Describe and evaluate the ways in which composers working with elements of musical indeterminacy attempted to a) redefine and b) maintain ‘traditional’ composer-performer relationships during the period 1945-2000.
‘Do you believe I was thinking of your silly fiddle when the spirit spoke to me?’ was Beethoven’s riposte to Schuppanzigh, when the violinist complained about a difficult passage in his Violin concerto.[1] Whilst perhaps one of Beethoven’s more flippant remarks, it is one immortalized for neatly surmising the expanding view of the growing importance of the composer in comparison to performer in the 19th century. On performing Beethoven’s music, E.T.A Hoffman writing in 1813 commented- ‘The true artist… is above putting his own personality forward in any way, and all his endeavors are directed towards a single end- that all the wonderful enchanting pictures that and apparitions that the composer has sealed into his work with magic power may be called into active life!’[2]
The 19th century bears witness to the continuing expansion of this celebration of the composer’s ‘magic’, under which the performer’s ego is effectively obsolete. By the early 1900’s the high-modernist composer Schoenberg was emphasizing this autonomy by requiring the performer’s ‘complete subservience’[3] and Stravinsky went as far as to replace the performer’s role of ‘interpretation’ (of a work) with ‘execution’ which he characterized as ‘the strict outing into effect of an explicit will that contains nothing beyond what it specifically commands.’[4] Another to use this change of term was Russian virtuoso pianist, Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) (we should not assume that this view was held by composers only) who gives the analogy of the performer as a ‘mirror’ reflecting the composer -‘If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it."[5]
This increase of authority of the composer was coupled with a tendency for composers to notate their score with an increasing precision and meticulousness- something which also has roots in Beethoven-[6] Schoenberg exhibiting detailed markings in both atonal and twelve-tone works, and Webern closely scrutinizing even the smallest musical particle, which directly influenced the post-Webern Serialists of the late 1940’s- principally Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez- to pinpoint all the so called parameters with the greatest possible accuracy.[7] In Hoffman’s terms we could consider this analogous to ‘sealing in more magic’, which does not appear such a ludicrous turn of phrase when we consider the reification that these (to use Schoenberg’s phrase) ‘masterworks’[8] received. Although doubtlessly a multitude of exceptional performances were created and appreciated during this period, the prevailing idea within the cannon was the Platonic/Schopenhauerian idealist notion that ‘the work’ was located in its conception (in the composer’s mind or in the ‘world of forms’) rather than its physicality.[9]
This is the backdrop against which composers working in the period from 1945-2000 were set against, and how I am defining the ‘traditional’ conception of composer-performer relationships within the western classical sphere.[10]
The first examples of indeterminate techniques were witnessed in the American ‘Experimental’ tradition,[11] later expanded upon by the New York School.[12] The New Grove dictionary identifies three main types of indeterminate composition or aleatory technique 1) the use of random procedures in the generation of fixed compositions (best exemplified in Cage’s ‘chance music’) 2) the allowance of choice to the performers among formal options stipulated by the composer and 3) methods of notation (including texts and graphics) which reduce the composer’s control over the sounds in the composition.
Compositionally, these techniques represent a dramatic departure from the integral-serial compositions listed above, yet three years after Structures 1a, (although more than 20 years after the start of the American tradition) both Boulez and Stockhausen were employing this second type of aleatoric technique (Boulez’s 3rd Piano sonata (1955-57/63), and Stockhausen’s Klavierstucke XI) and by 1968 Stockhausen had deviated entirely from his highly determinate background and was writing ‘ambiguous’ pieces that sometimes constituted no more than a few lines of text. How then, is it possible for the performer to enact their traditional role, in reflecting- to use Richter’s words- the ‘ideal work’, if the work itself is not entirely fixed by the composer? The remainder of this essay shall be a discussion of the ways in which indeterminate techniques employed by various composers- working with indeterminate aspects maintain or redefine the traditional performer/composer roles.
John Cage worked with many indeterminate mediums, the first being Music of Changes (1951) which can be defined by type 1 listed above; a fixed composition built on random procedures (the use of the I Ching which generated hexagrams that correlate to certain given pitches and durations, sounds and silences, tempi and dynamics) Other methods included using uncontrolled ‘performance’ conditions- the most obvious example being 4’33”, but also including works such as Imaginary Landscape No.4 (1951) for 12 radios, 24 performers and conductor- or employing indeterminate notation (for instance, the use of graphics) for the performer to respond to.
In utilizing procedures beyond his control, Cage’s intention was to ‘critique’ his own position as composer, deliberately eliminating his own compositional voice and preferences in style and taste.[13] This is especially witnessed in compositions such as 4’33”, demonstrative of Cage’s increasing interest in sounds and noises not produced by culturally conditioned human activity; the human aspect not only being less aesthetically pleasing, but dependent on the didactic composer-role which was, to him, an ‘unattractive way to get things done’- a composer simply being ‘someone who tells other people what to do.’[14] In this redefinition of role, Cage’s intention was not to hand his voice to the performer, but to let chance is speak for (and to) both of them. Improvisation was ‘something that I want to avoid. Most people who improvise slip back into their likes and dislikes, and their memory… and they don’t arrive at any revelation that they’re unaware of.’[15]
Cage’s relationship with the performer was mediated in accordance with the indeterminate method he was employing in each specific composition- the scores to pieces such as The Music of Changes as authoritarian as any archetypal Darmstadt score, requiring the skill of a virtuoso; this work and many others were written for Cage’s friend and associate David Tudor, who would later become a composer in his own right.[16] Yet in some respects this relationship- and the relationship Cage had with the performer in all works employing indeterminate notation- undermined his ‘chance’ aesthetic. Like many composers, Cage draws a hard line between performances resulting from ‘indeterminate notation’ and the intentionally avoided ‘improvisation’, inflected with the performer’s personality- yet is this difference as marked as Cage would have it be? The standard definition appearing in the New Grove Dictionary claims that improvisation ‘may involve the work's immediate composition by its performers, or the elaboration or adjustment of an existing framework, or anything in between.’[17]
Cage’s work Variations 2 (1961) of indeterminate duration, for any number of players and sound producing means, is the most abstract notational model of Cage’s late 50’s early 60’s period[18] and hands the performer a good deal of freedom with which to ‘personalise’ the work.[19] Tudor realized this score for an amplified piano in 1961, at the end of period whilst he was making the personal progression from performer to composer, underlining a key issue concerning authenticity. Because of Tudor’s close relationship with Cage, and specialism in performing indeterminate scores, what is Cagean and what is Tudorian about this specific realisation is unclear. In a study of how Tudor realised this specific work, James Pritchett cites he performance of Variations 2 as the location of the emergence of Tudor’s own compositional voice because of the synchronization with Tudor’s later works, dubbing it ‘Tudor’s first composition.’[20]
If, in offering a slightly personailsed and idiosyncratic interpretation, the compositional authority is blurred or shifts entirely from Cage to Tudor, does this render Tudor’s interpretation ‘wrong?’ In performing indeterminate scores, is the composer’s role to ‘perform out’ the indeterminate nature of these scores? In this case, we reach further problems in that the performer is torn between a (consciously or not) personalized- and therefore ‘uncagean’- rendition of Cage, or a performance which deliberately reflects the ‘Cage aesthetic’ and therefore constitutes as a continuation, not redefinition of the traditional ‘didactic’ composer function Cage attempted to challenge in writing these works.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, one who remained unimpressed by Cage’s chance technique and the ‘threat’ these random procedures posed to the structural integrity of the work was Pierre Boulez, rejecting the advances made with the statement that ‘this experimenting with the term chance I call carelessness.’[21] This position however, left him faced with a compositional problem when by his own admission he realized that ‘a development that is fixed in a final way has struck me as no longer coinciding with the current state of musical thought.’[22]
His 3rd Piano sonata (of which only two movements are complete 1955-57/63) can be seen as an intelligent compositional response the contradiction outlined above,[23] which he justifies in his 1963 article Alea. Boulez emphatically dismisses Cagean methods of indeterminate composition and cuts a clear line, not between indeterminacy and improvisation like Cage, but between the employment of random techniques to create fixed compositions, and his preferred method of ‘controlled choice’- writing that the only way to incorporate chance (or choice) into a composition was to allow it to be absorbed into the structure by ‘establishing a certain automatism of relationship among networks of probabilities drawn up beforehand.’[24]
This is evident within the sonata, where the performer is presented with a set of options- the order of the work's five movements may be freely selected; within movements themselves, the performer is offered a number of alternative routes, and must choose (with consideration beforehand) which passages to perform and which to omit.[25] The implications of each possible decision have been clearly meditated by the composer before hand, the work ‘solving’ the perceived problem by allowing open development whilst also maintaining the work’s closed cycle and its traditional ‘fixed’ status.[26]
Despite the amount of freedom given to the performer, Boulez intentionally retains as much control over material an compositional authority as he can whilst employing this technique, as he states- ‘The liberty- or the liberation- of the performer changes absolutely nothing about the notion of structure, since the problem is actually merely put off until a little later’[27] Certainly, this position appears to be clarified by those writing on performance who suggest that ‘The performer who accepts the freedom to ‘Shape’ Boulez’s third Piano Sonata (or a similarly ‘Mobile’ work)… [needs to make]… informed and carefully considered decisions (within controlled boundaries.’ A position which does not render the modernist performance ideology of performer as mirror obsolete.
Breaking away from his Darmstadt past, and bored with musicians who had become ‘living tape recorders, separated from one another’[28] the late 1960’s witnessed Stockahusen’s growing concern with the metaphysical properties and functions of music. This shift in perspective was epitomized in the composition of Aus den sieben tagen, (1968) a set of 15 text compositions for varying ensembles upwards of 3 musicians. In reaction to a personal crisis- his wife’s departure from their marriage- Stockhausen confined himself to his house, and wrote for the first time, indeterminate esoteric ‘text’ compositions:[29]
No. 13- ‘It’
Think NOTHING
Wait until it is absolutely still within you
When you have attained this
Begin to play
As soon as you start to think, stop
And try to re-attain
The state of NON-THINKING
Then continue playing[30]
In contrast to his early works, the text here does not simply give the performer an element of choice, but totally refocuses the ‘compositional’ responsibility onto the performer, where it is their reactions, choices, attunement to their own sonic environment and, especially in this in this case, mental process, that provide all of the inner workings of the composition. Stockhausen defines these works as distinct from improvisation, instead replacing the term with ‘Intuitive music’ stating- ‘The word improvisation no longer seems right for what we are playing since that always involves some underlying schemata, formulae, or other stylistic elements.’[31]
Although we can quite readily understand this development in Stockhausen’s music in relation to the expansion of his metaphysical interests, the notion of ‘Intuitive music’ has been described by critics as ‘confused’,[32] and evidently ‘raises innumerable questions about the composer-performer-listener relationships, about the concept of ‘the work’ and what and whom music is for.’ The effect of the breakdown of these relationships can be witnessed, in a practical sense, by the problems Stockhausen has faced in the performance of his own music.
As one might expect in a composition in which performers are invited to intuitively improvise to such a short and equivocal text for often as long as 40 minutes, Stockhausen’s largest problem was that of formal sameness. Vinko Globokar (Contemporary composer and improviser who performed Aus den sieben Tagen, and whose ensuing rift with Stockhausen became emblematic of the entire matter) commented: ‘Movements between action-reaction, simple-complex, tension-relaxation are made progressively, rarely in an abrupt manner. The form is often sinusoidal, each situation lasting until it has been exhausted.’[33]
This formal ambiguity caused Stockhausen to oversee and authorize specific performances of the text in a ‘compositional’ fashion, often stipulating more development from the players than the text specified,[34] and predominantly working with the same specific groups of musicians who were accustomed to his work- a secondary problem being that conservatory-trained orchestral players were often uncomfortable with their new ‘improvisatory’ role, not possessing the different attitude needed to ‘shape music which needs personal decisions in favour of the other players’[35]
The statement that gives us the most grounds for criticism is Stockhausen’s claim that the musical performance ‘is always focused on a text by me, which invites an absolutely specific intuitive response.’[36] Is the text specific? If it is, why then, is there be the need to change the response during rehearsal? Evidently there is a large amount of contradiction here, summed most neatly by Griffith’s comment that it is hard to know whom the music is ‘for’; Stockhausen hands the mantle of composer to the performer, only to take it back in rehearsal when the sonic result is different to what he envisaged.
Does intuitive playing and an aural product lying in accordance with Stockhausen’s sonic vision always correlate? If we apply this in relation to Composition No. 13, given above, the basic notion of the piece is destroyed. The re-forming of the work during rehearsal is surely undermines the instruction to ‘Wait until ‘it’ is absolutely still within you’ before commencing to play. Is the performer to stop when they have ‘started to think’ again, or when more textural or dynamic force is demanded by the composer? And paradoxically, surely remembering the instructions of the composer as outlined in rehearsal during the performance would constitute as a thought, in which case the performer should cease to play!
A composer bold enough to directly brand this type of behavior as resultant of Stockhausen’s ‘egomania’,[37] and who was also insistent that Stockhausen has redefined nothing at all in the relationship of composer and performer is Cornelius Cardew- with whom Stockhausen makes an interesting comparison. On the surface Cardew and Stockhausen appear to have gone down similar compositional tracts, both shifting compositional responsibility onto the performer, both dispensing with notation at various points and employing new ways of communicating their ideas, and both becoming involved with ensembles that performed ‘improvised’ music.[38] Yet Cardew vehemently rejected all that Stockhausen stood for- a view largely determined by his interest in radical left wing politics (Marxism and Maoism)- going as far as to vilify him in the title of his book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (Published 1974).
Cardew’s main objection to Stockhausen (and we can take this from a man who knew Stockhausen quite well, having worked with him on the composition of Carre)[39]
was rooted in the Marxist belief that Stockhausen’s art, mystical or otherwise, like all other canonized composers, served the ideology of the bourgeois rather than the proletariat, since the ‘the artistic avant-garde is a part of the imperialist superstructure… which protects [imperialist] society against radical social change’[40]
In contrast to tradition, Cardew advocated a re-definitive ‘symbiotic’ relationship between performer and composer. Central to this idea was the conception that the traditional score supported a hierarchical division of labour that required performers to subject themselves to the will of the composer. Cardew’s belief that conversely, the indeterminacy of graphic notation helped to dissolve this hierarchy instead fostering an active collaboration between the two parties[41] is manifest in his most influential work, Treastise (1963-7).
Treatise is ‘entirely’ indeterminate in the respect nothing is specified as to the manner in which it should be played. Inspired by Wittgenstein's Tractatus and his own background as a graphic designer- it comprises 193 pages; a continuous weaving and combining of a host of graphic elements (of which only a few are recognizably related to traditional musical notation) resulting in a long musical ‘composition’, the meaning of which in terms of sound is not specified in any way. Any number of performers, using any media, are free to participate in a ‘reading’ of Treatise- there is no ‘start’ or ‘end’ point, or instruction of any kind (Cardew was disinclined to do this on publication), the score simply exists. Evidently, Cardew’s idea was that the performer should not interpret the work in a particular way (e.g. how s/he imagines the composer intended) but instead ‘should be engaged in the act of interpretation.’[42]
In his 1961 article for Tempo magazine where Cardew outlined his position on interpretation, he argues against the traditional ‘platonic’ conception of the work, stating that ‘…it implies that there is something behind the notation, something the composer meant but did not write. In my piece there is no intention separate from the notation; the intention is that the player should respond to the notation.’[43] Yet what is preventing Treatise from becoming reified in the hierarchical manner that Cardew diametrically opposes himself and his work too? Treatise is a work where the score is the only constant, the only stable element which binds each performance under the same label, signed with Cardew’s name, remaining as an ‘object of ‘aesthetic contemplation after [the] ephemeral performances have dissipated’.[44]
Although he went further than most in trying to restructure the hierarchical academicised tradition, something that could almost be seen as undermining the whole of Cardew’s output, is the contradiction that lies between socialist politics and his interest in contemporary composition. Although different in terms of the ‘social infrastructure’, sonically, his music [presumably] would not serve the interests of the ‘masses’ more than any composition by Stockhausen, (although perhaps they might be more encouraged to participate) and many would be disinclined to describe Cardew as anything less than avant garde; in light of his departure from tradition, we could place him right at the forefront.[45] As Timothy D Taylor notes in a critique of Cardew’s politics- criticizing the bourgeois culture from within requires the critic to adopt some of the aspects of that system (in order to ‘authorise’ their voice). Whilst Cardew may well have understood that his conception of self was bourgeois, he nonetheless kept it, for he remains the singular presence behind this work- and indeed all his works[46] (works with the Scratch Orchestra were presented as collaborative). In application to the point about Treatise we could argue that the adoption of the position of composer and authorship of the score, Cardew merely reinvents a new form of didacticism compliant with traditional Western expectations-[47] there is no similar transformation of the bourgeois ‘composer-individual’, Cardew may be seen as having reinvented the role of performer, not composer.
In conclusion, the manner in which composers working within the period from 1945-2000 utilized indeterminate compositional techniques posed a direct threat to the traditionally held hegemony of composer over performer. I have illustrated the numerous ways in which composers attempted to maintain this role (Boulez), redefine it (Cage/Cardew), or formulate a manner incorporating both (Stockhausen). I have evaluated the success of these approaches and identified any weaknesses or contradictions found within the sets of interrelations between specific indeterminate compositions and the composer’s conception of the performer/composer role within these works, or between these works and the composer’s conceptual understanding of these areas of his output more generally.
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