c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullc-bo-9781139025966-a-041 121

ambridge Histories Online

httpuniversitypublishingonlineorgcambridgehistories

The Cambridge History of Musical Performance

Edited by Colin Lawson Robin Stowell

Book DOI httpdxdoiorg101017CHOL9780521896115

Online ISBN 9781139025966

Hardback ISBN 9780521896115

Chapter

30 - Instrumental performance in the twentieth century and beyond pp

778-797

Chapter DOI httpdxdoiorg101017CHOL9780521896115031

Cambridge University Press

7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


3 0

Instrumental performance in the twentieth

century and beyond

R O G E R H E A T O N

Modernism has released its icy grip During the latter decades of the twentieth

century composers seemed able again to breathe Stefan Georgersquos lsquoLuft von

anderem Planetenrsquo (lsquo Air of another planet rsquo) the opening soprano line of the last

movement of Schoenbergrsquos Second Quartet (1908) an iconic phrase emblem-atic of a newly extended or saturated chromaticism These revolutionary

beginnings of atonality (a negative term not favoured by Schoenberg) were

hastened by the need to broaden the compositional palette expressing and

exploring a newly liberated emotional inner life As Schoenberg memorably

writes in his 1047297rst letter to Kandinsky lsquoart belongs to the unconscious One must

express oneself Express oneself directly Not onersquos taste or onersquos upbringing or

onersquos intelligence knowledge or skill Not all these acquired characteristics but

what is inborn instinctiversquo1

Kandinsky rsquo

s initial letter to Schoenberg after hearing his music in 19112 which provoked the composer rsquos enthusiastic

response in a sense clinches the movement towards expressionism lsquoIn your

works you have realised what I albeit in uncertain form have so greatly

longed for in music The independent progress through their own destinies

the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly

what I am trying to 1047297nd in my paintingsrsquo3 And so that particular strand of the

complex story begins

The neat but arbitrary use of 1900 as the starting point for many twentieth-

century music histories no longer seems to obtain Invoking Dahlhaus the

Romantic nineteenth century might be seen to end with the death of Wagner

and the twentieth to start with the early modern period in German and Austrian

music Mahler Wolf Zemlinsky early Strauss and tonal Schoenberg straddling

the two centuries up to the beginnings of atonality in 1908 and perhaps further

to the end of the Great War As Dahlhaus suggests this period might even end as

1 J Hahl-Koch (ed) Arnold SchoenbergndashWassily Kandinsky Letters Pictures and Documents trans JCCrawford London Faber 1984 p 23 Letter dated 24 January 19112 Besides the Second Quartet the Munich concert (January 1911) also included the Drei KlavierstuumlckeOp 11 the First Quartet Op 7 and a group of 1047297ve early songs including Erwartung3 Arnold SchoenbergndashWassily Kandinsky p 21 Letter dated 18 January 1911

[778]

Cambridge Histories Online copy Cambridge University Press 2012

Downloaded from Cambridge Histories Online by IP 1469525317 on Mon Sep 21 053915 BST 2015httpdxdoiorg101017CHOL9780521896115031


7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


late as 1920 as the lsquorevolution in musical technique around 1910 was succeeded

by a profound transformation of aesthetic outlook around 1920rsquo4 here he is

looking to Stravinsky and the twelve-tone Schoenberg For the subject of this

chapter performance practice and instrumental exploitation the twentieth

century is not lsquolongrsquo but I would suggest quite short covering the mid-century from the 1950s to the late 1980s5

Much of this periodrsquos instrumental experimentation and usage the develop-

ment of so-called lsquoextendedrsquo techniques is embedded in modernism and its

language of free atonality The very life of these lsquonew rsquo sounds seems to depend

on the freedom begun by Schoenbergrsquos emancipation of dissonance a modernist

journey continuing through the familiar canonic tradition of post-serial com-

posers associated with the Darmstadt summer courses electronic music studios

and American campuses which reaches its peak during the 1980s with theconsiderable achievements of 1047297gures such as Ferneyhough and Carter This

journey was aided by the politics of modern music a politics of both the

lsquoindustry rsquo and the critics with their predilection for complexity and opaqueness

the two overriding prerequisites with which the cultural elite often legitimise

their artists and their art A review of Reichrsquos The Desert Music typi1047297es the view

Take for instance an unremarkable melodic phrase such as might have been

served as an accompanying 1047297gure in a nineteenth-century ballet score Hardly

has it appeared quite early in The Desert Music than it is subsumed into acharacteristic Reich pattern Yet before it has been fully ingested it 1047298eetingly

evokes another world The damage has been done Heard in a non-Reichian

context its banality is painfully evident These reminiscences are fatal They

confront Reichrsquos music with idioms more powerful than his own6

Conductors festival directors radio controllers and most critics promoted and

supported the modernist mission7 often to the detriment of other both more and

less radical musics (William Glock rsquos tenure at the BBC 1959ndash73 is an example)

Cage might have been tolerated even revered as a philosopher and inventor

who happened to use music as his medium but much else such as text pieces or

Alvin Lucier rsquos 1970 tape loop piece I am sitting in a room the beginnings of

4 C Dahlhaus trans J B Robinson Nineteenth-Century Music Berkeley University of California Press1989 p 3355 Perhaps 1990 is good place to stop with Ferneyhoughrsquos Fourth String Quartet with soprano a work commissioned as a companion piece for Schoenbergrsquos Second Quartet6 P Heyworth Observer 4 August 19857 There are of course notable exceptions including among the critics composer Tom Johnson writingin the New York Village Voice (1971ndash82) Keith Potter writing in his own journal Contact from the 1970s tothe 1990s and for the Independent British daily and Michael Nyman writing in the British weekly magazines and in Tempo during the 1960s and 1970s Among radio producers the composer Ernst

Albrecht Stiebler during his time at Hessischer Rundfunk (1969ndash95) produced prize-winning programmesof music by Alvin Curran and Walter Zimmermann Cage Wolff Feldman Radulescu and others

Instrumental performance in the twentieth century and beyond 779




7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


minimalism the Duchamp-inspired objet trouveacute composers and the rest was seen

by this elite as peripheral and unmusical The modernist supportersrsquo passionate

zealous campaigns and polemics enforced the tradition8 but this is music where

since the early 1990s one has sensed the end of the road

Except of course to return to Georgersquos lsquoLuft rsquo this is only part of the storythere are important parallel histories of experimental radical endeavour neo-

conservative symphonic work and those quasi-serialists who eventually

jumped the good ship Darmstadt wanting to be freed from purely atonal

functions Ligeti for example Signi1047297cant opera composers and symphonists

just to mention only a few of the lesser-known British ones such as Malcolm

Arnold Robert Simpson William Alwyn and Alun Hoddinott demonstrate a

rich body of work which is even now only being rediscovered and recorded

But the radical experimental movement seemed like a sideshow for theinitiated only a ghetto deafened by the institutionalised big guns of fully

notated atonality As fashions change it has taken centre stage in current

music-making in a number of guises most signi1047297cantly now in the form of

tonal post-minimalism This radicalism has a tradition with its beginnings in

the eccentricities of Ives and Satie

Satie is of pivotal importance to European experimental composers British

in particular as are such determinedly non-canonical 1047297gures as Lord Berners

Percy Grainger and others musicians as in1047298

uential though perhaps lessdirectly so as Cage The recent music of Bryars Hobbs and Skempton9

who started as text composers profoundly in1047298uenced by the visual arts and

who were founding members of the Scratch Orchestra and the Portsmouth

Sinfonia does not eschew functional diatonic harmony but rather embel-

lishes complements and subverts The American in1047298uence on European

experimental music is important (Bryars for example worked with Cage

on preparing HPSCHD (1967 ndash9) and with Reichrsquos group as a pianist) and the

1950s and 1960s particularly is the period most associated with indetermi-

nacy and the work of the lsquoNew York Schoolrsquo Earle Brown John Cage

Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff Pieces from this period still enjoy a

performance life and recordings frequently appear as younger generations of

performers discover this material How do they approach it There are

documentary recordings of course but as with performing any music from

8 Boulez is perhaps the most notable campaigner but one should not overlook his dogmatism and musicalnarrow-mindedness Other in1047298uential 1047297gures include the musicologist Harry Halbreich who called theemerging composers of the German lsquonew simplicity rsquo during the 1980s (including Hans-Christian vonDadelson and Wolfgang von Schweinitz) the lsquonew simpletonsrsquo9 John White and Dave Smith are also part of this group with a large body of music for solo piano Pianist John Tilbury has coined the label lsquoNew English Piano Schoolrsquo For a discussion see S E Walker lsquoThe new English keyboard school a second ldquogolden agerdquo rsquo Leonardo Music Journal 11 (2001) 17 ndash23

780 R O G E R H E A T O N




7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


the past the player addresses the material with a sense of history speci1047297cally a

performance practice based on the tradition in which the music resides

Feldmanrsquos Projections II (1951) is one of his 1047297rst graph pieces with the

instrumentsrsquo ranges divided into high middle and low with rhythm dynamics

(all generally very quiet) and performance techniques such as pizzicato notatedThe two Intersections (1951ndash3) pieces for orchestra go a step further with only

register given and everything else to be chosen freely Feldman writes that

the intention here is to lsquoproject sounds into time free from compositional

rhetoric that had no place herersquo10 But he soon discarded graphic notation

because lsquoI began to discover its most important 1047298aw I was not only allowing

the sounds to be free ndash I was also liberating the performers I had never thought

of the graph as an art of improvisation but more as a totally abstract sonic

adventurersquo11

Cage remarked of Feldmanrsquos later fully notated music as repre-

senting Feldman lsquohimself playing his graph musicrsquo12 There is certainly an

element of fuzzy lsquodissonancersquo between compositional intention and what play-

ers can produce in this music It is possible to follow the letter of these graphic

scores while still allowing for a sound world inappropriate to the style and the

composer rsquos intentions The problem is of players who might respond with a

tonal or at least tonally reminiscent vocabulary which con1047298icts with the

dissonant language of the modernist tradition in which these pieces exist

lsquo

allowing the sounds to be freersquo

rejects their rearrangement into musically meaningful (consonant) constellations13

10 B H Friedman Give my Regards to Eighth Street Collected Writings of Morton Feldman Cambridge MAExact Change 2000 p 611 Ibid p 612 As quoted in M Nyman Experimental Music Cage and Beyond 2nd edn Cambridge University Press1999 p 5313 Dave Smith recounts the storyof Feldmanbeing extremely cross at a performance in Munich of Wolff rsquos

Burdocks by the Scratch Orchestra Smithrsquos email to me (30 March 2009) is worth quoting almost in fulllsquoThe Scratch Orchestra concert was at Munich radio station on 31st August 1972 The number ldquo7 rdquoappeared in section 5 of Burdocks This was the opening section (fairly extended) in this particular perform-

ance The banjo player was Carole Finer She played more than one folksong (the second was a phrase fromldquoClementinerdquo) with appreciable gaps in between Shortly after the third began Feldman after letting forthan extended ldquoOhhhhrdquo got to his feet and announced ldquoI hope everyone here understands that this hasnothing (at all) to do with Christian Wolff rdquo He ranted on for a couple of sentences Richard Ascough oneof the members of the Scratch had a few words with Cage Feldman and Tudor after the concert They hadtaken exception to a number of things including the folksongs Cage said that the number 7 indicated 7 sounds Ascough pointed out that there was nothing in the score to indicate that They went through thescore but couldnrsquot 1047297nd it Tudor reckoned there was another page which explained the symbols it wasnrsquot inany score which the Scratch orchestra had Tudor was wrong There are ldquomiscellaneous instructionsrdquo onthe title page which brie1047298y explain the usual Wolff notations but nothing to explain a number 7 Cage alsotook exception to Bernard Kelly rsquos interpretation of Section 10 for which the instructions are ldquoFlying andpossibly crawling or sitting stillrdquo (no explanation given) Bernard recited a poem which he had written

Ascough pointed out that in the Scratch Orchestra performance of Burdocks in London earlier in the year Sue Gittins had performed a recitation for Section 10 [and] had earned no objection from Wol ff whoattended both rehearsal and performance The Americans were unrepentant The performance wasldquobadrdquo was not in the spirit of Christian Wolff and Tilbury and Cardew had ldquobetrayed their specialrelationship with Christian Wolff rdquorsquo





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


Tradition performance aspects which become attached to works and styles

and originate from the techniques and idiosyncrasies of speci1047297c performers are

consolidated over time and apply just as much here as in nineteenth-century

music With a very diff erent work from the same period Berio also felt the

need to control performance in his carefully rewritten Sequenza I for 1047298ute(1958) which now exists in two versions the original in timendashspace notation

and the 1992 revised version rhythmically fully notated Berio in an interview

before the 1992 rewrite comments

[I] adopted a notation that was very precise but allowed a margin of 1047298exibility

in order that the player might have the freedom ndash psychological rather than

physical ndash to adapt the piece here and there to his technical stature But instead

this notation has allowed many players ndash none of them by any means shining

examples of professional integrity ndash to perpetuate adaptations that were littleshort of piratical In fact I hope to rewrite Sequenza I in rhythmic notation

maybe it will be less lsquoopenrsquo and more authoritarian but at least it will be

reliable14

Whether the score is graphically notated or in timendashspace notation or in some

combination this does not allow the performer licence to approximation

With text scores the kind of intuitive music one 1047297nds in Stockhausenrsquos Aus

dem sieben Tagen15 (1968) for example Set sail for the Sun from this collection16

one assumes from the score this is a move from dissonance to consonance

could that mean to a gloriously colourfully voiced major triad Cagersquos Music for

Piano (1952ndash6) is his 1047297rst use of indeterminate notation with pitch and the

order of events 1047297xed and all other parameters left free apart from Cagersquos

control over pitch the result will be diff erent each time it is played David

Tudor rsquos approach to the performance of these early works was to meticulously

pre-prepare and notate the pieces Cagersquos Variations II written for Tudor in

1961 is a particularly abstract piece of lines and dots six transparencies with

single lines and 1047297ve transparencies with single points Cage instructs the

players to overlay the sheets and to measure the lines which represent lsquo1)frequency 2) amplitude 3) timbre 4) duration 5) point of occurrence in an

established period of time [and] 6) structure of event (number of sounds

making up an aggregate or constellation)rsquo17 Tudor rsquos realisation of the piece

14 D Osmond-Smith Luciano Berio Two Interviews London Marion Boyars 1985 p 9915 There are of course hundreds of examples from Wolff and the early British period of BryarsSkempton Parsons to recent British composers such as John Lely Important composers include the

Wandelweiser group of thirteen international composers (see wwwwandelweiserde) other recent American pieces can be downloaded at wwwuploaddownloadperformnet16 The text reads lsquoplay a tone for so long until you hear its individual vibrations[] hold the tone and listento the tones of the others ndash all of them together not to individual ones ndash and slowly move your tone untilyou arrive at complete harmony and the whole sound turns to gold to pure gently shimmering 1047297rersquo17 Composer rsquos note in the score





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


(using an ampli1047297ed piano) was again detailed and could be said to have been

appropriated by the performer in a sense the work no longer belongs to Cage

James Pritchett convincingly argues that Tudor rsquos performance is not of Cagersquos

work but of a composition by Tudor himself18

Into this stylistically pluralistic picture what James Boros called in 1995 alsquonew totality rsquo19 we need to place performance and the performers of these

very diff erent musics The relationship between composer and performer

alliances and allegiances is little diff erent now from how it has always

been Brahms and Joachim Mozart and Stadler The privileging of virtuosity

remains an important aspect both for the fortunes of the itinerant soloist and

for the composer providing a vehicle for the drama of virtuosity in all its

diff erent manifestations not simply digital dexterity Composers often come

into contact with exceptional players and the resulting works extend thetechnical boundaries with both composers making demands that may at 1047297rst

seem impossible to execute (but soon begin to come within reach) and the

players themselves encouraging the composers with what Ferneyhough has

called their lsquobox of tricksrsquo20 There is nothing new here Haydnrsquos works for

his Esterhaacutezy string players during the 1760s resulted in concertos with

challenging parts Spohr rsquos clarinet concertos required his favourite player

Simon Hermstedt to add keys to his instrument to be able to execute certain

otherwise unplayable passages Weber might have been the 1047297

rst to use multi-phonics at the end of the cadenza in his Concertino Op 45 (1806 rev 1815)

for French horn21 although the bassoonist Franz Anton Pfeiff er (1752ndash87)

was noted for a kind of three-part harmony presumably an early multiphonic

eff ect also using voice

There are a number of signi1047297cant diff erences and changes to the composer

performer relationship in the twentieth century What might be seen as new

from the mid-century onwards are composers writing for particular players

and specialist ensembles with talents in technical and sonic experimentation

musicians excited by the possibilities of their instruments beyond accepted

idiomatic writing These are players whose technical lsquotoolboxrsquo goes beyond the

all-pervading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music (with a smattering of

Proko1047297ev Bartoacutek or Shostakovich) which still seems to dominate concert

programmes The composers associated with Darmstadt in the 1950s and

18 For a full discussion of Tudor rsquos papers in the Getty Research Institute see J Pritchett lsquoDavid Tudor ascomposerperformer in Cagersquos ldquo Variations IIrdquo rsquo Leonardo Music Journal 14 (2004) 11ndash1619 J Boros lsquo A ldquonew totality rdquorsquo Perspectives of New Music 331 and 2 (1995) 538ndash5320 J Boros and R Toop (eds) Brian Ferneyhough Collected Writings Amsterdam Harwood 1998p 37021 This is actually two-part writing playing and singing rather than multiphonics as such but by singing athird harmonic often results





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


1960s did not extend instrumental resources in those early years but certainly

extended traditional technique in terms of rhythmic asymmetry range the

quick succession of widely spaced pitch fast changes of extreme dynamics and

the sheer quantity of non-adjacent non-stepwise pitch collections The

Klavierstuumlcke of Stockhausen particularly required the extraordinary techni-que of pianists such as Tudor Paul Jacobs and Frederic Rzewski

Apart from the soloists what is signi1047297cant in the twentieth century is the

demise of the string quartet as the standard bearer of all that is new and

experimental and the rise of the small ensemble The majority of new music

since the Second World War has been written for ensembles either of one-to-a-

part chamber orchestra size (string quartet plus bass wind quintet plus trumpet

trombone piano and percussion) or smaller groups whose model is the instru-

mentation for Pierrot lunaire Friedrich Cerha and Kurt Schwertsik rsquos Ensemble

Die Reihe founded in Vienna in 1958 is probably the 1047297rst of the larger groups

formed initially to play music of the Second Viennese School Schwertsik played

the horn and conducted HK Gruber was the double bassist A few years earlier

Boulez was organising and conducting his own Parisian Domaines Musicales

concerts22 The Darmstadt Internationales Kammerensemble was an ad hoc

ensemble made up of the instrumental teachers at the Summer Courses from

its inception in 1946 Later groups such as the London Sinfonietta (formed in

1968) the Pierrot Players (formed by Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle in 1967which became The Fires of London) and groups in the USA such as Speculum

Musicae (formed in 1971) were all based to a certain extent on their continental

forebears Boulezrsquos own Ensemble Intercontemporain (formed in 1976) was

itself modelled on the London Sinfonietta and at its inception had some of

the same British players in common Among the string quartets earlier in the

century there are a few committed to new work The Roseacute Quartet played 1047297rst

performances of Schoenbergrsquos First and Second Quartets23 the Kolisch Quartet

formed and led by Rudolf Kolisch (1896ndash1978) was also inextricably linked to

Schoenberg (his second wife Gertrud was Kolischrsquos sister) and played 1047297rst

performances of Schoenberg Berg Webern and Bartoacutek24 The Juilliard

Quartet also played and recorded Schoenbergrsquos quartets in his lifetime and

later took on the difficulties of Carter rsquos quartets The Parisian Parrenin

Quartet was particularly active in new music during the 1950s and 1960s playing

22 For a detailed discussion of the beginnings of this society and ensemble see P Hill and N SimeoneOlivier Messiaen Oiseaux exotiques Aldershot Ashgate 2007 pp 12ndash1923 The leader Arnold Roseacute (1863ndash1946) was also the leader of the Vienna Philharmonic (1881ndash1938 withsome breaks)24 Kolisch like Schoenberg emigrated to the lsquoparadisersquo of Hollywood but returned to Germany partic-ularly to teach at the Darmstadt summer courses playing for example Schoenberg rsquos Phantasy Op 47 withEduard Steuermann





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


many 1047297rst performances Henze and Penderecki among them and appearing in

Darmstadt performing Boulez But it is the Arditti Quartet rsquos extraordinary

achievement which despite the Kronosrsquos rather particular work in a much

smaller focused repertoire has almost single-handedly revived the medium25

followed now by many younger less specialised but equally committed quartetsOrchestras with the exception of some of the European radio orchestras

have been less willing in recent times to play or commission new work a sorry

tale that does not need re-examining here But the new music ensembles have

1047297lled the gap Their players are often soloists who have not trained to be

orchestral musicians or indeed have never played in an orchestra26 It is

unsurprising that many of these players during the 1970s and 1980s were

also part of the early music lsquoboomrsquo experimenting in the equally uncharted

territories of boxwood valvelessnatural gut string and the rest27

Many of these players have particular technical skills beyond speed and accuracy such

as a variety of tonal resources or a command of the altissimo register or circular

breathing and instrumental experimentation comes to the fore making an

instrument do things it was not designed to do introducing an idea of

collaboration where players can lead the way This new relationship with

technique allows for works to be created that exist in a dimension apart from

the concerns of traditional sound production and idiomatic writing Here the

phenomenon of the specialist has developed further not far removed fromthe composerperformer travelling showman certainly with the technique to

cope with the new demands but also a musical personality where the music

is often crafted to the strengths and the mannerisms of that performer

players and singers such as Cathy Berberian Jane Manning Harry

Sparnaay Irvine Arditti Pierre Yves Artaud Alan Hacker Heinz Holliger

and Vinko Globokar are instantly recognisable Certain players have a curi-

ously powerful and individual way of delivering material which almost

appropriates the music for their own purpose they create themselves in the

music project a style of approach which can develop into something more

tangible as composers write in ways which assume their performance styles

thereby creating a performance practice a tradition

Performance practice in recent music is an area that musicology has left

largely unexplored Very few expert performers write about what they do with

25 Founded in 1974 the Quartet describes its contemporary repertoire rather vaguely on its website as lsquoinexcess of several hundred piecesrsquo26 Although the Die Reihe and London Sinfonietta ensembles recruited almost entirely from interestedorchestral musicians27 Clarinettists include Hans Deinzer (who gave the 1047297rst performance of Boulezrsquos Domaines) Alan Hacker (Birtwistlersquos and Maxwell Daviesrsquos clarinettist) and Antony Pay (for whom Henze rsquos concerto Le Miracle dela Rose was composed)





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


some notable exceptions28 some contribute in an anecdotal way29 and some

in the time-honoured fashion write treatises30 These treatises are however

very diff erent from those of earlier centuries (Quantz Leopold Mozart C P E

Bach) in that they deal purely with technique descriptive lsquohow-torsquo manuals of

new and extended techniques and tell us little about expression about themusic itself Charles Rosen writes lsquoIn interpreting a work of twentieth-

century music we can emphasize its radical nature or we can try to indicate

its nineteenth-century originsrsquo31 Players may believe that they do not have to

reckon with the weight of an established performance practice that they can

create their own in new music but there are approaches for example born out

of the Darmstadt works of the 1950s and 1960s which demand a level

of accuracy cleanliness of attack attention to colour and signi1047297cant lack of

expression which have become the accepted style a tradition that adheresclosely to the score (its lsquoradical naturersquo) There is no room here for a perform-

ance which irons out the extremes of dynamics speed and irregular rhythm

but this approach still often appears in tandem with the kind of conservatoire-

learned musicality one might expect If a phrase or section gesturally suggests

music reminiscent of lsquonineteenth-century originsrsquo despite its use of intervals of

seconds and ninths expression comes into play a kind of lsquoutility musicality rsquo

which may have nothing to do with the speci1047297c piece or its radical nature

performances of the opening oboe solo from Varegravesersquo

s Octandre is an example

32

Music of course needs to be brought to life by the player and notation has

become increasingly prescriptive in the composer rsquos attempt to control every

parameter but what is crucial for the performer in new music is to determine

exactly where a strict rendition is obligatory and where greater freedom of

rhythm and phrasing for the purposes of expression is more appropriate This

is nowhere more important than in the two extremes of compositional style

that have dominated the last thirty years of the twentieth century complexity

and minimalism

All music is complex on some level however simple its surface features may

be Complexity here refers not only to rhythmic irregularities but also to the

28 Among them Pierre Boulez Charles Rosen Mieko Kanno David Albermann Steve Schick and Herbert Henck29 For example Contemporary Music Review 211 (2002) edited by Marilyn Nonken is an interestingcollection of interviews of performers on performance with mostly American singers and players includingUrsula Oppens Rolf Schulte and Fred Sherry30 A number of treatises by way of example include Pierre Yves Artaud Robert Dick (1047298ute) HeinzHolliger Libby Van Cleve Peter Veale and Claus-Steff en Mahnkopf (oboe) Daniel Kientzy (saxophone)Phillip Rehfeldt Giuseppe Garborino (clarinet)31 W Thomas Composition ndash Performance ndash Reception Studies in the Creative Process in Music Aldershot

Ashgate 1998 p 7232 The opening four bars have almost no expression marks a single mp two small crescendodecrescendomarkings and an accent





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


way in which the serial tendency has required more information on the page to

allow the performer access to something in addition to a technically accurate

rendition The increased detail of lsquoaction notationrsquo descriptive of the sounds

intended and modes of execution is evident from the late nineteenth century

for example in Mahler and in the Second Viennese scores In the string writingone sees much use of diff erent modes of bowing sul tasto sul ponticello 1047298 autando

col legno (tratto and battuto) a wide range of dynamics with detailed use of the

crescendo and diminuendo signs accents daggerwedge and staccato signs tenuto

tenuto with staccato as well as complex tempo relationships rhythmic groupings

and so on With this level of notation players could execute the score accurately

but with little sense of style and early performances of Webern attest to this33

The increased detail of notation in later twentieth-century music is there to

guide interpretation to generate a new performance practice in unfamiliar music where traditions from earlier music are inappropriate One might argue

that much of the more recent music from the 1970s to the 1990s putting rhythm

to one side for the moment is over-notated and prescriptive constraining a

player rsquos ability to interpret but I would argue that quite the reverse is true

Scores increasingly look like the music sounds and once the notes have been

learnt there is an internalising of the additional information which leads to

an understanding and ownership of the music Schoenberg Berg and Webern

notate clearly to try to give a sense of style for example the use of tenuto with staccato in triple time to give a precise waltz lilt or at short phrase endings on the

last note giving a sense of lift or being left in mid-air their use of Hauptstimme

and Nebenstimme is an attempt to balance complex counterpoint and texture

Brian Ferneyhough is a composer who has probably travelled furthest

down this notational route yet his music largely comprises familiar gestures

found elsewhere in earlier literature What is challenging here is the speed at

which the events occur the density of the notation and the technical demands

on the player not just in terms of pitch (particularly microtones in quick

grace-note 1047298urries) but the overlaying of additional sound treatments far in

excess of anything before Comparing the sound world of Bergrsquos Lyric Suite

(1926) with Ferneyhoughrsquos Third String Quartet (1986ndash7) reminds us just

how lsquomodernrsquo certain sections of Bergrsquos piece sound The ponticello scurryings

at the opening of the third movement Allegro misterioso which gradually

transform into pizzicato at bar 14 the geschlagen (struckbounced) semi-

quavers at bars 40ndash2 or the extraordinary Tenebroso section in the 1047297fth

33 Peter Stadlenrsquos (1979) score of Webernrsquos Piano Variations Op 27 is important here Stadlen studiedthe work with Webern gave the 1047297rst performance and later published a facsimile score with Webern rsquosadded performance annotations The score is said to have in1047298uenced Boulezrsquos interpretations of

Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


movement Presto delirando with its crescendo 1047298 autando double stops and held

double stops with tremolo ponticello interjections (bars 85ndash120) all 1047297nd echoes

and similarities in the 1047297rst movement of Ferneyhoughrsquos quartet Despite the

rhythmic complexities in Ferneyhough the sound of the 1047297rst movement

(at least in the Arditti recording)34 is of periodic events and simultaneousattacks for all four players not unlike in Berg the sound is exotically enticing

drawing the listener in but what is diff erent from Berg is its discontinuity

The movement is clearly structured as a juxtaposition of diff erent types

of material but the eff ect is of an episodic unfolding of statements the longest

of which is never more than eight or ten seconds in length The second

movement in contrast is a continuous fast-paced drama driving the listener

forward The form here is clear even on 1047297rst hearing beginning with a

frenetic 1047297rst-violin solo adding the second in a duo then the much slower-paced viola and cello together leading to the 1047297rst climax after a bar of fast

rhythmic unison at the quasi recitativo (bar 56) and a 1047297nal climax again with

simultaneous attacks over a solo viola (bar 103) who completes the movement

and the piece Sometimes the music slows so one is able to hear stable pitch

relationships (despite its microtonality one does not hear the quarter-tones it

all sounds remarkably well tempered) as in the viola and cellorsquos 1047297rst entry at

bar 18 a kind of cantus 1047297 rmus under the busy violins but what one does hear

are the familiar gestures of the expressionistic style present in the Lyric SuiteIt is this kind of grounding of radical new work from the latter part of the

century in the early expressionistic style that allows an lsquoentry rsquo for both

performers and listeners gesture and salient events not pitch

I hesitate to say that the music of the complex school sounds surprisingly

old-fashioned but the two issues which have overshadowed the actual sound of

the music giving it the patina of modernity and radicalism and which have

certainly concerned players are rhythm and microtonality Much of the dis-

course about this has been centred on Darmstadt during the Hommel era in the

1980s35 but it would be a mistake to associate Darmstadt only with complexity

of the serial and post-serial kind German institutions after the Second World

War were recipients of considerable (American) funds to put culture back on

track De-Nazi1047297cation was just as much a part of compositional style as it was

of political cleansing36 The Summer Courses began with an emphasis on

modern tonal styles Hindemith and Bartoacutek but Messiaen and Leibowitz

34 Brian Ferneyhough 1 Arditti String Quartet Disque Montagne 1994 M078900235 Friedrich Hommel was the director of the Summer Courses from 1981 to 199436 For a thorough discussion see A Beal New Music New Allies American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reuni 1047297 cation Berkeley University of California Press 2006 Also T Thacker

Music after Hitler 1945ndash1955 Aldershot Ashgate 2007





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


changed the direction and soon after the coursersquos 1047297rst director Wolfgang

Steinecke clearly had a vision to continue and develop the modernist tradition

But it did not last long There were disagreements Nono left in 1962 Boulez

taught from 1962 to 1965 and Stockhausen from 1966 to 1970 in any case the

arrival of Cage in 1958 fed the in1047298uence of indeterminacy and a group of composers less interested in the prevailing strict procedures showed that a

colourful theatrical approach was also possible Berio Kagel and Ligeti among

them Signi1047297cant here is the 1047297rst visit to Darmstadt of David Tudor someone

who begins and almost ends our story with his in1047298uential post-Cageian elec-

tronic work with Merce Cunningham

Tudor arrived in 1956 to teach but also to illustrate a lecture given by Stefan

Wolpe playing examples by Sessions Perle and Babbitt as well as Cage Brown

Feldman and Wolff Tudor was particularly keen to present Cagersquos Music of

Changes (1951) in the interpretation classes37 and to give the 1047297rst European

performances Tudor and Cage gave a two-piano recital of music by Brown

Cage Feldman and Wolff in 1958 and this seems to have been a signi1047297cant

turning point for the reception of this music and its aesthetic38 The appearance

of the three American pianists Tudor Paul Jacobs and Frederic Rzewski (who

was there in 1956) is important for the performance of post-serial European

music particularly Stockhausenrsquos Klavierstuumlcke Stockhausen wrote the 1047297rst

piano pieces during 1952ndash

3 (numbers III and IV in the set of eleven) numbersIndashIV were 1047297rst performed in 1954 and V ndash VIII in 1955 by the Belgian pianist

Marcelle Mercenier at Darmstadt Number XI was 1047297rst performed by Tudor in

New York in 1957 and the 1047297rst German performance was given by Jacobs at

Darmstadt in 1957 Pieces V ndashX were originally dedicated to Tudor but

Stockhausen later changed this to Aloys Kontarsky who gave the 1047297rst perform-

ance of number IX Rzewski gave the premiere of piece X in Italy in 1962 and the

German premiere of IX in 1963 and recorded them both

Klavierstuumlck X is probably the most notorious of the set not least because of

the forearm clusters and the cluster glissandi Stockhausen suggests in the

scorersquos notes that lsquoTo play the cluster glissandi more easily and with enough

rapidity it is recommended that woollen gloves be worn the 1047297ngers of which

have been cut awayrsquo Kontarsky preferred rubber gloves and apparently

Rzewski dusted the piano keys and his hands with talcum powder The

German pianist Herbert Henck who studied under Kontarsky (and took

37 The structure of the summer school was and still is to have performersrsquo masterclass-based interpre-tation studios running simultaneously with composition studios together with general lectures andconcerts open to all38 The audience included Stockhausen Berio Penderecki Lachenmann Ligeti Xenakis the percussion-ist Christoph Caskel and pianist Paul Jacobs





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


over his teaching in Darmstadt in the 1980s) worked on the piece with

Stockhausen and subsequently wrote a very useful book on the work includ-

ing a detailed analysis and a chapter on how to practise the piece39

He acknowledges that the primary problem is rhythm Stockhausenrsquos score

is clearly notated with the length of sections given above the staves and thebeams joining the 1047298urries of notes denoting fast (horizontal beam) acceler-

ando (rising beam) and ritardando (falling beam) collections of notes the

difficulty lies in the speeding up and slowing down within a fast tempo

while maintaining an internal sense of pulse All the grace notes are to be

played lsquoas fast as possiblersquo (lsquoso schnell wie moumlglichrsquo a direction that appears

time and again in twentieth-century music) with the basic tempo also as fast

as is playable The early recordings exciting as they are give the eff ect of

rapidity at the expense of the clarity of pitch and Stockhausen later talkedabout the grace notes as being melodic and suggested a slower basic pulse for

clarity of articulation40 Henck recommends an approach to practice which

performers might use for learning challenging music of any period and

suggests working very slowly in small sections but also not to practise the

piece in isolation

but always in conjunction with such music to which the hands are accustomed

which at least makes other (not more natural) demands on them The mastery

of very many technical problems in new music can often be excellently sup-ported by their traditional counterpart Thus for the sometimes ticklish chro-

maticism here one should work on pieces like the Chopin Etudes Op 10 No 2

or Op 25 No 6 Or better still to invent studies for oneself41

Rhythmic complexity and new lsquoactionrsquo notation are often the stumbling blocks

for performers A great deal of time is spent in music education becoming expert

in quickly reading and translating symbols into sound42 Composers often

devised symbols for particular sounds in isolation of each other working within

and for their own discrete musical communities and in doing so one of the

problems until recently has been the lack of a common notation for certain

eff ects even quarter-tone notation with its arrows diff erent shaped note heads

and diff ering versions of accidental signs confusing players Composers still

strive to explore areas of sound which require a clear and unambiguous notation

In Ferneyhough the notation speci1047297es as accurately as possible every possible

parameter and as I have said before it may lead to a performance where the

39 H Henck Klavierstuumlck X A Contribution toward Understanding Serial Technique Cologne Neuland198040 Ibid p 64 41 Ibid p 6142 See M Kanno lsquoPrescriptive notation limits and challengesrsquo Contemporary Music Review 262 (2007)231ndash54





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


performer rsquos concern with accuracy is paramount and a sense of lsquointerpretationrsquo

the 1047297nal stage of transmitting the music is missing This is not always the case

Expert performers who have a knowledge of the style and have worked with the

composer can transmit the essence of the music and create a tradition for that

speci1047297c work But how do new sounds enter the compositional and then nota-tional process Is there a gap between intention and realisation

Purely graphic notation however beautiful it may be in works such as

Cornelius Cardew rsquos Treatise or early works by Bussotti allows for the kind

of freedom where free improvisation is only a short step away The scores serve

as a visual stimulus for the interpreter rsquos creative energies and can be used

either to get the creative juices going or as a more prescriptive representation

of potentially speci1047297c soundsymbol relationships Any graphics pictures

colours are potential material43

What is more common are pieces that combinefamiliar music notation with other graphics Cardew provides an example in

his Octet rsquo 61 for Jasper Johns where sixty-one events are notated combining

hand-drawn pitches on staves with numbers and dynamics a number seven

might be seven repetitions of a pitch or an interval of a seventh or seven

discrete sounds or eff ects and so on Cardew recommends playing from the

score only for experienced performers and gives in the preface a traditionally

notated example of a possible realisation of the 1047297rst six events which while

useful as a simple explanation or key to symbols seems to me to miss the pointthis kind of notation contains enough information to realise spontaneously

Hans-Joachim Hespos also combines graphic and traditional notation in metic-

ulously detailed scores which sound like the kind of free jazz of players such as

Evan Parker or Peter Broumltzman combined with sometimes startling theatrical

approaches to playing and to the fabric of the instruments themselves The

scores do not always contain exact pitch material but do present a sophisti-

cated notation for unusual sounds and considerable use of the voice where

phonetic symbols are drawn in diff erent sizes thickness of type and placed on

the page to give a clear and easily read representation of the actual sound

dynamic and relative register The majority of composers have stayed with

standard notation measured or timendashspace with the occasional graphic to

represent the amplitude of vibrato or a note as high as possible where speci1047297c

pitch is irrelevant but these scores are also often littered with symbols repre-

senting extended techniques and by the 1980s there was beginning to be a

certain amount of uniformity of notational convention for these eff ects

The phenomena of extended techniques or instrumental deviation has its

roots in a number of ideas inventions and endeavours not least after the Second

43 Cathy Berberian uses strip cartoons in Stripsody for example





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


World War a parallel exploration alongside electronic music where traditional

instruments could play with the machines (pre-prepared tape) be modi1047297ed by

them in delays loops and ring modulations but could also be made to emulate

the new electronic sounds themselves Composers and players have often acci-

dentally stumbled across certain eff ects ndash the innocently inquisitive composer (lsquowhat if Try this rsquo) has been at the heart of collaboration as has simply

experimenting with unorthodox approaches to instruments Satie was threading

paper through piano strings in his 1913 Le piegravege de Meacuteduse (Ravel also suggests

this in Lrsquo enfant et les sortilegraveges) Pianos at the turn of the century were being

modi1047297ed with diff erent dampers to give harp and lute-like eff ects Ivesrsquos

Concorde Sonata (1911) uses a length of wood to produce a cluster Henry

Cowell in his now well-known works from c 1913ndash30 was the 1047297rst to system-

atically explore the pianorsquos possibilities with clusters glissandi and use of the

inside of the piano plucking and dampingmuting strings which then led to

Cagersquos lsquoinventionrsquo of the prepared piano (around 1938) Much later Horatiu

Radulescu put a grand piano on its side retuned and bowed it with 1047297shing line

his lsquosound iconrsquo There was an exploration of a wider range of percussion

instruments both exotic and scrap metal with percussionists freed from the

orchestra to play in ensembles and even solo recitals on un-tuned percussion

Jazz players were growling and singing down saxophones and trombones in

Duke Ellingtonrsquo

s band of the 1920s and 1930s Modest eff

ects and the extensionof range upwards began with works such as Varegravesersquos1047298ute solo Density 215 (1936)

with its high D as well as probably the earliest use of key clicks Beriorsquos Sequenza

I (1958) for 1047298ute (for Severino Gazzeloni) has the 1047297rst use of a multiphonic which

in1047298uenced American clarinettist William O Smith44 also to explore multi-

phonics which he used for the 1047297rst time in Nonorsquos A 1047298 oresta eacute jovem e cheja de

vida (1965ndash6) Bruno Bartolozzirsquos in1047298uential New Sounds for Woodwind 45 giving

multiphonic and microtonal 1047297ngerings 1047297rst appeared in 1967

What is at the heart of instrumental transformation is the simple notion that

if these instruments are capable of a wider spectrum of sounds than is expected

of them in common-practice repertoire then these sounds should be added to

the player rsquos lsquotoolboxrsquo and made available to composers as a natural part of the

instrument rsquos abilities It is exactly these instrumental quirks if you like an

exploitation of the instrumentsrsquo imperfections that gives an instrument

its depth of character and immeasurably extends its expressive possibilities

Ferneyhough in relation to his second solo 1047298ute piece Unity Capsule (1975ndash6)

writes

44 Also known as Bill Smith when he plays with Dave Brubeck45 B Bartolozzi New Sounds for Woodwind 2nd edn Oxford University Press 1982





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


I began by elaborating a system of organisation based on the naturally occur-

ring irregularities in the 1047298utersquos sonic character on the one hand various types of

microtonal interval capable of being produced by means of lip or 1047297ngers on the

other by recombining articulative techniques familiar to all 1047298utists (tongue

action lip tension larger or smaller embouchure aperture intensity of vibrato)into hitherto unfamiliar constellations What the piece is attempting to suggest

is that no compositional style can achieve full validity which does not

take as its point of departure that symbiosis between the performer and his

instrument in all its imperfection from which the life force of music

emanates46

Unity Capsulersquos use of extended technique and its precise notation is still

probably the most extreme example in the repertoire of any instrument47

Firstly basic sound production normal tone with varying intensities of

vibrato a dynamic range from pppp (verging on inaudible) to as loud as possiblewith a diff erent dynamic for every sonic event breath sounds and the combi-

nation of breath and tone embouchure changes (the diff ering angle of the

mouthpiece to the lips and the tightness or looseness of the embouchure)

Secondly additional treatments and eff ects air sounds audible in-breaths as

well as vocalisations through the instrument glissandi (both 1047297nger and lip)

1047298utter-tongue (both normal tongue 1047298utter and throat growling or lsquogarglingrsquo)

key clicks lsquolip pizzicatorsquo (a kind of slap tongue) Thirdly microtones quarter-

tones (a twenty-four note scale) 1047297fth-tones (a thirty-one note scale with1047297ngerings are given in the scorersquos Notes for Performance) and microtonal

activity notated graphically as rapid un-pitched grace notes which are intervals

smaller than a 1047297fth-tone What makes the piece particularly challenging is both

the microtones (especially at speed as in most cases speci1047297c 1047297ngerings need to

be employed) and the simultaneous production of the diff erent eff ects and

treatments for both 1047298ute and voice with the music written on two staves the

lower one containing the vocal part Ferneyhough talks about his awareness of

overstepping lsquothe limits of the humanly realizablersquo48 but his concern is with a

musical ideal that not only relates to accuracy but to style and the essence of

his music he tolerates wrong notes and rhythmic inaccuracies if the latter is

evident

Additional layers of notation for sound treatments appear in a number of

pieces the plunger mute notation below the stave in Beriorsquos 1965 Sequenza V for

trombone or a more recent trombone solo Richard Barrett rsquos Basalt (1990ndash1)

46 Boros and Toop (eds) Ferneyhough Collected Writings p 9947 Ferneyhough as a 1047298ute player tested the eff ects and the general playability of the piece but also citesRobert Dick rsquos in1047298uential The Other Flute (Oxford University Press) published in 1975 at the time of composition in the scorersquos lsquoNotes for Performancersquo48 Boros and Toop (eds) Ferneyhough Collected Writings p 319





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


where the voice is used almost throughout the piece The pioneer for trombon-

ists trombone technique and brass playing in general is the player and composer

Vinko Globokar His work has always explored new sounds and techniques not

only for brass yet what is signi1047297cant here is that while the notation is always

clear precise and readable even when he is asking for very complex sounds (as aplayer he is well aware of practicalities) he is also a composer who often notates

the impossible Like Ferneyhough whose music is in theory playable (certainly

at a slower tempo) Globokar often asks for a number of diff erent techniques

simultaneously vocalising together with pitched notes percussive eff ects with

1047297ngers or mutes playing on the in-breath circular breathing and so on a

combination of which unlike Ferneyhough are sometimes physically impossible

to produce But it is the tension and drama in the act of trying that is as much

part of the musical intention as any kind of accuracy The aim in much of thismusic is a performance that Ferneyhough has called an honourable or lsquointelligent

failurersquo49 lsquothe knife-edge quality of the possibility of not achieving somethingrsquo50

but again unlike Ferneyhough Globokar is an improviser so this element of

chance setting up a precise situation where the outcome may be unexpected is

acceptable Similarly in Sciarrinorsquos important Six Caprices (1976) for violin he

follows an arpeggiated style reminiscent of Paganini (an important reference in

these pieces) but uses diamond note heads for half-pressed left-hand pressure

resulting in some accurate harmonics but also in much more unstable andunpredictable pitches The idea of the unplayable and the unpredictable is also

largely the problem concerned with microtonal writing

Microtones have an honourable history with early exponents such as

Wyschnegradsky Alois Haacuteba Julian Carillo Ives and others Performances

of their work inspired instrumental modi1047297cations and new inventions The

instruments are now mostly in the museum and almost all microtonal music is

written for standard orchestral instruments without modi1047297cations51 There

are a number of compositional approaches that result in these microtones

being perceived in diff erent ways As I have mentioned when played at great

speed they are almost impossible to hear when played slower they often

particularly in string playing sound like poor intonation and are more

successful in the woodwind with speci1047297c 1047297ngerings for quite accurate tun-

ing52 When played slowly they can be clearly heard as either in1047298ections or

49 Ibid p 269 50 Ibid p 27051 Scordatura or detuning the lower strings is widely used in Scelsi for example but never for microtonaltuning Pianos and harpsichords have been tuned microtonally in works by Ives for example and morerecently in pieces by Kevin Volans and Clarence Barlow52 Microtones on all orchestral instruments are also used for trilling on one note colour trills bisbigliandowhat Radulescu calls lsquoyellow tremolirsquo





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


bends (in much Japanese new music in shakuhachi -in1047298uenced 1047298ute music or

the nausea inducing swooping in Xenakis) or as speci1047297cally tuned pitches In

post-serial music of the complex school the intention is a natural and further

saturation of the chromatic scale where the notes in the cracks between

the semitones are heard as new pitches within say a twenty-four-note scaleThe problems occur when pitches do not move stepwise facilitating a linear

contrapuntal style where microtones add to the expansion and expressiveness

of the melodic line (and thereby allowing for perceptual lsquogoodnessrsquo because

one can hear them against the stable pitches) If the music jumps in larger

intervals fourths or greater the eff ect is of poor tuning Some composers

devise new modesscales using microtones which arise naturally out of the

material (much more successful from the player rsquos point of view) and what

often results here is a music which is unafraid to mix dissonance (verging onnoise) and consonance where the use of a consonant sonority because of its

context and how the music arrives at it functions as just another sound or

perhaps a resolution of more complex colours onto a primary one ndash what does

not happen is the listener rsquos sharp intake of breath on hearing a major triad a

reminiscence of tonality out of context

Giacinto Scelsi was doing this in the 1960s After being a recluse for much of

his life he seemed to be rediscovered in Darmstadt during the 1980s and his

pieces hovering microtonally around a single pitch are now quite well knownIn the fourth movement of the Third String Quartet (1963) single pitches

(primarily B 1047298at) are explored with diff ering bow pressures vibrato and

quarter-tone glissandi but what is striking is the arrival on consonant harmo-

nies (G1047298at major second inversion then in root position) in no way reminiscent

of tonality but purely as sonorous consonances This idea of consonance and

dissonance as coexisting without implying earlier styles is nowhere more

apparent than in the work of the spectral composers

The predominantly French spectral music a term originating from Hughes

Dufourt and centred mostly on Paris emerged in the early 1970s led by

Tristan Murail and Geacuterard Grisey Its approach and aesthetic was markedly

diff erent from the then prevailing styles and while in1047298uenced by electronic

music it strove rather to explore a diff erent world of texture and sound

exploration using traditional instruments and sometimes live electronic

treatments This music is organic in the truest sense based on the analysis

and reproduction of natural sounds as well as notes themselves (like Scelsi or

later Radulescu) getting inside the notes dealing with soundrsquos density and

grittiness Additive synthesis in electro-acoustic technique (the building of complex sounds from simple ones sine waves) gives the model for the

creation of new sound complexes new harmony and instrumental timbre





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


Instruments have particular characteristics in diff erent registers The

clarinet rsquos low notes for example are rich in upper partials which can be

highlighted by lsquosplittingrsquo the note with the embouchure to reveal and simul-

taneously play some of the partials of the fundamental The higher the pitch

the fewer the partials resulting in increased thinness of tone There are aconsiderable number of new compositional techniques here53 but most seem

to involve the reproduction of timbres analysed spectrographically Murailrsquos

large-scale orchestral piece Gondwana (1980) at its opening creates a bell

sound transforming into a brass sound Grisey rsquos Partiels (1975) takes as its

starting point the sonogram analysis of a trombonersquos low pedal E Despite the

diff erences between them these composersrsquo fundamental interest is in the

manipulation of sound for soundrsquos sake in1047298uenced by acoustics and psycho-

acoustics frequency as given in Hertz rather than pitch resulting from thedivision of the tempered scale into microtonal steps Taking the range of

composed music the lowest note might be A0 (275Hz) the highest A7

(3520Hz) or the C above that 4186Hz What is more difficult is to map

these precise frequencies onto instruments designed for equal temperament

What results is an approximation using quarter eighth and sixteenth tone

notation again incorporating a certain amount of eff ort on the player rsquos part

to reproduce these with any accuracy But the sounds and their inherent

natural expressiveness are often glorious And so to minimalism and experimental tonality The challenge here for the

performer is not one of technical excess but of something much more funda-

mental and familiar Minimal pieces require a virtuosity of precise rhythm and

an unfailing sense of accurate pulse something which many musicians (unless

working with a click-track) 1047297nd difficult not least because of their innate

musical 1047298exibility there is no room here for lsquointerpretationrsquo (rubato equals

inaccuracy) and again it is the performer rsquos need to lsquointerpret rsquo which arises as a

problem in the music of tonal post-experimentalists This music is often

understated rhythmically straightforward diatonic and can imply a tradition

of performance familiar from the early twentieth century if not before while

belonging to a much more recent experimental movement To the uninitiated

player this may not be apparent from the score as these scores often have little

notated information apart from pitch and rhythm This music like Satiersquos can

demonstrate that pieces sometimes lasting only a few minutes can be hypnoti-

cally repetitive without becoming tedious simple but not simplistic The

music is not concerned with intentional nostalgia pastiche satire or quotation

yet there are references which can eff ectively conjure past musical styles The

53 See J Fineberg lsquoSpectral music history and techniquesrsquo Contemporary Music Review 192 (2000) 7 ndash22





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


music can be played (referring to Rosenrsquos point) in two ways A lsquocorrect rsquo

performance represents its radical nature by presenting the material simply

without interpretative intervention clean and unfussy But a player rsquos innate

and irrepressible musical re1047298ex to project a personal response born of

retrieved tradition will instantly recognise the familiar tonal contours andgestures and even on a 1047297rst sight-reading will want to make explicit the

implied character not far beneath the surface of these notes It may be difficult

for a player to suppress these romantic urges the need to rallentando at phrase

closures to vary the lengths of the pausesrests to linger on appoggiaturas or

to crescendo and diminuendo on rising and falling phrases

Where next For composers the golden age of instrumental experimenta-

tion is over and we are enjoying a period of pluralism where younger

composers without or consciously ignoring a sense of tradition can pick-rsquonrsquo-mix using musics of other cultures and popular genres woven into their

lsquoart rsquo music Many of them are seduced by digital technology laptop compos-

ers and performers improvise with noise but there is nothing new here apart

from the speed and ease of production and manipulation It seems to me that

the great electronic pieces have been written Stockhausenrsquos Gesang der

Juumlnglinge (1955ndash6) or Denis Smalley rsquos Pentes (1974) The cheapness of tech-

nology and the proliferation of music technology degree courses do not

re1047298

ect a surge of interest in electronic composition the courses are simply servicing the mammon of the media industry For performers instrumental

experimentation is over too and the instruments themselves have not

changed because of it The digital age hardly touches us at all in terms of

performance (apart from recording) synthesisers keyboard and wind are in

the second-hand stores and for those pieces with live instruments and

electronic manipulation the laptop simply replaces the banks of pre-digital

hardware the sounds are pretty much the same For the performer the great

melting pot of style and exploration that was the twentieth century has given

us and continues to reveal great riches a wealth of work rewarding and

sometimes frustrating probably too diverse for one player to encompass In

the current period of stylistic 1047298ux compositional trends and fashions will

continue to come and go and committed players will be as busy as they always

have been with new work enjoying themselves in the musical playpen


7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041


3 0

Instrumental performance in the twentieth

century and beyond

R O G E R H E A T O N

Modernism has released its icy grip During the latter decades of the twentieth

century composers seemed able again to breathe Stefan Georgersquos lsquoLuft von

anderem Planetenrsquo (lsquo Air of another planet rsquo) the opening soprano line of the last

movement of Schoenbergrsquos Second Quartet (1908) an iconic phrase emblem-atic of a newly extended or saturated chromaticism These revolutionary

beginnings of atonality (a negative term not favoured by Schoenberg) were

hastened by the need to broaden the compositional palette expressing and

exploring a newly liberated emotional inner life As Schoenberg memorably

writes in his 1047297rst letter to Kandinsky lsquoart belongs to the unconscious One must

express oneself Express oneself directly Not onersquos taste or onersquos upbringing or

onersquos intelligence knowledge or skill Not all these acquired characteristics but

what is inborn instinctiversquo1

Kandinsky rsquo

s initial letter to Schoenberg after hearing his music in 19112 which provoked the composer rsquos enthusiastic

response in a sense clinches the movement towards expressionism lsquoIn your

works you have realised what I albeit in uncertain form have so greatly

longed for in music The independent progress through their own destinies

the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly

what I am trying to 1047297nd in my paintingsrsquo3 And so that particular strand of the

complex story begins

The neat but arbitrary use of 1900 as the starting point for many twentieth-

century music histories no longer seems to obtain Invoking Dahlhaus the

Romantic nineteenth century might be seen to end with the death of Wagner

and the twentieth to start with the early modern period in German and Austrian

music Mahler Wolf Zemlinsky early Strauss and tonal Schoenberg straddling

the two centuries up to the beginnings of atonality in 1908 and perhaps further

to the end of the Great War As Dahlhaus suggests this period might even end as

1 J Hahl-Koch (ed) Arnold SchoenbergndashWassily Kandinsky Letters Pictures and Documents trans JCCrawford London Faber 1984 p 23 Letter dated 24 January 19112 Besides the Second Quartet the Munich concert (January 1911) also included the Drei KlavierstuumlckeOp 11 the First Quartet Op 7 and a group of 1047297ve early songs including Erwartung3 Arnold SchoenbergndashWassily Kandinsky p 21 Letter dated 18 January 1911

[778]




7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041













adventurersquo11









lsquo











7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041















reliable14























7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041













adventurersquo11









lsquo











7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041















reliable14























7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041













adventurersquo11









lsquo











7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041















reliable14























7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041













adventurersquo11









lsquo











7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041















reliable14























7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041















reliable14























7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041







































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






















32








and minimalism









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




































Webernrsquos music





7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041








































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7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041









































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

















piece in isolation






















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041











































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041





















Duke Ellingtonrsquo

















writes






7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










emanates46





















evident









7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041






































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041










































7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















7262019 c Bo 9781139025966 a 041




















re1047298















c Bo 9781139025966 a 041

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