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The Dawn o f Music Semiology

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Eastman School of Music

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 The Dawn o f
Music Semiology

Essays in Honor o f
Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Edited by Jonathan Dunsby

and Jonathan Goldman

4 ^ U n iv e r s it y o r Ro c h e st e r P r ess
Copyright © 2017 by the Editors and Contributors

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no

part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 2017

University of Rochester Press

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-562-5
ISSN: 1071-9989

library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 1945-honorée. | Dunsby, Jonathan, editor. |

Goldman, Jonathan, 1949- editor.
Title: The dawn of music semiology : essays in honor of Jean-Jacques Nattiez /
edited byJonathan Dunsby and Jonathan Goldman.
( )llier titles: Eastman studies in music ; v. 137.
I inscription: Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2017. | Series: Eastman
studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 137
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042784 | ISBN 9781580465625 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: I.CSII: Music—Semiotics. | Music—Philosophy and aesthetics. |
Symbolism in music.
Classification: LCC ML3845 .D385 2017 | DDC 781.1/7—dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042784

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library1.

This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America.
 Contents

Foreword: About Jean-Jacques Nattiez vii

Pierre Boulez

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1
Jonathan Dunsby and Jonathan Goldman

Part One: Metaconsiderations

1 Music and Gesture 11

Jean Molino

2 Music Semiology in the Mind of the Musician 23

Jonathan Dunsby

3 Against Ethnotheory 38
Kofi Agawu

Part Two: Poietic Channels

4 From Georgian to Medieval Polyphonies: Analysis and Modeling 59

Simha Arom

5 Schenker’s Inhalt, Schenkerian Semiotics: A Preliminary Study 81

Nicolas Meeùs

6 Music under the Sign of Modernism: From Wagner to

Boulez, and Britten 97
Arnold Whittall
Vi »> CONTENTS

Part Three: Esthesic Excursions

7 Musical Borrowings in the Works of Bruno Maderna 119

Rossana Dalmonte

8 Of Doubles, Groups, and Rhymes: A Sériation of Works for

Spatialized Orchestral Groups (1958-60) 139
Jonathan Goldman

9 The Psychological Organization of Music Listening:

From Spontaneous to Learned Perceptive Processes 177
Irène Deliège

Selected Bibliography of Works byjeanjacques Nattiez 201

List of Contributors 205

Index 209

Tabula Gratulatoria 215

 Foreword
About Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Pierre Boulez

11him \ ' note: Pierre Boulez was aware of the planning for this book and indicated to us
hit IiiIni lion to provide it with a foreword. Although this would doubtless have been elab-
ni iiird pom earlier writings in which Boulez had expressed his deep admiration for and
nppin lotion of our dedicatee's scholarship, nevertheless it is a matter of regret that he did
nut live lo complete the foreword, which we know he had begun to think about. Partly in
hitmir lo llie memory of such a great musician, instead we offer here excerpts from his let-
UI n/ ircommendation, now privately owned, written in support offean-Jacques Nattiez’s
•tiinlnlin y for a major award in 2002.I

I li.iw followed JeanJacques Nattiez’s career from the beginning. The nov-
i In ,iiid originality of his very first book, Fondements d ’une sémiologie de la
hi inique ( 11)75), did not go unnoticed by observers in our field. This book
mi* rile« lively the first of its kind to use methods of investigation based
mi die ligotons techniques of linguistics, in order to decipher and better
midi Iit.mil the structures of musical language. With this truly fundamental
Mm V. I<.i 11 -Jacques Nattiez paved the way for a new branch of musicology,
tn gin ted until then. But beyond this theoretical and methodological work,
In li.ul the merit of applying his theories to areas as varied as they are wor-
lli\ ul deep interest.
I lie oiigimility of JeanJacques Nattiez in the world of music lies in the fact
dm Im him, musicology does not imply a narrow specialization, more often
ill.........I diieeted toward the past. That type of musicology is not without its
intim Inn ulten seems lo forget about both the present and other cultures.
V lll *•» FOREWORD

As opposed to this, when looking at a list of his publications, one notes

titles referring to topics that one has a hard time imagining as being writ­
ten by the same hand. This is true of his studies of Wagner and another of
Proust; in these, it seems to me, he has perfectly grasped the source of the
greatness of creators of large-scale works: whether it be the Tetralogy or
Remembrance of Things Past, these creators display the capacity, fundamental
for me, of deriving compact yet fertile matrices for rich and infinite devel­
opment. It is to him also that we owe recordings and articles devoted to
distant musical cultures, like the Inuit of Canada, the Ainu of Japan, or to
the Baganda of Uganda. On top of all that, he has an abiding interest in the
study of contemporary music.
Need I mention that he served as editor of my own texts Points de repères
and Jahns (pour une décennie), as well as the critical edition of my correspon­
dence with John Cage? Without his active cooperation, these texts would have
remained, as they say, ‘in boxes’ or in the drawers of an archive. He is the
author of a very long and penetrating article on my work Répons, which is of
particular relevance.
He has been involved in musical life by directing, upon my request and
out of Montréal, a collection, Musique/passé/présent, published by Christian
Bourgois in Paris: he has published twenty-five books of composers’, musicolo­
gists’, and estheticians’ writings in this collection.
He founded in 1990, and was Director of for ten years, the journal
Circuit, a North American Review of twentieth-century music, published by
the Presses de l’Unversité de Montréal. I am well placed to know how fleet­
ing the life of ajournai on the music of today can be. It is rare that they out­
live their seventh year, whereas not only has this journal gone beyond this
limit but it is still going strong at the beginning of the twenty-first century,
still contributing to the dissemination of Canadian musical culture in the
French-speaking world.
I had the opportunity, in 1993, to introduce him before a series of four lec­
tures he gave at the Collège de France where he had been invited to speak. I can
attest to the extremely warm reception which he received from members of the
current French musicological community. These four lectures will be adapted
in preparation for a book which is much anticipated in our milieu, and which
will certainly be important, judging from what I then heard.1
He has been leading a gigantic project, an Encyclopedia of music in four
volumes, published in both Italy and in France. Here, once again, the origi­
nality of JeanJacques Nattiez’s approach manifests itself. This is the first time
that a project of this kind devotes an entire volume—and in this case it is the
 FOREWORD »> IX

Jint vol 1111 u •I—to the twentieth century. In most analogous works, the twentieth
century is timidly allotted a portion amounting to subsistence rations. The con­
tent and Ilie global plan of this project bear witness to Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s
great knowledge of the different currents of musicology.

Pierre Boulez
Composer and conductor
Honorary Professor at the Collège de France
Honorary Director of IRCAM (Institut de Coordination
et de Recherche Acoustique-Musique, Paris)
October 8, 2001

Notes

Boule/ uTrrs to the book that would be published as Analyses et interprétations

de In musique. La mélodie du berger dans le Tristan et Isolde de Richard Wagner
(I*m Ih: Vrin, 2013). —Eds.
 Acknowledgments

Jean-Jacques Nattiez, bom December 30, 1945, has the gifts not only of special
musicianship and scholarship but also of special friendship. It is probably no
exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of eminent colleagues worldwide,
expert in or fascinated by music semiology, whom we could have invited to
contribute to this publication and who would have agreed to do so eagerly, not
only in tribute to Nattiez’s impact on the history of ideas but also to his great
personal warmth. Although it would be invidious to comment on our choice
of invitations, it will be obvious that our first and most emphatic acknowledg­
ment must be of our contributors, to whom we express profound gratitude.
We discovered that it is the easiest thing in the world to ask eminent musical
researchers to intermpt their hugely busy professional lives for this purpose.
An unexpected request that might otherwise have elicited the kindly but firm
response “Are you joking?” in all cases triggered instead the Nattiez effect—
words such as “For JeanJacques, anything.”
“Three score years and ten” in the modern world is not nowadays quite the
momentous round number it has been in the Western tradition, but it is cer­
tainly something to celebrate, in this case of a scholar now entering his eighth
decade. We thank our eponymous dedicatee for long associations with each of
the editors, associations that have gready enriched our professional and per­
sonal lives. We also wish to express our gratitude to Rita Ezrati, spouse of Jean­
Jacques Nattiez, whose original artwork appears on the cover of this book.
We are grateful to the University of Rochester Press for fostering this project
with their typical, consummate professionalism, and to two anonymous readers
who made substantive contributions to how it has been realized. In particular
we would like to thank Ralph Locke, senior editor of the Eastman Studies in
Music series, Soniâ Kane, editorial director of the press, and Julia Cook, associ­
ate editor. We also wish to thank Alberto Munarriz for his help in preparing
the index.
 Introduction
Jonathan Dunsby and Jonathan Goldman

The aim of this book is to present some of the latest thinking about the nature
and purpose of music semiology. It is not only a repository of new scholarship
in an exciting area of general musicology but also a tribute to Jean-Jacques
Nattiez, who in anyone’s account of the last half century would be considered
the founder of this discipline.
The word dawn in the title of this book refers to the fact that music semi­
ology—which arrived on the musicological, and particularly the music-
theoretical, scene in French, in 1976, through Nattiez’s pioneering study
Fondements d ’une sémiologie de la musique—is young, vibrant, and certainly not
fully formed.1 In recent decades other strands of musicological thinking have
emerged that can be regarded as spawned by music semiology, explicitly or
otherwise. These alone are indications of the labile state of the recent history
of ideas as discernible in current musical scholarship. Although the bound­
aries are anything but clear, as some of the present book indicates, music
semiotics, which has aimed to distinguish its methods from those of music
semiology, could hardly have emerged as the prodigious research field it now
is without the impetus that came from the poststructuralist thinking of the
1980s, largely stimulated by Fondements and Nattiez’s other publications from
the earliest days of music semiology.2 Similarly, the development, especially
in music theory circles in recent years, of “narrative” approaches to musi­
cal explanation has been riding the same wave of hermeneutical explora­
tions of music as the semiologist Jean Molino, Nattiez’s principal influence.
The development of narrative approaches will be discussed further, as will
Molino’s concept of the “total symbolic fact.” It is no accident that it was
Nattiez himself, according to one authority, who first used the term new musi­
cology in print, applying it to research revealing the antistructuralist urges
that had begun to characterize the work of younger historical musicologists.
In Nattiez’s view, these scholars lacked the aesthetic conviction that would
have lent (hem some enduring henueneuiu al value.3
2 » JO N A TH A N D U N SB Y AND JON ATH AN GO LDM AN

It is important to understand that this publication is not a replete tribute

to Nattiez’s hundreds of publications, which include dozens of books, many
of them translated from his original French into English and other languages.
Any such project would have a potentially bewildering remit of topics to be cov­
ered. The omission here of certain ethnomusicological perspectives, whether
circumpolar or Pacific Rim, for instance, would alone be grave and obvious,
as would the failure to account for Nattiez’s work as an encyclopedist, or as a
chronicler of the thought and work of his great compatriot Boulez. Even that
is not to give attention to his early publications as a journalist outside of musi­
cology on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, or indeed his 1997 work of fiction,
the novel Opera. However, it requires no historical skill at all to see in Nattiez’s
work on every front the relendess pursuit of the interpretation of the mean­
ing of symbolic “facts”: he has been above all a semiologist and, embracing
that epistemological commitment, a passionate musician. It requires no special
knowledge, either, of the development of musicology over nearly half a century
to acknowledge the phenomenal influence that music semiology has exerted
on the often insouciant habits of mind among today’s generation of histori­
cally and theoretically inclined musical scholars.
This volume contains original essays by nine authors, preceded by Pierre
Boulez’s foreword. It seems doubtful to the editors that any one person—
except perhaps Nattiez himself—could have hoped to cover the sheer range of
critical thought that the combined approaches of such a distinguished panel of
writers can produce. The Dawn of Music Semiology therefore makes no apologies
for being multiauthored. Its coherence, however, is promised by our strategy of
exploring what we regard as central themes of the discipline as it has emerged
since the 1970s, and which we believe can set the agenda for future research.
It may be surprising to contemplate how recendy music, after centuries of
being marginalized in the study of humankind, has become the object of a
representative and thorough anthropology. Whether we cite Immanuel Kant’s
assigning the arts to aesthetic pleasure in the eighteenth century,4 or Stephen
Pinker’s notoriously calling music “auditory cheesecake” in 1997,5 momen­
tous correctives have been needed. It can well be argued that the three most
significant have been John Blacking’s How Musical Is Man? (1973), Stephen
Mithen’s The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and
Body (2005), and Molino’s Le singe musicien: essais de sémiologie et anthropologie
de la musique (2009)—’’The Musical Ape,” a book that regrettably has yet to be
translated into English.6 Molino’s work is of direct interest here as being not
only grounded in music semiology but also emanating from the scholar who
is counted by Nattiez as the single most formative influence on his intellectual
development. It is highly appropriate to open The Dawn of Music Semiology with
“Music and Gesture,” a chapter from Molino’s most recent book, translated
here for the first time. Those who already have an interest in music semiology
 INTRO DU CTIO N 3

will be aware that his article “Musical Fact and the Semiology of Music,” pub­
lished originally in 1975 in French, was foundational to Nattiez himself, as to
legions of scholars ever since.7 As Craig Ayrey described the situation in a con­
spectus that holds good to this day:

Molino’s theory had its most immediate influence in Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s

Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique. . . in which the tripartition informs
every aspect of Nattiez’s method. Having cleared the way for an analysis of
the neutral level, Nattiez continued to apply Molino’s insights using [Nicolas]
Ruwet’s paradigmatic procedures; but where Ruwet’s analytical criteria are
abstract, Nattiez’s are flexible, in response to the complexities of a work. Like
Molino, Nattiez recognizes that even a neutral-level analysis is provisional,
since it depends on the criteria underlying the analytical procedure. Thus,
a neutral-level analysis can be “overturned” by the introduction of different
analytical criteria or new (poietic or esthesic) data, in order to avoid harden­
ing the concept of structure into a concrete theory. In later work, Nattiez
has explored the dimensions of poietic and esthesic analysis. .. . The focus
on discourse here is significant, since it applies to all music . .. and is not
unconnected with recent work on narrativity in music, whether in opera, pro­
gramme music or what can loosely be called musical syntax.8

Even though gesture itself does not figure on a large scale elsewhere here—
for there is a big agenda of topics to be explored—the synthetic rather than the
“pure” nature of music understood in a semiological perspective is a recurrent
theme launched by this initial meditation. In fact, Nattiez’s has been a hero­
ically consistent voice in musicology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, explaining with utmost clarity the synthetic nature of musical activ­
ity—which is always inherently, indeed essentially, a symbolic activity—across
what is a stunning array of cultures and eras for the life’s work, to date, of
one scholar. Many statements in Nattiez’s writings testify to his commitment
to experience as synthesis. Let a recent one be emblematic of that lifetime of
insistence on the symbolic nature of human observation, as we attempt, Nattiez
says, “to explain things in the world, which are inscribed as Immanuel Kant
maintains in space and time, seeking to discern causal relationships.” And yet
such knowledge of the world, Nattiez continues, does not provide us with any
“profound essence, because it allows us to access only individual objects. Access
to the world by means of representation, subject to the principle of individua­
tion, leads us to miss the profound unity which is the locus of its truth.”9 In a
sense, that is the underlying impetus to what Boulez refers to as the “different
currents” in Nattiez’s research.10
It would be wrong, however, to suppose that despite his epistemological con­
sistency, Nattiez’s thinking lias been static. In our interpretation, at least, of his
development, there are three stages so lar. First was a poststructuralist phase
4 JO NATH AN D U N SB Y AND JO N A T H A N GOLDMAN

whose emblematic moment was the publication of Fondements (“Foundations of

Music Semiology,” which has never been translated into English) in 1975, lead­
ing to Musicologie générale et sémiologie of 1987, the period when Nattiez champi­
oned paradigmatic analysis as the quintessential methodology of analysis of the
“neutral” level. He demonstrated this extensively in his now classic analyses of
Varèse’s Densité 21.5 and Debussy’s Syrinx.11 A second period, during the 1980s
and 1990s, was one of consolidation, in which he applied his theory to appar-
endy heterogeneous areas—Baganda and Inuit music, Proust, and Wagner,
but also Gould, the Quebec abstract artist Yves Gaucher, and his venerated
French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and we would place his novel Opera in this category
also.12 It was during these years that he embraced postmodernism.13 Third, we
diagnose a hermeneutic turn: for example, the last of the four sections of his
2013 book on Wagner’s Tristan is entirely devoted to the hermeneutics of the
“Alte Weise”; as Nattiez says in introducing his wide-ranging exegesis there, “It
is . . . to be expected in articulating semantic connotations to have been able
to expose, for some listeners, hermeneutical explanations based on their own
experience.”14 It is significant that during this period, the structuralist foun­
dations of paradigmatic analysis were enriched by prolongational methods
that take into account the legacy both of Heinrich Schenker and of Nattiez’s
favored anglophone exponent of music-analytical discourse, Leonard B. Meyer.
Boulez is the music analyst Nattiez can probably be said to regard as a model,
whereas Meyer has always intrigued him in terms of theoretical ramifications,
especially in the latter’s Style and Music.15
The chapters that follow are grouped in three parts, a tribute to the cham­
pion of the tripartite model and dedicatee of this book: metaconsiderations,
poiedc channels, and esthesic excursions. Readers may wonder whether
there is something arbitrary, or programmatic, about the classification of the
majority of chapters into poietic and esthesic families, but as in Nattiez’s own
research there is a continual interplay here between the different levels. In the
following survey we draw together some of the interacting networks through
which chapters may be seen to be in dialogue with each other, beyond mere
categorization.
In part 1, “Metaconsiderations,”Jean Molino’s essay on gesture (mentioned
above) offers a penetrating initial meditation on a relatively neglected aspect
of symbolic synthesis. Professional musicians and audiences alike are acutely
aware of, and attuned to, the foundational role of gesture in musical signi­
fication, yet it has been little theorized. Molino approaches the challenge in
two ways: first, by making a typology of gesture, anchored in the anthropologi­
cal literature and fundamentally committed to what are in effect “concepts of
embodiment,” as they are referred to so often in contemporary anglophone
scholarship; and second, by discussing ways in which the gestural content
of music may be susceptible to music analysis in principle. Perhaps the key
 INTRO DU CTIO N ** 5

syncretic feature is enshrined in Molino’s comments—worth anticipating here,

for to some extent they set the tone for the whole volume—that

to relate the work to musical practice is to adopt the semiological perspective

of symbolic forms, according to which every human creation presents in a
triple mode of existence, as a work or object, as a channel of production, and
as a channel of reception. In this way music is seen to be complex, heteroge­
neous, involving the inherent participation of the body as well as the gestures
of its producers and listeners. Thus there is no pure music. (13)

Next, in “Music Semiology in the Mind of the Musician,” Jonathan Dunsby

steers the discussion toward the mental process of musical synthesis, includ­
ing a critique of the partial take on meaning offered by currently fashionable
narratological thinking, as was scrutinized closely by Nattiez in the 1980s and
1990s. Rather in the way that Nattiez moved from an early emphasis on analysis
at the neutral level to a proliferation of poietic and esthesic research (as we saw
above through Ayrey’s comments), so Dunsby also seeks here to reveal some of
the implicit weighting of the tripartition in certain areas. He argues that when
it comes to music psychology and cognition, inevitably we are theorizing above
all about esthesics as a substrate rather than an excursion, and that much
is to be learned by making that tendency explicit. Kofi Agawu, in “Against
Ethnotheory,” moves the debate from a global view. He scrutinizes apparent
human differentiation, in effect re-examining the time-honored question of
whether and in what way semiologically we can truly speak of the plurality that
has become a musicological commonplace during Nattiez’s career—that is,
truly speak of “musics.” Looking at ethnotheory in African music studies, in a
commanding critique of current practice Agawu argues against the prevalent
search for difference. He offers a cluster of reasons to treat ethnotheory as
potentially toxic, as “ultimately a confining rather than liberating discourse.”
Part 2, “Poietic Channels,” explores fundamental creative questions of
musicology in a music-semiological context. In “From Georgian to Medieval
Polyphonies: Analysis and Modeling,” Simha Arom examines harmony and
syntax in the traditional polyphonic music of Georgia in the Caucasus. This
music is a unique corpus that requires cognitive modeling in order to recon­
struct any understanding of its musical grammar. In that sense it is a poietic
demonstration of the centrality of esthesic evidence that Dunsby’s chapter
argues for, as well as being a validation of Agawu’s point about the need to
lay bare the workings of creative imagination “using the sharpest tools irre­
spective of origin” (51). This is a glowing example of what Nattiez has called
musicologie générale, a single held encompassing ethnomusicology, historical
musicology, and music theory and analysis. In this case it shows how a method­
ology developed for the analysis of Georgian vocal polyphony can be used to
shed light on medieval Western polyphony. In “Schenker’s Inhalt, Schenkerian
6 ** JO N A TH A N DUNSBY AND JO NATH AN GOLDMAN

Semiotics: A Preliminary Study” Nicolas Meeus offers a specific example of the

kind of integration implied by a musicologie générale, reflecting on exposing one
of the central puzzles in contemporary music theory, which emanates from its
dogged reluctance to embrace fully what Meeùs argues is the inherent relativ­
ism of Schenker’s theory of structural levels. Meeùs’s thesis is that “Schenker
sees musical meaning as having its source in a relational rather than a substan­
tive unity” (88). In this section’s final essay, Arnold Whittall focuses on Boulez
and Richard Wagner, as well as their interactions over the course of nearly two
centuries of German and French aesthetics generally. In “Music under the Sign
of Modernism: From Wagner to Boulez, and Britten” Whittall draws together
threads of institutional epistemology and the competing impulses of music-
psychological tendencies.
Part 3, “Esthesic Excursions,” focuses on musical effect rather than its gen­
esis, from a tripartitional perspective which scans production, structures, and
reception in a psychologically oriented context. In ‘'Musical Borrowings in the
Works of Bruno Maderna,” Rossana Dalmonte considers the different ways in
which we are able to hear Italian vernacular song injected into the fabric of
modernistic composition, concentrating on Maderna’s career-long practice of
such integration. She is inspired by Nattiez’s theorizing, based on psychological
evidence, about how melody th has passed from some original “folk” musical
setting into art music continues to bear meanings associated with its original
history. Jonathan Goldman also takes up the exploration of modes of listen­
ing in “Of Doubles, Groups, and Rhymes: A Sériation of Works for Spatialized
Orchestral Groups (1958-60),” which examines the specific ways in which
audiences in the 1950s and 1960s may have listened to works for spatialized
orchestral groupings, in light of their experiences of contemporary audio tech­
nology. The years 1958-60 were especially rich in premieres. Large-scale, multi-
orchestral works by Boulez, Stockhausen, and Pousseur are the central musical
evidence for this inquiry, which is based on esthesic sériation (a reference to
Nattiez’s semiological concept of “mise en sérié'). The essay concludes that the
esthesics of spatialized sound brought together the technological environment
of Western listeners, in the new era of stereophony, with the ambisonic creative
urge of some of its leading European composers. Finally, in a contribution to
experimental esthesics, Irène Deliège, in “The Psychological Organization of
Music Listening: From Spontaneous to Learned Perceptive Processes,” pro­
poses a taxonomy of listening—listening to, for example, Wagner, Berio, and
Boulez—based on levels of musical training. This essay spotlights the esthesic
link, discussing a series of listening experiments including on perception of
the “Alte Weise” from Wagner’s Tristan, as Nattiez has specifically discussed in
Analyses et interprétations de la musique (see pp. 163-70).
The editors hope and believe that the heterogeneity of this rich assemblage
will strike the reader as being part of its value overall, and of course its focus
 INTRO DU CTIO N 7

has to some extent been guaranteed by the brief that contributors were given:
simply, they were invited to present original research that represents some
engagement with the kind of musicological methodology and aesthetics that
Nattiez has done so much in his career so far to both originate and foster.

Notes

1. Nattiez, Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris: Union générale

d’éditions, 1976).
2. The remarkable work of contemporary scholars such as Marta Graböcz, Robert
Hatten, and Eero Tarasti, as well as the late Naomi Cumming, may be said to
refer to a background in American pragmatic philosophy. People rightly often
refer to “Peircean semiotics,” and although Nattiez refers to Peirce frequently,
music semiology is considered to belong to a rather distinct tradition. The edi­
tors have decided not to be prescriptive about this matter of terminology, and
the reader will find both terms used variously in this volume.
3. “The phrase ‘New Musicology’ was apparently first used byjean-jacques Nattiez
in the blurb for Carolyn Abbate’s book Unsung Voices and repeated by Arnold
Whittall in his enthusiastic review of that book for Music Analysis’’ Derrick
Puffett, “Editorial: In Defence of Formalism,” Music Analysis 13, no. 1(1994): 3.
4. For a recent authoritative study of Kant’s aesthetics, which does not, how­
ever, specifically discuss music, see Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublimefrom
Longinus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
5. See below, p. 26, for what Pinker actually wrote.
6. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1973); Stephen Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music,
Language, Mind, and Body (London: Weidenfeid 8c Nicolson, 2005) ; and Jean
Molino, Le singe musicien: essais de sémiologie et anthropologie de la musique (Arles:
Actes Sud, 2009).
7. Craig Ayrey, “Introduction,” Music Analysis S), no. 2 (1990): 105-56.
8. Ayrey, “Introduction,” 107.
9. “Nous tentons de nous expliquer les objets du monde, inscrits, comme y
insistait Emmanuel Kant, dans l’espace et le temps, en cherchant à découvrir
des relations de causalité. Mais cette connaissance du monde ne nous en four­
nit pas l’essence profonde, et ce, parce qu’elle ne nous donne accès qu’à des
objets individuels. Biaisé par le principe d’individuation, l’accèss au monde
par la représentation nous en fait manquer l’unité profonde en laquelle réside
sa vérité.” Analyses et interprétation de la musique: la mélodie du berger dans le Tristan
et Isolde de Richard Wagner (Paris: Vrin, 2015), 340.
IC). See above, p. Lx.
11. “Varese’s ‘Density 21.5’: A Study in Seiniological Analysis,” Music Analysis1, no.
3 (1982): 243-340; “An Analysis of Debussy’s Syrinx,'9in Three Musical Analyses,
JeanJacques Nattiez, Marcelle Chicrlin and Monique Desroches, Toronto
8 2» JONATH AN D U N SB Y AND JON A TH A N GO LD M AN

Semiotic Circle Monographs, Working Papers and Prep indications 4 (Toronto:

Victoria University, 1982), 1-35.
12. See Ouganda/Uganda—Musique des Baganda/Music of the Baganda People (in
collaboration with Nnaalongo Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza and Ssalongo
Justinian Tamusuza) OCORA C-560161, 2002, compact disc; “Some Aspects
of the Study of Inuit Vocal Games,” Ethnomusicology 27, no. 3 (1983): 457-75;
Proust as Musician (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); “Gould
Out of Time,” in The Battle of Chronos and Orpheus (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), 84-102; “Webern/Gaucher: The Jolt,” in Yves Gaucher (Montréal:
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2003), 193-209; “L’Arrière-pays de la
musique (moderne),” in Yves Bonnefoy et VEwrope du XXème siècle, ed. Michèle
Finck, Daniel Lançon, and Maryse Staiber (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires
de Strasbourg), 364-76; Opera, roman (Montréal: Leméac, 1997).
13. The first issue of the journal Nattiez founded in 1989, Circuit, Revue nord-améri­
caine de la musique du XX siècle (now called Circuit, musiques contemporaines) was
devoted to musical postmodernism: see http://www.erudit.org/revue/cir-
cuit/1990/vl/nl/index.html (accessed May 21, 2016).
14. “Il est . . . normal que la verbalisation des connotations sémantiques ait pu
déboucher, chez certains auditeurs, sur des élaborations herméneutiques à
partir de leur propre vécu,” 294.
15. Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
 Part One

Metaconsiderations
 Chapter One

Music and Gesture

Jean Molino

The Body and Music

11 is obvious that gesture and the human body must be incorporated into
music, but how do we do that?1 I think it would be both misleading and
huile to somehow add gesture in with music, meaning adding it to music
in ihe way this has been thought of since the age of Pythagoras, for about
(lie last two and a half millennia. That would be to produce a chimera,
a iwo-headed, impossible being created artificially on contradictory prem­
ises. To reintegrate gesture with music appropriately, we have to question
existing definitions of the art of sound and reconstruct something in which
the body takes its proper place from the start. That is no easy undertaking,
since music always tends to be understood, without our reckoning on this,
in terms of a duality in which the soul is at odds with the body, in which
pure music, its autonomy intact, is at odds with all the external impurities
that may be associated with it.
The history of Western music theory presents us with an uninterrupted
scries of dualisms for which the names may change or be swapped around but
Ihe logic of which remains the same: on the one hand, there is pure music,
music from on high, ideal music; on the other hand, low, mundane, impure
music. This distinction dates from the origins of Western civilization. Greek
ill ought has always differentiated musical practice—in which poetry, dance,
and sonic art are grouped because they have rhythm in common—from music
theory, the science of harmony that, arose at the same time as mathematics,
philosophy, and theology: sociology on one side, resting on the interplay of
iiendis and ethos, and on the other a science discovering the nature of things.
Medieval music, following neo-l’ylliagomm and neo-Platonic ideas from antiq­
uity remodeled the duality on new fundamentals. The six-century Boethius,
In 7V institut imr musirn contrasts w 11.\mr mundarut,—heavenly music known
12 ** JEAN MOLINO

through speculation in a quadrivium with arithmetic, geometry, and astron­

omy—with musica humana, the harmony of the body and the soul, and muska
instrumental, produced by human agents. Thus music theory is the master to
the slave of musical practice, just as the body is the slave to the soul: the real
musician is neither player nor composer but someone able to pass judgment
according to rules, knowing the mathematical principles on which the domain
of actual sounds is organized.
Yet another dichotomy was set up after the Scholastics, appearing clearly
in the Compendium musicae of René Descartes (1650). The aim “of music
is to delight and arouse various emotions in us,”2 but, as Descartes states
in a letter to Marin Mersenne of March 18, 1630, there is no absolute and
unequivocal correspondence between the properties of sound and the
emotions it arouses. Further, there is a mathematics of sounds, concerned
with analyzing their physical properties. Thus the status of what would be
called in the nineteenth century Affektenlehre remained ambiguous, while at
the same time music became an acoustic science. The two tendencies run
in parallel, a conflict between musical expression and physico-mathemati-
cal acoustics. Regardless of the nature of musical signification—whether it
was seen as arousing emotions or, as the romantics thought, as expressing
a yearning for the infinite—gradually a “positivist” idea of music took hold,
according to which the laws of sonic organization were based in empirical
reality. A consistent rationale developed from Descartes to Helmholtz via
Rameau, of which the basic principles seemed to become natural. “We are
thus immediately introduced into the field of music proper, and are led
to discover the physiological reason for that enigmatical numerical rela­
tion announced by Pythagoras,” writes Helmholtz, who goes on to say: “I
do not hesitate to assert that the preceding investigations, founded upon
a more exact analysis of the sensations of tone, and upon purely scientific,
as distinct from esthetic principles, exhibit the true and sufficient cause of
consonance and dissonance in music.”3 We can appreciate therefore that
the disputes between expression and semantics in music are a secondary
matter, since everyone is agreed on the fact of pure music, its organization
corresponding miraculously to the natural world and to our characteristic
modes of perception:

The gratifying reasonableness which can be found in musical structures is

based upon certain fundamental laws of nature governing both the human
organism and the external manifestations of sound. . . . All musical elements
have mysterious bonds and affinities among themselves, determined by natu­
ral laws. . . . They reside, though not in a manner open to scientific investi­
gation, instinctively in every cultivated ear, which accordingly perceives the
organic, rational coherence of a group of tones, or its absurdity and unnatu­
ralness, by mere contemplation, with no concept as its m i n i o n .'1
 M USIC AND G EST U RE 13

Kverything relies, therefore, on a kernel, music itself, to which external ele­

ments attach, and all discussion concerns the relations uniting these two
heterogeneous elements and the importance to music of what is not strictly
musical. It is striking that exactly this problem can be observed in the same
dualistic terms by even the most culturally oriented ethnomusicologists:
,l 11 follows that any assessment of human musicality must account for pro­
cesses that are extramusical, and that these should be included in analyses of
music.”5 Thus, John Blacking identifies both music as narrowly defined in the
Kuropean tradition and the extramusical, which embraces dance, social func-
(ions of music, and the emotions it arouses in the listener. Dualism is ever
present, and the only question is whether the body is engaged (the extramu­
sic al), and to what extent, affecting the soul (pure music). Conceptual devel­
opment has achieved nothing more than an amplification of dualism, the
sterile opposition between opposition between the music as soul and culture
as bodymusic’s soul and the body in human culture. There is no pure music,
because music is a synthesis.
Now, this is is a doubtful opposition, in that dualism is bound up with essen-
lialism, for body and soul can exist separately only if each is susceptible unam­
biguously to a precise, simple, and distinct definition. Yet that is not so, no
more than it is so of anything in life. To accept the synthesis is to acknowledge
1liai nothing in the world is reducible to a structure, to a unique model, those
being constructions allowing us to describe an object’s properties. That asser­
tion is so generally true that it applies even to mathematical objects. It has
been known since the end of the nineteenth century that the real numbers do
not correspond to one single mathematical structure but to a complex network
of different structures (at once an ordered field and a metric and a topological
space). Music too is a syndiesis, including not only those variables and organi­
zational principles that are recognized by Western tradition.
The only way to escape from the constraints of the dualistic tradition is
to explore not the work itself but musical practice. Bear in mind that in this
respect the idea of the work is very recent. Only really by the sixteenth century
was an identifiable musical poetics, in which the musical work could be con­
ceptualized, associated in Aristotelian circles with music theory and musical
practice. To relate the work to musical practice is to adopt the semiological
perspective of symbolic forms, according to which every human creation pres­
ents in a triple mode of existence, as a work or object, as a channel of produc-
1ion, and as a channel of reception. In this way music is seen to be complex,
heterogeneous, involving the inherent participation of the body as well as the
gestures of its producers and listeners. Thus there is no pure music. Different
aspects are in play when music is made: they are always at every moment.
True, in Kuropean thought we have celebrated the idea of pure music, but that
is as il were a phantom, 01 more precisely a model, partial and value laden, its
14 ** JE A N MOLINO

sole purposes analytical rather than as some definitive historical truth, a truth
that could be meaningful only at an individual level. That being the case, we
should undo the distinction between pure and impure, between internal and
external, or rather, we should remove the harrier between them. The mistake made
in all sociologies and all culturalist approaches is not that of aiming to amplify
and enlarge the model of pure music but aiming to extend it by adding some
thing that is in principle always external, such as social function.6 Because
music is a synthesis, it is its internal diversity that has to be accounted for, with
out necessarily displacing it to the legitimate arenas of ethnology or sociology.

Typology o f Musical Gestures

On that basis, gesture should no longer to be seen as something external to

pure music, but as a constitutive and fundamental element of musical activity.
In the same way that a particular definition of music has to be replaced by a
generalized one, so particular definitions of gesture must be generalized.7 In
its primary normal usage, according to the “Robert’ dictionary (2006), the wool
refers to “a movement of the body (mainly the arms, hands, and head).”8 Now,
music offers more than that form of gesture, since the whole body is involved,
and in broadening the usage of the word we can identify three general type?»
of musical gesture: instrumental gesture, vocal gesture, and rhythmic gesture.
There is much to be learned in comparison with other artistic practices: in
drawing, painting, and sculpture there is but one type, the gesture of llie
hand, making lines, strokes, or shapes. This is essential gesture, to which Heim
Focillon’s “In Praise of Hands” (1934) is devoted, and which is what endows
real meaning to a line on a sheet of paper.9 Yet there is a difference between
that type of gesture and music, in which the body is involved in three dilfemn
ways, indicating the key role that it plays in the art of sound. Note too that grs
tures are part of anyone’s activity who takes part in musical practice by passive
listening. The phenomenon of the “double ear” operates at three levels: to
listen to a voice, a rhythm, or an instrumental sound is to encounter, if partially
and allusively, the gestures that produced it.
Gesture has an essential role in music because music is an activity in whi< h
the product—the sound and its physical qualities—is only one feature, pail nt
the global symbolic fact that we call playing music. It is precisely in this con
text that I am ascribing three dimensions to the symbolic fact: the channels of
production (poietics), the object itself (neutral, or immanent level), and ihr
channels of reception (esthesics). Music does not boil down to the couvrit
tional musical score, for the very reason that we are dealing not with must« o!
the spheres but with music that is performed. Now, among all the facets ol ihr
channels of production that are involved in every aspect of human activity, ihr
 M U SIC AND G EST U R E sv 15

most basic, the first we should be thinking about, is the one that belongs to
traditional “techniques” in the sense offered by Marcel Mauss: “Techniques are
to be defined as traditional actions combined in order to produce a mechani­
cal, physical, or chemical effect, these actions being recognized to have that
effect.” He emphasizes the bond between technical and artistic activity: “It
is very difficult to distinguish aesthetic phenomena from technical ones.”10
But the main reason he gives for this affinity is not convincing. It is not only
because these two activities produce objects but because both cases involve
controlled behavior—traditional action—that does not necessarily lead to the
production of some external physical object. It is interesting that this theorist
of traditional techniques, the inventor of the idea of “techniques of the body,”
fails to refer to productive human activity when he considers the arts in the
Manual11 This seems emblematic of the challenge in integrating the channels
of production theoretically into musicology. Ethnomusicology and organology
do inspect these techniques, mostly by observation, as preliminaries or append­
ages rather than as determinative elements. Moreover, connections are rarely
made between gesture and the movements associated with physical production
and artistry. Only in non-European traditions is artistic gesture regarded as
decisive, for example in Chinese painting, where Shitao’s “oneness of brush­
strokes” does not separate the gesture from the mark it leaves on a surface.12

Instrumental Gesture

Gesture in musical activity in general includes, of course, the overall categories of

traditional techniques, that is, manufacture, use of instruments, and techniques of
tiie body. The study of instruments is a normal aspect of ethnomusicology, but it is
not clear that enough importance is ever given to the gestures of musicians playing
instruments. Organology provides a classification of those gestures when instru­
ments are placed in families in respect of both the physical and the bodily (chor-
dophones, membranophones, etc.) and how they are played (plucked, stroked,
and struck, for chordophones; shaken, scraped, hit, and clashed, for idiophones;
and so on). Yet such classification is determined by the classification of instruments
and does not take enough account of the dynamic autonomy of movement, while
from another point of view there is no account of the relationship with gestural
dynamics in other areas of social activity. The idea of symbol, though, as conceived
here, highlights correspondences that are not always given an explicit conceptual
value. A musical gesture may relate to other social gestures, a relationship consti­
tuting one of the first levels of signification. This interplay of relationships is all the
richer in that instrumental gestures result from a long period of apprenticeship
during which all sorts of physical and symbolic expertise crystallizes around them.
So we can see how important a veritable ergology of music is, which would offer a
sophisticated,coniparaIive account «if iusiiomental gestures.
l6 2» JEA N MOLINO

Vocal Gesture

With vocal gesture we need to move on to the domain of what Mauss regards as
bodily techniques: “Some techniques involve only the presence of the human
body, but the actions they bring about are nonetheless traditional ones, tried
and tested. The sum of bodily habits [habitus du corps] is a technique that is
taught, and whose evolution has not yet come to an end.”13 You have only to
sing in order to be aware of the effort it requires and of the existence of vocal
gestures engaging the whole body, including controlling the vocal muscles,
breathing muscles, and posture, facilitating vocal production, and muscles
involved in enunciation. Mostly this is about internal gestures, borderline or
even microscopic but of no small impact: “Anything which cannot be recorded
means there is a problem with our current microscopic or macroscopic meth­
odology, and the extent of this has nothing to do with the nature of gesture.
A microscopic internal gesture is as much a recordable gesture as any macro­
scopic external gesture.”14 One particularly interesting phenomenon is that
of the inner feelings associated with what is called vocal directivity. The singer
projects sounds produced at the interface of the horizontal plane of the mouth
and the vertical plane passing through the vertex of the skull. It is a striking
example of symbolic association between two distinct areas of experience.15
Generally, we can posit a vocal, bodily network, a complex symbolic construc­
tion which has to be understood in terms of the affective values asserted by
psychoanalysts, as in the work of Ivan Fönagy.16

Rhythmic Gesture

There is a third category of gesture in musical activity, which we are calling

“rhythmic.” Of course, all kinds of movement, including for instance the move­
ments involved in verbal articulation, are organized rhythmically to some
extent, but in music the fundamental nature of bodily rhythms is of real theo­
retical interest. Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan17 have emphasized
the central role that rhythm plays in the artistic practice of the human species,
so much so that one can almost regard artistic activity as being defined by the
presence of rhythm, hence a proposition that, though not correct, does clear
a space in the theory of art: art is not observation, resolution, or being trans­
ported, but is based on perception, on the creation of values and rhythms that
rely on the physiological characteristics of the human organism. Rhythm, how­
ever, is complex in itself, so that we encounter the endlessly renewed pattern
of existence that means that nothing can ever appear to be simple. Qualitative
groupings that make up the configurations of a particular rhythm are much
more varied than is generally thought and may be about parameters other than
duration, timbre, and intensity; they may depend too on oppositions of ascent
 M U SIC AND G E S T U R E 17

and descent (Gregorian chant), or of the stressed and unstressed (the arsis and
thesis of Greek mousike), and on similar traits identified and manipulated in a
particular culture. So this is about a wider, generalized rhythm that does not
necessarily figure in our traditional rhythmic categories but that nevertheless
still concerns rhythm in the sense of qualitative configurations organized in
time with respect to actual or virtual reference points.
The importance of rhythm in music stems from the fact that it is the origin
of specific symbolic constructions: “Rhythm relates to other spatial, affective,
and cognitive experiences precisely because it is deeply rooted in the biologi­
cal and psychical reality of the human being. As one of the most basic modes
of organization of temporality, rhythm readily serves as a structural model for
other domains of human continuity.”18 This helps us to understand better the
presence of nonlinguistic meanings, or what may be called symbolizations,
in music making. Dance is a good example of musical, physical, and societal
interrelationships; and there are doubtless other lessons to be learned from
Marcel Jousse’s imprecise but profound analyses of the Bible in oral tradition,
showing the importance in human experience of what he calls rhythmness and
two-sidedness.19

Gesture and Music Analysis

Since gesture in its various forms is thus found at the heart of the diverse
practices that we call music, we should consider what this means in rela­
tion to music analysis. As with the above argument, it is useful to consider
analysis in general rather than analytical practice. The practice of analysis, in
the sense of analysis based on the principles of the Western tradition, is not
something to reject. Nor does it make any sense to reconsider, merely to criti­
cize it, the litany of complaint about European ethnocentrism: one has to
begin somewhere in analysis, and one can do that only with what is available.
That is, though, the justification for “etic” procedures in analyzing any object
jusl as it is for the existence of a “neutral” level in scientific experiments.
When facing unknown music we transcribe and describe it using tools of etic
evaluation, thus beginning the dialectical journey of progressively defining
how the music is organized while we refine and adapt our tools. It is not pos­
sible to do without pure analysis at the inevitable initial stage of inquiry, but
we can move on quickly. There are two ways in which we continually recon­
figure description and categorization. First, there is an internal reconfigura-
lion that leads us to rearrange' the given facts without requiring us to discard
1lu* music it.seIf. That is what happens when we construct a series of values,
when we see how the significance ol variables, or their organizing principles,
is distributed differently than in music with which we are familiar. This is the
l8 ** JEA N MOLINO

everyday work of the ethnomusicologist. Second, however, an external recon­

figuration requires us, rather than transforming our categories, to include
categories that no longer belong to the sphere of the music itself. This is the
problem when, as ethnomusicologists do, we consider music in relation to its
sociocultural context. Nattiez has set out a typology for the situation when
recourse to external information assists an analysis or is the only way to do
it effectively.20 However, given our hypothesis that music must be seen as a
synthesis independent even of the cultural context in which it functions, we
have to reformulate the question above by asking when the external recon­
figurations are in reality internal ones. Gesture being part of music, then
analysis integrating it into its construction will no longer discard all music,
although it will force us to discard our own music.

The Need for and Challenges of Notadng Gesture

It needs to recognized up front that in practice there will be cases in which

we have to introduce a new staff into a transcription: next to the music stave,
a staff for gestures. But two preliminary problems arise before we can write on
that staff, the problem of description and the problem of pertinence. First is
the problem of description, formidable and fundamental, and which can be
summed up in a discouraging but undeniable formula: in general, we do not
know how to describe gestures. Because all description entails transcription—
you cannot have description without a system of notation—then the descrip­
tion of gestures implies creating a notational system of gesture and movement.
In that respect there have been a series of experiments leading to negative
results overall. Think only of the long, patient analyses by Ray Birdwhistell,
who in 1952 put forward a notational system into which he tried to transfer the
methods of structural linguistics.21 His “kinesics” were supposed to be to the
study of human gestures what phonetics and phonology were to the study of
language. His 1970 book reported on two decades of research, but it cannot be
said that, either his labors or those of others in the field succeeded in founding
a rigorous discipline of kinesics. The reason could have been told in advance,
in that most gestures have not been codified, and when it comes to human fact
there is no relevant system except what is codified and controlled by society,
'finis it seems unwise to set out to make a global description of human ges­
tures; rather, one should address only strictly constrained fields in which some
definite social regulation is in play. This does not mean that there are no physi­
ological rules, but one must accept that for now they are barely accessible to us.
These difficulties emphasize the special place of dance, a practice that is orga­
nized in and analyzable as discreet elements, for which—no doubt because of
those iwo properties—there are relatively effective systems of notation, such
as Laban and Benesh or Fshkol-Wachmann, even though nowadays video is
 M USIC AND G EST U R E ^ ig

increasingly replacing notational systems. Moreover, it is likely that rhythm

lends itself more easily to systematic analysis because of its linearity.
Pertinence is the second problem arising when gesture is integrated into
the heart of music analysis. There is basically no reason that gesture and all the
varieties of gesture should play a role in any particular act of music making:
gesture is just not as important in electroacoustic music, in serious European
music of the nineteenth century, in serial music, or in dance music or the oral
tradition. One may say that in the most general sense musical notation marked
an initial and categorical separation of gesture from pure music, and that is
surely one of the reasons that pure music did emerge. Electroacoustic music
of a serious kind led to a second separation, even more decisive, involving the
complete disappearance of instrumental gesture. In each case, then, the per­
tinence of gesture and the kind of gesture concerned need to be established.

Toward a Genuinely Global Music Analysis

Resolving those two preliminaries clears the way for generic analysis, of which
Simha Arom provides an excellent example. For analysis concentrating purely
on the music, Central African in this case, he brings out the role of an iso­
chronic pulsation in the musical architecture, a “temporal framework” in the
music. He asserts though that this pulsation, implicit in the music itself, is in
fact a construct: “beating is nothing other than the ‘sonificiation’ of regular
movement of the feet corresponding to the basic steps of the dance associated
with one or another kind of music.”22 The extraordinary process of detection
that Arom undertook thus led to the hypothesis of this isochronic pulsation to
account for the music he was studying, but the hypothesis took him to dance,
where the clues to the riddle were hidden. We should therefore mention here
lines of notation, added to the actual score, on which clapping may be noted
as well as hip and foot movement, which is exactly what the Ugandan ethno-
niusicologist Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza produced.23 The music itself simply
requires this, and the score is incomplete without the beating inscribed by
movement of the feet. How can we fail to draw from this example a general
hypothesis that conforms to our previous discussions, that gesture possesses a
strategic value both for the study of gesture itself and for music analysis, and
that its linearity and discontinuity facilitate its notation and thus its close study.
Further, rhythm does seem to be an element that is common to activity usu­
ally seen to be distinct yet having long been sited in the same cultural arena.
Nothing is more striking than the parallel between the conceptions of music
in ancient Greece and in central Africa, where in both cases what creates and
confirms the coming together of dance, poetry, and music is the presence of
rhythm associated with meter. So we can ju'c*how a big slice of music from “eth­
nic” to medieval and Renaissant c ought to susceptible to this kind of analysis
20 JEAN MOLINO

generally and, from the outset rather than after analysis of the music itself.
Further, we can equate and integrate sonic organization in the same transcrip­
tion with bodily movement and poetry—including the prosodic characteristics
of language as well as versification. Think of how many “purely musical” analy­
ses incorporate the signs for “up” and “down” instructing stringed instrument
players how to use the bow to produce a sound that is specific to those ges­
tures, for example in the third movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto—an
example for which I am indebted to JeanJacques Nattiez. Think too that in so
many cases we still know nothing about the versification and dance systems of
most of the cultures of whose music we have at least at least a little more knowl­
edge in general: if there is a versification system relatively independent of the
musical organization, then which elements of it are pertinent to the dance?
Such are the considerations that deserve to be explored if we really want to
understand how this synthesis called music works.
Observe that in this way we are inside music, not outside. It is not a mat­
ter of studying the external dialectic between music and the cultural context in
which it is inscribed but of contemplating the internal dialectic that fuses the
various components of music making, leading to a reorganization of the field,
where we find the rhythmic structures of dance and poetry within music, as
constitutive elements of it.
Thus there are two ways for research to develop. As for gesture, we need to
know what role the other categories of gesture—vocal and instrumental—play
in music. Is gesture formative? Or is it confined to the periphery? The difficul­
ties specific to studying these gestures have been emphasized here, but we have
to deal with them in a subtle way: their role is undoubtedly much bigger in
music of the oral tradition, and when it comes to modern Europeans music we
shall tend to ascribe subsidiary importance to them, meaning that they matter,
but they are not constitutive of the musical fact. It is for that reason that they
are identified as external to the music, assuming that by “music” we mean the
functional kernel that is pertinent to their production, independent of the poi-
etic, esthesic, and neutral dimensions. On the other hand, other elements do
not have a clear place, and this is where the classic problems of musicology lie,
for are the symbolic and functional aspects themselves of music making inside
music or outside of it? Should they be integrated into what is thus a wider kind
of analysis? There is some scholarly temptation to pose the question in that
way because it is blind to any arbitrary limit between music and its context, but
on the contrary leads us to the natural articulations between the object and its
study. Such articulations are of course variable, but there are definitive cases
where a score does have to be extended to include symbolic elements—you
have only to ask whether the sonic organization is functionally dependent on the
associated symbolic organization, or to put it another way whether the sonic
organization has any principle other than the symbolic stun lure allied to it.
 M USIC AND G E S T U R E 21

Music analysis, like psychoanalysis, is endless. The strategic place of gesture,

its very importance, stems from our being obliged to revise our field of study by
attending to production rather than to the product, to the poietic rather than
the material level, to music overall in its impurity rather than music in itself,
for there is no such thing as a pure idea or pure reality: “The attempt at univer­
sal separation is the final annihilation of all reasoning; for only by the union of
conceptions with one another do we attain to discourse of reason.”24

Translated by Jonathan Dunsby

Notes

1. This chapter is an original translation byJonathan Dunsby of “La musique et le

geste,” in Le singe musicien: Sémiologie et anthropologie de la musique [The musical
ape: Semiology and anthropology of music] (Paris: Actes Sud, 2009), chap. 3,
137-48. Molino’s original text contains no footnotes, but lists page references
to the cumulative bibliography of the book. Here, all footnotes are editorial,
providing page references to English translations of Molino’s sources where
possible, and certain ancillary scholarly information.
2. Quoted in Bertrand Augst, “Descartes’s Compendium on Music,”Journal of the
History of Ideas 26, no. 1 (1965): 120.
3. Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the
Theory of Music, 3rd ed., trans. Alexander Ellis (London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1893), 5, 227. For a recent discussion of Helmholtz’s role in the his­
tory of listening to Western art music, see Benjamin Steege, Helmholtz and the
Modem Listener (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
4. Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1986), 30-31.
5. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1973), 89.
6. In the essay “Arom dans le context de l’ethnomusicologie” (Le singe musicien,
213-15), Molino provides a definition of the “culturalist paradigm”: “The
principle is the following: sound structures never have explanatory value, but
represent only surface phenomena whose explanation can be found in the
cultural meanings of music” (214; translated here).
7. Molino’s opening statement in his discourse about human music is that “how­
ever we try to define or describe the various aspects of music, it cannot be
reduced to a single entity” (Le musique, que l’on cherche à la définir ou à
la décrire dans ses divers aspects, ne saurait être réduite à l’unité). Le singe
musicien, 73.
H. The Lawusse dictionary offers almost exactly that primary definition, with the
addition of “which may or may not he meaningful" (movement du corps, prin­
cipale nit*ni de la main, des bras, de la tele, porteur ou non de la signification).
22 ** JEAN MOLINO

http://mm.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/geste/36848. Accessed May 23,

2016.
9. Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 157-85.
Focillon’s original essay “Éloge de la main” is available in French at http://
classiques.uqac.ca/ classiques/focillon_henri/Eloge_de_la_main/Eloge_de_
la_main.pdf. Accessed May 23, 2016.
10. Marcel Mauss, Manual ofEthnography (New York: Durkheim Press, 2007; origi­
nal published in French, 1967), 24, 69.
11. See “Music and Singing,” Mauss, Manual ofEthnography, 86-89.
12. See Earle J. Coleman, Philosophy of Painting by Shih-T’ao: A Translation and
Exposition ofHis Hua-P’u (Treatise on the Philosophy of Painting) (The Hague:
Mouton, 1978), 86-89,115-16.
13. Mauss, Manual ofEthnography, 25.
14. Marcel Jousse, LAnthropologie de Geste (Paris: Gallimard, 2008; first published
1969), 50 (translated here). For a survey of Jousse’s work and significance, see
Edgard Sienaert, “Marcel Jousse: The Oral Style and the Anthropology of Gesture,”
Oral Tradition 5, no. 1 (1990): 91-106.
15. A frequently cited authority on this phenomenon is A. H. Marshal and J.
Meyer, “The Directivity and Auditory Impressions of Singers,” Acustica 58, no.
3 (1985): 130-40.
16. La Vive Voix: Essais de Psycho-phonétique (Paris: Payot, 1983).
17. André Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).
18. Jean Molino and Joëlle Gardes-Tamine, Introduction à Tanalyse de la poésie: 1 Vers
et figures, 3rd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 9 (translated
here).
19. See note 14 above.
20. Jean Jacques Nattiez, “Simha Arom and the Return of Analysis to
Ethnomusicology,” Music Analysis 12, no. 2 (1993): 241-65; see also his
“Musiques, structures, cultures,” in EM, Annuario degli archivi di etnomusicologia
delCAccademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia 3 (1995): 37-54.
21. Ray Birdwhistell, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970).
22. Simha Arom, “‘Du pied à la main’: Les fondements métriques des musiques
traditionelles d’Afrique Centrale,” Analyse Musicale 10 (1988): 21; translated
here.
23. Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Baakisimba: Gender in the Music and Dance of the
Baganda People of Uganda (New York: Routledge, 2005). See also JeanJacques
Nattiez and Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza, “Rhythme, danse et sexualité: une
danse ougandaise d’initiation au mariage,” in Musiques: Une Encyclopédie pour
le XXIt Siècle, ed. JeanJacques Nattiez (Arles-Paris: Actes Sud-Cité de la
musique, 2005), 3:349-69.
24. Plato, Sophist, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1735/1735-h/1735-h.htm,
accessed April 6, 2015.
 Chapter Two

Music Semiology in the

M ind o f the Musician
Jonathan Dunsby

Many of the present author’s music analyses have been largely inspired by the
work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez:1 from early examples, such as what claimed to
be the first Schenkerian ‘‘projection of the paradigmatic axis onto the syntag-
matic axis”;2 to more recent semantic studies of locality which claim to “keep
clearly in mind . .. the ‘triparti don.’”3 For many scholars, however, the lure
of music semiology has stemmed as much from its epistemological clarity as
from the windows it opens into interpretation, and this study will focus on the
former, though not without implications for the latter. A fact of human life that
semiology seems to be particularly good at exposing is how special the musical
mind is, compared with the mind when verbalizing, cogitating, or doing any­
thing other than being musical. One might have expected music psychology to
have embraced music semiology. Nattiez, however, has emphasized that music
semiology is not a science of communication.4 He has long objected to conven-
tional notions of “communication” as a model of musical purpose and effect.
Nevertheless, it has always been integral to Nattiez’s mode of thought that
music semiology is certainly the “science” of something. The forensic qualities
of his epistemology and argumentation may not always have been embraced
explicitly by anglophone musicology, but musicology has often resonated
unwittingly with the aims of music semiology, hence the profound influence of
Nattiez’s research, often where it may not be specifically acknowledged or even
recognized. In music psychology or music cognition—and the perception of
music is central to Nattiez’s whole endeavor while working, as it were, outside
the mainstream of those disc ipliiic»—it is not so easy to discern the imprint of
semiology. This gives pause fur thought.
24 JO N A T H A N DUN SBY

Just what a “science” is in the first place is a question almost too obvious and
complex to be asked, but it must be a matter of continual fascination that we
humans, knowing nothing other than our own minds (in Cartesian terms, at
least), are perpetually driven to believe that there is a world outside ourselves.
Since we think we are observing and experiencing something, not merely cre­
ating it in our individual imaginations, it is, as everyone knows, music above all
the arts which in its essentially fugitive nature can touch us most deeply. Other
apparent products of other apparent humans’ imagination—visual art, which
time allows us to look at, or prose and poetry, which we can reread at will—
are not fugitive in the same way;5 music’s presence—no conceivable reader
of this book needs to be reminded—is lost the moment we experience it. The
deepest scrutiny of musical signification might therefore be expected to ema­
nate from theories of perception, especially perhaps those anchored in empiri­
cal research, as opposed to speculation on mental processes.6 Those who do
believe they have something to say about music perception in modem research
certainly would accept how it stands or falls on the test of musical significa­
tion. However, experts in matters of music perception can seem to take musical
signification for granted, probably because, broadly speaking, scholars often
confuse music and language. It became a given of twentieth-century linguis­
tics that we are all perfect language-users, and unfortunately in the specialties
of music perception and music cognition it tends to be assumed that we are
all perfect music-users, even when music perceivers are divided into “experts”
and “nonexperts” or similar categories. The error of analogy will always lie ulti­
mately in the idea of “user” or “perceiver,” since language and music are nei­
ther used nor perceived in the same way or for the same reasons. This is partly
why Nattiez as a music theorist shunned the conventional model of “com­
munication,” as mentioned earlier. Deep insight into the musical mind had
hardly emerged from modern cognitive psychology in the 1970s when music
semiology began to coalesce as a body of thought, drawing on the linguistic
model while also beginning to distance itself from it in the earliest dawning of
a disciplinary identity. Scholars at that time largely felt that nobody, in theo­
rizing the mind’s hearing and aesthetic understanding of Western art music,
had meaningfully supplemented the picture of the musical mind established
so decisively in the nineteenth century by Hanslick in 1854 and then Gurney in
1880, an intellectual stasis noted by Edward Cone in 1966.7
If there has been a certain lack of connection between music semiology
and music perception, it is partly because the psychological language model of
music was always rickety at best, as we will see Elizabeth Margulis indicate here.
Semiology embraces perception in principle and exhaustively: there can be no
aspect of musical perception which music semiology excuses itself from contem­
plating appropriately. On the other hand, music perception as a discipline has
become unclear about its model of human understanding;, Maigulis says, hitting
 M USIC SEM IO LO GY IN T H E MI N D OF T H E M U S I C I A N ^ 25

precisely the point made above about what musical “communication” actually
entails: ‘‘It’s ironic that after scholars worked hard to make music seem language-
like and win acceptance as a Legitimate domain of scientific inquiry, applying sci­
entific methods to the study of music might reveal th at.. .its appreciation might
lie in the body as much as in the mind, and that the idea that we ‘feel’ music may
he nearer to the truth than the idea that we ‘think’ it.”8
Indeed, when it comes to the processes of perception, the puzzles in under­
standing empirical bases of musical signification seem particularly difficult to
»(‘solve. Margulis herself is skeptical about the potential of paradigmatic analy­
sis to provide a relatively objective “basis for the working of musical structure,”
citing Nicolas Ruwet from nearly half a century ago as having “acknowledged
tliât the abstractions that emerge in cultural descriptions of music are not
reconstructable through this supposedly neutral form of repetition analysis.”9
That is to be overly dismissive, though, of modern studies that claim to uncover
worthwhile stylistic understanding from contextualized explorations of what
may be called “heard” paradigmatic relationships across a significant corpus,
as in Sylveline Bourion’s recent book on Debussy’s style.10 It is also perhaps
unnecessarily pessimistic about the likely increasing value of paradigmatic
approaches, given Margulis’s perceptual understanding. In fact, her take on
musical repetition could well be understood as a classic methodological prem­
ise of music semiology. Of her various formulations, the following is canonical:
that “within a piece, especially in an unfamiliar style, repetition defines what
will count as a unit: what musical events will fuse together and function as a
1lung—a discrete, coherent entity—in the unfolding theater of the piece.”11
further, let us not forget that music-analytical thinking of such a kind has
rminent ancestry in achievements of the past that have become permanent
cultural perspectives in the mind of the Western musician. These perspectives
l ange from general classification of perceived musical form, based on exten­
sive comparisons such as A. B. Marx’s idea of the sonata principle, to specific
discoveries about long-range aural connection such as the leitmotif networks
iu Wagner’s music dramas.12
Where confusion about the status of music in a music-semiology or music-
perception framework may have originated is not easily diagnosed, but it cer­
tainly has never helped that general semiologists, and indeed semioticians, as
have modern philosophers, have by and large failed to regard music as any
part of the substrate of general human understanding and behavior. It ought
lo seem amazing, but we are used to the fact that semioticians—including
I'eirce and Morris, as well as the structural Linguists—never integrated music
into their models of the human mind. The mind of the musician has simply
not been thoroughly investigated in the same way as the human mind in gen­
eral; and the general model of (lie hum an mind is considered by some to be
hopelessly defective, in that iniiiiU ate probably in fact universally musical to
26 s* J O N A T H A N D U N S BY

some degree, music having played a central role in early human development.
Researchers such as Ian Cross have argued that point forcefully in recent
times.13 They have provided some corrective to, for instance, Stephen Pinker’s
notorious designation of music. Because it seems to him the mental faculty
least involved in adaptation, he has labeled it “auditory cheesecake . .. crafted
to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties.”14
Ferdinand de Saussure himself, whose Course in General Linguistics has been
a mainspring of Western intellectual development for nearly a century, fails to
refer to music perception or cognition as part of his science of signs. However,
he does make one passing comment on musical epistemology, or even
ontology, where he addresses what musicians came to call the Werk-Konzept
“Language is comparable to a symphony in that what the symphony actually is
stands completely apart from how it is performed; the mistakes that musicians
make in playing the symphony do not compromise this fact.”15 And it appears
that Saussure’s image of a piece of music as a virtual object was even more
refined than that, if we can go by his actual words elsewhere: “Where does the
musical composition exist? . . . In reality the composition exists only when it is
performed; but to see this performance as its existence is false. Its existence is
in the sameness of its performances.”16 That is to say, whereas no performance
idiosyncrasy can challenge the identity of the musical work, perhaps less obvi­
ously it is only in the commonality of all performances that the work exists at
all. This commonality certainly includes the “performance” in your mind, as
Saussure evidently understood. It appears that he takes for granted that the
commonality includes (i.e., it has at least once included) the work as conceived
in the composer’s mind—which it must always be tempting to regard as the
most authentic version of a work.
There is an analogy, clearly, between Saussure’s Werk-Konzept and the langue/
parole opposition, so familiar as to need no reference.17 Of course, music and
verbal language are categorically distinct, and I assume this would have been
obvious to Saussure; they are also categorically similar in the sense suggested
long ago by the structural linguist Roman Jakobson, who acknowledged the evi­
dent semiological similarity between music and verbal language, and no other
systems, in consisting of “ultimate, discrete, strictly patterned components.”18
In theory, “sameness” as a basis of the musical work in a Werk-Konzept is not
only or necessarily what “parole” is about in verbal language. On the contrary,
every speech act is unique, or potentially or in practice unique, yet perfectly
comprehensible. We can only speculate as to whether Saussure would have
come down on the side of a radically relativist definition of “musical work,”
claiming, for instance, that Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony is that piece of music
which is always no other piece of music. For Western art music, that is a rather
good definition of a musical work, difficult to knock down philosophically
and not difficult to conceptualize. Although this definition may be of little
 MUSIC S E M I O L O G Y IN T H E M IN D OF T H E M U S I C I A N ** 27

apparent hermeneutical use, nevertheless we may think of the musical work in

our minds rather concretely, by way of informal analogy, as like recognizing a
human face. However, Giles Hooper does seem to regard a text concept that
we can take to be very similar to the “virtual moment” as some kind of fruitless
epistemological self-denial:

The notion of a text that is a virtual trace of multiple subject-centred

perception (s), a virtual moment in the nexus of discursive propagation and
interaction, reduces the text—that is to say, the putative musical object—to
a kind of noumenal essence in the original Kantian sense, one that can only
be figured in opposition to that which it is not, at which point, in a method­
ological version of the zero-sum game, the original aim of semiotics under­
cuts itself and is cancelled all the way through, by virtue of its deconstructing
the very object of its inquiry.19

I looper’s call to construe the musical mind as passively observing rather than
actively imagining—if that is a fair synopsis of his position—is, admittedly, a
common one. Such is the strong implication in, for instance, the following pas­
sage from David Temperley. Ternperley writes in Popular Music about the tenets
of music cognition as a discipline. We shall see that this is a polarized view,
from the music-semiological perspective:

Cognitive music theory is an interdisciplinary field, lying in the overlap

between music theory and psychology, which brings together the perspec­
tives of the two disciplines in studying problems of music perception and
cognition. In large part, cognitive music theory has been concerned with
aspects of music which are often taken for granted in mainstream music the­
ory, but which closer study has shown to be highly complex, for example, the
mental representation of chords and keys .. . the detection of meter . .. the
way melodies are perceived and remembered . . . and the grouping of musi­
cal events into segments and phrases.. . . This work parallels work in cogni­
tive psychology and cognitive science which investigates the mental processes
and representations underlying other commonplace abilities such as vision
and language. Cognitive music theory is allied with psychology, also, in that it
generally concerns itself with the kearing of & broad population, rather than just
trained experts. . . . As such, cognitive music theory does not seem open to
the criticism, sometimes leveled against theory and analysis by students of
popular music, that it is merely concerned with pieces as autonomous formal
objects, divorced from experience and culture.20

Tcmpcrley is committed to exploring the listener’s ‘‘hearing.” One might

ask why he should have such an interest in the average or even the averagely
experienced listener, which hen unes ,111 urgent question when the tendency
emerges to neglect research on wh.il is in the mind of the expert Listener, such
28 ** JONATHAN DÜNSBY

as the composer or the professional performer. Yet in the semiological, “tri-

partitionar perspective, the striking feature of work by practitioners such as
Temperley is that they lock themseLves into one particular esthesic dimension.
Since he draws on his own experience in this particular piece of research, even
the possibility of an inductive esthesics is focused out, leaving external esthesics
alone as the clear image, as the empirical basis for analysis—and the external
esthesics of just one person at that: uMy evidence . . . is simply pieces of music,
along with my own intuitions, as an experienced listener of the style, about
their structural (particularly metrical) implications/’21 Readers who are not in
sympathy with cognitive music theory, of this kind at least, may be reminded
of the prescriptive music criticism of the early to mid-twentieth century, when
people were told what was in the mind, musically, of the articulate (Caucasian,
rich) author, and that this was how to hear.
Along with Peirce and Morris, for whom the triadic relationship of sign,
object, and interprétant is foundational, Nattiez has promoted a semiological
model in which the role of esthesis is indispensable, whether or not it is explicit
in any particular case. From a methodological point of view, this might seem
mundane, since after all music is a human activity. Our urge for cognition has
colonized even animal “music,” for example bird “song” as we call it, since we
have no more idea whether birds actually make “music” than we have whether
the Martians do. By using the term bird “song,” we mean scientifically nothing
less, but also nothing more, than that this is pretty much how it strikes us, as
interprétants.22 In this anthropomorphic way we reveal our tenacious commit­
ment to human cognition, and rightly so in that whatever else cognition may
be, it is clearly a key survival strategy.
It may come a little out of the blue to supplement that thought of Saussure’s
with a recent attempt by Lawrence Kramer, hardly known for his empathy with
music semiology, to revisit the idea of musical signification in light of all he
knew about the century since Saussure, the avatar of music semiology. All the
same, Kramer’s words can seem to stand here as a union of Nattiez’s position
regarding “communication” and Saussure’s ontology, if that is what we can call
a statement about the existence of a piece of music:

Music . . . might conjecturally be said to act like a sign fragment, the signifier
of a veiled or unrealized signified. It is not a full sign because it lacks both
a referent and a signified, but it is not merely an “empty sign” . . . because
it could at any moment have either or both. . .. Music heard as meaningful
does not seem to transmit a meaning that it signifies but to assume a mean­
ing that is exemplified.23

Binding the twentieth-century linguist to the twenty-first-century music aesthe-

tician is a common belief that musical identity is not some kind of Platonic
form, or Kantian essence as mentioned by Hooper, nor on the other hand
 MU S3C S E M I O L O G Y IN T H E M IN D OF T H E M U S I C I A N ** 29

some kind of concrete, empirical fact. Nor does it exist only in one place or
at one time. Informally, maybe the best we can say is that music exists in the
mind. This is not to assert that music exists only in the imagination, about
which both Nicholas Cook and Mary Wamock have written eloquently, each
of them pointing up in different ways the categorical difference between imag­
ined music and actual musical experience.24 But when music is felt to exist, it
('an be understood only as experience, and this is probably a key to the signifi­
cance of Nattiez’s explorations of our minds.
This model has two consequences. The first is more than anything attitudi-
nal—in Nattiez’s case, I would say that it represents an aesthetic urge. It says
(hat for an analysis to be coherent, it must take its esthesic responsibilities seri­
ously. At the very simplest level, to make the point through absurdity, it is no
use, or almost certainly no use, for you to tell me that Beethoven wrote his
Ninth Symphony in black ink, whereas Schoenberg wrote his orchestral song
“Vorgefühl” partly in red ink. Those observations may stand the scientific test
of good comparison, but they leave no meaningful trace in the esthesic level
of those works. They do not even make it into the immanent level of what
we might call musical structure. Here at least, Theodor Adorno would agree:
(hey are not part of the “truth content” of the works of art, not amenable to
what Gerhard Richter calls “philosophy’s translational services.”25 Students of
human culture are used to dealing with materials about which there is little or
no poietic information, but what semiology urges us to reconsider is what hap­
pens when there is no esthesic information either. We see concrete examples
of this in organology, the study of musical instruments. Modern researchers
have come to a realization about some, possibly many of the treasured musi­
cal instruments spotlit in our museums, that happen to have survived from
prehistory, sometimes from otherwise essentially unknown human societies.
They may well have survived not because they were specially prized but on the
contrary because they were somehow defective and of no use, so they never
became worn out or broken. A second example: Many critics of avant-garde
twentieth-century Western art music say that all the theorizing that took place
was entirely misapplied, because the musical public never really wanted all
those atonal musical compositions in the first place. That may seem to be a
jarringly unscholarly generalization, but surely it is no exaggeration to state
diat such a diagnosis is endemic. Witness this fairly recent manifestation of
it, which the writer wants to apply to both experts and the broad population:
“Wfiy does a work like Schoenberg’s Erwartung; composed in 1909, still sound
prohibitively modern to many listeners? .. . Such questions are hardly ever
asked. Professional musicians and scholars perform or discuss this music as
if the answer were sell-evict cut: the public continues to reject it as cmad’ and
have nothing tc> do with it/’*4' Wr could question Julian Johnson's assumption
that. Erwartung can sound “lirodcriT now, when in truth it may be sounding as
30 2* JO N ATH AN D U N SBY

weirdly old fashioned as a Marenzio madrigal would have sounded to a late

baroque listener, and indeed might still sound to a twenty-first-century expert
listener. However, he illustrates there the underlying point that theory may flip
to the esthesic pole, underlining the importance of esthesis as a test of perti­
nence. We are talking about the important place that certain music failed to
find, so it is claimed, in people’s minds, regardless of some intense contempo­
raneous theoretical and critical interest it long continued to arouse; we are not
talking about the colour of the ink in which this or that music happened to be
written originally.
A second consequence of the semiological model is the way in which the
esthesic level can and should undermine the global relativism widely thought
to be at the heart of the structuralist enterprise. Saussure does seem to have
been constantly looking over his shoulder at what he calls psychology (even
though any interest he might have had in music perception is not recorded).
In order to work out and reinspect his structuralist model of communication
he had to marginalize the human mind, to posit instead how certain systems
might work on that mind or in that mind, to suspend the question of what
the mind in and of itself is and does—a question for the philosopher, the psy­
chologist, nowadays also for the scientist of cognition, and not necessarily,
or anyway at that time, a question for the linguist. It may be that Nattiez has
regarded the Saussurean model with some suspicion in its potential applica­
tion to musical thought because it relied so much on folding the early twenti­
eth-century science of communication into a relativist account of signification.
Nattiez himself was faced with the challenge of bringing musical thought into
some kind of alignment with human cognition as increasingly understood in
its modem sense, and progress would be unlikely if he was merely reproduc­
ing a theory such as Saussure’s in which human cognition was marginalized or
at least underestimated. In the early years of the dissemination of his model
of music semiology, Nattiez’s apparent wish to supplement linguistic semiol­
ogy with philosophical semiotics was surely very much grounded in that mind­
set, leading him to relate his thinking explicitly or implicitly to the esthesic
level.27 Nattiez’s chapter “Boulez in the Postmodern Era,” from The Battle of
Chronos and Orpheus, is emblematic. “The global theoretical results of cogni­
tive research,” he tells us, “have shown that the return—a necessary one—to
linearity in musical discourse, to time suitable for a work of music, is not the
exclusive property of the language of tonality.” I take this to mean in part that,
although for two centuries and more music theorists have thought in terms
of a tonal “language,” it would a mistake to suppose that the only language­
like kinds of musical composition are Western, common-practice, tonal kinds.
On the contrary, Nattiez finds merits in the “hypothesis,” drawn from cogni­
tive psychology, “of a universal foundation for musical perception regardless
of the musical styles and languages.” Nattiez’s target is “the pervasive cultural
 MUSIC S E M I O L O G Y IN T H E M IN D OF T H E M U S I C I A N 3 1

relativism according to which everything is of value since there is no way to

provide objective criteria for telling the beautiful, from the ugly.” Yet criteria of
the beautiful clearly are available, so Nattiez asks us to agree, in the overarch­
ing, Beardsleyan aesthetic categories of “unity, complexity, and intensity.”28
We may consider those categories esthesic as well as aesthetic, when we take
a diachronic view of music and think about music semiology as accessing the
active mind of the musician. Thus, experiential time is inevitably going to be
an experience of some kind of unity, because it adheres to the continuous con­
scious stream of a self-aware individual, whatever the synchronic poietic facts
may be. Complexity also tends toward the esthesic in that the latter is an intra-
cultural value that seems to be nonreversible, in a sense nonfalsifiable. We may
fail to find complexity where it was intended; but it seems implausible—simply
not normally reported by humans—to find, other than trivially through unfa­
miliarity, complexity in art where complexity was not intended. Memorable
anthropological accounts support that hypothesis. For instance, in a classic
text of anthropological revisionism, John Blacking argued extensively that see­
ing music in any culture as necessarily having developed historically from the
simple to the complex is a mistake.29 In another example, in his case study of
Ewe music, Kofi Agawu observed that there may be essentially no distinction in
that culture between complexity in children’s music and in adult music: “We
cannot . . . speak of a straightforward progression from the ‘simple’ rhythms
of childhood to the ‘complex’ rhythms of adulthood. The latter appear to be
fully formed from the beginning.”30 To put it in the abstract, in whatever way
we produce complexity, there is always time to evaluate or to have evaluated it,
poietically, but esthesic complexity in the mind of the musician allows no time
for anything else, at least in ideal, unmediated experience. As for intensity, it
may well offer the clearest correspondence between the poietic and the esthe­
sic in Western art music (think of the case of Erwartung mentioned above). We
may say that in the mind of the musician, intensity is the most intuitively imme­
diate of the three aesthetic categories. An apparently insignificant sign may
nevertheless stay with us, as individuals, intensively and permanently in our
minds, and become the aesthetic impulse for exceptionally complex future
musical actions. The reader hardly needs examples of this universal phe­
nomenon, but an indicative case would be the way in which the “fate” motive
from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony spawned an intricate serial structure in
Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41—G-Eb from the Fifth Symphony prob­
ably being as much a determinant of the crucial pitch content of the row as the
more often discussed E-flat major, Ewicarlike ending. Unlike complexity, inten­
sity is almost by definition found where, to follow Susanne Langer, it was not
intended in particular, but is brought to the music by its listeners; it is exactly
why any neglect of the esthesic level in our understanding of the mind of the
musician is likely to he a big mistake.
32 ** JO N A TH A N DUNSBY

As a concluding gloss on this discussion of the aesthetic urge and of anti-

relativism in the music-semiology model, I quote some ideas from the sum­
mary thoughts in a recent music-analytical study of Chopin’s Mazurka, op.
30, no. 4, by Michael Klein, taking the liberty of interrupting him repeatedly
in friendly dialogue. The author explains at considerable length the kind of
analysis he is offering:

As the various Polish dances become deterritorialized in a Chopin mazurka,

they form different assemblages with different meanings, forms of desire,
functions. The Mazurka is reterritorialized as something akin to a dream,
open to interpretation as a form of subjectivity and, more importantly, as the
site of symptoms .. . [which] necessarily means that interpretation cannot
stop at the first reading. Therefore, the article proposes a number of read­
ings for the Mazurka.. . . The readings do not run from something shallow to
something deep—an opposition that we could only accept in order to reveal
its inadequacy. The readings rather overlap, or even hide one another.31

Klein declares a shared allegiance to hermeneutics: “In his Interpreting Music,

Lawrence Kramer explains the difference between semiotic and hermeneutic
approaches to music on the way to announcing, ‘My vote is for hermeneutics. ’
Mine too.” It is worth reading on, though, to the afterbeat in what Kramer
originally wrote: “My vote is for hermeneutics—the practice of open interpre­
tation. . . . Signs are indispensable but they are not determinative.”32 Kramer
was asking what we are supposed to do with signs, not surprisingly, and Klein’s
choice not to contemplate Kramer’s word “indispensable” is probably some­
thing on which it would be unfair, to Klein, on which to dwell. In any case, a
dichotomy between signifiers and signified is one that Nattiez would recognize
only as a meaningful opposition: signifiers and signifieds are not states which
can exist independently in our observation. The only sense in which something
can be conceived as indispensable yet not determinative would be through the
presence of a third force: no doubt the interprétant in Peirce’s model, and
roughly what I am calling here the mind of the musician. One may well say,
there is nothing isolable for which to vote, which I take it is Kramer’s essential
point anyway, as when he writes, challengingly of course, that “signs assume
their semiotic status only once an interpretation is already in progress.”33
Klein, however, is determined to hunt down the part of the whole, to dis­
tinguish, as we shall see, musical from “real” experience. “Although semiotics
informed Lacan’s discovery that the unconscious is structured like a language,
semiotics as it is practised today too often falls into the formation of neologisms
and taxonomies that end up telling us what we already know.” This would be
true, and it may well he true of semiotics as opposed to semiology, if music
analysis conducted in its name were merely a réinscription of an essentially
verbal description of music. However, as discussed above, the verbal model of
 M U S I C S E M I O L O G Y I N T H E MIN'D OF T H E M U S I C I A N 33

music is not accepted nowadays even among most music cognition experts.34
The same is true of semiologists who, following Nattiez’s model, have always
specifically rejected the idea of subject/predicate logic as a model of the musi­
cal syntagm and have never accepted that a musical semantics can be primarily
verbal or, as it is called everywhere in modern music theory, any kind of nar­
rative.35 I am going to be perhaps more tolerant than Klein, in the sense that
I quite like his analysis even though it tells me only everything I already knew
from the music. His analysis tells it in a new way, with interesting neologisms
(as Jacques Lacan’s mid-twentieth-century terminology can still reasonably be
called), and a comprehensible if rather agonized taxonomy—of distinguished
Enlightenment etiology in its insistence that truth lies in the study of the path­
ological. “The choice, then,” Klein continues, “is not really between semiotics
and hermeneutics but between hermeneutics and a desire to maintain a mysti­
fied vision of music as a real . .. experience, whose alluring fullness deserves
our attention.” Thus, music in the mind is the apparently shared and central
issue, every bit as integral to music inspected semiologically as Klein argues
it is to what he calls hermeneutics. “But this experience of music, lovely and
enticing as it is, is an attempt to recapture an Imaginary (capital T)36 stage in
our development, when we took ourselves to be whole. We fall into music’s
acoustic mirror, push away the history that hurts, and accept a vision of music
as ineffable and transcendent.” Notice a deliberate swerve there from external
to inductive esthesics, from what was said to be a “re a l.. . experience” to what
is now said to be a “vision,” in effect a naming of the musical experience: “inef­
fable” one day, “transcendent” the next, perhaps.37 And that may be well and
good, as long as we remember that these are poles of musical semiosis, aspects
of music in the mind, which may occupy itself with actual experience, or emo­
tion recollected in tranquility (to cite Wordsworth’s condition for poetry, by
analogy), or structural analysis of the immanent level as a basis for interpreta­
tion. In Kramer’s terms, Klein seems to be attempting to convey the images of
Chopin’s mazurka as a “signifier of a ve iled or unrealized signified.”38 It cannot
be overemphasized that those images are all symbolic forms. We may say that in
the mind of the musician they are shafts of the replete experience of music—
or, they would be, in the hands of a better author than myself, able to do verbal
justice to music’s breadth and depth, in some situations through immediacy, in
other situations through “translational services. ”39 One does not need to share
in Klein’s sense of irretrievable Loss in the face of, apparendy, all musical expe­
rience (“But the damage was already done at the moment we learned that there
was a word called ‘music,’ and we entered the symbolic order in a crisis that
made a happy wholeness irretrievable*) in order to share in his association of
the “symbolic” with crisis, if sei nit logically one insists on regarding music as a
replete symbolic fact.4(N>nc may indeed empathize with Klein’s frustration as a
con sequence of fragmenting the experience of Ihe human mind into different
34 ** JO NATH AN DUNSBY

types of experience, rather than discriminating, tripartition ally, among three

distinct but endlessly interacting ways in which we imagine (and are, as it were,
imagined by) the work of music itself. He says that “music as the vision of the
inexpressible will not release us from the symbolic and give us back what we
think we have lost, what we never really had in the first p la c e d Yet presumably
what we want in general, and what we had in the first place, was the experience
of music itself rather than a secondary vision of it. One may well understand
Klein’s Rousseau-esque urge to claim in effect that music, like man, is born to
be free, and everywhere is in chains; but we can be mindful too of Joseph de
Maistre’s legendary retort to Rousseau that it was like saying sheep are born to
be carnivores, and everywhere they eat grass. Klein is absorbed throughout his
analysis in a Lacanian scenario that appeals continually to a “symbolic order”
entailing nonobvious constructions of the human situation. In that sense, he is
using the idea of “symbol” in a categorically more circumscribed way than how
music semiologists may be said to intend it normally, while he is also certainly,
commendably, trying to help us to understand the mind of the musician.
There is no doubt that music somehow interrogates us. Different ages will
deal with that interrogation in different ways. Music semiology, with its con­
cepts of poiesis, immanence, and esthesis, of local truth, of aesthetic judgment,
lives peacefully with modern science in its assertion that to imagine something
identifiable is interact with it. To return to our opening idea, that “there is
indeed a world outside ourselves,” the lesson of music semiology is that music
is partly what we make of it: music seems to come at us ready made, but that
simply is not the case, the more we think about it. And in that context, the
nature of the mind of the musician is the most important research topic there
can be for the music semiologist.

Notes

1. I am grateful to the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, for the

opportunity of public presentation and discussion of the ideas in this essay. I
thank Joan Huguet for her shrewd and expert advice.
2. Dunsby, “A Bagatelle on Beethoven’s WoO 60,” Music Analysis 3, no. 1 (1984):
57-68.
3. Dunsby, Making Words Sing: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Song (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2.
4. See, for example, Nattiez, Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 15.
5. Poetry and drama do obviously share music’s fugitive nature in real time in
some respects, and verbal text is linear. Cf. Giles Hooper on texts and Roman
Jakobson on patterning, both later in this chapter.
 M USIC S E M I O L O G Y IN T H E M IN D OF T H E M U S I C I A N 9» 35

6. Since at least as early as the 1980s, music psychology has been categorized as
focusing on either perception or cognition. See for example Diana Deutsch,
Editorial, Music Perception: An InterdisciplinaryJournal 1, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 1.
7. Edward Gone, introduction to The Power of Sound, by Edmund Gurney (New
York: Basic Books, 1966; originally published in 1880).
8. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2014), 115; quoted also in my review of that book,
Music and Letters 95, no. 3 (2014): 497-99.
9. Margulis, On Repeat, 52-53.
10. Sylveline Bourion, Le style de Claude Debussy: Duplication, répétition et dualité dans
les stratégies de composition (Paris: Vrin, 2011).
11. Margulis, On Repeat, 65.
12. This field, which we would surely now call paradigmatic analysis, was initi­
ated by Hans von Wolzogen in Thematischer Leitfaden durch die Musik zu Richard
Wagners Festspiel ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen ’ (Leipzig: Edwin Schloemp, 1876).
13. Cross, “The Evolutionary Nature of Musical Meaning,” Musicae Scientiae, spe­
cial issue (2009-10): 179-200.
14. Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 534.
15. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1959), 18. Readers will hardly need to be reminded that the Course
contains not Saussure’s actual words, but reported words from his lectures.
16. Ferdinand de Saussure, Writings in General Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 16.
17. I am grateful to JeanJacques Nattiez for having encouraged me, in an earlier
version of this paper, to make this analogy more explicit.
18. Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), 2:337.
Nowadays it is a matter of interesting debate how programming “language” is
related to verbal language.
19. Giles Hooper, “A Sign of the Times: Semiotics in Anglo-American Musicology,”
Twentieth-Century Music 9, nos. 1-2 (2012): 172.
20. David Temperley, “Syncopation in Rock: A Perceptual Perspective,” Popular
Music 18, no. 1 (1999): 19 (my emphasis).
21. Temperly, “Syncopation in Rock,” 20. It is not clear to me what Temperiey’s
strategy is in espousing “the hearing of a broad population” on one page and
his own “intuitions” on the next, although in common sense one can accept
the position that as an informed listener he can embody the broader intersub-
jectively valid responses of any listener.
22. There is a tradition of speculation on whether animals go beyond apparent
biological necessity in their behavior. Eor an example of this in research on
birdsong, see Hollis Taylor, “Decoding the Song of the Pied Butcherbird: An
Initial Survey,” Transcultural Music Review 12 (2008), http://www.sibetrans.
com/trans/articulo/98/drcoding-th e-son g-of-the-pied-butcherbird-an-in itial-
survey, accessed May 24, 2016. However, considering the exceptional mimetic
capacity of the pied butcherbird, ascribing some kind of intention ality to the
supposedly “musical” sounds it c;ui emit Ncetns inappropriate.
36 ** JO N A TH A N DU N SBY

23. Lawrence Kramer, Music and Meaning (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002), 156-57. One may assume that Kramer intends “meaning” here to unite
the poietic and esthesic poles.
24. Nicholas Cook, Music, Imagination and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990); Mary Warnock, Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976).
25. Gerhard Richter, “Aesthetic Theory and Nonpropositional Truth Content in
Adorno,” New German Critique 97 (2006): 122.
26. Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 105.
27. A recent example of how that concern endures in the fanning out of music-
semiological thinking is Andrew Shenton’s Olivier Messiaen's System of Signs:
Notes towards Understanding His Music (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008). As one
reviewer says, Shenton “insists on a traditional linguistic analysis . . . as well as
an analysis in terms of music cognition . . . of Messiaen’s langage, although it
seems clear almost from the start that this invention of the composer’s is not
compatible with the categories helpful for an explanation of verbal semiosis
and will only reveal the composer’s ‘inconsistencies’ to his own set of ‘rules.’”
Ivan Curkovic, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology ofMusic 43, no. 1
(2012): 243.
28. JeanJacques Nattiez, The Battle of Chroms and Orpheus: Essays in Applied Musical
Semiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 280-84. For an example
of music analysis examining a work explicitly in terms of those aesthetic cat­
egories, see William Child’s account of Steve Reich’s Violin Phase in “Monroe
Beardsley’s Three Criteria for Aesthetic Value: A Neglected Resource in the
Evaluation of Recent Music,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 34, no. 2 (2000):
59-62.
29. John Blacking, A Commonsense View of All Music (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987).
30. Kofi Agawu, African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 63.
31. See, for example, Jean Molino, “Musical Fact and the Semiology of Music,”
trans. J. A. Underwood, introduction by Craig Ayery, Music Analysis 9, no. 2
(1990): 105-56. Molino’s essay was published originally in French as “Fait
musical et sémiologie de la musique,” MusiqueenJeu 17 (1975): 37-62.
32. Michael Klein, Interpreting Music (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2011) , 21 .
33. Klein, Interpreting Music, 21-22.
34. See the reference to Margulis, On Repeat, in note 8 above.
35. In his even-handed discussion “Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?”
Nattiez did not concede anything but an external status to stories in music,
admittedly a quarter of a century ago: “I have tried . . . to show that in itself
. . . music is not a narrative and that any description of its formal structures in
terms of narrativity is nothing but superfluous metaphor. But if one is tempted
to do it, it is because music shares with literary narrative the fact that, within it,
objects succeed one another: this linearity is thus an incitement to a narrative
 M U S IC S E M IO L O G Y 3N T H E M IND OF T H E M U S I C I A N ** 37

thread which narratixjizßs music,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115,
no. 2 (1990): 257. Klein and Nicholas Reyland recently opened the preface
to their edited volume Music and Narrative since 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2013) by stating that Nattiez had been asking the wrong ques­
tion. They prefer to ask, “How we can speak of narrativity in music?” By this
they mean what is to be gained, how it differs from hermeneutic or formalist
speaking, and so on (ix).
36. This is a reference to Lacan’s terminology.
37. The “real” in Lacan twists and turns through his thinking in away that the bald
English word fundamentally betrays. It is courageous of Klein to import it into
a music-theoretical context, knowing that the mzyority of his readers will prob­
ably take it at face value and, despite all his valuable commentary, as pretty
close to the normal word in English. As an example of a specialist synopsis of
what “real” indicates in Lacan, I offer the following lucid quotation from the
literary critic Kevin Kopelson: “The Real isn’t simply synonymous with external
reality, nor is it the opposite of ‘imaginary.9 It exists outside or beyond the
Symbolic, is menacingly homogeneous, and isn’t composed of distinct and dif­
ferential signifiers. It’s that which resists symbolization and signification, and
is usually encountered in the context of trauma and psychosis.” “The Sonic
Mirror,” Iowa Review 37, no. 2 (2007): 19-20.
38. See above, p. 28.
39. Cf. note 25 above, citing Richter on Adorno.
40. See note 31.
4L All Klein quotations are from “Chopin Dreams: The Mazurka in CjJ Minor,
Op. 30, no. 4,” 19th Century Music 35, no. 3 (2012): 259—60 (my italics).
 Chapter Three

Against Ethnotheory
Kofi Agawu

Nattiez’s Ambivalence

In his 1990 monograph, Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, Jean-
Jacques Nattiez welcomed “a new interest in ‘ethnotheories’” as “one of the
great virtues of ethnomusicology’s anthropological orientation.” By their
very existence, ethnotheories, defined as “conceptions that indigenous peo­
ples form of their own music,” suggest that “the ‘savage mind’ can also oper­
ate in the realm of music theory, with a precision that is a bit disturbing for
smug Western feelings of superiority.”1 The context in which these statements
appear is a broad semiological study of a variety of discourses about music.
Nattiez reflects on the very concept of music and the musical work, the nature
of musical meaning, and musical analysis in theory and practice. Along the way,
he invokes writers as diverse as Charles Sanders Peirce, Nicolas Ruwet, Alan
Lomax, Eduard Hanslick, Umberto Eco, Paul Ricouer, Jean Molino, Bernhard
Riemann, and André Schaeffner; and music by Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Richard Wagner, the Inuit, the Kaluli, and the Igbo. In other words, as early as
1990, Nattiez’s purview was “world music,” and it is against this cosmopolitan
background that we might interpret his remarks.
Ethnotheories (the plural is hardly avoidable at this level) are typically
reported in ethnographically based studies by “western” scholars of knowledge
systems developed within cultures of (mainly) primary orality. They purport to
show a high level of verbal and conceptual precision in the way that indigenous
people think and talk about music. Nattiez lists writings by Feld, Keil, Powers,
Sakata, Smith, Stone, Tedlock, and Zemp as the most significant contribu­
tions.2 Although welcoming of this new development, Nattiez was also skepti­
cal. On one side was a positive valuation of the idea of ethnotheory, responding
perhaps to an ethical imperative to respect native conceptualization; on the
other side was skepticism about ethnotheory’s intellectual cogency, especially
 AG AIN ST ETH NOTH EO RY 39

when its claims came into conflict with scientific knowledge: “When an Inuk
says that the throat ls the point of origin of sound in Katajjaq, but modern
articulatory phonetics (Ladefoged) states that there are no guttural sounds as
such, I am hard put to imagine what guilt complex about ethnocentricity could
allow privileging the informants’ illusion above a well-established physiological
fact.”3 The semiologist does not at this point entertain the possibility that the
Inuk explanation may be rooted in a self-empowering myth, or that it repre­
sents a bid for power in just the same way that the ostensibly scientific explana-
lion proffered by modem linguistics is invested in institutional power. He is
concerned only with the fact that musicians around the world can and do give
accurate as well as inaccurate information to researchers, and that we should
not hesitate to discount what we judge to be inaccurate.
Since Nattiez’s remarks appeared, a number of other scholars have nego-
liated this particular tension in ways that have enriched our understanding
of the dynamics of cross-cultural knowledge production. One such scholar
is the ethnomusicologist Marc Perlman, who in his book Unplayed Melodies
considers the epistemology of ethnotheory and pursues the limits of theo­
retical articulation (and disarticulation) manifest in insider and outsider
perspectives on Javanese gamelan music.4 Another is the music theorist
Lawrence Zbikowski, who opposes ethnotheory to theory and exposes an inevi-
lable asymmetry at the base of this supposed binary. In Conceptualizing Music,
Zbikowski describes ethnotheory as “a sort of Third World shadow of ‘the­
ory.’” Ethnotheory, he declares, is “not a very comfortable concept: ‘theory’
remains the privileged term.”5
There is some pussyfooting here, some dragging of feet, and it is precisely
Ihis ambivalence that I want to use as point of departure for a critique of eth-
notheory in African music studies. I should admit at the outset that although
1he will to invent ethnotheories has been a force in Africanist ethnomusicology
.since the 1960s, ethnotheory as such is at present only an emerging discourse,
not a fully developed one. Two impulses seem to direct the ethnotheoretical
project. The first proceeds from a priori notions of difference held by eth­
nographers. The assumption is that other people are intrinsically different;
therefore that their way of thinking must be different from ours. The second,
alluded to in Nattiez’s remarks quoted earlier, proceeds from an ethical stance
that wishes to limit “western” impositions on the non-West by, as it were, grant­
ing the subaltern the ability to speak.
Although separate in principle, the two motivations frequently converge in
practice. What begins as a gesture of respect for others easily morphs into a
construction of their alterity based on a historically freighted script that under­
values or even denies what is shared between cultures. Were it common to find
ellinotheoretical efforts Ihat irnninatr in claims of sameness—a demonstra­
tion, for example, that Other» think .111«i talk just the way we do, even though
40 ** KOFI AGAWU

they use different linguistic expressions—we might retain some faith in the
prospect that the outcome of such efforts is not determined in advance. Alas,
ethnotheorists do not always give priority to the prospects for cultural trans-
latability. The deck is stacked in favor of those who seek and find difference.
And it is precisely here, in the making of claims about others’ minds, that we
encounter some of the most patronizing, demeaning and racist attitudes in
ethnographic writing.6

Feld’s Kahili Exam ple: Model or One-off?

Steven Feld’s elegant demonstration of an ethnotheory among the Kaluli of

Papua New Guinea would be every ethnographer’s dream. The Kaluli, we
learn, have a well-developed conception of certain musical elements and
practices, and they code them in a metalanguage affiliated with the semantic
fields of water, sound, space and birds. In effect, the Kaluli problematize the
boundary between the musical and the extramusical, conceptualizing musi­
cal performance as social action and interaction expressed in evocative terms
and metaphors. A vivid example is the phrase dulugu ganalam, meaning “lift up
over sounding,” which Feld describes as “a spatial-acoustic metaphor, a visual
image set in sonic form and a sonic form set in visual imagery.”7
Feld’s achievement inspired a number of scholars in the 1980s and after to
look in their places of work to see if their theorizing could be enriched by a
more determined attempt to reclaim the native cognitive territory. In my own
work on the Northern Ewe, I was encouraged to look for signs of an ethno-
theoretical discourse, but the results were less than ideal. Although I found
indigenous terms for genres and musical instruments, and a number of active
verbs designed to energize performance, I did not find a sustained reflective
discourse capable of supporting fundamental distinctions between the particu­
lar and the general; nor did the Northern Ewe invest in technical discussions
of form, syntax or structure. By that I don’t mean that notions of form, syntax
and structure do not occur sporadically in Ewe discourse (or, for that matter, in
Yoruba, Akan, Igbo, Fon, Kpelle, and other African discourses); I simply mean
that, for various sociocultural reasons, not to mention historical-materialist fac­
tors, these notions had never been consolidated into a separate theoretical dis­
course. For the Ewe, theory appeared to be that which made composition and
performance possible, not a body of reflective discourses cultivated by those
who have the leisure to indulge in such activity.
A valuable article by Misonu Amu entitled “Glossary of Ewe Musical Terms”
(1997) affirmed my intuition about the priorities displayed in Ewe discourse.8
The majority of her 245 items are terms for genre or musical instrument; nine
are song words, and eight depict musicians. T here an* sporadic references
 AG A IN STETH N O TH EO R Y ** 4L

to form (such as the introductory section of a song: or dance); costume, per­

formance site, posture (such as extending one’s buttocks); and state of being
(such as being possessed). Although this “technical glossary of Ewe musical ter­
minology” names, it does not necessarily explain. Little in it is truly technical,
and litde touches the internal organization of the music itself. We can under­
stand now why one prominent writer, in a gesture reminiscent of Nattiez’s,
decided to cut through the chase and declared that '‘African taxonomies, while
adequate from a social and/or religious perspective, throw no light whatsoever
on the systematic structure of musical techniques e mployed.”9
Misonu Amu modeLed her glossary on David Ames and Anthony King’s
influential Glossary of Hausa Music and Its Social Contexts.1®Published in 1971,
it was the first book on a sub-Saharan African society devoted exclusively to
terms and concepts that convey the musical worldview of its people. Neither
there nor in a subsequent work by the ethnomusicologist Lester P. Monts, An
Annotated Glossary of Vai Musical Language and Its Social Context (also modeled
on Ames and King’s book11) does one glimpse the kind of technical vocabu­
lary that might constitute a music theory rather than a “shadow of theory.”12
I consulted other work, notably that of John Blacking, who in the 1960s and
after made a lot of noise along ethnotheoretical lines, urging us to consider
what the Venda think and how they express their thoughts in talk and in acts
of musical performance, and not to assume the a priori validity of our own
(metropolitan) concepts and vocabulary. But here, too, I found only nibbles;
moreover, it was impossible to locate discourse communities among the Venda
whose members possessed a stable body of indigenous knowledge that they
deployed regularly in theoretical talk about music.13
Nor was I encouraged by the evidence assembled in writings by Paul van
Thiel on the Ankole, Gerhard Kubik on various East and southern African peo­
ples, Gilbert Rouget on the Eon, or A. M. Jones on the Zambian and Southern
Ewe of the existence of a native discourse that was also viable as self-standing
theory rather than a collection of fragmentary inputs into a possible theory.14
Similarly, more recent writings by Eric Charry, Kwasi Ampene, Kelly Askew,
Akin Euba, and Chris-topher Waterman, though mindful of indigenous expres­
sion, have not pointed to thriving ethno-discourse communities.15 Here and
elsewhere, I found, if anything, an implicit rather than explicit discourse, spo­
radic rather than sustained assertions, mostly confined to individual idiolects
rather than broadly distributed across entire communities.
Steven Feld’s recent book Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra, Ghana by and large
jettisons die ethnotheoretical effort associated with his earlier Sound and
Sentiment.16 This is not because the author is any less alert to how his collabora­
tors talk about what they do; 011 the contrary, Feld reproduced their words at
length throughout the hook 11 h rather because, for these collaborators in the
( ihanaian capital, At'era, the Fngiisli language (in fleeted, it is true, by a variety
42 2* KOFI AGAW U

of local usages) has become a standard means of communication, even though

none of them are native speakers. Feld apparently saw no need to translate
their words from Ghanaian English into American English in order to recover
material with eth no theoretical potential.
So had Feld simply been lucky to discover a rich ethnotheoretical terrain
such as that of the Kaluli in 1982? Or had other researchers been looking in
the wrong places, or were simply not skilled enough to construct something of
comparable cogency? Was it perhaps the case that the Kaluli enjoyed theoriz­
ing, whereas the Northern Ewe (or Akan, Fon, or Igbo) couldn’t be bothered,
preferring simply to make music on the basis of internalized constraints, rather
than talking about it after the fact? What accounts for variations in the den­
sity of verbal-theoretical discourse in communities throughout the world? And
how can the moral imperative to incorporate native understanding be formu­
lated so that it neither forces a discovery of what is not there, nor leaves the
researcher feeling that he or she has ignored a potentially illuminating dimen­
sion of a community’s musico-intellectual life?

A Lesson from Ethnophilosophy

While these early ethnotheoretical projects were unfolding in ethnomusicol-

ogy in the 1980s, a burgeoning literature on postcoloniality inspired by Edward
Said’s Orientalism was bringing to the fore questions of knowledge ordering
and the politics of representation, including the occidental representation
of others across a vast historical period.17 One tributary of this intellectual
movement revolved around work in African philosophy and literature, spear­
headed by Valentin Mudimbe’s Invention of Africa, Paulin Hountondji’s African
Philosophy: Myth and Reality, Kwasi Wiredu’s Philosophy and an African Culture,
Abiola Irele’s African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora, and
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s In My Father's Housed I turned to this literature in
part to see what analytical methodologies were in use, and how colleagues
in the humanities were negotiating the challenges of the prefix ethno-. How
were literary scholars, for example, analyzing poems and ritual texts? Were
some methods figured as “African” and others as “western”? Could some of
the approaches be described as ethnotheoretical? Answers to these questions
varied, of course, but it appears that Appiah’s strictures on structures notwith­
standing,19 the consensus was to let the outcome determine the value of a
given analytical proceeding, rather than prohibiting a proceeding because its
method was invented in Paris, Montréal or Berlin rather than in villages far
from Lagos, Nairobi, or Accra.
As for ethnotheories, African philosophers were already engaged in a
vigorous debate about the related concept of elhnophilosopliy. The idea of
r

AG AIN ST ETH NOTH EO RY ** 43

a collective philosophy attributed to African peoples and said to exhibit a

cogency comparable to Western philosophy had been proposed by Placide
Tempels in his 1942 book, Bantu Philosophy.^0 Tempels reconstructed a
bantu philosophical investment in forces, and this enabled him to contest
the enduring prejudice that Africans lacked a philosophy. A Belgian mis­
sionary in the then Belgian Congo, Tempels aimed to unveil the workings of
the African mind not as an end in itself but as a means to an end; and that
end was to facilitate the civilizing mission of Christianity. If we can under­
stand better the way native minds work, if we can grasp the bases of their
philosophical system, we can civilize them more efficiently with our Christian
beliefs—so reasoned Tempels.
Tempels’ project was based on a problematic assumption of unanimist
belief across Bantu communities. Hountondji, in particular, has taken
exception to the power ploy implicit in referring to Africans always in the
plural, denying the role of individual agency and failing to embrace the
ambition to establish an explicit, scientific discourse that transcends the
local. Again, without rehearsing all aspects of the critique of ethnophiloso-
pliy here, we can suggest that there is a certain isomorphism between eth-
notheory and ethnophilosophy. Ethnotheory is in that sense a problematic
discourse at the moment of birth, for it is founded on a will to a larger
cultural difference that mutes its sensitivity to the very foundational critical
activity that serves as philosophy’s condition of possibility. If we model our
thinking and writing about African music on postcolonial African philoso­
phers, then ethnotheory will have to be rigorously thought through before
it can serve our purposes.

Emerging Ethnotheories in African Music Studies

The most immediate gesture in the direction of ethnotheory is the invoca­

tion of African-language words in an ethnographer’s text. Typically, the writer
points out absences by using locutions such as “They do not have a word for
music” or “There is no word for rhythm in their language.” He or she may also
remark on unfamiliar images: “The song is going down the road” or “We hear
the dance.” Although all this seems innocent enough, its ultimate goal as a step
in the construction of an indigenous theory is dubious.
Consider the use of African-language expressions in three ethnomusico-
logical texts by J. If. Kwabena Nketia, Ruth Stone, and Steven Friedson. In
Nkctia’s 1974 classic, The Music of Africa, readers will not find very much in
the way of African-language data associated with conceptual constructs.21 It
would be hasty to conclude, however, ilia! an African point of view is miss­
ing from die hook. Only a seliol.u with a keen understanding of the place of
44 ** KOFI AGAW U

music in African culture, including its linguistic expressions and conceptual­

ization, could have assembled many of the observations in Tke Music of Africa.
Ethnotheory, on the evidence of this book, is an implicit discourse; it informs
the construction of the text, but it is not displayed as a separate discourse. By
contrast, Ruth Stone devotes an entire chapter to Kpelle conceptualization
in her book Let the Inside Be Sweet,22 Here, African-language data are gath­
ered to support the use of sound symbolism, the naming of genres, and the
denotation of performance actions. On first view, one might conclude that
Stone's study, by virtue of its surface deployment of African-language con­
cepts, leads the reader to the workings of the African mind more deeply than
does Nketia’s. But that would be an unfortunate inference. Speakers of other
African languages often find Nketia’s English formulations resonant with
theirs. This suggests that Nketia thought through the native categories and
found ways of rendering them paradigmatically in English. Of course, he does
use African-language data when occasion demands, but he also recognizes
the translatability of concepts.
A third approach is found in Steven Friedson’s recent book Remains of
Ritual?* Here I believe we have reached another limit in the supposed rep­
resentation of the native mind. The author includes African-language names
and concepts on practically every page. But do we really need to know the
Ewe words for door, goat, soup, fence, and the like, unmarked words in every­
day discourse? If so, why not write the entire book in Ewe? The Ewe words
are meant to assure readers that the author is conversant in Ewe, but the
extent to which they advance our understanding of Ewe conceptualization is
far from guaranteed by such excess. Friedson’s project as a whole embraces
the production of differences almost as an article of faith, so it is not surpris­
ing that he has gone to such lengths to suggest a degree of semantic opacity
where none exists. Professional posturing of this sort leaves untouched larger
claims about how Others think because it privileges acts of crass naming over
translation. It is striking how distant Friedson’s project is from Nketia’s or
Stone’s. If an ethnotheoretical orientation is meant to guide us to how the
Ewe (as portrayed by Friedson) or the Kpelle (as portrayed by Stone) or
Africans in general (as portrayed by Nketia) think, I doubt that we would
automatically accord first place to Friedson’s book simply because it splashes
African-language words across its pages.

When Experts Disagree

We may glimpse a related aspect of the precarious nature of ethnotheoretical

construction from the following anecdote about the naming of parts in pygmy
polyphony.
 AG AIN ST ETH NOTH EO RY 45

• 1994. In an article titled “Intelligence in Traditional Music,” Simha

Arom reports that BaAka people of the Central African Republic
characterize their polyphony as haying “‘four constituent parts: ngûé wa
limbo (“mother of song’), irw.tangole (“that which gives its words’), o.sese
(“below/ subordinate to mo.tangole), and di.yei (‘yodeling’).”24 This
is precisely the kind of native scheme that facilitates the construction
of an ethnotheory. In this oral culture, controllers of discourse about
music have apparently developed technically sophisticated terms to
designate the constituent parts of a polyphonic texture.
• 2006. Suzanne Fürniss draws on this framework to analyze Aka
polyphony.25 This is a direct application; there is no tweaking of the
framework, no questioning of its status as a pan-Aka scheme.
• 2009. Revisiting an old debate about the origins of polyphony, Victor
Grauer referred in passing to Arom and Fürniss’s word motangole as “the
name supposedly provided by the Aka themselves for the ‘principal voice’
of any song” (my emphasis) 26 En search of corroboration, Grauer turned
to another expert on Central African music, Michelle Kisliuk, who “spent
much time in the field investigating the musical practices of the same
Pygmy group studied by Arom and Fürniss, the Aka.” His enquiry elicited
a surprising response: KisLiuk “denied any knowledge of a fixed four-part
scheme as the basis for Pygmy polyphony, as described by Fürniss.”27
Is it really conceivable that Kisliuk, working within the same set of
communities, had never come across a nomenclature that supposedly
framed discourse by the Aka about their polyphonic practices? Kisliuk is
emphatic about her inability to corroborate its provenance:

When I read an essay by Fürniss in which she asserts that each “voice”
has a particular name, and that somehow each voice is a particular and
necessary part of a song, I was surprised, as I’d never heard such a sys­
tematic description of voice or part by BaAka. This summer [2007] in
CAR [Central African Republic] I attempted to verify her findings with
people I’ve known for years, and though my interviews were not wide­
spread, I could not find a single person for whom Fürniss’s terms or
even idea seemed familiar.28

kt hnographers differ in what they seek and find, but the assertions and deni­
als in this little story raise questions about Aka ethnotheory. Was the fourfold
milieme perhaps once part of a thriving institutional discourse that has disap­
peared since it was first reported in 1994? Were the terms known only to a
handful of individual Aka? Or did they emerge under a particular regime of
inlerrogatkon? Might the terms have a prior metropolitan origin? We obviously
would need more information to awe plain the truth, but what is significant
here is 1li«* contradictory nature ol the testimonies. The fact that two groups of
46 a* K O F I AGAWTJ

researchers working with the same people in a relatively compact area in the
Central African Republic are unable to agree on the very existence of an osten­
sibly common set of terms used to describe the organizational framework of
Pygmy polyphony says a lot not only about their techniques of field investiga­
tion, but also their desires for the people they study. By these lights, ethnotheo-
ries exist precariously; indeed, they sometimes approximate inventions.

Against Ethnotheory

Here, then, by way of summary and an extended conclusion, are five reasons to
be wary of ethnotheory. In stating them so direcdy, I aim to provoke discussion
and debate. Ideally, issues of this magnitude and intricacy would be worked
through a series of texts and historical circumstances, but limitations of space
forbid that. Perhaps, however, a programmatic statement against ethnotheory
will help engender that larger discussion.
A first and perhaps paradoxical reason is that ethnotheory appears not to
exist. It is an apparition, a hopeful construct rather than a knowable discourse.
Often mentioned and desired, it seems not to be located anywhere in particu­
lar. Of the nine titles listed by Nattiez in his “short bibliography of ethnotheo-
ries,” only two deal with Africa, those by Keil and Stone.29 Keil’s 1979 book
Tiv Song scrutinizes the Tiv lexicon and points to the imbrication of individual
items in intricate semantic fields, but denomination without a fuller social
delineation of the use of these terms and concepts limits their status as theory.
Moreover, given that many of the terms are translatable into English, what we
are presented with in Keifs book are said to be “Tiv ways of conceptualizing
music” and not “uniquely Tiv ways of conceptualizing music.” By erasing non­
uniqueness, we erase difference and thus undermine the putative ontological
basis for the construction of ethnotheory.30
It could be argued that even though ethnotheory does not exist now, it
might come into being in the future through the cumulative efforts of indi­
vidual scholars. Ethnotheory may thus be thought of as a kind of promissory
note, a desirable future discourse. Like heaven, hell, or purgatory, ethnothe­
ory would be a thing for believers rather than nonbelievers. Unfortunately,
the trajectory of discourse since the 1960s does not inspire confidence in
such an optimistic projection. The efforts of Blacking, Merriam,31 Keil, and
latterly Rubik serve as useful reminders that native musicians, too, have ways
of talking about music, but they have not (yet) inspired a large ethnotheoret-
ical project. Indeed, scholars nowadays seem more interested in broad and
comparative approaches involving dialogue with metropolitan theory rather
than ethnically confined approaches aimed at portraying difference from
metropolitan theory.
r

A G A I N S T E T H NTO T H E O R Y 47

A second reason to reject ethnotheory is that the categorical distinc­

tion it presupposes between “African knowledge” and “Western knowledge’'
in extremely fragile, if not simply false. En 2003, I argued that “beyond locaL
1111lections deriving from culture-bound linguistic, historical, and materially-
tnllected [sic] expressive preferences, there is ultimately no difference between
European knowledge and African knowledge/’32 I fulLy expected some resis­
tance to that bald statement, but although the book in which it appears
1«reived its share of criticism, this particular claim was overlooked by my most
uncompromising critics, Veit Erlmann and Louise Meintjes.33 It is of course
possible that the claim was not deemed worthy of a response, but is it also pos­
sible that it threatens the very foundations of the ethnomusicological project?
The construction of a fundamental difference between European and
Ahican knowledge originated in European thought. Since the eighteenth
1 rntury at least, the enabling mindset of many ethnographers has been a
presumption of difference, not a presumption of sameness. The presumed
dichotomy between African and western knowledge has in turn provided
some justification for the search for ethnotheories. Kubik, for example,
mice lamented the fact that “publications are rare in which African music
in described according to the concepts and ideas of the people in the musi-
i al cultures concerned.”34 In other words, African music has too often been
described without the benefit of its ethnotheories. Kubik then adds that
African musicologists have been of no help in resolving this matter because
ul the way they are trained: “Most African musicologists .. . have had a pre­
dominantly Western approach in their studies of African music. . . . As a con­
sequence of Western musical training they often tend to hear African music
similarly to a Western observer.”35 This extraordinary statement, so blind to
Ils own enabling assumptions, and so confident about the power of Western
education to wipe out the last trace of Africanness from an African musi-
1 ««legist, denies individual agency and Leaves little room for individuals who,
piccisely because of their “Western” education, are able to interrogate the
"Western approach” keenLy, not only in words about music but also—and
Importantly—through deeds in music. Individuals such as the Nigerian com­
pose r-musicologists Fela Sowande, MekL Nzewi, and Joshua Uzoigwe each
underwent “Western musical training,” but none could be described as hav­
ing a “predominantly Western approach in their studies of African music.” Is
H .1 surprise that such musicians have not been enamored of ethnotheory?
The most vocal advocates of an African approach are—ironicaLly—western­
e r who are often familiar with the “Western approach. ’”Their reasons for seek-
lug to jettison the latter in favor of a little African authenticity are not always
•rll-evident, but they are often traceable to a fundamental will to difference
1h.1t animates the anthropological project. The problem is that the putative
"Ahiran approach” is always already mediated, always already inflected by the
 IH w KOFI A G A W U

"wrHirrn” scholar’s desire to construct an authentically African way of think-

niU Ef linotheorists thus go to great lengths to seek out the bush African, not
Ilie* city African. Bush Africans normally do not participate in metropolitan
knowledge production except as informants. They suppLy ideas, words, and
phrases, perhaps even offer some explanation, but it is rare to find them dic­
tating the shape of the rest tiling theory or stabilizing a metalanguage. Nor do
bush Africans normally read the theories that ostensibly describe their ways of
thinking and talking about music.
Indeed, the reception of ethnotheory can reach amusing heights of arro­
gance when, assured that bush Africans will probably never read what we write,
assured that they will never “write back,” so to speak, ethnotheorists return to
the field with the books and articles they have written about indigenous peo­
ple, read them out loud, and record their responses for incorporation into
future publications. “Dialogic editing,” as it has been called, rests ostensibly on
a dialogue between the ethnographer and his or her field associates.36 This is
surely a dialogue among unequal parties, however, and it points to one of the
less savory aspects of the ethno theoretical project: the downplaying of the huge
gaps in material endowment and profound asymmetries of power between the
researcher and the researched. It is perhaps little wonder that nowhere in the
literature can one find a listing of the benefits that accrue to African communi­
ties that have been subjected to ethnotheoretical exploitation. Benefits accrue
overwhelmingly to the individual scholar and his or her interpretive commu­
nity in the metropolis.
The construct “African knowledge,” when deployed in an ethnotheoretical
context, is meaningless in the absence of clear borders between it and western
knowledge. A favorite move of ethnotheorists is to locate African knowledge
in verbal expressions that differ from those commonly found in the ethnog­
rapher’s culture. Expressions such as “The song caught our throats” and “The
mother drum stammers” provide the sort of data that ethnotheorists are drawn
to. These colorful expressions illuminate the descriptive and naming priori­
ties within specific African communities, but they also facilitate the pursuit
of “writerly” ambitions that do not necessarily serve critical-theoretical ends.
Kthnotheories, after all, are texts.
In any case, isolated lexical items do not add up to a theory. What about the
context in which a given expression appears? How do terms combine to form
a comprehensive statement with predictive power and explanatory capability?
I low do different speakers apply these expressions in analysis? In attempting
to answer these questions, one quickly realizes that there are few models in the
field of Africanist ethnomusicology. It appears that ethnotheory is simply not
localized anywhere. Is ethnotheory then nothing more than a fleeting, inter­
mil lent, or decorative set of effects in a field of discourse' not otherwise differ­
entiated from other fields of discourse?
 A G A IP fS T E T H N OT H E O R Y 3* 4g

A third reason to reject ethnotheory is that, as a concept, it does not appear

to be supported by a constitutive opposition that would guarantee its validity.
If “theory” is regarded as the opposing term, then ethnotheory would appear
marked, whereas theory would be unmarked. Ethnotheory thus boasts a par­
ticularity that theory shuns because theory’s claims are in principle generaliz-
able. Purporting to represent the thinking of whole communities, ethnotheory
claims the same kind of generality, but it is always already dependent on the­
ory. The two are thus distinct rather than opposed.
We might also ask why we use the term ethnotheory when dealing with
Kpelle, Vai, Ewe, Luo, Hausa, or Yoruba, but theory when dealing with Mozart,
Beethoven, Brahms, or Stravinsky. Why are the treatises of Rameau, Koch,
Riemann, and Schenker designated as “theory,” whereas those promulgated by
Stone (on behalf of the Kpelle ), Nzewi (on behalf of the Igbo37), and Thiel (on
behalf of the Ankole) are consigned to the category “ethnotheory”? Insofar as
their répertoriai purview is geocururally confined to Austro-Germanic music,
the theories of Riemann and Schenker could be said to constitute the equiva­
lent of ethnotheories. However, in both designation and aspiration, the prefix
ethno- does not accompany such western usages. The repertoires analyzed are
said to be “standard,” and the explanatory theories are often presented as if
they were universally applicable. A will to power is inscribed in such univer­
salist claims, whether they be those of a Schenker or a Riemann, or of their
peers and successors who practiced comparative musicology (such as Erich von
Hornbostel and Marius Schneider). “Ethnotheory” and “theory” thus re pre-
stmt different kinds of bids for power.
A fourth factor to consider in evaluating ethnotheory is the sociological fact
that African scholars appear not to be especially interested in ethnotheory. If
one examines the writings of African scholars such as Nketia, Euba, Augustus
Vidal, Bode Omojola, Joshua Uzoigwe, Imani Sanga, and Nzewi, one does not
(ind anywhere a sustained discussion of ethnotheory. Instead, one finds the
sporadic influence of indigenous ideas and vocabulary woven into a more gen­
eral explanatory or theoretical framework. Consider the example of Nketia,
who was able to strike a balance between the particular and the general. His
little book from 1949, Akanfo Nnwom hi [Some Akan songs], a compilation of
seventy-five song texts belonging to different genres, including adotva, aden-
hn.m, and nnwonkmo, is rich in indigenous ideas about Akan song and perfor­
mance.38 (It is yet to be discovered by ethnotheorists). In his introduction,
Nketia explains the origins of various genres, describes performing strategies
,uid performance occasions, and interprets the drum language. Several techni­
cal terms are introduced and explained, so readers seeking African essences
will lind much to feed that particular fantasy. Nketia did not maintain this
»lance toward ethnolhcory in later writings, however. In The Music of Africa,
Afrie; m-languagc trims and m in e pi* arc introduced from time to time, but
5O ** K O F I AGAWTJ

they are incorporated into a broader, more cosmopolitan, theoretical effort.

For this African scholar, then, ethnotheory—if that is what it is—has no sepa­
rate or autonomous existence; it is simply part of an analytical or theoretical
effort to understand a given cultural phenomenon.
Nketia’s approach has become paradigmatic for a more recent generation
of African scholars. Writing about the Akan genre nnwonkoro, for example,
Kwasi Ampene reveals vivid terms of indigenous origin for the parts of song,
for calling and responding, for beginning and ending, and for making polyph­
ony.39 These terms are introduced as parts of a larger theoretical effort, not as
items in a separatist category designed to capture the ways in which indigenous
practitioners think about their music. That is why they appear alongside terms
of ostensibly Western origin. Although Ampene does not pause to engage the
politics of theoretical posturing, it is obvious that he advocates a cosmopolitan
approach that incorporates insights from both local and global theory.
Even Meki Nzewi, probably the staunchest advocate of indigenous perspec­
tives among African ethnomusicologists, is finally not invested in ethnotheory.
His is a theoretically diversified portfolio assembled pragmatically from a vari­
ety of sources. For example, in his 1991 book on musical practice and creativ­
ity, he employs a number of Igbo terms for concepts of play and structure,
and in Musical Sense and Meaning he explains several aspects of Igbo cultural
practice with due attention to indigenous conceptions.40 Thus, “mother drum”
is opposed to “master drum” (explained in reference to the procreative poten­
tial of the mother). Indigenous terms are not gathered into a separate ethno­
theory, however, because in Nzewi’s thinking no such boundary exists. Theory
is always already marked by ethnotheory, just as ethnotheory stakes a claim to
theore tical status.
A fifth—and reciprocal—reason to be wary of ethnotheory is the interest
shown in it by western scholars. Ethnotheoretical constructions are academic
discourses designed for consumption in the western academy. Consider the
example of the British ethnomusicologist John Blacking. During the 1960s and
1970s, he emerged as one of the most passionate advocates of ethnotheory, if
not in name then of the impulses affiliated with it. In a series of writings start­
ing with his dissertation turned book ( Venda Children's Songs, 1967) through
a popular and popularizing study of the nature of human musicality (How
Musical Is Manf, 1973) to a posthumous collection of reflective essays, Music,
Culture and Experience (1995), Blacking touts the particularisms of ethnotheory
within a broad view of music as social action.41 We come to know the Venda
as a musical people and to understand their philosophy of music as different
from that of western classical music practitioners. Laboring under an ideol­
ogy of difference, Blacking sought native understanding of musical process in
order to criticpie western thought and practice. Kthnotheoiy guaranteed that
the thought-world of the Venda would be permanently perceived as separate
 A G A IN ST ETHXOTHEO R¥ 5 1

from that of a Gustav Mahler or an Alban Berg. Yet every one of Blacking’s
characterizations ofVenda music making is available in the metropolis, just
as the impulses that motivate Mahler’s and Berg’s compositional choices are
readily relatable to those of the anonymous Venda composers. Blacking’s dif­
ferences were always already fragile.
The appeal of ethnotheory to non-Africans studying Africa stems in
part from its promise to uncorer and dramatize differences whose produc­
tion is the enabling condition of ethnomusicological work. If I announce,
for example, that the Igbo concept of nkioa, which some have translated as
“music,” includes not one but three elements (singing, playing instruments,
and dancing), I can immediately distance Egbo conceptions of music from
western conceptions. But one does not have to be an apostle of sameness to
see that two of the three elements of Igbo music—singing and the playing
of instruments—are shared by western mnsic from most eras and that the
third, dance, is either present or supplementary to a number of prominent
genres—minuets, mazurkas, and waltzes. Attempts to keep these worlds apart
oftentimes underreport what is shared among cultures. Add to these affini­
ties the previously noted rich prospects for cultural translation and we see
why ethnotheory is a problematic discourse.

Postscript

When Nattiez announced a “new interest in ethnotheories” stemming from the

work of anthropologically oriented ethno musicologists twenty-five years ago,
he seemed in principle favorably disposed to them. At the same time, however,
he was urging caution about what exactly we choose to embrace in the process
oI'cross-cultural knowledge production.
In this essay, I have stepped to the right of Nattiez by arguing against ethno-
iheory because I believe that ethnotheory is ultimately a confining rather than
liberating discourse. A liberating discourse would incorporate all of the ethno-
llieorist’s data into a larger cosmopolitan construct. Although no less commit­
ted to the specifics of indigenous thinking and expression, such a discourse
1ejects their ostensible separateness and insists on the dialogical entailments
of indigenous categories. Such a discourse is already in evidence in certain
areas of rhythm research, including writings by Simha Arom, David Locke,
Polo Vallejo, Willie Anku, Godfried Toussaint, Richard Cohn, and Martin
Scherzinger.42 Using the sharpest tools irrespective of origin, these writings lay
hare the workings of the African creative imagination; they incorporate indig­
enous perspectives not it 1 die form of symbolic displays of informants’ words
bin by incorporating insights In an pedagogy, reception and close analysis into
.1 broader analytical inquiry; Tin* ingenuity of lead drumming, the versatility
52 J* K O Kl A Ci A WH

of songsniiths, and tlie* imaginative* projections of poets—musicologists need

to continue to analyze these ami other aspects of African creativity within a
cross-cultural framework. Ah hough tlu* theory deployed in such ventures, like
all theoretical ventures, oilers no ultimate guarantees as such, it gains in its
principled resistance to the “ghettoizing” and patronizing temptations associ­
ated with ethnotheory. At this historical-political conjuncture, what we need
in Africa are strong forms of conceptualization in the form of theory not the
titillating exoticisms associated with ethnotheory.

Notes

1. JeanJacques Nattiez, Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, trans.

Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 105.
2. Nattiez, Music and Discourse, 186. References are to Steven Feld, Sound and
Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); Charles Keil, Tiv Song: The Sociology
of Art in a Classless Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979);
Lorraine Sakata, Music in the Mind: The Concepts of Music and Musician in
Afghanistan (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1983); Sandra Smith,
“The Constituents of Music Ethnotheory: An Example from the Kuna of
Panama,” in Ethnotheory, ed. Maria Herndon (Dorby, PA: Norwood Editions,
1982); Ruth M. Stone, Let the Inside Be Sweet: The Interpretation of Music Event
Among the Kpelle of Liberia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982);
Barbara Tedlock, “Songs of the Zuni Kachina Society: Composition, Rehearsal
and Performance,” in Southwestern Indian Ritual Drama, ed. Charlotte Frisbie
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980), 7-35; Hugo Zemp,
“’Are’are Classification of Musical Types and Instruments,” Ethnomusicology
22 (1978): 37-67; Hugo Zemp, “Aspects of ‘Are’are Musical Theory,”
Ethnomusicology 23 (1979): 6-48.
3. Nattiez, Music and Discourse, 196.
4. Marc Perlman, Unplayed Melodies: favanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music
Theory (Berkeley, London: University of California Press, 2004).
5. Lawrence M. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and
Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 116.
6. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), incorporates a sub­
tle critique of a broad range of anthropological writing about Africa. For a nar­
rower critique of difference in Africanist ethnomusicology, see my “Contesting
Difference” in Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 151-71.
7. Feld, “‘Flow Like a WaterfalP: The Metaphors of Kaluli Musical Theory,”
Yearbookfor Traditional Music 13 (1981) : 22-47.
8. Misonu Amu, “Glossary of Ewe Musical Terms,” Rcsmtrk Review (Institute of
African Studies, University of Ghana) 13 (1997): 27-45.
 AG AIN ST ETHISTOTHE O R Y **> 53

[). Simha Arom, African, Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology,
trans. Martin Thom, Barbara Tuckett, and Raymond Boyd (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, L991), 215 (emphasis in original).
10. David Ames and Anthony King, Glossary of Hausa Music and Its Social Contexts
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971).
11. Lester P. Monts, An Annotated Glossary of Vai Musical Language and Its Social
Contexts (Paris: Peeters-SEIAF, 1990).
12. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music, L16.
Li. See, for example, John Blacking, Venda Children’s Songs: A Study in
Etknomusicological Analysis (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press,
1967).
1*1. See Paul van Thiel, Multi-Tribal Music of Ankole: An Ethnomusicological Study
Including a Glossary of Musical Terms (Tervuren: Musée royal de YAfrique cen­
tral, 1977); Gerhard Kubik, Theory of African Music, vol. 1 (Wilhelmshaven:
Florian Noet2el Verlag, 1994); Gerhard Kubik, Theory of African Music, vol. 2
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Gilbert Rouget, Un roi africain
et sa musique de cour: Chants et danses du palais à Porto-Novo sous le règne de Gbèfa
(1948-1976) (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1996); and A. M. Jones, Studies in African
Music, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).
If». See Eric Charry, Mande Music: Traditional and Modem Music of the Maninka
and Mandinka of Western Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);
Kwasi Ampene, Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana: The Creative
Ihrocess in Nnwonkoro (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005); Kelly Askew, Performing
the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2002); Akin Euba, Yoruba Drumming: The Dundun Tradition
(Lagos: Elokoto Music Centre and Bayreuth African Studies Series, 1991);
and Christopher Waterman, Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African
Popular Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
H», Si even Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
17, Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).
IM, See Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa] Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy:
Myth and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983); Kwasi Wiredu,
Philosophy and an African Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980); Abiola Irele, The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black
Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Kwame Anthony
Appiah, In My Father's House. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York:
( >xford University Press, L992).
P> Aill bony Appiah, “Structures on Strictures: The Prospects for a Structuralist
Poetics of African Fiction/’ in Black Literature and Literary Theory, ed. Henry
1,011 is Gates,Jr. (New York: Methuen, 1984), 127-50.
VO Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Presence africaine, 1959).
VI 1. 11. Kwabeha Nket.ia, The Music ufAfrica (New York: Norton, 1974).
V? Kulh Stone, l et the Inside Be Sued: The Interpretation of Music Event among the
Spells of Libéria (Bloomington: liidknni University Press, 1982).
54 ** KOFI A G A W U

23. Steven Friedson, Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009).
24. Simha Arom, “Intelligence in Traditional Music,” in What Is Intelligence? ed.
J. Khalfa, Darwin College Lectures, 1992 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 137-60.
25. Suzanne Furniss, “Aka Polyphony,” in Analytical Studies in World Music, ed.
Michael Tenzer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163-204.
26. Victor Grauer, “Concept, Style, and Structure in the Music of the African
Pygmies and Bushmen: A Study in Cross-Cultural Analysis,5’ Ethnomusicology 53
(2009): 403.
27. Grauer, “Concept, Style, and Structure,” 413.
28. Michelle Kisluik, email of October 30, 2007; quoted in Grauer, “Concept, Style,
and Structure in the Music of the African Pygmies and Bushmen,” 414.
29. Nattiez, Music and Discourse, 186; Keil, Tiv Song; Stone, Let the Inside Be Sweet.
30. The claim that a term in an African language is untranslatable into a metropol­
itan language is unintelligible to me. Terms may not have one-word equivalents
across languages, but as long as they are understood, they must be capable of
rendition in another language, even if the translation is cumbersome. In some
ethnographic contexts, it is part of the (ideological) script to maintain a deficit
at all costs in negotiating conceptual transfers between languages. The claims
of ethnotheory are shaped by this ideological bias.
31. Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1964).
32. Agawu, RepresentingAfrican Music, 180.
33. See Veit Erlmann, “Resisting Sameness—À propos Kofi Agawu’s ‘Representing
African Music,’” Music Theory Spectrum 26 (2004) : 291-304; and Louise Meintjes,
Review of Representing African Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society
59 (2007): 769-77.
34. Ki il >ik, “The Ernies of African Rhythm,” in Cross Rhythms, ed. Daniel Avorgbedor
and Kwesi Yankah (Bloomington, IN: Trickster Press, 1985), 2:30.
35. Kuhik, “The Ernies of African Rhythm,” 30.
30. Steven Feld, “Dialogic Editing: Interpreting How Kaluli Read Sound and
Sentiment,” Cultural Anthropology 2 (1987): 190-210.
37. Meki Nzewi, Musical Practice and Creativity: An African Traditional Perspective
(Bayreuth, Germany: IWALEWA-Haus, University of Bayreuth, 1991).
38. J. II. Kwabeha Nketia, Akanfo nwom bi [Some Akan songs]. London: Oxford
University Press, 1949.
39. Ampene, Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana.
40. Nzewi, Musical Practice and Creativity, Nzewi, Musical Sense and Musical Meaning:
An Indigenous African Perception (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2010).
41. See Blacking, Venda Children’s Songs; Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1973); and Blacking, Music, Culture and
Experience: Selected Papers ofJohn Blacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995).
42. Simha Arom, African Polyphony and Polyrhythm; David Locke, Durti Gahu: An
Introduction to African Rhythm (Tempe, A/: While (Hilf* Media, 1998); Polo
 AGAIN ST ETH N O TH EO RY 3» 55

Vallejo, Mbudi mbudi na mhanga: Universo musical infantil de los Wagogo de Tanzania
[The musical universe of the Wagogo children from Tanzania] (Madrid:
Ediciôn del autor, 2004); Willie Anku, Structural Set Analysis of African Music 1:
Adawa (Legon, Ghana: Soundstage Production, 2002); Godfried Toussaint, Thé
Geometry of Musical Rhythm: What Makes a “Good”Rhythm Good? (Boca Raton, FL:
CRC Press, 2013); Richard Cohn, “Brahms the African, Kwashie the German/’
presented at the First International Conference on Analytical Approaches
to World Music, University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 19-21, 2010,
http://www.aawmconference.com/aawm2010/images/laawmcohnpaper.pdf;
and Martin Scherzinger, “Negotiating the Music-Theory/African Music Nexus:
A Political Critique of Ethnomusicological Anti-Formalism and a Strategic
Analysis of the Harmonic Patterning of the Shona Mbira Song Nyamaropa/ ’
Perspectives of New Music 39 (2001 ) : 5-118.
 Part Two

Poietic Channels
 Chapter Four

From Georgian to
Medieval Polyphonies
Analysis and Modeling

Simha Arom

It was in June 1990, at a conference in Tbilisi, that I discovered Georgian

polyphony. Its beauty, singularity, and complexity immediately fascinated
me. Its dissonances, the abruptness of its “modulations” with no preparation,
and its archaic nature, strongly evoked both western medieval music and the
polyphony of the Pygmies of Central Africa that I had already been studying
for some twenty years at that point.1

General Characteristics and Situation

Georgian polyphony constitutes a unique musical heritage that is renowned

for its beauty and its complexity. It includes avast body of religious chants and
folk songs which are mostly in three parts, with “harmonic” sequences that are
unequalled in the world of oral-tradition singing.
Because the three parts may be rhythmically independent, their progression
can lead to dense counterpoint within which, according to our definitions of
western music, there are many “dissonances.” Uninformed listeners may have
Ihe impression that it follows no rules. But that is certainly not the case. It
6o ** SIM HA AROM

was indeed the particularities of the “harmonic” organization of this heritage

which intrigued me.
Georgian music is modaL and involves improvisation:

The ability of improvisation and having many variations which is a common

phenomenon for a folk song have become a special characteristic feature of
the music of Georgia. It is the very quality that explains the particular sig­
nificance of a trio-ensemble in a Gurian song where the performers of all
the three voices have an equal chance to embroider the fabric of the song
according to their free will and ability.
The singer’s skill is not defined by the original turns of the voice and
refined ornamentation only. It is, first of all, the mutual feeling of the part­
ners, the development of one's own voice in regard to theirs, in the flair of
achieving common harmony or the skill of singing together.2

Georgian polyphony has the following characteristics, which represent its

specific traits:

• Drone polyphony
• Strict homorhythm, sometimes with parallel, oblique or contrary
movement
• Partially homorhythmic songs
• Homorhythmic songs with added ornamentation
• Counterpoint, that is, rhythmic independence of the parts

The cadences of the songs, both religious and secular, usually end on a unison,
sometimes a fifth or an octave.
The trajectory of any Georgian polyphonic song includes a series of irreg­
ularly distributed vertical conjunctions—traditionally separated by improvised
passages—that define its particular nature: these are the pillars that form its
matrix, t hey constitute the mental reference, the cognitive scheme that all of the
singers carry, consciously or not, in their memories.
Many aspects of Georgian traditional polyphony, particularly historical
and ethnological, have been studied before, mainly by Georgian and Russian
researchers. However, the underlying principles of its grammar have never
been addressed in a systematic way. This is what led me, with the collaboration
of my former pupil Polo Vallejo, to undertake in 2007 a study of the harmonic
and essentially nonlinear syntax of this music.3
At this stage, I should specify that in this study of the structure of Georgian
polyphony, the term chord will be used to designate any vertical collection of
sounds, which can include, in addition to the usual chords found in tonal har­
mony, any other sets of two or more sounds produced simultaneously. In the
sat ne way, harmony will mean any progression of chords llms defined.
 FROM GEO RGIAN TO M E D I I Y A L POLYPHONIES 2* 6 l

Modeling and Models

The contrapuntal complexity of the songs and the multiplicity of the chords
appearing in them makes it necessary to present them in a simplified form.
This implies modeling.
The modeling procedure described here follows the definition given by
Jean-Louis Le Mo igné: “The intentional elaboration and construction of mod­
els that can make intelligible a phenomenon that is perceived as being com­
plex, and the amplifying of the reasoning of the actor planning a deliberate
action within the phenomenon; reasoning aiming in particular to anticipate
the consequences of these projects of possible actions.”4 Le Moigne goes on to
state how: “The projects of the modeling system are not given: they are built.
In other words, the most important task of the modeler . . . is to formulate the
problems that it is relevant to solve.”5 This is because, as Le Moigne points out,
"relevance is defined with respect to certain ends: if the ends are not identified,
how can we reasonably evaluate the relevance?”6
Modeling allows us to grasp the relations prevailing between the spontane­
ous production of a musical event and the idea it springs from. Modeling activ­
ity is not necessarily limited to the reconstituting of concrete objects, such as
a given work or repertoire. The same approach can aim to explore, or even
to reconstruct, certain properties of the components revealed by analysis. By
model, we mean at this stage “a representation, both overall and simplified, of a musi­
cal entity. The model condenses, in outline form, all of this entity’s distinctive
features and no others, thus revealing its uniqueness.”7 “The model is thus
equivalent to the barest realization of a piece that can be identified as such by
Ihe bearers of the tradition to which it belongs.”8 It is the model that preserves
Ilie identity of a piece of music and allows for its oral transmission.9
Georgian polyphony uses all seven diatonic modes. Although many songs
use one single mode, some contain transitions to one or several other modes.
The latter necessarily occur within a segment of a work,10 and we had there­
fore to find a way to discriminate between their respective modes. To do this,
we adopted a single criterion: the finalis of any segment or song would always
be considered the first degree of its mode. Most often, the finalis is a unison;
wilt*ii this is not the case, we designated the lowest note of the chord: thus, in
a CM) type chord, the finalis would be G. This criterion, though it may seem
somewhat arbitrary, is valuable in establishing of a point of reference which is
coherent not only for a set of pieces but for the entire Georgian polyphonic
corpus. It is important to emphasize that the attribution of a number to the
various degrees of any mode is die indispensable condition for being able to label
die chords based on diese degrees, independent of the mode in which they appear.
’Ihe analysis revealed dial ill chords in the songs fall into two distinct cate­
gories: first. Ihose dial ivMillsolely from inlemclioris of die voices; and second,
<i V ** S1M H A A R O M

lin >*•’ Ihat have a structural function. At this stage, our goal was to determine
IIn harnmic framework of each musical entity, whether a work or a segment: in
nth«*I words, to detect among the numerous chords those that constitute its
II.miework—that is, those which, beyond the different realizations of any song
•it irgi lient, remain stable and ensure its identity. This goal was accomplished in
I\v*»si ages, the first independently by ourselves, the second in close interaction
wli 11 Ilie members of the Georgian State Vocal Ensemble Basiani.
What is the harmonic framework? It is the series o ï fixed chords distrib­
ut nl over the course of each work and mostly separated by brief improvised
mu/ unices. As a reminder, these “pillars” constitute its matrix, or cogni­
tive scheme, which is present in the background of any of its realizations.
In order to materialize this matrix, it was essential to determine for each
«bord whether or not it constituted a pillar of a given work or segment; in
other words, whether it was a component of its harmonic framework. This
Iin plies the following operations: interactive experimentation, modeling, and
validation, ail of which must be carried out with the collaboration of local
lingers with recognized experience.
11lidaily, we considered whether only chords resulting from a simultaneous
Ihange of the three parts of a work constitute the harmonic framework. To arrive
,ti this reduction we eliminated passing tones, neighboring and escape tones,
.tppoggiaturas, anticipations and suspensions, and also, given unchanging
harmony, its register, that is, any variation in position of sounds within the
s.une chord.
As outsiders to the culture, we could not be certain that the result of such
an approach would be more than purely speculative. In order to validate it cul-
lurally, we had to call on local experts. We thus sought the invaluable help of
Ilie members of the Basiani Ensemble: after explaining our objective to them,
we asked them to perform the pieces that we had reduced, but under the fol­
lowing conditions: (1) remove the words; (2) retain only those chords which
seemed to them to constitute the pillars of the song; and (3) scrupulously
respect the time interval that separated each of these chords from those which
preceded or followed them, so that the proportions of the durations in the
“real” song would not be affected.
It turned out that the versions reduced by the members of Basiani and those
reduced by us are very close. In general, the reductions by Basiani are sparser
than ours: they retain fewer chords. The minor differences to be observed are
most often due to the intercalation, where two structural chords follow one
another in the Basiani version, of one or several additional chords in our ver­
sion, which the singers of Basiani deemed unnecessary.
The modeling is thus a turning point in the processes of analysis and vali­
dation. It is the result of an analytical process but also ilu* starling point for a
procedure to validate the analysis.
 FROM G EO R G IA N TO M ED IE V A L POLYPHONIES 63

Relationships between Written and Oral Polyphonies

Many musico logical studies have suggested relationships between written

polyphony and oral polyphony, which have persisted since the High Middle
Ages. This was known as of the beginning of musical notation, as was still the
view in the middle of the eighteenth century, when improvised polyphony,
such as the practice of chant sur le livre (singing from the book), was still very
much alive. This is confirmed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Encyclopédie of
Diderot and d ’Alembert, in an article he also used in his Dictionnaire de musique
in 1768. In the entry “Chant sur le livre* Rousseau begins with a reminder that
it involves a “Counter-point with four Parts, which the Musicians compose &
sing impromptu on only one of them. . . . Except for the noted Part, which is
generally assigned to the Taille,11 the Musicians assigned to the three other
Parts had only that Part as their guide, & each composes their melody while
singing.” Then, after noting that Chant sur le Livre’ requires a great deal of
Science, habit Sc ear in those who perform it,” he observes that “there are
Church Musicians who are so well acquainted with this type of Chant, that
1hey begin and continue even Fugues, when the subject includes them, with­
out confusing or crossing the Parts, and with no mistakes in the Harmony.”12
In sacred music, oral polyphony was practiced through the chant sur le livre
and improvisations with several parts starting from a cantus firmus, the basis
lor polyphony; it is generally a cantus planus motif drawn from the liturgical
repertoire, notated with no mensural indications and stretched in long dura-
lions that can be realized rhythmically according to highly variable patterns.
The cantus firmus can also come from a cantus figuratus, or “figured chant,”
in which the notes are measured and which replaced the cantus mensumtus
in the fifteenth century. The cantus figuratus is used as commonly in sacred
music, such as psalms, as in the secular realm of song or dance. It was some-
limes written entirely by one composer.
In practice, the chant sur le livre is thus the opposite of musica facta—which
is entirely notated—in that it stems from collective improvisation. But, begin­
ning in the fifteenth century, while recognizing the fundamental differences
between these two techniques, theoreticians treated them as two different ways
of expressing the same contrapuntal thought. It was only in the sixteenth cen-
mry tliat the two processes began to be viewed as distinct, and by the eigh-
1re nth century, in western Europe, improvised counterpoint had lost ground
in favor of notated music. Such a double approach to composition has a long
history. Philippe Canguilhem mentioned that “in his treatise on counterpoint
milieu in 1477, Johannes Tinctoris considers that musical creation can be
rill icr a collective action in Ilie process of happening (cantare super librum), or
ihr fruit of an individual process ending with a written realization (res/aetaJ / ’13
I hr practice of rhanl snr Jr Inw 11 at 11 rally required thorough training and
64 ** SEMHA AROM

preparation. According to the Portuguese composer and theoretician Vicente

Lusitano, active in the mid-sixteenth century, singers devoted much time to
practicing improvised singing, composing melody lines on the spot that would
combine with those of others singing together. This observation regarding
what Lusitano called “thought-out counterpoint5’ (pemado) gives us a better
understanding of how improvising singers managed to elaborate counterpoint
as complex as that of written music. Among others, we have the account of
the Neapolitan Scipione Cerretto, who had the opportunity to hear such oral
polyphony, which impressed him on several occasions in the papal chapel:
“When I was in Rome in 1573, at the time of Pope Gregory XIII, and again
in 1601, at the time of Pope Clement VIII, I heard in the chapel of the Pope
a very elaborate counterpoint. Writing it down would not have improved on
what was improvised.”14
Collective preparation began with the identification of the place and type of
cadences by all of the participants.

Once the cadences have been placed, for which each part knows exactly
its melodic pattern and its arrival note, the singers could travel from one
cadence to the next with no risk of creating a chaotic situation.. .. Thus,
the chant sur le livre and the res facta are not different in nature. .. . They are
distinguished from each other as two different processes of polyphonic cre­
ation, which are neither competing, nor in a hierarchy.15

The author made an essential point: after careful preparation, “the role of
improvisation in the performance was sufficiently controlled such that it
involved more the ornaments than the structure.”16
Many studies published over the past fifty years stress the role of improvi­
sation in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It indeed seems, in
light of numerous historical documents, that collective improvisation played
a much greater role than had been assumed previously. For this reason, as
Christian Meyer aptly notes, “each of these documents which, in its singu­
larity, probably reveals only one of the multiple possible realizations of a
structure transmitted by the oral tradition—and not a ‘composition’—more
generally raises the issue of the procedures by which writing was introduced
into an oral tradition culture.”17 It follows that musicologists can no longer
simply study scores that are merely a moment, a frozen instant in time of a
living and nonformalized practice, unlike ethnomusicologists working in the
field on material that is constantly being renewed and that its practitioners
have, typically, never formalized. This questioning encourages us to examine
closely the relationship between writing and orality in medieval polyphony.
To this end, a study of the forms of traditional polyphony that survive today
can provide invaluable information.
 FROM GEORGIAN TO M E D I E V A L P O L Y P H O N I E S 2* 65

About Modality La Medieval Polyphony

In a text devoted to the analysis of modal structures in the preclassical poly­

phonic repertoire, Anne-Emmanuelle CeuLemans writes:

While various authors, it is true that, starting from the Middle Ages, mention
in passing the possibility of applying modes to polyphony, only the Liber de
natura et proprietate tonorum of Johannes Tinctoris proposes explicit criteria
for the modal analysis of polyphonic works. We know that the modal system
that underpinned the language of polyphony over the course of several cen­
turies, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and until the beginning
of the Baroque era, was constituted as of the end of the 11th century. . . .
Frans Wiering demonstrates the existence, at the time of the Renaissance,
of two visions of modality: an “internai” vision, according to which the mode
influences the complete progression of the works, and an “external” vision,
according to which the mode of a composition is only manifested by certain
characteristics, or even just one: the finalis.18

Harold Powers mentions that

polyphonic theory was for centuries entirely preoccupied with problems of

ensemble control, that is, with durational relationships and vertical sonorities
in multi-line textures where each line had its own sequencing of pitches-cum-
durations. . . . The chief stimulus to the introduction of modal theory into
the world of polyphonic musical composition in a fully systematic way was
not originally a desire for analytic understanding of long-range tonal rela­
tions. It was rather more cultural than technical, and had at first to do with
the expressive function of music rather more than with its tonal structure.19

Yet he also advises that “modal doctrine and polyphonic theory on the whole
continued to be slow in coming together, and most of the junctures that do
occur in the technical literature of music before 1525 are more suggestive than
systematic.”20

Relations between Medieval and Georgian Polyphony

Although in Georgian polyphony, which was originally entirely oral, there is

loday some use of writing, with license to include improvisations, it is impor­
tant to consider how it may correspond with medieval polyphony. Analogies
bet ween Georgian polyphony and polyphony of the western Middle Ages have
long been intriguing. As Fried er Zaminer rightly says, “Historians who are
familiar with medieval polypi tony remain astonished by the similarity of certain
musical forms found in thr <auciistis/“1Susanne Ziegler adds:
66 »f SIM H A AROM

The analogies between medieval polyphony and the polyphony of some

peoples of the Caucasus and even the hypothesis of a possible historicaL-
genetic filiation between these two styles of music were formulated on
several occasions during the 19th century. . . . Already at the beginning of
the 20th century, musicologists had observed this resemblance when they
heard for the first time in Central Europe recordings of polyphonic music
from the Caucasus. . . . In a second phase—mostly in the 1930s—, Siegfried
Nadel (1933) and Marius Schneider (1940) tried to provide a basis for
this resemblance historically and genetically, while Nadel formulated, with
many reservations, the hypothesis of a possible influence of one musical
culture on the other.22

For the analysis of Georgian polyphony, our idea was to adopt methods used
in analyzing medieval polyphony. However, analyses that incorporate harmonic
syntax have been rare in studies of medieval polyphony. There is no established
systematic method for the analysis of medieval polyphony. A new methodology
was therefore needed, based on rigorous criteria and explicit procedures, that
would be appropriate for the specific characteristics of Georgian polyphony.
This is precisely the challenge for which a method of reducing each work to a
matrix was developed.
Let us remember that many similarities between Georgian and medieval
repertoires were known by the beginning of the 20th century. Common pro­
cesses include drone polyphony; homophony; and parallel, oblique, contrary,
and genuinely contrapuntal movement (meaning rhythmic independence of
the parts). A list of other characteristics would include:

• The use of modality

• Cadences (internal and final) on so-called perfect intervals (according
to medieval theory) that end on the unison, fifth, or octave in both
repertoires
• Vertical conjunctions with alternation of dyads and triads
• Melodic progression of the voices by conjunct degrees (stepwise)
• Improvisation in these forms of music

These characteristics lead to the formulation of a hypothesis according to

which medieval polyphony reflects the influence of a practice involving impro­
visation based on matrices, that is, stable syntactic structures, or in other words,
“on a generative system that can lead to different realizations of the same musi­
cal entity.”23
These similarities have never been studied systematically and in depth.
But beyond the value of modeling for the purpose of better understanding
the “grammar” of Georgian polyphonic songs, new research can open up
perspectives for the analysis—even the modeling—of vocal polyphony from
 FROM GEORGIAN TO M E D I E V A L POLVPHONIES 67

the thirteenth century (Ecole de Notie-Dame) until the beginning- of the

Renaissance. Despite the differences between these two repertoires—not least
that one of them is still practiced» based on oral transmission and improvi­
sation, whereas the other one is old and based exclusively on notation—they
share the feature of matrices in which chords are separated by improvised
ornamentation. Our Georgian models confirm the potential value of analyzing
medieval music in the same way; they imply that we should be making analyti­
cal reductions of the notated repertoire. As Susanne Ziegler points out, “The
importance and the place of improvisation in medieval music can no longer be
anything more than a question for speculation. In folk polyphony, the musical
practice is still alive: one singer sings his part one way, another one in a differ­
ent way. . . . In Georgia, polyphonic songs are transmitted by oral tradition,
[.earning from scores is a very recent phenomenon.”24
Those views are shared by Frieder Zaminer:

We cannot say today with certainty how our early polyphony sounded [dur­
ing the Middle Ages]. What was set down in writing with the help of notation
was in a sense the musical idea of the pieces that were performed. But as this
idea . .. seems to us much too abstract, we are trying to give it a perceptible
appearance. In doing this, the musical world of the Caucasus offers us fasci­
nating stimulations.25

Given the outcome of applying our method to Georgian polyphony, it seemed

appropriate to test medieval polyphonies with this new tool and see the extent to
which research on the vocal polyphony of the Middle Ages could benefit from it.

Application

To undertake this concrete application of our method, a mini-corpus of seven

works from the Georgian liturgical repertoire is assembled alongside the same
number of medievaL liturgical works. This enables us to identify common and
distinct elements of these two repertoires. All of the works selected are in three
parts. The Georgian chants are anonymous and considered to be relatively old.
Their geographical provenance is two monasteries—Gelati and Shemokhmedi.
Six of the medieval chants, also anonymous, date from the twelfth to the four-
lecnth centuries, the seventh being the motet Ave ngma caelorumby Guillaume
Dufay (fifteenth century).
Examples 4.1 and 4.2 place a Georgian hymn, “Atskhovne upalo” (O Lord,
save thy people), from Ilie Gelati Monastery26 alongside “Maria, virgo virgi-
iinni,” from the fourteen ili-crui ury Rmnun de Fauvef^ in conventional notated
Innn, followed by n d u d ions of racli in their harmonic framework (exx. 4.3
and 4.4).
 I.Kiilïiple 4.1. “Atskhovne upalo” <<) Lord, save thy people), Georgian Church
«liant, Gelati school.
h
« me___
m n

i N .....
f ne m

9* o g
Lo_-
5-------- 8
48----
----- 8$ 8-
5- 6 6- 4 ------------ 4
vr vu VI V IV VI V

IV VI IV III-------- IV V IV III IV VI

14

4----- 5 3 4 4-
IV III IV V VI IV V-
Example 4.2.— (concluded)

\ 3---- 7 7 H 4 *
II III I VII VI III T III Il I
 TT
Example 4.3. “Atskhovne upalo” (O Lord, save thy people), Georgian Church
chant, Gelati school, reduction.

VI VII V------------------ VI V IV VI V IV VI IV n i — IV V IV

10 8 5 8 8 7 5 5 5 8 8 8 5 8 8 8 10 8
6 6 4 4 4 5 3 4 4 6 6 6 7 6 5

5 8 5 5 5 8 7 5 8 8 8 8 10 10 8 5 8
3 4 3 3 6 5 3 6 6 4 6 6 8 6 3 6
VI IV — V VI IV ____ V III IV y ------- — IV III IV VI IV

V VI vu vi v iv v — iv ni iv v yi vu i

y
Example 4.4. “Maria, virgo virgin am,” Roman deFauvel (fourteenth century),
reduction.

8 5 3 6 8 7 8 5 5 4 5 8 5 6 7 5 68 8 7 8 5 5 2 4 4-6 8
5 5 5 5 3 5 4 5 5 5 5 3 33 3 5
I ii in ii— I VII I II III I YL I ------- II-— I II I VII I II III IIIVII VI

H 8 1 6 H 5 £ N < « 7 « 12 £ 5 5 5 5 8
S 3 ft ^ 5 7 * 3 l 4 i

1 II III II 1 II 1 VII 1 II III I VI II III V III 11 I

74 ** SIMHA AROM

Formal Organization

Both pieces include reiterated sequences, with varied sequencing and durations.
In “Atskhovne upalo” (ex. 4.1), four sequences, designated as A, B, C, and D
respectively, involve reiteration, sometimes slightly varied:

A—measures 2-5 and 16-22;

B—measure 8 up to the third beat (inclusive) of measure 13, and from the
last beat of measure 27 to the second beat (inclusive) of measure 35;
C—from the fourth beat of measure 13 to the third beat (inclusive) of
measure 15 and from the fourth beat of measure 41 to the second beat
(inclusive) of measure 45;
D—from the third beat of measure 15 to the end of measure 24 and from
measure 25 to the end of measure 30.

We note that the second occurrence of A (mm. 16-22) is incorporated in

the first occurrence of D (third beat of m. 15 to m. 24); and that D and B over­
lap, from the last beat of measure 27 to measure 30.
Some brief sequences of the chant do not involve any reiteration: measure
1, measures 6-7, from the third beat of measure 35 to the third beat of mea­
sure 41, and the two final chords.
“Maria, virgo virginum” (ex. 4.2), however, uses two types of sequences, the
repetitions of which also present slight variants: the first (A) corresponds to
measures 1-6, 10-15, 16-21, 22-27; the second (B), inserted between the rep­
etitions of A, includes measures 7-9 and 28-30.

Modes

“Atskhovne upalo” (ex. 4.1) is in C mode (on F), “Maria” (ex. 4.2) in F (on F).

Cadences

In “Atskhovne upalo,” all of the internal cadences (mm. 10, 15, 27, and 39) are
of type V5; the piece ends on I1.
The internal cadences of “Maria” are more diverse: three are on Vl| (mm.
6, 15 and 21), two are on l | (mm. 9 and 30) and two on V Il| (mm. 27 and 36);
the final cadence is on l|.

Chords

“Atskhovne upalo” has nineteen different chords, of which two arc dyads (m2,
m3, P5) and seventeen are triads (M3/P5, m3/P5, M3/M7, P1/P5, P4/m6,
 FROM G EO RGIAN TO M ED IE V A L P O LYPH O NIES ** 75

P4/P8, aug4/P8, P5/M7, P5/m7, P5/P8, M6/P8, m6/P8, M6/M10, m 6/m l0,
m7/P8, P8/M10, P8/P12>.
“Maria” has twenty-five different chords, of which seven are dyads (M2, m3,
M3, P4, P5, M6, P8) and eighteen are triads (M2/P5, M3/P4, M3/aug4, M3/
P5, m3/P5, M3/M6, m3/m6, m3/m7, P4/P5, P4/m6, aug4/M6, P5/M7, P5/
m7, P5/P8, P5/M9, M6/P8, M7/P8, P8/P12).
Those two works have the following eleven chords in common: m3, P5,
M3/P5, m3/P5, P4/P5, P4/m6, P5/M7, P5/m7, P5/P8, M6/P8, P8/P12; this
amounts to about half of alL the chords.28
Bearing in mind the danger of drawing conclusions from an overly isolated
sample, this result was tested by applying the same procedure to two mini
corpuses.20 The inventory of our original Georgian chants shows thirty-eight
different vertical configurations, including five dyads (3m-4-5-m7-M 7) and
thirty-three triads (M2/P4, m2/P4, M3/P4, m3/P4, M3/P5, m3/P5, M3/M7,
m3/m7, P4/P5, aug4/P5, P4/m6, aug4/M6, aug4/M7, P4/P8, aug4/P8, P5/
M6, P5/m6, P5/M7, P5/m7, P5/P8, P5/M9, P5/m l0, M6/M7, M6/P8, m 6/
P8, M6/M9, M6/M10, M 6/ml0, m7/P8, m7/m9, m7/M9, P8/M10, P8/P12).
The seven medieval chants have a total of thirty-six vertical configurations,
including eight dyads (m2, M2, M3, m3, P4, P5, M6, P8) and twenty-eight triads
(M2/m3, M2/P5, M3/P4, m3/P4, M3/aug4, M3/P5, m3/P5, M3/M6, M3/P8,
m3/m6, m3/m7, P4/P5, P4/m6, aug4/P5, aug4/M6, P4/m7, P4/P8, aug4/
P8, P5/M6, P5/m6, P5/M7, P5/m7, P5/P8, P5/M9, M6/m7, M6/P8, M7/P8,
P8/P12).
The correspondence between the number of different chords in each of the
two sets—thirty-seven in one, thirty-six in the other—is notable in itself, but
there is more. In the new sample, there are twenty-four common chords, of
which four are dyads (m2, m3, P4, P5) and twenty are triads (M3/P4, m3/P4,
M3/P5, m3/P5, m3/m7, P4/P5, aug4/P5, P4/m6, aug4/M6, P4/P8, aug4/
P8, P5/M6, P5/m6, P5/M7, P5/m7, P5/P8, P5/M9, M6/P8, M6/M9, P8/P12.
Their rate of appearance greatLy exceeds the level mentioned above (close to
50 percent) and represents fully two thirds of the chords.30

Movement of Degrees

In both the Georgian and the medieval works, the melodic progression of the
various parts proceeds essentially by conjunct intervals, with a few noncontigu­
ous thirds. With the exception of the Dufay, the largest interval is a fifth. Leaps
of a fourth or a fifth in one voice part occur following an internal cadence only.
In the Georgian hymn “Atskhovne upalo” (ex. 4.1),

• the upper pail, which lias 103 melodic intervals, has L fourth, 19 thirds,
and 83 conjiiiK 1 degrees;
76 ** SIMHA AROM

• the middle part, out of 82 intervals, includes 1 fifth, 1 fourth, 2 thirds,

and 78 conjunct intervals; and
• the bass part has 64 intervals, including 8 thirds and 56 conjunct
intervals.

In the medieval work “Maria, virgo virginum” (ex. 4.2),

• the upper part includes, out of a total of 133 intervals, 3 fourths, 12

thirds, and 118 conjunct intervals;
• the middle part has, among its 138 intervals, 1 fifth, 1 fourth, 7 thirds,
and 129 conjunct intervals; and
• in the lower part, out of a total of 112 intervals, we find 3 fourths, 5
thirds, and 104 conjunct intervals.

Why Make Models?

Uncovering the harmonic framework of Georgian polyphony means finding

the matrix common to musical works that are considered to be different. On
the other hand, it should also allow us to reveal musical differences between
works that otherwise had been considered to be identical, most often because
of the shared text.
It thus allows for comparison of

• variants between verses within a single work;

• works from the same region belonging to the same repertoire (religious
versus secular, for example);
• works from different regions;
• liturgical chants from different monasteries but that share the same
title; and
• two or several versions of the same liturgical work from different
monasteries but that fulfill an identical function in a ritual.

For medieval polyphony, on the other hand, such modeling reveals stylistic fea­
tures that might be specific to works of a given time period or a given place, or
it might even attribute anonymous works to known composers.31 In all of these
cases, modeled scores could reveal the practice of improvisation that was asso­
ciated with each, but lost when a work was notated.

In Conclusion

Analysis and modeling have been done manually till now, which-clearly lim­
its the amount o f data that can be processed and the num ber of <jiu\stions
 F R O M G E O R G IA N " TO M E D I E V A L POLYPHONIES ** 77

explored. Recently, in collaboration with Frank Sch erb aum, a professor of geo­
physics at the University of Potsdam, Frank Kane, a voice teacher of and spe­
cialist in Georgian folk music, and two young musicologists,32 we developed
a new methodological framework that uses Markov chains, among other ele­
ments, to shed light on the modes, degrees, and harmonic syntax of Georgian
polyphony, for the purpose of modeling. This method yields an inventory of all
of the variants that are consistent with the harmonic framework of the works
and their modes. In addition to facilitating the study of a song’s chord progres­
sions, it enables analyses and comparisons on several different levels. Research
on Georgian polyphony, initially undertaken within an ethnomusicological
perspective, can thus contribute significantly to solving problems of general
musicology. It is therefore an attempt, apparently the first of its kind, at concrete
interaction between historical musicology and ethnomusicology. By a curious
paradox, a sort of “boomerang effect,” the exploration of an analytical method
designed to describe an oral heritage—Georgian traditional polyphony—thus
borrows a core practice from historical musicology (the attribution of numbers
to the degrees of the bass and the ciphering of the chords). Historical musicol­
ogy seems to have neglected this practice in the investigation of a broad sec­
tion of its domain, that is, medieval and Renaissance polyphony.

9*

This article has aimed to show how ethnomusicology can contribute to ihr
establishment of a unified musicology, a topic dear to Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ln
whom it is dedicated.

—Translated by Frank Kane

Notes

1 heartily thank Sonia Jolies and Gilles Cantagrel for their attentive 1«‘.tiling
and their wise remarks, Boris Freulon for his contribution to ilir sein linn
and formatting of the examples, and Frank Kane for the Knglislt 11 ;ti i*l.iihni«,
including those of cited texts.
1. The first part of this article includes substantial excerpts from .1 p.ipn pir
sented by the author at the Ninth Triennial Conference oi ihr lnni|H!ih
Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, Manchester, UK, /\ugu*i I/ V'«f.
2015, under the Lille “Modeling of Georgian Traditional Polyphony."
2. David ShuglhishviU, preface to Gentian Songs: Collection of Sheet 0] Alum ( 1hllnl
International C-eutre of Georgian Folk Song, 20€4r), 5.
M. Siinha Arom anil I’olo Vallejo, "Towards a Theory of the (hold Svnlan hi
Georgian Polyphony/ in J*nneerljng.\ oj The Third TntmiutÀonuf uitm un
TruditÀoml PoFvjjßwm\ eil. jnwepli |<»d;itiiii and Rusudan Tsiirlsniiii.i (IbllUI
78 9» SIMHA AROM

International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony, 2010), 309-35;

and Arom and Vallejo, “Outline of a Syntax of Chords in Some Songs of
Samegrelo,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Traditional
Polypheny (Tbilisi: International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony,
2012), 266-83.
4. Jean-Louis Le Moigne, La Modélisation des systèmes complexes (Paris: Dunod,
1990), 5.
5. Le Moigne, La Modélisation, 66.
6. Le Moigne, La Modélisation, 67.
7. Simha Arom, “Corroborating External Observation by Cognitive Data in the
Description and Modelling of Traditional Mnsic/’ in ‘‘Understanding Musical
Structure and Form: Papers in Honour of Irène Deiiège,” special issue, Musicae
ScientiaeW, no. 2 (2010): 297.
8. Simha Arom, “Modélisation et modèles dans les musiques de tradition orale,”
Analyse musicale 22 (1991): 70.
9. In Georgian polyphony, this common denominator of all of the versions of a
given work is never realized as such.
10. By “segment” we mean here any section of a work delimited by a cadential for­
mula or a pause.
11. Low tenor voice that was mostly used in religious music. Rousseau defines the
taille as “the second of the four Parts of Music, counting from low to high”
(la seconde des quatre Parties de la Musique, en comptant du grave à l’aigu).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Chez la veuve Duchesne,
1768), 498 (our translation).
12. “Contre-point à quatre Parties, que les Musiciens composent 8c chantent
impromptu sur une seule. . .. Excepté la Partie notée, qu’on met ordinaire­
ment à la Taille, les Musiciens affectés aux trois autres Parties, n’ont que
celle-là pour guide, 8c composent chacun la leur en chantant.” “Le Chant
sur le Livre demande beaucoup de Science, d’habitude 8c d’oreille dans ceux
qui l’exécutent, . . . Il y a des Musiciens d’Eglise, si versés dans cette sorte de
Chant, qu’ils y commencent 8c poursuivent même des Fugues, quand le sujet
en peut comporter, sans confondre 8c croiser les Parties, ni faire de faute dans
l’I Iannonie.” Rousseau, Dictionnaire, 84.
LS. Philippe Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint chanté à la
R<’naissance,” in Chanter sur le livre. Les traités de contrepoint de Vincente Lusitano
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 3.
14. “Dico, ehe ritrovandomi nell’ aima Città di Roma à tempo vivea la bona memo­
ria della Santità di Papa Gregorio Terzodecimo nell’anno 1573 et anco nel
1601, à tempo della Santità di Papa Clemente Ottavo, nella sua Cappella senti
un Contraponto molto arteficioso, ehe se fosse stato scritto à penna non possea
migliorare più di quello ch’era fatto all’ inproviso. ” Scipione Cerreto (C19),
fols. 34v-35, cited in Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint,”
26.
15. Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint,” 15.
16. Canguilhem, “Lusitano et la pratique du contrepoint,” 23.
 FROM GEO RGIAN TO M E D I E V A L POLYPHONIES ** 79

17. Christian Meyer, “Polyphonies médiévales et tradition orale,” Cahiers

d ’ethnomusi cologée6 (199 3) : 100.
18. Frans Wie ring, The Language 0/ the Medes: Studies in the History of Polyphonic
Modality (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), 83-95; cited in Anne-
Emmanuelle Ceulemans, “L’analyse des structures modales dans le répertoire
polyphonique préclassique—Les Kyrie de Josquin des Prez,” Musurgia 4, no. 3
(1997): 43-65; 48.
19. Harold S. Powers, “Tonal Types and ModaL Categories in Renaissance
Polyphony, ”Journal of theAmerican Musicologieal Society 34, no. 3 (1981): 429-30.
20. Powers, “Tonal Types,” 432.
21. Frieder Zaminer and Susanne Ziegler, “Polyphonie médiévale et polyphonie
du Caucase,” in Polyphonies de tradition orale: histoire et traditions vivantes, ed.
Michel Huglo and Marcel Pérès (Paris: Éditions Créaphis, 1993), 72.
22. Zaminer and Ziegler, “Polyphonie médiévale,” 76.
23. Meyer, “Polyphonies médiévales et tradition orale,” 49.
24. Zaminer and Ziegler, “Polyphonie médiévale,” 80.
25. Zaminer and Ziegler, “Polyphonie médiévale,” 75.
26. Atskhovne upalo (O Lord, save thy people), in Georgian Church Chant, Gelati
School, ed. Nodar Mamisashvili, vol. 2, The Hymns to the Twelve Feasts of Our Lord
. . . (Tbilisi: Patriarchate of Georgia, 2006), 18-20.
27. “Maria, virgo virginum,” in Polyphonic Musk of the Fourteenth Century, vol. 1, The
Roman de Fauvel: The Works of Philippe de Vitry; French Cycles of the Ordinarium
Missae, ed. Leo Schrade (Monaco: L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1974), 57.
28. In both works, the most frequent chords are m6/P8, M6/P8, m3/P5, M3/
P5, and P4/P8 for the Georgian one, P5, P5/P8, P5/m7 and P5/M7 for the
medieval one. The abbreviations are all for intervals: M2 = major second, m2 =
minor second, M3 = major third, P4 = perfect fourth, etc.
29. The other six Georgian chants are (1) “Qovlisa dabadebulisa” (Creator of
all), in Mamisashvili, Georgian Church Chant, vol. 2, 3-5; (2) “Romelman hshev
mtiebi” (Thee, who from thy virgin), Mamisashvili, Georgian Church Chant, vol.
2, 11-12; (3) “Metskhre galobis chasartavi” (The refrain to the IX canticle),
Mamisashvili, Georgian Church Chant, vol. 2, 22; (4) “Aghdgomasa shensa” (To
thy resurrection), in Kartuli saeklesio da Sabdno Sagaloblebi (Georgian church
and feast hymns), Gurian Chants, ed. Malkhaz Erkvanidze (Tbilisi: Liturgical
Chant Center of the Georgian Patriarchate, 2003); (5) “Dghes saghmrtoman
madlman” (Today by God’s grace), Gurian Chants, 29-30; and (6) “Dideba
chvens shekrebasa” (Glory to our gathering), Gurian Chants, 39. The six other
medieval chants are (1) anonymous, “Vert floris sub figura,” Cl, WL 2, 6, fol.
15v.L, in Notre-Dame and Related Conduetus: Opera Omnia, vol. 1, Conductus: Motets
Transmitted in Conductus Fascicules, ed. Gordon Anderson (Henryville, PA;
Ottawa; and Binningen: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1986); (2) anonymous,
“Serena virginum,” Notre-Dame and Related Conductus, voL. 1: AL, W1 2, 5, fol.
I3r; (3) anonymous, “Die Christi veritas,” Notre-Dame and Related Conduetus, vol.
1: C3, W1 8, 4, fol. 73r; (4) anonymous. Conductus XV, “Mater patris et Blia,”
in FA. Codex Musical dr Fas l !migns: Musine a nous dels segles Xlll-XTV, vol. 2, ed.
Iligino Angles (Hai<rlnnii: liiMiihil dTstudis Catalans: Biblioteca de Catalunya
8o S I MH A AR O M

n° 154, 1931); (5) anonymous, “Que nutrinos filios," in Polyphonic Music of the
Fourteenth Century, vol. I, The Roman de Fawoel: The Works of Philippe de Vitry;
French Cycles of the Ordinarium Missae, ed. Leo Schrade (Monaco: L’Oiseau-
Lyre, 1974), 24; and (6) Guillaume Dufay, “Aye regina coeLorum,” motet for
three voices, ed. Rafael Ornes (1999), MS. Canon. Mise. 213 (no. 129, fol 62),
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
30. We note lastly that in both sets there are numerous successions of triads in
which the fifth is systematically present.
31. As Margaret Bent points out: “No ‘neutral’ modern criteria or ahistorical
methodologies are going to give relevant answers with respect to a work of
fifteenth-century music unless the ‘grammar’ specific to that music informed
the question. A methodology cannot be sensitive to the particular language of
pre-tonal music unless that Language was taken into account in formulating
the analytical method—in which case it would indeed be to some extent a his­
torically sensitive method. The task is to reconstruct, as precisely as possible in
the absence of native witnesses, the languages, grammars and dialects proper
to specific repertories, as we would in dealing with their verbal counterparts.”
Margaret Bent, “The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis,”
in Tonal Structures in Early Music, ed. Cristle Collins Judd (New York: Garland,
1998), 19. Further: “Rather than attempting to adapt Schenkerian techniques
for the quite different languages of early music, we would be better employed
in developing models for listening and analysis that are specifically tailored to
early music, and through which we will learn to discriminate between individ­
ual styles. After all, the details of Schenker’s method derive indisputably from
his intimate knowledge of the particular repertories to which he applied it.”
Bent, “The Grammar of Early Music,” 34.
32. Florent Caron-Darras and Boris Freulon are both cum laude graduates of the
Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.
 Chapter Five

Schenkers In h a lt,
Schenkerian Semiotics
A Preliminary Study

Nicolas Meeùs

Schenker’s monograph on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, published in 1912,

may have been one of his most successful writings and probably was the most
influential one in its own time. Its influence on Wilhelm Furtwängler, who read
the book in 1913; on Bernard Paumgartner, who reviewed it in Heimgarten in
1914; on Paul von Klenau, who directed the performance of the Symphony
for the centenary of its premiere in Vienna in 1924; and on many others is
well known. The full title reads: Beethovens neunte Sinfonie. Eine Darstellung (1rs
musikalischen Inhaltes unter fortlaufender Berücksichtigung auch des Vortrages und drt
Literatur, that Ls: Beethoven ’s Ninth Symphony. A Presentation of the Musical Control
under Ongoing Consideration of Both the Performance and the Literature.1As Ni<11nl.\*
Cook describes it, Schenker’s basic purpose in this book “is to refute the wlmir
edifice of Wagnerian interpretation, and to reclaim the work lor wli.it |ltr|
calls ‘absolute music.’ . . . Schenker’s attempt to show how everything In tin
Ninth Symphony, even its finale, can be explained in purely niiiMie.il in m i
is therefore an accurately targeted assault on the central s t r o n g h o l d of tin
Wagnerian aesthetic.”2 Cook further comments on the contrast briw m i lin
descriptions of the Ninth, especially of the FinaLe, by Schenkel o n m u Mile
and by Wagner (and Krelysclnmu) on the other.3 Schenker inde«‘il violentl\
critidr.es the “outrageous p a s s i o n * ’ with which Wagner “defends the i d e . i id a
82 s* NICOLAS MEEtTS

pretended progress on the basis of the overcoming of absolute music, drawn

from his own misunderstandings.*’4
But Schenker’s more precise purpose, as mentioned both in the title and
throughout the book, is to describe the “musical content” of the symphony,
which does not appear of much concern to Wagner, at least in his program
note of 1846. Wagner writes that instrumental music expresses what cannot
be formulated in words, and proposes “words,” taken from Goethe’s Faust, to
express the moods underlying the music:

It must be granted from the outset that the essence of the higher instrumen­
tal music consists specifically in expressing in musical sound what is inex­
pressible in words. Even so we believe we may approach here, albeit only
through suggestion, the solution to an unachievable task by summoning to
our aid the words of our great poet Goethe. They stand in no way in direct
relation with Beethoven’s work, and in no way capable of indicating in a
penetrating manner the meaning [Bedeutung} of his purely musical creation.
Nevertheless they so sublimely express the underlying higher human spiri­
tual moods that, in the worst case, of being incapable of a better understand­
ing, one could be content with recording these moods, in order at least not
to have heard the work entirely without emotion.5

As Jean-Jacques Nattiez stressed, this is a hermeneutic interpretation based

on passages from Goethe “that essentially express states of mind.”6 Quoting
Goethe’s poems, Wagner tries to elicit psychological responses comparable to
Ihost* suggested by the music itself: what he proposes is not a translation of
music into poetry, but merely an imitation, through poetry, of the psychologi­
cal rlTccts of the music.
Early in his preface, Schenker writes these astonishing words: “Am Anfang
war der Inhalt!” (In the beginning was the content), a statement obviously
inspired by the first phrase of the Gospel according to John, “In the beginning
was Ilie Word.”7 Nicholas Cook, noting this rewriting of the Gospel, adds that
“what makes this strategy puzzling is that the Bible seems to be on Wagner’s
side.”8 It is true, indeed, that the particular value of the word, of language, of
the poetic content of the artwork, seems to rest on the side of Wagner’s herme­
neutics. But Schenker replaces Wort with Inhalt, as if the Inhalt was, for music,
the equivalent of the word for language—or of logos, in the original Greek, for
God.9 I Ie explains that the first aim of his monograph could only be to present
the content of the work as organically derived from the inside out.10
As I intend to show in this chapter, the Inhalt of music was a constant con­
cern for Schenker, during the forty years between his Geist der musikalischen
Technik in 1895 and his posthumous work Der freie Satz in 1985. I would like to
show in addition that Schenker’s Inhalt may have been lor him, in a visionary
way, the musical equivalent of the “signified” of linguistic semiotics. My claim is
 m

SCHENKELS IN H A L T , S C H E N K E R ] AN SEIMLOTUCS 2* 83

that Schenker attempted to develop an autonomous, musical semiotics,11 one

in which, as Wagner wrote, ‘‘music expresses in musical sound what is inex­
pressible in words.” This issue may have been for Schenker far more important
than the quarrel with Wagner about absoLute music.
My research will remain preliminary however, because of the difficulty of
the task. The term Inkalt appears on almost every page that Schenker pub­
lished, but it is such an ordinary word that one hardly can be sure when or
whether Schenker understands it in the special semiotic meaning in question
here. He discusses the content of this or that scale step, of this or that measure,
of this or that motive, but is he speaking onLy of the presence of this or that
note, its content stricto sensu?12 The case is more obvious when he comments
on the content of entire pieces: it seems difficult, then, to escape the conclu­
sion that such content somehow also is a semantic one—which in turn leads
us to wonder in retrospect whether the content of an elaborated harmonic
degree, for instance, could not also be of the order of “meaning.”
Long ago, Jonathan Dunsby and John Stopford traced the program of a
research into a Schenkerian semiotic,13 to which I will come back at the end
of the present reflection. Their suggestions do not seem to have elicited much
response. A full study of Schenkerian semiotics would require an analysis of
the many passages where he compares music with language, or opposes them
to one another. And the study should also reexamine the evolving position of
Schenker with respect to organicism and its growing importance for his con­
cepts of content and form14—or for his theory as a whole. These are aspects
that will only be hinted at here.

The concept of Inhalt has been an important concern of art and literature
since the eighteenth century. The discussion most often has turned on the
relation between form and content or, at a more abstract level, between form
and substance.15 Schenker, because of his unusual attitude to musical form,
is only indirectly concerned with this problem. Nineteenth-century phi­
losophers, however, at times raised the question of the content of music, as
opposed to that of other arts and, more particularly, to that of language. They
even claimed that music hardly could give access to its own content without the
help of words.16 This, in a way, is a discussion of the lack of a denotative power
of music, which can neither describe (as does language) nor imitate (as do the
figurative arts). As we will see, it becomes an Important concern for Schenker.
Hegel discusses this question in his Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, especially
when he opposes “‘accompanying” to “autonomous” music. He writes about
accompanying music that, “its spiritual content [Inhalt] is not perceived merely
in the abstract intcriority of its significance (Bedeutung] or as a subjective
84 ** NICOLAS MEEÙS

sensation, but enters in the musicaL movement such as it was already figured
by the representation and perceived in words.” Autonomous musk, on the
other hand, “cuts itself loose from such a content already complete in itself,
and makes itself independent in its own domains, so that either when it still
has to do with some determined matter [Gehalt], it immediately immerses it in
melodies and their harmonic elaboration, or else it knows to satisfy itself with
the wholly independent ringing and sounding as such and their harmonic and
melodic figurations.”1'7
Hegel uses the word Inhalt in the first case, that of “accompanying” music,
and prefers Gehalt in the second case, that of “autonomous” music. In the
first case, even though the meaning of language is determined, that of music
remains indefinite, and it is only the determined meaning, apparently, that the
word Inhalt designates. In the case of vocal music, he writes, “The singingvoice
at the same time speaks words which give the representation of a determined
content. Now the music, as sung word (unless both sides, tone and word, come
apart in indifference and without mutual relation), can only have the task of
rendering the musical impression of this content as adequately as possible,
which as Inhalt is brought to perception in its close determination and no
longer left unrelated in its indefinite impression.”18 In other passages, Hegel
opposes a content that can be explicitly described in words to an indefinite
one, to be perceived in the notes, their harmonic relations and their melodic
life, subsuming them both, however, under the concept of Inhalt,19
llanslick devotes the last chapter of his famous work, Vom Musihalisch-
Schöneriy to the concepts of Inhalt and Form. He first asks the question “Does
music have content?” (Hat die Musik einen InhaltÎ). That it does not, he says, is
a point of view held by the weighty voices of philosophers such as JeanJacques
Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Friedrich Vischer,20 August Kahlert,
and so forth. In later editions21 he adds “physiologists,” among whom Lotze22
and Helmholtz23 stand out because of their musical knowledge. Those who
light for the content of music, on the other hand, often “are more concerned
with a supposed honor of their art than with the truth.” The problem, he
adds, arises because of a confusion between the concepts of Inhalt (content),
Gegenstand (subject) and Stoff (matter). Music is made of notes, which are its
content stricto sensu. And if this meaning appears unsatisfactory, it is because
“in the question of the ‘content’ of music one has in mind a ‘subject,’ which
one readily opposes as idea, as ideal, to the notes as material elements. But
music in fact does not have a content in this sense, a matter in the sense of
the treated subject. . . . Music is made of successions of tones, of sound forms,
wit ich have no other content than themselves.”24
llanslick continues, with ideas that are well known today, as the foun­
dation of his formalistic view of music, and which as such do not deserve
much discussion here. He first stresses that “whenever there is question of
 SCHENKER^ IN H A U ', SCHEIN' RE RIAN" S E M I O T I C S ^ 85

the content and the descriptive power of music, one can only start from the
pure instrumental music.”25 Any other type of music would belong to Hegel’s
description of “"accompanying” music, of which the Inhalt is determined not
by the music itself but by anything it accompanies—usually snng text—and
would therefore be amhdngend in Kant’s terms. And Hanslick concludes:
“One can speak of the Inhalt of a work of art only when one considers this
content as contrasted to a Form. The concepts of ‘content9 and ‘form’ presup­
pose and complete each other. Whenever form appears mentally inseparable
from content, there exists also no autonomous content. In music however we
see content and form, matter and configuration, image and idea blended in
an obscure, indivisible unity.9’26

Schenker’s first important writing, “Der Geist der musikalischen Technik”

(1895), attempts to explain how musical technique struggled to free itself from
the constraints of language.2"7 In so doing, it sketches a semiotic agenda that
was to occupy Schenker for the forty years to come.
The booklet is divided in five sections.28 The first section describes how
singing at first must have been an outburst of accumulated delight, and soon
developed into an end in itself, “song for song’s sake’9 {Sangum des Sanges wil­
len) ,29 without external cause, and probably resulting in something of the
nature of “free beauty,” as Kant would have defined it.30 This situation, how­
ever, eventuaLly disappeared under a desire to stir the musical imagination by
external causes:

For a need to sound (Tonbedürfniss), aimlessly creating and aimlessly self-

indulgent, it must therefore have been a benefaction, in the earliest of times,
to shelter under language and its laws. Music sought to become an image of
language and its cadences, and above all it had to learn to imitate, by anal­
ogy, what is most idiosyncratic to language, namely the creation of satisfyingly
self-contained thoughts. . . . Be it as it may, the art of music began only when
a series of tones arose claiming to be understood and felt as a whole, as a self-
contained idea. Thefirst wholeness of tones earned the right to be wiled melody31

The following three sections of the book describe means by which music
tried to escape the domination of language, or at least to develop techniques
of its own, along with those it inherited from language. The most interesting
section is the second, where Schenker stresses that “we would have arrived
a significant step further in the recognition of musical technique, had one
investigated when, where and linw its strongest and most distinctive property,
namely so-called repetitions, lor the first time incorporated itself iu the art
of music.9’32 For Schenker, niotivie repetition is specifically musical because
86 NICO LAS MEEÙS

it contradicts the causality of narration; and Schenker’s statement strikingly

predates the description of the so-called paradigmatic, or semiotic, analysis by
Nicolas Ruwet.33 Schenker wrote:

For the musical motive, unlike the word, does not possess the blessing of
being able to represent by itself concreteness, concepts. The word, process­
ing objects by itself, is merely a sign for something, i.e. for an object or a
concept, but the musical motive on the other hand is but a sign for itself
or, better said, nothing more and nothing less than itself.... For so long as
tone incorporated word, it believed itself to be comprehensible while only
the word ensured comprehensibility. .. . Repetition, this primal discovery of
music, could now prove successfully that music, even millennia ago, carried in
its own womb an integral securingprinciple, and from this point of view was eman­
cipatedfrom language much earlier than music historians suppose.34

The next sections, on polyphony and harmony, indeed further describe musi­
cal devices that do not pertain to language; they do not need to detain us here.
The last section, which occupies almost half the length of the entire book,
returns to the matter of content. Schenker explains that the time needed to
establish a mood (Stimmung) is much longer in music than in language. Longer
contents arose not only from music having to support poems of considerable
length but also from music’s own need for repetition. “Thus different causes
worked together to force music into an ‘artificiality,’ in which that which is
manifold and similar was soon subsumed and differentiated under the con­
cepts of so-called form.”35
Schenker then turns to “the fallacy of organicism,” as William Pastille terms
it.% Schenker writes: “In fact, no musical content is organic. It lacks any kind
of causal nexus, and no invented melody ever had such a determined will that
it could say ‘only that particular melody could follow me, no other.’”37 But
Schenker makes it clear that what he has in mind is the concept of “organic”
as it can be found in natural science.38 In their desire to emulate the logical
organization of language, he explains, composers produced an illusion of
inner necessity, hiding the fact that their work was ruled only by their own
free fantasy. The illusory organicism of music results from an appearance of
logic: “The feeling of rounding, of closure, always simulated, by association,
the character of conceptual thought, which is marked precisely by an unmis­
takable beginning and an unmistakable ending. And so, beyond all the lengthy
ideas of fantastic artificial arbitrariness, the appearance of a rational logic
shimmered deceptively, and one soon began to believe that in the artificial
accumulation lay a necessity of the same kind as in a natural organism. This
belief still exists today, when artificiality threatens to overwhelm the receptive
capacities of our time. The highest praise accorded today to a work of music is
to say that it is constructed ‘organically.’”39
 S C H E N IE R 'S IMHALT, S C H E N K E R E A P f S E M J O T U C S &> 87

The appearance of logic in music has its origin in the imitation of language:
‘‘Through a habit of perhaps many years, the art of music eventually came to
suppose that it possessed an inherent logic, similar to that of language.”40 One
couLd multiply the quotations, but the purpose of Der Geist should now be clear.
I cannot refrain from quoting one last remark: “OnLy later did music find the
courage to sail away from the shores of language into the open sea of more
distant musical intervals,”44 obviously echoing Wagner's "shoreless seas of abso­
lute music.”42

Schenker’s purpose, in Beethevens neunte Sinfonie, is to describe a purely musical

content that would in no way depend on words or on a program. What he wants
to demonstrate is that musical content, musicaL meaning, can be produced by
purely musical technical means, without any external reference. This is an
idea that he had expressed before, when he wrote in Ein Beitrag zur Ornamentik
(1908): "[His] hope that one soon will realize the significance of the technical
means [.. .]—the insight into which then necessarily must lead to the follow­
ing one, whereby program music and music drama manifest themselves more
as impediments to musical freedom, rather than as stimulus and a benefit.
Then one will also understand that the breath of music is only an artificial one
if it is infused with a program of representations or of words; that all liveness
in such cases is but a borrowed one, artificial and unnatural.”43 Or, in the first
volume of Kontrapunkt (1910): “Along with the absolute character of the life
of sounds, as only counterpoint can establish, there also arises the emancipa­
tion of the life of sounds from any external goal, be it language, the stage, or
above all the anecdotal content of any program. Composers have to adapt to
what lies purely within sound and leave as secondary any other purpose that
may be associated with music.”44 Similar statements appear from time to time
in later writings, for instance when Schenker speaks in Das Meisterwerk, vol. I,
of music, “which—alone among all the arts—is not referring to the external
world, which instead autonomously realizes the impression of the motive as
word-in-tone [Tonwert]
A “word-in-tone”: obviously this is the mo ne me of the musical language, its
unit of first articulation, the equivalent in music of the word in language. One
main difference however, which Schenker Immediately stresses, is that musi­
cal words-in-tone, contrary to the ordinary words of language, do not form
a lexicon: musical words-in-tone cannot be considered intertextual Lexemes.
“It is hard enough . . . to read, to hear these words-Ln-tone in themselves as
(hey change from work lo work.’’*® Ln "Das Organische der Fuge,” discussing
various analyses of bach’s Prelude in G minor from the first book of the Well-
Tempered (lavier, Schenker mresse* (lie differences between hearings and says
NM » NICOLAS MEEÙS

ili.h lie himself perceives in lhe work a "tone rationality’5 (Tonvemunft) more
mi louai than any rationality of language could ever be; he wonders: “Is such a
11*markable difference in hearing only imaginable in the case of language?5’47
Srhenker once more stresses the auto-referential character of music and its
»,illy dependence on language in Der freu Satz: “In music, which was destined
lo reach its highest culminat ion in the avoidance of any mundane matter and
in Ihe likeness of itself, only the needs of language, of march, of dance, ruled
.il first. .. . Only language founded the tonal successions.. .. The limits of lan­
guage and music remained for a long time the same, even in the time when
counterpoint had conquered diatony and linear progressions and, with them,
Ilie first requirements of music as art.”48 Later, in a comment on number 24
of Hans Leo Hassler, Lustgarten, Schenker stresses the liberation of this music
from the constraints of text: “Despite its origin in a text, this music is pure art,
clear, organic in itself, as an exclusively-music [Nur-Musik] in opposition to a
language-music [ Wort-Musik] .”49 The organic coherence arises, among other
Iliings, from diminutions that generate meaning: "Why then should words gen­
erate music, interpret it, when it lives organically, sings and speaks from within
itself?”50 The two last chapters of Der freie Satz, on meter and rhythm and on
form, remain somewhat puzzling until one realizes that they are devoted to a
large extent to the differences between music and language. But that will be
the object of further research.
Jonathan Dunsby and John Stopford write that “for Schenker, musical
meaning is constituted by a fundamental structure (the Ursatz). . .. This is
to say that Schenker sees musical meaning as having its source in a relational
rather than a substantive unity. This relationality obtains between the ‘chord of
nature’ . . . and temporality. Such extension in time of the empirical material
of music constitutes musical signification.”51 Meaning, indeed, is produced by
the inscription in time of an abstract material, the process of “elaboration,”
Auskomponiemng. This is not only an inscription in the temporal linearity that
Schenker describes as “the horizontal” but also one in the depth of the succes­
sive prolongational levels, from background to foreground. Meaning develops
(Vom level to level until blooming in the surface, the score. Even before he had
c learly conceived these essential elements of his theory, Schenker described
the production of meaning as this, which I consider one of the clearest and
simplest descriptions of what elaboration is about: “In practical art, the matter
generally is to realize the concept of harmony (of a triad or seventh-chord)
in living content. In Chopin’s Prelude, op. 28 no. 6, for instance, the motive:

c\* M a
■ Tii uT fam___
v' Mu
»f : f‘ f ■^fi
_f
—L________ 1■■ ■ ___^ tL_
T T^ Tw' i / ^ m

ZU molto cantan<J(i~m «

makes lhe abstrai t concept of the triad B-D-K# so truly alive, while
 SCHENKE x ’s F N H A I . V , S C H E N K EX] AN S E M I O T I C S ^ 89

|*g..
alone somehow only reaches the effect merely of an initially sketched proposi­
tio n /52 Chopin’s elaborated version of the B-minor triad, especially compared
with its “abstract concept,” obviously is Loaded with “content,” with meaning, a
fully intrinsic meaning which, at this stage, neither denotes nor connotes any­
thing, but certainly is of an order of signification in the mind of the listener.
Chopin’s version becomes a motive, subject to repetition and, as such, a semi­
otic eLement.
This is a new version of the gospel, which allows Schenker to write in his
posthumous work, Derfreie Satz,, “The geal, the course is first, the content comes
in only second: without goal, no content.”55

Notes

1. John Rothgeb, in his translation, gives the title as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:
A Portrayal of Its Musical Content, With Running Commentary on Performance and
Literature As Well. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the German
in this paper are mine, and usually more literal than, even if they often are
inspired by, the published ones.
2. Nicholas Cook, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, Cambridge Music Handbooks
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 83.
3. Cook, Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, 83—89.
4. Heinrich Schenker, Beethovens neunte Sinfonie. Eine Darstellung des musikalischen
Inhaltes unter fortlaufender Berücksichtigung auch des Vortrages und der Literatur
(Vienna: Universal, 1912), xxv: “Die er mit so unerhörter Leidenschaft zu gun-
sten der Idee eines angeblichen Fortschritts auf Grund der Überwindung der
absoluten Musik aus seinen eigenen Mißverständnissen gezogen.” In a letter
of May 30, 1911, to Hans Liebstöckl, Schenker writes about his monograph
(then in press): “Therein a truth not hitherto intimated regarding Wagner’s
incompetence over against absolute music will be incontrovertibly proven”
(OC 1A/4-5, trans. Ean Bent, 2007, http://www.schenkerdocumentsonline.
org/docume nts/correspondence/ OC-l-A-4-5. html).
5. Richard Wagner, [Beethovens neunte Symphonie] Programm. Gesammelte Schriften
und Dichtungen (Leipzig: E. W. Fritzch, 1871), 2:75-76: “Muß nun zunächst
zugestanden werden, daß das Wesen der höheren Instrumentalmusik
namentlich darin besteht, in Tönen das auszusprechen, was in Worten
unaussprechbar ist, so glauben wir uns hier auch nur andeutungsweise der
Lösung einer un erreich baren Aufgabe selbst dadurch 2U nähern, daß wir
Worte unsres Dichters Goethe zur 1lulle nehmen, die, wenn sie auch keineswe-
ges mit Beethoven* WeiFe in rineiii unmittelbaren Zusammenhänge stehen,
und auf keine Weise dir Br de uh mg seiner rein musikalischen Schöpfung
go N ICOLAS MEEÙS

irgendwie durchdringend zu bezeichnen vermögen, dennoch die ihr zu

Grunde liegenden höheren menschlichen Seelenstimmungen so erhaben
ausdrücken, daß man im schlimmen Falle des Unvermögens eines weiteren
Verständnisses sich wohl mit der Festhaltung dieser Stimmungen begnügen
dürfte, um wenigstens nicht gänzlich ohne Ergriffenheit von der Anhörung
des Musikwerkes scheiden zu müssen.”
6. Jeanjacques Nattiez, Wagner Androgyne, trans. S. Spencer (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1993), 109.
7. Schenker, Beethovens neunte Sinfonie, vii. The reference to the Gospel was first
noted by Leo Treitler, “History, Criticism, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,”
in Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989), 28. It is also mentioned in Robert Snarrenberg, Schenker’s Interpretive
Practice, Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2.
8. Cook, Beethoven's Symphony no. 9, 83.
9. Such synecdoches, Wort for Sprache or Ton for Musik, will be encountered in
many of the following quotations.
10. Schenker, Beethovens neunte Sinfonie, v-vi: “.. . als gleichsam Wie bei jeder Arbeit
dieser Art ergaben sich auch bei der vorliegenden gleichzeitig mannigfache
Gesichtspunkte, die organische Elemente des Stoffes von innen nach außen
traten und nach Verkörperung förmlich selbst riefen. So mußte naturgemäß
mein erstes Ziel sein, den musikalischen Inhalt des Werkes darzustellen.”
11. On autonomous semiotics, see Nicolas Meeùs, “L’Autonomie de la sémio­
tique,” in Le Sens langagier du musical, ed. Bernard Vecchione and Christian
Hauer (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 187-96; http://nicolas.meeus.free.fr/
NMSemio/Autonomie.pdf.
12. See note 12 below.
13. Jonathan Dunsby and John Stopford, “The Case for a Schenkerian Semiotic,”
Music Theory Spectrum 3 (1981): 49-53.
14. See Nicolas Meeùs, “Formenlehre in Der freie Satz A Transformational Theory,”
paper read at EuroMAC 8, Leuven, Belgium, September 19, 2014, published in
Rivista diAnalisi e Teoria Musicale 21, no. 2 (2015): 97-111.
15. For more details about this relation, see, among others, Mark Evan Bonds,
Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
16. For example, C. P. E. Bach, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu Spielen
(Berlin, C. F. Henning, 1753), 1:124: “Indem man also ein jedes Stück nach sei­
nem wahren Inhalte, und mit dem gehörigen Affecte spielen soll; so thun die
Componisten wohl, wenn sie ihren Ausarbeitungen ausser der Bezeichnung
das Tempo, annoch solche Wörter vorsetzen, wodurch der Inhalt derselben
erkläret wird.” August Kahlert nevertheless expressly maintained that no
“description in words” can be provided for music. Kahlert, System der Ästhetik
(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1846), 380, quoted by Eduard Hanslick in Vom
Musikalisch-Schönen. Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Leipzig:
Weigel, 1854; 8th ed., augmented and corrected, Leipzig: Barth, 1891), 96.
17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, ed. IX H. E.
Ilotho (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1838), 3:186: "Das eine Mal kann . . .
 SCHENKER^ INH Al, T', S C H E N K E R ] A N S E M I O T I C S ** gL

die Musik begleitend seyn, wenn nämlich Lhi geistiger EnhaLt nicht nur in der
abstrakten Innerlichkeit seiner Bedeutung oder als subjektive Empfindung
ergriffen wird, sondern so Ln die musikalische Bewegung ein geht, wie er von
der Vorstellung bereits ausgebildet und in Worte gefaßt worden ist. Das andere
Mal dagegen reißt die Musik sich von solch einem für sich schon fertigen
Inhalte los und verselbständigt sich in ihrem eigenen Felde, so daß sie ent­
weder, wenn sie sich’s mit irgend einem bestimmten Gehalte noch überhaupt
zu thun macht, denselben unmittelbar in Melodien und deren harmonische
Durcharbeitung einsenkt, oder sich auch durch das ganz unabhängige Klingen
und Tönen als solches und die harmonische und melodische Figuration des­
selben zufrieden zu stellen weiß.’’ One will note the resonance of this text to
several Schenkerian concepts, among others the harmonic Durcharbeitung of
melodies (Schenker would rather have said Durch- or Auskomponierung), or
their harmonic and melodic figurations.
18. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 187: “Die Stimme spricht singend zugleich
Worte aus, welche die Vorstellung eines bestimmten Inhaltes angeben, so daß
nun die Musik als gesungenes Wort, wenn beide Seiten, Ton und Wort, nicht
gleichgültig und beziehungslos auseinanderfallen sollen, nur die Aufgabe
haben kann, den musikalischen Ausdruck diesem Inhalt, der aLs Inhalt seiner
näheren Bestimmtheit nach vor die Vorstellung gebracht ist und nicht mehr
der unbestimmteren Empfindung angehörig bleibt, soweit die Musik es ver­
mag gemäß zu machen.” It is in a similar meaning, probably, that Immanuel
Kant had considered music without text as an art of “free beauty,” as opposed
to the arts of “dependent” {anhängend) beauty: the concept of dependent
beauty appears analogous to that of accompanying music in Hegel. Kant, Kritik
der Urtheilshraft, Kant’s Werke (Berlin: Reimer, 1913), 5:229.
19. For instance, Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 143: “Erst wenn sich in dem
sinnlichen Element der Töne und ihrer mannigfaltigen Figuration Geistiges
in angemessener Weise ausdriickt, erhebt sich auch die Musik zur wahren
Kunst, gleichgültig, ob dieser Inhalt für sich seine nähere Bezeichnung aus­
drücklich durch Worte erhalte, oder unbestimmter aus den Tönen und deren
harmonischen Verhältnissen und melodischen Beseelung müsse empfunden
werden.” “It is only when, in the significant elements of the notes and their
varied figurations, something spiritual expresses itself in an adequate manner,
that music elevates itself to [the level of] a true art, no matter whether this con­
tent includes in itself its more precise description explicitly in words, or must
be perceived indeterminately from the tones and their harmonic relations and
melodic enlivenings.”
20. Friedrich Vi scher, known (among others) to have written about Faust.
Der Tragédie dritter Teil under the pseudonym Deutobold Symbolizetti
Allegoriowitsch Mystifizinsky, In 1858, he published the short essay Über das
Verkältniss tien Inhalt und Form in der Kunst (Zürich: Meyer und Zeller, 1858).
Hanslick refers to his Aeslhelih eder Wissenschaft des Scheiten, 6 vols. (Leipzig-
Stuttgart: Märken, lH4(>-.r>7).
21. H ansl ick, Vom Mmtkn JurIt .V/ünum ( 1891), 20 3-4.
92 ** N ICOLAS M EEÙS

22. Hermann Lotze wrote, among other publications, Über den Begriff der Schönheit
(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1845) and Uber Bedingungen der
Kunstschönheit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1847).
23. Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von dem Tonempfindungen als physiologische
Grundlagefür die Theorie der Musik, 1st ed. (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1862).
24. Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), 96: “‘Inhalt’ im ursprünglichen und
eigentlichen Sinne ist: was ein Ding enthält, in sich hält. In dieser Bedeutung
sind die Töne, aus welchen ein Musikstück besteht, . . . der Inhalt dessel­
ben. . . . Bei der Frage nach dem ‘Inhalt9 der Musik hat man die Vorstellung
von ‘Gegenstand9 (Stoff, Sujet) im Sinne, welchen man als die Idee, das
Ideale den Tönen als ‘materielle Bestandteilen’ geradezu entgegensetzt.
Einen Inhalt in dieser Bedeutung, einen Stoff im Sinne des behandelten
Gegenstandes hat die Tonkunst in der That nicht.. .. Die Musik besteht aus
Ton reihen, Tonformen, diese haben keinen andern Inhalt als sich selbst.9’
Following this text, Hanslick further argues against Eduard Krüger’s idea that
music may reflect another side of the same Inhalt as in other arts, its inner
aspect, whereas literature or figurative arts present only an external aspect.
Krüger, Beiträgefür Leben und Wissenschaft der Tonkunst (Leipzig: Breitkopf und
Härtel, 1847), 131.
25. Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), 98: “Daß wenn vom Inhalt und
der Darstellungsfähigkeit der ‘Tonkunst’ die Rede ist, nur von der reinen
Instrumentalmusik ausgegangen werden darf.”
26. Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), 99: “Vom Inhalt eines Kunstwerkes
kann eigentlich nur da die Rede sein, wo man diesen Inhalt einer Form entge­
genhält. Die Begriffe ‘Inhalt’ und ‘Form’ bedingen und ergänzen einander.
Wo nicht eine Form von einem Inhalt dem Denken trennbar erscheint, da
existirt auch kein selbständiger Inhalt. In der Musik aber sehen wir Inhalt und
Form, Stoff und Gestaltung, Bild und Idee in dunkler, untrennbarer Einheit
verschmolzen.”
27. “Der Geist der musikalischen Technik” is somewhat difficult to interpret.
William Pastille considers that its main purpose is to discuss “the fallacy of
organicism”: Pastille, “Heinrich Schenker, Anti-Organicist,” 19th Century
Music 8, no. 1 (1984): 29-36. According to Robert P. Morgan, it is mainly
about whether music answers to an inherent logic. Morgan, Becoming Heinrich
Schenker. Music Theory and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2014), 41-59. I think that the question more precisely is whether music
answers to the kind of organicism and the kind of logic that, in the case of lan­
guage, results from the reference to the external world. There is therefore no
real contradiction between Pastille’s and Morgan’s points of view and the one
to be advocated here.
28. In his translation (to which my own are indebted), William Pastille gives titles
to these five sections. Those of the first two sections appear to be missing in
the German originals. The titles are: 1. Melody; 2. Repetition; 3. Polyphony;
4. Harmony; 5. Moods, Forms, and the “Organic*.” Pastille gives a more
detailed table of contents in his “Heinrich Schenkel, Ai it i-( hganicist,” 31.
 SCHENKER^ INHALT, S C H E N S E 3M A N SEM IOTICS ^ 93

29. Schenker, Der Geist, 3.

30. See note 18 above.
31. Schenker, Der Geist, 3-4: “Einem ziellos schaffenden und ziellos. sieh ergehen­
den Tonbedürfniss musste es daher am Anfang aller Zeiten eine Wohlthat
gewesen sein, sich an das Wort und seine Gesetze zu schmiegen. Es suchte da
der Ton ein Abbild des Wortes und seine TonfalLs zu werden, und vor Allem
musste es lernen, analog nachzubilden, was den Wort am eigenthümlichsten
ist, nämlich die Schaffung des Gedankens, der befriedigend abgeschlossen in
sich ruht. . . . Wie Dem auch war, so begann die musikalische Kunst doch erst
dort, wo eine Reihe von Tonen mit dem Anspruch auftrat, aLs ein Ganzes, ein
in sich ruhender Gedanke verstanden und gefühlt zu werden. Das erste Gauze
von Tönen trug die Wurde einer Melodie.”
32. Schenker, Der Geist, 5: '‘Wir wären wohl um einen sehr grossen Schritt in
der Erkenntniss der musikalischen Technik weiter gekommen, wenn man
nachgeforscht hätte, wann, wo und wie die stärkste und unterscheidenste
Eigenthümlichkeit der musikalischen Kunst, nämlich die der sogenannten
Wiederholungen, zum ersten Mal sich ihr einverlebt.”
33. Nicolas Ruwet, ‘‘Methods of Analysis in Musicology,” trans. Mark Everist, Music
Analysis 6,, nos. 1-2 (1987): 11—36.
34. Schenker, Der Geist, 5-6: “Denn es besitzt das musikalische Motiv nicht wie das
Wort den Segen, durch sich selbst die Gegenständlichkeit, den Begriff aus­
zulösen. Ist das Wort eben nur ein Zeichen fur Etwas, d.h. einen Gegenstand
oder ein Begriff, der in sich die Gegenstände verarbeitet, so ist das musika­
lische Motiv nur ein Zeichen fur sich selbst oder, besser gesagt, Nichts mehr
und Nichts weniger, als es seLbst. . . . So lange der Ton das Wort in sich barg,
glaubte auch er verständlich zu sein, während doch nur das Wort für die
Verständlichkeit sorgte. .. . Die Wiederholung, diese ureigene Erfindung
der Musik, möchte nun am besten beweisen, dass die Musik schon vor
Jahrtausenden im eigenen Sckooss ein eigenes stehergestaltendes Princip trug und
nach dieser Richtung hin schon viel früher vom Wart emcmäpiert war, als die
Musikgeschichtschreiber es an nehmen.”
35. Schenker, Der Gäst, 18: “So wirkten denn verschiedene Grunde zusammen,
um die Instrumentalmusik in eine Künstlichkeit hinauszutreiben, wo nun
bald dasjenige, was mannigfaltig und ähnlich war, in den Begriffen der soge­
nannten ‘Formen5zusammengefast und unterschieden wurde.”
36. Pastille, ‘‘Heinrich Schenker, Anti-Organicist,” 31.
37. Schenker, Der Geist, 20: “ln der Th at ist kein musikalischer Inhalt organisch. Es
fehlt ihm ein jeglicher Causalnexus, und niemals hat eine erfundene Melodie
einen so bestimmen Willen, dass sie sagen kann, nur jene bestimmte Melodie
darf mir folgen, eine andere nicht.”
38. Schenker, Der Geist, 21—22: “der naturwisse uschaftlic he Begriff des
‘Organischen.’”
39. Schenker, Der Geist, 19: “L>as Gefühl der Rundung, des Sichabschliessens, täus­
chte immer im Associations‘ge den Charakter des begrifflichen Gedankens
vor, der sich eben durch einen nicht 111 isszuverstehenden Anfang und ein
nicht niUszuvcrs lebe mir* Ende utis/.rirhnet. Und so schimmerte über all
94 ** NICOLAS MEEÙS

den erweiterten Bildungen einer phantastisch künstlichen Willkür trügerisch

der Schein einer gedanklichen Logik, und bald begann man gar zu glauben,
in der künstlichen Bildung ruhe eine eben solche Nothwendigkeit, wie in
einem natürlichen Organismus. Dieser Glaube besteht noch heute, wo die
Künstlichkeit die Aufnahmsfähigkeit unserer Zeit schier zu sprengen droht.
Heisst doch das höchste Lob, das heute einem musikalischen Kunstwerk
gezollt wird, das Werk sei ‘organisch’ gebaut.”
40. Schenker, Der Geist, 4: ‘‘Durch die Gewohnheit von vielleicht vielen
Jahrhunderten bildeten sich endlich die musikalische Kunst ein, eine ähnliche
Logik wie die Sprache von Haus aus zu besitzen.”
4L Schenker, Der Geist, 5: “Erst später fasste der Ton den Muth, von den Küsten
des Wortes weg ins freie offene Meer der entfernteren musikalischen Intervalle
hinauszuste uern.”
42. Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (Leipzig: Wigand, 1850), 75-76:
“So sind durch den Helden, der das weite uferlose Meer der absoluten Musik
bis an seine Gränzen durchschiffte, die neuen, ungeahnte Küsten gewonnen
worden, die dieses Meer von dem alten unmenschlichen Continente nun
nicht mehr trennt, sondern für die neugeborene, glückselige künstlerische
Menschheit der Zukunft verbindet. .. . Als die Tonkunst sich aus dem Reigen
der Schwersten löste nahm sie, als unerläßlichste nächste Lebensbedingung,
—wie die leichtfertige Schwester Tanzkunst sich von ihr das rhythmische Maß
entnommen hatte, —von der sinnenden Schwester Dichtkunst das Wort mit;
aber nicht etwa das menschenschöpferische, geistig dichtende Wort, sondern
nur das körperlich unerläßliche, denverdichtete Ton.”
43. I leinrich Schenker, Ein Beitrag zur Ornamentik. Als Einführung zu Ph. Em. Bach 's
Klmiierwerken, mitumfassend auch die Ornamentik Haydns, Mozarts u. Beethovens
etc. (Vienna-Leipzig: Universal, [1908]), 16: “Insonderheit aber hoffe ich, daß
man bald auch die Bedeutung der technischen Mittel . . . einsehen wird, —
welche Einsicht dann sicherlich zur nächsten führen muß, wonach Programm
und Musikdrama eher als Hindernisse der musikalischen Freiheit, denn als
deren Sporn und Segen sich erweisen. Dann wird man wohl auch begreifen,
daß der Atem der Musik nur ein künstlicher ist, wenn ihr ein Programm von
Vorstellungen oder Worten eingeblasen wird; daß alle Lebendigkeit in solchen
Fällen nur eine geborgte, künstliche und unnatürliche.”
44. Heinrich Schenker, Kontrapunkt I, Cantus firmus und zweistimmiger Satz, Neue
Musikalische Theorien und Phantasien, vol. 2, book 1 (Stuttgart: Cotta; Vienna:
Universal, 1910), 23: “Mit dem absoluten Charakter des Tonlebens, wie ihn
zum ersten Male eben der Kontrapunkt feststellt, ist nun aber auch zugleich
die Emanzipation des Tonlebens von jeglichem äußeren Zweck, mag es das
Wort, die Bühne, und überhaupt das Anekdotische irgend eines Programms
sein, von selbst gegeben. Das in sich selbst Ruhende der Töne zwingt
dem Komponisten die Verpflichtung auf, sich dem Eigenleben der Töne
anzubequemen, und jeglichen Zweck, der allenfalls der Musik vergesell­
schaftet sein kann, ein Zweites sein zu lassen.”
45. Schenker, “Weg mit dem Phrasierungsbogen,” Das Meisterwerk in der Musik
(Munich, Vienna, Berlin: Drie Masken Verlag, 1925), 1:13: “Der Musik, die
 SCHENKER ’S INHALT, SC KE NKE RI AN" SEM30TECS ** g5

sich—unter alle Künsten die einzige—nicht auf die Außenwelt bezieht,

vielmehr die Prägung des Motivs aLs gleichsam eines Tonwortes in sich selbst
vollzieht. ”
46. Schenker, “Weg mit dem Phrasierungsbogen,* 1:43: “Es ist schon an sich nicht
leicht, in der Musik [. *.] eben diese von Werk zu Werk-wechselnden Tonworte
zu lesen, zu hören.*
47. Schenker, “Das organische der Tuge, ”Das Meisterwerk in der Musik (1926), 2:94:
"Ist der Unterschied dieser und ähnlicher Ausfassungen gegenüber der mein en
bloß auf die verschiedene Namengebung zurückzuführen oder geht es jenseits
von wie immer beschaffenen ‘Theorien5 um ein wesentlich anderes Hören?
. .. ich [höre] eine Tonvernunft, wie vernünftiger keine Sprachvernunft sich
gebärden kann—ist eine so auffällig große Verschiedenheit des Hörens auf
dem Gebiete der Sprache auch nur denkbar? Das Nachprüfen der Wahrheit
überlasse ich dem Leser.” For the sake of completeness, let me briefly mention
here that Schenker again mentions the “language of tones” when he writes:
"May it be granted to the German nation ... to protect its two languages,
the language of words and the Language of tones.* Schenker, “Rameau oder
Beethoven? Erstarrung oder geistiger Leben in der Musik?” Das Meisterwerk in
der Musik (1930), 3:22.
48. Heinrich Schenker, Der freie Satt, Neue Musikalische Theorien und Phantasien,
vol. 3 (Vienna: Universal, 1935; 2nd ed., ed. Oswald Jonas; Vienna: Universal,
1956), 150: "In der Musik, die bestimmt war, ihre höchste Steigerung in der
Abwendung von allem Stoff der Welt, im Gleichnis ihrer selbst zu erreichen,
regierte anfangs nur der Zweck des Wortes, Marsches, Tanzes. .. . Das Wort
allein zeugte die Tonfolge.. .. Die Grenzen von Wort und Musik lagen denn
auch lange noch beisammen sogar in der Zeit, in der der Kontrapunkt schon
Diatonie und Züge und damit die ersten Voraussetzungen der Musik als Kunst
erobert hatte.”
49. Schenker, Der freie Satz, 156: “Trotz ihrer Herkunft vom Text ist diese Musik
hier völlig kunstrein, klar, organisch in sich selbst, wie eine Nur-Musik über­
haupt im Gegensatz zu einer Wort-Musik.”
50. Schenker, Derfreie Satz, 160: “Wozu dann noch Worte, die Musik zeugen, deu­
ten sollen, wenn sie aus sich selbst heraus organisch lebt, singt und redet?”
51. Dunsby and Stopford, “The Case for a Schenkerian Semiotic,” 53.
52. Heinrich Schenker, Harmonielehre, Neue Musikalische Themen und Phantasien,
vol. 1 (Stuttgart—Berlin: Cotta, 1906), 281: "In der praktischen Kunst kommt
es im allgemein darauf an, den Begriff der Harmonien (eines Dreiklanges
oder Vierklanges) durch lebendigen Inhalt zu realisieren. So z.B. macht
in Chopins Prélude, Op. 28, Nr. 6 erst das Motiv: [ex. 244] den abstrakten
Dreiklangsbegriff H, D, Tis so recht lebendig, wogegen [ex. 245] allein Bloß
etwa die Wirkung einer zunächst nur skizzierten Behauptung erreicht.”
53. Schenker, Der freie Satz, 18: “Das Ziet, der Weg ist das Erste, iu zweiter Reihe
erst kommt der Inhalt: ohne Ziel kein InhaLt.” Schenker explains statement
further, for example on page 42: “On their way to the foreground as ultimate
goal, the transformations also constitute a delay (retardation). We are still far
from the goal as long as ihr Iemicnia and con tent-expansions continue at the
g6 NICOLAS MEEÙS

various transformational levels. Delay counts therefore as the most valuable

compositional means.” (‘“Auf dem Weg zum Vordergrund als dem letzten Ziel
bedeuten die Verwandlungen zugleich eine Aufhaltung[Retardation], wir sind
von Ziel noch entfernt, solange die Spannungen und Inhaltsmehrung in der
Verwandlungsschichten noch anhält. Die Aufhaltung zählt demnach zu den
wertvollsten kompositioneilen Mitteln.”)
 Chapter Six

Music under the

Sign o f M odernism
From Wagner to Boulez, and Britten

Arnold W hittall

An Initial Analysis

Benjamin Britten’s Tema “Sacher'3 (1976) is a one-minute, one-page, four­

teen-bar composition for solo cello in C minor. It uses two basic types of
material, the first presenting two broadly melodic statements of the motif
Eb, A, C, and B, the second an edgier moto perpétue based on just two notes,
E and D (ex. 6.1). These are the six pitch classes derived from the surname
of Paul Sacher (Es/Eb, A, C, H /B ^, E, Re/D) and reflect the composi­
tion’s role as part of a seventieth-birthday tribute to Sacher commissioned
by Mstislav Rostropovich.
Another product of Rostropovich’s commission—a total of twelve compos­
ers were involved—was Boulez’s Messages quisse for seven cellos. This also uses
the “Sacher” hexachord as its source, but instead of Britten’s tonal voice lead­
ing, which introduces nonhexachord notes to reinforce a relatively diatonic
bass line (for example, C to G in bar 1) and a C—Db-C cadence at the end,
Boulez’s pitches are generated from a pair of six-by-six matrices that preserve
the order of the Sacher interval classes while systematically supplementing the
original six pitch classes through rotation (matrix A) and transposition (matrix
B)—procedures that assign a certain priority to Eb, but which nevertheless
have more to do with post-tonal serial technique til an with tonality (exx. 6.2-
6.8; table 6.1 ).
F.xample 6.1. Benjamin Britten, Tema “Sacher* ( 1976). Reproduced by permission
of Faber Music.

t » t y r t t

ÿikÿd J J j - J - r i - J . . - - - - - . [ ■ ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . - | - ^ z z d [_ :
p L. ■ l - . L — i — J w ê é é \,i
«r ■■
R(e)”

Example 6.2. Pierre Boulez, Messagesquisse, ordered and unordered “Sacher”

hexadiords.

S A C H E R 0 1 2 4 5 7

fahle (i. 1. Boulez, Messagesquisse, derived matrices from the ordered version of
Ilie "Sadier" hexachord (Matrix A) by rotation (Matrix B) by transposition.
(a) Ek 6 Ai] 3 Ct| 1 Bil 5 Et| 2 Dll 0 Ek Ail Cil Bil Ell Dll
(b) Ek 3 Ffl 1 Ft| 5 Bt 2 At 1 A1 6 All Eb Ftf Fl] Bk Ak
(O Ek I Dll 5 Gil 2 Fit 1 Gk 6 Ci| 9 Cil Fft All Ak Dk B4
(d) Ek 5 At 2 Gt 1 Gl| 6 Dk 3 El] 8 Bil Ft) Ak Gil Cl! Bk
(e) Ek 2 Dk 1 Dt] 6 Ak 3 Bil 1 Aft 1 E l) Bk Dk Cil F il Ek
(0 Ek 1 Eil 6 Bb 3 Dk 1 Cti 5 Fl| 11 Dll Ak Bil Bk Ek Dk
Matrix (A) Matrix (B)
 M U S 3 C U N D E R T H E S E G N OF M O D E R N I S M 99

Example 6.3. Boulez, Meszagesqmsse, opening of final section, cello 1 only. Pierre
Boulez, Messagesquisse |für Violoncelb solo m d 6 ViolomdlL <£>Copyright 1977 by
Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/LJE L6678.

Boulez’s eight-and-a-half-minute score falls into five distinct phases:

1. a recitative-like introduction, separating the first, principal cello from

the other six:
2. a much faster, contrapuntal moto perpétue
3. a return to something more recitative-like, but with the first cello
providing fragmentary reminiscences of the moto perpetuo against the
sustained trilling of the supporting ensemble
4. a cadenza-like episode for the principal cello with alternating relatively
animated and reflective statements
5. a short, hectic moto perpeiuo conclusion (with repeated groups of three
eighth notes rather than four sixteenth notes, as previously) in which
the uniformity of the seven-strong ensemble overrides the earlier
distinction between solo and accompaniment

Britten’s much shorter design also involves the evolving alternation of contrast­
ing types of material, with what might have been a literal a b a1 bl e? scheme
extended by the addition of a developmental coda, alluding to both a and b
material. And it could be said that, for all their obvious differences of style and
technique, both works are more concerned with the manipulation or devel­
oping variation of foregrounded materials than with the composing out of
deeper, foundational background forces.1
Like most descriptive comme maries on musical works, what I have just
provided for the Brillen and Boulez works discussed here stops well short of
spelling out the kind of “framework" <as Nattiez terms it) that specifies the
"respective scope» and merits" of those “diflerenl inodes of analysis” which are
ÎOO ARNOLD W HITTALL

ideally required for a distinctively semiological analysis of even the simplest

example of compositional design.2 That what has come to be known as para­
digmatic analysis can work well within closely confined dimensions is shown
by, for example, Jonathan Goldman’s Nattiez-inspired studies of Boulez.5 Such
exercises tend to underline the broad contrasts in present-day analytical work
between the relatively wide perspectives offered by Schenkerian principles,
or the categories expounded in sonata theory,^ and the much more closely
focused local identities that neo-Riemannian, transformational, and paradig­
matic analyses tend to delineate.5 Yet Nattiez’s own refusal to be restricted to
the exhaustive exposition of the neutral level, while remaining sensitive to the
need to avoid the dilution and vapid generalizing that can so easily emerge
when large-scale works are under analysis, and their contexts as well as their
processes loom large, is a heartening indication that analytical validity can
emerge as long as the governing theoretical principles are kept in mind.
Although there is a world of difference between Nattiez’s ninety-six-page
study of Varèse’s Densité 21.5 and his twelve pages of prose—no music exam­
ples—entided “Memory and Forgetting: Wagner/Proust/Boulez,”6 the fact
that the latter appears in a text subtitled Essays in Applied Musical Semiohgy sug­
gests the format for the kind of exercise that follows here and that concerns the
ever-interesting, always frustrating topic of how musical facts and verbal sym­
bols might pursue their interdependent destinies. This introductory section
has already outlined a cast of characters—Britten, Boulez, Sacher—each with
salient institutions—the Aldeburgh Festival, IRCAM, the Sacher Stiftung—
behind them that could form the basis for an elaborate exercise in critical and
historical interpretation far exceeding the modest dimensions of this essay. But
the net will need to be cast even wider than this initial trawl suggests, not least
in order to draw Wagner into its web—a composer whom Nattiez has often
considered from a particularly Boulezian perspective.

More about Words and Music

Few if any grandly general statements about music are likely to gain a less sym­
pathetic hearing than the declaration of regret that, over the centuries, music
has failed to win its independence from words; that music has not decisively
and permanently evolved away from the unsatisfactory hybrid represented by
text setting. For me to argue that “words attach to concepts, musical sounds
don’t, therefore bringing them together devalues both forms of expression and
produces essentially incoherent results” seems an even more absurdly extrav­
agant proposition. And its absurdity will be underlined if it is accepted that
Wagner, one of the most prominent composers from (lie past (wo centuries to
have contributed virtually nothing to the laiger nonvoral musical genres, has
 MUSIC UNDER TH E SIGN OF M O D E R N ISM 10 1

seen his popularity continue to increase. Nor is there much credible support
for the view that major post-Wagnerian composers such as Gustav Mahler and
Dmitri Shostakovich are actually superior to Wagner because they wrote both
vocal and nonvocal works on a large scale. Serious musical scholarship would
pour scorn on the suggestion that any and all nonvocal compositions would
benefit from being thought of as “programmatic,* and having stories or sce­
narios devised to match the progress of the music. Much more reputable is the
possibility of mapping ideas about “plot” or “narrative” onto nonvocal compo­
sitions as a legitimate way of suggesting significant content involving actions as
well as feelings: that is, attributing character to something that seems to resist
abstraction or neutrality even when it lacks a verbal text. '7
One important consequence of the emergence and dominance of the aes­
thetics of modernism since (at least) the time of late Beethoven is that the pos­
sibility of seeing pure instrumental music as classical and hybrid vocal music as
modernist lacks credibility. If the hallmark of classicism is the degree of inte­
gration ensured by the kind of tonal structuring best understood in terms of
Schenker’s theories, and if the essence of modernism aspires to challenge and
even contradict such integration by seeking less tonality-dependent ways of
organizing musical structures, then this distinction can apply to vocal and non­
vocal compositions alike. Against this background, one of the most fascinating
of all aspects of musical life over the past century or so has been the response
of composers, scholars, and institutions to Wagner’s texted works. This essay
makes a deliberately impressionistic foray into some of the most intriguing
manifestations of this phenomenon.

Boulez and Wagner in Time and Place

The Festspielhaus at Bayreuth is no ordinary opera house. Although the

Wagner festivals have long been a regular, annual occurrence, they run for
a mere four weeks or so. Otherwise, the theater is silent—a monument that,
despite the various modifications made to the building itself and its surround­
ings down the years, seems to preserve something essential from its open­
ing in 1876, during Wagner's own Lifetime. The history of the Festspielhaus
has been closely bound up with the successive generations of the Wagner
family that have managed it. Also, as is very well known, styLes of production
have changed radically since the would-be naturaLism—based in Wagner’s
stage directions—of 1876. It is commonLy accepted that the single greatest
moment of change in this evolution came in the centenary year of 1976,
when Wagner's sole surviving grandson, Wolfgang, invited Boulez to conduct
and Patrice Chéreau to stage a new production of the Ring cycle—something
that came just as Boulez was reinforcing his French connections with the
102 & ARNOLD WHITTALL

establishment of IRCAM in Paris and his commitment to lecturing on music

at the Collège de Fran ce
In 1976 it was already six years since Boulez had completed the origi­
nal version of his last vocal composition, cummings ist der dichter (a revised
version appeared in 1986). Despite occasional rumours of plans for oper­
atic collaborations with Jean Genet and Heiner Müller, or of a stage work
based on Samuel Beckett’s En attendant Godot, all of Boulez’s compositions
after 1970 to have reached performance nonvocal, and all save the series of
orchestral Notations, deriving from a set of short piano pieces written in 1945,
avoided the relatively abstract generic titles—such as “sonatina,” “sonata,” or
Structures—found with his earlier nonvocal compositions. It was very different
with Boulez’s closest contemporaries—Ligeti, Berio, Stockhausen, Kurtâg—
as well as with other living composers whose works he favoured as a conduc­
tor, for example, Elliott Carter and Harrison Birtwistle. There is indeed a
sense that one factor motivating the characteristic Boulezian distancing
from anything approaching a consensus was the wish to stand apart from his
teacher Olivier Messiaen’s engagement with sacred texts and with specifi­
cally Christian rites of commemoration—an engagement by which Messiaen
sought his commitment to the kind of boldly compartmentalized modern­
istic structures that Boulez found simplistic in that they failed to take into
account the more sophisticated, less collage-like models that could be found
in the early modernist master Richard Wagner.9
Avoiding texts was as satisfyingly radical a way of applying the important
Wagnerian lessons as avoiding the routines of extended tonal harmony. Boulez
was well aware of how Debussy and Messiaen, among his French precursors, had
responded to both the sublime and the erotic aspects of Wagner’s work, and he
could no more be expected to produce anything along the lines of Le Martyre
de Saint Sébastien or Cinq rechants than of emulating Satiesque or Stravinskian
comedy, with its risks of seeming to endorse a Nadia Boulanger-style aes­
thetic. Nevertheless, by the early 1970s he was beginning to retreat from the
extreme hostility he had once shown to the alleged failure of the post-tonal,
expressionist initiative in the years around 1908 to keep faith with the properly
radical post-Wagnerian musical impulses of that time. Schoenberg’s recourse
to baroque and classical formal templates after devising his twelve-tone tech­
niques remained a problem, but—paradoxically, perhaps—Alban Berg’s less
crabbed, more heterogeneous way with tradition in the Lyric Suite, Lulu and
(he Violin Concerto began to seem more acceptable and to have some poten-
l ial as background for a later twentieth-century modernist “mainstream.”10
Even as Boulez distanced himself from the likes of Carter, Kurtag, and
Birtwistle by not having found settable texts to align with his own music after
1970, he did not shrink from choosing characterizing titles for his composi­
tions that suggested a degree of doubt about his own hold daim that “music
 MUSIC UNDER THE S I G 34 OF M O D E R N I S M 2* LO^

is an art that has no ‘meaning.’* If, precisely because of this, he was commit­
ted to “the primary importance of structures that are properly speaking lin­
guistic, given the impossibility of the musical vocabulary assuming a simply
communicative function,”11 he might indeed have relished being involved as
a conductor in Wagner productions that challenged received ideas about their
“meaning” rather than seeking to conform to traditional interpretations—the
whole point being that the challenge was valid only if some basic elements
from those traditions remained in place.
cummings ist der Dichter (with material taken from the much earlier, unpub­
lished vocal work Oubli signal lapidé, 1951-52) brought to an end Boulez’s will­
ingness to provide music for a text within a composition “in which the form of
the poem is really and essentially linked to that of the music/’12 The implica­
tion is that the form of the Cummings poem is more significant for the music
than its verbal content as a sequence of sense-giving or mood-creating verbal
statements. The poem begins, if its typographical fragmentation is ignored,
with the kind of observation—'’birds here inventing air, using twilight’s vast­
ness”—that might signify acknowledgment of Messiaen’s most familiar source
material, but as a distancing rather than homage. Boulez would soon turn to
more direct, nonvocal forms of homage, not in a spirit of religious devotion
but to commemorate real people and their relationships with the realities of
music. First came the short Stravinsky tribute . . . explosante/fixe . . . (1971),
then Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna (1974—75), an extrapolation from . . .
explosante/fixe . . . that sets no text but has a verbal preface, laid out like a short
poem, suggesting how the work is structured and also what its music signifies.
However, unlike Stravinsky, whose In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) was even­
tually paralleled by a text in which Stravinsky recalled receiving news of the
poet’s death—’’all I could do was cry”15—Boulez does not mention Maderna
in his preface, or any personal feelings about his death at the early age of fifty-
three. The note uses the word ceremony three times—”an imaginary ceremony,”
“a ceremony of remembrance,” “ceremony of extinction”—only to counter the
apparently decisive conclusiveness of the last as follows: “a ceremony of extinc­
tion, the ritual of disappearance and survival: in this way are images imprinted
on the musical memory—present/absent, imprinted on uncertainty.”
This formulation seems to suggest that the polarity of disappearance
(extinction, absence) and survival or presence (in the memories of those
who survive) can take a meaningful musical form—what the beginning of the
preface terms “perpetual alternation: a sort of verse and response/’14 None of
Boulez’s works after Rituel mention a person in the tide, but this absence is
countered by the persistent presence of materials that stem either from the
1971 Stravinsky heptachord or from the 1976 hexachord derived from the
surname of the friend and patron whom Stravinsky and Boulez shared, Paul
Sacher. Boulez consistently avoids the explicitness in the title of his grandest
104 ** ARNOLD WEOTTALL

“ceremony of remembrance ”—Pli selon pli: Portrait de Mallarmé-—tiring- perhaps

of the invitation this provided to critics and analysts to translate the musical
discourse into verbal narratives that somehow represent either the poet in
question on examples of his work. The inference is that although music can
never entirely escape from pictorial or poetic associations with its sources, it
is never restricted to those sources: it starts from them to move beyond them.

Boulez on Wagner

Boulez’s various writings about Wagner, which stem mainly from the time of
his most intensive work on that composer as a conductor, do not deal with
the possibility that the Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal all end with ceremonies of
remembrance, reconfiguring material crucial to earlier stages of the drama
to reinforce the celebratory rituals of the endings. As a young avant-gardist
in the 1940s and early 1950s, Boulez preferred splintering to centredness,
taking literally the hyperexpressionistic aggression with which Schoenberg
and Webern had exploded the effusive post-Wagnerian opulence of Austro-
(ierman music around the year 1908. The kind of focused hierarchization—
Kb as freely floating center—that Schoenberg used to counter twelve-tone
heterarchy as early as the Wind Quintet (1923-24) seemed like a betrayal in
1951, a dereliction of the duty of pioneers to preserve their progressive integ­
rity against the seductive siren calls of classicizing fantasy. The argument that
Schoenberg might have been rethinking the nineteenth century’s early mod­
ernist (brays rather than rejecting the early twentieth century’s high modern­
ist in it ialives was no more persuasive to the young Boulez than the hypothesis
that Stravinsky—even at the height of his neoclassical phase in Oedipus Rex or
Persephone—was not on an entirely different wavelength. But in 1951 Boulez
was only at the beginning of involvement in a sociocultural drama that would
shape the music of the century’s second half along lines that saw the trans­
formation of early and high modernist initiatives—centering in large part
on the special psychological qualities provided in vocal music—into a strand
of late modernism able to withstand the turbulent surges of other strands
much more concerned with less subtle acknowledgments of persistent pre-
twentielh-century traditions.
Boulez said that it was his collaboration with Wieland Wagner on a Frankfurt
production of Wozzeck in 1966 (just before Wieland’s unexpected death) that
“drew my attention to a world that I had not been immediately prepared to
regard as important or of present-day interest—the world of opera.”15 He had
already conducted Berg’s opera in Paris in 1963, and the Frankfurt Wozzeck
was preceded by Wieland’s invitation to him to conduct Der /liegende Holländer
or 7annhunser at Bayreuth in 1964. Boulez had said no lo that: he regarded
 MUSIC UNDER THE SIGN OF M O D E R N I S M 2* LOg

these early works as “relatively insignificant.,,L6 But Wieland persisted and, fol­
lowing the death of Hans Knappe rtsbusch in 1965, Boulez agreed to take oyer
as Bayreuth’s chief conductor of Wie land’s long-standing Parsifal production
in the summer of 1966. Haring also conducted Tristan und Isolde with Bayreuth
forces at the Osaka Festival in the spring of L967, he returned to Parsifal at
Bayreuth that summer, and again in 1968 and 1970; he then took on the even
higher-profile task of the centenary Ring cycle in 1976, with its various revivals
in subsequent years. Nor was this the end of Boulez’s commitment to Wagner:
in 2004 and 2005 he returned to Bayreuth for a very different production of
Parsifal by Christoph Schlingensief. It is understandable, then, that some com­
mentators should have singled out this strand of Boulez’s work as a conduc­
tor, not least for opening up the path to Mahler and Bruckner in later years.
And some musicologists have even dared to speculate about how conducting
Wagner might have worked through into BouLez’s own compositions.

Wagner in Boulez: The Roots o f Homage?

Musicologists are as weLl practiced at finding significance in absence as 'well

as in presence: for example, might it be possible that Boulez’s avoidance of
text setting after 1970 is complemented by the presence of musical features
that show some more subtle and allusive kind of homage to Wagner’s ideas
about form and content? Of course, the notion of homage is most explicit in
those later Boulez compositions that name admired or deceased dedicatees
while nevertheless avoiding that element of portraiture set out in Pli selon pli:
Portrait de Mallarmé. In this respect, the use of quote marks around the title
of cummings ist der dichter gently underlines the somewhat accidental nature of
that title, the composer’s way of naming the author of the chosen text for the
benefit of a German-speaking secretary. By contrast, in 1971—the year after
the original version of cummings—the momentous occasion of Stravinsky’s
death was marked by the outline of . . . expiasante/fixe .. ., a work identified by
an archetypal modernist concept involving dialogue and opposition between
relatively stable and distincdy unstable qualities. That title actually derives
from André Breton, and Stravinsky himself is portrayed only by a certain focus
on his initial S, Eb, or Es in German. This “essence,” in the basic form of a
collection of seven pitch classes, then provides the central core for Rituel in
memoriam Bruno Madema; Memoriale, the elaboration of . . . explosante/fixe . . .
for MIDI flute, ensemble, and Live electronics; and finalLy Anthemes 1 and II.
There is also the alternative E b>-based essence of the SACHER hexachord, the
source for Messages(puisse, Dérive Iy Indies, and snr Tmises. Boulez’s wish to hon­
our Stravinsky and Sacher presui nably had nothing to do with their attitudes to
Wagner, though the tact that Sacher’s sewnlirtli birthday fell in 1976, the year
1C)6 ** ARNOLD W H tTTÀLL

of Bayreuth’s centenary Ring cycle, might not have escaped Boulez’s ear as he
set the entire enterprise in motion with those hushed double-bass Ebs.
Of Boulez’s own comments on Wagner, none have attracted more attention
that those that underline—some would say exaggerate—the music’s modern­
istic formal qualities, as in the remark that Parsifal “places the emphasis for
the first time on uncertainty indeterminacy a definite rejection of finality, and
an unwillingness to stabilize musical events before they have exhausted their
potential powers of evolution and renewal.”17
It is worth noting that in this formulation “uncertainty” is not deemed to be
incompatible with continuity, for a music Boulez describes as having the con­
sistency of “perpetual evolution.” Indeed, Boulez’s dialectical tendencies mean
that any apparent preference for the plural requires acknowledgment of the
singular. In his 1972 discussion with Célestin Deliège, which I’ve already quoted
in part, Boulez said this: Wagner “is a composer who has greatly impressed
me with his feeling for large scale organisation in which one can move from
one point to another, passing through very varied landscapes. One of the most
decisive features in Wagner, more so even than his musical language, is this
constant reference of all the sections of a work to a central core; it is a concep-
tion that he stressed and there is no doubt [in my own case] that behind such
literary influences [as Proust and Mallarmé, mentioned by Deliège] it is the
influence of Wagner that is at the root of my own project.”18
It would obviously be convenient to be able to show that the dramatic con-
l lasts between Boulez’s involvement with Wagner and his engagement with
IRGAM achieved a particularly intricate synthesis in the compositions he
worked on during these years, from Eclat and cummings ist der dichter, to Rituel
and Mrssagesquisse. In a 2002 discussion, Nattiez quoted the 1972 conversations
with Deliège in which Boulez said that “one of the most decisive features in
Wagner. . . is this constant reference of all sections of a work to a central core.”
Invited by Nattiez to elaborate, Boulez observed that the year 1966, when he
first conducted Parsifal at Bayreuth, was also the year in which he wrote Eclat,
and between 1971 and 1974 this turned into Éclat/Multiples, described by
Boulez as “a longer work, made from a single gesture.”19
It clearly mattered to Boulez to think of both Parsifal and Eclat/Multiples
as involving a “central core.” But however we might define this core in relation
to Parsifal—as tonal, thematic, or a blend of the two—it is surely very differ­
ent from anything core-like in Boulez’s own music. So how might we usefully
interpret the comparative specifics of two such different musical conceptions
as Parsifal and Éclat/Multiples? Paul Griffiths, writing about the Boulez piece
in a book published in 1978, and not long after hearing it for the first time,
i itulcrlined important differences in both harmony and melody from what had
gone before. In Eclat/Multiples, Griffiths says, there was “a theme of an expres­
sive amplitude unparalleled in Boulez’s music," a theme that is “the melodic
 M USIC U N D ER THE SIGN OF M O D E R N I S M ** 107

quintessence of various features which are to emerge again . . . as the music

proceeds, these including a straining towards polar pitches.* Griffiths even
argues that Boulez’s “harmonic thinking” in Eclat/Multiples involves “open
diatonic leanings/’20 Such comments are a useful reminder that around the
mid-1970s skepticism about the durability and exclusiveness of so-calLed atonaL
and so-called serial composition gained considerable ground. So it might well
be possible to infer from Griffiths’s comments that the kind of flexible conti­
nuity, brought to un paralleled heights of sophistication by Wagner in his music
dramas, and involving elaborate polarities between recurrent and centred
elements and much less stable and rooted materials, had somehow begun to
inspire Boulez to his own version of what is after all an essentially modernis­
tic technical principle. That version advanced from Wagner’s chromaticized,
extended tonality to something closer to the Schoenbergian principle of sus­
pended tonality, where diatonic leanings are contradicted or complemented
by tendencies to heterarchically deployed total chromaticism. In other words,
ParsifaFs kind of thematic and harmonic “central core” is transformed into the
kind of centered, rotational matrix that generates the later Boulez composi­
tions. And although Boulez might have arrived at his own strategy by way of an
appreciation of Stravinsky’s approach to the twelve-tone method, his dialecti­
cal sensibility could have made the notional alignment between Wagner’s early
modernism and Stravinsky’s late-modern serialism all the more appealing.
In a 1996 discussion with Erling Guldbrandseu, not published until 2011,
Boulez freely assented to the proposition that the experience of conducting
Wagner had influenced the way he conceived of musical form. What this means
for Guldbrandsen is that the 1981-82 reworking of the third Improvisation sur
Mallarmé became more continuous, less episodic than the original. Boulez
agreed, adding that another major work, Répons, “could not have been done
without the experience of The RingT^ Here again it is presumably not just
greater length but greater continuity that is involved. It is almost as if a prin­
ciple most closely associated with classicism is being brought in to counter the
wilder excesses of modernism—and just at the time when the doors of IRCAM
were opening onto a new world of electroacoustic exploration that would give
new impetus to Boulez’s propensity for proliferating, multiplicatory strate­
gies. In time this development would also provoke imaginative musicologists
such as Célestin Deliège and Jonathan Goldman to explore harmonic vistas
that built bridges from serialism and atonality to spectralism and even—of all
things—to the bassefondamentale. Deliège’s discussion of the basic chords used
in Répons from this last perspective is surely so provocative precisely because
it is not utterly implausible!22 It is, after all, one of the cherishable ironies of
mid-twentieth-century music history that the foundation of IRCÀM coincided
with die birth of what—as suggested by Hugues Dufourt in 1979—we now call
spectralism. Ciérard <»risey’s Partiels elates from 1975; 1 owe to Liam Cagney and
1C)8 ARNOLD W HITTALL

his researches at the Sacher Stiftung: the information that study of the score of
Pli selon pli led Grisey toward his particular use of “spectral resonance.”23
In 2002 Boulez discussed Wagner—and especially Parsifal—-with Jean-
Jacques Nattiez. I ’ll come back to this discussion shortly but first I want to
comment further on the topic of uncertainty and to move back from Parsifal
to Götterdämmerung. Boulez wrote in 1977 that “the amazing scene between
Alberich and Hagen” that begins act 2 of the final Ring drama, “moves me for
reasons that are probably not directly related to the drama. The composer
seems here to be conducting a kind of dialogue with his own double,” and the
scene involves “a questioning of the future, an uneasiness about generations to
come.” For Boulez, “the whole scene reveals a deep uncertainty about commu­
nication,” an “anguished questioning.”24 These comments seem to anticipate
a musical conception that Boulez would realize some years later—that febrile
dialogue with his own double that the clarinettist in Dialogue de Vombre double
has with his electroacoustic alter ego.

Ceremonies o f Transformation

Just as Boulez’s discussion of Wagner in the mid-1970s moves beyond simplistic

binarism to explore the transformational connectedness of elements initially
predicated on difference, even opposition. So his principal compositional
enterprise of these years, the orchestral Rituel in memoriam Bruno Madema,
remembers and celebrates the now-absent musician by refusing to lapse into
generic transparency—or so, at least, David Metzer’s short discussion of the
piece attempts to suggest. For Metzer this ritual is a shadowy but far from
shapeless structure: ‘Yet the work resists designation as a lament, or any spe­
cific genre. Its resistance, though, makes the lament all the more relevant, for
the piece appears to be designed to prevent a lament from forming.”25 And
this brings Metzer’s position close to suggesting that something is suspended,
in suspense, between what is present in and what is absent from Boulez’s music.
Metzer’s commentary is nothing if not multivalent. He claims that “Rituel
erects the architecture of what could be an impassioned lament.” As with
Ligeti’s later Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, “the texture grows denser, the
melodic lines sprawl, and energy builds to a climax.” However, Metzer goes
on, “The similarities end there. In Rituel the form does not animate a rush­
ing emotionality. . . . This is not to say that Rituel is an inexpressive work. It
has expressive qualities, but they remain difficult to encapsulate. An austere
mournfulness and a rigorous inevitability are two impressions that come to
mind, fliese qualities are achieved through an elaborate structural scheme,
which is elevated in this piece, lifted up to the status of a ceremony.”26 And that
ceremony, Metzer might have added, depends entirely on the calm, control­
ling presence of the master of ceremonies, the coin Ini toi, out Iront.
 MUSIC UNDER TH E SIGN OF M O D E R N I S M ** } Og

Metzer’s risk in his discourse of seeming to he playing ’with words does rather
underline the Mallarméan or Deleuzian poetic/philosophical context in which
Boulez often, seems most comfortably at home. For all the appeal to him of
Proustian narrative, even that might ultimately be too definite, too concrete to
serve as a suitably modern-classic model for his music. But Metzer uses the claim
that Rituel “appears to be designed to prevent a lament from forming* to imply
an absolute contrast between it and the generic explicitness of—say—-Wagner’s
funeral music for Siegfried in Götterdämmerung. It is often claimed that Wagner
alternates in that music between sorrowing lament and the celebration of heroic
achievements.27 In that case, the words with which Boulez prefaces Rituel are
striking in the way their generic references avoid any attempt to identify a once-
living human subject. As noted above, what he describes first in overtly liturgi­
cal terms as a “litany for an imaginary ceremonial,” then as a “ceremonial of
remembrance,” and then as a “ceremonial of death” is also explored in terms
of formal procedures—’’perpetual alternation,” “recurrent patterns changing in
profile and perspective” that embody a “ritual of the ephemeral and the eter­
nal.” And with die ephemeral tending to prioritize absence, and the eternal to
prioritize presence, this polarity reinforces that essential uncertainty referred to
at the end of his preface. There is also the contrast between the idea of perpetual
expansion basic to Boulez’s early vision of avant-garde progressiveness and the
post-Wagnerian, modernist notion of perpetual alternation that Rituel and other,
later Boulez works explore.
In these terms, Rituel is in part a distancing from Wagnerian heroics that
nevertheless acknowledges and celebrates Wagner’s formal, technical subtiety,
defined by John Daverio and other analysts from the 1990s as involving the art
of transition on the one hand and the oppositional forces of “rhetorical dialec­
tics” on the other.28 Rituel might also involve some repudiation of Messiaenic
religiosity—being less to do with any confident expectation of the resurrection
of the dead and a collective heavenly reunion, more a poignant, sometimes
harsh acknowledgment that remembering who and what has been lost is all we
can rely on. Rituel is not without solemnity, but it would he difficult to impute
sublimity to it, or any sense of seeing human achievement as grandly transcen­
dent. Perhaps Boulez’s aim is therefore to transfer that uncertainty about com­
munication that he values in Götterdämmerungs Alberich-Hagen scene to his
own textless and presumably Godless litany

Perpetual Uncertainly

Albe rich’s uncertain attempt to communicate with his son hinges on matters of
inheritance.29 In the mid-1970s, Boulez coukl well have mused on the ironies
of inheritance as well, as he confpared and contrasted the situation at Bayreuth
in tlie altennaili of ihr deaths of Wieland Wagner and Hans Knap per tsbusch
1 1O A R N O L D W H 1T T A 1 L

with the situation in Paris after the death of Georges Pompidou. In the 2002
discussion with Nattiez, when BouLez came back to Wagner, and to Parsifal, it
was identity as inheritance, bringing with it the ceremony of anointing a new
leader, that seized his attention.30 But the ceremony at which Parsifal offici­
ates at the end of the opera is not primarily a memoriaL event. What begins as
the funeral of Titurel and involves the healing of Amfortas as the holy spear
is returned to the knights of the Grail has its own dramatic element of uncer­
tainty: is the status quo being restored, or is there to be a new beginning, even
if the location for that beginning is not itself a new one?
During their 2002 conversation, Nattiez asked Boulez whether Bayreuth was
in his mind as any kind of a model as he made plans for 1RCAM. Yes, along
with the Bauhaus, Boulez replied. But if IRCAM was meant to offer the kind
of progressive compositional pedagogy that Bayreuth had never aspired to, it
could also be seen as a response to an earlier twentieth-century artistic enter­
prise with strong French connections. Fifty years earlier, France had hosted a
radical and decisive alternative to Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian Germanic
musical culture, the Ballets Russes, celebrated above all for its productive
association with Stravinsky. The Ballets Russes itself expired with Diaghilev in
1929. Yet Stravinsky’s remarkable advance after 1918 from folklore with a rit­
ualistic aura—Le sacre, Les noces—into dramatic worlds that (unlike Wagner)
dealt directly with ancient Greek materials, ultimately led to the strange case
of the melodrama Perséphone (1933-34). Tamara Levitz has recently explored
IWséphone in depth as a kind of supremely un-Wagnerian collaborative work
Iliai nevertheless sets up especially significant resonances with post-Wagnerian
( iermanic cultural phenomena, in what Levitz defines as “a fractured musical
Ion n that resembles the ‘field of ruins’ of [Walter] Benjamin’s allegories.”31
benjamin, of course, was a very Paris-oriented thinker—especially after 1933.
I .cvil/’s analysis can be read as the ultimate validation of the kind of anti-
rxpicssioiiist st rand of high modernism that, pedagogically, meant much more
to Nadia Boulanger than to Messiaen or Boulez. Perséphone—in some ways an
oblique riposte to Parsifal—is one of those middle-period Stravinsky works that
Houle/, avoided. The evolution of his own musical life and work did not lead to
any rapprochement with ancient Greek or any other mythic-dramatic texts—
once he had moved beyond practical tasks such as the provision of incidental
music for the Oresteia, as performed by the Renaud-Barrault theater company
in 1955. Freed from the prospects of mirroring the dynamics of either tragedy
or comedy in texted form, Boulez in the early IRCAM years might have been
tin* more intrigued by the possibility of moving beyond formal fractures into a
latc-modernist version of the most complex and sophisticated early modernist
structure—that found in Wagner’s “perpetual alternation” of connection and
disconnection. This principle of formation, as explored by Schoenberg and
be Ig during the years between 1908 and 1914, had the added attraction of
 M USIC UN D ER THE S I G N OF M O D E R N I S M L11

demoting Alfred Lorenz’s AAB and ABA form plans from, their alleged preemi­
nence as bearers of the single, constantly functioning “sec ret” of Wagnerian
formal design.
Boulez’s form plans, at Least from . . . explosemte-ßxe . .. and Rituel onward,
can be interpreted less as mimicry of the Wagnerian balance between the two
alternatives and more as a two-stage transformation, with “rhetoricaL dialectics”
governing the higher-level successions, and the art of transition working within
the various subsections—thereby promoting the evolving continuities so typi­
cal of Boulez’s many moto perpétue toccatas and their contrasting recitatives. It
is as if (in Nattiez’s terms) Boulez forgets Wagner’s subject matter but remem­
bers his aesthetics of structure while transforming those aesthetics to suit his
own post-tonal and serial preferences. Just as Stravinsky celebrated Debussy’s
formal radicalism in Symphonies of Wind Instruments, rather than aiming to pro­
duce a portrait of Debussy in sound, so Boulez celebrates late-modern musical
vitality and memorability by rooting his thought in memories of the early-mod-
ernist Wagner that remain at a safe distance from the specifics of the person
and his distinctive musical surface. The “amnesia” Boulez claims to praise is
therefore more a matter of distancing than of exclusion. The avant-garde fan­
tasy of a perpetual present is never sustainable without commitment to much
more exclusive procedures than Boulez ever seriously countenanced. To this
extent, he made a crucial contribution to the survival and even the prolifera­
tion of late modernism in the early twenty-first century.

Immersion or Alienation?

Not only has the persistence and diversification of the modernist aesthetic
over the past two centuries not led to the eclipse of vocal music but it has also
proved hospitable to developments in musicology that focus on words about
music by the leading writers of the period. In a recent example of this genre,
Josh Epstein (a professor of English rather than of music) discusses “musi­
cal culture and the modernist writer,” finding his main title in E. M. Forster’s
description—via the narrator of Howard 'sEnd—of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
as “the most sublime noise ever to penetrate the ear of man.”32 “Noise” here
lacks connotations of the negative, the ugly, signifying rather “sounds resem­
bling speech without actual words” (as in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary),
or “sounds expressing sympathy, a reaction, feelings, etc. without actual words”
(Chambers Dictionary). Much of what Epstein concerns himself with displays a
form of modernism that requires “the destruction of the sublime in art” (p.
226), as in Satie’s Parade, where “the interplay between the auditory and the
visual creates not a Wagnerian synthesis but a proudly incoherent clash of sen­
sory fields, not to absorb the audience but to annoy it” (p. liW). This follows
\\C
À S» ARNOLD W H ITTAL1

on from Epstein’s basic distinction: “Where Wagner aimed to immerse the

audience in a fusion of poetry, drama, music, and visual. spectacle, modern­
ists (Cocteau and Satie being salient examples) often responded by emphasiz­
ing discordance rather than synthesis” (p. 37). Some would claim that many
present-day producers of Wagner’s music dramas see a desirability in achieving
comparable effects, sometimes through the conviction that the “Wagnerian
synthesis” was always something of a fantasy anyway, along with the assumption,
which Epstein seems to share, that Wagner himself was in no sense modernist.
I Ie does not consider the possibility that the “total work of art” is more likely to
balance differences than magically to merge them into a seamless whole, but
to argue this case is not to say that all modernist music lacks sublimity.
It might certainly seem surprising for Forster to be thought of as a mod­
ernist when Wagner is not. Epstein notes, “For the most part, until his col­
laboration with Eric Crozier on the libretto of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd
( 1951), Forster seemed to involve himself only cursorily with new music; but
(wen before then he has an acutely modernist sense of the pressures that
music exerted on literary form” (p. 234). Epstein at least concedes that
“Wagner is among the most intensely contradictory figures in Western art,”
whose “idealism never loses contact with the fleshliness of the body” (pp.
59, 60). Epstein later observes that a close reading of T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land
shows (hat the modernist poet “hears in Parsifal a grasping for the sublime
dial tries to sever voice from body, only to find itself anchored to those bod­
ies’ lingering materiality” (p. 90). Epstein references Adorno here, but not
(iary Tomlinson’s related thoughts on ParsifaH dealings with “high capital­
ism.”'™Nor does Epstein engage with Tomlinson’s very last paragraph, which
begins as follows: “What seems worthy of note is that Britten’s singing ghosts
I in The I urn of the Screw] place his work in the mainstream of operatic mod­
el nism reaching back to Parsifal Just as the overweening solidity of Wagner’s
objects —of the spear and the grail—make claptrap of their claims to divine
powers, so the uncanniness of Britten’s ghosts does not survive their vocal
assertion of subjective autonomy.”34
Epstein’s final sentences are much more upbeat than Tomlinson’s, but no
less open to critique on grounds of rhetorical exaggeration. At the end of
Billy Budd, “Forster and Britten channel the desires and ruptures of moder­
nity into sublime noise: forms of music and writing whose aspirations toward
formal coherence remain critical of their own fractures. The end of Budd, at
the end of what we call modernism, reveals the resolution of fragmentation
into unity, dissonance into consonance, to be no resolution at all” (p. 278).
No “resolution” in classical terms, indeed: but no “end of . . . modernism”
either—unless postmodernism, defined as truly antimodernist, can be shown
to have begun around 1950. Yet Epstein’s strategy does not require him to
lay down any useful context for the Britten—Forsier-( Iro/ier enterprise; and
 M USIC UNDER THE SIGN OT M O D E R N I S M l 13

■without that, the character of Billy BudcTs engagement with both -words and
noise remains opaque. 0

From. Aide burgh to IRC AM

It was during the autumn of 1948 that Britten decided, after discussions with
Forster, that his next opera would be Billy Budd. It has been a typically hec­
tic year, with the launch in June of the Aldeburgh Festival, the very opposite
of Bayreuth in that it involved no new, specially built performance venue and
was not intended primarily to promote its founder-composer’s own work. More
than sixty years later, the differences between Aldeburgh and Bayreuth are even
more marked. Most of the Festival events do not take place in Aldeburgh at all
but a few miles away at Snape, where the various performance spaces are in
regular use throughout the year. That said, the Aldeburgh Festival remains as
unthinkable without Britten, forty years after his death, as the Bayreuth Festival
does without Wagner. The fact that both festivals enshrine the name of a place
rather than of a person cannot mask the core association and what that associa­
tion stands for. Britten’s modestiy expressed desire to be “useful”36 is trumped
by Wagner’s much more Svengalian ambitions, but both in their different ways
desired to exercise control and were duly conflicted about that desire. And
although there has never been any serious possibility of other composers’ rep­
resentation at Bayreuth, the absence of exclusivity at Aldeburgh made for some
awkward encounters during Britten’s lifetime. When Boulez made his first and
only appearance there as composer and conductor at the age of eighty-five in
2010, commentators were not slow to note the ironies. One of the few British
composers to win Boulez’s approval, Harrison Birtwistle, had early experience
of Britten’s unease with his kind of radicalism when his opera Punch and Judy
was premiered in the Jubilee Hall in 1968.37 Boulez’s visit in 2010 only seems
to have become a practicable proposition when Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who
had performed in the Ensemble Intercontemporain under Boulez’s direction,
became the Aldeburgh Festival’s artistic director in succession to the Wagner
(and Boulez) skeptic, Thomas Adès.38
The story of IRCAM’s early years, as documented by Georgina Born, does
not suggest that Boulez was any less difficult as an institutional figurehead than
Britten was at Aldeburgh.39 The nature of the institutions, and the pressures
on those who are primarily composers and performers, not arts administrators,
made this inevitable, and for such high-profile personalities, being “useful”
to complex institutional structures, necessarily involving people of differing
temperaments and predispositions, is fraught with challenges. Even during
Britten's lifetime, the irony of someone's proclaiming social reLevance and util­
ity while writing operas and other vocal works that dealt predominantly with
114 ** A R N O L D W H1TTALL

misfits and the alienated, and devising a musical styLe especially sensitive to
instabilities and equivocations, was ’widely observed. The ceLebration of differ­
ence was to be avoided, simply because of its unsparing depiction. Yet Britten
and Boulez both became pillars of the high-art establishment. Britten’s special
associations with Aldeburgh and Englishness were offset by the ways he found
of adapting aspects of the gamelan and the Noh play—bringing East Asian oth­
erness to bear on the culture of East Anglia.40 And Britten, with more affinity
for Verdi than for Wagner, found in the extended tonality whose provenance
was essentially that of the early modernist nineteenth century a legitimacy and
a si ill unfulfilled potential that helped to justify his own relatively conservative
style between 1930 and 1976. Boulez celebrated the fathers of French liter­
ary and musical high modernism—Mallarmé and Debussy, in particular—but
nothing ran deeper in his experience than the Germanic, Wagnerian world of
early modernism. Above all, it was the special formal flexibility of that world
that Boulez found so productive, and that helped to extend his distinctive con­
tribution to the survival of musical modernism into the twenty-first century.

Notes

1. 'fhe concept of developing variation is discussed in several of Arnold

Schoenberg’s texts, including The Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed.
Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (London: Faber, 1967) and Coherence,
Counterpoint, Instrumentation, Construction in Form, ed. Severine Neff, trans.
Charlotte M. Cross and Severine Neff (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1994).
2. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, “Varèse’s Density 21.5,” Music Analysis 1, no. 3 (1982):
336.
3. Jonathan Goldman, The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2-6, 138-48.
4. James FFepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and
Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006).
5. See Richard Cohn, Audacious Euphony. Chromaticism and the Triad's Second
Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Steven Rings, Tonality and
'Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
6. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, The Battle of Chronos and Orpheus: Essays in Applied Musical
Semiology, trans. Jonathan Dunsby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
177-89.
7. Music and Narrative since 1900, ed. Michael L. Klein and Nicholas Reyland
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 2013) is the most
substantial recent exploration of this topic.
 M U SIC U N D ER THE SIGN Of M ODERNISM ^ L tà

8. For these lecture materials see especially Boulez, Points de Repère II: Regards
sur autrui and III, Leçons de musique, ed. Jean Jacques Nattiez (Paris: Christian
Bourgois, 2005).
9. ‘“Messiaen . . . does not compose, he juxtaposes.” BouLez, “Proposais/’ in
Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen WaLsh (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991), 49.
10. See, for example, Pierre Boulez: Conversations with Cêlestin Deliège (London:
Eulenberg Books, 1976), 23-26.
11. Pierre Boulez, Orientations: Collected Writings, trans. Martin Cooper (London:
Faber & Faber, 1986), 32.
12. Boulez, Orientations, 202.
13. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London:
Faber 8c Faber, 1959/1979), 79.
14. The English version is that printed in the score, UE159941, Universal Edition
(London, 1975).
15. Boulez, Orientations, 244.
16. Dominique Jameux, Pierre Boulez, trans. Susan Bradshaw (London: Faber
8c Faber, 1991), 134. See also Catherine Steinegger, Pierre Boulez et le théâtre
(Wavre: Mardaga, 2012), 278-79.
17. Boulez, Orientations, 254.
18. Boulez, Conversations with Cêlestin Deliège, 52.
19. JeanJacques Nattiez, “Wagner through the Looking Glass of Boulez: An
Interview with Jean-Jacques Nattiez,” Wagner Spectrum 1, no. 2 (2006): 184-85.
20. Paul Griffiths, Bonlez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 56-57.
21. Erling E. Guldbrandsen, “Pierre Boulez in Interview, 1996 (III),” Tempo 257
( 2011 ): 20.
22. Cêlestin Deliège, “Atonal Harmony: From Set to Scale,” in Contemporary Music:
Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Max Paddison and Irène Deliège
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 5L-76.
23. Liam Cagney, “On Vagues, Chemins, le Souffle (1970-72) and the Early Use of
Resonance Chords in Grisey’s Oeuvre,” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 28
(2015): 49-54.
24. Boulez, Orientations, 291.
25. David Metzer, Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 167-69.
26. Metzer, Musical Modernism, 169.
27. See for example, Christopher Wintie, “The Numinous in Götterdämmerungin
Reading Opera, ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (Princeton, NJ Princeton
University Press, 1988), 200—34.
28. See John Daverio, Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology
(New York, Schirmer, 1993), 197—208; and Arnold WhittalL, “Criticism and
Analysis: Current Perspectives/’ in The Cambridge Companion to Wagner., ed.
Thomas S. Grey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 276-89.
29. The British composer Michael Finnissy (1>. 1946) also references this scene,
and uses a quotation from Wagner’s setting of the line “the eternal power—
who will inherit it?*' in his magnum opus Ior solo piano, 77re. History ofPhotography
1l6 S* ARNOLD W HITTALL

in Sound (1995-2001). See Arnold 'Whittall, “Michael Finnissy’s Instrumental

Music Drama,” Musical Times 155, no. 1928 (2014): 71-91.
‘40. Nattiez, “Wagner through the Looking Glass of Boulez/’ 187-91.
81. Tamara Levitz, Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 369.
32. Josh Epstein, Sublime Noise: Musical Culture and the Modernist Writer (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 234.
33. Gary Tomlinson, Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999), 140.
34. Tomlinson, Metaphysical Song, 156.
35. For an exhaustive account of the Billy Budd opera in the context of Forster’s
work, see Hanna Rochlitz, Sea-Changes: Melvilk-Forster-Britten: The Story of Billy
Budd and its Operatic Adaptation (Gottingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen,
2012 ) .
36. See Britten, “On Receiving the First Aspen Award/’ in Britten on Music, ed. Paul
Kildea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 262.
37. See Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber Sc
Faber, 1992), 282-83.
38. See Thomas Adès: Full of Noises: Conversations with Tom Service (London: Faber Sc
Faber, 2012).
39. Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez and the Institutionalization
of the Musical Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
40. See Mervyn Cooke, Britten and the Far East (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press,
1998).
 Part Three

Esthesic Excursions
 Chapter Seven

Musical Borrowings in the

Works o f Bruno Maderna
R o ss ana D a lm o n te

Musical Structures

from the point of view of the listener, musical structures are objects distin­
guishable from other structures; from the point of view of the composer,
they are the product of previous generations’ reflections on music, a link
that makes comprehension between generations possible and that allows the
expansion through time, place and genre of what is perceived as an element
of a particular tradition. If a musical structure typical of a repertoire that is
remote in space and time is utilized in a different context, its presence can
achieve different results, since in the field of aesthetic perception and assess­
ment the subjective parameters of the receivers—not only as single individuals
hut also as a group participating in a cultural area—are a non-negligible part
of the communicative power of a cultural product. Moreover, every new com­
position is based on structures, that is to say musical forms, that emerge from
previous generations. Anew piece of music is like a constructive game in which
Iried and tested “forms'’ and practices are combined with newly invented ones,
.nid in which composers’ creativity is expressed by their talent for combination
II inch more than by their capacity to create completely new forms.1
When hearing a piece for the first time, the listener likes both to feel at
home—that is, able to recognize the forms and the ways they are combined—
.uid to be surprised to encounter unexpected forms or new combinatory
mimions. The composer—who is well aware of these communication mecha-
niftniH—sometimes uses structures willi particular cultural connotations, asso-
1 1,1 ted with faraway eras or tmdil ions, in this combinatorial game. Such objets
rtutuM:are rarely quoted in tin* clic I florin they take in their original context;
120 & ROSSANA DALMONTE

more often they are only hinted at, or more or less precisely imitated, so
that the perception of their “alien” character in the new context, and the
significance of their “alienation” can be very different. Moreover, some objets
trouvés can adopt the grammatical rules of a particular styLe, that is, the rules
necessary to give a particular form to a sequence without precisely coopting
the object itself.
Among the possible reactions of listeners to the presence of a musical form
with particularly strong connotations, one could include those in which the
perception of a mixture can give rise to different and even opposite reactions:

• The “alien” form is not perceived as such and therefore does not carry
any particular meaning to the listener.
• It is not immediately recognized, but the listener notices something
particular about it and becomes more attentive.
• It is perceived as being different, but not as belonging to a particular
musical culture.
• It is perceived only by people familiar with the tradition or the genre
from which the borrowed form has been taken, and the reaction is
often positive.
• It is not perceived as a form because it is so widespread in a particular
culture that it loses its personality and becomes part of the very body of
that music, so that it does not stimulate any reaction.

The musical structures discussed above become perceptible only when

Ihey are very much modified. Take, for instance, the harmonic sequence sub-
dominant-dominant-tonic, a syntactic model that indicates closure through
many centuries of the European history of art music and popular music. It is
m oomnipresent, that it has almost lost its identity, and listeners rarely and only
in particular cases perceive its presence. But even if the dominant region is
sometimes enlarged in comparison with the other elements of the sequence,
and the links between the three harmonic functions become extremely loose,
all listeners notice the discrepancy between what is perceived and what was
supposed to be, between the known form and its manipulation, even if it is not
possible to guess what kinds of reactions this awareness will arouse.
On the contrary, a musical form very much characterized by an idiolect
bound to the history of a country or of a musical genre clearly reveals its links
with the tradition of which it is an element, and usually resists through time,
without passing into other genres. “The synchronic aspect—that is the pas­
sage into the present of a musical form from one individual to another, from
one group to another—is usually named ‘transmission’; ‘tradition’ is used to
describe the continuity of a human fact through time, the making topical of
something in the consciousness of ensuing generations.”^
 W O R K S OF B R U N O M A D E R N A 8* 121

A musical form has become topical foi a particular genie and culture when
it has been present in that particular culture for a long Lime, but usually it can­
not survive in a different genie. When the particular melodic profiles of, for
example, a Venetian gondola song or the Swiss “Ranz des caches” are taken
out of their context and utilized in another stylistic situation, the result is still
distinctive. In his 20 IS book Analyses et interpretations de la musique, Jean-Jacques
Nattiez clearly demonstrated that the meLodies that have passed from their
original musical setting into the shepherd’s meLody in Wagner’s Tristan und
Isolde retain traces of their Long journey through Literature, painting, and music
itself, but that they continue to bear meanings associated with their history.3
Nattiez arrived at this conclusion after rigorously testing students exposed to
the excerpt. When asked to indicate some extramusical content for the shep­
herd’s song, their suggestions clearly related to memories embedded in the
borrowed melodies.*4 Nattiez’s various analytical procedures illustrate from
many points of view what remains of the original forms and how the proximity
to new forms, and the different aims of the global new form, have modified the
original model. He maintains that the result is not a biological heritage, the
continuation of a tradition, but a mostly silent transplantation that introduces
various meanings into the Wagnerian world. The transplantation of musical
forms into other contexts is always deliberate, but its presence is noticed to
varying degrees depending on the familiarity of the audience with the culture
from which the material has been borrowed. In any instance of transplanta­
tion, both the composer who borrowed the alien material and the audience
who recognize it are placing credence in the capacity of music to transmit
extramusical meanings from one culture to another.
The content transmitted can be vague, as when a listener reports, “This mel­
ody reminds me of a peasant tune”; or it can recall some feature of a familiar
melody. In either case, in order to implement transmission the composer must
be sure of two things: first, that the audience is by and large familiar with the
particular musical aspects of the cuLture from which the material is borrowed;
second, that the audience possesses the appropriate music-listening skills. This
is not the place to discuss different ways of Listening to music, but it is impor­
tant to keep in mind a neglected truth: just as not everybody has the aptitude
and knowledge to compose, sing, or pLay music, so not everybody has a talent
for listening to it, or better, not everybody has had the opportunity to become
familiarized with listening to a particular type of music. Similarly, not every­
body is capable of understanding the messages conveyed by a particular piece
of music that may emanate from a different musical culture.
The task of Listening is particularly difficult because it touches the very
heart of the problem: What is music? Listening to music and being prepared
to receive its messages depends on one’s ideas about music. This fundamental
question has received different answers over die ages and was discussed deeply
122 ** ROSSANA DALMONTE

throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.5 Before music semiology

established the theory of musical signs, there were different positions on the
problem of instrumental, or pure music, music without lyrics and unaccom­
panied by dancing or acting.0 On the one hand, theorists such as Hanslick
tried to mythologize the materials of music, its structures and its norms; on
the other, following Kant, some writers sought to replace the concept of mate­
rial by “Idea,” listening to music as a contemplation of the musical object in
purely aesthetic terms. Program music, championed by Liszt, Wagner, and the
New German School, aimed to highlight both aspects, considering music from
both its technical and its expressive sides, because they believed in the capacity
of music to embody significations from the external world, from human prac­
tices as well as from aspects of nature and artistic expression (literature, poetry,
paintings, etc.). Later, avant-garde musicians—one could date this from the
futurists—wanted to remove music from its metaphysical pedestal, canceling
the distinctions between noble and popular arts, pure and impure, mundane
and ultramundane artistic expressions, so that in some compositions of the
twentieth century (especially in the first half) transmission and transplantation
became increasingly frequent.
Sometimes this transplantation involved the migration of complete topical
melodic forms (for example, the borrowing of a well-known tune, its actual
quotation in whole or in part), and sometimes they are less obvious, involving
only some aspects of a particular style, or the use of special topical techniques,
such as a reminiscence of Renaissance contrapuntal voice leading in a contem­
porary vocal piece. In some cases, the borrowed material is a complete form,
hearing, for instance, the typical traits of a Viennese waltz. In other cases a
reminiscence is awakened by a short sequence of notes with a distinctive rhyth­
mic profile. In all cases, in all their possible variants, the proximity of the bor­
rowed musical forms to different historical and cultural connotations enriches
Ihe referential spectrum and multiplies the possible interpretations of a piece
into which these atypical musical forms are transplanted. The identification of
musical forms and sensitivity to their cultural content are important keys to the
interpretation of music of all times, but especially of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries.

Folk and Learned

Over the course of centuries and until roughly the middle of the twentieth
century, the dichotomy between folk and learned in all forms of expression was
one of the many different markers of class difference in both rural and urban
contexts. The middle classes usually tried to imitate* the forms of expression of
the leading strata of society hut rarely achieved a dear identity in their output.
 WORKS o r B R U X O MAD ERK A ** 12 $

In the past, social and artistic levels tended toward separatlon and the pursuit
of distinct languages in life as in art (remembering-, though, that “the past” is a
different concept chronologically in all societies). Occasions for meeting were
rare and sometimes dependent on the calendar; Carnival. time was one of the
few occasions in which social roles were ostensibly reversed. This separation
allowed the birth of artistic forms among the lower cLasses with precise con­
notations that the upper classes would often incorporate into their own reper­
toires (for, example, the migration into learned genres of fairy tales, tunes, and
rural dance forms). In works of art, class differences did not always reflect con­
flict but could produce hybrid art forms. In more recent times, not only is the
social gap between classes smaller in many societies than In the past (despite
the widening wealth gap recently demonstrated by economists such as Thomas
Piketty) but the growing presence of the mass media enlarges the limits of cog­
nitive opportunity and tends to homogenize the cultural level, or at least to
make differences a matter of preference with respect to genre. For an Italian
example, which is higher or lower, the sophisticated instrumentation of a San
Remo Festival song, or the differently sophisticated musical works presented at
the Venice Biennale?
Consequently, the concept of folk in recent times is usually connected with
the idea of the past, with some degree of otherness and often the connotation
of purity. Even if the romantic view of folk art as the manifestation of society’s
common values is now long outdated, nevertheless a folk art form, verbal or
musical, is often interpreted as authentic expression, despite emanating from
individuals with individual emotions and beliefs. Perhaps because folk poems
or songs rarely exist in only one version but vary according to place and time,
the implicit idea of an independent life, pure and free, endures in folk-art
forms as distinct from the outputs of recognized poets and musicians.
Despite such general features, it has long been recognized that folk songs
are not a single category but can be divided into at least three main types:

Songs composed by an anonymous popular singer for members of the

community;
Songs composed for the community by an expert musician;
Songs adopted by a community but not composed for it?

Other hybrid types can be observed. Take, for instance, the most popular
Venetian song, “La biondina in gondoleta,” which was composed by Johann
Simon Mayr on lyrics by Anton Maria Lamberti, for Marina Que rim Benzon,
a Venetian noblewoman who was famous for her lively personal life. Nothing
could be more learned and more personalized than this song, but it has been
regarded as a folk melody by the Venetian population and indeed globally for
more than two centuries.
124 ** ROSSANA DALMONTE

This exampLe highlights the importance of social significance, that is, the
fact of a community’s acknowledging a piece of music, or even a whole reper­
toire, as originating in another culture. If a musical society confines itself to
the mythic roots of its cultural ancestors or to what is produced only within its
territory, it becomes ever poorer. In fact, in the everyday musical life of a com­
munal, traditional heritage, genuinely local traits are few, and their identifica­
tion tends to be a nationalistic pursuit amounting to political propaganda. It
is preferable and more in keeping with social reality to replace the notion of
what, is familial with that of social relevance. The social relevance of a piece of
music, or of a repertoire, depends not only on the music itself but on its con­
text ualization in a concrete spatiotemporal frame. If, for instance, you were to
ban for political reasons Webern’s music, or jazz, both become musical signs
of political resistance, an opposition that has nothing to do with the original
meaning of each of these repertoires.
Another widely rooted half-truth, persisting until at least the middle of
(he last century, was the political or nationalistic interpretation of folk songs.
Because they were presumed to be an expression of the people, incorporat­
ing them into a learned piece of music could mean choosing to take part in
(he beliefs and aims of the lower echelons of society in the class struggle. One
can refer to half-truths rather than shameless lies because the false assump­
tion does offer some real value. One of the main distinguishing features of
folklore of many different provenances may well be the simplicity of its for­
mal construction; bringing these simple formal constructions into a complex
piece of art music can add something. It effectively implies a desire to change
one’s own language, to search for innovation, to explore new paths by means
ol unusual material. In this sense, remembering that folk music was a way for
composers (o declare their capacity to overcome a traditional high language
(hat (hey fel( was incapable of expressing a contemporaneous mode of thought
and expression.
A good example of this phenomenon is Schoenberg’s quotation of the folk
song “() du lieber Augustin” in his Second String Quartet, op. 10 (1907-8).
The year 1907 was a difficult one for the composer: Mahler—his only sup­
porter in the Viennese musical society—left the city, and Schoenberg remained
isolated and unsure of his own identity. It was the year of his conversion to
Protestantism in order to become a supposedly true German. In this context,
the* folk song corresponded to his crisis in various respects: in its poetical con­
tent (the last line of the song is “Alles ist hin!”—’’Everything is over!”), in sug­
gesting an escape from the limits of contemporary musical grammar and as a
.sign of personal freedom with regards to musical choice. The quotation is rec­
ognizable, but only in the manner of a meta-sign, that is, as a sign that refers to
another sign, because it is clearly unrelated to its actual musical context, in the
same way that Schoenberg, as a Jew, felt himself to he an alien in the society in
 WORKS or BRUNO MADERNA. 1 3 5

which he was living. This linguistic procedure was antagonistic to the listening
habits of middle-class audiences, and therefore took on apolitical meaning.8
In this case, the parallelism between a Linguistic procedure and political
meaning had a personal motivation, but in general the use of folkloric mate­
rial in art music gained its social impact as a consequence of the parallelism
between lower-class struggles for the recognition of their rights and the con­
flict between the contemporary sensibilities of a composer and the rules pre­
scribed by tradition for composition: in this perspective, trying to overcome
learning by utilizing aspects of folk music corresponded to the political con­
flict of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. In other words, new solutions
in composition (especially the presence of folkloric material) matched innova­
tions in social conflicts, whether the composer was aware of it or not, that is,
even if the composer's avowed aim was of a purely artistic nature.
But not all shared this stance: some even considered the discussion about
the link between politics and foLklore, and between politics and Linguistic
innovation, irrelevant It suffices to quote the position taken by György Ligeti
in Darmstadt (1972), commenting on presentations by Carl Dahlhaus and
Reinhold Brinkmann: ‘T think it’s completely irrelevant to speak about the
political progressiveness or reactionary position of New Music. It is not pro­
gressive in a political sense nor is it regressive, just as mathematics is neither
progressive nor regressive. It emanates from a different place.”9
In reality, recent history had demonstrated the exact opposite, when, in the
years leading up to World War II, the rulers of the various European totalitar­
ian regimes condemned compositional innovation, which resulted in “degen­
erate music,* and in general required artists to produce, for the supposed sake
of the people, only what were in fact hedonistic and state-controlled art forms.
Between these two extremes, practitioners of New Music generally
adhered to positions similar to those of such “enlightened” critics as
Theodor Adorno, who believed in a parallelism between the internal orga­
nization of works of music and the organization of society in different lev­
els. Consequently, he sometimes described the organization of musical
sounds as akin to political activity.
Some artists at a certain time freeLy and consciously chose to posit a pre­
cise link between art and society. Of the Italians, I would mention Luigi
Dallapiccola, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, Armando Gentilucci, Giacomo
Manzoni, and Luca Lombardi, but one could name Béla Bartok, Hanns Eisler,
or Dmitry Shostakovich and others throughout Europe. For these artists, “social
engagement bound to a particular concept of life and culture couLdn’t be sepa­
rated from the elaboration of new compositional techniques.”10 For them, the
distressful perception of die Longstanding crisis of musical language was not
only difficult in itself but also had a more general meaning: it indicated the dis­
solution of the totalizing idea that in a particular era only one way of making
 2(5 ** R O SSA N A DALM ONTE

music was possible. It was not the dissolution of the tonal system at the begin­
ning of the twentieth century that mattered most to them but its potential as a
model. Not only was tonality no longer able to express the feelings of people in
the contemporary world but no system of rules (not even dodecaphony or seri-
alism) could claim to be the future unique and ideal solution for every expres­
sive need. This position was not an invitation to eclecticism without ideas but
rather the refusal to bind a musical work to any single system of composition
rules. The multiplicity of compositional solutions in the music of the twentieth
century was a concrete fact that needed to become a theoretical principle, as
was the titular aim of Armando Gentilucci’s book Beyond the Avant-garde: An
Invitation to Multiplicity.11 Gentilucci did not advocate any particular type of
homogeneous compositional behavior but rather a syncretism that sought to
merge social contradictions or even incompatibilities through the force of the
c reative imagination.
And here again—even though not explicitly declared—in a small group
of Italian composers we find evidence of Antonio Gramsci’s “optimistic will,”
the steady intent to resist a general tendency to forswear noble passions in the
name of “general economic silliness” and the will to work within the living
music of a particular society.12
Luigi Nono, Armando Gentilucci, and Giacomo Manzoni worked for the
Italian Communist Party (PCI); the older Luigi Dallapiccola, Bruno Maderna,
and Luca Lombardi, for contingent reasons, moved away from it. But all of
them had an idea of the “people” in Marx’s sense, even if, as composers, they
did not share the aesthetics of the priority of content over the value of artis­
tic expression but tried on the contrary to adapt the artistic to the political
Irasons lor music making. Moreover, they tried to mold pan-national ideas
ln Ihe specifically Italian way of life, rethinking the role of music history—
the learned and the folkloric—in Italian society of the mid-twentieth century,
because* they maintained that after the Second World War artists could no
longer withdraw themselves from the influence of everyday life but must find
Iheir place in that context.

Music Borrowings in Maderna’s Works o f the 1950s

In the last years of the 1940s and at the beginning of the 1950s, Bruno
Maderna’s engagement in the renewal of musical language emerged under
three different and seemingly contradictory aspects: (1) the intention to mas­
ter all the structural potential of dodecaphonic technique; (2) the tendency to
view it within a broader serial theory; and (3) the desire not to sever all links
with tradition. The first and the third of those points art* personal features
of Maderna’s compositional career, both of them linked to his biography; the
 WORKS OF B R U N O MADERPfA ** 1 2 7

second he shared with the main proponents of New Music. Maderna never
explained his project in essays or other explicit declarations not only because—
as he wrote in a letter to Wolfgang Steinecke in Darmstadt—’’I ’m able to write
music but unfortunately not words”15 but also because he did not Like to be
involved in theoretical discussions, often polemical, as many of his colleagues
did. However, a few interviews and letters suffice to demonstrate his awareness
of the new compositional choices of Western art music, from the beginning
until his untimely death.14
He never conceived of twelve-tone technique as an abstract combinatorial
game, nor did it appear in his works as the manifestation of some inevitable
childhood malady. On the contrary, he considered those seemingly mathemati­
cal operations as indispensable agents of sound quality and musical form. One
may speculate that dodecaphonic technique was never “pure” in Maderna’s
works because of the extent to which he personalized his compositional influ­
ences; moreover, we must not forget that Maderna was the oldest of the young
Italian composers to have had the seminal experience of the Wiener Schule.
Some critics declared that Maderna’s was an Italian style of dodecaphony, in
the wake of Dallapicola’s example. Yet it is impossible to demonstrate this
hypothesis through detailed analysis. Maderna’s dodecaphonic freedom con­
tinues to trouble analysts trying to identify his compositional processes—which
is a music analytical rather than an inherently musical matter. In fact, early on
he felt inclined to serial elaboration in all dimensions of musical language,
which he would transform through a particular set of operations he called
mutazioni The large quantity of precompositional sketches he wrote particu­
larly for the works dating between 1948 and 1960 clearly attests to his engage­
ment in compositional research, busy though he was as a conductor and—in
the 1950s—also as an administrator. In his letters to and from Darmstadt,
documenting the challenge of preparing concerts, seminars, and presenta­
tions—often with meager budgets and few professional instrumentalists—one
senses the living atmosphere of those years at the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik,
when Maderna, Luciano Berio, Nono, and Aldo Clementi, together with other
young musicians from all over Europe and the Americas, contributed in differ­
ent capacities to the development of the musical project born in Darmstadt,
which was also considered a social one.
The first work in which Maderna clearly shows his urge to find new com­
positional solutions with reference to musical material taken from other rep­
ertoires is the Fantasia e Fuga per due pianoforti (1948), which was premiered
in Darmstadt (1949) under the title B.Æ.C.H. Variationen für zwei Klariere and
was also known as Fantasie und Fuge über B,A. C.if.15 These two titles reveal the
main distinguishing trait of the piece through the indication of the extensive
and—one could say serial—use of' the four-note motif. A close relationship
with the classical tradition is dite not only to the elaboration of the famous
128 ** ROSSAPvTA D A L M O N T E

;icroilym but also to the quotation of the last chorale prelude on which J. S.
Bach worked on shortly before his death. While at least three voices of the
two pianos weave an intricate and chromatic texture, one voice quotes the
simple, diatonic melodic line of the chorale, above which Maderna inscribes
Ihe words: “Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit / O Gott, und dich demütig
bin.: / Wend dein genädig Angesicht / Von mir betrübtem Sünder nicht.” But
despite diese clear references to Bach (in the tide, in die musical material, and
in the quotation), Fantasia eFuga is not a neoclassical piece in the manner of
Ilie many works composed in the interwar years—unlike for instance Busoni’s
Junge Klassizität—16 but is diametrically opposed to the aesthetic principles of
Ihr neoclassical Stravinsky, who proclaimed the need for formal order against
Ihe exaggerations of the expression istic power of music. In the dichotomy out­
lined by Boulez, “Neo-cLassicism and dodecaphony are the results of essentially
different aims; the one is based on an aesthetic of reconstitution, the other
obeys a dialectic of evolution.” Maderna spontaneously chose the latter posi­
tion.17 Ilis dodecaphonic attitude in this work is inchoate, and there is no
proof that he was familiar with Webern’s String Quartet, op. 28, constructed on
Ihe same soggetto cavato.
The Fantasia e Fuga per due pianoforti was chosen for performance in the first
of Ihe concert series Musik der jungen Generation, which presented works by
composers under the age of thirty, on July 9, 1949. It was performed by Carl
Seeman and Peter Stadien, who played it again in Düsseldorf. The director of
Ilie Ferienkurse, Wolfgang Steinecke, had originally planned to include it in
Ihe program of the concert that included the Concerto per due pianoforti e stru-
ntaili, hut Maderna was not able to send the parts in time, nor could he attend
die «'oncert.18 Although Antonio Trudu, in his seminal book on the Darmstadt
Sc Itool, maintains that the concert of young composers did not receive favor­
able reviews in the newspapers,19 in his second letter to Madema, Steinecke
seems to imply a positive reception. He wrote, ‘Your piece, thanks to the very
convincing performance by Carl Seeman and Peter Stadien, was mentioned in
many reviews. The newspaper articles are now being collected and the pieces
referring to your work will be sent to you. I’m very happy that your composi-
tioti represented the young Italian school in such a substantial manner inside
our Institution, and I’d be very glad if this first link with us could continue next
year with your presence at the courses.”
Although the reference to the traditional symbols of Western music could
not be clearer in the Fantasia e Fuga per due pianoforti, Maderna’s close affili­
ation to dodecaphonic compositional practice is less explicit. In several pas­
sages of the score he indicates with broken lines the course of the B-A-C-H
notes across different voices in the two pianos, thus testifying to their being the
skeleton of the piece, without conferring on them the status of serial material.
In fac t, in some* passage's Maderna attains chromatic saturation by transposing
 WORKS O FBRÜNO MADERNA §* 12g

the intervallic content of the soggetto cavato, but in other places, especially
in the second motement (Allegro vivace), the profusion of single notes and
short patterns creates a hierarchy within the chromatic material, contrary to
the normal twelve-tone principle of equaL distribution. The mixture of tradi­
tional and modernist devices could not be more explicit: with his first work to
appear on the Darmstadt international stage, Maderna displays his desire to
renew musical language without disregarding its sources. At first, Maderna’s
musical borrowings come from the learned tradition, but his aim was not to
disrespect Bach devotees. When listening to the Fantasia t Fuga, one does not
need to be familiar with the Bach chorale in order to appreciate the flavor
of traditionalism spread throughout the work alongside new musical features.
Maderna’s aim was to communicate to all listeners the pleasure of innovation
together with a reminder of the past, a reminiscence unburdened with nostal­
gia because it still inhabits us.
A closer link to the past is apparent at the very beginning of Compcsizione
no. 2 (1949-50), in which the Greek theme in Phrygian mode “Epitaffio di
Sicilo” is quoted first as a monody by that most evocative of instruments, the
English horn (mm. 1-7; see ex. 7.1), then by the flute and oboe (mm. 8-13) as
a unison canon, the second voice following the pitch series exactly but with ret­
rograded durations. These two notably cantabile phrases stand out against the
calm background of long sustained chords played pianissimo by muted strings
(not shown in ex. 7.1), a kind of lightly moving layer that engages the com­
plete diatonic scale.20
It is not difficult to hear this opening as a special kind of accompanied mel­
ody, a compositional figure rooted far back in the tradition of Western music.
Maderna’s borrowings, in fact, are not limited to melodic material but also
include rhythmic and compositional figures having a clear link with a different
musical world, as discussed in the introduction above.
With his reference to early music, Maderna seems to suggest ethical and
human meanings that had been effaced by time and by the culture industry. In
this way contemporary composition (the dodecaphonic elaboration of the epi­
taph) was renewed by material taken from a different compositional context
and culture, a culture that we usually imagine as pure and having no bearing
on the supposedly false values of modern society. This “realistic” material, with
such clear connotations, is tantamount to a quotation, but a quotation with­
out nostalgia or complacency: the same music is aLso used as raw material for
dodecaphonic elaborations, which seems to emphasize Maderna’s awareness
of its unsuitability for the present. The judgment that Maderna’s Compaqmonte
no. 2 is anything but a conventional work derives also from the proximity in the
same work of a traditional modal chant with the rhythms of the English waltz,
the Viennese waltz, and the rumba—more hinted at than explicit, but percep­
tible at the surface of the composition. It is useful to remember that Made m a
!$(> ** ROSSANA DÀLMONTE

Kxainple 7.1. Bruno Maderaa, Cempesmem ne. 2 (1949—50), mm. 1—15 (excluding
strings). © Copyright 1949 by Sugarmusic S.p.A. - Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milano.

cor. ingl.
j - iT C!rigri«rliiDgr? rr]rr^ge
Ttip espress.(cantaresermarnente)
7

also iiic lndc'ci dance rhythms in another piece from his twelve-tone period,
hnpmnnsazione no. 1, in which he inscribes the generic source of the rhythmic
struct tires in the score: polka, waltz, cancan, and so on. The heterogeneity of
material taken from different contexts combined with the serial structure of
the composition is widely recognized as one of the main characteristics of the
pluralistic form of such New Music.21
l’he quantity of preparatory material for Composizione no. 2 testifies to an
elaborate creative process, but the result is a piece of modern music unusually
pleasant to listen to. Typically, listeners probably do not perceive the complex
intrinsic structure of the piece; they perceive only the peaceful coexistence of
different stylistic elements. This aspect of the composition is particularly sig­
nificant because only rarely does the music present a symmetrical and regular
 WORKS OF R R U N O M A D E R N A 8* 13 1

organization of rhythm and pitch, a compositional figure typical of motivic

writing, which is easy to perceive thanks to a Long tradition. En other words,
Composizione no. 2 is highly accessible even though its Language is decidedly
modern and elaborate. In Boulez’s dichotomy between, reconstruction and
evolution (quoted above), this work too takes its place in the second position,
even if the mainstream of Italian musical culture at that time had a strong incli­
nation toward neoclassicism.
In the cultural pages of the newspapers and in specialized journals edited
by the staff of Italian radio, the guidelines for a new musical channel, the
Third Program of the RAI, were often quoted as aiming to give due weight to
the “typical testimony of contemporary music, Neo-classicism.” To this end,
a cycle of radio programs called The Idéal of Classical Form in Contemporary
Music was initiated in 1950 and announced ostentatiously by the general
director of the RAI.22 But Maderna had no such ideaL of employing classical
forms in contemporary music, and the neoclassical attitude was far removed
from the spirit of his original compositions, despite the fact that he played an
important part in the revival of earlier music in Italy with his transcriptions.
These ranged from Perotinus to Schubert and included works by the Italian
composers Domenico Belli, Giacomo Garissimi, GiroLamo Frescobaldi,
Giovanni Gabrieli, Baldasarre Galuppi, Giovanni Legrenzi, Antonio Lotti,
Biagio Marini, Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Alessandro
Stradella, Orazio Vecchi, Ludovico Viadana, Antonio Vivaldi, Marc’Antonio
Ziani, and Ottaviano Pétrucci, whose Odhecaton contains works by many non-
Italian composers. He was also often engaged to conduct early music with
the Orchestra da camera di Venezia, and he frequently had to transcribe the
music from old editions no longer available for performance.23 It is impor­
tant to emphasize that his transcriptions were not undertaken in the spirit
of historically informed performance-practice studies, and that he never uti­
lized original instruments but rather adapted early music scores by seeking
particular sounds from the potentialities of the modern orchestra. The theme
of Maderna’s studies of early music, which he made together with Luigi
Nono and other young Venetian musicians in the shadow of Gian Francesco
Malipiero, is almost a commonplace in the literature on these composers.
His deep emotional involvement in this kind of music remains beyond doubt,
and there are also testimonies from his years of study at the Santa Cecilia
Conservatory in Rome.24 And yet his participation in the revival movement
was idiosyncratic: he was n o ta philologist who aimed to reproduce the histor­
ical sound of this music as performed on original instruments. On the con­
trary, he tried to imitate the sound of ensembles from other eras by means of
original mixtures of modern timbres. Moreover, he never tried to modernize
old scores with the sounds of a large symphony orchestra in the manner of,
for example, Ottorino Respighi. He was always a musician of his time, and he
I $2 ** ROSSÀNA DALMONTE

never forgot his duty as an innovator of the musical praxis of his day, even as
lie worked with the early music that so enthralled him.
The concept of borrowing thus finds its origins in this aesthetic-histori­
cal held. It assumes a broader significance when music reinforces its role in
society. When communication between composer and listener takes place
not only at the level of art but also when it engages practical aspects of life
that reflect the role of the single subject faced with the power of govern­
ment and of the ruling classes in different spheres of society. In the years
after the Second World War in Italy, the view emerged that the conquest of
new territory in art was entirely consistent with the socialist idea of the con­
quest of greater decision-making power by the masses. And because power
was believed to be proportional to knowledge, many artists and musicians
acting inside or near the PCI, as well as members of the Catholic intelligen­
tsia, worked to create various types of initiatives aimed at bringing culturally
marginalized communities into contact with all kinds of “high” literature, art,
ami music.25 From these wide-ranging movements, including socialists and
Catholics, writers and artists, the figure of the “organic intellectual” was born,
similar to what Gramsci had theorized some thirty years earlier.26 Maderna
was one such figure in the field of music, and he manifested his position
especially with two works: Kranichsteiner Kammer Kantate: Vier Briefe für Sopran,
Hass and Kammerorchester and Composizione in tre tempi
'The program notes for the first performance of Vier Briefe (“Four let­
ters,” Darmstadt, July 30, 1953) revealed Maderna’s dedication—”dem
Kran id ist einer Musikinstitut gewidmet”—but the audience he had in mind for
this piece was much broader. It is the most politically committed of his works
horn the decade after the Second World War, with aims that echo those of
Luigi Noun’s Canto sospeso (1955-56).
The text of the first letter—”Lettera di un condannato a morte della
Resisteiiza" (Letter of one condemned to death in the Resistance)—is read
in the first part and then sung as a plain accompanied melody by the bass:
“I want to write you these few words. I hope they will be of comfort to you
against such terrible misfortune. Maria, they have condemned me to death.. . .
The author of this letter was killed on January 31, 1945.”27 The second letter—
"KoimnerzialbrieF (Business letter)—is simply read out loud, first by the bass
and then by the soprano, without any melodic enhancement of the spoken
language: “My dear friend, I understand very well your scruples about sacking
your workers.” The soprano comments, possibly to one of her friends, “We are
leaving for St. Moritz the day after tomorrow.”28 The third letter—’’Kafka Brief
an Milena” (Kafka’s letter to Milena)—is entirely sung by the soprano (even
though the letter is from Kafka), but the words are perceptible because there
are no melismas or repetitions: “To tell you the truth, I am writing the same
tilings again. . . . Knough, enough.”29 The text ol the lomtli letter—’’Gramsci.
 WORKS OF B R U N O MADERPfA ** 1J J

Lettera dal carcere” (Gramsci’s letter from the jail)—is taken from two differ-
ent sources: the first a letter to his wife, and the second to his sister-in-law.
In the second letter, Madema did not translate the text precisely from Italian
to German. The musical elaboration of this text is the richest of the four let­
ters, but the words remain clearLy perceptible throughout: “My dearest. . . You
wrote that we are still both young enough to be able to hope to see our chil­
dren grow up. . . . I embrace you and our children most fondly.”30
In three of the four letters, three themes are intertwined: freedom, or bet­
ter, lack of freedom (incarceration); love for a partner (life); and the future
denied by an imminent, untimely death. All three are, of course, perennial
themes in literature, but their direct expression in the plain language of a
private letter throws them into an unusual light: no academic overtones, no
sentimentalism or self-pity, but only the direct expression of a dramatic situ­
ation at a particular time. The "Business letter” creates a sharp contrast due
to its content. The language is always familiar and colloquial, but the senders
and receivers of the letter are people of the upper class, who insincerely regret
an abuse of power—possibly an injustice—they themselves committed against
their workers. The spoken text is accompanied, without any kind of expres­
sion markings, by a thin and Loose background played by one piano, then two
pianos, and later by a small group of instruments, ending again with a single
piano. It is the sparsest of four very discrete accompaniments.
The single voices and the chamber-orchestra texture are in fact discrete in
terms of the sound presence, but highLy expressive in their deliberately senti­
mental estrangement. Madema seems to be observing the four situations not
direcdy, but through a filter: the serial elaboration of given material, borrowed
from a situation with deep connotations. The basic material of the composi­
tion is not a twelve-tone row but rather a diatonic song well known among
partisan groups during the Resistance in Italy: “Fischia il vento” (The wind
whistles). This song has an interesting story, being a translation/disguise of the
famous Russian song, “Katyusha,” with lyrics by Michail Isakovskij and music
by Matvei Blanter (1939). In the summer of 1942, an Italian soldier named
Giacomo Sibilla learned the song from Soviet prisoners in a concentration
camp near the Don river. After the armistice on September 8, 1943, Sibilla
returned to Italy and joined the partisan war near Imperia. He first came up
with a song for his group by changing the words of the familiar melody of the
chorus from Nabucco, but it did not find favor with his companions. He then
turned to the melody of “Katyusha” with newly composed Italian lyrics by the
partisan commander Felice Gascione. The song was hugely popular among
partisan groups throughout Italy, and is known in an "official” version, though
there were many lyrical variants.31
The pitch and rhythmic con ten! is real bed through the application
of Madeni;t’» aforementioned technique of :imtfmirmi, ilia! is, through the
1^4 RO S SA N A D A L M O N T E

use of serial permutations that seem affectively unrelated to the texts. The
orchestral part is indeed built up of serial material, since Maderna directly
composed the vocal lines (and the “Business letter” has no music for the
bass voice, as mentioned above). In this way, a dialectic relationship emerges
between the objectivity of compositional procedures in the orchestra and the
subjectivity of the vocal texts and of their musical elaboration.32 Maderna
commented on his serial methods in an interview many years after the com­
position of Vier Briefe. A passage from this testimony encapsulates his compo­
sitional approach to this work: “Do I write series in the ‘classical’ sense of the
word? Certainly not: I have a personal grammatical system, deriving from the
serial principle, but sufficiently flexible, and sufficiently abstract as to leave
me complete freedom to represent in a thousand ways my musical imagina­
tion, which is anything but abstract.”33
From the vantage point of forty years since his death, in the whole span
of Maderna’s composing career, it is possible to discern a clear objective to
resolve from an ethical point of view the conflicting relationships among the
subjectivity of the composer, the objectivity of methodological development,
and the legacy of cherished history. This desire persists right up to the most
important compositions of his last period, of which it suffices to mention the
Hyperion complex and his opera Satyricon as well as the cantata VenetianJournal,
the same conflict being evident albeit in a more reflective and stylized manner,
with a shade of self-irony. But it was especially during the 1950s that his poetics
first emerged, showing a personal balance in which experimental abstraction is
present but kept at a discreet distance. Poets as complex and open minded as
Federico (iaraa Lorca and Franz Kafka inspired significant pieces such as Studi
pa il Llauto de Garcia Lorca, Don Perlimplin, and Studi per “II Processo” di Franz
Ka/ka, while anonymous lyricists of popular songs allowed Maderna to evoke
social aims through compositional innovation.
A clear example of the ways Maderna strove to bring social issues to mind
through compositional innovation is presented by the Composizione in tre tempi
(1954) based on three popular songs—one for each movement of the com­
position. Maderna provided detailed information about the compositional
techniques in this work in a letter to Roman Lad on June 28, 1956, which was
included in the most influential book on dodecaphony in Italy.34 Surprisingly,
Maderna explains his serial theory using definitions taken from the “contra­
puntal sublime” of the Flemish school. The first movement consists of a canone
ex unica that is the vox cancrizans of the first strophe of the song La biondina in
ftirndolHa. This contrapuntal form is historically one of the earliest and aestheti­
cally simplest forms of counterpoint: the easiest in principle, if not in execution.
The simplicity of the elements involved, and their development into subtle and
intricate results, reminds us of mathematics. Also, the rhythmic structure pre­
serves the structure of the song through the use of other conirupuutal figures,
 WORKS OF B R U N O M A D E R N A L35

diminutiv, “various elaborations of Longer notes through subdivision into notes

of Lesser duration,” and a figure th at Maderna terms amplitudo, and defines as
“a treatment of thematic material in proportionally shorter note vaLues.”35 The
second movement is based on the popular song from Trento Splende la luna
ciara sora Castel Dublin, whose diatonic melody undergoes four transpositions
to cover the total chromatic, thus susceptible to the strict permutations of the
Darmstadt school. The third movement is based on a song from Friuli, Lalegrie
le ven dai zoveni, to which simiLar procedures are appLied. "What is particuLar
here is that near the end, at the beginning of the Pm mosso (starting in m. ISO),
the song emerges in its originai and <aimost) perceptible form, played by gui­
tar, mandolin, harp, and marimba.
Of the other pieces based on borrowings in Maderna’s oeuvre, suffice it to
mention two works at the extremities of his career: the unfinished baLLet Das
eiserne Zeitlater (written possibly at the beginning of the 1950s)36 and the can­
tata Venetian Journal (1972, the year before his death). In the first piece, traces
of a suite by Bach and an Egyptian melody can he found; in the second, the
central role is assigned to the song La biondina in gondokta, but the song is
borrowed in a different way than in the first part of Composidone in tre tempi
(1954). In this period, Maderna consciously modified his musical Language,
introducing little by litde and in different ways a closer attention to the pos­
sible reception of his music, many years before this probLem was a crucial issue
in mainstream criticism of serial and post-serial techniques.
The topic of Maderna’s many kinds of borrowings in the purest style of
New Music is too vast to be exhausted in a modest number of pages; a long
book would be needed, and perhaps even that would not suffice. As Nattiez
maintains, “Today it is clear that no description, no matter how refined and
detailed, will ever be able to consider a work, a style, a genre or a period in its
totality.”37 And so, paraphrasing him once again, I shall say, “This chapter is
finished. The work now begins.”

Notes

1. Throughout this chapter, according to convention I am using the term form

in its neutral sense, not referring to musical form as such, but simply to what
might more colloquially be termed a “musical object.”
2. Antonio Pagliaro, Forma e tradiiione (Palermo: Flaccovio, L972), 11 (my
translation).
3. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Analyses et interprétations de la musique: La mélodie du berger
dans le Tristan et Isolde de Rkhard Wagner (Paris: Vrin, 2013), 234-66.
4. Nattiez, Analyses et interprétations, 195-99.
5. Lydia (loehr, “11 concetto di musica dopo il 1800,” Eneietapedia della Musica
Einaudi, vol. 5 (Torino: Kin midi, 2005), (599-716,
136 2* ROSSANA DALMONTE

6. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Fondements d ’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris: Union

générale d’éditions, 1975).
7. Ermoiao Rubieri, Storia della poesia popolare italiana (Florence: G. Rarbèra,
1877; new ed., Milan: Edizioni del Gallo, 1966).
8. Christian Hauer, “La citazione di una canzone popolare Viennese nel Secondo
Quartetto d’archi op. 10 di Schönberg: Una interpretazione insieme musicale,
spirituale e socio-politica,” Musica/Realtà 46, no. 2 (1995): 51-70.
9. Gyôrgy Ligeti, “On Music and Politics,” Perspectives of New Music 16, no. 2
(1978): 22; orig. published as ‘‘Apropos Musik und Politik,” Darmstädter Beiträge
zur Neuen Musik 13 (1973): 42-46.
10. Luigi Nono, “Musica e Resistenza,” Rinascita, September 7, 1963, 27 (my trans­
lation); republ. in Nono, Scritti e colloqui, ed. Angela Ida De Benedictis and
Veniero Rizzardi (Lucca: Ricordi/LIM, 2001). In this article Nono quotes
Bruno Maderna’s Vier Briefe: Kranichsteiner Kammerkantate as an example of
musical and political engagement.
11. Armando Gentilucci, Oltre Tavanguardia: Un invito al molteplice (Fiesole:
Discanto, 1980; Milan: Ricordi-Unicopli, 1991).
12. Luigi Nono, Texte, Studien zu seiner Musik, ed. Jürg Stenzl (Zurich: Atlantis,
1975), 231. In an interview with B. Bock in 1970, Nono declared, “I read
Gramsci in 1945 and from that time Marx’s ideology has been the source of my
political engagement.” Nono, Texte, 231 (my translation).
13. Maderna to Wolfgang Steinecke, Milan, June 24, 1957. In Bruno Maderna—
Wolfgang Steinecke, Carteggio/ Briefwechsel, ed. Rossana Dalmonte (Lucca: LIM,
2001), 140-41.
14. See “Conversazioni,” in Bruno Madema: Documenti, ed. Mario Baroni and
Rossana Dalmonte (Milan: Suvini 8c Zerboni, 1985), 89-118; “Lettere e scritti,”
in Studi su Bruno Madema, ed. Mario Baroni and Rossana Dalmonte (Milano:
Suvini 8c Zerboni, 1989), 52-73.
15. Ihe complete history of the many titles Maderna gave this composition is
described precisely by Susanna Pasticci in the introduction of her critical new
edilion (Milan: Suvini 8c Zerboni, 2000).
16. Ferruccio Busoni, “Nuova dassicita,” in Lo sguardo lieto: Tutti gli scritti sulla
musica e le arti, ed. Fedele D’Amico (Milano: II Saggiatore, 1977), 113-15.
17. Pierre Boulez, “Moment de Jean-Sébastien Bach,” Contrepoints 7 (1951): 72-86;
English translation, “Bach’s Moment,” in Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship,
trails. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3. It is important
to note that in this article Boulez quotes the same chorale used by Maderna at
the end of Fantasia e Fuga, underlining its contrapuntal richness and its capa­
bility of building the musical form (p. 26). Boulez went to Darmstadt for the
first time in 1952; therefore he could not have heard Maderna’s work.
18. Steinecke gave Maderna details of the first performance in two letters (letters
not dated, but surely written close to the performance, one before and one
after it): see Dalmonte, Bruno Madema—Wolfgang Steinecke, 33—34, 36-37.
19. Antonio Trudu, La "Scuola” di Damstadt: I Ferienkurse dal 1946 a oggi (Milan:
Ricordi-Unicopli, 1992), 53-54.
 W O R K S OT B R U N O MADERNA. L37

20. A thorough description of the materials of the composition and of the criteria
of their elaboration can be found in Susanna Pasticci, ‘“ Una musica di facile
ascolto’: Sulla Composidone n. 2 di Bruno Madern a,” in Bruno Madema. Studi
e testimonianie, ed. Rossana Dalmonte and Marco Russo (Lucca: L1M, 2004),
117-47.
21. Philippe Albèra, “Modernità: la forma musicale,” Emiclopedia délia Musica, ed.
Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), 1:158-65.
22. Salvino Sernesi, UL’inizio del Terzo Programma è ormai prossimo, ” Radiocorriere
25 (June 18-24, 1950), 5-4; quoted by Roberto Giuliani in “PoLitica culturale
e musica d’avanguardia: La presenza di Bruno Maderna ne lia RAI degli anni
Cinquanta,” in Bruno Madema: Studie testimonianu, 47—48nl8.
23. See, for instance, the program of the concert Un’ora di classica musica veneta,
Venice, Ca’ Giustinian, May 22, 1941, quoted in BrunoMadema: Documenti, 73.
24. The Archrvio Bruno Maderna at the Department of Music of the University of
Bologna houses an unpublished paper (shelf-mark S.III) that Maderna wrote
during his student years in Rome: “Origini e primo syiluppo del teatro ital-
iano,” which can be considered an early testimony of his knowledge of ancient
Greek and Latin poetry and theater.
25. Gianmario Borio, “Key Questions of Antagonist Music Making: A View from
Italy,” in Red Strains: Music and Communism outside the Communist Bloc, ed.
Robert Adlington (London: Proceedings of the British Academy 185, 2013),
173-89.
26. Gramsci illustrates the concept of the intellettuale organko in a passage in
one of his most seminal writings, Quademi del carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1975),
3:1550-51.
27. Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, eds., Lettere di condannati a morte della
Resistenza italiana, 8 settembre 1943-25 Aprile 1945 (Letters by members of the
Italian Resistance condemned to death, September 8, 1943-April 25, 1945)
(Turin: Einaudi, 1952), 92.
28. The source of this text is unknown.
29. From Franz Kafka, Kafka: Briefe an Milena, ed. Willy Haas (New York and
Frankfurt: Schocken Books, 1952). The letter is dated “Prague 26.07.1920”
and is the second letter Kafka wrote on the same day.
30. Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1947), 11, 129-30. The
quotations from the four letters are taken from the critical new edition of Vier
Briefe, ed. Nicola Verzina (Milan: Su\ini & Zerboni, 2003); English translation
by Michael Webb.
31. Gesare Bermani, Guerra guerra ai palazzi e alle ehiese (Rome: Odradek, 2003),
219-21.
32. SeeJoachim Noiler, “Dimensioni musicali: Le composlzloni di Bruno Maderna
nel primo dopoguerra,” in Studi su Bruno Madema, 98nl2; NicoLa Verzina,
“Tecnica della mutazione e tecnica seriale in Vier Breife (1953) di Bruno
Maderna,” Rivista Italiana di Muskobgia 34, no. 2 (1999): 309-45; Verzina,
“Musica e impegno nella Krankhsteiner Kammerhantate (1953) : 11 tenia della lib­
er tà,” in Brum Madenm: Studie testimoniaux, 199-226.
138 ** R O S S A N A DA.LM ONTE

33. Bruno Maderna, “La revolution dans la continuité,” in Preuves 15, no. 177
(1965): 28-29 (“La musique serieLle, aujourd’hui,” ed. André Boucourechliev),
28 (my translation).
34. Roman Vlad, Staria della dodecafenia (Milan: Suvini & Zerboni, 1958), 261-62;
quoted by Edoardo Bruni in the introduction to his critical new edition of the
piece (Milan: Suvini 8c Zerboni, 2008), vi-vii. In the introduction, Bruni illus­
trates in detail Maderna’s compositional procedures.
35. First quote from Dietrich Bartel, Musica Pcetica: Musical Rhetorical Figures in
German Baroque Music (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 440; sec­
ond quote from Roman Vlad, Storia della dcdecafonia (Milan: Suvini Zerboni,
1958), 261-62. As can be noticed, a very complicated serial elaboration can be
explained by a terminology borrowed from ancient contrapuntal forms, a fact
that is not without significance.
36. Maurizio Romito, “II balietto Das eiserne Zeitalter ,” Musica/Realtà 10 (1983):
63-69.
37. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, “Unità della musica .. . unità della musicologia?” last
article in the last volume of the Enciclopedia della musica (Turin: Einaudi, 2005),
1206, 1209.
 Chapter Eight

O f Doubles,
Groups, and Rhymes
A Sériation of Works for Spatialized
Orchestral Groups (1958—60)

J on ath an G o ld m a n

Introduction

Methodological Considerations
Between March 1958 and October 1960, no fewer than six msyor works by
prominent European avant-garde composers for multiple spatially distrib­
uted orchestral groups (with or without electronic sounds) received their first
performances: Boulez’s Doubles (which would later be expanded into Figures
doubles prismes) and Poésie pour pouvoir, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen and
Carré; and Henri Pousseur’s Rimes pour multiples sources sonores were sometimes
premiered days apart, in key musical centers such as Paris, Cologne, and
Donaueschingen. It is instructive to regard these key postwar modernist works
as owing their existence in part to the specific characteristics of the histori­
cal era into which they were launched.1 One of the important developments
of this era concerns music recording and sound reproduction, specifically the
commercial introduction of stereo long-playing records that Led to the mass
distribution of stereo sound technology into homes throughout the Western
world, including the introduction of commercially available stereo long-playing
records in 1958. Stereo radio t ransmission also started to come of age over the
course of the decade beginning in that year, and multichannel cinema sound
140 JO N ATH AN GOLDMAN

systems were already commonplace in major urban centers around the world.
To what extent were listeners’ experiences of the aforementioned spatialized
works informed by their new familiarity with stereo sound? To what extent did
composers respond to listeners’ expectations about, and understanding of, ste­
reo in their spatialized works? The answers to these seemingly naive questions
will require evaluating the extent to which an allusion to the technology of
stereophony may have been inscribed into these works. This inscription might
include both ways in which audiences were inclined to hear stereophonic
effects in these works and ways in which composers might have reacted in their
works to these expectations. Answering these questions also requires, on the
poietic side of things, an evaluation of these composers’ constantly evolving
discourses on their works’ relationship with technology (in order to reveal the
ways in which they aim to position themselves strategically with respect to tech­
nological innovations of their time). On the esthesic flank, it requires an analy­
sis of the extent to which the experience of two-channel stereophony lay at the
horizon of contemporary listeners’ expectations. Confronting listeners’ reac­
tions to these works, notably in the form of ample published concert reviews,
reveals the extent to which the new modes of technologically assisted domestic
listening informed listeners’ experiences even when, as is the case for most of
these works, they may not employ any electronic means as such.
Kxploring how contemporary audiences might have heard spatial works by
Stoc khausen, Boulez, Pousseur, Berio, and other composers through the prism
ol sound technology invites a transversal approach that examines a group of con­
temporary composers rather than a single artist in order to highlight their com­
monalities and points of divergence. This type of scholarship is relatively rare
with respect to postwar avant-garde music, owing, as Charles Wilson has argued,
to the overwhelming influence on musicological writing of composers’ discur­
sive strategies to individuate themselves in the field of contemporary composers:

Nothing speaks more loudly, perhaps, for the widespread belief in the incom­
mensurability of contemporary composers’ outputs than the fact that mono­
graphs on single composers and their works make up such a large proportion
ol hooks about twentieth-century music. This is not to say that all such studies
fail to loc ate their subject within a wider field of compositional activity. But
each seems to justify its existence by portraying an incomparable individual
who ‘stands apart’ from contemporaries. Little wonder that many conceive
of contemporary art music, in defiance of John Donne’s famous dictum, in
terms of an archipelago of composer-islands, some more tightly clustered
than others, hut each surrounded by its own ring of blue water.2

This lacuna has allowed certain obvious common threads between composers’
processes, discourse, and reception to be* overlooked or underemphasized,
even il the collec tive nature of the burst of creativity in the* domain of “space
 OF D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , A3J D R H Y M E S *> I4L

music” around 1958 discussed here was recognized at the Lime by the compos­
ers themseLves. Stockhausen admits as much in a pass age from his essay “Music
and Space,” in which he notes that in addition to his own work on Gruppen,
“Boulez, Pousseur and Berio are also now working on compositions in which
the spatial distribution of orchestral groups takes on significance.”3 Critics also
tended to think of these spatial pieces as forming a group or indeed a genre. In
his 1963 biography of Stockhausen, Karl H. Wörner acknowledges the resem­
blance between these works while hastening to assert Stockhausen’s claims
to being first: “Stockhausen's idea of a ‘music in space’ and its conception in
some detail have rapidly claimed a sizable following, including amongst others
Boulez, whose Poésie pour pouvoir, after a poem by Henri Michaux, uses a speak­
ing voice, distorted on tape, other musique eoncrète sounds and three orches­
tras.”4 The parallels between these works seems obvious when one considers
the sheer number of such compositions presented over a period of some two
and a half years (March 1958-October 1960). Some of the most prominent,
by Boulez, Pousseur and Stockhausen, are listed beLow in chronological order:

March 16, 1958: Premiere of Pierre Boulez’s Doubles, performed by Société

de concerts Lamoureux, Paris, with Boulez conducting. Commissioned
by Igor Markévitch and Georges Auric for the Société de concerts
Lamoureux. Composed in 1957.

March 24,1958: Premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen by the Cologne

Symphony Radio Orchestra, Cologne, with Stockhausen, Boulez, and
Madema conducting. Performed again at Donaueschingen Festival
on October 18, 1958, by the Südwestfunk Baden-Baden Symphony
Orchestra, with Hans Rosbaud, Boulez, and Stockhausen conducting.
Commissioned by the Cologne Radio WDR. Composed 1955-57.

October 9, 1958: Premiere of Pousseur’s Rimes 1, Brussels World Fair,

Journées internationales de musique experimentale, Institut
national belge de radiodiffusion (INR), performed by the Orchestre
international des Jeunesses musicales, Bruno Maderna conducting.
Commissioned by Hermann Scherchen for the Congress of the
Jeunesses Musicales Internationales.

October 19, 1958: Premiere of Boulez’s Poésie pour pouvoir, for three
orchestras and tape, Donauesch ingen Festival, performed by the
Südwestfunk Baden-Baden Symphony Orchestra, Hans Rosbaud and
Boulez conducting. Commissioned by the German South-West Radio
SWR Baden Baden. Composed in 1958.
142 ** JONATHAN GOLDMAN

July 25, 1959: Performance of Pousseur’s Rimes I and II, Aix-en-Provence,

by L’orchestre de FInstitut national, belge de radiodiffusion, Boulez
conducting.

October 17, 1959: First complete performance of Pousseur’s Rimes I, II,

and ITT, Donaueschingen, by the Domaine musical orchestra, Boulez
conducting; performed March 29, 1960, by the Domaine musical
in Paris, and SI January 1961 in Brussels. INR Symphony Orchestra
Brussels, Boulez conducting.

October 28, 1960: Premiere of Stockhausen’s Carré, Hamburg, by the

Orchestra and Choir of the Hamburg Radio Orchestra (NDR),
conducted by Michael Gielen, Mauricio Kagel, Andrezj Markowski, and
Karlheinz Stockhausen. Commisioned by the Hamburg Radio NDR.

Of course many other composers and works could be added to this list:
Luciano Berio’s Allelujah II for five orchestral groups was premiered on May
17, 1958.5 Gunther Schuller’s Spectra, which a contemporary critic described
as “an interesting example of music that tries to capture a ‘stereophonic’
sound,”6 was premiered by the New York Philharmonic on January 14, 1960.
'The Canadian composer Harry Somer’s 1962 orchestral work Stereophony also
comes to mind, as do, of course, many works by the seasoned spatialist Henry
Brant, whose early Antiphony I (1953) was scored for five orchestral groups.
In <loset temporal proximity, the Japanese composer Toshiro Mayuzumi’s
Nirvana Symphony, for three orchestral groups and choir, was premiered exacdy
two weeks before Doubles, on March 2, 1958, in Tokyo. The score indicates
llial the “orchestra is divided into 3 groups and, in order to get a crisscross­
ing stereophonic sound effect, each group should be placed in separate posi­
tions in the auditorium.”7 The commonalities of the works enumerated above
invite the use of Nattiez’s methodology of “sériation” (mise en série) with “plot”
(intrigue), inspired, respectively, by Jean Molino and Paul Veyne, applied to the
production and reception of several of the aforementioned works—in particu­
lar, Boulez’s Doubles, Stockhausen’s Gruppen, and Pousseur’s Rimes. In the spirit
of Jean Jacques Nattiez’s scholarship, this chapter is intended to be as much a
meditation on (or an experiment in) methodology as a contribution to the his­
tory of postwar avant-garde music. In a 2013 monograph on Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde, Nattiez offers a new formulation of the principle of sériation, citing
as ever his mentor Jean Molino:

One could not better explain the criterion of “sériation” (mise en série), itself
a reformulation of the well-worn Cartesian principle of “complete enu­
meration” (dcnombmnents complets), that Jean Molino theorized, taking his
 OF D O U BL E S, G RO U P S, AND RHYMES ** 143

inspiration from phiLology and. archeology* <6The principle of the series Is

essential. An isolated Inscription transmits only a part of-what it has to teach
us; it takes on its true meaning only as part of a series; the more the series
is abundant and varied, the more the inscription becomes interesting. This
is the Golden Rule expressed, about archeological monuments by Eduard
Gerhard: “Whoever has seen a monument» has not seen any; whoever has
seen a thousand monuments has seen a single one.”6 And MoLino continues:
“The sériation of homogenous data, that allows us to distinguish the excep­
tion from the rule, the constants and the evolutions, is the operation that con­
stitutes a historical fact as such.”1®It is also constitutive of the hermeneutic
act itself, of which it assures both its legitimacy and its validity. When con­
fronted by a variety of often contradictory historical interpretations, and the
variety of constituent parts of the fabric of history, all I can attempt to do is
to arrange them into a series, because sériation is certainly the fundamental
process of the humanities.11

As for the concept of plot ( intrigue), Nattiez often returns to a definition found
in the historian Paul Veyne’s book Comment on écrit Vhütoire (Writing history),
quoted here from the opening essay of the five-volume encyclopedia of music
that Nattiez edited:

Facts don’t exist in isolation, in the sense that the fabric of history is what we
call a plot (intrigue), a very human and very “unscientific” mixture of mate­
rial causes, of ends and chance occurrences; in a word, a slice of life, that the
historian cuts up according to his own fancy and in which facts have their
objective connections and relative importance. . . . The word plot has the
advantage of reminding us that what the historian studies is as human as a
play or a novel, War and Peace or Antony and Cleopatra. .. . Which facts are
then worthy of interest to the historian? It all depends on the choice of plot;
in itself, a fact is neither interesting nor the contrary . . . A fact is nothing
without its plot.12

The plot (intrigue) selected for navigation through the series of works in this
essay concerns the way an audience’s experience of the then recent invention
of stereo sound in home music systems, movies, and radio could have informed
their musical perceptions. There is substantial scholarship on the way spatial
considerations have been incorporated into electroacoustic works. But viewing
these mostly nonelectronic orchestral works (Rimesbeing the exception), pre­
miered in the context of traditional concerts, from the point of view of spatial-
ization alLows us to focus on the ways general audiences perceived their spatial
dimensions and how they related those experiences to their own experiences
of stereophony. The selected works will be studied according to various cat­
egories, essentially following the tripartite model— the composer’s discourse
on the work’s spatial conception (external pniotics), aspects of the score that
144 ** JONATH AN GOLDMAN

lend themselves to stereophonic listening (neutral level of analysis), and traces

of contemporary audiences’ perception of these works, usually in the form of
concert reviews in newspapers and learned journals (what Nattiez terms “exter­
nal esthesics”).

Stereophony in 1958

In the years in which these multi-orchestra works were being performed, high
fidelity technology was increasingly finding its way into middle-class homes in
Europe and the Americas. Stereophony had been demonstrated by Bell Labs
at the Chicago World Fair as early as 1933, and the experience of multichannel
stereo had been accessible in movie theaters since the 1940s, notably through
the technology of CinemaScope and Cinerama, which used two, three, or
more loudspeakers to create the illusion of acoustic depth as well as to localize
sounds in the auditory plane. The most famous example of this use of multi­
channel stereo in the realm of classical music was the 1940 Walt Disney film
Fantasia, whose score, conducted by the technophile Leopold Stokowski, was
recorded in multitrack stereophony using a pioneering technology dubbed
Fantasound. Stereo technology had also been adapted for home use beginning
in 1953, when two-track stereo was available to audio enthusiasts through the
medium of magnetic tape, and, beginning in 1958, on stereo LPs played with
styluses able to read two distinct sound tracks within a single groove of a pho­
nograph disc.13 In the same year, some FM radio stations began transmitting
signals in two-channel stereo in the United States, but FM stereo would not
become Ilie norm for major European radio stations until the later 1960s.14
From then on, stereo sound would be distributed on a massive scale, prompt­
ing the New York Times to announce in a 1959 headline that “Plants Quicken
lempo to Meet Stereophonic Sales Crescendo.”15 Record companies across
North America and Europe took to releasing seven- and twelve-inch stereo
demonstration discs that included musical excerpts to highlight the advantages
of stereophonic sound over mere monaural (“mono”) high fidelity.16 A power­
ful marketing campaign initiated in newspapers and audio magazines begin­
ning in 1958 ensured that stereophony was never far from the thoughts of the
average music lover (who would soon transform into what is today known as
an audiophile). The apotheosis of this propaganda campaign was surely the
October 1958 issue of High Fidelity magazine, in which the word stereo appears
in ads, articles, and record reviews a total of 910 times and is found on no
fewer than 125 of its 168 pages. Record guides began to feature reviews of ste­
reo discs in a separate category. In France, the promotion campaign took off
a few months later than in the United States, but already by 1959 the music
critic Raymond Lyon could express his exasperation at the false claims made
 OF D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , A N D RHYMES §» 14 5

by stereo dealers in a cynical attempt to ‘"restore some vigor into the American
record market.”17 In Germany, the sale of stereo LPs constituted 10 percent of
the total sale of discs in 1959-60, a sixfold increase from the previous year.18
In the pages of specialized audio and music magazines, record critics
began adding reviews of stereo LPs, often remarking on the way some orches­
tral music seemed particularly suited to stereophonic broadcast. Writing in a
1959 review of a new stereo LP featuring Debussy’s Images far Orchestra, per­
formed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with CharLes Munch conducting,
the critic Arthur Cohn noted, “‘With the Bostonians' sterling sound, the ste­
reophonic commodity makes a double dividend. Debussy’s scoring is made to
order for duo-channeled recording. The evenness of all choirs and well bal­
anced highlighting makes this a quality release.”1^ In another issue, review­
ing a recording of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Cohn could assert, “The
orchestration of this master is formulated by instrumental syllogisms that are
still fresh to the ear and prophetic in terms of stereo sound.”20 The familiarity
of typical listeners with avant-garde works using this new cutting-edge audio
technology may well have informed their perception and comprehension of
them in a live context too, and also inspired composers to produce spatial
works that play with audience’s preformatted stereophonic expectations.
Other factors may well have contributed to the way well-informed audiences
at modernist music festivals such as the Donaueschingen Musiktäge associ­
ated their experience of two-channel stereo recordings with the preoccupa­
tions of avant-garde music. At his electroacoustic studio in the Swiss village of
Gravesano, the conductor Hermann Scherchen had been performing experi­
ments in stereophony beginning in 1953, among other activities looking for a
way to convert mono hi-fi LPs into pseudostereo ones. The journal he edited
from 1955 to 1966, the Gravesaner Blatter, included both research on sound-
reproduction technology21 and articles on avant-garde music by the likes of
Boulez and Stockhausen and especially on the (often spatialized) music of
Xenakis, creating a kind of conceptual link between spatialized recordings
and spatialized modernist music.22

General Information and Seating Plans

While purveyors of stereo equipment were attracting customers to their wares

by emphasizing the parameter of space in music, audiences at concerts of works
such as Gruppen, Doubles, Carré, or Rimes wouLd also have been immediately alive
to the central role played by spatial considerations. Their first cue would have
been visual, via the unique seating arrangement of the orchestral instruments
that these works exploit. The orchestral groups are either set apart in space
lj() a* JO N A TH A N GOLDMAN

(sometimes behind the audience) or, in the case of Doubles, distributed across
Ihe concert stage in a way that produces unusual instrumental groupings.
Kadi work offers different solutions to the problem of physically separating
distinct musical timbres in space, and may well have reminded audiences of
multispeaker setups. Contemporary record guides and magazines made much
of the placement of speakers in stereophonic equipment for the home, with
»('hematic drawings fairly commonpLace (see fig. 8.1a). Also, record buyers
had become accustomed to thinking about the location of the sound sources
iu their home stereo systems. Advertisements for hi-fi equipment promised to
create the sensation that listeners were surrounded by sound, as a spot in the
same issue of High Fidelity conveys (see fig. 8.1b). The listener in this photo­
graph hears the sound of the first violin and viola of the quartet as emanating
from the rear right and the second violin and cello from the rear left—a listen­
ing situation not afforded by any seat in a recital hall, but promoted here as
a desirable spatialized listening experience. Listeners at a concert of Doubles,
(huppen, or Rimes observing the unusual ways instruments are placed on stage
or around the audience would clearly sense a similarity with their own home
experiments with stereo-speaker placement, such as audio magazines had been
inviting listeners to partake in for months.

Seating Plan of Boulez’s Doubles

Doubles was commissioned in 1957 by Igor Markevitch and Georges Auric,

who requested an orchestral work to be performed at a concert of the vener­
able Société de concerts Lamoureux. This first publicly performed orchestral
work by Boulez was much anticipated by critics and the concertgoing pub­
lic. Boulez had by that time gained a considerable reputation as the fore­
most young avant-garde composer in France through various networks, most
notably the success of the “Domaine musical” concerts, which by 1958 were
already into their fourth season. The most obvious feature of Doubles is its use
of an unusual seating plan, in which the orchestral choirs are divided into
several groups scattered across the stage. The seating plan of Doubles employs
live groups of strings, four groups of brass, and three groups of woodwinds
in addition to percussion and three harps. The woodwind groups form a tri­
angle inscribed within a rectangle formed by the four brass groups (fig. 8.2).
Boulez, later characterized this plan as “a single orchestra with groups placed
symmetrically: the woodwinds in the center, the brass at the edges and the
strings in the interstitial space, with the percussion in the back.”23 With this
spatial canvas laid out, Boulez was able in his sketches to tag musical ideas
with out* of lotir labels: GaV (“gauche avant,” or front left), GaR (“gauche
arrière,” or rear left), DaV (“droite avant,” or front right) and DaR (“droite
arrière,” or rear right).
 FOR STEREO

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Figure 8.1a.
Advertisement for
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Systems from the
October 1958 issue
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permission of Klipsch
Group, Inc.
148 JO NATH AN GOLDMAN

Figure 8.2. Seating plan of Boulez’s Doubles. Pierre Boulez, Figures - Doubles -
hismes \für Orchester. © Copyright 1964 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd.,
London/UE 13994.

Sealing Plans of Stockhausen’s Gruppen and Carré

(h uppen began as a commission from the West German Radio (WDR) in 1955.
Stockhausen started to work on it in the summer of 1955 while staying in
Paspels, a village in the Swiss Alps, and originally planned to mix electronic
sounds with a large orchestra. After sketching the formal plan of the work, he
put it aside and devoted himself to composing the electronic five-channel work
Gesang der'Jünglinge as well as completing Zeitmasse, only to return to the real­
ization of Gruppen in early 1957.24 The critic Karl H. Wörner described expe­
riencing the spatial distribution of the premiere of Gruppen (fig. 8.3) in the
following terms:

Flic first performance of Gruppenîov three orchestras took place in 1958 in the
Rheinsaal des Messegeländes, Cologne. One’s first surprise came upon enter­
ing the hall: the quadrilateral area was arranged diagonally so that the central
orchestra took up the whole of one side of the hall at the front, the second took
up the whole of the left-hand side and the third the whole of the right-hand
side?. The listeners found themselves in the middle of the three orchestras.25
Figure 8.3. Seating plan of Stockhausen’s Gruppen. Karlheinz Stockhausen Gruppen | für 3 Orchester | Nr 6. © Copyright 1963 by
Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE 13673.
15 ° ** JO NATH AN GOLDMAN

fa v o u ra b le h a ll: 25 m X 25 m

m easurem ents o f p latform s t 4 p la tfo rm s 5,25 m x 12 m, 50 cm high

Figure 8.4. Seating plan of Stockhausen's Carré. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Carré \für
4 Orchester und 4 Chöre (4 Dirigenten) | Nr. 10. © Copyright 1971 by Universal Edition
(London) Ltd., London/UE 14815.

Stockhausen himself described the spatial layout shown in figure 8.3 in his
lecture “Music and Space,” delivered at the Darmstadt courses in the sum­
mer of 1958 and accompanied by excerpts of a recording of Gruppen. “The
‘Gruppen’ require the 3 orchestras to be arranged in horseshoe form in such
a way that—from the listener’s point of view—one orchestra occupies the
entire left side, the second the whole fro n t. . . , and the third orchestra occu­
pies the whole right side. In this way all the listeners are surrounded by the
three orchestras.”26
for his next spatialized work, Carré, for four orchestras and choirs,
Stockhausen laid out the floor plan in a simple schema, appearing first in the
score and then reproduced on the jacket of the Deutsche Grammophon LP
(hg. 8 . 4 ) . 27 It has sometimes been noticed that Stockhausen’s spatial experi­
ments find parallels in the Cinerama of the day as well as in experiments in
spherical cinematic projections by contemporaneous visual artists.28 Indeed,
speaking of Gmppen in his monograph on Stockhausen’s music, Jonathan
Harvey comments that “Son et lumière and stereophonic [C]inerama also date
from the same time.”29 Robin Maconie notes the similarity between the layout
of Caire and the original plan for Stockhausen’s electronic work Kontakte, which
was to have four players placed in a square, “each also controlling one track of
a four-channel tape of electronic sounds. . . . By altering the loudness levels of
channels in carefully co-ordinated ways, disturbing the balance between them,
sounds can be made to appear to move in the direction of the loudest speaker.
This would have amounted to a simple manual realization of the kinds of ste­
reophonic effect made popular by the earliest demonstration records.”30
 OF D O U B L E S , GROUPS, AND RHYMES 3* L5 1

DISPOSIZIONE DELLE FONT! SONORE

»
I / eUf.i
K C»* r

Figure 8.5. Seating plan of Pousseur’s Himes. © Copyright by Sugarmusic S.p.A. —

Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Milano (Italy).

Seating Plan of Pousseur’s Rimes

Rimeswas originally commissioned by Hermann Scherchen for a concert he was

supposed to conduct by the Orchestre International des Jeunesses MusicaLes
as part of the Journées internationales de musique expérimentale programed
near the end of the 1958 Brussels World Fair, the same event at which Edgard
Varèse’s radically spatialized Pcèmê électronique was broadcast through hundreds
of loudspeakers in the Philips Pavilion. Indeed, Scherchen’s own aforemen­
tioned experimental interest in stereo phony may have motivated the commis­
sion. The piece that was performed on October 9. 1958, for string orchestra
and tape, with Bruno Madcrna conducting (Schnellen h id fallen ill), was die
152 ** JO N ATH AN GOLDMAN

(irsl movement of what would become a three-movement work for orchestra.

The electronic part was produced in the studio that would become the Studio
de musique électronique de Bruxelles.51 The second movement was composed
lo be premiered by Boulez at the Aix-en-Provence festival in July 1959. In addi­
tion to the string ensemble and the tape, Pousseur added wind instruments
and brass, placing two sextets (made up of brass, woodwinds, and strings) in
either side of the rear of the hall, behind the audience, and placing additional
pc*mission in the center rear of the hall (fig. 8.5). The third and final move­
ment of Rimes, which is purely instrumental, maintains the same spatialized
Moor plan as the second movement and was premiered at the Donaueschingen
festival on October 17,1959, with Boulez conducting.

Composers’ Discourse

Did composers, in their discourses on the work, whether published in concert

programs, LP liner notes, or in interviews, draw connections between the spa­
tial properties of their music and stereophonic sound? In the cases in which
they do, these passages need nevertheless to be read with caution, in that the
meaning of the word stereo did not stabilize to mean two-channel sound until
the 19()0s; before that time, it conveyed a more general sense of spatialized
multichannel sound.32

Boulez on Doubles

Boulez stales in his monograph Penser la musique aujourd'hui that “the real
interest in distribution lies in the creation of ‘Brownian movements’ within a
mass, or volume of sound, so to speak.”’33 By referring to Brownian motion—
that is, the random motion of particles—Boulez seems to be advocating a use
of space that defies systemization in the form of sound trajectories describing
geometric shapes. But in the note that was included in the program of the
1958 premiere of Doubles, he makes explicit reference to stereophony as the
poetic source of the work:I

I took the liberty of changing the position [of the orchestral instruments].
In effect, the arrangement of the orchestra on stage always follows, with a
few variants, the type established in the 19th century that was itself inherited
in large part from the preceding century. . . . Composition [Ecriture], in our
time, calls the physics of the orchestra into question. No one will contradict
me when I state that when timbres follow each other in rapid succession, they
should not be excruciatingly stuck to each other through a distance-obstacle;
no one will contradict me when / claim that in our times the ear requires stereophony
 O F D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , AN~D R H Y M E S 15g

in its desirefor clarity and movemen LThis “demonstration'’ through an arrange­

ment of the instruments of the orchestra is truly required by the musical
composition [écriture], therefore, it originates in the poetics of new works.
This is one of the characteristics of this score which [ wanted to emphasize.34

An optimistic attitude toward stereo as an invention that had allowed for the
conquest of musical space may have rubbed off on the Boulez, who authored
the program note to Doubles only a few months before the release of the first
commercially distributed stereo LPs.
And yet, in successive performances of later versions of Doubles (now called
Figures,. doubles, prismes), Boulez omitted or downplayed the allusion to stereo­
phony found in the original 1958 program note.3^ Boulez seems gradually to
purge the theme of stereophony from his discourse on the work after 1958.
The change in attitude signaled by BouLez’s aligning himself with stereo in
1958 and then downplaying his relationship with it in 1964 mirrors changes in
the aesthetics of recording during this period that have been recently studied
by scholars such as Jochen Stolla, and Martin Kaltenecker. They have studied
the way in which a “positivist” or “realist” orientation in the 1950s yielded to a
later aesthetic paradigm that exploited the audio possibilities of stereophony
to define an enhanced audio space without necessarily claiming fidelity to
any actual performance. This later paradigm was itself followed by a banal iza-
tion of stereo technology that was a product of its sheer familiarity.36 Boulez's
apparent downplaying of the stereophonic implications of his work may well
have resulted from the fact that by the middle of the 1960s, stereo effects had
become familiar to the point of being trite.
Whatever his interest in aligning his work with stereophony or not, Boulez
mentions in all of his pronouncements on Doubles that the unusual seating
plan was conceived as a way to allow for a new use of orchestral timbre. In con­
versation with Célestin Deliège in 1975, he notes:

In 1958, when I decided to compose this work, I thought about modifying

this structure by separating the individual groups while leaving them a cer­
tain autonomy, and doing so in such a way that the woodwind in particular
would be split up among different groups, and the same with the brass. [.. .
When you hear the work live, the sonorities are extremely homgenous [sac]
yet at the same time scattered, so that it is not a homogeneity of neighbour­
ing groups but a homogeneity of fus ion. To that extent this new geography of
the orchestra has been a success.37

Looking back on Doubles from the vantage point of 2002 in an interview with
Cécile Gilly, Boulez again stressed that the orchestral seating plan was con­
ceived as a way of obtaining certain timbres, noting that “this arrangement
is related to the idea—new at the lime—of stereophony, since the timbre is
l 54 JO N ATH AN GOLDMAN

distributed across the stage in a potentially mobile fashion while the classical
orchestra is founded on fixed domains of timbres.”38

Stockhausen on Gruppen

While Boulez was invested in emphasizing the exploitation of space in Doubles,

Stockhausen took pains to stress the temporal properties of Gruppen, which
he claimed to be the raison d ’etre for the three-orchestra plan. In “Music and
Space,” Stockhausen offered the following justification for the spatial layout:

Right at the very beginning it proved necessary to present more or less

long groups of sounds, noises and a cross between the two simultaneously
in various tempi. So that this could be correctly played and heard, a large
orchestra of 109 players was split up into 3 smaller orchestras; each of these
was to have its own conductor and had to be placed at some distance from
the other two.39

In a 1971 interview with Jonathan Cott, Stockhausen elaborates, stating that,

I originally wanted to write a normal orchestra piece, but when I started com­
posing several time layers I had to superimpose several metronomical tempi,
and it was impossible to find a solution by which one conductor would be
able to lead the three sections of a large orchestra in different tempi. So I
finally concluded that the only way was to split the diverse time layers and put
each group in a separate place so that one didn’t get distracted by the signals
ol die odier conductors.”40

And yd Stockhausen goes on to claim that this layout, even if it was motivated
by du* si i nclurai need for superimposed passages in different tempi, led to a
secondary interest in sound travelling through space as an end in itself: “The
similarity of the scoring of the three orchestras resulted from the requirement
dial sound-groups should be made to wander in space from one sounding
body to another and at the same time split up similar sound-structures: each
orchestra was supposed to call to the others and to give answer or echo.”41
Klaborating in his interview with Cott, he recalls: “Once I had the idea of sepa­
rat ing the three groups . . . I began to think in terms of alternations of sound
movements: triangular rotation—one, two three . . . one, two, three—with
accclerando-ritardando; then alternations between two groups; and moments
when one group would add only short sound events to the continuous alterna­
tion of the other two groups. I also thought in terms of moving timbres.”42
Unis even if temporal considerations are at a premium in this work, the move­
ment of sound in space is also important. Stockhausen then went on to reverse
this hierarchy (with time having pride of place over space) in Carre, in which
 OF D O U B L E S , G R O U P S, AND R H Y M E S 8* 355

several passages (particularly the so-called inserts) thematize space with spec­
tacular effects of sound passing from one ensemble to another. Consequently,
over and above the temporal scheme of Gruppen, which required a multi-
orchestral plan, Stockhausen specifically aimed to have ensembles echo and
answer to each other in the traditional Venetian polychoral sense, though he
denied any filiation with that tradition.4:5 Whether Stockhausen specifically
intended listeners to draw connections between the experience of hearing
Gruppen in the concert hall and that of stereophony in the home or the cin­
ema can be ascertained indirectly from the program note published in his col­
lected writing (and only incompletely reproduced in “Music and Space”), in
which Stockhausen considers the possibility of broadcasting a spatial work like
Gruppen on the radio:

Why broadcast this kind of music that is entirely written for the concert hall?
Well, it’s better to see a photograph of a sculpture than nothing at all; maybe
one will get the urge to look at the original sculpture: the same goes for such
broadcasts. And radio will start broadcasting stereophonically in the not too distant
future. Then the listener has more speakers in the worn and mil get at least an approxi­
mate idea of such space music.44

Even if Stockhausen regarded stereophonic broadcasting as inferior sound-

images of little inherent worth (and presumably he had the same opinion of
stereophonic LPs that were introduced soon after these lines were written), he
nevertheless drew a parallel in this passage between the kind of listening that
Gruppen requires and the listening that a multispeaker stereo system affords.

Pousseur on Rimes

Following the achievements of Stockhausen and Boulez, Pousseur did not

apparently feel the need to foreground the spatial aspect of his Rimes pour dif­
férentes sources sonores, instead focusing mostly on the way form emerges from
the interactions between figures produced by instrumental and electronic
means. This may be due to the fact that the first version of the piece (com­
prising what would be the first movement) does not use spatialized ensem­
bles, which were added only in the successively performed versions. In an
essay published in 1962, Pousseur identified three kinds of “rhymes,” or cor­
respondences, that the work explores: between natural and artificial sounds,
between originally disparate families of instruments, and between form and
material.45 He goes on to describe the three-stage genesis of the work that
explains the heterogeneous nature of the three movements: a first move­
ment for strings, percussion and (ape; a second movement with an orches­
tra enriched by two sextets placed behind the audience, also with electronic
156 JONATHAN GOLDMAN

sounds on tape; and a third movement with no electronic part. Although

Pousseur does not refer to stereophony in his essay spatial configuration
holds a prominent place in his discussion. The work used three speakers, one
placed on stage and the other two behind the audience on either side. In the
first movement, he has the electronic sound move from the front to the back
of the concert space: “Progressively during a polyphonic process dominated
by the orchestra, the recorded sounds move towards the rear of the hall.”46
Pousseur describes this as a "process of definition of a global space, external
to the orchestra.’'47 In the second movement, Pousseur sought to reinforce
this sense of space through the addition of the two rear-placed sextets, each
one situated next to a loudspeaker behind the audience, “accentuating the
spatial structure of the composition.”48

?*?*?*>

Some provisional conclusions can be drawn from the examination of these

composers’ discourses on space in their respective works. Boulez, Stockhausen,
and Pousseur all seem to take a similar stance, according to which they only
indirectly, temporarily or weakly incorporate stereophonic effects in their
work. Boulez announced his era’s “need” for stereophony in 1958, but then
downplayed it in most later comments on Figures doubles prismesr, Stockhausen
asserted the primacy of the coordination of time over that of space; and
Pousseur emphasized the “rhyming” of instrumental and electronic sound
even (hough the play of widely spaced ensembles in his work is just as strik­
ing as its use of taped electronic sounds. These three stances may be rooted
in a strategy of artistic negotiation. In a study of the “discursive construction
nl a wall of aesthetic difference between multi-channel work inside and out­
side the electroacoustic studio,” Patrick Valiquet has shown how with respect to
electroacoustic music, “an ideology of aesthetic isolation supported the other­
wise contradictory work of appropriating the tools of commercial broadcasting
and recording.”49 It may well be that Boulez, Stockhausen, and Pousseur are
at once accepting and rejecting their works’ affinity with commercial and what
they saw as “unartistic” stereophonic enterprises, in an effort to construct such
an aesthetic wall around their works.

Prominent Spatial Moments in Each Work

In what particular ways is “sound travel” exploited in the three pieces focused
on in this chapter? The passages to be discussed contain what might be con­
strued as stereophonic effects, in which a sound figure changes its physical
position with respect to the listener. I will take pains to describe the passages
 Or DOUBLES, G RO U PS, AND RHYMES ig j

in such a way that they remain as independent as possible of both the question
of whether the composer intended these passages to be heard in this way and
whether the average listener would have been able to hear these passages in
this way.

The Thème Lent of Doubles

The passages of Doubles that stage stereophony in the clearest way are the ones
deploying what BouLez refers to in his sketches as the thème lent. In Doubles, this
slow theme is set in opposition to a fast theme in a kind of antiphony familiar
from later works by Boulez such as Rituel <1975).50 This theme first appears
in interrupted fashion (rehearsal numbers 0 to 2, 8 to 10, and 11 in the most
recent Figures doubles prismes score) throughout Doubles, with very long dura­
tions, creating a broad harmonic canvas.51 In order to describe the spatial
movement of this theme, example 8.1 indicates which instrumental groups
play the notes of each of the chords, whose location is then plotted on the
stage. Nevertheless, it must be born in mind that the instrumental groups
shown in example 8.1 are far from the only ones sounding in these passages.
The other groups play figures derived from three compositional procedures
that Boulez developed, which Edwards terms “superstructures” and Decroupet
structures enveloppantes with names such as canons d'intensités, accords complé­
,52

mentaires, and mélismes récitatifs, each being the source of new sonorities, figures,
arpeggios, and pitch collections in other instrumental families, providing fore­
ground interest to the expansive slow theme in the background. These super-
structural procedures result in a great variety of sounds heard elsewhere on the
orchestral stage plan that probably preclude hearing the movement of specific
sound-figures in space, stereo fashion. As a result, the possibility of hearing the
chords of the thème lent moving through space is diminished by the presence
of other foregrounded sounds. In the end, it is unlikely that a typical listener
would hear a stereophonic effect in the sense of musical figures consistently
moving through space, although here and there such effects can indeed be
perceived (for example, the first sonority of the thème lent, which travels from
stage right to stage left).

Group 119 of Gruppen

In the case of Gruppen, a unique situation arises, given the composer’s abun­
dant discourse on his works collected in writings and interviews. Stockhausen
himself pointed out a passage which has become a sort of locus classicus of
discussion of the spatial conception of Giuppen. Descriptions of this passage,
leading up to group 119, find their way into most later scholarly discussions of
Example 8.1. Instrumental groups used for each constituent chord of the thème
lent. Pierre Boulez, Figures - Doubles - Prismes \für Orchester. © Copyright 1964 by
Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE 13994.
reh.O to 2
 OF D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , AND R H Y M E S ** *59

of the work.53 This passage, which has been characterized as “the extraordi­
nary moment at LI9 where brass harmonies are acoustic alLy ‘cross-faded’ from
orchestra to orchestra,”54 was described by Stockhausen himself in his pub­
lished interviews with Jonathan Cott:

I also thought in terms of moving timbres: there’s one spot that led to some­
thing I hadn’t expected myself—a chord is moving from orchestra to orches­
tra with almost exactly the same instruments (horns and trombones) and
what changes isn’t the pitches but rather the sound in space. Each orches­
tra, one after another, makes a crescendo and a decrescendo; at the moment
when one starts fading out, the next orchestra begins to fade in, producing
these very strong waves of revolving timbres.55

Example 8.2 presents a reduction of die passage in question. Critics tended to

follow suit, letting their gaze rest on the spinning brass chords at rehearsal num­
ber 119, and drawing attention to the stereophonic aspects of the work, as the
next section will make clear. As if Stockhausen was aware of the way critics and
audiences could respond to the passages of Gruppen that involve sounds travel­
ing in space in away that was more difficult to grasp in the case of superimposed
tempi, he took pains to include such passages in his later multi-orchestra effort,
Carré for four orchestras and four choirs. In the spring of 1959, the English com­
poser Cornelius Cardew worked as Stockhausen’s assistant on the composition of
Carré. In two essays that Cardew later published in the Muskel Times, he claims to
have assembled large swaths of the work based on Stockhausen’s sometimes cryp­
tic sketches.56 In the second essay, Cardew focuses on several insertions to the
original plan that Stockhausen specifically conceived to demonstrate spatialized
sound travel using the four orchestras of the work: “In the insertions, Stockhausen
intended that ‘space’ should emancipate itself, and the sounds’ movements in
space should be their chief feature. Our main probLem—chiefly because it was
the most predictable one—was that the sounds would always proceed by jerks
around the room, for between each orchestra there was a considerable space.”57
Cardew shows himself to be conscious of the fact that the kinds of effects he was
trying to create for the concert audience was already commonplace in the world
of stereo recordings, writing that “the movement of sounds in space is largely a
psychological phenomenon; the problem is to create the illusion that the sound-
source is moving—easy for the stereo record engineers, harder with live perform­
ers.”58 Cardew eventually decided on a technique similar to cross-fading between
the orchestras, and gives examples of the way Stockhausen accomplished this
in collaboration with Cardew himself in the inserts. In section 69X of Carré, for
example, Cardew describes how “a soprano D ... is passed around the four cho­
ruses at the rate of 12 changes per minute—each chorus sustains it for five sec­
onds plus one second after the next chorus lias taken it up. Simultaneously the
strings and woodwind revolve1in the opp< wit e direct ion at the rale ofbC) (banges per
Example 8.2. Spatial motion in Group 119 (1 m. after reh. no. 119 until reh. no. 120), brass only. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gruppen
I für 3 Orchester | Nr. 6. © Copyright 1963 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/UE 13673.
 OP D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , A N D R H Y M E S ** l6 l

Example 8.3. Chord displace men t&in Pousseur, Rimes, second movement, from
rehearsal letters L to R. © Copyright by Sugar music S.p A. —Edizioni Suvini
Zerboni, Milano (Italy).
Front right
Rear right Promt right Front right Front left
Rear right Rearleft Rear right Reûr & Front left Rear left Fmnt left Front left Û
A JP L .

—cr~ “ O ' ¥ =K ¥
-W-

M Q-

minute.”59 These inserts, which were designed to dispLay the ambisonic pos­
sibilities of the orchestral positioning, expanded, as it were, on the famous pas­
sage in Gruppem.t group 119, and were added to the plan in order to emphasize
this aspect of the work. Whether the passage that forms group 119 of Gruppen,
lasting only a few seconds, would have been noticed by the audience or even by
professional critics had Stockhausen not attracted our attention to it is perhaps
irrelevant: it merely shows the power of the composer’s discourse to shape lis­
teners’ perceptions of a work. But undoubtedly this passage features a clear,
simple, even naive approach to spatialization that is rather atypical of the work
as a whole; in fact, as the section of this essay on critical reception will show,
many critics were disappointed by the lack of musical figures in general in
Gruppen, let alone figures that change position stereophonic ally.

Movement 2 of Rimes

As for Pousseur’s Rimes, in the middle of the second movement, in what is one
of the few stereophonic passages of the piece, slow chords are alternately played
by ensembles at opposite ends of the performance space. In his essay on Rimes,
Pousseur speaks only of ‘long-held chords, very soft and absolutely immobile that
subsist in the background and thus prepare for their eventual predominance.”60
But far from being immobile, these chords are heard alternately at opposite cor­
ners of the concert space, as the reduction in example 8.3 demonstrates.
A glance at these various “stereophonic” passages in works by Boulez,
Stockhausen, and Pousseur has suggested some close parallels in the way they
were conceived and perceived, a generic bond uniting these works. Each work
presupposed a distinct theorization of space. In Doubles, Boulez put it in the
service of timbre. In Gruppen, Stockhausen subordinated it to time /pulsation.
In Rimes, Pousseur includes it as one' of several sources of op positional tension,
along t h e lines of the L i i s t r u m e n t a l / c d e c l m n i c sound divide. However, all of
1 () 2 ** JO N A TH A N GOLDMAN

these passages is striking in that listeners would have been perceived them in
roughly the same way—that is, as experiences, relatively rare in the context of
the three works as a whole, of an identifiable musical object changing its posi­
tion. In the cases of Gruppen and Doubles, these moments—the easiest to parse
and perhaps those that leave the most vivid impression on the listener—are
those that critics by and large refer to in their reviews.

Critical Reception

The critical reception of these spatial works by Boulez, Stockhausen, and

Polisseur may well have been modulated by the massive advertising campaign
that supported sales of stereo equipment and records. To what extent, then,
did critics connect their experience of these compositions to the familiar expe­
rience most of their readers already would have had of stereophonic sound in
the home or in Cinerama? The answer seems simple at first, since it is likely
that many concertgoers entering the Rheinsaal of the Cologne Exhibition
(«rounds for the first performance of Gruppen on March 24, 1958, would asso­
ciate the seating plan spread out on three sides around them with advertise­
ments for stereo or even the placement of loudspeakers in their own living
rooms or at the cinema. Attendees at the premiere of Doubles, while watching
stage hands rearrange the chairs and stands on stage at length, which famously
prompted Le Figaro's critic Clarendon to dub the piece La polka des chaises
(musical chairs),61 might have thought of speaker placement in their own liv­
ing rooms, many articles on the topic having appeared in magazines at the
time. This issue is trickier than it might at first appear because of the semantic
drill of the term stereophony. Not until sometime in the 1960s did the meaning
n! the word stereo stabilize to mean two-channel sound, having conveyed a more
general sense of spatialized multichannel sound before that time.62 Criticism
of this repertoire might sometimes have betrayed disappointment rooted in
these expectations of explicit sound traveling that were not fully satisfied in
live acoustic or electroacoustic performances.
To some listeners, it was clear that spatial works such as Doubles and Gruppen
formed a kind of genre, or indeed a fad. Everett Helm wrote about the elec­
tronic part of Boulez’s Poésie pour pouvoir, which he said “produces Musik imRaum
(Music in Space), which, nota bene, is the clue to the latest musical fashions.”63
In a 1959 New York Times article, Igor Stravinsky himself expressed a tempered
skepticism (if not a cautious optimism) about the promises of stereophonic
sound, warning that “we do not hear live performances ‘stereophonically,’ . . .
and stereo, instead of giving us ‘the best seat in the house’ gives us, in fact, a
kind of omnipresent seat not found in any house.” Me concludes by referring to
r e c ent works that integrated the stereo principle into their very conception:
 OF D O U B L E S , GROUPS, AND RHYMES 9» L63

Stereophony has already influenced composed music. At the most superfi­

cial level this amounts to an exploitation of the stereo effect (the stereo fault,
rather) by "‘building” stereo “in,” creating distance and separation by reseating
the orchestra, etc. (When I listen to this sort of musk 1 find myself looking
in the direction of the sound, as one does in Cinerama; therefore ‘"direction”
seems to me as useful a word as “distance” to describe this effect.) Examples of
this kind of music are Stockhausen’s "‘Gruppen” and Boulez’s "‘Doubles.” But
a more profound influence of stereo will come when composers see that they
have to construct an independently interesting “middle dimension.”54

Stravinsky thus definitely believed that stereo technology was the source of inspi­
ration for both Gruppen and Doubles, and he was surely not the onLy listener to
arrive at this conclusion. But in 1959, Stravinsky had not actually heard either
work but was relying on accounts of conceits that his friends had attended.

Critical Recepdon of Doubles

Critics who had attended the first performance of Doubles were in a position to
weigh in on the success of Boulez’s stereophonic effort. Many critics were con­
scious of the links between the work’s spatial conception and stereo technology.
Edgard Schall wrote in a Swissjournal that the sounds “rang out. from a fixed loca­
tion, while the issue was taken up by the various groups, thus seeming to dance
around the stage. The sound effects obtained in such a manner bringing to mind
a certain relief-like impression of stereophonic effects normally triggered only by
technical means.”65 In the pages of Paris’s newspapers and music journals, most of
which included reviews of the Doubles performance, critics were divided over the
perceptibility of the announced stereophonic effects. Writing in Le Mande, René
Dumesnil confessed that he “did not experience any particular sensation of ‘stere­
ophony’ announced in the programme.”56 Marc Pinch erle, writing in Les Nouvelles
littéraires, assumed that the unusual seating plan was used in order to "‘obtain a ste­
reophony adequate to the economy of the work (the horns in front, in two groups
facing each other, the double basses in three groups, two on the sides and the
other facing the audience, etc.),” but admits, “1 only grasped the exterior, the play
of sonorities.”57,Jean Hamon, in Combat, notes Boulez’s reference in the program
notes to stereophony but admits that he could not perceive it.58 Similarly, after the
British premiere of Figures doubles prismes in 1964, Hans Ulrich Lehmann observed
in the pages of Tempo that “The doubLy symmetrical lay-out of the six groups ...
permits all sorts of stereophonic effects. These, however, were clearly perceptible
only to listeners in the front rows of the hall, for which failing the small size of
the stage may well take the blame.”69 The stereophonic reading of Figures doubles
prismes continued among critics following successive performances of the work
and its newer versions. Marcel Schneider described the seating plan of Doubles in
an article on musical life in France that was published in an Ttalian journal in 1959
164 ** JONATHAN GOLDMAN

and in which he reiterated ideas he had expressed in a concert review published

in Combat Schneider saw stereophony in Doubles as a means of representation of
.7 0

the disembodied Doppelgängerof the tide: “In order to create a sort of stereophony,
the composers then had the idea to pLace the instruments in a particular way....
Not that this is a new idea, but Boulez used it in a felicitous way creating with it a
disquieting and mysterious atmosphere that justifies the tide Doubles, correspond­
ing to the Doppelgänger of Schubert and Schumann.”71 Other critics described the
first performance with no mention of stereophony at all, not considering it essen­
tial to a discussion of the work.72 In general then, critics were disappointed at not
discerning any stereophonic effects in Doubles. Depending on their temperament
or aesthetic allegiances, they blamed this absence either on the composer or on
the shortcomings of their own ears.

Critical Reception of Gruppen

The parallels between Grupperis actual sound and the phenomenon of stereo­
phony were not lost on the first wave of critics. Writing in the American Musical
Courier, Horst Koegler noted:

In his “Groups for Three Orchestras,” Stockhausen uses three differently

placed ensembles, between which he seats the listeners, so that they hear the
music wandering from one orchestra to the next and thereby undergoing
various changes. This is, of course, “stereophonic” live music. The effect is
ai first startling; later on, however, it loses some of its erstwhile “music-on-
llie-move” spell. The music in itself is not interesting enough to arrest one’s
attention, which begins to wander, too.73

With the two words “of course,” Koegler showed that the stereophonic aspect
ol ( h uppen was obvious to him, and he assumed that it would be for his readers
as well. At the same time, by placing the word stereophonic in quotation marks,
he was expressing doubts about the possibility of (or interest in) reproducing
stereophonic effects by a live ensemble. Other critics latched onto the climax
at Group 119, finding it to be a convenient place to begin their discussion of
“space music” and its links to stereophony. Thus Antoine Goléa, writing in 1977,
claimed that Gruppen “is the supremely virtuosic realization of a living stereo­
phony, and also the inauguration of large-scale orchestral writing, influenced by
the composer’s electroacoustic research, but remaining in essence symphonic,
despite its extremely tightly woven polyphony.”74 In 1981, Francis Bayer spoke of
“the orchestra breakfing] out stereophonically into three instrumental groups
that play simultaneously at a distance from each other and most often in differ­
ent tempi.”75 In 1992, Paul Griffiths wrote that “having arrived at this situation,
Stockhausen proceeded to exploit it, notably at the climax of the work, where
 OF D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , A N D R H Y M E S 165

a brass chord is swung around the hail from one orchestra to another.”76 Peter
Evans writes in the Oxford History of Music that “Stockhausen’s spatial lay-out. . .
permits arresting motions of a uniform timbre; a quasi-fugal exposition of nine
brass entries is distributed in space and its climax-chords dynamically manipu­
lated so as to swirl round the orchestras.”77 In a 1967 concert review of Gruppen
that appeared in the Musical Times, Roger Smalley described how “the first cli­
max is built up by brass and piano alone and culminates in a thriLling series of
chords thrown with an almost physical impact from one orchestra to another.”78
And yet, as we have seen, Stockhausen emphasized in his commentaries on
the work that the spatial conception of Gruppen was the means to the end
of creating a multitemporal musical work and that temporal considerations
thus have primacy over spatial/stereophonic ones. As we also have seen, crit­
ics of the work’s performance during the 1960s tended to take their cue from
Stockhausen’s all-powerful discourse about it, emphasizing the treatment of
time over space. Most of these critics could not hear (or were not listening
for) spatial effects of a stereophonic kind. Writing in 1960 the journal Esprit,
the French composer Gilbert Amy considered that “although such an ensem­
ble does not allow for very great refinement of sound, it is nevertheless wholly
appropriate to its main objective: as a way of globally highlighting the continu­
ally varying superimpositions of tempi within a clear stereophony.”79
Indeed, many critics were in awe of Stockhausen’s achievement but could
not make head or tail of the music (notably but not only because the score
was not readily available). They resorted to paraphrasing whole paragraphs
of Stockhausen’s essay “Music and Space.”80 This is unsurprising, given that,
as Charles Wilson wrote, “It is often noted how writing on late twentieth-cen­
tury music has slipped ail too often into a kind of ghost-writing, in which
critics effectively replicate composers’ own accounts of their music.”81 When
critics did allow themselves to offer mild criticism of their experience, their
target was revealing. Karl Wörner remarked in the pages of the Musical Times
that “this is definitely Expressionist music, often very jagged and given to wild
outbursts and sharp contrasts. The effect diminishes with repeated listening.
A purely musical objection to be raised against this music is its lack of plastic
themes, which increasingly fatigues the ear.”82 This “lack of plastic themes”83
may belie disappointment in an inability to hear themes shuttling between
the different orchestras, evolving as they travel—in essence a disappointment
at the lack of stereophonic effects, echoing similar disappointment or baffle­
ment among many critics of Doubles. In the Saturday Review, Everett Helm
wrote that he went with the expectation of sound traveling—of “antipho-
nal effects”—and found the lack of such effects in Gruppen a shortcoming:
“Most of the time his three groups sounded like one huge orchestra that
had overflowed from the stage into the hall. He left many of the possibili­
ties of antiphonal effects unexploiied. Ilus was particularly true of the two
l6 6 ** JONATHAN" GO LD M AN

enormous crescendos, one for the mammoth percussion, the other from the
brass, both of which built up to 3D pandemonium.”84

Critical Reception of Rimes

The most memorable aspect of Pousseur’s Rimes was unquestionably its incorpo­
ration of electronic music on tape, and consequently critics turned their atten­
tion more to this technological aspect of the piece than to its spatialized seating
plan, often considering the blending of electronic and instrumental sounds to
be successful: “The sounds and their combinations were extremely varied. This
is the best synthesis of ‘real’ and electronic music that we have heard to date
and also the best work by Pousseur.”85 Nevertheless, critics did sometimes draw
attention to the spatialized nature of the ensembles. The liner notes to the 1967
LP The New Music explicitly relate the spatialized plan of Rimes to Venetian poly-
chory: “The sound sources are set against each other, reminding some of the
16t h-century example of broken or answering choirs in St. Mark’s.” This author
uses the distancing phrase “reminding some,” fearing perhaps that such a judg­
ment might be considered naive, however much the author believed it.86 The
anonymous critic of the Darmstädter Echo noted, “These ‘rhymes’ are composed
of three stereophonically established orchestral groups.”87 This critic also consid­
ered the work’s filiation to other spatialized orchestral pieces to be self-evident:
“The influence of Stockhausen’s ‘Gruppen für drei Orchester’ and especially
of ‘Poésie pour pouvoir’ by Boulez, premiered last year in Donaueschingen, is
unmistakable.”88 This critic also considered Pousseur’s space-music entry deriva-
live and uninspired: “Unfortunately, Pousseur’s apparent lack of a strong authen­
tic creative force cannot be replaced either by formulas nor through purely
physical speculation.”89 In the Musical Times, Everett Helm also described the
work as “stereophonic,” since the “orchestra was divided into separate groups,
two of which were placed in the rear of the hall.”90 Claude Rostand, writing about
(lie Aix-en-Provence premiere of all three movements of Rimes, emphasized the
way the spatial groups staged a geography of the park in which it was performed:
"'These ‘various sound sources’ disseminated under the chestnut trees of Rambot
Park revealed an ingeniously strange music to us through its effects of spatial
mobility, and in which Monsieur Henri Pousseur essentially sought to integrate
classical instrumental timbres with the new timbres of electronic technique, and
also to find sound equivalencies between two different vocabularies.”91 Hans
Keller’s negative review takes the spatial conception of the work for granted,
criticizing the work’s conception because some audience members would neces­
sarily be seated outside the “sweet spot”:I

II you sil “in the wrong place” at an ordinary concert, you try to adjust your­
self and, up to a point, intuitively compensate* for the distortion—enough to
 OF D O U B L E S , GRO U PS, A N D K B Y MES 8* L67

be able to follow the music, of whose textural framework you are aware by
acoustic implication, even though you do not directly perceive it But when
you are confronted with Pousseur’s work, you will, if you are not exception­
ally lucky, sit in 2 or 3 “wrong places” at once, or in a place which is right for
one source of sound but wrong for another.. . . I think 1 greatly shocked a
colleague from Norddeutscher Rundfunk when Eturned my chair round by
180°; yet, in the acoustic circumstances, this was the most natural and logi­
cal experiment imaginable. The resuLt was striking, the balance between the
different sources of sound totally different—in some respects the opposite.
What would the composer haye said if I had asked him which sound-picture
was the “truer”?92

Keller was uneasy with the idea that no two concertgoers would hear the
work the same way; yet the uniqueness of each listening subject’s perception
is inscribed into all spatialized works, explicitly so when the pioneering com­
poser Henry Brant asserted in 1955 that “spatial music must be conceived in
accordance with the premise that there is no one optimum position in the hall
for each listener... . Spatial music must be written in such a way that the com­
poser is able to accept whatever he hears as a listener, regardless of his position
in the hall.”93

Conclusions

Whenever technology comes into the story of postwar avant-garde music, it

generally falls on the poietic side of things: the ways technology can be used
to construct musical works. More rarely do musicologists speak about the ways
in which technology (sound reproduction) is also an essential mode of recep­
tion for this repertoire. Yet technology also inflects the experience of listening
to music, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that audience members who
had been reading the ubiquitous newspaper and magazine articles on stereo­
phony and who had recently acquired stereo systems would experience spa­
tial music such as Gruppen, Doubles, or Dimes through the prism of their own
personal experimentations with the kinds of spatializations made possible in
the home and cinema by stereo systems. Composers, aware of this trend, some­
times draw explicit connections between the technology and their spatialized
works (BouLez’s “Our era requires stereophony”). But what binds these works
together over and above their chronological proximity and their composition
by composers working very closely, and of the same generation and approxi­
mate location, is a cluster of concerns, chief among them the (poietic) incor­
poration of the parameter of space into the logic of musical composition, and
(esthesic) listening for sound movement of the kind experienced in the cin­
ema or iti ihr 1tome, l he parallels bel ween spat ialiped orchestra works and the
l6 8 JONATHAN GOLDMAN

multiple sound sources of home and public stereo systems were underscored
for listeners even more emphatically when these works were released on ste­
reo LPs beginning in the later 1960s.94 Further, a common thread that runs
through the works mentioned in this chapter is that most of them were com­
missioned or programmed by German radio stations, and the Donaueschingen
festival itself was produced by the Southwest German radio (SWR). Stereo
radio had been broadcast experimentally in Germany in the 1940s; over the
course of the 1960s, more and more people had stereo FM receivers in their
homes. In 1966, there were nine hundred thousand in Germany, which was
still in the long process of postwar economic reconstruction, and that number
doubled the following year.95
Taken together, the poietic and esthesic aspects of these works authorize
our considering them as forming a genre in the strong sense. In a recent but
already highly influential journal article, Eric Drott traces the history of a cer­
tain story about twentieth-century music.96 According to this plot line, which
is propagated in countless music history textbooks, the history of twentieth-
century music is one of progressive liberation from genre constraints. Works
cease to be sonatas, symphonies, or minuets in order to become sui generis.
Drott comments on a passage from Carl Dahlhaus’s Aesthetics of Music (1967)
as emblematic of this particular story, in which Dalhaus claimed that in the
past, musical works were examples of a genre, whereas, “in the twentieth cen­
tury, individual structures submit only under duress to being allocated to any
genre.”97 Drott points out that despite this prevailing scenario, certain genres
continue to exert their influence on twentieth-century music. Following Bruno
I .atour, Drott defines a genre as a processive “grouping” rather than as a fixed
group, in these terms:

A dynamic ensemble of correlations, linking together a variety of material,

institutional, social, and symbolic resources: repertories, performance prac­
tices, dist inctive formal and stylistic traits, aesthetic discourses, forms of self-
presentation, institutions, specific modes of technological mediation, social
identities, and so forth. These correlations in turn give rise to an array of
assumptions, behaviors, and competences, which taken together orient the
(individual) actions and (social) interactions of different “art world” partici­
pants: composers, performers, publishers, audiences, critics, music industry
personnel, arts administrators, and music scholars (among others).98

Drott’s reasoning could well apply to the corpus of multiorchestral works stud­
ied here. In the way that they stage stereophony diversely (sometimes satisfy­
ing but sometimes dashing our expectations of what a stereophonic work can
achieve), these works may well constitute a genre, with the combination of
composerly intention and audience expectations that the term implies. The
spatiali/.ed instrumental works discussed in this chapter dearly link together
 O r DO U BLES , GRO U PS, AND RH YM ES 3» l6 g

material, institutional, social and symbolic resources. They also induce a cer­
tain compositional aesthedc discourse (one that takes pains to distinguish this
repertoire from others) and critical reception (one that is constantly expecting
antiphonal effects and disappointed to varying degrees by its absence). These
works also draw links to poietic (referring to the use of space as a musical
parameter) and esthesic practice (learning to hear the musical uses of space,
whether in the home, at the cinema, or in the concert space of Gruppen). The
generic connotations of these works might well have invited a certain form of
listening to them in the concert hall, one mediated by audio technology.

Notes

1. In approaching works transversally rather than individually, 1 am also following

the lead of Pascal Decroupet, whose scholarship deals with the music of the
three composers discussed here (Stockhausen, Boulez, and Pousseur), but I
extend his methodology toward the realm of reception.
2. Charles Wilson, “Gyorgy Ligeti and the Rhetoric of Autonomy,” Twentieth-
Century Music no. 1 (2004): 17.
3. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Music and Space,”Die Reihe 5 (1961) : 71.
4. Karl H. Worn er, Stockhausen: Life and Work, trans. Bill Hopkins (London: Faber
8c Faber, 1973), 167.
5. Luciano Berio, Allehjah II for five orchestral groups, premiered in Rome on
May 17, 1958, by the RAI Orchestra, Bruno Maderna and Berio conducting;
performed at Donaueschingen Festival on October 18, 1959.
6. D. R., “The International Scene: Cologne Host to 34th Festival of the ISCM,”
Musical Courier (August 1960), 23.
7. Toshiro Mayuzumi, Nirvana Symphony, for Male Chorus and Orchestra (New
York: Peters, 1969), score 6336, 2.
8. [Nattiez’s footnote:] See Jean MoLino, Le singe musicien. Sémiologie et anthropolo­
gie de la musique, Jean-Jacques Nattiez éd., Arles: Actes Sud / INA, p. 242 and
“Pour une histoire de Tinterprétation: les étapes de l’herméneutique,” pt. 1,
Philosophiques 20, no. 1 (1985): 97.
9. [Nattiez’s footnote:] Louis Robert, “Épigraphie,” in Charles Samaran ed.,
LHistoire et ses méthodes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 473.
10. [Nattiez’s footnote] Molino, “Pour une histoire de Vinterprétation,” 97.
IL Placement of Nattiez’s footnotes is indicated by bracketed numerals: “On ne
peut mieux expliquer ce qu’est le critère de la mise en série, reformulation du
bon vieux principe cartésien des ‘dénombrements complets,’ que Jean Molino
a théorisée en s’inspirant des leçons de la philologie et de l’archéologie:^
‘C’est un principe essentiel que celui de la série. Une inscription isolée ne
livre qu’une partie de son enseignement; elle ne prend sou vrai sens qu’au
sein d’une série; plus la série est abondante et variée, plus l’inscription devi­
ent intéressante. C'est la règle d’or exprimée pour tous les monuments
archéologiques par Kcluard ( lerhanl: ‘Qui a vu un monument iTcn ;i vu aucun;
L7 0 ** JO NATH AN GOLDMAN

qui en a vu mille en a vu un.’*9! Et Molino de poursuivre: ‘La mise en série de

données homogènes, qui permet de distinguer l’exception et la règle, les con­
stantes et les évolutions, est Yopération qui constitue le fait historique en tant
que tel.’f10^ Elle est également constitutive de l’acte herméneutique lui-même
auquel elle apporte sa légitimité et sa validité. Face aux diverses interpréta­
tions historiques, souvent contradictoires, et la variété des constituants du tissu
de l’histoire, ce que je peux tenter de faire, c’est de les mettre en série car la
mise en série est sans doute l’opération fondamentale des sciences humaines.”
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Analyses et interprétations de la musique. La mélodie du berger
dans le Tristan et Isolde de Richard Wagner (Paris: Vrin, 2013), 308. See also
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, “The Concepts of Plot and Sériation Process in Music
Analysis,” Music Analysis A, nos. 1-2 (1985): 107-18.
12. Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit Chistoire: Essai d'épistémologie (Paris: Seuil, 1971),
46-47; cited in Je anJacques Nattiez, “Histoire ou histoires de la musique?”
Musiques: Une encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle (Arles: Actes Sud, 2006), 4:28.
13. Plie system for developing single-groove two-channel stereo discs was devel­
oped by the Westrex company, and demonstrated at the annual meeting of the
Audio Engineering Society in New York in October 1957. The major record
labels began producing stereo discs in 1958; Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous
Phonograph 1877-1977 {New York: MacMillan, 1977), 316.
14. “WFUV To Program Stereophonic FM: Fordham Radio Station Will Begin
Broadcasts Oct. 1—New Technique Planned,” New York Times, September
22, 1958, 52; Burton Paulu, Radio and Television Broadcasting on the European
Continent (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 29. In 1964, the
cl lief sound superintendent of Swiss Radio could write that “single-channel
broadcast-transmission is likely to stay with us for the time being.” Ermanno
Biiner-Aimo, “Stereophonic Effects by Monaural Means,” Gravesaner Blätter 7,
no. 25 (1964): 86.
15. Allied R. Zipser, “Plants Quicken Tempo to Meet Stereophonic Sales
Crescendo: Orders Booming in Stereo Field,” New York Times, September 6,
1959, FI.
16. At least eight such records were released in 1957 and 1958 alone: Adventures
in Stereo, Decca DL 738046, 1957; Bel Canto Stereophonic Demonstration Record,
Bel ( !unto SR 1000, 1957; Double F—Double S (Full Frequency Stereophonic Sound),
Decca STO 101, UK, 1958; A Journey into Stereo Sound, London Records PS 100,
1958; Somethingfor Both Ears! World Pacific Stereo HFS-2, 1958; A Demonstration
of the New Dimensional Sound of Dynamic Stereo, Roulette Records SR-100, 1958;
Admiral Stereophonic Demonstration Record, RCA Victor PRS-218, 1958; Stereophonie
(Graetz Stereo-Werbeplatte), Graetz, 1958; Sounds in Space, RCA Victor SP 33-13,
1958.
17. “Je fais grief, non pas aux inventeurs de la stéréophonie [. . .] mais aux négo­
ciants qui s’en servent pour redonner quelque vigueur au marché américain
du disque.” Raymond Lyon, Guide du concert et du disque 39, no. 229 (April 3,
1959): 2-3.
18. Robert Kolben, “Stereophony Today: A Brief Review,” Gravesaner Blätter 19-20
(1960): 183.
 OP D OUBLES, GROUPS, AND RHYM ES ** 17L

19. Arthur Cohn, “Review of Recorded Music: Stereo,”' Mutual Courier (July 1959),
15.
20. Arthur Cohn, “Review of Recorded Music: Stereo,” Musical Courier (September
1959), 19.
21. Including several articles on stereo sound: see issues 5 (1956); 7-8 (1957);
11-12 (1958); 13 (1959); 15-16 (1960); 19-20 (1960); and 25 (1964).
22. See Dennis C. Hutchison, “Performance, Technology, and Politics: Hermann
Scherchen’s Aesthetics of Modern Music,” (PhD diss., Florida State University,
2003), 86-120.
23. “C’est un seul orchestre avec des groupes qui sont disposés symétriquement:
les bois sont au centre, les cuivres à la périphérie et les cordes dans l’espace
interstitiel, la percussion étant placée tout au fond.” Pierre Boulez, Uêcriture
du geste: Entretiens avec Cécile Gilly sur la direction d’orchestre (Paris: Christian
Bourgois, 2002), 114.
24. Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen; A Biography, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber 8c
Faber, 1992), 79-80.
25. Karl H. Wôrner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, trans. Bill Hopkins (London: Faber
& Faber, 1963, 1973), 162-63.
26. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Music and Space,” Die Reihe 5 (1961 ): 71.
27. Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gruppen / Carré, Deutsche Grammophon 137 002,
1968, 33% rpm.
28. Francis Bayer, De Schönberg à Cage: Essai sur la notion d’espace sonore dans la
musique contemporaine (Paris: Klincksieck, 1987), 15-16; see also Olivier Lussac,
“Gruppen @ Karlheinz Stockhausen/’ artperformance.org, http://www.artper-
formance.org/article-19127353.html (accessedJuly 5, 2016).
29. Jonathan Harvey, The Musk of Stockhausen (BerkeLey and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1975), 56.
30. Robin Maconie, The Works of Stockhausen (London/Boston: Marion Boyars,
1976), 125-27.
31. Henri Pousseur, “Rimes pour différentes sources sonores (1961),” Écrits
théoriques (1954-1967), ed. Pascal Decroupet (Brussels: Mardaga, 2004), 162.
32. Patrick Valiquet, “The Spatialisation of Stereophony: Taking Positions in Post­
war Electroacoustic Music,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of
Music 43, no. 2 (2012): 404.
33. Pierre Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, trans. Susan Bradshaw and Richard
Rodney Bennett (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 67.
34. “Mais j ’ai pris la liberté de leur faire changer de place, La disposition de
l’orchestre sur une scène, en effet, suit toujours, avec quelques variantes, le
type fixé au XIXe siècle qui, lui-même, était hérité en grande partie du siècle
précédent. Si l’on a augmenté les effectifs, on n ’a guère songé aux problèmes
acoustiques que posait la transformation de l’écriture musicale, et l’on s’était
accommodé de ces trois écrans de timbre que constitue l’orchestre ‘classique.’
L’écriture, de nos jours, met en cause la physique de l’orchestre. NuL ne me
contredira si j ’affirme que lorsque des timbres se succèdent rapidement, ils
ne doivent pas être péniblement arc roc lié s les uns aux autres par delà une
172 ** JO N A TH A N GOLDMAN

distance-obstacle; nul ne me contredira encore si j ’affirme que l’oreille, de

nos jours, exige la stéréophonie dans un désir d’évidence et de mouvement.
Cette ‘manifestation5par une disposition entre les instruments de l’orchestre
est bien réellement exigée par l’écriture de la musique, donc, à l’origine, par
la poétique des oeuvres nouvelles. Telle est une des cractéristiques de cette
partition sur laquelle je voulais attirer l’attention.” Boulez, “Quelques mots
sur ma nouvelle partition,” insert to the Carnets Lamoureux, March 16, 1958,
Boulez Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation Archive; reprinted in Antoine
Goléa, Rencontres avec Pierre Boulez, (Paris: Julliard, 1958), 247 (my translation
and emphasis).
35. An evolution that I trace in “Listening to Doubles in Stereo,” in Boulez Studies,
ed. Edward Campbell and Peter O’Hagan (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016), 246-69.
36. Jochen Stolla, Abbild und Autonomie. Zur Klangbildgestaltung bei Aufnahmen klas­
sischer Musik 1950-1994 (Marburg: Tectum, 2004), 78; Martin Raitenecker,
“Trois perspectives sur l’enregistrement sonore,” in Musique et enregistrement,
ed. Pierre-Henry Frangne and Hervé Lacombe (Rennes: Presses universitaires
de Rennes, 2014), 140.
37. Pierre Boulez, Pierre Boulez: Conversations with Cêkstin Deliège (London:
Eulenburg, 1976), 100.
38. “Ce dispositif est en relation avec l’idée, neuve à l’époque, de stéréophonie,
le timbre étant réparti sur scène d’une façon éventuellement mobile et
l’orchestre classique étant fondé sur des domaines fixes de timbres.” Boulez,
llêcriture du geste, 114.
39. Stockhausen, “Music and Space,” 70.
40. |onathan Cott, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (New York: Simon 8c
Schuster, 1973), 200.
41. Col t, Stockhausen, 200.
42. C<>tt, Stockhausen, 200.
43. "Recently, on the occasion of some first performances, examples from occi­
dental musical history have been discussed in which the distribution in space
of ( hoirs or instrumental groups also plays a part. If the examples cited are
examined more closely, it can be seen how little they have in common with the
present-day musical situation.” Cott, Stockhausen, 67.
44. “Warum sendet man solche Musik, die ganz für den Konzertsaal geschrieben
ist? Nun, es ist besser, schon einmal eine Photographie von einer Plastik zu
sehen, als gar nichts; vielleicht bekommt man dann Lust, sich die Plastik auch
einmal im Original anzuschauen: das gilt auch für diese Musiksendung. Und
dann wird der Rundfunk in nicht allzu ferner Zeit das stereophone, also räum­
lich gerechte Hören einführen. Dann hat der Hörer mehrere Lautsprecher im
Zimmer und bekommt wenigstens einen annähernden Eindruck von solcher
Raummusik.” Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Nr. 6: Gruppen für 3 Orchester (1955-
1957),” in Texte zur Musik, vol. 2, Texte zu eigenen Werk zur Kunst Anderer Aktuelles
(Cologne: Dumont Schauberg, 1964), 72 (my italics).
45. The essay “Rimes pour différentes sources sonores” was based on a lecture
Polisseur delivered in Stockholm before a performance of the work by the
 OF D O U B L E S , G RO U PS, AND R H YM ES L73

Stockholm Philharmonic on January 26, 1962. The text was then published in
the Swedish journal Nutida Musik 5, no. 3 (L961-62): 20-24:, and included in
Pousseur, Écrits théoriques, L6L-66.
46. “Progressivement, au cours d’un processus polyphonique toujours domine
par l’orchestre, les sonorités enregistrées se déplaceraient vers l’arrière de la
salle.” Pousseur, “Rimes,” 162.
47. “Ce processus de définition d’un espace englobant, extérieur à l’orchestre.”
Pousseur, “Rimes,” 162.
48. Pousseur, “Rimes,” 163.
49. Valiquet, “The Spatialisation of Stereophony,” 415.
50. See Allen Edwards, “Boulez's ‘Doubles’ and ‘Figures Doubles Prismes’: A
Preliminary Study,” Tempo, 185 (1993): 7.
51. Universal Edition, 1964; a lengthier discussion of spatialization in the thème lent
can be found in Goldman, “listening to Domä/ss in Stereo.”
52. Pascal Decroupet, “Moments Doubles, Figures en Prisme,” in Pierre Boulez:
Techniques d ’écriture et enjeux esthétiques, ed. Pascal Decroupet and Jean-Louis
Leleu (Geneva: Contrechamps, 2006), 133-57.
53. In a dissertation later published in book form, Sarah Ann Overholt observes
that many passages of Gruppen are designed to create an illusion of sound trav­
eling, going so far as to describe the work: as “musical trickery filled with aural
illusions of sounds floating, jumping, and spiraling around the audience with­
out any of the musicians actually leaving their assigned positions. This spatial
slight-of-hand is accomplished via strictly controlled parameters of the compo­
sitional design, specifically through the combination of pitch, volume and tim­
bre pairings, and, most importantly, through various diversionary techniques.”
Sara Ann Overholt, “Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Spatial Theories: Analyses
of Gruppen für drei Orchester and Oktophcnie, Electronische Musik von Dienstag
aus LIGHT’ (PhD diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 2006), 93;
published as Stockhausen’s Musical Shapes: How a Master Composer Moves Sound
(Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008).
54. Quoted in Overholt, Karlheinz Stockhausen ’s Spatial Theories, 103.
55. Cott, Stockhausen, 200-201.
56. Cornelius Cardew, “Report on Stockhausen’s ‘Carré/’5 Musical Times 102, no.
1424 (1961): 619-22.
57. Cornelius Cardew, “Report on ‘Carré': Part 2,” Musical Times 102, no. 1425
(1961): 698.
58. Cardew, “Report on ‘Carré5: Part 2,” 698.
59. Cardew, “Report on ‘Carré5: Part 2,” 698.
60. “D’accords longuement tenus, très doux et tout à fait immobiles, qui subsis­
tent à l’arrière-plan et préparent à leur façon l’évolution ultérieure des phé­
nomènes dominants.” Pousseur, “Rimes,” 165.
61. Bernard Gavoty (Clarendon, pseud.), “Pierre Boulez ou Lapolka des chaises,” Le
Figaro, Mardi 18, 1958, 18.
62. Valiquet, “The Spatialisation of Stereophony,’*404.
63. Everett Helm, Tlonaueschingen Festival a n d Space Music,” Musical. Times 99,
no. 1390 (1958): (>76.
174 ** JO N A TH A N GOLDMAN

64. Igor Stravinsky, “New Sound as Stravinsky Hears It: Stravinsky and Sound,” New
York Times, March 15, 1959, Ml, 14. This article may have been conceived as a
promotional tool, because it was published only two months after the record­
ing sessions that Stravinsky made for the stereo LP of his Threni
65. “Die letzteren erklangen von einem festen Platz aus, während das Thema von
der verschiedenen Gruppen aufgenommen wurde, also den Kern zu umtan­
zen schien. Die auf solche Weise erzielten Klangwirkungen riefen durch
einen gewissen reliefartigen Eindruck sonst nur durch technische Mittel aus­
gelöste stereophonische Effekte ins Gedächtnis.” Edgard Schall, “Frankreich,”
Schweizerische Musikzeitung98 (1958): 226-28 (my translation).
66. “Je n’ai aucunement éprouvé une sensation particulière de ‘stéréophonie’
annoncée par le programme.” René Dumesnil, “Pierre Boulez—Peter Frankl—
Georges Prêtre aux concerts Lamoureux,” Le Monde, March 18, 1958, 13.
67. “Obtenir une stéréophonie adéquate à l’économie de l’œuvre (les cors au pre­
mier plan, en deux groupes se faisant face, les contrebasses en trois groupes,
deux latéraux, l’autre face au public, etc.). . .. Je n’en ai saisi que l’extérieur,
le jeu des sonorités.” Marc Pincherle, “La musique,” Les Nouvelles littéraires,
March 20, 1958,10.
68. Jean Hamon, “Toujours à propos de Doubles de Pierre Boulez,” Combat, March
24, 1958.
69. Hans Ulrich Lehmann, “First Performances: Boulez’s Figures Doubles Prismes,”
Tempo 68 (1964): 34 (my emphasis).
70. Marcel Schneider, “La musique à Paris,” Combat, March 27, 1958, 3.
71. “Per creare una sorta di stereofonia l’autore allora ha avuto l’idea di disporre
gli strumenti in maniera particolare. .. . Non è del resto un’idea nuova, ma
Boulez l’ha saputa impiegare con un felice risultato, e ha in tal modo creato
queiratmosfera inquiétante e misteriosa ehe giustificava il titolo Doubles, cor-
rispondenti ai Doppelgänger di Schubert et di Schumann.” Marcel Schneider,
"La vita musicale all’estero: Francia,” Musica d’oggi 2 (1959): 172-74.
72. See, for example, Jacques Bourgeois, “La révolution de Pierre Boulez a fait
long feu à Lamoureux,” Arts-Lettres-Spectacles, March 19-25, 1958, 9.
73. 1lors! Koegler, “The International Scene: Berlin,” Musical Courier 158
(December 1958): 23.
74. “C’est la réalisation suprêmement virtuose d’une stéréophonie vivante, c’est
aussi l’inauguration d’une écriture orchestrale de grandes dimensions, influ­
encée par les recherches électroacoustiques de l’auteur, mais restant sympho­
nique dans son essence, malgré une polyphonie extrêmement serrée.” Antoine
Goléa, La musique de la nuit des temps aux aurores nouvelles (Paris: Alphonse
Leduc, 1977), 2:803.
75. “Uéclatement stéréophonique de Vorchestre en trois groupes instrumentaux qui jouent
simultanément à distance les uns des autres et dans des tempi le plus souvent différents. ”
Francis Beyer, De Schönberg à Cage: Essai sur la notion d'espace sonore dans la musique
contemporaine (Paris: Klincksieck, 1981), 85-86.
76. Paul Griffiths, Concise History of Avant-Garde Music from Debussy to Boulez (New
York: Thames and Hudson, 1978, 1985), 150.
 O F D O U B L E S , G R O U P S , AIM'D R H Y M E S 175

77. Peter Evans, “Karlheinz Stockhausen,” New Oxford History of Music, voL LO, The
Modem Age 1890-1960, ed. Martin Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1974), 454-67.
78. Roger SmaLley, “Stockhausen’s Gruppen,” Masked Times 108, no. 1495 (1967):
794-97.
79. “Un tel ensemble, s’il ne permet pas de très grands raffinements sonores3 est cependant
nettement approprié à l’objectif principal: mise en évidence globale d'une superposi­
tion perpétuellement variée de temp% an sein d’une stéréophonie claire. ”Gilbert Amy,
“Orchestre et espace sonore,” Esprit (January 1960) : 85.
80. For example, Karl Wôrn er’s long review “Germany,” Musical Quarterly 45, no. 2
(1959): 237-41.
81. Charles Wilson, “Gyorgy Ligeti and the Rhetoric of Autonomy,” Twentieth-
Century Music 1, no. 1 (2004): 17.
82. Wörner, “Germany.”
83. Years later, Jonathan Harvey echoed this objection when he spoke of “one
of the most important deficiencies of the work (deliberate no doubt on
Stockhausen’s part, but which nevertheless I feel rather strongly), the defi­
ciency of motivic purposefulness.” Harvey, The Music ofStockhausen, 57.
84. Everett Helm, “Space, It’s Wonderful,” Saturday Review 41 (November 15,
1958), 55.
85. Everett Helm, “Darmstadt Holiday Courses for New Music,” Musical Times 100,
no. 1401 (1959): 615.
86. The New Music, works by Stockhausen, Penderecki, Brown, and Pousseur, with
the Rome Symphony Orchestra and Frederick Rzewski (piano), conducted by
Bruno Maderna. Liner notes by Massimo Mila. RCA Victor VCGS-1239, 1967,
33Vs rpm.
87. “Diese ‘Reime’ sind für drei stereophonisch aufgestellte Orchestergruppen
komponiert.” “Mozart in Aix-en-Provence,” Darmstädter Echo (August 4, 1959)
(my translation).
88. “Der Einfluss der ‘Gruppen für drei Orchester’ Stockhausens und vor allem
der voriges Jahr in Donaueschingen uraufgeführten ‘Poésie pour pouvoir’ von
Boulez ist unverkennbar.” “Mozart in Aix-en-Provence.”
89. “Leider scheint Pousseur der starken authentischen schöpferischen Kraft
zu entbehren, die weder durch Formeln noch durch rein physikalische
Spekulationen ersetze werden kann.” “Mozart in Aix-en-Provence.”
90. Everett Helm, “Donaueschingen,” Musical Times LOO, no. 1402 (1959): 676.
91. “Ces ‘diverses sources sonores’ disséminées sous les marroniers du parc
Rambot nous ont révélé une musique ingénieusement étrange par ses effets de
mobiLité spatiale, et dans laquelle M. Henri Pousseur a essentiellement cher­
ché à intégrer les timbres instrumentaux classiques aux timbres nouveaux de
la technique électronique, et aussi à trouver des équivalences sonores entre
ces deux vocabulaires différents.” Claude Rostand, “Igor Markevitch et Pierre
Boulez à Aix,” Le Monde (July 31, 1959), 9.
92. Hans Keller, “The New in Review: Donaueschingen, 1959,” Music Review 21,
no. 1(1960): 79-80.
176 ** JO N ATH AN GOLDMAN

93. Henry Brant, quoted in Gascia Ouzounian, “Sound Installation Art: From
Spatial Poetics to Politics, Aesthetics to Ethics,” in Music, Sound and Space:
Transformations of Public and Private Experience, ed. Georgina Born (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015), 76.
94. Karlheinz Stockhausen: “Gruppen” für 3 Orchester; “Carré” für 4 Orchester und
4 Chöre, NDR Orchestra, conducted by Michael Gielen, Mauricio Kagel,
Bruno Maderna, Andrzej Markowski, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Deutsche
Grammophon, Avant-Garde (2), Deutsche Grammaphon 104 989, 1968, 33/3
rpm; The New Music, RCA Victor VCCS-1239; Pierre Boulez, Le visage nuptial—
Le soleil des eaux—Figures Doubles Prismes, with Elizabeth Laurence (soprano)
and Phyllis Bryn-Julson (contralto), BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers,
conducted by Pierre Boulez, Erato 2292 45494-2, 1990, compact disc.
95. Burton Paulu, Radio and Television Broadcasting on the European Continent
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 29. The commissions of
works that thematized spatial sound through radio (by such important radio
figures as Hans Rosbaud and Heinrich Strobel in Germany and Hermann
Scherchen in Switzerland) may have been partly designed to take advantage of
the forthcoming stereophonic radio technology, via which the pieces would be
rebroadcast, although more research is needed to substantiate that hypothesis.
96. Eric Drott, “The End(s) of Genre,” Journal of Music Theory, 57, no. 1(2013):
1-45.
97. Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics ofMusic, trans. William Austin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), 15; cited in Drott, “The End (s) of Genre,” 2.
98. Drott, “The End(s) of Genre,” 9.
 Chapter N ine

The Psychological
Organization of
Music Listening
From Spontaneous to
Learned Perceptive Processes

Irène Deliège

Introduction

Context
What happens in the minds of those listening to a musical work in a concert
hall or other location? This frequently asked question continues to be sur­
rounded by more mysteries than answers. While a variety of mental activities
are in operation during listening, these activities resist description if they fail to
leave concrete traces. Some listeners display observable signs of listening, but
these do not go beyond foot tapping or head nodding induced by the rhythmic
pulsation of the music. Nor do they reveal anything about the underlying pro­
cesses involved in the perception of a work or the way mental representations
are constructed.
To delve into a field that is so clearly hermetic requires a few precautions
and requires us to specify what kind of musical listening will be under discus­
sion here. In certain cases, one can, in effect, define listening as a creative
act inasmuch as an individual can inject elements at will that emerge from
178 ** IRÈNE DELIÈGE

preferences or from the imagination, such as visions of colored shapes, pasto­

ral scenes, and so on. This would amount to a re-composition in the sense that
a musical work is a pretext for an escape into external effects. In this respect,
no two listeners can be said to take the same approach, since what the listener
brings to the act of listening is fundamentally personal and bound up with
states of mind and moods in the moment. Another type of listening is associ­
ated with the “consumption” of music as background sound, which drowns out
silence and becomes a backdrop for other daily occupations.
Though these situations could well be interesting from a psychological
point of view, this chapter will focus—in a ramified theoretical exegesis, fol­
lowed by examples of selective application—rather on a type of listening that
is concerned with the work itself, a listening that “is not reducible to the
reception of its acoustic signal,” but tends toward its “codification and uncon­
scious reinterpretation in the form of cognitive signs.”1 This form of listen­
ing assumes listeners’ willingness to attain a maximum of correspondence
between the work’s structure and their comprehension of it. This type of lis­
tening is perhaps closer to the thesis maintained by François Nicolas in his
most recent book, Le Monde-Musique, which sees it as “a comprehension of
the Form of a piece that proceeds in an endogenous fashion . . . by experi­
encing from the inside the musical impulse that lays down a musical Form
from end to end.”2
Seen from the angle of Molino and Nattiez’s tripartite model,3 a musi­
cal work is approached through three fundamental axes: the poietic, or the
analysis of how it was made, that is, as the product of a creative act; the esthe-
.wV, or the reception by the listener; and the neutral (or immanent) level,
which results from the analysis of the traces left by the poietic level. The
perspective envisioned here is situated on the esthesic side and will be con­
cerned with understanding the processes of constructing cognitive schemas
in real time, whereby a representation of the work is laid down over the
course of listening to it, integrating elements from the previously memo­
rized schemas and general musical experience of the listener. On that basis,
the experimental approach offered here will compare the perceptions of
professional musicians—teachers or soloists and advanced students, all of
whom may or may not be familiar with Western art music from the modern
period—with those of listeners with no knowledge or particular familiarity
with music.4 On the one hand this will show that the aptitudes of nonmusi­
cians are far from trivial and on the other hand will attempt to confirm,
following Leonard B. Meyer, that

a general distinction must lx* drawn . . . between those expectations that

arise out of the nature of human mental processes—the modes in which the
mind perceives, groups, and organizes the data presented by the senses—and
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G l y<)

those expectations that are based upon learning. .. . [n the actual perception
of music there is an intimate and subtle interaction between the two types of
expectation . .. though the expectations based upon learning are prior to
the natural modes of thought.5

With this in mind, we will examine the perceptual organization of music from
various perspectives, including theories and observations derived from other
fields of application—principally the psychology of vision and psycholinguis­
tics—that provide a decisive springboard for research in music cognition.

Survey o f Approaches to the

Cognitive Study of Music Listening

General Remarks
When the listener’s behaviors tend toward a maximum correspondence to a
work’s structure in active listening, can one consider the listener as able to
reconstruct these structures mentally and truly undertake an analysis through
listening? “It seems that we are not generally capable of consciously attending
to every aspect of the auditory input (or indeed of other sensory inputs) ; rather
certain parts are selected for conscious analysis.”6 Except in cases of those with
exceptional memories, of which certain descriptions can occasionally be found
in the literature,7 active listening must normally be regarded as the construc­
tion of a schema, that is, a simplification or even an impoverishment, of the
objective content of perceived data. The construction of this schema continues
until the temporal organization of the musical object reveals itself to the lis­
tener as a whole. André Boucourechliev notes on this subject that

we can try to imagine the stupefying complexity of all that happens inside
the smallest musical phenomenon. No one, however, is expected to be aware
of this complexity in order to enjoy it, not even the composer who intuitively
notates the conditions of its enjoyment. This is to say that perception and
its operational faculties of distinction, comparison, selection and reduction
allow us to master the structure and make it manageable.. .. Perception ana­
lyzes much less than it synthesizes.8

The Perception of Changes

For Michel Imberty, the perception of changes is a basic organizing principle

for the segmentation of’musical discourse. This process allows the structure of
the work to be identified.9
l 8o I R È N E DE L J È G E

Change => Segmentation

As a first approximation, the perception of segmentations relies on the pres­
ence of qualitative changes in the musical flow, which leads to the perception
of a “before” and an “after,” “that constitutes the perceptive reality of the rela­
tionship.”10 But “segmentation also depends on factors inherent to the deep
structure of the work, and reveals certain aspects of it; the way perceptive seg­
mentation functions, the number of units that result from it and their dura­
tion, as well as the contrasts, ruptures or the dynamic elements that delimit
them . . . are the result of the way the style is decoded by the listener.”11 Other
factors, notably references acquired through study and from the cultural envi­
ronment, organize segmentations Located at a fairly broad level. According to
Imberty’s description, they concern, for example, the subdivisions of sections,
as is the case for the verse-and-chorus form of popular song, which can be
(bund in the classical rondo, or the usual schema of a story—exposition, crisis,
dénouement—a suggestion of which can be seen in musical forms of the ABA
type (exposition, development, recapitulation).12

/ Iierarchy of Changes
Witli respect to the perception of change and its degree of impact on different
levels of a work, Imberty defines two types of hierarchical organization directly
related to the perceptual salience of changes encountered. A hierarchy is
“weak” in cases in which there are numerous segmentations of roughly equiva­
lent .salience, leading to a vague hierarchy that is perceived in only a fragile
way; a hierarchy is “strong” when there are few changes, and these changes
aie Idatively clear.13 These two types of organization are associated with the
notions ol the “order schema” [scheme d'ordre] and the “order relation schema”
I scheme de relation d 'ordre] :

The order schemas concern only simple successions and juxtapositions; they
extend therefore at once to close relationships and distant ones (growth,
diminution, repetition, imitation). The order relation schemas concern the
organic links that allow for close temporal parts to be placed in relation to
each other (theme, variation of a theme, syntactic or rhetorical relationships,
in short, anything that tends to fuse time into a kind of psychological present
grasped as such).14

These conditions define both weak and strong hierarchies, order schemas
dominating weak hierarchies and, conversely, order relation schemas generat­
ing strong hierarchies.15
Imberty summarizes the relationships between these notions as follows:

• Weak changes => order relation schema => strong hierarchy

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G X? 1S 1

This hierarchy predominates in musical works that use classical

grammar, in which the changes “appear more like successions with a
coordinating function than as contrasts or ruptures in the temporal
flow/’16
• Strong changes => order schema => weak hierarchy
This hierarchy is commonly found in the works of Debussy and in
countless twentieth-century works.

Changes => Dynamic Vectors and Work Style

The above relationships should nevertheless be qualified to avoid one pos­
sible misunderstanding: it would not be acceptable to claim that a piece of
music with a strong hierarchical organization uses only order relation sche­
mas, whereas another piece with weak hierarchical structures exploits only
order schemas. In reality, different organizational types dominate the music
of different historical eras.17 In this way, Imberty returns to his basic idea of
emphasizing the perception of changes in the apprehension of a work's global
organization. These changes suggest tendencies that the author calls dynamic
vectors. These vectors reflect successive changes noted over the course of listen­
ing that allow one to determine in this way the style of a work and its general
schema. Related to the idea of weak and strong changes, Imberty also includes
the concepts of microstructwre and macrostructure proposed by Walter Kintsch
and Teun A. van Dijck in their research on reading and listening to written
texts: “The microstructure is the local level of the discourse, that is, the struc­
ture of the individual propositions and their relations. The macro structure is
of a more global nature, characterizing the discourse as a whole.. . . A mac­
rostructure must be implied by the (explicit) micro structure from which it
is derived.”18 To summarize, on the level of microstructure, the segments of a
text share a common idea (see below) defining the macrostructure that takes into
account all of the sound material present.

Local Groups

The perception of changes as a fundamental function of the mental organization of

perceptive schema is also found, at about the same period, in other theoretical or
experimental demonstrations with more direct reference to Gestalt theories. For
example, Paul Fraisse, Leonard B. Meyer, and Diana Deutsch adopt the theoretical
principles of die organization of the visual field formulated by Max Wertheimer to
represent the idea of the segmentation of musical flow in to groupings.19 They did
not, though, show how the process of gen (Tating these groups functions from a
theoretical standpoint. The first true formalization was proposed by Fred Lerdahl
and RayJacket idol fin A Cennative I'heory of Tonal Music***
l 8s ** IRÈNE DELIÈGE

Although included in that study, which was concerned with the perception of
tonal music, the theory of groups is more broadly applicable and might be con­
sidered as a universal of musical perception. Its descriptive power is not limited
to works of only a single period of Western music. On the contrary, the processes
of segmentation and group formation are at the heart of listening to music from
any era or of any cultural origin. Listeners who do not explicitly possess the
grammar to which the work corresponds may access that grammar progressively
and implicitly through the relationships established during the course of listen­
ing. Yet it is wrong to suppose that the cognitive aptitudes of an individual effec­
tively improve or are modified by the lexical and syntactical novelties contained
in perceived material; rather, the hypothesis is that psychological constants exist
dial adapt themselves to whatever material is perceived. As Leonard B. Meyer
observes: “What remains constant from style to style are not scales, modes, har­
monies, or manners of performance, but the psychology of human mental pro­
cesses—the ways in which the mind, operating within the context of culturally
established norms, selects and organizes the stimuli that are presented to it.”21
In the context of music, Lerdahl and Jackendoff formalize the perception
of temporal and sound qualities of a message, based on Gestaltist laws of proximity
and similarity (see ex. 9.1). Delimitations, that is, borders between groupings, are
the result of the perception of

• either a temporal distance—a rest, a pause, the end of a slur, etc.—when

something is heard from the point of view of proximity; or
• cl langes of an acoustic nature—oppositions of timbre, dynamics,
register, articulation—which fall under the principle of similarity.

As Andre Boucourechliev writes:

"Music might thus be a system of differences that structure time through the category
of sound." . . . fhe production of differences is synonymous with the act of
composition, just as it is also synonymous with the act of performing and per­
ceiving. lo compose, perform or listen to music is to produce or reproduce
differences in their infinite hues and gradations, to inflect them through
a scholarly and loving reading of them, finally to evaluate them, appreci­
ate them through listening, which perception does as a matter of fact with
incomparable precision. Thus music structures time—that is to say that it acti­
vates and submits to our perception an ensemble of differentiated relations.
This time is a time different from the chronos that flows measurably. It pos­
sesses a life of its own with which we are invited to coincide.22

In example 9.1, this sensation of “differences” can be observed at the bor­

ders of the groupings, which explains the perception of a contrast between
sonorities situated on either side. Boucourechliev adds that “perceptive pro­
cesses tirelessly record, evaluate and compare these differences.”2*
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G L8 3

Example 9.1. Examples of segmentations (V). Top staff: an example of proximity

(end of slur; rest); bottom staff: an example of similarity (change of register,
dynamics or articulation).
Proximity

The Impact of the Same and the Different

From Cues to Imprints

But music reveals itself through more than the perception of differences.
On the contrary, as noted above, musical materials within groups, without
necessarily being identical, always develop a relative degree of relatedness.
This observation, the result of an analysis of short musical sequences that
I selected for an experimental study of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s grouping
rules, led to the Principle of the Same and the Different, a theoretical propo­
sition that, according to my suggestion, intervenes at the local level dur­
ing listening, that is, at the moment of group formation.24 Continuing this
line of thought, with the intention of extending its scope to a level that
would encompass the progressive construction of a cognitive schema for an
entire musical work, I proposed the hypothesis that this theory, supported
by that of “cue abstraction,” could extend to the formation of groupings of
groups, generated by the perception of musical material that shares a rela­
tive degree of similarity—thereby defining regions on this basis, the succes­
sion of which would in the end reveal the global architecture of a musical
work.25 As Meyer notes,

One of the absolute and necessary conditions for the apprehension of shape,
for the perception of any relationships at all, no matter what the style, is
the existence of both similarities and differences among the several stimuli
which constitute the series under consideration. If the stimuli comprising the
series cannot be perceived as being similar in any respect whatsoever, then
they will fail to cohere. .. . The appraisal of shape is. a relative one, depend­
ing upon the general level of diffère* nti ad on and homogeneity prevalent in a
particular musical style.26
184 ** IRÈNE DELIÈGE

With the term cue, it must be understood that the listener identifies brief
cells of a motivic, rhythmic, or other nature, characterizing segments of a
work through their return in various forms. These cells contain an identifiable
invariant component that characterizes a segment through “varied formula­
tions to express a single fundamental idea: the dialectic between the same and
the different that constitutes the foundation of large-scale form from the per­
ceptive point of view.”27 A set of related pathways are thereby summarized, as
it were, by the abstracted cue: it seems to function in the manner of a library
catalogue entry, giving access to a book whatever its format or its dimensions.28
Through the reiteration of abstracted cues, a supplementary hypothesis
emerges regarding the construction of imprints that are generated through
more or less varied repetitions of analogous content.29 Observations of this
type, found in experimental research undertaken by the likes of John D.
lirailsford and JefferyJ. Franks with both linguistic and visual material, are well
known: the presentation of similar stimuli generates a process of prototyping
Iemfrreinte] that encapsulates the various presentations as a basic formula built
on the main details of the whole.30

Duration —■
►Memory
In the dialectic of the same and the different that was at issue above, duration has a
decisive impact. Time must pass for the sensation of the same to set in and for the
listener to realize that structures have reappeared, been repeated, varied, and so
on. The different, in contrast, intervenes abruptly. One suddenly perceives that
the sonic climate has changed, and only after a lapse of time can a new same be
demarcated to intervene in the construction of a cognitive schema. Because of
this, at the level of both local and broader grouping, cognitive management of
what is perceived relies on taking into account elements that follow each other
in lime, but the perceived structures are not physically present when the cog­
nitive construction is called into reality. Such processes therefore necessarily
involve memory. The role of the cue becomes particularly important at this level:
not only does it lighten the load on immediate memory by means of summariz­
ing but it also promotes localization of structures in time. With respect to the
role of the cue in cognitive processing, this was already noted in 1937 by Paul
Guillaume, an important French Gestalt theorist, in Théorie de la forme, where he
notes the following concerning listening to melody:

One is at first tempted to believe that at any given moment we only hear a
single sound. But. each note is heard as a function of the preceding ones;
they continue them, so they must still be acting at that moment. The percep-
tion of melody poses the problem of memory, because in a manner that is
neither strictly speaking a recognition, nor an evocation, the past immedi­
ately makes its action fell.31
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N O r M USI C U N T U N I N G 8» 1 85

Paul Fraisse also mentions that in visual space, proximity dors not suffice for
elements to be perceived as a group. In the temporal plane, however, whether
in spoken language or in the perception of music, a psychological present needs
to be invoked as a condition sine qua non for successive elements to produce
meaning and for form to be established.32

The Construction of the Schema of the Work

We return now to an idea mentioned above about the construction of the
macrostructure of the work, which, according to Kintsch and van Dijck, is estab­
lished from segments that are delimited on the level of the microstructure. These
segments, which share a common idea, supply the necessary basis for progressive
definition of the macrostructure.
In the field of psycholinguistics, other authors, including Roger C. Schank
and Robert P. Abelson (1977), Georges Noizet, and Jean Caron, have put for­
ward similar ideas leading to a similar hypothesis, the construction of schema
founded on marked events gathered during reception of a stimulus.33 These
authors built on work by their illustrious predecessor, Frederick Bardett.
Bartlett’s book Remembering, a classic on the subject, collected most of his
research dealing with the construction, while listening to a story, of schemas
that contain relevant elements that summarize its content.54 However, in this
context one should take into account a difference in emphases between the
languages of speech and of sounds. A language of speech is informed by ratio­
nal meaning, by semantic content, which musical language lacks. The hypoth­
esis of cue abstraction reinforced by the Principle of the Same and the Different, of
which several experimental illustrations are offered below, can identify an anal­
ogous role in musical perception. As Boulez writes:

All works, and especially musical works, live under the double sign of analogy
and difference, without which, and because they occur in irreversible time,
our perception could not apprehend them. It is through analogy that per­
ception can get its bearings in the progression of the work, and it is through
difference that this progression can take place. Every musical form depends
absolutely on the dialectical relationship that holds between analogy and dif­
ference; formal articulation is founded on these characteristics.55

Empirical Illustrations

From the Formation of Local Groups to the Schema of the Work

The theoretical elements outlined above suggested several experimental stud­
ies between 1985 and 1998. As iimmitinned earlier, in these studies I compared
perceptions of musicians with those of non musicians.3^ Well aware as I am of
l86 IRÈNE D ELIÈGE

Nattiez’s keen interest in this aspect of musicological research, here I sketch its
broad outlines, as a tribute and as a development of my research in this area.
Working first with short musical sequences excerpted from works from Bach
to Stravinsky, these studies later broadened to take into account entire works
within which listeners concentrated on tasks relating to previously explained
specific points.

The Formation of Local Groups

This research project aimed at verifying the validity of Lerdahl andjackendoff’s
theory of group formation (see “Local Groups” above). Twenty-four nonmusi­
cians (university students) and thirty-six musicians (enrolled in the harmony
classes of the Brussels Conservatory) listened to thirty-two short sequences
taken from instrumental and orchestral pieces. In order to verify the effect of
the perception of same, the playback of each experimental sequence was pre­
ceded by

• the context from which it emerged, that is, the complete phrase;
• a different context chosen from elsewhere in the piece; and
• no context.

Listeners could choose to hear items more than once if they considered it nec­
essary, the number of repetitions being noted by the coordinator of the ses­
sion. Two secondary tasks were then requested:

1. to estimate their degree of familiarity with the musical sequence they

listened to on a scale from 1 to 5; and
2. to explain, if possible, the reasons for the segmentation they chose

An analysis of the results revealed that 77 percent of the responses of musi­

cians and 49 percent of nonmusicians were in agreement with the theoreti­
cally predicted responses, which is a significant difference. A larger number
of repetitions were required for items for which responses turned out not to
conform to the theory, indicating inaccuracy coupled with uncertainty. As
lor the importance of the context (actual, false, or absent), only musicians
showed a higher degree of precision in their responses when they were given
the actual context: presumably, previous ear training led to their memory’s
operating more adequately. The results of the secondary questions held few
surprises. The segmentations identified were correctly justified by musicians
in 87.5 percent of cases as opposed to 69.9 percent for nonmusicians, 4.4 per­
cent of whom were unable to justify their responses at all. The average degree
of familiarity with the material of the musical sequences used was on a scale
(rom 1 to 5, with 8.4 for musicians and 2.1 for nonmusicians. To summarize, in
P S Y C H O L O G E C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OP M U S I C L I S T E N I N G 187

the different analytical strategies, musicians were always more likely to record
superior perception.
Overall, nonmusicians are mostly sensitive to changes of an acoustic
nature—timbre, dynamics, and so on—and to the temporal prolongation
of a sound in an environment in which other sounds are shorter. In paralLel
with this observation, we note that nonmusicians have a tendency to overseg­
ment when faced with the uneven temporal flow of a phrase: thus, for example,
untrained subjects tended to segment on or after dotted notes, whereas some­
thing, presumably ear training, disposed musicians to wait and listen for what
was coming next rather than to segment in such cases.

The Role of the Same and the Different

Several experimental studies of this aspect of the mental organization of lis­
tening have been undertaken. Each of them deals with a complete piece: in
chronological order, Luciano Berio’s Sequema VI for solo viola,37 Boulez’s
Éclat for fifteen instruments,38 and the English horn solo (“Alte Weise”) from
Wagner’s Tristan undlsoldef9 Each experiment was configured to compare the
perceptions of musician and non musician listeners.
The experimental methodologies of each study, although fundamentally
similar, were adapted over the course of time in order to refine the procedures
for a more precise analysis of the questions raised.

Choice of types of listeners: When works from the contemporary repertoire

were used, the musicians invited to participate in the study were
chosen from those who were already familiar with this repertoire. The
nonmusicians were university students who had not had any musical
education (average age for both groups: 26).^ Questions including
the effect of a broader or narrower general or musical education, as
well as the degree of familiarity with the actual music, were taken into
account in the study of the English horn melody from Wagner’s Tristan.
The listeners were divided into four categories. The responses of two
types of nonmusicians—young undergraduates, on the one hand, and
postdoctoral researchers on the other—were expected to establish a
difference in terms of the possible impact of general education. The
effect of musical education was verified by comparing the responses
of music students and professional musicians (professors at music
academies or conservatories).

Evolution of experimental procedures: All listeners were tested individually,

listeners were told beforehand that they would need to listen attentively
in order to grasp the formal plan of the piece. For the understanding
of nonmusicians, the task was compared by way of analogy with
18 8 IRÈNE D E L IÈGE

highlighting the major sections of a spoken text, whether a speech,

poem, or a short story, divided as they are into paragraphs, chapters,
and so on. Subjects highlighted by pressing a key on a computer
keyboard to simulate the introduction of a punctuation mark.

In the Berio and Boulez experiments, before being asked to undertake the
experimental tasks, the participants were played a complete recording of the
work for familiarization. Then, over the course of two experimental listenings,
they were asked to mark the perceived segmentation points by pressing a key.
The second listening was intended to screen for instability of initial responses
through inadvertency, failure of concentration, and so on.
A further instruction was given during the segmentation operations in the
second hearing of Boulez’s Éclat only, a perceived weighting in order to try
to collect more refined information. In place of the first-playback single-key
response, in the second playback listeners pressed one, two, or three numerical
keys at once depending on the value that listeners attached to their responses
(weak segmentation = 1, medium = 2, strong = 3).
fhe procedures described above were applied identically to the Wagner
segmentation but with the addition of a question related to the degree of
familiarization. To that end, one group of listeners listened to additional famil­
iarization playbacks—three instead of a single playback—before recording any
segmentation; this was not applied to the professional musicians, given their
likely prior knowledge of Wagner’s melody.
The major segmentations will be considered here—that is, those demarcat­
ing the main subdivisions of the three musical examples.41 In general, it can be
noted that the second hearings showed that the perceptual behavior of listen­
ers did not change from one hearing to the next.

• Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI. The responses of both nonmusicians and

musicians defined the same global schema of the piece in six sections
suggested by the sonic density of the musical structures. One of the
nonmusician listeners spontaneously drew a shape to convey the
densities of perceived volume (see fig. 9.1): section A (ff)\ section B
(■mf)\ middle section C {pp); section D (return to mf); section E (ff);
section F {pp). This listener commented that there was an analogous
ambiance between sections A and E and between B and D.
• Pierre Boulez, Éclat. With the Berio, both musicians and nonmusicians
achieved similar results. The complementary task, giving a weighted
scale for the second hearing, confirmed the major segmentations but
did not significantly differentiate the responses of musicians from
those of nonmusicians. An analysis of all of the responses revealed
that statistically four major segmentations subdivide the general layout
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N 3 Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G L89

SECTION A SECTION B SECTION C SECTION D SECTION E SECTION F

Figure 9.1. Schema for Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIsketched by a nonmusician

listener after hearing a recording of the work.

of the piece into five sections. These segmentations are located at

moments of abrupt sonic change, mostly the result of changes in timbre
(see rehearsal numbers 3, 14, 17, 20, 25 in the score42).
• Richard Wagner, “Alte Weise” (English horn solo) from Tristan.
Several years separate this study from the preceding ones. As a result,
it benefited from the use of improved equipment. The general and
musical education levels of the listeners made no significant difference
to simple segmentation on first hearing. The criterion of familiarization
also made no statistical impact. It was the hierarchical segmentation
requested on the second hearing that allowed salient points situated
at I, II, III, VIII, XIII, XV, XVIII, XXI to be highlighted, and which
received a significantly higher number of segmentations (see circled
roman numerals, ex. 9.2).

Impact of Cues Abstracted in the Construction of the Cognitive Scheme of the Work
The studies outlined in the previous section were supplemented by, so to
speak, an opposite approach, that is, the attempt to access what gets stored in
the memory over the course of familiarization and segmentation hearings. The
results summarized here concern the same musical works.
Different procedures were planned for each of the pieces studied.

• Choice of types of listeners. Since these studies were designed to explore

memory, they used the same listeners who had participated in the first
stage of these studies.
• Evolution of the experimental procedures. Listeners were tested individually
for each of the three pieces. The experimental techniques are specific
to each approach.

Initially, this experimental stage was not planned for the Berio Sequenia. But
the analysis of the segmentations from the first tests suggested investigating
Example 9.2. Shepherd’s melody (English horn solo) from Richard Wagner,
Tristan und Isolde. The segmentations noted during the experiment are indicated
with roman numerals, with circles indicating the primary segmentations and
roman type indicating secondary.
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G i g i

cognitive performance in Later studies dealing with schema memorized from

previously heard works. Twelve musicians and twelve nonmusicians were
invited back. They were informed that the result of their segmentation was
division of the piece into six sections. They could then listen to a complete
recording of the work twice more; a distinctive sound was added to the record­
ing to mark the ends of sections. They then were asked to listen to some forty
short excerpts (from 5 to 10 seconds in length) of the piece and to try to locate
the section from which each excerpt had been extracted. For each response,
they were also asked to note their degree of certainty (from 1 to 3) as well as
the degree to which the excerpt was typical of the section from which it was
taken (from 1 to 5), which was an aspect that was hypothesized to shed light on
the effect of the cue abstracted.
For Boulez’s Eclat, the tests of the memorization of the cognitive schema
were conducted immediately after the segmentation tests. Fifteen soi nul
excerpts of variable duration (from 7 to 35 seconds) were played for lislen
ers (sixteen musicians and sixteen nonmusicians) in a different, randoml/rd
order for each listener.45 They were asked to locate each excerpt on a hoi i/mi
tal line that represented the temporal flow of the piece.44
A different approach was developed for the Wagner. To take advantage ol
the brevity of this melody, it was divided for the listeners into seven gi mipmgn
and they were then asked to reconstruct it. This task used an olr< Horn« insim
ment called SCALE GAME, which somewhat resembles a child’s xylophone,
but with keys of equal length and for which each bar can em il a d il leu 111 pi«
viously recorded musical material.45 The seven sequences of the melody wm
programmed into seven of the keys of the apparatus. The participant* wm
given the keys in random order. To hear their content, they slotted ihr !•« n
onto the keyboard bed and pressed it, thus determining the order n! the n g
ments spatially. The piece was played for them twice before they wen* asl cd in
reconstruct it on the instrument.46
Taken as a whole, the perceptions of the listeners were proportion'll m lin h
level of musical education. The higher the degree of musical kuowlnlgi , 11»*
more accurately the extracts were localized. However, some spr< tin oh*« i \. i
tions are significant.

• Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI. Relative inacc 111a< y o n 1111« il In

the localization of extracts from sections ih.it weir n I titn l\
undifferentiated in sonic density, particularly and as cnpri ted \ It
and E. The initial and final sections received tin* hesi n spinne * limit
nonniusicians, suggesting that memorized cues wen moir « Ihiiiv«
with respect to the beginning and the end ol the woil Ihn »II« *1
has already been observed in other experimental «m»ir*i*. imialih
for the memor ization of word lists, where die brttei n i m i hI i Ih i« »ii
ig 2 ** I R È N E D E L 3È G E

beginnings of lists is termed a primacy effect, and that of the ends a

recency effect.47 At the same time, no differences were observed in
judgments of the degree of typicality and of certainty of response as
a function of the degree of musical training. This absence of effect
could be the result of the insufficient difference in length of the
selected extracts (5 to 10 seconds); the next study should allow for a
clearer view of things.
• Pierre Boulez, Éclat. The extracts, chosen by design to be of variable
length (7 to 35 seconds) and thus offering a larger quantity of cue
information, allowed for a better differentiation of the memorized
responses as a function of musical training. The musicians benefited
greatly from an increase in the quantity of material: their localizations
were more accurate the longer the extract. In fact, since they were asked
to locate the extracts on a timeline of fifteen sequentially distributed
points, it was notable how the sensation of “experienced duration” was
more restrained among nonmusicians, who experienced an average
time span of between 6 and 12.1, whereas the musicians’ responses
ranged between 1.7 and 14.7. Experienced duration therefore becomes
longer in proportion to the quantity of the material memorized: the
effect of the cue information recorded while listening to the piece is
relevant to this level (table 9.1). The data regarding segmentations had
identified five sections. Analyzing correct localization as a function of
the section concerned showed that primacy and recency effects were
more prominent among musicians. The recency effect had a slight
elfect on nonmusicians, and the central sections received less precise
responses (fig. 9.2).
• Richard Wagner, English horn solo from Tristan und Isolde. Thirty-
seven percent of all listeners were able to reconstruct the melody. It
was observed that the results were sensitive to the degree of general
and musical education. Non-music students produced accurate
reconstructions 21 percent of the time as against 35 percent among
postdoctoral researchers; music students succeeded 60 percent of the
time, music teachers 67 percent.

The number of hearings (either three or five) that preceded the recon­
struction produced a strong effect . Only a few of the musicians (both students
and teachers) were able to reconstruct the melody correctly after three hear­
ings, and only a very few nonmusicians (either undergraduates or postdocs)
alter live hearings, file primacy and recency effects were present among all lis­
teners, strongly affected by the number of familiarization hearings: the results
are much better when the reconstruction is preceded by having participants
listen to the live1healings.
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G ^ 193

Figure 9.2. Pierre Boulez, Éclat percentage of correct responses by section.

Conclusion

General Observations and Comments

The experiments in segmentation of musical discourse produced results that
were quite undifferentiated from one approach to the next. The perceptions
of musicians are more precise, both from the point of view of the segmenta­
tion of short sequences and for the experiments dealing with entire pieces in
any style. Nonniusicians show a tendency to oyersegment: the perception of
temporal gaps in the flow of a musical phrase throws them off. The presence of
any long sound moves them to fragment, to split apart, a tendency somewhat
comparable to extraneous punctuation in inappropriate places of a text, a
1()4 ** I R È N E D E L 3È G E

Table 9.1. The fifteen sound extracts of Pierre Boulez’s Éclat for fifteen
instruments in order of appearance, with corresponding durations and
indications of primary and secondary modes as well as mean localization
judgments.
Musicians Nonmusicians
Primary & Mean Primary & Mean
Extract no. secondary localization Secondary localization
and length mode1 judgments mode judgments
1 22" 1 1.7 1 6.0
2 14" 2/5 5.1 2/12 7.8
3 15" 6/4 6.3 11/12 8.1
4 18" 5/2-9 7.2 3 /7 7.2
5 14" 5/7 7.7 12/5 7.9
6 7" 6 6.2 2-5* 6.3
7 12" 9 9.3 9/7 8.9
8 20"* 7-8-9* 9.5 4-6* 8.9
9 35" 4/9 7.3 3 6.5
10 28" 12/7 8.5 10/5 7.5
11 11/10 9.9 9/11
CM
o
*

9.3
12 13" 12 10.5 9/12 9.4
13 20" 13 10.7 13-6* 10.7
14 20" 14 13.3 15/14 12.1
15 35" 15 14.7 14/15 11.3
1The mode is the most frequently observed value in a data set. Bold numbers = primary
mode
* No primary or secondary mode for this extract

tendency not observed among trained listeners. On the contrary, in such a

situation, a musician experiences a feeling of expectation and has learned to
sense a continuity that is logical from the point of view of the completeness
of the structures. Thus, Leonard B. Meyer emphasized the importance of
training, writing that “the response to music as well as its perception depends
upon learned habit responses. . . . The stimulus field is organized . . . on the
basis of past experience—the learned habits of discrimination and percep­
tion of the listener. Such learning, by directing the listener’s attention to cer­
tain parts of the total field, conditions what is looked for and expected and
hence modifies what is perceived.”48 In addition, in ibis particular case, the
relevance of the Gestalt law of good continuity is palpable in the perceptive
organization of the practicing musician, for whom it brings out the semantic
PSYCHOLOGICAL OIU. AM / H H » «H MU S I C L I S T E N I N G ^ 195

quality of discourse, but (In** i*»p» • 1 u in»i obvious for the untrained listener.
All listeners were in agreeimm .»lt*»in tin m.ijor segmentations. Would these
segmentations have satisfied tin ihemselves, Luciano Berio and
Pierre Boulez? They weir 11<»9 .id» «I 1 11<* question, but it is likely that they
would have: as Meyer notm li u !»• • auxr the composer is also a listener
that he is able to control Itu in»>pu .hi*mi with reference to the listener.’"49
However, a slight sense ol dlM.tilhl.u n»»n lingered for the experimenter, after
the experiment on the srgim i i i .i H»»! Ilnio's Sequenza VI. The observed
m m

performances resulted in a so hi »1 1• 1 »inn lure, but it did not reveal how

these sections left a trace in uiriinii > I Mil h»»me kind of draft of a schema sub­
sist following the segmentalimi up« Miimiv'
The later experiments 1h.11 1 im igrd limn 111is observation, and the appli­
cation of specific methodologies loi «»1«It ol the three studies, led to more
accurate conclusions and lo iiiom u scaling analyses with respect to the con­
struction of cognitive scheine*. I In task» ol localization of extracts requested
in the study required lisle neu« to Hie» 1 .1 kind of retrospective scan of what
they had just heard. Willi lelnm « « lo a <uncut assumption, one might have
expected that a first-time ex pci Inn c would seem longer than a familiar expe­
rience, which would lead one to expn 1 uoiinmsicians to have the impression
of hearing longer temporal Mien In *. I lowcvei, an opposite effect was at work
here, that is, an amplification ol dir loi m.it ol the mental schema for musicians
and, conversely, a strong leiiipoi.il non enhottnn among nonmusicians. William
Friedman, in his About 'June: Inventing the Dnnlh Dimension, sheds light on thin
issue that concurs with our own cmpiin al 1 exults. Speaking notably about dir
phenomenon of distortions ol the subjective experienced duration, Friedman
notes that “an interval seems longer il we remember more of its contents 01 tl
it was made up of more distim t segments. It seems shorter if we think ol it in a
simpler way.”50 Consequently, in the case under discussion, a larger teinpoial
scheme observed as a function of musical competence could indicate* dm it
was from a less limited abstraction of cue events during listening, sim e tin
temporal scheme is observed to he as greater, the greater the level ol imiMi al
competence, as was confirmed experimentally.
In conclusion, it appears that the perception of segmentations aux« *» up
to a certain point out of psychological processes that precede any naming
which is a reason that unlike memorization, the perception ol segment ail» »11
does not differentiate one listener from another, regardless ol musii.d h .tin
ing. Memory, in contrast, does reflect acquired training, as was noted m shill**
tical analysis showing results beyond the average, that is, beyond die mat gin
of error. I was surprised to encounter a few professional musician* win» win
unable to reconstruct Wagner’s “Alte Weise”—surprising and urn \p n iril In
itself—and also, conversely, a few nommisicians who achieved lexullx dial w c m

among the most precise of even the musician group. Could il he cuiulmhil
1()4 ** IRÈNE D ELIÈGE

Table 9.1. The fifteen sound extracts of Pierre Boulez’s Éclat for fifteen
instruments in order of appearance, with corresponding durations and
indications of primary and secondary modes as well as mean localization
judgments.
Musicians Nonmusicians
Primary & Mean Primary 8c Mean
Extract no. secondary localization Secondary localization
and length mode1 judgments mode judgments
1 22" 1 1.7 1 6.0
2 14" 2/5 5.1 2/12 7.8
3 15" 6/4 6.3 11/12 8.1
4 18" 5/2-9 7.2 3 /7 7.2
5 14" 5/7 7.7 12/5 7.9
6 7" 6 6.2 2-5* 6.3
7 12" 9 9.3 9/7 8.9
8 20" 7-8-9* 9.5 4-6* 8.9
9 35" 4/9 7.3 3 6.5
10 28" 12/7 8.5 10/5 7.5
11 11/10 9.9 9/11 9.3
o
CM

12 13" 12 10.5 9/12 9.4

13 20" 13 10.7 13-6* 10.7
H 20" 14 13.3 15/14 12.1
15 35" 15 14.7 14/15 11.3
1 I hr mndr in thr most fr equently observed value in a data set. Bold numbers = primary
mode
* No primary or secondary mode for this extract

tendency not observed among trained listeners. On the contrary, in such a

situation, a musician experiences a feeling of expectation and has learned to
sense a continuity that is logical from the point of view of the completeness
of the structures. Thus, Leonard B. Meyer emphasized the importance of
training, writing that “the response to music as well as its perception depends
upon learned habit responses. . . . The stimulus field is organized . . . on the
basis of past experience—the learned habits of discrimination and percep­
tion of the listener. Such learning, by directing the listener’s attention to cer­
tain parts of the total field, conditions what is looked for and expected and
hence modifies what is perceived.”48 In addition, in this particular case, the
relevance of the Gestalt law of good continuity is palpable in the perceptive
organization of the practicing musician, for whom it brings out the semantic
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N ! Z A T I 0 N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G 195

quality of discourse, but this aspect is not obvious for the untrained Listener.
All listeners were in agreement about the major segmentations. WouLd these
segmentations have satisfied the composers themselves, Luciano Berio and
Pierre Boulez? They were not asked the question, but it is likely that they
would have: as Meyer notes: “It is because the composer is also a listener
that he is able to control his inspiration with reference to the listener.”49
However, a slight sense of dissatisfaction lingered for the experimenter, after
the experiment on the segmentation of Berio’s Sequenza VI. The observed
performances resulted in a six-section structure, but it did not reveal how
these sections left a trace in memory. Did some kind of draft of a schema sub­
sist following the segmentation operations?
The later experiments that emerged from this observation, and the appli­
cation of specific methodologies for each of the three studies, led to more
accurate conclusions and to more revealing analyses with respect to the con­
struction of cognitive schemes. The tasks of localization of extracts requested
in the study required listeners to effect a kind of retrospective scan of what
they had just heard. With reference to a current assumption, one might have
expected that a first-time experience would seem longer than a familiar expe­
rience, which would lead one to expect nonmusicians to have the impression
of hearing longer temporal stretches. However, an opposite effect was at work
here, that is, an amplification of the format of the mental schema for musicians
and, conversely, a strong temporal concentration among nonmusicians. William
Friedman, in his About Time: Inventing the Fourth Dimension, sheds light on this
issue that concurs with our own empirical results. Speaking notably about the
phenomenon of distortions of the subjective experienced duration, Friedman
notes that “an interval seems longer if we remember more of its contents or if
it was made up of more distinct segments. It seems shorter if we think of it in a
simpler way.”50 Consequendy, in the case under discussion, a larger temporal
scheme observed as a function of musical competence could indicate that it
was from a less limited abstraction of cue events during listening, since the
temporal scheme is observed to be as greater, the greater the level of musical
competence, as was confirmed experimentally.
In conclusion, it appears that the perception of segmentations arises up
to a certain point out of psychological processes that precede any training,
which is a reason that unlike memorization, the perception of segmentation
does not differentiate one listener from another, regardless of musical train­
ing. Memory, in contrast, does reflect acquired training, as was noted in statis­
tical analysis showing results beyond the average, that is, beyond the margin
of error. I was surprised to encounter a few professional musicians who were
unable to reconstruct Wagner’s “Alte Weise”—surprising and unexpected in
itself—and also, conversely, a few nonniusicians who achieved results that were
among the most precise of even the music ian group. Could it be concluded
1()6 ** I R È N E D E L 1È G E

that this kind of test reveals aptitudes, musical gifts? That research question
was not one of my concerns, but it certainly deserves to be pursued.51

—Translated byjonathan Goldman

Notes

1. “Ne se réduit pas à la réception de son signal acoustique [mais tend à sa] codi­
fication et réinterprétation inconscientes sous forme de signes cognitifs?” Fabien
1.évy, Le compositeur, son oreille et ses machines à écrire. Déconstruire les grammatologies
du musical pour mieux les composer (Paris: Vrin, 2013), 73 (author’s emphasis).
[Translator's note: for all original translations, the French original is provided
in the note.J
2. “Kst une compréhension de la Forme du morceau qui procède de manière
endogène [. . .] en éprouvant de l’intérieur la poussée musicale qui dépose de
proche en proche une Forme musicale.” François Nicolas, Le monde-Mw^i^,
vol. 1, L'œuvre musicale et son écoute (Paris: Editions Aedam Musicae, 2014), 47.
The concept of “structural listening” was perhaps first widely disseminated in
the attempted critique by Rose Subotnik, Deconstructive Variations: Music and
Reason in Western Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
3. Jean Molino, “Fait musical et sémiologie de la musique,” Musique en Jeu 17
( 1987): 37-62; reprinted in Molino, Le singe Musicien (Paris and Arles: Actes-
Sud-INA, 2009), 73-118; Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Musicologie générale et sémiologie
(Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1987).
*1. Sec* my comments on the expertise of “expert” listeners in the experiments
discussed later in this chapter.
r>. Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of
Chic ago Press, 1956), 43.
6. Brian C. J. Moore, An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing (New York:
Academic Press, 1982), 202.
7. John A. Sloboda, Beate Hermelin, and Neil O’Connor, “An Exceptional
Musical Memory,” Music Perception 3, no. 2 (1985): 155-70.
8. “Nous pouvons essayer d’imaginer la complexité ahurissante de ce qui se passe
à l'intérieur du moindre phénomène musical. Nul cependant n’est tenu d’être
au fait de cette complexité pour en jouir, ni même le compositeur qui rédige
intuitivement les conditions de cette jouissance. C’est dire que la perception
et ses facultés opératoires—distinctives, comparatives, sélectives, réductrices—
sont en mesure de maîtriser la structure et de la rendre habitable. . . . La per-
cefftion fait beaucoup moins d'analyses que de synthèses." André Boucourechliev, Le
langage musical (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 35.
9. Michel Imbcrty, Les écritures du temps: Sémantique psychologique de la musique, vol.
2 (Paris: Dunod. 1981).
10. “Qui constitue la réalité perceptive de la relation.” Imbcrty, Les écritures du
temps, 87.
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G AMI Z A T I 0 N O F M U S I C L I S T E N I N G ** 197

11. “La segmentation dépend également des facteurs propres à la structure pro­
fonde de l’oeuvre, et en dévoile certains aspects; la façon dont s’opère la seg­
mentation perceptive, le nombre d'unités qui en résultent et leur durée, ainsi
que les contrastes, les ruptures ou les éléments dynamiques qui les délimitent,
[. ..] témoignent de La façon dont le style est décodé par l’auditeur.” Imberty,
Les écritures du temps, 86.
12. Imberty, Les écritures du temps, 88-89.
13. Imberty, Les écritures du temps, 87-88.
14. “Les schèmes d’ordre ne concernent que les simples successions et les juxtapo­
sitions; ils s’étendent donc à la fois aux relations proches et aux relations loin­
taines (croissance, diminution, répétition, imitation). Les schèmes de relation
d’ordre concernent les liens organiques qui permettent d’établir des rapports
entre les parties temporelles proches (thème, variation de thème, relations
syntaxiques ou rhétoriques, bref, tout ce qui tend à synthétiser le temps dans
une sorte de présent psychologique saisi en tant que tel)Im berty, Les écritures
du temps, 91.
15. Imberty, Les écritures du temps, 92.
16. “Apparaissent plus comme des enchaînements à fonction coordinatrice que
comme des contrastes ou des ruptures dans le devenir temporel.” Imberty, Les
écritures du temps, 91-92.
17. Imberty, Les écritures du temps, 113.
18. Walter Kintsch and Teun A. Van Dyk, “Toward a Model of Text Comprehension
and Production,” Psychological Review 85, no. 5 (1978): 365-66.
19. See Paul Fraisse, Les structures rhythmiques: étude psychologique (Louvain:
Publications universitaires de Louvain, 1956); Paul Fraisse, La psychologie du
rythme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974); Meyer, Emotion and
Meaning in Music, Diana Deutsch, “Grouping Mechanisms in Music,” in The
Psychology of Music (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 299-348; and Max
Wertheimer, “Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms,” in A Source Book of
Gestalt Psychology, ed. Willis D. Ellis (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1923/1938),
71-88.
20. Fred Lerdahl and Rayjackendoff, A Generative Theory ofTonalMusic (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1983), chap. 3. The content of this chapter uses material pub­
lished byjackendoff and Lerdahl in 1981 in the Journal ofMusic Theory.
21. Leonard B. Meyer, Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), 7.
22. “La musique serait donc un système de différences qui structure le temps sous la caté­
gorie du sonore. [. . .] La production de différences est synonyme de l’acte de
composition, comme d’ailleurs de l’acte d’interprétation et de l’acte de per­
ception. Composer de la musique, en jouer ou l’écouter, c’est produire ou
reproduire des différences en leurs infinies nuances et gradations, les infléchir
dans une lecture aussi savante qu’amoureuse, enfin les jauger, les apprécier
en les écoutant, ce que la perception fait d’ailleurs avec une précision incom­
parable. Ainsi la musique structuneA-*'\le le tnnps—c’est-à-dire met en jeu et
soumet à notre perception un ensemble de relations différenciées. Ce temps
est un temps autre que le chmnos qui s’écoule, mesurable. 11 possède une vie
 autonome avec laquelle nous sommes appelés à coïncider.” Boucourechliev, Le
langage musical, 21, 23 (italics in original).
23. “Les processus perceptifs, enregistrent, évaluent et comparent infatigablement
ces différences.” Boucourechliev, Le langage musical, 36.
24. Irène Deliège, “Perception des formes élémentaires de la musique: Voies de
recherche de la psychologie cognitive,” Analyse musicale 1 (1985): 20-28; Irène
Deliège, “Grouping Conditions in Listening to Music: An Approach to Lerdahl
and JackendofPs Grouping Preference Rules,” Music Perception 4 (1987):
325-60.
25. Irène Deliège, “Le parallélisme, support d’une analyse auditive de la musique:
Vers un modèle des parcours cognitifs de l’information musicale,” Analyse
musicale § (1987): 73-79; Deliège, “Approche perceptive de formes contem­
poraines,” in La Musique et les Sciences cognitives, ed. Stephen McAdams and
Irène Deliège (Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1989), 305-26; Engligh translation:
“A Perceptual Approach to Contemporary Musical Forms,” Contemporary
Music Review 4, no. 1 (1989): 213-30; Irène Deliège and Abdessadek El
Ahmadi, “Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Musical Groupings: A Study of
Perception on Sequenza W for Viola Solo by L. Berio,” Psychology of Music 18,
no. 1 (1990): 18-44; Irène Deliège, “L’organisation psychologique de l’écoute
de la musique: Des marques de sédimentation—indice et empreinte—dans la
représentation mentale de l’œuvre” (PhD diss., University of Liège, 1991);
Irène Deliège, “Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Memory for Musical Time,”
in Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium Music and the Cognitive Sciences, ed. Ian Cross
and Irène Deliège, Cambridge, September 1990; reprinted in Contemporary
Music Review 9, nos. 1-2 (1993): 191-207.
26. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music, 157-58.
27. Jonathan Goldman, “De quelques idées simples au travers d’un labyrinthe,”
prel at e*to Leçons de musique: Points de repère III, by Pierre Boulez (Paris: Editions
Christian Bourgois, 2005), 4L
2N. Alain Lieury, Les procédés mnémoniques: Sciences ou charlatanisme? (Brussels:
Mardaga, 1980), 16; cited in Deliège, “Le parallélisme, support d’une analyse
auditive de la musique.”
29. Deliège, “Le parallélisme, support d’une analyse auditive de la musique”;
Deliège, “L’organisation psychologique de l’écoute de la musique.”
30. John I). Bransford and Jeffery J. Franks, “The Abstraction of Linguistic Ideas,”
Cognitive Psychology 2 (1971): 331-50.
31. “On est d’abord tenté de croire qu’à chaque moment on n’entend qu’un son.
Mais chaque note est entendue en fonction des précédentes, elle les continue,
il laut donc que celles-ci soient encore agissantes à ce moment. La percep­
tion de la mélodie pose le problème de la mémoire, puisque d’une manière
qui n’est, à proprement parler, ni une reconnaissance, ni une évocation, le
passé immédiat fait sentir son action.” Paul Guillaume, La psychologie de laforme
(Paris: Flammarion, 1937), 156.
32. Fraisse, La psychologie du rythme, 75.
33. Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding:
An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures (Hillsdale, N|: Krlbaum, 1977).
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N OF M U S I C L I S T E N I N G ** 199

Georges Noizet, De le perception à la compréhension du langage (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1980); Jean Caron, Précis de psycholinguistique (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, L983).
34. Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1932, 1977).
35. “Tonte oeuvre, mais spécialement toute œuvre musicale, vit sous le double
signe de Fanalogie et de la différence; sans quoi, et parce qu’elle se déroule
dans le temps, irréversible, notre perception ne saurait l’appréhender. C’est
grâce à l’analogie qu’elle peut se repérer dans la progression de l’œuvre, c’est
grâce à la différence que cette progression peut s’accomplir. Toute forme musi­
cale dépend absolument du rapport dialectique qu’entretiennent analogie et
différence; c’est sur ces caractéristiques que se fond L’articulation formelle.”
Pierre Boulez, Leçons de musique: Points de repère III, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez
(Paris: Christian Bourgois, 2005), 239.
36. Deliège, “Perception des formes élémentaires de la musique”; “Grouping
Conditions in Listening to Music”; “L’organisation psychologique de
l’écoute de la musique”; Deliège, “Wagner ‘Alte Weise’: Une approche per­
ceptive,” Musicae Scientiae, special issue (1998): 63-90; Deliège and Ahmadi,
“Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Musical Groupings.”
37. Deliège and Ahmadi, “Mechanisms of cue extraction in musical groupings”;
Deliège, “L’organisation psychologique de L’écoute de la musique.”
38. Deliège, “L’organisation psychologique de l’écoute de la musique”;
“Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in Memory for Musical Time.”
39. Deliège, “Wagner ‘Alte Weise’: une approche perceptive.” This project was
undertaken at the request of Nattiez in association with Lectures he delivered
at the Collège de France. This study was later discussed at length in Nattiez’s
book Analyses et interpretations de la musique: La mélodie du berger dans le Tristan
et Isolde de Richard Wagner (Paris: Vrin, 2013), for which I wish to express my
gratitude.
40. Note this refinement compared with our initial definition of a musician lis­
tener above.
4L More detail is available in the publications cited in note 37.
42. Universal Edition, UE17746.
43. The extracts are as follows:
• Extract 1: fast piano figure, followed by a long resonance and chord played
by the wind instruments, ending in a trill (rehearsal no. 1)
• Extract 2: regularly spaced harp notes, contrasting tempo (rehearsal no. 3)
• Extract 3: groups of trills in harmonics, followed by a gruppetto (rehearsal
no. 4)
• Extract 4: contrast between groups of fast notes at the beginning and the
end of the extract, framing isolated notes in the middle (rehearsal no. 5)
• Extract 5\ brief group of resonances (rehearsal no. 6)
• Extract 6: group of trills ending in trills and appoggiaturas (rehearsal no.
7)
• Extract 7: two rising runs played by various instruments, interrupted in the
middle by several piano notes (rehearsal no. 8)
400 ** IRÈNK DELlfttiK

• Extract Ä long resortance on the glockenspiel and the tubular bells;

interrupted by fast figures on the cymbalom, guitar, and harp; followed by
vibraphone, celesta, and piano (rehearsal no. 9, beginning)
• Extract 9 dry, isolated sounds, repetition of the tubular bells and
corresponding resonances (rehearsal no. 14)
• Extract 10: solo piano in the low register (rehearsal no. 16)
• Extract Ih the continuation of the previous extract: similar tempo plus
new timbres (rehearsal no. 17)
• Extract 12: a trilled chord in the upper register played f ending with a
short group of notes in the lower register of the piano (rehearsal no. 24,
end)
• Extract 13: return of the winds over the piano chord, followed by a long,
held note and ending with a group of dry notes played / by several
instruments (rehearsal nos. 25 and 26)
• Extract 14: fairly metrical structures with simultaneous attacks that give an
impression of vertically (rehearsal no. 27, beginning)
• Extract 15: isolated groups of orchestral tuttis and piano, long sonorities
followed by resonances (end of work)
44. Complete length: 22.5cm divided into fifteen squares, each with a width of
1.5cm.
45. The construction is described in Irène Deliège, Patrick Delges, Jean-Claude
Oter, and Jean-Marc Sullon, “Annexe: Le ScaleGame, un outil MIDI multi­
fonctionnel,” Musicae Scientiae, special issue (1998): 117-29.
46. The participants were returning subjects, and they therefore heard the melody
a total of three to five times, depending on the group, before undertaking the
second set of requested tasks.
47. Unmet Ik Murdock Jr., “The Serial Position Effect in Free Recall,” Journal of
t'.xfini mental'Psychology 90 (1962): 65-74.
4M. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Musky 60, 187.
49. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Musicy 40-41.
50. William Friedman, About Time: Inventing a Fourth Dimension (Cambridge, MA:
MU Press, 1990), 20.
51. I would like to thank my friends Robert Wangerm ée, Valérie Dufour, and Pascal
Decroupct for their careful rereadings of this chapter and their comments.
 Selected Bibliography
Works by Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Books

What follows is mainly a list of Nattiez’s monographs only. English editions

are mentioned where available. We omit here the numerous translations of
some of his books in Albanian, Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Romanian; his early political writings; his edited volumes; his editions of
Boulez’s writings; his editorship of the five-volume Enciclopedia della musica
(Turin: Einaudi, 2001-5; French ed., Paris: Actes Sud, 2003-7); and his ethno-
musicological field recordings.

Fondements d'une sémiologie de la musique. Paris: Union générale d’éditeurs, 1975.

L'Envers d'une œuvre: “De Natura sonorum" de Bernard Parmegiani With Jean-Chris­
tophe Thomas and Philippe Mion. Paris: INA-GRM and Buchet-Chastel, 1983.
Tetralogies: Wagner, Boulez, Chéreau, essai sur l'infidélité. Paris: Christian Bourgois,
1983.
Proust musicien. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1984. Translated by Derrick Puffett as
Proust as Musician. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Musicologie générale et sémiologie. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1987. Translated by Car­
oline Abbate as Music and Discourse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990.
Il discorso musicale: Peruna semiologia della musica. Turin: Einaudi, 1987.
De la sémiologie à la musique. Cahiers du département d’études littéraires, N° 10.
Montreal: Université du Québec à Montréal, 1988.
Wagner androgyne. Essai sur l'interprétation. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1990. Trans­
lated by Stewart Spencer as Wagner Androgyne: A Study in Interpretation. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Le combat de Chronos et d'Orphée. Essais. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1993. Translated
byJonathan Dunsby as The Battle of Chronos and Orpheus: Essays in Applied Musical
Semiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Opera: Roman. Montréal: Leméac, 1997.
La musique, la recherche et la vie: Un dialogue et quelques dérives. Montréal: Leméac,
1999.
À 02 ** SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Les esquisses de Richard Wagner pour Siegfrieds Tod (1850): Essai de poïétique. Paris:
Société française de musicologie, 2004.
Histoire de la musicologie et sémiologie de Vhistoriographie musicale. Iasi, Romania: Editura
Artes (Coll. Conférences de l’Université), 2005.
Ihvfession musicologue. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2007.
Lévi-Strauss musicien: Essai sur la tentation homologique. Arles: Actes Sud, 2008.
La musique et le discours: Apologie de la musicologie. Montréal: Fides, 2010.
La musique, les images et les mots: Du bon et du moins bon usage des métaphores dans
l'esthétique comparée. Montréal: Fides, 2010.
Eloge de la musicologie. Tunis: Éditions Karem Sharif, 2012.
Analyses et interprétations de la musique: La mélodie du berger dans le Tristan et Isolde de
Richard Wagner. Paris: Vrin, 2013.
Wagner antisémite: Un problème historique, sémiologique et esthétique. Paris: Bourgois,
2015.

Articles

Of the two hundred articles that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has published, we

include here only those that were not included in a book or collection of
essays. This list is further limited to essays that concern musicological meta­
considerations, the history of musicology and ethnomusicology, music history,
eilmomusicology, and semiological music analysis. We do not include prefaces,
book reviews, music criticism, interviews, and various publications aimed at a
general audience.

"Vatrsr's 'Density 21.5’: A Study in Semiological Analysis.” Music Analysis 1, no. 3

(Mm2): 243-340.
"De la sémiologie générale à la sémiologie musicale” L’exemple de la Cathédrale
engloutie de Debussy." Ihrotée 25, no. 2 (1997): 7-20.
"A Comparison of Analyses from the Semiological Point of View (The Theme of
Mo/art’s Symphony in G minor, K. 550).” Translated by Katharine Ellis and Ray­
mond Monelle. Contemporary Music Review 17, part 1 (1998): 1-38.
"Simha At om and the Return of Analysis to Ethnomusicology.” Music Analysis 12,
no. 2 (1993): 241-65.
"Musique, Structures, Cultures.” EM, Annuario degli Archivi di Etnomusicologia
delVAccademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia 3 (1995): 37-54.
"Qu’est-cc que la musique? Une théorie sémiologique et anthropo-génétique.” In
Ditti i lunedi di f/rimavera, edited by Rossana Dalmonte and lgnazio Macchiarella
1, 15-35. Trento: Editrice Università degli Studi di Trento, Dipartimento di Sci-
enze Filologische e Storiche, Labirinti 46, 2000.
'Quelques problèmes de la musicologie critique selon Célestin Deliège.” Circuit 16,
no. 1 (2005): 73-88.
 SELECTED BIBL IO GR APHY 3» 203

“Rythme, danse et sexualité: Une danse ougandaise d ’initiation au marriage.” In

Musiques, Une Encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle, vol. 3, Musiques et cultures, 1108-29.
Arles: Actes Sud / Cité de la musique, 2005.
“Histoire ou histoires de la musique?” In Musiques: Une Encyclopédie pour le XXIe
siècle, vol. 4, Histoires des musiques européennes, 19-49. Arles: Actes Sud / Cité de la
musique, 2006.
“Le timbre est-il un paramètre secondaire?” Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de
recherche en musique9, nos. 1-2 (2007): 13-24.
“Typologies et universaux [en collaboration avec Jean Molino]” In Musiques: Une
Encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle, vol. 5, L'unité de la musique, 337-96. Arles: Actes Sud
/ Cité de la musique, 2007.
“Allen Forte’s Set Theory, Neutral Level Analysis and Poietics.” Translated by
Jonathan Goldman. In Proceedings of the Symposium around Set Theory, a French/
American Musicological Meeting, Ircam, October 15-16, 2003, edited by M.
Andreatta, J.-M. Bardez, and J. Rahn, 215-33. Paris: IRCAM-Centre Pompidou /
Éditions Delatour France, 2008.
“Introduction à l’œuvre musicologique de Jean Molino.” In Le Singe musicien: Sémi­
ologie et anthropologie de la musique, byJean Molino, 13-69. Arles: Actes Sud / INA,
2009.
“Introduction à la pensée musicologique de Leonard B. Meyer.” In Émotion et sig­
nification en musique, by Leonard B. Meyer, 13-45. Arles, Actes Sud, 2011.
“Is the Search for Universals Incompatible with the Study of Cultural Specificity?”
Translated by Jonathan Goldman. Human and Social Studies (Iasi, Romania) 1,
no. 2 (2012): 67-94.
“Isabelle Panneton—De la rigueur à la liberté de creation.” In La création musicale au
Québec, edited by Jonathan Goldman, 269-99. Montréal: Presses de l’Université
de Montréal, 2014.
“Musicologie critique ou musicologie générale? A propos des positions de Célestin
Deliège sur les musiques de tradition orale et ‘les autres musiques.’” In Modernité
musicale au XXe siècle et musicobgie critique: Hommage à Célestin Deliège, edited by
Valérie Dufour and Robert Wangermée, 159-77. Brussels: Académie royale de
Belgique, 2015.
 Contributors

K o f i A g a w u is professor of music at Princeton University and adjunct profes­

sor at the University of Ghana, Legon. Recent publications include “Tonality
as a Colonizing Force in Africa” (in Audible Empire, ed. Radano and Olaniyan,
2016) and The African Imagination in Music (Oxford University Press, 2016). A
fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow
of the British Academy, he was George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford
University in 2012-13.

S i m h a A r o m is an ethnomusicologist and the emeritus research director of

the CNRS (France). His work deals with the systematic features of music in
the polyphony of Central Africa and the republic of Georgia, as well as the
temporal organization and modeling and cognitive aspects of oral traditional
music. Notably, he is the author of African Polyphony and Polyrythm: Structure and
Methodology (2004 [1991], Cambridge University Press), has published close to
a hundred articles in ethnomusicology, and has produced some thirty CDs of
traditional music and several films. He holds the G.N.R.S. (Centre national de
la recherche scientifique) silver medal and many international awards.

French composer and conductor P i e r r e B o u l e z (1925-2016) was one of

the most influential musicians of the postwar period. In compositions like
Le marteau sans maître (1952-54) and Pli selon pli (1958-63) he developed a
modernist style consciously crafted on the discoveries of Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern, and Olivier Messiaen. As a definitive conductor of his era,
he served as musical director of renowned orchestras such as the New York
Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra.
He had a significant impact on musical institutions, particularly in France,
establishing the research center IRCAM, the Ensemble Intercontemporain
performance group, and the Cité de la Musique complex in Paris (now named
The Philharmonie). Boulez was also one of the most cogent writers on music,
in such volumes as Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, Orientations, Boulez on
Music Today, and the forthcoming Reorientations.
20<i MST OF C O N T R I B U T O R S

Rossana Dalmonte is professor of musicology at Bologna and Trento

University and president of the Fondazione Istituto Liszt. Her research per­
tains to music theory and analysis (a volume coauthored with Mario Baroni
and Carlo Jacoboni about the rules of music); music philology (two volumes
in the Franz Schubert: Neue Ausgabe, one in Gioacchino Rossini: Edizione critica,
and twenty volumes of Maderna’s works); and music history (as editor of two
collections, the fifteen-volume Quaderni delVIstituto Liszt and the six-volume
Liszt Rarities).

IufcNF. D kliège obtained her qualifications at the Brussels Royal Conservatory.

Later, she returned to study psychology, earning a PhD in 1991 from the
University of Liège. A founding member (1991) of ESCOM (European
Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music), she launched its journal, Musicae
Scientific, in 1997. She has published numerous articles and coedited several
books, including Musical Beginnings (Oxford University Press, 1996), Perception
and Cognition of Music (Psychology Press, 1997), Musical Creativity (Psychology
Press, 2006), Musique et évolution (Mardaga, 2010), Music and the Mind: Essays in
Honor of John Sloboda (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Contemporary Music.
Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2011).

J onathan Dunsby is professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music.

Among his books are Performing Music: Shared Concerns (Oxford University
Press, 1995) and Making Words Sing: Studies in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Song (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He is life president of the Society for
MiiNic Analysis, and for four years was president of the Music Theory Society of
New York State. In 2004 Oxford University Press published his translation from
the I'Ieuch ol JeairJacques Nattiez’s The Battle of Chronos and Orpheus: Essays in
Applied Musical Semiology.

)onAi t IAN ( »Oldman is associate professor of musicology in the Faculty of

Music of the Université de Montréal. From 2006 to 2016, he served as editor
of the scholarly journal Circuit, musiques contemporaines. His monograph The
Musical Language of Pierre Boulez (Cambridge University Press, 2011), won an
Opus Prize in 2012. In 2014, his edited volume on composers in Quebec was
published (Presses de l’Université de Montréal); another, Texts and Beyond, was
published in 2016 (UT Orpheus Edizioni). His articles have appeared in jour­
nals such as Perspectives of New Music, American Music, and Music Analysis.

N icolas Mkkijs is professor emeritus at the Paris-Sorbonne University. He

was a researcher at and then director of the Brussels Museum of Musical
Instruments for twenty years before moving to the Sorbonne, where he
directed the Department of Music from 1999 to 2004. He has read papers at
 L I S T OF C O N T R I B U T O R S 3* 207

conferences in Europe and around the world. His many publications concern
organology, the history of music theory, and music analysis. He is the French
translator of Heinrich Schenker’s Derfreie Satz,

Je a n M o l i n o has taught at the universities of Aix-en-Provence, Fez, and

Lausanne. He is the author of two major books on the analysis of narratives

and poetry: Introduction à Vanalyse de la poésie, in collaboration with Joëlle
Gardes-Tamine (Presses universitaires de France, 1982-88); and Homo fabu-
lator: Théorie et analyse du récit, in collaboration with Raphaël Lafhail-Molino
(Leméac-Actes Sud, 2003). He has published more than two hundred arti­
cles on French and comparative literature, linguistics, and semiology, some
of which are collected in Le singe musicien: Sémiologie et anthropologie de la
musique (Actes Sud/INA, 2009).

A r n o l d W h i t t a l l is professor emeritus of music theory and analysis at King’s

College, London. His latest books are The Wagner Style (Plumbago Press, 2015)
and Introduction to Serialism (Cambridge University Press, 2008). A contributor
to Elliott Carter Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Rethinking Britten
(Oxford University Press, 2013), and Harrison Birtwistle Studies (Cambridge
University Press 2015), he has recendy completed an extended series of arti­
cles, “British Music after Britten,” published in Tempo and the Musical Times
between 2001 and 2015.
 Index
activism, social, 125-26 Blacking, John, 2, 13, 31, 41, 46, 50-51;
Adorno, Theodor, 29, 112, 125 anthropological revisionism, 31;
aesthetic criteria, 13-14, 15, 29, 31,122 How Musical Is Man f, 2
Affektenlehre, 12 body, embodiment, 5, 11-14, 25, 112
Aldeburgh Festival, 100, 113 Boethius, Be institution musica, 11
American pragmatic philosophy, 7n2 Bonnefoy, Yves, 4
Ames, David and Anthony King, Glos­ Boucourechliev, André, 182
sary of Hausa Music and Its Social Boulanger, Nadia, 102, 110
Contexts, 41 Boulez, Pierre, 6, 131,140-46, 148,
Amu, Misonu, 41; “Glossary of Ewe 152-58, 161-64,167, 188, 195; anal­
Musical Terms,” 40 ogy and difference, 185; on Bach,
Arom, Simha, 5, 19, 51; “Intelligence in 136nl7; at Bayreuth, i05, 109;
Traditional Music,” 45 Bayreuth, Bauhaus, and IRCAM,
Ayrey, Craig, 3, 5 110; as conductor, 101, 105, 107;
cummings ist derDichter, 102, 103,
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 87, 94, 128-29, 105, 106; Dérive I, 105; Doublesand
135, 136nl7, 186 Figures Doubles Prismes, 139, 141-42,
Ballets Russes, 110 145-46,148,152-54, 157-58,
Bartlett, Frederick, Remembering, 185 161-65, 167; Éclat, 187-88, 191-94;
Bartok, Béla, 125 Eclat/Multiples, 106—7; . . . explosante/
Bauhaus, 110 fixe . . . , 103, 105; Incises and Sur
Bayreuth, 101, 104-6, 110, 113 Incises, 105; Messagesquisse, 97-99,
Beardsley, Monroe, 31 105-6; musical homage, 103; nonvo-
Beethoven, Ludwig van, Fifth Sym­ cal forms, 103; and opera, 104; Oubli
phony, 31; Schenker’s monograph signal lapidé, 103; Penser la musique
on the Ninth Symphony, 81 aujourd'hui, 152; perpetual alterna­
Belli, Domenico, 131 tion and expansion, 103,109; Pli
Benjamin, Walter, 97; “field of ruins” selon pli, 104, 105, 107; Poésiepour
allegory, 110 pouvoir, 139,141, 166; Répons, 107;
Berg, Alban, 51, 102, 104, 110; Lulu, Rituel, 103, 108; and sacred texts,
102; Violin Concerto, 10; Wozzeck, 102; and text settings, 105; on Wag­
104 ner, 104, 108, 110
Berio, Luciano, 6, 102, 127, 140-42, Bourion, Sylveline, 25
187-88, 195; Allelujah II, 142; Brahms, Johannes, Violin Concerto, 20
Sequenza VI, 187-88, 191, 195 Brant, Henry, Antiphnny I, 142
Birdwhistell, Ray, 18 Breton, André, 105
Birtwistle, I Iarrison, 102, 113 Brinkmann, kchilinld, 125
210 9» INDEX

Britten, Benjamin, 97-99, 112-14, 116; Feld, Steven, 38, 40; Jazz Cosmopolitan­
Billy Buddy 112-13; Tema “Sacker, ” ism in Accra, 4; Sound and Sentiment,
97-98; The Turn of the Screw, 112 40-41; on ethnotheories, 41-42
Busoni, Ferruccio, Junge Klassizität, 128 Festspielhaus. See Bayreuth
Brownian motion, 152 Focillon, Henri, In Praise ofHands, 14
Fönagy, Ivan, 16
Carissimi, Giacomo, 131 Forster, E. M., 111-13
Carter, Elliott, 102 Fraisse, Paul, 181
Chopin, Frédéric, Mazurka, op. 30, no. Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 131
4, 32 Friedman, William, About Time, 195
classicism, 101, 107 Friedson, Steven, 43; Remains of Ritual,
Cocteau, Jean, 112 44
cognition, 17, 24, 28, 40, 60,178-83 Fürniss, Suzanne, 45
cognitive music theory, 23-24, 27. Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 81
Cone, Edward, 24
Cook, Nicholas, 29, 81-82 Gabrieli, Giovanni, 131
Cott, Jonathan, 154 Galuppi, Baldasarre, 131
creativity, 52, 119 Gaucher, Yves, 4
cummings, e. e., 103 genre, 44, 49, 108, 120, 123, 168
Gentilucci, Armando, 125-26
Dahlhaus, Carl, 125, 168 Georgian polyphony, 5
Dallapiccola, Luigi, 125-26 Gestalt, 181, 194
Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Guillaume, Paul, 184
127-28 gesture, 11, 14, 15, 18-19, 21, 39, 41, 43
Debussy, Claude, 4, 102, 111, 114, 145, Gould, Glenn, 4
1H1; Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, 102; Gramsci, Antonio, 126, 132-33 intellet-
Syrinx, 4 tuale organico, 137n26
Descartes, Kené, Compendium musicae, 12 Grauer, Victor, 45
Ilettisch, Diana, 181 Griffiths, Paul, 106-7
I)lj< k, létm A. van, 181 Gurney, Edmund, 24
duration, 62, 65, 129, 135, 184. See also
time Hanslick, Eduard, 24, 38, 84-85, 122;
dynamic vectors, 181 On the Musically Beautiful, 84
Hassler, Hans Leo, 88
Eco, Umberto, 38 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 83-85
Eisler, Hanns, 125 Helmholtz, Hermann von, 12, 84
electroacoustics, 19, 107-8, 143, 156 hermeneutics, 1, 4, 27, 32-33. See also
embodiment, 4 narrative approaches to music
Epstein, Josh, 111-12; Sublime Noise, 111 analysis
esthesic level of analysis, 3-6, 14, 28-31, Hooper, Giles, 27-28
33, 140, 144, 167-69, 178; challenge hybrid, 100, 101, 123
to structuralism, 30. See also tripartite
model of analysis Imberty, Michel, 179, 180-81; imma­
ethnography, 44-45 nent level, immanence, 29, 33-34,
elhnolheory, 38, 39, 41-43 178. See also Nattiez, Jean-Jacques:
expressionism, 102, 104, 110, 128, 165 neutral level of analysis
 INDEX 8* 211

Inhalt. See Hanslick, Eduard; Hegel, Ligeti, Gyôrgy, 102, 125; Triofor Violin,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Schenker, Horn and Piano, 108
Heinrich Liszt, Franz, 122
Inuit music, 38 Lomax, Alan, 38
IRCAM, 100, 102,106-7, 110,113 Lombardi, Luca, 125,126
Italian Communist Party, 126, 132 Lorca, Federico Garcia, 134
Lotti, Antonio, 131
Jakobson, Roman, 26; on music and
verbal language, 26 Maderna, Bruno, 6,105, 119, 125-35,
Johnson,Julian, 29 141, 151; art and social activism, 132;
Journées internationales de musique and classical forms and early Italian
expérimentale, 151 music, 131; compositional process
Jousse, Marcel, 17 and twelve-tone technique, 127;
Composizione in tie tempi, 132, 134-35;
Kafka, Franz, 132, 134 Composizione no. 2,129, 130,131; and
Kahle rt, August, 84 dance rhythms, 129, 130; Das eiserne
Kant, Immanuel, 2, 3, 84-85, 91, 122; Zeittater, 135; Don Perlimplin, 134;
on the beautiful, 91nl8 and early music, 129; Fantasia eFuga
Keil, Charles, 38, 46; Tiv Song, 46 per duepianoforti, 127-29; and instru­
Kintsch, Walter, 181 mentation, 131; Improvvisazione no.
Kisliuk, Michelle, 45 1, 130; Kranichsteiner Kammer Kantate,
Klein, Michael, 32-34 132; and popular songs, 134; Studi
Kramer, Lawrence, 28, 32-33; music as per ‘'llProcesso”di Franz Kafka, 134;
sign, 28, 32; on the semiotic status of Studi per il Llanto de Garda Lorca, 134;
signs, 32 and transcription, 131
Kubik, Gerhard, 46 Mahler, Gustav, 51,101,105,124
Kurtâg, Gyôrgy, 102 Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 131
Kwabena Nketia, J. H., The Music of Mallarmé, Stéphane, 114
Africa, 43, 44 Manzoni, Giacomo, 125-26
Margulis, Elizabeth, 24-25
Lacan, Jacques, 32, 33, 37n37 Marini, Biagio, 131
Langer, Susanne, 31 Marx, A. B., 25, 126
language, 18, 20, 24-27, 30, 41, Mauss, Marcel, 16
43-44, 49, 82-83, 85, 87,124-27, Mayuzumi, Toshiro, Nirvana Symphony,
129, 131-33, 135,185; analogy with 142
music, 24, 26; in cognitive psychol­ meaning, musical, 24-25, 28
ogy, 27; Lacan and, 32; prosodic medieval polyphony, 5
characteristics in transcription, 20; Merriam, Alan P., 46
translation and ethnocentrism, Messiaen, Olivier, 102, 103, 110; Cinq
43-44, 54n30 rechants, 102
Legrenzi, Giovanni, 131 Metzer, David
Lerdahl, Fred and Rayjackendoff, Meyer, Leonard B., 4, 64, 79,178, 181—
181-86; A Generative Theory of Tonal 83, 194-95, 198; Style and Music, 4
Music, 181 Michaux, Henri, 141
Leroi-Gourhan, André, 16 Mithen, Stephen, 2; The Singing
Levitz, Tamara, 110 Neanderthals, 2
212 * * INDEX

modernism, 97-114 paradigmatic analysis, 3, 4, 25, 35nl2,

Molinojean, 1-5, 38, 142-43, 178; 86 , 100
culturalist paradigm, 21 n6; Le singe Peirce, Charles Sanders, 7n2, 25, 28
musicien, 2; Musical Fact and the Semi- perception, 24, 28, 30, 162-67, 177-87,
ology of Music, 3 191-95
Monteverdi, Claudio, 131 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 131
Morris, Charles, 25, 28 music analysis Perlman, Marc, Unplayed Melodies, 39
and extramusical processes, 13; Perotinus, 131
music perception, 24, 26-27, 30; and Pétrucci, Ottaviano, 131; Odhecaton,
music signification, 24 131
Pinker, Stephen, 2, 26
Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia, 19 poietic level of analysis, 3-5, 14, 29, 31,
narrative approaches to music analysis, 34, 140, 167-69, 178. See also tripar­
1,33, 104 tite model of analysis
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 1-7,18,20, polyphony, 5, 45-46, 59-80, 86
23-24, 28-31, 33, 38, 39, 41, 51,77, Pousseur, Henri, 6; Rimes, 139, 140-42,
82,99-100,106,108,110,121,135, 151-52,155-56,161-62,166-67
142-43,156,186, 20; Analyses et inter­ Powers, Harold, 65
prétations de la musique, 6,121; on anti- Proust, Marcel, 4, 106, 109
structuralism, 1; The Battle of Chronos psychoanalysis, 16, 21
and Orpheus, 30,100; on ethnotheory, Pythagoras, 11, 12
38, 46; external esthesics, 144; Fonde­
ments d'une sémiologie de la musique, vii, Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 12, 49
1, 3-4; Music and Discourse, 38; music rhythm, 11, 16-17, 19-20, 31, 43, 60,
and narrative, 36n35; musicologie 66,129-33
générale, basis and conceptualiza­ Richter, Gerhard, 29
tion, viii, 5-6; Musicologie générale et Ricœur, Paul, 38
sémiologie, 4; neutral level of analysis, 3, Riemann, Bernhard, 38
5, 14, 100, 144; New Musicology, 7n3; Rostropovich, Mstislav, 97
on Saussurean model, 30; Opera, 4; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 84
on poslstructuralism, 3; semiological Ruwet, Nicolas, 3, 25, 38, 86
model, 28; on semiology/semiotics
distinction, 30; signifier and signified Sacher, Paul, 97, 103
dichotomy, 32; tripartite model of Said, Edward, Orientalism, 42
analysis, 178; on universals, 30 Sakata, Lorraine, 38
New German School, 122 Sanders Peirce, Charles, 7n2, 25, 28
Nicolas, François, Le Monde-Musique, 178 Satie, Erik, 112; Parade, 111
neoclassicism, 128, 131 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 26, 28, 30;
Nketia,J. H. Kwabena, The Music of langue/parole, 26
Africa, 43, 44 Schaeffner, André, 38
Nono, Luigi, 125-27, 131-32; Canto Schenker, Heinrich, 4-6, 23, 49,
sospeso, 132; political engagement, 81-83, 85-89; Auskomponiening, 88;
136nl2 Beethovens neunte Sinfonie, 81 ; Ein
Beitrag zur Ornamentik, 87; Der freie
organicism, 86 Satz, 88, 89; “Der Geist der musika­
organology, 15, 29 lischem Technik,” 85-86; Inhalt, 5,
 INDEX 2» 213

81-83, 91; Kontrapunkt, 87; and lan­ Stopford,John, 83, 88

guage, 85-88; Das Meisterwerk, vol. T, Stradella, Alessandro, 131
87; “Das Organische der Fuge,” 87 Stravinsky, Igor, 49, 103-5, 107, 110—11,
Scherchen, Hermann, 145 128,162-63, 186; In memoriam Dylan
Schoenberg, Arnold, 29, 102, 104, 110, Thomas, 103; Oedipus Rex, 104; Persê-
124; Erwartung, 29; Ode to Napoleon, phone, 104, 110; Symphonies of Wind
31; String Quartet no. 2, 124; use of Instruments, 111
folk songs, 124; Vorgefühl, 29; Wind
Quintet, 104 Tedlock, Barbara, 38
Schuller, Gunther, Spectra, 142 Temperley, David, 27, 28
segmentation, 179-83, 187-89 time, 19, 154, 182. See also duration
semiology, 1-2, 23-25, 28-32, 34,122 Tomlinson, Gary, 112
signification, musical. See meaning, translation, 46, 51, 54n30
musical tripartite model of analysis, 3, 5, 23, 28,
semiotics, 1, 25-27, 32, 83 31-34, 140, 143. See also esthesic level
serialism, 97 of analysis; poietic level of analysis
sériation ( mise en série), 142
Shostakovich, Dmitri, 101, 125 Ursatz, 88
Smith, Sandra, 38
Somer, Harry, Stereophony, 142 Varèse, Edgard, 4, 100, 151; Densité
song: Akan, 49; Lalegrie le ven dai zoveni, 21.5, 4, 100; Poème électronique, 151
135; bird, 28; La biondina in gon- Vecchi, Orazio, 131
doleta, 123, 134-35; extramusical Verdi, Giuseppe, 114
content, 121; Fischia il vento, 133; Veyne, Paul, Comment on écrit Thistoire,
folk songs in Georgian polyphony, 143
59; folk song typology, 123; and Viadana, Ludovico, 131
improvisation, 60; Italian vernacular Vischer, Friedrich, 84
and modernistic compositions, 6; Vivaldi, Antonio, 131
melodic profile, 121; and mode, 61;
oral transmission of, 67; Schoenberg Wagner, Richard, 4, 6, 25, 38, 81-83,
Lieder, 29 87,100-3, 105-14, 121-22,142,
spatialization, 139-69 187-88; English horn solo (“Alte
Steinecke, Wolfgang, 127-28 Weise”) from Tristan and Isolde, 187,
stereophony, 139; commercialization 189, 190—92,195; The Flying Dutch­
and popularzation, 144; as concep­ man, 104; Parsifal, 104, 105, 106,
tual field, 152-56; experiments in, 107, 108,110, 112; perpetual alter­
145 nation, 110 ; The Ring of the Nibelung,
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 6, 38, 102, 101-8; Siegfried, 109; Tannhäuser,
139, 140-42, 145, 148-50, 154-57, 104; Tristan and Isolde, 4, 6, 104-5,
159- 62, 164-66; Carré, 139, 142, 145, 121, 142,187; Twilight of the Gods,
148, 150, 154, 159; Gruppen, 139, 108, 109
141-42, 145-50, 154-55, 157, 159, Wagner, Wieland, 104,105
160- 67; Kontakte, 150; ‘Music and Warnock, Mary, 29
Space,” 141, 154 Webern, Anton, 104, 124, 128; String
Stone, Ruth M., 38, 43-44, 46; Let the Quartet, op. 28, 128
Inside Be Sweet, 44 Wertheimer, Max, 181
214 ** INDEX

Wilson, Charles, 140 Zbikowski, Lawrence, 39; Conceptualiz­

Wolzogen, Hans von, paradigmatic ing Music, 39
analysis, 35nl2 Zemp, Hugo, 38
Wörner, Karl H., 141 Ziani, Marc Antonio, 131
Tabula Gratulatoria
Margaret Bent
Tim Carter
Claude Dauphin
John Deathbridge
Sylvia L’Écuyer
Annegret Fauser
Nathalie Fernando
Ghyslaine Guerdn
Steven H uebner
Shay Loya
Robert Morris
Isabelle Panneton
John Rea
Marie Rolf