Transcript
Boulez and Cage:A Look at Serialism and Chance
Randy Kingery
Footnote references to die Reihe are abbreviated as dR followed by the volume number in Roman numerals. Other abbreviations are as follows:
Correspondence Nattiez, Jean Jacques (ed.). The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, English trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Grant Grant, M.J. Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Kostelanetz Kostelanetz, Richard (ed.). John Cage: an Anthology (New York: Da Capo Press, 1991).
Orientations Boulez, Pierre. Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois, 1981), English trans. Orientations. (Harvard University Press: Faber & Faber, 1986).
Silence Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973).
Stocktakings Boulez, Pierre. Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), English trans. Stocktakings of an Apprenticeship (Oxford University Press,
1991).
INTRODUCTION
This study was initially begun from the presumption that because large amounts of serial
and chance music1 sound very much alike, either method of composition might be used to
explain music derived the other way; one only needs to devise a system to fit the notes. In other
words, there must be a relationship that allows serial methods to create chance music, or the
flexibility of serial methods is so vast, to the point of being arbitrary, that a serial method could
be invented to account for a chance method.
After some research, it became apparent that I was working with many levels of
misunderstanding, not least of which is that methods of composition don’t necessarily have to
have anything at all to do with the listening experience. In fact, it might be argued that serialism
is not a method at all, but a conception of music containing many methods, including chance.
I came to believe that the reception of these musics is one of similar misunderstandings
which were often inadvertently, but sometimes willingly, perpetuated by the composers
themselves, never mind its outspoken opponents. A famous example of this is Milton Babbitt’s
article “Who Cares if You Listen.” Babbitt insists that the study of music is a specialized field
and the layman should be as incapable of comprehending advanced music as he would be of
advanced physics. He therefore proposes that composers of advanced music should “pursue a
private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional
compromise and exhibitionism,” and advocates withdrawing into the “ivory towers” of the
university. Ironically, by his own admission, Babbitt truly does care if you listen.
The question of how serial and chance composers view their music became important in
sifting through the hyperbole in order to determine why they developed the way they did. But
1 Only the method of chance is of any importance in the current essay. Specific differences between forms using chance procedures such as aleatoric and indeterminate music will be ignored and collectively described simply as chance music.
3
this doesn’t necessarily lead one to an appreciation of their music; an additional look at the
composer’s cultural environment and their relationship to other contemporary artists seemed
necessary for this.
Examining the gulf between what are ostensibly contradictory aesthetic principles – the
serialism of the Darmstadt school and the chance methods of the New York experimentalists - is
a huge undertaking given the large number of composers in question, and maybe even
impossible given the nuances of thought between composers within the same school. The
narrower scope I provide by tracing the interaction of two composers, Pierre Boulez and John
Cage, within the contexts in which they were working, seems to be a useful way to view in
microcosm what might be contained in this gulf.
The choice of these two composers is obvious given that each can be seen as a leader in
their respective school, and that they had an extended friendship and preserved correspondence -
a convenient example of the two schools talking to each other. But a web of influences also
emerges when examining these two composers which, on a fundamental level, can be used to
understand what drew the composers together and what ultimately caused their parting of ways.
While both composer’s aesthetic can be traced from Webern, an indispensable progenitor of both
schools, the influence of Debussy on Boulez and Satie on Cage marks an aesthetic divide, the
effects of which can be seen throughout the works of each school.
4
PART 1: SOME HISTORY
The cultural complexion of Europe and the United States were very different in the years
leading up to and following World War II. While Europe was marked by tremendous upheaval
and then construction, the U.S. emerged from its isolationism as a world superpower and
experienced great economic prosperity. This in part helps to explain the European phenomenon
of serialism,2 and the development of chance music in the United States.
Europe:
The devastating effect of World War II, which left Europe in ruins, is easy to
underestimate when investigating the postwar cultural and artistic developments. The generation
that came of age just after the war brought with it a new idealism and an intense need to rebuild
everything from scratch. The horrors of the war provided evidence that previous generations had
gone horribly wrong and that it was the new generation’s duty to correct the mistakes. This does
not imply that suddenly there was a new world order; certainly, some of the achievements
alluded to before the war, were realized after and even during the war. Still, the war had created
somewhat of a cultural caesura that necessitated, for young artists, the development of entirely
new modes of expression with little regard for tradition.3
This generation was further propelled by a confluence of technological and scientific
advances that influenced and gave impetus to much of their artistic investigations. Physicists in
particular were making discoveries that raised questions about our understanding of the universe
and our existence in it. With Heisenberg’s work the idea of an objective reality was no longer
the domain of philosophical speculation, but was now a scientific problem.4 The resulting
2 The American brand of serialism is quite a different phenomenon than European serialism and will not be given any treatment in this essay.3 M.J. Grant describes this cultural caesura as the “Stunde Null” or Year Zero in German culture.4 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle showed that at the subatomic level a particle’s velocity cannot be measured without taking steps that would alter the exactness of measurements of its position.
5
quantum theory suggested that the scientist had become a factor in the experimentation.
Advances in the theories of electromagnetism and gases began to stress energy rather than matter
as the focus of research, and further confirmed the shift away from a directly perceived reality.
In general, the new physics necessitated a shift in scientific inquiry from an objective and
directly perceived reality to a subjective reality. This proved to be hugely influential on the
young rebuilders of European culture. It put new emphasis on the role of the observer, it was
dialectical and open in nature, relied on intangible concepts such as probability and entropy, and
put more stress on the concept of time.5 But it was the budding science of information theory
that was to be more directly linked to serialist methodology. Communication itself had become
the subject of scientific investigation, and this was to profoundly influence the rebuilding of a
new theory of musical composition.
Information theory is essentially the mathematical representation of communication. It
aims to find the optimal channels and means for the transmission of messages.
5 As Grant has pointed out, philosophers such as Henri Bergson began to argue against the Newtonian emphasis on space over time.
6
A simple model starts with an information source which sends the message by way of a
transmitter to a receiver, which in turn sends the information to its destination. It also shows the
possibility of noise entering the communication channel.
One of the main objectives of information theory is to minimize redundancy, or those
parts of communication which are non-informative in order to construct communication systems
which function on the transmission of minimal amounts of information. Grant sums this up well:
“information is related to the range of choice available when constructing a message – not so
much what is said, as what could be said, since it is the element of choice which allows the
message to be informative.”6 Messages are measured in bits, or binary units, for example, the
message 1111111111 contains very little information due to redundancy while the message
1001011100 contains much more information. To put this in terms of probability: the more
likely an event, the less information is contained in the event. It is important to note that
information does not imply anything about meaning.
What was the significance of information theory on serial music? First, it allows for a
description of music in the mathematical terms of information units. For example, in describing
how one experiences time in music, Stockhausen explains “the degree of information is thus
greatest when at every moment of a musical flow the momentum of surprise is greatest: the
music constantly has ‘something to say.’ But this means that the experiential time is in a state of
flux, constantly and unexpectedly altering.”7 Stockhausen relates an increase in the speed of
musical time to an increase in musical information. Information theory, by its very existence,
also showed that the classical ‘laws’ of music theory were merely conventions; that other modes
6 Grant p. 327 dRII p. 64 (emphasis original)
7
of thought were available. The problem with serialism’s reception generally lies with this other
mode of thought.
America:
There might be some truth to the idea that the pioneering spirit required to settle the New
World also exists in America’s artists, and might partially explain its unique brand of
experimentalism. Early American experimentalists were typically colorful personalities
characterized by a strong individualism and a blatant disregard for institutional musical
‘correctness.’ But until the end of World War II, American composers weren’t considered
sufficiently trained until they had studied with a master in Europe. Original American
composers who tried to support themselves without study abroad had to struggle against a
European aesthetic that was constantly being reenergized by so called ‘polished’ composers
returning from Europe. Essentially a rift in American music was created. On one side, were
composers of European sensibilities and on the other were those who believed in more
indigenous American music. Often, those composers who didn’t study in Europe were not taken
seriously, but perhaps this is what allowed them to push the boundaries of music as they did
relatively unchecked.
It wasn’t until the 1920’s that American experimentalism finally fully flourished. All
composers, including experimentalists, began to organize themselves according to musical and
social ideals for the purpose of promoting contemporary music. The Eurocentric composers
generally aligned themselves with Copland and the League of Composers, most of who had
studied in Paris or Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger and were mostly supported by rich
patrons of the arts. By contrast, the so called ‘ultramodernists’ were more interested in
8
eschewing European standards and forming an indigenous American music. This latter group
was initially led by Varese, and later Cowell, through the Pan American Association of
Composers, and was largely funded by their musical patriarch Charles Ives. A typical drama of
the rich kids versus the poor kids might be imagined as an apt narrative for the clash that ensued.
In their search for a uniquely American music, the ultramodernists encouraged any and all
sounds, noises, or musical effects their fertile imaginations might dream up. Leo Ornstein,
George Antheil, and many others, were to achieve a successful cult following, a possible
precursor of the ‘cult of the individual’ of modern-day popular music – the music that would
eventually supplant all public interest in the avant-garde.
The stock market crash in 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression completely
destroyed the healthy avant-garde culture of the previous decade. Even the popular hot-jazz
scene was temporarily silenced. Art for the sake of art was no longer economically feasible.
Government social programs such as the Federal Music Project of the Works Progress
Administration created public art projects that allowed musicians to be paid for their work by
sponsoring concerts and radio broadcasts; composers, however, in contrast with other artists,
were not allowed free reign in composition when working for such programs. Some composers
found work in other non-traditional areas. Virgil Thomson, for example, found work writing
scores for government-sponsored documentaries, and even scored a wartime propaganda film for
the Office of War.8 Copland, as part of Roosevelt's 'good neighbor' policy, was hired to study the
music of South America and find promising composers who might benefit from U.S. sponsored
university study.9
8 Hitchcock p. 2249 Struble p. 197
9
The Depression saw a proliferation of music unions aiming to protect the musician’s
financial interests. But programming of new American music plummeted as the country’s
orchestras turned to European standards in an effort to keep subscription sales up. The
Philadelphia Orchestra, for example, announced in its 1932 season that it would not program
“debatable” new music.10 Much of the music of preeminent composers such as Copland and
Thomson took a drastic conservative step as they struggled to find a way to support themselves.
Copland’s more abstract works such as the Piano Concerto (1926) and Piano Variations (1930)
gave way to the ‘popular’ works that incorporated vernacular music and programmatic themes,
such as Billy the Kid (1938), in order to make his music more accessible. Similar movements by
large numbers of other composers ushered in a whole era of 'populist' music in mainstream
America.
As in Europe, Marxism became highly influential on artists of the 1930’s. Many
composers became engaged in social agendas and even became affiliated with the communist
party; a notable example being that of Elie Siegmeister, an ultramodernist who became a very
outspoken leftist and strove to bring classical music to the working class.11 Many ultramodernist
composers voluntarily placed themselves under similar restrictions of post-Bolshevik Russia by
renouncing ‘perversions’ such as dissonant counterpoint, complex harmonies and rhythms, and
influences from jazz, effectively ending an era of experimentalism on the east coast.
America’s entrance into the war sparked a host of patriotic works. Many composers
turned to folk songs and hymns for sources of material; a famous example being Cowell’s series
of Hymn and Fuguing Tunes. The works of early American composers such as William Billings
were also used as sources of inspiration and subject matter. Even though Americans were
10 Hitchcock p. 21711 Gann p. 60
1
generally uneasy about European (especially German and Italian) music, most orchestras still did
not program American music and instead performed non-Germanic European classics. But the
war, as Kyle Gann suggests, may have had a liberating effect on American music. The absence
of patronage and support forced composers to find alternate and sometimes very creative ways to
make music.12
Some composers, especially those who tried to maintain true to their art, sought
patronage by the country’s universities. But unlike Europeans, American composers seem to
have been maladapted for the academic life. Historically, there is a trend where American
composers are uncomfortable in professorships and/or these posts are retained for only brief
periods.13 Many professorships were ultimately given to Europeans who flooded to the U.S. to
escape Nazism and the war. Established European composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg,
Hindemith, and Bartók, took posts at various universities across the country. These elder
composers taught a generation of younger composers who grew from a more conservative style;
many of whom became obsessed with writing the ‘great American symphony.’ The typical
American style came to be associated with wide melodic intervals and a slow moving rich
harmony that was almost exclusively diatonic; presumably to suggest the majestic expanse of the
American landscape.
But there were notable exceptions to this rule. Where more 'popular' American
composers such as Copland and Thomson did not have any considerable success in academia,
'unpopular' or technical composers such as Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt were much more
successful. This may have been due to the more scientific approach they took to composition.
Both of these latter two came to represent the quintessential 'ivory tower' composer in the
12 Ibid. p. 7713 Struble p. 149
1
university. Probably due to the easily quantifiable nature of music theory, composition classes
were largely forays into theoretical principles. This was especially suited for 12-tone music,
which came to be the dominant technique taught in universities across the country during the
middle decades of the twentieth century.
Also well adapted to the academic setting because of heady theoretical possibilities was
the field of electronic music. Improvements in recording technology and manufacturing made
the record a useful medium for new music. Finally, in 1952, Luening and Ussachevsky
programmed the first all tape-music concert in the U.S. beginning a trend where a composers
success started to become based on record sales rather than on score publications; a definite plus
for experimental and self-financed composers.
During the war, many composers were caught under the spell of the recent war refugee
Stravinsky. The highly influential composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, a devoted follower of
Stravinsky, released a host of neoclassical composers into the American mainstream. The only
strong avant-garde impulse came from the west coast and included among others Henry Cowell
and his student John Cage. Cage, who had a natural gift for invention, suffered from what he
saw was a lack of musical experimentation: “The great trouble with our life here is the absence
of an intellectual life. No one has an idea.”14 But this trend of apathy may have been what
allowed Cage to experiment as he did unchecked by popular opinion. But to be sure, his
negative outlook on American musical culture carried through the end of the war and on into the
50’s.
After World War II, American artists didn’t share the same need for cultural revolution as
their European counterparts. The end of the war brought a rising prosperity, and with it,
increased patronage of American music. The 50’s saw an explosion in the number of orchestras
14 Correspondence p. 50 (Letter from Cage to Boulez)
1
and performing ensembles in the U.S. Money from art organizations began to flow again. An
interesting statistic shows that the 50’s brought more Americans to the concert hall than even the
baseball stadium!15
15 Hitchcock p. 243
1
PART 2: WEBERN
Despite the cultural and economic differences between composers on either side of the
Atlantic, the music of Anton Webern was to become a pervasive influence and transform the
musical landscape of both continents. More importantly, Webern’s music was to become the
foundation on which serialism was built as well as a major influence on John Cage and the New
York experimentalists.
The serialists and Leibowitz:
“The fact that everyone discovers something different in his [Webern’s] music and
wishes to demonstrate it to others throws a useful light on the manifold ideas about Webern; and
that, above all, his music allows of interpretation from the most varied points of view, speaks
only for its vitality.”16 This insightful remark from Stockhausen is, for the most part, very true,
but there was definitely more than just a little consensus on what the interesting or important
aspects of Webern’s music are; the disagreements happening between the serialists and those
more aligned with Schoenberg. A quick discussion of the different treatments Webern gets from
the serialists in die Reihe and from Rene Leibowitz (generally regarded as a Schoenbergian by
the serialists) in his quick study of Webern in Schoenberg and His School should demonstrate
what these differences are.
The most obvious ‘global’ difference between the two schools is one of perspective.
Where Leibowitz repeatedly emphasized Webern’s connection to tradition via Schoenberg, the
serialists saw him more as a break from tradition and/or pointing the way for a new music. It
must be understood that the serialists not only saw Schoenberg as the inventor of ‘the path to the
new music,’17 but also as the last dying breath of the decadent monster that was romanticism.
16 dRII p. 3817 The title of a series of lectures, and subsequently a book, by Webern.
1
Although a certain reverence for his work remained, they nonetheless saw him as part of the old
way that must be obliterated in order for the new music to be born, an attitude that can be seen
from such announcements as ‘Schoenberg is dead.’18 Leibowitz’s connection with Schoenberg is
then naturally seen as reactionary and his writings drew aggressive objections, especially when
his commentary was somewhat reckless. A good example of this is Eimert’s protest that “even
in the early op. 9 not a bar could possibly have been written by Schoenberg” in response to
Leibowitz’s “slightly exaggerated” comment that Webern’s work up to op. 21 could have indeed
been authored by Schoenberg.19 Leibowitz does, however, admit that Webern “represents the
greatest advancement in the evolution of the art of music.”20 But even here, “advancement”
implies a tie to tradition. By contrast, Boulez describes Webern as “the threshold,” implying that
a certain limit has been reached with regards to tradition and that just beyond his music
“impossibilities are abolished.”21
Leibowitz, no doubt holding on to romanticism and the desire to show the direct
relationship to tradition, spoke of Webern’s accomplishments in terms of an organicism and
psychological impact completely missing from serialist rhetoric. In addition to the ‘row
counting’ style of his analyses, nearly all of them approach Webern’s works in terms associated
with tradition, such as ternary form, variation, counterpoint, accent displacement, etc. and he still
makes certain common distinctions such as melody vs. harmony or rhythm vs. meter that were
eventually abandoned by many serialists. The serialists on the other hand, tended to think in
non-organic and objective terms. Eimert’s essay patently states that Webern “never proceeds by
motivic, psychological paths but builds out of reflecting motivic cells a proportioned structure.”
He even assigns the adjective ‘metallic’ to these “structures”. Eimert later continues: “there 18 The title of a famous essay by Boulez.19 dRII p. 3220 Leibowitz p. 25121 dRII p. 41
1
appeared in Webern’s work...this will to an impersonalizing objectivity; it is as if the flow of
merely affective happenings had been broken against the firmly-driven pillars of his note
objects.”22 Again we can see the desire to destroy tradition in favor of a highly prized objectivity
in music. But this objective approach definitely was a means to an end. In Webern’s own words
his method was “a matter of creating a means to express the greatest possible unity in music...
Unity is surely the indispensable thing if meaning is to exist.”23 Heinz-Klaus Metzger, another
author in die Reihe, even describes a difference of perspective between the composers
themselves: “Schoenberg, after renouncing the form building potentialities of tonality, had to
look for ‘new formal principles,’ which soon slipped back into the line of tradition, the opposite
was true in Webern’s work; it was the new formal principles which forced him to abandon
tonality.”24
This leads to the second global difference between the two schools. While Leibowitz
seems understandably concerned with the methods employed in an effort to show their relation to
traditional canon (also a preoccupation of Schoenberg in an effort to legitimize his system), the
serialists are nearly obsessed with the ‘hows and whys’ behind the development of these
methods. Stockhausen quite plainly describes this difference: “the essential is not what methods
he [Webern] used, but how and to what end he sought and worked them out.”25 The reason for
this difference seems obvious enough: again we have Leibowitz’s emphasis on the connections
with the past, but the serialists wanted to construct an entirely new music from the potential that
the “emancipation of the dissonance” left. They wanted to find out where “the path to the new
music” was going. Building a new grammar for music required the utmost objectivity and meant
stripping music completely free of all ornamentation. This could explain why in their study of 22 Ibid. p. 3323 Webern p. 4224 dRII p. 4325 Ibid. p. 39
1
Webern’s methodology, the serialists give sparse treatment to the phenomenon of
Klangfarbenmelodie, a decidedly important part of his compositional style, but one given much
more gravity by Leibowitz than the serialist, again, probably due to its comparable weight in
Schoenberg’s works.
Intervals and cells:
More specifically, the serialists concentrated on two aspects of Webern’s work that they
suggested strongly distinguished it from the work of Schoenberg. Probably the most important
of these is the functional use of intervals rather than notes. Where Schoenberg worked with 12-
tone rows, Webern, they suggested, worked with the intervals comprising the relationships
between the notes in his rows. In his analysis of the string quartet (first movement), Eimert uses
a statistical analysis of the various intervals used and found that of the 95 occurrences of a
seventh, not a single one was a literal repetition. Each form of the seventh had a different
“shape”. The few repetitions he found in the work were treated to variations of dynamics or
timbre.26 This would seem to indicate that Webern had indeed used an intervallic proportioning
that had overridden any thematicism suggested by a 12-tone row. Instead the row is used as a
reservoir of interval-motives.
Webern’s construction of his rows was very meticulous and logic driven. His notebooks
that show the pre-compositional process indicate that a row underwent many revisions before
achieving its definitive form.27 The rows used in the early works (prior to Op. 20) show a
concern for the intervallic content of his rows and a tendency to limit the amount of intervals
used, probably in the effort to create structural unity. These earlier rows have a preponderance
of semitones and its transpositions, major sevenths and minor ninths. Starting with Opus 21,
26 Ibid. p. 9427 Bailey in the introduction to part I.
1
Webern shifted his logic to constructions of symmetry and palindrome and showed much more
concern for invariance among permutations of his rows.28 Often his rows were derived by
stringing trichords and tetrachords of various permutations together. An interesting example of
techniques of both periods is the row from the Trio Op. 20. It consists of a string of pairs of
semitones where the third tetrachord is an inversion of the second:
Additional invariance also occurs among the permutations of the row. For instance, the second
hexachord of the prime row is nearly identical to the first hexachord of the inversion of
transposition 1 and vice versa:
Webern’s use of rhythm, and in particular, silence, also captured the imagination of the
serialists and John Cage in ways that couldn’t have been suggested by the music of Schoenberg.
The ‘silence’ they spoke of is not the traditional absence of sound or merely rests, but more of an
active or energized silence. Schnebel insisted that “the rests sound, they merely lack the
characteristics of physical tones.”29 This revelation is described in some way by nearly all the
contributors to the second volume of die Reihe. Boulez declared it a “most irritant and
provocative” feature in his work and that music “is not just ‘the art of sound’ – that it must be
28 This concept is demonstrated in detail in Bailey chapter 1.29 Grant p. 107
1
defined rather as a counterpoint of sound and silence.”30 In a bit of sarcasm that continued a
reevaluation of Schoenberg, Metzger refers to an “emancipation of the rest.”31 And although the
American experimentalists were already working with alternate notions of ‘silence,’ it was with
the same sense of discovery that Christian Wolff observed: “With Webern one has come to
notice that music is sound and silence...”32 This new notion of time in music was to suggest new
methods of temporal organization for both the serialists and John Cage.
Webern had also developed a cellular style of rhythmic organization that corresponded to
the logic of his pitch organization that the serialists, in particular, found interesting, but may have
also contributed to what Cage referred to as “prismatic”33 rhythmic structuring in his own music.
Part of what was interesting to the serialists was the fact that Webern had seemingly separated
the rhythmic aspect of his compositions from the pitch content while still allowing the row to
dictate the rhythmic material. In the creation of rhythmic cells, Webern had created a unit of
organization that itself could be subjected to what Boulez called “a series of transformation.”34
For example, in a simple motive taken from Webern’s Op. 30, the following transformations can
be detected:35
30 dRII p. 4031 Ibid. p. 4432 Ibid. p. 62 (emphasis mine)33 A term Cage used to describe a technique where the same numerical durational proportioning is repeated in both the macrocosmic and microcosmic layers of the music.34 The seven series of transformation are outlined in his essay Possibly... in Stocktakings pp. 111-40. See below in Part 4 under “New Approaches to Rhythm.”35 Example derived from Bailey, table 5.2
1
2
PART 3: DEBUSSY AND SATIE
As Boulez suggests, the influence of Debussy on serialist thought may have been second
only to Webern. The fact that the fourth edition of die Reihe was originally slated to be
dedicated to him would indicate such an importance.36 Boulez certainly admired Debussy’s
music, but the rest of the serialist response isn’t as direct, and the influences ascribed to Debussy
are far from homogenous. On the other hand, the influence of Satie, through Cage, on the New
York experimentalists seems easier to follow given Cage’s well documented infatuation with the
composer and his disproportionately large influence over the group.
In many ways, the relationship of Debussy and Satie mirrors that of Boulez and Cage.
Like Satie, one gets the sense that Cage plays the role of the student, or that Boulez is the
dominant personality. Both Satie and Cage have been regarded by many critics as amateurish
dilettantes hiding their lack of skill behind facades of wit and satire. And even though Debussy
and Boulez were considered ‘cutting edge’, they still fit well into tradition whereas Satie and
Cage went a step beyond, and were more overtly experimental. To take this point a bit further,
the experiments of Debussy and Boulez are of two composers attempting, with varying degrees
of success, to develop a new musical language. On the other hand, Satie and Cage were actually
exploring, in a more philosophical sense, what music is or can be.
Debussy and Boulez:
Debussy is often stereotypically pitted against Wagner as the antidote to romanticism, but
the truth is in fact more complicated. Debussy’s position with Wagner should be seen more from
the standpoint of a convert than iconoclast. Debussy, by his own admission, was a Wagnerian in
his student days.37 Later in life, Debussy detested this sort of Wagner worship. But this fact
36 Grant p. 12037 Debussy p. 15
2
should not be confused with detesting Wagner’s own work. Debussy’s distaste stemmed instead
from the institutionalization of art which catered to imitation and mediocrity. The possibility of
similarly becoming the object of ‘worship’ caused fiery reactions: “There is no school of
Debussy! I have no disciples! I am I!”38 It should therefore be no surprise that the serialist
connection to him would involve an opposition to romanticism and the dissolution of traditional
forms. But the change was gradual, and by no means complete. Boulez even suggested that
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) took some of its material from Wagner, namely Parsifal,39 an opera
he claimed that Debussy found free in its invention and avoidance of a formula,40 almost as if
paying homage to his former icon. Wagner was an original and Debussy held originality in very
high regard: “To be unique, faultless!”41
Debussy was a huge lover of nature as well as music, and dreamt of music’s liberation by
nature. He found a certain parallel between the two and was prone to such prosaic declarations
as: “There is nothing more musical as a sunset.”42 He was very much in favor of a certain
freedom in music that disregarded tradition. Further yet, he advocated removing the ego from
the compositional process as expressed: “I did my best to write music for its own sake and
disinterestedly,”43 a characteristic that can also be seen in serialist’s “non-aesthetic choices.” As
a result, Debussy tended to write what he heard regardless of what form it took, if any. He
composed sound for the sake of sound; the rhetoric of the classical sonata had been liquidated.
In general, with a few exceptions, the serialists saw in Debussy a clear break from the
thematicism which was brought to its ultimate conclusion in the operas of Wagner, a
characteristic in Debussy’s music that serialists agreed was shared with Webern’s.
38 Vallas p. 2039 Orientations pp. 312-1340 Orientations pp. 245-4641 Debussy p. 842 Ibid.43 Ibid. p. 12
2
Debussy’s music is often described as ‘fragmented,’ as if the music had been shattered
into a thousand different shards with each piece held up to show how the light reflects off of it.
This play of color or light is the essence of what is termed “impressionism,” a term that Debussy
hated but does seem aptly applied (admittedly, impressionism does have larger implications than
just those of color or shade). The term could also be appropriately applied to Schoenberg’s
Klangfarbenmelodie, as well as Webern’s imaginative orchestral colorings as inherited from
Klangfarbenmelodie. In this sense, impressionism amounts to the structural use of timbre or
what Boulez would call “treating the orchestra ‘acoustically’”44 and much has been written by
serialists with regards to Debussy’s use of timbre, or more appropriately, his integration of
timbre into the formal structure. For example, Eimert described the integration this way: “And
the motives no longer ‘work’, they play their part in the ornamental linear coloratura, which
combines with the play of timbre to form a most perfect unity.”45 Schnebel describes a similar
phenomenon: “Debussy composes the ‘partials’. He juxtaposes selections from spectra of
partials. The result is formant-composition, composed timbre-change, the organisation of sound-
movements. Debussy is tending towards composition with sounds.”46 But, possibly more
important were the innovations Debussy made with form and rhythm.
The serialist response to Debussy, with notable exceptions, was largely a response to a
single work: the ballet Jeux (1913). The premiere of Jeux met with only lukewarm reception, a
fact that may have to do with confusion based on its innovation, compounded with its introverted
character. The late arrival of the importance of this piece, it has been suggested, probably has
something to do with being overshadowed by the more extroverted The Rite of Spring which
premiered only two weeks later and in Debussy’s home town of Paris. It seems that it was
44 Stocktakings p. 28145 dRV p. 446 dRVI p. 36
2
Messiaen who finally dusted off the piece and presented it to his students, kindling a fascination
that was to last for some time.
Eimert’s essay on Jeux47 provides some insight into what these composers were
fascinated with in this piece. Eimert starts by stating how seemingly unextraordinary the piece is
in Debussy’s development. It lacks the sensation of a Rite or Pierrot; its innovations instead lie
below the radar. Eimert describes a “delicacy” and “gentleness” that is in keeping with
Debussy’s normal style. His language sets Debussy apart from not only Wagner, but also from
“the merely muffled sound of impressionist music.”48 Eimert’s description of an “endless
variation” is reminiscent of Schoenberg, but has some important differences. He employs
Debussy’s notion of ‘arabesque’ and describes not melody, but ornament; something less than
thematic where phrase structure can no longer be described as antecedent and consequent, but
perhaps as only antecedents. The various ornaments are partly dismantled and then varied and
run back together. Inexactness is emphasized as important to maintain a melodic mobility and
suppleness. Instead of transposition of melodic shapes, motives are linked by association. (To
show this idea of ‘ornament’ Eimert uses an example that is not unlike a Schenkerian graph to
reveal a ‘wave’ underfigure that links the ornamentation!) This particular method of composing
creates a structure that is in constant “flux” and “self-renewal.” The implications for form were
particularly interesting to serialists.
Traditionally, Jeux is described as a ‘free’ rondo doesn’t really fit this model in the
traditional sense, although Eimert admits that it does hint at it. From bars 49-185 a rondo
structure can be uncovered in the form of A – B – C – A – D – E – A. In a more contemporary
analysis, Jann Pasler describes the form as something reminiscent of an arch form:49
47 dRV starting on p. 348 Ibid. p. 449 Pasler p. 73
2
As can be seen from this example, Pasler asserts a certain connection of the musical form to the
dramatic action of the stage. And indeed, Debussy does attach motivic ideas to certain actions
and characters of the stage. In this sense, the musical form is suggested by the dramatic form.
But also, instead of a formal product based on spatialization of the elements in the composition,
there is a formal principle at work giving rise to the structure. Eimert called it an “ornamental-
vegetative formal principle” due to its lack of rhetorical devices and the blossoming or growing
nature of the variation technique. Essentially, there is a form based on rhythmic organization
and interweaving of all the various formal constituents (motive/ornament, tempo, meter,
dynamics, and timbre); the horizontal and vertical aspects of the piece no longer have any
significance. Thus we arrive at the serial aspect of Jeux: all the parts of the form are given equal
weight. This seems to reflect Debussy’s own intentions when he said: “I would like to make
something inorganic in appearance and yet well ordered at its core.”50
Of the serialists, Boulez was to be the most influenced by Debussy, taking more interest
in the aesthetic cues left by his music and seeing him as an ancestor to serialism. Boulez even
goes so far as to suggest him as part of a triumvirate axis at the root of all modernism. 51 Boulez
saw in Debussy a master who questioned tradition and developed his own methods. In the last
works Boulez saw him working towards a simpler, less ornamented style where the structures
50 Pasler p. 6951 Stocktakings p. 20. The other two members are the painter Cézanne and the poet Mallarmé.
2
were constantly variable but still guided by unifying developmental techniques. Specifically in
Jeux, Boulez admired a rich complexity of invention based on constant development and
“instantaneous self-renewal” not limited to the musical material but also applied to the
orchestration.52
Satie and Cage:
In contemplating the seeming paradox between the public’s love of originality and
disdain for imitation, and the necessity to have music that they can agree on and understand,
John Cage came to describe the function of music as the union of two disparate elements: “law
elements” or elements that can be agreed upon, and “freedom elements” or elements that cannot
and should not be agreed upon.53 These two ‘fields’ were then treated as endpoints on a
continuum that united the four parts of music: Structure, Method, Material, and Form. Structure
was defined as the parts in relation to the whole, Method as the continuity producing means or
syntax, Material as the sounds or language, and Form as “the morphological line of the sound-
continuity.”54 In all the fields except structure, it is desirable to have originality, or freedom
elements, but in structure it is necessary to maintain a sameness or law elements, although
method and material can also contain law elements, but this is not necessary.55
52 Stocktakings pp. 274-7553 Defense of Satie, Kostelanetz p. 8454 Ibid. p. 79. This is a confusing mix of terminology, but Cage possibly clears this up a bit by defining morphology in Silence p. 9 as: “how the sound begins, goes on, and dies away.”55 The following example is based on a similar graphic by Cage in Correspondence p. 39
2
According to Cage, there have been two principle approaches to structure since the time of
Beethoven. The first, and in Cages opinion, incorrect approach, is defining the parts of a
composition by harmony. Since lengths of time (rhythms) are more fundamental due to their
existence in both sound and silence, they provide the other, ‘correct’ approach to structure. The
only composers Cage credits with this discovery are Webern and Satie.56
Critics of Satie tended to disregard him as a musical clown suggesting that his humor was
a shield to hide his lack of talent (a critique that has also been applied to Cage). Humor was
definitely a large part of his talent and it may be correct to say that he lacked the compositional
technique associated with most masters, but the ideas expressed in his music are brilliant and
compelling. It might be then, that Satie did use humor as a shield, but only to hide his sensitive
ego from criticism of ideas he knew to be eccentric but nonetheless took completely seriously.
Some analysts even point to his ideas as a precursor of Dadaism and minimalism, possibly also
anticipating Muzak, and hugely influential on Cage and his followers.57
Satie’s music insolently includes folk tunes, musical clichés, cabaret music, and any and
all absurdities at his disposal. His so called ‘mosaic technique’ would incorporate all these and
more in a mixed bag of juxtapositions that entirely dispenses with the idea of dramatic
56 Defense of Satie, Kostelanetz p. 8157 Gillmor (1988) p. 48
2
development. Each sound event exists free of all that comes before or after. The unresolved
tension and novelty in Satie’s harmony, or what some refer to as the ‘harmonic audacity’ of his
music, has been interpreted by Cage as an unpretentious disregard for the traditional function of
harmony. Take for example, the chains of unprepared and unresolved seventh and ninth chords
in the Sarabandes (1887):58
Cage took this concept to a new level with the composition of his Sonatas and Interludes; gone
is the rhetoric that infers movement and the passage of time. As Cage pointed out, “boredom
dropped when we dropped our interest in climaxes.”59 It is often said that one gets the feeling in
Satie’s music that it could go on forever in an endless repetition. It was Cage who raised this
notion of monotony to a dialectic in music between monotony and a subtle intensity.
Harmony is then relegated to a derivative position in a composition and ‘correctly’ placed
back in the field of method. In its place, Satie’s music uses rhythm to define structure. Like
Cage, Satie was always devising a new system of composition. Most of his compositions show
some type of rhythmic proportioning or numerological element. If Cage can be believed, unlike
Beethoven who worked out the keys and harmonic structure of a composition before he started
the writing proper, Satie would plan the length of its phrases and proportion its sections,60 often
with built in incongruities to “confuse would-be followers.”61 Related to the liberation of sound
events are Satie’s attempts to blur the lines between music and the ‘real world’: his so called 58 Example is from the opening of Sarabande No. 1.59 Nyman article p. 122960 Satie’s sketchbooks do in fact show complete pre-compositional rhythmic structures for some of his pieces.61 Orledge p. 142
2
‘furniture music.’ The idea of ‘furniture music’ was to incorporate music into the environment
of everyday life (much like furniture); “a music which would be a part of the surrounding noises
and which would take them into account.”62 One can pay attention or ignore it as one chooses; it
is unassuming and need not have special attention drawn to it. Orledge describes a colorful
scene during a ‘performance’ of his furniture music where Satie walked around shouting “Go on
talking! Walk about! Don’t listen!”63
In general, Satie concerned himself with the concepts of time and space and investigating
the effects of monotony and what he called boredom: “The public venerates boredom, for
boredom is mysterious and profound.”64 The most audacious example is the piano piece
Vexations (1893-95), possibly a precursor to Cage’s 4’33” (1952), where a short 52 beat motive
(the music is characteristically unbarred) comprised of four sections containing the same bass
theme (and other internal repetitions) is to be played a total of 840 times; a performance that took
over 18 hours at its premier. At first, the monotony of such repetition would produce boredom in
the listener, but boredom eventually gives way to interest in the subtleties. Or as Cage famously
describes the effect: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it
for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but
very interesting.”65 For Cage, the monotony of this experiment allows the most subtle aspects of
the performance, which might not otherwise be noticed, to come to the foreground. A performer
in such a situation would likewise begin incorporating subtle nuances in their playing. But it is
the idea of music existing as a fixture in space, so to speak, rather than time, and becoming part
of the sound-space it inhabits that was revolutionary.
62 Erik Satie: A Conversation. From Contact: A Journal of Contemporary Music No. 25 p. 2663 Orledge p. 14364 Shattuck p. 18465 Erik Satie: A Conversation from Contact: A Journal of Contemporary Music No. 25 p. 26
2
PART 4: BOULEZ AND CAGE
As mentioned above, the relationship between Boulez and Cage is, in a way, an extension
of the relationship between Debussy and Satie. Both pairs exemplify the complex relationships
between a stream of avant-garde composers more rooted in technical advancements and a stream
of laissez faire experimentalists that characterized much of the musical discourse in the twentieth
century. During their brief friendship, Boulez and Cage had extended exchanges on a few
pivotal developments in their music starting with the aggregates of Cage’s prepared piano that
first brought them together, and ending with ideas about chance in music that would ultimately
bring the friendship to an end.
Aggregates and Sound Complexes:
Pivotal to the development of 20th century music is the acceptance of non-traditional
instruments and sounds, even noise, as part of the composer’s palette. For Boulez this included
studies, initially in Messiaen’s class, of music of other cultures and experiments in percussion
and electronics, namely the ondes martenot. Cage not only shared an interest in foreign musical
cultures, but also had been influenced by a number of American composers, led by his teacher
Henry Cowell, who were avid explorers of non-traditional and non-western music. Despite the
problematic differences in aesthetic aims, it is easy enough to see what drew the two composers
together, especially in regards to Cage’s prepared piano.
In 1949, at a lecture given in a friend’s salon prior to a performance of Cage’s Sonatas
and Interludes for prepared piano, Boulez warns that Cage’s prepared piano is not simply the
result of the tinkering of a dilettante, but more seriously, an inquiry into the traditional acoustic
system provided by western music, by which he must have meant the fundamental and its natural
harmonics, produced by “natural sounding bodies,”66 and organized into tempered scales of
66 Stocktakings p. 158
3
pitches. What must have initially drawn Boulez to Cage was Cage’s total abandonment of
tonality and chromaticism. After meeting Cage, Boulez admitted that even the very sounds used
in music (orchestral instruments) should be questioned in light of the emerging new music; “you
[Cage] are the only person who has added an anxiety about the sound materials I use,” and
“meeting you made me end a ‘classical’ period...”67 Boulez goes on to suggest that it is time for
a completely new era of exploration and discovery in music: “...everything remains to be looked
for... We have to achieve an ‘alchemy’ in sound.”68 Boulez eventually fully brings this idea to
fruition with the opening of IRCAM, another idea that he may have gotten from Cage who tried
early in his career to set up a similar center for acoustic research in L.A. But presently in Cage
he found someone who had created new “non-tempered sound spaces, even with existing
instruments.”69 This meant a primitive form of deriving new sounds presently rather than
waiting for the fledgling field of electro-acoustics to deliver the synthesizer.
Boulez saw the capabilities of the serial system not only as a way to control pitch-classes
but, more generally, as a way to regulate the “permutations of sound objects.” Cage’s term
“aggregates” suggests a clustering of defined elements while avoiding the historical harmonic
baggage of the term ‘chord.’70 Boulez takes Cage’s “aggregates” phenomenon a step further to
“sound complexes.” For Boulez “aggregates” seems to be a special case of “sound complexes”
involving just pure tones and their harmonics, whereas “sound complexes” is more universal to
the entire spectrum of frequency and timbral possibilities. By generalizing the phenomenon,
Cage’s prepared piano not only suggested to Boulez a method of deriving “non-tempered sound
67 Correspondence p. 4568 Correspondence p. 4569 Stocktakings p. 13470 In Kostelanetz p. 103, Henry Cowell describes Cage’s notion of an aggregate as: “the relationship of miscellaneous and apparently disparate objects established by their juxtaposition in space, as furniture and other objects in a room are related by their simultaneous presence there. Similarly, different sorts of musical media may be conceived as constituting an aggregate, and so used as a unit of building material for the creation of musical forms.”
3
spaces” from existing instruments, but also the notion of giving each sound (or complex) its own
individuality independent of any hierarchy or extra-musical properties. Since he was no longer
dealing with the octave to create a framework for scales, there arises a single ‘scale’ containing
all the given sounds, which inevitably leads to a uniform neutrality or individuality of each
sound. Then, through the use of a tablature, the blocks of sound, separated from any function of
harmony, could either be deployed in the composition serially, or transformed into other forms of
various degrees of complexity using various methods of ‘transposition.’ For Boulez, this meant
serialism was not only a method for composing with these complexes, but could also be used to
derive them in order to maintain the composition’s structural integrity. For example, one method
Boulez uses to accomplish this in Le Marteau sans maître (1953-55) is to take the twelve-tone
row and distribute the notes into vertical aggregates, in this case five aggregates of three notes,
one note, two notes, four notes, and then two notes. What ensues is a sort of multiplication
process where the notes of one aggregate are transposed to each of the pitch levels of the second
aggregate. Then the remaining aggregates are all transposed to their respective pitch levels to
maintain the intervallic content of the original progression. Finally, all the new transpositions
are added together to create a new progression of aggregates. Thus the three note aggregate
times the four note aggregate makes, in theory, an aggregate progression of: twelve, four, eight,
sixteen, and then eight notes including any possible duplicate pitches.71
Boulez even proposed that in the electronic music studio the sound curves themselves can
be manipulated serially to form other related sound forms. As an example, he produced a graph 71 Example based on examples from Stocktakings p. 129
3
of a sound’s dynamics over time. Then five equal divisions were made (presumably five is not
arbitrary). The divisions could then be rearranged and/or treated with any number of
permutations, in this case he uses retrograde (bd = backward, fd = forward).72
It is difficult to surmise just how much Cage’s aggregates influenced Boulez’s work with
complex sounds. In letter number 6 in the correspondence however, Boulez writes: “I plan to
put into practice in it [Les soleil des eaux] some ideas derived from your pieces and what I
explained to you about complex sounds...”73 Much later in his career, Boulez still recalls his
fascination with the prepared piano and the possibilities it suggested: “I was fascinated by Cage’s
prepared piano and wrote about it early on – welcoming it, as it seemed to offer an artificial,
embryonic, but plausible solution to avoiding the clichés of the old tonal language.”74
As for Cage, it seems the prepared piano was very much an invention found by accident
and necessity. Being the only composer available at the time, Cage was obliged to help a young
dancer out by composing music for a stylized African dance she was scheduled to perform in less
than a week. The dance space however, was far too small to accommodate a percussion
ensemble and forced Cage to work with the piano. After some time attempting to form what he
72 Stocktakings p. 130, 134-35. The example is taken from p. 137 and is from his Étude de musique concrète. 73 Correspondence p. 4374 Di Pietro p. 33
3
described was an “African” pitch set, Cage concluded that the results weren’t “primitive” and
“barbaric” enough. He decided that “what was wrong was the piano, not my efforts,” and
decided to change the piano. Remembering how Henry Cowell made certain sounds by running
his fingers or fingernails along the strings of the piano in The Banshee (1925) for example, or
how, in other pieces, he used objects inside the piano to achieve different sounds, Cage set about
inserting and wedging various objects inside the piano himself until he had effectively created a
one man percussion ensemble suited to the African style of the dance. Therefore it would seem,
and even Boulez admitted, that the prepared piano was “half by chance, half by necessity” a
product of trial and error, or even simply a deliberate attempt to make percussion sounds from
the piano (given the difficulty in organizing a percussion ensemble), but not necessarily a
rebellion against traditional acoustical designs.
Cage was, however, interested in acoustical ideas which lay outside those of the
traditional set of instruments and instrumental combinations. As far back as 1937 he proposed
(somewhat sarcastically) circumventing the “sacredness” of classical music by giving his art “a
more meaningful term: organization of sound;” a term more inclusive of sounds other than those
provided by the standard 18th and 19th century instruments. In fact, before he met Boulez, he
taught a course entitled Class in Experiments with Sound. He even went so far as to predict a
time when electronics will provide composers with “any and all sounds that can be heard”75 and
that new methods of composition will be developed which are “free from the concept of a
fundamental tone.”76 In practice, Cage did attempt to extend the acoustical properties inherent in
the prepared piano to other ensembles; not by ‘preparing’ them, but by composing out his sound
complexes. For example, in a ballet entitled The Seasons (1947), Cage composes for a
75 Kostelanetz “The Future of Music: Credo” p. 5576 Ibid p. 56
3
conventional orchestra, but instead of notes he wrote sonorities that were devoid of any harmonic
function and as Boulez put it: “acting essentially as a resonance amalgam of superimposed
frequencies.” But ultimately, the prepared piano with its problems of being exactly duplicated
from piano to piano and even to other performers, led Cage to think more about things “as they
happen” rather than as they are “kept or forced to be” and contributed more towards his
experiments in indeterminacy than in sound itself.77
New approaches to rhythm:
Intellectually, the two friends couldn’t have led more similar paths in their research.
Boulez had tied his “sound complexes” to other aspects of his language. The rhythmic cells he
greatly admired in Webern, were used to analogously draw a connection to sound-complexes -
“it is possible to imagine a sort of correspondence with rhythmic cells and hence to arrive at the
notion of complex sounds, or sound-complexes.” He could have even called them “sound-cells”
to emphasize the relationship.78 For Cage, the structure of his music necessarily came from
rhythm as the harmonic element had been discarded by way of his aggregates. Here we arrive at
a curious departure of the two friends: while they both agreed on the importance of structures
based on rhythm, Boulez found it necessary to fit the idea of sound complexes into his methods
of serialism from the standpoint of rhythm, while Cage was eventually left with only rhythm.79
In order to see how the development of rhythm in the two composer’s work was influenced by
each other, it would be necessary to see where they were in their approaches prior to their
meeting.
Webern was their common ground. Both composers had a strong admiration for his
music on two levels: the first being his revolutionary use of silence, the second was his work
77 Empty Words “How the Piano Came to be Prepared” pp. 7-978 Stocktakings p. 12879 See “Satie and Cage” above.
3
using structurally significant rhythmic cells.80 For Boulez, the silences surrounding the notes in
Webern’s compositions created an isolation that emphasized a note’s placement in the temporal
unfolding of the piece. Hence, Webern’s use of silence is more than just an aspect of rhythm,
but more important in its function to the composition’s “morphology” and “pitch succession.”81
It is here, in these delicate structures and treatment of sounds as a phenomenon both related but
independent of global schemas that Boulez finds an affinity with Debussy’s treatment of form.
Boulez had been studying with Messiaen, who had already devised his own systems of
rhythmic organization such as the non-retrogradable modes. With the help of his students,
Messiaen wrote what is probably the first example of total serialism with his Mode de valeurs
(1949-50). At first, Boulez more or less adopted these techniques for his own compositions; the
importance of using rhythm structurally hadn’t yet crystallized fully for Boulez. One might say
that Cage was necessary for the total serialism achieved in Structures. Something could even be
said to be shared between their seemingly parallel discovery of rhythmic proportioning, which
eventually led Cage to the use of actual space on the page, as measured by a ruler, to designate
duration; a phenomenon which amounts to graphical scoring. And although Boulez is adamantly
against graphic scores, he embraces similar methods in Schaeffer’s electronic studio.
For Cage, silence in Webern was a manifestation of a supposed belief that “structure” can
only be properly achieved using lengths of time, or durations, as opposed to harmony - structure
being defined as “parts in relation to the whole.”82 Webern and Satie are the only composers
Cage credits with this discovery, and surprisingly they differ in a great degree in the other
elements of composition as Cage defines them.83
80 See “Webern” section above.81 Stocktakings p. 29882 Kostelanetz p. 8183 See “Satie and Cage” section above.
3
Probably what Boulez gained most from Cage here is a model in separating rhythm from
other elements, especially polyphony. This separation probably originated from Cage’s
collaborations with the choreographer Merce Cunningham in creating dance pieces of a largely
percussive nature. In order to organize music of indefinite pitch, Cage was required to give up
the series and use rhythm as the structural element in his music.84 Later, Cage attempts to
logically deduce this preference for rhythm.85
In addition to the types of transformation illustrated by the Webern examples (in Part 2),
Boulez also suggested a type of transformation that was based on what he called the “synthesis”
of two motives. This synthesis is created by superimposing one rhythm over the top of another
and then notating the resultant rhythm:86
Given the rhythms I, II, and III, we get IV by the synthesis of I and II; V by the synthesis of I and
III; VI by the synthesis of II and III; and VII by the synthesis of I, II, and III.
Boulez’s work in the electronic studio led to considerations of rhythms as durational
lengths of magnetic tape. Using these lengths, one could then construct what Boulez called a
“registration of durations”87 - probably influencing Stockhausen's famous article “...how time
passes...” written a year later. But in order to be analogous, registers would have to relate at a
ratio of 2:1 like the octave. This ratio was further justified as being in line with Fechner’s law
84 Stocktakings p. 17585 See “Satie and Cage” section above.86 Example taken from Stocktakings p. 12187 Stocktakings p. 165
3
which states that sensation is related logarithmically to stimulus. Stockhausen solved this
problem in “How Time Passes...” by proposing that scales of durations could be composed using
tempos. For example, a logarithmic scale of 12 tempos starting at = 60 would read as follows: = 60, 63.6, 67.4, 71.4, 75.6, 80.1, 84.9, 95.2, 100.9, 106.9, 113.3, and 120. Once the ‘octave’is reached at =120, it can be reinterpreted as = 60. The next register would then be given thesame number values at the half note value.
Mobility and Immobility:
Originally, the idea of mobility was tied to aspects of register, such as used by Webern,
where occurrences of the same pitch class are moved to different registers, whereas ‘fixity’ or
immobility ties a pitch to the same register. Webern, Boulez, and Cage all used the technique in
different ways, but common to them all is the idea that some elements change while others
remain the same or as Griffiths put it: “There had to be this dialectic between process and
freedom, between organization and composition, between the rational and the irrational.”88 The
concept of mobility versus immobility encapsulates the serial problem.
Leibowitz describes Webern's use of the technique as a way to transcend the classical
idea of a theme. Webern's 'themes' were constructed with the built in mobility of variation, that
is, the rows are already a development, or what Leibowitz called “a priori” development. This
stands in contrast to the ‘classical’ idea of a theme: a static idea of a tune not yet varied. But by
fixing the pitches in register, Webern was able to deny the dynamic quality of his themes and
build what are essentially static structures, or as Leibowitz characterized them, “unfoldments” of
a single chord.89
This was much the same way Boulez used the ideas of mobility and immobility, although
he extended the technique to aspects of rhythm. Rhythms were attached to pitches that were
88 Griffiths p. 83. This was actually said regarding Boulez’s Le marteau, but in my opinion could equally be applied much of the rest of his output as well as to Webern and Cage.89 Leibowitz p. 248
3
fixed in register. In the example below, the bottom line shows the register in which the pitches
are fixed. The rhythms are then based on the two voice counterpoint:90
The major innovation in this area however was Cage’s use of dialectic between mobility
and immobility which might be thought of as a precursor to chance. Surprisingly, this is an idea
that Cage claims to have gotten from Boulez.91 In Music of Changes (1951), Cage expanded this
idea to amplitudes, durations, and sounds/silences through his use of magic-square like charts.
“These twenty-four charts, eight for sounds and silences, eight for amplitudes, eight for
durations, were, throughout the course of a single structural unit, half of them mobile and half of
them immobile.”92 Mobility as Cage defined it “meant that once any of the elements in a chart
was used it disappeared to be replaced by a new one. Immobility meant that though an element
90 These examples are taken from Stocktakings and are excerpts of Boulez’s second Piano Sonata.91 Correspondence p. 1592 Silence p. 21
3
in a chart had been used, it remained to be used again.”93 At various “structural points” Cage
used a chance operation to determine which of the charts was to be mobile and which immobile.
It’s strange to think this was a piece Boulez claimed to have been “absolutely charmed by,”94 but
as he pointed out, there still remains the idea of a dialectic between process and freedom; “The
idea that I find most interesting in all that you have explained to me is the opposition between
mobility and immobility of the constitutive elements of a table...”95
Chance:
As described above, Cage saw composition as the integration of law and freedom
elements, but with the composition of Music of Changes this was to change. According to
Peyser, this is the piece that began the separation of ways for the two friends. To support this,
there seems to have been a rather heated argument between Stockhausen and Boulez after a
performance in 1956 where Stockhausen argued for the ideas of the piece while Boulez argued
against them.96 Remember that this was the work Boulez was “absolutely charmed” by. Also, as
Nattiez observed, even after their relationship had pretty much come to an end (but only 7
months after the argument), it was the Music of Changes that Boulez would program with his
Domaine Musical. So which way was it with Boulez? Maybe both, but the seed of their
differences must have been planted before their first meeting.
In hindsight Cage’s development can be seen almost as a straight line slowly moving
element by element from rigid control to complete indeterminacy. By the time of the writing of
the Sonatas and Interludes in 1948, and his meeting with Boulez in 1949, Cage was already
working with what he called a method of “considered improvisation.” Later, he described his
93 Ibid.94 Correspondence p. 13395 Correspondence p. 11396 Peyser p. 121
4
choice of the prepared piano sounds “as one chooses shells while walking along the beach.”97
Structure therefore, was the only element left that Cage had not allowed, or found a way to
produce, using chance procedures. In Music of Changes, the structure is still controlled, but
chance operations were introduced at various ‘divisions’ to determine stability or a change of
tempo.98 It became impossible (because of the tempo changes) to know the time length of the
piece; the ending was no longer determined. For Cage, the most basic function of structure had
been elided. The beginning and ending were no longer determined; the framework of structure
started to flake away. It became clear afterward that structure really was not necessary, but that
it did have its uses. For example, structure could determine the density of lines within a section,
or it could affect his charts of sounds and silences, or simply it determined the end of the
compositional process. But by 1952 in Music for Piano, structure had ceased to be part of this
purpose of integrating law elements and freedom elements and became instead a process itself
stripped of purpose.
At this point in his development, Cage found that he was no longer composing music, at
least not in the sense of a “preconceived object” waiting to be performed. His music could start
anywhere, last any length of time, be performed by any number of various types of ‘instruments’
(sound makers). Even silence itself was a sound, or to put it another way, there is no such thing
as pure silence. As Cage discovered in Harvard’s anechoic chamber,99 even in so called
complete silence one can still hear the faint throbbing of one’s own circulatory system and the
high pitched singing of the nervous system; “No silence exists that is not pregnant with
sound.”100 Silence is therefore not acoustic; it is only the absence of intention, or a change of
97 Silence p. 998 Ibid. p. 2099 Harvard’s own catalog for the 1949-50 school year defined the anechoic chamber as: “an environment as sound proof and reverberation free as was technologically possible.”100 Revill p. 163
4
mind. Because silence loses its function as a separator of sound durations and other formal
structures, it must become something else.101 That something else could be argued to be closer in
spirit to Webern than anything Boulez ever composed; a charged silence, full of ambience, the
background onto which the music is ‘projected.’ Cage suggests that because of ambient sound
inherent to ‘silence,’ music is an ideal situation, not a real one. Music performance should then
be an occasion for experience, or as he sometimes called it, a “happening,” and not a desire to
improve upon creation.102 The ultimate non-dichotomy of sound and silence was the ‘silent’
composition 4’33”.
It can be seen then, that Music of Changes was quite a pivotal piece in Cage’s output,
especially with regards to the growing element of chance. What Boulez must have been
“charmed” with were the other aspects of the composition. He may have been enthusiastic about
Cage’s description of his use of charts, which he says was paralleling his own experiments, but
he was also not shy about what he didn’t like: “The only thing, forgive me, which I am not happy
with, is the method of absolute chance (by tossing coins). On the contrary, I believe that chance
must be extremely controlled...”103
From the start Boulez would be suspicious of Cage’s use of chance in his form and
method; this might be explained by Boulez’s firm stance against anything uncontrolled. But the
introduction of chance in the structure itself may have been more than Boulez could accept. A
year after the performance of Music of Changes, Boulez published the article “Alea” which may
have sealed the demise of their friendship. In the article, he outlines how one might reconcile
chance operations with composition, which was traditionally inherently a process of constant
choice, or as Boulez would say, “a series of rejections among many probabilities.” 104 The article 101 Silence p. 22102 Ibid p. 32103 Ibid. p. 112104 Stocktakings p. 157
4
in fact almost seems to be a justification of his use of chance in the third Piano Sonata (1955-
57). Although Boulez never mentions any names, he describes a source of the so called
“obsession” with chance to be “quasi-oriental philosophy in order to conceal a fundamental
weakness in compositional technique.”105 Cage was not mislead though, and was reported to
angrily reply: “With me the principle had to be rejected outright; with Mallarmé it suddenly
became acceptable to him. Now Boulez was promoting chance, only it had to be his kind of
chance.”106
Cage may have been right about Boulez needing to do it his way since the impetus for
Boulez’s exploration in chance came from literature, or so he claims (Boulez would deny any
influence from Cage); partly from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, a book Cage had sent him, and
partly from Mallarmé’s Livre. Regardless, there is a big difference in the two treatments of
chance operations. The plan of third Piano Sonata has been likened to that of a city - its design
is singular - however, “one can choose one’s own way of going through it, but there are certain
traffic regulations.”107 So the piece is composed by choice in its entirety, but a performance will
only include a sampling of its architecture chosen by the performer. Whereas Cage has trusted
large parts of his compositions to performers, Boulez still composes the details that might be
chosen, otherwise, he feared, the performer would fill the work with clichés as they are left to
memory as their only device.108 The third Piano Sonata represents Boulez’s contribution to the
fad of ‘open’ (or chance) form or ‘work in progress,’ but still a rejection of automatism and
chance operations in the compositional method.
Ironically, the first intentional use of chance in a composition by Boulez occurs earlier in
his Polyphonie X (1951), in the same year as Music of Changes. In a letter to Cage in Dec. 1950, 105 Ibid. p. 26106 Peyser p. 129107 Peyser p. 126108 Orientations p. 461
4
Boulez describes it as a collection of 14 or 21 polyphonies where the performer will be able to
select which ones they like. Also, perhaps in response to Cage’s description of chance as an “un-
aesthetic choice” in an earlier letter,109 Boulez describes the form of Polyphonie X as “a
construction where the combinations create the form, and thus where the form does not stem
from an aesthetic choice.”110 This almost indicates a slight waffling on the part of Boulez with
regards to chance operations. On the one hand, he has a structure entirely composed that only
leaves the decision of which parts to play up to the performers, but on the other hand, he uses
Cageian language in describing the removal of the composers will from the compositional
process.
Cage generally reacts to these attacks as hypocritical, but usually with wit and good
humor. For example, in 45’ for a Speaker, Cage can be found asking: “Have you not lost your
friend?” and then quoting certain passages from Boulez’s letters. But as Peyser pointed out, the
renaming of the chance techniques that Cage had practically invented as ‘aleatory’ (after
Boulez’s article “Alea”) was quite a slap in the face, and it was a term that Cage would never
accept;111 although, it should also be remembered that Boulez’s use of chance was never quite the
same as Cage’s indeterminism.
Their differences regarding chance can also be seen through their reactions to the music
of Feldman. Cage makes it quite obvious that he is enamored with this music: “Feldman’s music
is extremely beautiful now. It changes with each piece, I find him my closest friend now among
the composers here.”112 Boulez is at first seemingly sympathetic towards this music, although he
treats him more as a student who is still learning than as a potential colleague. But it doesn’t
take long for this fatherly veil to wear off, and in the end Boulez is very much against the 109 Correspondence p. 78110 Ibid. p. 85111 Peyser p. 129112 Correspondence p. 78
4
developments in Feldman’s music, concluding that his work with “white squares” is “much too
imprecise and too simple.”113 Specifically, Boulez found the metric organization to be a
“regression,” and the graphical notation more “summary” than previous developments. With
regards to the notes, or more precisely, the frequency bands, he states: “I do not believe that the
use of pavements of frequencies...corresponds to as rigorous a control.”114 Feldman, it seems,
was surprised by this reaction, as was Cage, who was convinced that if Boulez would only talk
with Feldman he would recognize his quality. But the aesthetic differences here were too great.
They were very much the differences that would lead to the parting of ways for Cage and
Boulez; it’s a wonder if at this point in their friendship they didn’t see it coming.
113 Ibid. p. 103114 Ibid. p. 115-16
4
PART 5: TOWARDS AN APPRECIATION
All art is an abstraction in some form or another. A painting, at the most basic level is an
abstraction from the dimension of depth. Sculpture is often an abstraction from color. But not
until the twentieth century is abstraction considered a method for approaching ‘pure’ forms or
those prototypes that give rise to the less pure deviations from pure forms that are external or
‘natural’ forms. In many ways, abstraction of form is a generalizing of form in order to remove
the specifics that make it ‘external’; by removing the specifics of external form one may
approach the ‘pure’ form.
To approach pure forms by removing specifics often infers a process of chance during the
interpretation of the viewer of the art. The artist is allowing the beholder to ‘fill in the spaces.’
E.H. Gombrich describes this phenomenon as being what made impressionist methods possible;
“The artists who tried to rid themselves of their conceptual knowledge, who conscientiously
became beholders of their own work and never ceased matching their created images against
their impressions by stepping back and comparing the two – these artists could only achieve their
aim by shifting something of the load of creation on to the beholder.”115
To some extent, all music that is given human performance inherently contains additional
chance elements. The way in which a performer deals with these chance elements is what is
described as interpretation. But chance can also be used as a method of composition with the
same intention of tapping into pure forms, or as in the case of 4’33”, chance may become the
material itself.
The emergence of chance methods in serial composition marks an important juncture in
the evolution of serial music. The early serial music pioneers consistently made the claim of
giving birth to an entirely new music. But until the development of ‘open’ works, this claim
115 Gombrich p. 10
4
could always be called into question because of the remnants of the common practice conception
of form. Open works represent the beginning of the dissolution of this formal conception and the
arrival of something truly new. No longer could serialism be described as a method, but rather
as an entirely new conception of music, complete with new modes of expression, new
instruments and performance techniques, and new ways of listening.
Mobile and Open Form:
The seeming convergence of indeterminate and serial music in the form of the open work
is sometimes seen as the beginning of the breakdown of serial music. This breakdown is often
attributed to Cage's presence in Darmstadt in 1958 and the subsequent influence his ideas had on
the serialists.116 But the correspondence between Cage and Boulez shows that serialists must
have been aware of Cage’s ideas even before his visit, therefore, it seems likely that the seeds of
open form in serial music came from somewhere else. As Grant suggests, Cage's ideas only
became important when serialists realized their own methodology had led them to similar
conclusions that Cage had already reached.117 A reading of the theories of open form as seen
from this perspective suggests a chance element must have been inherent to the serial conception
from the very beginning. It is the open form that holds the key to an appreciation of serial music
by suggesting a new mode of listening. The true intersection with Cage's brand of chance music
lies with this alternate mode of listening; it not only connects serial music with Cage's
indeterminacy, but also the rest of the abstract art world through its rejection of thematicism and
representation and its composers search for an entirely new world of musical expression.
In his article “...how time passes...” in the third edition of die Reihe, Stockhausen posits
that time is the fundamental element of music: “Music consists of order-relationships in time.” 118
116 Grant p. 144-45117 Ibid. p. 144-46118 dRIII p. 10
4
He asserts that both pitch and rhythm (or duration) and even timbre are governed by what he
called “phases” or the intervals between sonic events. Phases consisting of longer than
approximately 1/16 of a second are perceived as rhythm, whereas phases less than that in length
are perceived as pitch. The phenomenon creating these impulses, and the phases between them,
remains the same; the change occurs in our perception. This idea suggested a basis for a new
morphology of music: all musical parameters can be derived from a unifying element of time.
In order to achieve a balance of all these temporal elements, every phenomenon in the
perception of pitch, or what he termed the “microphase” level, was given an analogous element
in duration, or “macrophase” level. Therefore an equal-tempered scale of durations was derived
to correspond to the chromatic scale.119 The 2:1 ratio of an octave was equated to 2:1
proportions of durations such as to . Changes in tempo then corresponded to modulations
and so on.120
When faced with the equivalent to timbre, Stockhausen introduces the idea of the
“formant rhythm.” Using a term borrowed from acoustics, a formant is a basic element of a
complex tone, i.e. a sine tone. When brought together, all the formants of a tone make the timbre
of the sound and imply their common fundamental. By analogy, a formant rhythm would create
a “statistical density” where the individual lines would appear undifferentiated in a sound mass
forming a “group spectrum,” or field. In tonal music, the equivalent might be the key; for
example, one might refer to the dominant and tonic fields in a sonata form. These statistical
fields could then be deployed serially in the composition.
The highly complex methods of notation necessary for such a work would only lead to a
less than exact performance. Indeed, much serial music in general suffered from imprecise
119 This is outlined in detail in the article.120 See above in “New approaches to rhythm.”
4
performance due to its highly evolved rhythmic organization. This lead Stockhausen to consider
his options: he could return to tonal composition, he could accept the problem and work with it
as an additional dialectical relationship, he could renounce performance and compose only
electronic music, or lastly, and the preferred choice, he could find a completely new method of
composing for instruments.121 He found that by looking into the problem he could theoretically
determine “factors of dubiety” where the more complex the notation the less exact the
performance; thus the creation of “uncertainty fields” and the implication of serial use of chance
in composition. The statistical methods ensured that the individual elements were no longer
perceived discreetly, and instead, one could base a composition on the fluctuation of these fields.
It is a chance concept derived from serial methods. The form is not governed by thematicism but
by a certain disconnectedness made by the statistical fluctuation. This type of form implied any
possible ordering of the material so long as a flux was maintained and “the possibility of forms
not closed, but open.”122
It was through this notion of working with fields of uncertainty that finally led to
composing open forms. But as Grant states, this is entirely in keeping with the serialist aesthetic.
Serialism’s tendency to revert to basic elements and its fascination with the individual tone show
us what a new mode of listening might entail. The constantly transforming fields of serial music,
as derived of open forms, require being aware of a completely differentiated world in constant
flux, just as a focused listening on the isolated tone reveals a “richer and more subtly inflected”123
world than previously experienced with thematic music. This is a point Cage has repeatedly
experimented with.
121 dRIII p. 29122 Grant p. 139123 Ibid. p. 160
4
Both Cage and the serialists were ultimately working to destroy the artificiality they
perceived in traditional music and worked towards a more accurate description of the universe
that can only be seen through faculties of reason in order to avoid being deceived by our senses.
In a metaphysical sense, their art closely resembles that of other mid-twentieth century abstract
artists and truly may be considered abstract itself. Looking at the motivations behind abstraction
should then give insight to serial thought.
As Umberto Eco and others124 have observed, artistic expression has always followed
historically with how societies have perceived reality. A tendency towards abstraction has
always existed, but abstraction resulting in the actual destruction of form is unique to the modern
era. The new physics showed an inconstant universe that was renewed in each observation. To
form a whole picture of reality, many 'snapshots' or models to describe the behavior of matter are
required. But these ‘snapshots’ are often seemingly contradictory and can’t be shown together as
a whole. Psychology demonstrated the illusion of perception. We can never completely
experience an object; none of our views exhausts the possibilities. Experience is therefore also
always open to continuous renewal.
The abstract painter Paul Klee is noted for his interest in nature, a fact that somehow
seems distant from serialism, but given this new view of experience, is justified. However, he
was not just interested in the various forms and objects created by nature, but more importantly,
in finding an archetype responsible for the proliferation of these forms. He wanted to get at the
“absolute value of objects of the external world through art.”125 This motivation assumes
deficiencies in our senses of perception; a description reminiscent of Bertrand Russell’s view of
perception. According to Russell, it is impossible to see the true nature of matter. Instead, we
124 This history is recounted by Rosenthal125 Klee p. 25
5
receive “sense data” from “objects” that aren't necessarily inherent in the object itself but are a
product of the object and our mechanisms of perception i.e. our eyes and brain. Experience is
only an ‘accidental’ manifestation of an infinite possibility. Abstraction is used to create so
called ‘pure’ forms. According to Klee, art’s purpose was not to depict things as we see them or
even would like to see them, but rather as the truth that is hidden in this infinite possibility. In
Klee's words, “the relativity of visible things is made clear, and the belief is expressed that the
visible is only an isolated case taken from the universe and that there are more truths unseen than
seen...an effort is made to give concrete form to the accidental.”126 By searching for archetypes
of form, Klee is defining the function of abstraction as making a representation from a multitude
of possible realities. In short, “art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible.”127
In the attempt to account for an overlying principle (or archetype), designs were made
which gave birth to more than one single ‘accidental’ musical form. Instead, composers
attempted to account for a multitude. But music, being restricted to the flow of time, is only able
to inhabit one of the possibilities of these schemas at a time (time meaning performance). As
such, open form might be thought of not so much as a chance form, but more of a draft archetype
with the performance being the audible 'accident' inherent to the schema. The problem one
encounters is that the possibility of other accidents within the archetype is not transferred to the
listener in the sounding music; polyvalence of form cannot be heard. This is a charge that Ligeti
leveled at “mobile” forms, or those polyvalent forms on paper that contain the possibility of
multiple realizations. He claimed that “multiple instantiations of a text” does not mean a
multiple or mobile form. As soon as the music sounds, the form is set, immobilized as it were. 128
For him the problem lies with the difference between “primarily spatial configurations” and
126 Klee p. 25-26127 Ibid. p. 26128 Ligeti p. 15
5
“primarily temporal events.”129 A sculpture is a spatial configuration. A sculpture in motion,
such as Calder's mobiles, is also a spatial configuration but has an added temporal element. A
mobile is then a spatial configuration set in motion. Music as a temporal art is already in motion.
Ligeti thus concludes that “Since music already embodies motion, ... and since this mobility, as a
spatializing entity, enters into musical form and determines it, musical form cannot be
understood as mobile: mobility inheres in form, but form itself is not mobile.”130
An explanation of the open form in serial music as a search for a new sonic archetype
seems more accurate and insightful than attributing the entire phenomenon to Cage, even though
Cage probably expedited the process. An alternate, but related, view could describe serialism,
and much abstract art in general, as a reaction to phenomenology:131 we can never completely
experience something since none of our views can exhaust all the possibilities, therefore, our
experience of something is always open to continuous renewal; “Every performance [of an open
work] explains the composition but does not exhaust it.”132 Such a view of music implies
perspective and 'point of view' and seems to reinstate the metaphorical spatialization of music
central to thematicism. To be sure, later explorations of time, especially discontinuous time and
multi-layered time, led to a reevaluation of the rejection of the spatial dimension in music,
especially in the theories of Eimert and Ligeti, and probably had something to do with the
physical properties inherent to the experience of time as discovered by modern physicists. For
example, Ligeti spoke of a transition in serial methods from one of process to one of
“juxtaposition of colors and surfaces” reminiscent of modern paintings.133 It would seem that
this juxtaposition would be a natural result of discontinuous time or the concatenations of
129 Ibid.130 Ibid. p. 16131 The study of objects of experience as seen from the subjective, first person point of view initiated in the works of Husserl and Heidegger.132 Eco p. 15133 dRVII p. 15
5
'moments.' The attempt to form multiple perspectives of this discontinuous time in the open
form was also described by spatially by Ligeti as simply a “flash-photo of a Calder mobile;” 134
the performance being a “momentary incarnation”135 of the various perspectives of a spatialized
form.
Aesthetic versus Semantic Music:
Serial music, as a form of information, requires that communication between sender
(composer) and receiver (listener) operate within a repertory of elements common to both; that
is, the listener must have the necessary knowledge of the musical language to decipher the
messages. When this repertory does not exist, the information splits into two different messages:
that which was sent, and that which was received, the latter being due to a subjective response to
the former because of a lack of interpretation capability. Werner Meyer-Eppler generalized the
problem by defining various attributes of communication “signals” and grouping them into two
“spheres”: semantic and ectosemantic.136 The semantic spheres contain all signal attributes that
have to do with the language and symbols, and are common to both communication partners.
The ectosemantic spheres contain those signal attributes which are not symbol carriers, such as
those attributes having to do with emotion or style. Ectosemantic spheres also contain those
attributes where the original signal differs from the translation of the signal.
The pioneering information scientist Abraham Moles took this a step further and
concluded that there must be two types of information: semantic and aesthetic.137 Semantic
information exists outside the communication system and is translatable to other transmission
channels; it has a “universal logic”. Semantic information is largely utilitarian, and serves to
prepare actions. Aesthetic information is created within the system and is not translatable to 134 Ibid. p.19135 Ibid.136 dRVIII p. 7137 Moles p. 128
5
other transmission channels; it is particular to the receiver. Aesthetic information shapes states
of mind, but has no goal or intention. For example, the semantic nature of a dictionary allows for
its entries to be defined using many different combinations of words, whereas the aesthetic
nature of poetry doesn’t allow for this same method of recombination. Ultimately, poetry must
remain non-translated in order to convey the same information. In reality, all messages are a
mixture of both, but they do tend in one direction or the other. While music is primarily
aesthetic, it could be true that some music is more semantic, while other music is more aesthetic.
The philosophy of Max Bense describes a similar dialectic. According to Bense,138 all art
is a sign process. He describes two processes taking place in the world: physical and aesthetic.
Physical processes those of the natural world and governed by necessity and reality. Aesthetic
processes are made, and founded on possibility and are essentially statistical. Since art is man-
made and is an accumulation of possibilities, it must also be an aesthetic object formed by
aesthetic processes. The exponential increase in possibilities, and the statistical nature of serial
music, would seem to place it further into the aesthetic spectrum of information than common
practice music. In general, art’s existence in the possible, rather than reality, implies that its
focus should not be on what is presented, since there are innumerable possibilities, but on the
presentation itself. Modern art demonstrates a transition from a sign world that functions, to a
more aesthetic and untranslatable sign world that simply is; the material becomes the sign.
Classical art functions through the representation of things; modern art can only represent itself.
Serial music, like much modern art, is also concerned more with the presentation of itself.
Analyses involving in depth ‘row counting’ and ‘note crunching’ miss the point entirely.
Traditional analysis, which is based on the semantic argument inherent to the thematicism of
common practice music, has very little to say regarding an aesthetic and athematic music. The
138 All the following information on Bense is secondhand via Grant pp. 146-49.
5
common argument that serial methodology doesn’t reflect the aural experience is a result of this
misplaced premise regarding thematicism. Trying to account for organic structural unity from the
smallest musical unit to the largest (a preoccupation of classical analysis) is foolish. It misses the
point.
The Serial Conception:
In an essay titled “Series and Structure,” Umberto Eco, taking the idea from Levi-Strauss,
defines two paradigms of experience, and in the case of the creation of art, two methodologies.
“Structural thought” as the basis of traditional scientific method, relies on general structures or
objective constants on which to build an understanding of the world. “Serial thought” rejects this
hierarchy central to structuralism, and as Levi-Strauss pointed out, even denies the very
existence of objective constants.139 This is not to say that serialism and structuralism are
opposites. In many ways the two paradigms have much in common, and Levi-Strauss was keen
to point out a few of these similarities in order to demonstrate that because of the similarities the
two should be carefully distinguished: both paradigms demonstrate “a resolutely intellectual
approach,” “a bias in favor of systematic arrangements,” and “a mistrust of mechanistic or
empirical solutions.”140 These similarities, coupled with the fact that serialists often use
structuralist techniques, could possibly be to blame for the misunderstandings of serialist
thought. As Eco pointed out, because serialists use structuralist methods doesn't mean that
structuralism is the method of serialism.141 In fact, there are also fundamental differences
between the two schools: 1) Structuralists emphasize the idea that communication requires a
common vocabulary between the sender and the receiver, whereas serialism posits that every
message calls its very vocabulary into question; “every artistic message is a discourse on the
139 Levi-Strauss p. 26140 Ibid. p. 27141 Eco p. 219
5
language that generates it.”142 2) Structuralism is based on the hypothesis that there exists a
primary code upon which the evolution of all codes can be traced. Serialism uses the
identification of primary codes in order to question and destroy them, thereby creating entirely
new forms of communication. 3) As taken from structuralist linguistics, structuralism proposes
two levels of articulation necessary for communication; they are often described as the axes of
‘selection’ and ‘combination.’143 Selection has to do with associative relationships and
substitution of codes while combination determines the positioning of codes. Temporally,
relations of selection refer intertextually to codes outside the message’s transmission channel,
while relations of combination refer intratextually to codes co-present within the transmission
channel. According to Levi-Strauss, serialism by contrast attempts to “construct a system of
signs on a single level of articulation” by omitting the first, or selection level, or attempts an
“oblique” reading of the two axes by integrating them.144 By dispensing with the first level of
articulation, serial music destroys the “general structures” which allow the encoding and
decoding of messages to be universally understood. There is no longer an inherent grammar to
the music. According to Eco, the series is “a field of possibilities that generates multiple
choices” and “challenges the bidimensional axes of selection and combination.”145 As seen
above with Moles and Bense, serial music must then belong to an entirely new conception of
music that places even greater emphasis on the aesthetic attributes of the acoustic “signal.”
142 Ibid. p. 220143 These axes were first proposed by Saussure. His student, Roman Jakobson, in his book “The Fundamentals of Language” defined them as follows: Combination is a linguistic mode of arrangement where “any sign is made up of constituent signs and/or occurs only in combination with other signs.” This concept is important in the formation of context in a message. Selection is the other mode of arrangement that involves the selection of alternatives. “A selection between alternatives implies the possibility of substituting one for the other, equivalent to the former in one respect and different from in another.” In modern semiotics these are known as the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes.144 Levi-Strauss p. 24145 Eco p. 220
5
The stances taken between Eco and Levi-Strauss on this last point are somewhat similar
but contain a subtle and important difference. Levi-Strauss, incapable of seeing outside the
structuralist paradigm, must analyze serial music accordingly: since all language requires both
articulations, serial music must not be a language, or at least incapable of communication. And
given the difficulty of the music, the vast amount of the public understandably seems to agree
with this. But Eco suggests the fundamental aim of structuralism is only discovery, whereas
serialism aims to produce.146 Common practice tonality fits this description of the structuralist
aim by way of its continuous discovery of messages and meanings within a given language.
Serial music aims at creation of new codes of language and constant evolution of these codes.
As Boulez put the distinction, “classical tonal thought is based on a universe defined by gravity
and attraction; serial thought, on a universe in continuous expansion.”147
In a world that is perpetually expanding, serialism's goal is constant evolution forward
rather than the rediscovery of the past. This evolution took place at such a rapid pace that its
systems of construction quickly became tremendously sophisticated and outstripped the listening
public’s comprehension of these constructions. This is indeed one of the charges against
serialism: the complexity of its constructions doesn't correlate with the sounding music. It might
even seem that the form-giving principles, or means, are more important than the final sound.
This is a point that even Levi-Strauss conceded: “It is not a question of sailing to other lands, the
whereabouts of which may be unknown and their very existence hypothetical. The proposed
revolution [serialism and the avant-garde] is much more radical: the journey alone is real, not the
landfall, and the sea routes are replaced by the rules of navigation.”148 Or put another way by
Mondrian: “Let those of out time, the men of action who insist upon immediate results, who are
146 Eco p. 221147 Stocktakings p. 220148 Levi-Strauss p. 25
5
so strongly oriented to concrete realization, who are so hostile to so-called abstract art, let them
understand through this art that the realization of anything depends upon the means employed,
and that only with pure means, can universal equilibrium be established.”149
In order to construct a new “universe in continuous expansion,” serialists would have had
to develop a conceptual generator to ensure the expansion. Although the building of this
‘conceptual generator’ was not undertaken through conscious effort, the language serialists used
to describe their music suggests this direction. Indeed, much abstract art of this period echoes
similar sentiments. When considering a statement by Klee such as, “The more deeply he [an
artist] looks, the more readily he can extend his views from the present to the past, the more
deeply he is impressed by the one essential image of creation itself, as Genesis, rather than by the
image of nature, the finished product,”150 one is struck by the theological coloring of the
language. Obviously these artists are not referring to God or gods, but they are speaking of some
powerful higher plane of understanding from which they are trying to derive their art. Eimert in
the edition of die Reihe dedicated to musical craftsmanship says, “ ‘Serial’ technique...can no
longer express itself aright in the comparatively plastic world of sound to which...academic
lessons belong, since it has reached out and laid its hand on the basic elements, the
‘repertoire’.”151 Since this remark is placed amongst others in the essay having to do with the
work of A. Moles and its significance in music, it would seem that Eimert may be referring to a
musical metalanguage. The so called “basic elements” are those universal elements that describe
languages themselves. Because serial composers were no longer composing symbolically or
thematically, expression in their music elides the interpretation stage of the communication chain
from composer to listener, and instead aims to tap directly into the “Genesis” of music. The
149 Mondrian p. 280 (emphasis original)150 Klee p. 45 (emphasis mine)151 dRIII p. 2 (emphasis mine)
5
‘conceptual generator’ is then a metalanguage devoid of symbol and incapable of interpretation
since it is creation itself, and no language exists for interpretation.
Serial composers were not only building a new conception of musical composition, they
had to destroy the old one. In effect, they also introduced a new mode of listening. As with
chance music, one only has to listen - not to relationships or systems of construction, but only
sounds - to the mystery and fascination and to revel in our own incomprehension. Serial music,
being an abstraction in the musical sense, is not to be listened to as representational; that is, it is
ultimately aesthetic in information content and representative only of itself. Or perhaps more
accurately, there is an indefinite number of possible representations. Stuckenschmidt even states
that Eimert, as spokesman for the serialists, is “opposed to all metaphorical synaesthetic
interpretation - that is, he is opposed to the idea of composition and interpretation by association
and reference.”152 This seems to echo Mondrian's ideas about abstract art: “Art itself shows that
to be new it must realize a positive change in its representation of the essential in art's
manifestation; that is, a positive change in the representation of purely plastic expression - which
does not subsist in figurative representation but is created by relationships of line and color or of
the planes they compose.”153 The fact that you can’t hear serialism’s structures is not only
irrelevant, it is essential to the experience. As Eco explained, “incomplete knowledge of the
system is in fact an essential feature in its formulation.”154 It reflects the non-definitive nature of
experience. What is required is a change in the way the music is listened to, much the same way
that one must suspend their preconceptions when viewing a Klee or Mondrian work.
A silent piece like 4'33”, is taking advantage of the fact that the world (which already
possesses its own sonic archetype) is constantly giving a real time ‘performance’ of sounds; you
152 dRI p. 11153 Mondrian p. 245 (emphasis original)154 Eco p. 15
5
only have to turn your attention to it. The spectacle of a staged performance is inconsequential.
It simply provides a framework - a beginning and an ending for the piece of essentially arbitrary
length (remember, Cage discarded form) and possibly a philosophical framework for the
uninitiated. Maybe this is where the fundamental difference between serialism and chance music
lies. Where serialism is seeking the ‘higher power’ or creation itself for use in its own ends,
chance music is accepting nature as it exists at any given moment of performance. As Cage put
it, “I listen to it [4'33"] every day...I don't sit down to do it; I turn my attention toward it. I
realize that it's going on continuously...”155
155 Duckworth p. 14
6
Bibliography:
Bailey, Kathryn. The Twelve-note Music of Anton Webern (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Boulez, Pierre. Points de repère (Paris: Bourgois, 1981), English trans. Orientations. (Harvard University Press: Faber & Faber, 1986).
Relevés d’apprenti (Paris: Seuil, 1966), English trans. Stocktakings of an Apprenticeship (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Cage, John and Roger Shattuck and Alan Gillmor. “Erik Satie: a Conversation.” Contact: A Journal of Contemporary Music, no. 25, autumn 1982: 21-26.
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973).
Debussy, Claude. Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music (New York: Dover, 1962).
Di Pietro, Rocco. Dialogues with Boulez (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001).
Duckworth, William. Talking Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995).
Eco, Umberto. The Open Work, English trans. Cancogni, Anna (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
Eimert, Herbert and Stockhausen, Karlheinz (eds.): die Reihe 1: Electronic Music (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1955),
English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 2: Anton Webern (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1955), English
trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 3: Musical Craftsmanship (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1957), English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 4: Young Composers (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1958),
English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 5: Reports Analyses (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1959),
English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 6: Speech and Music (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1960),
English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 7: Form -- Space (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1960), English
trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).die Reihe 8: Retrospective (Karlsplatz: Universal Edition, 1962), English
trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co.).
Gann, Kyle. American Music in the Twentieth Century (Belmont CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 1997).
6
Geelhaar, Christian. Paul Klee and the Bauhaus (Greenwich CT: New York Graphical Society Ltd., 1973).
Gillmor, Alan. Erik Satie (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988).
“Satie, Cage, and the New Asceticism.” CAUSM Journal 5, no. 2 1975: 47-66.
Gombrich, E.H. Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (London: Phaidon Press Ltd. 1994).
Grant, M.J. Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Griffiths, Paul. Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988).
Jakobson, Roman. Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1956).
Jameux, Dominique. Pierre Boulez (Paris: Fayard, 1984), English trans. (Harvard University Press: Faber & Faber, 1991).
Klee, Paul. On Modern Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1969).
Kostelanetz, Richard (ed.). John Cage: an Anthology (New York: Da Capo Press, 1991).
Leibowitz, Rene. Schoenberg and His School, English trans. Newlin, Dika (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949).
Levi-Strauss. The Raw and the Cooked, English trans. Weightman, John and Doreen (New York: Harper and Row, 1969).
Ligeti, György. “On Form in New Music”, from Darmstädter Beiträge zur neuen Musik 10’ (1966): 23-35. Unpublished English trans. Ian Quinn.
Mondrian, Piet. The New Art-The New Life: The Collected Writings of, Edited and English trans. Holtzman, Harry and James, Martin S. (Boston: G.K. Hall
and Co., 1986).
Moles, Abraham. Information Theory and Esthetic Perception, English trans. Joel E. Cohen (University of Illinois Press, 1966).
6
Nattiez, Jean Jacques (ed.). The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, English trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Nyman, Michael. “Cage and Satie.” Musical Times, vol. 114, December 1973: 1227-1229.
Oja, Carol J. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920's (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2000).
Orledge, Robert. Satie the Composer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Pasler, Jann. “Debussy, Jeux: Playing with Time and Form.” 19th Century Music, Vol. 6 summer 1982: 60-75.
Peyser, Joan. Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (New York: Katomo Ltd., 1976).
Revill, David. The Roaring Silence: John Cage: A Life (New York: Arcade Pub., 1992)
Rosenthal, Erwin. The Changing Concept of Reality in Art (New York: George Wittenborn Inc., 1962).
Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. (see Eimert, Herbert).
Struble, John Warthen. The History of American Classical Music (New York: Facts on File Inc., 1995).
The Tate Gallery. Towards a New Art: Essays on the Background to Abstract Art 1910-20 (Millbank: The Tate Gallery Publications Dept., 1980).
Vallas, Léon. Les Idées de Claude Debussy (London: Oxford University Press, 1929) English trans. The Theories of Claude Debussy (New York: Dover,
1967).
Webern, Anton. The Path to the New Music, (Universal Edition, 1960), English trans. (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co., 1975).
6
top related