A. Whittall -Music Analysis as Human Science

Music Analysis as Human Science? 'Le Sacre du Printemps' in Theory and PracticeAuthor(s): Arnold WhittallReviewed work(s):Source: Music Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Mar., 1982), pp. 33-53Published by: Blackwell PublishingStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853990 .Accessed: 07/01/2012 06:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Blackwell Publishing is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music Analysis.

http://www.jstor.org

ARNOLD WHITTALL

MUSIC ANALYSIS AS HUMAN SCIENCE? Le Sacre du Printemps in Theory and Practice

I The music analyst - even if he chooses to argue that his craft is a form of composition - will probably accept that at a time when the composer seems to enjoy greater and greater degrees of liberty, the analyst himself experiences and expects less and less freedom from precedent and strictness. The composer may have freed himself from any necessary concern with tradition, at least if he accepts Boulez's argument that it is positively unhealthy to be closely involved with the past (Boulez 1976: 33). But the present-day analyst tends not to be taken seriously, at least by other analysts, unless his work can be directly related to that of his discipline's found- ing fathers. Like many kinds of modern scientist, the music analyst finds that his most significant precursors lived in relatively recent times. But the true analyst, aware of the novelty of his discipline, is inclined to see this proximity as strengthening the need for strictness. It is by no means certain, therefore, that he will be greatly concerned with the possibility of relating himself and his work to broader trends in cultural history, axiol- ogy or epistemology. If there is such a thing as a typical music analyst, he is someone who does not particularly want to be set free within the loose, vaguely defined boundaries of intellectual history and cultural studies. He is happiest with his own special technicalities, with terminologies and de- finitions which have little or no relevance outside the sphere that immedi- atley concerns them, the musical composition. He may be appreciative of the fact that several modern philosophers have made a special point of the relevance of music to their concerns. But he will doubt whether much of value can be gained, with respect to refined techniques or deeper technical understanding, by considering music analysis in relation to something beyond itself: for example, the 'human sciences'.

In the final chapter of Les mots et les choses, translated as The Order of Things, Michel Foucault writes that 'a "human science" exists ... wher- ever there is analysis - within the dimension proper to the unconscious - of norms, rules, and signifying totalities which unveil to consciousness the

@ MUSIC ANALYSIS 1: 1, 1982 33

ARNOLD WHITTALL

conditions of its forms and contents' (Foucault 1970: 364). As far as I'm aware, Foucault has never brought music into his frame of reference, although whole chapters of The Order of Things are devoted to the discussion of Las Menihas by Velasquez, and Don Quixote by Cervantes. But literary and cultural studies together form one of the three human sciences which Foucault identifies - the others are psychology and sociology - and his view of the nature of the analytical models employed by these sciences offers some thought-provoking perspectives. The human sciences are themselves derived from other sciences - psychology from biology, sociology from political economy, literary and cultural studies from philology - and their analytical models stem from these parent disciplines. 'From biology they receive the notion of function; receiving and reacting to stimuli, adapting to the environment, compensating for imbalances, in short, establishing and obeying norms. Economics, which depicts man seeking sat- isfaction for his needs and desires, provides the notion of conflict, and, by way of containment of conflict, that of rules. Language provides the notion of signification and system, which is an ordering of signs' (Sheridan 1980: 83). Not surprisingly, these models are not exclusive in their functions. 'All the human sciences can be used to interpret one another; intermedi- ary and composite disciplines multiply endlessly' (Sheridan 1980: 83). But at the moment, in Foucault's view, it is the third model, deriving from philology, which is the dominant one. As a result, all the human sciences 'seem to be constantly employed in a process of demystification, of unveil- ing a reality that is less apparent, but more profound' (Sheridan 1980: 83-4).

The music analyst may feel that this 'process of demystification' corre- sponds reasonably well with his own concerns. But he might well prefer to argue that the 'human science' of which music analysis is part must be psychology, not literary and cultural studies: certainly this will be so if his preferred analytical model is that which Foucault sees as deriving from biology - 'the notion of function ... establishing and obeying norms.' Alternatively, since 'all the human sciences can be used to interpret one another', we might propose that the branch of literary and cultural studies known as music analysis functions most effectively when the biological model complements, or even dominates, the philological one. But it is the main purpose of this essay to examine whether there might not be a certain kind of music for which application of the model from political economy is essential - the model which 'provides the notion of conflict, and, by way of containment of conflict, that of rules'. In fact, the music in question may be more concerned with conflict than with rules, and for that very reason it is especially difficult to employ analytical models which focus primarily on function and system.

It is in respect of this model from political economy, which Foucault relates most directly to the human science of sociology, that the philos- opher's more general consideration of the nature and function of various

34 MUSIC ANALYSIS 1:1, 1982

MUSIC ANALYSIS AS HUMAN SCIENCE?

analytical enterprises seems most significant. Foucault sees these as aspects of what he calls an 'archeological' activity, in which 'the aim is not to overcome differences but to analyse them' (Sheridan 1980: 109). 'In archeological analysis ... contradictions are neither appearances to be overcome nor secret principles to be uncovered. They are objects to be de- scribed for themselves.' This offers an alternative to the preferred modern analytical activity, the search for unity and coherence, and to that 'ruling ideology' according to which 'analysis exists for the purpose of demon- strating organicism' (Kerman 1980: 315). It cannot be denied that 'the perception of "the Same in the Different", and of "The Different in the Same", is the origin of all hierarchy in social practice, as it is the origin of syntax in grammar and of logic in thought' (White 1979: 95). But when hierarchy, syntax and 'logic' are all challenged, it is likely that diversity will no longer be subject to unity, and that conflict may cease to be subsumed within a larger coherence.

I have already amply revealed my amateur status with respect to the understanding and exposition of Foucault's philosophy. But the very atmosphere of his writings provides a powerful stimulus to a reconsider- ation of some of the most basic and cherished assumptions about analytical procedure, especially with regard to the interpretation of difference, as opposed to similarity, and conflict, as opposed to conformity. In what follows, therefore, the issue of whether or not music analysis can usefully be considered a human science, and, if so, which of the three sciences it belongs to, is set aside in favour of the more concrete (and to me more congenial) matters arising from a study of one of modern music's most famous and familiar masterpieces. Fundamental to this study is the belief that conflict and difference, as represented most essentially by the concept of dissonance, are central to the music's identity, and to its challenge to tradition. When it is difficult even to describe objects 'for themselves', 'archeological' analysis may of necessity be tentative and primitive. But we have not yet reached the point at which all analytical writing can deal in valid absolutes.

II A more complete and coherent description is possible for a local structure regarded as a 'piece' in itself than is possible for that same passage when it is regarded as part of a larger tonal structure. Such a situation is virtually the reverse of that of the tonal music we care about (Boretz 1973: 188). Chords can no longer be precisely named, nor can their identity be maintained in differing contexts. But it is important to realize that, even in stubbornly non-triadic music, the concept of the chord remains, by analogy at least .... In fact, only when the contrapuntal aspect becomes so strong that every element of each sonority is heard

MUSIC ANALYSIS 1: 1, 1982 35

ARNOLD WHITTALL

primarily as a point in a moving line, or at the other extreme, where the texture is completely pointillistic, is the chordal concept seriously challenged (Cone 1962: 42-3). ... juxtaposition itself affords an invaluable clue as to analytical method. For, confronted with the kind of 'discontinuity' it im- poses ... why burden ourselves with analytic-theoretical schemes of 'continuity' or 'coherence' which, if not entirely inapplicable, cannot be the most advantageous (the most compelling or instructive) since they ignore this most telling and conspicious feature? Why not accept abrupt 'block' juxtaposition and the referential implications, and proceed accordingly ? (van den Toorn 1975: 126). For a long time to come, the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course, and can comprehend the processes based on them (Schoenberg 1975: 264).

Stravinsky himself has left some familiar words from the 1960's about how he composed Le Sacre du Printemps: 'I was guided by no system whatever in Le Sacre du Printemps. When I think of other composers of that time who interest me - Berg, who is synthetic (in the best sense), Webern, who is analytic, and Schoenberg, who is both - how much more theoretical their music seems than Le Sacre; and these composers were supported by a great tradition, whereas very little immediate tradition lies behind Le Sacre du Printemps. I had only my ear to help me. I heard and I wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which Le Sacre passed' (Stravinsky and Craft 1962: 147-8).

The picture is an attractively simple one: the three cerebral Austro- Germans contrasted with the instinctive Russian, whose ear was the sole arbiter of right and wrong. But even so authoritative a statement tends not to be taken too seriously in an intellectual climate dedicated primarily to the discovery of unity, consistency, logic. The more comprehensively general the statements we can make about a composition, the more of its elements we can relate to a single source, structural principle or process, the more authoritative our work is held to be. So even if the fact that Stra- vinsky was guided by no 'system' in the normal sense of that term is accepted, his admission that he proceeded by what made sense to his ear is sufficient to encourage the analyst to progress from sense to structure, and to define structure - and style - in ways which stress essential unifying forces.

Stravinsky also stated that the first musical ideas for the work were what he called the 'themes' of the second section of Part I, Les Augures Printa- niers. In the 1960's Robert Craft was still more specific, with regard both to the nature of those themes and to how Stravinsky thought of them technically. 'Stravinsky spent the summer [of 1911] in Ustilug ... com- posing the Augurs of Spring, Spring Rounds, part of the Rival Tribes, and the Introduction. He recalls that his first idea was the focal chord of Fb major in the bass combined with the dominant-seventh of Ab in the treble



(to adapt his own nomenclature, for he has always referred to the triadic combinations in The Rite in terms of bi- or polytonality; at the same time, it should be said that he rarely employs and never thinks in the vocabulary of musical theory, and that he recently remarked of this chord that he could not explain or justify it at the time but that his "ear accepted it with joy")' (Craft 1969: xvii).

Craft filled out these remarks in his commentary on the first page of the published sketches: 'The composer maintains that the ostinato in the centre of the sheet [which became Fig. 13ff. of the finished work] was his first notation for the ballet, but having watched him fill many similar pages, and invariably begin at the top, my own guess is that the torso of the chord [Ex. la] preceded the full chord, and that it occurred to him melodically, by way of the Eb, Bb, Db, Bb ostinato in the second example. [Ex. lb] Studying the page now, after fifty-seven years, Stravinsky agrees that this is probable' (Craft 1969: 4). And a decade later Craft referred to another sketch, not included in the 1969 volume, as the 'earliest known notation for the Rite', containing 'the motto chord of the entire work, together with other basic harmonies' (Craft 1978: 597 - see Ex. 2).

x l Ex.b Ex.rc 8va

Ex.2

It is no surprise that these musicological revelations should have stimu- lated and influenced the activities of analysts, and at least some of these must now be considered. The possibility, offered by the composer's own statement, that in Le Sacre's genesis practice supplanted theory has been swallowed whole by at least one writer, who inveighs against the modern propensity to exclude all apparent concern with the 'real-time' listening experience from analytical activity. He wages total war on the direction which thinking about music has taken over the last two centuries, and

Music examples 3-10 of this article are taken from the reduction for piano duet by the composer and are reproduced by kind permission of Boosey Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd., as are Exs la, b and c (adapted), which appear in the Sketches (1969), p. 3. Ex. 2 is quoted from Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents by V. Stravinsky and R. Craft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 597.


ARNOLD WHITTALL

offers what he calls an 'absurd example' of the quandary of the traditional kind of harmonic analyst. Referring to the 'focal' chord of Les Augures Printaniers, he declares: 'there is no harmonic analysis called for; it is simply a question of how the composer placed his hands on the keyboard. It was this bodily placing of the hands which gave birth to the sound, and not some theoretical idea that made it possible' (Smith 1979: 178). And this point has already been made earlier in the same volume: 'this juxtaposition of two hands on the keyboard was never conceived intellectually, and defies classic analysis in terms of functional harmony' (Smith 1979: 70).

Smith does not attempt to argue that the whole work might be analysed in this way, by charting some sort of manual choreography to show how the right notes were discovered. But his aim is evidently to undermine the foundations of an analysis which proceeds from intellectual, theoretical premises rather than from expressive, practical ones. He is not suggesting that Stravinsky's intellect played no part in the creation of Le Sacre, and his implication that speculation about the nature of such mental activity is futile has much to commend it: the recreation of the process of composition, even with a work so well documented with surviving sketches and statements, is an impossible task. But to confuse the way in which a particular sound was probably invented with the way in which that sound may function in relation to other sounds is a serious and fundamental flaw.

Two other areas of recent analytical enquiry are considerably more important. First, Lawrence Morton (1979) and Richard Tarushkin (1980), working independently, have confirmed that Stravinsky used specific folk- melodies for his material to an extent which had not previously been made apparent, and which may give a new slant to his remark that 'very little immediate tradition' lay behind the music. Second, Allen Forte, in his book The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring, has boldly devel- oped the thesis that, The Rite of Spring is unified not so much by literally repeated formations, although there are a few instances of this, or by thematic relationships of a traditional kind, as by the underlying harmonic units, that is, by the unordered pc sets, considered quite apart from the attributes of specific occurrences. In this respect, The Rite of Spring re- sembles the extraordinary early atonal works of Schoenberg and his students, and, indeed, from our contemporary vantage point it has more in common with these works than with the later works of its composer - in particular, with the so-called neoclassical works, at least as we understand them now' (Forte 1978:28).

These two enterprises might seem to be complementary, if not actually opposed; the work of Morton, and Tarushkin, appears to strengthen the case for the work's structural, harmonic basis in the kind of modality found in its folk sources, while Forte's implication is that, in its most essential procedures and characteristics, Le Sacre is atonal. Nevertheless, the two approaches share a basic concern with the pitch-content of the



music, and analytical perspectives may be very different if, like Pierre Boulez, the analyst sees the music in relation to 'an essential simplification' in which rhythm achieves pre-eminence over pitch (see Boulez 1953/1968). But even the painstaking exploration of rhythmic hierarchies and symmetries which Boulez's analysis offers cannot avoid all consideration of the actual pitch-content of chords and cells. Nor does Boulez attempt to argue that there might be some sense in which the actual pitches are simply the arbitrary or accidental means for giving appropriate density and colour to more essential rhythmic structures. Whether or not Boulez's work on those rhythmic structures is definitive, it is with pitch that later analysts have been most consistently concerned.

Robert Craft has expressed guarded approval of Allen Forte's set- theoretic treatment of Le Sacre, and there is no necessary inconsistency between Craft's description of the composer's own avoidance of 'the vocabulary of musical theory' and his later claim that Forte has provided 'the long-awaited analytical means with which Stravinsky's harmonic system can be understood' (Craft 1978: 593). But with the discovery by Morton and Tarushkin of the composer's adaptation of particular melodies from Melodje Ludowe Litewskie (Cracow 1900), and also from Rimsky Korsa- kov's 1877 folksong collection, the issue of the basic nature of the musical substance deriving from that material, and its possible connection with any 'harmonic system', has become still more challenging to analysts.

It is because of the simple and explicit modality of this material, and the clear associations it seems to invite with some aspects of the Russian tradition in particular and musical nationalism in general, that most of Allen Forte's critics have objected to the discussion of something called 'harmonic organization' without reference to theories of modality, tonality, or some fusion of the two. And these critics have not been satisfied, given Forte's title, with his disclaimer that 'I will make no attempt to cover such features of the music as tonality, large-scale linear connections, register, or orchestration' (Forte 1978: 29). Richard Tarushkin comments, with reference to a passage from the Jeux des Cites Rivales, Fig. 60 (Ex. 3): 'Forte flatly asserts that "it is not structured in terms of functional harmony"' (p. 59). If, on the other hand, one looks at the passage from the point of view of functional harmony (and pretty simple functional harmony at that, al- lowing Stravinsky his fair share of double inflections and added sevenths), there is no problem. ... The shift of tonal centre, involving a progression to the submediant, is standard Russian fare' (Tarushkin 1979: 123). And

MUSIC ANALYSIS 1:1, 1982 39

ARNOLD WHITTALL

Robert Moevs, in a comment cited by Tarushkin, proceeds from an interpretation of what he calls Stravinsky's 'simplification of ... attributes central to the European tradition', in which harmony is reduced to 'near- static triads' (Moevs 1971: 92). Moevs instances a passage from the Cercles Mysterieux (Figs 91-3) whose 'static triadic foundation is given color or tension if not harmonic movement by the addition of nontriadic notes' (Moevs 1971: 94). In this instance, Moevs argues (p. 93), the necessary tension is produced primarily by the use of degrees of B major and B minor scales. In his later review of Forte's book, Moevs makes a bold, inclusive assertion: 'The Rite of Spring has a basic tonality: D minor' (Moevs 1980: 103). But he does not attempt to explain how the whole work may be related to the structural properties of the D minor scale and tonality. Indeed, he has already stated earlier in his review that 'perhaps ninety percent of this composition can be referred directly to a matrix of alternate half and whole-tone steps' (Moevs 1980: 100), in other words, to an octatonic formula more symmetrical than the minor scale.

Moevs's matrix comprises three collections, and the first collection (a) is itself an octatonic formulation which has the pentatonic and other modal properties necessary to enable the folk-derived material to 'harmonize' with the dense chromaticism of its context:

standard (a) 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 becomes (b) 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10

reducing to (c) 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 Moevs (p. 102) therefore answers the question, 'why do we accept the opening bassoon melody as consistent with what follows ?', with the argument that 'the "set" of this melody contains a tetrachord [0, 2, 3, 5] which is embedded in the octatonic collection [as 1, 3, 4, 6] and makes possible travel between the two types of modality.'

Of course, Moevs is offering a contribution to a subject which has been regularly discussed at least since Arthur Berger's 1963 article 'Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky', notably by Benjamin Boretz, in his consideration of 'collection-centric' music (Boretz 1972-3), and by Pieter van den Toorn. Toorn is in basic agreement with Moevs, though the de- tails work out rather differently. Toorn writes: 'I consider Le Sacre primarily octatonic (inferred singly or with reference to some form of octatonic-diatonic interpretation)' (Toorn 1977:61). And this interpretation is the result of what he terms 'a pervading vertical chromaticism' with respect to which 'we might view the patches of unimpaired diatonicism as subsidiary and diverging' (Toorn 1977:59).

Toorn's work might seem to intensify the basic disagreement between the pro- and anti-Forte persuasions about what is most essential to the structure of Le Sacre. Yet for all their obvious differences, both persuasions share a concern to identify those collections of pitch-classes which appear to contribute most decisively to the unity and coherence of



the composition. In preserving the traditional analytical emphasis on the search for wide-ranging unifying factors, both approaches highlight the extent to which Le Sacre can be seen validly in relation to specified norms of connectedness. For just as the octatonic scale is a means of establishing associations between notes originally regarded as - diatonically - in conflict, so the set-theoretic vocabulary places pitch-classes in the context of their global relations. My own object is to examine what, if anything, can be gained by complementing these interpretations with an approach cen- tering on the role of conflict, as represented most crucially by focused dissonance. But one further area of recent Sacre-studies remains to be mentioned first.

III Edward T. Cone has referred to Le Sacre as the comparatively rare case of a work including passages which create 'tonality' by means of 'an almost completely static tone or chord of reference' (Cone 1962: 43). The analyst may indeed discover an abundance of 'centres' in the work, but despite the occasional use of key signatures, for example in the passages discussed by Moevs and Tarushkin, there is little functional diatonicism to be found, and the 'centres', whether single notes or chords, do not have the explicit, tonality-defining qualities of pure triadic identity; they do not normally display membership of basic tonic- dominant- tonic progressions. The closest Stravinsky comes to the relatively large-scale deployment of at least some of the elements of such a progression is in the concluding Danse Sacrale. But the music from Fig. 181 to the end can only be regarded as expressing a fundamental I-V-I of D if we accept that such a structure can survive the 'extension', or even partial 'suspension', of pure diatonicism by substitution, supplementation and superimposition: and it would seem undeniable that the survival of a tonal background is seriously compromised if the extending processes affect the essential connectedness and continuity of the basic structural progression itself, applying to single notes or chords more readily than to complete progressions. Such notes or chords, which are frequently repeated, may indeed serve as the foundation for decorative 'extension': elements of the chord itself may be horizon- talized (as at Fig. 34 of Les Augures Printaniers - Ex. 4), or its repetitions may be connected at least in part by the use of neighbour notes, as in the treatment of the D minor triad in the lower voices of the Introduction to

Ex.4 1 mf

f Ameno f


ARNOLD WHITTALL

Ex.5

P P p poco crest mf

Part II (Ex. 5). This present essay cannot consider all the thorny issues created by attempts to apply Schenkerian terminology and method to Le Sacre. But it is necessary at this point to discuss briefly two very different accounts of the Introduction to Part I whose perspective originates in some sense in Schenker.

Stravinsky wrote the ballet's Introduction only after the composition of several of the later sections was well under way: sketches for the Introduc- tion itself have apparently not survived. Although it does not present the composer's first thematic ideas for the work, however, this music has re- ceived particularly close attention from analysts concerned to establish what type or degree of tonality the work as a whole may possess. In the first six bars (Ex. 6) we find the tension between a particular modality (the

Ex.6 LentoJ =50 3 5 '3 --

a placere 7Cl: poco accel.

bassoon melody) and a focused total chromaticism presented in a strikingly concentrated form. I have already referred to Robert Moevs's argument for the modal consistency of melody and accompaniment, and nothing he says rules out the possibility that 'travel between the two types of modality' may establish a dissonant rather than a consonant norm. And Roy Travis has actually argued for the presence of what he eventually came to term a 'dissonant tonic sonority', comprising Ab, Db and Ch as at Fig. 1 (Travis 1959). Travis uses the term 'dissonant' simply to underline the obvious point that his chosen chords are not major or minor triads. But the entire quality of his argument is to assume a structurally signifi-

42 MUSIC ANALYSIS 1: 1, 1982


cant norm which is not significant primarily through the distinctions the music makes between consonance and dissonance. Indeed, Travis might well consider that the very existence of dissonant tonic sonorities invali- dates attempts to distinguish consonance from dissonance. In the words of a more recent commentator, 'there is no triad to be prolonged: thus, some contextually derived associative sonority must take its place. The concepts of consonance and dissonance, as technically defined, therefore cannot exist, nor can, strictly speaking, the notions of passing and neighbor notes where these were dissonant events. Their attendant constraints, which provided motion and delays, must be compensated for by other kinds of embellishing and traversing motions' (Laufer 1981: 161). Of course, the stricter the Schenkerian, the more futile such issues will seem. For Adele T. Katz, in her discussion of the opening of Le Sacre, 'the top-voice motion is completely independent of the two lower voices, and the space they outline from C# and G# to their octave below': and she asks, 'what does this motion within two totally unrelated chords signify ?' The answer, as Forte for one might put it, is that it signifies a 'harmonic system' best understood in terms of the relations between unordered pc sets. These reveal that the first 'cadential harmony' - significantly different from Travis's 'dissonant sonority' - which is established in the three bars from Fig. 2 (Ex. 7a), offers a pc set, 4-16 [0, 1, 5, 7] which 'subsequently assumes an important role elsewhere, for instance, as the ostinato figure in the Introduction to Part II (Ex. 7b) ... and, even more remarkably, as the last chord in the entire work' (Forte 1978: 31 - see Ex. 7c). Forte thereby establishes a particular connection between the beginning and end of the work which is independent of 'tonal' or 'tonic' qualities. The contrast between the two 'persuasions' could scarcely be greater.

Ex 7b Ex. 7b Ex. 7c 3 bars after6 3 bars after 21

0157

The proposal to argue that the music is most essentially concerned with conflict and dissonance, and that its comprehension therefore depends on the concepts of consonance and dissonance being preserved, might nevertheless seem to be a good deal closer to the views of Katz, or of Travis, than of Forte. Such may indeed one day prove to be the case. But so far Travis and those who think like him would seem to have taken rather too much for granted in their ambitious attempts to fuse a concept of essential dissonance with voice-leading processes pertaining to orthodox tonal structures. Were what I call 'focused dissonances' to be in every case


ARNOLD WHITTALL

identical with Travis's dissonant tonic sonorities there would still be the necessity - which Travis himself has not met - of identifying the precise nature and number of such sonorities in the work, and the precise nature of the voice-leading techniques which prolong and integrate them. But I am not able to accept that my focused dissonances are subject to such techniques: to be more precise, that they are part of coherent and connected harmonic progressions, which link a dissonant tonic sonority to a dissonant dominant sonority, and resolve back to the dissonant tonic sonority. To make sense, such sonorities must contain the elements of tonic and dominant triads, and therefore serve in the unfolding of a genuinely extended tonality. The difference between 'focused dissonances' and 'dissonant tonic sonorities' is therefore far from trivial.

Roy Travis is quite right to describe the A b/D /C of the Introduction to Part I as dissonant: less so to suggest that its component pitches are 'prolonged' by downward octave transfer in respect of the Ab and Db, and by a thirds progression descending to A from Cb. The sonority is scarcely the 'tonic' of a larger, complete progression, has none of the properties of an 'extended' tonic, and therefore what in a truly tonal context might be construed as prolongation (reflecting an understanding of consonant/dissonant relations deriving from strict counterpoint) is perhaps better de- scribed more neutrally as the extension and reinforcement of dissonant harmonic elements, or chords. It is less a matter of 'specific foreground events' (Schenker) than of 'the attributes of specific occurrences' (Forte). In fact, it is not difficult to assert that the most significant focused dissonances in Le Sacre are those which have absorbed a degree of tonal content (being based on a fifth, or built around a triad) into their dissonant essence. It would therefore be possible to compose a description of the work in terms of relatively neutral and relatively allusive points of closure, and to discuss sections or segments in respect of whether or not they tend to focus on a single reiterated dissonance, as is common, or - as at the start - on a dissonance which involves a degree of motion and transformation within itself.

The generally short span of the extensions of repeated notes and dissonant chords in Le Sacre is often seen as evidence of Stravinsky's emphasis on cellular rhythmic processes. But it could equally well represent his ap- preciation of the fact that dissonances lack the capacity for substantial 'prolongation', since their possible functional significance within a fully layered harmonic hierarchy is so difficult to define. All major and minor consonances would in a sense be the same major or minor consonances - 'spelling' apart - were they not capable of being functionally differen- tiated. But structural differentiation of dissonance in the absence of consonance may only be possible if degrees of prominence are very strongly asserted by contrasts between the repetition or sustaining of certain chords and their 'ornamental' extension. The difference between basic dissonant chords and their extensions will be largely textural and rhythmic, though



the occasional horizontalization and neighbour-note motion, as indicated above, may suggest connections with traditional tonal techniques.

It is problems of this sort which, in the case of atonal music, have led to analyses more motivic than chordal. The set-theoretic initiative has, however, had the effect of reopening the question of linear relations as aspects of different levels of compositional significance (if only through registral connections not immediately identified by segmentation). But while Le Sacre makes much use of registral 'integrity', its compositional com- parability with those works of Schoenberg and his students to which Forte refers - at any level beyond that of the identification of unordered pc sets - is surely problematic. While 'nationalistically' rather than 'neo- classically' allusive as far as its thematic material goes, it challenges the ear with other allusions - to fifth relations, triads, diatonic harmony, focused consonance and dissonance, allusions that are used dramatically, for immediate effect, rather than symphonically, for their contribution to overall coherence.

At first sight, the issue of focused dissonance may seem relatively insig- nificant, a mere evasion of more important matters. One may accept the distinction between the prevailing dissonance of Les Augures Printaniers from Fig. 13 to Fig. 28, and the relative consonance of the bars after Fig. 28. Similarly, it can be confidently claimed that there is a relatively low level of dissonance in the Rondes Printanieres between Fig. 48 and Fig. 53, compared with what follows. And it is precisely the fact that these movements offer the most extended examples of consonance in the ballet which seems to confirm that the 'norm' for the work as a whole is dissonant, not consonant. We may therefore be tempted to argue that, under such circumstances of prevailing, emancipated dissonance, we hear a 'norm', an entity of fundamental structural significance, rather than something - called a dissonance - which nevertheless does not function as a dissonance functions in tonal music.

It is certainly not my intention to claim that the prevailing dissonances of the work can only be perceived as such if implied, underlying yet absent consonances are assumed. For example, it might be argued that the final chord of the work (see Ex. 7c) can be defined as dissonant only if it is seen and heard as an altered D minor (or major) triad. This seems to me a crucial oversimplification. The 'norm' of Le Sacre is not one in which predominant dissonances imply unheard consonant resolutions - and it follows that such 'imagined' resolutions are unnecessary. The norm is one in which the distinction between consonance and dissonance is preserved - indeed, it is vital - but the conventions of structural significance which attach to these concepts in tonal music no longer apply. Simply because consonance is relatively incidental, it cannot automatically be given the decisive role of providing a structural background to which the predominant surface dissonances relate. The relationship between the two forces is therefore not one of mutual tolerance. There is a sense of conflict, of dis-


ARNOLD WHITTALL

ruption, and whether (as the analytical model deriving from political economy proposes) that conflict is contained by rules seems highly doubtful. The most convincing case for the presence of coherent unifying relations and recurrences throughout Le Sacre is that proposed by Allen Forte. But if the 'attributes of specific occurrences' are brought into play, it again become evident that the unordered pc sets are compositionally deployed as dissonances of strikingly diverse character.

A similar point can be made with respect to Pieter van den Toorn's identification of a 'primarily octatonic' structure. Even at a point like the opening of the Jeu du Rapt (Fig. 37), where the music is 'diatonic' to the octatonic scale on C, the effect surely depends on the perception of dissonance, and a dissonance relative to the music which precedes it from Fig. 31 of Les Augures Printaniers, rather than to any unheard C major triadic background for the Jeu du Rapt itself. The effect is achieved entirely by relations within the work itself. The 'surface' is therefore the most significant 'substance'.

There is of course no mistaking the particular, dissonant nature of the musical ideas which occur in the recently published preliminary sketch for Le Sacre (Ex. 2). What Robert Craft calls 'the motto chord of the entire work' is a dissonant representation of conflict whose properties, in affect- ing so many large- and small-scale factors, ensure at least a coherence born of consistency. The most intriguing thing about this preliminary material is that it shows the Eb dominant seventh supported by A - not E or Fb - and resolving by half-step motion to become a 'dominant eleventh' of D. Here, apparently, is further evidence of the kind which those who argue that the work has as underlying tonality of D minor are looking for - and there is more such evidence in the published sketches for Part II, particularly of the Danse Sacrale. But however strongly such tonal features seem to some ears to remain present, even if only in an 'underlying' capacity, they are normally submerged in dissonance. The sequence of pitch centres, discussed below, is not expressed through 'underlying' tonality, but through actual dissonance, even though the chords, like the single notes, inevitably have tonal associations.

The sketches for Les Augures Printaniers published in 1969 (Ex. la & b) show that what begins as a skeletal A-D-Bb-Eb sonority is transformed as the ostinato character of the material becomes clearer, through a C major/Ab dominant - seventh combination to the E major/Ab dominant seventh of the chord which actually begins the movement (Ex. lc). The progress away from favouring D as pitch centre is clear. But the associ- ation of Eb and C, so crucial to Part I of the ballet, is outlined, and overall, of course, this relationship, or opposition, matters more than that between Eb and E, or Ab and E.

It is with respect to Eb that a technique of generating conflict with diatonicism from within can be observed in Part I of Le Sacre. The most extended diatonic episode in Part I occurs in the Rondes Printanieres, from



Fig. 49, where the Eb minor mode is disturbed only in passing (in 25 bars at crotchet = 80) by melodic G s, and these occur only when Gb is absent from the accompaniment. But there is no progression here: merely contrapuntal protraction of Eb in the lowest line, and either F or Bb above. In Le Sacre, this means that the stage is set for calculated disintegration: such purity cannot be allowed to survive. With the sudden expansion of register and intensification of dynamic at Fig. 53, the outer voices remain grimly faithful to the diatonic collection for a few bars more. But in the centre of the texture all five non-diatonic notes are generated - D? from Db, Cb from C?, Fb from F?, and A? and G? from B flat. And the section ends one bar before Fig. 54 when the bass line itself is so disoriented that it misses its footing and cadences on Fb instead of EL:

Ex.8

sff

However incidental it may be, given the basically dissonant forces at work in Le Sacre, such a process of generating conflict with diatonicism from within also occurs earlier in part of the first movement which Stra- vinsky sketched, Les Augures Printaniers. At Fig. 28 the same Eb minor mode which operates in Rondes Printanieres is established, and is likewise subject to extension without progression. Then, at Fig. 30, four of the five chromatic notes occur in rapid succession, and the fifth chromatic note - A M - follows three bars later. It is the increasing emphasis on this A in the top voice that appears to motivate the harmonic shift at Fig. 31, from a focus on Eb to focus on C (Ex. 9).

It is typical of the stucture of Part I of the ballet that C is never as firmly rooted as Eb. C is more subject to conflicting chromatic degrees, both in the Jeu du Rapt, and in the concluding Danse de la Terre, where the Eb/C opposition is brought brilliantly into focus as the music hustles to its cut-off point. If it is strongly felt that the C major triad is the tonal centre throughout this section (from two henars after Fig. 72), it will be equally clear that Ein, as well as F and the other non-diatonic elements

MUSIChe top ANALYSI 1:1, 1982 47

___._J __oted as _% .Cismrsujctocnlcighoaicdre,

ARNOLD WHITTALL

Ex. 109

of the whole-tone scale on C, are discordant with that centre. And the extreme tension of the ending - given the absence of purely rhythmic complexity - stems more from superimposition of the unrelated than from integration of the diverse. To adopt Edward T. Cone's terms, the strata are not so much synthesized as superimposed, however much they are texturally interwoven (see Cone 1962/1968), and it is difficult to feel that the divergent components of the texture are subsumed into a higher unity which is itself of positive structural significance.

In Part II, the sense of significant dissonance is intensified, for although there are fewer suggestions of triadic diatonicism than in Part I, the focused harmonies often invite discussion in terms of fifth-relations. Part II begins with a texture in which a sustained D minor triad is embedded in oscillations which employ the pitch-classes of the minor triads on either side - C#, E, G#: D#, F ,

A.. Here one may indeed sense a consistently

decorative role for dissonance, but it coexists with the fundamental con-



sonance of the D minor triad, and does not resolve into that triad, in order to allow it an independent structural function. Nevertheless, as indicated earlier, the role of the pitch-classes D, A and certain of their triadic associ- ates is such that a sense of focus is inescapable as Part II proceeds. A is the focus for the Glorification de l'Elue. Indeed, some may feel able to claim that this entire movement offers an extended A major tonality with 'Bb minor' in the central subsection as 'substitute dominant' (E? being in any case a constant presence). But the dissonant formulations which pre- vent pure diatonic harmony emerging (and orthodox voice-leading oc- curring) are surely the forces which ensure that this focused, if atonal, music resourcefully expresses recurrent and decorated dissonance. This does not abolish all connection between the A of the movement and the stressed D's and A's of the remainder of the composition. Their associations are unmistakable, and nowhere is the tension between possible diatonic clarification and persistent dissonant focus greater than in these final movements. The concluding Danse Sacrale highlights the issue in a particularly powerful way by progressing from bass emphasis on D at the outset to bass emphasis on A at the start of the final section at Fig. 186. The A then persists until Fig. 210, four bars before the final chord combines D's and A's with E's and G's.

The bass ostinato from Fig. 186 uses only A and C, but a texture of greater and greater density gradually accumulates above. After Fig. 192 the most essential dissonance is provided by the constant Bb minor triad, and all the other elements of the linear process (the outline of the C major triad at the top of the texture, the descent from C to G of the chords which cut across the ostinato) reinforce the fact that neither the Bb minor nor the A minor components achieve the status of consonance.

The crux is at Fig. 201, from which the bass describes a fragmented but decisive motion from A down to D. At the very top the C major arpeggia- tion - now probably more noise than pitch - reaches through F to G and through G? to A. And although the conflicting action of the triadic amal- gam in the inner parts is withdrawn, thus strengthening the sense of 'dominant preparation', the last dissonant chord seems more the parody of a resolution, an emphatic confirmation of disintegration. It offers the D, E, G?, A collection not as an affirmation of a struggle survived, but as an ironic and ultimately destructive gesture. One could even argue that, at last, it is the effect, and not the pitches, which matters.

IV There have been important and far-reaching developments in music theory during the decades since Le Sacre du Printemps was composed. But they have tended to strengthen the sense of contrast between tonal structures, in which the regulation of unessential dissonance by essential con-


ARNOLD WHITTALL

sonance is fundamental, and a music in which the consonance /dissonance distinction no longer obtains. A composition in which this distinction sur- vives the exchange of essential and unessential roles between consonance and dissonance therefore remains a particular challenge. Analysis has still to reveal if - or how - the dissonances themselves function in Le Sacre, beyond being the basis for local extension. I have argued that, whether one's starting point is Forte's tables of set-complexes, Toorn's octatonic- diatonic interpenetration, Tarushkin's double inflections and added sevenths, Travis's dissonant tonic sonority, or Katz's 'totally unrelated' chords, what is most significant is the existence and dominance of discords. As a portrait of human savagery, the tragic power of Le Sacre may depend precisely on the freedom for conflict to be expressed by the most immediate and effective means. And it may indeed be the case that the 'rules' of the game can only be discovered if the discords are 'translated' into some other medium, in which they can be examined without the psychological burden of their true character and quality. For Le Sacre remains an explosive work, and analysis may be impossible unless the score is first defused.

For many, the idea of a violent music for a violent age is highly appropriate. From Constant Lambert's description of Le Sacre as 'a work which was merely the logical outcome of a barbaric outlook applied to the technique of impressionism' (Lambert 1966: 34) to Adorno's feverish vision of a music which exists 'to embody the idea that there is no longer any life' (Adorno 1973: 181) the analogies between Stravinsky's subject-matter, style and symbolism, have tripped all too easily from a multitude of critical tongues. So now is probably as good a time as any to make analysis of the work more difficult. Certainly my own object has not been to offer an analysis, or even propose a technique. It has been to consider the nature of analysis, and to examine what problems are created for analysis by the dominating presence of an inconvenient but inescapable psychological, aesthetic, element - dissonance of a largely 'non-functional' type. Such an inversion of true tonal structuring does indeed seem in the strictest sense negative, an assault rather than a rejection, radicalism of a distinctively primitive kind. When it is allied to a comparable 'inversion' in the rhythmic sphere, then the affront to tradition is even greater: dissonances are not merely given the prominence previously assigned to consonances, but they are grouped in patterns, in cells, which undermine the traditional phrase-building functions of regular succession and accentuation.

In our search for a single, comprehensive technical statement about Le Sacre we may even choose to fall back on the assertion that the most basic structural element in the work is icl (semitone), and its various projec- tions, vertical and horizontal, immediate and longer-term. But the nature of the music would still depend on this structural feature being perceived as a dissonance. It is not a substitute or surrogate for the octave or unison, and yet it retains the quality of an entity whose consonant resolution



would indeed be the octave or unison. Le Sacre may be one of the most crucially radical modern masterpieces, but it needs the perspective of tradition for its nature as well as its effect to be comprehended. Dissonance may indeed be emancipated in that it is no longer subject to rules re- quiring and prescribing preparation and resolution. But the effect of that emancipation within a work where consonances remain to be heard from time to time is an enhancement of dissonance as a structural focus, and not an elimination, an emasculation of that focal role, with dissonances being transformed into 'polychords', or some such neutral construct. Of course, it follows that it will always be possible to segment Stravinsky's dissonances by separating out their consonant or diatonic components. But analysis should surely be more closely concerned with the ways in which the complete dissonances themselves function, as a means of establishing whether conflict is indeed contained by rules.

When Stravinsky spoke in The Poetics of Music of the 'gains in true solidity' which 'music ... that does not succumb to the seductions of variety' might possess, it might seem that Le Sacre would be the very last work which he could have had in mind for criticism (Stravinsky 1977: 32). It would certainly be extravagant to claim that the achievement of Le Sacre lies precisely in the wholeheartedness with which it succumbs to the seductions of variety. But Elliott Carter's reservations about neo- classicism, and its tendency to appear 'too oblique and resigned' in face of the endemic violence of the modern world, indicate the essence of the issue (Edwards 1971: 61). Stravinsky's neo-classical works are not devoid of all tension and excitement. But they do not follow on from Le Sacre with quite the ease and inevitability which is sometimes assumed.

The analytical challenge of Le Sacre itself may indeed not be greatly affected by exercises in comparative terminology. But, as a technical term, 'dissonance' is a description which enshrines an interpretation. What we call something (and why) does affect, and even determine, those preliminary assumptions and expectations from which analysis stems, and rep- resents an understanding which lies behind the analytical decisions which follow. In so far as focused dissonances override (but do not eliminate) their absorbed tonal and triadic segments, they drive the music into a peculiarly intense state of explosive energy. It is for this reason - this vital connection between character, texture, structure - that the recognition and interpretation of focused dissonance seems to be more essential with respect to Le Sacre than arguments about underlying tonality or explicit atonality: and these dissonances are, for the purposes of analysis, ultimately irreducible.

This essay began by raising - then abandoning - the question of whether there was any illumination to be gained from viewing music analysis as part of a portmanteau 'human science'. The most attractive reason for doing so might well be nothing to do with the achievements of those sciences, but with their limitations. Hayden White sees the primary concern


ARNOLD WHITTALL

of Foucault's The Order of Things as 'the use and abuse of "authority" in the "human sciences" .... Foucault wishes to show that the disciplines which deal with man as a social and cultural being are as little "scientific" as those conceptions of the "body" which have successively informed me- dical practice from the sixteenth century to our own day' (White 1979: 98). As long as music can be considered in relation to the 'absolutes' of analytically defined tonality or atonality, we might feel satisfied that substantial progress towards a truly scientific and authoritative interpretation of all music has been made. But the remarkable recent progress in these areas should not obscure the difficulties which remain. The composer's creative freedom still presents analysis with its greatest intellectual challenge.

REFERENCES Adorno, T. W., (trans. A. G. Mitchell and W. V. Bloomster), Philosophy of

Modern Music. London: Sheen and Ward, 1973. Berger, Arthur, 'Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky'. First published

in Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1963, pp. 11-42. Reprinted in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky, ed. B. Boretz and Edward T. Cone, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 123-55.

Boretz, Benjamin, 'Meta-Variations, Part IV: Analytic Fallout', PNM, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1972, pp. 146-223; and Vol. 11, No. 2, 1973, pp. 156-203.

Boulez, Pierre, 'Stravinsky Demeure'. First published in Musique Russe, I, Paris 1953. Translated by Herbert Weinstock as 'Stravinsky Remains' in Notes of an Apprenticeship, New York: Knopf, 1968, pp. 72-145.

Boulez, Pierre, Conversations with Celestin Deliege. London: Eulenberg, 1976. Cone, Edward T., 'Analysis Today' in Problems of Modern Music, ed. P. H. Lang,

New York: Norton, 1962, pp. 34-50. Cone, Edward T., 'Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method'. First published in

PNM, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1962, pp. 18-26. Reprinted in Perspectives on Schoen- berg and Stravinsky, pp. 156-164.

Craft, Robert, 'Genesis of a Masterpiece' and 'Commentary to the Sketches' in Igor Stravinsky. The Rite of Spring. Sketches 1911-13, Boosey and Hawkes, 1969.

Edwards, Allen, Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds. A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: Norton, 1971.

Forte, Allen, The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring. New York: Yale University Press, 1978.

Foucault, Michel, (trans. Alan Sheridan), The Order of Things. London: Tavi- stock Publications, 1970.

Katz, Adele T., Challenge to Musical Tradition: A New Concept of Tonality. New York: Knopf, 1945; Da Capo, 1972.



Kerman, Joseph, 'How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out', Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, Winter 1980, pp. 311-31.

Lambert, Constant, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline. London: Faber and Faber, 1966 (third edition).

Laufer, Edward, review of Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, in Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 3, 1981, pp. 158-84.

Moevs, Robert, 'Mannerism and Stylistic Consistency in Stravinsky', PNM, Vol. 9, No. 2; and Vol. 10, No. 1, 1971, pp. 92-103.

Moevs, Robert, review of Forte 1978 in Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 1980, pp. 97-107.

Morton, Lawrence, 'Footnote to Stravinsky studies: Le Sacre du Printemps', Tempo, No. 128, March 1979, pp. 9-16.

Schoenberg, Arnold, 'Opinion or Insight ?' (1926), in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, London: Faber and Faber, 1975.

Sheridan, Alan, Michel Foucault. The Will to Truth. London: Tavistock Pub- lications, 1980.

Smith, Frederick J., The Experiencing of Musical Sound: Prelude to a Phenomen- ology of Music. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979.

Stravinsky, Igor, (trans. A. Knoedel and I. Dahl), Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1977 (fourth edition).

Stravinsky, Igor and Craft, Robert, Expositions and Developments. London: Faber and Faber, 1962.

Stravinsky, Vera and Craft, Robert, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Tarushkin, Richard, review of Forte 1978 in Current Musicology, No. 28, 1979, pp. 114-29.

Tarushkin, Richard, 'Russian Folk Melodies in The Rite of Spring', Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 32, No. 3, Fall 1980, pp. 501-43.

Toorn, Pieter van den, 'Some characteristics of Stravinsky's diatonic music'. Part One, PNM, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1975, pp. 104-38; Part Two, PNM, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1977, pp. 58-95.

Travis, Roy, 'Towards a New Concept of Tonality?', JM T, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1959, pp. 257-84.

White, Hayden, 'Michel Foucault' in Structuralism and Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida, ed. John Sturrock, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.


Article Contentsp. 33p. 34p. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52p. 53

Issue Table of ContentsMusic Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Mar., 1982), pp. 1-116Front Matter [pp. 1-2]Editorial [pp. 3-8]Epilogue/Prologue: Criticism and Analysis [pp. 9-31]Music Analysis as Human Science? 'Le Sacre du Printemps' in Theory and Practice [pp. 33-53]A Disguised Reminiscence in the First Movement of Mozart's G Minor Symphony [pp. 55-71]Analysis and Performance: Webern's Concerto Op.24/II [pp. 73-99]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 101-107]Review: untitled [pp. 108-112]Organicist Meditations [pp. 112-116]

Back Matter

A. Whittall -Music Analysis as Human Science

Documents

Transcript of A. Whittall -Music Analysis as Human Science