Ancient Roman statues which have lost limbs over time were originally created whole, yet we have no problem visually complementing this absence. In reproducing the 'incomplete', Rodin acts as a mediator, requiring something from the audience. Rilke, Rodin's secretary, mentions the eyes of a statue despite their lack of presence (1974: 83), and Schumann does something similar in the incomplete music of Dichterliebe (1840). The partial work thus expands to invite a response. Similarly, in using references (often fragments from other musics) composers invite audience's contributions. That a piece of music can have a perception attached is shown by Stravinsky's deployment of Lanner's rather lame waltz in
Petrushka (1911), selected (according to Taruskin 1994: 709) because its saccharine melody
matches the shallowness of the ballerina's character, and he senses this utilisation (or ironically-imbued stylisation) was the seed for Poulenc and Milhaud (1994: 777). The possible anachronistic solecism (a St Petersburg fair of the 1830's might not have had a waltz-tune from an Austrian born in 1801) is eclipsed by the over-riding musical point that
82
deploying a mechanical music-box sound is a dramatic way of highlighting Petrushka's 'humanity', which is in inverted commas since he is, in Benois' scenario, a doll.
Lacasse (in Talbot 2000: 35-58) suggests that one of the most prevalent responses (though his focus is pop-music) is "trans-stylisation" and he lists a few genres (parody, travesty, pastiche, copy, cover, re-mix) with which many musicians will play. But it does not appear obvious (in classical music) that trans-stylisation is fundamental to any reworking, even if it does occur, as in Gounod's shifting of the Bach Prelude into a song of religious import or in Hooked-on Classics. The underlying point, though, is that music in the pop world often comes with particular lyrics (and cultural baggage), so that while a cover version changes the clothing, the message is still recognisably the same or similar. One can, equally, change more than the outer clothing whilst still keeping to the original's import. Other composers do not feel their music is regimented into one monochrome meaning, such as the two dozen settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis by Howells (which are not all identical), or the Paraphrase on a Simple Theme (1878) by a collective comprising Borodin, Cui, Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. More provocative or pregnant is the idea that a musical aspect (e.g. a particular Affekt, created by the collusion of notes and context) can be subverted by using a different cocktail of elements. I do this in The Real Op. 42, an à rebours version of
Schumann's Frauenliebe-und-Leben (1840) where all the moods of Schumann's settings are inverted while keeping many of the notated notes the same. Yet this goes further by not only omitting the singing role entirely (thus the woman's voice of the poems—written by Adelbert Chamisso, a man—is excluded), but by respecting the independence and self- sufficiency of the accompaniment. It is as if the butler used to serving someone else has become the lord, which carries a further message about the playing of parts and roles.
In fact, the notion that identity involves something more than itself is in Bakhtin, whose word for 'being' was 'co-being' (see Morris ed. 1994: 246). Yet the word (in Russian) has a freight attached with the idea of 'event' or 'process', and we might consider the original word for word with its theological implications. The Logos (translated into Latin as Verbum) is not so much a concept, idea, or word as a verbal form involving action. Thus (regardless of one's religious view), the expression that Jesus is the Logos Theou, is not so much "the
83
Word of God", but "the Deed of God", a point amplified by Goethe. In Goethe's Faust (1808) in Part I, scene iii, line 1237 (in 2002: 52) the translation to the opening of St John's Gospel ("In the beginning was the Act") gives the word 'Word' a richer and more dynamic life. Busoni's view, quoted by Williamson, that "every notation is, in itself, a transcription of an abstract idea" (Talbot 2000: 192) reminds us that music can require an enacting stage or several stages for it to be real enough to be listened to, analysed and critiqued. Witkin's suggestion that works of art are "vocative" (1995: 57) is persuasive since they call forth something (they can invoke, evoke or provoke) and move beyond themselves. How this works in practice remains, rightly, in the hands of composer, performers and listeners.
Virginia Woolf (1942: 129) in her brilliantly entitled essay Words fail me says that this "power of suggestion is one of the most mysterious properties of words". This can be amplified by composers, performer and even listeners. Although Genette (1997: 5) details a system of hypertextuality (an "over-text"), which makes Bach in Op. 48 the hypotext (an "under- text"), this (con)fusion of elements still tends to privilege earlier texts over newer thoughts. While Riffaterre (1980: 4-6), by contrast, sees the hypertext as a unifying device (rather than mere bricolage as Genette believes), both share the view that music's multi-dimensionality functions on numerous levels. Indeed, the word hypertext seems rooted not in etymology but from a parallel in science fiction, where "hyperspace" details an instantaneous and more connected network, making it a sort of "beyond-world". Music's multivalent quality, and its ability to show "beyond-worlds" makes it especially prone to allusion. For instance, the same two sounds (e.g. a G chord and a C chord) can be heard as a I-IV or a V-I progression with the solution only determinable by the context. Any discussion of 'the musical work' (as a concept), ends up discussing how the various and multifarious texts (musical, musicological, physical, scriptural, biographical and more) interact.
This chapter showed that the defining of a work is problematic, yet it is also instructive, for in considering how works emerge, other aspects come into play. Being aware of the provisionality of definitions is a part of the creative process, since it is the underexplored zones encountered in this process which seed further questions and invites responses.
84
Section V Methodology
Chapter 1
What is this thing called Bach?
The Foreword raised 4 over-arching questions, and this section uncovers issues relating to composers who, in addressing Bach, consider the role of the Canon. This section sets out the reasoning and the modus operandi of the project. Although particular details follow in the Experiments section (where compositional decisions are unpicked), technical details creep into the methodology because the integration of the works, and the way they intertwine with Bach, is fundamental to the enterprise. While this section is a ‘how’ section,
it also mentions the ‘why’.
Chapter 1 notes that Bach, too, tackled the problem of originality, and examines how others have transcribed his music.
Chapter 2 is my preparatory work on Bach, demonstrating my application (to four Chopin Etudes) of the four 'modes' mentioned in a Manley Hopkins poem. Chapter 3 is a list of the techniques, approaches and resonances I took
account of in preparing Op. 48.
In this document, the noun 'experiment' is used often (rather than 'piece' or 'work') not merely because of its research resonances, but because in German the word Versuch covers a panoply of meanings - from essay, to experiment - and helps affirm something of their provisional and exploratory nature. It is the word used by C.P.E. Bach for his 1753 essay on playing the keyboard (tr. Mitchell, 1974), and it is also the word used by Adorno for his 1960 book on Wagner (In search of Wagner, tr. Livingstone, 2005). One might also note that Bach's 1747 Musical Offering (arguably the ne plus ultra of compositional conceit) contains the model of Ricercar: none other than the word for research, it is replete with the idea that it is not as tightly argued as a fugue but is a journey that might have surprising features. Berio, salutarily, notes that the boundary between the words ‘experiment’ and
85
‘work’ is really an "artificial and ideological" one (1985: 121), and this study is intended to show some aspects of this liminality in the music itself.