It seems strange that the word for piece (in French morceau) has not attracted more attention. Just as we use the word for a 'piece' of cake, the bite-sized chunk it implies is clearly related to the concept of something greater than itself from which it comes. But unlike a cake (with four quarters to make a whole), the 'music' from which a piece is taken is really a cake of infinite proportions. (One thinks of the French use of du lait which signifies the putting of something in one's coffee that is drawn from something greater of indeterminate resource.) This linguistic use can be applied profitably to music, for if we concur with Carlyle's character in his 1836 book Sartor Resartus (bk. 3, ch. 3)—"in a Symbol there is concealment yet revelation" (2000: 166)—then music, too, is a symbol. While a symbol nowadays mostly means a token, properly understood, the symbolic quality of music (which signifies the presence of more than it is) is a vital part of appreciating how music plays its part in its own decoding and in aiding the people who engage with it to gain a deeper understanding. Baudrillard is more provocative, suggesting that the meaning of symbols necessarily migrates and can end up very different indeed (2003: 15-18).
More interesting than mere semantics, though, is the mindset the words betray. Attali (1985: 147) reminds us that the French word for 'musical score' is partition: so the English word that appears to be comprehensive translates to being a separation, a partition from something. It may be that the partition applies both with regard to the other voices involved (so a collection of parts), as well as the limiting of the musical script's potency. Even more vitally, it marks off one particular work (e.g. Tippett's First Symphony of 1945) from another (e.g. Tippett's Second Symphony of 1957), or even of another composer's offering (e.g. Havergal Brian's Symphony no. 27 from 1966). But we should not lose sight of the fact that Attali's book is entitled Bruits (technically 'noises'), and yet is translated to
69
Noise, since English has a tendency to soak up plural concepts into single words. (For example, Arabic allows informations, and French describes a church organ as orgues, indicating the multiple divisions that comprise most organs.) My use of the word 'musics' is deliberate when it refers to more than one 'music', and the fact that other languages can expose inherently multifaceted potentialities should alert us to the fact that music is often not a one-dimensional construct as one might believe from a more monoglot perspective.
These issues coalesce around what it is to create a 'work' or a 'piece'. That these definitions are used does not mean that all composers are beholden to them, but given that Op. 48 is definitely predicated on the existence of a prior text, some unpicking of the status of musical works is needed. Kramer asked (1984: 99) "what is an opus?" in relation to Chopin's Preludes (1839), but 19th century music (with its particular shifting blends of patronage, for instance) has particular qualities that may not be the same as classical music in general. A fresh look, then, at what it is—especially as to how it might inform Op. 48— would be valuable. An early review in the Wiener Abendpost of Mahler's Second Symphony in 1899 called it "a piece in pieces, five movements with nothing to do with each other" (in Blaukopf & Blaukopf 1991: 139), but this view that it was not a proper Symphony was due to the perception that symphonies were supposedly obliged to fulfil other criteria. Yet Mahler's very discontinuity is an integral part of its identity, shown by Mahler's later request in the score to allow a five-minute break after the first movement, making its 'sounding- togetherness' something that happens on a longer temporal canvas and within a wider musical horizon than might have been anticipated (including by Mahler himself). Talbot (2000: 3) reports that a symposium (organised to tackle both popular and classical music) recognised some consensus around what might constitute a musical work, and they bore some relationship to Danto's grappling (from 1981) with how we define art in general. While recognising that there is a degree of elasticity to each area, he suggested three adjectives: discrete, reproducible, and attributable. I will examine these briefly as some analysis will help unpick not so much what works are but how they function.
It should also be said that on a more macroscopic level, genres also prove hard to compartmentalise, shown in Schulenberg's The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach. Aside from the
70
issue over ignoring the organ music, he spends less than 5 pages on the organ music that is
Clavierübung III. This is presumably because he feels obliged to be comprehensive as his title
forces him to tackle the keyboard music that makes up Clavierübung I, II and IV. A keyboard player (does that mean modern-day pianist?) is thus not only put off from exploring the organ repertoire, but will fail to engage with how each supposed genre- division might relate. Said says (2008: 272) that Glenn Gould, early on, made it clear that Bach's keyboard works were intended severally: not simply for harpsichord or organ, they exist for a sort of Platonic keyboard which performers, in their human imperfection, bring to life with the instruments to hand. This relates not just about the instrumental medium, but other things such as tuning, performance, context and appropriateness (if that is definable). The many possible settings of a piece should not be confused with Grainger's 'elastic' scoring, for Bach keyboard music exists at one and the same time in many settings. A similar point over over-compartmentalisation might be made over a composer's 'sacred' music and how one ascribes divinity, especially since some composers (such as Haydn or Leighton) see all their work as sacred, even signing off with the ascription Laus Deo.