For the notion of text to be meaningful as regards music we could helpfully redefine what we mean by text, or even ionise the word whereby the very multiplicity of meanings can provoke better discussion. Merleau-Ponty's notion—though the image is from Walter Benjamin in 1929 (1992: 198)—that the writer is like a weaver (1964: 45) who "works on the wrong side of his material" has been applied to music (see Cook 1990: 122-60). However, the two sides have been limited to production and reception, with the implication that one side is better than the other (not so very far from seeing musicians as the tradesmen providing furniture for the gentry, perhaps.) This limiting of music to merely a 'production' (of a score) and a 'presentation' (in performance) does miss something of the interplay that comes through how the texts can play with each other. Cook (2007: 194) develops this, in relation to Corelli violin sonatas, and proposes the notion of 'multitext' that will allow for many diverse sonic children from one textual parent. The idea from 1951 of Alfred Schutz (quoted in Cook 1990: 129) that the score of a piece of music is somehow a "prehistory" to the music's performance accords with Steiner’s note (1989: 151) that the artwork or score has a prior status (and is thus a pre-text). However, expressing the differences of texts we encounter will help us disentangle the knots we encounter. Many folk have little problem using the word 'letter' to mean a missive composed of letters and a building block for words, since the context clarifies whether a macro-letter or a micro-letter is being referred to. The phrase 'letters make words which make letters' (or 'trees, made of wood, make a wood') shows a spatial separation between the micro-elemental atom and the macro-composite molecule. Music, though, has no such luxury, but attempting to describe the areas (listed below) better should aid discussion:
i) the sound music makes (often called 'music' which remains a symbol as a listener provides a missing part, which is not exhaustively completed in that rendition); ii) the symbols used to do the above (often called the 'score', or confusingly the 'notes'
61
iii) the (back)ground on which the above stand. (This can be story, programme notes, themes or resonances which remain symbolic since a piece's entirety is unknown since the first two categories (above) are insufficiently appreciated);
iv) the unconscious (and thus 'hiddenground') into which the above is rooted. (This might include unknown and unknowable relationships between pieces. It can be posited that some foundations exist, even if the details remain hidden.)
While one can propose ways of seeing a musical economy, it should be emphasised that the totality of music (which is currently unfinished and therefore in progress) is a process and not a state. Textual constructs will naturally move in varying orbits to mirror one's listening, studying, or compositional experiences. The word pretext already has a meaning and yet its tone of (underhand) motivation is a useful way of colouring what it is that it does. I also use a Germanic word (in tribute to Freudian psychoanalysis) because it will be seen that Urtext has different meanings, both in the Busoni sense (of Platonic ontology, see Williamson in Talbot 2000: 191), and in the music publishers' sense (though there can be considerable dispute as to what constitutes a Prime/Main/Best Source of the notes). Texts are not self-standing, but require a pre-text, and we get a fairer perspective if we appreciate the contexts from which they come. A three-dimensional model (like a globe) might be a better representation since it would show-up discrepancies between experience and theory to make other connections and raise other possibilities. We should remember that 'text' (from textus in Latin) means web, and indicates its networking and branching possibilities. This makes any model inadequate or tricky to process but this is at least an attempt to show that its woven quality can make it problematic to express in words or pictures (and the different size lettering indicate one aspect of its asymmetry).
T E X T t e x t TEXT text t e x t
T E X T t e x t text TEXT T E X T
PRETEXT p r e t e x t PRETEXT pretext p r e t e x t
c o n t e x t CONTEXT context CONTEXT C O N T E X T ---
62
As a composer, then, it would seem that sorting the pretext out involves checking that the immediate environs are not already owned by someone else. Improvisers erect structures immediately and ignore the pretext (which helps the building's permanence), but a context still exists for the temporary edifice (more a tent than a house, perhaps?) provided by improvisers does not require the same sort of planning permission. One advantage of this model is that it allows works to exist in a variety of ways. For instance, the internal décor— say, particular articulation markings—might not be sorted straight away. It also helps explain how the performance of music can be seen from further away while the context can be obscured. Also, if other storeys can be built (assuming the foundations will take it) one could even build fly-overs to another building if one wanted which means one avoids going through the contextual stage. As it is not clear at what stage a building (or a 'work') is complete or finished, subsequent extensions could even be called a Textension.