing some ultimate “inside of the outside”, itself never to be captured in sound’.16 As for the opening of Carceri d’Invenzione I, it has to function in one of two ways: either as the commencement of an autonomous piece, or as the second part of the Carceri cycle, following on immediately from Superscriptio. Either way, it delineates extremes in much the same way as the opening of the piccolo piece does, but with at least two important distinctions. First, it charts the lower extremes (bass trombone) as well as the higher ones (piccolo), both being supplemented by the outermost registers of the piano. Second, the occupation of these boundaries is comparatively static; there is no attempt to break outside them. On the contrary, one might easily have the impression that the instruments have just forced an entry from ‘outside’, and are making (thwarted) attempts to break into the enormous ‘middle’ space that lies between them, and that will be spectacularly occupied by the remaining wind and brass a few moments later. ‘If I were just doing it as a dramatic gesture’, says Ferneyhough, ‘I believe that these forces would seem very implausible as entities, whereas by simultaneously figurally interpreting certain gestural units on several levels, through temporal and perceptual space, into the future, I believe I authenticate and validate these particular dramatic gestural devices as – what shall we say? – coherent definitions of lines of force’.17 All this, of course, operates well enough without reference to Superscriptio. But in the context of the whole cycle, additional factors come into play. By the end of the piccolo piece, the full (albeit limited) range of the instrument has been brought into play, even if the final note is, once again, at the very top of the instrument. So the opening of Carceri d’Invenzione I picks up from that last note, while also, by insisting on extremes, ‘wiping out’ the upper middle octaves that Superscriptio had gradually acquired, and thus referring back to the very beginning of the piece, so as to pursue a different course from almost the same point of departure. At the same time, after the initial bars for just three instruments, it finally ‘releases’ the ensemble that has been sitting mute onstage for the previous five minutes, rather like a genie corked up in a bottle. Clearly it would be tedious to examine every Ferneyhough opening since the Carceri d’Invenzione cycle, and to some degree superfluous, since the same basic principles apply. However, it may be instructive briefly to investigate the opening strategies of a later sequence of works for solo instrument and ensemble – La 15

Ibid., p. 134. Ibid. 17 Ibid. 16

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chute d’Icare (1988), Terrain (1992), Allgebrah (1990–1996), and Incipits (1996) – since here the openings are also reflections on the idea of a ‘soloist’, and his or her possible relations to an instrumental collective. Here again, certain extra-musical factors come into play, but only, I think, as a reinforcement of Ferneyhough’s own ‘innate ideas’. Thus, while the whirling solo clarinet part at the beginning of La chute d’Icare may indeed suggest the luckless aviator’s frantic and ignominious descent, one needs to remember that work’s title is taken from a painting by Brueghel in which, notoriously, one has to look hard to find any trace of Icarus, beyond a few ripples, and which the impact of this ‘mythical’ event is, on the face of it, negligible. And so it is (or seems to be) with Ferneyhough’s opening: the clarinet’s virtuosity is barely registered in the placid conduct of the other instruments. Yet in fact it is playing a vital role in shaping the overall harmonic structure, which evolves slowly and belatedly from its flurry of pitches. So what seems incidental is fact fundamental – what is portrayed as non-communication is, in effect, quite the reverse. Ferneyhough has referred to the clarinet in La chute d’Icare as an ‘obbligato’ part, and this reflects the fact that, timbrally, the clarinet is a natural part of the overall ensemble of three winds, piano, percussion and three strings. In Terrain, on the contrary, the solo violin is an emphatic outsider, set in opposition to the octet instrumentation of Varèse’s Octandre, whose only string component is a double-bass. Far from seeking to play down this opposition, the composer pushes it to extremes: the work opens with an extended violin solo, and it is almost two minutes (out of 14) before the rest of the ensemble starts to enter. As if to compensate for this, the single instrument engages in dialogue with itself, not just in terms of consecutive materials, but also, for much of the time, in the projection of two simultaneous layers (perhaps, rather than ‘dialogue’, one should call this stratified monologue). The beginning of Allgebrah for oboe and nine strings again provides a quite different scenario: a commencement in media res whose initial tutti bars are so frantically interwoven (particularly in the parts for oboe and the four violins) that only strategies for at least provisional disentanglement can follow. One might be inclined to ally this to the frantic creative activities of the schizophrenic artist Adolf Wölfli, from whom the work’s title derives, though Ferneyhough portrays it simply as the exposition of three layers of varying degrees of complexity whose shifting relationships will be central to the formal development of the work. As for Incipits, for solo viola, obbligato percussion and six strings, the title itself implies that the idea of beginning(s) is to be placed under the microscope. On the face of it, the situation at the outset is comparable to that of Terrain: the soloist plays for about one and a half minutes before the ensemble starts to enter. But whereas the violin in Terrain momentarily became a ‘pseudo-duo’, here the duo is real: the obbligato percussionist is also present from the start. Whether, or to what degree, this represents ‘dialogue’ is another matter. The two forces involved are flagrantly incommensurate: on the one hand, the viola with all its possibilities of nuance in pitch (extending to eighth-tones!), dynamics and timbre, and on the other, three

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woodblocks of indeterminate pitch, with no means of sustaining duration except tremolos – reviving Lévi-Strauss’s distinction, one might talk of an extreme confrontation of ‘the raw and the cooked’. Turning much more briefly to endings, some summary of general assumptions is again called for. Here, in conventional terms, obvious distinctions might be made between: • • •

palpable ‘closing strategies’ (codas), which might be triumphalist (rare today outside the minimalist repertoire), valedictory, ironic, or something else; what happens in the closing moments, which might be seen as the arbitrary end of a mechanistic process, the logical end of a teleological one, an unexpected last-minute swerve, and so on; and what the listener senses when the activity of the musicians has just come to an end (the ending after the ending).

For Ferneyhough, it seems, works themselves do not ‘finish’ in quite the conventional sense, though clearly there is a point at which the composer ‘finishes’ them, by stopping work on them (and consequently, at which the musicians stop playing). This does not mean that the works are necessarily ‘open-ended’, though in a limited sense this too is the case. For instance, in relation to a relatively early work like Transit, he writes: ‘The work does not set out to recommend any of the world views it reflects upon; as with other works, the ending really rather leaves things coolly open’.18 Yet such an opinion is likely to startle the listener who has just experienced the final, apocalyptic moments of the work (tam-tam and all the rest), and what the composer himself describes as ‘the final, chaotic cycling of the brass and percussion’.19 Similarly, concerning Time and Motion Study II, Ferneyhough comments that ‘As with the other components of the cycle, no definitive conclusions are drawn: the future remains open’.20 But this at least partly reflects the ‘investigative’ agendas underlying many works of the 1970s, and the Time and Motion Study cycle in particular: given a sufficiently rich field of investigation, there are no definitive conclusions, only points at which it seems sensible to call a temporary halt, and reflect before deciding whether or not to proceed further. This seems to imply that, for the listener too, even the most emphatic of conclusions is to be understood in a broader perspective, and that at least two levels of reflection should follow the final sounds. One might compare this to a judicial process where, at the end of evidence being given, one makes an initial assessment per se of the last statements heard, but then assesses them in relation to everything that preceded them. 18

Ibid., p. 326. Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 114. 19

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If this idea of some kind of auditory double-take by the listener immediately after a performance seems unduly fanciful, it gains considerable support from Ferneyhough’s comments on the final part of Lemma-Icon-Epigram. These directly address not only the listener’s possible response to its process of collapse and dissolution – almost capitulation – but also (and in this context, more significantly) the reflective feedback process that might follow in its wake: In Lemma-Icon-Epigram, for instance, you will find a final section which is peculiarly out of proportion, somehow `weak’ when approached from preceding passages. One sort of frame has been suggested, for which this ending is clearly inappropriate, something of a let-down. Whether it is an actual failure, of course, depends almost exclusively on what evidence one has been able to assemble as to the overall focus and ambience of the work up until that point. An aware listener will presumably feel frustrated by the collapse at the end, the inefficient dissipation of accumulated energies: at that time (at the latest immediately after the conclusion of the performance) this frustration will, ideally, feed back into and animate the reflexive phase of aesthetic reception. For that, those remaining energies can still come in useful.21

One might wonder, however, whether such refection is to be left entirely to the listener, or whether the composer might not feel inclined to implant a last-minute (or last-moment) signpost, and indeed there are some such. Admittedly, it is doubtful whether the natural harmonic B at the end of the guitar piece Kurze Schatten II, which the composer describes as ‘a Pyrrhic victory, perhaps, for the defamiliarization principle over the ineluctable encroachment, from panel to panel, of “normal” guitar sonority’22 would ever have much more than symbolic value, and then only for those ‘in the know’. But the quizzical little figure that ends Lemma-Icon-Epigram does indeed seem to say ‘Well, there it is – make up your own mind!’. Innate in such an ending is the perception of fragmentation, and there is no doubt that for Ferneyhough this fragmentation has acquired a significance that is very different to its valedictory aura in Webern, or its iconclastic status (the isolated shards left after the tabula rasa) for the 1950s avant-garde. It is, in fact, a precondition for his own very particular conception of ‘open-endedness’. He writes: ‘I believe very much that fragmentation … can only have a musical expressive significance to the extent that we can postulate at least possible alternative ideal completions that never were’.23 And elsewhere, invoking a much broader perspective: ‘if you can create enough energies in a musical (or any sort 21

Ibid., p. 451. Ibid., p. 152. The piece begins with substantial scordatura. By the end of the piece, all strings except the one on which this final note is played have been restored to the normal tuning. 23 Ibid., p. 267. 22

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of artistic) language, you’re capable (or the language is capable) of doing a salto mortale over the edge of the picture, or over the end – the final double bar line – of a composition, in such a way as to be able actually to modify, to change, to show in a different light the world outside the object itself. And that would be a sort of idealistic answer to the question of what does a work of art mean, and what is it for, what does it do, how does it express?’.24 Bibliography Ferneyhough, Brian, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995)

24

Ibid., p. 290.

Chapter 8

A Period of Confrontation: The Post-Webern Years 

Célestin Deliège

Art can express its radical potential only as art, in its own language and image, which invalidate the ordinary language, the ‘prose du monde’. (Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt) And let us not forget that rarely has a generation of composers had so many lucky opportunities and been born at so favourable a time as the present period: the ‘cities have been razed’ and we can start again from the ground up, without regard for the ruins or relics of a time ‘without taste’. (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Texte)

Introduction My intention here is not to adopt a militant approach. It’s more a question of taking a fresh look at an era remarkable for its musical creativity, and to do so as objectively as possible in the context of a debate that has not yet reached its conclusion, while at the same time attempting to raise critique to a more dialectical level. We need to ask straight away who it is and what it is we are talking about. Who? We are referring to those who have made history since the death of Webern. Of this there can be no doubt. It’s only for the historian that history involves discontinuity; for society it is perfectly continuous, since it cannot accept a void. Yet if we manage to agree on a definition of creativity and the creative act – let’s say that of Rimbaud or Schoenberg, as the production of an event appearing for the first time, where the process is attached to some indispensable innovation – friend and foe alike will know exactly who is being referred to. Approval or suspicion 

This essay was originally written in 1987 and was first published in the French version of this volume in 2001.  Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 103 (italics in original).  Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Zur Situation des Metiers (Klangkomposition)’ (1953), Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), p. 48 [trans. MP].

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only begin when the question is raised as to what the substance of the innovation might be. The history of which we speak should not therefore need re-evaluation. This latter proposition will not, however, be recognized as true by opponents of the historical rupture represented by the 1950s and 1960s. It could well be said that, for them, the outcome is already signed and sealed; if they are not obsessively determined to reduce the problem to something planned beforehand then they can only approach it, of course, via the kind of unsupported claims that apparently require no explanation. How has it come about that they find such meagre resources on which to devote the pursuit of reason? If I begin my contribution in this way, rather than arguing from the outset by invoking Stockhausen and Boulez, who are my principal subjects, it is because, at the very moment I began to write, an old issue of Music & Letters (July 1987) fell into my hands. It contained a critical review of Boulez’s Orientations (the English translation of Points de repère) in which the reviewer was content to see historically ‘a sense of nostalgia for lost causes’. Were these critical comments to prove justified, then 20 years or so of musical creativity, of discoveries and invention, would have to be considered null and void. How, consequently, is one to understand the way in which musical history, having produced a vacuum, has been able to manifest itself more recently, and this being the case, from which source has it been able to derive its nourishment? God alone creates out of nothing, or from chaos! The reviewer’s criticism provides no response whatsoever to this crucial question; it sends us away instead to look at the concert programmes ‘the big London orchestras offer now’ compared to those of the Domaine Musical in the 1950s and 1960s. The observation lacks precision. But were our man to be able, even inside his head, to cite some examples of works to demonstrate what he means, this would still remain an opinion of no consequence. It is difficult to see how the significant musical works that came out of the 1970s or 1980s, just as with the music of other preceding periods, could be unable to offer any immediate points of reference to its antecedents. Of course, from the perspective of empirical, or even romantic, criticism, such a question can no have no meaning at all; 20 years of collapse in music history represent but a brief moment of distraction or delirium, and if there must be a transition with an historical antecedent, it will be discovered in other values, in works from the first half of the century, for example, even if this should entail forgetting that they might have a place of their own in the historical continuum. But whatever might be the case for such an ill-considered attitude, I do not wish 

See Douglas Jarman, Review: ‘Orientations: Collected Writings by Pierre Boulez, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez; and Pierre Boulez: a Symposium, ed. William Glock’, Music & Letters, 68/3 (July 1987), pp. 282–3.  Ibid., p. 283.  Ibid. Douglas Jarman writes: ‘How sad, and how salutary, it is to read the manifestos and the programmes of the Domaine Musical concerts and compare them with the sort of programmes the big London orchestras offer now!’

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to argue here, in the name of the perpetual return of things remembered, that once again ill fate during the creation of works ensures that they be recognized today as important. History probably does not recognize literal repetition, but what is at issue in the present problematic has gone beyond the framework of whether a work should be considered as good or bad, interesting or tedious. Instead, it is a question of evaluating an entire project, the aim of which was nothing less than how to unblock the history of Western music, which, by the early decades of the twentieth century, had reached the critical stage, first of all, of no longer being able to assume the existence of a traditional lingua franca given that a ruptured musical language was the only prospect in view; and, second, of the necessary recognition that Webern had provided the exemplary and incontrovertible model for what an atonal harmonic language could be, by means of serial organization and the chromatic scale. It cannot be stated too strongly to those for whom music is more than just a pleasant décor, and who did not live through the immediate postWebern period, what a time this was for those who wished to compose; the sum of anxiety was oppressive in the presence of the necessity to invent, but how much this was compensated by the enthusiasm provoked when every new discovery seemed to open up new paths and break down walls. The manner in which the efforts of the 1950s are currently naïvely discussed – something we have just seen blithely displayed in the review referred to above – signals a difficult and delicate necessity to employ tools of argument rather different from the traditional material of art criticism: this is, all told, nothing less than the problem of the future of musical civilization, as it was accepted by some musicians at that time when confronted by detractors who had nothing to propose by way of counter-argument. And even today it is difficult to see how 30-year-old composers could devote themselves to models other than those of their immediate predecessors, something that cannot be avoided without recourse to regressive practices or contributions from outside Western music. The fundamental debate is as wide open as that. It could, however, be summarized simply by the mere listing of titles: Stockhausen’s Gruppen, Carré, Kontakte and Hymnen; Berio’s Epiphanie and Chemins I–IV; Boulez’s Pli selon pli and cummings ist der dichter – to cite but a few virtually irrefutable examples produced during the incriminating years. Do they truly represent lost causes? However, I shall not choose this easy path, although it ought to suffice to legitimate that which is at stake, when we must, without further ado, put paid to the poor standard of such a pronunciamento. What the hostile critique of modernism defends is the traditional notion of the masterpiece, a notion that is more a matter of taste than of conceptual thinking. It is not under this heading that I make my challenge and choose my terrain – that is to say, by opposing to it other masterpieces whose quality could be attributed to our own taste. To escape from the circularity of such a commodified debate, we must therefore go further, and defend modernism in the name of what it is, by recognizing as much its aporias as its consistency.

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I shall draw on a text by Valéry, aimed originally at secondary school pupils in 1932, with the object of proposing a particular critical conception of history. The perspicacity of this little article, occasional and deliberately simple in character, is worthy enough to have inspired Paul Ricoeur, and I intend to use it here in order to structure my own ‘plot setting’. Using Valéry’s argument in the present circumstances, I must first of all apologize for the crudity of the scheme I attribute to him, and which does not really allow appreciation of its finer points. Its basis lies in the implacable opposition between the existence of a fact and the evaluation of its importance by the historian. This results in such differences between those whose burden it is to observe the event that the only agreements it is possible to reach are upon objective propositions of the kind: ‘Louis XIV died in 1715.’ Each of the various extensions given to the event ‘express the nature and character of their authors and this always results in an obvious fact, which is the impossibility of separating the observer and that which he has observed, the history and the historian’. The significance accorded to historical facts is therefore dependent upon testimony and leads to a choice of conventions. Since history, as a discipline, has not been able to establish itself as an exact science, the relative point of view to which it gives rise implies that the interpretation of the past is translated for us by a multiplicity of possible consequences. And, as if we had followed the Augustinian path relative to the conception of the modalities of the present, Valéry writes: ‘At each instant, you suppose another instant other than that which follows: in each imaginary present in which you place yourself, you conceive of another future other than that which comes to pass.’10 Thus appears the celebrated ‘IF’ of conjectures, the little conjunction, which ‘grants to history the power of novels and stories.’11 From this ‘suspension’ arises the idea of ‘fate’: ‘the following moment will be that of coronation or the scaffold, that of the artist who will unveil his marble statue …’12 It is here that reality always appears likely to lend itself to a multitude of interpretations: ‘This is why a De Maistre or a Michelet are equally possible’, and why, for us, ‘the eternal present is like a fluttering between symmetrical hypotheses, the one supposing the past, the other suggesting to us a future.’13 Having reached this point of reflection, Valéry tries to be pragmatic. The investigative method he proposes for ‘reading’ history ‘and making use of it’ is for everyone to rely upon the subjectivity of his personal experience by approaching the past from the present. He thereby proposes to his young audience an evaluation  Paul Valéry, ‘Discours de l’histoire’ (1932), Essais quasi politiques, In Variétés, Oeuvres, Vol.1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), pp. 1128–37.  Ibid., p. 1130.  Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 1132. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 1133. 13 Ibid.

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of the 45 years separating the time of his talk from his own time as a student of rhetoric at school.14 Valéry’s conclusion, after a brief examination of the two periods, is the absolute impossibility of all prediction. ‘In 1887 could even the most knowledgeable man, the most profound philosopher, the most calculating politician have dreamed of that which we see today, after forty-five miserable years?’, asks the writer. His response, which he takes great care to underline, is that ‘we walk backwards into the future’.15 We leave Valéry’s discourse, knowing – as we could hardly fail to acknowledge – that the recommended method risks turning out to be insecure, trusting a past situated in the perspective of the longue durée and which no longer encompasses the memory of present witnesses; but the proposal appears convincing to us if we put the decades separating us from events belonging to history to good use in order to rediscover them from the perspective of intimate experience; and, furthermore, if we think of Carl Dahlhaus’s observation16 that, a fortiori, the understanding of art accrues suggestive possibilities over time, which is something that distinguishes it historically from other past events, in that the existence of art works is perpetuated even though the period of their creation has passed. Positioning ourselves in the Augustinian triple present and trusting in the wise philosophy of Valéry, we therefore attempt to penetrate history backwards and, taking our leave from an outcome unknowable in 1950, to re-evaluate this recent past by working towards an outcome that is actualized or dissolved before our very eyes. We can perhaps – but without seeking to foretell – try to conceive the potentialities concealed within that which is actually available to us, although this final point will not constitute the essential object of our consideration. It is anticipated that we shall encounter on the way the ‘little conjunction’, the IF of all imaginary history. We shall have to ascribe this type of encounter to the adversary of modernism (which believes in lost causes and nostalgia), who thereby involves his own – that which has not taken place. But other ‘ifs’, in forms more subtle, or more durable and critical, have insinuated a heavy conditionality into the present of this past, questioning it on its future. We shall also have to encounter these ‘ifs’, which are born of the uncertainties of a history brought back to zero. It will be understood that my favoured terrain will be the initiatives taken by Stockhausen and Boulez, as opposed to their works looked at individually. The substance of my argument in a earlier study was that at this period we did not so much ask: ‘What is Boulez composing? What is Stockhausen composing?’17 The question that preoccupied us instead was: ‘At what stage is Boulez now? At what stage is Stockhausen now?’ In that present, now passed, we thus knew that these two composers were making the musical history that we were living through 14 In 1887 Valéry was a pupil at the lycée in Montpellier. He then went on to study law at the University of Montpellier, graduating in 1892 [note MP]. 15 Ibid., p. 1135 (emphasis in original). 16 Carl Dahlhaus, Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Cologne: Gerig, 1967), Chapter 1. 17 See Célestin Deliège, Invention musicale et idéologies (Paris: Bourgois, 1986).

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and would go on living. And this judgement was not wrong, for whatever one might think of their activities today, what other historical juncture could have led towards a different field of creativity? This history has certainly been a troubled one, even from within the inner sanctum, but whether it is to be read in exaltation or disillusionment, it has been accomplished without any counterpart, without any alternative. The period of convergence The second great reflection upon the organization of post-tonal language during the course of the twentieth century – the first having been that of Schoenberg, 30 years earlier – was due to Olivier Messiaen, perhaps the least controversial composer of our time, thanks to the aura of legitimacy with which he succeeded in surrounding his art. How could a society, even one saturated by the values of materialistic exchange, deny a high credit to an art emphasizing the most traditional spiritual values, values that, perhaps above all else, no longer hold, and thereby tend to become rarefied in the bosom of a lay collectivity, which therefore feels all the more obliged to respect them? Moreover, Messiaen’s craft, always accomplished in broad daylight, yet without ostentation, never ceased to refer to traditions of education and training that had great social credibility. As a composer, however, Messiaen’s mode of behaviour was never conventional or academic; he thus revealed himself often to be audacious, but always remained very wary in crossing the threshold of adventure. He liked, even during the 1940s, to define himself as a rhythmician; and his extensive research into the syntax of durations – concerned with the design of new rhythmical figures or their redistribution in a flexible, supple metre, sometimes in a ‘drawn-out’ tempo, sometimes more precipitous – has always rested upon an unquestionable efficacy. It was Messiaen, nonetheless, who, aiming at a complementary extension of his rhythmic system, in 1949 became carried away by a relationship of interdependence between different parameters of sound which up to then had always been treated compositionally as independent categories. I only return to this celebrated event here in order to underline its historical importance. To come back to Valéry’s distinction, I should say that the term ‘importance’ has here nothing of the excessive about it; it can hardly be doubted that the objective existence of the Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, from the Quatres études de rythme (1949–1950) for piano coincided, for the young musicians of the time, with its importance: an importance far more concerned with – and this was also the view of its composer – the consequences of the step taken than with the intrinsic value of the piece in itself. The somewhat banal fact, to which it is nevertheless worth drawing attention here, is that this is a case of a theoretical proposition formulated as a work which then not only passed beyond the work in question, but also became an authentic theme of research in its own right, and in its turn was drawn upon to create works which would in due course themselves soon be demanding to be revised and

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superseded. The objective fact – in the sense in which an event, to use Valéry’s example, is dated – is the work and the theoretical proposition that it implies, and the importance of the proposition is the result of an historical situation. If Messiaen, from a personal point of view, prioritized research into rhythm, he was not alien to the ways of thinking thrown up by the phenomenon of serialism: it is no accident that the modes of pitch in Mode de valeurs et d’intensités are based upon scales of twelve notes. And it is no less true that it is by virtue of their reflection upon Webernian serialism that Boulez and, two years later, Stockhausen discovered in Messiaen’s proposition the source of an extended conception of serial technique. Boulez immediately translated the theory into Structures I (1952) for two pianos, and the relationship to Messiaen is explicitly attested by his decision to transfer one of Messiaen’s modes of pitch for use as the pitch series of Structure Ia and to incorporate into the series, as Messiaen had done, a scale of durations organized in arithmetical progression, a series of attacks and a group of intensities. With Stockhausen, the same position is confirmed even more explicitly, if that is possible, by the reference to Messiaen and to his fellow student, Karel Goeyvaerts, who was at that time working in the same direction, in combining this research with an analysis of Webern’s Concerto op. 24, in which he discovers, in the mirror games that characterize that piece, a marked tendency towards systematization of the relations between variables.18 Although, to my knowledge, there is no documentary evidence concerning the meetings and conversations between Boulez and Stockhausen during the latter’s spell in Messiaen’s class in Paris, it is nevertheless absolutely certain historically that the meetings were frequent and that the observable correlations in the research of the two composers is in no sense something that can be accounted for exclusively from their reading of Messiaen and Webern, but that it arose from an authentic dialogue. The Parisian period of Stockhausen’s youth is, moreover, the single moment permitting us to speak of a Boulez–Stockhausen conjunction. This conjunction, which manifested itself concretely in Boulez’s Structures I and Polyphonie X (1950–1951) on one hand, and, on the other, Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel (1951), Klavierstücke I–IV (1952–1953), and Kontrapunkte (1953), could not last. The composers’ paths would progressively diverge – although it didn’t get to the point of their no longer being able to shake hands until about 1963 – but whatever the degree of cordiality such gestures might suggest today, the observer can no longer imagine, from their works and options, what might have been the content of that which in politico-diplomatic jargon is called a ‘summit conference’. To tell the truth, from the perspective of a ‘conjunction’ there was no more produced by the Boulez–Stockhausen relationship than could be said to be the case for any other group of artists in the course of the twentieth century, whatever 18 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Weberns Konzert für 9 Instrumente op. 24. Analyse des ersten Satzes’ (1953), Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963), pp. 24–31.

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their disciplines; and allusion is only made here to the distancing between two composers who had taken part for two years in common research – virtually nothing on a larger historical scale – so as not to puzzle the reader who might be expecting on my part the intention of uniting their different points of view. That question is not on the agenda of this chapter. Returning to the works from the period of convergence, what strikes us most from examining them is the parallelism of serial conception: the desire to affirm the equivalence of the horizontal and vertical projection of the material, involving a type of combination in which the diagonal dimension will generate or take advantage of unisons. One can hardly give a better example of this conscious desire than works such as Kreuzspiel and Polyphonie X, in which the visual intersections of the notation generate the aural architecture. Such intersections rest – whether totally or otherwise – upon the group of properties belonging to the sound, thus creating a strictly probabilistic combination. The composers had the merit of immediately realizing the excess of riches resulting from their discovery, and we know that they were not slow to draw their conclusions, each according to his fashion. But it would be wrong, in spite of serious self-critique, to deny that a very profound trace of the research undertaken at that point of convergence has marked both their subsequent paths. Boulez expressed in 1954, with considerable fury,19 what could appear to be a partial disavowal of what he had written in 1952 in his article ‘Eventuellement’;20 but it would still be erroneous only to see criticism or self-criticism in these humorous remarks, however scathing. Boulez’s writings convey above all else the refusal to allow a proposition, even one coming from him, to take a dogmatic turn, and this refusal is always added to new propositions. These theoretical essays must be read, above all, as the expression of a poetic art: it is in this sense that they are interesting, and that they need to be studied one day by placing their polemical aspect, which so far has been regarded as their most striking feature, to one side if we wish to attempt to grasp their central concepts. This is also why I detect in Boulez a type of approach that is essentially Popperian, as I have also noted elsewhere.21 Stockhausen’s refutation of the excesses of complexity has likewise been most rapidly denoted by his practice as composer, although he would never withdraw a work from his catalogue, as Boulez did with Polyphonie X and other works afterwards, no more than he would return to works already completed. For him, it is always the next work that ‘corrects’ its predecessor, if need be. But Stockhausen displays a far more shrewd – albeit perhaps unconscious – form of re-evaluation: he categorizes his works according to subsequent stages of his evolution, even at the risk of somewhat mistaking their status. He has acted in this way in arranging 19

Pierre Boulez, Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), pp. 27–32. Ibid., pp. 147–82. 21 Célestin Deliège, ‘La fin du romantisme’, Entretemps 4 (1987), pp. 40–41. 20

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his first piano pieces into relevant categories of ‘group’ technique.22 This form of retrospective anticipation has been noted by one of the best commentators upon his work, Jonathan Harvey.23 It would, however, be unjust to see in this attitude some form of malice on Stockhausen’s part. The evidence shows that the composer’s experience of discovery was that of an unimaginable state of exaltation. Stockhausen’s sense of the present is combined with paroxysm: the danger it threatens, from this standpoint, would be that discovery and invention should be experienced for their own sake. This mode of behaviour favours the appearance of provisional works. By this I mean those works, such as Mikrophonie I (1964), which display more their origin and underlying character as research than their actual aesthetic outcome; but, in such a case, another work – in this particular case, Momente (1962) – reveals the aesthetic solution which could have been drawn from the initial vision. The critique developed by Stockhausen and Boulez simultaneously with their so-called ‘pointillist’ works (using the term to characterize forms made up of a constellation of points) leads us towards Valéry’s ‘little conjunction’: the enigmatic if which ‘makes us participate in this suspension in the face of uncertainty, wherein consists the sensation of great lives’, at the point when ‘the artist reveals his marble or gives the order for the removal of the arches and props still supporting his edifice’. This kind of self-questioning described by Valéry is that of the person in charge. That quality of the if pertains in the immediate present or in a present projected into the immediate future, but which seals the destiny of the work of art. This is an if which can be that of Cézanne’s celebrated doubt in the face of the work to be made, or that of the decision, already taken, to change direction. The critique put forward by Boulez and Stockhausen, each according to their distinctive modalities, belongs to this category of turning back upon itself. But alternative ways of introducing the ‘little conjunction’ were being expressed at that time and are still being expressed: the if of true nostalgia for that which is completed, and therefore posed in the past tense; the hostile if, of the kind that we discovered at the beginning of this essay, in which the implied question is ‘and what if events had been different?’ This if is always objectively masked by irony and pity because it discharges itself only in vain conjectures or in silence. In parallel with total serialism (irrespective of whether its advent is interpreted as terrifying or salutary from the perspective of any future history) this question has so far received no answer: all things considered, there was no alternative imaginable at that time to Stockhausen’s conception of serialism, save perhaps for the case of Xenakis; but it is unlikely that the nostalgic if would ever have been convinced by this. The same state of mind can find no refuge with Messiaen, who was undisputedly responsible for making the initial effort with total serialism, any more than with Stravinsky, who defended these new compositional developments. 22 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Erfindung und Entdeckung. Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese’ (1961), Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1, p. 232. 23 Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen (London: Faber, 1975), p. 23.

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When Claude Samuel asked Messiaen about the consequences of his research into rhythm amongst the composers of the next generation, the master’s response was completely unambiguous: ‘Pierre Boulez is the one most influenced by my rhythmic research; even so, his approach is different from mine and, above all, he had the intelligence to associate it with the serial procedures of Webern and the system of irrational note-values that, beginning with Chopin, were pursued by Debussy and found one of their best outlets in Varèse and Jolivet.’ And Messiaen continues: ‘I’ll cite next the research into irrational values carried to its extreme by Karlheinz Stockhausen; in his Klavierstücke and his Zeitmaße, irrational values of extreme complexity have made rhythmic headway’.24 It will no doubt be objected that Messiaen’s argument is an argument about technical competence and that it belongs to the kind of militant discourse that justifies all forms of invention in the name of internal artistic necessity. Therein appears a crucial problem, which the composer himself skirts and for which cultural sociologists have often reproached him, but which critical philosophy, as in the case of Adorno, takes into account in defending the creator’s standpoint. As we shall see later, Stockhausen did not totally ignore this aspect, while Boulez seems to have passed over it in silence. I shall return to this point, but without claiming to be able to go beyond it. For the moment, however, there is little choice but for us to underline the powerlessness of the nostalgic if, which accuses composers of pursuing lost causes, but which can only win its own cause by withdrawing from that on which it claims to stake everything. Its complaints hit an impasse – the pipedream of an illusory reversibility of what is towards what was. In other words, it cannot itself reflect its own complaint; its criticism is incapable of exerting itself in reality, owing to the fact that the argument it develops against the composer– creator follows from a criticism passed over in silence, and which it refuses or neglects to address to society. Cage: an interpellation Another call to attention, which was not really formulated as such but nevertheless involved the if in the form of the conditional faced with the most immediate present, goes something like this: If, instead of composing works bending under the weight of information excess, you were to substitute by means of chance processes a total absence of relations between the sounds you put into your work, would this be any the less satisfying? This question merits even more consideration, given that it came from a brother and not an enemy. Cage, who posed it implicitly, had the prestige of the family elder, and his experience was unimpeachable. He admired Satie, but also Webern. The traces of a poor art (art pauvre, or arte povera) to 24 Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasow (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1994), p. 82. Original French edition: Claude Samuel, Entretiens avec Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Belfond, 1967), p. 89.

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be found in his Quartet did not leave one to suppose that that which attracted him most in Satie was the musique d’ameublement. Furthermore, he was quite clear that it was the relative isolation of sounds and the importance of silence that struck him most in Webern. During the 1940s he seemed to have tried to pursue the programme begun by Varèse, paying particular attention to percussion and to noise. His first works for piano, the attention he paid to serial technique, and above all, his invention of the prepared piano, won him the sympathy of the young Europeans. Boulez, most notably, considered him in 1950 to be a confidant, and kept up a sustained correspondence with him, over which musicologists in the twenty-first century will have plenty to quarrel about when they write the history of our time. In the meantime, ‘Le système mis à nu’ (‘The system stripped bare’),25 a significant extract from this correspondence which appeared in Points de repère, shows the extent of the exchange of ideas between the two men on questions of compositional craft and current projects. In this text, Boulez expounds at length to his friend on the latest stages of his research into serial technique which, at that time, he envisaged basing on quarter tones. He speaks of works in progress, among which are Un coup de dés, a composition which unfortunately has remained in the archives. This correspondence was suddenly brought to a halt by Boulez, says Cage: ‘But he rejected outright any acceptance of the idea of chance. That wasn’t a part of his views.’26 From the moment when Cage began to devote his compositions to chance processes and to a completely passive acceptance of the outcome, he had all but lost his interlocutor. Cage’s proposition reveals itself to be singularly ambiguous; it was difficult to attack to the extent to which it claimed to express a religious philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and also because Cage most certainly did not aim to extend his method beyond his own work and his circle of friends, who, besides, did not apply his approach with an equivalent radicalism. In spite of his submission to the outcome of chance, Cage debated the question a great deal, above all when, in his conversations with Daniel Charles, he was pressed on the matter. In terms of his own behaviour, it must be acknowledged that, faithful to his basic philosophy, he abstained from all pejorative judgement upon the work of his European colleagues; and, from the standpoint of composition, one of his most pertinent observations is the distinction that he established between chance and indeterminacy, when he 25

Pierre Boulez, ‘Le système mis à nu’, Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois-Seuil, 1981), pp. 127–40. See Boulez, ‘The System Exposed’, Orientations, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, trans. Martin Cooper (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), pp. 129–42. Boulez’s title in French of this section – originally, of course, a letter to John Cage – refers obliquely to the title of Marcel Duchamp’s famous painting also known as ‘The Large Glass’, The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even (1915–1923), a connection not retained in the English translation by Martin Cooper [note MP]. 26 John Cage, For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 1981), p. 180. See original French edition: Pour les oiseaux (Paris: Éditions Pierre Belfond, 1976), p. 181.

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speaks of aleatoricism, specifying that his conception of the aleatory in his work is definitely that of chance.27 Henceforth, despite an often sustained and intelligent line of argument, it was difficult to find points of entry for objection. I cannot here treat this subject on the scale that it really requires, but, while promising to return to it at another time, I consider that Cage’s defence is vulnerable when he proposes a form of libertarianism which pleads the composer’s non-responsibility, when in fact part of this is offloaded onto the performer, perforce obliged to convey the outcome. Placed in the presence of various notations and graphs, he is compelled to decipher them, to interpret them in both senses of the word, by making choices – that famous word used by composers of our time as an argument of seduction, before truly asking themselves indispensable questions about the meaning and the opportunity such minor choices can assume in the eyes of the executant, and about their qualitative worth in the setting of available alternatives – which in Cage’s case must not, as a matter of principle, be regarded as of any importance, since no structuring intentionality is postulated. By the same token, why did Cage desire a particular intensity of sound?28 Is that not also, however weak, the appearance of a search for a result which can be explained as a compensatory effect in the absence of a qualitative outcome? Cage insists, moreover, on his lack of interest in quality; only quantity concerns him. Heinz-Klaus Metzger has rightly remarked upon the lack of a connection in Cageian propositions between the meticulous score and the acoustic result, but he does not draw the consequences from this remark, any more than from another, no less judicious, in which he hesitates to grasp the significance of the social anticipation that accompanies the Cageian path in a world which only accepts it as something to laugh at.29 John Cage, who has never proclaimed that he is not a composer, has however declared that he has invented ‘music, (not composition)’.30 The music he has invented is intended to be devoid of internal relations: ‘What makes sounds ‘abstract’ is, instead of listening to them for themselves, being content with listening to their relationships. It would be just as valid, as I once said, to express musical ideas with lights … Or with apples!’31 And he adds even more insistently: I know perfectly well that things interpenetrate. But I think they interpenetrate more richly and with more complexity when I myself do not establish any connection. That is when they meet and form the number one. But, at the same time, they form no obstruction. They are themselves. They are. And since each one is itself, there is a plurality in the number one.32 27

Ibid., p. 79 (see original French edition, p. 74). Ibid., pp. 95–6 (see original French edition, p. 90). 29 Heinz-Klaus Metzger, ‘Musique laissée en liberté’, in John Cage, cahier 2 (Nevers: Maison de la Culture de Nevers et de la Nièvre, 1972), p. 24. 30 John Cage, For the Birds, p. 15 (see original French edition, p. 9). 31 Ibid., p. 78 (see original French edition, pp. 72–3). 32 Ibid., p. 78 (see original French edition, p. 73). 28

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And he says emphatically: ‘I hear not only the number two, but also the plurality of the number one’.33 It is from such considerations, but even more so from the acoustic characteristics of the music – am I anticipating too much? – and my frustration at the reception of works by various composers whose aesthetic outcome appeared dubious to me, that I tend to think that Cage has primarily invented a musical principle of falsification. By the time the correspondence between him and Boulez had broken off, Cage had in fact demonstrated that chance operations could be substituted for the excess of information contained in the combinatorial series. Admittedly the demonstration was not entirely convincing, but it was not without value. The combinatorial series lives essentially on the firm support it receives from a multiplicity of relationships, but it is true that a superabundance of these relations may allow the infiltration of aleatory elements without prejudice. Hence, in thinking that unconnected sounds, distributed by chance, constituted an effective control, there was only one step one could take: to introduce non-structure into structure. The test allows one to see – and above all to hear – whether the structure has been interfered with. If it proves able to absorb, without damage, the inoculation of aleatory sound, there is a strong likelihood that the work subjected to the test is extremely weak. On the other hand, strong works will violently reject this addition of disruptive chance. The subject of this essay does not involve any account of the conditions of the experiment, which requires infinite care and cannot be carried out in the same way as with tonal or modal systems. Unless I should prove to be gravely mistaken, Cage’s invention would have led him involuntarily to produce a system of falsification par excellence, whose function would reveal its pertinence in the fact that it cannot falsify itself. It is thus not surprising that Cage felt himself to be close to Dada: this type of subversive marginality, strongly coloured by the avant-garde and prisoner of the same social contingencies as the adversary it vituperated, could never have proposed such a rivalry with its intended object of attack. In their most aggressive intentions, seeking to attain social domination through the most reified of cultural values, the culturally subversive margins have committed the error of making use of the materials with which they were most directly in contact without taking into account the fact that, in fighting the social productions of culture, they were attacking at the same time that which was most authentic and artistically profound; tackling the opposition in reverse, they were unable to recognize that they were deriding the only objects which still allowed the citizen to claim, without too much embarrassment, his social and civilizational membership. Manifestly and paradoxically – despite a total absence of irritation which suggests the realization of his humanity in a most genial and good-natured manner – Cage has conveyed the same sort of error, but not without contradiction. He has delivered an apologia for Indian music, whose very strict code, it would seem, Zen has never tried to crush; he has destructured the music before seriously having asked himself about its possible status as a musical language, and without retreating in the face 33

Ibid., p. 78 (see original French edition, p. 72).

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of evidence of the setback that a treatment of spoken language of the kind he reserves for music would inflict upon communication. There are, of course, many other potential developments with regard to the Cage phenomenon that could be pursued, but I have only dealt with one here in order to underline the significance of his questioning during the 1950s, and to take into account his impact on certain European bourgeois milieus whose contemporary musical style has sometimes been identified with Cage’s influence. Let us not forget that certain aspects of academic music education from the late 1980s, to the extent that it attempted to develop a creative plan, appealed to a pedagogy which articulated its methods on the discredited cast-offs abandoned to the nostalgia of chance-produced musique concrète sound-effects. Nevertheless, there was to be a partial convergence between Cage and Stockhausen, especially during the 1960s, but it was not to be a true interplay of influences. Perhaps it resulted from Stockhausen’s avowed ‘voracity’, whereby he frequently incorporated into his own experience characteristics discovered in the failures of others, and which one finds revealed mostly in the works he characterized as intuitive, and which display traces of residual American influences. But whatever the truth of this, the distance between them remained considerable and resulted principally from the fact that there was never any abdication of the will in Stockhausen. Cage himself had signalled the absence of any correlation between his own willingness to submit to the outcome of his chance processes and the determination with which Stockhausen submitted everything to the imperative of his plan of activity. One of his favourite theses is that contemporary European music preserves a dramatic content that the American music of his milieu does not contain. In this connection, comparing the styles of Stockhausen and Wolff, he notes: ‘But in Stockhausen, on the level of conflict, everything is willed. It’s even more than drama, it’s tragedy as there must be determinacy or indeterminacy, one or the other. While in Wolff’s music, there is freedom’.34 Whether the conditionality of the ‘if’ emanates from nostalgia for the past, which would have liked to divert the course of history without even being able to give concrete expression to its desire, or whether refusal of serialism was a way of gaining admittance to the present, Stockhausen and Boulez only experienced the conviction – something that was historically quite exceptional – that the destiny of a self-aware music lay with them. Let us not speak only of those, who, like Berio, Pousseur, Ligeti or Donatoni, more or less at the same time, accepted the consequences of total serialism, but let us take an example that might perhaps appear more unexpected: I suggest, in spite of violent disagreement with my view from some quarters, that Xenakis will be seen ultimately not to have changed the course of the language of music towards areas open to a totally divergent path. Xenakis’s activity has remained centred upon the properties of sound; his language has remained strictly non-tonal, and if he has had recourse to the contribution of aleatoricism, this has certainly been a case of randomicity rather than chance. 34

Ibid., p. 199 (see original French edition, pp. 199–200).

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Yet with every one of the leading composers of the 1950s there was, beyond any friendships and rivalries, a common background, which, it seems to me, was impossible for them to renounce. Although compositional research became progressively more collective, Stockhausen and Boulez would remain the initiators. We have seen the two composers react very quickly to the danger to which serial ‘pointillist technique’ exposed their work. This reaction, at the very least in its tangible aspect, was a little slower on Stockhausen’s part; once rendered concrete, his technique immediately proved to be marked by statistical organization, whilst for Boulez, it was an editorial problem which prevailed, not in any exclusively linear sense, but which nonetheless verged upon issues of phraseology and sequentiality. The anchor point of both these two composers’ ways of thinking is to be found in their use of material. Boulez, in Le Marteau sans maître (1955), integrates it into a combinatorial series limited by the primary implications of the compositional texture, as had been the case in Le soleil des eaux (1948), but taking another approach to instrumental writing. Stockhausen, put in contact with the manipulation of sound through working in the studio and confronted by the resistance of the acoustic properties of sound, would be greatly preoccupied with problems of timbre, and would quickly distance himself from the serial conception of his first important works by constructing series founded upon the relations of the harmonic series. Electroacoustic work served swiftly to reveal his requirements, which led him to take new compositional steps so influential that it is not an exaggeration to say that, over a period of about 15 years, each new work he produced confronted the observer with totally new musical ideas. Has the term creativity, in Rimbaud’s sense of ‘creation’, ever been so charged with meaning? It is this sequence of creative steps we should now like to consider retrospectively by plunging immediately into critical discussion, with the intention also of preserving an epistemological interest in his work. The period of expansion Work in the studio, linked to the acoustic studies Stockhausen was undertaking in Bonn, put him in direct contact with a knowledge of physics which, while already long established, had not yet been encountered by composers. It was through its relation to practice that theory revealed to him that the interdependence of the properties of sound upon which the serial composers of his generation were reflecting existed in fact in Nature. When a sine wave is emitted, its frequency is related to its duration; in order for it to be ‘coloured’, it has to be superimposed upon other waves related to it in terms of harmonic or inharmonic partials. Research into colour/timbre is involved additionally with the modulation of the attack, the sustain, and the decay of the sound by variables of amplitude. A description, even at this elementary level, already involves the set of all variables accompanying the emission of sound, and shows how Stockhausen could not avoid essentially

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considering and operating on these relations. Following this line of reasoning, it would be very appealing to regard him as a twentieth-century Rameau, whilst Boulez would be a Bach, introducing the set of variables in grand combination. This reasoning would be all the more tempting in its reversal of nationalities: Rameau coming to Germany, and Bach to France. But all seduction is possessed of its snare, and, without regarding an historical representation of this kind to be completely false, we shall see that it is really nothing more than a pleasant allusion. History does not allow itself to be so readily transposed. Whereas Rameau outlined the bases of a grammar by means of an explanatory theory, thus communicating a posteriori the results of a long-term collective experiment, Stockhausen had to write down given knowledge a priori: knowledge in relation to a practical experiment totally new to musical composition. And besides, the equivalence of the projection of serial variables is as much the affair of both these composers – Stockhausen and Boulez – whereas Rameau and Bach are separated precisely through their respective conceptions of composition. It is probably this type of composition, elaborating the work through relating each parameter to all the others, which is the essential source of Stockhausen’s discoveries. Without abandoning the relationship pitch ↔ timbre, itself tied to duration, as he had shown in his most famous essay ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’ (‘… how time passes …’) (1957),35 an overall statistical perspective imposed itself, in the process creating relations of density within and between structures. It is these relations, organized into a hierarchy with the aid of the voice in Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–1956), which produce the differentiating of degrees of sonic density, and which spatialize the work structurally, just as much as it does via the mode of projection from speakers and the diffusion of sound. One can therefore appreciate just what a pivotal moment Gesang der Jünglinge represents in Stockhausen’s evolution, simultaneously with the discovery of a conception of serialism released from its dodecaphonic origins and the realization of the first accomplished model of electroacoustic composition – this latter, even when it had recourse to musique concrète methods such as the incorporation of the voice or of national anthems, has always been distinguished from manufactured music by the accumulation of musical objects – the concrete manifestation of ‘group technique’ as a formal support, and, principally, a field for exploiting density relations involving the spatialization of form. It is certainly as a result of the exploration of serialism as a point of departure leading to the interplay of density relations in electroacoustic composition that the first gap appears between the paths of Stockhausen and Boulez. In fact, Boulez had already felt strongly the necessity of organizing form through the exploitation of important variations in density, but this he reached not via the acoustic image by which he was often confronted, but by serial work leading to harmonic organization. This is one of the most likely reasons explaining why spatialization has been more 35 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘… wie die Zeit vergeht …’, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1, pp. 99–139.

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belatedly, and in particular more indirectly, involved in his work. One has to wait until Domaines (1968), in which six instrumental groups are distributed in the limited space of the podium around which a soloist moves, expressing more a perspective de scenario than a representation of structure, and then, a little later, … explosante-fixe … (1971), in which this time a structural vision is imposed via spatial movements, to see Boulez seriously preoccupied with the spatial projection of music. In Répons (which exists in three versions: 1981, 1982, 1984) the problem is posed in a different, more novel fashion: but can one really believe, even in this case, and being cautious to avoid a judgement, that space is the indispensable category of the musical event? Nevertheless, a contradiction remained that was apparently difficult to resolve. In his essay ‘Musik im Raum’ (‘Music in Space’) (1958), Stockhausen declared his wish to articulate temporal phases that were longer than others with a predominance of particular sonic properties. However, it does not seem that group technique, even if practised in this way, permits an easy auditory distinction to be made in the case of complex polyphonic structures if one does not separate the sources of sound emission very clearly from one another, whether electronic or instrumental.36 Where was the origin of this contradiction to be found – a contradiction which composers were already attempting to correct, but which nonetheless resisted them? First of all, perhaps, it had not been properly recognized, at least explicitly, that it was more marked in instrumental than in electronic works. Why? Probably because the latter, associating simple sound waves with some concrete sounds, as is the case in Gesang and even in Kontakte (1958–1960), tend to eliminate the resistance offered by pitch perception, which, whatever system might incorporate it into the work, remains, in the Western tradition, by far the most important. Besides, how could it be otherwise, when music, whether tonal or serial, or simply non-tonal, continues to be produced by traditional instruments? Consequently, even if well configured in small, clearly defined entities, with the acoustic variables involved in a narrow interdependence, they cannot form a real hierarchy: the only possibility to create the predominance of certain variables over others requires that they have conferred upon them a longer duration, notably by pitches repeated or held; and yet the modalities of prolongation of an event can never represent the equivalent of a polarization, because that implies, in the first place, a domain bound by relations. Thus is posed the celebrated objection raised in 1964 by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who declared that serialism succumbed to ‘the utopia of the century’ in founding itself only upon a single level of articulation.37 If it were only a matter of a ‘utopia’, it is not impossible to think that composers were hardly finding it pleasurable: their direction, their passion, their enthusiasm, and their

36 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Musik im Raum’ (1958), Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1, pp. 154–5. 37 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mythologiques 1, Le cru et le cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964), pp. 26–34.

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judgement put them in a position of triumph; but the problematic they had to confront belonged to the category of aporia. Lévi-Strauss: an interpellation Much has been said about Lévi-Strauss’s comments, yet composers, with the exception of Pousseur, have hardly shown any reaction to them. Boulez, directly affected by the quotation of an argument referring to anthropology, kept his silence rather than engaging in polemics. One can ask why, and although today any response would still be a matter for him, I do not believe that it would be very difficult to hazard a guess as to its nature. He was probably well aware of the fact that Lévi-Strauss had addressed the problem with considerable penetration, but it is likely that the argument, which developed around the preliminary philosophy of the opposition between nature and culture, was one that would naturally have aroused his scepticism. Moreover, he was not unaware of the precariousness of serialism as code, as system, but he knew that no code fell from the sky to replace irremediably lost tonality, and that the fate of music remained in the composer’s hands, as Lévi-Strauss openly declared. One could doubtless understand up to a certain point the mode of reasoning used, but it had to be admitted that what LéviStrauss named a first level of articulation of language, in the sense in which he understood it, was that the system, having effectively disappeared into itself, had inevitably to be reconstituted by action on the composer’s part. As for Pousseur’s response,38 it was undeniably courageous, but it could not be convincing to an ethnologist because it resorted to militant discourse without being able to demonstrate that the basic system he demanded was present in some way. Pousseur’s argument was based on four points: 1. the unimpeachability of Webernian systemization – but on this point the ethnologist saw only the hand of man, and therefore saw it as a reinforcement of his thesis; 2. the importance of the chromatic interval – and perhaps here Pousseur had some advantage over the Lévi-Straussian point of view, which was ultimately rather essentialist; 3. the nature/culture dichotomy – and here he caught his interlocutor in flagrante delicto methodologically, in opposing painting and music. It will be recalled indeed that Lévi-Strauss saw in colours a natural facet which furnished painting with a first level of articulation, and thus the elements of a system, and yet music’s location of these elements in the constitution of its scales was an element of cultural origin. Pousseur did not fail to remind him of the natural origin of the system of sound in vibration, equivalent, 38 Henri Pousseur, Fragments théoriques 1, sur la musique expérimentale (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie, ULB, 1970), pp. 20–27.

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from his point of view, to the system of colours. But of course his opponent could not be unaware of this; it was necessary rather to abide with the issue that his philosophy defended not the physical origin of the elements, but their physiological character. On this point, Pousseur’s reminder remained indispensable, to the extent to which his potential adversary only experienced the nature/culture opposition at a level of perception that was philosophical and not truly scientific; and finally 4. the level of defence to which Pousseur resorted, which is always both the most pertinent and the most fragile: the incontestable success of works, such as the most important electroacoustic realizations of Stockhausen. If, in his case for the defence, Pousseur clearly seized upon some of the difficulties in the case put forward by Lévi-Strauss, he nevertheless brought no action against the central point of his argument, the demand to identify a first level of articulation, absent in serial theory, represented by a system preformed and fixed in its hierarchy. But what route could have been taken to demonstrate the possible irrelevance of such a demand? For my part, I had, during the period following the publication of The Raw and the Cooked (1964), attempted a discussion of sorts,39 but I realize today how much the comments remained the prisoner of militant justification. Without doubt, we were wrong to refuse to let ourselves be involved in the LéviStraussian philosophical project. But beyond this project, largely biased in the name of the celebrated nature/culture opposition by the implicit distinction between physical phenomena and the physiologically given – something which permitted a very fragile opposition between painting and music – there was cause to take very seriously the warning relating to a menace threatening music. Today, one would be tempted to think that the intellectual and artistic world never accorded enough attention to the objections of a serious critic. Thinking that is too positive has always tended towards justification rather than the sharing of reflection, even to the extent of risking putting itself in danger. But, in any case, it is necessary to recognize that in art neither proof nor disproof has the pertinence accorded to it by science. The work of art establishes its legitimacy by its accreditation within social groups, whose importance cannot be evaluated a priori, whilst Adorno’s observation that art works ‘are hardly universally pleasing, and yet they cannot thereby be objectively disqualified as art’40 remains undeniable. Must we therefore resign ourselves to accepting the fact that judgement fails in the face of art and that it is rejected on account of its contingency? In spite of his scepticism, Adorno seems to have refused to allow this. 39

Célestin Deliège, ‘Sur quelques motifs de l’ouverture aux mythologiques’, L’Arc 26 (1965), pp. 69–76. 40 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997), p. 165. Cf. Ästhetische Theorie (1970), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970; 2nd ed. 1972), p. 248.

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Is it therefore the judgement of taste that triumphs anew? It can never be avoided on the receiving end: when, some years later during an interview with Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Jacques Nattiez tried to return to his position regarding the problem of serialism, Lévi-Strauss replied that serial music bored him, but he also admitted to feeling little attraction to the ethnic music to which one would have expected his work would have rendered him responsive.41 Be that as it may, LéviStrauss was right, in The Raw and the Cooked, to try to grant his taste some kind of rational explanation; this is the only level at which the composer can follow him. It is only today, however, that this dialogue could be revisited with the necessary calm, but at the expense of changing the perspective. It seems very much the case that serialism could never acknowledge to itself an important presence of the ‘natural’, as, for example, the exploitation of the natural ‘resonance’ of harmonics – something never forbidden. To seek to apply the resources of a natural language to it can therefore be most fruitful. Experiments such as Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel and Boulez’s Structure Ia, which apply an elementary logarithm, are an index of the resemblance of serial technique to artificial languages, something well confirmed by subsequent practice. To speak of serialism and its derived techniques requires that one treat and appreciate its givens from the perspective of techniques of information. That is certainly the reason for our ability to understand that, since Schoenberg, the composer has been obliged to create his own material, and also equally to understand the origin of the connection established since Stockhausen’s Elektronische Studie II (1954) between electroacoustics and serialism. Boulez was not mistaken in making those statements that indicated the absence of preconceived scales in serial music, and which alerted the attention of Lévi-Strauss. It is definitely true that serialism, whatever the ‘manufacturing process’ to which it has recourse, natural or synthetic, can be read and interpreted only in terms of programming. Would serial music thus have given way to the utopia of the century? This question remains to be answered: but it should be emphasized that what is clearly delineated is the view of the prevailing aporias themselves. Claude Lévi-Strauss’s underlying conditional if was no doubt expressed against the background of nostalgia, but it had the merit of acting as a warning to the present of the musical future; it is utterly distinct from questions asked by a vulgar attachment to the past: the anthropologist issued a warning, but he did not formally condemn. ‘This school has chosen to lay a wager upon its destiny and that of music’,42 he writes in the conclusions to his text. He did not suspect that he would soon be unwillingly engaged in this wager: less than four years after the publication of The Raw and the Cooked, its author learned that Luciano Berio, one of the most liberal representatives of serialist thought, had chosen to give concrete expression to the structural association of music and the bororo myth – the work’s theme in the proper sense – by using the ode in his Sinfonia (1968–1969). 41 Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ‘Rencontre avec Lévi-Strauss: le plaisir et la structure’, Musique en Jeu 12, Autour de Lévi-Strauss (1973), p. 6. 42 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mythologiques 1, p. 34.

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The period of equivocation In the article ‘Musik im Raum’, it will be recalled, Stockhausen mentions the necessity of separating sound sources in space in order to render the perception of the groups as distinct as possible. He even adds, in the French translation, that music conceived in this way no longer lends itself to radiophonic diffusion, apart from as some kind of documentary record: ‘Is it not better to see reproductions of works in the plastic arts rather than to see nothing at all?’ asks the composer, treating the question by analogy.43 This is most notably implied by the complexity that results from note durations and the superimposition of different tempi; but another reason is to be seen in the impossibility of organizing pitches into a hierarchy, more so perhaps in instrumental music than in electroacoustic music, where work on densities is more immediately audible. One solution lies in making sharp distinctions between timbres, as in Carré (1960) – in my opinion the best controlled among those of Stockhausen’s works that resort to space and group techniques through vocal and orchestral means. The fact remains that the general problem posed by the necessity of applying the principle of group segregation to the spatial dissemination of sound reveals a lacuna at the level of the theory’s intrinsic structure – even if this mode of dissemination proves successful to the extent that Stockhausen provides it with an adequate, indeed specific, form of notation. The serialists acted unanimously with respect to this lacuna, rather than defending themselves against it. The absence of intra-group hierarchies allows the practice of numerous permutations and interversions, without any noticeable result as far as perception is concerned. Working, as Stockhausen put it, on the basis of an ‘equality of rights’ (Gleichberechtigung)44 between the various parameters of sound (primarily pitch and duration), the composer endeavoured, of course, to create distinctive reference points for the listening experience. But within such a system of probabilities it is only with difficulty that the individual efforts of the composer can triumph over the principle of equality. In many of the works written between 1956 and 1958 aural, inter-group perception of the variants of intra-group distribution became an often hazardous operation whose profitability, qualitatively speaking, was doubtful. The difficulties were further compounded by the fact that composers relied upon statistically derived results to open up their formal structures to indeterminacy. In this respect it became impossible, philosophically speaking, not to recognize in it the kind of imagery current in the physics of the second quarter of the twentieth century. But it was precisely such imagery, in suggesting the confirmation of possible correspondences in the work of composers such as Stockhausen and Pousseur 43 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Musique dans l’espace’, Revue Belge de Musicologie 13, (1959), p. 82. 44 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Erfindung und Entdeckung. Ein Beitrag zur Form-Genese’, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1, p. 232.

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(and also Xenakis, of course, although in a totally different sense) that predicted the non-differentiation inevitably contained within the indeterminacy of such structures. An order of importance open to plausible evaluation can nevertheless be established between objects that cannot be compared quantitatively by dimension. The following quotation cited by Bachelard from an article by Chester Townsend Ruddick written in 1932 suggests the kind of parallelism evoked here. Speaking of the objects of a statistical law, Bachelard notes: Their only distinctive characteristic can be their membership of a certain group; they can be hydrogen atoms or men, but not this hydrogen atom or that man. They are distinguished as objects only outside their group, but not as objects within their group. The law is established on the assumption that a member of the group is thus likely, no matter what, to satisfy certain conditions. All individual characteristics are erased by the introduction of the individual into the group.45

However, the open work, or mobile, is erected on this aporia – that is to say, the difficulty of individualizing the elements that make up membership of a group submerged in the non-differentiation of an absence of hierarchy – as the variable ordering of sections according to a terminology that serves to define more or less the range of variability offered. This was the outcome of impeccable logic, where the non-differentiated (which itself resulted from what might be called the ‘hyperdifferentiation’ of elements) profited from its inability to engender any kind of diversity apart from that of multiple equivalence. In the short term the problem of musical perception did not become an issue to the same extent as was the case with the problem of the emancipation of the performer, who henceforth was no longer condemned to the passive role of qualified musical reproduction but now had the possibility of confronting his responsibility towards the combination of ‘choices’ offered to him by the score. Once again, the enthusiasm with which the innovation was presented contributed to closing the door against the multitude of questions it raised. Furthermore, the concept of ‘openness’ varied considerably from one composer to another, making any appreciation of the phenomenon as a whole almost as impossible today as it ever was. We know that literary models had been very important for Boulez’s work since the beginning of the 1950s, when he had conceived the project of a compositional approach derived from Un coup de dés, and then later when the published fragments of Mallarmé’s Livre struck him all the more forcefully on their publication in 1957 while the writing of the Third Piano Sonata (1955–1957) was already very much under way. Here the performer’s responsibility remains principally what it had been throughout the long history of polyphony: to transmit 45 Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1934), p. 127. See also Chester Townsend Ruddick, ‘On the Confirmation of Natural Law’, The Monist 42/3 (July 1932), pp. 330–84.

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as well as possible the content of the score. A supplementary interest was that the performer was able to decide on his particular version by conforming to a limited number of possibilities. However, Boulez has never offered any rational arguments in justification of his project; his motivations appear to have been more of a poetic order, rather than to do with a wish to provide any openings for the performer. In Berio’s case the use of mobile or ‘open’ forms more generally consisted in providing possibilities for the use of insertions or games involving interversions of the ordering of major sections of a structure. Pousseur, it seems to me, brought a very ludic sense to the use of mobile forms, while it was Stockhausen who, in the second half of the 1950s, aimed furthest of all in this respect, with the possible exception of American composers. Through playing with the oppositions between ordered and disordered structures, and between determinate and indeterminate materials in his Klavierstück X (1954–1961), Stockhausen opened the door wide to what could be understood in this context as entropy. It requires very serious and attentive listening to this piece to know whether it is actually the oppositional relationships that are being perceived or whether, on the contrary, it is the totality of the elements that make up the structure overall that are heard as homogenous. Any research into such questions of perception would probably immediately come up against factual difficulties pertaining to the sound/silence opposition which is very much in evidence in this piece. Given they were so conscious of practising an experimental art, one wonders why composers did not do any research into such perceptual issues. Would it not have been preferable to attempt to establish such experimental conditions concerning perceptibility rather than confining experimentation only to the completed works themselves? This question arises particularly with respect to Stockhausen, to the extent that his breakthrough was the most divergent from the norm. It is always possible to reply by drawing attention to the uncertainty of such tests and their fallibility in the face of an evolving culture and the susceptibility of perception to adaptation under such circumstances. In the end, however, after more than quarter of a century, it might be interesting today to look once again at the possibilities for an appropriate randomized statistical method for testing those areas in which group technique still seems to cause problems, particularly in cases where composers may well have distanced themselves subsequently from their earlier innovations. Klavierstück XI (1956) had a period of great fame. The piece posed major problems. Its performance was susceptible to a multiplicity of combinations which today could be calculated by a computer to produce results which would be in the order of large numbers. However, for reasons to do with what can actually be produced by means of probability techniques applied to music, it cannot be guaranteed that a genuine diversity would result. In addition, random probability can here coincide with chance probability, at least if the performer has the audacity and the expertise for playing the game; that is to say, in not preparing his version beforehand – something which the composer, however, has never encouraged. But does the interpreter benefit from this promised freedom? If he perfects one or more

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versions does he not place himself in the position of the traditional performer, aiming to exhibit the results of his work? It will naturally be claimed that he is responsible for his version, even if he has initially placed his faith in chance through simply glancing at the score without any intention of preparing the parameters of the next structural fragment his eye alights upon in the piece, however furnished with prescriptions it might be from the one he has just left. This much can be admitted, but nevertheless such reasoning also courts the risk of circularity: the performer, in fact, can retain nothing of the quality of his independent choices other than that which his virtuosity permits or suggests that he master. As for the listeners – for them, the open work, however it has been made, remains always closed; they hear the actual, not the potential. It would be incorrect, of course, to read these reservations as having relevance for a critique of traditional art, just as it would be utterly misleading to see in it an attempt to undermine the credibility of the musicians who have created the music history of the period since 1945. Personalities are not called into question; they have experienced more profoundly than the witnesses themselves the objective contradictions of the material explored. Perhaps one might regret that, in certain cases, all the consequences of the precariousness of the situation have not been drawn, not so much in the works themselves but in the presentation of suggestions and plans. Architecture, for example, has left us just such research testimonies, as in the case of Walter Gropius. It is probable in this instance that the full weight of artistic tradition was brought to bear in order to conserve the priority of the art object. But, at the same time, by turning the distance separating us from this period of exploration to our advantage, it is impossible not to consider what it could be that has prevented certain works from winning undisputed legitimacy. The way composers experienced the profoundly problematic character of the music of the 1950s manifested itself at the beginning of the following decade in a vision which served to reveal just how explosive the unresolved contradictions of the preceding decade were. By recourse to what he would come to call Momentform, Stockhausen restored difference; that is to say, individual structure. Even if the distribution of characteristics inside the group remained barely discernible, their succession was clarified considerably by the presence of a dominant variable characterizing each group – or group of groups – in passing from one group to the other. The combined effect of vocal and instrumental forces on the one hand and the dramatic situation on the other at times worked extremely well together towards the restoration of clarity. This new conception is particularly well illustrated in Momente, although Carré had already done much more than merely launch it, while, in the mixed-media domain (electroacoustic and instrumental), Kontakte also exhibited a form that was clearly perceptible. A little later, Mixtur (1964) was to build a new correlation between source (the orchestra and sine waves) and diffusion. For Boulez, a desire to reduce complexity appeared in the Improvisations sur Mallarmé (1957), but the true meaning of that which is efficaciously ‘mobile’ only appeared in Éclat (1965), where mobility is provided in the flexibility of the form:

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a lesson given by the conductor to the composer, and one he has subsequently not neglected to pass on to others. As for Berio, he deserves credit for only rarely ever deviating – Tempi Concertati (1958–1959) is an exception – from the fertility of ‘practical reason’. The use of his sense of freedom had always protected him from all the excesses of orthodoxy without ever tempting him to declare a schism. In 1960 he could be inventive by amalgamating all available discoveries to date. Épiphanies (1959–1965, 1991) brought about a fertile synthesis of concepts which had, for a moment, threatened the legitimacy of musical modernism, whereas Différences (1959) resonated with an objective irony which helped to explode the dullness of the undifferentiated by means other than the differentiation of sound sources. For Stockhausen, the period of experimentation still had another ten years to go. In his extension of the famous Klavierstück XI it was the performer who remained the object of focus. If the most frequently asked question at the time had been: how can the performer be granted new freedoms? it would be tempting with hindsight to change this now to: how can the performer’s productive capacity be further exploited? What kind of dialectical feat would be required in order to resolve the contradiction that never ceased to re-appear, and which led the performer to ask himself whether these recent freedoms were offered gratis or granted as favours that demanded much in return, and whether they brought with them the possibility either of creative elevation or of reduction to a position of enslavement? An unequivocal answer could hardly have been expected at the time, and still cannot be today. Perhaps one day we shall come to recognize that the history of contemporary music was played out just as much in relation to this problem as it was in relation to the journey from the tonal universe to the atonal universe, or in relation to the introduction of serialism. Liberation or coercion? – all the evidence points to the coexistence of these two antinomial tendencies. Once revealed, however, coercion produces good results for no one – neither for the composer nor for the performer. Could it be that one of the consequences of a political order that had experienced dictatorship was that, under cover of democracy and the abandonment of the authoritarian prerogative, authority in the form of the composer’s leadership might reinforce its control over the performer via the intermediary of the musical mode of production? I do not intend here to raise these issues further in the context of Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) and Kurzwellen (1969), or of Globokar’s Concerto grosso (1969– 1970). I think that in the case of these ‘works’ the composers have considerably reduced their prerogatives, while at the same time placing the performer in an unprecedented position of subordination, obliging him to change the use not only of his freedom but also of his competence. A similar remark might be made concerning Cage’s infamous Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958), but there is in this ‘object’ – ‘cette chose’ as Duchamp might have said – an implied level of plaisanterie which reduces the authoritarian tendency somewhat. Referring the

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interested reader to my previous observations on these questions,46 I would prefer by way of conclusion to consider for a moment the – if perhaps not liberating then at least fruitful – contribution made by Stockhausen in the form of what he called intuitive music. Conjectures and conclusions Works such as Plus-Minus (1963), Stop (1965), Prozession (1967) and Spiral (1968), to cite only some of the most sophisticated projects, have brought opportune perspectives to musical practice at a time when music is no longer regarded as a fine art in the sense previously understood by classical humanism. During the course of this essay I have drawn attention to evidence of the aporias facing composers during the post-Webernian period, the consequences of which have meant, for the listener, a calling into question of the legitimacy of musical works and their conceptual world. The extent to which serial music and its related concepts are really accepted culturally in our society (and statistical surveys are, in the end, of only limited value in this respect) is something we cannot know with any certainty, at least to the same extent that contemporary visual and plastic arts in the West have always been able to attract large audiences. What would be valuable would be to ascertain individual – for which read family – usage of ‘new music’ at home: listening to recordings, radio broadcasts, and so on. We already possess interesting data on the professed motivations of Parisian concert-goers in relation to the Ensemble Intercontemporain,47 through which we learn that a desire for information is given the highest priority; but what does not appear at all in the results of the survey is any form of research into aesthetic pleasure. In addition, we learn that an important segment of the audience plays, or has played, a musical instrument. As a result we possess an illuminating piece of information regarding potential future contact with music at the level of reception. In other words, could not the legitimacy that has been lost, possibly due to the aporias that compositional systems have not completely succeeded in overcoming, be compensated by a new practical approach to music that has the means of rendering acceptable, and even attractive, those things which a single hearing can no longer guarantee with any certainty? Were this conjecture able to be verified sociologically, it would have to be admitted that one of the transformations accomplished by musical modernism would be precisely this. Otherwise the traditional forms of contemplation associated with the Kantian concept of beauty would have to be revoked, or at very least would be weakened by substituting an active relationship to the music whereby listeners would be raised to a level of musical practice. In this, however, 46 Deliège, Invention musicale et idéologies, pp. 334–42; ‘La fin du romantisme’, Entretemps 4 (1987), pp. 37–40. 47 Pierre-Michel Menger, ‘L’oreille spéculative, consommation et perception de la musique contemporaine’, Revue française de sociologie 27/3 (July–September 1986), pp. 445–78.

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they would not be restricted to the arduous task of the reproduction of the score itself (which, before the development of techniques of mechanical reproduction, would have had to be done fluently), but they would instead be encouraged to see themselves as agents capable of managing the ‘programme’ put forward by the composer, thanks to their newly acquired knowledge of compositional technique. Were this to come about, it would be necessary to agree that there should be no qualitative regression in the comprehension of music, but, on the contrary, access to musical language in return for a mode of response far less equivocal than that of the past. It is in this regard that those works – I prefer the term ‘programs’ – of Stockhausen just cited reveal their significance, and can be understood in the sense of what he suggests should be seen as an enlargement of the field of perception of musical parameters in maintaining the level achieved.48 Stockhausen’s programmes preserve the statistical links with serialism. The levels of elaboration in Plus-Minus and Stop appear as prototypes of a pedagogical practice now accepted by composers, and one can imagine that such programmes could be further refined. After this initial foray, however, Stockhausen did not continue in exactly the same direction, reverting instead to musical practices that were more individual than collective, more specialized than generalized in relation to the musically active community. One might imagine that, in envisaging such a future, I’m re-subscribing to the utopian vision of an art produced by all, an idea that elsewhere I’ve always fought against. Such is not the case, however. That which is utopian in the notion of an art produced by all is the claim to transform everyone into the creator of a work of art. But in art it is mistaken, first of all, to believe that everyone can ever draw near to such an ideal: indeed, it is probably not even desirable. One can wish of every person that they should live their life aesthetically, but this is something which need not imply the presence of art. Second, this can only be a question concerning the matter of a desirable approach to performance practice, which, rather than decoding a score for the listener, decodes a ‘program’ for his personal use and edification and into which his initiative can be incorporated. It is a safe bet, moreover, that such a practice would provide the shock needed, and perhaps the only one possible, to stimulate a return to the idea of great works, but with an abandonment of the compromise by means of which the concert has served to edify music since the nineteenth century. If this new way of relating to music exists, for the time being at least, the fact remains that there has been no abandoning of traditional habits anything like as radical as that proposed by Adorno, to cite just one example. Great works have continued to make their mark on the history of recent years. If their dissemination often postulates the need for new architectural thinking for concert halls or the configuration of the auditorium, they have not downgraded the idea of the concert itself. Nevertheless, they do not appear to be numerous, while speculation 48 Jonathan Cott, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (London: Robson Books, 1974), pp. 88–9.

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about this in writing and in action has not, unfortunately, disappeared. Yet in the meantime we can rejoice at signs of a tendency manifesting itself in changes in the vocabulary we use to relate to the 1950s. Thus, rather than speaking of pitches, durations and other parameters which electroacoustics had rendered inevitable, we once again hear talk of harmony, melody, rhythm and metre. Without doubt such concepts will never disappear, but nevertheless the language of the advanced musical community has tended to play them down. As for Boulez, he gives greatest priority to writing (l’écriture); in so doing he puts back into play a dialectical relationship language/writing (langage/écriture) which calls for a synthesis. The synthesis he suggests is one that restricts writing to taking on the hierarchies that present themselves in the marking of configurations and polarizations. Writing thus substitutes itself for the deficiency of the system. The overriding question is whether musical composition will be able to perpetuate itself in the long term on the basis of such a vision, or whether it is only a question of getting rid of the myth of a system to which we had too unconditionally linked classical thought and its Cartesian demands, and towards which the spoken language and its associated studies are once again leading us. Current philosophical thought has got no further in surmounting the confrontation being played out between Adorno’s negative dialectics and analytic philosophy – an adversary otherwise as objectively redoubtable for Adorno as the Heideggerian ontology against which he exhausted himself, and which is for philosophy no more and no less a track equivalent to that exhibited by art through the multifarious facets of its retrospectivist attitudes. At the heart of this confrontation lies the very same problem: analytic philosophy aims towards a system, but without the multiplicity of theories that can recreate unity, whereas negative dialectics turns its back upon system and concept, placing its confidence in the writing of a kind of thinking that is always ready to re-define itself. Stockhausen had come to believe in a universal music. Through pleasure, in his view, there is a total escape from the one-dimensionality deplored by Marcuse.49 The composer appeared to assume the pessimism of Adorno in the face of the culture industry, and after a period of time he came to believe in art only as an underground activity.50 The great discoveries of science never ceased to fascinate him, and in them he found again that miraculous aspect which, through his own experience, had driven him from acoustic micro-organisms to the universality of macro-form. He did not, however, give the upper hand to rational imagery; paradoxically, the composer who has been most concerned among the musicians of his generation with the scientific foundations of his art is also the composer who has returned to the illuminism of the Romantics. But his mysticism and imagination led him far beyond everything conceived by Christian or syncretic 49 See Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). 50 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Arbeitsbericht 1952/53: Orientierung’ (1958), Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1, p. 33.

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Romanticism towards regions of Surrealism bursting with explosions of excess. From this perspective, the present essay has not dealt with Stockhausen according to Stockhausen, and the tone might well appear heretical. For the charismatic task cannot be the tentative one of understanding history and confronting it by endeavouring to catch sight of it as if it were already old. It remains true that the later evolution of the composer, after the hieratic positions of Alphabet für Liège (1972) and Inori’s acts of prayer (1973–1974), already prepared by the magical words of Stimmung (1968), implies that Stockhausen could be spoken about in an entirely different, wholly ‘other’ manner. But it behoves the upstart stranger, standing at the portals of a temple in which a ceremony whose ritual eludes him is taking place, not to force an entry. Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Ästhetische Theorie (1970), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970; 2nd ed. 1972). Trans. as: Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997) Bachelard, Gaston, Le nouvel esprit scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1934) Boulez, Pierre, Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966) ——,  Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois-Seuil, 1981) Cage, John, For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 1981). Original French edition: Pour Les Oiseaux (Paris: Éditions Pierre Belfond, 1976) Cott, Jonathan, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (London: Robson Books, 1974) Dahlhaus, Carl, Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Cologne: Gerig, 1967). Trans. as: Foundations of Music History, trans. J.B. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) Deliège, Célestin, ‘Sur quelques motifs de l’ouverture aux mythologiques’, L’Arc 26 (1965), pp. 69–76 ——,  Invention musicale et ideologies (Paris: Bourgois, 1986) ——,  ‘La fin du romantisme’, Entretemps 4 (1987), pp. 27–48 Harvey, Jonathan, The Music of Stockhausen (London: Faber, 1975) Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Mythologiques 1, Le cru et le cuit (Paris: Plon, 1964) Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964) ——,  Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972) Menger, Pierre-Michel, ‘L’oreille spéculative, consommation et perception de la musique contemporaine’, Revue française de sociologie 27/3 (July–September 1986), pp. 445–78

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Messiaen, Olivier, Music and Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasow (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1994). For the French edition, see under Claude Samuel, below. Metzger, Heinz-Klaus, ‘Musique laissée en liberté’, in John Cage, Cahier 2 (Nevers: Maison de la Culture de Nevers et de la Nièvre, 1972), pp. 15–29 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, ‘Rencontre avec Lévi-Strauss: le plaisir et la structure’, Musique en Jeu 12, Autour de Lévi-Strauss (1973), pp. 3–10 Pousseur, Henri, Fragments théoriques 1, sur la musique expérimentale (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie, ULB, 1970) Ruddick, Chester Townsend, ‘On the Confirmation of Natural Law’, The Monist 42/3 (July 1932), pp. 330–84 Samuel, Claude, Entretiens avec Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Belfond, 1967). For the English edition, see under Messiaen, above. Stockhausen, Karlheinz, ‘Musique dans l’espace’, Revue belge de musicologie, Vol. 13 (1959), 1–4 (Brussels), pp. 76–82 ——,  Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Vol. 1 (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1963) ——,  ‘Musique universelle’, Musique en jeu 15, Forum de musique contemporaine 1 (1974), pp. 30–34 Valéry, Paul, ‘Discours de l’histoire’, Essais quasi politiques, In Variétés, Oeuvres, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), pp. 1128–37

PART II Philosophical Critiques and Speculations After Adorno

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Chapter 9

A Philosophy of Totality Herman Sabbe

My aim in this chapter is to identify a common denominator within the cultural philosophies which underpin the ‘New Music’ of the twentieth century. As a candidate I propose, in its various guises, the aspiration towards inclusiveness: the permanent integration of all elements and their total determination in the case of multiple serialism; total indeterminacy in the case of chance music; and the availability of all musics in ‘quotation’ techniques. My intention is to propose and develop concepts pertinent to the New Music: that is to say, concepts that encapsulate all that determines novelty in such music. Furthermore, I shall also develop concepts that have some application for general history. By this I mean that, even if a general history cannot concern itself with the particularity of music, it can include music within its general propositions, provided that it can deal adequately with concepts that are sufficiently general, so as to allow the integration of music within a general history of culture and society. I should add that my point of view here (as much as possible) will be that of the detached observer. The nineteenth century was notable above all for expansion: the expansion of sound level (in music as in the environment); the expansion of instruments (notably of orchestral instruments, from the orchestra of Haydn to that of Mahler); the expansion of the duration of works; the expansion of sonic space, both high and low (for example the full range of the keyboard); the expansion of harmonic space, in terms of the density of chords; and, above all, the ever expanding journey through the circle of keys – that is to say stretching further and further away from any sense of tonal stability. Through this last point, we also touch another aspect of the idea of evolution that marked the nineteenth century: what could be called the accumulation of expressive drift. Under the pressure of the demands for original, subjective expressivity, the romantic century could not refrain from pushing back the limits of the admissible, and had difficulty remaining within the musical system generally in force, namely, the system of ‘common practice’ tonality. (This thesis finds easy justification in the light of the functional evolution of the dominant seventh: dissonant to the ears of Haydn and his contemporaries, since Wagner it has become a chord of resolution.) Thus, through expansion and through accumulation, the musical nineteenth century was taken to the very limits. In his works of the period 1906 to 1909, Schoenberg took a position visà-vis these limits. This position constituted a total about-turn in relation to the

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expansiveness that had preceded it; it was a position characterized by compression. In the Chamber Symphony of 1906, Schoenberg reduced the orchestra to 15 solo instruments, but while still keeping to the challenge of maintaining the generic character of ‘symphony’ through the complexity of thematic elaboration. (Historically, extremes touch each other here: 1906 was also the year of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the so-called ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, at which stage Schoenberg himself had not yet finished the orchestration of his monumental Gurrelieder). The First Chamber Symphony, moreover, is remarkable in many other respects, by virtue of which it constitutes an important point of departure for the New Music, even before the transition to atonality (which was to be achieved only two years later, in 1908). Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie, albeit still in a very timid way, begins the process of what could be called the generalization of equivalence – a process to be encountered throughout the history of the ‘New Music’ in the twentieth century. At issue here, and in parallel with what was happening or was about to happen with other composers like Debussy and Scriabin – is the equivalence of intervals other than thirds as the basis of a harmonic system (i.e. fourths and whole tones as well as semitones). The ‘scales’ with fourths or with whole tones determined successive order (the horizontal: melody) as much as simultaneous order (the vertical: harmony). This is the idea of the magic square. But more importantly, because of a more general order, is the notion (not yet explicit) of field, a harmonic field: a set of relations that regulates in a given period of time all that unfolds. Concepts of dissonance–consonance find their status altered here to the point of losing all meaning: these are now also equivalents. ‘Dissonance’ is no longer dependent upon a ‘consonance’ to which it must ‘resolve’ (it is this notion that Schoenberg described as ‘the emancipation of the dissonance’). One of the consequences of this (certainly not foreseen by Schoenberg himself) is the neutralization of harmonic space (neither the one nor the other; alternatively, both the one and the other). Each chord, whether one calls it such or whether one prefers the term ‘aggregate’, constitutes an entity in itself, a ‘harmonic colour’, and all these harmonic colours are equivalent in the same way that all the different instrumental colours (the 15 timbres used in his instrumental ensemble) and their combinations also are. Considered in terms of the relation to limits which arose through what I have called ‘the accumulation of expressive drift’, the position taken by Schoenberg had been in the spirit of a continuity which had radical consequences. As the departure from the tonal centre became more and more important and the centralist pull became less so, one of the possible consequences was to abandon it altogether, and to think of each tonal element as a potential tonal centre, facing a pluri-polar or even omni-polar reality. All the semitones of the tempered chromatic scale – later to be designated the twelve ‘pitch classes’ – would be equivalent, tonal relations arising henceforth in

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an ad hoc manner, organizing themselves according to contexts from which they in turn derive their ultimate significance. The musical form, therefore, is emergent. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that it was his stand on continuity that led Schoenberg to transgress boundaries, and at the same time to create something that seemed to be a point of rupture, a discontinuity: through Schoenberg, the tonal system had reached its point of ‘catastrophe’. Musical historiography registered the new situation under the category of ‘atonality’ – a term that belongs exclusively in the domain of music theory and has not been the subject of much interpretation that transcends the limits of this domain. I shall attempt, therefore, to identify certain characteristics of the atonal situation that will allow us to position it as framed in a moment of culture: • •

• •

• •

The abandoning of the centralist representation of the world (which departs from a central tone in order to return to it, each tonal phenomenon being interpreted in relation to this single centre). The replacing of a perspective of depth with a dispersion of space – or, still more generally, with the opening of a space of n dimensions (these first two points are comparable to the abandonment of Albertian perspective in painting, something which took place at exactly the same moment in history). Configurations are interchangeable: no single direction imposes itself (we will see that this directional freedom necessarily affects temporal unfolding, as rhythm: that is, uncertainties in the organization of time and duration). Further, through this suppression of imposed direction (both harmonic and metric), there results a feeling of ‘weightlessness’ (remember that Schoenberg cast off the shackles of all things tonal at the very moment he put into music the poetry of Stefan George speaking of ‘luft von anderem planeten’: floating through interstellar space!). No pre-established signs: place therefore for ‘existence’ as opposed to ‘essence’ (I am here offering an interpretation of Schoenberg such as that proposed by Leibowitz). A new epistemological situation: musical meaning is no longer a given – neither to its creator nor to its listener.

The atonality practised by Schoenberg and his disciples from 1908 to 1923 has been described as ‘free’. Free it certainly was: free from all deductive logic, of all linear causality – that which follows is not at any moment or in any way determined by what precedes it, nor, in principle, by any prior given. It is this indeterminacy that constitutes the primary difficulty of this music, for its listener as for its composer. The anarchy that it cultivates engages the selective responsibility of the creator at every instant, from note to note. Schoenberg would soon announce his ‘rappel à l’ordre’ – the institution of dodecaphony (accompanied furthermore by a return to pre-established forms). Here, by contrast, every configuration would be reducible

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to a single nucleus, a single given, a pre-condition: the initial series (the ‘row’). Is it already the case at this point that ‘Schoenberg is dead’? The installation of the authority of the series (‘sets’) – completely exterior to the ‘inner voice’, the one thing that Schoenberg until then had claimed to want to follow – as an absolute foundation (therefore as a form of fundamentalism) constituted an important historical moment for reasons other than the purely technical and formal. This was the moment when the constructive and the expressive faced one another, when began the story of two opposing autonomies, the autonomy of compositional methodology, and the autonomy of the subject. Or, it is the story of the two forces that now stand facing each other: the power of subjective expression and the power of constructivist law. This, then, was the conflict, the dilemma, even the aporia with which Schoenberg found himself confronted. Let us then pursue the concept of ‘equivalence’ further along this track. If a concept as abstract as serialism is to be thinkable in these terms, it could be defined as a generalization of equivalence: arrangements of pitches (12, as far as the dodecaphonic series is concerned), distributions of durational values, degrees of intensity, of timbre and so forth, as well as all their possible combinations, all can be considered as logical equivalents. The composer’s work consists, then, of (pre)selecting the material elements, defining the number of their possible combinations, then of undertaking the transformations of admissible combinations (transformations of temporal order, transformation in the pitch space, parametric intermodulations …); at each level of organization the composer can make a new selection, suggest different levels of perception (notably by modifying the speed of unfolding), provided that he keeps watch at each level over the equidistribution of possibilities. (Transposed to a physical, acoustic level, this can be compared to white noise – the sum total of possibilities – filtered to varying degrees.) If ‘Schoenberg’ signifies the equivalence of all the pitches in the panchromatic scale, and also of all the intervals between them, another decisive step was taken with Cage, who promulgated the equivalence of all sonic phenomena (tones, sounds, noises …, no matter the category labels). And one other step, more decisive still, was the equivalence of sound and silence (non-sound). In this manner, Cage puts between parentheses – without challenging it, so he remains able to quote it at will – the entire past musical world. Thus, in a manner even more overt than that of Schoenberg, he privileges ‘existence’ (in the philosophical sense) against ‘essence’. And here begins the story of transgressions, another mark of the New Music. • •

Cage’s intentional(!), willed silence is the introduction of the ‘Not’ in the positivity of art; this runs entirely contrary to all narrative convention: an art that is silent cannot be accounted for. In the world of sound up until that point categories were sharply defined: there were the sonic phenomena that constituted the category ‘music’;

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there were those that could – by right – make up ‘speech’ (those that were admissible, civilized); finally, there were … the rest: the sonic detritus, to remain absolutely distanced from the purity of vocal enunciation just as from music. (In a sense it is a sign of the radicality of the New Music that side by side with a kind of music that welcomed ‘sonic detritus’ was a kind that occupied itself with the elimination of all ‘impure’ elements: Webern would be the exemplar of the latter.) This transgressivity also relates to time: the lack of temporal limits. Certain music (LaMonte Young, to cite only one example) no longer fits social time; the time of listening, then, no longer submits to any control. As for vocality, we can take the example Ligeti’s Aventures (1962). Aventures makes us listen to the body, in all its states, its exclamations and questionings, its intrigues and absurdities. The music here is visceral, the language of guts and mucous. Aventures delivers, with all the sophistication of modernity, the sound world raw, as it were: all that through which sound is rendered menacing, chaotic; all that through which sound threatens the order of the world (the cosmos, logos) with chaos; all that is unsettling in sound: explosions, whistles, hissing, …; all that concerns vocal communication that one never learns in a formal manner, but learns instead through mimicry – inflections, intonations; all that which, like a spontaneous apprenticeship, is inscribed as much on our intimate physical body as on the social body. Aventures sets out to give us an inventory of types of oral behaviour independent of the lexicon: babbling, chattering, cackling, breathing, choking, muttering, mumbling, murmuring, breathing, groaning, coughing, laughing: all this cultural residue that normally remains repressed, inhibited, censored, is here laid bare, becomes primordial, making evident in the most direct manner the fundamental immemorial constants of human relations: conflict, hatred, games of love, the thirst for power and possession. Another mark of the twofold radicality of Ligeti’s work is that he wrote Aventures and Lux Aeterna (1966) side by side: the most corporeal with the most spiritual – the pre-verbal and the trans-verbal, Caliban and Ariel, the animal face of man alongside his (potentially) angelic face. Ligeti is not, to be sure, the only one to have opened the world of high art music to an unrestricted and unrestrained vocality. Without wishing to be exhaustive, we should at least add here the name of Dieter Schnebel. Seen from another perspective, these transgressions correspond to an escape from divisions. The 1960s saw the triumph of openings up, of breaking down boundaries between media and between artistic disciplines.

Dodecaphonic composition was historically the first in a line of types of what I would call totalization–summation that would come to be characteristic of the New Music for the rest of the twentieth century. Every individual form of seriation comprised all 12 pitch-classes, through which they staked a claim to universality, a claim that is pushed even further if the particular arrangement of a series constitutes

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the symbol of a perfectly closed world. The self-complementing hexachord imagined by Schoenberg as early as 1915 for Jacob’s Ladder, the ‘miracle series’ or ‘magic series’ (die Wunderreihe), so called because self-reproducing, for his Modern Psalm No. 1 in 1950 (which was the last of the works planned out by Schoenberg), Webern’s endlessly self-referential trichords, the ‘all-combinatorial pitch-class set’ theoretically established by Babbitt, the ‘universal formula’ (Weltformel) devised by Stockhausen for his heptalogy Licht – there are more than enough claims here to embrace the entire world, even if in all cases in the end it always comes down to the world of the dodecatonic division of the octave. Because, as we have already noted, in the pitch domain atonality does not imply the determination of temporal divisions, as had been the case with tonality (and continues to be in popular or more conventional music) through its rhythmic cadential formulae, Cage had either to impose an arbitrary time-frame (the delimitation and division of musical time imposed ‘as though from the outside’), or arbitrarily to abandon all temporal determination (durations then appeared to organize themselves ‘spontaneously’, in a non-predetermined manner, as if ‘from the inside’, from the contingent presence of sounds), before serialsm could arrive at a solution for a total differentiation of durational values. If dodecaphonic composition signified the sum total of pitch elements – the pitch-class set – ‘total’ serialism (the adjective is heavy with implications) attempted to realize the continuous presence of all sets: pitch-class sets, durational sets, sets of dynamics, of registers, of timbres – in short, the set of sets. And if serialism explains a tendency towards total composition, then ‘chance music’, on the contrary, is integral non-composition. The Philosophy of Totality manifests itself in absence as in presence, in emptiness as in plenitude, in Nothingness as in Totality – Nothingness being the rejection of all rejections, which is to say, the acceptance of all and everything. It is the ultimate transgression, that which negates – a philosophy of All which is also a philosophy of Nothing, which refuses all divisions: the ‘musikè’ that opens itself to everything audible in the world. To close this paragraph, I would add that a particular serialism (the most rigorous, that recommended by Karel Goeyvaerts – see the correspondence with Stockhausen, 1951–53) constitutes the beginning of ‘algorithmicization’ and (avant la lettre) ‘cloning’: an automatizable process for reproducing sameness. Repetitive-minimalist music, because strongly undifferentiated, has often been regarded as being an antidote to the differentiations pursued by serialism. Before acquiescing to this proposition we should note that the long sounds and long



Herman, Sabbe, ‘Die Einheit der Stockhausen-Zeit …: Neue Erkenntnismöglichkeiten der seriellen Engwicklung anhand des frühen Wirkens von Stockhausen und Goeyvaerts. Dargestellt aufgrund der Briefe Stockhausens an Goevaerts’, in Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn (eds), Musik-Konzepte 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen: … wie die Zeit verging … (Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 1981) pp. 5–96.

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repetitious stretches of minimalist music teach us that identity in music is never complete; it always includes difference. But the differentiation practised to excess by serialism ended up by leading to indifference: a kind of ‘all-always’ – that is to say, all elements always equally present, equally distributed, equivalent, and in equilibrium. There is nothing to choose between any of the serially constituted entities, each constitutes a whole in itself: this is logical indifference. Also, every arrangement of such serial entities must likewise be equally valued, logically. Their sequence, therefore, is also irrelevant: this is chronological indifference. This manifests itself in an exemplary manner in so-called ‘open’ or ‘mobile’ forms which, regarded in this way, form the logical ‘trans-serial’ sequence of serialism. Another kind of indifference, arrived at through successive accumulation of pre-existent material (and to which Stravinsky, for his part, had already greatly contributed) is the historical indifference of quotations, by dint of citation: Machaut, Monteverdi, Mozart, Messiaen – or, better, in disorder: Mozart, Monteverdi, Messiaen, Machaut – constitute a single ‘reservoir’: another form of totalization through actualization and simultaneization of all pasts by way of their citation. (Does ‘postmodernism’ thus manifest itself as following on naturally from a triumphant modernist attitude? At least a certain postmodernism?) As a further step in its generalization the principle of equivalence seems, in postmodernity, to transcend the separate domains of social–cultural genres: with John Zorn and other American composers one hears, juxtaposed, ‘classic classic’, avant-garde in the classical tradition, jazz, country, the list goes on. Do we have here, then, one of the ways in which a new multimedia society is in the process of finding itself? Finally, with Cage, who welcomes without discrimination any, all, and no matter what sounds in the world, are we confronted with the ultimate indifference of nature (in the very long term, by the cosmic clock)? Would this signify a progression towards an ultimate state of equilibrium – a phenomenon to be compared, as we have already suggested, to a state of white noise, this time ‘globalized’ – an undifferentiated cloth covering the whole world? Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949); Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975). Trans. as: Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) Attali, Jacques, Bruits: essai sur l’économie politique de la musique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1977). Trans. as: Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985)

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Boehmer, Konrad, Das böse Ohr: Texte zur Musik 1961–1991 (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1993) Bosseur, Jean-Yves, John Cage (Paris: Éditions Minerve, 1993) Deliège, Célestin, Invention musicale et Idéologies (Paris: Bourgois, 1986) DeLio, Thomas, Circumscribing the Open Universe (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984) Sabbe Herman, ‘Die Einheit der Stockhausen-Zeit …: Neue Erkenntnismöglichkeiten der seriellen Entwicklung anhand des frühen Wirkens von Stockhausen und Goeyvaerts. Dargestellt aufgrund der Briefe Stockhausens an Goevaerts’, in Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn (eds), Musik-Konzepte 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen: … wie die Zeit verging … (Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 1981) pp. 5–96

Chapter 10

Possibilities for a Work-Immanent Contemporary Musical Logic François Nicolas

I. Introduction In this chapter I ask the question: is musical logic autonomous, or does it remain dependent on the three-fold influence of mathematics, physics (acoustics) and psychology? With the hypothesis that, in music, logic operates simultaneously as coherence of writing (as écriture within the larger context of the ‘world of music’), as dialectical consistency (in the relationship to other pieces of music), and as strategic imperative (within each individual musical work), I maintain that, in the course of the twentieth century, musical logic has preserved its autonomy. I support this claim by putting forward reasons for placing hope in: • • •

a form of writing (écriture) which takes account of new sonic materials and which relates to musical listening; a non-classical dialectical logic; and a strategy of the work characterized by what I have called a ‘diagonal mode of thought’.

My argument is based on two precedents to be found in the work of David Hilbert and André Souris. 1. David Hilbert In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert laid out before his colleagues in Paris the 23 great mathematical problems to be addressed in the new century. A hundred years later, at least two-thirds of those problems have been resolved, and each one has shown the validity of this diagnosis of the state of mathematics. Hilbert’s programme thus constitutes a remarkable example of hope validated by posterity. In putting forward certain logical problems facing the music of the twenty-first century, I do not intend to compare myself with a giant such as Hilbert – not least for the following reason: my propositions do not reveal a ‘hope’ as such, but rather what I prefer to call an ‘expectation’. By this I mean the conviction that something has already been achieved, and that it is now a question of giving it the scope that

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it deserves. In this sense, this expectation is the corollary of the ‘restrained action’ of Mallarmé: it proposes to universalize the progress that has been made, but which remains confined to the immediate context in which it emerged. This means that I need to give a more detailed account of the way in which my propositions are rooted in the twentieth century and how they generalize the practices already present. 2. André Souris Nearly 50 years later, in 1945, André Souris in Brussels set out what he understood by the ‘conditions of music’. The content of his answers alone allows us to throw some light on what precisely he understood by the ‘conditions of music’. André Souris held that it was necessary to look for the conditions of music on the musical plane itself because ‘music is a kingdom isolated from all others, an element which obeys first and foremost its own laws’. Three aspects of his reasoning are of particular interest to me here. (a) From an answer to its question The first is the methodological aspect: André Souris invites us implicitly to retrace our steps from a conviction to that to which it corresponds; he suggests to us a process of induction from an answer to the question that underlies it. This method, diametrically opposed to that of Hilbert, seems to me to be appropriate to the work of musical thought which seldom proceeds from a question without an answer to an ulterior solution, but rather asks itself to which question an already acquired conviction corresponds, what a particular discovery solves or what a new piece of evidence indicates. Faithful to this principle, I shall discuss my propositions in terms of how they provide an answer to the question that is implied in the title of this chapter. (b) Logical conditions The second aspect of André Souris’s proposal that concerns me here is that to talk of ‘conditions of music’ is to raise a range of questions that are strictly speaking logical in nature, if by logic we understand that which formally conditions the possibilities of existence. Not all conditions of existence are logical: those which are strictly speaking logical are those which formally link possibilities of existence. To give a very simple example, the logical rule called modus ponens states: If A→B and if A is true, then B is true

 André Souris, Conditions de la musique, et autres écrits (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1976), pp. 16–17.

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This supports the possibility of B on condition that A and that A→B, without otherwise being concerned either with the effective existence of A or the real validity of the inference A→B. Thus logic is in no way concerned with real existence but exclusively with prescribing the coherence of that which is possible, regardless of its efficacy. To speak with Leibniz, logic configures all possible worlds but leaves to God the task of breathing life into that world which is to become the only one that really exists. Nolens volens, André Souris, in developing conditions for an art of music, thus brings concerns of a logical nature to bear on the question whether or not a purely musical mode of thought existed in the post-1945 period. Having travelled from Paris to Brussels to give the original version of this chapter as a paper, it is therefore logical that, 50 years later, I prefer the approach of André Souris to that of David Hilbert, and that I incline towards an expectation derived from the present rather than to a hope in a future. (c) Musical autonomy The final proposition of André Souris I wish to bring to your attention is the idea that ‘music obeys its own laws’. This statement concerns the capacity of music to exist autonomously. The alternative to this is as follows: is music in a position to constitute its own cognitive order, or is it essentially subordinate to another cognitive regime which prescribes it its logical coherence from outside? II. Musical logic: dependent or autonomous? We may reformulate the question in the following terms: is music as a mode of cognition dependent on an exogenous logic, or is it able to establish its own endogenous fundamental logic? 1. St Thomas Aquinas At the start of his Summa Theologia St Thomas Aquinas writes: Sacred doctrine is a science. But amongst the sciences, there are two kinds. Some are based on principles known in the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic, geometry and other similar sciences. Others proceed from principles which are known in the light of a higher science; for example …, music uses principles established by arithmetic …

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In the same way in which music relies on principles provided by arithmetic, sacred doctrine relies on principles revealed by God.

For St Thomas, music thus offers theology the model of a subordinate science; that is to say, a science which derives the very principles of its thought from a primary science. Music therefore is not an independent discipline that lays its own foundations – like mathematics – but it derives its own coherence from reliance on exogenous thought. Thus music is dependent on arithmetic. 2. A three-fold dependency There are three ways in which musical thought may be considered to be dependent on another intellectual discipline. (a) Mathematical (arithmetical) dependency The first, as we have just seen, is a dependency on mathematics. Most often this is limited to arithmetic, and, more crudely, the combinatoriality of the primary whole numbers. (b) Physical (acoustic) dependency Others postulate a physical dependency, or to be more precise, an acoustic dependency. This way of looking at things is so common today that we hardly need to repeat the relevant names here (e.g. Aristoxenes of Tarentum, Rameau). Thus

 The complete passage reads as follows: ‘Sacred doctrine is a science. But amongst the sciences, there are two kinds. Some are based on principles known in the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic, geometry and other similar sciences. Others proceed from principles which are known in the light of a higher science; for example, perspective uses principles derived from geometry, and music uses principles established by arithmetic. Now, it is in this latter fashion [hoc modo] that theology is a science. It proceeds in effect from principles known in the light of a higher science, which is none other than the science of God and the blessed itself. And in the same way in which music relies on principles provided by arithmetic, sacred doctrine relies on principles revealed by God.’ [Sicut musica credit principia sibi tradita ab arithmetico, ita sacra doctrine credit principia revelata sibi ab Deo] (St Thomas Aquinas, Theologia, Question 1, article 2, 24).  Or rather, music for him acts as a subjective model by virtue of its aptitude for relying on a superior intelligence. Thus, for St Thomas, theological faith has to follow the model of musical reliance.  See his project of reducing harmony ‘to its natural principles’ and, in order to achieve this, his passage from the mathematical to the physical: ‘It is in music that nature appears to assign to us the Physical principle of these first Mathematical notions on which all sciences are based. Music is a physical-mathematical science.’ (Cited by Charles Lalo in Éléments d’une esthétique musicale scientifique (Paris: Éd. Vrin, 1939), p. 84). Hence the eulogy of the physicist who, faced with geometry, loses himself in his calculations.

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the field of music is structured by physical principles which shape the possibility of musical thought itself. However, this conception of musical thought is not just concerned with taking into account individual physical laws (that would be a truism), but rather with establishing a dependency on a specifically logical order. Music not only derives its matter from physics, physics not only provides music with a framework in which to operate or material conditions for its existence (which, again, goes without saying: no music without sounds, of course), but musical thought has to ground its logical principles of inference in those of acoustics. This is an entirely different proposition – namely, the idea that musical logic has to derive its values from the logic (physical/acoustic) of sound. (c) Psychological dependency There exists a third form of dependency: that of psychology. On this view, music is given its values from outside through a psychology of emotions and a physiology of sensations. Even if the category of psychology is no longer as important as it has been in the past, this way of looking at things goes right back to the Greeks, and can be traced, without interruption, through to the modern age. This dependency on psychology, like the previous two examples, brings about musical coherence through an exogenous logic: to paraphrase St Thomas, music needs to be grounded in psycho-physiological principles. 3. Elements of the history of the three-fold dependency in the twentieth century The twentieth century witnessed an undeniable strengthening of this three-fold dependency. However, what interests a proponent of musical autonomy such as myself is that at different times this growing hold on music has hit a snag, something which forms the basis of expectations for those who, like André Souris, maintain that ‘music is a kingdom … which obeys its own laws’. (a) Arithmetic The dependency on arithmetic has risen to prominence in the course of the twentieth century. Today this is brought out even more by the omnipresence of the computer in the work of the musician. The computer acts as a logical authority for the musician in that it allows him to explore the realm of possibilities, the



It suffices to refer to the characterization of the different musical modes in Plato’s Republic.  With the help of information technology in composition (CAO), with the production of sound (synthesis) and even with listening (amplification). Of course, the digital nature of information technology, if it proceeds from the whole numbers of arithmetic, is not necessarily isomorphic.

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coherence of certain conjunctions independently of their practical modalities of existence. But if musical thought has become dependent on arithmetic, this is not for technical reasons – the computer, and equally the telephone and the internet, are not in themselves a reason either for hoping for or despairing of music. If musical thought tends to be subordinated, this can only be the case for internal reasons: in virtue of its own renunciation of autonomy. If musical thought has become dependent on arithmetic, this is in my opinion the result of serialism and the combinatorial proliferation over which it presided. Boulez has called this combinatorics of whole numbers, in exploring a rudimentary arithmetic, ‘a transference on to numbers as a means for the composer to escape his responsibility through subsuming it into a numerical organization which itself then becomes inescapable’. But merely naming and denouncing this combinatoriality of whole numbers is not enough to reconstitute a dissipated power. Thus the internal weaknesses of the mechanism of serial thought have been remedied very quickly by the massive intrusion of computer science into the field of music. The computer thus covers up, by means of the prestige attached to modern technology, the disappointments that have emerged as a result of the preceding dependency on arithmetic. Traces of this dependency on arithmetic coming unstuck on the musical sterility of ‘number fetishism’ may be discerned in the thought of Pierre Boulez during the pivotal period of the 1960s: ‘Serial generalization could lead to total absurdity, in that numbers are not sufficient to unify in any depth the different characteristics of sound with a view to integrating them into a general structure.’ Boulez recognized the inanity of serialism’s dependence on arithmetic, to pose what he called ‘the fundamental question: how to found musical systems on criteria which are exclusively musical’.10  It is possible, by means of synthesis through physical models, to imagine violins that are ten kilometres long and have 50 strings. If that has become practically possible, does such an instrument have any musical reason for existing? This question is not a logical but an ontological one. The computer offers incomparable powers of calculation, be it a capacity to combine letters according to logical rules which have been carefully established and remain entirely indifferent to the fact that the A, B, C and D combined can designate pitch, duration, or – why not? – the four amino acids that play a role in the composition of DNA.  Pierre Boulez, Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1963), p. 23.  Also: ‘All these changing fetishisms: of number, of great numbers, … stem from a profound lack of intellectualism.’ Ibid., pp. 17–18. 10 ‘The word “logical” … invites me to make comparisons. When one examines, in terms of new structures (of logical thought, of mathematics, of physical theory …) the thought of the mathematicians or physicists of our age, one gets an idea of the immensely long way musicians still have to go before arriving at the cohesion of a general synthesis … This begs the fundamental question: how to establish musical systems on the basis of criteria which are exclusively musical, rather than using, for example, numerical, graphical

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Another way is to make music dependent on geometrical shapes (this concerns the infantile disease of graphic scores or the more pedantic attempts of someone like Xenakis to derive values in music from the spatial order of hyperbolic revolution). This too, since the 1960s, has come up against its musical inconsistency: here we only have to take note of the fact that from then on the scores of someone like John Cage filled postcards. (b) Acoustics and psychology What of the dependence on physics which came to characterize the twentieth century? •

Klangfarbenmelodie First of all, we need to remind ourselves that the concern to provide a musical logic for new sonic materials goes back to Schoenberg’s concept of Klangfarbenmelodie. To Schoenberg this meant ‘to make … progressions … out of that which we call simply ‘tone color’, progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches.’11 Given that musical thought was unable to establish this logic of timbres on its own, this preoccupation led to a reinforcement of its dependency on acoustics.

•

Acousmatic music A particularly striking moment in this reinforcement was the establishment by Pierre Schaeffer of acousmatic music, the avowed aim of which, in direct opposition to that which he called ‘the error of the mathematicians of music’,12 was to deduce the musical element from sound. It is remarkable that this project failed, and even more remarkable and seldom mentioned is the fact that this failure was declared by the promoter

or psycho-physiological symbols for a musical codification (a kind of transcription) without there existing even the least common notion between them. … Choosing primitive notions by virtue of their characteristics and their logical relations appears to be the first reform that needs to be carried out urgently in the current state of disorder.’ Ibid., pp. 27–9. 11 ‘Now, if it is possible to create patterns out of tone colors that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call “melodies”, progressions, whose coherence (Zusammenhang) evokes an effect analogous to thought processes, then it must also be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colors of the other dimension, out of that which we call simply “tone color”, progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches. That has the appearance of a futuristic fantasy and is probably just that. But it is one which, I firmly believe, will be realized.’ (Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony (1911), trans. Roy E. Carter (London: Faber & Faber, 1978), pp. 421–2). 12 Pierre Schaeffer, Traité des objets musicaux (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 499.

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of this project himself. Pierre Schaeffer declares at the end of his Traité des objets musicaux: The theory [of musical objects] stops here. Music commences. In effect, the passage from object to structure, the meaning with which the structure endows the object, is the true birth of the musical element. In traditional music, this is called the Theory of Music, essentially that of scales. We have said that we are not able to go that far.13

In short, Schaeffer acknowledges the ultimate impossibility of deducing the musical element from mere sound. Someone like Michel Chion rigorously drew the consequences from this in deciding to establish a new art which he called l’art des sons fixés, the art of fixed sounds. •

13

Psycho-acoustics At this point at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century, we have to take into account a new configuration that cuts across the dependency on acoustic and psychological elements to unite them under the single category of the psycho-acoustic. To emphasize fully the dependency of music on acoustics, we have to raise the physiological capacity of the human body to perceive physical phenomena, in effect, and then its psychological aptitude for translating those stimuli into mental images. Thus psychological dependency envelops acoustic dependency, in that it furnishes it with its reasons and justifications.14 Overall, if the dependence on arithmetic has come unstuck because of its insensitivity to the musical element, and the dependency on acoustics because of the inability of sound to provide the foundation for the musical element, it can be said that the dependence on psychology has continued its course so far without coming across any notable obstacles.15

Ibid., pp. 578–9. Of course, all research of a psycho-acoustic order does not ipso facto go back to an intention to establish a dependency; however, if today one wants to allow good old programme music, narrative and thematic music, when it is not an archaic form of musical impressionism making a come-back, one has to recognize a justification of music on the basis of psychological considerations which tend to defeat simple considerations of an acoustic nature. I shall leave aside – as there is no scope to examine it seriously here – the problem of the spectre which also feeds on the twin source of acoustics and psychology (see, for example, its psychologizing conception of the perception of music). 15 It is true that experimental psychology as a discipline is only in its infancy with regard to patriarchal disciplines which are mathematical and physical in nature, and that, given this, it remains undecidable as to whether music or psycho-acoustics will emerge as dominant. 14

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III. Three orders of logic in music My proposal is not descriptive so much as prescriptive in character. In this sense, I am not a musicologist but a composer, convinced, as Boulez maintained at the start of the 1960s, that that which music lacks is an intellectual grounding which does not describe what exists but which prescribes what is necessary. If musical thought can break free from this triple dependency – or better: if it has already done so, if only in places – where can we find this progress in which to place our hopes? From where can we derive an autonomous musical force in the field of logic? I am going to put forward a triple proposition concerned respectively with the singular role of writing in music, with the issue of musical dialectics, and finally with what is properly speaking the strategic dimension of musical works. Writing (écriture), dialectics and strategy thus constitute the three orders with regard to which, it seems to me, there is room to hope for something from a musical logic. 1. Writing (Écriture) To consider musical writing as a logical dimension leads to two strands of inquiry: • •

How does musical writing take into account the new dimensions of sound material, in particular those of electroacoustics and information technology? How does musical writing relate not just to perception and hearing but more specifically to the act of listening?

What is the truly logical dimension of these two questions? (a) Writing (écriture) and information technology Firstly, musical writing is that which validates the musical dimension of the sound material used. In considering what exists in music and what does not, writing decides the validity of appearances.16 It validates, in a musical context, the real existence of each manifestation of sound, which remains only a mirage if its efficacy is not written down. Who, having heard a piece of music, has not consulted the score afterwards to evaluate the pertinence of what he thought he heard? He already knows the transcendental17 use of écriture (writing), even if for him, like Monsieur Jourdain

16

In philosophical terms, writing (écriture) measures the here of the being-here of sound, the da of Dasein. 17 For reasons that lie outside the scope of this chapter, this function may be identified philosophically by means of the concept transcendental in the very precise sense given to it by Alain Badiou in his philosophical interpretation of the mathematical theory of topos.

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when he realizes he’s been speaking prose all his life,18 this use is intuitive and remains classified under the concept of intuition. In this sense, musical writing takes into account the passage of mere sound towards music, and uses this fact to structure the logic of a musical situation. Hence the question: how should musical writing take into account the new sonic material originating from information technology and which is not written down by means of traditional musical nomenclature – that is to say, the notes and their letter names? Do we need to have recourse to a complete mathematization of musical writing here, in the form of numbers, and thus abandon the old system of notation, or should we resort to a system of double writing (for musical elements and for IT elements)? (b) Writing (écriture) and the act of listening My second question concerning writing is this: how does musical writing relate in particular to the act of listening to music? To relate writing to the act of listening to music involves a truly logical dimension which may be presented as follows: in music, notation is that which calculates and demonstrates, while the act of listening starts at the point at which something written down, something calculated and demonstrated, cannot be directly shown, that is to say is not capable of a strict perception. The act of listening proceeds from a breakdown of the perceptible.19 The favoured moment [le moment-faveur] of a work,20 where the act of listening starts, is thus underpinned by a logical condition: that there can be something which has been demonstrated but cannot be shown or presented – that it makes sense to speak of a certain existence, albeit unpresentable according to the traditional rules of demonstration. Contemporary mathematics of the infinite can here teach us things that we should not pass over. I shall give as a first example something which can be easily grasped. Penrose’s tiling Geometry studies the different ways in which a plane may be tiled. Thus one can cover a plane with two simple forms that lead to a non-periodic (i.e. non-repeating) tiling. Figure 10.1 gives an example of such a tiling, called Penrose’s tiling. 18

Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Monsieur Jourdain, on having the difference between prose and verse explained to him, is amazed to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without realizing it. 19 Inasmuch as one considers it to be acceptable to think of that which has been perceived as the adequacy of something which has been shown and something which has been demonstrated, in music the category of perception is close to the philosophical concept of apperception. 20 See François Nicolas, Les moments favoris: une problématique de l’écoute musicale (Conférence Noria, Reims 1997: www.entretemps.asso.fr/Nicolas/TextesNic/ momentsfavoris.html).

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Mathematics (see Connes, Grünbaum and Shephard21) thus demonstrates the two following results: 1. There exists an infinite number of ways to tile a plane with two tiles (that is to say different ways: one cannot pass from the one to the other by a sliding of the plane onto itself). 2. On the contrary, every finite segment is to be found in all possible ways of tiling: that is to say, it is strictly speaking impossible to show one region – if show means exhibiting an extract of the tiling, as is done in Figure 10.1 – which is not also to be discovered in all the other ways as well. There is, therefore, no means by which the eye may know that there is no single way of tiling the plane, but rather an infinite number of ways. Our eye, attached to the finite, is not able to follow reason in its comprehension of the infinite.

Figure 10.1. Penrose tiling

21 See Alain Connes, Géométrie non commutative (Paris: InterEditions, 1999), and G. Grünbaum and B.C. Shephard, Tilings and Patterns (New York: Freeman and Company, 1987).

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This example sheds light on my proposal as follows: the act of listening to music, which goes back to a mode of thought which correlates the sensible (i.e. that which can be perceived by the senses) with the intelligible, reaches the point at which the sensible detaches itself from the sole regime of the perceptible to open itself up to a new principle of intelligibility which no longer goes back to that which may be shown but which inaugurates the musical rationality of non-representable infinities. How can writing absorb this new regime of the sensible? Or, to be more precise, how can musical writing condition the possibility that such an act of listening occurs in the course of a work and then continues to operate? This question involves a dimension which is strictly speaking logical and which is perhaps related to that which the mathematical logic of the twentieth century has developed under the name of the theory of models, and which thematizes and classifies the articulation of reason and calculation.22 In order to do this I shall put forward three important theorems and interpret them in the musical context of the relationship between writing and the act of listening. Gödel The first theorem is very well known. Gödel’s theorem demonstrates that there is such a thing as the undecidable, and demonstrates thereby that calculation cannot absorb reason. Note the paradox: one demonstrates, therefore one calculates, that there is something which is incalculable, and that which is incalculable thus finds itself not rejected as irrational but integrated into rationality, as its incalculable part. But beware: this delimitation within the rationality of the calculable and the incalculable takes place in context, not in and of itself, so that that which is incalculable in one situation may become calculable in another. The essential point is that, in every rational situation, there is a point of that rationality which is not calculable, even within that situation. This incalculable point prescribes a decision (in that one cannot separate it by means of a procedure of inferences), and this decision goes back to the attributes of rationality. What does this mean in music? If one interprets the mathematical duality of theory and model in music as the duality between score and listening, Gödel’s theorem prescribes that the audible exceeds that which is written down. One could put this more precisely in the following terms: The act of listening to music takes place according to determinations which are not written down as such. This will be my first thesis.

22 So questions such as: What is the calculable part of the rational? Is all that is rational calculable? Do all calculations have a rationality? Conversely, is calculation not a purely formal procedure, and does it itself not prescribe any rational thought?

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Löwenheim-Skolem The second theorem, that of Löwenheim-Skolem, is the opposite of the preceding one: it circumscribes, so to speak, an excess of calculation, in that calculation exceeds the rational element by demonstrating that every theory, constituted to give an account the singularity of a given field, can also give an account, in exactly the same terms, of a completely different field, entirely alien to the one at which it is aimed. In this sense, every theory, that is to say every regulated system of calculation and inferences, misses the singularity of the field about which it theorizes and confuses it necessarily with another field, heterogeneous and quasipathological with regard to the original aim. Following the interpretative thread of the above, I put forward this second thesis: Every score is compatible with at least two acts of listening that are radically different. Henkin The third theorem, that of Henkin, is even more extraordinary. It demonstrates that every coherent theory has a model solely because of the fact that the coherence of a theory guarantees the existence of a field within which that coherence makes sense. Again, to use Hegelian vocabulary: everything rational is real! Hence my third thesis: All coherent musical writing guarantees ipso facto the possible existence of an act of listening.23 (c) Does the progress made give reason for hope? These three theses merely prescribe formal possibilities of existence; it is in this sense that they are logical. My hypothesis is nevertheless that in their effects they lie at the roots of contemporary musical developments. Let us therefore briefly set out the progress already made. 1. Firstly, there has been a musicalization of information technology which is already on course, and the hard core of which consists in its integration into traditional musical writing. This musicalization affects every aspect of electroacoustic practice and information technology: instruments, diffusion, 23

In passing, this tends to validate serial pronouncements of the type: ‘perception has to follow notation’ (or, more essentially, Boulez’s conviction that the essential has to be ‘the cohesion of a general synthesis’: Penser la musique aujourd’hui, p. 28). To put it more precisely: if for serialism perception has to follow, for the theory of models the ‘real’ model does not follow the logical-mathematical theory because the inferences of the latter have no semantic translation within the model; the consistency of the model and the coherence of the theory are by no means isomorphic. In this sense, the act of listening to music here does not operate by following notation (the act of listening is not a perception of written structures), but by deploying itself according to its own laws.

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and the capacity to give musically discursive form to sound material. But the truly logical key resides in the capacity to integrate all this into a written order which follows music’s own laws. In this respect, the progress already made24 is noteworthy. 2. The end of thematicism and a certain saturation that characterizes serialism have liberated a way of thinking about the act of listening which no longer reduces it to a question either of perception or of hearing. Although it has to be admitted that on this level musical thinking remains prehistoric, progress nevertheless has been made. From this perspective, my three theses outline the beginning of an undertaking more stimulating that that of the defunct ‘open work’, and take on very real practical significance, liberated from neo-serialism as well as its puerile negation. 2. Dialectics My second great preoccupation is that of musical dialectics. The fact that in music logic may be called dialectical may be illustrated in two ways. (a) Three dialectical principles Firstly, one can set against Aristotle’s three great logical principles three characteristic principles of musical dialectics (Table 10.1). Hence the antisymmetry25 between philosophical/mathematical logic and musical logic which Xenakis and others, such as Pierre Barbaud, have not taken into account.26 Table 10.1. Three logical principles: classical/dialectical Classical logic Identity principle A=A Principle of non-contradiction Non (A and non-A) Principle of the excluded middle A or non-A

Dialectical logic Difference principle A≠A(’) Principle of forced negation A→(A and non-A) Principle of the obligatory third A→(A and B) with B≠A and B≠non-A

1. Identity versus difference Where mathematical logic prescribes the principle of identity (A, posited twice, is identical to itself and its different occurrences), the principle of musical logic, 24

Which we cannot discuss here. Or an orthogonality. 26 I refer to my polemic against Xenakis: Le monde de l’art n’est pas le monde du pardon (Entretemps 5 (February 1988)), p. 128 (www.entretemps.asso.fr/Nicolas/TextesNic/ Xenakis.html). 25

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which one could call the principle of differentiation, or difference principle, posits the following: every musical term posited twice supports, by that very fact, an alterity. No term, posited twice, is identical to itself. And in music, even to repeat is ipso facto to alter. 2. Non-contradiction versus constrained negation. Where mathematical logic prescribes the principle of non-contradiction (I cannot posit A and not-A at the same time except to lapse into inconsistency27), music sets against that a principle which I shall call the principle of constrained or forced negation: every musical object posited has to unite itself with its opposite, that is to say, has to unite (or compose) itself through a process of becoming. 3. The excluded middle versus the obligatory third option. Where mathematical logic prescribes the principle of the excluded middle (I have to choose between A and not-A because there is no third option), musical composition posits a principle of the obligatory third option: every musical term posited has to unite itself (that is, compose itself) with another term which is not simply the negation of the first in the process of becoming, but a neutral term,28 in that it is ‘neither the one nor the other’.29 All in all, these three principles would suggest that musical thought could be more advantageously compared with Stoic30 than with Aristotlean logic. (b) Four dialectical gambits The fact that in music logic may be called dialectical also becomes apparent from this: every concrete musical situation has an historically fixed dialectical gambit (enjeu) particular to the musical works that are inscribed in it. 1. The Baroque fugue. For the Baroque fugue, the dialectical gambit was that of a scission of its single subject (that is to say, into a counter-subject and an answer): 27

subject → counter-subject answer

And from there to no longer disposing of impossible propositions to be deduced in my logical system. 28 In an etymological sense: ne-utrum. 29 In all these senses, composing musically would be to pose three terms together: a first musical term, its negation (its other) and also an Other term; and this would equally be composing the alteration of this triad in the course of its reiterations. I do not pretend to formalize what would be a dialectical logic: others have occupied themselves with this (Henri Lefebvre, Dominique Dubarle, Stéphane Lupasco) and I do not hold that this type of formalization is musically very productive. 30 For this, see the philosophical works of Claude Imbert. For example, Pour une histoire de la logique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999).

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2. The Classical sonata For the Classical sonata, the dialectical gambit was that of a resolution of two opposing forces within the work.31 3. The Romantic music drama. For the Romantic opera/music drama of Wagner, the dialectical gambit was that of a transition between the multiple entities which populated it. 4. Twentieth-century serialism. For the serialism of Boulez, the dialectical gambit was that of reversal.32 These considerations are not exhaustive. They illustrate the pertinence of calling the hard core of logic in music dialectical. (c) Dialectics of sameness Properly speaking, my proposition is to put my hope in a dialectic of another type. This can be set out in the following terms. If the musicalization of sonic entities is essentially to vary them, musical dialectics has up to now comprised variation as a process of alteration. To vary an object is to change its primitive identity, to alter its distinctive traits, to modify its original characteristics. Musical dialectics thus proceeds, in a privileged manner, from ‘sameness’ to ‘otherness’. This dynamic deploys itself according to an alternative put forward by Henri Pousseur, who distinguishes Beethovenian variation from Schubertian variation. The first modifies an object plunged into an unchanged context, whereas the second modifies the context and keeps the object unchanged.33 We can say that this concerns the classical musical dialectic and posits that there is no reason whatsoever to limit musical dialectics to the classical dialectic in the same way in which there is no reason to limit oneself to classical logic (bivalent logic with the excluded middle) in modern-day mathematics. I therefore propose a non-classical musical dialectics that, in direct opposition to classical musical dialectics, proceeds from ‘alterity’ to ‘sameness’, a kind of conquest of the generic, of something-or-other, of the anonymous.34 Alterity would be its starting point, first evidence such that the astonishing and the precious35 attach themselves to the universalization of sameness and no longer to the diversification of particulars. Instead of starting with the enunciation of an identity in order then to generate alterity,36 we are here talking about deriving a common characteristic from a diversity 31

See the works of Charles Rosen, in particular The Classical Style (London: Faber, 1978). 32 See the works of Célestin Deliège, in particular Invention musicale et ideologies (Paris: Bourgois, 1986). 33 For example, by revolving it in order to vary the angle of illumination. 34 Perhaps the being without qualities of Robert Musil. 35 The rare and the difficult: Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt (Spinoza, end of The Ethics). 36 In the case of Beethoven, by generating other objects; in the case of Schubert by making other facets or profiles of the same object appear.

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given at the outset, about bringing closer that which is far off and without any apparent links, in order to recognize the subterranean workings and thus to speak incognito of the same entity in the context of the diversity from which we started. Certainly, this kind of dialectic is interesting if it is not the pure and simple regression to traditional variation technique, if it does not lead to presenting a conclusive entity of the same nature as the one presented by the alterations.37 This dialectic should not become a retrograde alteration, turning deductions into induction. (d) Three dialectical categories (Kierkegaard) In order to put this non-classical dialectic which, provisionally, I shall call the dialectics of sameness, into action I propose to draw inspiration from Kierkegaard, and in particular from three of his operations: reprise, recognition and reduplication (Table 10.2). Table 10.2. Three dialectical categories (Kierkegaard) The ordinal two reprise

recognition

------●───◦───►

-------------●───►

¦ ▼

¦ ▼

-------------●───►

------●───◦───► The cardinal two

reduplication

(Hegelian redoubling)

{ A(A), A(A) } → A

A → {A, A’}

Reprise (or return to what has gone before) is a second occurrence which proves to be the first, whereas recognition (of something unknown38) is a first occurrence which proves to be the second. Reduplication is a reflection which overcomes that of a gesture by the fact that the how of it reduplicates the that which; the enunciation of it validates that which is enunciated; the doing of it overcomes the saying. Its inversion would be 37 We are not talking about proceeding like Liszt in his Fantasia Ad nos … or Franck in his first choral for organ, as these cases do not deliver the principal theme which forms the retrospective key of the work until the end. 38 Of something incognito, to use the vocabulary of Kierkegaard.

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the Hegelian doubling where a polarization reveals the two severed halves of a principal unity.39 These three formal operations40 are susceptible to configuring an alternative logic to traditional musical development. I hold that these operations are already present in a whole range of contemporary works (for example those of Elliott Carter and of Helmut Lachenmann), and that, there as well, it involves taking stock of progress already made. 3. Strategy Thus we arrive at my third great logical preoccupation. This concerns each work’s own strategy and leads to a distinction between two prescriptions for the work: 1. The strategy of a work has to come from a system of inferences which is its own, not just in terms of a more or less precise deviation in relation to the larger system which it inherits. 2. The work has to conclude, succeed, take on its finality without interpreting the moment of its end as that of a suicide. Let’s consider these two points in more detail. (a) A system of inferences The prescription of a strategy of a systematic nature indicates that the work must follow through its own musical project – incorporating the diversity of sonic situations that it encounters – with insistence, even tenacity. The work, in order to represent a truly ‘musical subjectivity’, would not remain content with merely inscribing some meticulously individualized, self-referential, but ultimately inconsequential totality, or with positing a localized deference towards some larger musical system which would only guarantee its own global envelopment. Such a work would configure a subjectivity that is hysterical in character and unilaterally rebellious. The issue is that the work constitutes, by means of its own forces, an insistent meaning, a persistent intension41 which arises from a systematic approach, not just from some momentary reactions to a progression which in other respects remains regulated by a tonal system, or a serial system, or by a systematic dialectic of the same. 39

The ‘doubling’ makes concrete the two facets of the same thing. Recapitulation and recognition deal with an ordinal two (that is to say, one which fixes an order and determines which is first and which is second), whereas reduplication (and its corollary, the Hegelian doubling) deals with a cardinal two (that is to say, one which goes back to quantity and which determines the way in which 2 is or is not identifiable by 1+1). 41 An instress in the sense given to this neologism by Gerard Manley Hopkins (cf. Nicolas, Une poignée de main: la musique du poète Gerard Manley Hopkins, Lyon: Horlieu, 1999). 40

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I am not saying that this systematicity has to be formalized; it does not take the form of an alternative system to the musical systems that are already well known. What I am talking about is a subjective quality of insistence rather than a codifiable system. This particular systematicity of the work can be seen as its own way of drawing inferences, a bit like a particular mathematical theory adding its own rules of inference. To give a basic example, the theory of relations posits that: if A ≤ B and if B ≤ A then A = B which is a new way of inferring the identity of A and B. To say that this strategy has to be systematic turns the Boulezian problem of system and idea42 on its head, in that the idea of the work is no longer that which clashes with the musical system in order to deflect it, but rather that which generates the work’s own system, by superimposing it on the musical system. As emblem of this idea that has been followed through systematically, I put forward the category of the diagonal, which owes nothing to the oblique of Boulez but a lot to the mathematical procedure invented by Cantor.43 I have already had the opportunity of presenting this method44 and shall not return to it here. Also, I have already developed how this category could act as the ferment of a diagonal style of thought, the foundations of which we find in Schoenberg. Thus, if the musical logic developed in the twentieth century gives us reason for hope, this will also be an extension of Schoenberg’s legacy. (b) The moment of ending If this insistence – this imperative – inscribes the desire of the work in the infinity of the situation, the moment of its ending is that which reminds the work of the necessity of a conclusion. This moment of the ending, in which the work relies on the ulterior effects of its act, in the dialogue with other works, poses particular logical questions for which it seems to me to be permissible to draw inspiration from the logical-mathematical procedure of forcing ( forçage). This moment of forcing, or the logical time of conclusion, recurs in a deduction by transfinite recurrence such as in a diagonal procedure. There too, the practice of Schoenberg is very illuminating. All I can do here is merely refer you to the endings of his works.45 42

Cf. Pierre Boulez, ‘Le système et l’idée’, Inharmoniques 1 (December 1986). In 1892, Georg Cantor (1845–1918) demonstrated by means of a diagonal that it was impossible to enumerate all real numbers. 44 Cf. François Nicolas, La singularité Schoenberg (Paris: Ircam–L’Harmattan, 1997), p. 97. 45 Cf. ibid., pp. 100ff. 43

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(c) The correlation of the two System and conclusion are logically correlated in the following way: if there is occasion to interrupt, that is because the work has a strategy and not merely a disorganized series of moves. The strategy of the work engages the relationship between the finite and the infinite at the very heart of the work, and this relationship arises from logical preoccupations, in that they are examined formally, as they are here, that is to say according to a framework which sets conditions to what is possible. IV. Conclusions Finally, we can present our theses according to an order of exposition proceeding from the general to the particular: 1. First of all, we propose to distinguish the level of the musical universal (or ‘the world of music’46) from the level of the musical opus, which divides itself in two: the piece of music is the level on which the opus inscribes itself as a being, existing in a situation (hence its relationship with dialectics and its general framework of inferences, or consistency of expression); the musical work, on the other hand, is the level on which the opus inscribes itself as project, as a musical subject (hence its relationship with strategy and its particular framework of inferences, or imperative of meaning). 2. Secondly, we can summarize three logical instances: • • •

Writing (écriture) is the logical instance of music as universal: that which formally conditions the coherence of a possible world of music. Dialectics is the logical instance of pieces of music: that which formally conditions the consistency of a piece, the possibility of its unity. Strategy is the logical instance of a musical work taken as a subjective singularity: that which formally conditions the insistence/imperative of this work, the possibility that it supports a musical project from one end of the piece to the other.

Thus we can say that musical logic operates as the coherence of writing (écriture) within the ‘world of music’, as dialectical consistency of pieces, and as the strategic imperative of each work.

46

To be very precise: the world of music of which we are speaking here (that of what is called classical and contemporary music which is based on the notation of the work), which is only one of all possible or all actually existing musical worlds (there are, for example, the worlds of music not written down, of traditional music or improvised music).

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3. Thirdly, on the basis of these hypotheses, what can be hoped for from a workimmanent contemporary musical logic developed in the course of the twentieth century? I propose the following (Table 10.3): • • •

A writing (écriture) which takes into account new sonic material and relates it to the act of listening. A non-classical dialectic that exists in the conquest of ‘sameness’ and operates systematically by means of recapitulation, recognition and reduplication. A strategy of the work that is simultaneously insistent, imperative and conclusive by the yardstick of what I have here identified as a ‘diagonal style of thought’.

Table 10.3. The 3 (1+2) dimensions of logic in music LEVEL musical

philosophical

logic of music →

musical writing (écriture) actualized as the work: • how does writing take into account new sonic materials? • how do writing and listening relate to one another?

two logics of the opus

musical dialectics immanent in the work:

1. Logical intension of the piece→ (all that is logiacally necessary)

• which dialectic in recognition of ‘sameness’? • according to which immanent principles?

← the transcendental

← inferences of a logical order

musical strategy of the work: 2. Strategic intension of the work→ (all that is strategically chosen)

• how does the work systematically persist without finality? • how does the work compel finality?

← inferences of a more theoretical order

Bibliography Boulez, Pierre, Penser la musique aujourd’hui (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1963) ——, ‘Le système et l’idée’, Inharmoniques 1 (1986), pp. 62–104 Connes, Alain, Géométrie non commutative (Paris: InterEditions, 1999) Deliège, Célestin, Invention musicale et ideologies (Paris: Bourgois, 1986)

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Grünbaum, B. and Shephard, G.C., Tilings and Patterns (New York: Freeman & Company, 1987) Imbert, C. Pour une histoire de la logique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999) Lalo, Charles, Éléments d’une esthétique musicale scientifique (Paris: Vrin, 1939) Nicolas, François, ‘Le monde de l’art n’est pas le monde du pardon’, Entretemps 5 (1988), pp. 109–32. www.entretemps.asso.fr/Nicolas/TextesNic/Xenakis.html ——, Les moments favoris: une problématique de l’écoute musicale (Conférence Noria, Reims, 1997). www.entretemps.asso.fr/Nicolas/TextesNic/momentsfavoris. html ——, La singularité Schoenberg (Paris: Ircam–L’Harmattan, 1997) ——, Une poignée de mains: la musique du poète Gerard Manley Hopkins (Lyon: Horlieu, 1997) Rosen, Charles, The Classical Style (London: Faber & Faber, 1968) Schaeffer, Pierre, Traité des objets musicaux (Paris: Seuil, 1966) Schoenberg, Arnold, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (London: Faber & Faber, 1978) Souris, André, Conditions de la musique, et autres écrits (Brussels and Paris: Université Libre de Bruxelles et CNRS, 1976)

Chapter 11

Postmodernism and the Survival of the Avant-garde Max Paddison

We have seen that there is a way in which postmodernism replicates or reproduces – reinforces – the logic of consumer capitalism; the more significant question is whether there is also a way in which it resists that logic. But that is a question we must leave open. (Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodern and Consumer Society’)

Introduction If we are persuaded by the view that the heroic age of the avant-garde is over, and that the conditions that sustained it have disintegrated, then the implications for the survival of a radical music today are not very encouraging. Nevertheless, in spite of the evident retreat from the position occupied by radical art in the 1950s and 1960s and the subsequent capitulation to consumerism, elements of an avant-garde appear to persist against all odds. In this chapter I address the problem of an avant-garde music in the cultural and social conditions which characterize postmodernity. The changed conditions under which music has been produced and consumed since the 1960s and 1970s can be seen as both socio-technological in character (the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society) and aesthetic–ideological (the shift from an attitude which is oppositional and subversive, rejecting commodification, to one which is accommodating and assimilated, and which embraces and celebrates commodification). These changes also represent a shift from a culture which has a critical awareness of history, even when attempting to negate it, to one which is characterized by historical relativism and a conviction that the historical project of the avant-garde is exhausted. It is this change in conditions that I would identify as the shift from modernity and aesthetic modernism to postmodernity and aesthetic postmodernism. With the term ‘avant-garde’ I refer to the metaphor employed by aesthetic modernism to suggest an advanced, radical, critical and oppositional art exploring the ‘New’ and previously unknown. The Baudelairean definition offered by Jürgen Habermas is more than sufficient for my purposes, namely:

 Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodern and Consumer Society’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 124–5.

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The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured.

Under the concept of the avant-garde I include a range of apparently opposed tendencies, and to this extent I do not accept Peter Bürger’s somewhat rigid distinctions between the labels ‘modernism’ and ‘avant-garde’, when he argues that modernism is the continuation of the theme of aesthetic autonomy by other means, but without challenging its own embeddedness in the institutions of art, while the avant-garde is identified with experimentalism and the rejection of art’s institutionalization, particularly in the form of Dadaism and Surrealism. I adopt instead Adorno’s perspective on these concepts, taking modernism (including the avant-garde) as a range of often conflicting responses to a common dilemma, that of the process of societal modernization itself. Furthermore, an important feature of all modernist positions, however contradictory, is resistance to commodification, even when employing the material and the means of mass culture itself. In the course of this chapter I consider the postmodernist context of the musical avantgarde, offer a conceptual framework, and put forward a typology of exemplars to map what I argue are the two extreme positions taken by radical music in this context. First, I discuss characteristic features of postmodernity and aesthetic postmodernism in relation to aesthetic modernism, drawing on Lyotard, Jencks and Jameson. Second, through a critique of Habermas and Adorno, I suggest that there are two sharply contrasting directions identifiable for a radical avant-garde music under these changed conditions. Third, I discuss the intensification and extension of music’s autonomy-character, taking the example of Brian Ferneyhough and, fourth, I consider the intensification and critical recontextualization of music’s commodity-character, taking the example of Frank Zappa. Thus I suggest that, while the necessary historical conditions for an avant-garde have disintegrated, it remains important to clarify the salient features of an advanced critical music and to identify traces of its survival under changed conditions. Postmodernity and aesthetic postmodernism: a cultural context The contention that modernism as a relevant aesthetic position is defunct, and that the conditions for a radical avant-garde have been undermined, is by now well established. Arguments from Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Eco and Lyotard, among 

Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), p. 5.  See Peter Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974). Trans. as Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw, foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).

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others, have sought to emphasize the relativity of values, the decentring of the expressive Subject as autonomous individual, the dehistoricization of material, and the collapse of what Lyotard calls ‘grand narratives’. However, such claims, at least for the demise of modernism and the avant-garde, and indeed of ‘great art’, are nothing new. To an extent they are part of art’s obsession with itself and its retreat from the world into a hermetically sealed autonomy – something which Hegel had identified in the first half of the nineteenth century as a potentially terminal problem of Romantic art in general, and of autonomous music in particular. Adorno suggests in Aesthetic Theory (1970) that: A latecomer among the arts, great music may well turn out to be an art form that was possible only during a limited period of human history. The revolt of art which programmatically defined itself in terms of a new stance towards the objective, historical world has become a revolt against art. Whether art will survive these developments is anybody’s guess.

Adorno, like Hegel, had foreseen the ‘end of art’ in the sense of the grand tradition of the nineteenth century and of the high modernism of the twentieth century. He had recognized the disintegration of the traditional notion of musical material and the rise of what he called a second ‘mass musical language’ made up of the reified gestures of the earlier music. The problem of the disintegration of material as the ‘historical dialectic’ of expressive needs and technical means was also inevitably an aspect of the precarious state of the historical Subject, as progress of selfreflecting subjectivity. The diagnosis of the situation so far is remarkably close to that of the advocates of postmodernism. The prognosis, of course, is significantly different. Jean-François Lyotard celebrated the loss of faith in grand narratives – that is, in notions of universality, truth, progress, freedom, utopia, the individual and the New. In the following passage he discusses this in relation to architecture, but the point is equally applicable to music: … there is no longer a horizon of universalization, of general emancipation before the eyes of postmodern man … The disappearance of this idea of progress within rationality and freedom would explain a certain tone, style or modus which are specific to postmodern architecture. I would say a sort of bricolage: the high frequency of quotations of elements from previous styles or periods (classical or modern), giving up the consideration of environment, and so on. … A second connotation of the term ‘postmodern’ … One can note a sort of decay in the confidence placed by the two last centuries in the idea of progress. This idea of progress as possible, probable or necessary was rooted in the certainty that the development of the arts, technology, knowledge and liberty would be

 T.W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Christian Lenhardt (London: Routledge, 1984), p. 5.

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Lyotard, who had taken careful note of Adorno’s position in Aesthetic Theory and converged with it in key respects, nevertheless plays his cards close to his chest regarding the survival of an avant-garde and what could be called a critical art practice, falling back on a comforting relativism. He credits Adorno, among others, with a significant role in the critique of Enlightenment thinking, but is in turn critical of the notion of the self-reflecting expressive Subject that is so fundamental to Adorno’s position. Adorno had early on lamented the decline of the self-reflecting Subject. For him, the survival of the individual, as expressive Subject, albeit damaged, becomes itself fundamental to the making of art. In music this is inseparable from the experience of time; thus, differences of attitude to time and the fragmentation of a sense of continuity become significant. Modernism is characterized by a concept of time which is often multi-faceted and polyphonic in time-based arts, but is nevertheless teleological, so that discontinuity is plotted against an underlying assumption of continuity, and it is the resulting disjunction that is significant. In postmodernism, on the other hand, there is a conception of time which is a-teleological, with emphasis on the present moment, the ‘now’, either as the extension of the moment over large, unarticulated periods, or as the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents – in both cases, however, without the tension created by assumptions concerning an underlying sense of continuity. This is combined with an a-historical approach to the past, characterized by use of elements from previous styles or periods, as pastiche or direct quotation, the kind of bricolage emphasized by Lyotard. The result is a negation of history, a repression of the past and its significance: ‘living in a perpetual present and in perpetual change’ that obliterates traditions and the past, as Jameson has put it. This pluralism and multiplicity, characterized by stylistic diversity and the breakdown of overarching stylistic or linguistic norms leads, on one level, to the celebration of difference and diversity, as I have suggested is the case with Lyotard. A version of this, particularly noticeable in relation to architecture, results in a relatively uncomplicated acceptance of pluralism as a purely stylistic matter, a playing with a dehistoricized repertoire of historical forms and styles. This version of postmodernism is well represented by the architectural theorist Charles Jencks, who discusses it in relation to irony and double-coding: Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of the immediate past: it is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence. Its best works are characteristically double-coded and ironic,

 Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Defining the Postmodern’, in Lisa Appignanesi (ed.), Postmodernism: ICA Documents 4 (London: ICA, 1986), pp. 7–8.

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making a feature of the wide choice, conflict and discontinuity of traditions, because this heterogeneity most clearly captures our pluralism.

This account of postmodernism certainly suggests a high degree of stylistic selfconsciousness. However, it represents this as a relation to a stock of materials which is conceived as historically neutral and static. What is noticeably lacking is any sense of a critical self-reflection at work at a structural level in the relation to styles and forms of the past, or any acknowledgment that the interaction is with material made up of ideologically loaded handed-down gestures which are dynamic in character. As Fredric Jameson has argued: … in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum. But this means that contemporary or postmodernist art is going to be about art itself in a new kind of way; even more, it means that one of its essential messages will involve the necessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the past.

In its rejection of the critical, oppositional, self-reflexive work of art, postmodernist art risks becoming merely a celebration of the commercialization of culture and the commodification of art. The erosion of boundaries between high culture and mass or popular culture towards stylistic cross-overs would appear at first sight to be a distinctive feature of postmodernism, and one which contributes significantly to its commodification. This is, however, misleading, as the boundaries had already become permeable during the period of high modernism, and, furthermore, there would appear to be no reason why a critical relation to material cannot just as well happen within rock music or jazz, for example. The key question remains whether a postmodernist aesthetic can encompass a critical, oppositional relation to its material and its social content, or whether it represents an essentially conservative and anti-modernist position. Jameson’s formulation of this problem is worth reiterating: ‘There is some agreement that the older modernism functioned against its society in ways which are variously described as critical, negative, contestatory, subversive, oppositional and the like. Can anything of the sort be affirmed about postmodernism and its social moment? We have seen that there is a way in which  Charles Jencks, ‘What is Post-Modernism?’, in Walter Truett Anderson (ed.), The Fontana Postmodernism Reader (London: Fontana, 1995), pp. 26–7. See also: Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? (London/New York: Academy Editions/ St Martin’s Press, 1986).  Jameson, ‘Postmodern and Consumer Society’, pp. 115–16.  I have argued this in Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996), pp. 81–105. The point was first made in my article ‘The Critique Criticized: Adorno and Popular Music’, in Richard Middleton and David Horn (eds), Popular Music 2: Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 201–18.

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postmodernism replicates or reproduces – reinforces – the logic of consumer capitalism; the more significant question is whether there is also a way in which it resists that logic.’ As he concludes, the question remains open. Habermas, for his part, has viewed postmodernism as representing a range of conservative and neo-conservative, anti-modernist positions, and has argued that the modernist project remains incomplete. Instead, he proposes, we should learn from the failed excesses of aesthetic modernism and the radical avant-garde’s attempts to achieve emancipation from rationalization and the reconciliation of art and society. He argues that such failure arises from misunderstanding the relationship of the aesthetic sphere to cultural modernity as a totality. Cultural modernity and the aesthetic sphere: Habermas and Adorno Habermas’s distinction between cultural modernity on the one hand, and the process of societal modernization on the other, is valuable for purposes of conceptual clarification,10 even if one ultimately rejects his proposals for alternatives to the radical avant-garde praxis of the period of heroic aesthetic modernism. Aesthetic modernism, as an aspect of a larger cultural modernism, has as its associated concepts the avant-garde and the autonomous, self-reflexive art work; societal modernization as a historical process has as its concomitants, means–ends rationalization, the division of labour, and their manifestations in the aesthetic sphere, the culture industry and the commodification of the art work. This distinction, which derives from Max Weber’s concept of rationalization and also in part from Habermas’s critique of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, identifies the field of tension between aesthetic modernism and the process of societal modernization – that they stand in opposition through their polarized relationships to a common technical and technological base. That is to say, the process of societal modernization, understood in terms of Max Weber’s concepts of rationalization and increasing bureaucratization, leads to the instrumentalization of consciousness and to increasing conformity and a diminishing of critical self-reflection. Aesthetic modernism, on the other hand, takes a critical stance in relation to societal rationalization and the instrumentalization of consciousness from the position of a relative aesthetic autonomy. Habermas acknowledges the critical stance taken historically by aesthetic modernism, but sees the aesthetic domain, that of autonomous art, in Kantian terms as one among other specialized and professionalized cultural spheres (that is, together with the spheres of science and morality, all three – art, science and morality – having become split off as cultures of expertise from the life-world of everyday communication). In Habermas’s view, therefore, the position taken by aesthetic modernism over against the ongoing process of societal modernization is at best 



Jameson, ‘Postmodern and Consumer Society’, pp. 124–5. Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, pp. 3–15.

10

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quixotic, as the discourse of the aesthetic sphere cannot on its own change the course of the totality. Habermas’s argument, that ‘a differentiated relinking of modern culture with an everyday praxis’11 is called for, arises from a critique of Adorno’s aesthetics of modernism. These two positions differ, not because they do not share the same utopian aspirations, but precisely because of their respective attitudes towards the possibility or impossibility of the realization of such aspirations under present conditions, and the kind of strategies they suggest. Implied in Habermas’s position is a normative aesthetics which insists that art must attempt to engage with the everyday life-world, rather than remaining within its own separate professionalized cultural sphere. What Habermas has had to say about the aesthetic sphere, however, has been limited mainly to the reception of art. Little attention is given to the predicament of advanced art today as a praxis in the context of total commodification. His larger critique of the Adorno/Horkheimer position in Dialectic of Enlightenment fails to deal with the extent of the commodification of art and of its reception, and to answer the complexity and seriousness of Adorno’s analysis of art’s situation in the ‘administered world’.12 Furthermore, Habermas has no choice in discussing art but to resort to the kind of utopianism for which he criticizes Adorno and Horkheimer. I argue that, while Habermas’s invocation of Max Weber’s spheres of cultural modernism in relation to the process of societal modernization as rationalization has explanatory value as an indication of art’s impotence against the totality, it does not satisfactorily address the paradox – what one might call the imperative impossibility – of advanced art under the changed conditions of postmodernity (at least, as a critical, self-reflexive art praxis which does not become totally assimilated to the interests of a commodity culture). The ‘impossibility’ in question is somewhat along the lines of Samuel Beckett’s ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on’. The conditions are greatly unfavourable to a radical avantgarde, and yet it continues against the odds. It then becomes a matter of strategies. This is something articulated at length by Adorno in his philosophy of music. For Adorno, aesthetic modernism is entwined inextricably with the avantgarde, as the point of intersection between the most extreme expressive needs and the most advanced technical means. In the case of music, the tendency is towards a form of ‘conceptless cognition’ which operates through critique of traditional norms of musical behaviour. This is one of the defining features of aesthetic modernism for Adorno, a feature which Habermas identifies at a general level as characterizing modernity tout court: ‘Modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition; modernity lives on the experience of rebelling against all that is normative.’13 This has fundamental structural implications for art works which Habermas does not pursue. While the relationship to handed11

Ibid., p. 13. See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, ‘The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985), trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), pp. 106–30. 13 Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, p. 5. 12

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down material is often characterized by irony, parody and satire, sometimes through quotation and montage, sometimes through negation, and always through a process of recontextualization, it must nevertheless always operate at a concrete, material level of structure, and it is through its construction as form that art – and, in particular, music – becomes a mode of cognition. It is in this direction that Adorno’s sympathies undoubtedly lay for the avant-garde – towards interiorization and the extreme development of music’s autonomy. But, at the same time, the disintegration of musical material and of the integrity of the musical work threatens the existence of the work in any traditionally meaningful sense. In its place Adorno had recognized the rise of what he called a second ‘mass musical language’14 made up of the reified gestures of music as assimilated by the music business. What Adorno was reluctant to acknowledge, however, was that the implications of this situation mean that the second mass musical language may be all that remains of musical material today. If this is so, then an advanced music may have no choice but work with such material – the second-hand, the already-used – as there may be nothing else.15 This direction had also, of course, established itself in the avant-garde by the early part of the twentieth century – indeed, Adorno talks of Mahler in these terms. But it is particularly in Dadaism and Surrealism that its distinctive difference emerges (also something noted incidentally by Adorno in his essay ‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik’ of 193216). As we have seen, Peter Bürger makes this the basis of his distinction between modernism (retaining the autonomy-character of art and its institutions) and the avant-garde (‘anti-art’, rejecting art’s autonomy and its institutionalization),17 in the process hijacking the terms and restricting both. The distinction is valid, however, when viewed as one between two versions of the avant-garde. The disintegration of material has also to be seen as an inevitable aspect of the disintegration of the historical subject. The problem of the individual, as expressive subject, becomes itself fundamental to the making of art. For Adorno, a strategy is that of the unknown as unintelligibility, the making of things ‘we do not know what they are’.18 This becomes a structuring principle of avant-garde art, 14

T.W. Adorno, Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (1962), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), p. 220. 15 Adorno had recognized this in relation to Mahler. There is, however, a certain inconsistency between his treatment of Mahler and his treatment of Schoenberg. See my discussion of this in Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially pp. 258–61 and 263–78. 16 T.W. Adorno, ‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik’ (1932), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 18, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 749–50. 17 See Peter Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974). 18 T.W. Adorno, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, Quasi una Fantasia (1963), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540.

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marking at least the spot where meaning should be. He takes it as the model for his notion of une musique informelle, and it is derived in large part from Beckett.19 For Habermas, this would doubtless be seen as a retreat into ‘nonsense experiments’ and abstraction, a legitimation of art as an end in itself, as something claiming to transcend society as it is, whereby disillusion with the fate of the avant-garde and the pessimism of Adorno merely ‘come to serve as a pretence for conservative positions’.20 But Habermas oversimplifies the problem in two ways: in the first place his alternatives for art and its reception are naïvely prescriptive, depending on the questionable notion that art can be produced to meet prescribed needs; and in the second place his proposals are dependent on our ability to steer societal modernization in a more desirable direction – and he admits that ‘the chances for this today are not very good’.21 This seriously undermines his argument because, in effect, it leaves us once more impaled on the horns of the dilemma identified by Adorno: that is, an avant-garde alienated by its inability to engage with the cultural totality, and yet compelled through self-reflection to present a critique of the falseness of that totality. Furthermore, the reception and mediation22 of art in the life-world remains shaped by the process of societal modernization – by the culture industry, by the institutions of art, by administration and bureaucratization, and by the professionalization of art as an autonomous sphere. In the case of contemporary music I have suggested that the extreme intensification of autonomy under these conditions is particularly well exemplified in the case of Brian Ferneyhough. Brian Ferneyhough: the radical extension of autonomy In his article, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’ (1988), Richard Toop argued polemically that a small group of composers comprising James Dillon, Richard Barrett, Chris Dench and Michael Finnissy, together with Harrison Birtwistle and Brian Ferneyhough, ‘represent the few possible sources of light within a scene otherwise dominated by (to coin another catch-phrase) “The New Capitulationism”’.23 These composers are seen as pursuing an uncompromisingly modernist path against the grain of the prevailing conservative and retrogressive tendencies towards accommodation. While ‘complexity’ is certainly a striking feature of their music (a term of identification Toop suggests was first used by 19

Adorno places a quotation from Samuel Beckett’s L’innommable at the head of his essay ‘Vers une musique informelle’: ‘Dire cela, sans savoir quoi’. 20 Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, p. 11. 21 Ibid., p. 13. 22 See also my chapter ‘Music and Social Relations: Towards a Theory of Mediation’ in this volume. 23 Richard Toop, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’, Contact 32 (Spring 1988), p. 4. See also the response to this article: Arnold Whittall, ‘Complexity, Capitulationism, and the Language of Criticism’, Contact 33 (Autumn 1988), pp. 20–23.

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Nigel Osborne to categorize this music around 1980),24 it is a complexity which is, however, more a manifestation of immanent structural processes than the striking of any calculatedly oppositional stylistic pose. Indeed, for Ferneyhough, complexity is linked significantly to structural self-reflexivity. In 1990, in the course of a response to the question ‘what is meant by complexity in music?’, he suggested: ‘A particularly vital quality of complex states is often their self-reflexivity … In reflecting on the history and conditions of its own creation and perception a work is already opening a window to the outside, no matter how refractory its substance may otherwise be’.25 These connections made by Ferneyhough – on the one hand between self-reflection and complexity, which implies an extension of the autonomy aesthetic, and on the other hand between the autonomous work and that which lies ‘outside’ it, its heteronomous other – have strong affinities with Adorno’s aesthetic theory which are worth exploring. The consistency of Ferneyhough’s musical development as a composer is striking, particularly in the context of the abrupt stylistic about-turns which have characterized much of the former musical avant-garde since the 1970s (one thinks of Penderecki, Ligeti, Maxwell Davies, and the striking case of Cornelius Cardew). From his early pieces of the 1960s like the Sonatas for String Quartet (1967), to later works like the String Quartet No. 4 (1989–1990) and the String Trio (1994–1995), the dense, multi-layered and multi-perspectival character of Ferneyhough’s musical structures, and the complexity of his work in its demands upon both performer and listener alike, stand out. His music continues and extends a line of development from Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School which is filtered through the earlier Boulez and Stockhausen, and which is characterized by an immanent musical logic which, while embracing fragmentation and disintegration, refuses to capitulate to it. And a further dimension to his work, which only serves to confirm this allegiance, is that Ferneyhough is not content only to write music, but also has that thoroughly un-British compulsion to write about it, and to seek to articulate the theoretical underpinnings of his aesthetic position. Ferneyhough, both as composer and as theorist, represents one attempt to confront the problem of a radical musical praxis today, given what is arguably the realization of Adorno’s most pessimistic predictions regarding the threat to the survival of the self-reflecting Subject within autonomous music. Ferneyhough’s impulse has thus been an intensification of the autonomy-character of music, which very much takes to an extreme the direction already manifest in the Second Viennese School composers. Central to this position is the concept of musical self-reflexivity – a concept that needs to be understood in a context of related ideas, in the sense of Adorno’s term ‘constellation’. I propose

24

See Richard Toop, ‘Against a Theory of Musical (New) Complexity’ in this volume. Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998), p. 66. 25

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to do this in the form of eight theses on parallels between Ferneyhough’s and Adorno’s positions.26 1. For Ferneyhough, as for Adorno, music itself is a mode of cognition, a way of knowing. From this position follows the possibility – if perhaps not the inevitability – of theorizing about music, of verbalizing a form of musical knowing and the principles of that knowing. In discussing his String Quartet No. 4, Ferneyhough writes: ‘Among other things, music is a form of thinking, and thinking can be verbalized, although it does not necessarily have to be. It can be verbalized or, perhaps, conceptualized, thereby extending our scope to cover a vast area of things symbolic as well as verbal.’27 Seen in this way, thinking in music and thinking about music are regarded equally as instances of the self-reflecting Subject’s relation to its other, to an objectivity, a processual relationship of dynamic interaction which is speculative, ‘a kind of poetic, rather than a rigorously scientific discourse’.28 2. We also see clearly an extension of Adorno’s concept of material in Ferneyhough’s thinking. Musical material, like the composer in his dialogic interaction with the material, is understood as inescapably historical in character and in its demands. This historicality is constituted both by a collective and an individual locatedness, to which the composer must respond, to which he has a responsibility. When Ferneyhough writes: ‘We, as composers, do not only manipulate material; it signals to us – by means of the ordered freeing-up and redisposing of figural energies – what it itself desires’,29 he speaks not only for Adorno, but also for Schoenberg, Ernst Bloch, August Halm and that whole tradition of Austro-German musical thinking from the early years of the twentieth century that regarded the material of music (das musikalische Material) as having a dynamic historical tendency, and not merely as raw ‘stuff’ (Rohstoff) to be manipulated. This historical tendency of the material comprises not only historically sedimented pitch relations, but also formal types, genres and gestures. Contained here is also the Adornian concept of mediation (Vermittlung), to be understood in two related senses: (i) as the manner in which the outer world is mediated within the inner, hermetic world of the musical work through the historically sedimented material; and (ii) as the mediation of the material, particularly as gestures, within the structure of 26

See my discussion of Ferneyhough and Adorno in my review article ‘Der Komponist als Kritischer Theoretiker – Brian Ferneyhoughs Ästhetik nach Adorno’, trans. Wolfram Ette, in Musik & Ästhetik 3/10 (April 1999), pp. 95–100. The arguments have been incorporated into this chapter. 27 Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 156. 28 Ibid., p. 155. 29 Ibid., p. 41.

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the work itself.30 Ferneyhough’s use of this complex trope is particularly illuminating in his discussion on the relationship between gesture and figure within his compositorial thinking. He understands gesture as ‘“frozen force” to the extent that it stands for expressive sentiment, for an absent exchange of expressive energies’.31 The figure, on the other hand, is ‘a constructive and purposive reformulation of the gesture’;32 it is ‘an element of musical signification’33 taking its meaning from its musical/structural context, with the emphasis placed on ‘the structurally mediating capacity of concrete gestural qualities’.34 3. The criterion of authenticity (Adorno’s Authentizität rather than Heidegger’s Eigentlichkeit) is thus also clearly foregrounded, since the relationship of figure to historically sedimented gesture can be seen to provide the location for a deeply embedded process of structural self-reflection fundamental to what Adorno regarded as ‘authentic music’. Because gesture is sedimented socio-historical ‘meaning’, the deconstruction and reformulation of it at the figural level constitutes at the same time a critical engagement with history. Ferneyhough, again with reference to the quartet genre, writes: ‘I’m not writing “historical music”, but am, nevertheless, historically located. It seems to me that we are all embedded in our own proper histories of becoming; however accidental they may appear, they are nonetheless authentic for us, as expressions of transitory perspective.’35 4. Ferneyhough’s post-Adornian attempt to salvage a concept of authenticity in the face of stylistic diversity and relativism hinges very much on a concept of consistency (Stimmigkeit) in relation to the problem of style. Because, for Ferneyhough, style is the outcome of energies and conflictual relationships set up within the work, rather than being imposed on it from outside, then style, in his sense as ‘personal style’, can be understood as an indicator of authenticity, of truth. He writes: ‘the concept of “personal style” can now be reinterpreted in terms of the unresolved tensions manifested in the individual work seen as a temporary and volatile confrontation of materials validated by linear consistency (from work to work) from within’.36 5. Ferneyhough rejects the relativism of a postmodernism confronted with multiplicity, pluralism and fragmentation, because his modernist perspective is always that of the critical, self-reflecting Subject, situated within the specific but contradictory conditions of the historically mediated musical material in a state of disintegration. While he recognizes the 30

See also my chapter ‘Music and Social Relations’ in this volume. Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 35. 32 Ibid., p. 41. 33 Ibid., p. 34. 34 Ibid., p. 36. 35 Ibid., pp. 155–6. 36 Ibid., pp. 76–7. 31

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apparent impossibility of the integrated self under such conditions, he argues that ‘the Subject will not go away merely because its existence is an impossibility’.37 But his conception of the critical Subject has never coincided with that of the pre-Freudian ‘integrated individual’. Instead, he sees the Subject itself as ‘constituted as a conflictual relationship, rather than acting out its institutionalized absence on already-present codes (no matter how inventively this may be carried out)’.38 His position is that of a critical modernism, characterized by an almost existentialist exploration of fragmentation as opposed to the postmodernists’ celebration of it.39 He seeks to do this music-immanently, through a ‘personal-historical’ and critical interaction with the handed-down material, a material which he, like Adorno, still finds relevant and meaningful, as a continuing engagement with and reformulation of historical gestures and generic norms. To this extent, therefore, both his music and his theoretical writing constitute a critique – indeed, a critical theory, in the sense understood by Adorno – whereby the task is twofold: to integrate conflicting levels while retaining and revealing the fractures and lacunae which resist integration and the appearance of consistency. 6. Implicit in Ferneyhough’s position is a work-concept, likewise derived from Adorno, which projects its implications both into the sphere of reproduction as performance and into the sphere of reception as the listening experience. Indeed, one is reminded of Adorno’s statement in Aesthetic Theory: ‘In art, the criterion of success is twofold: first, works of art must be able to integrate materials and details into their immanent law of form; and, second, they must not try to erase the fractures left by the process of integration, preserving instead in the aesthetic whole the traces of those elements which resisted integration.’40 But while Adorno’s work-concept could be seen as the starting point, Ferneyhough projects its implications both into the sphere of reproduction as performance and into the sphere of reception as the listening experience (Erfahrung). Adorno, in Philosophy of New Music, had argued that: ‘Under the constraint of its own objective logic music critically cancelled the idea of the consummate artwork and severed its tie with the public. … Today, the only works that

37

Ibid., p. 79. Ibid., p. 77. 39 Ibid., p. 78. 40 T.W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Christian Lenhardt (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 9–10. See Ästhetische Theorie (1970), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970; 2nd ed. 1972), p. 18: ‘Das Kriterium der Kunstwerke ist doppelschichtig: ob es ihnen glückt, ihre Stoffschichten und Details dem ihnen immanenten Formgesetz zu integrieren und in solcher Integration das ihr Widerstrebende, sei’s auch mit Brüchen, zu erhalten.’ 38

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count are those that are no longer works.’41 Ferneyhough’s radical critique of the traditional work concept questions the work as ‘a graspable, invariant entity, as something that can be directly transmitted’.42 In dismantling the idea of the work as invariant entity, however, and in recognizing the fiction of its determinacy, he does not retreat into an undialectical Cagean indeterminacy or into postmodern style-quotation. Instead he encapsulates the problem of the fragmented work as – to use Adorno’s term – a dynamic force field (Kraftfeld).43 7. Ferneyhough’s conceptualization of his ongoing compositional strategies faced with the work-problem takes notation as a focal point – the locus of the much-discussed issue of ‘complexity’ in his music. When he writes that ‘one of the principal characteristics of an authentic work consists in exactly this: to recognize the endless continuum of complexity uniting all things’,44 notation is a key point of departure and return in the ‘play of incompatibilities’ which is the work. Notation occupies for Ferneyhough the terrain of multiple possibilities. He reflects on the ‘strange ontological position’ occupied by the score: ‘a sign constellation referring directly to a further such constellation of a completely different perceptual order.’45 Notation acts as boundary in several ways in his music. It is ‘the boundary between the playable and the unplayable’; the boundary between ‘work’ as surfeit of possibilities, and performance as filtered by the technical capacities of the performer; and the point of intersection between work as metaphysical totality and work as process of interaction. The work therefore becomes a dialogue between performer and notation, and between performance and listener, with the process of preparation for performance and of rehearsal conceived as central to the dialogue. Ferneyhough writes: ‘The object of music thus becomes its conditions of realization, as these are made manifest in and through the encapsulated real-time structuration of composition/ rehearsal/ listening. There is simply one illusion less to 41 T.W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), pp. 29–30. See Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), pp. 36–7: ‘Musik hat unterm Zwang der eigenen sachlichen Konsequenz die Idee des runden Werkes kritisch aufgelöst und den kollektiven Wirkungszusammenhang durchschnitten. … Die einzigen Werke heute, die zählen, sind die, welche keine Werke mehr sind.’ 42 Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 5. 43 T.W. Adorno, ‘Zum Problem der musikalischen Analyse’ (1969), Frankfurter Adorno-Blätter 7 (2001), pp. 73–89. English trans. as: ‘On the Problem of Musical Analysis’, trans. with an introduction and notes by Max Paddison, Music Analysis 1/2 (July 1982), pp. 169–87. 44 Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 2. 45 Ibid., p. 2.

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contend with.’46 In this he recognizes the inescapable ideological content both of the work-concept as traditionally construed and of notation, which normally is taken uncritically as ‘the work itself’, or as the transparent vehicle giving access to it. 8. So, finally, there is a shared concept of ideology: in Adorno’s (essentially Marxian) sense of the term, ideology is not to be understood as a consciously held system of beliefs, but instead as a lived system of values of which we are largely unconscious. It thus serves to legitimize as natural and universal something which is cultural and historical in origin.47 To this extent, therefore, there is a political dimension to Ferneyhough’s compositional strategies (for example, as conceptualized in his essay ‘Aspects of Notational and Compositional Practice’ of 1978). He talks of ‘the most pressing task facing us’ as being the ‘re-integration of music into a wider cultural frame’, and clearly understands the value-loaded character of notation as being a fundamental starting point for any such attempt: ‘Notation, as an explicit ideological vehicle (whether intended as such or not from the point of view of the composer), would seem to have a vital role to play in any strategy directed towards the accomplishment of such a program, or, at the very least, towards a comprehensive presentation of the type and disposition of the problems involved.’48 Ferneyhough’s conflictual employment of notation as densely formulated and opaque screen of (im)possibilities serves also to keep open the processual character of the work, together with the role of performer and listener in this. It is an aspect of the critical self-reflexivity of the work as mode of cognition. As a coda to the above eight theses, and in the light of the composer’s more recent work, I should like to make two further points.49 First, the issue of notational complexity: the extent to which this remains central to Ferneyhough’s thinking is a matter for debate. The enormous technical demands of Ferneyhough’s scores, even at their apparently most impossible, are now constantly being transcended by the virtuosity of his performers.50 This presents an interesting aesthetic problem and raises an intriguing question: if the issue of complexity – once so striking 46

Ibid., p. 5. See Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, p. 53. 48 Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, p. 2. 49 These points do not appear in the original French version of this essay published in 2001. They arose from a roundtable discussion I chaired with the composer (there were also papers by Lois Fitch and John Hails), and which was hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Music at Durham University in January 2003 to mark the composer’s 60th birthday year. The piano work Opus Contra Naturam from his opera Shadowtime was performed at the festival by Nicholas Hodges. 50 I am indebted to the violinist Mieko Kanno for this point. She performed Ferneyhough’s unaccompanied violin piece Unsichtbare Farben from memory at a concert 47

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about Ferneyhough’s scores – is transcended by the sheer technical and musical accomplishment of his performers, then does this simply reveal complexity to have been a superficial rather than essential feature of the music itself? In view of the composer’s own clearly stated instructions in his earlier works – for instance, the piano piece Lemma-Ikon-Epigram, and also the ideas put forward in the essay ‘Aspects of Notational and Compositional Practice’ – we are compelled to take the issue seriously. Nevertheless, it is clear that the nature of the issue has in certain respects changed. The music retains its complexity, its multi-layered density. What is perhaps shifting, falling away, is the once opaque surface of the music, which includes the complexity of the notation. What is now coming into view is the structure of this music, in its intricate and transparent detail as well as in its larger sweep, as something palpable, concrete and, indeed, sensuous. This is no doubt the mark of time on these works, and it recalls Walter Benjamin’s insight when he talks of the idea of ruins, and the falling away of those things which initially appeared definitive in the works’ original historical context: ‘such ruins have always stood out clearly as formal elements of the preserved work of art.’51 Second, there is the question of musical material itself: whereas Ferneyhough had often drawn on the ‘grand tradition’ for his material – sometimes quite directly, as in his Fourth String Quartet, with its reference point the Second Quartet of Schoenberg, sometimes less direct, as in the Sonatas for String Quartet and their distant model in the Purcell Fantasias – this has become more strikingly the case in his recent music, where the apparent hermeticism of his structures, their extreme autonomy, is now laying itself open to forces outside itself which threaten that autonomy. The piano piece Opus Contra Naturam from his opera Shadowtime takes as its material fragmented gestures from the harmonic language of nineteenth-century Romanticism, accelerated and superimposed beyond recognition and hanging on the edge of chaos. It is to be played by a ‘speaking’ pianist dressed in a white suit (Liberace?) and evoking a deserted night club in Las Vegas in the early hours where the performer sits at the piano staring into a maelstrom of disintegrating moments musicaux. It’s the scene after the last clients have gone, the gambling machines are silent, and the night club crooner sits alone over just one last drink, tormented by fragments of imploding memories. It could even, perhaps, be the scene after Frank Zappa’s ‘America drinks up and goes home’. Frank Zappa: the radical critique of commodification And so we lurch to what seems the opposite extreme: Frank Zappa and the omnivorous acceptance of everything from the cultural scrap heap as material. I in honour of the composer’s 60th birthday organized by the Centre for Contemporary Music at Durham University in January 2003. 51 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne and introduced by George Steiner (London: NLB, 1977).

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suggest that the music of Frank Zappa also demands to be understood as a form of critical self-reflection, but one which operates directly upon what Adorno had called the ‘second mass musical language’ of the culture industry itself.52 Zappa saw the music business as an industry concerned with the manipulation and commodification of music and also of its consumers. His music embodies a critique of the ‘culture industry’ in the most concrete terms, as an ironic, oppositional reflection on the music business itself.53 The contradictory character of his position had not escaped Zappa, always his own most eloquent advocate. He recognized a situation where the music industry was driven by the profit motive, and therefore depended on the exploitation of the consumers of popular music to make its money. His music was subversive and worked in opposition to the music industry, while at the same time being designed at one level to operate through the industry. In an interview in 1969, when he and The Mothers of Invention had been in existence as such for less than four years, Zappa said: Industry wants to make money, and I’m getting into a phase now where I’m being used by industry to move products. A lot of the industries now are aware of the fact that they’re in a vicious cycle: in order to sell their goods to the youth market, which accounts for the major market of most of American products, that same market that buys most of the records, you have a weird situation where in effect record companies especially are helping to disseminate the information which will cause the kids to wake up and move and eventually destroy what they stand for, and they can’t help it.54

While as a general statement, and with the benefit of hindsight, this might seem overly optimistic, his music did succeed in treading this tight-rope effectively for nearly 30 years, from the mid-1960s up to his death in 1993. Zappa’s use of stylistic quotation, parody, displacement and the alienation effect of montage attracted academic attention early on because as techniques they pointed to processes more usually associated with the high-art avant-garde (particularly to be seen in the earlier twentieth century in the examples of Brecht and his musical collaborators, of Stravinsky in his music of the years 1914–1918, and of 52

Wolfgang Sandner, ‘Popularmusik als somatisches Stimulans. Adornos Kritik der “leichten Musik”’, in Otto Kolleritsch (ed.), Adorno und die Musik (Graz: Universal Edition,1979), pp. 125–32. Also Max Paddison, ‘The Critique Criticised: Adorno and Popular Music’, in Richard Middleton and David Horn (eds), Popular Music 2: Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 210–18; Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture. 53 See also my entry ‘Frank Zappa’ in Stanley Sadie & John Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (revised edition) (London: Macmillan, 2001), Vol. 27, pp. 748–9. 54 Frank Zappa in interview with Frank Kofsky, in J. Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), pp. 257–8.

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Dadaism and Surrealism). Ben Watson has put forward perhaps the most cogent arguments for Zappa to be recognized as critical thinker and musical Dadaist, and has supported his case by drawing on Adorno.55 And, indeed, Carl Dahlhaus had commented as early as 1971 that ‘pop music as practised by [Frank Zappa and] The Mothers of Invention … is music about music; and their technique is that of the alienating quotation or of montage’.56 Rather along the lines of Adorno’s comment in Philosophy of New Music that Stravinsky’s music was ‘music about music’, Dahlhaus recognized something of a similar nature in the musical selfexamination going on with Zappa and The Mothers of Invention in the late 1960s, suggesting that ‘musical subculture becomes its own subject-matter’.57 And yet, although a form of self-reflection, as reflection upon the material of popular music itself, Zappa’s music is just as much a critical reflection upon its context – a context which includes the sphere of consumption as well as the spheres of production and distribution. The fundamental factor here, precisely because it encompasses all three of these spheres, is the technology of recording. As Ben Watson has so perceptively put it: By close attention to the way in which music manipulates its audience, Zappa played with parameters – musical, technical, social and sexual – that are usually left unexamined, sacrosanct. Nowhere is this clearer than in his use of recording, the essential means by which twentieth-century music reaches a mass audience. Zappa was fascinated by the power relations of recording technology; indeed, his whole oeuvre may be viewed as a meditation on the consequences of being able to spool other people’s time on pieces of plastic. Questions of propriety and property – the encounter of the individual with the social – were raised with unnerving persistence.58

In these respects, Zappa’s music, while manifesting features like irony and bricolage which enable it to be claimed by the postmodernists (even though these features are equally to be found in modernists like Stravinsky, Joyce or Brecht), is distinctly modernist in its techniques and in its intentions. Richard Middleton has pointed out that popular musics have their own versions of modernism, as ‘the expression of alienated subjectivity caught within oppressive social structures … where the effects of this are apparent in the musical form itself – in disjunctive structures, an immanently contradictory musical language and a commitment to

55

See Ben Watson, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (London: Quartet Books, 1994); ‘Frank Zappa as Dadaist: Recording Technology and the Power to Repeat’, Contemporary Music Review 15/1, pp. 109–37. 56 Carl Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 229. 57 Ibid., p. 229. 58 Watson, ‘Frank Zappa as Dadaist’, p. 109.

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“authentic” self-expression’.59 He suggests that jazz and rock musicians themselves are also tending to think now in terms of Adorno’s categories of the split between ‘commercial exploitation’ and avant-garde ‘authenticity’. He writes: Interestingly enough, sociologists have noted the emergence of an Adornian distinction between ‘commercial exploitation’ and avant-garde ‘authenticity’ within the discourse of the jazz and rock communities themselves. … While such simple dichotomies are misleading – all categories of music live in the world of capitalist cultural production, while none can be entirely reduced to it, and a more accurate picture is of a spectrum of possibilities marked by internal conflict – their existence not only confirms the influence of the critique of mass culture in musical practice and popular consciousness, it also indicates that, within the premises of such a critique, Adorno draws the net too tightly.60

Middleton’s comments relate to an article I published in 1982,61 suggesting that the kind of critique of mass culture put forward by Adorno has now actually affected the practice of certain areas of popular music itself. While in my earlier article I had argued that Adorno had limited his field too narrowly, and that a critical and self-reflexive popular music certainly could exist along the lines of the ‘serious’ avant-garde, I had also suggested that such a popular music would then simply hit the same problems encountered by the serious avant-garde itself – that is to say, alienation and loss of popularity.62 Middleton puts this another way round, and argues that ‘if species of jazz and rock are accepted as potentially “authentic”, this knocks a theoretical hole in the approach, for in the recordings of, say, Frank Zappa, Carla Bley or The Art of Noise … we have examples of avant-garde commodities – a combination which, according to Adorno, is impossible’.63 Adorno had not sufficiently thought through his concept of commodification in relation to the avant-garde – something which comes out particularly clearly in the book Composing for the Films he wrote with Hanns Eisler in the 1940s in the United States.64 There Adorno and Eisler argue that Hollywood or mainstream cinema music made use only of regressive musical means – that is to say, the late Romantic orchestral idiom – and they go on to recommend the use of the latest musical techniques as part of modernist shock tactics. What they appeared incapable of recognizing was the extent to which the latest and most radical musical idiom can also quite easily be assimilated by the film industry, simply 59 Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990), p. 43. 60 Ibid., p. 43. 61 Paddison, ‘The Critique Criticised’, pp. 210–18. 62 Middleton, Studying Popular Music, p. 43. 63 Ibid. 64 Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (1947) (London: The Athlone Press, 1994).

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through narrowing the ambiguities of such musical means and restricting them to a limited and iconic set of meanings tied to the visual image. Harrowing avant-garde sound-worlds simply become music for war or horror movies, suggesting that no material in itself is able to resist commodification. Frank Zappa’s attempt at a solution to the problem of total commodification is particularly important. For Zappa, there was nothing which lay outside the junkyard culture of late-industrial society. That is the material – all of it, the bits and pieces, the second-hand gestures, the fragmentation and, of course, the record business, the mass media and the technology that goes with it. There is simply nowhere else to retreat to. The idea of the ‘autonomous work’, and, indeed, of an avant-garde, may well have collapsed. But I argue nevertheless that Zappa’s music is still about resistance to commodification, and to this extent it shares much territory with Adorno’s concept of the avant-garde, and constitutes a critical advanced music, albeit one which Adorno himself would have found it difficult to accept. For Zappa, the resistance did not lie in shrinking from the mass media, but in making things which operate through it and yet still maintain their irreducibly abrasive character. This is resistance in the heartlands of the commodity, a kind of revolution in Hollywood – ‘Tinseltown Rebellion’, Zappa style. To this extent Zappa, like Adorno, remained a modernist. In conclusion I have argued that in the aesthetic sphere modernism and the avant-garde are not two distinct and different categories, as Bürger has claimed, but belong to a range of different but related responses to the dilemma presented to our experience by the ongoing process of societal modernization. Seen in this context, what has been identified as postmodernism belongs also to this range of responses, given the accelerated rate of change of the process of modernization itself in the postindustrial, computerized societies of the developed world – what Lyotard has called ‘the postmodern condition’ in his 1979 report.65 I have also argued that what is undoubtedly distinctive about postmodernism in the arts, however, is its stance towards commodification – that is, acceptance and celebration as opposed to rejection and resistance. What is noteworthy is that this essentially politically and stylistically conservative position, now that it has become established, has lost no time in marketing itself as a new critical radicalism, with the concomitant that all who criticize it must now of necessity themselves be conservatives. Given these conditions, I identified two extremes of the avant-garde that I argued had developed within this context and which had maintained against the odds a critical stance towards commodification. 65 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986).

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As a typology, my juxtaposition of a category of the musical avant-garde epitomizing the extremes of the autonomy aesthetic with a category of rock music epitomizing the extremes of the critique of commodification is crude. But I would argue that it is valid when understood as a mapping of the apparently opposed extremes: the total rejection of commodification through the retreat into autonomy and complexity, and the total negation and critique of commodification and the culture industry through the embracing of heteronomy. Brian Ferneyhough makes works which, through the sheer complexity of their notation and of their structure, defy any fully ‘adequate’ performance or any easy consumption; Frank Zappa made records which, through their abrasive character and their ironizing of the formulaic, defy the norms of the music business and the expectations of entertainment listening. Again, I take my cue here from Adorno’s approach in Philosophy of New Music, where he draws on Walter Benjamin’s methodology in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama: Philosophical history as the science of origins is that form which, from the most far-flung extremes and apparent excesses of development, allows the emergence of the configuration of the Idea, characterized as the totality of all possibilities for a meaningful juxtapostion of such opposites.66

Like Adorno and Benjamin, I am not concerned to discuss the infinite diversity between these extremes, but just to identify what I consider are the extreme and opposed positions themselves, exemplified here, for the sake of argument, by Brian Ferneyhough and Frank Zappa. Unlike Adorno, however, I have not set out to polemicize the extremes as a polarization of antagonistic opposites, although I recognize that this could also be done. As an exercise, my reading has its element of absurdity. But this is, of course, built into both extremes anyway – Zappa’s high seriousness and low comedy, Ferneyhough’s painstaking construction of impossible objects. Indeed, I suggest that if the concept of ‘authentic art’ has any meaning today it is only through its unavoidable relation to the Absurd. Bibliography Adorno, T.W., ‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik’ (1932), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 18, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 749–50. Trans. as: ‘On the Social Situation of Music’, trans. Wesley Blomster, Telos 35 (Spring 1978), pp. 128–64 66

My translation. See original German: ‘Die philosophische Geschichte als die Wissenschaft vom Ursprung ist die Form, die da aus den entlegenen Extremen, den scheinbaren Exzessen der Entwicklung die Konfiguration der Idee als der durch die Möglichkeit eines sinnvollen Nebeneinanders solcher Gegensätze gekennzeichneten Totalität heraustreten läßt.’ Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, p. 13.

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——, Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 12, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975). Trans. as: Philosophy of New Music, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) ——, Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (1962), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973). Trans. as: Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976) ——, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, Quasi una Fantasia (1963), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540. Trans. as: ‘Vers une musique informelle’, in Quasi una Fantasia, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 269–322 ——, ‘Zum Problem der musikalischen Analyse’ (1969), first published in German in the journal of the Th.W. Adorno Archiv, Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurter Adorno-Blätter 7 (2001), pp. 73–89. Originally first published in English translation as: ‘On the Problem of Musical Analysis’, trans. with an introduction and notes by Max Paddison, Music Analysis 1/2 (July 1982), pp. 169–87 ——, Ästhetische Theorie (1970), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970; 2nd ed. 1972). Trans. as (i) Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge, 1984); (ii) Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: The Athlone Press, 1997) —— and Eisler, H., Composing for the Films (1947) (London: The Athlone Press, 1994) —— and Horkheimer, M., Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947) Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 3, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981). Trans. as: Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972) Anderson, Walter Truett (ed.), The Fontana Postmodernism Reader (London: Fontana, 1995) Benjamin, Walter, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Gesammelte Schriften 1.1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), pp. 203–430. Trans. as: The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne and introduced by George Steiner (London: NLB, 1977) Bürger, Peter, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974). Trans. as: Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw, foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) Dahlhaus, Carl, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) Ferneyhough, Brian, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998)

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Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, trans. Seyla Ben-Habib, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London and Sydney: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 3–15. ——, ‘Questions and Counterquestions’, trans. James Bohman, in Richard J. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), pp. 192–216 ——, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985), trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) Jameson, Fredric, ‘Postmodern and Consumer Society’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 111–25 ——, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London/New York: Verso, 1991) Jencks, Charles, What is Post-Modernism? (London/New York: Academy Editions/ St Martin’s Press, 1986) ——, ‘What is Post-Modernism?’, in Walter Truett Anderson (ed.), The Fontana Postmodernism Reader (London: Fontana, 1995), pp. 26–7 Kofsky, Frank, ‘Frank Zappa Interview’, in J. Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), pp. 254–68 Lyotard, Jean-François, ‘Defining the Postmodern’, in Lisa Appignanesi (ed.), Postmodernism: ICA Documents 4 (London: ICA, 1986), pp. 7–10 ——, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) ——, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982–1985, trans. and ed. J. Pefanis and M. Thomas (London: Turnaround, 1992) Mahnkopf, Claus-Steffen, ‘Adornos Kritik der Neueren Musik’, in Richard Klein and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds), Mit den Ohren denken. Adornos Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), pp. 251–80 Middleton, Richard, Studying Popular Music (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1990) Paddison, Max, ‘The Critique Criticised: Adorno and Popular Music’, in Richard Middleton and David Horn (eds), Popular Music 2: Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 210–18 ——, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) ——, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996; 2004) ——, ‘Der Komponist als Kritischer Theoretiker – Brian Ferneyhoughs Ästhetik nach Adorno’, trans. Wolfram Ette, in Musik & Ästhetik 3/10 (April 1999), pp. 95–100 ——, ‘Frank Zappa’, in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (revised edition) (London: Macmillan, 2001), Vol. 27, pp. 748–9

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Sandner, Wolfgang, ‘Popularmusik als somatisches Stimulans. Adornos Kritik der “leichten Musik”’, in Otto Kolleritsch (ed.), Adorno und die Musik (Graz: Universal Edition, 1979), pp. 125–32 Toop, Richard, ‘Four Facets of “The New Complexity”’, Contact 32 (Spring 1988), pp. 4–8 Watson, Ben, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (London: Quartet Books, 1994) ——, ‘Frank Zappa as Dadaist: Recording Technology and the Power to Repeat’, Contemporary Music Review 15/1 (2000), pp. 109–37 Whittall, Arnold, ‘Complexity, Capitulationism, and the Language of Criticism’, Contact 33 (Autumn 1988), pp. 20–23 Zappa, Frank, The Real Frank Zappa Book (with Peter Occhiogrosso) (London: Picador, 1989)

Chapter 12

Material Constraints: Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt Anne Boissière

I In this chapter I offer an exposition and development of Adorno’s concept of artistic material as characterized by constraints and ‘inner compulsion’, focusing on the critical dimension of his late musical aesthetics. Far more important than the historical character of the material, it seems to me, is the effort Adorno made in his polemics with the musical avant-garde and in his book on Mahler to put forward a conception of sound which is both mediated and ‘mediatized’, and which regards the material neither as an object on which to experiment, nor as the product of totally subjective control, but which instead gives it the status of an object of experience. In doing this Adorno poses a problem that characterizes our era – that of the non-differentiation of material, something partly the result of the hammer-blow dealt by the avant-garde, but subsequently also partly the result of developments in technology which made it possible to synthesize sounds themselves. Adorno’s perspective demands our attention in that, in our climate of postmodern nihilism, it does not hold back from raising issues concerning both the conditions of musical creation as well as the problem of musical creation itself. It is from this angle that I propose to approach his notion of the pre-formation of material, throwing into question the status of form as that which grants the material its poietic value. I argue that form gains its validity and legitimacy through the idea of a community of shared values, and I shall also show how this hypothesis is consequently developed in Walter Benjamin’s ‘art of storytelling’ and in Hannah Arendt’s category of ‘work’. Before entering into the main theme of this chapter, I should first like to offer a brief introductory account of my present thinking arising from the work that I have pursued for the past few years on the late musical aesthetics of Adorno,  In the original French version of this essay the author uses the phrase la contrainte du matériau to discuss Adorno’s concept Tendenz des Materials. The term contrainte is not easy to translate satisfactorily into English in this context. It implies not only the idea of ‘constraint’, but also of limitations, necessity, compulsion and drive, and does not precisely correspond to Adorno’s concept. A certain amount of circumlocution in order to bring out these meanings has therefore at times been unavoidable. [trans. ed. MP].

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elaborated by him during the 1950s and 1960s in his Aesthetic Theory (1970), in his immanent analyses of works by Mahler and Berg, and in his polemics with the musical avant-garde. Adorno’s thinking on music remains contentious, giving rise to multiple, and often contradictory interpretations; above all, his thinking is frequently vulgarized and summarized by commentators in reified formulae. For my part, on the contrary, what I take from Adorno is the problematical dimension of his thought: its resistance both to the period of the avant-garde rupture and to the direction taken today by the ideology of postmodernism. It is on this problematical dimension of Adorno’s concept of material that I wish first of all to concentrate. Adorno’s concept of material has become reified as a result of being interpreted in a manner that is too historicist and abstract. By insisting on the criterion of the ‘progress of musical material’, the conclusion has then been drawn that Adorno was ‘anti-avant-garde’, that as a music theorist he was incapable of grasping the significance of the structural transformations that took place in composition in the years following the Second World War, characterized in particular by the pluralization and dehistoricization of materials. Adorno is thereby locked into a philosophy of history that he had already to a great extent refined. The elaboration undergone by this concept during his final writings on music, and above all in the book on Mahler written in 1960, and in which Adorno appears to renounce the criterion of progress of the musical material, demands a more differentiated reading. For my part I propose the following shift, which offers an entirely different reading of what has been called Adorno’s ‘anti-avant-gardism’. Adorno is not opposed to the avant-garde, he does not draw his strength from a reactionary clenching of teeth; in fact, he questions the transformations thrown up by the avant-garde rupture; he poses the problem of the non-differentiation of the material. Thus it is not only the notion of the historicality of the material that is revealed as pertinent in his work, but also both its limits and its necessity, particularly in the late formulation he proposes in his Aesthetic Theory, showing that, in spite of the considerable extension of available materials, there is in reality little material available for actual composition, that is to say, for creation. Adorno’s concept of material retains its theoretical fecundity today from being situated within the framework of a theory of poietics (that is to say, a poietic theory) constructed by Adorno in his late aesthetics by way of a response to the changes affecting the field of contemporary composition, rather than within a philosophy of history. I suggest that the Adornian concept of material only makes sense when seen in the context of a threefold question: how to pose the problem of artistic creation in a situation where the very question itself is normally repressed; how nevertheless to envisage artistic creation as a problem, particularly at this new stage of composition, characterized as it is by the non-differentiation of material; and, finally, how to engage in reflection upon the poietic value of sound? It is this approach, first opened up by Adorno, that I shall now develop.  T.W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie. Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), p. 223.

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What distinguishes Adorno’s aesthetics in the context of contemporary philosophies and theories of art is its critical power. Adorno attributes a distinctive and differentiated status to art, in spite of all forces – whether from science or the culture industry – contributing to its demise. For him, resistance to the principle of identity is at the same time a value requirement. What seems to me of most importance is to establish the focus of this critical resistance. In this respect, the allusive proposals for une musique informelle are of less importance than the book on Mahler; the latter is important because what is elaborated in it is something that I have elsewhere called a philosophical poietics, that is to say a materialist theory of aesthetic creativity. In his Mahler book we know that Adorno pursues the analysis of Mahler’s music in technical terms, renouncing a subjective approach, whether psychological or biographical. The analysis derives from the music, considered in itself (that is, immanently), and it is in this sense that the approach qualifies as objective. However, if the analysis is also philosophical and not merely musicological, this is due to Adorno’s stated aim which, as he puts it with respect to his analyses of Berg, is to grasp not the skeleton but the flesh of the music, not the elements in themselves but the future, the destiny, of the thematic figures: that is to say, their ‘becoming’ (Werden). Formal analysis, considered in relation to the material, is aimed in this direction, and is before everything else a gesture that justifies the invention of new technical categories – that is, categories of value specifically for the music of Mahler. This is the significance of the work’s subtitle: Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy. Through this kind of approach, which is both objective and technical, Adorno does not so much pursue that which is subjective in this music, that which makes it what it is, that which makes it ‘Mahler’. If Adorno tackles the problem of musical creation, it is to the extent to which he does not abandon the attempt to think the ‘subjective moment’ in art, to the extent that, through his analysis of Mahler’s music, he proposes in fact the analysis of subjective form. To put it in Valéry’s terms, he considers the reality of the music to be that which acts rather than that which is acted upon in the work, the work as oeuvre de l’esprit, which is to say, that which ‘exists only in action’. It is in the context of this utterly singular approach to objectivity and to the work of art that one needs to understand Adorno’s critical stance during the 1960s. But 

See T.W. Adorno, ‘Vers une musique informelle’ (1960), Quasi una fantasia (1963). Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540.  See T.W. Adorno, Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomik (1960), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 13, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), pp. 149–319, for the origins of this concept, in particular of Adorno’s ‘material theory of musical form’.  T.W. Adorno, Berg. Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs (1968), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 13, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), pp. 71–8.  Paul Valéry, ‘Première leçon du cours de poétique’, in Oeuvres, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 1349.

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this is not to succumb to the dominant notion that ‘everything has value’, which finds a coherent philosophical elaboration in the postmodernist tendency towards the theme of the ‘death of art’ and the thesis of nihilism, as Vattimo has said, in the absorption of use-value by exchange-value and the dissolution of the category of the New. Adorno insists on addressing his thinking towards that which is unique and which cannot be exchanged with anything else. But the manner in which he does this is at the same time related to structuralism and to phenomenology. It is related to structuralism precisely because it is a question of form and not of structure, because his analysis of the work is organized, paradoxically, around the subjective moment of objectivity: form, for Adorno, is a dynamic, not a static, concept, which indicates the idea of form as process to be found in Aesthetic Theory. If art concerns not the subject but rather the object – that is to say, it has to do with works – it is therefore a prerequisite for understanding that, for Adorno, art is conceived as a process of movement (Bewegung) towards objectification. In this respect his approach therefore diverges from phenomenology through the connection he makes between expression and construction, and which serves to focus the notion of ‘tone’ (Ton) to be found in the books on Mahler and Berg. Adorno poses the question of the relationship between music and language, but no longer from the perspective of communication – which is the standpoint of semiology – but instead from the contrary standpoint adopted by phenomenology, that of expression, understood as a subjectivity existing prior to the work. It is in choosing to think of subjective form, ‘living form’ as he construes it, that we find the appropriate perspective in his late musical aesthetic for understanding the problem of the ‘New’. Taking his leave from Nietzsche, Adorno brushes aside the Idealist category of genius without ever renouncing the idea of creation. And it is for this reason that the concept of ‘material’ assumes for him a character that is crucial, not to say strategic, and which supports a materialist theory of musical creation characterized by critique. The constellation of late musical writings, and in a certain sense their coherence, is organized around the problem of musical creation (that is, musical production), and it is in this context that we need to understand Adorno’s work on the concept of material. Whether in the texts on the musical avant-garde, in which we observe the dogged rejection of any notion of ‘natural material’, or in the immanent analyses of Mahler and Berg, through which he assigns rather greater value to the idea of a material that is regressive and anachronistic, Adorno pursues the same end: description of the material as poietic material and its elevation by means of its status as artistic medium, which is to say, as a tool, but a tool, that is to say, for creation, for composition. Such is the importance of the concept of the ‘limits of the material’: the questioning of the structural transformations thrown up by the avant-garde rupture, marked not so much by the plurality of materials as by an extreme stage of individualization with respect to the work’s language,  

Gianni Vattimo, La fin de la modernité (Paris: Seuil, 1987). Cf. Adorno, Mahler, Chapter 2; Berg, Chapter 1.

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the material resulting henceforth from subjective choice. Adorno grants that this stage of material ‘non-differentiation’ constitutes a problem for musical creativity. But beyond that, he questions the extension of sound which characterizes our era, marked by the development of technology which subsequently allows the creation of new sounds in themselves. By means of a notion of the limits (or necessity) of the material, Adorno argues that not all sounds are sounds actually available for creative composition; he maintains that there are certain conditions which qualify sounds to be poietic sound material. Adorno’s refusal to accept the notion of ‘natural material’ opens up not so much the question of the material’s historicity as the problem of the status of form, which gives the material its poietic value. I take this idea as my point of departure – that is to say, the response proposed by Adorno to this problem in defending, in accordance with an approach that is dialectical in all respects, the idea of the mediated character of the material, which, he tells us, comes within the larger remit of social mediation. In doing this, Adorno confers upon the material the paradoxical dimension of being the result neither of subjective control alone, nor of a technical and scientific process of objectification. He thus frees himself from a scientific, physical conception of objectivity regarding the musical material in favour of a conception that is simultaneously mediated and mediatized. It is the mediated status of the object upon which I should like to elaborate here, and I shall do so by posing more directly the problem of the status of the form that gives the material its poietic value. To do this I propose a hypothesis that is not to be found in Adorno as such, and which concerns the notion of the plurality of the material. By introducing the term ‘plurality’, taken from Hannah Arendt, I propose to examine the constitution of Adorno’s concept of material in terms that are no longer quantitative; I suggest instead other terms to enable us to understand the material not as an object of experimentation but as an object of experience, terms which confer upon it this frankly paradoxical dimension of being the result neither of a subjective decree nor of a technical and scientific process of objectification. It is, in my view, ‘collective experience’ which characterizes and constitutes the material with respect to its poietic value, a hypothesis that is subsequently developed in Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘storytelling’, and in Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘work’. I turn to these thinkers because both of them pose the problem of the poietic value of the material and interrogate the notion of aesthetic creation by elaborating the question of the mediated status of the object through the idea of ‘collective experience’. II Walter Benjamin’s text ‘The Storyteller’ (‘Der Erzähler’, 1936) offers several levels of reading, and the approach that I propose makes no claim to be an exhaustive commentary. I concentrate, rather, upon an aspect of the text generally passed over 



‘Mediatized’ in the sense of becoming a commodity [trans. ed.].

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in silence – the themes of craft and artisanship running through the whole essay, from the opening, in which Benjamin links the storyteller to his dual origins as the merchant sailor who travels the world and the peasant who remains for his whole life in the region of his birth, relating these to the journeyman craftsman of the Middle Ages, and reaching his conclusions with Valéry’s eulogy in praise of the hand. I retain here the dual sense Benjamin confers upon ‘narration’, representing a story or monologue, but equally an art, in the artisan sense of the term. How does one understand the relationship between storytelling and craft, the fact that storytelling ‘is itself an artisan form of communication’?10 I should like to show that, through the art of storytelling, Benjamin reflects on the formation and elaboration of a material constituting a living or creative memory – that is to say, as a material for artistic creation. ‘The Storyteller’ is an essay about art and creation, in that Benjamin poses the problem of ‘living speech’ which, he informs us, is lacking today, and has been lost.11 ‘The art of storytelling is coming to an end.’12 If ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936), an exactly contemporaneous text, focuses on the possibilities opened up by techniques of reproduction, it is, nevertheless, through presenting a structural mutation relating to art. But something has fundamentally changed – that is to say, something fundamental to art has been lost. ‘The Storyteller’ is a key text, in that it fundamentally and constitutively makes this ‘something’ itself thematic to the idea of storytelling. Benjamin pursues this project by means of a materialist approach, as outlined in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, renouncing a theological, idealist conception of art. It is through reflection upon the material available to art that, in ‘The Storyteller’, he seeks to clarify this structural mutation, this qualitative rupture affecting art and the possibility of ‘living speech’ – that is to say, ‘communicable experience’.13 That storytelling throws us back upon the problem of the constitution of the material, and that ‘The Storyteller’ seeks to develop reflections on ‘objectivity’, is indicated by Benjamin in a sentence towards the end of his essay: ‘In fact, one can go on and ask oneself whether the relationship of the storyteller to his material, human life, is not in itself a craftsman’s relationship, whether it is not his very task to fashion the raw material of experience, his own and that of others, in a solid, useful, and unique way.’14 It remains, however, to determine what characterizes this relationship, what defines the ‘objectivity’ of the object constituted by storytelling. To do this, I shall focus on the opposition Benjamin constructs between storytelling and the novel. The storyteller recounts not his life but a story that has the status of general or ‘universal’ being. In contrast to the novelist, who becomes attached 10 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller’ (1936), Illuminations, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1973), p. 91. 11 Ibid. p. 87. 12 Ibid., p. 83. 13 Ibid., p. 87. 14 Ibid., p. 108.

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to the ‘meaning of life’, he cedes nothing to subjectivism.15 The objectivity of the storyteller’s story has, however, a paradoxical status, in that he is not totally exterior to that of which he tells; the latter can be appropriated, made his, which is to say testified from his experience. The assimilation of which Benjamin speaks à propos the storyteller is strongly opposed to that which he describes with respect to the novelist. The latter is ‘omnivorous’, to use Pascal Decroupet’s term. Benjamin writes: ‘In this solitude of his, the reader of a novel seizes upon his material more jealously than anyone else. He is ready to make it completely his own, to devour it, as it were.’16 To the unbridled, almost pathological orality of the novelist, Benjamin opposes the oral tradition of storytelling, thereby conferring a wholly other meaning on the assimilation it characterizes. In place of the transformation of the object that becomes ‘mine’, storytelling helps to maintain an objective character. But by virtue of which of the object’s properties does it achieve this? It is precisely this question that Benjamin answers by invoking the metaphor of the artisan: ‘[Storytelling] does not aim to transmit the pure essence of the thing, like information or a report. It sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again. Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel.’17 The material grasped by the novelist is a ‘naked thing’; it is made of glass, the glass Benjamin evokes in his essay ‘Experience and Poverty’: ‘a material so hard and smooth, upon which nothing sticks. A material that is cold and sober, too … You have nothing to look for here, for there is nothing here on which habitation would have left its trace.’18 Through the image of clay modelled by the potter, Benjamin outlines the qualities of a diametrically opposed material: a material characterized by its plasticity – that is, by its capacity to be simultaneously receptive and resistant, a material, above all, which accumulates traces. Through the hand, a hand that not so much takes as informs – that is, that touches and feels – Benjamin refers to one of the essential traits of the material elaborated by storytelling: its quality of receptivity, a material which ‘contains’ precisely because one’s experience can be deposited in it without losing itself within it, but also without being destroyed by it either. However, the meaning that Benjamin ascribes to this feature of receptivity possessed by the storyteller’s material can be more precisely characterized by means of that persistent motif of oral traditions – transmission, or communication. The material available to storytelling has so much of this quality of receptivity that it is even already formed, albeit as a particular ‘preformation’ resulting from previous work and borrowings passed from one hand to another, from the person who told it to me, and from whom I received the story. Benjamin holds that storytelling is not

15

Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 100. 17 Ibid., pp. 91–2. 18 Walter Benjamin, ‘Expérience et pauvreté,’ in Poésie, No. 51 (Paris: Belin, 1989), p. 73. 16

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only an ‘art’, but a ‘gift’.19 In saying this, he most certainly does not allocate to it a faculty reserved solely for the storyteller. Through the idea of the gift, Benjamin represents the receptivity characteristic of the material elaborated by the narration, and he identifies a quality of the object that adheres to its form: to be touched by the other, and for this reason to be able to be touched, to be modelled by me. Such is the sense of the transmission of which Benjamin speaks with respect to oral tradition: the object becomes an object for me because it is an object for another, for that which was before me and which will come after me. The object is modelled not by one hand, but by several hands together and it is this being-together or this commonality that constitutes it in truth as an object of experience, as Benjamin suggests through the image of weaving, where the Muse of storytelling would be Mnemosyne: ‘Memory creates the chain of tradition … It starts the web which all stories together form in the end. One ties on to the next … ’20 In ‘Experience and Poverty’, Benjamin speaks of glass as a material without ‘aura’, ‘the enemy of the secret’. Storytelling, on the contrary, is that which confers its ‘aura’, its secret, upon material, this depth of reserves implied by Benjamin’s metaphor of the consistency of clay – on condition, however, that we add that the important point for storytelling is that this depth of reserves is woven by a thread that is human. It is in this respect that the material elaborated by storytelling constitutes memory, and which confers upon it its ‘solidity’ or its consistency, its paradoxical status of being a living material. And it is most definitely this which constitutes the main theme of the oral tradition. For Benjamin does not oppose the oral to the written, but more precisely the oral tradition to ‘the invention of printing’:21 by placing storytelling in opposition to the novel, the hand in opposition to technical reproduction, Benjamin is actually opposing living memory to inert memory. If storytelling, however, constitutes living memory, it is also because it renders possible ‘living speech’,22 an idea Benjamin develops in relation to craftsmanship, when he introduces the theme of the ‘usefulness’ of storytelling. All this points to the nature of every real story. It contains, openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, in a proverb or maxim. In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers. But if today ‘having counsel’ is beginning to have an old-fashioned ring, this is because the communicability of experience is decreasing. In consequence we have no counsel either for ourselves or for others. After all, counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding. To seek this counsel one would first have to be able to tell the story.23 19

Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller’, p. 91. Ibid., p. 98. 21 Ibid., p. 87. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 86. 20

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At the beginning of his essay Benjamin links the decline of the art of storytelling to ‘falling silent’, to a deficit that has become structural: ‘Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly.’24 Storytelling, for Benjamin, is concerned with the question of language to the extent that the retelling of a story is first and foremost that of everyone. In this sense, it is opposed both to falling silent and to chattering, the alternative that proposes, on the contrary, the novel, on the one hand through the theme of ‘devouring’, which responds to the primary logic of the body and its private character, and on the other hand through the theme of ‘information’ – ‘this new form of communication’,25 turned exclusively towards the public. Retelling a story means to communicate, but from the depth of one’s own experience. Neither entirely subjective, nor entirely exterior to itself, the narrator’s story raises a ‘communicable experience’ in that it achieves that intersection or mediation between the subjective and the objective, the interior and the exterior, which confers upon experience that essential character of being communicable. It is through the idea of development – the continuation of a story that is in the process of being developed – that Benjamin identifies the mediating status of storytelling. That which grants to it its form as a story, as living speech – ‘in actuality’ according to Valéry’s usage – cannot be its character as a thing, an agency, or a structure, but its life, that which is born in itself. The storyteller’s story designates an act of objectification by which one gives form to one’s own experience, or, more precisely, without which there is no experience. We must, however, be mindful of that fact that through ‘good counsel’, without which development is impossible, Benjamin once more picks up the theme of the gift. By this means he designates that which is possible in each story: not to start from nothing, nor from some ‘naked thing’ or a ‘pure essence’, but first of all to form one’s material through a relation to its ‘other’. The receptivity of the material, its plasticity, is in this sense a precondition for artistic creation. The idea of the gift on the one hand, that of the living word on the other: these two ideas converge in ‘The Storyteller’. The storyteller’s story is ‘living speech’ at the same time as narration is an art, the art of forming the material with which one can recount the story. If storytelling, in its artisanal dimension, is a technique, it involves technique which is in fact that of the creator: through storytelling, Benjamin develops the idea of mediation, he points out at the same time the mediated character of artistic creation and the mediated character of the material constituting the possibility of artistic creation, and whose form proves itself through the idea of commonality, of collective experience. This calls for some comments concerning transmission. To transmit signifies neither conservation nor inheritance of the past. There is in this a patrimonial – that is, inert – conception that Benjamin utterly refuses to accept. In ‘The Storyteller’ the theme of transmission is polarized around two ideas: life at one pole, the gift at the other, and it is this polarity that must be maintained in order to understand what is 24

Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., p. 88.

25

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meant by transmission. Life first of all: it is living speech, which has always within it something eruptive, radical, without antecedent. It carries within itself the ‘New’. Then there is the gift, because the living word is not an absolute beginning. For when, asks Benjamin in ‘Experience and Poverty’, ‘does poverty of experience introduce barbarism? It introduces it by beginning at the beginning: by building totally anew’.26 Building anew, with the fate Benjamin calls ‘the culture of glass’: through the gift, Benjamin reintroduces the theme of a necessary continuity. One does not build anew but takes one’s leave from a material that has already been formed, in the sense that the terms of its constitution are specified via narration. Neither a mere objet trouvé, nor an object entirely created, it is the intersubjective constitution of the object or material that destines it for artistic creation. In this sense, the material has something constituent about it, is itself an act, but an act of commonality, of collective experience. To transmit is to give to the ‘other’ the possibility of being ‘living speech’; for it and with it is constituted a material for artistic creation. The problem of transmission is not that of a rupture with the past but that of commonality, of collective experience. III I should like to extend my commentary on ‘The Storyteller’ with some reflections on Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘work’. It may seem strange to turn at this point towards a philosophy that does not deal directly with the concept of ‘material’ – not, at least, in the sense in which I have defined it here – nor with music. It seems to me, however, that, through her concept of ‘work’ in The Human Condition,27 Arendt develops a conception of material rather close to the one which I have also explored through a consideration of Benjamin’s concept of ‘storytelling’. First of all, for Arendt it is the hand which turns work into a craft activity, because ‘work’ for her is defined above all by an artisan relationship, indicating the fundamental distinction she makes between labour and work.28 Moreover, it is particularly because work is the activity through which objectivity is formed, of which the essential aspect is its plurality, which Arendt indicates when she says that work is the activity by which man constructs a world. I should then like to show that it is via the concept of ‘work’ (that is, productive work as opposed to unproductive labour) that Arendt engages in reflection upon material and upon what constitutes the material – that is, its formation; taking the idea of the hand, she develops a concept of form deriving from collective experience, which she calls the common, and which has much affinity with Benjamin. Finally, by way of conclusion I shall

26

Benjamin, ‘Expérience et pauvreté’, p. 72. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); French ed.: Condition de l’homme moderne (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1983). 28 Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 79–174. 27

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consider the idea of ‘birth’, or ‘natality’ – that is to say, the idea of ‘the New’, which Arendt makes the central category of her political thought. The Arendtian category of ‘work’ is in general identified by ‘making’ or manufacture – corresponding to the Greek term poïesis, as opposed to ‘action’ (prattein). To justify this definition we rely upon the lengthy reference Arendt makes, in her chapter on work,29 to the Platonic model of techné, upon which she principally calls. Whilst ‘work’ would correspond to a type of activity carried out under the supervision of a model – the Platonic Idea or eidos – conforming to which the object is constructed, ‘action’ would have that specificity, by contrast, of being unpredictable, liberated from the pre-existence of any model to which it must conform. Work would be that activity having a determined beginning and end, the production or manufacture of the object, whilst action would have that specific trait of indeed having perhaps a beginning, but in all cases no predictable end. The lengthy development Arendt devotes to instrumentality in her chapter on work is thereby retained. Such an approach, however, only tackles the Arendtian category of work in a peripheral manner. The category is organized not so much around an analysis of use and instrumentality as an analysis of the objectivity of the products of work, the knowledge of their durability, their permanence: ‘the specific productivity of work lies less in its usefulness than in its capacity for producing durability.’30 As Paul Ricoeur remarks in his preface to the French edition of The Human Condition, it is temporal determination that permits understanding of the distinctions Arendt makes between labour, fashioned work, and action, and from this point of view the principal aspect of work is its capacity to endure: ‘When considered as starting from the world, the products of work – and not those of labour – guarantee permanence and durability, without which there would be no possible world at all.’31 What I take from this is that Arendt develops her conception of temporality through the insistent motif of artifice: only manufactured products can establish that durability or permanence in the world. But by virtue of which of the object’s properties is this achieved? It is precisely to this question that the distinctions Arendt makes between labour and the work, private and public, respond. I think, however, that she only really responds to this question, at least in The Human Condition, through her analysis of art, which is not merely a conclusion or supplement to the chapter on work but, on the contrary, constitutes its central framework. In The Human Condition Arendt specifies her conception of objectivity at the moment when she defines the two meanings she gives to the term ‘public’. Starting from this double definition, which offers her the opportunity of honing her idea of ‘the common’, I propose to show that her

29 The chapter is entitled ‘Labor’, and in it Arendt makes the distinction between ‘labour’ and ‘work’. 30 Ibid., p. 172. 31 Paul Ricoeur, Preface to: Hannah Arendt, La condition de l’homme moderne (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1983), p. 139.

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conception of objectivity is only really to be grasped in relation to her analysis of the permanence and durability of the products of art. At an initial level, Arendt’s analysis of objectivity is organized around the idea of appearance: ‘It [the public] means, first, that everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity. For us, appearance – something that is being seen and heard by others as well as by ourselves – constitutes reality.’32 Arendt does not develop this notion of appearance in The Human Condition. She does so instead in the first chapter of The Life of the Mind, Vol.1, by maintaining that, through a critique of metaphysics and ontology, ‘Being and Appearing coincide’.33 At this stage, her concept of the object is elaborated through an opposition between the public – that which presents itself to the presence of others, seeing what we see, hearing what we hear, and which thereby is real – and the otherness of the private – that which resists such publicity. Arendt takes the example of the most extreme physical pain, which renders man infirm in the mute suffering of his body – an experience that, in any precise terms, is incommunicable. I think that it is a not unimportant point that this opposition between private and public is equivalent to the distinction Arendt makes between ‘the labour of our body and the work of our hands’.34 For what distinguishes labour is not only that it is arranged according to a cyclical process, by its very nature without beginning or end, but that it locks animal laborans into his body, into the privacy of his body, removing him from the public domain. Animal laborans is on the side of the novelist, as described by Benjamin; he obeys ‘a logic of devourment’ that destroys all objectivity. By contrast, homo faber is found on the side of the public, not simply because he produces objects but by virtue of the quality of the objects he produces, the reality of which depends upon ‘the constant presence of others who can see and hear and therefore testify to their existence’.35 The products of work are characterized not by the fact that they are manufactured but by their status as objects – that is, by their quality of appearance, by their public existence. Arendt holds that durability is the criterion that distinguishes objects fashioned by work from the results of labour. It is important to understand that this durability does not raise a single quantitative determination – a life-span, whether longer or shorter – but one that is qualitative, in that the opposition between public and private becomes comprehensible. What distinguishes homo faber in his production of objects is his exit from the privacy of his body and entrance into the space of public appearance, which is to say, plurality. Arendt draws a comparison between the activity of work and ‘the unnaturalness of human existence’.36 This unnatural quality is considered by Arendt in relation to the hand, that organ distinguishing 32

Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 50. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Vol. 1, Thinking (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978), Chap. 1, p. 19. 34 See Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 79ff. 35 Ibid., p. 95. 36 Ibid., p. 7. 33

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the body of homo faber from the body of animal laborans, or by which the body of homo faber is defined in The Human Condition. It is by his hand – an organ which is natural but also anti-Nature – that Valéry notes in his Discourse on Surgeons that homo faber achieves this self-removal from his body and detaches himself from a purely biological life. But if he does this it is not because he would tear himself away from Nature by a technique based upon a traditional historicist model, but because, by the quality of the objects he produces, he opens up the public domain. The hand, for Arendt, is a veritable mediator; it designates the point of articulation between the body – which is mute in the obscurity of its strictly individual, subjective experiences – and that which is common, that is to say communicable in other terms concerning human plurality. For Arendt, the hand does not so much throw one back to the activity of making or manufacturing as to render public and communicable all those areas overshadowed by the body. The hand represents the wrench from privacy. From that point of view, the figure of homo faber is not without some relation to that of the storyteller. It is notable, moreover, that Arendt, at this particular point in her analysis, introduces the narrative monologue and more generally the art of representation in the public realm: ‘The most current of such transformations occurs in storytelling and generally in artistic transposition of individual experiences.’37 At a second level the analysis of objectivity presented by Arendt converges more directly with the idea of the (common) world. It is to the second meaning she accords the term ‘public’ when she writes: ‘the term “public” signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us and distinguished from our privately owned place in it.’38 This second meaning is not reducible to the preceding analysis of ‘appearance’. For ‘the common’ no longer signifies only that which presents itself to me at the same time as it presents itself to others at the moment of perception, but that which presents itself to me in much the same way as it did to those who came before me and the way it will do to those who will come after me. The world, for Arendt, is characterized by its transcendence in relation to the duration of the individual life-span, and its durability is owed to its power of resistance towards the birth and death of each generation: Without this transcendence into a potential earthly immortality, no politics, strictly speaking, no common world and no public realm, is possible. For unlike the common good as Christianity understood it – the salvation of one’s soul as a concern common to all – the common world is what we enter when we are born and what we leave behind when we die. It transcends our life-span into past and future alike; it was there before we came and will outlast our brief sojourn in it. It is what we have in common not only with those who live with us, but also with those who were here before and with those who will come after us.39 37

Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 52. 39 Ibid., p. 55. 38

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The political significance Arendt accords to the idea of ‘the world’ is owed to its durability, its permanence, which constitutes a bond, a ‘something between us’, between successive generations. But the essential point is that it is to the constitutive capacity of work that she accords the production of this durability. The real productivity of work is not to be found in mere manufacture but in the production of this permanence, that is to say in a temporality of material which characterizes the products of work. Yet it is precisely this quality of durability that Arendt analyses through the products of art; for, freed from all use-value, these exemplify more than any other product the significance of work. She writes: For although the durability of ordinary things is but a feeble reflection of the permanence of which the most worldly of all things, works of art, are capable, something of this quality – which to Plato was divine because it approaches immortality – is inherent in every thing as a thing, and it is precisely this quality or the lack of it that shines forth in its shape and makes it beautiful or ugly. To be sure, an ordinary use object is not and should not be intended to be beautiful; yet whatever has a shape at all and is seen cannot help being either beautiful, ugly, or something in-between. Everything that is, must appear, and nothing can appear without a shape of its own; hence there is in fact no thing that does not in some way transcend its functional use, and its transcendence, its beauty or ugliness, is identical with appearing publicly and being seen. By the same token, namely, in its sheer worldly existence, every thing also transcends the sphere of pure instrumentality once it is completed.40

This passage is notable for the threefold displacement it suggests. The first, already touched on, consists in refocusing the analysis of work towards an analysis of objectivity: a displacement, therefore, from usage or instrumentality towards the question of the objectivity of the object. The second point concerns the analysis of objectivity – what Arendt calls the ‘quality’ of the object – which leads her to introduce the notion of ‘form’. The analysis of work here distances itself from the question of manufacture, of making. After a fashion somewhat similar to that which we have seen in ‘The Storyteller’, Arendt provides, through the concepts of ‘work’ and of the ‘hand’, an insight not into manufacture but into form. Like Benjamin, through storytelling ‘in its artisan form’, she in fact puts forward the problem of the object’s constitution, that is, a qualitative determination of its form. But thirdly, it is the manner in which she analyses form that is decisive: by introducing the concepts of beauty and ugliness, by linking, in other words, form on the one hand to the action of assessment on the other. That which confers upon the object its quality as an object is, in truth, the fact that it results from an activity which is not that of manufacture but of judgement. The true key to the Arendtian analysis of ‘work’ is to be found in aesthetic judgement, and it is no accident that, after The Human Condition, the 40

Ibid., pp. 172–3.

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attention Arendt devoted to art came to be directed towards this question. It has been suggested that she abandoned a problem she linked to the Greek world from the point of view of poiesis in order to turn towards a modern – that is, a Kantian – problem in adopting henceforth a perspective from the point of view of reception. In developing the question of aesthetic judgement, Arendt, I suggest, in fact really only recapitulates the question of the work in the same terms she had posed in The Human Condition, by looking at it not from the standpoint of manufacture but rather from that of judgement. For in her analysis of the object and its form, the latter had already brought about that displacement affecting her idea of ‘the common’: from perception – corresponding to her analysis of appearance – to that of judgement. This should ideally be the point to embark upon an examination of Arendt’s analysis of judgement, notably in the late writings, in which she turns her attention to the Critique of Judgement. There is no space to do that here, however. Nevertheless, the point I take from Arendt’s thinking on material, which I derive from her analysis of work, and which is not so far removed from aspects of Benjamin’s concept of storytelling, is as follows: the idea of a ‘materiality in action’, so to speak, which is to say a ‘formed material’, but in a form that defines itself through the idea of ‘the common’. For Arendt, permanence or durability is not to be discovered in terms of a material temporality, or as something that is materially or physically determined. It is through the act of judgement that she thinks of the temporality of material, that which constitutes its durability or permanence. In this sense the durability of the products of work has something in common with that solidity of material of which Benjamin speaks regarding the art of storytelling. But for Arendt, it is the act of judgement, a connection that is human, which constitutes the material in terms of what could be called ‘material memory’ or ‘memory in action’. Thus I shall conclude with a consideration of the relationship between work and action, insofar as, for Arendt, action affects ‘the New’; that is to say, ‘beginning something new on our own initiative’.41 I should like to dwell for a moment on the status that she accords to the New, even though her analysis relates to politics rather than to art. The point of view she adopts on ‘birth’, or ‘natality’ as she also terms it and which she makes the central category of her political thought, does not seem to me, however, totally distinct from her analysis of work – something she frequently recapitulates by saying that, without the continuity of the world, the beginning inherited at birth could not be felt. But I think it is necessary to go even further and to understand that for Arendt there is only birth because there is a world; in other words, it needs to be understood that her conception of action is mediated by her analysis of work, which would moreover justify the central position it occupies in the chapter on work in The Human Condition as the point of mediation between labour and action. With regard to my argument, this indicates that Arendt proposes an essential connection between natality and objects – in other words, that her conception of ‘the New’ is elaborated through 41

Ibid., p. 177.

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a conception of materiality which is precisely that which she sees as running through her notion of ‘work’. Arendt does not confuse the aspects of natality related to action with some kind of faculty that would serve to improve human nature. She is critical of any such idea, opposing to it that of The Human Condition. Natality is not a given; it is not innate, but rather, to be more precise, a possibility. It was Arendt’s intention to develop a materialist mode of thought to act as a critique of such assumptions and aimed at the ‘fallacious arguments’ of metaphysics. Her approach to technique and to objectivity is of this kind and participates in this sort of critical movement. It is through her conceptions of the world and work that she points to the possibility of birth. In a certain fashion Arendt maintains, like Benjamin, that one does not begin at the beginning, and this is for her the meaning of the world’s precedence. Regarding work, this permits yet another specification of its status: envisaged as technique, arising not as a manufacturing process but, after a fashion still rather analogous to the art of narration, as a technique of creation; envisaged as a material memory, appearing as a living memory. To speak of work as a technique of creation is not only to insist upon the formation of the work’s material as ‘formed material’, but once again to recognize the essentially mediating aspect of its constitution as form. It is the object’s form, analysed as starting from communality – that is, what one has seen – as material in actuality, which opens up the possibility of natality. Natality, in this sense, is not a gift: it is objectivity, in its pluralist dimension, that is in truth the giver; it is objectivity that initiates the beginning. Finally, to speak of living memory is to recognize the essential bond which Arendt suggests between, on one hand, that material memory which forms the world, and, on the other, innovation or beginning, and to understand the meaning she attaches to the idea of transmission. For the world, in that it assures continuity between men, in that it can support – and this is the important point – a nature that is radical, absolute and in this sense destructive of birth and beginning, the world is indeed that which ensures transmission between men. But this transmission should not be confused with tradition or with conserving the past. Transmission is directly connected with natality. To transmit is, in reality, to grant to the other the possibility of starting from scratch, it is to grant that possibility precisely because it is not innate: it is, therefore, that which signifies the idea of plurality in Arendt. Yet we should be sensitive to the fact that this gift is indeed elaborated through Arendt’s conception of the world as an idea concerning objectivity and material. In this sense, work, like the art of storytelling, is really that which forms material, but a material for something new. The dimension of action attached to natality is thus thought about on the basis of receptivity, that to which Arendt refers as the welcoming dimension to the world.

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IV I shall conclude with three points. The first, an extension of Arendt, concerns postmodernism. In the second volume of The Life of the Mind, Arendt poses the problem of the New and points out its association with the attempt at liberation from a final and retrospective conception of time by conferring a philosophical status on the unpredictable and the unforeseeable.42 Her move to place natality at the heart of her political thought and to uphold the idea of the fragility of human affairs cannot be dissociated from such an effort, which is deployed in various ways throughout her critique of all teleological conceptions of history. Arendt suggests that the choice between, on the one hand, philosophies of history that are in effect outdated and, on the other, the dissolution of the category of history proclaimed by the extreme position of contemporary nihilism, is not the only choice. Under the imprimatur of her political concept of ‘birth’ or ‘natality’, she argues that the choice is not between the ‘dissolution of the New’, on one hand, and total rupture as the Cartesian politics of the tabula rasa on the other.43 Secondly, this affects the avant-garde and, in particular, the meaning accorded to the idea of the avant-garde rupture. I think that it is necessary at this point to draw a distinction, for there is first of all the avant-garde discourse that leans upon a unitary, globalizing, even fabricating, conception of history – the idea that one can make history – whose limitations we have seen, and which gives way to the illusion that the New would be tantamount to complete rupture, as Benjamin said, by wanting to begin at the beginning. However, this discourse, with its dogmatism, must not obscure the reality of a structural rupture, that which Adorno sought to problematize in his final musical writings, and which Benjamin referred to as the end of the art of storytelling. This transformation, this qualitative leap, affects commonality; that is to say, the material as shared reality. Under this heading I propose to define tonal material by its narrative dimension, in the artisanal sense conferred upon this term by Benjamin. For the objectivity of the tonal material cannot solely be understood as the result of a scientific and technical process of objectification corresponding to a relative mastery of sound, even if this should be the case. That which conferred upon the tonal material its ‘solidity’, to use Benjamin’s term once again, its ‘durability’ for Arendt, was its being in common, its being an object of experience: that is to say, in that sense of being transmittable. It is the commonality of its form that qualifies tonal material as such, thereby granting it its poietic status. As expounded by Pierre Boulez in Jalons, notably in his text, ‘Language, material, structure’, the avant-garde marks the end of this obviousness; the rupture affects conditions of poiesis and it is that which marks

42 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Vol. 2, Willing (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978), pp. 28–34. French trans.: La vie de l’esprit, Vol. 2, Le vouloir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), pp. 44–50. 43 Vattimo, La fin de la modernité.

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the end of the art of storytelling.44 However, as Benjamin points out in writing the contemporaneous ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, it is not the end of all poiesis. There are differing responses to this structural transformation. In its response, the avant-garde provides evidence of a Cartesian spirit, in fact of solipsism: holding that one can at the same time be both author and actor, in Arendt’s terms, that one can create ex nihilo. What characterizes the avant-garde is less the rupture with the past than an active, voluntarist conception of the material, the idea that one can decree one’s own material. Admittedly, the material is created in that it participates from the outset in the work’s gestation; but together with the dimension of action, which makes of the material something invented, there must also be a dimension of passivity, rendering it at the same time something given. It is this dimension of the receptivity of the material, its dimension of plurality, that is lacking in the avant-garde spirit, the fundamental idea that the material is formed in the horizon of intersubjectivity or human plurality. And finally we come to the notion of the material’s ‘non-differentiation’, and the insistence with which I have tried to describe the material with regard to its receptivity or plasticity. In taking this approach I have attempted to escape from an inert, static conception of the material, which is a conception which one does not avoid by emphasizing its historicity or its past. The idea of a material that is past is as problematical as that of one that would be entirely new, where its conservation is equally as problematical as is complete amnesia regarding the past. If the material has something to do with the past, it is to the extent to which, as present material, it is connected to the past. It is in terms of this active connection that we should view it as material. It is more accurate, then, to stress – as does Nietzsche in the second of his Untimely Meditations – the idea of an active relationship with the past, that of history in the service of life. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomik (1960), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 13, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971) ——, ‘Vers une musique informelle’ (1960), Quasi una fantasia (1963), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 16, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), pp. 493–540 ——, Berg. Der Meister des kleinsten Übergangs (1968), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 13, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971) ——, Ästhetische Theorie. Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970)

Pierre Boulez, Jalons (Paris: Bourgois, 1989), pp. 70–95.

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Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); French trans.: Condition de l’homme moderne (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1983) ——, The Life of the Mind, Vol. 1, Thinking (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978). French trans.: La vie de l’esprit, Vol. 1, La pensée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983) ——, The Life of the Mind, Vol. 2, Willing (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978). French trans.: La vie de l’esprit, Vol. 2, Le vouloir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983) Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Storyteller’ (1936), Illuminations, ed. and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1973), pp. 83–110 ——, ‘Expérience et pauvreté,’ in Poésie, No. 51 (Paris: Belin, 1989) Boulez, Pierre, Jalons (Paris: Bourgois, 1989) Valéry, Paul, ‘Première leçon du cours de poétique’, in Théorie poétique et esthétique, Oeuvres, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), pp. 1340–58 Vattimo, Gianni, La fine della modernità (Milan: Garzanti, 1985). French trans.: La fin de la modernité (Paris: Seuil, 1987). English trans.: The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture, trans. John R. Snyder (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)

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Chapter 13

Towards an Aesthetics of Risk Marc Jimenez

In the last decade of the twentieth century, controversies in aesthetics show that art cannot escape a thorough questioning of its definition and its ontological and existential bases. Analytic and pragmatic aesthetics, as well as Anglo-Saxoninspired theories, undertake to modify radically the paradigm in use; the aim is to replace the European aesthetic tradition by a form of thought more in agreement with the present conditions of cultural integration in liberal democracies. However, the idea of a ‘conformist’ aesthetic and of an art ‘adjusted’ to the social, cultural and ideological context is in contradiction with the very concept of creation. To create means to risk, and the aesthetics of risk in art – particularly in contemporary art – means to reassert the essential role of criticism, of judgement and of evaluation as necessary conditions to bring about a real public debate on the art of today. This chapter is not specifically about music, something which should be no great disadvantage, given the numerous more competent specialists in that area elsewhere in this volume. I propose simply to look at certain aspects of aesthetic and philosophical thinking in a postmodern context – or perhaps I should say, rather, ‘post-postmodern’ – which will, moreover, take us back, as if after a detour or the turning of a wheel, to the starting point: that is to say, to Modernism, so as properly to start the rewrite from there, as Jean-François Lyotard suggested. In doing this, it could be that I find myself agreeing with the ideas espoused by my fellow-contributor to this book, Max Paddison, who, if I have understood him correctly, advocates – from a musical perspective – criticism against consensus, the avant-garde against cultural integration at the hour of the great global takeover. The 1990s mark the beginning of what has been called ‘the crisis of art’. Since then we have seen, notably in France, the rise of what are sometimes quite virulent and aggressive attacks against contemporary forms of creativity. I prefer this latter phrase to ‘contemporary art’ – a term which poses certain problems to which I shall return later. There was undoubtedly a certain legitimacy in denouncing – as several philosophers and art specialists have – areas of mediocrity in current art characterized by charlatanism, excessive official support, media promotion, and the consensus which surrounds always the same artists profiting from international renown. Nevertheless, it quickly became clear that these denouncements also concealed a calling into question of the historical avant-garde, of modern art, even  See Max Paddison, ‘Postmodernism and the Survival of the Avant-Garde’, in this volume.

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of the global process of modernization itself. We then saw the dawning, notably from 1996 onwards, of conservative and frankly downright reactionary positions, arguing the necessity of a return to traditional artistic and aesthetic values. We have therefore passed from a real problem, the unsuitability of traditional criteria for evaluation and judgement of current art, to ideological–political diatribes. We have done so without noticing, in the first place, that there was a contradiction between the assumption of the so-called disappearance of criteria of judgement and the condemnation of contemporary production on the grounds of worthlessness, and, in the second place, that France, of all European countries, was the only one to engage with so much acrimony in contemporary art criticism. To summarize: the protagonists in this debate have arrogated for themselves the right to speak on current forms of artistic creation – incidentally only in the fine arts – without taking account of the fact that the contemporaneity of art just as much concerns Asian, African and Latin American art and not only international, institutionalized and official art, solidly implanted in the art market and in the galleries of London or New York. Clearly, such a debate would be unthinkable in the United States! Another phenomenon, which has come to light well after the end of the debates about postmodernism, concerns what I have called the ‘postmodern syndrome’. Many misunderstandings have obscured the concept of the ‘postmodern’ put forward by Lyotard and the controversy with Jürgen Habermas. The idea grew little by little that these two thinkers, opposed in other respects on the question of consensus and ‘difference’, were in agreement on the subject of modernity’s supersession, thereby abandoning the pursuit of the modernist project and by the same token the reactivation of a critical Aufklärung, of a dialectical and, to reiterate, a critical mode of thought to counter the ideology – admittedly hidden but all the same time massive – of the prevailing liberalism and its neo- and ultravariants. This is clearly false, even if Habermas’s project of a communicative rationality is aiming, in the long run, at a form of consensus based on discursive intersubjectivity. In a somewhat bizarre fashion, these two thinkers have been regarded as in some way condoning the liquidation of all critical thought on society and the world. As a result, when important philosophers, especially those considered ‘leftleaning’, appeared to legitimize the way of the world, it could seem to follow that, in so-called liberal democracies, as guardians of the new international order, the era of the critic, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, was definitely over.



See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, with a foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984; orig. French: Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979).  See Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 3–15.  différend.

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One might ask oneself today whether art, or aesthetic criticism, is not more in crisis than art itself. This question is a formidable one, as it suggests some correlation, and maybe even causation, between two crises: one of an institutionalized, complaisant and promotional criticism, which thus is no longer functional, and one of a confused art, victim of a loss of legitimacy. Let us note, firstly, that we should not be surprised that, at a time when the traditional conception of Art (with a capital ‘A’) disintegrates, and when classical criteria of judgement and appreciation are on the way out, art criticism is no longer identical to the kind of models that are still occasionally cited from time to time, not without nostalgia, such as those of Diderot and Baudelaire. That said, we tend to forget that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as always, there was a body of flattering, hypocritical, consensual criticism, in thrall to the dominant powers and ideologies of the period. Paradoxical though it may seem, I think that neither art nor criticism is in crisis. It is enough to count the number of exhibitions, centres or institutes of modern art, diverse events open to young creative artists, or, recently, the opening of prestigious new cultural centres, exerting a strong draw on the public, like the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Never has there been so much support for art criticism: reviews, catalogues, papers and, of course, the internet. A true crisis of art would be if artists no longer created, if cultural centres were deserted, if 99 per cent of new works were desperately mediocre. The question posed by criticism does not lie there, however. It lies rather in the cultural covering which envelops, absorbs and disarms all who would oppose it, and would look to restrain an institutional, media-conscious and mercantile mechanism that is extremely productive and profitable. In other times, to become cultured (without going into too much semantic detail) was to acquire freedom of judgement, and thus critical autonomy, something which was capable of enriching and transforming both the individual and society. Today, access to different forms of culture – we live in a ‘multicultural’ era – means above all, in spite of this multiculturalism, or maybe because of it, adapting to the system which manages ‘cultural’ goods and taking one’s place in the world as it is, avoiding precipitating it into crisis. Nowadays, art criticism expresses this situation perfectly. It abandons any analysis of works while becoming a foil for the cultural system. From thence, what matter that artists – and there are still many of them – still claim to produce subversive, disturbing, shocking or provocative works? The debate on modern art is revealing for this lack of interest in the works themselves. We have forgotten very rapidly the first and most essential question, that which bears on the existence of criteria for judgement, appreciation and evaluation applicable to art at the end of the twentieth century. To attempt to reply, one would in effect need to analyse the works, explore the technical methods of production, the materials employed, and the modalities of the treatment of material. We have spoken of the new materials omnipresent with current artists, who use less palpable material supports than those of their predecessors, and who play with time, movement, memory, and so on.

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We have preferred to sacrifice understanding of artistic procedure, of the famous poïesis, to a vague discussion, general and abstract, of the state of the current cultural system, finally subscribing to the watchword of this system: that is to say, that it is important from now on to exhibit works of art, to have ever-increasing numbers of exhibitions, without showing what there truly is to see in the works themselves. But that which there is to see in them – as Adorno has succeeded in showing – is a particular stage of history and contemporary society, a spectacle probably too forbidding and indecent, to the extent that we hide behind the chaste and attenuating veil of culture. In the present and probably future context of the management of artistic and cultural activities, it is clear that cultural logic has the upper hand over aesthetic logic. Could the crisis in contemporary art and the crisis in criticism not be two effects of a much worse crisis affecting everything: a crisis in faculties of judgement? I have just referred to Theodor Adorno. We undoubtedly have to adopt a certain distance regarding this philosopher. For example, we have to accept that his aesthetic theory – referring here to the whole of his concept of art and not simply to the posthumous text – was progressively developed in the wider context of modern art, from the first avant-gardes of the twentieth century to the end of the 1960s. Though he predicted a change in art’s function – its liquidation, indeed – in a world dominated by rationalization and instrumentalization in all sectors of activity, and though he described perfectly the mechanisms of the culture industry, Adorno did not take account, and with good reason, of the movements and artistic actions that accompanied postmodernism. For him, modernism was an irreversible and inevitable trend, though that obviously did not stop him from denouncing the ambiguity of this historical evolution. The historicism and eclecticism which were rife in art in the 1980s, as well as hackneyed declarations on the end of history, would have seemed to him to be pure absurdity. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that his aesthetic theory could be termed ‘historical’, though this is not enough to invalidate his ideas since the kernel of his aesthetics and his philosophy remains intact. Some examples may help. Adornian theory is solidly based on analysis, commentary, criticism and interpretation of works of art. His critical sociology rests on the postulate that the essential is not to know where the work belongs in society, but to determine how deeply society and history are embedded in artworks, in material and in artistic methods. However, I have discussed earlier the absence of analysis and true criticism of works within the debate on modern art. It is certainly not due to incompetence, neither on the part of the critics, nor of the aestheticians or philosophers of art. Rather, it is clear that our modes of cultural consumption and communication deliberately prevent our questioning what works of art have to tell us about the world and about ourselves.

 T.W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970).

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It is also worth considering that the description of the mechanisms for integrating artistic and cultural practices into a system for making money from cultural assets offered by Adorno and Horkheimer in the late 1940s and early 1950s has not lost any of its contemporary relevance. We see now that the Adornian analysis of the culture industry was not simply, as was long thought, a rather nostalgic and passive reaction from a literate bourgeois, but much more that of a lucid analyst, convinced by the anticipatory force of theory. My last example concerns Adorno’s most crucial philosophical theme: opposition to the identity principle. The concept of negation, which is found in his aesthetics, is the expression of a dialectical and negative mode of thought battling against universality in all its forms: ideological, political, and economic, to protect something of the individual, the specific – the different – more and more subject to a regimenting and total, sometimes insidiously totalitarian, rationalization. In his aesthetic theory it is the work of art that bears witness to this negation. The artwork is the mark of appearance and as such – Adorno often expresses this idea – is a scandal regarding the overpowering economico-political reality which does not have any other means to attenuate its effects, to convert – in the economic sense of the word – art into culture. Adorno talks of the ‘utopia which figures like a secret in each work of art’. It is this utopia, subversion of the real, that the contemporary performance principle aims to eradicate! Today, all of these Adornian theories are challenged by the Anglo-Saxon aesthetic, notably by the analytic philosophy of art as developed by Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto. Analytic philosophy of art, in particular the Anglo-Saxon branch, reached France at the time when the debate on the crisis in contemporary art was undergoing a paroxysm. Nelson Goodman’s and Arthur Danto’s theories, partially relayed in France by Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer and Yves Michaud, have had and still have a certain success in that they resolve, in their ways, the eternal questions of the essence of art, the nature of aesthetic experience, and the relationship between institution and society. Jean-Marie Schaeffer has no hesitation in declaring that the whole of art philosophy, from Kant to Heidegger, is obsolete, and considers the fact that France is making much of the ‘richness’ of English and American analytic aesthetics as a definitely positive development. We cannot here go into the detail of the opposing arguments. It is true that these theories have the merit of attracting attention to the kind of linguistic usage transmitted by French history and culture. To ask the question ‘When is there art?’, or even ‘When does an object function as a work of art?’ allows us finally to end the interminable debates on the essentialist definition ‘What is art?’. By taking account of interactions with the ‘world of art’ we can shed light on certain aspects of contemporary, and in particular post-Duchamp, art. The problem is that these analytical theories are too well tuned to American pragmatic ideology, and they do not mesh well with art philosophy as it is known in Europe – a philosophy that

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keeps the idea of a critical capacity of works of art resisting their integration into the current system. An anecdote will illustrate better than a lengthy exposition what I think of the international success of the analytic philosophy of art. Recently I invited the American philosopher Arthur Danto to speak in a doctoral seminar series at the Sorbonne. With much friendliness and humour, Arthur Danto spoke of his curious history of modern Western art which freely jumped several decades, going from the Impressionists to Andy Warhol without stopping with either Duchamp or the avant-gardes. At one point, describing the artistic actions aroused by Warhol’s Brillo boxes, he spoke of the red, white and blue colours, ‘ … like the colours of the American flag’! I pointed out that these were also the colours on the French flag, and I could have added – particularly given the times – the colours of Serbia, or of Panama, Costa Rica, Iceland, Thailand, Luxemburg, Great Britain, North Korea, Liberia, and no doubt many others. No comment! By way of the rather belated reception of the theories of analytic philosophy of art in France (Goodman’s Language of Art was first published in English in 1968) and its exploitation by particular French writers in the context of the crisis of art, the problem of the ‘aesthetic alternative’ presents itself. It is, as today’s advocates of globalization put it, a ‘paradigm shift’. Instead of the old model of the European aesthetic tradition, one would substitute a mode of thought ‘adapted’ to the current conditions of cultural integration. In summary, they extol paradoxically the virtues of cultural plurality and aesthetic pluralism as dominant models, irresistibly imposed – in the name of sacrosanct liberalism – on the whole of the planet at the speed of the distribution of Coca-Cola bottles. It is evident that a ‘negative’ aesthetics like that of Adorno, heir of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and – scandalously – Marx, hardly has a place here. Let us be explicit: Anglo-Saxon theories of inspiration reject all philosophy of art that comes with the idea that a critical potentiality still resides at the heart of artistic creativity. To summarize: they cut the ties between politics and aesthetics. Politics, we know, is not a (neo- or ultra-) liberal concept, unless, so to speak, politically correct. Otherwise, better to suppress it in the name of a realistic, pragmatic and precisely ‘correct’ view of history. The key characteristic of an ideology is precisely not to admit to being one. The idea that the aesthetics of pluralism correspond to ways of thinking and creating perfectly ‘adapted’ to the multiculturalism of capitalist, democratic and liberal societies seems to show more and more a stubborn Western ethnocentrism. The United States are already, by virtue of their history, a multicultural society; this did not stop – and still does not prevent – the segregation, racism or ghettoization of ethnic and cultural minorities. Once these diverse, juxtaposed minorities are classified and controlled, they are not admixed but united under the banner – red, white and blue – of the United States. That is to say, multiculturalism, in terms of pseudo-identity or false universality, is the extreme opposite of cultural mixing, diametrically opposed to the process of unending assimilation known as

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‘creolization’ as in the dream of a fabulous utopia of Edouard Glissant, who speaks of ‘poetry of relations’, a beautiful definition of what hybridization could be. I do not think that things are evolving in this direction. Western societies have invented an unstoppable weapon: ethnology. Ethnology is a shield against hybridization – one considers others as an object of study, and thus from a distance – and a great alibi for conscience. A good example of this ethnological point of view can be found in the manner in which non-Western works of art are welcomed. The case of the Ousmane Sow exhibition in Paris in the late 1990s is typical, notably with respect to the comments, some more sensible than others, of recognized art critics. The case was to ‘transform’ a Senegalese artist into an ‘African’ artist, then to allow him to move to the higher rank of ‘contemporary’ artist but never to allow these two latter categories to mix (I was about to say ‘hybridize’). In the eyes of the West, there was the choice between ‘African artist’ – what is ‘African’, given that Africa goes from the Mahgreb to the Cape? – and ‘contemporary’ artist. But certainly not ‘contemporary African artist’, since artistic contemporaneousness, as everyone knows, is the privilege of our own old Western culture. The same ‘recuperation’ operation with ethnocentric ends had already been conducted on composers of current styles of African music, such as Francis Bebey, Manu Dibango – who only became known in Europe after his emigration to the United States – and today concerns Youssou N’Dour. To summarize: I do not think that hybridization is close. And one would need a good helping of optimism to believe in a harmonious future in the short term, in an admix which would manage to circumvent two major obstacles: on the one hand, the globalization of a capitalist hegemony, and, on the other, the crisis of identity and the withdrawal into ethnic and cultural particularisms. This is nevertheless a challenge to which we should rise. We feel that, behind all that, art cannot do much about this, nor can the artists, who have become toys of mechanisms over which they have no control. Faced with the capacity of institutions to disarm and absorb all that is potentially culturally subversive, what can art do? Is it condemned to be simply merchandise? I am certainly not alone in asking this question, which I consider to be central to all debates on art today. Today it seems obvious that art and artists cannot change the world, and in particular cannot overturn the media and institutional structures on which they depend. It is true that the establishment disarms and absorbs, but in so doing it changes itself. We could even say that it is evolving in the direction of tolerance – maybe ‘repressive’, as Marcuse would have put it, but a soft repression – within the framework of a set of sometimes meddlesome laws, but without common cause with the aesthetic prohibitions and the moral and political censure which reigned in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. Looking at subversion – ideological, political, social, economic, moral? – in the cultural sector, we have to recognize that it is largely subsidized, and therefore as a point of fact ceases being subversive.

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No doubt artistic practice, generator of aesthetic experiences, remains a scandal looked at from the point of view of monetary worth, but there is no point in subversion at the level of individual works of art. I think that we have to make a distinction between the breaking of artistic rules at the time of Impressionism, the will to shock the middle class and to abolish political or social prejudice at the time of the avant-gardes, and today’s provocations directed at authority, institutions and social rules. To provoke is not a subversive activity, given that the act itself is ambiguous. Provocation can come both from the left and from the right. And, to tell the truth, it is also, in the context of generalized commodification of the cultural sector, an important resource, without any ambiguity at all. What choices does art have? I have difficulty in thinking of art other than in terms of social practice, a creative activity which gradually infiltrates daily life. Obviously, we do not say, as Marx did, that everyone must become an artist, but rather must try to draw benefit from the ever-increasing cultural mobilization. Though it is legitimate to denounce abuses in the cultural scene, it is worthless to criticize constantly. It is also an expression of resistance to the pressure caused by economic–political reality that the public rushes to new exhibitions and invades summer festivals. And it is there that the art critic, the philosopher and obviously the artist come in, playing their role, by refusing to associate themselves with the clichés of the end of Art or the failure of contemporary art, and stressing that artistic experiences are still among the most essential in a world that sometimes believes that it needs no art any more. The use of new techniques will not determine the whole of art’s future, but only a few artistic practices which will coexist with rather more ancient ones. On top of this, today’s ‘new’ technologies will, of course, one day become old. Artists have always invested in, integrated and used the most advanced techniques of their time. There is, therefore, nothing a priori illusory or dangerous in the appropriation of current techniques, as long as we remember that art is, of all human activity, that which allows us to fantasize, mimic, exploit, turn aside, provoke, infiltrate, mock, multiply forms and procedures, express our rebellion, and so on. It all depends, in fact, on the degree of appropriation and the skill of the artist to avoid it becoming mere submission or servility. To be honest, I don’t know any time, even before the beginnings of the Western art market, where art has not also been a commodity. Everything here lies in the ‘also’. I obviously do not believe in the danger that art might become simply a commodity because art causes an aesthetic experience which is of an incommensurable and inexchangeable order, a sensation, a passion, an effect, an intuition – a moment that cannot be bought or sold. It is this ‘non-marketable’ aspect that, probably paradoxically, partly saves culture. For example, at the start of the 1960s, the paperback was criticized as it was thought that its massproduction and low cost would kill off literature. This would have been true were books solely a consumer object, if they were only objects to be sold. The fault in the argument lies in the fact that books are also read, whatever people say. Liked or hated, they interact, for a while, with the imagination of the reader.

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And the same thing may be said of all arts, even reduced to the state of cultural commodities, of ‘merchandise’. In Real Presences, George Steiner declares at one point that all art and all literature begin in immanence. To understand what he means, the previous sentence must be read: ‘The arts are marvelously rooted in colour, string vibrations and in the weight of the wind on the reeds’. Also – and Steiner knows this well, and says it in a fairly emphatic way – the arts are more than this. But the important idea, at least that which I want to keep here, is that this rooting in immanence, and eventually life, is non-negotiable. Stressing the irreducibility of the ‘nonexchangeable’ is perhaps the central task for aesthetics today. ‘Aesthetics’ is a difficult term to use. Hegel already found it improper, superficial, and we know that in French it produces curious amalgams with chirurgie esthétique (plastic surgery) or esthéticien (beautician). It is therefore sensible to say what I want it to mean. When I contrast aesthetic with cultural, I make of it a critical concept. This lets me say, for example, that the cultural would be satisfied to show works of art, while the aesthetic tries to show what there is to see in these works. The term ‘critical’ is obviously essential. Aesthetics as philosophical reflection has historically opened up, since the eighteenth century, a wonderful space, the critical; in other words a crisis which, leaving the question of art behind, has affected all principles of authority, metaphysics, philosophy, politics and religion. Diderot was not wrong, nor was Kant, nor Schiller, nor Hegel. To do aesthetics was, and still is, using our freedom to think; and also to create concepts to explore the senses, taste, imagination, passions, intuitions, emotions and so on. Of course, when we listen to classical, rock or techno music, when we watch a show, be it Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the opera or Orlan on an internet site, we can hold to the immediacy of the experience, good or bad. But nothing stops us from leaving the stage of simple stimulus-response and asking ourselves qualitative questions about both this actual experience and the object of the experience. All that the cultural proposes of the grand fair does not have the same value, and does not cause the same quality of aesthetic experience. Not all interpretations of Beethoven, or Rap, or Raï music are good; not all of Delacroix, comic books or virtual images are of top quality. But current postmodernism erases differences and prevents us from thinking for ourselves. Of course, the adoption of an avant-garde artistic and aesthetic posture is no longer subject to the ‘tyranny of the new’. But this does not disqualify the concept of the avant-garde if we define this as the capacity to resist the massive pressures of cultural indifferentiation.





George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 227.

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Bibliography Adorno, T.W., Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone Press, 1997). Original German edition: Ästhetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 7, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970) Danto, Arthur C., The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) Genette, G., L’oeuvre de l’art II. La relation esthétique (Paris: Seuil, 1997) Goodman, Nelson, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1976) Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Modernity – An Incomplete Project’, in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 3–15 Jimenez, Marc, La critique. Crise de l’art ou consensus culturel? (Paris: Klincksieck, 1995) ——, Qu’est-ce que l’esthétique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1997) Lories, D., Philosophie analytique et esthétique (Paris: Méridiens-Klincksieck, 1988) ——, Expérience esthétique et ontologie de l’oeuvre (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1989) Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, with a foreword by Fredric Jameson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984; orig. French: Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979) Michaud, Y., La crise de l’art contemporain (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997) Schaeffer, J.M., L’art de l’âge moderne. L’esthétique et la philosophie de l’art du XIIIe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1993) ——, Les célibataires de l’art. Pour une esthétique sans mythes (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) Steiner, George, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)

Chapter 14

Music and Social Relations: Towards a Theory of Mediation Max Paddison

Introduction The extremes of the debate on the relation of music to society today are familiar enough. On the one hand there is the argument found in certain areas of aesthetics and musicology and often espoused by composers themselves, that music has no direct connection at all with society, and that what it actually offers is a utopian alternative to social reality. On the other hand, there are the kinds of all-embracing generalizations from the social sciences that argue that music can only be understood in the social context of its use, and that it is primarily an arena for the creation and maintenance of cultural identity. The one extreme constitutes a polemical stance which is itself of social significance, in that it amounts to either a radical rejection of society or at very least a retreat from it which indicates a continuation of the art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic of the late nineteenth century. The other extreme tends either to discuss music entirely through its function as a signifying practice, or to take a distinctly utilitarian turn towards explaining music entirely in terms of its social use. What is neglected by both these positions is any serious consideration of the extent to which society inheres historically within musical structures and musical material, and – importantly – the extent to which music itself, whether intended or not, engages with its socio-historical content in musical terms, and does so with greater or lesser degrees of reflexivity at a structural level. The wonderful irony of Schoenberg’s alleged statement in support of an uncompromising artfor-art’s-sake position, that ‘music has no more to do with society than a game of chess’, is telling on all counts, given the formal clarity with which the hierarchy 

A version of this essay was originally given as a paper at the Toronto 2000 Musical Intersections Conference, 3 November 2000 in a joint session entitled ‘Musical Enactment of Social Difference’, chaired by Regula Burckhardt Qureshi. It was first published in the French version of this book: Irène Deliège and Max Paddison (eds), Musique Contemporaine: Perspectives théoriques et philosophiques (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2001). It has been extensively revised and expanded for this English edition.  Tibor Kneif refers to Schoenberg as having said this but without saying when or where. See Kneif, Musiksoziologie (Cologne: Musikverlag Hans Gerig, 1971, 2nd ed. 1975), p. 112.

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of mediaeval society is represented on the chessboard. This chapter examines levels or modalities of what can be understood as music’s social content and its relation to its social context. It proposes that the relation is processual – that is, dynamic and dialectical. In all cases, irrespective of what composers or performers themselves consciously set out to do, this material, technical and structural process can be understood as falling under the concept of mediation. Problematics The concept of mediation is problematical. As Adorno wrote in 1932: ‘A solution to the problem of mediation (Vermittlung) in music has by no means been found; it is rather only that the location of the problem has been designated with greater precision’. More than anyone else, Adorno has focused our attention on the complexities involved in understanding the ways in which music is mediated by society, by the historical character of its material and its traditions, and by the history of its reception. What this amounts to is an attempt to understand how music is materially permeated by social and technical processes as well as by expressive needs and formal means – in essence, music as the mediation of subjectivity and objectivity, of the individual and the social as a material dialectic, a dialectic, however, that takes place entirely within the structure of the music itself. A further aspect of the process of mediation (a sufficient but not a necessary condition) is also the extent to which a music may to some degree become ‘aware of itself’, structurally speaking – of its ‘historical dialectic’, as Adorno puts it – and build this awareness into its own structure, as a form of self-reflection upon its material, its relation to its particular tradition, style system, sets of social expectations, or other ‘works’. The problem remains, however: how to discuss the social content of music when it becomes musical content? Or, to put it another way: how are we to trace the lines connecting music’s social content to its social context when those lines have been all but erased in the process of mediation itself? That is to say, what is striking about music is its apparent immediacy, not the fact that it is mediated. What I offer here is a sketch, following Adorno, which indicates with greater precision, but inevitably with a considerable degree of abstraction, the location of mediation in music at a theoretical level. I have done this through bringing together in concentrated form elements of a theory of mediation that I have elsewhere treated separately. Detailed examples referring to pieces of music must be left for another occasion. To begin with, we need to situate the concept of mediation itself.

 T.W. Adorno, ‘On the Social Situation of Music’ (1932), trans. Wesley Blomster, Telos 35 (Spring 1978), p. 140.

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The concept of mediation In the first instance, the concept of mediation in the sense in which it is intended here most usefully derives from Hegel, as Vermittlung, ‘through the medium of’, and is to be contrasted with ‘that which is immediate’, direct, unvermittelt, unmittelbar. It specifically refers to the whole dynamic process of the dialectic itself, whereby opposites, as contradiction or antinomy, are both unreconciled and sublated into a new unity, albeit unstable. Thus, for Hegel there is nothing that is not mediated – and this includes knowledge itself. Furthermore, as he makes clear in his Logic (1830), mediation disappears in the process of mediation itself. In his Logic he writes: It has been shown to be untrue in fact to say that there is an immediate knowledge, a knowledge without mediation either by means of something else or in itself. It has also been explained to be false in fact to say that thought advances through finite and conditioned categories only, which are always mediated by a something else, and to forget that in the very act of mediation the mediation itself vanishes. And to show that, in point of fact, there is a knowledge which advances neither by unmixed immediacy nor by unmixed mediation, we can point to the example of Logic and the whole of philosophy.

The importance of these frequently overlooked features of mediation – that mediation is total, and that mediation seems to disappear in the process of mediation itself to reappear as immediacy – cannot be overemphasized. Simply put: for us mediation is inescapable, but we are not normally aware of that. Secondly, for Hegel, as Adorno has pointed out, mediation is not primarily the relation between two terms, ‘not a relation between the object and those to whom it is brought’, but is ‘in the object itself [in der Sache selbst]’. This is significant, because the general usage of the term in English assumes a relation between given  G.W.F. Hegel, Logic (1830), trans. William Wallace, with foreword by J.N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), §75, p. 109. Cf. original German: ‘Es ist hiermit als faktisch falsch aufgezeigt worden, daß es ein unmittelbares Wissen gebe, ein Wissen, welches ohne Vermittlung, es sei mit Anderem oder in ihm selbst mit sich, sei. Gleichfalls ist es für faktische Unwahrheit erklärt worden, daß das Denken nur an durch Anderes vermittelten Bestimmungen – endlichen und bedingten – fortgehe und daß sich nicht ebenso in der Vermittlung diese Vermittlung selbst aufhebe. Vom dem Faktum aber solchen Erkennens, das weder in einseitiger Unmittelbarkeit noch in einseitiger Vermittlung fortgeht, ist die Logik selbst und die ganze Philosophie das Beispiel.’ Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, in G.W.F. Hegel, Werke Vol. 8, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1970), pp. 164–5 (§ 75).  T.W. Adorno, ‘Theses on the Sociology of Art’ (1967), trans. Brian Trench, Birmingham Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2 (1972), p. 128 (trans. modified). Cf. original German: ‘Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie’ (1967), in Ohne Leitbild: Parva Aesthetica

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terms rather than embodiment in a dynamic process, as object or apparently closed unity. As if to reinforce this, Hegel also draws on Leibniz’s theory of the monad – a closed unity which is blind to that which lies outside itself, but which at the same time contains that which is outside it. And, thirdly, there is also as a further important point of reference the famous definition of the commodity to be found in Marx’s Capital, Volume I (1867), which, in emphasizing the phantasmagorical character of the commodity, also identifies the defining feature of the commodityform as the concealed labour that has gone into its production. As Marx formulates it: ‘The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists … simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things. … It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic [phantasmagorische] form of a relation between things.’ That is to say, the commodity is mediated labour: the forces and relations of production are mediated in the thing itself, while at the same time the direct appearance of such relations disappears in the process of production itself. And finally, Max Weber’s theory of rationalization, particularly as developed in The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1921), is also highly relevant to any theory of musical mediation. Weber’s theory can be seen to complement Marx’s theory of the commodity, in that it suggests how music and (1967. 1968), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 10.1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977), p. 374.  See G.W. Leibniz, Monadology (1714), trans. and commentary by Nicholas Rescher (London: Routledge, 1991): ‘For as all is a plenum, which renders all matter interconnected, and as in a plenum any motion has some effect on distant bodies in proportion to their distance – so that each body is affected not only by those that touch it, in some way feeling the effects of all that happens to them, but also through their mediation feeling affected by those in contact with the former by which it is directly touched (dont il est touché immediatement) – it follows that this inter-communication extends to any distance, however great. And in consequence, all bodies feel the effects of everything that happens in the universe. Accordingly, someone who sees all could read in each all that happens throughout, and even what has happened or will happen, observing in the present that which is remote, be it in time or in place’ (§61, pp. 24–5).  Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (1867), trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976), pp. 164–5. See German original: ‘Das Geheimnisvolle der Warenform besteht also einfach darin, daß sie den Menschen die gesellschaftlichen Charaktere ihrer eignen Arbeit als gegenständliche Charaktere der Arbeitsprodukte selbst, als gesellschaftliche Natureigenschaften dieser Dinge zurückspiegelt. … Es ist nur das bestimmte gesellschaftliche Verhältnis der Menschen selbst, welches hier für sie die phantasmagorische Form eines Verhältnisses von Dingen annimmt.’ Das Kapital, Bd.1, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd.23 (Berlin: Dietz, 1962), p. 86.  See Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1921), trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958).

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its techniques, tuning systems, tonal systems and technologies are merely a special case of the systematic application of means–ends rationalization to all aspects of social life, and in particular to its technical and technological developments, which has been such a feature of Western societies since the Renaissance. The technical and bureaucratic development of society as a whole is mediated in music, its technologies and its materials. The making of music and musical works involves the use of techniques and technologies that are themselves taken from and common to that which is ‘not music’, while the materials of music themselves bear the marks of that which derives from ‘outside’ music. It has to be said that such a multi-faceted but ultimately materialist concept of mediation is not a popular one in the present climate, even though any careful and extensive reading of Adorno in the original German will confirm it to be his view (English translations of Adorno in this respect are often misleading because they frequently fail to translate the term Vermittlung at all and sometimes go in for circumlocutions which make it impossible to be sure what is meant without referring to the German original). The preference is to understand the idea either in a loose and poetic way, whereby it can be taken as metaphor or homology, in the spirit perhaps of elective affinities, or in an empirical sense, whereby correspondences between music and society can be identified and categorized as a kind of taxonomy of musical meanings drawing on sociological, anthropological and semiological perspectives.10 The fear is that mediation can otherwise only be understood as a form of essentialism, the belief that musical materials are in some way, of their very nature, slabs of society in a direct and unmediated sense. The use of the term ‘essentialism’ in this way is not thought through by those who so readily reach for it, because it goes directly against any understanding of the process of mediation itself (mediation is not a thing, but a dynamic network of interactions), and the term ‘essentialism’ is used increasingly now as a way of trying to fend off something quite different, but which is fundamental to any serious concept of mediation – that is to say, materialism. The metaphorical is, of course, inescapably  Remarkable examples of the complete erasure of the concept of Vermittlung in the process of translation into English are to be found in A.B. Ashton’s translation of Adorno’s Negative Dialektik and in Anne Mitchell Culver’s and Wesley Blomster’s translation of Philosophie der neuen Musik. For example, compare Negative Dialektik (1966) (Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 6, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Mein: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), pp. 23–4, which employs the terms Vermittlung, vermittelt and Vermitteltsein, with Ashton’s version, Negative Dialectics, pp. 11–12, where there is no attempt made to render them into English. The translator may well argue that circumlocutions were used. If this is the case, such tactics have only served to conceal the concept of mediation completely for English readers unaware of its significance and centrality. There are many other examples of this in Ashton’s translation which indicate that he had not grasped the implications of the term. 10 Since the original French version of this chapter appeared in Musique contemporaine in 2001 an interesting attempt to take an essentially anthropological approach to the question of mediation has appeared in English: Georgina Born, ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’, Twentieth-Century Music 2/1 (March 2005), pp. 7–36.

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an aspect of mediation, in that all interpretation is inseparable from metaphor, is mediated through it, and any metaphor is social through the shared understanding of the complex resonances it produces and on which it depends for its effects. Nevertheless, what the models discussed here emphasize is the mediatedness of the pre-existing and pre-formed, handed-down material itself, and in this respect they could also be understood as constituting a materialist theory in the Marxian sense.11 Interestingly, just such a theory of mediation in music as a dialectical relation to handed-down material can also be seen to have its origins in that most extreme of musical formalists, Eduard Hanslick, who, in an almost totally overlooked passage in Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), writes: ‘Composing is the working of the mind in material capable itself of becoming cognitive [ein Arbeiten des Geistes in geistfähigem Material]. In the hands of creative genius the musical material is fluid and responsive … Unlike the architect, who has to shape the rough and clumsy stone, the composer works with the effects of handed-down sounds from the past. … As the creation of a thinking and feeling mind [Geist] it follows from this that a musical composition has to a high degree the capacity itself to be intelligent [geistvoll] and expressive [gefühlvoll].’12 What this suggests is that a theory of mediation is inseparable from a theory of material.13 Methodology Methodologically, I have attempted to develop theoretical models from critical theory – not exclusively from Adorno, but certainly focusing on his work while drawing also on the concept of mediation in Hegel and Marx, and implied, I suggest, 11

The complexity of Marx’s concept of the mediatedness of the commodity should serve to undermine the simplistic view that the (ideological) superstructure is the direct (that is, unmediated) product of the (economic) base. The commodity is mediated because it is the product of human labour, rather than a piece of ‘nature’ that has simply fallen off a tree into our lap. But it is also ideologically mediated a second time by sets of beliefs and values that are themselves the product of the capitalist mode of production, dominated by a division of labour whereby no one experiences the totality of the production process, a situation which leads to the illusion (the phantasmagoria, to use Marx’s term) that the commodity is magically free-standing, autonomous and, in a sense, natural. Looking back from the perspective provided by Marx, this can be seen as the epitome of Hegel’s ‘mediated immediacy’, or rather, of mediatedness appearing as immediacy. And as for the commodity, so for the artwork: understood in this way the commodity-character of art can be seen as inherent in a capitalist society, and not simply the result of the context within which art functions, a context which it is assumed leaves the material of music untouched. 12 Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Leipzig, 1902, 10th ed.), p. 81 (my trans.). 13 I have argued elsewhere that Adorno’s theory of musical material derives in part from Hanslick. See my Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; 1998), p. 66.

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in Weber. In its approaches to aesthetics and the sociology of music the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is associated either with the defence of autonomous art or with the critique of mass culture. There have been sustained criticisms of Adorno in particular on both these counts, including those from within critical theory itself (for example, Jürgen Habermas).14 While such critiques are valuable, in that they serve to identify the partiality of Adorno, they have not always engaged with the particularity of his focus on musical material in a manner which recognizes its subtlety and potential for development. In this chapter I propose that Adorno’s thinking on music continues to offer valuable perspectives on the ways in which music can be seen as a ground of socio-historical and political relations. I put forward here a series of critical models developed over a long period of engagement with Adorno’s work, and which I have dealt with individually more extensively elsewhere, although brought together here as an ensemble for the first time. Through these models I argue that, if music can be regarded as ‘a terrain for negotiating social relations’,15 then these relations are not to be read directly or literally in the musical phenomenon, nor can they be regarded as a simple matter of volition, but call for an adequate concept of mediation: that is to say, a theory of how social relations inhere in musical relations. What I offer here, therefore, is an on-going theory of musical mediation derived from a critique of Adorno, which both draws on my own previous work in this field, and which attempts to develop it further in the direction of broader cultural and anthropological applications while retaining a focus on the problem of a radical, self-reflexive avant-garde today. Theory Theory itself, of course, is also mediated, in that it is highly susceptible to ideology. I have distinguished between three types or modalities of theory – types which differ in kind rather than merely in degree: 1. theory as codification; 2. theory as legitimation; and 3. theory as critical reflection.16

14 See, for instance, my chapter ‘Postmodernism and the Survival of the Avant-Garde’ in this volume. 15 Regula Burckhardt Qureshi’s term. See Joint Session 3–1, ‘Musical Enactment of Social Difference’, organized by Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, in Toronto 2000 Musical Intersections: Abstracts of Papers Read, prepared by Margaret Murata and Robert Judd (Philadelphia, PA: American Musicological Society, 2000), pp. 79–80. 16 Cf. Max Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996; rev. ed. 2004), pp. 18–25.

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The first is prescriptive, in that it provides rules for action, and is concerned largely with the codification of conventions and the establishment of norms (an example in music would be theories of harmony with rules for good practice). The second is descriptive, often claiming to do no more than get at the ‘facts’, while in the process serving to legitimize and perpetuate canons (an example would be histories of music that do not make clear their own terms of reference and underlying assumptions). The third is critical, in that it recognizes that theory itself is not neutral. It also carries with it a theory of mediation, and this is because it recognizes theory itself as being also inescapably mediated. It sets out to reveal underlying assumptions and values as ideological through contextualizing them, and also reflects upon its own terms of reference. This is a meta-theoretical level, theory about theory. At its best (that is, when not hamstrung by unexamined prejudices concerning popular music or music outside the central European tradition), Adorno’s work belongs, in my view, to this third category of theory, and it is only at this level that a theory of mediation can be conceived that can go beyond the kind of ‘stocktaking’ methodologies that characterize positivism. Levels of mediation: critical models My own contribution to the critical interpretation of Adorno’s theories addresses these concerns in three main areas: 1. as a theory of musical form; 2. as a theory of society; and 3. as a philosophy of history (more specifically, as an aesthetics of modernism). I argue that any concept of mediation that is of any use has also to be understood simultaneously on these three ‘levels’ – that is to say, in terms of formal autonomy, social situation and historical antinomies. Let me first indicate briefly at this stage what I mean by these categories before I go on to expand on them in more detail in the rest of the chapter. •

•

The formal level (as theory of form): here the focus is on the structural consistency of the musical work in relation to its dominating musical idea. Mediation can be understood in this case as what Adorno calls ‘the immanent dialectic of musical material’; it is the mediation of subjectivity and objectivity, of the ‘I’ and handed-down forms, within the apparent autonomy of the musical work or musical event. The approach here is via immanent analysis. (See p. 267 below.) The social level (as theory of society): the focus here is on uncovering the ideology of the musical work/musical event in relation to its social situation, its repressed ‘social other’. Mediation can be taken at this level

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as what Adorno called ‘the social dialectic of musical material’. This is the mediation of subject and object as socially mediated individual and socially mediated musical material. The mediation of music and society is dominated by the commodity-form, as mediated labour which is no longer aware of its origins in labour. The apparent autonomy of the commodity form has, of course, powerful affinities with the apparent autonomy of art. This level would also focus on the kinds of institutions through which music operates and by which it is shaped. The approach at this level is via sociological critique. (See see p. 269 below.) The historical level (as philosophy of history): the focus here is on historical antinomies which arise between what Habermas has identified as the aesthetic sphere and the life-world. The ‘authenticity’ of the musical work is understood in terms of immanent structural solutions to the demands of the socially and historically mediated musical material. Mediation in these terms is what Adorno called ‘the historical dialectic of musical material’. The approach here is via philosophical as well as musicological critique. (See p. 272 below.)

Work-immanent mediation of music First, at the formal level, or modality, mediation is taken as what Adorno called the ‘immanent dialectic of musical material’, understood as constituting the autonomous form of the musical work: on the one hand, the work is mediated in itself, as the mediation of parts and whole; and on the other hand, this immanent mediation is also social, because the handed-down musical materials and the techniques used to manipulate them are social in their origins. I have attempted to represent this dialectic in the following terms, as itself encapsulating a dynamic interaction between two levels of form – universal and particular.17 This dialectic takes place within the musical work, and constitutes its structure as a dynamic coherence or context of meaning (dynamischer Sinnzusammenhang). The implications of this are plain: the self-enclosed, monad-like autonomy of the musical work is itself akin to the phantasmagorical character of the commodity-form – that is to say, the musical work contains the relations of production within itself and, like the Leibnizian monad, does not know it. Society and social relations are mediated within the musical work. As already suggested, this can be understood in several ways. The material of music is itself socially and culturally pre-formed before any individual act of composition even begins, and does not appear as mediated 17

Cf. Max Paddison, ‘The Language-Character of Music’, in Richard Klein and ClausSteffen Mahnkopf (eds), Mit den Ohren denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), p. 83. See also ‘Immanent Analysis or Musical Stocktaking? Adorno and the Problem of Musical Analysis’, in Nigel Gibson and Andrew Rubin (eds), Adorno: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002), pp. 222–7.

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at all, but rather as something ‘natural’ and ‘immediate’. The material consists of handed-down, previous engagements with the material, as other musical works, forms, genres, style systems, compositional procedures. It could be understood as including techniques and developments in musical instrument technology, tonal systems, tuning systems. It involves also modes of performance and of reproduction. Importantly it also now embraces recording techniques and studio technology, together with electroacoustics, sound production and diffusion. All of this constitutes, in the broadest possible terms, ‘the musical material’ in ways that Adorno probably could not have predicted, but which nevertheless may be understood as ‘sedimented society’ and thus as part of the material transmission of social norms. At the same time this level of mediation, as the structure of the autonomous work, is also a terrain both for the propagation and the subversion of socio-cultural norms, because of the two levels of form within the work: what I have called the normative and the critical levels of form. (It needs to be emphasized, however, that the concepts ‘Universal’ and ‘Particular’ are entirely relative in this context, and that ‘Universal’ does not imply an absolute in any sense.) (See Figure 14.1) Figure 14.1. Work-immanent mediation of music (1)

normative level

Universal: form as pre-formed, historically handed-down material: norms like genres, formal types, tonal systems and schemata, performance styles, tuning systems, compositional techniques. The musical material as sedimented society/ social process.

(2)

critical level

Particular: form as structure of the individual musical work, a recontextualization of historical materials as ‘second reflection’: deviation from and negation of handed-down norms to create new structures. The individual work as form of critical cognition and as force field of tensions.

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Social mediation of music This brings us directly to a further consideration of the second level or modality of mediation: what I have called here, again using terminology taken from Adorno, the social dialectic of musical material.18 This is at first sight a complex arena. What it represents, however, is the web of mediations between the spheres of musical production and consumption, but at the same time it needs to be understood as inherent in the processes of production, reproduction, distribution and consumption. Notions of the ‘musical work’, and what precisely is meant by ‘musical material’, are, of course, open to debate: they do not, in my view, depend on Adorno’s Eurocentric, high art model. Very different kinds of music are equally well illuminated by such an approach, as no music escapes being mediated by the socio-cultural totality – by which is meant in particular the institutions and networks through which music exists – and little escapes the effects of globalization and its distribution networks. Nevertheless, Western art music has largely been my focus here (understandably, perhaps, given the main emphasis of the present volume). I have three reasons for this focus: 1. art music is typically the most thoroughly rationalized and structurally permeated by the dominant culture; 2. ideologically speaking it is the most convinced of its own autonomy (or if you prefer, alienation) from this process, and from anything resembling a direct social function; and 3. it is most prone to reflection upon its own structural processes and materials, and to resist or oppose dominant orthodoxies and their constraints. Hence the social mediation of music has to be seen as complex and multi-layered. Crucial within these layers of mediation are the effects of what Adorno famously called ‘the culture industry’, meaning the music business in its most globalized sense. This is the pivotal point where the forces and relations of aesthetic production, which are still to an extent founded on an earlier craft ethic, become permeated by the forces and relations of contemporary social production; that is to say, by the mass media as ‘culture industry’. All artistic production therefore becomes the production of commodities, and the consumption of art is the consumption of commodities. It is interesting in view of this to consider the points at which resistance or negotiation is possible. It needs to be understood, however, that the social dialectic as here represented constitutes the context of social relations of production, reproduction, distribution and consumption within which all music must function, whether it likes it or not. This is simply because it is the context and, importantly, the process which dominates not only highly industrialized, modernized societies, but also now most remaining traditional, pre-industrial, premodern societies. And furthermore, I would argue, it continues to dominate, in spite Cf. Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, p. 187.

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of suggestions to the contrary, post-industrial, post-modern societies. At the same time it also needs to be said that, while the following version of the model is posited on score-based music and the implications this has for notions of the musical work (see Figure 14.2), other versions are possible for non-score-based or improvised musics. In one of these versions the spheres of production and reproduction are conflated, and composer and work-as-score are redundant. The performer then relates dialectically to the musical material (which includes performing traditions, professional training, and developing technologies), a relationship which, however direct and immediate it might at first appear, remains always distinctly mediated.19 In this version the concept of the ‘work’ can more appropriately be understood as the musical performance or musical event. Needless to say, the effects of the culture industry and commodification on the ‘musical event’ also continue to apply in this alternative version, given the extent of technical rationalization and globalization today. Finally, there is the sphere of reception/consumption. While this includes reception history, it really concerns ways of listening and kinds of musical experience – for example, Adorno’s use of concepts here like Erfahrung (integrative experience) and Erlebnis (fragmented experience) – and understanding (Adorno’s use of the concept Verstehen as a form of reflexive understanding able to experience a piece of music as a whole, contrasted with Verständnis, which he employs to refer to a more limited and conventionalized musical knowledge). The sphere of consumption/reception as musical experience and understanding is perhaps the most obvious locus of the mediation of music by the Subject, and in this respect it is an important but notoriously complex and under-researched area. Most research so far concerns the psychology of perception or the sociology of consumption. The problem with these approaches is that they start from a limited conception of what the experience of music might involve, normally based on simple listener preferences. Adorno’s ‘listening types’, as put forward in the first chapter of Introduction to the Sociology of Music,20 point in the direction of a wider scale of possibilities for the experience of music, ranging from the ‘expert listener’ and the ‘good listener’ (types which could both be described as taking an ‘active’ relationship to the music, responding actively to the demands of the music, and to varying degrees being self-reflexive), via the ‘emotional listener’ (a type which could be said either to be taking a passive relationship to the work, or to be using the music as a screen on to which to project their own emotional 19

I have developed the concept of mediation in relation to performance in Max Paddison, ‘Performance, Reification and Score: The Dialectics of Spatialization and Temporality in the Experience of Music’, in Musicae Scientiae: Forum de Discussion 3. Aspects du temps dans la création musicale (2004), pp. 157–79. 20 See Theodor W. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962), trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 1–20. See German original: Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie: Zwölf theoretische Vorlesungen (1962) (with Dissonanzen), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 178–98.

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needs, and which is not reflexive), to the limiting concepts of the ‘non-musical’ or ‘unmusical’ listener. While Adorno insists that these are ‘ideal types’, in the sense in which Max Weber uses the term, and that they are not based on empirical research, his sketch of a typology certainly suggests other aspects of the listening experience that could be researched empirically (see Figure 14.2). Figure 14.2. Social mediation of music musical material (as handed-down historically changing conventions, genres, forms, schemata, techniques)

(representing earlier →o← composer mode of production; craft

(2) sphere of Reproduction

musical work (as score)

→o← performer (craft relation)

(3) sphere of Distribution

musical work (as performance)

industry & institutions →o← culture (intervention of industrial socio-

(1) sphere of Production

↓ ↓ ↓

(4) sphere of Consumption

musical work (as commodity)

↓

relation to material)

economic forces and relations of production)

(e.g., as ‘expert’ or as →o← listener ‘entertainment’ listener, etc.)

musical experience (as (i) fragmented ‘lived experience’ (Erlebnis), or (ii) integrated ‘interpretive experience’ (Erfahrung))



→o← = dialectical relationship)

(

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Historical mediation of musical material Finally, I turn to what I have called the third level or modality of mediation: that of the historical dialectic of musical material.21 This aspect of mediation is characterized by an antagonistic relation between irreconcilables, and is also characterized by an historical ‘coming of age’, again to use Adorno’s term. It is a process of becoming increasingly conscious of the weight of handed-down norms of musical behaviour as sublimated cultural norms, and simultaneously of the need both to subvert and displace them, and to create a new critical synthesis. This level of mediation revisits the formal level, in that we are again talking here of an apparently closed world of aesthetic activity, where the musical work is understood as an autonomous, self-consistent, self-contained text in its relation to historically handed-down musical material. At the same time, however, the differences are important. The revisiting is in the light of the second level of mediation, and the effects of commodification, where the ‘autonomy’ of the Figure 14.3. Historical mediation of musical material Three spheres (autonomous form, social situation, historical antinomies) and their relationship (1) autonomous form

o

(the musical work understood as autonomous, self-consistent, selfcontained text in its relation to historically handed-down musical material)

(2) social situation (the ‘autonomy’ of the musical work seen as ideological through situating it in its heteronomous social context as cultural commodity and institutional product)

(3) historical antinomies (the degree to which the musical work’s unity of form is attained through antagonisms, through the conflict between its ‘autonomy character’ and its ‘commodity character’ as historical dialectic of material) (o = oppositional/dialectical relationship)

Cf. Paddison, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture, p. 71.

21

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musical work is seen as ideological through situating it in its heteronomous social context as a commodity and as a product of the institutions of art. What is implied at what I have called the ‘third level’ or modality of mediation, that of historical antinomies, is a degree of self-reflection, not only as an immanent reflection upon the consistency of the work in itself, but also as a consciousness of the impossibility of success in terms of consistency. What this third level (as critique) represents is the predicament of a radical contemporary music today. It is characterized by the degree to which the musical work’s unity of form is attained through antagonisms, through the conflict between its ‘autonomy character’ and its ‘commodity character’. The gap between the two remains permanently open. Any formal unity is achieved only to the extent that this gap remains a permanent, if oscillating, feature of the work. That is to say, the antagonisms, as polarities, remain as an inbuilt conflict between music’s ‘autonomy character’ and its ‘commodity character’, a materialization of the reflexive and critical dimension of the work’s dynamic movement (see Figure 14.3). In conclusion What I have attempted to show in this chapter is that what is frequently used as a rather vague and general concept can be seen to be far more differentiated, nuanced and, if one dare say it, systematic when examined in detail, and particularly when viewed in the light of the concept as employed by Adorno. While it is easy to say that everything is mediated, and that immediacy is mere appearance or ideology, what becomes clear from a close examination of his concept of mediation is that, true to its origins in Hegel’s Logic, Adorno employs it as a critical and dialectical tool to reveal a dynamic and multi-layered process fundamental to the object of enquiry (that is, in this case, music, in all its aspects as musical material, musical work, musical performance and its technical reproduction, musical experience, and the institutions of music through which musical life functions). What is particularly significant about Adorno’s use of the concept, I suggest, is that it traces the mediation of subject and object through the interaction of work-immanent, sociological and historical spheres, and does so through a dialectical movement of reification, reflection and liquidation within, for instance, a particular composer’s work, a particular tradition of performance, or a particular musical institution. Inescapable at all levels of mediation today are the effects of the culture industry, shaping styles of musical performance, ways of using, listening to and experiencing music, and rendering music and musical works the ultimate commodities. In this respect what Adorno dubbed ‘the culture industry’ functions not only in the spheres of musical reproduction, distribution and consumption, but most notably and importantly in the sphere of musical production itself. It seems to me that the distinguishing feature of Adorno’s concept of mediation is that, for him, mediation is not simply a fact of our experience of the world, but is also our only route to the interpretation of that experience as meaningful. I would suggest that this is

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a decisive feature of the concept of mediation that is frequently overlooked in attempts to understand the use of the idea in Adorno, and the failure to understand it leads also to a serious misunderstanding of what Adorno was trying to do not only in his aesthetics, but also in his sociology of music. As I have also argued in this chapter, in the case of music, as with nature, what is most striking is its immediacy – to use Adorno’s German term, its Unmittelbarkeit.22 Music, especially if it is purely instrumental music without words, absolute music, appears to speak to us in a way we find difficult to conceptualize, because of its apparent intentionlessness – its lack of intention and lack of purposiveness beyond its immediate sphere. Our difficulty lies in grasping a musical work as a totality, as a coherence or a total context – a difficulty compounded with music (in contrast to the other arts) because music is an art form that unfolds through time. In this sense music, like nature, is particularly elusive because it is constantly in motion. I would say that, for Adorno, the meaning of music lies in the larger context of its mediations. Music is mediated in itself as autonomous, hermetically sealed structure, as, for example, the mediation of thematische Arbeit23 and of form; but this structure is also socially mediated because musical material is itself socially mediated, as pre-formed genres, forms, scale systems, and so on; and it is also mediated historically, in that all possibilities are not available at any particular historical moment, so that a work is also a response to its time, its present. A version of all these mediations is also to be discerned in performance, and contained within the work and its performance is also a process of reflection. This totality of mediations is the work’s context of meaning, and constitutes its gesture, its physiognomy, the face it makes at us, its expression. This is all the work fulfils, without intending or meaning to – in the sense in which Adorno uses the term ‘intentionless’ – and it is precisely in this that the meaning of the work lies, in what he calls its ‘mimetic being’ rather than in the amount of intention invested in the work by the composer (or indeed by the performer or listener). And, finally, the obvious point needs to be made again here concerning the mediatedness of theory itself, and the related problem of ideology: the theoretical tools we use to reveal mediation in phenomena like music are themselves mediated, and therefore any theory of mediation needs also to be self-reflexive in order to take this into account. I am aware that what I have put forward here is open to criticism for what could be seen as an unacceptable level of generality and abstraction. However, what I have set out to do is to outline the theoretical frameworks themselves, 22 See Max Paddison, ‘Die vermittelte Unmittelbarkeit der Musik: Zum Vermittlungsbegriff in der Adornoschen Musikästhetik’, in Alexander Becker and Matthias Vogel (eds), Musikalischer Sinn: Beiträge zu einer Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2007), pp. 175–236. 23 The term thematische Arbeit can be translated literally as ‘thematic work’. It refers to the process of working out and development of motivic-thematic material which characterizes the structure of musical works in the Austro-German tradition.

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and not simply present them as precursors to some particular instance. I have two things to say in my own defence. First, there are examples elsewhere in my published work where I have attempted to put flesh on the bones, and I have done so at some length.24 Indeed, the extreme cases of Brian Ferneyhough and Frank Zappa discussed in my chapter on ‘Postmodernism and the Survival of the AvantGarde’ earlier in this book offer two very different examples of what I mean. Second, and more importantly, however, I argue that it is necessary to examine the bone structure of our thinking – to look at the connectedness or otherwise of our theoretical underpinnings, so to speak. Adorno is invaluable in this respect, because he acts as a foil to our ideas, provoking and at the same time compelling us to develop our thinking further. And, finally, what is significant for an avant-garde music is not simply that its material and its structures are socially mediated, but that through its form it constitutes a critical reflection upon its own mediatedness. This also very much belongs to the issues I have attempted to discuss here. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., ‘On the Social Situation of Music’ (1932), trans. Wesley Blomster, Telos 35 (Spring 1978), pp. 128–64. Cf. original German: ‘Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik’, Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 18, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 729–77 ——, Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962), trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976). Cf. original German: Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie: Zwölf theoretische Vorlesungen (1962) (with Dissonanzen), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 14, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984), pp. 169–433 ——, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1973). Cf. original German: Negative Dialektik (1966) (Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 6, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Mein: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973) ——, ‘Theses on the Sociology of Art’ (1967), trans. Brian Trench, Birmingham Working Papers in Cultural Studies 2 (1972), pp. 121–8. Cf. original German: ‘Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie’ (1967), in Ohne Leitbild: Parva Aesthetica (1967, 1968), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 10.1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977), pp. 367–74 Hanslick, Eduard, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854) (Leipzig, 1902, 10th ed.) Hegel, G.W.F., Logic (1830), trans. William Wallace, with foreword by J.N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Cf. original German: Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik,

24 See Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, Appendix: ‘Berg’s Sonata op. 1 and its relation to Wagner’s Tristan’, pp. 279–84; also ‘Immanent Analysis or Musical Stocktaking?’.

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in G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, Bd.8, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K.M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970) Kneif, Tibor, Musiksoziologie (Cologne: Musikverlag Hans Gerig, 1971, 2nd ed. 1975) Leibniz, G.W., Monadology (1714), trans. and commentary by Nicholas Rescher (London: Routledge, 1991) Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1 (1867), trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976). Cf. German original: Das Kapital, Bd.1, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Bd.23 (Berlin: Dietz, 1962) Paddison, Max, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; 1998) ——, Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996; 2004) ——, ‘The Language-Character of Music’, in Richard Klein and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds), Mit den Ohren denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), pp. 71–91 ——, ‘Immanent Analysis or Musical Stocktaking? Adorno and the Problem of Musical Analysis’, in Nigel Gibson and Andrew Rubin (eds), Adorno: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002), pp. 209–33 ——, ‘Performance, Reification and Score: The Dialectics of Spatialization and Temporality in the Experience of Music’, in Musicae Scientiae: Forum de Discussion 3. Aspects du temps dans la création musicale (2004), pp. 157–79 ——, ‘Die vermittelte Unmittelbarkeit der Musik: Zum Vermittlungsbegriff in der Adornoschen Musikästhetik’, in Alexander Becker and Matthias Vogel (eds), Musikalischer Sinn: Beiträge zu einer Philosophie der Musik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2007), pp. 175–236 Weber, Max, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1911), trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958)

PART III Creative Orientations

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Chapter 15

Music, Ambiguity, Buddhism: A Composer’s Perspective Jonathan Harvey

I At a time when we are critically taking stock of the value of classical contemporary music, and many young, and not so young, composers are uneasy about their place in the world and their music’s relation to their fellow human beings, it seems right to address the fundamentals of valuation in a context surrounded with ethics. We composers are mostly a part of a broad historical sweep stretching from the orchestration of Debussy onwards. Before that, to simplify brutally, Brahms and the post-Beethovenians, Wagner and the post-Wagnerians were questioning the clarities of motivic, thematic and harmonic working with ever greater and more challenging ambiguities. And crucially, from roughly the time of Debussy on, the clarities of sound were questioned, made ambiguous. Now, with Spectralism and the sound research of computer programs and composers like Lachenmann and Sciarrino influential everywhere, in spite of various examples of ‘neo’-music, the broad sweep has blown us into a brave new world of ever more complex transformations of expressive sound. This is probably the foreseeable future, and it brings with it a small crisis. It needs some fairly fundamental explanation. My title suggests a duality between music and Buddhism. There is, however, a third factor and that is the writer – myself. The ‘explanation’ of music by Buddhism and Buddhism by music will be largely through the prism of my own music; and it may seem a very personal account. Nevertheless, it is a search for truth, for axioms that are true for all music, not just my own. But this truth is informed by a kind of Buddhist Uncertainty Principle, and the argument is that one solid, truthfully impersonal perspective is impossible anyway. The principal Mahayana Buddhist concept to be addressed is that of ‘emptiness’, connected with what the Buddhists call ‘wisdom’. It’s at the heart and centre of Buddhism. Emptiness means the lack of inherent existence of objects and concepts from their own side. It doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, but it means that they don’t exist solidly in the conventional way; they don’t exist inherently without our aid. For the purposes of discussion we can say that there are two types of reality, ways of being real. There is conventional reality and there is ultimate reality. The conventional reality is the reality we work with, we do our daily business with, and

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we get around with. We impute reality on to entities both incorrectly (mistaking a bit of rope or – to Westernize – a rubber toy snake for a live snake, for instance) and – through the power of reason – correctly (calling our bodies bodies, for example). In both cases ‘we appear the world’ as Geshe Kelsang Gyatso says. The ultimate reality is a way of understanding the world more truly. With long practice and meditation it can also become a way of acting in the world – and it’s not easy. But Buddhism is famous for its middle way, neither ascetic nor selfindulgent, but also taking both aspects of reality and balancing them. It’s not an extremist philosophy. It means one gives a full role to conventional reality in daily life at the same time as grasping with the other hand this other view, which is called ultimate reality. Eventually, for a master, a way of life informed by the predominant presence of ultimate reality takes over. Ultimate reality, then, deals with the concept of emptiness. I’ll spend a few lines quoting from a commentary Kelsang Gyatso wrote on the classic text on emptiness, The Heart Sutra. In explaining the ‘emptiness of form’ (or ‘things’) he says: If form were inherently existent it would be independent of all other phenomena. In fact, when we investigate, we find that form exists in dependence on other phenomena. All impermanent phenomena are produced in dependence on causes … There is no starting point to this because the causes of each moment of an impermanent phenomenon are themselves impermanent phenomena and therefore have their own causes … Our body of yesterday was produced from our body of the day before. Eventually we can trace back the causes of our present body to the sperm and ovum of our parents. These cells can be traced back to previous causes in a process without beginning. Buddha said: ‘Shariputra, know that all phenomena are mere name.’ We may have the thought that there is an object that is existing in its own right that is ‘waiting’, as it were, to be called ‘my body’. However, if we examine the basis of the name ‘my body’ we find that it is merely an assembly of various parts – legs, arms, a head and so forth … Furthermore if we investigate the parts of our body such as our legs, we find that they too are mere name. ‘Leg’ is merely a name given to a certain assembly of flesh and bones. All forms have parts … If our body were identical with its parts, such as our head, our arms and so forth, we would have many bodies, since there are many parts of our body. On the other hand, if our body were independent of its parts, we could remove all the parts of our body and the body itself would still remain. We must conclude that our body is different from its parts but is dependent upon them. This is true of all form and therefore form is a dependent-related phenomenon depending on parts.  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Heart of Wisdom: A Commentary to the Heart Sutra (London: Tharpa Publications, 1986), pp. 69–71.

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Meditations on emptiness begin with holding the object of negation clearly in mind – the body, or any feeling or concept it might be. Only then can one proceed to negate, to understand its emptiness. All phenomena exist by way of convention; nothing is inherently existent. This applies to mind, Buddha and even to emptiness itself. Everything is merely imputed by mind. All phenomena have parts because physical phenomena have physical parts and non-physical phenomena have various attributes that can be distinguished by thought. Using the same type of reasoning as above, we can realize that any phenomenon is not one of its parts, not the collection of its parts and not separate from its parts. In this way, we can realize the emptiness of all phenomena. The same reasoning can be applied even more profoundly to the search for the ‘I’, the ego, the self: the reasoning leads to the conclusion that the ‘I’ cannot be found. It consists of ‘parts’, if you like, such as the mind and the body. But with careful reasoning it’s actually impossible to find the self, the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is not the body, it is not the mind (we have countless changing ‘minds’ and ‘I’ can change my mind – so the possessor and the possessed cannot be the same); nor is the ‘I’ some disconnected soul separate from mind and body. So ‘I’ am none of these things, nor a collective entity made up of them, except for verbal labelling convenience. We are language, as some current philosophers observe; there is nothing else. In the same way, we exist through a mind of several billion interacting neurons, which are self-organizing and without a centre, a ‘self’, as current neurobiology is sensationally discovering. The emptiness of the ‘I’ leads to the discourse on suffering, or, more clearly, dissatisfaction. this was the Buddha’s teaching for 45 years, where many sermons were given and subsequently written down, and in which the primary object was the release from suffering; and that release is deeply connected with the ontological status of the ‘I’, and the counter-productivity of ‘self-grasping’. The bigger the delusion of ‘I’, the bigger the suffering which inevitably results. This is not the place to follow that trail, except to note that it can start out from music – that the lightened ‘I’ is often the result of a musical experience, an experience which ‘lightens the heart’ (the heart is the seat of ‘mind’ in Buddhism). The connection with music begins from this point of ‘wisdom’. Music is in some sense a picture of wisdom. It is even an explanation, in that it shows rather more clearly than words can the will-o’-the-wisp quality of reality. Music shows us how mind works. We see forms building in ‘mental space’, fine forms in Beethoven or Boulez; and (at varying degrees of consciousness) we see they are ultimately emptinesses, kept in memory in our minds. Nothing is what it seems; it seems ‘real’ but is mere projection of the mind. What seems to be is nothing, as it turns out. Music explains that everything is shifting between two levels. We love some music because it presents us with a representation of illusions seen  For a more detailed lead-up to this statement see Jonathan Harvey, In Quest of Spirit (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999).

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through – we comprehend musical entities as the projections they really are. We project on to the sounds, and realize that we are projecting on to the sounds. That seeing of the double nature of sounds is exactly parallel to, or even the same as, wisdom, which sees the double nature of conventional/ultimate reality. It brings liberation. We can particularly understand liberation if we focus on human characteristics, as Geshe Kelsang wrote, such as obsessions, hang-ups, wishful thinking, unrealistic longings and irritations. All ‘disturbing’ entities are the results of our own minds. That infuriating driver who aggressively butts into the traffic-jam queue ahead of me is suddenly recognized as my mother, for example, and my attitude immediately changes to ‘dear old mum at her tricks again’ and I laugh. The ‘fact’ of the action has not changed – but the mental way of seeing it has changed diametrically according to the imagined threat to my ego. Rage and affection are irrationally interchangeable, depending on the flux of our mind-set. We, too, are the constructions of our minds, which themselves change constantly. What I fear has no existence, once, as the Buddha taught, I learn to control the mind. Such control brings a joyful celebration of the ultimately real world; traditionally that’s associated with bliss and happiness, and concomitantly a state of great tranquillity. Music aids and abets that control. The ‘seeing through’ that that control brings constitutes the pleasure of great music. We see through the delusions of conventional reality and experience liberation. Boulez once said that the only music which interests him possesses the quality of ambiguity. This is a striking remark. Ambiguity is a threat to the solidity of existence. Illusions are shown up. I’ll touch now on some aspects of ambiguity in music which are familiar to us all, but which need to be thought about from this Buddhist point of view. I talk only of sounds, not of their notation, which for me is a very secondary matter. At the level of musical text one might talk more of ‘multiple meaning’ in the Schoenberg sense than of ‘ambiguity’; but my experience (although I was an academic for nearly 40 years) is that the text and its forms fall away as the power of acoustic experience shapes them in its own terms. Let’s first of all take tonal music, or tonality itself, and remember particularly the analyses of Heinrich Schenker (and later, for example, Lerdahl) – the way they showed that different levels coexist in nested form. Let’s look at a movement in C major – Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, first movement – with a passage in E major some way into it – the second subject. There is a group of chords in the middle of that passage in C minor, and in that group there’s a root position chord of A major momentarily; it is lightly emphasized by the composer. Just for a split second we have a sense of being in or on A major, but not only that – also on the submediant of C minor – therefore we are in C minor and also in E major and C major. Without the knowledge that the movement is in C major, the A major chord would have less sense of strangeness, less sense of being ‘distant’, so that C major must be present in the meaning of that A major, as it is present in the meaning of the C minor experience and all the other levels. If you played an A major chord

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in isolation, with no context, it would mean only itself, unambiguously: totally different from the A major chord we are talking about. With every expansion of context to larger spans the ambiguity increases within that one chord. So tonal music of a certain sort is clearly in many keys at the same time. It’s highly ambiguous. An analysis depends on the level you choose to focus on, just as the quest to find the body asks ‘is the head the body?’ (no) or ‘is the assembly of all the parts the body?’ Neither factor is the body, but we focus on different parts to try to find it. E major, C minor … what is the tonality exactly? It cannot truly be found, or, following Derrida, it’s ‘undecidable’. Each ‘part’ has its own parts, which, in their turn, themselves have parts. Every tonal appoggiatura relies for its significance on the note that it is not. Unless you realize that it is a substitute for a note that it is not, it cannot function as an appoggiatura. Therefore the note that it is not (the absent note) has a presence. This also applies, more or less strongly, to all notes in a tonal piece, except the low tonic in certain stable places. Unless the root of the tonic is sounding (the principal of the hierarchical system of tonality) we should be aware that we are hearing only substitutes; their presence is haunted by the presences of absent notes. We are not yet at the foundation, the unsubstitutable tonic, which cannot be an appoggiatura when it occurs in a tonic context. The same applies to appoggiatura tonalities, substituting a tonality briefly for a more stable one which surrounds it. Like a Russian doll, one will hear appoggiaturas within an appoggiatura tonality, which is itself an appoggiatura tonality to some further tonality, and so on. The more the composer makes this presence/absence undecidability or ambiguity speak clearly, the more interesting the music’s signification, in my view, becomes. Interesting music is undecidable music. It is fascinating how Derrida has used the Saussurean difference, on which all signifying phonemes depend, to demonstrate that elements are constituted on the basis of the ‘trace’ of the different (absent) elements being present, chipping away at old certainties in the way that Buddhist ‘emptiness’ overturns everything we ever grasped. Another example of ambiguity is the union, or the simultaneous confusion perhaps, of opposites. Let’s take ‘up and down’. For example, in the opening bars of the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 2, after the opening octave figure, the second phrase (in demisemiquavers) is a phrase that is going down and it’s also a phrase that at the same time is going up: each of the two demisemiquaver runs descends, but, in relation to the first, the second run starts a tone higher. If you ask of any note in the second demisemiquaver run whether it is going up or down, the answer can only be ‘both’. It depends at which level you situate your focus; one level is nested in the other. You can’t separate them. They are indissolubly linked in the musical experience (Example 15.1).

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Example 15.1. Beethoven Piano Sonata op. 2, no. 2

‘Louder and softer’ can be, and frequently are, similarly nested. Any sequence of diminuendo hairpins which is part of an overall build-up would be an example – each diminuendo louder than the last one. But each time an accentuated first beat is followed by a softer second beat or phrased-off figure, and this occurs within a slight crescendo, we have the same double meaning – and this is so common it can be found in almost every phrase ever performed in any tradition. One type of focus is on the ‘now’, another type of focus relies more on memory. So it’s a different level of cognition, slightly more instant, which makes for a diminuendo and slightly less instant which makes for a crescendo. Yet these two levels of cognition cannot be separated in musical reception; both are received together. They make a double meaning for a single object. Then there’s ‘faster’ and ‘slower’. We can remember examples of an ornamental style increasing in speed with divisions at the melodic levels; and at the same time the harmonic movement underneath, or the movement of the bass, slows down: this is clearly a very common experience at all levels of time-span – for instance, short (within a measure), and long (over four phrases). It’s a similar case for monodic traditions, where the basic structure slows down and the ornamentation increases, as in Hindustani and Karnatic practice for example. So much for some ambiguities of nested opposites. Then we could move on to ‘theme’ and ‘accompaniment’. When is a cluster of material an accompaniment? When is it a theme? When is it subsidiary? When is it principal? Often we can’t be very clear, and the same bit of music changes from one role to another and/or it is half way in between. It is shoved into the background and then it rebounds into the foreground. The ‘big’ horn theme in the finale of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony has a domineering personality, everyone remembers it. Yet after a few bars it becomes subsidiary to the violin melody, which, because it is more diverse rhythmically and intervallically, succeeds, to some extent, in turning the horn theme underneath into a rather simple and repetitive ‘accompanimental’ figure for its own glory. What about thematic interconnection? Familiarity with cellular analysis, set analysis, and so on, shows that pitch cells belong to many different musical articulations. Theme one, theme two and theme three can all have the same cells. Taking again the exposition of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, compare the semiquaver descending third in the fierce, ‘male’ bar 3 with the gentle and

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serenely singing, ‘female’ register minim-and-crotchets descending third of the E major second subject mentioned above. The same cell is highly ambiguous in its meaning in any one piece – it is multivalent. This multivalence can apply equally to rhythmic cells. Contracting, expanding like some protean amoeba, they are always identifiably the same in some ambiguous sense. So any one rhythmic motive can articulate radically different melodies and textures. The constant delight within a Beethovenian tradition of one theme turning into another – with a strong emphasis on ambiguous clouds in the transition moments between – is so characteristic of mainstream Western repertoire concert listening that it needs no special mention here. My own absorption in it should be stated: for 13 years in the 1960s and 1970s I taught analysis of the Viennese Classics – thematic, motivic, Schenkerian, nested metrical structure (Cooper and Meyer), phrase-rhythm, motivic/cell rhythm, the smallest notes and their expectedness in terms of pattern at the micro level, and so on. All the time I was talking about one ‘thing’ being metamorphosed into another, similarity perception and difference perception; cue abstraction, imprint perception of larger constructs, and their dissolution and dissipation. The perception of the dissolution is only possible because we clearly postulate a ‘cue’ – a motivic profile distinctive enough to the ear to be forcibly noticed (following the terminology of Irène Deliège). When I compose, the current material on which I am engaged – perhaps a salient figure of four domineering notes – is singing in my head all day, and often half the night too. It is little surprise that it gets into every so-called ‘new’ thought surreptitiously, unnoticed by me, only to be discovered in its heavy disguise years later. Timbre is a very important dimension for contemporary music, and particularly for electronic composers. For instance, we work very much with spectrum concepts. The spectrum is the natural harmonic series or its distortions, and we can either put it into an orchestra or have it on a computer and manipulate it. Imagine an example: at first there is an object, an objet sonore, just one thing – a note with a specific brightness, a fundamental with partials, if it’s the normal harmonic series, the natural series. Then perhaps the composer makes one of the upper partials go into vibrato, or slide off pitch a bit, or do a glissando, or change in some other way. Then one begins to see that this object consists of parts, many parts. The one contains the many. Thirdly, the errant partial will perhaps slot back into its place and become merged into just one ‘note with its brightness’ again – a game of hide and seek backwards and forwards into the spectrum, into polyphony; back into colour and then again into intervallicism. This kind of to and fro motion is very common in contemporary music. Fusion and fission are the terms generally adopted to describe it. Identity is also a subsection of timbre. Is it an oboe? Is it a flute? We are all familiar with the great orchestrators, perhaps starting with Berlioz, reaching  See Irène Deliège, ‘Introduction: Similarity Perception < > Categorisation <> Cue Abstraction’, Music Perception 18/3.

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emphasis by the time we reach Wagner, who have doubled, trebled or quadrupled a single line, and made different spectra from these combinations. One can’t be sure which instrument is playing – a new spectrum is heard. Again in electronics, you can turn (‘morph’) any instrument into any other instrument – manipulation of the spectrum. In the slide from one to the other there is an area of no man’s land which belongs to neither. Identity is questioned; we can, and do, mistake one instrument for another, and the mistaking is pleasurable, delightful even, in the way a magic trick can delight. Next to consider is the debate – an old chestnut – around the question: ‘Is music itself or is it something else?’ As my teacher Hans Keller used to say, ‘It’s always both’. It both has autonomous structure and it refers to something else, something social, emotional and spiritual, in the code in which it is written. Musicology oscillates between ‘positivist formal’ and ‘post-Kerman hermeneutical’ approaches, but always acknowledges some degree of ‘it’s both’. There is, of course, pattern to set against onomatopoeia: that is to say, pattern, which is a matter of repetitional structure, transformations, and the breaking-up of musical things which are identical. Then there’s onomatopoeia, where the music sounds like something outside music. This can be very subtle. Music may seem very abstract, but inevitably it relates to such rhythms as the heartbeat, it relates to breathing, it relates to our sense of gesticulating, walking, running, dancing and sensory-motor activity generally. It’s onomatopoeic through and through. We can’t escape it. Music is always ambiguously both pattern and onomatopoeia, now more emphatically one, now more the other. Another, related, ambiguity comprises ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Is it nature? Is it culture? Again, it is often both. I wrote a work for choir and electronics which seemed to illustrate this point. It is called Ashes Dance Back and it sets poems by Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet. These are poems about the dissolution of the self: dissolution in wind – the self is scattered like dust in the air, in fire – the self is consumed by fire, and in water – the self is drowned in water. I took recordings of these three elements and blew them through electronic filters, as it were. A filter is a window through which sound can be pushed, but it is only a certain width, so a designated band of frequencies (part of the wind) is all one hears. When it was rather fully opened it sounded as if the wind was blowing through it, but when it was gradually closed it became more and more like a musical note, till eventually it was a pure note, with a slightly wavery pitch and a wind-like rhythm-envelope. Depending on the changing size of that window I could change from nature to culture, and from culture to nature, moving seamlessly from music to wind. Blowing fire through it, or spouting water through it, achieve similar transitions from one world to another. The choir would become wind, as it were. It would be more normally ‘music’, but it was able to make those expansions into a sense of wind/choir, and the same with a fire/choir or a water/choir. If the electronics are played as loudly, as elementally, as demanded, the hall is flooded with nature’s power, and the choir is dissolved and changed. The humans audibly become the elements.

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There are many other shades of the ‘nature/culture’ ambiguity, which are very interesting. I would only point to my Bird Concerto with Pianosong which, as the title implies, is built on the negotiation between unmistakable digital birdsong and its seamless and magical connection to musical instruments, by progressive slowing and transposing down. Birds melodize quite similarly to humans, but approximately three times faster. The aim was, a little imaginatively (and not forgetting Siegfried), to try to see what it is like to be in the mind of a bird; and conversely – observing the birds who gathered close to my study window during composition – what a bird might imagine the mind of a human to be like. Speaking of Wagner, Adorno – ever suspicious of sensuality – wrote about transcendental magic in his book In Search of Wagner using quite extreme terms. He opposed magic to labour, to the production of the music and the noticeable, observable labour that goes into musical production, an argument with Marxist undertones. I’d like to quote a short, and rather outrageous, passage in which he talks about the greatest passages in Wagner, where the evocation of magical existences – the ‘phantasmagoria’ – is most extreme, like the Venusberg music in Tannhäuser, or Act Two of Tristan und Isolde or the Flower Maidens’ music in Parsifal. Adorno writes: Where the dream is at its most exalted, the commodity is closest to hand. The phantasmagoria tends towards dream not merely as the deluded wish-fulfilment of would-be buyers, but chiefly to conceal the labour that has gone into making it. It mirrors subjectivity by confronting the subject with the product of its own labour, but in such a way that the labour that has gone into it is no longer identifiable.

So all these poor individual musicians with their sweat, their hard work and their instruments of string, metal and wood, and so on, are magicked away in a kind of conjuring trick – an impression of transcendentalism. This is Adorno’s criticism. It’s scarcely justified because nobody’s really taken in. When he says the labour is ‘no longer identifiable’ it is difficult to know what he’s thinking of. We all suspend disbelief very willingly when we listen to magic in music, as, say, in the evocation of the storm at the beginning of Die Walküre. We ‘really’ believe there is a storm, but on the other hand we don’t really reach for our umbrellas and our raincoats. Or when we hear Loge’s magic fire music, we ‘see’ the fire vividly but we don’t go to the assembly point outside the theatre. One sees the musicians as well. Children perhaps, when you ask them what their impressions of a piece of music are, go the closest, enter into the new reality the most fully. They say things like: ‘I felt it was a dark night and I was in the forest. It was really scary.’ But for most listeners the art object is definitely out there, separate, however willingly they suspend disbelief. The disbelief has to be there in order to be suspended, although, as Adorno would  Theodor W. Adorno, In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: NLB, 1981), p. 91.

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justly have said, there are some listeners who are such emotional listeners that they project their own particular emotional needs and obsessions very strongly on to many things in life, including their favourite music. This points towards the neurotic. So the argument has some credence, but in general a limited credence. Nietzsche anticipates Adorno’s line of reasoning when he pillories Wagner as a liar, as a ham actor, as a showman, a magician of the theatre. Zarathustra’s encounter with the Magician (Wagner) in Also Sprach Zarathustra is a brilliant parody. But it also shows the ambivalence that can be detected occasionally in Adorno’s book, that at some level in dealing with Wagner one has been touched by the sacred. Peter Sellars, the director, once said to me, as a corrective to my own struggles to represent the numinous on stage in the opera Inquest of Love: ‘you can’t really achieve magic on the stage by the obvious means. You can’t have the grail as a beautiful bowl with mystical light shining from up above somewhere. The way we have to do it nowadays is by metaphor. You’d have to take a Cocacola can, put it on the stage and everybody will behave as if it’s the Holy Grail. This way lies magic.’ That’s always struck me, and I prefer that way of expressing the problem to Adorno’s, because it acknowledges the power of ambiguity. The labouring musicians are right upfront, and still there is magic. As children are wont to say in their happiest hours with the scantiest of props: ‘let’s pretend…’. These are a few of the many things we could talk about in a survey of the failed polarities of ambiguity. These issues, though basic for any musical culture I know in any age, have in our own time come to the fore with stark clarity. Particularly now, electronics have created a quiet revolution which has unseated the 150-yearold organological stability of instrument design. It is a very special and exciting time for that reason alone. Remember, you can change anything into anything. A violin can become a volcano. The musical entity is constantly slipping and sliding, changing form and changing the mental illusion of what we’re looking at or what we’re listening to, what objects are out there, where they’re placed in space; whether, indeed they have any permanent identity at all. So why do we like ambiguity? What do all good, ‘likeable’, listening experiences have in common? They are fresh, unpredictable, not too chaotic and they constantly awaken my attention. What do all bad listening experiences have in common? They’re banal, predictable, clichéd – or there’s no rhyme or reason to what happens and they’re just chaotic, they fail to keep my interest – unless, of course, the text or some extra-musical element mitigates. Between the boring and the chaotic, just the right balance of clarity and complexity must be found. There must be clear statement of idea and intriguing dissolution of the ideas formed. Statement and ambiguity must both be strong. All statement, the music is tediously obvious: all ambiguity, the music is irritatingly vague. That’s really the essence of the matter. Hans Keller’s hypostasis-view of Statement and Development defines genius as the ability to implant in the listener’s mind formidable strength in both departments, with clear opposition between them, at all levels of structure, not just the obvious ones bearing those names. What one judges to be strong statement

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and what strong ambiguity is to a large extent subjective; each to their own great music. But why it is ‘great’ is, in my view, the same across all subjectivity. In Buddhist meditation practice, as mentioned above, that is called ‘identifying the object of negation’. Unless and until the meditator has a very strong mental picture of the object (an object like anger or the ‘I’ or the body) there is no hope of seeing it in the light of ultimate reality, of ‘seeing through’ it. It may take many meditations before that object, in its delusory, conventional form, becomes truly clear and vivid, and we can begin, just as it may take many hearings of a piece of music before we can truly begin. Banal music is like conventional reality – all surface. Interesting music is like ultimate reality – it gives an inkling of conventional reality exposed, of the underlying emptiness, tranquil as the ocean bed. For each of us the banal and interesting are different, according to our abilities of reception. That’s not the point. Moreover, even in familiar music, where we might expect familiarity to breed tedium, we escape the experience of banality as we still get the sense of momentarily losing the thread – of key, of the theme, of metre. This sense remains powerful within familiarity, encased hard within form, experienced each time, and crucially determines our subjective evaluation of that music. Like the impermanent and ever shifting world, good music seems to set up strong thematic personalities but constantly dissolves them in ambiguity. The 80odd normally available notes before microtones came along (a further ambiguity to some ears) are shuffled, rebuilt in ever changing groupings signifying everything from God to gossip, from Sarastro to Lulu. I think of the magnificent sandcastles that children build on beaches, elaborate edifices which wash away as soon as the tide comes in. But the next morning they will be out there building new ones, completely different, equally magnificent. The sand has been rearranged. And so it is with sound, the 80 notes. If you’ve ever seen Buddhist monks making mandalas out of sand, beautifully coloured sand, very complex – there are animals and buildings and symbolic forms – you will be shocked to see that once the mandala is completed they say a blessing or two, sweep it into a bag and throw it into the river. Music is always dissolving magnificent patterns together with our attached significations, which are projected onto them in a powerful beam. At the same time it should not be forgotten that we ourselves are shifting, we are not static. As Buddha said, we never have exactly the same mind twice. One impermanent object is meeting another; anything can happen, according to the causality of ‘dependent arising’. Now I’d like to move on to some examples from my music, in the hope some of what has been said will be illustrated. But it should be emphasized that, up to a certain point in time, I have not composed according to a Buddhist theory. I composed first, and then looked back and saw what I had, for so long, been doing. The explanation offered here is not of how I, or any other composer, follow a theory, but of the nature of composition in itself.

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II Wheel of Emptiness (1997) is for 15 players with light electronics. The electronics are largely used for equal-addition spectral compression, which is a technique I use to manipulate the spectrum by adding the same amount of cycles-per-second (equal-addition) to each partial in the spectrum by means of computer resynthesis. If you add 20 Hz to the bass note, it moves quite far; and if you add 20 Hz to the top partial, it moves hardly at all. So you get compression of the spectrum’s size. After more and more has been added and the point is reached where exactly the same amount as the fundamental’s frequency has been added to each partial, the fundamental-based spectrum is almost repeated, but it lacks the fundamental itself. Such repetition of the basic series every time a multiple of the fundamental’s frequency is added to each and every partial yields a rock-solid grammar of sound. It’s basic Pythagorean stuff. But one needs to manipulate the pitches very precisely, by exactly the same amount in each partial – and only a computer resynthesis can do that very well. The rougher, ‘dissonant’ inharmonic spectra are complex questionings of the clarity of the natural harmonic series; thus, like modulatory dissonances in tonal music, they bring such ‘statements’ into a state of ambiguity. However, that’s by the way. In Wheel of Emptiness there are two types of music. The first is very turbulent, almost chaotic. There are waves of sound – an old Indian image: the turbulent waves with their fascinating but impermanent forms above the unchanging and tranquil seabed water; and these waves – they are waves of compressed spectra – repeat ten times. Around them surge foaming figures composed of glissandi, jeté bowings, circular bowings, tremolandi on harmonics, col legno battuto on the strings, and pointillistic fragments flying off in the other instruments (Example 15.2). I wanted to make a contrast by means of another idea, which consists of ‘objects’, or as it were objets trouvés. The nearest equivalent might be early twentieth-century collagist work where a bus ticket or a cigarette packet or some bit of flotsam is stuck to the painting. They’re completely random bits of sound which have no grammatical meaning, no tonality virtually, and no connection with anything. Each of the 15 objects is scored for from one to 15 instruments: a brief fragment of distorted Mozart, a loud added sixth for all 15 instruments, an object with a prominent lion’s roar, another with slide whistle glissando, a doubled complex oboe multiphonic, a post-Wagnerian thirds structure, and so forth. Their use lies in the juxtapositions they are forced to make, the way they are arranged in patterns, just as one might formally arrange bits of rubbish in a collagist structure (Example 15.3). There’s a little exception, which is a short oboe melody that I regarded as a mere object also, but which has a very different history later in the piece. This ‘exposition’ comes about three minutes into the piece.

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Example 15.2. Harvey, Wheel of Emptiness (opening)

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Example 15.3. Harvey, Wheel of Emptiness (p. 27)

So these are ‘objects’ with certain identities. The passage goes on for some minutes and the listener thereby gets used to them, I think, and learns to recognize them – they are clear statements (‘cues’). They don’t change until later in the piece, some five or six minutes later, where they begin to dissolve, they begin to turn into each other, they lose their limbs, an arm of one is stuck onto a leg of another, and so on. They make different shapes, different personalities, and they become closer to the waves, to the chaotic music that starts to creep in there as well. This ‘development’ refers to the two previous examples’ materials and

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dissolves them. (It is too long to print as an example, but the CD listener can play it at 8′40″–12′22″ – bar 228 onwards). Another piece I’d like to use as an example is the Fourth Quartet (2003). It was written for the Arditti Quartet with electronics; these were done over the course of a year at IRCAM. It takes the form of five cycles; between each cycle there is a passage of ‘scarcely present’ music. We come eventually to the birth of some more densely organized sound, closer to what we normally call ‘music’. The ‘nonmusic’ is closer to nature (wind or sea or simply silence) – it represents, perhaps, a different form of consciousness, a disincarnate one. In a sense, each cycle is a life and a death, a slow forming of a personality and a crumbling disintegration. Electronic arts are particularly interesting from this point of view – of being able to refine and etherealize and make things volatile; it was this that caught my attention as I worked in the field of ambiguity and emptiness – the insubstantiality of reality, once one begins to live emptiness. (One can see, incidentally, the same current tendency in music outside the electronic arena too – in the work of Lachenmann and Sciarrino, amongst others.) We touch what is virtually the most insubstantial type of music possible, with just a violin playing on the rib of the instrument or on the bridge itself, without ‘tone’. But the insubstantiality is substantiated in another sphere, that of volatile spatialization. The structure of rhythmic spatialization articulates and sharpens the ambiguity of the vague ‘noise’. There’s an elaborate system of spatialization which can send the sound anywhere and at any speed around eight channels – it can be sent, by calculation of various parameters and their relation to the organ of the ear, a mile outside the concert hall if desired. All this is possible in IRCAM’s spatialization programme; one can use it as syntax, without the sense of merely adding it to some existing music cosmetically, but as a deep structural feature of the music. The spatial movement in this piece is very rhythmic, and these mobile rhythms are also the rhythms of the note-themes – the structural rhythms. So we have that rhythm, but we hear it articulated by invisible bodies flying around the hall – invisible presences. I was very struck at the time by the philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s book L’air et les songes. He wrote inspirationally about the air, and its oneiric dimensions. ‘Aerial being is pure being’, he said, equating spatialization with a lightness of being, purified of all encumbrance, physical and mental. In literature and philosophy he referred to Nietzsche (that lover of mountains and snowy heights), to Shelley (clouds, light, sky, birds) and many others, analysing the quality of the image in terms of its height and its depth and its ‘vertical mobility’. The ethical dimension comes in as well: good and evil are scarcely imaginable without a prior



Jonathan Harvey, CD: Wheel of Emptiness is available on CYPRES CYP5604. Jonathan Harvey, CD: Fourth Quartet is available on AEON AECD 0975.  Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes. Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1943). 

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high and low. Strikingly, the book is mostly concerned with philosophical primacy of the imagination, of reverie, the basis before the logical thinker gets to work. After the first cycle in my quartet there are many strange spectral complexes from the live treatment of the string quartet. It is a bardo world of shadows, but eventually and gradually an obsessive, repetitive, minimalist sort of music begins to build, as if this personality that is being born likes to repeat the same attachments, the same desires, over and over again. Electronically that complies with the simplest foundation of electronics – repeated live recordings and playbacks of fragments the quartet itself performs (‘karmic imprints’ exerting their influence, perhaps, but I am uneasy about one-to-one interpretations). In due course that disintegrates – is shown to be highly fragile – and dies. Tiny specks of silence are recorded obliteratingly over the repeating recording; they perforate it more and more until it crumbles like a decaying piece of wood (Example 15.4). Finally, here is an example from a work which is, for textual reasons, explicitly Buddhist, called One Evening (1994). There are four texts, which are set for soprano, mezzo-soprano and a few instruments with electronics. All texts are on the theme of emptiness. The first movement uses a text by Han Shan, a T’ang Dynasty Buddhist poet. He wrote a text on how, one evening during meditation, ‘I saw distinctly the Great All-Illuminating: pure, transparent, empty and open like a clear sea – nothing at all existed! … Clear and empty shines the ocean like moonlight on snow, no trace of man nor gods.’ A little later he writes: ‘You will see that your body and mind, like the mountains, rivers, spaces and territories of the outer world, are all contained inside the true mind, wonderful and illumined’. The two sopranos are really not individuated (Example 15.5). They sing, monotonously, only on the axis of the work, the harmonic axis A/B, and the quarter tone in between. In the instruments, there are struck or plucked chords played with durations which get longer and longer as in a meditational ‘calming of the mind’ process. The controlling harmonic fields from which the chords are selected are all axially symmetrical around the A/B – ‘floating in mid-air’. The second movement sets a letter by Rabindranath Tagore recounting an experience that was very important for his spiritual orientation, when he was on the balcony in his house one day watching the sunrise. Suddenly his depression lifted from him and he saw the world wrapped in inexpressible glory, in waves of joy and beauty. Everybody was transformed on the street. He seemed to feel the beat of a music, to feel the rhythm of a ‘mystic dance’, the movements of the body of all humanity. He seemed, in other words, to get a vision of emptiness which was very positive, a very substantial emptiness – the whole world dissolved into colour and energy. As he was a Hindu this was expressed through the idea of Shiva’s lila, or the play of maya. I started my setting by filtering the waves of bursting-out light into the pitches of the structural harmony – a sampled cymbal roll becomes harmonically coloured by comb-filtering. Emptiness and form are intertwined (Example 15.6). 



Jonathan Harvey, CD: One Evening is available on Ades (Universal) 206 942.

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Example 15.4. Harvey, String Quartet No. 4

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Example 15.5. Harvey, One Evening, movement 1 (opening)

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Example 15.6. Harvey, One Evening, movement 2

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The next movement is the negative. It is an experience of emptiness which the anonymous author, a lady in America, described in her book as a near mental breakdown; here emptiness was terrifying. The loss of self was something which was completely intolerable. Everything around her seemed to turn to ashes, the world became hideous. I set that as a negative, the opposite side of the same picture. One could put it in context as the last desperate grasping of the ego before it acknowledges the joy of emptiness, the negation of existence as a separate entity. In fact, she did get through her ‘dark night’ to write the book, and is now living with a monastic order. The last movement sets some Sanskrit, the short beginning of the Heart Sutra Om namo bhagavatyai aryaprajnaparamitaya, which translates as ‘homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy’, the same wisdom we’ve been talking about. This text is fragmented into its syllables and phonemes and is used much of the time for vocalises. At the opening of the movement there is only an ocean sound, or one might call it equally a wind sound, a timbre, a colour. There’s no music, so to speak, but we hear a descent into music. We hear that what was being listened to up in the highest registers actually reveals itself as a rhythm, but it’s so fast and so high you can’t hear it as anything other than a shimmer. It descends, slowing down gradually until it becomes a rhythm played by a drum, a tabla. A seven-quaver rhythmic cell is perceived, and over the longest duration of the rhythmic cell a nested faster version – a quick seven against four – occurs. I also sometimes have a triplet subdividing the third quaver, but this whole rhythmic idea was made by being looped over and over again, sent up several octaves and accelerated about eight times faster, until it was just a static shimmer. As, in the reverse process mentioned above, it descends out of ‘nature’ to a human ‘cultural’ level it becomes corporeal, gestural; it becomes a dance, body rhythm: from emptiness to body, from spirit to matter and back again – from one reality to another, and each contains the other. The rhythm is the stasis (Example 15.7). Example 15.7. Harvey, One Evening, movement 4: rhythm

Two minutes later we hear an ascent, the opposite process for the rhythm, speeding it up until it becomes a figment of nature, a texture, a spaced-out meditational tranquility. Because is it an elaborate structure which is speeded up, one attack – the first – is the loudest, and other attacks have differing amplitudes. So, taking the rhythmic speed of only the looped first notes, we have a very slow rhythm of loud notes. Every time the loop starts the 1 comes round at a very slow frequency. You hear it, as the acceleration continues, coming up as a rhythm out of the deep bass and gradually rising in another, second, ascent. It leaves the domain of rhythm and, at about 18 Hz becomes pitch, and then continues on upwards.

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There’s a huge glissando therefore (up to the mid-axis A/B), leading into the dance section proper. In this section, seemingly endless (in fact 15) ‘mantras’ or repetitions of the Heart Sutra text – sung in a gentle, floating manner – waft over the exhilarating body-rhythms of the seven-quaver ‘loop’, now sounding in moderately fast tempo. (Each ‘mantra’ lasts about 19 seconds.) Here is the simultaneous, unified, ambiguous counterpoint of slow and fast in yet another version. Pitch-wise, like the whole work, these mantra-rhythms are centred on the axis of the A and B above middle C, as pedals. The entire work revolves axially around these pitches – fixed, yet seemingly always in revolving motion (Example 15.8). III What I love in music, what I find mysterious in music, what in music seems to be tantalizingly revealing, is something very akin to what Buddhism is teaching me. Just as meditation makes Buddhism explicit, so music makes Buddhism explicit. Buddhism, returning the compliment, informs my analyses and inspires my creativity. Such is the marriage of music and Buddhist thought. I would even say that it was not until I came to practise (rather than read about) Buddhist philosophy that I understood how music I love works, and more, importantly, why I love it. The Buddhist doctrine of emptiness can be situated fairly comfortably somewhere in Western philosophy’s range of degrees of solipsism, idealism and phenomenalism. Had I been competent enough, this chapter might have been an epistemological exercise within Western philosophy, within the metaphysics of Kant and Schopenhauer, the positivism of the Vienna Circle10 and the linguistic meditations of Wittgenstein,11 for example. But I am not sure those pathways would lead convincingly enough to the sacred. What strikes me as interesting is that, although Buddhism’s comparatively radical way of re-viewing the world is at first sight profoundly anti-intuitive – it contradicts everything we are programmed to think about the world – those who practise it best, in my experience, are not the intellectually daring thinkers, but often those who are little-educated, unsophisticated but pure-hearted people. Like music, the vision of emptiness is an intuitive simplicity beyond intuition. The sacred is quickly come upon. Connectedness and compassion are seamlessly part of the philosophy.



T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955). 10 Richard H. Robinson, ‘Some Logical Aspects in Nagarjuna’s System’, Philosophy East and West 6/4 (1957), pp. 291–308. 11 Robert Thurman, ‘Philosophical Nonegocentrism in Wittgenstein and Candrakirti in their Treatment of the Private Language Problem’, Philosophy East and West 30/3 (1980), pp. 321–37.

Music, Ambiguity, Buddhism: A Composer’s Perspective

Example 15.8. Harvey, One Evening, movement 4 (pp. 134–5)

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What, then, is the value of writing a Buddhist aesthetic of music? After all, not many Westerners know very much about Buddhism, and even fewer understand emptiness. As Roger Scruton says in his book on Tristan und Isolde, ‘modernist works show mysteries that are presented but not, as a rule, explained’.12 He is referring, with uncanny insight, to the ‘sacred’ in post-Wagnerian ritual. But I think the sacred quality he imputes to Tristan and the modernists is applicable to all good listening experiences, if good means ‘deeply satisfying’ by our lights – which may sometimes be of much lesser obvious intensity than an evening at a performance of Tristan. The haunting question for music lovers is: why do I love it so much, and what precisely is it in it that I love – in Western fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music, in Tibetan music, in everything I love? It is mysterious. But the only answer I can begin to glimpse formulates itself as the eternally enticing veil of Maya, and its parting. Knowing ambiguity is the means for this. The consequences of the play of parting and drawing the veil are sacred. One does not have to be a Buddhist to sense that, but it probably helps. One of the most famous lines in Buddhism comes from the Heart Sutra: ‘Form is empty: emptiness is form.’ Conventional reality (form) is inseparable from ultimate reality (emptiness). Both are embedded in the other. The appoggiatura is inseparable from the absent note for which it substitutes. The blue we point at above is inseparable from the emptiness of ‘sky’. Each needs the other, emptiness needs form to manifest, form needs emptiness in order for us to understand how our ‘I’grasping delusions have brought about its illusory existence. The undecidability about whether something is form or emptiness (because it is always both) does not mean they cannot be distinguished. They can. But the ambiguity of binary opposites, in music as in life, creates a fascinating play, each opposite present (as well as absent) to the other. Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: NLB, 1981) Bachelard, Gaston, L’air et les songes. Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1943) Deliège, Irène, ‘Introduction: Similarity Perception < > Categorisation < > Cue Abstraction’, Music Perception 18/3 (spring 2001), pp. 233–43. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Heart of Wisdom: A Commentary to The Heart Sutra (London: Tharpa Publications, 1986) Harvey, Jonathan, In Quest of Spirit (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999)

12 Roger Scruton, Death Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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Murti, T.R.V., The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955) Robinson, Richard H., ‘Some Logical Aspects in Nagarjuna’s System’, Philosophy East and West 6/4 (1957), pp. 291–308 Scruton, Roger, Death Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Thurman, Robert, ‘Philosophical Nonegocentrism in Wittgenstein and Candrakirti in their Treatment of the Private Language Problem’, Philosophy East and West 30/3 (1980), pp. 321–37 Examples 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.5, 15.6, 15.8 are all reproduced by kind permission of Faber Music Ltd.

Chapter 16

Artistic Orientations, Aesthetic Concepts, and the Limits of Explanation: An Interview with Pierre Boulez 

David Walters

Introduction This interview with Pierre Boulez took place at IRCAM on 13 March 2002. It has as its particular focus the composer’s attempts to explain and conceptualize his thinking about music in his extensive writings, and their relationship to his creative practice. The concepts which underpin Boulez’s writings, and which are employed with such consistency, have themselves histories and trajectories which, when traced back, point to the key artistic and philosophical figures who have contributed to the formation of Boulez’s aesthetic position. A number of these have been either overlooked or under-examined in other interviews. As a consequence, the following interview covers what I think are certain lacunae in Boulez’s published texts and in those of his commentators. Although the Mallarméan influence on the development of Boulez’s aesthetic position has been considered in depth before, most notably in Breatnach’s study



I would like to thank Pierre Boulez for giving me the time to interview him. I would also like to acknowledge the help of Astrid Schirmer and Klaus-Peter Altekruse in arranging the interview.  In addition to the many short interviews with Boulez that have been published, particularly since the 1970s, there are three major interviews that should be highlighted. The most important and revealing of these is Par volonté et par hasard: Entretiens avec Célestin Deliège (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975) in which Boulez discusses his music, ideas and career up to 1975. The recently published Dialogues with Boulez (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001) by Rocco Di Pietro offers several intriguing revelations concerning Boulez’s encounters with, and thoughts on, various composers, artists and painters (for example, the Irish painter Francis Bacon), but this interview largely remains at the level of anecdote rather than proceeding to theoretical analysis. Finally, one should mention Conversations de Pierre Boulez sur la direction d’orchestre avec Jean Vermeil (Paris: Éditions Plume, 1989), which focuses upon issues concerning conducting.

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Boulez and Mallarmé, I wanted to pursue several specific points relating to Boulez’s reading of Mallarmé. These points included his conception of chance, something which had occupied Boulez along with other composers such as Cage in the 1950s. This concept, often misunderstood as merely referring to experimentation with chance procedures, concerns the fundamental problem of the contingent inherited material and how this material can be brought within the composer’s means of expression. A second important issue concerned his interpretation of Mallarmé’s unfinished work, Igitur (1869). Boulez quotes from Igitur in ‘Aléa’ (1957), his first article to consider thoroughly the issue of chance. Although the text of Igitur resists immediate comprehension, it depicts a confrontation with the problem of chance, and suggests a dialectic of chance and control which is clearly crucial to an understanding of Boulez. A third issue concerned his description of Mallarmé’s ambition to make the French language become an ‘original instrument’. This notion refers to a work in which the composer has dominated the inherited material and made every aspect of the work mirror, in Boulez’s words, ‘not only what he is thinking, but the way he is thinking’. His discussion of these important concepts, along with others concerning notions of musical expression and musical material, and the fundamental principle of the dialectic which underlies his thinking, both as composer and as theorist, sheds much light on the origins of his ideas and the development of his conceptual framework. A further issue concerned the intellectual and artistic milieu in which Boulez developed as a young composer in post-war Paris and Darmstadt. Boulez talks intriguingly about figures associated with the Existentialist and Surrealist movements and their influence on his thinking. The encounter with Adorno in the early 1950s also belongs to these seminal influences – an encounter in which Adorno doubtless benefitted as much as Boulez. Finally, after discussion of his first book of Structures for two pianos (1952), I enquired about the appropriation of the famous lines from Rimbaud that Boulez used to complete his 1960 lecture series at the Darmstadt Summer School. The original, which can be found in two letters, one from Rimbaud to George Izambard and the other to Paul Demeny, is as follows: ‘Our task is to arrive at the unknown by  Mary Breatnach’s Boulez and Mallarmé (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996) is useful as it examines on the one hand Boulez’s aesthetic ideas, particularly those influenced by literature, and Mallarmé’s aesthetic ideas, particularly with respect to his use of the metaphor of ‘Music’. However, Breatnach does not provide a detailed examination of the ways in which Mallarmé’s ideas have shaped Boulez’s aesthetic writings; instead, she concentrates upon Boulez’s composition Pli selon pli (1960–).  The term ‘aléa’, presented both as the title of Boulez’s article and within the text itself, was employed by Boulez to refer to chance elements within music, and this constitutes its first usage in a musical context. Etymologically, it is derived from the Latin word ‘alea’ meaning ‘throw of the dice’. This clearly signals his debt to Mallarmé’s poem ‘Un coup de dés’ (1897) in the conception and formulation of this term and in his thoughts on chance in general.

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the deregulation of all the senses’, ‘[t]he Poet becomes a seer by a long, immense and reasoned deregulation of all the senses’. Boulez significantly inverts these to read: ‘Our task is to arrive at the unknown by the REGULATION of all the senses’, and ‘The musician becomes a seer by a long, immense and reasoned REGULATION of all the senses’. Nothing perhaps more clearly suggests the deep-rooted dialectical cast to Boulez’s thinking than this inversion. David Walters Interview David Walters: One of the most striking influences in your writings is that of Mallarmé. You’ve acknowledged that your interest in him began around 1950. What were the key features that first attracted you to his writings? Pierre Boulez: It was his formalist aspect. For me, he was very obsessed by formal questions. It was necessary for him to have his new ideas in a new form, even a new vocabulary, particularly a new use of the vocabulary. When you read, for instance, the sentences of Mallarmé in his prose poems, you see that the order of the sentences is not at all the usual order in French. Therefore, one needs some time to enter this type of syntax. For me, it was this aspect that was very interesting: when the idea is reflected in everything. Not only the idea expressed as such by a balanced sentence but with a sentence that is absolutely appropriate for what he wants to say. DW: In your writings, I note that you concentrated on three works in particular by Mallarmé, all of which focus on the issue of chance [le hasard]: Igitur (1869), ‘Un coup de dés’ (1897) and the never-completed Le Livre. This concept of chance is also an important aspect in your own writings and one  ‘Il s’agit d’arriver à l’inconnu par le dérèglement de tous les sens’ appears in a letter to Georges Izambard dated 13 May 1871 and ‘Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens’ in a letter to Paul Demeny 15 May 1871. See: Rimbaud: Oeuvres complètes edited, presented and annotated by Antoine Adam (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 249 and p. 251 respectively.  [‘Il s’agit d’arriver à l’inconnu par le RÈGLEMENT de tous les sens.’ / ‘“Le Musicien” se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné RÈGLEMENT de tous les sens.’] (My translation, Boulez adds the capitalizations to the original, which already contains the italics.) This quotation appears in ‘Conclusion partielle’ in Points de repère I: imaginer collected by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Sophie Galaise, introduced by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, musical examples identified by Robert Piencikowski (Paris: Bourgeois, 1995), p. 377. This has been translated into English as ‘Towards a Conclusion’ in Orientations introduced by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Martin Cooper (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), p. 99. The English version incorrectly and misleadingly omits the quotation marks that Boulez places on the first quotation. One also notes that Boulez has substituted ‘Le Musicien’ for ‘Le Poéte’.

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that I would like to pursue. You refer to it frequently in your article ‘Aléa’ (1957) and you end with a quotation: In short where chance is involved in an action, it is always chance that fulfils its own Idea in affirming or negating itself. In the face of its existence, negation and affirmation both fail. It contains the Absurd – implies it, but in a latent state and prevents it from existing: that which allows the Infinite to be.



I would like to know if you could expand upon what you mean by chance. To me it appears to be a complex concept…

PB: Yes … DW: … something more than the English word ‘chance’. In the passage from ‘Aléa’ to which I’ve just referred I understand it as something that is inconsistent with the writer’s Idea, in that it always ‘fulfils its own Idea’ (not that of the writer). Would it be correct to understand chance as an inconsistency? PB: Not inconsistency – but even that if, let’s say, you take an artistic decision on a lower or higher level, it is in its function certainly logical and, at the same time, this logic is at the heart of quite a lot of chance operations. Your decision is influenced by the moment at which you take it: by the circumstances, by the context and, finally, if you think you are decisive, your decision seen in the bigger context is always a product of chance. The sentence of Mallarmé ‘un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’ is therefore exactly that – you take the dice, you have certain combinations of dice, and once these combinations are there, there is no more chance, but in the process there is chance. And the chance is frozen, so to speak, for a moment. DW: Igitur is widely understood as a confrontation between the writer and chance. You write that:

 ‘Aléa’ is published in French in Points de repère I: imaginer, pp. 407–20 and published in English as ‘Alea’ in Stocktakings of an Apprenticeship translated by Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 26–38.  [‘Bref dans un acte où le hasard est en jeu, c’est toujours le hasard qui accomplit sa propre Idée en s’affirmant ou se niant. Devant son existence la négation et l’affirmation viennent échouer. Il contient l’Absurde – l’implique, mais à l’état latent et l’empêche d’exister: ce qui permet à l’Infini d’être.’] Boulez, Points de repère I: imaginer, p. 419 and published in English in Stocktakings of an Apprenticeship, p. 38.

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The deliberate aim of relearning, re-finding, rediscovering, resurrecting … goes beyond the maximum point of doubt which breaks-up inherited knowledge; it is the descent of Igitur …



That, to me, suggests that you understand Igitur as something more than concerned with chance but maybe concerned with all the problems of artistic creation?

PB: With destiny, as a matter of fact. Not only in the sense in this quotation that you have a life and an artistic life, but that your artistic life is totally tied to your life and to what you discover in life. You have to put what you want to decide into doubt – that is already in the writings of Descartes10 – doubt is fundamental; as long as you don’t doubt, you cannot find the truth, or the temporary truth. DW: You also made an intriguing statement on Mallarmé’s attempt to establish his own syntax for his own expressive needs, which you mentioned a moment ago. You write that: Mallarmé was obsessed by the idea of formal purity … He entirely rethinks French syntax in order to make it, quite literally, an ‘original’ instrument.11

I wondered if you could elaborate on what you meant by an original instrument? PB: An instrument that is totally adapted to his own thinking. If other people are thinking differently they have to find their own syntax because Mallarmé’s syntax does not apply to the other way of thinking. Therefore, if you applied the syntax of Mallarmé to what I myself say, for instance, when I just imitate it, it would be wrong because it would be an imitation which does not fit. Because the way he thinks, the way he puts words one after  [‘Le propos délibéré de réapprendre, retrouver, redécouvrir, renaître, enfin, passe par ce point maximum du doute qui fait éclater le savoir hérité ; c’est la descente d’Igitur …’] (My translation.) Boulez, ‘Nécessité d’une orientation esthétique II’, in Points de repère I: imaginer, p. 560. 10 This is a reference to the Cartesian concept of doubt, which makes its first appearance in Boulez’s writings in ‘Probabilités critiques du compositeur’ (1954). See: Boulez Points de repère I: imaginer, p. 31 and published in English as ‘The Composer as Critic’, in Orientations, p. 109. Boulez uses this term on numerous occasions in his important lectures presented at Harvard University in 1963. 11 [‘La syntax française, il la repense entièrement pour en faire un instrument original, au sens littéral de ce terme.’] Boulez ‘Pli selon pli’, in Points de repère I: imaginer, p. 486 and published in English under the same title in Orientations, p. 175.

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another, the way he punctuates, the way he isolates something, the way he puts something before or after, is really according to the way of his thinking. Therefore, his syntax is totally tied to his way of thinking. DW: So, the idea of the ‘original instrument’ is something… PB: … totally adapted to his own thought. ‘Original’ as in the sense that it goes to the origin of himself. DW: So would you say that the idea of an original instrument is about Mallarmé trying to make the language, as you say, his own so that it can express exactly… PB:

… not only what he is thinking, but the way he is thinking. He describes, at the same time, a very condensed process of thinking – his own thinking. Very often at the time when he was writing, say the 1880s, many people objected to his syntax which was like a kind of Latin syntax – that is, it was a kind of transcription of Latin syntax in French. That’s true: sometimes he puts the words in a relationship that is very close to Latin syntax.

DW: You often write about music expressing something. What do you believe music expresses? You’ve written that music expresses itself. What do you mean by that? PB: Music expresses itself in the sense that you can make comparisons, you can gauge the equivalent, give some kind of translation, but that is always some kind of transcription around the idea of the work that does not really describe the centre of the musical idea. If you were able to transcribe something into words then the music would not be necessary anymore. Therefore, there are so many translations of music. For instance if you write some music, or you read music or you hear some music, let’s say some Beethoven, or Debussy, and you can see that people translate in different terms and the composer very often does not tell us anything about what he thinks. One of the most striking examples is Mahler, who gave titles in his earlier symphonies and did not at all want his titles to be known later because maybe it was showing a starting point for his musical invention that was much too restrictive. People were thinking that and then saw the music as a sort of illustration of some descriptive ideas, and therefore he did not want this, and he said it was much too small compared to what he had in mind. If you are orientated, or much too orientated, towards some kind of descriptive intentions, then you restrict the power of music and you can only give an equivalent, for instance. For example, you have some works of Debussy, you can think of some paintings of Monet. But if you think of a precise landscape, then it does not apply any more.

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DW: You seem to have drawn on other disciplines as creative influences. Also, I recall that for Mallarmé the idea of ‘Music’ was very much an inspiration. Translations, as you have just described them, can be very productive… PB: Yes. DW: Klee was also inspired by his idea of music, of course. So, when you describe music as only expressing itself, that is the raison d’être of music – to express itself. It can only express an idea that is musical in itself. PB: Exactly. DW: I raise this idea of expression because it strikes me that your essential aesthetic point of departure is the need for expression and from that you focus upon problems of language. You are sometimes portrayed as a mathematical composer who neglects expression. I’d like to know how you feel about this gulf between your popular image and the actual reality that your concentration upon the problems of language is based on the necessity of achieving an adequate means of expression. PB: Yes. It is very difficult to explain music; if you explore really deeply into the composition, you have to describe it in terms of technique – there is no other way. If you explain the Rite of Spring, you can say that it is very strong rhythmically, but once you have said that, then you must say why it is strong and how it is strong. Of course, when you have said that, then you go deeper, then you go deeper still, and then suddenly you cannot know why Stravinsky discovered this kind of rhythmical language at this period. Therefore, there is an approach when you don’t know anything, and there is an approach where you know practically how the work is constructed, how it is made, and if you go deeper to the real source then you end up once more without an explanation. Very often people will go from the very beginning to the central point, but they do not go further and they say that’s only mathematical because they are not making the last step which is the most important: the how. The how you cannot discover; you can give some intuitive reasons, but you cannot give any explanation any more. DW: I wanted to ask you about the cultural climate in Paris when you first moved there in the 1940s. What would you say were the dominant literary and philosophical ideas that were around at that time? PB: The big personality in literature, as a figure and a philosopher, was Sartre. He was very major. He was born in 1905, and when we arrived in 1944– 1945 he was really a strong personality. He had had some success in the theatre with two plays, Les Mouches (1943) and Huis Clos (1944), so he

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was really a very prominent figure and also known as a philosopher. Also, there were all the people around him, Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, and so on. Also, from 1945 on, there was a magazine Les Temps modernes where all these new ideas were brought together. In Les Temps modernes there were sometimes pieces about music which were written by Leibowitz and which were mainly about the Second Viennese School, because Leibowitz was very much part of the Second Viennese School. That was the climate. Immediately after the war you began to have very big painting exhibitions, but Picasso and Matisse were really the main heroes of this time, very French (Picasso is Spanish but belonged to France for practically all his life). Kandinsky, Mondrian and Klee were then barely known at this time, so there was a kind of desire, especially for the younger generation, to discover something else. Because, before the war in France, music was Stravinsky, at the very very top, and Les Six, especially Honegger, Milhaud and Poulenc. And then, for my generation, the war was a real cut-off point: there was a real difference between before the war and immediately after the war. In this respect, I remember very well, we were visiting an exhibition of Surrealist Art in 1947, the first Breton organized after he came back from the States. I remember that I went to this exhibition with some friends, and one of my friends said ‘after Stalingrad and Auschwitz, it’s very difficult to look at this kind of exhibition because it’s so superficial’. We did not know at all about Adorno at this time – that Adorno made the same reflections, that ‘you cannot write poetry after Auschwitz’. That was our reaction also. This kind of artistic divertimento, these artists who thought that they were really very provocative – it had absolutely no meaning for us at this time. So therefore, we were looking for something that was much beyond this kind of period piece. DW: So that was an exhibition of Surrealist painting … PB: Surrealist environments, Surrealist happenings, and so on. DW: I note that many of the figures you cite in your early writings are Surrealist writers … PB: But the ones that had nothing to do with the kind of revival of the movement itself. It was René Char, who dissociated himself from the Surrealist movement, Henri Michaux, who was always very independent, and Antoinin Artaud, who was a very tragic case. Those were the three people who were Surrealists in the 1920s or early 1930s but who, after the war when they saw how things were, came out of the movement totally. DW: Did Breton’s writing interest you?

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PB: Not any more, because it was so ‘precious’, let’s say ‘mannered’. It sounded totally out of touch with the epoch, with the century that was. That kind of isolation from Europe in these very important years was, for them, very detrimental. They could not be incorporated again – that’s very strange for me. Breton never was at all what he was before the war in the 1930s, never any more. He published some books, he tried to revive the Surrealist movement, but it was just a lost cause. DW: Your writings often describe your own approach as dialectical. In the post-war years, but particularly in the 1930s, there was a resurgence of interest in Hegel. This was, in part, stimulated by Alexandre Kojève. Did you encounter this? PB: Not at all. That I did not know. The only philosophers I met came much later – Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. I met these much later. But of this generation, Kojève was especially before the war. That does not mean that he was outdated, it was such a difference of generation that they had no communication with him. DW: So the idea of the dialectic is not written… PB: … with Hegel in mind? No. DW: Someone you’ve already mentioned is Adorno, who based his approach on the Hegelian dialectic. I’ve always assumed that you first met Adorno at… PB: Darmstadt. DW: In 1952? PB: 1952 very briefly. I knew him really from 1956. Because in 1952 I was in Darmstadt for the first time, I met a few people there but it was only for a few days – I was not living in Germany at this period. But from 1956, and in 1958 especially, I was living in Germany, and it was then I really met him, and he came once to Baden-Baden and we spoke at length. He sent me his books and I began to be able to read German because most of the books were not translated into French at this time. DW: So would that be the time when you first read the Philosophy of New Music? PB: Yes – although Adorno, even for Germans, is not easy to read, and for me at the beginning I had quite a lot of problems reading Adorno. It was very

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interesting for me to speak with him because when he was speaking he was less elaborate than when he was writing, of course. DW: Your writings, particularly dating from 1957 and 1963, are characterized by the use of terms that can be associated with a dialectical approach – such as speculation and the idea of synthesis. Just before this period in 1956–1957 you were writing your Third Piano Sonata which, of course, was influenced by Mallarmé. Mallarmé read Hegelian-influenced writers – it’s not certain whether he encountered Hegel’s writings directly. I wonder whether the dialectics that manifest in your writings from that time may in part have come indirectly from your reflections on Mallarmé? PB: Yes, certainly. It’s very strange as well, when we speak of Mallarmé and my Third Piano Sonata. I knew Igitur well, and ‘Un coup de dés’. Then I wrote my Third Sonata and I spoke to somebody about my idea and I showed them what I was writing and he told me that there is something very interesting in Le Livre, and so I discovered Le Livre after this time. For me it was the proof that I was on the right track, because my train of consequences from Igitur and ‘Un coup de dés’ was going back to the origin of it. I said ‘yes, now I am sure of what I am doing’. DW: … The deliberate introduction of mobility into the form? PB: Exactly. DW: I’d like to ask you about Structures, specifically the first book which I analysed some years ago, Structure 1c. For me, the first book of Structures, particularly Structures 1a, seems to stand out in your compositional career. It seems to be something more than a work of art – perhaps an aesthetic exploration, or even an aesthetic declaration. In your conversations with Célestin Deliège you describe Structures as ‘one of the fundamental experiences in my life as a composer’.12 I would like to know if 1952 was a pivotal moment, if it was the moment where you tried to bring the idea of the unforeseen element back into the work of art, and maybe this pushed you towards a consciously dialectical approach where the unforeseen is very much a product of that approach? PB: Yes. For me, the important thing was to achieve anonymity. The elements chosen were not by me, the elements were taken from Messiaen, so that I did not have any influence over the material – the material was already 12 [‘c’est … une des expériences fondamentales dans ma vie de compositeur.’] (My translation.) Boulez in: Boulez and Deliège, Par volonté et par hasard: Entretiens avec Célestin Deliège, pp. 71–2.

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there. I then began to have this material develop by itself. I interfered with it to the least possible extent, or interfered, for instance, in a kind of mechanical way. For example, intensity 1 to 6, which is the easiest thing, with all the combinations possible between the two instruments. Also, the fact that I used the pianos because there was no instrumental problem – you can hit each pitch as you want, there is no mechanical or instrumental problem of any kind. So therefore, you can have the material play by itself, and interfere with itself, and at first this was a case of how far can I go with having the material be independent from me, independent at the source and independent in terms of the result. Therefore, this was a kind of research into anonymous composition. If I had been 30 years younger, I would have tried this with a computer, just keep the data and then devise some process and then see the result. Only then I had no idea of computers, but as a matter of fact that was a kind of computer experience itself. DW: You’re talking there specifically about Structure 1a, because when I analysed 1c I was really struck that your attitude to the material is very different in those three pieces. You’ve made statements where you’ve described them before: (i) the first piece is … ‘purely automatic’, the second piece is no longer completely automatic and the third piece ‘has a direction’.13 (ii) In summary, I departed progressively from the fact that it was the material that proposed itself to me, and finally things are themselves transformed: at the end of the second piece, it is truly me that proposes to the material that something be done with it.14

PB:

13

Yes, exactly. The first piece, it is true, is automatic, as I say, in a kind of computer experience sense. Then the third piece was composed second – that’s not clear here [points to the quotations above] – and already took some direction, while the second piece, which was actually composed third, is totally orientated. I did not put them in this order because of the length – the first and the third are shorter and the second is much longer. The order of the composition is 1, 3, 2. You can see that the second is much more complex, much more organized. In the third one you have moments

[‘La première pièce est … purement automatique’, ‘la troisième pièce a une direction’.] (My translation.) Ibid., p. 71. 14 [‘En somme, je suis parti progressivement du fait que c’est le matériau qui s’est proposé à moi, et finalement les choses se sont transformées: à la fin de la deuxième pièce, c’est vraiment moi qui propose au matériau de faire quelque chose avec lui.’] (My translation.) Ibid.

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of direction within an overall context where you don’t know where you are sometimes, and then the second piece is totally orientated. DW: I was going to ask about the fact that, in both of these descriptions, you stress the automatism of the relationship to the material that you deliberately selected from the Mode de valeurs with which you had as little to do as possible. I wondered whether, when you describe them in this sense, you intended the three parts of Structures to be understood as the three parts of a dialectic, as taking the immediate material and then transforming it in the process of the dialectic. PB:

What I explained very clearly here [in the second quotation above] was that, in the first piece, let’s say, the material is stronger than the composer, then secondly that the material is in equality with the composer, and third that the composer is stronger than the material.

DW: I wanted to ask you about the quotations you’ve selected from the correspondence of Rimbaud. You place them at the end of your 1960 Darmstadt course, so clearly they are important. I wanted to know why you picked these to conclude your course, and also the way you understood them, and what you intended to convey when you inverted them. PB: Generally, this sentence by Rimbaud, ‘dérèglement de tous les sens’ was taken as ‘dérèglement’ by all kinds of means – alcohol, drugs – which was very much the trend at this time. You were practically blowing up your head. I said, on the contrary, when you want to arrive – it was kind of Mallarmé – if you are really entering a very strong discipline, then you will really reach the unknown. DW: In this quotation you mention the idea of ‘seeing’. It is an idea you have referred to on a number of occasions: Valéry’s ‘Je me voyais me voir’, and also ‘centre et absence’, which refers to the idea of seeing, although you don’t refer to it, in the short text that refers to that ‘Eureka’ moment. It seems to be an important idea and I’d like to know how you understood it … PB: Seer, that’s voyant, Hellseher in German; the voyants are those people who have the intuition of the future. That’s not seeing, that’s foreseeing. Voyants are like people who have a crystal ball, and who look into it and see the future. Voyants, like priests in the ancient times who could foresee the future. That’s not ‘voyant’ in this case, that’s not simply open your eyes, that’s really having a kind of power and the gift of seeing the future.

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DW: In its entirety? In relation to music, you’ve written elsewhere about the idea of the phantasmagoria. In a sense that’s like a partial seeing into the future … PB: Yes. DW: So when you are talking about ‘seeing’ do you mean… PB: Imagining. The power of imagination can project oneself into the future. DW: Doesn’t that ability of being able to see, to foresee the future eliminate the idea of the unforeseen? PB: Yes; therefore, what other people cannot foresee, you are able to foresee – like in Ancient Greece, when people were in a trance and then were telling you the future. That’s what Rimbaud means by that. DW: But in terms of your own approach? PB: That’s a comparison also. When you are projecting yourself into the future, into your own future, that’s not just being in a trance but, on the contrary, being persistent with organizing, organizing, organizing, and the more you organize, the more you leave behind the present and the more you are projecting yourself into the future.

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Chapter 17

Failed Time, Successful Time, Shadowtime: An Interview with Brian Ferneyhough Lois Fitch and John Hails

Introduction This interview was conducted via e-mail in early June 2006, at a time when Brian Ferneyhough was immersed in the composition of Plötzlichkeit, a work for large orchestra premiered at Donaueschingen in October 2006. He had just completed his Fifth String Quartet, and at the time of writing was still working on a cycle of four movements for string quartet entitled Dum transisset. This interview also reflects on the composer’s most recent large-scale work, the opera Shadowtime, whose subject is Walter Benjamin’s descent into the underworld after his suicide at the Spanish–French border in September 1940. Several lines of questioning focus on the opera, principally from the perspectives of form and the composer’s preoccupation with time and perception The link is made between this work and the earlier Carceri d’Invenzione cycle (1981–1986), also in seven parts, whose component modules are similarly performable as free-standing concert pieces. However, whereas the stimulus for the Carceri cycle is external (specifically, Giambattista Piranesi’s eponymous engravings, with their fantastical complex of perspectives), the ruling paradigm of the opera is ‘in’ the material itself. Ferneyhough conceives of this in terms of the metaphor of a mountain range and the experience of climbing it, hence his coinage of the term ‘Effort Music’. Other structural correspondences between the cycles are elucidated in the discussion, which also foregrounds Ferneyhough’s relationship to pre-existing or borrowed materials, his approach to philosophy and the aesthetics of music, and some thoughts on contemporary American consciousness. Above all, this interview foregrounds the composer’s fascination with musical time, which manifests itself in a number of ways. At a rather abstract level he characterizes time as ‘failed’ and ‘successful’ time (in relation to Shadowtime); his longstanding interest in the perception of time conditioned by a ‘volume’ of musical information either too large or small for a particular time frame (also discussed in the Collected Writings) implies an almost scientific dimension to his thinking and practice. On quite another level, however, Ferneyhough is aware of his own lifetime: certain long-established preoccupations have been thrown into relief in recent years. Far from quasi-scientific descriptions of time-space perception, here Ferneyhough is at his most direct, utilizing metaphors rich with sensate imagery.

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The composer’s wry sense of humour is particularly striking here: the medium through which the interview was conducted does not impede the openness and spontaneity of his responses, but neither is the density of expression typical of previous interviews any less in evidence. The timing of this interview is significant, shedding light as it does on the composer’s motivations at an important juncture of his career. Lois Fitch Interview Lois Fitch: At the time of the Carceri cycle, you were very interested in visual stimuli and analogies – in particular Giambattista Piranesi’s etchings and Francis Bacon’s figurative paintings. Since then you have tended to use verbal and textual stimuli and analogies such as ‘speech resemblance’ and poetry in the Fourth String Quartet, writing poetry of your own for On Stellar Magnitudes, and even inventing your own language for part of the opera Shadowtime. Have verbal preoccupations displaced your own parallel activity of painting? How are concerns relating to Carceri – the issue of force especially – carried over into the differently prioritized contexts (verbal as opposed to visual) of more recent works? Brian Ferneyhough: There are probably some aspects of my occupation with specifically visual stimuli that have burrowed so deep into my psyche that I am scarcely aware of their continuing influence. I am sure that this must be true of the entire field of spatial and mechanical analogies. That way of ‘feeling the aesthetic’ is simply part of who I am as an artist, and it would require an extraordinary inward feat of salto mortale to render them available again as objective data. Even the still vivid recollection I have retained of the acquisition and accretion of these elements of my creative imaging form part of its instrumental allure, its persuasive myth of flavourful coherence. If I have returned to earlier preoccupations with language, I suppose that it is, in part at least, a re-focusing on local processes of meaning as opposed to large-scale topologies or affective architectures – as it were, details of character rather than specifications of stage size or configurations of lighting. Perhaps this is an age-related thing? At some point, one’s intense preoccupation with particular aesthetic problems – and by ‘aesthetic’ I intend the entire scruffy universe of sensation, definition and transmission – tends to lose its cutting edge, to withdraw or fade – I can’t think of an  Stelae for Failed Time, written for IRCAM. A stela is an ‘upright stone slab or column typically bearing a commemorative inscription or relief design’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

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appropriate term here – into a tatterdemalion organism whose muscles and sinews are made up of compromises, local solutions and strategic elisions, the better to end up as significantly more than the sum of its parts. The practice of philosophy, perhaps, rather than the philosophy of practice? I am aware that this might be understood as some form of sell-out from the standpoint of the young and righteously monolithic; it doesn’t feel like it, though. I can only describe it as resembling the uncertain traversal of a melting ice field – one’s actual landings on momentarily stable pieces of ice seem much more gratifying than the endless instants of suspension when in the air between them, or when, in retrospect, one contemplates the haphazard path traced. Good balance and timing are useful, of course! Put another way, composing nowadays seems to me much like tentatively and painfully slowly unpicking the surgical sutures applied to a particularly egregious wound. We rely on the body having hit on a way of holding itself together once its enforced collusion with our gross intervention has been removed. We wait for music to heal itself. LF: In the post-Carceri periods you wrote a number of pieces for solo and chamber ensemble including On Stellar Magnitudes (voice), Terrain (violin), Incipits (viola and percussion), La chute d’Icare (clarinet) and Allgebrah (oboe), which were never intended to be components of a cycle. The recently premiered Guitar Concerto is, however, part of Shadowtime – are its concerns different from those in the earlier pieces? Which, if any, have been taken up in the Guitar Concerto, and how do they work in the larger context of the opera, which has its own specific exigencies? John Hails: Do you consider this ‘group’ of concertos now closed, or are you still planning further pieces that explore the same area? Maybe you don’t consider these pieces to be grouped in the same way any more? BF: I never really considered these works as forming any sort of continuum. At a certain period in my career there were a number of prominent young exponents of various instruments demanding new works, and many of them were better in a position to obtain commissions from official sources than I, acting on my own behalf, would have been. That is just one of the realities of the New Music environment (or just of my reticence or lack of business savvy, perhaps). I have never not written a work I wanted to write because there was no commission forthcoming; at the same time one likes to have more than just a couple of performances, and this is also what soloists provide. There is an especial vivacity which attends working  As described in the interview with Ross Feller, in Brian Ferneyhough, Collected Writings, ed. James Boros and Richard Toop (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press, 1995), pp. 447–63.

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intensively with a single musician which is often missing, or transformed into something else, when rehearsing with larger formations. I always look forward to it and am seldom disappointed. To be sure, Les Froissements d’Ailes de Gabriel, in which a solo guitar is ‘shadowed’ by a second guitar tuned a quarter tone lower, shares some obvious characteristics with my other solo–ensemble works; whilst working on it, though, I was far less concerned with these similarities than with articulating recent concerns with how our perception of time emerges from, or is conditioned by, the resistance of material to immediate comprehension and assimilation. In particular, I had become fascinated by the historical development of Angelology, the theological exegesis of God’s supreme mediators, from medieval times up to the turn of the last century. What was particularly suggestive to me was the idea that angels, as extra-mundane essences, are essentially deaf to time. They are constrained to act in time in their interaction with the human race, but do not themselves require sensible access to that dimension. I imagine this state as being one of transcriptive cognition, as when colour-blind motorists are not aware of traffic lights as being ‘red’, ‘yellow’ or ‘green’ but rather ‘top’, ‘middle’ and ‘bottom’: they understanding how to react appropriately to the transmitted instructions regardless of the specifics of the medium. In any case, I conceived it as my task to imagine a music in which the role of time would be considerably pared down, being reduced, as it were, to the timeless moment of reversal in the incomprehensible beating of the angel’s vast pinions. But how to approach this (literally impossible) goal? In the end I adopted a dual strategy: on the one hand I chose to work with only extremely brief time frames of a few seconds each; on the other, I combined them with musical forms and materials necessitating (demanding) objective time spaces quite different from those actually assigned for their effective apprehension, thus linking up with some of my long-term ideas on the current nature of Subjectivity as a dynamic self-distancing performance act within the constraints of a given discursive frame or frames. One’s variously configured failures to adequately apprehend both frame and content imply, as it were, the complicit presence of the observer in a series of judgemental acts. A further consideration concerned form, since form is coextant, but never identical with, immediate perception. To relocate each segment as far as possible in its own unique space, it was important that the quality of memory alimented by projected larger-scale contexts be deactivated, whilst maintaining a global consistency of diction. The local power of narrative needs must be retained; the predictive force of larger synthetic narratives had to be avoided at all costs. My way out of this dilemma was, firstly, to derive all materials from a single pre-compositional codex of figurations; my second step was to ensure that these materials were read and reread according to a completely non-linear pattern with respect to

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the order of reading, the onset point of a reading, its duration and, finally, its instrumentation. Of course, it is clear that the mind is a powerful instrument with a will of its own: I did not seek obsessively to negate each and every apparent segment-to-segment correspondence, since that would have imposed a further level of ordering perhaps invoking the very same impression of composer-imposed linearity I was concerned with avoiding. On the whole I think that this strategy works quite well. Having heard the piece many times, I find that I can predict the order of things without this accreted overview taking on the authoritative lineaments of ‘form’ in the strong sense of the term – so much so, in fact, that I am continuing to pursue similar concerns in a work for large orchestra entitled Plötzlichkeit, which widens the scope of my approach to incorporate aspects of the Sublime in nineteenth-century Romantic philosophy. JH: At the end of the Études Transcendentales (1982–1985), the voice brutally separates two vocal functions: the sung, and thereby betrayed and mutilated text, and the spoken and unmodified text. If we regard the soprano part of the Fourth String Quartet as a continuation of the sung elements of the Études, setting a text in which the inviolability of the individual word is constantly undermined, do the spoken elements continue into the Seven Tableaux and into Opus Contra Naturam? Is it significant that the texts in these pieces are playful? BF: Actually, I regard the text of the Fourth Quartet (Words & Ends From Ez by the late Jackson Mac Low) as being, in an important sense, already violated. At the time (1990) I was very concerned with finding a textual ground which itself stood at some distance from its original source. Since Mac Low’s operations on Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos resulted in a finely fractured, sometimes pulverized trace largely devoid of conventional syntax, I was not faced with the familiar dilemma – how to compose music rooted in its own internalized generating grammar whilst employing texts still adhering largely to the syntactic continuities of heightened everyday language. There is a world of difference, I think, between the reductiveenhancing elisions typical of lyrical poetry and the second-degree products of imposed objective mechanisms. The former live through the dialectical encounter between standard speech models and their obliquely dissonant or amplificatory transgression; the latter have been largely freed from that particular ‘elephant in the corner’, thus opening the way for the composer to integrate textual and musical elements as approximately equal partners. As to the playful aspect: it is true that familiarity with Charles Bernstein’s ‘tone’ encouraged me to be more accepting in that respect. On the other hand, it was always my intention to incorporate aspects of the ‘low’ as well as the ‘elevated’ in Shadowtime, and Charles was aware of this.

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JH: Has this ‘breakdown’ of interpretation at the end of the Études continued to reverberate in your more ‘conventionally’ sung works such as The Doctrine of Similarity (1999–2000) or even the non-modular scenes of Shadowtime? BF: In undertaking an extended music-theatre work for voices I was certainly concerned that similar thorny issues would not prove an insurmountable obstacle to comprehension. Rather than approaching this from the musical side, though, I decided that I needed to enlist the aid of an author who, apart from sharing with me certain obvious aesthetic prises de position, would provide me with a libretto which would give me a maximum of liberty regarding how to amalgamate words and music. In the end, my intuition that the highest level of poetic independence would provide me with the highest degree of freedom proved correct. I had specified at the outset that the libretto should also be publishable as an independent volume of poetry; I am glad to say that this is now the case. As well as asking Charles to conform to a series of numerical strictures in certain sections, I also requested that as many of the texts as possible be freely permutable, either as entire lines or, in many cases, as single words. This was particularly important in the 13-movement Doctrine of Similarity, where some of the texts were, in accordance with my numerical plan, extremely brief. The final scene, Stelae for Failed Time is for 12 solo singers and electronics. It actually sets three texts simultaneously, two of which are quite densely speculative, the third (translations of parts of the libretto into an artificial language of my own) is strictu sensu incomprehensible, although I think it compensates for this through the colourful nature of its diction. I certainly try to sculpt a choral texture which allows the emergence of individual strands of thought or imagery; there is also a supplementary strand of narrative provided by the computer materials, where the sound of the human voice and breath is constantly transforming into pseudopercussion or even obviously artificial sonorities. JH:

I’d like to ask about the appearance of ‘foreign material’ in your output. In Unsichtbare Farben (1997–1999) you employ the famous Caput plainsong, and you have mentioned pre-existing material cropping up in Shadowtime (I noted a three-part motet from the Montpelier Codex and the Grosse Fuge). Is the use of pre-existing materials particularly tied to the opera (and is it particularly prevalent within its pages?) or is it a trend within your music?

BF: My first employment of found material was indeed in Unsichtbare Farben. It is important to emphasize, though, that there was no symbolic or extramusical intent involved. Rather, I wanted to develop compositional tools which would allow me to modulate seamlessly between completely

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diatonic (or, as here, modal) pitch materials. It happened that Fabrice Fitch, as a musicologist and composer, was able to suggest to me a material both of an appropriate length and memorable melodic contour. I believe that it was Marcel Duchamp who compared the wayward titles given to many Surrealist paintings as ‘invisible colours’: that is precisely the role that the Caput material plays in my piece. In 2001 Ensemble Recherche initiated a project where a wide variety of composers was asked to compose short pieces based, however loosely, on the celebrated In nomine chant. I happily contributed a 2½-minute item for piccolo, oboe and clarinet which took as its point of departure one of the viol consort In nomines of Christopher Tye. Since Shadowtime I have continued to work with further Tye consort pieces, including an O lux palimpsest for ten instruments and a set of four Dum transisset movements for string quartet. What attracts me to this approach, I think, is the same allure that led to Unsichtbare Farben; that is to say, the opportunity to focus on very specific aspects of the originals refashioned as measuring rods, as it were, for testing out very different modulatory mechanisms. For instance, the fourth piece in the Dum transisset cycle, Contrafacta, posits a self-renewing series of ‘improved’ chants to subvert the original. The first piece does not use the chant at all, but is an extended fantasy on the four superimposed Tye voices. It was not Shadowtime which initiated this trend in my work, but it certainly encouraged me to be more accepting with respect to external references. Whether this will have repercussions in my future works is difficult to say; probably I am more interested in the compositional tools thereby set free than I am in pursuing the fata morgana of inclusivity. LF: How does the borrowing, or rather the re-articulation of aspects of preexistent musical worlds (perhaps Monteverdian opera?) consolidate your own musical expression in Shadowtime? BF: I don’t know if it does. In such an extended work it seemed quite natural to me to make reference, however obscure, to works from the past which have been important to me. Of course, the fifth scene, the series of interrogations by mythical or historical figures, is built along a very limited reading of emblematic forms from the tenth century to the death of Beethoven. There is no literal borrowing of either material or form in any of these cases, except for a ‘metal compactor’ version of some Tye in the instrumental parts of the Joan of Arc sequence. You are right to speak of re-articulation rather than active borrowing. The connotative auras of the genres I chose gave me permission, I suppose, to see different things in the same light (or vice versa).

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LF: Although the individual components of the Carceri cycle can act as freestanding concert works, it is not through the addition of the seven parts together that the global dynamic of tensions, perspectives and forces is created – rather the latter seems to be inflected, in concentrated form, in each piece. Does the opera work in the same way, and if so, how do you reconcile its global forces with the intensity and self-consistency of each discrete segment? BF: I think Shadowtime does work in a similar way. In fact, I was well advanced in my work before I realized that the seven-part overall structure of the Carceri cycle is replicated in the stage work, even to the extent of locating the most intimate and focused item (Études in the one, Opus Contra Naturam in the other) in pivotal fourth position. The central difference, as I see it, is that the ruling image or paradigm of the earlier cycle stands outside the work – I mean the entire complex of perspectival energy-related concerns. In the opera there is also a ruling paradigm, but it is very concretely embodied, both in the opening measures of the initiatory ‘Effort Music’ and in the progress of the work as a whole. The image is that of the ascending and descending contour of a mountain chain, represented at the outset in a series of fraught glissandi played by soprano and tenor trombones and cello. The succession of scenes is meant to convey the increasing effort of climbing, a short pause on the peak, followed by a more relaxed if still perilous descent. The dense drama of the opening scene is mysteriously replaced by a purely instrumental intervention (Les Froissements) which leaves us disorientated; the third scene (Doctrine) reintroduces the voices, but offers a resolutely non-dramatic succession of 13 individual choral pieces with no interconnective tissue. Even though the internal imagery of each piece is highly dramatic, it is clear that the very duration of this dense block causes the most intense muscle pains to the intrepid climber. After the solo piano respite of the fourth scene the descent begins. The fifth scene is a rapidly changing series of dramatic cameos; the sixth a series of interlinked character pieces featuring a dramatic narration; the seventh and last is clearly a sort of extended coda, a meditation on time and circumstance. If the work had been cut by an interval I am pretty sure that the first half would have proven an indigestible piece of hardtack indeed. Many listeners have been moved to interpret this uneven path as evidence for the work as a mere congeries of individual Einfälle: I hope that, ultimately, repeated listening will evolve a different, if no less testing and, perhaps, irritating impression. JH: You’ve now seen Shadowtime through a number of performances. How and when did the ideas for the opera start coming? Was it a project, like the Carceri d’Invenzione cycle, that you only crystallized after serious work

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had already been done on constituent elements? At what point and why did you decide that the opera was going to be modular? BF: I had had no thought of a stage work prior to being approached by the Munich Biennale. Once animated, however, the subject of Walter Benjamin as the posthumous curator of a politico-historico-ethico-cultural side show to our World Circus sprang to mind fully formed. The sequence of scenes was settled almost immediately: otherwise, I could not have given any sort of realistic guide to Charles Bernstein. As it was, his part of the collaboration was completed very early on, I believe already in 1998. All that was added thereafter was an anagrammatic text for the ‘Radio Music’ section of the prelude and a new version of the text for the first movement of Opus Contra Naturam, both of which were my work. Given Benjamin’s interest in the phenomenon of the Paris Passages, a form based largely on discontinuities and incongruities seemed very persuasive, and that is the path I ultimately followed. LF: Reading your essays, papers and interviews in the Collected Writings suggests many levels of correspondence between your own ideas on musical material and those of Theodor Adorno. In fact, this is something that you have consolidated since the Collected Writings, for example in keynote addresses at Goldsmiths College. How does your interest in a philosopher as different from Adorno as Gilles Deleuze – you have referred in particular to the Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation and Mille Plateaux – resonate with this? Have Deleuze’s ideas on music been an influence at all? It strikes me that, although he devotes considerable parts of Mille Plateaux, in particular, to a discussion of music, it is always appropriated in order to articulate his principle of the a-subjective ‘plane of immanence’, and takes little account of anything actually immanent to the music itself. BF: I have nearly always found the work of philosophers on aesthetics to be profoundly unsatisfactory, particularly when specific art media are being addressed. Perhaps it is that philosophers are not particularly attuned to that uncomfortable coexistence of the intelligible and sensual which the best art exhibits. Kant maintained that aesthetics was de facto subservient to philosophy because of this irreducibly dual nature. Adorno, later, turned the tables by asserting the superiority of artistic cognition over philosophy precisely by virtue of this surplus of meaning. So: who knows?  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (New York: Belknap Press, 2002).  First and Second International Biennial Conference on Twentieth Century Music, Goldsmiths College, London. Summer 1999 and 2001.

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What does seem clear to me is that theorizing on art, by virtue of its ability to remain safely within the realms of the general, always has a decided advantage over individual exemplars of art work. No concrete work, in whatever medium, can ever aspire to fulfilling the totality of demands that philosophical abstractification imposes simply because it is part of its definition as art work that it is particular, its character carved out of the numinous mass of the possible. It would be a very deluded composer who, persuaded by agenda-laden philosophical rhetoric, set out to compose according to such precepts. Alas, poor Yorick; dead on arrival! In his Bacon book Deleuze seeks to ground the general in the particular. This is surely the proper way to go, whether one agrees with the conclusions reached or no. Perhaps a similar approach to music necessitates a more profound familiarity with the actual nuts and bolts of composing. On the other hand, none of the more recent examples of composers engaging with philosophy seem to me to have amounted to much more than frighteningly cogent and frequently aggressive special pleading. I find much to disagree with in Adorno, but nevertheless can enter immediately and with pleasure into his concrete musings on specific artworks such as one finds in the unfinished Beethoven treatise, where he has not had opportunity to densify and render invulnerable his dicta (as his colleagues apparently thought he did in the Minima Moralia). LF: Time is also very important in your opera on many levels, including historical time, biography (life) time, dramatic time and I recall your reference to ‘epiphanic’ time as well. There’s also a sort of time beyond time, an afterlife and failed time. What is successful time? How does Benjamin’s examination of found objects and the historicity bound up in them inform your treatment of musical objects and time in segments of the opera? Does the notion of failed time relate to this – what or who fails time? BF: Successful time is the sort of active sense of temporality which accompanies musical experience as a quasi-independent strand of perception. As such, it is probably most often to be reckoned with at moments where extensive discourse and temporal frame no longer synchronize. At its most basic, the ‘too long’ or ‘too short’ that we sometimes associate with particular situations provides a viable, if limited example of time emerging as an entity in its own right. Time fails when one descends into momentary experience so completely that perceived time becomes a negligible quantity, so that, in retrospect, one’s recollection of the work is reduced to a coagulated block of residual sonic sensations.

 Brian Ferneyhough, Keynote Address at the Second International Biennial Conference on Twentieth Century Music, Goldsmiths College, London 2001.

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On a different level, the troubled period separating the two World Wars was surely also a ‘failed’ time. It failed because those living through it, particularly the so-called intellectual classes – failed to engage with it in a decisive fashion. Benjamin was a case in point. Our own increasing cultural disassociation from the past does not make me optimistic regarding our own culpability. JH:

You seem to be attracted to people in extremis. To take two (I believe) linked but opposing figures that have influenced your output, Adolf Wölfli (Allgebrah) and Walter Benjamin (Shadowtime), I am struck that their positions within your work represent two different ways of dealing with catastrophe. Wölfli’s catastrophe is that of his insanity and otherness, which drives him to create a new universe, in which he can exist unconstrained; whereas for Benjamin, in your opera, it is the ‘catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage’ – the train-wreck of history that seems to have led him to his dead-end position, out of which he can only see one exit. Is this twin drive of despair and new creation particularly important to you, as it was to Schoenberg?

BF:

Getting older does nothing to dissuade one from the bleak thesis that increasing age prunes one’s possibilities. If we look at Schoenberg in his final years, though, we begin to see a path not taken which would have perhaps influenced post-war music to some significant degree. The thing to do is not to be afraid of splinters.

LF and JH: Having lived in the US for 20 years, do you feel that your stance relative to popular culture has in any way altered, or are there any aspects of it that have come to strike you as instructive? We’re thinking here of Shadowtime in which the locus of Opus Contra Naturam as a portal to hell recalls (apart from the obvious operatic references) the Hellmouth in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. BF: The current American fascination with all things vampiric is so marked that one can only assume there to be something ‘at work’ under the surface of the collective psyche. University philosophy departments run courses on it. By the way, it may be worth mentioning that I chose Las Vegas as the main earthly portal to the nether regions after a never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Day stopover where the sound of jingling one-armed bandits mingled with the mantra-like strains of Jingle Bells. One thing I have been confused by is why the current population of the United States is ruled by a suffocating sense of nostalgia. Probably  Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed. with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana/Collins, 1973), pp. 255–66.

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that accounts for why the serious arts have such a hard time of it, since the explicitly commerce-driven recycling of minimally distinct cycles of the ‘up-to-date’ picture-postcardizes experience in bite-sized hermetic packages. It is odd when you think about it: nostalgia excludes continuity; the so ardently desired can only be reached by a leap of faith into a nolonger-available reversed temporal continuum. America is a demented rhizomatic time machine burrowing in all directions for what it has lost, all the while comfortably complicit with the final abolition of the last sad shards of ‘before’ and ‘after’ in some very un-Nietzschean form of Eternal Return. But you asked about popular culture. No, I have never found any access whatever. Rather like failed attempts to read Proust, or to sit through an entire evening of The Ring, I am occasionally moved to try again, but have not made it very far. Sometimes I am asked by undergraduate students (and even colleagues) why I don’t like ‘beautiful’ music. I can only reply that if music is not true, it can’t be beautiful. One day, I may work out what I mean by that: in the meantime, I’ll just believe it. JH: After drawing a line (?) under one major project, what is on your desk at the moment? Is there another ‘group’ of pieces on the way? BF: I would like to think that my current concerns with time and perception will one day give rise to a larger, coherent body of works, but there exists no master plan. I envisage composing a piece in which extremely distended time spans play a major role. We’ll see. The most recent work to be completed, my Fifth String Quartet, does not speak to such concerns: in fact, it is still so unfamiliar to me that I was extremely hard put to write any sort of programme note for it at all. Quite exciting, really, I suppose.

Chapter 18

Sound Structures, Transformations, and Broken Magic: An Interview with Helmut Lachenmann Abigail Heathcote

Introduction This interview took place on 19 January 2006 in Paris, during the concert series ‘Lachenmann/Mozart’ at the Cité de la Musique. The year of Lachenmann’s seventieth birthday, 2005, saw an explosion of international interest in the composer’s work. Having stood at the forefront of the German avant-garde music scene since the 1960s and yet having received surprisingly little attention from outside his home country, Lachenmann is now finally coming to be regarded on the international stage as one of the greatest composers of his epoch. It may be useful for what follows to briefly introduce some of the central features of Lachenmann’s aesthetics, as expounded in his numerous theoretical essays. These essays, along with some interviews, have been collated by Breitkopf & Härtel in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung: Schriften 1966–1995 (1996). In the early essay, ‘Klangtypen der Neuen Musik’ (1966), Lachenmann sets out his aesthetic agenda systematically for the very first time. The essay brings together the latest avant-garde tendencies of that period in a unique synthesis: the serialist idea of tight connections between the smallest details of the work and its overall form and the timbral music embodied in the work of composers such as Ligeti and Nono at the time. Taking the form of a sound typology, ‘Klangtypen’ begins with the purely physical perception of sounds and culminates with the notion of ‘sound structure’ (Strukturklang). Crucially, in this latter concept, music is seen as dialectical object of perception. In other words, in a Strukturklang sounds are experienced not only in themselves but also in terms of their relation to their wider context and the various relationships which they form. Whereas in ‘Klangtypen’ sounds are construed in terms of their purely immanent connections with other sounds, in the later ‘Bedingungen des Materials’ (1978) Lachenmann enlarges the notion to embrace the whole ‘aesthetic apparatus’ of which the sound also forms a part. The affinities and relationships within a piece  Helmut Lachenmann, Musik als existentielle Erfahrung: Schriften 1966–1995 (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2nd revised edition, 2004).

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of music are extended to those present in the material before the composer even begins his work and include such things as associations, memory and tradition. Finally, the term ‘musique concrète instrumentale’ mentioned in the interview refers to the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer and the French school of electroacoustic composition in the 1940s and 50s. Rather than using recordings of everyday sounds as the basis of his musical material, as Schaeffer did, Lachenmann’s intention is to conceive of instrumental sounds as the result of mechanical, apparently unmusical processes. These processes enlarge the repertoire of sounds available to a composer, yet always bear testament to the circumstances of their production. His un-pitched noises and ‘action scores’ break radically with standard techniques of musical performance. The idea of ‘musique concrète instrumentale’ is central to early pieces such as temA (1968) and Accanto (1976), and remains important for an understanding of the composer’s work. Abigail Heathcote Interview Abigail Heathcote: You have had a number of concerts in Paris recently. How has the French audience received your music so far? Helmut Lachenmann: Enthusiasm here, scepticism or even disapproval there – at any rate, I felt I was being understood. Though my works have been performed quite often in Paris since 1983, when my Mouvement – vor der Erstarrung was commissioned and performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, it’s clear that my music is not easy for French audiences, even those somehow familiar with the ‘avant-garde’. In France, access to New Music seems to me characterized by a tradition – think of Messiaen or Boulez – in which the idea of musical material is determined much more by standardized categories, the ‘classical parameters’, than in my music. My opera, The Little Match Girl, was performed here in 2001, and it was sold out for each performance. But on the first two evenings there were a lot of people booing and slamming doors; I don’t know what they had expected, but it was an aggressive situation. AH: How do you feel when the audience behaves in that way? HL: Well, usually the booing on one side provokes ovations from the other, and this also happened with my opera in Paris, as in Hamburg and elsewhere. If people protest at the end, I can respect that. But when they disturb the performance I get angry, whether it’s my own music or that of another composer. More than once, I myself have stood up and stopped the performance. In Mulhouse, a few years ago, there was a concert of my chamber music combined with choral pieces by Schumann. People were

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totally shocked on hearing my solo cello piece Pression, and they laughed and coughed artificially. Later, after another Schumann song, I had to perform my group of piano pieces, Ein Kinderspiel. When I came on the stage people – well, maybe 30 or 50 out of about 600 – shouted and didn’t stop laughing and disturbing my performance. So after some minutes I had to interrupt my playing. People stopped laughing immediately, waiting to see what I would do next. So I said, ’As there is at least one person sitting in this hall who would like to listen to this music, I’m going to start again from the beginning.’ Then I began again, and enjoyed a marvellous silence, because they feared that if disturbed, I would start again! Similar things had happened in Warsaw, in Vienna, in Munich, in Frankfurt and even in Donaueschingen in 1980, when Sylvain Cambreling had to stop the premiere of my Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied. When he began again from the very beginning, nobody dared to disturb the performance. Here in Paris most people seem to be quite open, in a sense. This might have to do with the colonialist tradition – who knows. People in France are much more familiar with other cultures than in Germany. If you want to find interesting Tibetan, African or Indian recordings, you can find them here much more easily than in Berlin, for instance. I think a lot of French people are rather fascinated by my ‘barbaric’ German sounds, as if they were another ‘exotic’ experience, so to speak … A composer like Boulez rejects such things. It’s against his aesthetic: for him, a noise is not controllable the way a pitch is. I think somehow he tries to respect my music and my thoughts, but he would not like a lot of composers to do such things – and I would agree. Using noises is easy. The problem is to find stringent and convincing new contexts with each piece. In my piano concerto Ausklang, for instance, now more than 20 years old, the pitchless elements, just air from the brass instruments, or the strings with the bow moving directly on the bridge avoiding any pitches, serve as a world of shadows – even when fortissimo – continuing the noisy resonances of the pedalled piano in the highest register. In Accanto, for clarinet and orchestra, such ‘noises’ – I don’t like this term – have a totally different context depending on whether they’re loud breathing or radical escalations of the good old flutter-tongue effect, for example. Incidentally – the most irritating element in Accanto is not the noise, but the presence of Mozart’s clarinet concert on tape, unexpected fragments of which are ‘shot’ or faded into the orchestral sound. This might be shocking because everybody understands that it’s not fun, but is being taken seriously as a part of the musical syntax developed in this piece. Hearing Mozart’s music as an exterritorial signal might be taken as another quite shocking element of noise. AH: Could you tell me about your latest pieces?

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HL: In the autumn, winter and spring of 2004/2005 I wrote Concertini, commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, for the Ensemble Modern. It became a 40-minute piece in which the musicians are placed around the audience. The piece was another attempt to reintegrate pitch control into my sound attempts. AH: When you talk about pitches, do you mean tonality? HL: No, I am thinking of interval relations. In the last 40 years I have tried to develop a special sound concept, which I called ‘musique concrète instrumentale’, and which has to do with the energy of where a sound is coming from. In that context, I had to study and include what people might call ‘noises’. A Bartók pizzicato, for instance, is not just a short, loud pitch, but as a sort of ‘bang’ it also could be understood as a message signalling a physical energy — in this case even a special sort of violence— and so a legno battuto or pitchless breathing through a tuba could be listened to in those energetic terms. But for me the creative scope, the repertoire of such ‘extended playing techniques’ is limited. And I don’t want to make surrealistic gags out of it with strange or even ‘funny’ effects. That would be a cheap trick, and far from what I had in mind. My idea of musique concrète instrumentale is not at all just about the noises, it’s about the physical energy of a sound. And this aspect of energy can be communicated by, let’s say, a totally normal pizzicato on a violin, or a unison; two instruments playing the same note, but with a slight difference in vibrations. Velocity and speed, a trill, a glissando, the dynamic level, could also be perceived as elements of energy. The idea of energy remains the most important thing for me. That’s why my music is sometimes difficult to understand when listened to on CD without having had the experience of a live performance. The problem is how to open one’s ears to this aspect; it has forced and also helped me to develop a special context in each new piece. In our everyday lives we wouldn’t have any problem with it. Hearing the sounds of a car crash or of drops of water falling on a stony floor, you wouldn’t listen to the pitch but you would sense the different energies acting behind it and causing the acoustic result. I like to distinguish between music as a kind of discursive text on the one hand, and, on the other, music as a kind of situation, be it a static or dynamic one. A fugue by Bach is somehow a text, and so is the Wind Quintet by Schoenberg, whereas the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with its pulsating fifth or the Fourth Symphony of Bruckner with its mysterious tremolo on all strings is more like a situation, and so is the beginning of Wagner’s Rheingold with its arpeggio for eight French horns. In contemporary music we sometimes encounter titles like ‘Commentaire’ or ‘Glose’, like in the Third Piano Sonata by Boulez or Superscriptio in the music of Brian Ferneyhough, which evoke the idea of a musical discourse,

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of a text. A title like Atmosphères indicates a situation, in the sense of a gradual process of transformation, like the light changing from morning to evening in a landscape. And it’s indisputable: there is a dialectical relation between both aspects; a Bach fugue, as a polyphonic game, is also a sort of situation, and each situation, be it dynamic or static, is somehow eloquent. AH: Your interest in the ‘energy’ of sounds makes me think of the paintings of Francis Bacon. Deleuze, the French philosopher, wrote about Bacon’s work in terms of what he called ‘sensation’, and talked about the painter breaking through representation to attain a sort of sensation … HL: I would sooner say Twombly, Cy Twombly, much more than Bacon. When I see some of Twombly’s paintings it’s like a bursting. Bacon is much more iconographic. In Twombly this is nature, eruption. AH: But in Twombly there’s no referent. You retain the dialectic with tradition: in your instruments, in the use of tonal intervals and quotations, as in Accanto, in the way that Bacon retains the human form, albeit distorted … HL: Quotation? Which quotation? AH: In Accanto, or Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied, for example. HL: I wouldn’t call that ‘quotation’. I see a big difference. Quotation is the Marseillaise fragment in Debussy’s Feux d’artifice, for example, or the anthems in Beethoven’s Wellington Symphony. It means evoking the familiar fascination of something that everybody already knows. AH: These pieces evoke the aura of the original music. HL: I don’t think you can call it quotation if a more or less well-known melody is hidden somewhere in a musical structure. When I take the German national anthem in Tanzsuite, it’s like a skeleton that now serves to help me articulate a characteristic time grid. On the other hand, the Mozart music in Accanto comes from a tape and a loudspeaker. The musician with the tape machine has to follow his part: where and how to fade the Mozart in or out. One can’t predict which bars are going to come out. The Clarinet Concerto tapped now and then is a special sort of ‘instrument’ – one which a musician is playing. If I switch on the radio, and some Beethoven comes out, that isn’t a quotation. The radio, together with what it is transmitting at that moment, is used like a wah-wah mute. Or take my piano piece Ein Kinderspiel. In the first of these seven pieces I use the well-known rhythm of a popular German children’s song as a rhythmic pattern controlling the way I move over the piano keyboard from high to low. As a listener, I

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might remember the well-known song the rhythmic pattern comes from. So the fascination of the object is perhaps not destroyed, but it is suspended. Other composers might use a 12-note row, the Fibonacci Sequence or the Golden Mean, but in some of my pieces – Tanzsuite, Ein Kinderspiel, Mouvement, Harmonica – I have used models like ‘Oh Du lieber Augustin’ in Mouvement, ‘Hänschen klein’ in Ein Kinderspiel and also in Harmonica, and the German anthem as well the famous Bach Siciliano from his ‘Weihnachtsoratorium’ in Tanzsuite. AH: Do you nonetheless intend the song to be recognizable to the listener? HL: The listener should enjoy the resulting music. Perhaps he didn’t used to sing the same songs in his childhood or listen to the same music as I did. I can’t control what is going on in a listener’s mind and in his memory. In any case, he might feel that there is a rather strong mechanism controlling the sound process, that ‘there is method in his madness’. In my Tanzsuite as well as in Ein Kinderspiel there is a sort of tarantella. In Ein Kinderspiel it works as a rhythmic hammering on the two highest piano keys, causing a lot of uncontrollable low frequencies that colour the resonances of a pedalled pianoforte. I also doubt that the music of Ravel’s Bolero could be taken as a ‘quotation’. I think it’s rather the medium for an intellectually organized, irresistible magical arrangement. Those phenomena are all more or less empty pretexts. I remember a famous book, Max und Moritz, by Wilhelm Busch. Do you know it? AH: Yes, and you refer to it in your commentary to the Tanzsuite … HL: Max and Moritz were nasty boys. In their last story there is a miller who grinds the two boys in his mill, from which they come out as grains. So now they’re granulated. Are the grains still Max and Moritz? Well, they once were and we still can recognize their shapes, and now we are invited to observe the structure of their appearance and also to reflect on what has happened to them. You can often find this sort of deformation of well-known, but now empty objects once loaded with magical familiarity in my music. The listener might remember where this object came from and should also feel the intervention of a creative spirit putting it into a new created context, and so he might be invited to discover the opportunity to enlarge his own perception. It’s a sort of dialectical listening, combining disturbance and happiness. So if I want to draw attention to a special sonic aspect, it can be a good idea to make a rhythmic and/or a pitch pattern so simple that we immediately understand this is just a sort of empty pretext leading us to another, somehow hidden level of perception, for instance the different

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degrees of resonance in Ein Kinderspiel, or other perceptual categories we would never pay attention to if confronted with a more complex pitch or rhythmic constellation. Right now, sitting here with you, I could play a trick and look at your sheet of questions not in order to read what is written, but to observe the ‘landscape’ of white paper, red pen and black symbols. This would be a sort of structural approach, which means not only to understand what this paper is for but also to study it as a somehow characteristic but abstract constellation. You didn’t choose those objects and put them here in order for them to be looked at it and understood in this way. Alternatively, we could look at our restaurant table. Nobody laid out the plates, the bottles, spoons, knives etc. to be looked at like a still life. But we could decide to look at the architectural relationships among these objects, and then it would become a kind of structural constellation of elements made of porcelain, glass, metal and plastic. This also happens in a different way in my piece Salut for Caudwell for two guitars, which uses a Caudwell text whose words are spoken in a kind of slow motion, creating silences between each syllable and even each consonant and vowel. To understand the semantic message, you have to keep in mind each acoustic signal and wait patiently for the next one until, through a process of addition in your memory, you gradually understand what the text is saying. But at the same time, you wonder what’s going on. Listening involves not only understanding by activating the familiar categories of communication, but also … AH: … experiencing the materiality of the sounds. HL: Yes, exactly. Perceiving the physical structure of what seemed to be familiar, I discover my own creativity as a listener. For me this isn’t an intellectual thing, but a deeply touching experience of being reminded of my own sensitiveness and creative potential. In the 1960s I wrote a choral piece, taking the words of a very old German prayer, the ‘Wessobrunner Gebet’, which is in fact the first religious document in my country, and evokes eternity as a reality where nothing exists: neither the sea nor the wind, the heavens, the earth … nothing, except for ‘the one almighty God’. This might somehow have a pantheistic aspect. By organizing a phonetic landscape based on the words of this prayer, each vowel and each consonant remained loaded with its original meaning. So this text being decomposed and transformed into a radical phonetic sound constellation of phonetic signals is now itself a part of the nature it is speaking of. Giving up its semantic functions as information, or as a message or evocation, the text now itself becomes a radically structural and also sensual, even existential experience. ‘Music as an existential experience’: that’s the idea that’s always interested me. Such speculations might be considered superfluous or purely intellectual gymnastics, but you know, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning

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of the twentieth century, with Mahler and Richard Strauss, and still in the music of the Second Viennese School, it was the subject that constituted the creative authority, not only in the music: the ‘I’. Such an emancipation probably took place for the first time with Beethoven. Maybe Beethoven was the first composer who discovered the autonomy of the subject. Bach was not supposed to be individualistic. He was, due to the incredible mastery and intensity of his craftmanship, but that wasn’t the idea behind the music. In Mozart’s music we feel the autonomy of the artist: he discovered it, but this brought him into conflict with the society that accepted him and treated him as a brilliant entertainer for the aristocracy, so he had to go through a lot of conflicts with the despotic arrogance of his archbishop and others. He was too complicated. ‘Great music, but nothing for the palate of the Vienna audience’, the Austrian emperor said about Don Giovanni. So, in his time, even Mozart as an entertainer seemed to be replaceable. Beethoven, on the other hand, insisted on his dignity as an autonomous artist in each of his compositions and radically opened the door for the discovery and emancipation of the autonomous subject with all its triumphant and also depressive dimensions. At the end of that development in the nineteenth century and not only in music, the ‘I’ had discovered this subjective autonomy called ‘freedom’, but also its objective non-freedom. ‘Man is an abyss’, says the protagonist in Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. This was still during the time before Nietzsche, Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. From that moment on, with the music of Schoenberg most recently, the deep source and transcendent authority from which the music came was no longer the ‘I’, it was the ‘It’. ‘Je est un autre’, Rimbaud said. Working with the material aspect of music, thinking in a structuralist way, became the consequence of what was called ‘development’ in classical music. It was Beethoven who had treated this in a totally radical way, developing and transforming the motivic material of his themes, sabotaging and even destroying the good old sonata form. Beethoven’s music represents both, the triumphant I and its catastrophic crisis and capitulation. And after Schubert, Schumann, not forgetting Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and the early Second Vienna School, and finally, with the dodecaphony of Schoenberg, the ‘I’ delegated or even sacrificed its autonomy to a principle with its own special rules, at the same  When Lachenmann uses the term ‘the subject’, he is, of course, referring to the idea of the Subject as individual subjectivity, as the expressive subject [ed.].  The convention in English, ever since Ernest Jones’s original translation of Freud’s psychoanalytic terminology in the early twentieth century, has been to render das Ich (the I) as ‘the I’ and das Es (the It) as ‘the Id’. This has muddied the waters, particularly since the popular take-up of the term ‘I’ in the 1960s. We have decided to stick with Lachenmann’s ‘the I’ and ‘the It’, just to make us think twice about these terms and to see them as they really are [ed.].

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time leaving and maybe even destroying tonality which had been a highly developed system, still surviving today as a sort of anachronistic paradise, accessible and exploitable, available for anyone who wants to flee from reality. In any case, Webern, and later the serial composers in the 1950s, didn’t say ‘I want that’; they said ‘I get that from my self-invented system of rules’. Music was not simply to be invented, it was to be set free in that way. Composing music after Schoenberg has meant developing in each piece a new, more or less complex syntactic system with its own laws and rules. And the whole authority of the piece derives from such a radical creative process of organization. So what we call structure is the medium of a radical de-subjectification. In 1954 and 1958 Cage came to Europe. The idea of his most simple and simultaneously most radical piece, 4′33″, could be described like this: from here to there, within 4 minutes and 33 seconds, you don’t receive an individual message about what a composer wants to say or express; you just listen to ‘what happens’. And in so far as it happens to you, wherever you are, or to me, it again becomes a totally individual message, with its own expression. And what happens is no longer a car accident or another event from everyday life, but is now a characteristic auditory situation with its own authentic, unpredictable acoustic elements and qualities. You might call it non-music, but it’s a consistent development of our musical tradition that is still going on. At any rate: in our time, the idea of music itself has to be redefined in each composition. AH: Adorno said that music should ‘take the composer by surprise’. Despite the fact that you write action scores, when I hear your music I feel that you have very distinct sounds in mind. To what extent are your sounds predetermined? HL: I normally never write what you’d call ‘action scores’. I don’t want to lose control of what should happen. But nor do I have a generally describable conception of how to generate a sound system, as in 12-note music; it depends on the context, which I have to develop in a different way in each piece. If in my cello piece Pression I decide that within 60 seconds the bow has to move gradually from the first to the fourth string behind the bridge with fortissimo pressure, I get a wealth of sounds that would be impossible to predict, and which not could be written down. This isn’t chance, it’s a clearly understandable result of what the player has to do at a certain moment in this piece. In the early 1960s I had a period – the pieces aren’t published – in which I worked not with chance, but with mobile forms. In my music there’s no such thing as chance. Where is chance in music? I think that even in Cage’s music everything is perfectly organized. I visited Cage in the autumn of 1990 and asked him, ‘Did you ever make mistakes when you composed?’ And he laughed and said, ‘Well, once

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upon a time I made a lot of mistakes, but since finding chance operations I can’t make any’. Maybe one could say that once you’ve invented a new, coherent syntactic context you can’t make mistakes any more. That’s what I mean when I sometimes say, ‘composing means building an instrument’. Composing means discovering and revealing a new, invented imaginary instrument. In my case the problem is that such an imaginary instrument doesn’t exist before I develop it by composing the piece. So my composing is full of helpful ‘mistakes’. Cage’s chance operations were again what I call a paradise that might become a prison. For a European artist it’s indispensable in each composition to create his own paradises, but also to discover – and eat! – the forbidden apple just to find the exit. AH: Adorno predicted that the historical tendency of musical material would disintegrate and that we’d be left with a mass musical language, the ‘rubble’ of musical history. Would you agree with that, and if so, what are the possibilities open to a critical arts practice under such conditions? HL: Critical art? Well, I have a great deal of respect for Adorno, but in my eyes he was an interesting fossil from the nineteenth century. From that perspective he had a very precise diagnostic eye for what happens today. But his aesthetic horizon ended with Schoenberg, Berg and maybe Webern. His comments about the ‘avant-garde’ are almost as incompetent as his comments about jazz or what he wrote about Stravinsky. I love his ideas about art as a subversive element. But in Germany there are quite a lot of followers of Adorno who have based their academic mission on that idea, and we have a mannerism of pseudo-subversive, or I might say ‘subversivoid’ art. I think the terms ‘critical art’ and ‘subversive art’ aren’t reflected upon sufficiently. I mistrust them. I really believe that music should succeed in sharpening not only our acoustic sensorium, but also our reflections on the idea of art, of beauty, of our possibilities and calling as human beings. By sensitizing I mean opening our ears, our whole sensorium, and our mind, our intelligence, our intuition, and also our heart – if you like. This is a sort of subversive mechanism, and is the reason why New Music was strictly forbidden under the Nazis and in other totalitarian systems. I am dreaming of a music that provokes thought; thought not in the sense of intellectual games but in the sense of reflecting on our existence in all dimensions. It has to begin by creating an intense auditory situation that provokes a new way of listening, looking into the ‘interior’ of a structure. And I think – not because I am a composer, but because I am a human being loving life and facing death – that it’s important today, and we should try to find a more precise definition of art incorporating the subversive element. If I were to sit down and try to write a somehow ‘subversive’ music, that would be totally stupid, ridiculous and maybe – at best – just a piece of bourgeois entertainment. But if you concentrate fully on your auditory

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visions, and bring together all your creative energy, your fantasy, your intelligence, intuition, professionalism, experience, memory and so on, the radical autonomy of the result might manage to provoke a totally new sensitivity not only of our ears but also of our mind, and will go beyond any standardized idea of music. But it should prick up your ears in any sense. AH: So would you describe your music as political? HL: No and yes. Writing music, using what I once called the ‘aesthetic apparatus’ to participate in culture, always has a political aspect. But for me a Webern bagatelle is much more subversive and politically significant than all those requiems, cantatas and oratorios dedicated to the Holocaust, to 9/11 or to oppression in the Third World using depressive clusters, aggressive noises, threatening percussion orgies and sad nostalgic quotations. It’s quite easy to write a powerful requiem for the Holocaust, but the Holocaust, beyond all aesthetic usability, is much too deep, strong and radical an event in the history of humanity. To evoke it with music is playing it down in a way. One also could write some other – or even the same – music as a solemn requiem for the German or Russian soldiers killed in Stalingrad, or to commemorate what happened to the population with the burning of women and children after the air raids in Dresden or London. Of course you can arrange emotionalizing music full of cleverly organized magic moments and give it such a political sense. This might be commercially attractive but it’s also both clever and totally naïve, ridiculous and somehow frivolous, it’s even fascist in a sense, because it tries to manipulate our feelings and thoughts. The only composer whom I forgive this naïveté is Luigi Nono, because the emotionality in his music was an authentic part of the opening up of our aesthetic horizons. So Nono’s music has an expressive credibility in spite of its blind ideological ambitions. But what people call ‘political music’ is a naïve enclave in the world of Western entertainment. A composer never has to ‘say’ anything, but he has to search for and create something that will say more than the composer himself knows. As an irritating element in a lazy society ruled by brutal elitism, any art that deserves the name generally has a political significance. That’s why my answer was first no and then yes. There is a peculiarity in traditional Western art that I haven’t been able to find in any other culture: the idea of broken magic. The occidental concept of art – and of music – has always had something to do with magic, but in the sense of evoking an irresistible collective fascination and simultaneously reflecting upon, even suspending it by a creative intervention. In those nonEuropean cultures that are still alive, for instance Japanese Noh theatre, or Kabuki, or Gagaku, it’s different, because in the case of music, this has to do with ritual practices connected to intact religious traditions. In the European Christian culture, religion as a collectively felt power has been

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emptied and displaced by the emancipation of what might be called ‘logos’, the globalization of which is now about to contaminate and destroy all other cultures. So as Western-orientated mankind, having eaten the forbidden apple of knowledge and been chased out of the innocent paradise, we now experience what we call ‘art’ as a sort of considered magic, and we enjoy – or have to withstand – what we call entertainment as an unconsidered form. There is a big selection of more or less cheap magic in everyday life, and it works, because we all need some substitute for what we have lost as ‘enlightened’ citizens. Today we have a large industry offering those easy available substitutes penetrating our existence. When my younger daughter was 15 years old she was totally crazy about techno, so much so that she didn’t want to come home again. It was another world altogether, a magic one, offered and sold by a clever industry. But it’s not only so-called ‘entertainment’ music that is organized and available as a surrogate for that lost magical happiness. For the majority of people today, our traditional art and classical music in particular is used as this sort of magical paradise. A Mozart piano concerto might be offered as ‘music to dream by’, usable like a drug, an artificial paradise which might help us to forget about our not-so-paradisiacal reality. But Mozart’s music was, and is, more than just stunning magic; the magic element in his music was considered in an incredibly brilliant way, which means it was suspended, even broken, which is why his late symphonies, solo concertos and string quartets were irritating and even disturbing in his time, as I’ve just attempted to describe. At the end of his life, Mozart’s music was considered somehow difficult, too intellectual and too complicated – ‘not for the palate’ of the people. Today – as I have just said – we sometimes use Mozart’s music as a drug, for relaxation, and most people do the same with Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Bruckner, Wagner and even Mahler. And in that sense this great music, which once disturbed audiences because it opened up their horizons, now once again has an unbroken magical fascination for most so-called ‘classical fans’, good to be listened to on every car radio, livening up housework or washing the car, and, last but not least, enjoyable as a magic ritual in subscription concerts, and in all these functions it has now become an object of commercial speculation. OK, why not – as long as the music is well performed and easily accessible. AH: Could you elaborate on this idea of broken magic? HL: It’s not easy to avoid misunderstandings when talking about this. Broken doesn’t mean destroyed. To break the magic in music means to interrupt or, or rather to suspend its irrational power by intervening in the sounding structure of the magical object, thus provoking us to attend closely and intensely to what really is going on in our perception. I can give you an

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example. In Bach’s time, Protestant chorales had a magical function. They weren’t there to be listened to; they were there to be sung together as a medium of collective worship in the presence of the almighty God, as an evocation of the ‘numinosum’. But then along came Herr Bach, playing the organ in Arnstadt, accompanying the singing congregation in the service with his sophisticated modern harmonizations, of a kind that was unheardof at the time. So people felt disturbed and confused, and were totally angry about this interruption of their devotion that somehow forced them to pay attention to what happened to their good old chorales. Bach was almost fired, because he broke the magic. But Bach never intended to break it, he just wanted to give his best as the artist he was. And today those Bach chorales have become irresistible magic objects once again! I remember, and always respected, how my dear father’s eyes were often full of tears when listening to those chorales in the St Matthew Passion. The chorale harmonizations of Bach, which are today simultaneously familiar and magical, are such a document of creativity, of going beyond the limits of what is acceptable in one’s time, and have now survived all these centuries. Composing as a way of fabricating magic in music is rather easy. There are a lot of composers whom I wouldn’t call real composers but more or less talented arrangers of magical situations. They just walk into the supermarket of easily available curiosities, more or less familiar sound effects usable as magical elements. For example, they take the mysterious sound of a tam-tam, or an elegant harp glissando, a very ‘contemporary’ cluster, an ever-helpful string tremolo, some folkloristic elements, or some sexy electronic effects. And people, more or less ‘fascinated’, say it’s interesting. But interesting is boring! I don’t want to hear interesting music. I need to be radically touched. As far as I can see, all the masterworks in our tradition once had, in their own time, a disturbing effect caused by their innovative intensity. There were the big symphonies of Mahler, irritating his contemporaries because they were full of primitivities, banalities, stolen melodies, chorales, waltzes, marches, ländler etc., potpourris lasting an hour or more. Then along came Schoenberg, who, in his Chamber Symphony, compressed all the traditional symphonic elements together into one movement, played by just 15 musicians. It was a total shock to people at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the quandary: magic as a medium of familiar safety, even of irrational collective ecstasy, or magic as a medium of reflection, dominated and ‘suspended’ by a creative spirit? At any rate, in what we call ‘art’ in music, the composer, with his creative and innovative energy, has to evoke and dominate the magic. And dominating the magic means interrupting the magic and suspending any standardized fascination. This doesn’t mean destroying or rejecting the magic element. When reflected upon and looked at from a new perspective, the magic comes back – but now full of authentic aesthetic and expressive intensity: this is what happens in art.

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AH: In your early essays ‘Klangtypen der Neuen Musik’ (1966) and ‘Bedingungen des Materials’ (1978) you set out a radical new approach to structure. Do the ideas in these essays remain fundamental to your compositional approach? HL: Yes, but they have to be ‘opened up’ each time. Each technique we develop as composers must help to make new discoveries, otherwise it becomes a sterile mannerism. My concept of Klangtypen still works very well for me. But the idea of what a fluctuation or sound structure or structure sound is must always be supplemented, filled up with other aspects because these ideas, whilst helpful in some ways, are quite schematic. If you hear Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and then say the whole piece could be regarded as one structure, or as one sound, be it a ‘structure sound’ or ‘sound structure’, as I tried show in my Klangtypen then this might be an invigorating and interesting mental sport, but it’s not enough. You should also take into consideration that Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a sort of serene march, full of well-known signals coming from society and the stylistic repertoire of Viennese Classicism. And it’s not a march to march to – it’s a march to listen to. One idea in my essay ‘Bedingungen des Materials’, then, was the idea of musical material as loaded with and evoking an aura. Take the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 27 (Moonlight), for instance: the melodic element behaves like a military signal, maybe a funeral march, but the accompaniment with its triplets seems to evoke a kind of serenade. Such an exciting observation should be taken in connection with my concept of the ‘structure sound’ or ‘sound structure’ as developed in ‘Klangtypen’, then it’ll make sense. You could compose a totally abstractly organized piece, but if you use a cowbell or tam-tam or harp in such a score, forgetting that each of these instruments will bring along its own expressive aura with its entire history and social connotations, it’s impossible for the listener to concentrate on the ‘pure’ constellation, the frequencies, intervals and intensities – as a lot of young composers hoped in the 1950s. The idea of pure structure was somehow useful, but not complete. I think both my essays together work well if studied carefully and then forgotten wisely. Making up definitions and trying to verbalize what might happen in a creative act can be as inspiring as any intellectual exercise, and I think that for every composer it’s good to have done that once. But instead of trying to make a ‘structure sound’ when writing music, I just write down or try to organize what I would like to be heard. Today I would say something different: every sound we know or might use could be considered a point situated on a large number of lines going through this point and crossing one another. A cowbell, for instance, could be viewed on the line of all the rustic properties associated with a farm. The cowbell, the anvil, the plough and so on: all these things are on the same line. But in music, the cowbell is viewed on another line, together with all

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the percussion instruments in an orchestra. The cowbells in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, together with the tubular bells, brass signals, pianissimo tremolo in the high strings etc., belong to another very special line, having the idyllic and even transcendent connotation of a landscape above civilization, closer to heaven. But in Stockhausen’s Zyklus, that same instrument, the cowbell, belongs to a ‘family’ of different metal instruments, in a line together with the vibraphone and the tam-tam, the gong and the triangle; so in just one sound, we can still remember all these contexts and their negation by putting it into a newly developed context. AH: Your music has been described as fragmentary and discontinuous. Would you say the sense of time in your music is spatial rather than temporal or teleological? HL: I don’t think in those categories. And I’m sceptical towards such semiphilosophical terms. Is the sense of time in the music of Webern or Bach more spatial, or more temporal or teleological? I really don’t know, and I don’t want any music to be put in some predefined or pre-codified terminological category. I prefer to create or to be exposed to an auditory situation or process in which those categories will be forgotten. When experiencing an earthquake or a thunderstorm, when surrounded by mountains or looking into the waves of the sea, or just studying the structure of the bark on an old tree, such categories have no place. AH: In pieces such as Accanto and Ausklang you seem to refer to the formal genre of the concerto, and in Tanzsuite you lead the listener to expect the large-scale form of a dance suite, but the piece is performed without a break. To what extent do you manipulate genre to subvert expectations? HL: Whose expectations? Yours or mine? Those of Angela Merkel or the Royal family? Are there collective expectations in our torn society that should seriously be taken into consideration by a composer? In my opinion this would be a journalist’s way of thinking. My Tanzsuite going through without any break? So what? There are also a lot of sonatas or symphonies without a break. Or look what a DJ does in a disco … . I know composers who use the Golden Mean or other formulas, hoping that this will help to make what people might call a good piece. OK, why not. But as I said, I’m not interested in ‘good pieces’! In each of my compositions I begin with an idea of, let’s say, a distinctive and more or less complex sound process. And in order to put this idea into music I use whatever is helpful. In the course of being worked out, the idea sometimes changes totally. A composer who knows exactly what he wants, just wants what he knows – that could never be sufficient. In Ausklang I began with the rather simple idea of the familiar piano integrated into or

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confronted with a sort of huge ‘meta-piano’ represented by an especially developed and gradually transformed orchestral sound. I wanted to bring the pianistic elements and whatever happens in the soundscape of a piano into an orchestral context, and then simply ‘show’ it. Most probably the form of my pieces is the result of my need to show what I’ve found. And I’ve found so many unexpected situations. I like Morton Feldman’s title The Viola in My Life, and maybe each of my pieces could be similarly titled: my Serynade as ‘The Piano in My Life’, Gran Torso and later Reigen seliger Geister as ‘The String Quartet in My Life’, in my Tanzsuite ‘The Siciliano in My Life, or ‘The Opera in My Life’. I’m a bit helpless when I get asked about form. If people say, well, this is a nice sounding piece, but the form is not OK – I can’t understand that. Sound and form: for me they’re inseparable. Sound is not just an acoustic phenomenon. The Eroica sound is a totally different one from that of the Pastoral. But don’t ask me to say which bar I am thinking of! My clarinet concerto Accanto has a totally different ‘sound’ to my Tanzsuite. It has its own very special transformations connected to the particular structure of the clarinet and its technical possibilities, related to my good old idea of music as a coherent world of physical energies: ‘The Clarinet in My Life’. In any case, the idea of transformation is the only formal aspect that interests me in music. If, in the first bars of a composition, I show a special sort of musical landscape, this landscape will be radically transformed in the course of the piece. So my music always arrives somewhere I had never had thought of. AH: But you do refer to traditional formal genres? HL: Not at all – I don’t think about traditional form. Form, as I said – I tried to show this in my Klangtypen – form is sound. I could also say: form is a sort of more or less large ‘arpeggio’ of a sound concept. Each day has its form and even its sound, which is not predictable and not classifiable. It’s what happens to your existence. Trying to redefine again and again the idea of music, searching for new contexts for the sounds I am living with, trying to resolve the resulting problems and thus discovering my creative possibilities: the resulting music has its sound and its form, and the two are inseparable. AH: What you say reminds me of Adorno’s notion of musique informelle, where form arises from the substance of the music itself … HL: That’s a beautiful idea, I think. But Adorno, with his expertise in some things and his ignorance in others, probably didn’t know what he was speculating about. I try to apply such a concept not by using the good old parameters like the composers of the 1950s. Instead of those parameters I prefer to

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think in what I called ‘categories’. Parameters, like pitches, or durations, or intensities, or different degrees of density, or velocities, etc., are predefined and more or less dead particles of a musical structure. Any composer could use them in several compositions. The creative radicality of the parameterorientated composers, whom I greatly respect and admire, such as Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono and Pousseur, opened up a new creative paradise; but, as I said before, these paradises gradually became prisons, and each of those great composers finally had to fight against their paralysing influence and find the exit. I belong to a younger generation. What I like to call ‘category’ instead of ‘parameter’ is not regulable via serialist methods; each degree has to be invented, defined and developed in a different way in each piece. And instead of different degrees on a predefined scale, I call the elements I work with ‘families’, where each member has a totally individual, sometimes even incompatible quality in relation to the other parts of the same family. The father, mother, eldest son, little daughter, twins, housemaid, dog, cat, parrot, and the old grandfather – we look at them as one family because they live together under one roof, each of them somehow related to the others, but each member having their own identity, destiny, and so on. To give a primitive illustration: take a somehow perforated sound-world in an orchestral piece, like a characteristic cosmos of ‘snoring’ and rattling effects when pressing the bows vertically and horizontally on the different strings, in front of and/or behind the bridge, but also with flutter-tongues on wind instruments, with or without pitch, and all sorts of perforated glissandi across the keys or moving a plectrum on the lowest strings of the piano, but also the rolls on the timpani with snare drumsticks. A great perforated world, that’s quite simple, but it might also include a normal bow moving with no pressure at all. This could be called an ‘ordinario’ cello sound, but here, in this special context, it is taken as a defamiliarization, a sort of ‘non perforato’. Or take the timpani roll in such a context of perforated sounds: when being slowed down by a ‘molto ritardando’, the perforation being stretched out until you get single impulses – and at the end only one beat, which can now be understood as an extreme sort of ‘non perforato’. This would be an effect that’s not so easily repeatable, even though it’s not alienated at all. In my ‘… zwei Gefühle …’ the music enters a situation which is dominated by the guitar, just using ‘barré’ chords, parallel transpositions of the well-known E minor harmony of its open strings, regarding the guitar as a kind of ‘open air’ instrument, in a semantic situation where the Leonardo-Text is about the marvellous chaos caused by ‘ingenious nature’. So I gave this familiar guitar harmony to all the other instrumental groups in all possible transpositions, thus creating a sort of ‘characteristic chaos’: blown by the six wind instruments, stroked by the four timpani, played arco but also pizzicato by six string instruments, also by the harp, played on the keys of the piano, etc., in different registers. At a certain moment,

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the landscape of ‘guitar harmonies’ changes into a landscape of all sorts of ‘open strings’: the open strings of the violins, violas, cellos, double bass – each instrument being prepared with a different scordatura, also plucked harmonics and playing behind the bridge –and then also those 45 ‘open strings’ of the harp and the 88 ‘open strings’ of the piano, which don’t need to be alienated, but take on an unrepeatable sound quality through this context alone. Allow me to give another, somewhat surrealistic example: imagine you were playing a Beethoven sonata on a grand piano, and there was another person gradually cutting or choking all the strings one by one. So the text of Beethoven’s music would increasingly be interrupted by silently struck piano keys, and by the end it would have been totally displaced by silent knocking on the keys, but rhythmically still controlled by the Beethoven piece. In such a case I don’t hear simply the music of Beethoven, but rather a distinctive process of dismantling and transformation. This would again be an example of an imaginary ‘instrument’ which, to be understood, needs to be heard with the whole gradual transformation from a Beethoven piece to a silently struck skeleton so that we are invited to modify our perception. Well, I’m not proud of my examples, and it’s almost impossible to verbalize what I would like to explain. I was just trying somehow to illustrate my second point: composing music means inventing an imaginary ‘instrument’ and showing it through an exclusive and not so easily repeatable context. This gives me both, sound and form, in a single distinctive sound event. But enough of that – I hope you understand what I mean.

Chapter 19

Hunting and Forms: An Interview with Wolfgang Rihm Richard McGregor

Introduction This interview with Wolfgang Rihm took place on 18 November 2000, during the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, at which Rihm was one of the featured composers. The interview was conducted in English, which is not a language which Rihm favours for extended discussion of his compositional processes. Indeed, during an open forum in the 1990s which included Boulez and Berio, and which was documented by Hermann Danuser, Rihm says at one point, after a particularly long exchange with the other participants in English, and when the question is finally addressed directly to him, ‘Not in English, please’. As his first statement in the present interview makes clear, he cannot make words describe the ‘intimate processes’ of composition in English as he can in German. In the conversation which follows I have undertaken a small amount of necessary editing in order to clarify some of the composer’s intended meanings. Nevertheless, Rihm’s understanding of his art is always interesting and frequently laced with humour, even when expressed in a language with which he is not most comfortable. Such a sentiment is perhaps understandable, given that for almost as long as he has been writing music Rihm has also been writing about music, often concerning his own works and his compositional aesthetic. His earliest mature compositions show the influence of Stockhausen, who was his teacher. However, Rihm’s music of the later 1970s (that is, from his mid-20s onwards), shows an increasing desire to evolve an individual means of expression, allied to the development of a means of articulating the nature of the compositional impulse in words. Most of the articles and programme notes which he wrote up to the end of the 1990s have been collected in two volumes by Ulrich Mosch of the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle under the title Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gespräche. Rihm’s search for a ‘new means of expression’ in his music was effected in a cycle of works, most of which bear the title Chiffre, written between 1983  See Hermann Danuser (ed.), Die Klassizistische Moderne in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Winterthur: Amadeus, 1997).  Wolfgang Rihm, Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gespräche (Winterthur: Paul Sacher Stiftung, Vols 6/1 and 6/2, 1997).

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and 1985 (with a final work added in 1988). The ‘cycle’ thereafter became an important vehicle for Rihm’s articulation of abstract musical ideas, although equally important in his compositional output is the setting of texts by, among others, Artaud, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heiner Müller. During the 1980s his articles and programme notes reflect this change of direction: often the latter will be aphoristic in character, like the music – an early example of this in relation to the Hölderlin Fragments has been effectively explored by Carola Nielinger-Vakil. Some interesting writing on the compositional impetus in Rihm’s music has also been undertaken by Alastair Williams, firstly in an illuminating discussion of the composer’s powerful return to the expressionist pre1910 world of Mahler and Schoenberg for ‘some of his richest seams of inspiration’ in works like Im Innersten (Williams makes the connection here with Adorno’s similar proposals for une musique informelle), and secondly in relation to the exotic world of Rihm’s music drama Die Eroberung von Mexico. Otherwise there is very little writing of any substance in English about the composer. There is a collection of later writings in German, also edited by Ulrich Mosch, under the title Offene Enden, and a useful volume in Schott’s composer series Ausdruck. Zugriff. Differenzen. Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm, edited by Wolfgang Hofer, both of which provide further insight into Rihm’s unique approach to composition. Even though the interview is in English, Rihm’s discussion of his compositional processes is at times poetic, often metaphorical, and highly evocative. His concern, for example, about the exact location, or placing (die Lage) of a ‘sound’, and his ideas on ‘movement’ (Bewegung) are striking, and they very much reflect the areas of concern which also dominate his writings on music. Richard McGregor Interview Wolfgang Rihm: The process of composition is such an intimate thing. It’s very difficult to speak about it because it’s something which has to do with nerves and also the chemistry within your body; and for me it’s doubly difficult to speak about, because, you know, it’s difficult for me in English  Carola Nielinger-Vakil, ‘Quiet Revolutions: Hölderlin Fragments by Luigi Nono and Wolfgang Rihm’, Music & Letters 81/2 (May 2000), pp. 245–74.  See Alastair Williams, New Music and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 136–45.  See ‘Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm’s Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico’, in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 129/2 (2004), pp. 240–71.  Wolfgang Rihm, Offene Enden, ed. Ulrich Mosch (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2002).  Wolfgang Hofer (ed.), Ausdruck. Zugriff. Differenzen. Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm (Mainz: Schott, 2003).

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… and I cannot do what I always [like to] do – to construct neologisms … This is a beginning, but now let’s start. Richard McGregor: Let’s go back a little. Why do you compose? Does it come from early in your childhood? WR: It started before I [realized I] wanted to do it. I composed and I said ‘oh, I can compose’. RM: And what age would that be? WR: I started doing things like playing the recorder. I wrote pieces …, before that, I wrote poems, and before I could write I dictated them to my mother, because it was too early for me to write. This was from before my fifth birthday and up until I was eight. RM: Do you still recognize yourself in those early pieces? WR: Yes, they are still part of me. RM: Was there ever a turning point where you said this is something I must do? WR: All that I do I have to do. It has never been a question for me, because I [simply] do it, it’s important that I do it … RM: Do you start with an idea? WR: No, I start with composing. RM: No pictures, no poems? WR: No, no, nothing like that. Music. But pictures are important – they are always there, but they are not the reason for composing, just the starting point … The doing is for me the thing. RM: I’ve been to Basle, to the Paul Sacher Foundation archives there; much is made of your spontaneous approach to composition, but yet there are sketch blocks in the archive. What do you use the sketch blocks for? WR: To note down the ideas. RM: Just as they come to you?

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WR: I work in my head and I don’t need so much paper because there is enough brain space, and I have a wonderful ability to concentrate. I can memorize a lot. RM: Right. Sometimes you start a piece in a sketch book? WR: Yes. RM: Is that just a starting point? Do you use that approach and then depart from it? WR: Each piece needs a different approach. Sometimes a piece is started and I don’t know where it belongs, [so I try it in different places], and it becomes the middle of the piece, and the following week it’s the end, and the next day maybe it’s the beginning. Sometimes the piece is written from the beginning to the end. Sometimes I need two years and sometimes I need two hours. Pieces are individuals. RM: Someone said something yesterday [at the Huddersfield Festival Open Forum with you, Helmut Lachenmann and Richard Steinitz] about the idea of cycles and working out. Would you say that perhaps you’re working out sketches in pieces as you go along because you change them, or that you ‘grow’ things from them, like in the sketching process, but that it’s applied while you are actually doing the piece? WR: Yes, I change everything very much, because changing is for me synonymous with composing. I can’t do the same thing twice in the same way. RM: Could you identify any points of comparison with Boulez’s compositional processes, any points of similarity? WR: To come back to material which is full of energy and which is still unused. RM: When somebody asks you for a piece, presumably you now write mainly in response to commissions? WR: Yes. RM: Do you do a piece because you want to do it, rather than because somebody else wants it? WR: If somebody asks me and wants an orchestral piece, that’s enough. I have enough ideas for a piece and nobody says to me ‘I want an orchestral piece which is pianissimo and then fortissimo, and then with tonal chords and

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then without’. You know, I do what I want, and if you commission me I’ll give you a piece … At the usual rate! RM: Do you ever take account of things like the orchestra …? WR: Sometimes it’s very moving for me to be asked by artists. For example, there’s a vocal group – they sing old music, Renaissance music and things like that – who asked me for a piece, and that was a wonderful idea which came from outside. And I thought about it and felt ‘yes, I can do it’. But mainly a commission consists of them asking me ‘can you give us a piece?’, and exactly what kind of piece is up to me. RM: Some people would say, listening to some of your music, that there is a certain anger in it. But would you say that the emotional content is up to the listener, whether they interpret it one way or another? WR: It’s not important to know what my emotions are. I write music, and the listener, the individual listening, will have the possibility to come to it himself, and not to think, ‘oh, the composer feels such and such at this point’. That’s not interesting for me. RM: How do you view people analysing your music? WR: Yes, it’s wonderful. I love my music to be analysed, but I’m not the teacher of my analysts. RM: Do you build yourself into the music, autobiographically? WR: No, No. Well, maybe in the sense that any music which is human-made has to do with the human beings who made it – that’s normal – but it’s not about the … well, you cannot hear my music as ‘now he is sad’, ‘now he is full of laughter’ and ‘now his dog died’. No, I don’t [build myself into the music]. But it’s autobiographical in a higher sense, because there’s the lifeforce, the force of nature – that’s important for me – to build with in such a way that people call it music. Maybe it’s also a sculpture, maybe it’s also a painting, but the material I use is called music. RM: Have there been any periods when you’ve stopped and said, I need to reconsider, or have you never had a time like that? WR: The periods sometimes come together; each day I have a lot of such periods. I stop in each bar and I stop before each note. It’s not like, how can I say, somebody separated them, so that now the blue period starts, now a starting period stops.

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RM: Do you work on things simultaneously, or on one piece at a time? WR: I sometimes start pieces simultaneously, but I finish only one piece at a time. If I feel the piece is now in a state where I cannot leave it, then it needs me, and yes, then I only work with that piece. RM: Do you have a hierarchy of musical elements? WR: It is the texture which is the most important. RM: The thematic is less important, or does it depend on the piece? WR: Yes. I write a piece, and if it’s melodic, then it’s a melody. For example, if I write a piece for cello solo and I want to write only one line, then the whole piece is only one line for 20 minutes, one uninterrupted line. The hierarchy is clear. The decision as to what I do creates the hierarchy … but all that I do is my decision. If you like, I am a decisionist! RM: Is there a plan in your head before you start? WR: Not before. I start in order to make a plan. I don’t start with a plan. The plan comes when I am working. It is important to see ‘oh, so that’s my plan’, not ‘oh, I have to follow my plan’. The plan is like one of the individual partners in a discussion: the plan says ‘yes’ and I say ‘no’, and we struggle together. RM: And then you go somewhere else. WR: Maybe sometimes. RM: Do you see an idea developing and say ‘I don’t want it here but I’ll keep it for somewhere else’? WR: Yes. RM: The piece we heard yesterday [Jagden und Formen] had spaces that were composed between the pieces. WR: Yes. RM: Could you use them – would you use them – as a new piece perhaps? WR: The pieces between the pieces can be used as beginnings for development, but not as pieces alone. They need beginnings and endings.

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RM: They are something, as it were, in the middle … WR: Yes, but all these pieces are written (not all, actually; not the first, but after the second they are all written) in the direction of one big piece. The first piece was Gejagte Forme; the second, Verborgene Forme, was only written with an idea that ‘You come together with the first piece and you will have a marriage and you will have children’. RM: I’ve been looking at the pieces from 1984, and you already had this idea of cycles then. WR: Yes, I love to start a piece, and at the end of the piece sometimes I know that ‘oh, that’s not all, I need more time’, or ‘oh, let’s wait’, and sometimes a second movement comes about, or perhaps a cycle of movements. But in Gejagte Forme there are no movements. It’s one form, but in Fremde Szenen for piano trio, or the Chiffre cycle, it is a cycle of different, of closed, interrupted pieces. RM: You had an early piece called Sektor 4 Morphonie – that was a projected cycle, wasn’t it? WR: Yes, it was projected – that was different. I started with a piece and it was fully mature. Now you can hear it – there is a CD of the Südwest Rundfunk orchestra doing it. The piece had its first performance in 1974, and it was my first performance of an orchestral piece. It’s 40 minutes long, and during work on it I felt that there were more possibilities in it, and that I could write three pieces before and three after it [to frame it], and so I would have seven movements: that is, number four, number one and number seven would maybe only be solo string quartet pieces, but number two and number six would be chamber orchestra pieces or orchestral pieces, and numbers three and five would be for chamber orchestra and string quartet, and number four would be the piece for all the forces. But it was written and I heard it, but I lost the plan. RM: Nothing reappeared in any subsequent pieces? WR: There were other ideas. For example, three orchestral pieces called Diskontur, Sub-kontur and Kontra-kontur, but Kontra-kontur was never written, only the two first. They are big pieces, both of 25 minutes each. RM: Let’s go back to your composing. You talked yesterday about telephone interruptions. Do you structure your day?

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WR: The work structures my day. If I am really in a work, my day is wonderfully structured. If I don’t work, my day seems very ‘improvised’. RM: What about your conditions of working – do you have a quiet room? WR: Yes, I have a wonderful room, full of books, and another room also full of books. But the most important thing is to have time. I need time. RM: You don’t have a place that you use to go back to, to write – it’s not like a ritual for you? WR: No. My living room is my room; it’s also a special flat. The family also has a flat, but [my work] is not a ritual, it’s full of life – sometimes we are all there together and I cook. Friends, family, it’s not a cloister, a monastery. … There’s a big piano and books and a table and a standing desk, because I work standing mostly, because my backside is not so good. RM: Do you ever play what you’ve written in order to test it? WR: Not always. I like to improvise at the piano, maybe only upon one chord, two notes, or whatever you want, to get the taste of composing, but some pieces are written at the piano – for example, song cycles. I love to sing and play at the same time, and so the best place to do both is sitting at the piano. RM: Have you ever been interested enough to make electronics part of your work? WR: I’m very interested, but I think I need special possibilities. It’s not an interest which overwhelms other interests. I have done it once for Étude pour Seraphin, which is on CD. I made a tape from material from other parts of Seraphin, and I made it in the Institute in Karlsruhe. There are wonderful possibilities to make really, really deep, low sounds: that is, [to make them] lower but not longer – you know the problem, you make something lower and it becomes longer and longer. I have wonderful chords made up of four bass trombones and four tubas from Étude pour Seraphin. We took these and manipulated them down into the abyss. It sounds wonderful, and taking this tape I then wrote music for two double basses, two harps, four trombones and three percussionists. This piece is, I think, one of my best, and I love it very much. RM: You wrote a Laudatio for Stockhausen – do you see yourself as his heir?

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WR: I was Stockhausen’s student in 1972–1973 … He didn’t speak about his students’ music, he only spoke about his own music. I’m totally different as a teacher, I only talk about the music of my students and about other music, and not about my music, but that’s a personal decision. For me it was also very important to attend his rehearsals for Momente. In 1972 there was a big performance of the final version of Momente in Bonn. That was 28 years ago, and we as his students were allowed to attend all the rehearsals. I cannot believe that there is any better way to learn. To hear music in a state of ‘making’ is better than to hear a professor speaking analytically from his chair. It was the living material. And he was there and we could see and hear him and his music as well – that really taught me a lot. RM: I’m interested in your sketch writing: even in your sketches you’re always very precise – forte and piano markings are always there, and there’s never a sense that you’ve added these things afterwards. Everything seems to come at the same time – is that true? WR: Yes. I cannot change the dynamics. I cannot imagine that I could first invent the dynamics and then two weeks later a melody or some harmonies. RM: But very even precise dynamics, as for instance the sforzandos … WR: Yes, but dynamics have to do with die Lage, the location of the tone, and the location has to do with the instrument, and the instruments are important for me. I don’t write a note only as a note and later look and think, ‘oh what can I do here – a trumpet, maybe, or a clarinet?’ If I write for clarinet, I feel the air, I feel the breath, I feel the flavour of the special sound. For me it’s composing and the integrity of knowledge, the location of the note, die Lage, and its instrumental reality. RM: I wanted to ask you about your religious works and religious texts. Do you use them as texts only, or do they symbolize something? WR: The texts are texts that are the foundations of our culture. They are full of history. They are like the great philosophical texts of Plato, for instance. The texts are fundamentally grounded in our culture and … that’s important for me. RM: So you use them as symbols, if you like, of the cultural …? WR: They use me, as a window opener, maybe. RM: A bit Stravinskian perhaps?

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WR: Maybe. I love him … RM: Is movement important to you in your composition? The feeling of moving … WR: Yes, in the last eight years or so it has become more and more important – movement in my orchestral and ensemble music, but movement has also always been very important in my chamber music. I wrote a lot of music which consists of ‘sculptures’ of sound and also of the steps in between: there was a sound sculpture and another sound sculpture, and in between there was a sculpture of silence which was formed by the end of the first and the beginning of the next, and that seemed very important for me in the 1980s. Now it’s the movement that is important to me – movement also of the middle voices. It was interesting for me yesterday too, because the acoustic in St Paul’s Church [in Huddersfield] is very resonant. It’s wonderful for slow, pianissimo pieces, it sounds beautiful there, but if you have movement you only hear the one Gestalt, one shape; you can hear, but what exactly [Rihm demonstrates fast-moving musical texture] the polyphony in the body of what you hear is doing is not so clear, and an acoustic that is a little bit drier is better. But I love also this kind of changing; music comes into a room and changes its face. The acoustics give another light. RM: Are there instruments which you relate to particularly …? WR: Yes. For example, in this phase of my life I love very much the cello, I guess – the cello, viola and English horn, and the clarinet and French horn too. I shall write a horn concerto, but it needs time. I like the middle and lower registers particularly. I’ve written a lot for violin, which also used to be very important for me; but not so much at the present time – that was ten years ago. Maybe that will change. RM: A lot was said yesterday about the German Romantic Tradition or the European Tradition, but you’ve already said Stravinsky is important to you. Also Nono, of course. Who else would you say that you value as your spiritual masters? WR: Varèse, Schoenberg, Debussy. These are very important. RM: What do you get from Debussy? Colour? WR: When I was twelve or thirteen and I was in a choir singing Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien, it was an experience that changed my life … It was not possible for me to become an academic composer because I had tasted

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freedom. There was a music which only consists of itself, self-sufficient. The music was not something a teacher talks about with words – ‘look, there’s some counterpoint’, and ‘there’s a melody against the another melody’, and ‘now he goes upstairs and now he goes downstairs’ – the music was a living creature, and singing within this living creature opened me, and Debussy for me is a composer whose highest [attribute] is his intuition … It’s difficult to express what I mean: he doesn’t say, ‘oh, I compose this music because my system tells me I have to do it like that’; he’s totally free, and it’s the same with Schoenberg composing in the period around 1910, but not the later works. The time around 1910 is one of the highest points in [his] music that I know – Erwartung, for instance. RM: But Schoenberg had the need to go and discover what it was about the sound of his music that held it together. WR: Yes, because Schoenberg was in a situation where he was surrounded by enemies, and everyone said ‘it’s worthless’, and ‘where are the laws in his music’, and so he was put in a very tragic situation psychologically, having to say ‘yes, everything that I do has to do with laws, and here are those laws’. Then the music became dry. … I’m not allowed to say this, but, for me as a listener, I cannot compare the Third String Quartet or the Woodwind Quintet with such wonderful music as the Orchestral Pieces op. 16, or Erwartung op. 17, or Die glückliche Hand, op. 18. This period [around 1910] is for me one of the most astonishing moments in the history of our times.

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Postlude:

Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition Alastair Williams

I From 1946 to the mid-1960s, West Germany was the international centre for avant-gardism in music, and its institutional support for new music, through festivals and radio stations, served as a symbol of post-war cultural renewal. The Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, held at Darmstadt, were one of the key institutions, and facilitated the international careers of now established composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel and Pierre Boulez as the main representatives of post-war avant-gardism. After the first post-war cultural phase, which lasted until about 1968, much of the institutional support remained in place, but the discourses and practices of art music in Germany, as elsewhere, became more fragmented. One manifestation of this shift was that the composers who had established international reputations in the early Darmstadt years became voices amongst others, such as Hans Werner Henze and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, who were less closely aligned with the Ferienkurse. With its strong socio-political resonances, 1968 is an interesting transitional point. It covers the end of the first wave of post-war experimentation, exemplified by Stockhausen, which in many ways tried to shut out the past, or, put another way, sought to expand upon the technical achievements of canonic music, while – perhaps inadvertently – restricting its aesthetic aspirations. And yet this date also marks the start of a social shift, which became apparent around 1974/1975, that led to music in Germany becoming more historically reflective, as composers sought to write music that connected with this nation’s illustrious cultural past. This transformation, which affected many already established composers, stemmed partly from frustration with a blinkered belief in the progress of technology and knowledge, and partly from a reaction against the previous generation’s disdain for tradition. Kagel is an interesting figure through which to observe this shift in perspective, partly because he was a major figure both before and after 1968, and partly  For more on the institutions of new music in post-war West Germany, see Amy Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

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because, having been born and educated in Argentina, he was able to maintain a certain detachment from the European canon. The score of his Ludwig van (1970) was assembled from close-ups taken in a Beethoven House in which the walls and furniture were plastered with fragments of Beethoven’s music; these excerpts, the composer indicated, can be played in any order. This is an important transitional work because, on the one hand, this piece embodies, by means of irony aimed at a dominant institutionalization of the composer, the aesthetic of an avant-garde wary of the past; on the other hand, it acknowledges that the past offers a repository of meanings that can be creatively engaged. With a decline in the cultural supremacy of classical music, however, the possibilities for reinterpretation suggested by this score are now, perhaps, more valuable than its transgressions. Indeed, it is only fair to point out that Kagel himself has recognized this change in circumstances by means of more reverential, though still critical, encounters with the past, as his Sankt-Bach-Passion (1985) demonstrates. Again engaging with reception history, it is the life of Bach that the Passion unfolds, with Bach himself appearing as a speaker. What remains consistent across this shift in perspective since Ludwig van is the idea of new music drawing upon the hermeneutic strategies of older music as a creative resource. In fact, a range of music stemming from Germany in the 1970s and 1980s struck up dialogues with the past, and it is to such music that I want to turn now, with regard to the two most influential German composers at the end of the twentieth century: Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1935) and Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952). Despite an age difference of 17 years, Lachenmann and Rihm both became prominent in the 1970s, the latter in association with a group of what were known at the time as neo-romantic composers, such as Manfred Trojahn and Hans-Jürgen Bose. Lachenmann and Rihm might be seen as antipodes because the former resisted traditional means of expression and engaged with a serial aesthetic, while the latter fostered an aesthetic of inclusion, partly as a way of detaching himself from the established post-war avant-gardes. And yet Lachenmann’s emphasis on the physicality of sounds, the ways in which they are produced and what he calls ‘broken magic’ (that is, something that disrupts the system) is not at all compatible with a serialism’s formalist preoccupations. Even though Rihm does not generally deploy extended techniques, he shares with Lachenmann an interest in presenting musical objects in unconventional ways; in addition, his emphasis on the placing (die Lage) and production of an instrumental sound is congruent with Lachenmann’s aesthetic. Such shared preoccupations reveal both composers to be engaging with an Austro-German tradition – even if it is one refracted through the 

For a recent illuminating study of Kagel, the first to appear in English, see Björn Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)  Lachenmann uses the term ‘broken magic’ in his interview with Abigail Heathcote in this volume.  See the Rihm interview with Richard McGregor in this volume for more on the ‘placing of sound’.

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heightened perception sought in the music of Luigi Nono – that distinguishes them from a broader Darmstadt-style internationalism. Both figures became prominent in the revived Darmstadt Ferienkurse of the 1980s at a time when Brian Ferneyhough also became influential and when, in addition, Spectralist approaches to composition received increasing attention. Speaking generally, these two impulses develop different strands of post-war modernism: Ferneyhough’s brand of new complexity emphasizes the tendency to push musical material beyond established techniques, while Spectralism takes its cue from the desire to make the scientific exploration of sound relevant to musical creation. There are convergences between the aesthetics of Lachenmann and Ferneyhough, although each has a very different compositional voice; however, Lachenmann’s and Rihm’s compositional priorities do not converge with the underlying concerns of Spectralism. II The tension ingrained in Lachenmann’s music is that its frustration of conventional expectations leaves the listener somewhat disoriented, and yet precisely this lack of familiarity creates the potential for sonorities to impact directly on the ear. Moreover, this dichotomy was preserved when Lachenmann chose to extend the semantic range of his music by applying techniques of defamiliarization not only to musical materials, but also – in his own, oblique, way – to existing music. This referentiality is especially evident in three orchestral scores. Accanto (1975/1976), for clarinettist and orchestra, includes a recording of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, which plays subliminally throughout the piece, occasionally emerging in unexpected ways. Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (1979/1980), for orchestra and amplified string quartet, includes Haydn’s Emperor’s Hymn, which eventually became the German National Anthem, along with a range of mostly Baroque dance forms in barely recognizable guises. Finally, the score on which I intend to dwell, Staub (1985/1987), for orchestra, evokes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, no less. Lachenmann’s interview in this volume makes it clear that these pieces are not about quotation: ‘I don’t think you can call it quotation if a more or less well-known melody is hidden somewhere in a musical structure. When I take the German national anthem in Tanzsuite, it’s like a skeleton that now serves to help me articulate a characteristic time grid.’ He expands on this idea by discussing his piano pieces Ein Kinderspiel, in which the opening piece uses, as a rhythmic skeleton, the well-known German children’s song Hänschen Klein, as a way of accessing a stratum of shared childhood experience. However, Lachenmann’s systematic approach to this material breaks the magic of familiarity – indeed, the bass ‘roar’ with which the piece culminates is far removed from the domain of nursery rhymes. 

See the Lachenmann interview in this volume.

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As one might expect, it is not immediately obvious that Staub engages with the Ninth; in fact, the circumstances relating to the genesis of this work very much contribute to its meaning – in the kind of way emphasized by current trends in musicology. It was commissioned by the SWF Baden-Baden symphony orchestra, which has a good track record for playing new music, as a prologue to the Ninth, to be performed at a concert in 1986 celebrating the orchestra’s 40th anniversary. With Lachenmann already an established figure at this time, the nature of the music he was likely to compose was beyond doubt; nevertheless, the eminence of its composer did not deter the orchestral manager from cancelling the premiere of this score. Why this happened is explained in the title of an interview with Lachenmann on this topic: ‘Not with Beethoven, and not in front of Späth’ (the Baden-Baden federal minister at the time). Despite this unpropitious start in life, the work’s Beethovenian context remains, not least in the title, ‘Dust’, which, as Lachenmann’s programme note indicates, signifies an accumulated temporal deposit. Approaching the Ninth, reverently, as a quarry, the composer suggests that we stumble over the rubble of the expressive formulae that surround us, which become more or less unrecognizable components of a perception field. Hence Largo cantilenas, pulsation and bare intervals are transformed for a listener who has overcome, but not forgotten, his or her philharmonic attachment. Some specific allusions are to be found in the score, although these prompts are unlikely to be heard by an audience – even one familiar with the Ninth. At bars 194–196, a skeletal reference to the concluding phrase of the first subject is penned in beneath the percussion parts, as a way of showing the conductor, presumably, how this rhythm is to be picked out in the wind and percussion. Likewise, bars 203–204 contain a comparable reference to the ‘Ode to Joy’ theme, which is used to determine the rhythmic onsets, some of which are heard as string clusters, across the whole orchestra. Perhaps the initial point of orientation for an audience, during a live performance, is that, with the exception of some extra percussion, Staub uses Beethoven’s orchestra. Other signals include the prominent timpani part, perhaps suggestive of the Scherzo; the tonal chords that are occasionally to be heard emerging through gaps in the ensemble; and the use of sustained pedals and tremolandi, perhaps suggestive of Beethoven’s famous opening texture. 

Helmut Lachenmann, ‘Nicht mit Beethoven und nicht vor Späth’, in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, ed. Josef Häusler (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), pp. 186–90. For more on Staub and this interview, see Richard Toop, ‘Concept and Context: A Historiographic Consideration of Lachenmann’s Orchestral Works’, Contemporary Music Review, 23/3+4 (2004), pp. 138–9.  Helmut Lachenmann, ‘Staub. Für Orchester (1985/87)’, in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, ed. Josef Häusler (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), p. 398.  For a more detailed study of Staub, see Rainer Nonnemann, ‘Beethoven und Helmut Lachenmanns “Staub” für Orchester (1985/87)’, Beiträge, Meinungen und Analysen zur neuen Musik, 33 (Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag, 2000).

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Lachenmann’s extended techniques and non-pitched sounds undoubtedly make the symphonic gestures unfamiliar – they certainly defy standard analytical topoi; presumably, this is what he means when he says that, in the context of the Beethoven, this is ‘Nicht-Musik’. Nevertheless, as befits a student of Luigi Nono, the composer is sensitive to the historical nature of the material deployed. Indeed, the score plays on a tension between tonal and symphonic allusions being understood, on the one hand, as dispersed traditional elements, and being interpreted, on the other hand, as sound objects because they are not organized in the conventional manner. However, the rubble moves in two directions, one might say: not only do we hear muffled resonances of Beethoven in Staub, but we also become attuned to the precursors of Lachenmann’s sound objects in Beethoven’s symphonic gestures. In other words, what Hans-Georg Gadamer calls the prejudgement (Vorurteil) we bring to Beethoven is jolted by Lachenmann’s intervention, raising the hope that the perception of perception that Lachenmann intends his own music to release will also apply to the experience of listening to Beethoven. Because this music refuses a certain reception history of Beethoven, along with many of the values upon which the masterpiece culture is built, it is very much part of the ongoing debate about what Beethoven’s vision of human values offers to modern society.10 Staub keeps alive the utopian dimension of the Ninth – though, at a less universal level – because Lachenmann’s refusal of habit and his attenuation of perception encourage listeners to become aware of the processes by which they attribute meaning to music. III In different ways, such processes also lie at the heart of Wolfgang Rihm’s aesthetic. It is certainly true that Rihm’s inclusive aesthetic employs a range of traditional resources, but it also seeks a degree of estrangement from these materials that is not in conflict with Lachenmann’s approach. For Rihm, it is not merely a case of taking stable techniques from the past and rendering them unstable, but of responding creatively to an already present instability, especially in an AustroGerman context. I intend to pursue this theme by focusing mainly on Rihm’s earlier vocal settings, in which the aesthetic of inclusion is frequently linked to the theme of mental illness. Wölfli-Liederbuch (1980/1981), for bass baritone and piano (and two bass drums) sets texts by the Swiss poet and artist Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930), whose mental illness is reflected in the combination of directness and confusion characteristic of his writings. Rihm’s cycle alludes to Schubert’s lieder 

Lachenmann, ‘Staub. Für Orchester (1985/87)’, p. 398. Elsewhere, I indicated that the visionary dimension of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is not defunct, even if it now functions at a less generalized level. See Alastair Williams, Constructing Musicology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 131–9. 10

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simultaneously, as a model of lost innocence and as a symbol for a type of subjectivity that finds itself ill at ease with bourgeois conventions.11 Prompted by Wölfli’s derangement, however, Rihm takes the idea of alterity further than Schubert could have envisaged in the seventh, and last, of the Wölfli ‘songs’, where he replaces the voice-and-piano texture with two bass drums. At this point, melody, harmony and language give way to pulsating rhythm, suggesting a collapse into psychosis. Such an interpretation is certainly endorsed by Rihm’s accompanying text, which implies, theatrically, that the music becomes a staged embodiment of the poet’s state of mind: ‘Wölfli works as if crazy, writes and draws as if insane, paints all over everything as if mad, and builds as if out of his mind.’12 Moreover, this usage of bass drums provides something of a context for other scores in which Rihm deploys these instruments for their somatic energy, such as the large orchestral scores Dis-Kontur and Sub-Kontur, which open with massive percussive gestures. The Wölfli-Liederbuch itself also develops the idea by using the piano in a drum-like way to create a repetitive intensity, as found, for example, in the repeated ninth chord used in number IV, where intensity and repetition serve to bleach the chord of any tonal allusions. The most extreme example of this effect in Rihm’s output is found in ‘Klavierstück Nr. 7’, a score contemporary with the Wölfli songs, in which the frenzied repetition of an E-major chord serves to create the most ‘dissonant’ passage in the music. While the percussion Finale certainly takes Wölfli-Liederbuch beyond the realms of the Romantic lied, the score’s opening statement makes it clear that this music is not about nostalgia. The standard lied device of addressing the beloved is accompanied by very simple Schubertian textures to match the disarming directness of the words. As the mood takes an abusive turn, however, the strongly tonal accompaniment continues so incongruously, as if nothing had changed, that it creates a tension with the words. Like the slightly later Wölfli songs, Neue Alexanderlieder: Fünf Gedichte von Ernst Herbeck für Bariton und Klavier (1979) fuses allusions to the Romantic lied (less specifically to Schubert this time) with enactments of mental instability. The title of the cycle is explained by the fact that Ernst Herbeck (1920–1991), who was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent much of his life in mental hospitals, published his best-known poetry under the pseudonym ‘Alexander’. The opening song of Rihm’s setting, ‘Die Frau in mir’, brings out the disconnected qualities of Herbeck’s verse by the direct means of resorting to passages of extreme range and dynamics that are not implied by the preceding music. Not only does this device serve to alienate tonal harmony, but it also manages to skew the strongly 11

For a recent study of the alternative modes of subjectivity offered by Schubert, see Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 12 Sleeve notes by Rudolf Frisius for Wolfgang Rihm: Lieder (CPO 999 049 – 2), 1992, trans. Susan Marie Praeder.

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unifying tendencies of the repeated motif that Rihm deploys. The second song, ‘Der Herbst’, enables Rihm to engage with a tradition of hunting motives, which are duly shattered by tremolandi marked ‘with more terrible power’. The third song, ‘Ich mag euch alle nicht’, opens with a strongly tonal Schubertian rippling accompaniment, suggestive of well-being, that grates with the misanthropic sentiments of the words, creating a conflict of the kind encountered in the Wölfli-Liederbuch. In addition, there are clear comparisons to be made between the percussive use of the piano that is found in the later score and the way the song’s accompanying pattern turns to pounding E-minor chords, at bar 31, which are experienced more as hammer blows than as a tonal respite. (This section is also strongly redolent of the ‘E-major’ passage, already mentioned, in ‘Klavierstück Nr. 7’, which was composed in the following year.) It is certainly a feature of the Alexanderlieder that Rihm places disproportionate gestures near the ends of songs, as a way of conveying Herbeck’s not fully comprehensible semantic shifts. The final lines of the cycle, which end on a forced D-minor 7th, consolidate this tendency, exemplifying an aesthetic that pushes established devices to a point where their traditional patterns of signification become distorted. Neue Alexanderlieder were written during the during the year (1979) in which Rihm’s chamber opera Jakob Lenz (completed in 1978) premiered, and were dedicated to Richard Salter, who sang the part of Lenz, as well as subsequently taking principal roles in Rihm’s later music theatre pieces. It is certainly not hard to make the transition from Lenz, a figure who cannot find social acceptance, to Rihm’s invocation of the deranged sentiments of Herbeck. The somewhat intricate lineage of the libretto for Jakob Lenz indicates the extent to which Rihm’s creative energy is embedded in Expressionist traditions. The sound world and topic of the work are clearly related to Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Berg’s Wozzeck; however, the connections also run deeper, because the libretto of Jakob Lenz was adapted, by Michael Fröhling, from a novella, Lenz, written by Georg Büchner, who was also author of the play, Woyzeck, that was the source for Berg’s opera. The plot thickens, moreover, when one considers that Jakob Lenz, the historical figure (1751–1791) who paved the way for the Sturm und Drang movement, wrote the play Die Soldaten upon which Bernd Alois Zimmermann based his celebrated opera of the same name. (This score, along with the work of Zimmermann more generally, provides a precedent for Rihm’s aesthetic of inclusivity in passages such as the second scene of Act II, in which the seduction of Marie is accompanied, in one layer of the musical fabric, by the chorale ‘Ich bin’s, ich sollte büßen’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion.) It is documented that Lenz, a contemporary of Goethe, stayed with the clergyman Johann Friedrich Oberlin during an attack of schizophrenia – and it is this episode in the poet’s life that forms the substance of Rihm’s chamber opera. Precursors such as Berg and, especially, Zimmermann, not only provided a source for the expressionist language of Rihm’s 13-scene chamber opera, they also offered a precedent for widening the palette to include a range of references, which in the case of Jakob Lenz are associated with the group of six vocalists that

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represents the voices in Lenz’s head. From the very opening, where, according to the stage instructions, these voices represent nature, it is evident that the drama is indebted to an Austro-German practice – as represented by, for example, Schubert’s song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise – of conveying inner subjectivity, especially its fragmentation, by means of a dialogue with nature, which is conceived, duplicitously, as an extension of self and as something alien to self. This convention is continued in scene iv in which the voices assume the role of working farmers, who accompany Lenz’s paranoia with a Ländler. In scene ix, the voices (‘mountains?’, the stage instructions state) approach Lenz using stylized sarabande steps, while the ensemble does indeed play an appropriately quirky sarabande. Elsewhere, in scene vii, for example, the voices adopt a style strongly reminiscent of Bach’s choral writing, as found in the Cantatas and Passions, informing Lenz that his (unattainable) beloved, Friederike, is dead. Here, and in scene x, where Lenz is reminded of his mortality, the voices assume something of a superego function, serving to confirm the protagonist’s sense of alienation. However, this score does not confine its interactions with tradition to one dimension: in the closing interlude of scene vii Lenz attains some respite from the voices in the form of a quotation, which is actually labelled in the score, from Schumann’s Kinderszenen. To the listener, Jakob Lenz’s stylistic range offers some of the most attractive aspects of this widely performed score, providing respite from its turbulent expressionism; and yet, for Lenz, the respite offered by Schumann notwithstanding, they often contribute to his feelings of non-acceptance and confusion. The notion of the European tradition as a problematic father figure is explicitly raised in Rihm’s later stage work Die Hamletmaschine (1986), most obviously in an aria adapted from Handel’s cantata Lucrezia, in which the regal confidence of the music is undermined not only by the accompanying words, but also by moments of expressionist paranoia. Since Rihm’s music played a role in the German debates about postmodernism, and since schizophrenia is an important idea, not only for the music just discussed, but also for the theorizing of postmodernism – at least in Fredric Jameson’s predominantly North-American account of it – it would make sense to draw these strands together. Following Jacques Lacan’s semiotic interpretation of schizophrenia as a break with the authority of language, whereby signifiers become detached from signifieds and thereby released from conceptual duties, Jameson goes on to suggest that schizophrenia, as a state of perception, illuminates the depthless intensity of postmodernist culture. His proposition is that when this condition is generalized as a cultural style, its joyous intensities, which detach the present from the past, displace the established associations of schizophrenia with anxiety and alienation.13 Since Rihm clearly has left behind neither old-style anxiety and alienation nor modernist fragmentation, he is not obviously an exponent of Jameson’s cultural postmodernism. 13 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 29.

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However, Jameson’s ideas do have some relevance to understanding Rihm, if we see them not as all-embracing, but as part of a larger palette of possibilities. Sometimes Rihm’s tonal references do indeed function as intensities, detached from a structural context, in a manner that Jameson’s scheme helps to comprehend, and sometimes they do so alongside devices that signify the past in a very connected way. It is the ambiguity of jostling old-style anxiety alongside new-style intensity that creates much of the richness in Rihm’s music. IV The scores considered in this chapter are stimulating because they suggest ways of releasing new latencies from the past when it no longer represents an authoritative standard, loosening established practices so that we encounter them in unexpected configurations; and they are valuable because they indicate that innovative methods of organization need not create limited channels of signification. Such music facilitates modes of subjectivity that are not pre-established, and which enable the components of self to encounter one another in unusual ways, as indicated by Rihm’s mixing of inner subjectivity with semiotic codes. By offering something that is non-substitutable and non-exchangeable, such music enables us to articulate ‘aspects of ourselves which are not reducible to what can be objectively known and which are not to be written off as being merely inchoate feelings’.14 Indeed, this music is in keeping with a German tradition of subjectivity that is attuned equally to the ways in which subjects shape their environments and the ways in which environments shape their subjects. Partly through the disruption of existing practices, Lachenmann and Rihm contribute to a larger search for a critical language capable of understanding the past in terms of the present. They also contribute to the larger cultural project of bringing the more abstract procedures of modernity into contact with heightened, self-reflexive forms of perception. To engage the play of past and present, of procedure and immediacy, is to shape the cultural experience of modernity. Bibliography Beal, Amy, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) Bowie, Andrew, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990; 2003) 14 See Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, 2003), p. 10. Bowie writes ‘understand aspects’ instead of my ‘articulate aspects’.

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Heile, Björn, The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991) Kramer, Lawrence, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Lachenmann, Helmut, ‘Nicht mit Beethoven und nicht vor Späth’, in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, ed. Josef Häusler (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), pp. 186–90 ——, ‘Staub. Für Orchester (1985/87)’, in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, ed. Josef Häusler (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), p. 398 Nonnemann, Rainer, ‘Beethoven und Helmut Lachenmanns “Staub” für Orchester (1985/87)’, Beiträge, Meinungen und Analysen zur neuen Musik, 33 (Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag, 2000) Toop, Richard, ‘Concept and Context: A Historiographic Consideration of Lachenmann’s Orchestral Works’, Contemporary Music Review, 23/3+4 (2004), pp. 125–43 Williams, Alastair, Constructing Musicology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)

Index of Names

Adorno, Theodor W. xix, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 27, 45, 89, 100, 152, 161, 169, 170, 206, 207, 208, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 229–33, 252, 253, 260, 261, 264–9, 270, 271, 273, 274, 275, 287, 288, 306, 312, 313, 327, 328, 339, 340, 346, 350 Agricola, Martin 22 Alciati (Alciato), Andrea 95 Ammons, A.L. 95 Ampère, André-Marie 23 Antheil, George 102 Ballet mécanique 102 Aquinas, St Thomas 185–6, 187 Arendt, Hannah 10, 233, 238–44, 245, 246 Aristotle 21, 39, 196, 197 Aristoxenes 186 Art of Noise, The 223 Artaud, Antoinin 312, 350 Auschwitz 312 Babbitt, Milton 53, 56, 180 Bach, Johann Sebastian 53, 54, 105, 113, 158, 334, 335, 336, 338, 342, 345, 362, 367, 368 St Matthew Passion 105, 343, 367 Bachelard, Gaston 164, 293 Bacon, Francis (painter) 320, 327, 328, 335 Bacon, Francis (philosopher) 23 Ballif, Claude 54, 56 Barbaud, Pierre 196 Barrett, Richard 92, 95, 133, 213 Bartók, Béla 334 Baudelaire, Charles 5, 251 Beatles, The 99, 110, 111 Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 110, 111 Beauvoir, Simone de 312 Bebey, Francis 255

Beckett, Samuel 92, 95, 133, 211, 212, 213 Beethoven, Ludwig van 96, 102, 198, 257, 280, 282, 285, 310, 325, 328, 334, 335, 338, 342, 348, 362, 363, 364, 365 Piano Sonata in A major, op.2, No.2 283–4 Piano Sonata in C sharp major, op.27, No.1 ‘The Moonlight’ 344 Piano Sonata in C major, op.53 ‘Waldstein’ 282, 284 Symphony No.9 334, 363–5 Grosse Fuge 324 Wellington’s Victory 335 Benjamin, Walter 10, 12, 92, 95, 100, 220, 229, 233–8, 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 319, 327, 328, 329 Berg, Alban 4, 85, 99, 230, 231, 232, 340, 367 Wozzeck 367 Berio, Luciano xix, 4, 46, 52, 100, 145, 156, 162, 165, 349 Chemins I–IV 145 Différences 167 Épiphanies 145 La Vera Storia 65, 69–71 Sinfonia, 162 Tempi Concertati 167 Berlioz, Hector 82, 285 Bernouilli, Daniel 25, 38 Bernstein, Charles 323, 327 Berry, Mark xx Berthelot, Marcellin 28 Birtwistle, Harrison 4, 8, 213 Bley, Carla 223 Bloch, Ernst 215 Boissière, Anne xiii, xix, 10, 229–47 Borio, Gianmario 5 Bose, Hans-Jürgen 362

372

Contemporary Music

Boulez, Pierre xiii, xix, xx, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 43, 52, 86, 91, 96, 99, 100, 113, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 129, 144, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158–9, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 188, 191, 201, 245, 280, 282, 305–17, 332, 333, 334, 347, 349, 352, 361 cummings ist der dichter 145 Domaines 159 Éclat 166 … explosante-fixe … 159 Improvisations sur Mallarmé 166 Le Marteau sans maître 129, 157 Piano Sonata No.3 314, 334 Pli selon pli 145 Polyphonie X 149, 150 Répons 65, 68–9, 159 Structures 117, 120, 149, 162, 306, 314, 316 Boyle, Robert 22 Brahms, Johannes 279, 338 Brecht, Bertolt 107, 221, 222 The Threepenny Opera 107 Breatnach, Mary 305–6 Breton, André 7, 312, 313 Brown, Earle 14 Bruckner, Anton 334, 338, 342 Symphony No.4 334 Brueghel, Pieter 94 Büchner, Georg 338, 367 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 329 Bürger, Peter 206, 212, 224 Busch, Wilhelm 336 Busoni, Ferruccio 83, 126 Butor, Michel 106 Cage, John 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 83, 84, 86, 99, 103, 113, 117, 119, 120, 122, 129, 152–7, 167, 178, 180, 181, 189, 218, 306, 339, 340 4’33’’ 339 Concert for piano and orchestra 167 Credo in Us 83, 103 Imaginary Landscape No.1 83, 103 Imaginary Landscape No.4 83 Imaginary Landscape No.5 83 Living Room Music 102

Music of Changes 117, 119, 120 Williams Mix 83 Cambreling, Sylvain 333 Cantor, George 201 Cardew, Cornelius 214 Carter, Elliott 4, 46, 200 Caudwell, Christopher 337 Celan, Paul 92, 95 Cézanne, Paul 151 Chagas, Paulo 108, 109 Char, René 312 Charles, Daniel 153 Chion, Michel 190 Chopin, Frédéric 152, 338, 342 Cioran, Emil 92 Cohen, H.F. 10 Connes, Alain 193 Cooper, Grosvenor 285 Costabel, Pierre 21 Coster, Salomon 21 Crombie, Alistair Cameron 19 Dahlhaus, Carl 14, 51, 99, 147, 222 Danto, Arthur 253, 254 Danuser, Hermann 349 Darmstadt, Darmstadt School 5, 8, 14, 41, 306, 313, 316, 361, 363 Darwin, Charles 338 Debussy, Claude 4, 12, 111, 121, 123, 126, 152, 176, 279, 310, 335, 358, 359 Feux d’artifice 335 Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien 12, 359 Decroupet, Pascal xiii, xix, 9, 10, 51, 99–115, 117–31, 235 Delacroix, Eugène 257 Deleuze, Gilles 2, 206, 313, 327, 328, 335 Deliège, Célestin xiii, xix, 8, 9, 10, 51–76, 96 Deliège, Irène xiii–xiv, xix, xx, 285 Demeny, Paul 306 Dench, Chris 89, 91, 92, 93, 213 Derrida, Jacques 206, 283, 313 Descartes, René 11, 21, 24, 25, 95, 170, 246, 309 Dibango, Manu 255 Diderot, Denis 251, 257 Dillon, James 89, 93, 95, 213 d’Indy, Vincent 52

Index of Names Domaine Musical 144 Donatoni, Franco 156 Drake, S. 19 Duchamp, Marcel 153, 167, 253, 325 Dufourt, Hugues xiv, xix, 9, 19–50, 52 Dürer, Albrecht 94 Eco, Umberto 206 Eimert, Herbert 96 Eisler, Hanns 223 Emerson, Lake & Palmer 110 ESCOM xix Euler, Leonhard 24, 25 Evangelisti, Franco 97 Faraday, Michael 23 Feldman, Morton 4, 96, 346 The Viola in My Life 346 Ferneyhough, Brian xiv, xx, 4, 8, 10, 12, 13, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 133–42, 206, 213, 214–20, 274, 319–30, 334, 363 Allgebrah 139, 321 Carceri d’Invenzione I 90, 92, 137–138, 319, 320, 321, 326 Cassandra’s Dream Song 92 Dum transisset 319, 325 Epicycle 134 Études Transcendentales 323, 324, 326 Firecycle Beta 134 Funérailles I 135–6 Funérailles II 135–6 Incipits 139, 321 Kurze Schatten II 141 La chute d’Icare 139, 321 Lemma-Icon-Epigram 136, 140, 220 Les Froissements d’Ailes de Gabriel 321, 322, 326 On Stellar Magnitudes 320, 321 Opus Contra Naturam 220, 323, 326, 327, 329 Plötzlichkeit 319, 323 Prometheus 134 Shadowtime 12, 220, 319, 320, 323, 324, 325, 326, 329 Sieben Sterne 134 Sonatas for String Quartet 133, 214, 220 Stelae for Failed Time 320, 324

373

String Trio 92, 214 String Quartet No.2 135, 136 String Quartet No.4 214, 215, 220, 320, 323 String Quartet No.5 319, 330 Superscriptio 137–8, 334 Terrain 139, 321 The Doctrine of Similarity 324, 326 Time and Motion Study II 134, 135, 140 Transit 134, 140 Unity Capsule 135 Unsichtbare Farben 324, 325 Ferrari, Luc 113 Finnissy, Michael 4, 91, 92, 213 Fitch, Fabrice 325 Fitch, Lois xiv, xx, 319–30 Forte, Allen 53 Foucault, Michel 2 Fourier, Joseph 25, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40 Freud, Sigmund 338 Frisius, Rudolf xiv, xix, 9, 10, 77–87, 93 Fröhling, Michael 367 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 365 Galilei, Galileo 25, 26 Gassendi, Pierre 23 Gay, John 107 The Beggars’ Opera 107 Genette, Gérard 253 George, Stefan 177 Giannini, Anne xx Glissant, Édouard 255 Globokar, Vinko 167 Concerto grosso 167 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 107 Orpheo 107 Gödel, Kurt 194 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 91, 367 Goeyvaerts, Karel, 149, 180 Goodman, Nelson 253, 254 Gozza, Paolo 19 Grisey, Gérard 8, 9 Groupe de Recherches Musicales 112 Gropius, Walter 166 Grünbaum, G. 193 Guattari, Félix 2, 206 Hába, Alois 89

374

Contemporary Music

Habermas, Jürgen 2, 205, 206, 210, 211, 213, 250, 265, 267 Hails, John xiv, xx, 319–30 Haine, Malou xx Halm, August 215 Händel, Georg Friedrich 368 Lucrezia 368 Hanslick, Eduard 264 Harrison, George 110 Harvey, Jonathan xv, xx, 4, 8, 11, 52, 71, 151, 279–304 Ashes Dance Back 286 Bird Concerto with Pianosong 287 Inquest of Love 288 One Evening 294, 297–9, 301–2 String Quartet No.4 293–6 Wheel of Emptiness 290–93 Haubenstock-Ramati, Roman 14 Haydn, Joseph 96, 175, 363 Emperor’s Hymn 363 Heathcote, Abigail xv, xx, 12, 331–48 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 48, 199, 200, 207, 254, 257, 261, 262, 264, 273, 313, 314 Heidegger, Martin 170, 253 Helmholtz, Hermann von 19, 25, 26, 35, 57, 78, 117, 125, 126, 128 Henau, Joris De xx Hendrix, Jimi 110 Henry, Pierre 84, 99, 113 Psyché Rock 113 Heraclitus 134, 136 Herbeck, Ernst 366, 367 Henze, Hans Werner 13, 361 Hilbert, David 183–4 Hindemith, Paul 51, 54, 55, 95, 102 Hofer, Wolfgang 350 Hölderlin, Friedrich 95, 350 Hollywood 223, 224 Honegger, Arthur 102, 312 Le Roi David 102 Pacific 231 102 Hooke, Robert 22 Horkheimer, Max 210, 211, 253 Huber, Klaus 13 Huygens, Christian 21, 24 IRCAM 4, 9, 94, 293, 305

Ives, Charles 9, 85, 86, 91, 95 Izambard, George 306 Jameson, Fredric 205, 206, 368, 369 Jannequin, Clément 102 Jencks, Charles 2, 206, 208 Jeppesen, Knud 96 Jimenez, Marc xv, xix, 11 Johns, Christopher xx Jolivet, André 152 Joyce, James 104, 222 Kagel, Mauricio 4, 8, 13, 14, 361, 362 Ludwig van 362 Sankt-Bach-Passion 362 Kandinsky, Wassily 312 Kant, Immanuel 39, 47, 168, 243, 253, 257, 300, 327 Keller, Hans 286, 288 Kepler, Johannes 24 Kierkegaard, Søren 199 Kirnberger, Johann 52 Klee, Paul 311, 312 Kobliakov, Vladimir A. 51 Koenig, Gottfried Michael 54, 55, 96 Kojève, Alexandre 313 Kokelaar, Sebastiaan xx Kraus, Karl 7 Kuhn, Thomas S. 24–5 Lacan, Jacques 368 Lachenmann, Helmut xv, xx, 4, 8, 11, 13, 200, 279, 293, 331–48, 352, 361, 362–5, 369 Accanto 332, 333, 335, 345 Ausklang 333, 345 Ein Kinderspiel 333, 335, 337 Mouvement – vor der Erstarrung 332 Pression 333, 339 Salut for Caudwell 337 Staub 363–5 Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied 333, 335, 345 temA 332 The Little Match Girl 332 … zwei Gefühle … 347 Las Vegas 220, 329 Laurent, Auguste 28

Index of Names Lavy, Matthew xx Le Corbusier, 80 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 22, 185, 262, 267 Leibowitz, René 90, 177, 312 Lenz, Jakob 105 Lerdahl, Fred 282 Les Six 312 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 140, 159, 160–62 Lewin, David 71, 73 Ligeti, György 4, 8, 13, 14, 43, 52, 94, 156, 179, 214, 331, 361 Atmosphères 334 Aventures 179 Lux Aeterna 179 Lindberg, Magnus 52 Lyotard, Jean-François 2, 206, 207, 208, 224, 249, 250 Mac Low, Jackson 323 Machaut, Guillaume de 181 Mâche, François-Bernard 55 Mahler, Gustav 12, 103, 175, 229, 230, 231, 232, 310, 338, 342, 343, 345, 350 Symphony No.8 176 Mallarmé, Stéphane 12, 94, 164, 166, 184, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 314, 316 Malraux, André 103 Malthus, Thomas Robert 41 Marcuse, Herbert 143, 170, 255 Mardaga, Pierre xx Marley, Bob 109 Marx, Karl 219, 254, 256, 262, 264, 338 Matisse, Henri 312 Matta, Roberto 95 Matthews, Max 28, 31, 34, 36 Maxwell Davies, Peter 214 McGregor, Richard xv, xx, 12, 349–59 Meredith, Dave xx Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 312 Mersenne, Marin 22, 23, 24 Messiaen, Olivier 8, 42, 80, 96, 148, 149, 151, 181, 314, 332 Mode de valeurs et d’intensités 42, 148, 149, 316 Metzger, Heinz-Klaus 93, 154 Meyer, Leonard B. 285 Michaud, Yves 253

375

Michaux, Henri 312 Middleton, Richard 222, 223 Milhaud, Darius 312 Molière 192 Molino, Jean xix, 54 Mondrian, Piet 312 Monet, Claude 310 Monteverdi, Claudio 54, 181, 325 Mosch, Ulrich 349, 350 Mothers of Invention, The 221, 222 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 107, 111, 181, 257, 290, 333, 335, 338, 342, 344, 363 Clarinet Concerto 335, 363 Don Giovanni 107, 257, 338 Eine kleine Nachtmusik 344 Müller, Heiner 350 Murail, Tristan 8, 9 Mussorgsky, Modest 110 Pictures at an Exhibition 110 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques xix, 54, 72, 162 Nazism 31, 340 N’Dour, Youssou 255 Nicolas, François xv–xvi, xix, 9 Nielinger-Vakil, Carola 350 Nietzsche, Friedrich 246, 254, 288, 293, 330, 338, 350 Nono, Luigi 4, 8, 13, 46, 331, 341, 347, 358, 363, 365 Oberlin, Johann Friedrich 367 Ohm, Simon 25 Olive, Jean-Paul 102 Osborne, Nigel 89, 213 Osmond-Smith, David 71 Paddison, Max xvi, xix, xx, 1–15, 205–28, 249, 259–76 Palisca, Claude V. 19 Penderecki, Krzysztof 214 Penrose, Roland 192 Penrose tiling 192–3 Perle, George 54, 56 Picasso, Pablo 312 Piencikowski, Robert 51, 99, 120 Pink Floyd 110 Atom Heart Mother 110

376

Contemporary Music

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 94, 137, 319, 320 Plato 24, 239, 242, 357 Popper, Karl 150 Poulenc, Francis 312 Pound, Ezra 323 Pousseur, Henri 4, 9, 51, 54, 56, 99, 101, 106, 108, 109, 156, 160–61, 162, 165, 198, 347 Couleurs croisées 108 Iles déchaînées 108 La Passion selon Guignol 108 Votre Faust 106–7, 108 Praetorius, Michael 22 Proust, Marcel 330 Purcell, Henry 220 Fantasias 220 Pythagoras 38, 46 Ramaut-Chevassus, Béatrice 102 Rameau, Jean-Philippe 23, 52, 56, 158, 186 Ravel, Maurice 336 Bolero 336 Ricoeur, Paul 146, 239 Riemann, Hugo 51, 52, 85 Rihm, Wolfgang xvi, xx, 4, 8, 12, 13, 349–59, 361, 362, 363, 365–9 Chiffre 355 Die Eroberung von Mexico 350 Die Hamletmaschine 368 Dis-kontur 355, 366 Étude pour Seraphin 356 Fremde Szenen 355 Gejagte Forme 355 Im Innersten 350 Jagden und Formen 354 Jakob Lenz 367, 368 Klavierstück Nr.7 366 Neue Alexanderlieder: Fünf Gedichte von Ernst Herbeck 366, 367 Sektor 4 Morphonie 355 Sub-kontur 355, 366 Verborgene Forme 355 Wölfli-Liederbuch 365, 366, 367 Rilke, Rainer Maria 95, 157 Rimbaud, Arthur 143, 306, 315, 317, 338 Risset, Jean-Claude 28, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39 Rossi, Paolo 23 Ruddick, Chester Townsend 164

Rumi 286 Russolo, Luigi 81 Saariaho, Kaija 52 Sabbe, Herman xvi, xix, 10, 106 Sacher, Paul 99 Paul Sacher Stiftung (Sacher Foundation) 99, 349, 351 Salter, Richard 367 Samuel, Claude 152 Sartre, Jean-Paul 311 Satie, Erik 102, 152 Musique d’ameublement 153 Parade 102, 103 Saussure, Ferdinand de 283 Sauveur, Joseph 23, 25 Schädler, Stefan 119 Schaeffer, Jean-Marie 253 Schaeffer, Pierre 9, 28, 39, 83, 84, 99, 102, 103, 112–13, 189, 190, 332 Bilude 113 Étude aux chemins de fer 102, 103, 112 Schat, Peter 96 Schenker, Heinrich 8, 52, 282, 285 Schiller, Friedrich 257 Schnebel, Dieter 179 Schoenberg, Arnold 4, 12, 53, 54, 55, 78, 80, 85, 91, 120, 126, 143, 148, 162, 175, 177, 178, 180, 189, 201, 214, 259, 282, 329, 334, 338, 339, 340, 343, 350, 358, 367 5 Orchestral Pieces op.16 359 Chamber Symphony No.1 op.9 176, 343 Die glückliche Hand op.18 359 Erwartung op.17 359, 367 Gurrelieder 176 Modern Psalm No.1 180 Moses und Aron 90 Piano Piece op.33a 65, 66 String Quartet No.2 op.10 90, 220 String Quartet No.3 op.30 359 Wind Quintet op.26 334, 359 Schopenhauer, Arthur 300 Schubert, Franz 198, 338, 342, 366, 367, 368 Die schöne Müllerin 368 Die Winterreise 368 Schultze, Bernhard 6

Index of Names Schulze, Alfred Otto Wolfgang (Wols) 6 Schumann, Robert 332, 333, 338, 342, 368 Kinderszenen 368 Sciarrino, Salvatore 279, 293 Scriabin, Alexander 176 Scruton, Roger 303 Second Viennese School 5, 54, 214, 312, 338 Sellars, Peter 288 Serravezza, Antonio 19 Shankar, Ravi 110 Shannon, Claude 31 Shelly, Percy Bysshe 293 Shepard, Roger N. 31 Shephard, B.C. 193 Sibelius, Jean 284 Symphony No.5 284 Soft Machine 110 Souris, André 183, 184–5, 187 Steiner, George 257 Steinitz, Richard 352 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 4, 8, 10, 13, 43, 54, 55, 86, 90, 91, 96, 99, 107, 108, 110, 111, 123, 134, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 180, 214, 345, 347, 349, 357, 361 Alphabet für Liège 171 Aus den sieben Tagen 167 Carré 145, 163, 166 Elektronische Studie I 80 Elektronische Studie II 162 Gesang der Jünglinge 158, 159 Gruppen 97, 145 Hymnen 86, 108, 145 Inori 171 Klavierstücke I–IV 149 Klavierstück III 65, 71–5 Klavierstück VII 97 Klavierstück X 165 Klavierstück XI 165 Kontakte 145, 159, 166 Kontrapunkte 149 Kreuzspiel 149, 150 Kurzwellen 107, 108, 167 Licht 86, 180 Mikrophonie I 151 Mixtur 166

377

Momente 151, 166, 357 Plus-Minus 168, 169 Prozession 107, 168 Spiral 168 Stimmung 58, 80, 171 Stop 168, 169 Telemusik 108 Zeitmaße 134 Strauss, Richard 126, 338 Stravinsky, Igor 4, 101, 141, 181, 221, 222, 311, 312, 340 Rite of Spring 311 Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz 102 Tapié, Michel 6 Tartini, Giuseppe 23 Toop, Richard xvi, xix, 10, 89–97, 133–142, 213 Trojahn, Manfred 362 Twombly, Cy 335 Tye, Christopher 325 Valéry, Paul 10, 146, 147, 148, 151, 231, 234, 237, 241, 315 Varèse, Edgard 4, 10, 83, 101, 102, 117–31, 153, 358 Déserts 117 Ecuatorial 117, 130 Hyperprism 117, 120, 123, 126–8 Intégrales 117, 120, 127–9 Ionisation 83, 119 Octandre 117, 120, 122, 139 Vattimo, Gianni 232 Vaucanson, Jacques de 20 Vienna Circle 300 Virdung, Sebastian 22 Wagner, Richard 8, 54, 175, 279, 286, 287, 288, 303, 334 Das Rheingold 334 Der Ring des Niebelungen 330 Die Walküre 287 Tristan und Isolde 303 Walker, D.P. 19 Walters, David xvi, xx, 11, 305–17 Warhol, Andy 254 Watson, Ben 222 Weber, Gottfried 85

378

Contemporary Music

Weber, Max 9, 10, 19, 45, 210, 211, 262, 265, 271 Webern, Anton 4, 51, 53, 85, 117, 121, 123, 124, 125, 134, 141, 143, 145, 149, 152, 153, 160, 179, 180, 339, 340, 341, 345 Bagatelles op.9 133, 341 Cantata No.2 op.31 117, 123–5 Concerto op.24 65, 66–8, 80, 123, 149 Symphony op.21 117 Weill, Kurt 102, 108 Der Lindbergflug 102 Der Zar läßt sich photographieren 102 The Threepenny Opera 107, 108 Werckmeister, Andreas 23 Whitehead, Alfred North 39 Williams, Alastair xvi–xvii, xx, 13, 350 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 300 Wolff, Christian 156 Wölfli, Adolf, 139, 329, 366 Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) 6 Woodstock 110

Wyschnegradsky, Ivan 128 Xenakis, Iannis 4, 46, 80, 81, 83, 94, 95, 151, 156, 164, 189, 196 Diamorphoses 83 Metastasis 83 Young, LaMonte 179 Zappa, Frank 4, 10, 206, 220–25, 275 Zarlino, Gioseffo 23 Zimmermann, Bernd Alois 9, 99, 104–5, 111, 361, 367 Ekklesiastische Aktion ‘Ich wandte mich um und sah alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne’ 111 Die Soldaten 105, 367 Musique pour les soupers du roi Ubu 104 Requiem für einen jungen Dichter 111 Stille und Umkehr 111 Zorn, John 110, 181

Index of Subjects

abstract expressionism 5 abstraction 20, 22, 47, 112, 113, 274, 328 absurd, the 10, 225, 308 acousmatic music 113, 189 acoustics 19, 23, 26, 29, 35, 39, 40, 41, 43, 54, 56, 112, 117, 125, 183, 186, 187, 189, 190, 358 acoustic spectrum 52, 55, 74 action 135, 184 administration 213 aesthetics 11, 19, 20, 26, 30, 39, 44, 45, 47, 79, 90, 169, 206, 207, 208, 219, 225, 229, 231, 232, 242, 243, 249–258, 259, 274, 303, 305, 311, 319, 320, 327, 331, 340, 341, 343, 361, 362, 363, 365 aesthetic sphere 210, 267 aleatoricism 154, 155 alienation 221, 222, 223, 368 alterity 198, 366 ambient music 114 ambiguity 11, 224, 279, 282, 283, 286, 288, 289, 290, 293, 300, 303, 369 amplifier 33 amplitude 43 analysis 20, 30, 32, 34, 47, 54, 231, 252, 353 immanent analysis 266 neutral level analysis 54 poietic level analysis 72 anthropology 159–160 architecture 264 arithmetic 187–9, 190 art, artist 21, 161, 205, 209, 210, 234, 239, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 273, 327, 328, 329, 338, 340, 341, 342, 343, 349 art for all 2, 169 high art 269 theory of art 21, 22, 45, 46, 47, 48

work of art 100, 161, 209, 217, 256 art informel 5 arte povera 152 artisan 235, 242 atonality 9, 52, 54, 145, 177 atonal harmony 54, 56 atonal hemitonic chromaticism 56 atonal order 51 free atonality 177 attack 42, 43 audience 222 aura 236, 335, 344 authenticity 111, 155, 216, 218, 223, 225, 267, 339, 343 automata 20, 94 automation 20, 31, 315 autonomy 178, 183, 188, 191, 207, 214, 220, 225, 251, 266, 269, 272, 286 aesthetic autonomy 206 autonomous art 210, 213, 223 autonomy-character 206, 214, 273 musical autonomy 185, 212 avant-garde 1, 6, 8, 10, 13, 133, 141, 155, 205–228, 229, 230, 232, 245, 246, 256, 257, 275, 331, 340, 361, 362 beauty 12, 41, 168, 242, 330, 340 beginnings 133–42, 352, 355 bird song 287 borrowing 325 bricolage 207, 222 Buddhism 11, 153, 279–82, 289, 294, 300 Mahayana Buddhism 279 Zen Buddhism 153 bureaucratization 210, 213, 263 capitalism 45, 205, 210, 223, 254, 255 catastrophe 329, 338 chance 11, 12, 153, 155, 156, 165, 175, 306, 307, 308, 338, 340

380

Contemporary Music

chorale 343 Christianity 341 chromaticism 52, 55 cinema 223 cognition 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 284, 327 music as a mode of conceptless cognition 185, 211, 215, 219, 268, cognitive psychology 19, 26, 27 collage 99, 100, 103 collectivity 237, 341 colour 80, 358 combinatoriality 180, 186, 188 commodity 205, 223, 257, 262, 269, 271, 286 commodification 205, 206, 209, 210, 220, 221, 223, 225, 256, 257, 272 commodity-character 206, 273 commodity-form 262, 267 work-as-commodity 271 communication, communicability 234, 236, 237, 252, 337 complementarity 53, 125, 128 complexity 10, 89, 213–14, 218, 219, 220, 225; see also new complexity composer, composition 12, 14, 44, 46, 85, 100, 218, 219, 220, 264, 271, 289, 315, 328, 332, 340, 343, 344, 350, 352, 356, 358, 359 computer, 187, 188, 315, 324 computer music 19, 21, 29, 33, 34, 35, 47, 48 computerized society 224 concept, conceptualization 29, 30, 31, 41, 206, 215 limiting concept 271 consistency 12, 29, 46, 145, 183, 216, 217, 266, 272, 273 self-consistency 326 constellation 214, 218, 337, 344 construction 178, 232 consumer, consumption 221, 222, 225, 252, 269, 270, 271, 273 content 46, 48, 259, 260 musical content 260 social content 260 context 274, 331, 334, 336, 340, 345, 369 continuity, discontinuity 31, 33, 40, 43, 143, 177, 208–9, 327, 330, 345

contradiction 196, 261 non-contradiction, principle of 196 counterpoint 44 country music 181 craft, craftsmanship 236, 269, 271, 338 creation, creativity 10, 47, 143, 157, 229, 230, 232, 233, 237, 249, 336, 337, 343 critique 10, 144, 145, 206, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 232, 244, 249, 250, 257, 267, 273, 369 criticism 252 critical art 340 metacritique 10 sociological critique 266, 267 cross-over 104, 209 culture 20, 41, 155, 160, 161, 181, 223, 251, 257, 259, 286, 287, 299, 311, 329, 340, 342, 357, 362, 365, 368, 369 cultural conditions 205 cultural context 206 culture industry 170, 213, 221, 225, 252, 253, 269, 271, 273, 342 mass culture 10, 223 popular culture 329, 330 Dadaism 155, 206, 212, 222 dance 345 dance music 110, 111, 114 defamiliarization 347, 363 deformation 336 density 43, 158, 175, 347 determinacy 11, 156 dialectic, dialectics 46, 48, 81, 95, 104, 136, 143, 191, 196, 197, 198, 202, 203, 233, 253, 261, 264, 266, 269, 271, 272, 273, 306, 307, 313, 314, 316, 323, 331, 335, 336 difference 283 difference principle 196–7 diffusion 158, 166, 268 disintegration 207, 212, 214, 340 displacement 221, 242, 342, 368 dissolution 141 distribution 222, 269, 271, 273 dodecaphony 53 Doppler effect 23, 25, 35 double-coding 208

Index of Subjects duration 21, 42, 43, 148, 149, 158, 170, 347 dynamics 42, 43, 48, 139 economy, economics 255 écriture see writing elective affinities 263 electroacoustics 20, 29, 83, 86, 157, 158, 161, 162, 191, 268, 332, 356 electronic music 102, 290, 294, 324 elitism 341 emancipation 338, 342 embodiment 262, 366 emotion, emotions 187, 341, 353 empiricism 271 endings 133, 140, 352, 355 Enlightenment, the (Aufklärung) 210, 250 entertainment 225, 338, 340, 341, 342 entropy 165 equal temperament 46, 119 essentialism 263 ethnic music 101, 109, 111 ethnocentrism 254 evolution, theory of 41 existentialism 217, 306 music as existential experience 337 exoticism 114 experience, musical experience 11, 29, 217, 233, 237, 238, 241, 257, 270, 271, 273, 303, 328, 331, 337, 359, 363, 365 experiment, experimentation 20, 31, 34, 46, 361 experimental music 30, 31 expression 42, 44, 45, 175, 178, 208, 232, 306, 310, 311, 338, 340, 343, 349, 359 self-expression 223 expressive formulae 364 expressionism 5, 367, 368 exterritoriality 333 falsification principle 155 Fascism 341 figure 136–7, 215, 216 figuring 53, 59–62, 74 figured bass 57, 85, 86 filter 33 film 223

381

film music 223 force-field 94, 218, 268 form 29, 40, 47, 48, 158, 177, 209, 212, 222, 229, 232, 242, 266, 272, 273, 274, 303, 322, 338, 346, 348 formal type 215 formalism 47, 264, 307 ‘formal’ music 31 formula (Formel) 180 fragment, fragmentation 107, 115, 141, 214, 218, 220, 224, 335, 345, 368 fugue 197, 334, 335 fundamental, fundamental tone 58–9, 64 funk 109 fusion 114, 115 Gagaku 341 game 165 genre 104, 215, 274, 325, 345, 346 gesture 136, 209, 215, 216, 274, 299, 365, 367 globalization 115, 181, 254, 255, 269, 270, 342 harmony 43, 44, 51–76, 77–87, 120, 170, 294, 366 harmonics 28, 34, 55, 56, 78, 290 harmonic field 176 harmonic matrix 67–75 harmonic series 25, 80, 127, 290 harmonic space 176 harmonic spectrum 58 harmonic system 80 scale of harmonics 58 harmonicity 25 hegemony 255 Henkin completeness proof 195 hermeneutics 286, 362 heterogeneity 99–115, 209 heteronomy 225 history, historicality 13, 19, 45, 48, 54, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 205, 208, 215, 216, 266, 272, 274, 328, 340, 341, 357, 359, 361, 365 historical conditions 205 historical context 13, 259 homogeneity 100 hybridization 255

382

Contemporary Music

idea, musical idea 12, 201, 266, 307, 308, 345, 350, 351 identity, identity principle 196–7, 255, 285 cultural identity 259 ideology 31, 41, 48, 205, 219, 230, 250, 253, 254, 255, 265, 266, 269, 273, 274, 341 idiom 223 image 42, 224 imagination 317 immediacy 260, 261, 268, 274, 369 impressionism 254, 256 improvisation 85, 104, 270, 356 indeterminacy 153, 156, 163, 164, 165, 175, 177, 218 industry, 221; see also culture industry information, information theory 32, 33, 48 informelle Kunst 6 innovation 143 institution, institutionalization 212, 273, 362 instrument, instrument making 21, 23, 26, 45, 46, 100, 125–6, 268, 274, 358 ‘building an instrument’ 12, 309, 310, 340 imaginary instrument 348 integration 217 internet 188 interpretation 84, 273, 353 intersubjectivity 238, 246, 250 intervals 45, 46, 47, 334 interval ratio 56 interval relations 334 interval structure 78, 79, 85 micro-interval 58 intuition 11, 12, 42, 192, 300, 340, 341, 359 intuitive music 168 invariant, invariance 46, 47, 218 irony 208, 221, 222, 225, 362 jazz 9, 104, 108, 109, 111, 181, 209, 223, 340 free jazz 111 Kabuki 341 Klangfarbenmelodie 189 knowledge 21, 22, 29, 46 labour 238, 239, 240, 262, 267; see also work language 29, 222, 245, 280, 310, 311, 320, 324, 366, 368

mass musical language 212, 221 levels 267–73 libertarianism 154 listener, listening 84, 168, 169, 183, 191, 194, 196, 217, 218, 219, 270, 271, 273, 303, 335, 336, 337, 340, 345, 353, 364 dialectical listening 336 typology of listeners 270 literature 256, 257, 311 logic 41, 46, 47, 53, 183–204, 214, 273 classical logic 183, 196, 198 dialectical logic 183, 196, 198 Hegelian logic 261 musical logic 183–204, 198 looping 103, 134, 299, 300 Löwenheim-Skolem theorem 195 machine 46 magic 287, 341, 342, 363 broken magic 341, 342–3, 363 magic square 176 market 41, 250 art market 256 mass media 27, 224 material, musical material 10, 11, 27, 43, 44, 45, 99, 102, 114, 115, 118, 121, 134, 136, 157, 191, 196, 209, 212, 215, 216, 220, 223, 229–47, 251, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 306, 314, 315, 319, 322, 324, 325, 331, 332, 338, 340, 344, 352, 353, 363, 365 materialism 263, 264 mathematics 32, 40, 90, 183, 186, 189, 198, 311 matter 39 mechanics, mechanism 21, 23, 31, 45 media 249, 255, 327 mediation 10, 30, 119, 213, 215–216, 229–47, 259–76 melody 77, 84, 125, 170, 189, 335, 344, 354, 366 memory 134, 147, 234, 236, 243, 244, 251, 284, 336 metaphor 263, 264 metaphysics 244 metatonality 56

Index of Subjects metre 42, 43, 170 mimicry, mimesis 179, 256, 274 minimalism 180 mobile, mobile form 107, 164, 165, 166, 181, 314, 338 modality 30, 52, 53, 60, 70 modern 31 modernism 10, 145, 167, 168, 206, 207, 212, 217, 222, 223, 224, 249, 250, 252, 303, 368 aesthetic modernism 210 anti-modernism 209, 210 modernity 13, 210, 369 modernization 206, 210, 213, 250 moment form 166 monad 262, 267 monophony 46 montage 84, 100, 221, 222 morality 210 movement 20, 21, 47, 232, 251, 350, 358 music drama 198 music theatre 324, 367 musicology 259, 286, 364 musique concrète 9, 84, 102, 103, 111, 114, 156, 158, 332 musique concrète instrumentale 332, 334 musique d’ameublement 153 musique informelle 5, 8, 12, 213, 231, 346, 350 mysticism 170 natality 239, 243, 244 nature 12, 21, 35, 41, 54, 80, 112, 157, 160, 161, 162, 181, 241, 268, 274, 286, 293, 299, 337, 353, 368 second nature 12 Nazism 31, 340 negation 225, 253, 345 negative dialectics 170 neo-romanticism 4, 362 neo-serialism 41–42, 43, 196 New, the 239, 243, 245 new capitulationism 213 new complexity 10, 89–98, 213 new simplicity 89 nihilism 245 noise 57, 58, 77, 82, 100, 101, 103, 135, 153, 333

383

norm, normativity 211, 225, 268, 272 notation 20, 26, 45, 46, 84, 114, 150, 154, 163, 192, 218, 219, 220, 225, 282 novel, the 234, 235 objectification 232, 233, 237 objet sonore 285 objet trouvé 238, 290, 328 ontology 44, 170 open forms 133, 165, 181 open work 164, 166, 196 opera 107, 324, 325, 326, 327, 329, 367 orchestra, 42, 109 salon orchestra 107 orchestration 42, 43, 44, 121 organology 22 oscillator 21, 33, 34, 35, 36 painter, painting 160, 161, 320, 335 paradigm 254 paradigm shift 254 parody 221 pastiche 208 pastoral 102 pendulum 21, 23 perception 285, 322, 330, 331, 336, 342, 363, 364, 365, 368, 369 percussion 101, 103, 104, 107, 113, 119, 129, 153, 324, 345, 364, 366 performer, performance 21, 91, 166, 167, 169, 217, 218, 219, 220, 225, 268, 270, 271, 334 work-as-performance 271 phantasmagoria 8, 262, 287, 317 philosophy 13, 14, 19, 31, 41, 45, 46, 48, 180, 217, 222, 250, 300, 311, 312, 323, 327, 328, 335 analytic philosophy 170, 249, 253, 254, 319, 329, 357 philosophy of history 266 philosophy of totality 175–182 physics 22, 35, 39, 157, 163, 183, 186, 189 pitch, pitch relations 42, 43, 44, 77, 135, 158, 170, 176, 178, 189, 334, 347 pitch-class set theory see set theory plainsong, plainchant 324, 325 pluralism 104, 208–9, 216, 254 poetics 121

384

Contemporary Music

poetry 320, 323, 324 poïesis 239, 245, 246, 252 poietics, theory of 230 pointillism 151, 157 polemics 150, 259 politics 4, 241, 242, 253, 254, 255, 341, 361 polyphony 43, 44, 46, 56, 77, 114, 120, 159, 164, 285, 335, 358 popular music(s) 100, 108, 109, 111, 114, 115, 221, 222, 223, 266 positivism 266, 286, 300 postmodernism 10, 205–28, 229, 230, 232, 245, 249, 250, 252, 257, 270, 275, 368 postmodernity 205, 206 prepared piano 119, 129, 153 printing 236 process 219, 315 production 222, 223, 242, 262, 268, 269, 271, 273 forces and relations of production 262 psychoacoustics 29, 37, 190 psychology 183, 187, 189 cognitive psychology 48 quotation 100, 104, 105, 111, 175, 208, 218, 221, 335, 336, 363, 368 racism 254 radio 104, 119, 168, 335, 361 ragtime 87, 111 raï 257 randomicity 156 rap 257 rationalism 28 rationality 250 rationalization 9, 10, 45, 46, 53, 210, 252, 253, 262, 270 means-ends rationalization 263 reader, reading 235 reality 48, 279, 280, 303, 338 reception 168, 213, 217, 270 reception history 362, 365 recording 102, 103, 168, 222, 268 reflection 269, 275, 340, 361 reggae 109 register 42, 43, 44, 81, 85, 121 registration 122

regression 223 rehearsal 218 reification 212, 230 relations 262; see also production social relations 267 relativism 208, 216 religion 341, 357 representation 280, 335 reproduction 217, 234, 236, 246, 269, 271 reproducibility, technical reproducibility 100, 246, 268 resistance 224 resonance 23, 56, 127, 162 rhythm 42, 43, 84, 112, 148, 149, 152, 170, 299, 300, 335, 366 ring modulation 34, 127 risk 11, 249 ritual 303, 341, 342 rock music 9, 104, 109, 110, 209, 223, 225 progressive rock 99, 110, 115 punk rock 115 ruin 220 sacred, the 300, 303 sameness 198–9 sampling 9, 34, 36, 81, 99, 111, 112 scale 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 74, 75, 79 scale systems 274 schemata 268 science 19, 22, 31, 47, 170, 185, 186, 210, 363 score 166, 191, 194, 195, 219, 362, 364, 365, 368 graphic score 189 work-as-score 270, 271 scratching 9, 114 self-reflection, self-reflexivity 214, 215, 216, 221, 223, 265, 273, 274, 369 semiology, semiotics, 263, 368 serialism 8, 41–2, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 56, 81, 83, 86, 90, 96, 97, 99, 117, 120, 145, 151, 153, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167, 168, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 188, 196, 198, 331, 338, 347 sets 51, 53, 180 set theory 53, 54, 56, 58, 75

Index of Subjects signification 216, 367, 369 silence 136, 153, 178, 237, 293, 337, 358 society 9, 21, 48, 210, 222, 252, 255, 259, 266, 269, 274, 344, 365 social conditions 205 social relations 259–76 social situation 272 sociology 9, 223, 265, 270, 274 sonata 198, 338 sonority 117, 128, 129–30 sound 77, 100, 196, 233, 332, 334, 338, 344, 346, 348, 357, 358, 362 organized sound 293 sound figure 120 sound sculpture 358 sound structure 78 sound synthesis 29, 32, 35, 75 space 11, 118, 159, 163, 175, 177, 189, 345 spatialization 11, 84, 158, 159, 293 spectralism, spectral music 4, 9, 11, 19, 37, 53, 54, 86, 94, 279, 363 standardization 21 stochastics 95 story-telling 10, 229, 233–8, 241, 243 strategy 183, 191, 200, 202, 203, 211, 218 structure, structuration 11, 29, 32, 39, 44, 46, 99, 114, 121, 155, 158, 214, 218, 225, 232, 245, 275, 288, 326, 337, 338, 339, 340, 344, 347, 369 sound structure (Strukturklang) 331 Sturm und Drang 367 style 209, 214, 216, 218, 221 subculture 222 subjectivism 235 Sublime, the 323 surrealism 171, 206, 212, 222, 306, 312, 313, 325, 348 symbolism 5 syntax 308–10, 323, 333, 339, 340 system 30, 201 systematization 11, 12 synthesis 314 technique 46, 119, 222, 244, 256, 263, 268, 311, 344 extended techniques 365 techno 101, 111, 113, 342

385

technology 20, 21, 29, 33, 36, 44, 45, 46, 207, 229, 233, 263, 268, 361 information technology 191, 195 teleology 345 temperament see tuning tempo 43 texture 43, 354, 358, 364, 366 theology 186 theory 6, 11, 14, 19, 29, 30, 31, 40, 42, 45, 47, 48, 223; see also sets; set theory critical theory 265 theory as codification 265–6 theory as legitimation 265–6 theory as critical reflection 265–6 theory of models 194 theory of music 19, 27, 30 theory of musical complexity 89–97 timbre 28, 35, 36, 37, 42, 43, 48, 77, 121, 123, 139, 157, 158, 163, 176, 178, 285, 299, 331 time, dimension of 11, 32, 33, 36, 55, 208, 251, 274, 326, 328, 330, 345 concept of time 12 failed time 12, 319, 328 musical time 319 successful time 328 temporality 11 tonality 77, 78, 105, 175, 282, 283, 334, 339 tonal reference 269 tonal system 263, 268 tools, technological tools 20, 45, 47, 100, 324 tradition 10, 13, 42, 211, 220, 236, 244, 250, 269, 284, 342, 343, 346, 361, 365, 368 transcription 26 transducer 22, 33 transformation 335, 337, 338, 348 transition 11, 198 transitoriness 11 transmission 238, 244, 268, 320 truth 11, 12, 216, 279, 309, 330 eternal truths 105 temporary truth 309 truth concept 11 truth not beauty 330 tuning, tuning systems 46, 263, 268

386

Contemporary Music

equal temperament 59, 60, 61 temperament 58 type, typology 30, 39, 44, 206, 225, 265, 271 formal type see form ideal type 271 uncertainty 11 uncertainty principle 11, 279 underground 114, 170 understanding 270 unintelligibility 212 universal matrix 106 utopia 159, 162, 169, 207, 211, 253, 259, 365

variation 198 developing variation 45 virtuosity 166, 219 volt, voltage 33, 36 work 200, 229, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243, 244; see also labour musical work 200, 202, 270, 271 work concept 217, 219 world music 9, 99, 111, 114, 115 writing (écriture) 119, 170, 183, 191, 192, 194, 195, 202, 203