Order and flexibility, the transition from serialism to
total serialism
Webern’s lectures on 12 note music make a number of bold
statements, for the purpose of this blog the following are selected to provide
a route into the discussion regarding order and flexibility.
·
12 note music is an inevitable outcome of
progressive developments in Western music.
·
12 note music is a method that creates
comprehensibility through repetition and order.
·
Comprehensibility requires the control of
foreground and background material (gestalt).
·
The overtone series is the basis for the progression
to new music; it generates consonance and dissonance, cadences, and is
responsible for the eventual development of key change, the weakening of the
tonic which results in the liberation of music from the tonic.
Webern’s overriding concern (as it seems to me) is order, an
order where gravity and the gluing together of material to create a coherent
and strong structure is the substance of art. We have a century of developments
after Webern to see how this argument plays out, and in order to take a
constructive view on flexibility in music it is necessary to touch on the next musical
stage, serial composition up to the period around the 1950’s. While I have
inbuilt reservations about composers discussing their own works it is fascinating
to read through Boulez’s (changing) views regarding order and structure, and
his essays aid our understanding of the different ways of perceiving “flexibility”,
so it is to his texts and interviews that this blog turns.
Before engaging with Boulez’s own music it is worth noting
his views on Webern in his early essays. The first view concerns Webern’s “technical perfection” and “formal
purity”, which he senses acts as a barrier to wider public recognition. This is
a concern that Webern addresses in his own lectures. This problem of
accessibility in Boulez’s view arises as a result of the newness or “novelty”
of the language. He argues that the means of expression makes Webern a
significant figure in the development of music. It is quite clear that Boulez identifies with
Webern in this matter:
I consider that methodical investigation and the search
for a coherent system are an indispensable basis for all creation, more so than
the actual attainments which are the source or the consequence of this
investigation. I hope it will not he said that such a step leads to aridity,
that it kills all fantasy and since it is difficult to avoid the fateful word
all inspiration.
Boulez also writes
about the severance of new music from the earlier tonal period, citing
Stravinsky for rhythm and the 12 note composers for their weakening of
tonality. He considers this severance as a historical necessity arising out of
serialism, and as such continues the processes outlined in the Webern essays.
When writing about his own music Boulez makes use of a
number of terms that are of different degrees of intuitive comprehensibility, the
following link to Peter Tannenbaum’s work on Boulez has as an appendix a list
of some 80+ of these terms which the reader might find of some interest.
Despite the necessity to adapt to the terms which Boulez uses
the main arguments are relatively straightforward when we filter out the
principal notion of control and freedom.
Like Webern Boulez holds to the idea of comprehensibility
being rooted in every part of the composition being necessary; the play between
foreground/background materials for Webern is present in Boulez’s idea of a purity
in the final composition. The idea that components of a composition have to
have a function which relates to the composing intention is not new, what is
different after Webern is the model for selecting the composing material, and
that this has a prescribed system of organisation.
Boulez discovered that the use of precise ordering effects
the number of choices available, where this seen as an advantage by some
composers it raised questions in Boulez’s mind. Boulez recognises that complete control necessitates a total
overview of the work before the process of realisation begins. He accepts that in attempting to create the
situation in which every musical unit has a necessary function an element of surprise
is lost. This surprise is primarily the concern of the composer, though one has
to assume that Boulez also feels that is an issue for the listener. One may
think that there are parallels with the planning in Beethoven’s notebooks, but
the essential difference comes down to the difference between prescriptive and
flexible variation of material.
Like Webern
Boulez considers processes of evolution, but in his case this evolution arises
from the composer’s engagement with the music itself. By employing the
techniques of composition one learns to identify mannerisms, regularities and characteristics
which in their turn enrich the engagement. While there is little that is new in
this, it once again echoes Webern’s lectures regarding the choice of material:
Linking up with my last remarks, I should like to say
something today about the purely practical application of the new technique.
But first I'll answer a question put to me by one of you: "How is free
invention possible when one has to remember to adhere to the order of the
series for the work?"
Here is Boulez in
conversation with UE:
I think that if you have an interesting and productive
relationship with the material, the material certainly will compose for you.
But you must know how it is composed. And I find it wonderful to think of it
such that the material in fact composes with you, and you compose with the
material.
Boulez adopts the
stance that there is a difference between the exploration of a plan and its
realisation, the logic of the music is not music in itself. The composer is
seen as a guide who offers a “pathway” through possibilities by selective,
informed choice. If a situation arises
where some element of the work is unplanned (an unexpected encounter on the
pathway) then it is outside the control of the composer and therefore valueless
in that it does not contribute to the whole. One can immediately recognise the
gap between e.g. Boulez and Crumb where quotation in the latter composer’s work
is an essential factor, and does not arise specifically from the content of the
vessel that contains the quotation.
Boulez explores
the notion of a ground plan and its limitations, he writes about “chance by
automatism”. He considers the construction of music via number systems and
pitch permutations and decides that if a composer fails to select his own
“pathway” or impose his will on the material then one is failing to compose, instead
the result is a generation of kaleidoscopic, potentially meaningless, patterns.
He also considers other composers alternatives to the method of sound selection
by less rigorous approaches, “Chance by inadvertence”. Here he includes graphic
notation and randomized selection (coin tossing, dice etc.), in fact any music
that minimizes the composer’s control. Boulez considers that the outcome of
these methods fall on the shoulders of the performer rather than the composer.
There are of course many methods of ensuring a partnership between composer and
performer, but his concern is the “purity” of the work produced.
Though this is a
very brief outline of a stage in Boulez’s thinking about structure, it serves
to illustrate the situation that brings this composer to consider alternatives
to complete control, alternatives that were of interest to his one-time friend
John Cage, mobile form.
The recurrent
theme of writings by Boulez and about Boulez is intellectual rigour, and his criticisms
of less-rigorous or non-rigorous approaches could be read as weakness in the
structure or musical argument of that music. This leads to the question, does
flexibility as in the inclusion of quotation in music as in the music of Ives
and later George Crumb signify that is a weaker composition?
For those who wish to read more about the thought processes
that lead to Boulez’s aesthetics I would strongly recommend the following link
to a thesis by David Walters:
