SOUNDFEST, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Friday 7th January 2011, David Atherton conducting Elizabeth Atherton (soprano) with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
300 Words
My initial desire as a concert-goer was for more sense of presence in the opening number of tonight's concert, Stravinksy's Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The hopping reed passages, recurrent in this initial number, could have defined the edges of the patchwork mood sequence through a sharper form of attack (required since, unfortunately, the HKPO was playing to a half-empty concert hall). Correspondingly, the finest sections were the slow chordal passages, which fanned out, beautifully, through stepwise lines with a solemn tone and sense of reservation. One could not help feeling that perhaps the performers were responding to this diminished sense of performance space.
Following on the heels of the Symphonies, however, Elizabeth Atherton sailed through a masterful rendition of Britten's Les Illuminations with a sense of confidence which placed her firmly at the helm of the programme's first half; each role she portrayed within the song cycle was entirely believable. Completely metamorphosing from animated narrator to serene bystander, she propelled and retracted the narrative seemingly at whim, catching the entire audience under the spell of her tongue and taking off with their emotions. Technically, each swoop and glide was faultlessly placed; each word perfectly matched by a subtle timbral facet.
The Nutcracker was the final item on the programme, and, as expected, David Atherton's show-stopper. From under the deft strokes of his baton, the HKPO unfurled each familiar melody with luscious romantic swells and securely tailored falls. Elements within Atherton's interpretation were both surprising and appealing: melodic lines were often portioned into shorter phrases, which kept the work light in relation to unusually heavy rhythmic drive he had given to the piece. With his shoulders slightly stiff, almost in the pose of a bear, Atherton even stepped into a waltz in more than one of the dance movements with surprising agility. Effectively, Atherton saved a fuller, weightier, sense of melodic line until the end to carry the glorious, sweeping final movement; a satisfying finale to a well-delivered programme.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Concert Review: Children's Prom
Concert Review: BBC Proms, Prom 59, Royal Albert Hall, Monday 30th August, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, Aurora Orchestra, National Children's Chamber Orchestra, National Youth Chamber Orchestra, Nicholas Collon.
500 Words
'Crikey, they are making a lot of noise backstage!' Basil Brush remarked as he popped up from a fox hole in the corner of the RAH stage. Whether the orchestra was in fact louder than Basil himself - who delivered an uninhibited commentary to the children's prom, the 59th concert in the 2010 Proms season - is debatable. Accompanied by the gentler-worded Louise Fryer and conducted by the amicable Nicholas Collon, Basil 'boomed' his way through a carefully crafted and varied programme, which included break dancing to Prokofiev, Capoiera to Lully, 'safe' show-stoppers such as Rimsky-Korsakoff's The Flight of the Bumble Bee, alongside more adventurous programming such as the 2nd Movement from Schostakovitch's 10th.
As an adult going with a child, I appreciated the programme, which achieved a balance in being educational as well as entertaining; enlivening works through visual accompaniments and unusual orchestration rather than tacky sensationalism (would I expect anything other from BBC Radio 3?) The required amount of audience participation was tasteful, keeping children engaged by making them clap and stomp in time with the orchestra, yet not going as far as to make the adults feel stupid.
I enjoyed myself, but how did my 9 year old piano pupil feel? Her description of the experience as a whole on leaving the hall, was that it was 'fantastic'; when quizzed further she disclosed that the elements of dance in the programme had been her favourite. On reflection, I consider this an interesting point. Obviously, for a child, the attraction of dance provides a richer experience than the music alone; it enables the child to see the music in direct relationship to gesture and emotional narrative. What I would have liked to have seen done is movement utilized in such a way as to highlight sonic relationships, providing a visual structure to help the children hear the music differently. A point in the programme which would have benefited from this was the penultimate work, Chis Willis's composition Mashup, an interesting orchestral arrangement of all the music heard through the concert. A lovely idea, I thought, but how many children, after hearing the works just once, would be able to identify motific fragments as they were played on top of one another in complex contrapuntal arrangements? Unfortunately I fear that the point was lost; perhaps corresponding visual cues would have been one way in which this clever design may have been communicated to the young audience.
However, I do not make this point to undersell the morning's success. My pupil came from the concert feeling inspired, which is obviously what concerts of this nature strive to achieve. As we discussed afterwards, a large amount of this to do with the fact she had noticed the ages of the young performer's in the Aurora Orchestra and the National Youth/Children's Chamber Orchestras, who delivered the programme with mature expression and virulent sense of drama. I was worried that intimidation may have had the opposite effect, but no, the resulting logic from the experience was a firm 'if they can do it, so can I', which is wonderful. Therefore, in relation to the points made above, and on the basis that the experience may encourage at least two days of diligent practice my verdict has to be: excellent, 5 stars.
500 Words
'Crikey, they are making a lot of noise backstage!' Basil Brush remarked as he popped up from a fox hole in the corner of the RAH stage. Whether the orchestra was in fact louder than Basil himself - who delivered an uninhibited commentary to the children's prom, the 59th concert in the 2010 Proms season - is debatable. Accompanied by the gentler-worded Louise Fryer and conducted by the amicable Nicholas Collon, Basil 'boomed' his way through a carefully crafted and varied programme, which included break dancing to Prokofiev, Capoiera to Lully, 'safe' show-stoppers such as Rimsky-Korsakoff's The Flight of the Bumble Bee, alongside more adventurous programming such as the 2nd Movement from Schostakovitch's 10th.
As an adult going with a child, I appreciated the programme, which achieved a balance in being educational as well as entertaining; enlivening works through visual accompaniments and unusual orchestration rather than tacky sensationalism (would I expect anything other from BBC Radio 3?) The required amount of audience participation was tasteful, keeping children engaged by making them clap and stomp in time with the orchestra, yet not going as far as to make the adults feel stupid.
I enjoyed myself, but how did my 9 year old piano pupil feel? Her description of the experience as a whole on leaving the hall, was that it was 'fantastic'; when quizzed further she disclosed that the elements of dance in the programme had been her favourite. On reflection, I consider this an interesting point. Obviously, for a child, the attraction of dance provides a richer experience than the music alone; it enables the child to see the music in direct relationship to gesture and emotional narrative. What I would have liked to have seen done is movement utilized in such a way as to highlight sonic relationships, providing a visual structure to help the children hear the music differently. A point in the programme which would have benefited from this was the penultimate work, Chis Willis's composition Mashup, an interesting orchestral arrangement of all the music heard through the concert. A lovely idea, I thought, but how many children, after hearing the works just once, would be able to identify motific fragments as they were played on top of one another in complex contrapuntal arrangements? Unfortunately I fear that the point was lost; perhaps corresponding visual cues would have been one way in which this clever design may have been communicated to the young audience.
However, I do not make this point to undersell the morning's success. My pupil came from the concert feeling inspired, which is obviously what concerts of this nature strive to achieve. As we discussed afterwards, a large amount of this to do with the fact she had noticed the ages of the young performer's in the Aurora Orchestra and the National Youth/Children's Chamber Orchestras, who delivered the programme with mature expression and virulent sense of drama. I was worried that intimidation may have had the opposite effect, but no, the resulting logic from the experience was a firm 'if they can do it, so can I', which is wonderful. Therefore, in relation to the points made above, and on the basis that the experience may encourage at least two days of diligent practice my verdict has to be: excellent, 5 stars.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
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
Cardew, Cornelius, Notation: Interpretation, etc. Tempo, New Series, No. 58 (Summer, 1961), pp. 21-33
Cardew, Cornelius, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974)
http://www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/cardew_stockhausen.pdf
Cristoph Cox, Daniel Warner, (Ed) Audio culture: readings in Modern Music, The continuum publishing group (2008)
Ford, Andrew, Composer to Composer; Conversations about Contemporary Music, Quartet books, (1993)
Griffiths, Paul Modern Music and After Oxford University Press (1995)
Griffiths, Paul, Untitled Review The Musical Times, Vol. 115, No. 1573 (Mar., 1974), pp. 225-226
Hamilton, Andy, The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Perfection British Society of Aesthetics (2000)
Harbinson William G, Performer Indeterminacy and Boulez's Third Sonata, Tempo, New Series, No. 169, 50th Anniversary 1939-1989 (Jun., 1989), pp. 16-20
Hoffman, E.T.A, Beethoven’s Instrumental Music in Source Readings in Music History The 19th Century’ Ed. Oliver Strunk W.W Norton & Company Pulishing (1978)
Kurz, Michael, Stockhausen: a biography, Faber and Faber (1992)
Maren Roger, Untitled Review, Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1968), pp. 182-184
Monsaingeon, Bruno, Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations Princeton University Press (2002)
Nattiez, Jean-Jaques, (Ed.) The Boulez-Cage Correspondece, Cambridge University Press (1993)
Nevill, Tim, Stockhausen: Towards a Cosmic Music, Element Books (1990)
Potter, Keith, Boulez and Stockhausen, Bennett and Cardew, The Muical Times, Vol. 122, No. 1657 (Mar., 1981), pp. 170-171
Pritchett, James, David Tudor as Composer/Performer in Cage's "Variations II"
Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 14, Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor (2004)
Service, Tom, Playing a Game of Analysis: Performance Postmodernism, and the Music of John Zorn, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Southampton (2004)
Small, Christopher, Musicking Wesleyan University Press (1998)
Smalley, Roger Some Aspects of the Changing Relationship between Composer and Performer in Contemporary Music proceedings of the Royal Musical Association Vol.96 (1969-1970) pp.73-84
Stein, Leonard The Performer's Point of View Perspectives of New Music Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1963), pp. 62-71
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Aus den sieben Tagen, Universal edition (1968)
Taylor, Timothy D. Moving in Decency: The Music and Radical Politics of Cornelius Cardew Music and Letters, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 555-576, Oxford University Press
Turner, Steve Sweeney, John Cage’s practical Utopias (1990) Musical Times No 130 pp.469-472
‘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
Cardew, Cornelius, Notation: Interpretation, etc. Tempo, New Series, No. 58 (Summer, 1961), pp. 21-33
Cardew, Cornelius, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974)
http://www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/cardew_stockhausen.pdf
Cristoph Cox, Daniel Warner, (Ed) Audio culture: readings in Modern Music, The continuum publishing group (2008)
Ford, Andrew, Composer to Composer; Conversations about Contemporary Music, Quartet books, (1993)
Griffiths, Paul Modern Music and After Oxford University Press (1995)
Griffiths, Paul, Untitled Review The Musical Times, Vol. 115, No. 1573 (Mar., 1974), pp. 225-226
Hamilton, Andy, The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Perfection British Society of Aesthetics (2000)
Harbinson William G, Performer Indeterminacy and Boulez's Third Sonata, Tempo, New Series, No. 169, 50th Anniversary 1939-1989 (Jun., 1989), pp. 16-20
Hoffman, E.T.A, Beethoven’s Instrumental Music in Source Readings in Music History The 19th Century’ Ed. Oliver Strunk W.W Norton & Company Pulishing (1978)
Kurz, Michael, Stockhausen: a biography, Faber and Faber (1992)
Maren Roger, Untitled Review, Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1968), pp. 182-184
Monsaingeon, Bruno, Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations Princeton University Press (2002)
Nattiez, Jean-Jaques, (Ed.) The Boulez-Cage Correspondece, Cambridge University Press (1993)
Nevill, Tim, Stockhausen: Towards a Cosmic Music, Element Books (1990)
Potter, Keith, Boulez and Stockhausen, Bennett and Cardew, The Muical Times, Vol. 122, No. 1657 (Mar., 1981), pp. 170-171
Pritchett, James, David Tudor as Composer/Performer in Cage's "Variations II"
Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 14, Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor (2004)
Service, Tom, Playing a Game of Analysis: Performance Postmodernism, and the Music of John Zorn, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Southampton (2004)
Small, Christopher, Musicking Wesleyan University Press (1998)
Smalley, Roger Some Aspects of the Changing Relationship between Composer and Performer in Contemporary Music proceedings of the Royal Musical Association Vol.96 (1969-1970) pp.73-84
Stein, Leonard The Performer's Point of View Perspectives of New Music Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1963), pp. 62-71
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Aus den sieben Tagen, Universal edition (1968)
Taylor, Timothy D. Moving in Decency: The Music and Radical Politics of Cornelius Cardew Music and Letters, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 555-576, Oxford University Press
Turner, Steve Sweeney, John Cage’s practical Utopias (1990) Musical Times No 130 pp.469-472
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Programme Notes: Goldsmiths Sinfonia (Bartok/Brahms/Adams)
Bartók, Piano Concerto No. 1
Bartók's 'Piano Year' of 1926 saw the creation of his first Piano Concerto, alongside other important piano works, most notably the Out of Doors suite, and the Sonata. The works mark a stage in his compositional development where he was forming the musical language of his advanced maturity- A synthesis of the traditional western cultural tradition, in particular Bach, Beethoven and Debussy, with the study of (his native) Hungarian and Balkan traditional music. These folk elements are not utilized in a 'fancy' or ornamental form of shallow exoticism, but are key components in the formulation of a new musical language.
The acute burst of creative energy from June to November which spawned The Piano Concerto broke a compositional dormancy during which Bartók had composed almost nothing for three years, (despite the fact that during this time, he was aware that a piano concerto was 'sadly lacking' in his output as a composer). Although the exact reason for Bartók's near silence is only theorised, the suggestion is that it was mainly due to pragmatic reasons; Bartók became a father for the second time in 1924 with the birth of his son Peter, as well as having commitments to the Royal Academy of Music and a heavy international concert schedule.
Not a year after it's completion, the Piano Concerto No.1 had its first performance at the ISCM Festival in Frankfurt on 1st July 1927 with Bartók himself as a soloist and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. The reception- almost a cliché in the history of Western Classical Music- was cautious. At worst it was met with incomprehension and derision, misunderstood for abandoning the traditional concept of theme and instead working with more basic levels of expression- motifs or note-cells, with narrow range and simple rhythmic impulses.
Compositionally, the Piano Concerto can be looked upon as Bartók's response to the compositional trends which dominated the 1920's. Die Neue Sachlichkeit, in English The New Objectivity was the counteraction to the early 1900's 'romantic hangover' of intense expressionism and hyper romanticism, and the resurgence of interest in Classical and Baroque compositional forms. This influence, as well as the aforementioned folk influence manifests itself in Piano concerto No.1, (as Bartók himself stressed to musicologist Edwin Von der Null) as a more striking use of counterpoint, unseen in his previous compositions.
Although the work looks to the past, it clearly veers away from pastiche, and is utterly dissimilar from the dry stylisation of Stravinskian neo-classicism. At least in it's character it is more akin to the early, folk-driven Stravinsky. The writing is harsh and the music highly charged with a momentous, even barbaric energy. The piano itself takes on the role of a percussion instrument, and for long stretches, the piano is left with only percussion as it's accompaniment. The once-radical writing exudes the innovative characteristics we have now come to regard as Bartók idioms: angular melodic lines, nervous rhythms, imaginative writing for percussion, arresting sonorities and – above all – complete formal control.
Even after it's initial exposure, the new percussive style aroused antagonism; several years later conductor Constant Lamber was still criticizing these works for their 'lack of report' between melodic and harmonic elements. Bartók himself realised the style of the work as difficult for the orchestra, and indeed public, and although he considered the First Concerto to be a success, of his second said: 'I decided to compose my second concerto with fewer difficulties for the orchestra and with lighter, more pleasing themes.'
Brahms, Symphony No. 2
Brahms composed his Second Symphony over the course of one summer in 1877, this marks a striking contrast from the tumultuous gestation of his First Symphony (which took 15 years to complete, Brahms continually fearing the pressure of living in Beethoven's shadow). After the First's great success, prominent conductor Hans von Bulow going as far to dub it as 'Beethoven's Tenth', Brahms appears to have written his Second Symphony with much greater ease. The general tone of the Symphony has been likened with the cheerful, pastoral mood of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and it is possible to speculate that this is due to the new confidence Brahms had gained in his symphonic abilities. In fact, so enthusiastic seems Brahms that he had completed the symphony within a year of finally completing the First.
The decade of the 1870s was a happy and productive period in Brahms’s life. After the premiere of his German Requiem in 1868, his international reputation was secure, and honors, commissions, and job offers came in an ever-increasing stream. The completion of his Symphony No.1 in 1876 marked the end of a long self-imposed apprenticeship in symphonic writing—a period of intense study and self-criticism that had produced works such as his two orchestral serenades, his first piano concerto, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn. In some sense, the happy nature of the Symphony No.2 was a reflection of Brahms’s own happiness over the end of this apprenticeship. The “Pastoral” designation may also be an accurate description: according to his own accounts, Brahms composed the symphony as a reaction to the beauty of the countryside surrounding Pörtschach.
The first movement, Allegro non troppo, is a very interesting movement. It almost seems to be an entire movement based on variations of the lullaby motive which is introduced in bar 74 and continually brought back, shaped and changed both rhythmically and harmonically. What is further interesting is his decision to write the opening movement in 3/4 which is highly uncommon in the symphonic repertoire.
Despite the second movement's (Adagio non troppo) air of calm simplicity, underneath lies one of Brahms’s most complex and original forms. Brahms bases this movement on four distinct groups of melodic material and an exceedingly complicated harmonic plan. The opening theme, stated by the cellos, sounds simple enough, but features a complicated notation that grates against the bar lines. A contrasting episode in 12/8 sets winds in syncopation above a background of pizzicato strings. Another 12/8 theme, first in the violins, and then in woodwinds and solo horn, is more placid, but no less complex. A forceful passage from the full orchestra introduces new material, based on the opening theme, and the movement comes to an understated conclusion.
Throughout the Germanic symphonic repertoire composers have drawn from or mimicked traditional Austrian folk music, this is a notable motif throughout Mahler's body of works, similarly the third movement of this symphony (Allegretto grazioso) begins with a brief Haydnesque Ländler, an echo of Austrian country dances. This quickly leads into Beethovenian scherzo in 2/4. The Ländler returns again, but is quickly overshadowed by more forceful minor-key music. Again, the texture lightens, now for an episode in 3/8. The movement closes with a densely contrapuntal passage that fades away after a sustained chord from the strings.
The finale (Allegro con spirito) opens quietly, with a subdued yet complex and contrapuntal theme stated in the strings and answered by the bassoon. This theme is subtly related to the main theme of the opening movement, tying the entire symphony together into an organic whole. The hushed opening suddenly gives way to an explosion of Beethovian force and jubilance. After urgent development and a second theme presented by the violins and violas, a point of calm and repose is reached out of which emerges the first theme quietly, in a way reminiscent of the opening. The second theme takes over for a while, and begins to drive the movement to the brilliant coda. Hanslick said of this work that "Mozartian blood flows in its veins", and it is true that the music builds to an affirmative, striking and rejoiceful conclusion.
The Second Symphony is said to have gone "straight to the hearts of the Viennese", and it enjoyed the same immediate success of the First, Brahms would go on to compose two further symphonies, cementing his reputation as an orchestral composer of great skill, and all four works remain staples of the German symphonic tradition and the entire orchestral repertoire as a whole.
John Adams 'The Chairman Dances'
John Adams, (b. 1947) is considered the most frequently performed living American composer in the Classical music sphere. Over the past 25 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language. Although continually stuck with labels associated with other American composers such as 'minimalist' or 'neo-romantic', Adam's musical personality has become increasingly resistant to such pigeonholing; his own attitude being one of distaste towards formalised compositional doctrines in favor of 'aesthetic openness' with a freedom of influences.
Having won a Pulitzer Prize for his musical reaction to the atrocities of September 11th, (The Transmigration Of Souls) Adams is particularly known for his operatic works on contemporary subjects. 'The Chairman Dances was described by him as an "out take" from Act III of his 1987 opera, Nixon in China- a politically charged and satirical examination of historical, philosophical, and sociological issues surrounding President Nixon's visit to China in 1972.
The subtitle of The Chairman Dances is Foxtrot for Orchestra, although when he composed it, Adams claims he 'Did not have any idea what a foxtrot sounded like'. Perhaps we can excuse him for this compositional guesswork when we consider that the purpose of the music was to accompany the part in opera where Madame Mao gatecrashes the presidential banquet on the last night of the visit to Peking and strips off her communist uniform to reveal herself in the more provocative clothing of her former occupation of a movie actress. She motions to a poster of Mao on the backstage of the banquet hall and he steps out of the portrait to dance with her, to the accompaniment of a gramophone.
Adams states that in composing this he tried to encapsulate the type of distorted vision the 1930's Shanghai movie industry may have held of Hollywood... it didn't matter if he didn't know what a foxtrot sounded like, because, he figured 'neither did the Maos'.
The work was begun as a commission for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra before any work on Nixon in China had actually been started. However Adams, unable to get Nixon out of his head, began work without knowing the exact context and consequently found the Foxtrot 'too robust and extrovert' for the final form of the opera. The final scene of Nixon in China is essentially elegiac and poignant- fragments of the melodies of The Chairman Dances are referenced; their character transformed into the melancholic.
Compositionally, the work owes more to Western styles than the Eastern (contrary to what one might expect to find in an opera geographically placed in China). Adams has often remarked on how his 1980's works always conformed to one of two polarities, creating a kind of compositional 'split personality.' With astonishing regularity, he switched between composing sober, introspective compositions, to irreverent, brash, 'trickster' works influenced by the American vernacular music of his youth.
The Chairman Dances alludes more to the latter category; true to the time of its composition (1985), the music is representative of a combination of minimalist iterations and stylized pseudo jazz inflections, chugging rhythms, colorful orchestration and diatonic harmonies. In this work Adams synthesizes 'low' and 'high' forms of art, in complete accordance with his postmodern maxim of maintaining an 'open aesthetic'.
Bartók's 'Piano Year' of 1926 saw the creation of his first Piano Concerto, alongside other important piano works, most notably the Out of Doors suite, and the Sonata. The works mark a stage in his compositional development where he was forming the musical language of his advanced maturity- A synthesis of the traditional western cultural tradition, in particular Bach, Beethoven and Debussy, with the study of (his native) Hungarian and Balkan traditional music. These folk elements are not utilized in a 'fancy' or ornamental form of shallow exoticism, but are key components in the formulation of a new musical language.
The acute burst of creative energy from June to November which spawned The Piano Concerto broke a compositional dormancy during which Bartók had composed almost nothing for three years, (despite the fact that during this time, he was aware that a piano concerto was 'sadly lacking' in his output as a composer). Although the exact reason for Bartók's near silence is only theorised, the suggestion is that it was mainly due to pragmatic reasons; Bartók became a father for the second time in 1924 with the birth of his son Peter, as well as having commitments to the Royal Academy of Music and a heavy international concert schedule.
Not a year after it's completion, the Piano Concerto No.1 had its first performance at the ISCM Festival in Frankfurt on 1st July 1927 with Bartók himself as a soloist and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. The reception- almost a cliché in the history of Western Classical Music- was cautious. At worst it was met with incomprehension and derision, misunderstood for abandoning the traditional concept of theme and instead working with more basic levels of expression- motifs or note-cells, with narrow range and simple rhythmic impulses.
Compositionally, the Piano Concerto can be looked upon as Bartók's response to the compositional trends which dominated the 1920's. Die Neue Sachlichkeit, in English The New Objectivity was the counteraction to the early 1900's 'romantic hangover' of intense expressionism and hyper romanticism, and the resurgence of interest in Classical and Baroque compositional forms. This influence, as well as the aforementioned folk influence manifests itself in Piano concerto No.1, (as Bartók himself stressed to musicologist Edwin Von der Null) as a more striking use of counterpoint, unseen in his previous compositions.
Although the work looks to the past, it clearly veers away from pastiche, and is utterly dissimilar from the dry stylisation of Stravinskian neo-classicism. At least in it's character it is more akin to the early, folk-driven Stravinsky. The writing is harsh and the music highly charged with a momentous, even barbaric energy. The piano itself takes on the role of a percussion instrument, and for long stretches, the piano is left with only percussion as it's accompaniment. The once-radical writing exudes the innovative characteristics we have now come to regard as Bartók idioms: angular melodic lines, nervous rhythms, imaginative writing for percussion, arresting sonorities and – above all – complete formal control.
Even after it's initial exposure, the new percussive style aroused antagonism; several years later conductor Constant Lamber was still criticizing these works for their 'lack of report' between melodic and harmonic elements. Bartók himself realised the style of the work as difficult for the orchestra, and indeed public, and although he considered the First Concerto to be a success, of his second said: 'I decided to compose my second concerto with fewer difficulties for the orchestra and with lighter, more pleasing themes.'
Brahms, Symphony No. 2
Brahms composed his Second Symphony over the course of one summer in 1877, this marks a striking contrast from the tumultuous gestation of his First Symphony (which took 15 years to complete, Brahms continually fearing the pressure of living in Beethoven's shadow). After the First's great success, prominent conductor Hans von Bulow going as far to dub it as 'Beethoven's Tenth', Brahms appears to have written his Second Symphony with much greater ease. The general tone of the Symphony has been likened with the cheerful, pastoral mood of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and it is possible to speculate that this is due to the new confidence Brahms had gained in his symphonic abilities. In fact, so enthusiastic seems Brahms that he had completed the symphony within a year of finally completing the First.
The decade of the 1870s was a happy and productive period in Brahms’s life. After the premiere of his German Requiem in 1868, his international reputation was secure, and honors, commissions, and job offers came in an ever-increasing stream. The completion of his Symphony No.1 in 1876 marked the end of a long self-imposed apprenticeship in symphonic writing—a period of intense study and self-criticism that had produced works such as his two orchestral serenades, his first piano concerto, and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn. In some sense, the happy nature of the Symphony No.2 was a reflection of Brahms’s own happiness over the end of this apprenticeship. The “Pastoral” designation may also be an accurate description: according to his own accounts, Brahms composed the symphony as a reaction to the beauty of the countryside surrounding Pörtschach.
The first movement, Allegro non troppo, is a very interesting movement. It almost seems to be an entire movement based on variations of the lullaby motive which is introduced in bar 74 and continually brought back, shaped and changed both rhythmically and harmonically. What is further interesting is his decision to write the opening movement in 3/4 which is highly uncommon in the symphonic repertoire.
Despite the second movement's (Adagio non troppo) air of calm simplicity, underneath lies one of Brahms’s most complex and original forms. Brahms bases this movement on four distinct groups of melodic material and an exceedingly complicated harmonic plan. The opening theme, stated by the cellos, sounds simple enough, but features a complicated notation that grates against the bar lines. A contrasting episode in 12/8 sets winds in syncopation above a background of pizzicato strings. Another 12/8 theme, first in the violins, and then in woodwinds and solo horn, is more placid, but no less complex. A forceful passage from the full orchestra introduces new material, based on the opening theme, and the movement comes to an understated conclusion.
Throughout the Germanic symphonic repertoire composers have drawn from or mimicked traditional Austrian folk music, this is a notable motif throughout Mahler's body of works, similarly the third movement of this symphony (Allegretto grazioso) begins with a brief Haydnesque Ländler, an echo of Austrian country dances. This quickly leads into Beethovenian scherzo in 2/4. The Ländler returns again, but is quickly overshadowed by more forceful minor-key music. Again, the texture lightens, now for an episode in 3/8. The movement closes with a densely contrapuntal passage that fades away after a sustained chord from the strings.
The finale (Allegro con spirito) opens quietly, with a subdued yet complex and contrapuntal theme stated in the strings and answered by the bassoon. This theme is subtly related to the main theme of the opening movement, tying the entire symphony together into an organic whole. The hushed opening suddenly gives way to an explosion of Beethovian force and jubilance. After urgent development and a second theme presented by the violins and violas, a point of calm and repose is reached out of which emerges the first theme quietly, in a way reminiscent of the opening. The second theme takes over for a while, and begins to drive the movement to the brilliant coda. Hanslick said of this work that "Mozartian blood flows in its veins", and it is true that the music builds to an affirmative, striking and rejoiceful conclusion.
The Second Symphony is said to have gone "straight to the hearts of the Viennese", and it enjoyed the same immediate success of the First, Brahms would go on to compose two further symphonies, cementing his reputation as an orchestral composer of great skill, and all four works remain staples of the German symphonic tradition and the entire orchestral repertoire as a whole.
John Adams 'The Chairman Dances'
John Adams, (b. 1947) is considered the most frequently performed living American composer in the Classical music sphere. Over the past 25 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language. Although continually stuck with labels associated with other American composers such as 'minimalist' or 'neo-romantic', Adam's musical personality has become increasingly resistant to such pigeonholing; his own attitude being one of distaste towards formalised compositional doctrines in favor of 'aesthetic openness' with a freedom of influences.
Having won a Pulitzer Prize for his musical reaction to the atrocities of September 11th, (The Transmigration Of Souls) Adams is particularly known for his operatic works on contemporary subjects. 'The Chairman Dances was described by him as an "out take" from Act III of his 1987 opera, Nixon in China- a politically charged and satirical examination of historical, philosophical, and sociological issues surrounding President Nixon's visit to China in 1972.
The subtitle of The Chairman Dances is Foxtrot for Orchestra, although when he composed it, Adams claims he 'Did not have any idea what a foxtrot sounded like'. Perhaps we can excuse him for this compositional guesswork when we consider that the purpose of the music was to accompany the part in opera where Madame Mao gatecrashes the presidential banquet on the last night of the visit to Peking and strips off her communist uniform to reveal herself in the more provocative clothing of her former occupation of a movie actress. She motions to a poster of Mao on the backstage of the banquet hall and he steps out of the portrait to dance with her, to the accompaniment of a gramophone.
Adams states that in composing this he tried to encapsulate the type of distorted vision the 1930's Shanghai movie industry may have held of Hollywood... it didn't matter if he didn't know what a foxtrot sounded like, because, he figured 'neither did the Maos'.
The work was begun as a commission for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra before any work on Nixon in China had actually been started. However Adams, unable to get Nixon out of his head, began work without knowing the exact context and consequently found the Foxtrot 'too robust and extrovert' for the final form of the opera. The final scene of Nixon in China is essentially elegiac and poignant- fragments of the melodies of The Chairman Dances are referenced; their character transformed into the melancholic.
Compositionally, the work owes more to Western styles than the Eastern (contrary to what one might expect to find in an opera geographically placed in China). Adams has often remarked on how his 1980's works always conformed to one of two polarities, creating a kind of compositional 'split personality.' With astonishing regularity, he switched between composing sober, introspective compositions, to irreverent, brash, 'trickster' works influenced by the American vernacular music of his youth.
The Chairman Dances alludes more to the latter category; true to the time of its composition (1985), the music is representative of a combination of minimalist iterations and stylized pseudo jazz inflections, chugging rhythms, colorful orchestration and diatonic harmonies. In this work Adams synthesizes 'low' and 'high' forms of art, in complete accordance with his postmodern maxim of maintaining an 'open aesthetic'.
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