Essay: Socialising Analysis Through Postmodern Knowledge

Socialising Analysis Through Postmodern Knowledge

(MPhil Submission, Lent Term 2012)

3500 Words

The 20^th Century saw the study of music predominantly focused on the study of Western Art Music through analyses which took as their starting point the 'music itself'– interpreting the structures of a work, together with their resolution into relatively simpler elements, to show how harmony and motives work together to form a unified whole. From the late 1950's onwards, the quasi-scientific field of music theory and analysis underwent rapid expansion and professionalisation in North America, 'music theorist' becoming an esteemed professional identity (Everett Maus 2004: 14). Although there are certainly agreed upon methodological 'tools' (i.e. the parameters of the music itself), there are many accepted, differing methodologies.¹

Joseph Kerman's seminal publications How We Got Into Analysis and How To Get Out (1980) and Musicology (1985) began a substantial weakening of faith in the methods of analysis, and a shift in focus towards the 'cultural' values to which it has, by custom, dichotomously opposed itself. In this essay, I will take the look at the contributions of two authors who helped shift musicology out of the analytic paradigm by borrowing ideas from literary theory, whether to present a method of discussing social context – Lawrence Kramer's Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, or to present a different model of how we may look at the 'music itself' – Rose Rosengard Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations. I will use these texts to illustrate issues raised by the paradigm shift, and to suggest ways in which these problems, which are still pertinent today, may be resolved.

In the first chapter of Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, Kramer accuses analysis as having, in its “zealous will to truth” promoted the “rhetoric of impersonality into an epistemological first principle”, and states that within musicology, the concept of knowledge needs to be re-situated within the historicity of human subjects and their discourses (Kramer 1992: 2). Kramer 'undoes' analysis's rational foundation by asserting that by adopting a scientific manner and presenting its results as objective, analysis disguises its roots in the subjectivity of the analyst and makes implicit the value judgments on which it constructs its claims to knowledge. “For what if”, Kramer asks, “interpretations are...contestable, historically conditioned forms of knowledge?” (my italics). This position is supported by many later musicologists, who have gone even further in trying to show that the 'purist' techniques of analysis have a strong root in the ideology surrounding the Western concert tradition and the culturally constructed notion of instrumental music as transcendental (Levy 1987, Tomlinson 2003).

Kramer proceeds to argue for a musicology that makes the historical – with all its contingencies, subjectivities and cultural constructs – an object on which to focus rather than deny. He outlines scope for engagement with feminist theory, popular culture, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, the histories of sexualities and other forms of postmodern knowledge. The essential principle of Kramer's musicology is that it should be a 'dialogue of listening' between critic and the composer, who provokes questions by making their music behave in a certain way, and trusts the listener to hear the music within a field of rhetorical, expressive, and discursive behaviours. He states this is especially appropriate to 'representative' music; representation is one of the sites where culture enters music, and music enters culture. In his third chapter, Kramer presents a detailed analysis of Haydn's The Creation, using both Schenker and Tovey to help elucidate the manner in which Die Vorstellung des Chaos conveys its representation of the origins of the universe, accounting for the appropriate musical parameters. For example, Kramer takes the use of melody to be appropriately fragmentary (as one might expect in a partly-formed universe) and also locates a 'chaos motive': three notes ascending a minor third in a double dotted rhythm (e.g mm.22-24). He explains how Haydn treats the motive to explicate chaos's urgent desire to be lifted into the cosmos, but also to thwart their aspirations, as they greet the cadences in bars 39 and 49.

Kramer’s notion of 'subjectivity' here and in the rest of the book becomes obfuscated and problematic in its application. For all his apparent understanding of the problems of the enlightened postmodern academic, he appears to limit discussion of the (co-dependent and co-extensive) relationship between subject and object only to disciplinary classifications of knowledge – equating 'subjectivity' with the cultural and historical, in marked opposition to the 'objective' which he relates to quantitative and quasi-mathematical data. Although initially he undercuts the traditionally conceived notion of objective by pointing out its origins in subjectivity, he takes up the same authorial stance and manner of looking at the object that has traditionally been used by analysis. That is, although he considers 'extra musical' factors, he does so through from the perspective of someone who claims they have access to the music as it 'really is'.

Since not all of Kramer's arguments are fully justified by his musical examples (Pasler 1997), one could argue that a more nuanced application of postmodern knowledge would have been slightly more cautious in conducting a 'dialogue' with the music. For, without any semantic capacity of its own, music is inarticulate in refuting the meanings the theorist gives it.² In Kramer's studies, the distinction between finding meanings and creating them is markedly obscure. This is demonstrated especially when he argues that the musical portrayal of 'chaos' extends towards a notion of 'limitlessness' he turns to quoting the literary theorist Slavoj Žižek, rather than providing a musical example as justification for his ideas. Behind this example lies a deeper epistemological issue: when discussing music, is there ever a distinct difference between meanings which are found and meanings which are made, or is there only a gradient? I will return to the role of social context later in this essay; to delve further into the complications postmodern theory illuminates between analysis, the academic, and the 'music itself', I will now turn to Rose Rosengard Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations.

The poststructuralist concept of deconstruction, engendered by Jaques Derrida, has no universally agreed upon definition or form of application. In fact, deconstruction is resistant to any notion that would 'fix' its interpretation, precisely because its 'central principle' (for lack of a more appropriate term) is what Derrida called Différance – the notion that there is always some difference, some delay, between the meaning intended in an utterance made by a subject, and the meaning received in its interpretation by another (Glendinning 2011: 54). The issue is more complex, vast and discursive than this small outline makes clear, but for the purposes of this essay, this does not matter: Subotnik makes no claim to provide a full account of any deconstructionist’s work; rather, the book is an account of the results of the application of certain 'deconstructive' ideas to a musical text.³

The chapter that most concerns us, entitled “How Could Chopin's A-Major Prelude be Deconstructed” presents two, in-depth readings of Chopin's Prelude op. 28, no. 7, which are incompatible: as Subotnik observes, “characteristically, a deconstruction results in (at least) two coherent readings of a single text that coexist but cannot be reconciled with each other” (Subotnik 1996: 66). The first, more 'congenial' reading – the one that Subotnik states the prelude “assigns priority to,” and therefore presents as the foreground layer of meaning – construes the prelude as a unified whole. It is divided into 'primary' material, which is tonally located in the key of A major, and 'supplementary' material, the climactic chord on the first beat of measure 12 (chord V of B major). The supplementary material is defined as such since the piece would still work as a composition if phrase 6, which contains the chord, behaved like phrase 2; although Subotnik is keen to remind us the chord is complementary, not inessential.

Subotnik claims the workings of the prelude “suggest themselves very powerfully... as a metaphor for free choice.” By rupturing the A major tonality, chord V of B (analogous to a subjective individual) effectively symbolizes the power of the freely acting subject to have an impact on its environment. Yet, through its identity as tonally different, it clarifies its own secondary status, and thus confirms the governing constructive role of the tonic, A, just as the freely acting subject depends on some united, governing, rational framework in order to render its actions intelligible.

In the second 'deconstructive' reading, Subotnik rips apart the unity she previously constructed. By replacing the tonal lens she uses to view the prelude with one that focuses on parameters our academic tradition may have conditioned us to marginalize, we can construe phrase 6 and the climactic chord it contains not as a consequential partner of phrase 5, but as itself, an antecedent. Thus, we may hear chord V of B-minor as a dramatic and rhetorical projection of strength, which is disjunct from the rest of the piece also in terms of its extended range, increased dynamic, and the fact that the chord is often performed slower tempo, and rolled (for pianists whose hands do not span a compound major third). In breaking the symmetry of the 'sensuous' antecedents and 'logical' consequents, the framework of order in the first reading is dissolved, and the prelude's is rendered contingent; a structure which, like human life, may or may not possess meaning.

There are a number of issues that arise from this interpretation. The first is similar to the problem encountered within Kramer's analysis: in her analysis she reaches outwards to explain the prelude in light of metaphoric associations it has no power to contest. In extension, Subotnik's interpretation (of both the two readings, and the relationship between phrase 6 and the rest of the musical material) as oppositional appears forced. A unified prelude and an un-unified prelude might be unreconcilable, but do they constitute a binary opposition? As Brian Hyer observes of deconstructive readings more generally, “deconstructionists sometimes force mere differences into oppositions in order to preside, triumphantly over their undoing” (Hyer 1998: 414).

The main issue, however, is illuminated by questioning whether Subotnik's readings actually are deconstructive. As I have stated, what deconstruction exactly is falls outside the boundaries of this essay, and Subotnik herself never claims to have presented an (again, for lack of a better term) authentic deconstructive model. Yet what Subotnik's analysis reveals is a weakening of faith in the tools of analysis: an unclear stance on which parameters should be used to dissect the prelude into its 'essential elements' (necessary in order to explain its inner workings). In both readings phrases are taken as stable constituent objects, with phrase 6 as the climax; however, phrase 6's classification as antecedent or consequent is dependent on whether we view the prelude in a predominantly tonal sense (as in reading 1) or whether we include the (traditionally secondary) parameters of range and dynamic. A third view, articulated by Brian Hyer in light of what he considers the prelude's 'terseness', is that there are not eight phrases but two (antecedent) phrases (with cadences). And Kevin Korsyn contends, in his survey of analyses of Prelude no. 7, and the rest of Opus 28, there are, in fact, four different ways of reading the preludes: as unified monads, with separate systems of internal workings, as nomads, as a cryptocycle, or as an ironic cycle, depending on which way each prelude's internal workings are defined in relation with the others' (Korsyn 2003: 101).

Implicitly demonstrated by the multiplicity of readings – whether contained within the work of a single “author” or not – is this: the results of analysis are dependent on the questions analysis asks, and the parameters through which it chooses to view the work. As Adam Krims has observed, those working within the field of New Musicology, despite their critical sophistication, often take for granted the essentialist premise that music analysis may reveal something objectively present in the 'music itself' (Krims 1998: 304). In this sense, Subotnik and Kramer's analyses are more structuralist than poststructuralist, but then so is all analytical theory: analysis itself seems to encourage us to essentialize analytical 'tools', whilst poststructuralist thought contests metalanguage and its essentialist tendencies, and tends to militate against methodological closure. Indeed, if there ever was a binary opposition that needed to be undone, it would have been between the 'objects' of analysis and their expression in language.

Are analysis and postmodern knowledge radically incompatible, then? Kofi Agawu argues: yes. Analysis needs neither cultural context or postmodern knowledge; theory works best when questions about its objects are consigned to the periphery, and when matters of social context form a separate discussion: “The musical text...together with an explicit methodology, form the basis of theorizing.” In this sense, analysis needs no justification and should carry on as it has done before (Agawu 1993: 89-98).

This barefaced rebutal resulted in a discursive stalemate with Joseph Kerman, whereby both theorists fought from positions constructed on different axioms, “misrecognizing the two disciplines dependency on each other, as they misrecognise the sources of their own identity”. Agawu undermines his argument by presenting a historical case for it, and Kerman tries to construct a unified identity for all historical critics by attempting to detach historical criticism from theory entirely, obscuring the identities of theorists he admires by reclassifying them as resembling something like a critic (Korsyn 2003: 88). Korsyn sets forth a list of reforms the academy should undertake to end the stand-off and let the two disciplines continue in parallel, with separate methodologies and separate concerns. By this, all of music's aspects would be represented through undertaking relative positions in a larger discourse with no singular or permanent centre.

However, what I propose as a better solution to Korsyn's notion of parallel paradigms is implicit within the writings of Kramer and Subotnik, but never brought to explicit attention: “[For] what if”, Kramer asks, “we see the music, not as the site where its contexts vanish, but precisely as the site where they appear?” In Kramer's “dialogue of listening” he does not undergo the process of listening to specific performances and documenting the results, but conducts a hermeneutic analysis of music as a text, and discusses it in relation to reminisces of performances he has attended previously, or vague, unspecified, imaginary performances. Likewise, although Subotnik points to issues within performance (the difficultly of the rolled chord for her small hands, the fact that performers often slow down as they approach it with dread), specific performances are not delineated.

However, refocusing on real performance events allows us to relate music to social and cultural forces in a more concrete manner. To take an obvious example, depending on their cultural conditioning, a performer may choose to roll the climactic chord in phrase 6 of Chopin's A-Major prelude or not; they may find the passage tricky and attempt it rather slowly; they may, even chose to play the phrase as a disjunct from the others which surround it, since personally, they understand the prelude to be a metaphor for the contingent nature of all human life and understanding.

Therefore, we should try and understand music by relating the specifics of a performance to the larger cultural contexts in which they are imbedded, for instance: styles, genres, performing trends and performance occasions. Undoubtedly this creates a more realistic vision of music's relation to the social and cultural than Kramer's; however, those who have written on it often fall into a similar interpretive trap. Writers such as Small (1998) and Attali (1985) take these microsocialities as the sole locus for theorising the social in music, idealizing them through a metaphysics of presence (Born, forthcoming). Accounts like this run the risk of determining the musical event as a product of social or ideological forces, when these “social forces” are what should be explained.

In advocating a performance approach, I am not stating that performance is any more resistant to the sort of interpretations music receives when conceived of as a text. However, performance does limit these types of interpretation through offering a solid and accessible contextual framework that we can study, empirically, through ethnography.

Nicholas Cook and Georgina Born's “Relational musicology” is a theoretical paradigm that advocates such an approach. Recent work within the field holds that meaning emerges in encounters between people, and is not wholly determined by the musical score, social structures or ideologies. Instead, these are seen to forge the conditions for the encounters in which culture is negotiated and reshaped by agents. Through a strong ethnographic approach which engages with individuals to study these negotiations in rehearsal and performance, and an assessment of findings it in relation to larger social theories, we find an empirically sound way of relating musical practices to their social and cultural context.

Born (2007) argues that it is productive to analyse music's myriad socialities in terms of four planes of social mediation: 1) Micro-socialities 2) Imagined communities 3) How it refracts wider social identity formations, and 4) Forces of production. This framework goes some way to eliminate reductive accounts of music's relation to the social by holding interactions between these planes (and the extra-musical factors that they incorporate) are irreducibly complex, and all four planes have the ability to animate music's aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions. The anti-reductionist gains of analysing both the autonomy of distinctive planes of music's social mediation and, thereby, cross-scalar relations between them include the potential for contradiction and disjunction. For performance does not only traverse wider social relations, but it has the ability to catalyse or act on them, to invert or contest hierarchical social orders. Genre, for example, is commonly explained as embodying an assured linkage to the politics of the communities that construct it (e.g. Negus 1999). However, this does not explain its power to affect either the reproduction of identity formations, or a redirection or novel coalition of such formations. Genre should therefore be analysed as an evolving constellation constituted by the mutual mediation between two self-organizing entities (music and identity formations), (Born, forthcoming).

Relational musicology advocates reshaping the boundaries of the epistemic field, revealing the concealed ideologies of individual branches, and extending other branches to form hybridized and multivalent approaches (Born 2007). In this sense, there is room here for analysis to be brought back into the picture, as well as occupying an isolated position within the field as Agawu and Korsyn suggest.

The manner in which analysis has previously aggregated with different methodologies has been problematic. Analytical methods have been used in ethnographies as a manner of recording performances. However, too often these transcriptions attempt to totalise the experience of the individual musicians making up the ensemble and abstracts it from the social processes in which it is embedded, creating a new reified text which translates rather than explains the experience (Cook 1999: 261). 'Structurally informed performance' (as urged by Berry or Namour) has also been problematic. It is prescriptive rather than descriptive in nature, and although it presents viable options it cannot justify why these are necessarily better than other options discovered through performing.

Cook defines the score not as a textual object with all its meanings located within it, but instead as a script for social interaction, which gives us only a certain amount of information to obey in performance, and leaves the rest as ambiguous, delegating decisions to performers who will negotiate to fix them for performance (forthcoming). Through this 'relational' paradigm, we can work towards creating different forms of analysis, which does not 'blindly' dictate performance methods, but poses questions to performance, and engages with responses. This approach also offers the capacity to shift analysis away from the purely tonal, and consider other important musical parameters, including those not present when we consider music as a text such as gesture and movement.

In conclusion, postmodern knowledge might not have taken musicology in the direction it originally intended, but opening musicology to literary theory and deconstructive approaches planted the seeds for the development of the study of music in relation to the social and cultural, and the expansion of analytical methodologies. In particular, I advocate Nick Cook and Georgina Born's approach of Relational Musicology, in light of its nuanced and realistic understanding of the complex relationship between music and the social factors it aggregated with, and its ethnographic focus on 'real' (rather than abstracted) forms of social and cultural knowledge. Hopefully, this will enable us to make a swifter shift away from the large body of introspective discourse characteristic of musicology's last twenty years and engage in a new yet enlightened focus on our “object” of study.

3434 Words. 

 

Bibliography:

Agawu, Kofi, “Does Music Theory Need Musicology?” in Current Musicology 53, special issue, Approaches to the Discipline, ed. Edmund J Goehring (1993) pp. 89 – 98

Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, (Minnesota: 1985)

Born, Georgina, “For a relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn”, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, (2007) Vol. 135, no. 2, 205–243

Georgina Born, 'Music and the Social', in M. Clayton et al (eds), The Cultural Study of Music, 2nd edition,

(forthcoming: 2012).

Cook, Nicholas, Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: 1998)

Cook, Nicholas,' Analysing Performance and Performing Analysis' Rethinking Music, Cook and Evereist eds., (Oxford: 1999)

Cook, Nicholas, Scripting social interaction: Improvisation, performance, and Western 'art' music'. In Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, ed. Georgina Born, Eric Lewis, and Will Straw. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press (forthcoming)

Cook, Nicholas, 'Theorising Musical Meaning', Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 170-195

Everett Maus, Fred, 'The Disciplined Subject of Musical Analysis' in Andrew Dell'Antonio, ed., Beyond Structural Listening: Postmodern Modes of Hearing (Berkely and Los Angeles: 2004)

Glendinning, Simon, Derrida: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford University Press: 2011)

Hyer, Brian, “Review: Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society by Rose Rosengard Subotnik; Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge by Lawrence Kramer,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 409 – 424

Kerman, Joseph, Musicology, (London: 1985)

Kerman, Joseph, “How We Dot into Analysis and How to Get Out,” Critical Enquiry 7, (1980), reprinted in Write all These Down: Essays on Music, (Berkely: University of California Press, 1999), 12–32

Korsyn, Kevin, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research, (Oxford: 2003)

Kramer, Lawrence, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, (University of California Press: 1992)

Krims, Adam, “Disciplining Deconstruction (For Music Analysis)” 19^th Century Music, Vol. 21. No. 3 (Spring 1998), pp. 297 – 324

Kramer, Lawrence, Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990)

Levy, Janet M, 'Covert and Casual Values in Recent Writings About Music', The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987)

Littlefield, Richard, “The Silence of the Frames”, Music Theory Online 2, (1996)

Negus, Keith, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (Routledge: 1999)

Pasler, Jann, “Review: Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge”, Notes, Second Series, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Mar., 1997), pp. 756 – 761

Scherzinger, Martin, “The finale of Mahler's Seventh Symphony: A Deconstructive Reading” Music Analysis 14 (1996), pp. 1–25

Snarrenberg, Robert, “The Play of Différance: Brahms's Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 2,” In Theory Only 10 (October 1987), pp. 1–25

Small, Christopher, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Wesleyan: 1998)

Subotnik, Rose Rosengard , Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society, (University of Minnesota Press: 1996)

Tomlinson, Gary, “Music, Anthropology, History”, in Middleton, ed., The Cultural Study of Music (Routledge: 2003)

1Analysis is reflective of modernist values more largely, in that it prizes the rational, the constantive, the quantitive, the scientific and the masculine.

2Nicholas Cook explores the complex interactions between music and text in 'Theorising Musical Meaning', Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 170-195

3The other attempts at applying deconstruction (which encounter the same problems) are: Snarrenberg (1987) Scherzinger (1996) Kramer (1990) Littlefield (1996).

Essay: Accessing the Sonic and the Social: An Evaluation of Methodological Shifts in the Ethnography of Performance

Accessing the Sonic and the Social: An Evaluation of Methodological Shifts in the Ethnography of Performance

(MPhil Submission Lent 2012)

3500 Words

In his 2001 article 'Between Process and Product', Nicholas Cook comments on a recent paradigm shift in musicological literature away from the textuality of the score and towards performance. Since the mid-eighties there has been a growing attention to performance within scholarship; the

landscape of literature on performance before this point has been described by Jonathan Dunsby as 'fluid' and 'fragmentary' (Rink: 1996: 253).

Within the study of music, Cook identifies the growth of interest as a response to tensions in the musicological field, namely, Goehr's challenge to the autonomy of the concept of the Western 'musical work' through a delineation of the problems inherent within its ontological status, and the New Musicology's recognition of the importance of discussing music in terms of its social context, but their ineffective attempts to locate it within the score through hermeneutic analysis. The shift can also be seen against the backdrop of the larger 'performative turn' within the humanities and social sciences more generally; the work of Richard Schechner, along with others such as Butler and Goffman establishing 'performance studies' as a discipline in its own right.

Performance studies call for a greater attention to phenomena as a processes, rather than texts or objects, and Cook's article serves as a call to arms in the development of a musicology of performance, for fuller, more detailed explanations of it as both a social and sonic process. Ethnomusicology, which has predominantly devoted itself to the study of other cultures – which have often been remote, previously undocumented, illiterate, or without a system of notation – is a discipline that has constantly been forced to engage with music and culture as a process rather than a text.

However, this is not to say that ethnomusicological scholarship has provided an easily identifiable process-based methodological archetype, which musicologists can now hope to utilize. On the contrary, despite their close engagement with the act of performance itself, previous ethnomusicological scholarship has often taken an analytical approach, utilizing the musical process for the formation of a text through the act of transcription. Transcriptions which too often attempt to totalize the experience of the individual musicians making up the ensemble and abstract 'music' away from the social processes in which it is embedded, creating a new reified text (Cook 1999: 261).

It is not the mere difference between process of music making and the text produced that is the problem. As Dunsby states, the event and its documentation are not the same and never can be (Dunsby 1996: 97); one cannot hope to capture music – a present, performed experience, a 'living art' existing only in time – in verbal discourse (or indeed, notation) because of the unbridgeable epistemological gulf between the two (Rink 1996: 256). The problem, within certain types of scholarly methods including transcription is that they merely translate the performative experience, rather than explaining it.

Therefore, the aim of this essay is to evaluate certain key publications within the ethnomusicological literature, with an emphasis on methodology, acknowledging their contributions but also pointing out the ways in which they could take further steps to achieve a fusion between process and product – not one which transcends the boundaries of language or analysis: such a coalescence is unobtainable – but one that attempts to get closer to the musical event in both its social and sonic dimensions.

As a result of the shift of emphasis, many of these publications broaden the scope of musicological research has been extended to include document pedagogy, rehearsal, performance and the linguistic and gestural communication instrumental playing included within these practices. I shall delineate points whereby further scholarship would be beneficial where relevant.

In her 2001 article 'Towards an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds', Kay Kaufman Shelemay advocates an approach which accounts for the social function of musical performance through ethnographic methods which give access to the study and experience of musical act and sound (2001: 3)

The article takes certain issues, central to the functioning of the Boston Early Music Movement – including distinctions between amateurism and professionalism, specialist performers and ensembles, uses of particular instruments, musical values and performance practices – and works small details into larger themes, situating them in a broad social context. However, although Shelemay paints an extensive and detailed picture of the movement as a whole, her use of ethnographic methods can be seen as falling short of her original aim – to access the experience of musical act and sound. Although she uses interview techniques to gain information about the meaning of the musical act to certain performers, the reflections she documents largely embody general points about musical style, (i.e. a reflection on what it might mean to be musically 'authentic') and do not talk directly about the musical act.

The one exception within the article illuminates musical phenomena which scholarship needs to address: “John was filling in the harmonies, but he was also inventing a third voice a lot of the time... there was some real invention going on in the keyboard playing, which doesn't get talked about much” (2001: 10) This quotation illuminates that clearly, if we are to understand music making in its experiential dimension, we need to extend ethnographic techniques to attempt to get closer to it: to explain the process and not just describe it.

In his seminal publication Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Paul Berliner undertakes this very task, using an ethnographic approach to explain the act of jazz improvisation in social and sonic terms. Whereas previous literature on jazz had often misrepresented the practice, 'mystifying' the act of improvisation and misrepresenting and marginalizing musicians through critical outsider perspectives which failed to see the music on its own terms (1994: 6), Berliner's ethnographic technique brings him closer to an emic perspective on the process of improvisation. He weaves together his informant's reflections on what they think they do during performance together with his own observations in order to de-mystify the processes Jazz musicians go through in order to develop the ability to improvise, confirming Dunsby's assertion that musicians “do not usually work in some sort of unreflecting trance”; instead they “think hard” (1996: 9). By encouraging reflection on the musician's practical and pedagogical engagements, Berliner elucidates the manner in which players gradually build up a vocabulary of harmonic gestures, which can be utilized in performance with increasing dexterity to create a 'dialogue' with other musicians. Berliner explains the relationship between improvised and pre-composed components of the artists' knowledge as cyclical: the improvised exploration of individual pitch combinations produces new vocabulary patterns which, when memorized, are transformed into pre-composed materials. When the soloist retrieves them in performance, however, they serve as improvisational elements that reintegrate in unique ways in the construction of phrases.

Berliner illustrates examples of these materials though transcriptions, ranging from basic building blocks for fashioning individual parts to extended group performances. Although Berliner provides us with the theoretical framework through which to understand the transcriptions in the main text of the book, there is definitely more scope for a fuller integration of musical text and the performer's reflection on the processes happening. Berliner states that the transcriptions are intended as guides for readers who may wish to immerse themselves in the original recordings (1994: 12). However, although the recordings are noted to be of important pedagogical value to Berliner's informants, a set of transcriptions which document the 'great' jazz standards – Booker Little, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker amongst others – misses an opportunity to fully explain the repertoire from the perspective of those who perform it. In the latter transcriptions showing improvised group interplay, Berliner uses the picture of improvisation he has built up in the previous chapters in order to discuss the recording. However, although his detailed analysis gives us an insight into the music, it is predominantly descriptive rather than explanatory. Given that Berliner obtained some of the improvisational variants on the traditional repertoire through conversation with his informants, and learned the intricacies of jazz improvisation directly from the musicians themselves, performing and recording with a group he had organized (1994: 5) it is surprising that Berliner did not think it appropriate to record and transcribe various groups in practice, and use the method of the interview to present an explanation of stylistic choices and which tied details to larger theoretical frameworks he outlines: Part 2 of the book.

Berliner's account is outstanding in its extensive scope and the rigor with which it contextualizes the jazz tradition within wider cultural practices, and its seminal insights into jazz improvisation as a process. However, in terms of the objective I outline in my introduction, there is opportunity for development. For a greater synthesis to be reached, a higher degree of specificity is needed – reflections need to be made, pertaining to both social and sonic elements in relation to particular events, which can be displayed through musical notation and backed up by audio recordings, pertaining to Nicholas Cook's observation in Between Process and Product, that a “musicology of performance really demands the integration of sound, word, and image achievable through current hypermedia technology (2001: 29).

A perspective which embraces hypermedia technology, in order to document a successfully integrated account of music as a process, is Amanda Bayley's 2011 article 'Ethnographic Research into Contemporary String Quartet Rehearsal'. Bayley utilizes an audio recording of a rehearsal, concert performances, a filmed performance and photography, alongside the more traditional methods of interviews, questionnaires, observations in order to present a picture of the interactive and collaborative processes which take place between a composer and performers of his work. It documents the progress of Micheal Finnissy's Second String Quartet, from composition, through the rehearsal and performance process with the Kreutzer Quartet, and finally, to reflections on performance (2011: 386).

Although Bayley has broader research concerns, she states her primary objective is to discover more about how professional musicians structure their rehearsal time, and why they approach Finnissy’s piece in a particular way. Taking the audio recording of the rehearsal, Bayley uses a quantitative method to examine how much rehearsal time is spent on particular activities. She uses the 5 main categories taken from Davidson's and Good's (2002) examination of the social and musical co-ordination between members of a student string quartet in rehearsal and performance: social conversation, non-verbal social interaction, musical conversations, non-verbal musical interactions and musical interactions. Due to the predominance of the conversation, she breaks this down further, into more specific areas.

However, the problems inherent in such a method undermine its apparent precision. One issue, which Bayley recognises, is the level of simplification of the event that such a process entails when distinguishing between overlapping categories. For example, one conversation may have two objectives, such as solving a problem relating to technique and notation or to sound quality and technique. Furthermore, talking and playing often merge in rehearsal: if an instrument is utilized to produce sound within the conversation about another point, then should it be reclassified as musicking? Bayley points to an inherent methodological weakness when she admits that where musical and/or verbal interactions overlap or collide, the categorisation has been made according to what was most audible (2011: 396).

Most importantly, in terms of the research objectives, is that this type of analysis fails to explain music as a process. Bayley notes some of these quantitative analyses also fail to show the swift transitions between humour or chit-chat and playing; which points were made by whom, who was being directive, and interplay between musicians changed in the course of the rehearsal. As Bayley herself states: a graphic representation of data is a useful way of gaining a sense of the proportion of various elements that make up the rehearsal but has limited value because it fails to show how the rehearsal progressed (2011: 398) Moreover, although it may be useful to show that more time was spent doing certain activities, this is not a direct reflection of their importance.

However, extremely illuminating insights into the rehearsal process were made by qualitative analysis:

The first issue regards the function of metaphor in communicating the composer's sonic preferences to the performers: At the beginning of the rehearsal Finnissy chose metaphors such as ‘sort of saltier’, ‘frothier’ and ‘like spiders crawling’ to help describe the nature of the sound he wanted. In a later interview, he explained that such metaphors were not fixed, but that they emerged in relation to the sound that the musicians were already making. Bayley places this in a larger theoretical framework by pointing to Feld’s observation that metaphors categorize musical experiences in relation to similar or dissimilar experiences, to place an item or event in meaningful social space through ongoing interpretive moves. These moves do not fix or freeze a single meaning; meaning is emergent and changeable in relation to various combinations of moves made by specifically situated speakers (2011: 403).

However, although this theoretical framework gives insight, it does not provide us with an insider perspective, which may help explain the process of 'emergent meanings' in more specific terms. Although her research includes scripts of dialogue in the rehearsal process, and notes from a conversation with Finnissy, the perspectives of the performers are not interwoven into the main fabric of the article, but consigned to a detached section at the end. The documentation gained (a questionnaire, completed a month after the filmed performance) could not have been worked into a broader explanation, since the four players give differing and contradictory responses. In answer to the question ‘Are there important elements of the composition that Michael clarified in rehearsal which were not evident from the notation or other markings in the score? Please give details’, there was no consistent answer between players: two replied yes; two replied no. However, the specific responses conveyed different interpretations of similar themes, showing that given a more dialogic methodology, progress towards an insider's account of the process could have been attained. Heyde and Trandafilovski differed on whether they had understood Finnissy's metaphors to describe sound, or character and expression, and Sheppard Skærved’s negative response was ‘all of the important details are apparent; all that Michael did was to show that they were in front of us'. These comments suggest that there is a deeper discussion here to be had on the relationship between the score, sound, language and communication (2011: 406).

Another illuminating insight is provided through a discussion Bayley documents on coordination and movement: Finnissy’s compositional is (for lack of a better term) semi-indeterminate – a degree of freedom is composed into the parts for the explicit function of varying vertical alignment on each iteration as well as transitions between different sections of the piece. Towards the end of the rehearsal, Finnissy commented that he felt that the players had become too coordinated with the viola and cello parts, and that it was not producing the right effect. Finnissy wanted them to create “a feeling of initially not really being within reach, as if an unattainable plateau that they’re on and you’re desperate to reach it.” Once the players knew how the parts worked together, they had to find a way of ‘unlearning’ that knowledge, resisting the urge for highly co-ordinated playing to attain a controlled ‘un-coordination’, a style of performance determined by the composer’s intention for the character of the piece.

Bayley claims she was aware of the implications of the loss of visual information, but felt it important to only use audio in order not to impede or affect the rehearsal process. However, the lack of data on movement and gesture prevents her from working towards a theory of the nonverbal methods of communication, which would elucidate the way in which this co-ordination and un-coordination might take place.

Visual information is also of crucial importance to the discussion of Finnissy's metaphors, partly because the taped concert performance reveals that Finnissy consistently uses gestures as he talks to accentuate and refine his meaning, but also since the production of sound is dependent on the process of movement and thoroughly aggregated with the notions of 'expression' and 'character'. In fact, as I stated above, through the rehearsal process, Heyde took Finnissy's comments to pertain predominantly to expression and character rather than sound. Whilst much work has been written on the distinctions between the terms in abstract philosophical terms, a discussion of what they have meant in pragmatic terms, as 'discourse frames' for instrumentalists negotiating a rehearsal has not been fully documented.

Hence, although Bailey uses hypermedia documentation which Cook suggests can help us bridge the gap between process and product, she does not go far enough in seeking to relate the individual forms of collected data (the taped rehearsal, the filmed concert performance, the interview and the questionnaire) to one another. However, to rectify this I am not suggesting that Bailey should merely take her analytical approach further in positing interrelations – such an approach may induce dangerous level of abstract theorizing. I am positing we take an approach that places informants nearer to the center of the research, and encourages a dialogue through a method called video playback, predominantly used within music psychology.

In their forthcoming article “Exploring creativity in musical performance through lesson observation with video-recall interviews”, James, Wise and Rink (from hereon in referred to as James) utilize video analysis, to document specific moments of 'creativity' within the pedagogical engagement between teacher and student. Lessons are filmed and the footage is used as a memory prompt and participants are invited to talk in depth about their experiences. James contends this has the potential both to allow insights into their experiences that could not be gained from viewing the footage alone, and to facilitate participants’ conscious access to processes that they may not often think about or articulate, thereby “building an effective bridge between research and practice” (forthcoming: 2).¹

The video-recall method is not without its problems. Firstly, as Bayley feared in her research, there is a chance that the presence of a camera will cause participants to act in a manner slightly different they would have done otherwise, however, this can be reduced by getting used to being on film. Secondly, although the use of video lessens participant's likelihood of forgetting details, misremembering, or interpreting things differently than reflection without video data might induce, seeing the lesson from a different angle and after a period of time, however short, introduces an inevitable element of interpretation in hindsight, and it is therefore possible participants can confuse revelations they have through reflection with revelations they had at the time (forthcoming: 26). However, a reflexive manner which does not make participants feel that they have to offer explanations to fit analytical categories demanded by the researcher and an acute scholarly look at the data which may identify erroneous comments, such problems can be minimized.

James's methodology gave the participants control over the research process, initially asking participants to select excerpts of tape they felt were important to the creative process. The advantage of this method is that it that it creates a directed but flexible structure which can cater for new questions and issues that emerge through the research process – the importance of which is demonstrated to be important by Bayley's research, and the unexpected impetus on metaphor and gesture.

Therefore, I propose that in future ethnographic research, the video-recall method should be utilized if relevant to create a bridge between product and process through discourse. Traditional ethnographic fieldwork methods such as the interview and the questionnaire will remain highly important for the initial observation issues which may become central to research and for collecting data to provide a cultural context for the research. However, a more detailed focus on the experience of music should use video recall both with musicians individually - to enable them to express their insights to the researcher away from the social pressures of the ensemble – and in a group context to enable participants to work towards a mutual understanding of the terminology used, and to avoid the incompatible conceptions of terminology found in Bailey's questionnaire approach, which prevents the construction of a more extensive conceptual framework. Results from individual interviews and group interviews should be compared and contrasted, with the possibility of re-interview either in a group or on an individual basis as a control method to ensure that terminology is being used consistently, and that group politics are not prohibiting reflection.

It will be necessary for researchers to undertake preparatory work in order to define research questions about the exact object of their study, and to refine the full methodological approach accordingly, yet they should be prepared for other research questions to emerge and aware that changing procedures to cater for these may produce more illuminating research. Research can perhaps best be presented in an essay format, with whichever supporting documentation is appropriate - scores, lead sheets, rehearsal charts, etc. - but access to full documentation of the recorded performances (or other) should be presented alongside to allow readers to contextualise academic observations. The written documentation should make specific references to the points in the video that are being discussed, either expressed in time, or with the possibility of larger-scale synthesis through computer programming. Imperative in research conducted with a significant focus on sound is that the quality of audiovisual data is as high as is possible, to ensure that reflections on sound quality are not misguided.

In conclusion, performance itself and its documentation may always be separated by Dunsby’s ‘epistemological gulf’, and performance practice may inevitably continue to be conditioned to a varying degree by a number of binaries, including performer and audience, creator and reactor, and subject and analyst. Yet the best way for scholarship to proceed is through an understanding of these differences not as dichotomies, but as positions of proximity and distance. This notion is made more lucid by Dunsby's assertion, that in performance there are no “pure doers” (1996: 49); language is constantly present as an inner monologue throughout our experience of music as both listeners and performers. Indeed, as Karol Berger states, “The hermeneutic element cannot be wholly banished from the arena of performance; there is no such thing as pure experience, uncontaminated by interpretation” (Berger 2005: 501) Therefore, the video-recall method is not only an attempt at 'translating' their sensual actions and feelings into words, (although undoubtedly this might form part the method); it is a report or 'second reflection' on thoughts, words, that they experienced at the same time as sensation and action.

In sum: by understanding music as a process, rather than as a product, and by taking an ethnographic approach which places musicians' emic perspectives at the centre of research in the aforementioned ways, we may gain a more complete understanding of music in its sonic and social terms.

Words: 3815

Bibliography:

Bayley, Amanda, 'Ethnographic Research into Contemporary String Quartet Rehearsal', Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 20 No. 3, (2011) pp. 385-411

Berger, Karol, Musicology According to Don Giovanni, or: Should We Get Drastic?

The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 2005), pp. 490-501

Berliner, Paul, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: 1994)

Cook, Nicholas,' Analysing Performance and Performing Analysis' Rethinking Music, Cook and Evereist eds., (Oxford: 1999)

Cook, Nicholas, 'Between Process and Product', in Music Theory Online, Vol. 7, No. 2, (April 2001)

Davidson, Jane W. and Good's James M. 'Social and Musical Co-Ordination between Members of a String Quartet: An Exploratory Study', Psychology of Music, Vol. 30, (2002), pp.186-201

Dunsby, Jonathan, Performing Music: Shared Concerns, (Clarendon Press: 1996)

James, M., Wise, K., & Rink, J. 'Exploring creativity in musical performance through lesson observation with video-recall interviews', in Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis, (forthcoming)

Rink, John, Review of Jonathan Dunsby, Performing Music: Shared Concerns, in Music & Letters, Vol. 77 No. 2, (1996), pp. 253–7

Shelemay Kauffman, Kay, 'Towards and Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds', in Ethnomusicology, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Winter 2001), pp. 1-2

1See also: (Davidson & Good: 2002)

Essay: Composer/Performer relationships and aleatoric composition. (Cage/Boulez/Stockhausen/Cardew)

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.

Bibliography:

Boulez, Pierre Alea (Trans.) David Noakes and Paul Jacobs, Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn - Winter, 1964), pp. 42-53

Boulez, Pierre, Sonate, Que me Veux-tu? (Trans.) David Noakes and Paul Jacobs Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1963), pp. 32-44

Susan Bradshaw, Howard Skempton and Kurt Schwertsik Cornelius Cardew (1936 - 1981) Tempo, New Series, No. 140 (Mar., 1982), pp. 22-24

Bradshaw, Susan, All Fingers and Thumbs. Can We 'Interpret' Contemporary Music, or Do We Just Perform it? The Musical Times , Vol. 135, No. 1811 (Jan., 1994), pp. 20-24

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