January 7, 2017 | Author: Lenin Estrella | Category: N/A
Review Author(s): Michael Graubart Review by: Michael Graubart Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 191 (Dec., 1994), pp. 46-47+49-51 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/945606 Accessed: 06-03-2015 20:28 UTC
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46
BookReviews
appropriateage for a book such as this detailing his accomplishmentso far. Sculthorpe'seminence amongliving composersis stillnot fully recognized in Britain, though it was immediately obvious, for instance, to audiences at the Vale of GlamorganFestivalthis summer,where Sculthorpe was featured composer: 18 of his works were performed and their mastery plain to hear. Mastery in the old-fashioned sense is rare nowadays, for it depends on an unselfconscious confidence in the musical language one is using. Sculthorpe has that confidence: his language is relaxed and communicative, straightforwardbut not simplistic, deeply immersed in tradition, yet fresh and new. Deborah Hayes, in her compactbut extremely informative biographical section, sheds much light on how and why Sculthorpe has become a majorartist.It isn't essential,but it certainlyhelps to have been born in the right place at the right time, and Sculthorpe was fortunate in both respects.Before him, Australiahad produced no outstanding composer other than the expatriate PercyGrainger.The music thatwas being written in Australiawhile Sculthorpewas growing up was mostly a watered-down version of early 20thcentury English music. Most of Sculthorpe's contemporariescommittedthemselvesto European modernism,but againin a somewhat dilute form. Sculthorpe instead was cleverly eclectic, taking what he needed from Europebut relying more on Asian melody and an Asian harmonic stasis. He saw the flat Australianlandscape as a metaphor for the non-developing musiche wanted to write. Later, he incorporatedAboriginal melodies into his language (he had at first been wary of doing so, though he -used Aboriginal titles from the start). His use of folk music as the basis of his melodic language is similarto VaughanWilliams or Bartok, andjust as the former'smusic seems to most people to encapsulate Englishness, so Sculthorpehas cannily succeeded in his intention to create an authentic Australianmusic, without in any sense sounding narrowly nationalistic. The Greenwood Press's format (they have now published over 50 bio-bibliographies of 20th-century composers) allows for a worklist, discography, performance list and bibliography in addition to biography. Deborah Hayes has been indefatigable in pursuing every last detail and the result is a model of scrupulousresearch. The worklist includes all the composer's own programme notes, which form a small musical autobiographyin themselves. The bibliography, which comprises 1200 items, contains many quotations from reviews which again add substantially to the biographical material. It
seems remarkablycomplete: the only omission I noticed is an interestingif rathereccentric article by Kelly Trench on Sculthorpe's early works, published I believe some time in the 1970s in the Tasmanianperiodical Ossa. David Matthews
Instruction in Coherence, Instrumentation, Counterpoint, Form(Zusammenhang, Instrumentation, Kontrapunkt, by Arnold Schoenberg, Translated Formenlehre) by Charlotte M. Cross & Severine Neff. Edited and with an Introduction by Severine Neff. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London. FormenInstrumentation, Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, lehre('ZKIF') was Schoenberg'sfirst majorpiece of theoretical writing since the Harmonielehre of 1911. The manuscript consists essentially of Schoenberg's notes, intended for his own use, towards four projected text-books, which were, however, never written. It mainly dates from 1917, but Schoenberg used it when working on other, later, projects, and added two kinds of materialto it in later years:firstlyaround1926, in the section on counterpoint,some musicexamples of 12-note hexachordalcombinatoriality(as well as some of diatonic counterpoint),and of the first sketches for the theme of the Orchestral Variations,op.31; secondly - in order to facilitate his use of the notes - his own indexes. This is the first publication of ZKIF, and as such is obviously of importance to anyone interested in the development of Schoenberg's aesthetic and didactic ideas. As Professor Neff says in her introduction, The sketchy,incompleteenunciationof Schoenberg's can be theory of coherencein "Zusammenhang" in theHarmonielehre fleshedoutfromideaspropounded andlaterworks,andparticularly by lookingcloselyat notionof a musicaltheoryandhis ideas Schoenberg's "Zusammenof musicalform.Evenwithitsdeficiencies, hang" is uniquely rich among Schoenberg'stheoretical works in its many speculative comments on musical In this work also he discusses the perception... principle of developing variation for the first time, illustratingthat principle with an analysis of Mozart's "Dissonant" Quartet, K.465. (In view of my later comments about the translation, it is noteworthy, incidentally, that she only refers to the 'Coherence' part of Schoenberg's text.) It has at once to be said, though, that it is hard going. Notes that trigger something in the mind and memory of their author do not always yield up their meaning easily to another reader. This is
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Book Reviews 47
have come acrossof Schoenberg'sconcept of 'developingvariation'.Schoenbergpicked up this analysis again in his later study, Der musikalische Gedankeunddie Logik,Technik und Kunst seiner (1934-36), recently published Darstellung asTheMusical IdeaandTheLogic,Technique andArt editedand of itsPresentation byArnoldSchoenberg translatedby PatriciaCarpenterand Severine writings. The notes sometimes include lists, both Neff (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, exhaustive and exhausting, of all possible 1994).His theoryof coherence had evolvedinto of compoundtopics- someof the thatof the primary,generativeandunifyingidea, permutations shorteronestendingtowardsthe hilarious:p.35: andSeverineNeff expandsthe analysisfoundin to belong,it will consist ZKIF in her introductionin the presentbook. 'I) If a piece is supposed eitherof a) manyshortparts,or b) a few large Thebookis lavishlyandbeautifullyproduced, parts,or c) manylargeparts.(thepartscanthen with attractive (though doubtfully relevant) be keptat a lengthlikethoseof theirkind)II)If a photographs of Schoenberg in likelyandunlikely to be short,then it will consist companyanda colourreproduction of his littlepiece is supposed eitherof a) a few long parts,or b) a few short known abstractexpressionistpainting Vision [parts,or] c) onlyone short(orlong)part.'(One (very differentfrom the well-knownseriesof recallsthe old Tyroleseproverb,trottedout to Gazes).It consistsof a preface;a verysubstantial amazetourists:'Whent'cockon t'rubbish-heap introductionandnote on the textsby the editor; do crow,the weather'llchange- or on like it is the text itself, namely Schoenberg'snotes, nowgo!'.)Theselistsmaybe revealingof aspects presentedwithparallelGermanandEnglishtexts of Schoenberg's mentality,thoughevenhereone on facingpages,butin the caseof the sectionson mustrememberthata check-listmadeto ensure coherence and instrumentationreorderedby thatwhenthe eventualbookcomesto be written subject-matter in accordancewith Schoenberg's all possibilitieswill be scrutinizeddoes not own indexes(the originalorderbeing given in necessarily presagea ploddingly pedanticworking- Appendix2); five appendices:1. Schoenberg's throughof all the possibilitiesin the book itself. own indexes, 2. A table of contentsof each But mixedin with thesesometimeshermetic, notebook, 3. Two bibliographic lists of his own sometimestedious jottings are to be found writingscompiledby Schoenberghimself,4. A brilliant,succinctdefinitionsof conceptslike comparisonof Schoenberg'slists with Rufer's discussions of organic- catalogue,and 5. A comparisonof Christensen 'development', fascinating ismin generalandof coherencein termsof what and Christensen(Christensen, Jean, andJesper is varied and what is kept the same between Christensen:FromArnoldSchoenberg's Literary successivestatementsof a musicalfigure,of the Legacy: A Catalogue Items.Warren, of Neglected natureandfunctionof motives,of therelationship Mich.: HarmonieParkPress,1988)with Rufer between theory in science and in art, and andwithSchoenberg; a list of workscitedin the importantstatementssuchas thatthe purposeof presentbook;anda rathercuriousindexto this theoryis to explicatespecificworks,not to lay book, in which only Englishwords are listed down general, asynchronic,immutablelaws apart from German titles of Schoenberg's (note the relevanceto criticismsof atonality!). writings,musicalcompositionsare not listedat (It is interesting,though, to see how often all, andwhich,to confusethe eye, is printedin Schoenbergis temptedinto andcarriedawayby two columnswithouta verticaldivider. ProfessorNeff s introductionis a majoressay self-sustaining, general,even abstract,speculations, often carried on in terms of entirely of greatinterestand importance.It is in three nonmusical,metaphoricalimages,only to pull parts.Thefirstis anindispensable contribution to himselfup shortwith 'Thisis probablynot true' the bibliography of Schoenberg's prosewritings or 'Is probablynot relevant to the musical (takenfurtherby the editor'sinvaluable footnotes or 'Itis necessarythat in the main text itself, citing the places in questions'[mytranslation] I confinemyselfto the musical'.) Schoenberg'sother writingswhere the same, Aboveall, the 'Coherence'notes,asProfessor similarorrelatedtopicsaretakenup).Thesecond Neff says,containSchoenberg's firstmajorpiece discussesthe examplesof 12-notehexachordal of written-downanalysis,a short but brilliant combinatoriality, andof the firstsketchesfor the motivicanalysisof the bridge-passage in the first themeof the OrchestralVariations, op.31. Here movement of Mozart's'Dissonances'quartet there is an obscurestatementto the effect that whichis at the sametimethe clearestdefinitionI thefirstsketchesaretriadic,whentheyarein fact the casewhen,as often, Schoenberg particularly lists topicsto be discussedand questionsto be answered,but leaves the discussionsand the answersto thestage- neverreached- of actually writingthe four books; thoughsome of these matters- andheretheeditoris of greatassistance - were picked up in others of Schoenberg's
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Book Reviews 49 for the most part barred tetrachordally (and dodecaphonic);only the later examples, in which four-voiced canons are derived from pairs of hexachordally-combinatorialrows, could be said to be triadic - or, less misleadingly, trichordal. The third summarizesand explicates the contents and philosophical implications of the notebooks that make up ZKIF. Despite the book's luxurious production, errors in English ('become' instead of 'became' on p.liv; 'principle' instead of 'principal' on p.lviii); a musical one ('tritone' - augmented fourth - instead of 'diminished fifth' on p.lxvii;) and a caption printed twice in two different places in a musical example ('d.i: The first appearance ...' in Example 7, p.xlviii), have slipped through the proof reading. (These are only mentioned here because, ironically, Dr. Cross and ProfessorNeff three times in the main text wrongly 'correct' Schoenberg's admittedly elsewhere often slap-dash and misspelt German where it happens to be right: on p.16, 'bekannt' refers to the singular noun 'Beziehung', and Schoenberg correctly writes 'ist', not 'sind'; on p.2 Schoenberg's 'fur einen ..., der sich freiwillig, selbst verbannt hat' deliberately emphasizes 'selbst': '. . . for one who has voluntarily exiled himself, as againstthe blander editorially-changed word-order, translated as '. . . for someone who voluntarily has gone into exile'; footnote 10 on p.66 creates a similar situation: Schoenberg's sentence means 'It is wrong for already such a voice to be called melodic; it is merely not unmelodic', implying a threefold gradation between unmelodic and melodic; the revised word-order leads to a quite wrong 'quite' in the translation. On the other hand, on p.104, the translators miss a golden opportunity to correct Schoenberg's repeated misspelling: 'Symetric', etc.!) It is the translation of Schoenberg's text, though, that is the real problem. It is claimed to be almost literal and word-for-word. As an excuse for its inelegance, this might do if it were true. Unfortunately, often as a result of attaching an adjective or adverb to the wrong word or phrase within a sentence, it frequently modifies, and in some importantpassagesactually reverses or makes nonsense of Schoenberg's meaning. (The title itself gives warning of this; whereas 'Lehren' does indeed mean 'To teach' or 'To instruct', '. .. lehre' - compare 'lore' - means a body of knowledge: 'science of . . .' in the old sense; the word-ending '.. .logy'; sometimes 'theory of . It is not till Note 35 on p.li thatwe are given a rationale for divergent - but not even then consistently used - translations of '. .
lehre': 'instruction in . . .' and 'theory of.) The bilingualpresentationof the maintext goes some way towardsamelioratingthe consequences of the errors of translation;but only for those readers whose own German is good. Space preventsthe correctingof the mistranslationsand other confusionshere, but this reviewer would be pleased to supply a list of the more important ones to any interested reader. On pp.8/91, Schoenberg enunciates some important and provocative principles of art and its comprehension:'coherence ... bindsindividual phenomena intoforms.','A form (the form of the phenomena) is an artisticformif the recognizable connections. . areessentialin the same wayfor the partasfor thewhole','The degreeof comprehensibility depends on the type and number of connections used .. .'; 'The limits of comprehensibility are not the limits of coherence . . .'. Another provocative statement- and a mistranslationthat almost reverses Schoenberg'smeaning - is to be found at the top of p.10/11: 'Even without a shared content coherence may be direct if the purposeis held in common.' is the translator's version. But 'mittelbar' means 'indirect'. What Schoenberg says is 'There can be an indirect coherence even without shared content if the purposeis shared.' On pp.12/13, Schoenbergintroducesa curious, lengthy parable about a wardrobe whose key is lost, intended to explicate the processof reaching understanding,with 'If I make this statement[this refers to the previous sentence, in which the recognition that parts of a thing are similar to those of an already familiar thing is made the prerequisite for understanding]the basis of my following considerations, I do not mean that it states conclusively and completely what understanding is. Rather, it is as though: . . .'. But a redundant comma tempts the translatorsinto a reversal of the logical structure: 'If I base this statement upon my ensuing observation, .' On pp.26/27, Schoenberg enters into an argument with himself: 'A motive is something that gives rise to a motion.' This fascinating dynamic view leads him to play with ideas of motionand motor,only to decide that he might be wrong to equate motiveand motor.This leads to a discussionof rhythmin which Schoenbergseems, surprisingly (or, as they might have said in Darmstadt, not surprisingly) to equate rhythm with regularrepetition and relatesit to 'Takt'- an unfortunately ambiguous word, meaning both 'bar' and 'beat', which creates inconsistencies in the translation. 1This notationrefersto the pairsof pagesof the parallel texts.
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BookReviews
Now we come to some stimulating and illuminatingmotivic analysis,first of an example of Schoenberg's,then of the previouslymentioned Mozartbridge-passage,together with discussions of liquidationand developing variation.On p.38, Schoenberg explains the derivation of motifs from each other by writing 'b1=-2, where a is a motif consisting of one crotchet and b one of two quavers;in bar 3, b1 changes the latter into two pairs of semiquavers, and Schoenberg is saying that these derive from the second half of al, a variantof a at the beginning of bar 2 which turns the crotchet into a quaver and two semiquavers. By writing 'a' in the above equation instead of 'a1', Schoenberg already introduces a degree of mystification,which is then compounded by the editor's explanatory footnote on p.39, which refers to bar 2 instead of bar 3. There follows a discussion of the function of tonality, which includes the significant remark that in certain cases it can be dispensed with, and of its establishment;which, Schoenbergsays, can sometimes be achieved merely by noncontradiction;plagal ('weak') final cadences are cited as proofs of this. But then examples of harmonically unsuccessful closes are cited as proofs of the opposite: Schumann(unspecified), and - revealingly - the end of the second movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, with its in principle classical but exaggeratedly strong and sustainedsubdominantdigressionjust before what Schoenbergcalls 'the coincidentalBflat major' of the end. Revealing, because of Schoenberg'sFreudianslip (or is this a consequence merely of early 20th-century performance practice?)in calling the movement 'the Andante movement'; it is marked 'Allegretto scherzando' in Beethoven's score, andjust as for Schoenberg 'Scherzo' means a form, not a piece of joky character, so here he seems to betray his discomfort at the witty, irreverent nature, both harmonically and in matters of tempo, rhythm and figuration,of what 'ought to be' a symphonic slow movement. Finally, Schoenbergreverts to a consideration of rhythm and metre. Here (as is even more strikingly the case in the section of the notes dealing with 'Form')he speculatesabout origins, without examining historical and ethnomusicological data. '2-beat rhythm (original rhythm) comes from our two legs (hands) and from our gait'. True; though he might have added that our experience of breathing,of sleeping and waking, of all our physical and psychic processes of mounting tension and its release are binary, and that many of them contain a much stronger feeling of (sometimes prolonged) anacrusisand
the discharge of energy in the downbeat. But then he continues with a speculative, contingent, mechanistic (and military!) hypothesis: 'The 3beat rhythm ... could come from a change of step', without consideringthe evidence (musicological and psychological) that it arose first, through agogic accentuation reinforcing or replacing dynamic, in the form of 'long-short, long-short', and then.through the reassertionof binary rhythmin the form of the bisection of the long sounds into two short ones. The 'Coherence' section of ZKIF is by far the longest and most rich. The 'Counterpoint' notes are sketchy and brief. First, a discussionof what independent voices and melodic voices are, complete with an interesting,if slightly pedantic, demonstrationthat the second voice of a canon can logically be considered independent. Complete, too, on pp.66/67 with an example of the sense being fundamentally distorted in the translationby the association of an adverb with the wrong verb: the English text says 'The of developmentin a voice merely independence andpossibilities consistsof following the requirements of its motive.' (Emphases original.) What Schoenbergsaysis 'The independence ofdevelopment of a voice lies in its only following the requirements and possibilitiesof its motive.' The former trivializes both the criterion for independence and the concept of independence itself; the latter emphasizes the freeness of the voice, and provides a strong and active criterion for independence. After a sketch for a teaching syllabus, there are the music examples, added laterwithout any explanations.The dodecaphonic ones are followed by four very brief diatonic ones, one of which is curious: the rest are either written in C and F (bass) clefs and with keysignaturesof two or four flats, or follow on from these with the implication that the clefs and signaturesremain the same; but the second one, without clefs or signatures,can only be made to follow from the firstby an improbablerearrangement of voices andstaves.ProfessorNeff supplies G (treble)and bass clefs, which creates a fourvoiced mensuralcanon in which all the voices are plain arpeggiations of an A-minor triad, with parallel unisons at one point; since the following two examples seem to be sketches for mensural canons, it seems likely that the second one is a mere rhythmicsketch without pitch implications. The third section of the notes, on 'Instrumentation', is substantial(though not as much so as the 'Coherence' part), and stresses the idea that, whereastraditionalorchestrationbooks deal mainly with the ranges and capabilities of individual instruments, instrumentation should
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Book Reviews 51 be seen not as a 'penny plain, tuppence coloured' addition, but an integral part of the composition process that begins with considerationsof types of texture and goes on to questionsof balanceand clarity. It is, therefore, a pity that at this point the translatorsseem to have lost interest in trying to understandwhat Schoenbergis saying, or at least to ensure that their versions make corresponding (or any) sense. Thus, paragraph 3) on p.78 specifically complains of the old methods that they are - the knowledgeof mainly 'Instrumentenkunde' - which the translatorsrender on p.29 instruments as 'instrumentation', thus making nonsense of Schoenberg'scentral point: that it is necessaryto teach the art of instrumentation (as a branch of composition) and not just the knowledge of instrumentsas such. And in the next sentence, 'II. The main defect of the old method: the truebasis is composition itself . . .', we for all instrumentation fall foul of the multiple meanings of 'Satz': 'setzen'means'to set'; 'Satz'can mean 'movement' (as in 'second movement'), 'texture' (as in 'polyphonic texture'), or 'composition'itself, and the following table of kinds of texture makes it clear that here it means 'texture' and not 'composition'. The same is true of the next sentence, which in any case has lost the crucial subject of the second clause and therefore makes no sense, right or wrong: 'Therefore the student must first choose: what is the nature of a composition, so that [?] may be suitablefor this or that instrumental combination' (my questionmark) should read 'Therefore the student must first choose: what should the character of a texture that is suitable for this or that instrumentalcombination be'. Yet again, in the second line of the following list, and on much of p.81, 'texture' should replace 'composition'. At last, on p.81, footnote 51 addressesthe possibility of an alternative translationof 'Satz', but offers 'Setting' rather than 'Texture'. A marginalnote on pp.84/85, the lines running vertically along the margin, has been completely corrupted in the translation. It refers to a very long list of conditions under the heading 'What conditions doinstruments imposeon a setting?'and, in the translators'version, reads 'It is not necessary to considerthese conditions [!]. Often one choice suffices because the instrument is not exposed, often because it is supported by other (more capable) linstruments}'.What the original says is 'Not all these conditions need to be considered. Often a selection[of conditions!]suffices, because ...' (the italics and the parentheses in square brackets are mine). It is the succinctenunciationon pp.98/99-100/
101 of Schoenberg's views on transposing instruments that provides the clearest evidence that by this stage the process of translationhas become a mechanical one. 'In learning the C major scale, the horn player (or trumpeter or clarinettist)should not play the key in which no valves are depressed (as has been the practice until now), but should use instead the key that really sounds C major' is, to this reader at least, fairly impenetrable.But what Schoenberg says is perfectly clear: 'The horn player (or trumpeteror clarinettist)should learn as the C major scale not that key in which no valves are depressed (as has been the practice until now), but that scale that actually sounds C-major'. The final substantive remark of the 'Instrumentation'section relates the style of piano reductions (a better term than to the way pianistsare accustomed 'arrangements') to play them. Surprisingly, 'Instruction in Form' is the shortest section. It consists merely of the beginning of a sketchy attempt at a classification of forms, with some speculation (again without historical data) about origins. Nevertheless, the following has resonance: 'NB. How is it that: in undergoing dissolution, every theme or motive loses individuality (harmonic and rhythmic), becomes more ordinary, and ends up as a structurewith relativelyuncharacteristicfeatures'. One turns with some relief to the useful appendices, already listed above. Appendix 1, A Indexes,is presented of Schoenberg's Transcription with parallel texts, but has been rearrangedin the alphabetical order of the English words; Appendix 2 is the editor's table of the order in which topics appear in Schoenberg's original manuscript.The two bibliographicallists of his own writings that form Appendix 3 were compiled in the 1940s - in English - by Schoenberg himself, while Appendices 4 and 5 collate the various catalogues and methods of identification of Schoenberg'sprose manuscripts by Rufer, Schoenberg himself and Christiansen and Christiansen, and are, like the editor's introduction to the whole book, indispensable bibliographically. A curate's egg, then: a central text mixing stimulating, provocative and enlightening statements and discussionswith private aidesmemoires, jottings and lists of topics tending to the tedious if not hermetic, beautifully presented, but marred for readers without excellent German by an increasingly misleading translation;and a major introductoryessay and appendicesof great value and importance. MichaelGraubart
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