“Schoenberg … leads us into a realm where musical experience is a matter not of the ear but of the soul alone—and from this point of view begins the music of the future.”
— Wassily Kandinsky (1911)
CMT: Biss’ playing ( Kansas City and New York ) is phenomenal. Spacious. Expansive in his ideas and references to other works and other ideas. His pre-concert remarks were also very good (Biss Interview with Cynthia Siebert. 15-NOV-2006. )—indicative of the way his mind works; how he reacts to musical and social stimuli across space and time. So what? Where does Biss lead me? Working from Heidegger’s and Adorno’s and Wittgenstein’s “Philosophy of Language” concepts, I would say that a piece of music is only meaningful by way of that work’s relations to other works within a larger group, by way of the person’s relations to other persons, and in relation to the “game” that’s unfolding in the society that the composer, performer, and listener are members of.
DSM: When I experience a piece of music, I experience it in the context of this community of other related works and events and motifs—which include other cultural and political motifs, not just musical ones. Even if you consider only the characteristic features of a single work, the exceptional features of the specific piece inevitably arise in proximity vs. remoteness to other pieces that are somehow related to it. Even if the composer and the players scrupulously avoid listening to or studying or performing other works, they inevitably manifest aspects of their native culture. They can’t escape that—even if their work doesn’t overtly aim to express it; even if their work deliberately strives to hold itself at a distance from the prevailing culture or avant garde-ishly, consciously avoids reference to it.
CMT: This is, I think, basically right. We never experience a piece of music as self-contained in isolation. Nor is it possible to create one in total isolation. Each piece is like a star within a constellation of other pieces in our gaze. Musical understanding happens when we situate a particular piece within such a musical galaxy. Thought of like this, a work isn’t so much an isolated point as much as it is a location of gathering together. A condensation of matter and energy.
DSM: Well, yes. And the sustained appeal of Schenker’s theory and method of musical analysis is due to their ability to situate tonal pieces in the galactic realm of the proverbial masterwork, a musical equivalent of a Grand Theory of Everything in physics, the desire for a universal Gesamtkunstwerk.
CMT: So if we privilege the concept of historical backward-and-forward continuity—if we make that the “card” that “trumps” all others—then atonality just serves to extend and continue the tonal tradition. Seen in this way, atonality isn’t “really” atonal, but is instead just a more complicated kind of tonality. The disruptive effect of “atonality” is an optical-acoustical-cognitive illusion.
DSM: An example from Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces, Op. 19 (1911), shows what I mean. The second little piece contains this G-B dyad that’s repeated throughout the nine measures. In m. 7-9, a progression of major thirds descends against the ostinato dyad—producing a sequence that goes F-A, E-flat-G, D-flat-F, C-E. A tonal analysis of this might take these thirds as a stepwise descent from G to C interpreted under a rubric of the key of C. But it’s ambiguous. It could be interpreted in the key of G, or no key at all.
CMT: Mitsuko Uchida’s account of Schoenberg’s Klavierstücke covers emotional light-years in the few bars that comprise each piece. Different from Jonathan Biss’ treatment but also deep and beautiful. Lots of dark matter in the interstellar space she spins out. The pieces in Op. 19 are so short that it’s impossible to say that there are clear expository sections—they’re a study in compactness. They’re a gauntlet to test your expressive artistry—they are not a crucible for virtuosic stellar playing.
DSM: Yes, they’re so compact conceptually as to be unexpectedly daunting to the performer. You can easily turn in an uninspiring incarnation of these Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke—but it's surprisingly difficult to materialize an inspiring one. Maybe this is a consequence of how compact the process of composing them was. Nos. 1 through 5 of Op. 19 were, you know, composed in a single day, 19-FEB-1911. And No. 6 was composed on 17-JUN-1911 in one go.
CMT: The longest, No. 1, encompasses just 18 bars, while the shortest ones, Nos. 2 and 3, only nine bars each. Some melodic repetition and manipulation occurs in No. 3, Sehr langsam Viertel, but it too is really compact, like astronomy’s M39, a globular cluster. Because of its tempo, Rasch, aber leicht (No. 4) is the shortest of the Klavierstücke.
DSM: In No. 2, the repeated third (G-B dyad), played ostinato, contrasts with the legato melody at a higher dynamic level. The pauses create galactic cadences—sparse structure, spacious. The most dramatic of the pauses occurs just after the vertical build-up of the thirds.
CMT: And a pitch-class set analysis of this might explain the various collections that result from combining other pitch classes with the central G-B dyad. The piece seems to center on the important trichords (0 1 4) and (0 4 8) and culminate with the statement of the (0 1 4 5 8 9) hexachord at the end. At least that’s where my own telescope focuses!
DSM: So what are we doing here on this blog? I notice, by the way, that sometimes you bring out your microscope instead of your telescope! And your mirrors! Always your mirrors! Like Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations”—looking backward and forward at the same time.
CMT: Well, to quote Jonathan Biss from his interview with Cynthia Siebert: [The responsible person] “… must nurture discourse. He/she must make music part of the public conversation.” Because we lack voices in other spheres of life—and also because you and I live 2800 kilometers apart [ 91 picoparsecs or 1.6 megasmoots ], in Boston and Kansas City—we meet here in this bloggy part of the galaxy. We add more music conversation to the public commons. We’re discharging what Biss says is a social moral duty. Cogito ergo obtineo! Velicamus ergo crearāmus! DiggIt ergo sum!
- Adorno T. Philosophy of New Music. Univ Minnesota, 2006.
- Biss J. Beethoven-Schumann Piano Works - Debut CD. (EMI Classics, 2004.)
- Dahlhaus C. Schoenberg and the New Music. Cambridge Univ, 1989.
- Heidegger M. Being and Time. Harper, 1962.
- Jacobs P. Schoenberg Op. 19. (Nonesuch, 1992.)
- Reich W. Schoenberg, A Critical Biography. Praeger Publishers, 1981.
- Stein L, ed. Style and Idea. Faber & Faber, 1982.
- Uchida M. Schoenberg Piano. (Philips, 2001.)
- Wittgenstein L. Blue and Brown Books. Harper, 1942.
- Wittgenstein L. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment